M.B. HENRY 
Dan Wescott – On Another Battlefield
The sun burned hot in the isolated countryside of Belgium. So hot…. and the horizon lay vast and unbroken. On either side of the car, we only saw open farm lands, and tidy hay blocks stacked in pyramids or speckled in uniform over the fields. Tall, green grass rippled in the wind. The sky topped it all with its fantastic sapphire dome. While my husband drove, I fiddled with the GPS, which babbled some robotic nonsense back at me. It couldn’t help me, because it didn’t really know what I wanted.
I was looking for something yes, but it wouldn’t be on the GPS. Although, I knew it was somewhere among these hay fields and grasslands. I had traced movements through old atlases and battle maps, I had scoured the many volumes on my home library for clues. It took some elbow grease, but the research forged a pathway. What I wanted should be quite close. If I had done my job right anyway…And it’s not like I would have a second chance. It’s not every day we fly across the world and drive all over continental Europe.
“Wait, here we are,” my husband pointed at a small road sign – “Flamierge.”
The car tires crunched over loose rocks on the cracked, country road. We pulled onto the main street of the small town of Flamierge – if you could even call it that. The main street only had three or four buildings, and none of them looked open for business. I spotted a house or two nearby. We didn’t see any people or other cars. A small church with a crumbling cemetery sat on the corner, the only sign this town had ever had any inhabitants.
I thought I would feel something when I entered this place. Maybe he would greet me somehow – a flutter of the heart, a flicker inside my mind, but it was blank. I felt nothing. How could I really be sure this was it?
“Look,” my husband suddenly exclaimed. “There’s something over there!”
I craned my neck around and sure enough, I noticed two flags sticking out behind some trees. One had some distinctly American stars and stripes.
My husband whipped the car around and we pulled over. A Belgian flag flanked the American one, and both flapped in the breeze. A humble, stone monument crouched in the shadow of the banners. It was about three feet tall, with a statement carved on the front of it. And I would never mistake the emblem on the top of that – an eagle’s talon.
The 17th Airborne.
“Oh my God…” I stammered out of the car and walked slowly over to the monument. I put my hand on its cold, rough surface. I read the simple inscription beneath the 17th Airborne’s emblem. “In proud remembrance of the men of the 17th Airborne Division who fought in this area during the Battle of the Bulge in January of 1945. They fought that we might be free.”
That we might be free…. I ran my hand along the monument, and a tear slid out of the corner of my eye. “Hello, Dan Wescott. I found you.”
The following story is a bit more personal than ones I’ve shared before. Because sometimes, history isn’t just some big, vast concept that we pull from dusty volumes. Sometimes, it is a bit closer to our hearts. It involves people we know and care about. History, sometimes, is personal.
So, I’d like to share the history of a special friend. One of those real, true friends that come from all ages, generations, and walks of life. Exactly a year ago, I had to say goodbye to this friend. Although I know we will meet again someday, goodbyes are never easy. And in honor of the one year anniversary since he answered the final roll call, I wanted to introduce you to him, and the part he played in history.
In 2011, I had just begun research for a novel about World War II. I especially wanted to find some first-hand accounts. The local library boasted plenty of memoirs and histories, but that wasn’t quite what I wanted. I longed to hear it from their own mouths and watch their eyes while they spoke. I wanted to learn their mannerisms and get inside their hearts and heads. And I could only achieve that by sitting down with one.
The quest to speak to a World War II veteran proved difficult. Men and Women of the Greatest Generation had really started slipping away, even back then. However, I happened to mention the project to my pastor at church one Sunday. “Talk to Dan Wescott,” she said. “He’s the older gentleman who sits in the back.”
The very next Sunday, I approached Dan after service. I introduced myself, explained my project, and asked him if he’d like to share some of his experiences. We set up a meeting for the following Tuesday. My first interview with a World War II veteran, and I didn’t know what to say. I worried I would sound like a complete idiot to this aged warrior who probably had no time or patience for the likes of me.
Once we started talking, it didn’t take long to realize the interview wouldn’t require much from me. The best I could do was just let him talk. I tossed in a question here and there if he lost his train of thought, but for the most part, I just sat back and enjoyed the show. And he started it pretty bluntly:
“War is crap, young lady. It’s just crap.”
Dan Wescott went on to tell me how he grew up in North Dakota, and he got drafted at the age of twenty-one in 1942. He had a rough time in training, and the food scared him the most. “They only gave us rice. We all thought it meant we were headed to the Pacific. That was a different kind of war.” As it turned out, the Army just had a rationing shortage at the time, and they could only feed the recruits rice until their stores picked back up. There would be no Pacific for Dan. He and the 17th Airborne would go to Europe instead.
The Battle of the Bulge initiated Dan into combat. He got the news of the surprise attack on a Friday. By that Sunday, he found himself on the bullet-riddled frontline. “There was no time to prepare. We didn’t even get proper winter attire. Nothing but our army jackets.”
A coat was a bad thing to be without. Because the bitter cold of the Battle of the Bulge became just as dangerous as the fighting itself. Temperatures dipped to historic lows that winter. It was so cold the GIs couldn’t even dig fox holes. They had to use ones the Germans left behind, or just lay out in the snow, with their green jackets a perfect target against the white snow. “There was just no escape from that cold,” Dan said. “Just shoot me, I would think to myself. Just shoot me, and get me out of this damn cold.”
Dan served as radio messenger and reconnaissance on the frontline, which often put him under fire from an unseen enemy. “The guns were all around. We couldn’t see them in the trees. But if you could hear the bullet, it was a miss. The one you didn’t hear, that’s the one that would get you.”
After fighting in the Ardennes, Dan crossed the Rhine into Germany with the rest of his unit. He showed me photos from old and yellowed newspapers. Some showed men from his own company. He and his boys rousted out German soldiers in hiding, and he took a lot of them prisoner. “It wasn’t personal to me,” he said about how he handled POWs. “If a German’s got a gun, and it’s me or him, that’s one thing. But I wouldn’t make it personal.”
Not long after his arrival in Germany, Dan finally got to get out of the cold. He didn’t get shot, but his feet froze and swelled so badly he couldn’t get them out of his boots. He spent the rest of the European war in the hospital, praying they wouldn’t have to remove his blackened trench feet. “I was glad. I was lucky. Because it was either that or get shot.”
V-E Day came that Spring, just as Dan left the hospital and returned to the line. “We got drunk,” he said when I asked how he celebrated. “Every single damn one of us.” They had hoarded French wine just for the occasion, secretly storing it away in rooms. When they heard the British would soon come and take over their sector, the GIs took care of the wine by drinking it all. “Like hell we were going to let that good French wine go to the Brits. We all got drunker than skunks.”
The happiness of V-E Day came at a price though. I asked Dan about the survival rate in his unit. He thought it over for a long moment before he said… “maybe thirty percent.”
“If you walked out of there alive, unhurt, it was just luck. Just horseshit luck. There is nothing you can do against an unseen enemy. You can watch your buddy’s back, but it’s you, him, the guy next to you… horseshit luck.”
The interview was a powerful experience for me, and in the end, I got more than research for a book. I got a friend. The first real one I made in Los Angeles. Dan and I met up for lunch once a week after that. I also picked him up for church every Sunday. We sat next to each other in the back pew. He entertained me during service by cracking sarcastic jokes and grumbling at everything when he felt cranky. Every time I dropped him off, he wrapped me in a bear hug and said, “God bless you, sweetie.”
Five or six years passed. I saw many friends come and go, I went through some break-ups, and I suffered typical trials of the “starving artist” life in Los Angeles. Through all the changes, old Dan stayed constant. When I began dating my now-husband, Dan had to sign off. “No marrying without my approval,” he said with his stern finger in my face. Thankfully, he loved my husband, and he became Dan’s friend too.
One morning, I went to pick up Dan for church but I arrived to an empty apartment. I heard his beloved cat yowling at the door, but he didn’t appear no matter how hard I knocked. A neighbor told me that Dan had fallen down the night before. He was okay, but he wouldn’t be able to live on his own anymore. His family was moving him to assisted living in Santa Clarita.
My husband and I went to visit him there often. We also adopted his cat, and we sometimes brought him along so he could say hi to his poppy. And we still brought Dan to church every Sunday. He had reached his 90s by then, and he became wobbly and frail on his feet. Still, he refused to use his wheel chair.
“Dan,” I said to my dear old friend one day. “You have to use your wheel chair at church from now on.”
“No. I don’t like it. I can walk by myself.”
“I know. You’re strong and stubborn. But we can’t have you fall down when you are in our care. It would kill me. You understand?”
He considered.
“We’ll put a bicycle bell on it for you.”
“Fine.”
All went well for a while, and then in January of last year, I got a call. Dan had fallen down again. The next day, I got another call. They had decided to take him off life support.
It happened that quickly.
My husband and I drove to the hospital in silence. It would be the last time we would see our friend on this part of the timeline, and that weighed heavy on both of us. When I reached his room in Intensive Care, I didn’t find the same Dan. There was no signature sarcasm, no anxious inquiries about his kitty, no “God bless you sweetie” with that bear hug. It was tough to take. But I took his hand and said goodbye anyway. I at least knew he wasn’t afraid. Because he had told me so during that interview all those years ago.
“I’m not afraid to die,” he had said in that bold, confident voice. “I’m ready. I’ve been ready since that snowy winter in 1944.”
…And so, my husband and I crawled across Belgium to find where our dear friend fought in that snowy winter he always talked about. I now stood right in the very spot. Dan may have just been one cog in a very big wheel, but he and his unit were everything to this small town. In the peak of summer almost seventy-five years later, Flamierge felt still. A butterfly flitted nearby. A few birds chirped. The fields, the sky, and the trees provided our only company. Although, maybe we weren’t as alone as we thought.
I knew Dan stood there somewhere, and it was so much more than a whimsical thought. It was fact. Dan was here. He just stood in a different time period than I did, and that can be an awfully thin veil sometimes. Even though his part of the timeline was probably much less pleasant, it still felt like a much better way to say farewell than in that dingy hospital room.
“Hang in there, old boy,” I whispered. “It’s a terrible fight where you are, but it all gets better. And later down the road, there’s a friend waiting for you. So, until we meet again on another battlefield….”
RIP DAN WESCOTT.
SOURCES
Interview Notes – Dan Wescott, 17th Airborne
Years of Friendship
The Historical Atlas of WWII – A. Swanston & M. Swanston
A Time for Trumpets – C.B. MacDonald
Wikipedia
What a moving post – I was fully engrossed in this story from the heart – thanks, MB – brilliant. 😊💕
I feel like just the typist for this one – it’s his story 🙂
MB, this post is magnificent — eloquent, poignant, humane, and riveting. I love the way it combines history, travel, intergenerational friendship, and much more. I’m going to put a link to your piece in my current blog post.
That is very flattering Dave, thank you very much for your kind words and for sharing the story. It honors me and my friend, I still miss him very, very much.
I completely agree with Dave. Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you for reading! I’m happy to see so many people getting moved by Dan’s story!
A few tears from me reading this post. How lovely it was that you became his friend.
Yes, he was a lovely friend! 🙂 And is still very much missed. We still have his kitty and that always makes us happy.
What a beautiful post! Got me all teary-eyed.
Thank you very much 🙂 Dan would be glad to know his story moved you!
What a great story beautifully told!
I’m glad you were moved by it – Dan would be glad too!
Beautiful and moving story!
Many many thanks <3
What a remarkable story! For him to survive when the survival rate in his unit was only 30%!
I laughed when you told him you’d put a bicycle bell on his wheelchair.
It’s fascinating to study the photos of this area, the site of such a famous battle. But it was very moving, too, and I’m sorry to hear about the loss of such a dear friend.
P.S. Good luck with querying your novel!
I’m glad you came by and enjoyed Dan’s story. He was quite a character. We still miss him very much. And thanks for the well wishes for querying, I will need it!
Wonderful tribute M.B.
Thank you <3
This is the most beautiful tribute anyone could ever ask for. You have such an amazing gift for writing. I felt like I was there with you and Dan. Thanks for making me cry and for sharing your special relationship with us.
🙂 Thank you for taking the time to read it! Dan would be happy to know his story moved you! Love you
Terrific story! Amazing that you were able to find that place… and that the flags were there!
I know, right?! We had no idea they would actually have a monument there. That was a very moving and wonderful surprise.
What gifts – your friendship with Dan and the opportunity to honor him where he once stood for all of us. A remarkable story – very powerful. Thank you for sharing.
<3 Well I thank you for reading. So glad it moved you.
Oh my, the tears… This is beautiful. I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you <3 We still miss him so much!
M, this was a very moving story. I know Dan was a special and precious friend to you. I also know even though I never met him, that you meant the world to him. Somewhere he is watching over you and smiling. You have honored this old warrior with your beautiful writing. Thank you for sharing this with all of us!
Glad you came by to read it! Dan would be glad you did so!
I hope you know how talented and beautiful you are. I am so proud of you!
what a great piece, its always a sad moment when someone we know and love passes. The memories live on, thank you for sharing this story. RIP Dan…. A fellow parachutist.
I am so glad you read it! You know I actually thought it would be right up your ally when I was exploring your blog yesterday. Were you a parachutist? That is incredible. Dan was glider airborne.
Yes I was a parachutist, 1983 joined as a joiner.. 15.5 years old.. wish I was still in.. miss it so much.. yes totally connected with your blog.. what a great Dan seemed to be and how honoured he must have felt to be friends with and your hubby.. I guess you maybe know this, you helped him through his last years and brought some joy to his life.. I tip my hat to you both…
That is very kind of you to say 🙂 Dan was a very special friend to us and is very much missed!
Thanks for a wonderful and deeply moving post and for telling the story of a real hero.
Thank you very much for reading it. Dan is smiling somewhere out there! 🙂
Great story – a reward for persistence
Thank you! <3
It is an outstanding tribute for your friend and all the other troops who fought beside him. I’ll be passing this on to others who can appreciate it.
Dan greatly appreciates that, GP 🙂 It’s an honor that you would do that for him!
Very touching and personal.
Thank you <3
Beautiful and moving
Thank you very much <3
What a moving story! Those personal ones are the absolute best. Thank you for sharing your friendship with us. ❤️
Thank you for reading about it! I’m happy to share just a little bit of his story 🙂
M.B., Wow. Thank you for sharing your experiences with Dan. Brilliant writing about an exceptional human being. May I reblog/ post on all platforms?
I’m glad Dan’s story moved you – he was a great friend. Of course you may repost 🙂 He would be very honored!
Thank you. The honor is mine
That’s a moving account you’ve written. I’m sorry for your loss, even though it was inevitable.
Thank you <3
What a beautiful tribute!
Thank you <3
Very moving! Thank you for sharing ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for reading, I’m glad to share his story with all my friends here! <3
You’re welcome. You definitely have a way with words and it was my pleasure to read.
That’s a wonderful piece, MB, on so many levels. And a fine piece of writing. Dan sounds like quite a character, too; I could even forgive him for not sharing the booze with our chaps (probably just as well, really).
Lol! 🙂 He rarely shared good booze with me either, so it’s nothing personal haha. Thanks so much for giving it a read, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
http://www.AParatroopersFaith.org George B. Tullidge III brother of Anne Bell
It’s a very powerful story – you’ve worked hard to get it out there! Thank you for sharing it with all of us!
He sounds like an honest and down to earth man who like so many, did what he had to do. A fabulous tribute to him, I’m sure there will be a big hole left by his departure.
Yes he was always very honest! I’m glad you enjoyed his story, sharing it has helped fill in the hole a little 🙂
I am choking up, M.B., both because of your beautiful tribute to Dan, and because of the beautiful friendship you forged with him. Thank you for keeping his story alive.
He was a wonderful friend. It’s hard to believe he’s been gone a whole year already, but I do feel he’s still around in some ways 🙂
How beautiful that you still feel his presence, M.B. I have no doubt you meant the world to him, too. xx
We still have his kitty 🙂 So that’s a good way to feel his presence! We call him “Cat Cat” and he is the cutest, cuddliest little thing.
I think Cat Cat won the lottery when you adopted him. 🙂 It must have been a HUGE comfort to Dan too, to know his beloved pet was in such good hands (quite literally, ha ha!). This heartwarming story just has so many lovely angles, M.B. …
Thank you so much – I’m very honored you think so!
Wow, what a beautiful story MB. Thank you for sharing it. –Curt
Thank you for reading! 🙂
Beautiful story, thanks for sharing. As you said the war, that we read in books and watch in movies, seems so distant from us, until we know somebody that was inside it. Glad you found what you were looking for. Have a great weekend!
Thanks so much for reading and for your kind comment! 🙂
what a beautiful story ~ made me a tear up a bit.
I’m glad it moved you. He was an amazing man!
I have the image of him sitting alone in the back pew until you came into his life. This was a poignant story of mutual bonding in friendship. I can’t wait for your book!
Thank you <3 We did have fun once we started sitting together. Word got around about our sarcasm and it earned us the nickname "section smart aleck." LOL 🙂
This is a beautiful tribute to your friend, MB. Thank you for sharing his life’s story, and the beautiful friendship that developed between you. I hope your memories of shared times bring you much comfort.
Thank you. I’m so glad you enjoyed his story – he was a wonderful friend indeed.
oh, M.B. this was an emotional one. it took me a couple napkins and a few minutes to be able to start this comment.
if you hear the bullet, it’s a miss…. that is so true in so many ways.
I’m glad you got to meet someone like him and become friends. it’s a memory to treasure forever.
<3 Thank you for sharing your thoughts and kind words. It's still not the same around here without old Dan. He is sorely missed.
What a wonderful way to pay tribute to your friend. Thank you for sharing his story.
It must have been a great experience to explore the battlefields of Europe and is something I’d love to do myself one day as I had a relation that fought in France and alas didn’t make it home like so many others. I’ve been trying to research what happened to him but as he was in the SAS it’s not been easy to get information.
A great website – I’ll be following with interest.
Thank you very much for stopping by and for your kind words. I do hope you make it to those battlefields someday, it is quite an experience! I want to go back again!
Thanks! I have been to see some of the fortifications around Normandy but it was a long time ago.
I hope you get back there soon.
That is one of the places we visited! It’s in my France photo album here if you’re interested: https://mb-henry.com/photography/france/
What a wonderful account, so beautifully and movingly written. My son did the first world war graves in Belgium with his school last year (the centenary) and they were all really moved. They were taken to a German cemetery too, which I thought was really impressive. But so many lives lost.
You had quite a few readers with tears in their eyes. I was struck that this was a real person, with a cat, who fought in battle.
He sure loved his kitty. He is a very sweet little cat too, I’m glad we got to keep him! It’s like having Dan with us still 🙂
What a lovely idea!
That’s a lovely idea!
Sorry for the senior moment – replying twice twice!
Ha! It happens to the best of us!
Wonderful piece. So reminds me of my dad and his experiences iin the Battle of the Bulge. He, too, was one of the few survivors in his company. He forever after hated the cold, and taking long walks — “I walked enough in the war.”
Wow… 🙁 Thanks for sharing that about your dad. It was a terrible battle indeed. I’m glad you enjoyed Dan’s story – he is still sorely missed!
You stopped by my blog so I repaid the visit although I didn’t know it would end in tears. I lost two uncles in WWII. My Uncle Allen was in the U. S. Army, 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division. He died in Germany on March 2, 1945, and he is buried in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg. We traveled to Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, and Luxembourg to visit his grave a few years back. It is a very humbling, moving experience. I know what you felt when you saw the flag and the stone. Maybe your Dan and my Uncle Allen are sharing stories.
That is so sad about your Uncle. The many lives that wars like this take away and shake up is devastating. Yes -I definitely understand the many emotions involved in visiting a grave like that, and I’m glad you got to have that experience. I’m sure you are right in that he and Dan are having a marvelous time somewhere out there 🙂 Thank you so much for sharing your story here, I was very moved to hear it.
Tears stream down my face as I type this. Beautiful moving post. Thank you for sharing.
I am moved that you were so moved! Dan was a wonderful man and is sorely missed. I am so glad that you enjoyed his story!
This is really great M.B.! <3
Thank you!!!
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