A Round of Golf with My Father by William Damon

Author:William Damon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Templeton Press

The Berkshire Eagle story notes that “Damon went to England in the fall of 1944.” It seems that my father was writing home about conditions at Lichfield even before the scandal was made public by Corporal Henney’s January 1945 communication to the Toledo Blade. If that indeed was the case, my father showed a true moral sense by taking the initiative to alert people at home so that they might, in his words, “do something about the conditions.” In the face of the censors and his commanding officer’s orders, he also showed genuine courage—and compassion—by sticking with his purpose of telling the truth about what he had discovered.

My father paid a price for his truth-telling. By 1944, before his assignment at Lichfield, he had risen in rank from corporal to sergeant. Yet in his discharge in 1946, he was listed as private first class. Although there’s no existing record of this, it is reasonable to surmise that this demotion was due to my father’s violation of the censorship regulations. Fortunately, this punishment did not have a long-term effect on his career: after the war, he went on to secure prestigious posts in the War Department and State Department. I am guessing that my father’s courageous truth-telling was recognized by government officials and that they rewarded him for his principled behavior by hiring him for the positions he sought.

The last line of the Berkshire Eagle story about my father’s testimony reads as follows: “He is married to the former Miss Helen Meyers of Brockton, and they have a son, William Van Buren Damon.” There it is. No matter where my father’s mind was in those days, I existed!

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