My Namesake and His War

Benny Christensen. Known to 10th Mountain Division, 86th Regiment rolls as "Christensen, Frank B." To his platoon buddies in 3rd Platoon, India Company, he was of course "Tex." Named by his Norwegian emigrant parents to honor Benjamin Franklin. He was my father's young uncle, the last of six sons to his doting mother Caroline, who was his dependent when he was drafted in 1943. He was taken into the elite mountain infantry of the 10th MTN as a linguist because he spoke Norwegian, which was to be useful when the Allies invaded Norway to draw off German troops to another front. When the Norwegian invasion plans were scrapped, Benny was sent into the line as a grunt, away from the relative comforts and safety of Headquarters Company.

Benny, as my dad calls him, was only four years older than my old man. My dad was an only child, so they were as close to brothers as my father had. Because Caroline died while Benny was training at Camp Hale, Benny signed over his death benefit ($10,000) to my dad. Today the death benefit is $250,000. Adjusted for inflation, the WWII benefit is still a lot of money.

On April 17, 1945, just 17 days before Nazi capitulation in Italy, a machine gunner with the 90th Panzer Grenadiers cut Benny down as he made a charge with a grenade to take out the gunner who'd pinned his squad down. He wasn't awarded a medal. My dad ultimately used the money to fund a master's degree in physics from Texas A&M. Benny was killed after having lived through some of the most intense fighting seen during the Second World War, namely the battles for the five peaks called "Riva Ridge" by history. Benny fought on Della Torraccia, the fiercest one. David Brower, a major mover in the Sierra Club, was his Company's historian, and recorded his death for posterity.

So begin a few of the themes with which I will begin to portray in an idea for a memoir I share with the son who didn't return. After all, that's what this war business is to we who partook and to our families: a matter of those who survived and those who did not. Those who came back and those who never lived to see Texas or New York or Toad Suck, Arkansas ever again.

Benny is buried in Kingsville in the Christensen plot. I have conversations with him. I always have had, before I went to Iraq and learned what it has always been for the foot soldier.

My grandmother Rosa only had this to say about him, her baby brother-in-law: "He was such a nice boy."