This week, an envelope arrived from the U.S. Navy Personnel Command. Inside, I found my father’s World War II commendations – honors that had been nearly five years in the making since I first requested them. Holding the Air Medal 2, the American Campaign Medal, and his Honorable Discharge, I felt a mix of emotions. These medals represented more than just his service in the war – they symbolized the battles he fought both in the skies and within himself, and, for me, the unspoken struggles between father and son.
My father, Howard Burton, served as a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps. The Air Medal 2 marked his valor as a radio-gunner in a squadron of Helldivers, stationed on the remote Ulithi Atoll in the Pacific. It stood for every mission he flew, every enemy encounter, and every moment when survival was not guaranteed. These missions weren’t just numbers in a logbook – they were moments when life hung in the balance, when each dive might be his last.
The American Campaign Medal symbolized his role in a global conflict that stretched across oceans and continents. While he was serving thousands of miles from home, he was part of something much larger than himself, enduring months away from loved ones, fighting in foreign lands, and facing unimaginable hardships. And then there was the Purple Heart. Dad received it after his aircraft went down near Ulithi, marking not just the physical wounds he endured but the emotional scars that ran much deeper. His Honorable Discharge, in its simplicity, was perhaps the most powerful of these awards—a final testament to his honor, dedication, and duty fulfilled.
For him, these medals likely represented a time when survival, fear, and duty intertwined. For me, they reflect his quiet resilience and the unspoken battles between us. I never really had a father. He ran away from me, and I ran away from him. Through all those years, I can’t remember Dad ever telling me he loved me. Our relationship was defined by an unspoken distance, a chasm we never managed to bridge. His inability to connect left a void, and my reaction was to pull further away. That unresolved tension still lingers in my memories as I try to make sense of our relationship.
For years, his Marine Corps dress uniform, flight jacket, service ribbons, and Purple Heart hung silently in his closet – reminders of a life shaped by duty and sacrifice. But beyond those tangible symbols of service, there was a silence between us that carried just as much weight. I still have the U.S. flag that draped his coffin, folded in that precise triangular military style – a reminder not only of his service to our country but also of the father I never fully reached.
He rarely spoke of the war. I remember only one moment, after we buried Mom in 1996. He lit a Camel, sank into the couch, and said, “You can’t imagine how terrified I was as an eighteen-year-old kid, thinking today might be my last day.” My Uncle John had filled in the gaps, painting a vivid picture of my father strapped into the rear-facing seat of a Helldiver, plummeting from twelve thousand feet while Japanese Zeros screamed down at them. The terror was real, but the battles he fought within himself were the ones that lingered long after the war had ended.
His medals speak of bravery, honor, and service, yet the man behind them remained a mystery to me. His silence left an imprint – a sense of longing and unmet expectations. Even now, I grapple with the emotional impact of that unspoken void, trying to reconcile the love that was never expressed with the father I yearned to understand.
Ulithi Atoll may have been a tiny speck in the vast Pacific, but it became the center of my father’s world during the war. Yet, even as he fought those battles thousands of miles from home, the distance between us never shrank. These medals are more than mere symbols of military service – they're fragments of a life lived with quiet courage, of a man who carried his burdens alone. And holding them now, I feel the weight of those unspoken stories, the memories of a father I lost long before he was ever gone.
