My father, whose military medals and discharge papers were stashed in a wooden box buried in a closet, never spoke about World War II. The discharge papers said that he came out of the service as a corporal, a sharpshooter, and had served with distinction behind enemy lines. The medals suggested battles fought and valor under fire.

We got an occasional hint that he’d experienced his share of awfulness. We did not own guns, and we did not allow hunting on our land, anomalies among the farm families from our neck of the woods. My uncle once told me my dad had been in an ambush where only he and another guy in his unit survived. When we balked at eating all the food on our plates, he would sometimes end the dispute by declaring flatly: “You’ve never seen people starving to death.” He was right. We had not. And so we’d soldier on, through the boiled beets or the cauliflower, wondering all the while who he’d seen starving to death, and why.

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