Ordinary Heroes (54 page)

They are both gone now. To quote a favorite author, "Death deepens the wonder."

As I have acknowledged, over many months I edited, reshaped, and occasionally rewrote many of the passages in Dad's account for the sake of publication. At this stage, with the manuscript having been put aside while I waited for my mother to make her rocky passage from this world, I frequently cannot remember whose lines are whose when I turn the pages.

I could go back to my father's original manuscript to sort that out, but, frankly, I don't care to. I've done my best. This is as real as I can make my parents, as fully as I can imagine them, as honest as I can stand to be with others, or myself. There are inevitably limits. When our parents talk about their lives, they relay what they think is best, for their sake or ours. And as their children, we hear what w
e w
ant, believe what we can, and, as time lengthens, pry and judge and question as our needs demand. We understand them in that light. And when we tell our parents' tales to the world, or even to ourselves, the story is always our own.

*

A NOTE ON SOURCES

This book is a work of imagination, inspired by the historical record, but seldom fully faithful to it. Although I began from reported events, the action throughout the novel is my embroidery, undertaken by characters who, except for the largest historical figures, are entirely fictitious.

My principal imaginative starting point was stories about World War II, which I heard from my father when I was a boy, before he put away those experiences and retreated into silence. My dad, Dr. David D. Turow, trod much of David Dubin's path through Europe as commanding officer of the 413th Medical Collecting Company, which was attached to the Third Army after October 1944. From my father, who was a field surgeon at the Army hospital established in the
Sisters of Notre Dame convent at Bastogne, I heard many tales that stayed with me: about that loose-sphinctered parachute jump into Bastogne; being taken captive by German troops who needlessly executed his driver; the horror experienced by the initial medical teams to enter Dachau and BergenBelsen.

My father's stories are grossly transmogrified in Ordinary Heroes; they provided only a point of departure. David Dubin is in no way a portrait of my dad. For those who might wonder, my mother, Rita Pastron Turow, was a schoolteacher in Chicago during World War II. I owe profound thanks to her for lending me my father's files and photographs and letters (from which I borrowed several lines appearing in the letters in the novel), since they inevitably revealed many things a child would never otherwise know, including the depth of Dad's devotion to my mother as a young husband. To Peggy Davis, who added the photos and memories of her father, Technical Sergeant Donald Nutt, my dad's clerk, I owe special thanks.

After a television appearance in which I said that my next novel would concern World War II, Mr. Robert Freeman of Tequesta, Florida, contacted me at the urging of his wife, Julie Freeman, to offer me free use of a variety of materials he had retained relating to his cousin Carl Cohen, an infantryman who was
found starved to death in a Paris hotel room at the war's end. I am grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, and to Carl Cohen's sister, Dottie Bernstein of Bennington, Vermont, for sharing these materials with me, even though I have contributed nothing to solving the mystery of how Cohen fell into Nazi hands, or why his death was misreported by comrades who said they saw him die on the battlefield.

On slender historical footings like these, the novel was then imagined. All of Robert Martin's activities, for example, are invented, although they occasionally hark back to reported operations of the OSS. There was no ammunition dump at La Saline Royale, which is actually situated a few miles from the site I describe. A team of U
. S
.
. S
oldiers made unsuccessful efforts around December 22, 1944, to rescue a stranded ammunition train outside Bastogne, but not in the precise manner set forth in the novel. Heisenberg did run from Hechinger, but not because anyone had attempted to blow up the secret location of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on Haigerlocherstrasse. FDR's death was announced near midnight overseas, not in the afternoon of April 12, 1945. Und so weiter. A concentration camp was situated at Balingen, but it was much smaller and not as heartless as what I have portrayed, which is drawn instead from accounts of Bergen-Belsen.

With all of that said, I have tried to be mindful o
f t
he larger historical record, especially the chronology of the war, and the movement of forces, and to accurately reflect the individual experiences of American soldiers. A bibliography of the sources I consulted is posted at www
. S
cottTurow
. C
om.

My research was enormously aided by several persons whom I must thank. Colonel Robert Gonzales, U
. S
. Army, Ret., a former Army JAG officer now employed at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, shared with me the manuscript of his excellent history of the JAG Department during World War II, which incorporates interviews of numerous JAG Department members of that period. I reached Colonel Gonzales at the end of a lengthy bucket brigade of helpful hands that began with Carolyn Alison, Public Affairs Officer for the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Department of the Navy. With the grace of her boss, Rear Admiral Michael F. Lohr, the Navy's Judge Advocate General, Ms. Alison put me in contact with a number of able Army historians, starting with Colonel William R. Hagan, U
. S
. Army, Ret., another former Army JAG Corps member, who is now a civilian employee at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and who was of continuing aid. Bill Hagan went far out of his way to acquaint me with a number of his colleagues, to whom I am indebted, including Mitch Yockelson of the National Archives and Records Administration. Dan Layering, the Librarian at the
Army's JAG School Library in Charlottesville, Virginia, was particularly generous in providing me with materials, including copies of The Judge Advocate Journal, the JAG Department's newsletter during World War II, and the 1943 revision of A Manual for Courts-Martial, U
. S
. Army. Mary B. Dennis, Deputy Clerk of Court for the Army Judiciary, responded to my requests to obtain a court-martial record as an exemplar. Alan Kramer, Director at the Washington National Records Center at Suitland, Maryland, was a kind host and guide when I visited. I also must acknowledge research assistance from my friends at the Glencoe (Illinois) Public Library and the Western New England College of Law. Great thanks to Henri Rogister and Roger Marquet of the Center of Research and Information on the Battle of the Bulge (CRIBA) for responding to my questions. And to Michel Baert, formerly of the Belgian Tourist Office, who guided me on a trip in 2004 along David Dubin's route, I am especially grateful. He was both remarkably well informed and a congenial traveling companion.

Several veterans of the European campaign offered comments on the initial drafts of this novel that kept me from making even more mistakes: my law partner Martin Rosen of New York; Sam L. Resnick of Bayside, New York, President of the moth Infantry Division Association; and Harold Tauss of
Wilmette, Illinois. Thanks, too, to Bill Rooney and the other members of the World War II Round Table, as well as the librarians at the Wilmette Public Library.

I had incisive literary comments from several early readers: Rachel Turow, Jim McManus, Howard Rigsby, Leigh Bienen, Jack Fuller. Dr. Carl Boyar answered medical questions, as he has often before. My assistants, Kathy Conway, Margaret Figueroa, and Ellie Lucas, kept me on my feet, with Kathy making a number of special contributions, ranging from proofreading to compiling the posted bibliography. My agent at CAA, Bob Bookman; my law partner Julius Lewis; Violaine Huisman; and my French publisher, Isabelle Laffont, each contributed many corrections to my ersatz French, for which I'm sure I still owe apologies to French speakers around the world. Thanks to Sabine Ibach for correcting the tattered remains of my high school German. Robert Marcus was chief consultant on Things Jewish. Eve Turow was a valued sounding board about many questions connected to the book's presentation. And of course the edifice stands only with my three pillars--my editor, Jonathan Galassi; my agent, Gail Hochman; and, at the center, my wife, Annette.

I will not even begin the mea culpas for the errors I must have made, notwithstanding my substantial efforts to avoid them. I hope none of these mistakes are taken to diminish my admiration for the men and
women who fought that horrible and necessary war. I can only paraphrase the remark of my old mentor, Tillie Olsen, which is quoted at the novel's end: Time deepens the wonder.

S
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.