old men are living history

i spent last weekend in refuge cove, on the secluded island of west redonda in a very small cabin at the top of a very large mountain with my mum, her bush-pilot lover, and their landlords (who are much nicer than mine, and who have now become family friends).

the husband part of this landlord duo is over 80 years old. he amazes me. he is fit, healthy, sharp, and has a pleasant and witty personality that's a pleasure to be around. he cut down ferns with a scythe while we were up there. he made us all a delicious dinner salad with home-cured olives. he cheated at speed scrabble. he says, "Once a Marxist, always a Marxist!" to describe himself.

he grew up jewish in brooklyn and as a young man, fought against the germans in WWII in northern italy. i asked him about the war and he said that war can be described in three words: stupid, stupid, and stupid.

even though he was the leader of a machine gun squad, he says he has never killed anyone that he knows of -- but he also said that with machine guns, you just spray a whole area with fire, so who knows what you hit. the two times he had a real person in his sights, and had to make a decision to shoot or not, something saved the day, and so he didn't have to kill them. one of the times a handful of germans were running away from his squad -- and one of his men shouted, in german, "Stop! Put down your guns, turn around, and we won't shoot!" two of the running men stopped, and so the other three or four who kept going were saved, because, of course, you wouldn't shoot at unarmed men with their hands in the air. the two who surrendered were so glad to be prisoners of war that they didn't even mind when H and his men raided their packs and ate their lunch (which, H tells me, is "illegal." such funny rules. killing, ok. lunch stealing, illegal.)

H saw many people die, and got a metal for bravery.

while helping to lug our provisions for the weekend up the mountain to the cabin, he said that it was easier to climb mountains 60 years ago.

he was 40 in the 60's. he was 40 when there were hippies. he grew up with people who knew what it was like to wear corsets, who knew what it was like without cars everywhere.

he has worked as an environmental engineer and urban planner all over the US and Canada.

he built the house that my mum rents from him. it's a little a-frame in the woods, overlooking an apple orchard and the ocean. it's all windows and weirdly placed electrical outlets -- like, in the middle of the wall, seven feet up.

he says the most amazing thing he's ever seen was one night, while driving alone in some remote and northern canadian location (i forget where) he suddenly came upon hundreds and hundreds of jack rabbits in the middle of the road. not little bunnies, huge jack rabbits. they all hopped away to let his car pass and no one has ever believed him.

he's an optimist -- he plants nut trees and expects to eat the nuts.

and i worry that when he and all his brethren die, we won't have a living memory of the horror of war in the same way. that we, in the so-called developed world, will lose even the possibility of having an immediate, collective, understanding of war, and of why it should always, always, always be the absolute last, last, last resort.