I wanted to honor every combat Veteran with this post of the story of my uncle Corporal Paul Franklin Fulton who spent his youth fighting in WWII in the battle of the Bulge. He typifies what it is to be an American soldier in any war.
The Bulge
An Essay on Courage
Uncle Paul was a member of the Greatest Generation. Because of a mad man in Germany named Hitler he enlisted in the Army to fight tyranny. He was going to defend his country and his way of life.
He was fourth of fourteen children raised on an eighty acre farm in the nineteen thirties in the middle of Indiana. When he helped his father plough the fields it was with a team of horses. He probably hadn’t been out of Hamilton County where he lived until he was driven to the train station to go learn to fight the menace in Germany. He ended up in the Battle of the Bulge, the most costly battle of WWII in terms of American lives, on the business end of a three man machine gun.
Details are sketchy because this information wasn’t made known to me until his final days in a nursing home. He talked of how he and seven other GIs were tasked with stopping the Germans from crossing a strategic bridge. They took turns laying down a withering wall of lead at anything that moved on the German side.
For his next assignment he was put on the front lines with his machine gun and ordered, along with thousands of other men, to hold off a determined German blitzkrieg bound to take the city of Bastogne. His reality became the rat-tat-tat of his gun and the scream of the mortars overhead and the red snow all around him. His first crew perished. He picked up the gun and ran back to the supply area to recruit more men and ammunition. Twice he had to do this. In the course of setting up the gun the last time a German soldier appeared out of nowhere bound to take out Paul’s position. The German aimed his rifle at Paul but for some reason hesitated. Paul didn’t. The red rain burst out of the German’s chest and mixed with the already cold American blood of Paul’s buddies. Sometimes, in his dreams, the German’s face was his own. He lost his innocence and his twenties on that battlefield in a world gone mad.
The numbing cold masked the fact that Paul was carrying shrapnel of a mortar round that exploded too close to his position. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his service and was in line for a Purple Heart and two more medals but there were so many heroic acts and wounded and dead that many didn’t receive medals that were due them in this conflict. Paul never pursued his other medals because he didn’t think it right to be rewarded for killing.
He served his remaining time in the Honor Guard that followed General Dwight D. Eisenhower all over Europe in the aftermath of the fighting. His gun was cleaned and oiled and put in storage. Paul was mustered out of the Army with pomp and a salute, but no mention of the demons that were sure to follow him home.
So far we have witnessed Duty, Honor, Valor, Heroism and Perseverance, all standard issue with the American Soldier. Now we will find out what real courage is. The American, British, and Canadian allies were victorious but the demons lurking in every battle thrived in the fertile red fields.
Paul found himself back in the bosom of family in the house he grew up in as if none of this nightmare ever happened. He found comfort in the fact that nothing had changed. He took solace in the quiet nights disturbed only by the song of the crickets and lit only by the stars and the moon.
That is, until his consciousness waivered into sleep. The area of his brain where he locked away the horrors of war would not be denied. They burst forth and the rat-tat-tat and the constant recoil of his gun seemed to shake his bed. The smell of gunpowder once again seared his nostrils. He fought against the demons with all his might but the German with Paul’s own face confronted him and he automatically pulled the trigger. He tasted the blood and saw the look of the dead once more.
His sister Martha witnessed him night after night quietly sneaking down the creaky stairs, out the mournful screen door into the fields he had ploughed so many times. All night he did his reconnaissance, walking the perimeter of the land making sure there were no Germans lurking in the shadows. Only daylight and exhaustion brought him back to reality. Such is the life of a combat Veteran.
Paul was one of the lucky ones. He had his God and Savior, a good wife and family, and the land to ground him. As the years passed he learned to encapsulate his demons like a benign tumor in his brain. They never really left him but he gained control.
He mustered out of the Army when his tour of duty ended but he finally stopped fighting the war and won his peace on March twentieth of twenty eleven at the age of ninety three. That’s when Corporal Paul Franklin Fulton mustered out of this life and joined God’s Army for good.
Paul was a gentle, unassuming, hard working family man that lived his life as if nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to him. I’m proud to call him my uncle.
This is just one story told in the midst of thousands that served: true courage in the face of such destruction. Their numbers are dwindling but they are replaced by the Korean, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran Veterans. The wars are different, the demons the same. They walk among us in obscurity waging their private wars. Most, if asked would do it again. Now that is true courage.
THANK YOU, American Veteran for being there when we need you!
Dan Fulton
10/12/18