Six-Thirty Report by Beamish

10/08/2025

A reminder of what I wrote long ago.

08/08/2025

Saw this just now. I guess we just need to continually be kind.

Amen.

06/08/2025

I study the shimmers of light popping through the leafs of the Honey Locust tree that blocks my view. What is it about the past in our lives that seem to linger when we’re old? I just want to put to rest the stories I know. It is a tad cold as I look out on this August morning. I hear the throttle of the big diesel out on the road. The roar of the oceans constant in my ears, yet I can hear the swoosh of the cars in my distant past. Why do these memories resonate so? These are not the recollections of holidays now gone. No, these are the memories of who we are as a people. Cruel, I suppose.

I think of Sidoti. That’s his name. In the midst of the chaos of vicious war there in the Philippines long ago. He saw humanity for what is right. A Japanese soldier wounded, bleeding with his guts coming out. He pleaded, Sidoti did, for permission to go help the man in his dying moments. The Army officer, a doctor, knew there could be a gr***de as part of the enemies plan. Sidoti approached with caution and knowing he could die. He made the man comfortable and pushed in his guts, tending the wounds of the enemy soldier the best he could.

What came next in his words to his wife in 1945 stays with me today. He opened his bag, taking out a bottle of whiskey and a glass. Sidoti, a devout Catholic man, poured whiskey into the glass and put the glass into the dying man’s hand. As the American soldiers, his comrades in arms, who had moments before cheered his death of the Japanese man, Sidoti lit a cigarette and placed it between the lips of the man now with the glass. Sidoti closed his bag, backing away to the look of gratitude in the eyes and on the face of the Japanese soldier as he died.

Newspapers did not report the act. Sidoti did not get a medal for risking his life. Nobody thanked him for what he did, except for what was silently communicated in the eyes of an enemy—Sidoti must’ve seemed a saint to the man with his guts hanging out. I suspect his wife thought so too when she read his letter. Maybe this is why it lingers with me, staying inside the creases of my brain long after I read the dried ink on yellowed paper. A needle in a haystack of “Honey, I Love You and Hey, How Are the Cats?” love letters saved in a lamp.

Stick with me as I make this journey. The story of Sidoti goes to the character of my father—I don’t quite understand the leap—who witnessed his own scenery of evil in that war, and then stood on a freshly plowed winter wheat field where a familiar B-25 crashed into the ground. It was six years later and now in the homeland, the breadbasket of America while a man pleads for his life trapped under the fuselage of the burning plane. Still. Why do these memories linger with me? I have to tell the story. And the story is more than words.

—Beamish

04/08/2025

More tomorrow.

04/08/2025

It’s Monday. Might as well write. Early morning sun seeps through the leaves in my big tree in the front of my house, getting into my eyes as I sit here on my porch. Seventy-two years ago, this day, the fourth day of August in 1953, was a Tuesday. My mother eight months pregnant with her second child, did what she normally did in the mornings for her husband—she fried potatoes in bacon grease and three eggs over easy on the small stove inside the trailer in a hastily built trailer park outside Salina, Kansas. Her first child, Johnny, was three months short of his first birthday. Regardless of what happened before dinner the night before, my mom fried eggs for my dad, a former Army sergeant who fought in World War II, as he sat somewhat hung over at the table smoking his freshly rolled cigarette.

I was thinking of this day-after scene as I read the first pages of James Clavell’s next to last novel, Whirlwind, yesterday. I’ve never read any of his books before. Of course I’d heard of Sh**un and King Rat. This old book caught my eye last week in a book exchange box over at the state park near here. I mean, on the third day of August, 1953, my dad became a hero by helping to save an airman from a B-25 that crashed in a field just plowed to plant winter wheat. It is an epic story. Three World War II veterans and their families living in this trailer park working for a construction company repairing a bridge on Smoky Hill River that was washed out in recent flooding had saved a man from dying, and the next day my mom and dad go on with life.

No martinis or sophisticated dinners as in the Clavell novel. There’s a story to be told here though. I was born about five years later, the fourth of my mom’s six babies. The last one died. Neither my father or mother ever mentioned this rescue. I discovered it researching my dad’s World War II experience after he died in 1999. Twenty-six years later, I know more about the B-25 crash and my dad’s involvement than I know about his specific combat experience on Peleilu. Regardless, I started this page here on Facebook long ago to chronicle things I learned along the way of researching the trauma my father faced.

Get ready for a bumpy ride as I write my own version of his story.

—Beamish

20/07/2025

One from the memories.

20/07/2025

Had the privilege of being part of a pretty cool thing back in June. About 150 volunteers helped the Pikes Peak Chapter of the Association of the United States Army earn about thirty thousand dollars going back into the Fort Carson, Colorado, community. I think it was a team effort with the local sergeants major association as well. We all helped keep the rift raft out of the wrong places during the 2025 Senior Open at the Broadmoor. Not sure how all the money will get into the community, but will report what I learn.

I thought it was a pretty cool concept of bringing in a significant amount of money into an organization to help folk—quite a step up from a bake sale or car wash. I mean, how many chances do you get to step onto a legendary golf course like that and spend time there? Another part of the coolness was meeting some wounded warriors who volunteered to come out to help. One sergeant got banged up in a drone attack over in Syria, suffering several TBIs. Currently being treated over at the world class TBI clinic on Fort Carson.

Yesterday the veterans and veteran-owned partners serving as the backbone of the associations during this volunteer effort held a little barbecue on Fort Carson to honor the folk who helped out. Even the 4th ID command sergeant major showed up to give out a few coins to go along with the pulled pork and beef brisket. The best part, though, was seeing the pride in the other veterans and soldiers in the realization that they helped even in a small way to do something so big.

Tip of the Hat to the visionary leaders who made this happen.

Nice coin. Nice view. Nice community service event.

—Beamish

16/06/2025

Well, the grasshopper came to inspect the new Dog Run Fence (No Dog Required) yesterday and seemed pleased. At least she stayed for several hours out of the rain under the roof of the deck. We had a mighty storm roll through with golfball sized hail late last night, but I think it cut east of my little piece of heaven.

15/06/2025

My father is a dead man now twenty-five years. Yesterday they had a big parade up in DC for the Army’s 250th birthday. I heard they paid some people to fill the seats to give a perception of support of Mr. President. I think Fox was the only channel to air it live. Still as I watched those Army soldiers march, I had to think of my father who was the first soldier I ever knew. He was my father. I suppose he held me as a newborn. I remember his long arm behind my head with his hand resting on my shoulder. I didn’t even know what a soldier was until my friend got a GI Joe doll for his birthday.

My father branded soldier in me from the beginning of me. I read about Picasso the other day how he appeared as a stillborn lying unattended on the table until his uncle sucked in a mouthful of cigar smoke from his big fat cigar and blew it into the face of the new Pablo. That brought the boy who would become the world’s most famous artist in modern times to life. The idea, I think, behind the story is that something stirred the gentle senses inside of Picasso to make him what he became. I don’t have cigar smoke in my past, but I do have my dad who planted Army soldier in me.

Since 1999 when he died, I have tried to figure out what was wrong with this crazy old man. The triptych below is the hardest thing I ever painted. It is on display in the Pentagon to honor him and to tell an odd story of PTSD’s impact on others. The starfish represent how the hidden wounds manifest into new wounds, or the five holy wounds, nailed to the cross. Over the years as the child continues to take down the starfish to decorate the yard, the old man keeps adding to the trees as he hides the secrets of what really happened to him.

My post is not meant to be a downer on this father’s day. I did find out what happened to my father. I just wish he had told me and did not make me figure it out on my own. Maybe that is the soldier in him teaching me to be one too. Yes, this is about my father, the toughest man I ever knew.

—Six-Thirty Report by Beamish

07/06/2025

There is a lot to be said about D-Day today as we wake up to the seventh day of June eighty-one years later. My father always hated when my brother or sisters would ask about the grand attack that led to the end of war in Europe. “Dad, did you fight in Normandy?” we’d ask in naive childish energy when we heard the other boys and girls spoke proudly in our classes about what their fathers did on the beaches of Europe on June 6, 1944. A terse and angry “No!” would greet our cheery inquiry.

We soon learned to never ask him again about what he did in the war as the memory of it clearly touched something hurting him deep inside—even little children could see it. After he died, I researched my father’s war. I learned he fought as a sergeant in the infantry—a squad leader in the 81st Infantry Division; a machine gun squad in the 323rd Infantry Regiment that fought in battle on Peleliu from noon October 16, 1944 to November 27, 1944 when the enemy was defeated.

I learned a lot of war heroes did heroic things in battles we don’t hear about. Battles that are not iconic declarations on playgrounds where little boys and girls can recall about their fathers. I learned that not all battles are memorable to the masses even though the same extra human effort is applied by the soldiers in the fight. I learned that was is sh*tty and hard to swallow. I learned about the ambush that killed three soldiers in my dad’s company in the chaos of Army boys taking over the fight from the dessimated Marine Division in the initial assault a month earlier.

The assault is likely the source of his nightmares that woke my mom.

Another thing I learned is about my father’s unique connection to D-Day. He probably didn’t even know about it, or maybe he didn’t know the significance of it. Still, there was a photographer taking photographs for LIFE magazine the day in May, 1944, when he and about eight-hundred Wildcats from the Division were awarded the Expert Infantryman’s Badge. As the group of soldiers in the photo, the photographer yelled, “Smile, boys, you’re gonna be on the cover of LIFE!”—this according to the grandson of one of the soldiers in the photo.

Dad’s Division was supposed to go to Europe. It is clear that Division leaders knew since around January 1944 when everyone came back from Christmas leave that they were headed to a different war than the one fought in Europe. Still, it was closely guarded information that they were headed to the Pacific. An indicator of this is that their photograph ended up on the LIFE cover that was highlighting the D-Day invasion.

LIFE Magazine published a story about D-Day the day before the invasion.

I think that is iconic.

—Beamish

16/09/2023

I should remind you — you would be disappointed if I did not — that the battle on Peleilu began mid-September 79 years ago. This is when the Marines assaulted the beaches of Peleilu while the Army boys in the Wildcat Division stayed on the ships to watch before going to Anguar, Ulithi and other places. But it starts here and all comes back to Peleilu in September, 1944.