Two soldiers' lives morph in a computer photo

Houston Chronicle ^ | May 26, 2003 | Sue Diaz

[Cincinatus' Wife]

MY father's half-inch hand floats on the computer screen in front of me. Not his arm. Just his hand. The right one.

For the past hour or so I've been working at merging two photographs, one old, one new -- into a single picture. In January I started taking a semester-long class in Adobe Photoshop, the software program that makes it possible to blend and alter photos in the most amazing ways. It's April now, and I'm finally getting the hang of it.

Two pairs of eyes smile back at me. One belongs to my father. In a sepia-toned photo, he is 19 and a soldier. Those eyes of his had not yet seen the churning red surf of the beaches of Normandy, the shattered cities, the hollow faces of concentration camp survivors.

Such sights were yet to come, followed in time by good things, as well: the war's end, a long and happy marriage, three kids, a career in accounting and management, a passion for local politics and a scant two years of retirement in Sun City West, Ariz.

All that was still ahead the day this picture was taken. On the screen of my laptop, Frank T. Bindas is grinning next to his grandson, Roman, who, here in the spring of 2003, is 19 and a soldier too.

Both are lanky, squared jawed and with ears that stick out a little too far. They stand together in an overgrown back yard on the south side of Milwaukee. They could be brothers -- though 15 years ago, the one named Frank was laid to rest under the sands of a veterans cemetery on the edge of Phoenix. And earlier this spring Roman, a new private in the 1st Armored Division based in Germany, boarded a plane bound for Baghdad.

My dad died after a brief battle with cancer just before Roman started kindergarten. So my son's memories of him are few and sketchy. He remembers the long drives to Arizona from our home in San Diego. And the gentle way his grandpa tossed the Frisbee to him in a back yard dotted with cactus and oleander. He recalls how he tasted pickled pigs' feet for the first time the afternoon his grandfather said, "Here, try a bite, Roman. The men in the family like this." (He did. And they still do.)

Of the memories I have of the two of them, one in particular lives on in my mind. It happened the day of my father's funeral. The Mass had ended. The pallbearers had taken up their positions, and with measured steps, were carrying the simple, silver casket toward the back of the church. They had just passed the pew where my husband and I stood with our daughter and our son. Suddenly, Roman shot out into the aisle, as if someone had pushed him. I was the only person next to him. And I know it wasn't me.

The soles of his Sunday shoes slipped a bit on the marble floor. He looked surprised. Then he turned and scampered up the aisle. Catching up with procession, he put his small hand, the right one -- on the side of the coffin, and, blonde head bowed, walked with the gray-haired men who carried his grandpa.

In the picture I'm looking at now, his hair is shorn in the style of new recruits; his head rises above two broad shoulders. The blue-braid insignia of the U.S. infantry loops over the shoulder where my father's hand hovers.

This composite is a work in progress. A few minutes ago, using what Photoshop calls the "Lasso" tool, I'd lifted Roman's image out of a different photo, one taken just before Christmas, made the necessary color and size adjustments, then placed him next to my father in the sepia-toned snapshot. In the original of that one, Dad had slipped his arm around his mother's shoulders. Here on the screen, Roman has taken her place. I reposition my father's hand. And just like that, he holds his grandson in an embrace that reaches beyond the boundaries of time.

The merged picture continues to take shape, and I realize that the connection between these two men goes beyond the Photoshop toolbar. With every click of the mouse, my sense of this grows stronger.

The uniform each wears joins them in a bond, a brotherhood I can't possibly comprehend. What do I know of war? I remember how my father used to describe it. "War is hell," was all he'd say when he talked about it, hardly ever.

As bombs began to fall on Iraq and I learned my son was headed there, I heard those three words once again. And it was my father's voice that spoke them. "If you can hear me, Dad," I prayed, "please do what you can to keep this grandson of yours safe and whole."

And the war lasted just four weeks.

The Middle East is still a dangerous place. But I will be forever grateful that when Roman and the men of Bravo Company set up their tents north of Baghdad, the major battles were already over.

I'm not about to say we have my father to thank for that. But then I look at him again in the picture, my soldier father with his arm draped protectively around my soldier son. I look into my father's eyes and think about what those eyes saw of war on the beaches and the battlefields he wouldn't talk about, and not just him but the corps to which he now belongs, all the soldiers who after the bloodshed they saw would move heaven -- wouldn't they? -- to end any war as soon as they could.

Maybe it wasn't him, but all of them who heard my prayer. If I was moved to speak to them, who's to say they weren't moved to listen?

Diaz, a columnist and author, can be reached via her Web site, www.suediaz.com.

[4mycountry]

Cool story.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!