New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘A watch to honor SSGT Campbell and his daughter’
A few months back, a man named Jeff, who knew my soldier dad, reached out. Jeff served with Daniel S. Campbell at Ford Ord, Calif., where Dad was the supply sergeant and platoon sergeant, and Jeff was a cook.
In his first email, Jeff insisted that he only wanted to tell me he knew my father and that he knew, from reading things I’d written about the man, that stories from his friendship would mean something to me.
Fort Ord was the last place my family lived together. We were shredded by my parents’ acrimonious divorce. As a soldier, my father was always away, and so though I barely knew him, when my mother announced that they would divorce, I remember telling her, at age 6, that I wish I’d never been born.
What happened next — the man my mother immediately brought into the family — destroyed what was left of us. I stayed in touch with my father via letters. That taught me how to write.
We had a reunion, of sorts, when I was old enough to drive and could see him without running the family gauntlet. I decided my mother’s stories about his crimes and misdemeanors were lies, so he and I were free to forge a relationship. I’ve said this before, but: He was an imperfect man who was a perfect father for me. I once sent off for my father’s military records, and from what I can tell — with the help of military friends who deciphered the acronyms — he was a model soldier, the best one his commanding officers had ever seen — but then he’d mouth off or do something un-military-like and get bounced down a rank.
It’s a family trait. We are our own best speed bumps.
Fast forward to 1992, when in four short months we absorbed the news that (1) Daniel S. Campbell had cancer and (2) it might be operable, but (3) a seven-hour operation on Father’s Day that year showed that it wasn’t, and (4) at 56, he was dead by the end of October.
All this time later, I can work up tears thinking of all he’s missed — but more, what his grands and great-grands missed with his absence. In that, I am no different from any daughter who loved her dad who died.
He haunts me, a little bit. I hold his military trunk in my basement and occasionally I go through the papers inside. I have photos of him everywhere. I’d thought recently of how he used to wear his watch with the face in, and how if you asked him the time, you waited a split-second while he flipped his wrist over. He learned to do that as a marksman and as a spy. The former was because it’s easier to see the time with the watch pointed in when holding a rifle, the latter because a watch face can reflect the light and give away one’s position. So, you tuck it in.
Also, it’s cool.
I decided I wanted a watch to remember him by and, as I always have, I would wear it as he did, face in. I haven’t touched a gun in years. As for being a spy, well, it’s cool. As a Christian fundamentalist, I’m not allowed to embrace talismans, but as the daughter of a soldier dad, I can’t help but.
Literally two days after I had that random thought, another email from Jeff landed in my inbox. The subject line was “Standing ‘watch.’ ” Jeff reached out because, he said, a lot of people were getting triggered by the events in Afghanistan and if I was, as well, he shared a website for an organization that helps veterans and their loved ones.
I did not contact the organization, but I let Jeff know that his timing was incredible, that I was considering getting a military watch, just like my dad’s.
It was as if I’d uncorked a bottle and a genie came out. What followed was a series of long emails from Jeff, who collects watches, in which he committed himself to finding one for me. He put out a call for “a watch to honor SSGT Campbell and his precious daughter Susan,” and that alone made me cry. He asked for a date that is important to me so he could find a watch from that time. My father was horribly wounded in February 1968, during the early days of the Tet Offensive. So that was my date.
Jeff enlisted a network of veterans. Several responded, including Larry, John and Terry. I don’t know any of them, and I don’t need a watch to realize just how wonderful random people can be and how, without any provocation or encouragement, men you’ve never met can make the whole world open up.
But the box arrived a week ago, with two watches (a Bulova and a Benrus) and extra bands for when the others wear out. My dad could have owned watches like either one. Jeff suggests I make the Bulova my go-to watch and the Benrus, from March 1968, my special occasion one. Throughout March 1968, my dad laid in a hospital bed with a back scarred like the map of hell, and I will happily save that watch for meaningful moments. I am told both watches are finicky — imperfect, so they’re perfect for me.
Susan Campbell is the author of “Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood,” “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker,” and “Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl.” She is a Distinguished Lecturer at University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.