Father’s silence inspires war documentary
Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/64335/
Most children grow up listening to their parents’ childhood and teenage stories.
Doug Andonian was like most children, except for him there was a two-year gap in his dad’s stories from 1943 to 1945 while his father served in 750 th Tank Battalion in the U. S. Army in Belgium and Germany during World War II.
Andonian, a Boston native who now lives in Goshen, said questions about that part of his father’s life were met with a turned back or a change of subject.
“ I hammered him pretty much with questions; I wasn’t at all intimidated, ” Andonian said. “ He wouldn’t answer them, but I’d ask. ”
Andonian’s father, Paul, was pretty open about every aspect of his life except his time in the Army, even to the point of discussing his imminent death before discussing his military service.
At his father’s funeral, Andonian made the decision to map out the untold period of his father’s life by revisiting all the areas in Belgium and Germany through which his dad’s tank unit traveled during the war. He also decided to turn the journey into a documentary, which will be aired at the GI Film Festival in Washington, D. C. Held May 14-18 at the Carnegie Institute, the festival honors the contributions of the American soldier.
“ My wife told me I couldn’t travel there for three weeks, see all those places and not document it somehow, ” he said.
A photographer by hobby, Andonian said film was an easy transition. He recruited two friends to aid him on his journey, and in 2005 he headed to Belgium to retrace his father’s journey. He got ahold of the 750 th Tank Battalion’s Journal of after-action reports from the National Archives to help with the project.
The trips to Europe allowed Andonian to see the countryside and villages through which his father traveled. He saw rusted communication stations left in the Ardennes Forest and stone barriers, called dragon’s teeth, set in the ground to prevent tank advances. He even got to meet some villagers who remember the American troops liberating them.
“ It’s boggling how appreciative the Belgians are over there (for America’s wartime aid ), ” he said.
One village even created a bronze plaque commemorating the 750 th Tank Battalion and held an unveiling ceremony. Andonian said that despite the sounds and smell of war being long gone, the country still carries some of the scars.
“ You can still stand in the forest and get a sense of how eerie it must have been, ” he said.
Andonian said the event really gave him some insight not only into his father’s life but also his own.
The production took three years and three European trips to finish. They entered the film, “ Sons of War, ” into the Sedona Film Festival in Sedona, Ariz. It was screened twice, one of 135 films to be screened and one out of 1, 000 films entered. He also entered it into the GI Festival hoping to get it as much exposure as possible. But it was at the Sedona festival that Andonian realized that the documentary spoke more to the lack of communication between him and his father as a result of the war.
“ So many of us are kids of parents who didn’t talk to us about certain things, ” he said.
Lana Brown is the Fayetteville Veterans Affairs Medical Center mental health coordinator for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. She said that Andonian’s tale is not an unusual one for families of veterans.
“ It’s more the rule of thumb that they don’t want to talk about (their time in the war ) with anyone in their family, ” she said. “ They will talk about it with other veterans. ”
She said some of the veterans’ reasons could be that they don’t want to expose their families to the horrors of war or don’t think their families would ever understand.
World War II veterans also lacked the research and treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Brown said in the 1950 s it was just called shell shock, and soldiers were expected to deal with it on their own.
Andonian did get one bit of insight into his father’s time at war, perhaps the most horrific experience of all. One day Paul Andonian told his son about the time he visited Mauthausen, one of the largest Nazi concentration camps in Europe at the time.
“ They rolled the tanks in there right about the time the camp was liberated, ” Doug Andonian said.
Paul Andonian and his comrades had heard rumors about the giant crematoriums used by the Nazis at the camp and decided to go look at them. He told his son that they never made it to the part of the camp with the ovens because the smell of the bodies was too strong.
“ I always thought he was able to talk about the camp because it was a release, ” Andonian said.
The time at the death camp was such a big issue that Andonian decided to save it for a sequel he plans to begin work on in mid-May.
As for the current film, he said it will air at the festival at 2 p. m. May 18.
For more information on the documentary, go to www. kuduproductions. com.