Gifts

Gifts:

While helping my father clean out a room in the old family house, I noticed a ribboned medal atop one of the pieces of furniture we were moving. When we had shifted it to its new room, I picked the thing up to look at it.

"What's this?" I asked.

He glanced at it, and said, "I'm glad you saw that! I've had these things here for you for years. Your uncle sent them to you."

My uncle, his brother, was the elder of my grandfather's two sons. Unfortunately his own son is a tragic case, and so he has sometimes sent me things that he had intended to give his son when my cousin was old enough to get them.

The ribbon proved to be a World War II Victory Medal. It's interesting in that, on the reverse side, it is engraved with the famous "Four Freedoms," which were so capably illustrated by Norman Rockwell.

There were a few other items.

He had come across several General Officer stars, I couldn't guess where. There have certainly never been any Generals in my immediate family -- although Patton is a distant relative of ours, it is quite a distance. He had also an old Nazi mess-kit utensil. I'm no collector of Nazi things, but I recognized the crest on the back of it.

There was also a pin. It was black, engraved on the back with the number D-22; and on the front it bore a pair of crossed arrows and a dagger, and this motto:

"De Oppresso Liber."

My uncle was in Korea with the Air Force Security Police, who at that time were a very impressive bunch. This was when the Security Police was the last-ditch force for preventing the world's only nuclear weapons from falling into enemy hands, should a base be overrun or infiltrated. These were the early days of the Cold War, when the stakes were high and nowhere on earth seemed safe from covert action. The Security Police were trained in all manner of deadly combat, and understood that they were to die in place if called to do so. I gather from the occasional adventure onto an Air Force Base that the standards have changed since then, but the Security Police of the 1950s were a brave and dangerous band.

I don't know where he got this pin -- the insignia has existed since 1960, so it's possible that it was traded to him by someone he knew in Korea. It's been many years since I've spoken to him, but I'll have to write to ask where he got it.