American Treasure (1994) By Harold J. Drake

In many ways American Treasure is your typical war memoir – though for me there is an important distinction: the author is my uncle, Harold J. Drake.  He was an Infantryman in World War II.  While reading about his military record was interesting, it was not the reason I read the book.  I read it because I don’t recall having ever met him (or most of my other Drake relatives for that matter) -- maybe once, I’m really not sure.

If I did meet him it would have been at his father’s, my grandfather’s, funeral.  I was quite young then, and I’m pretty sure it was my first funeral.  I’d never met the man in the casket before either. My paternal grandfather, Elmer Drake, was a World War I veteran and is buried at Camp Butler, just east of Springfield, IL.

Let me explain.

My father was born in Lincoln, IL, one of six children.  My paternal grandmother died in a TB sanitarium in Ottawa, IL when they were all still kids.  My grandfather took off for who knows where, and the kids became part of what at-the-time amounted to Illinois’ foster care system -- which explains the lack of tears at this funeral. In Harold Drake’s book he touches on this subject the one and only time he mentions my father, his older brother.  It was during a conversation he was having with his foxhole buddy their first night on European soil, as part of the second wave of Americans soldiers, sent in to fight in the Battle for Normandy, once the path had been made possible by the D-Day invasion.

“I tell Herman that my home town was in Illinois and that I lived and worked on a dairy farm.  My family had become scattered around and only my brother, Kenny [my father], a Marine now in the Pacific, maintained a family relationship through letter writing.  I didn’t miss anyone except my mother who had died in 1932 leaving my father the impossible task of supporting six kids when she entered the sanitarium.  The State had been forced to place the whole family in an orphanage during the Depression.” 

The point in reading the book was to find clues about what happened in the lives of my father's siblings.  Some information was gleaned, but not much – it was clear Harold’s childhood was an unpleasant experience that he’d rather not talk about, he states as much in the book, explaining why he avoids the subject.  In those days, foster care for boys usually meant being farmed out as child labor for all practical purposes.

Harold, it is worth noting, was a redhead (as am/was I) and went through much of life being called “Red,” and, as was the case with me and all of my siblings, often called “Ducky," or a variation thereof.

I know my father lived with a family in Marengo, IL and worked in a bakery.  From the book I’ve learned that Harold and their younger brother Jackie went to live on a farm near Morris, IL.  But, Harold did not get along with the foster family, and ended up working on a farm in Hebron, IL and living in a hotel/boarding house while finishing high school, before joining the Army.  One of the girls, Betty (Elizabeth Jean) apparently was adopted by a family in Aurora, IL – my Uncle Bud (Leo), the only one I actually knew, isn’t mentioned, nor is the other sister.

In addition to the genealogy aspects of this book, it ended up being an interesting read.  Harold was wounded twice.  On the second occasion he was used by his commanding officer as a guinea pig to see if there was a possible path through a minefield outside of Brest, France.  He lost one of his legs as a result of that.  The book covers in great detail the two years of repeat surgeries he went through for his wounds, including the amputation, plastic surgery on his nose, and being fitted for and learning how to walk with an artificial leg.  Next to nothing is mentioned in the book about his post-Army years, though we know that he worked for the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Washington, DC and lived in Maryland. 

Recommendation:  I will share the book with my siblings, finding another copy is probably not possible.  The one I obtained was decommissioned from the National Library of Scotland, and it shows up on the “out of print” list everywhere else.  As it was printed by Minerva Press, a vanity publisher, there probably weren’t many copies to begin with.

Young Turk (2004) By Moris Farhi

My world history education covered the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, but provided next to nothing on what came after.  It’s as though the piece of geography these two empires occupied disappeared along with them.  It did not.  For the record, after the calamity of picking the losing side in World War I, the Ottoman Empire came to an end, ceding much territory to the victors, and eventually being deposed by a demoralized military at home.  In the aftermath, the Republic of Turkey was declared in 1923, with a military commander, Mustafa Kemal becoming its first President.  Known to history as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, he was a surprisingly forward thinking leader.  He died in 1938.

I’m always hesitant to comment on the history and politics of other cultures, because I’m really not qualified to do so. I know this much however: the politics and history of Turkey are controversial beyond dispute, and interpretation is truly in the eyes of the beholder.

To start, let’s remember that Ataturk holds the same status for Turks that George Washington does for Americans – not perfect by any means, but with good that vastly outweighs the bad (George Washington, for those getting ready to slam me, was a slave owner and killer of Indians, in addition to being a Founding Father).

Ataturk’s personal mission as the founder of the Republic of Turkey was to restore the country to its rightful place on the world stage, not through Empire, but through modernization, of a secular and western bent.  Until its final decades, the Ottoman Empire had been, for the most part, an ethnically plural place where Muslim Turks lived in (relative) peace with Greek Christians, Kurds, Jews and numerous other ethnicities. The Ottoman’s did not however, have any qualms about using force against ethnic minorities – the Armenian Genocide occurred on their watch, with many future leaders as active participants). 

Ataturk rhetorically believed diversity to be good, and a component of nation building.  Put in modern terms, one could say he believed hyphenated citizens were okay, with the mantra that they be Turks first.  He is credited with inspiring Turks of all backgrounds to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” a philosophy made famous decades later with John Kennedy’s immortal quote. The new generation of leaders Ataturk sought to create was referred to as the Young Turks, a name originally given to junior members the Ottoman military who had worked to abolish the Sultanate.  [Adding to the complexity of Turkish history, the Young Turks moniker is used for two polar opposite political viewpoints: those who like Ataturk believed in nationalism by nation building, and those who believed in nationalism by ethnic cleansing, as in the Armenian genocide, and the expulsion of Greeks from Turkey.] 

Moris Farhi’s historical novel is about the nation-building Young Turks and how Ataturk’s dream has been stolen from them.

Farhi’s book covers a group of Turkish youth who came of age during World War II.  They are an ethnic hodgepodge:  Muslim, Jewish, Greek, Christian, Gypsy, Kurd, Armenian, even a Turkish-Scottish guy – boys and girls.  This book can be judged as excellent based merely on their coming of age stories, but the book is much more than that, it is a spell-binding political commentary on modern Turkey. 

An important chapter occurs late in the book when Asik Ahmet, a man who served as a professor-mentor-friend to many of the youth, holds an end of semester gathering for them.  At it he asked them what occupation needed by the country they were willing to devote their lives to.  Once someone chose an occupation it was no longer available to anyone else at the party, which posed a problem for some of the students because the question was asked of them in alphabetical order.  Last to be called was Zeki, a Turkish Jew, who is clearly the stand in for the book’s author, Moris Farhi.  Zeki chose the occupation of professor.

Like Zeki, Mr. Farhi was born in Turkey, but moved early in his academic career to the United Kingdom.  Young Turk was (apparently) written in English, and first published in 2004 by Saqi Books in London.  The copy I bought while vacationing in Istanbul earlier this year was an English edition – one must wonder if it is even available in Turkish.

Recommendation: On the back page of the edition I have is a pull quote from Nicholai Murray, author of Kafka, it reads: “Everyone should go out immediately and buy Young Turk. Warm, witty, wise, humane, it’s a delightful book.”  I couldn’t possibly agree more.