The first time I learned that my Uncle Eli had gone ashore during the Normandy invasion during World War Two was on his ninetieth birthday, the day of his funeral. He was a newly minted medical doctor then, a Captain in the U.S. Army. Since my childhood, I heard stories about his wartime experiences, but rarely from him, except for a few amusing anecdotes. Perhaps after the first telling before I was born, his modesty silenced him. My mother, his sister, told me his stories. The cherished letters and postcards, clearly censured with black marks that he sent home told little except that he “was fine and sent his love.”
When I was a teenager, my Uncle Eli broke his silence to reassure me about the human immune system. I was afraid of catching some illness, one of many I feared then, adolescent angst displaced into intermittent hypochondria. “In France I was in charge of ‘hepatitis tents’ filled with hundreds of soldiers. They were sick and yellow, coughing everywhere and their sheets soiled with body fluids! Did I catch hepatitis? No. And my constant exposure put my immune system into high gear and helped me develop antibodies to it.” His medical lecture calmed and reassured me.
My Uncle Eli practiced medicine and taught at Boston University Medical Center forever, it seemed, until a year before he died. Many fine specialists in Boston were trained by him through those years, and he was awarded a “Lifetime Achievement Award” at their gala just before he was diagnosed with liver cancer. This cancer likely resulted from exposure in the hepatitis tents, harming him not until the next century.
In the funeral chapel, the rabbi continued, “Dr. Shapiro was part of the Normandy invasion that helped win the war. Doctors were among the last to land to tend the dying and wounded.” I smiled through my grief; growing up, I had always thought he appeared in France by magic and never questioned it.
My uncle was an old fashioned doctor who made house calls. I grew up in the Boston neighborhood where his enormous patient load lived. Almost very day, and some nights for years, he appeared at my house for a food refueling, fast nap, or to use the phone. When I was seven, I made him “dessert” for his lunch. While he napped after a night of emergency house calls, I mixed flour and water to make dough, shaped it into a fluted pie crust, and my mother baked it. It was possibly harder than a rock, but looked beautiful to my second grade eyes. “That’s the most wonderful pie crust I’ve ever seen!” Uncle Eli proclaimed as I formally presented it to him. “Shall I take it home?” he asked. I told him I wanted to see how he liked it. With difficulty he broke a piece off and ate it. Sitting in front of his casket, I remembered him say as he labored to chew, “Mmmmmmm! This tastes absolutely delicious! You really made this by yourself?” He ate the whole thing in front of me! I felt like a queen.
I sat by his bedside at the end of his life. We talked for hours at each visit; he didn’t want me to leave and I didn’t want to go. Often my mother had told me about the day Uncle Eli came back from the war. “My grandmother died of old age when my brother was in Europe. We didn’t tell him. He was in danger and he loved her so much. We worried that knowing would make him lose concentration and he’d get hurt. Every letter he wrote asked, ‘How is my Bubbie?’ We answered she was fine. When he came home from the war, the first thing he asked was, ‘Where’s my Bubbie?’ We told him she died two years earlier.”
I asked Uncle Eli about this for the first time. He said simply, “My heart was broken.” I reminded him that I was named after her. “Yes. She was a beautiful, wise, kind woman. You’re just like her.” As he lay dying, my uncle gave a gift to me.
My uncle had been assigned to a field hospital in France. The building was a deserted large stone school. Suddenly they got a radioed warning that German troops were advancing towards his hospital and just hours away. All doctors, staff, and injured and sick soldiers were ordered to evacuate. Those too sick to be moved were ordered to stay behind and become prisoners of war so they would not slow down the more able. Uncle Eli defied orders and refused to leave the sickest without a doctor; there were other doctors to take care of the evacuated soldiers.
The American military could have forced him to leave, and the Germans could have killed him if he stayed. He convinced his superiors that if the sickest were captured, they would surely need their doctor. There was no time to argue. My uncle helped load patients on a convoy of trucks that transported them from the advancing Germans. He was left with few medical supplies and many critically wounded soldiers.
The trucks reached the train and all got aboard. The Germans never got to the field hospital; they changed direction suddenly for unknown reasons. Uncle Eli kept the men alive for days until new American soldiers arrived with more medical supplies and food and guarded the hospital while he continued to heal his men. The train that carried the soldiers and staff away from harm was bombed by the Germans and all perished. Each person who remained in my uncle’s care survived because of his skills as a physician even without proper medical supplies, and his humanity and heroism.
I asked him about this family legend during one of my visits to his bedside. Was it true? “I couldn’t leave those poor souls! And they really would have needed a doctor if they ended up in a German prisoner of war camp,” he said and looked away. I couldn’t see the cancer, only a tall, brilliant, gentle spirit who had devoted his life to medicine.
My Aunt Barbara appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Eli,” she said, “Did you tell Lila that every one of those soldiers lived to return to America, married, had families, and every Christmas sent you pictures and updates of their lives, and the future lives, you saved?” She smiled at me. I smiled at him.
The rabbi finished the prayer of mourning as the pall bearers stood beside the coffin. Then I heard my Uncle Eli playing his grand piano softly. It was haunting, as if he had suddenly come alive. “What you hear is a recording of Dr. Shapiro playing classical music and his own compositions.” the rabbi said. It was a sweet goodbye, so like my uncle, who always comforted those in pain with his gentle manner.
