By Scott Graber
It is Wednesday, early, and for the past week I’ve been struggling with a memory that may or may not be real.
I thought it was 1964 when the Corps of Cadets was summoned to Mark Clark Hall to listen to General Hans Speidel — the deputy to General Erwin Rommel — who then described his time in the Wehrmacht during World War 2.
These Citadel talks occurred several times a year and usually featured an American General who was then, say, Chief of Staff of the Army; or a war correspondent; or a politician. But sometimes it was just Mark Clark who wanted to talk.
Clark’s lectures always included the story of how he, the Commanding General of the 5th Army in Italy, somehow found himself in a foxhole with an angry rifleman who had lost his combat boots.
“The old man can’t even keep our damn toes from freezing-off,” the dogface said to the unknown companion who had just jumped into his foxhole.
At this point (in the story) Clark would take off his own boots, put them on the feet of the soldier, and leave without revealing who he was.
But my “Hans Speidel story” has always been elusive in the sense that I could not recall much detail from his talk although I knew he was at Normandy trying to organize the defense of occupied France.
The problem that Rommel and Speidel faced at Normandy was the fact that the Luftwaffe had been almost completely destroyed prior to the invasion. Allied control of the air made German counter-attacks tremendously difficult and Rommel’s understanding of the battlefield impossible. But the real problem was that the German machine guns did not have enough bullets to meet the Allied tsunami that was rolling over the beaches and through the hedgerows.
But in terms of what Speidel actually said that evening, or afternoon, I remember little. So I called five of my (Class of 1967) classmates asking for detail.
But none remembered Speidel.
Now some of you know that I am given to exaggeration, especially when it comes to after dinner, wine-enhanced anecdotes. I know that for at least 55 of my 80 years, I have told stories about my time at The Citadel; and that many of those stories have an element of fiction. But I’ve never encountered a situation where I could not independently verify a single detail of a particular event.
So I turned to everyone’s instant expert, Google, for an explanation of what may have happened to my memory of Hans Speidel.
It seems that forgetting is the default function of one’s brain. Studies show that we begin forgetting 20 minutes after learning something and within a few days we’ve lost four-fifths of what we saw or heard.
Apparently the brain can’t possibly retain everything we see or hear, and our neurons, axions and dendrites find themselves competing with other (apparently finite) brain cells to hold on to a particular memory. Those that succeed in holding an image, poem or password do so if the event involves fear, desire, love or surprise. In other words if the event is important, distinctive and meaningful the memory may linger.
It is said that one’s memory is similar to a painting that the brain paints for us. But these cells don’t render a photograph perfectly accurate in all its detail. It is more like they do a partial painting where some of the details are not right; where blank spaces are filled-in with extra, invented items by one’s over-extended neurons.
Some may remember Brian Williams who was a popular television anchor who reported that he was shot at while flying in a helicopter in Iraq.
Apparently Williams was riding in a helicopter, and he may have witnessed another helicopter being shot at and nearly blown out of the sky.
Combat veterans didn’t like that Williams had seemingly invented the incoming artillery fire, claimed to have “seen the elephant and heard the owl;” and he lost his job as network anchor.
Most believed he was lying.
But some experts think that Williams’ brain may have filled-in a false narrative that left Williams’ with the memory that his helicopter had taken RPG fire.
In any event I, myself, remember an old, guttural-sounding man talking to the Corps. Upon reflection it could have been Strom Thurmond — he was also at Normandy. But my mischievous brain cells may have said, “We can do better than Thurmond!”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
