Finding Uncle Billy

CHAPTER 1: THE VANISHED WARRIORS BALL

1999, Sky Grey, Ohio

"Mom," the little girl said, lying in bed, "did anyone in our family ever do anything great? I mean, I know I'm cousin to the Greys around here, but did a Finch ever do anything?"

Barb Finch looked at her daughter Trish, the love of her life, a miracle of existence. Dark hair, hazel eyes, thin, smart as a whip, athletic. If Trish didn't have a book in her hand, it was because it's hard to hold a book while carrying a lacrosse stick or tennis racket. She always had a skinned knee or elbow, always a bruise here or there. She could be absent from home for whole mornings or afternoons. Sky Grey was a town of free range parenting, of parents who wondered that there was any other kind. Most nights, Trish was tired.

A name came to mind. She remembered seeing a picture of Billy Finch, in his army uniform before he went to war and didn't return.

"Oh, I don't know if you'd call him famous, or great, but your great uncle is in some history books," she said. "Billy Finch, on your dad's side of the family. Your great-grandpa's big brother. You remember Great-grandpa Finch who died last year?"

"What did he do?" Trish asked. A relative in history books?

Her mother looked at her. "Billy? He fought in World War I. And he disappeared. He and his whole group. They call it the Lost Platoon. No one knows what happened to them. Forty or fifty guys, and he was their lieutenant. They probably all died."

"World War I?" Trish asked. "When was that?"

Barb hesitated. "Long time ago," she said. "Before Grandpa was your age." She didn't remember the years of World War I. "Everybody who fought in that war has died now, I think. Or they'd be over a hundred, probably." She was mostly right about that.

"Uncle Billy?" Trish asked, imagining derring-do in that war that was not much of a stage for heroics.

Her mother kissed her cheek. "Nobody knows what happened. Maybe you'll figure it out," she said. "Now, SLEEP!"

Trish rolled over. She thought, Billy Finch and the Lost Platoon...

*

2008, Sky Grey, Ohio

The dance was a vestige of another time. A small group played dance songs from decades past, the mayor of Sky Grey said a few words. But its title was evocative, and for some time it represented something to the rural people of the area. John Glenn attended two as a senator; several governors from Ohio and Indiana came for the attention, even an ambassador from France once.

The Vanished Warriors Ball was held every decade near the Fourth of July, and for Sky Grey, it was quite a party. Several hundred attended every time, wearing the best they had. Tickets were expensive, although no one was ever turned away at the door. Most paid. After the bills were paid, any money went to a veterans charity.

Tables were arranged on the carpet from the main entrance to the dance floor. There were chandeliers, it was brightly lit, and drinks were served. This year a small, live band played, a disabled former Marine lieutenant fronting the group.

At eight, the memorial commenced.

"Good evening," the singer said, using crutches but smiling, "I'm Josiah Langer, and I live in Sky Grey now. I was in the Marines. But I sing, so the Army guys put up with me." He nodded toward a table of soldiers also in uniform.

People smiled and laughed politely. Langer then introduced the mayor of the town, who took the microphone to conduct a ceremony. Tricia Finch, about to begin her sophomore year at Ohio State, was manning the table at the door, taking tickets and collecting money, but she turned for the little ceremony she'd never seen. Her Aunt Sheila Grey spoke into the microphone.

"It's time we take our seats. Everyone, please," she asked gently, and the room became quiet.

"Thank you. Welcome to the Ninth Vanished Warriors Ball. We have a small ceremony that goes back to 1928 and the first Vanished Warriors'. We begin with the fourth verse of the Star Spangled Banner, which at that time was not the national anthem and the fourth was the verse sung before the Lost Platoon boarded the train to leave for World War I. Please rise."

Langer stood forward and sang, to the accompaniment of his small group, the rarely heard fourth verse. The hall was not so large that he needed electronics, so for this song he did not use the amplifier. There was clapping then, and the mayor began.

"Thank you Mr. Langer. It is our custom to sit for this ceremony, so please be seated." All sat and watched Mayor Grey. "These words are read at every Ball: Hear Ye All Present," she read loudly. It became quiet. There may have been five hundred there.

"We gather to remember the men of the Lost Platoon, feared lost since June 23, 1918, men from Sky Grey and other parts of western Ohio and eastern Indiana, and one from Missouri. They are not forgotten, and we still await their return. If anyone here present awaits the return of a family member, please rise and remain standing when I read his name."

One by one, she read the rank, full name and hometown of each member of the Lost Platoon. As she did, various people stood at their seats for a relative unmet by them, lost 90 years earlier. She read on as more and more people stood, the great-great nieces and nephews and distant cousins of boys killed at 19 so long ago. From lowest to highest rank, she read the names. At the mention of Sergeant Harvey Lancaster, the lone soldier from Missouri, a very, very old woman in a wheelchair was pushed forward a bit, onto the hard dance floor by a young woman of perhaps 25, who stood behind.

The mayor saw those two and smiled, and finally said, "First Lieutenant William Finch, of Sky Grey, Ohio," and she saw Finches and Greys all over the room stand. "I add myself to that number," Sheila Grey said.

Trish turned at her table.

"You should stand, too," Mattie Morrison said, her coworker for the evening. "You're a Finch. None of them ever met him, either."

Trish stood at her table.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the living relatives of the Lost Platoon," The mayor said, and began to applaud. She was joined by all in a gentle ovation.

There were no direct descendants. None of the Lost Platoon had children. That fact impressed itself on Trish as she saw all those standing.

Finally, the mayor read from her paper again, "Sky Grey Platoon: We await your return. This will always be your home." At this gathering, no mothers cried, no brothers wept, no sisters wailed. She handed the microphone to a minister, who gave a prayer for their souls or their safe return, which no one had considered possible for fifty years or more.

The mayor said, "Thank you. You may be seated. There is someone who would like to speak."

The mayor took the portable microphone and visited the Missouri women, and then called for quiet.

"Ladies, Gentlemen, your attention please." A spotlight pointed at the mayor and the two women.

"I'm with Clara Lancaster Jones, the sister of Sergeant Harvey Lancaster of Missouri. She would like to say a few words about her brother." The mayor turned the microphone over to the very old woman.

"I was five when Harvey was killed in 1918. I expect I am the oldest relative alive, here, but I want you to know that they were real people. I remember Harvey in his uniform, our parents so proud." She hesitated at the thought. "I didn't know him well, he was 17 years older. Still, he was my brother. He didn't know where Sky Grey was, I remember him saying." She smiled. "I'm here with my great-granddaughter Evelyn. We think it's wonderful what you are doing here, and we hope you continue it. Perhaps someday, we'll find out what happened to them." She handed the microphone back to the mayor.

Trish had never seen such a commemoration. It was a sober and lovely night. A US senator stopped in. The lieutenant governor was there with his wife, daughter and son-in-law. The governor of Ohio sent his regrets.

CHAPTER 2: NEVERENDING WAR

For a decade after the end of the Great War, mothers in western Ohio told their children about the local boys who went to Europe.

They sent their sons Over There, thanked the Army they were together, and hoped for a best that was not to be. From Europe came a few letters immediately after landing, some more over the next few months, but the last notes just said they were soon to move up. Then there was nothing. No letter came, nothing for months. The army declared them missing. Eventually they were presumed dead. Letters were sent to Senators and Congressmen, to the Army, to the President, but no one knew anything. The army sent an officer to find them, but the war was still raging and he found no sign of anyone.

"One day," parents and relatives said to their surviving children, "God took them, and every one of them was carried to heaven by an angel. One second they were soldiers, and then they were saints." It was a great tragedy for the likes of Sky Grey or Eaton, Ohio, or Lynn or Muncie, Indiana.

A door slammed once in 1924, and Mrs. Finch looked up, thinking it must be Billy. Mrs. Noe saw her son Douglass in the 1930s at the new Union Terminal train station in Cincinnati, from a distance, as he got on a train, but he never turned around and then he was gone. She cried for hours, convinced he was alive and just didn't come home for some reason.

Tom Canally saw his brother once walking along the street in Sky Grey in 1936. He ran up to him, pulled on his arm, but when he turned it wasn't him. Tom said, "Sorry, I thought you were someone else."

Mother Lindstrom told her daughter, "Every time the steps creak I look up and think it might be Ted, finally home. Remember how he always bounced on those steps?"

That happened for decades. Finally, all who had hoped for their return were gone, too. They were just a legend. No old man wandered in fifty years later claiming to be the long lost Private Simkins or Sergeant Lancaster. No Billy Finch, no Allen Scranton. No Doug Noe. No one.

They stepped onto a troop transport train in early 1918, and no one from Sky Grey ever saw them again, alive or dead.

*

2010, Rochambeau, France

The screen door creaked open, its spring twinging.

"Mama, come quick, we found something!" little Cheri, almost six, yelled from the backdoor, excited and smiling. Amie Durand took her hands out of the dishwater, dried them on a towel, and wondered what the children had gotten into.

"Come on, Mama, come on!" Cheri insisted, pulling on her hand. They went outside on that brilliant, cool spring Saturday. Cheri pulled on her mother's hand until they were jogging to the base of the ridge, where it merged with the floor of the valley. The ground was always a little moist there. Around the point of the spur it became a swamp pond.

Jean was there, holding a small cylinder of metal, caked in mud and dirt. Seeing his mother approach, he held it out to her proudly.

"Look, Mama! Look what we found right here, just sticking out of the ground!"

Amie saw what he held and her heart stopped. She didn't want to frighten them, but she was frightened.

"Jean, don't move." Her voice had a commanding tone neither of the children had ever heard. "Just hold it out and don't move. Let me have it, please," she said. "Gently."

"What is it, Mama? Why are you..." he said. Then he remembered all the times she or Uncle Jacques had warned them not to touch things they found on the ground. They had not said it for some time, so it hadn't mattered.

Amie gently put her hands around the cylinder, which had two bands of iron or steel belted about the tube that looked to be brass. It was heavier than she expected. Jean pulled his hands back.

"Good," she said, not moving. "Now listen to me. I want you to run to the house. Get your uncle. Hear me? GET YOUR UNCLE!"

Jean and Cheri were scared, now. Their mother was scared, and they could feel her fear. Jean saw her perspiring, saw her trembling.

"GO! RUN!" she said, standing there with her arms out, scared to pull her hands closer, or to accidentally shake or jostle the old bomb.

They ran. Uncle Jacques should be in the house or the front field.

Amie slowly squatted, and gently, oh so gently, put the cylinder down on the ground.

The children heard the explosion, and Cheri screamed.

CHAPTER 3: A GRADUATE SEMINAR IN HISTORY

"Patricia Finch?"

"Here. Trish, please. I'm interested in the impact of war on small communities."

The professor made a notation.

"Arlington Jeffries?"

"Here," said a tall guy in the corner. His hair is perfect, Trish thought. He probably spent more on those clothes than I did on my car. "I'm studying the role of women in my life," Jeffries said. There was a groan from two of the three women in the room.

Dr. Simms raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Sociology seminar is down the hall. Psychology is downstairs. Pickup Bar is down the street. Seriously, Mr. Jeffries?"

"American fascist movements, Simms."

Trish was startled by the rude tone of the reply. Dr. Simms was not smiling, and he looked for some seconds at the student. He didn't seem amused by Jeffries. Jeffries looked back at him. Was that insolence?

"Thank you, Mr. Jeffries." Simms's voice was harder, quieter, Trish thought.

He went on with the class list then, perhaps having measured Jeffries or tired of him.

Most of the discussion was about the nature of history doctorates, their uses and limitations (several of the students appeared to be considering other programs), and the level of work necessary to finish successfully.

Jeffries spoke up almost as if his participation was a gift to everyone. "I planned on reading the major historians and what they wrote on the Klan and the German-American Bund. My idea was to conduct a meta-synthesis of the best historians and critics."

Meta-synthesis? Trish looked at Jeffries, wondering if he were serious.

Dr. Simms waited a moment, perhaps wondering who the "major historians" might be. "Do you mean only Bund? Not the American Nazi Party founded by Rockwell later? There have been several other significant fascist groups and movements. The Black Legion. Business Plot. Silver Legion. Coughlin's followers. Recent groups that might be fascist like White Aryan Resistance, or left-wing groups that have similar structures. You need to show there is a lack of knowledge or study of your topic as well as your plan to investigate it before it will be approved. You need to identify a change or idea, perhaps an event, that has not been adequately investigated."

Jeffries seemed flustered, never having considered that Simms might expect more than that he read popular histories of American nazis. Trish thought she saw amusement in Simms's eyes, quickly veiled. She thought Jeffries had picked a subject out of thin air because he thought it would be easy or impressive to someone, and hadn't considered he was expected to defend his project every step of the way. Perhaps he was surprised Simms knew more than he about the subject.

"Racism precludes rigor," Jeffries said. "You act as if there is a philosophy of intellectual depth. My thesis is that it is a shallow ideology based in their ignorance and lack of education."

"Why do you think it's based in lack of education or ignorance?" Simms asked.

"The Nazis? Skinheads? You expect me to read tons and tons of that propaganda as if it's anything other than white supremacist caterwauling?"

"You chose your topic," Simms said. He shook his head. "Perhaps you underestimate the depths of intellectual thought among the fascists. It's not my field but I've seen references to Nietzsche, Schonerer, Riehl, Heidegger, Savitri Devi, and other writers, Darwin, Ploetz, and other scientists. American fascists are not in a bubble. I doubt the topic will be as superficial as you assume. And the meta-analysis of secondary readings is more suited to studies of effective educational techniques than history. We don't study just because we can. Of course, if you approach it another way, your Phd could be a study in intellectual history, but it would have to be carefully approached. I doubt you'll find much enthusiasm for a study of the studies of fascism. We use primary sources and reach our own conclusions. You should see your advisor, Dr. Marshall, I think?"

"I will," Jeffries said, almost disgusted, accusingly. Trish wondered if it were possible for him to be humiliated.

"Dispassion is not difficult, one just need not care," Simms said. "But approaching every subject, every statement, every event, with an open mind, associating with the vast experience of humanity, and treating each historical actor as a full human being... that's what makes an historian different. Historians take great advantage of hindsight. Our subject is the memory of humanity, and there's purpose in that." He stopped and shook his head.

"It is quite possible for a reporter or general to write a great history of a battle or event. What makes the historian's job important?" he finished. "We with degrees compete with every participant, every knowledgeable observer, everyone who wants to explain. We bring diligence, hindsight, knowledge, time, years of study, books, consideration of every possibility, and hopefully open mindedness." He looked directly at Jeffries. "I don't believe in perfunctory history. We train people to write the major history, not just summarize it. It requires work and intelligence. It can take," he paused, "a lifetime."

Jeffries said nothing, and Trish thought that he didn't want to defend laziness.

She smiled. She raised her hand.

"It's a seminar, Ms. Finch. You may speak without raising your hand, whenever appropriate. Yes?"

"Of course, forgot, uh, some of what I'm interested in for my eventual dissertation is probably only available in France. How should I handle that?"

Dr. Simms looked at her with sudden seriousness. "History is really going to be your field? And you want to investigate something with many documents in another language and country?"

Trish answered yes to both.

"If you're serious, there's only one serious answer, and you already know it."He looked at her, and she realized he was saying she must study French, which she could already speak adequately but not like a native, and she'd have to go to France, if that was the only way to get the information. She had taken years of French in her high school and undergraduate years; perhaps she would add French to her schedule now to improve. It was not daunting to her; it was exciting. She looked at her teacher; he was not smiling but his eyes were twinkling.

Simms saw her excitement at the prospect of language and geographical obstacles and wanted to smile. The room was quiet. He looked at them. "You are going to be the experts in your fields, small as you may define them. That Phd means you have made every, EVERY, effort to understand it thoroughly. NOT that you understand those who have written about it. That you understand IT."

"Studying history doesn't save anyone's life," Dr. Simms said. "But it can reveal its meaning."

The room was silent. Perhaps he was trying to discourage the charlatans, Trish thought and smiled. Simms saw her smile, and he wanted to smile also, but didn't.

"Okay, that's enough for tonight. Don't forget the reading for Thursday. I know it's a lot, but you're worth it. Ms. Finch, Mr. Seymour, you are my advisees so if you'd see me after class for a minute? Okay, see you all Thursday."Trish and Seymour nodded and stayed in their seats as the other ten filed out. Dr. Simms stood by the door, shaking hands with each student as he or she left. He was an interesting guy, Trish decided.

He started off talking to Seymour and arranged a bi-weekly meeting to discuss things. Seymour left then.