A Foxhole and a Chestnut Tree

Healing through history

One way I’m recovering from my traumatic childhood is learning my family history. Through conversations with others, looking inside myself, and reading external sources, I’m discovering some of what my family experienced through the generations and how their experiences may or may not have affected me.

For instance, 35 years ago, in the last three years of my father’s life, when he’d stopped drinking, I talked with him about his family history and how it might have shaped his beliefs and actions. Although I’d studied comparative religions at university, I had only recently gotten baptized so the topic of spirituality was fresh in my mind.

I ask my father, “Do you believe in God?”

He’s sitting in the same easy chair from which he’s launched countless drunken insults and threats at me in the 30 years I’ve been in his orbit. He’s wearing a flannel shirt, a faded tee shirt with holes in it from welding sparks, blue jeans, work boots, and a mesh trucker’s hat with the words, “Dick’s Clothing & Sporting Goods” in a rectangular patch on the front. He’s watching TV and drinking a glass of water and not smoking a cigarette, which is unusual for him.

After about a half minute of rubbing the whiskers on his chin he says, “Well. . .me and another guy was in a fox hole in Germany outside ‘a Solingen and I had to crawl over to the next one to get somethin’. Don’t remember what it was. Anyway, right after I got there a mortar blowed up the one I’d just been in. . .and my buddy who was in it.”

After about 30 seconds of silence he says, “Sometimes I wonder why that happened.”

He leaves the story and the thought lying between us like an unexploded shell and goes back to rubbing his whiskers.

After I realize he’s not going to expand upon his answer that’s not really an answer I say, “Why do you think it happened?”

“Well, they say Hitler’s SS troops were crazed fanatics who were desperate and all hopped up on amphetamines or somethin’ and would kill anything that stood in their way. They’d either fight to the death against us or have to go back and face Hitler. So they shelled the hell out of us.”

“I understand all that,” I said. “But why do you think the shell hit your buddy and not you?”

More silence and whisker rubbing. Then, he grimaces and without looking at me, says, “I don’t know.”

I want to get to the root of things and this seems like a topic that will bring him out of his defensive position so I press on.

“Do you think it was dumb luck? Or do you think God pulled you out of one hole and put you in another because maybe he had other plans for you?”

“Maybe,” he says.

“Maybe what? Maybe dumb luck, or maybe God?”

“I don’t know,” he snaps, then gets up and goes to the bathroom. A clear non-verbal cue that says my attempt to further explore what he thinks about God is now over.

When he comes back and sits down we both watch the TV in silence, as we’d been doing before I started probing him. In my head I’m still trying to interpret what his cryptic response means.

After an interminable silence, he breaks it.

“There’s a perfect chestnut tree in the cemetery where my mom and dad are buried. My brothers are also buried there and my sisters and my grandfather and my great grandfather and their wives and my cousins and some of the other people I growed up with. The tree’s perfectly shaped. It’s full ‘a perfectly placed leaves and the trunk is straight and true without any extra branches stickin’ out of it. Just a perfect tree. And it’s been there for as long as I can remember.”

Then, more silence. A lot more. I wait and nothing comes; no follow-on thought.

Since I’ve asked him about God I want him to say the tree is perfect because God makes it drop chestnuts in early autumn when they’re ripe so squirrels and deer can eat them and people can use the chestnuts in soups and bread and pies.

I want him to say the tree is perfect because God has given it good-looking bark to lean against when you want to sit in the shade on a hot day and He’s given the tree an expansive canopy of feathery foliage that beautifies the landscape and reduces the earth’s heat and energy consumption so it’s good for the environment and therefore good for humanity

I want him to say the tree is perfect because God hasn’t let it become full of itself like an oak tree nor wimpy like a willow but instead has given it a powerful blend of strength, resilience and nurturing, like a Heaven-sent guardian watching over the family to make sure no more harm comes to them because they’ve been through enough already.

I want him to say God told my dad’s great-grandfather to plant this chestnut tree and make sure every generation knows it’s their responsibility to look after it and keep it healthy because you don’t plant trees for yourself to enjoy but for future generations to enjoy.

I want him to say the tree is perfect because it symbolizes peace and reconciliation and prosperity like the ancient olive trees under which Jesus sat in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed in agony as he prepared for his coming betrayal and suffering and gift of salvation.

I want him to say only God could make a tree as perfect as this chestnut tree and He put it there to remind people of his perfect love for them and for the earth and for the entirety of His creation every time they go to that cemetery.

I want him to connect his story about the tree to God in some way but instead he’s left it dangling. . .like a ripe chestnut.

I ask, “Are you saying the chestnut tree is evidence of God?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Somethin’ made it.”

“Aside from the tree having a perfect shape, why do you think this tree is special?”

Another long pause. He’s really giving this some thought.

“Well. . .one time a tornado come through and ripped a huge oak tree clear outta the ground and threw it a hundred yards away. That oak tree was about 50 feet from the chestnut and had already been hit by lightnin’ in another storm. But that ol’ chestnut stood right there and the tornado never paid it no mind.”

Then he chuckles softly and goes back to being silent.

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That was it. I needn’t have expected more of him because that’s not who he was. He wasn’t Jesus sitting under an olive tree or Moses sitting near a sycamore tree or the Buddha sitting under a Bodhi tree. And he certainly wan’t an annoyingly curious amateur theologian and philosopher who wouldn’t let well enough alone.

He was my dad and he was thoughtful and wise in his own way.

Everything my father said in that exchange was a sort of parable and my response said as much about me as it did about him.

He may or may not have given me the answers I was looking for, but he did make me think and he did make me keep searching for truth.

When my dad passed away three years later I went to that cemetery and looked at that tree and sure enough, he was right—it was a perfect tree.

Because of his story about the mortar, I started reading about World War II from every possible perspective, especially the infantry who were on the front lines doing the fighting. I read about heavy artillery and the impact it had on the soldiers who had to endure the relentless onslaught of shells by hiding in foxholes. I learned sometimes they dug their own foxholes and sometimes they used holes in the ground that were made by earlier bombardments—a disconcerting thought. And I learned the aphorism “There are no atheists in foxholes” came from World War II.

I went further back in time and learned that the men in my family were ancient Viking warriors for whom violence was a way of life. They believed in gods rather than the God many of us believe in today.

I learned my Viking ancestors became Norman kings and lords and earls who fought the British for centuries, including William the Conqueror who defeated King Harold II in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

In North America, I learned my ancestors have fought in every conflict since they arrived on the Mayflower in November 1620 when, within days after they landed at Provincetown, they fought the Indians and stole their seed corn and water at Corn Hill—a far cry from the Thanksgiving we’ve been taught to believe.

I learned my 4th generation grandfather, a 35-year-old Quaker farmer and blacksmith in White Plains, New York, was hanged by the British during the Revolutionary War because he refused to sell his farm to them and instead let the Colonial Army use it. The British left him for dead but he somehow survived.

I learned my 3rd generation grandfather, a 27-year-old immigrant farmer from Ireland, was blinded while fighting for the U.S. Army in the War of 1812.

And on it goes. In war after war the trauma has accumulated and been passed down for future generations to deal with—passed down to me. Of course, the trauma comes not only from wars, but from multiple hardships.

It’s been well worth the time and effort to learn these things because it’s helping me heal from the metaphorical mortars and terrible tornados that have wreaked such havoc in my life.

Learning my ancestors’ history has also helped me realize I can get through virtually anything life throws at me. And that is invaluable.