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.