Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

28 By the end of the war my dad was twenty-nine and maybe his running career would have been over. After the boxing match it was over. My dad tried to run again after the war but his ankle just did not work. Other men were losing limbs, eyes and worse, I know. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time meant a potentially minor injury resulted in the end of my dad’s pre-war joy of running. War has an ability to change the paths of people’s lives not only by cataclysmic events, but by small missed chances and dumb bad luck. Flies My family and I were out for a picnic in the late 1950’s. I was probably six or seven at the time. Eating my sandwich, I was bothered by a persistent fly trying to hover and join in on lunch. My dad coached me to bring the sandwich to my mouth, blow half a lung full of air from my lungs to move the fly away, and then take a quick bite. My dad told me that during the war the warm weather and the unsanitary camp where he was held as a prisoner meant there were millions of flies. In