Ever get excited about a "find" only to discover it was nothing to get too excited about? I have had that happen to me more times than I care to mention. Most often it happens when researching the family tree. It happens because I am somewhat of a stickler when it comes to the facts, the straight truth of the matter. Then having uncovered the truth I find myself a bit disappointed. No heroic characters from my past, no one famous, just regular folks living regular lives for the times they were in. I've also had that experience with things. Nothing of great rarity or value, just stuff. Stuff that is cool if you knew the person or were related in some fashion but nothing real exciting.
An example is an "escape" map I found among my father's things from his time in WW2. He was a flight engineer on B-24 Consolidated bombers. So he had this escape map that covered an area of Japan. It is printed on Rayon to be waterproof and lightweight. The date on that map is 1942. Pretty cool, exciting even. I had visions of Dad putting this map into the pocket of his flight jacket, you know the type, leather with a big fur collar, iconic in appearance. It was a bomb run over Kanazawa Japan or possibly Sendai Japan. Next to that in the same pocket would have been his "blood" chit. That chit promises a reward to anyone helping him escape should he get shot down. It is also printed on Rayon and the writing is in Chinese because he was flying over Chinese territory to gain access to Japan. Also, in that pocket would have been the handkerchief his grandmother embroidered for him. I have that mounted in a frame hanging on my living room wall. All pretty cool stuff.
After doing some reading and research there was a let down. I read about the bombing raids in Japan during the time my father was there. Turns out Kanazawa was never bombed. Dad couldn't have flown over that area. The other side of that map was Sendai, perhaps that was it. Sendai had indeed been the target of the Eighth Air Force late in 1944. I read where a campaign of carpet bombing had been carried out. Then I read where it was conducted by a squadron of B-29 Super fortresses. Dad never flew in a B-29 so he wouldn't have been a part of that. That leaves me with the question, why did he have that map? I did some more research on that map, and it turns out 33,000 of them were printed. Perhaps he was issued that map as just in case thing, perhaps he just traded something for it. Still a cool relic but I can't attach a great story to it.
Now I have some things from my time in the Navy. I have quite the collection of "Letters of Appreciation" and a few "Letters of Commendation" along with certificates of training, and certificates marking milestones. I have my Shellback certificate, a Bluenose certificate, an Order of the Rock certificate and a Suez Safari certificate. All are framed and look pretty cool. Well, not the letters, they are in the closet somewhere, in a pile. When they are "discovered" it may cause some excitement on the part of the grandkids or great grands. Perhaps they will wonder about all of that. I was there for Desert Shield/ Desert Storm and have the medals to prove it. Thing is, I was there but never in any real danger at all. I was serving on an Ammo ship providing shells and oil to the other ships in the fleet. Well back from any serious threat. I have navigated the Straits of Hormuz. It all sounds exciting unless you were there, then you know the truth of it. If they do their research, that is what they will discover.
Maybe it is just the optimist in me but I'm always thinking I will make a discovery of importance. All I have found is the everyday things of life. I do enjoy finding out about the lives of my ancestors, especially the ones long gone before my time. I know I have had whalers, those seagoing men chasing the "great beasts" for their oil. Some ancestors were pioneers, heading west back in the day. I've discovered ship Captains, carpenters, merchants and photographers. There has been tailors and shipbuilders. At least one ancestor was an indentured servant, later becoming a shoemaker. But all of those people were just the regular folk of their day. No heroes, no standouts, no fame or fortunes. Today they are all just names in history, names carved in stone, or simply buried and forgotten to time.
It's a temptation to elaborate and speculate about those folks. It wouldn't be too difficult to build a story about any number of them. My second great grandfather was at Fort Sumter during the Civil War. I had vision of him charging into battle. Truth is, he was there on picket duty after the fort had been surrendered back to the Union forces. He spent most of his enlistment in the hospital, not from battle wounds but from disease. After the war he suffered from what we now call PTSD although at the time they just called that "nerves." He had a breakdown at some point and seems to have recovered. Not a very heroic tale to tell. But I'm interested in the truth and that is simply how it was. My own father was in a plane crash! Yes, his bomber crashed. Thing is it crashed shortly after taking off and not from a high altitude at all. His knee was injured in that crash, everyone survived. As Dad told the story he tried to warn the pilot that the plane was overloaded and with the current weather conditions it wouldn't fly but that college man figured he knew better! So, the true story is one of error, not of valor. Just the everyday stuff during that time in history.
It has been said that fact is stranger than fiction. That is true often enough. But the facts are often not very exciting. That is true almost all the time. I think if we are lucky, we will have a "moment" that fifteen minutes Andy Warhol spoke of. He actually said, "In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes." In this day of Twitter and the world wide web, he may not have been far off the mark. Have I had a heroic moment? In my own mind I have, but I don't get to choose that. Only history gets to choose the heroes and the villains. Strangely even they are subject to change, by history. It's all in how the story is told.
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