Bruce Braley: Gifts from the past

Byard Braley had a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving in 1945. He had survived 22 days of hell on Iwo Jima. He saw a Marine Corps buddy disappear right in front of him. He was surrounded by death and suffering on a scale unimaginable to most 18-year-old Iowa farm boys.

So when he was taken off the line and sent to the island paradise of Guam for rest and retraining before the invasion of Japan, I know he was thankful that he survived. My dad died in 1981, but he left us photographs and keepsakes from his time serving his country in World War II. One of the items he left us was a church bulletin from the Protestant chapel for the Heavy Artillery Fleet Marine Force on Guam from the Thanksgiving service on Nov. 18, 1945.

The bulletin has a sketch of the chapel on the front cover. The worship hymns included “Faith of Our Fathers,” “America the Beautiful,” and “Now Thank We All Our God.” My dad’s grandparents were founding members of Ewart Presbyterian Church, and I can only imagine how he must have felt singing those hymns 7,500 miles from home after being gone for two years.

Earlier this year, I took an extraordinary journey to Guam and Iwo Jima with 12 veterans from around the country who served on Iwo Jima with my dad. One of those veterans was David Greene from Waterloo. I took two important items with me. One was the flag that draped my dad’s casket when we buried him on March 14, 1981. The other was the church bulletin from that Thanksgiving service so long ago.

Our trip was sponsored by the Greatest Generation Foundation, which gives aging veterans a chance to return to the battlefields of their youth. When our group met with the governor of Guam, I presented him a copy of the Thanksgiving bulletin, and thanked him and the people of Guam for taking care of my dad in his time of need.

The strangest twist on my journey happened the night before we went to Iwo Jima, when our group attended a dinner on Guam.

The dinner was hosted by the Iwo Jima Association of America. Around 350 people attended, including many U.S. military personnel from Guam and Okinawa. As our group of 35 settled into tables, we were a small group in a large crowd. Our table included a couple about my age from another tour group.

During the program, all of the Iwo Jima veterans were introduced to a loud ovation. The next group recognized was wives, children and grandchildren of Iwo Jima veterans. As I stood up, I noticed that the woman at our table also stood. I walked over to introduce myself to Diane Radcliffe.

I told her my name and said, “Tell me about your dad.” She pointed to her name tag, which included a photo of her dad (Robert Eckel), his hometown (Perrysville, Ohio), and the unit he served in (4th 155 mm Howitzer Battalion, Headquarters and Service Battery).

I froze in shock, realizing that her father served in the exact same unit as my dad! When I told her why I was in shock, tears welled up in her eyes and she gave me a big hug. She said she really didn’t know much about her dad other than the photo album he had left her, which she had up in her hotel room.

After dinner, Diane left to retrieve her dad’s photo album. When I opened Robert Eckel’s album, it was like opening a buried treasure chest. Sixty-seven years melted away and I saw images that my father would have seen and experienced in black and white photos from Hilo, Hawaii, Guam and Iwo Jima. One of those photographs that jumped off the page had the handwritten caption “Corps Arty. Chapel” — the exact same chapel on the Thanksgiving bulletin from 1945.

Sixty-seven years have passed since that Thanksgiving worship service in a tiny wooden chapel on Guam. My Thanksgiving miracle is that the faith of our two fathers, forged in a time a war, brought Diane Radcliffe and me together to celebrate our common bond and the two great men who gave us life.