![]() ![]() The Army (or was it the Navy?) had also taught him to shine shoes, a job which he did weekly with an equal mixture of precision and vigor. And even when I didn’t love them, I wanted to love them and ate every last drop and asked for more. “That’ll make a man out of you,” he said as he added a splash of Tabasco. But what eggs he made! Gourmet omelets, heavy with sauces, mushrooms, cheeses and olives. Strangely, it seemed that the only thing the troops ate were eggs. “Time to feed the troops!” he would say on those special occasions when he pulled down pots and pans and plates. The important thing was that he knew how to cook for hungry men. The story changed every time he told it and my mother would neither confirm nor deny. My father claimed to have been a short order cook in the Army. It was easy to see why he admired soldiers. “Just ketchup,” I would parrot, although I wasn’t really sure. “It’s just ketchup,” he would say at the spurting geysers of blood on the screen. When the gory killing scenes came on I did not wince. I tried very hard to be brave, like them. I knew my father admired them and I wanted desperately for him to admire me too. Specifically, one of the wounded British soldiers who marched, whistling through broken teeth, in the film “Bridge on the River Kwai”. As a small Jewish girl growing up in Brooklyn, I dreamed of becoming a British soldier. ![]()
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