Real Cold Forgotten By Modern Americans
By Joseph B. Dychala
“You don’t know what cold is”.
I can still hear my father saying these words to me now.
“You don’t know what cold is”…and he is right.
Today we move from our heated homes, to our heated automobiles (with heated seats) to our heated offices and complain about the cold we are exposed to for five minutes or less in many cases. Imagine sleeping on a steam vent in a big city, while people walk by you as if you don’t exist. We have the most plentiful and varied resources at our fingertips, oil, coal fired electricity, thermal technology, chemical packs when crushed can provide hours of heat inserted in our socks and gloves. Natural gas has never been so plentiful or inexpensive as it is today.
“You don’t know what cold is” and he is right. I thought heat came from turning a dial or pushing a button, heat isn’t free he would often remind me.
We live in a nation of plenty, all types of natural and man made fabrics readily available as coats, gloves, blankets and so forth. No shearing sheep for wool, no spinning on a loom. Just go to the nearest store and purchase what you need. But everyday I see clothing discarded on the streets, as if there was no value to the items. As if the legacy of cotton is king means nothing. Same plantation, different location. Occasionally I wonder why some professional athletes and Hollywood personalities continue to bring up the stain of slavery that is the reality of the United States yet have no remorse in taking large sums of money from sneaker companies to promote a product that is essentially made with slave labor somewhere in the developing world.
“You don’t know what cold is”…and he is right. Turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater if you are cold he would say to me…
Imagine the pain of the bitter cold at Valley Forge, Ypes, Verdun, Ardennes in the winter of 44- 45 one of the coldest recorded, the “Brotherhood of the Frozen Chosin”, imagine the heartache of waking up huddled next to your foxhole buddy who died from exposure over night perhaps wondering why him and not you. Losing toes or fingers to frostbite and having to continue on to do your job. I’ve never know such things, and try as I may to imagine I can never fully appreciate their sacrifices.
“You don’t know what cold is”…and he is right. Camping in the frozen mud without a tent while wearing a summer uniform and leggins instead of proper boots, that is what he endured for two brutal winters in the Italian Alps with Nazi artillery raining down on them…
The Rapido, Moletta, Cassino, Anzio, Mussolini Canal, The Winter Line, The loss of the entire 142nd Regiment, the blizzards and drifting snow, zero visibility. Pack mules because the terrain was impassable to any other other form of supply lines. There are a few pictures of my father from the war wearing a rather colorful scarf, I can only imagine that was one of his most prized possessions and may have literally saved his life from the cold as sure as a dog face’s helmet could potentially stave off German shrapnel.
“You don’t know what cold is”…and he is right. Stop your complaining and eat a hot bowl of oatmeal, it will warm you up and stick to your ribs he would say to me after coming in from playing on a snow day off from school…
So please remember in your thoughts and prayers this weekend from the comfort of our heated home or business, while sipping a hot beverage, with shorts on and the thermostat set to 75 degrees that the only reason this is possible is because the simple fact that there are good, descent, honorable folks that aren’t going to promise you free health insurance or a free college education or other economic impossibilities but that there were and still are good people willing to lay down their very lives for their country and love of fellow man and make that which seems impossible a reality.
Better still, turn down that thermostat and put on a sweater.
Most of us will never truly know what cold is. Be thankful, be very thankful for that.
May God Bless you and yours and may God Bless the United States of America.
Happy Saint Valentine’s Day!