Robert P. Borsody has been in the private practice of law in New York City for 37 years. Before returning to private practice, he directed a federally funded project of health and law research and test case litigation. Earlier he was affiliated with the New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. He chaired the Public Health Committee of the New York State Bar Association for four years and then founded one of the largest health law firms in the country. He has written numerous articles on his specialty of health law. This is his first foray into the new area of holistic law.

 

 

Robert P. BorsodyRobert P. Borsody serves as Counsel for Phillips Nizer LLP’s Healthcare practice.  Mr. Borsody, who joined the firm in 2005, represents health care providers of all types in dealing with regulatory aspects, as well as the legal and business affairs of health care providers.  This includes, corporate, banking, securities and commercial law, regulation of tax exempt organizations, public underwritings and private placements, reimbursement matters, certificate of need issues, licensing—both institutional and individual, corporate reorganizations, joint ventures, antitrust, amongst other areas relating to the health care industry.

Mr. Borsody is a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Health Law (Co-Chair Managed Care Committee), the Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s Health Law Committee and the American Bar Association’s Health Law Section, Health Care Fraud and Self Referral Interest Group, New York State Program Lead.  He is also member of the American Health Lawyers Association and the Healthcare Financial Management Association (Advanced Member).  Additionally, Mr. Borsody serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of the Mental Health Association of New York City, and has been a member of the New York State Council on Health Care Financing since 1978. 

Mr. Borsody is a frequent speaker, moderator and panelist on programs relating to health law.  His most recent programs are as follows:

Mr. Borsody has written extensively on health care matters.  His most recent publications are as follows:

Mr. Borsody received both a law degree and a engineering degree from the University of Virginia.  He is listed  in ‘Who’s Who’ in Health Care, ‘Who’s Who in Law’, Who’s Who in the United States’ and ‘Who’s Who in the World’.  He is an honorably discharged veteran of the United States Naval Reserve and the United States Marine Corp Reserve. 

Professional Memberships:

Links

> Some unpublished writing
Robert Borsody's Law Profile
Hampshire House
Robert Borsody on Premier Senior Living
> Robert Borsody's on Linkedin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LAWYERS: GUNSLINGERS OR PEACEMAKERS,

TOWARD A NEW PARADIGM



The recent terrorist attacks have caused many people in this country to take a searching look at their lives. This is true especially of the New York City lawyers who, like myself, could have been in the World Trade Center at that tragic time, but were not. Perhaps there should be a reexamination of the way we practice law. Law practice, at least in New York City, can often be corrosive and depressing to practitioners. It can create a psychic pain of the soul and of the heart. Over time it can also become a pain of the mind and of the body. This is one of the reasons attorneys, as a group, have some of the highest rates of suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, divorce, strokes and heart attacks. How did it get this way? Is a different paradigm possible for the practice of law?

Lawyers in many law schools were trained to be strictly objective, weigh both sides, be judicious, think like a judge. As in many professions and occupations that have been traditionally an all male preserve, the law encourages traits of competitiveness and aggressiveness. Legal training is mind and head-centered. It is about winning arguments. To introduce humanism into the mix is, to some lawyers' way of thinking, soft and "wimpy." Many litigators adopt a "macho" courtroom presence and, in their conduct of a litigation, they proudly espouse a "go for the jugular", "take no prisoners" and "scorched earth" approach. Because they are seen as protectors and defenders of corporate power, often at the cost of the public interest, they are often feared and hated by the general public. It was thought as more women came into the law, the stereotype of the "high-powered corporate lawyer" or "trial attorney," would change. An historic moment occurred recently when the proportion of women enrolled in law schools exceeded 50 percent. However, even as women have advanced in the ranks of law, they have often done so by emulating these male stereotypes.

In opinion surveys rating the jobs held in high esteem by the public, lawyers rate among the lowest. Negative references to lawyers go way back, and must have some true basis in history and in fact. As early as sixteenth century England, Shakespeare's common folk in King Henry the Sixth say: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." In the aptly-titled 1920 poem by Carl Sandburg, "The Lawyers Know Too Much," he wonders: "Why does a horse snicker, Hauling a lawyer away?" Why indeed? More recently, in media and common parlance, the public has a love-hate reaction to lawyers. Note the proliferation of anti-lawyer jokes comparing them to sharks. Also, remember Jurassic Park--the mercenary lawyer cowering in an outhouse, who is gobbled up by Tyrannosaurus Rex? For every novel, film and television drama of a self-sacrificing lawyer representing the little fellow against the establishment (Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington), there are a dozen disparaging and unfavorable media representations of ambulance chasers and shysters (The Verdict) and conspirators (The Firm).

The question arises: Is there an alternative or, more precisely, is there any way that any of this can be changed? Some lawyers are working hard to make a difference. They are attempting to point the way to a different paradigm for the practice of law. They are exploring the question, can a lawyer can be a healer; can a lawyer ever be a peacemaker -- and make a living?

A concept and a practice has arisen called Holistic Law. The concept and the practice is new enough so that the definition is still developing. Holistic law approaches disputes differently, looking for a resolution that will not inevitably involve litigation, but rather a solution that will take the interests of all parties into consideration. Holistic Law practice has its own professional association, the International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers which just celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Bill van Zyverden, a Vermont lawyer, is the founder of the Alliance. In the organization's recent newsletter he says, "Holistic Law…, is concerned with the 'whole' client: past, future, body, mind, spirit and unified field connection to each other and all that is. Our role becomes a sharing of our own humanity as equals, as Spiritual companions." When Bill opened his practice in 1992 at the "Holistic Justice Center" in Middlebury, Vermont, a New York Times reporter noted that a fellow lawyer asked if he was practicing "wimpy law." Many of the members of the Alliance practice in small towns across the country. Bill Van Zyverden still practices in a small town in Vermont, he wears blue jeans to work and bills out at $80 an hour. The question that I have put to myself after becoming aware of this concept is: "Will it play in the Big Apple?"

Before September 11, 2001, I had significant doubts. Now, however, I am hopeful that New York lawyers might be open to some suggestions for alternative ways of looking at their law practice. It will be helpful to look at how the "big New York firm" corporate practice compares with what I know of a holistic law practice, to see if this is feasible.

When I first started practicing on Wall Street I read a book by Erwin O. Smigel called, The Wall Street Lawyer, Professional Organization Man? that characterized a good lawyer as one who is "methodical, prudent and disciplined." This description still is useful today. A lawyer who represents clients in significant transactions, engages in thorough and exhaustive research and finds all the cases and all the precedents in favor of his client's position. This is certainly the right thing for any lawyer to do. There are, of course, ethical obligations to represent one's client with the utmost vigor. Canon 7 requires "zealous" representation of a client. See DR 7-101. However, it is also important to note that the Canons of Ethics also state that, "The duty of a lawyer to represent his client with zeal does not militate against his concurrent obligation to treat with consideration all persons involved in the legal process and to avoid the infliction of needless harm." See EC 7-10. In addition, Canon 8 encourages improvement of the legal system.

Another common characteristic of the big city practice is aggressive lawyering. This encompasses a broad range, from attempting to overwhelm an adversary with motions and discovery requests in a litigation to loading the first draft of a contract with exceptionally favorable terms for your client in the expectation that you will sacrifice a number of points and ultimately arrive at something satisfactory to your client. This is traditional conduct in a battle of behemoths such as Microsoft and the United States government. Unfortunately, it often happens with big corporations versus much smaller corporations or individuals.

Another problem and practicality of the big firm is the pressure on those who do the work to bill a lot of hours. The "rainmaker" is also pressured to bring in enough business to feed the large overhead. To a lesser extent, these same pressures exist in many smaller firms but, of course, a high overhead is a characteristic of big city practice. Some of this is driven by the perceived need of attorneys to impress clients. A large, luxurious office that presents the appearance of success is thought to attract and please clients. The accepted wisdom is, clients want to bring their business to firms that are successful because those firms will be successful for the clients, too.

Holistic practitioners, who are not burdened with concerns of feeding a large overhead, may take more time with a client to understand the client's life and lifestyle and the client's business, including and going beyond the immediate facts of the proposed deal or the perceived conflict. In structuring a particular business deal or transaction in the context of the broader picture, the holistic lawyer is able to fulfill his obligation to his client and also, hopefully, to help with some healing advice that could address the client's immediate problem and also prevent that problem from reoccurring.

Holistic practitioners and alternative practitioners are often concentrated in particular areas of law, such as family law, where, instead of just aggressively representing a client in a divorce, they urge the client to look at the broader view and the longer view; the effect on the children and how the children will view the client in years to come, for example. However, even a lawyer representing commercial or corporate clients versus neighborhood and community interests can also serve his client well by looking beyond the normal parameters of the matter or controversy.

Tom Lynch, a lawyer practicing as environmental counsel and litigator at a traditional corporate law firm in Maryland, and who is a member of the International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers, commented about the evolution of his representation of a company which became aware of pollution problems at one of its facilities. The company prudently took immediate damage control measures to address the contamination problem quietly and efficiently and for a number of years, on Tom’s advice, avoided communication with the media and its neighbors in the perception that it may thereby evade litigation. When a company representative was required to appear at a public meeting as a part of the process to upgrade its treatment system, Tom found himself in the position of having to address the community. Tom, who had just completed reading the book entitled “Seeing Law Differently, Views From a Spiritual Path”, written by Alan Reid, a Canadian lawyer, had an inspiration. He appeared at the meeting, apologized to the entire community for the advice he had given to his own client; i.e., maintaining a low profile. Instead, he and his environmental consultant disclosed to the community precisely what had been done to remediate the problem and invited the community to participate in a series of plant tours during which state of the art environmental clean-up equipment could be examined. The community’s concern and anger were dissipated by this catharsis event and the community has worked with the company since that time. Expensive litigation was thereby avoided and the relationship between the company and the community was significantly improved. This approach was completely consistent with the basic premise and major tenets of holistic and compassionate lawyering. In this case, compassion, information sharing, cooperation and understanding between both sides, encouraged community and commonality of purpose. There was no call for blame and no need for the waste of resources in litigation.

Many traditional lawyers could see disaster in this direction because less litigation could mean less legal fees. However, in the long run, a practice that encourages resolution of disputes without the expense of litigation, flourishes. Abraham Lincoln said "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses and waste of time. As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man."

The fact is, most lawyers do not go to court and are rarely involved in litigation. Many lawyers practice "transactional law." They do business deals: buying and selling businesses, setting up businesses, counseling their business clients on contractual relationships with other businesses, and dealing with regulatory requirements of many city, state and federal regulatory agencies that hold their clients in regulatory thrall. Business lawyers could not be expected overnight to dramatically change their practice, but they can make a difference in a number of small ways. Indeed, many such lawyers have been trying in some ways to "do the right thing." Like Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who is amazed to discover he had been speaking prose for 40 years without knowing it, many lawyers may be surprised to know they have been practicing some holistic law without knowing it.

Almost all lawyers are fine, decent and honest people. From the young, idealistic lawyer who has recently graduated, to the older, seasoned lawyer, who has seen it all, many lawyers have been practicing in accordance with some of the holistic principles described above. This includes the customary courtesies extended to opposing counsel, as well as the cautionary observation to a client that a course of action could have long-term, unintended and unpleasant consequences. In these and many other ways, many lawyers have helped to make the practice of law a little less abrasive, and life more bearable for some clients and their opponents. They would probably, however, be embarrassed or indignant to find themselves grouped with "holistic lawyers." They would probably think it is bad for business.

The good news is that it could be very good for business. The longer and broader view of a client's interest is always good for lawyers. Furthermore, it can be entirely consistent with the Canon of Ethics. When a client comes to a lawyer, flushed with the heat of incipient battle, seething from a wrong, or excited about a possible deal or sale of a new business, he certainly expects the lawyer to point out pitfalls and even hopes to learn about unexpected advantages and possibilities. But he would also appreciate the lawyer pointing out an approach from which both sides of the deal could benefit. The other party to the deal or controversy is not going to disappear. Within a particular industry, paths may cross again and that person may be in a position to help or harm the client in the future; how the lawyer constructs the deal and conducts the transaction could determine which he does.

Will the "high-powered, corporate lawyer" in a big firm in a big city practice think of applying any of these principles in the way he practices and makes his living? He may contribute to charity and serve on boards of community organizations, but that humanism may not carry over to the practice of his profession where, he thinks, "Business is Business." He may believe it would be taking a big chance to change the way the business of law is conducted. He may feel that a successful practice is his contribution to the world. He should know, however, about the story Abraham Lincoln used to tell. It concerns a brilliant and eloquent frontier lawyer who spent his life in anxious, unending and exclusive pursuit of big fees, unconcerned with the issues of the day: slavery, states' rights, free soil, or other community concerns that swirled around him. In a career of forensic brilliance, the lawyer won everything but the respect of the people he lived among. Before the lawyer died, he ordered his own tombstone and directed that under his name be placed the inscription: "A Successful Lawyer and a Good Man." But the local town council refused to approve the inscription. They said it was against the law to bury "two men in one grave."

Most lawyers believe that it would be taking a big chance to change the way the business of law is conducted. However, conventional ways of thinking and acting in business and the professions in this country can and must change. Lawyers can change; for themselves, to make themselves healthier and happier, and also for the betterment of our country. It starts with each individual lawyer. It then spreads to the lawyer's firm and his colleagues and perhaps to the courts and to the agencies where he practices and then to the broader legal community and his locality. Then it can spread across the country and, in this modern Web-based, international community, it can spread to the rest of the world. Where it must start, however, is in the consciousness of each individual lawyer.

Robert P. Borsody, October 2001


A Suggested Reading List:


Keeva, Steven: Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life (Lincoln Wood, Illinois, Contemporary Books, 1999)


Perlmutter, Mark: Why Lawyer's (and the Rest of Us Lie) and Engage in Other Repugnant Behavior, (Bright Books, 1998)


Stolle, Wexler and Winick: Practicing Therapeutic Jurisprudence, the Law as a Helping Profession, 1 Carolina Academic Press, Durham, N.C., 2001.



Helpful Organizations and Programs:


Wainwright House

260 Stuyvesant Avenue

Rye, NY 10580

(914) 967-6080

Web site: www.wainwright.org


Omega Institute

150 Lake Drive

Rhinesbeck, NY 12572

(845) 266-4444

Web site: www.eomega.org


The New York Open Center

83 Spring Street

New York, NY 10012

(212) 219-2527

Web site: www.opencenter.org


International Association of Holistic Lawyers

PO Box 753

Middlebury, Vermont 05753

(802) 388-7478

Web site: www.ihala.org

 

Feeding the Homeless-The Midnight Run 

 Perhaps some of you have heard about the Midnight Run.  The purpose of this article is to tell you more about the Run and, also, to let you know how you can be a part of it if you would like to. 

      The Run is, basically, a caravan of five to seven cars and vans that travel to midtown Manhattan late Saturday night to bring sustenance of various sorts to the homeless of New York City.  The most tangible sustenance that we bring is food and clothing.  The vehicles are filled with clothing of various sorts and underwear, which are always in great demand.  Also we bring toiletries, such as shaving supplies, soap, toothpaste and depending on the season, either cold or hot drinks.  And we always have hot, nourishing soup. 

      In addition to the more visible, tangible kind of sustenance for our homeless clients, we also might engage them in conversation while we are serving them something to eat, or helping them to look for items of clothing they may need.  This means a lot.  It can be a spirit-nourishing experience for them and for us. 

      Our usual contact with the homeless is no contact.  To most of us who go into the city to work, they are invisible or too painful to look at.  They are what, at first sight, is taken for a pile of rags in some eddy in the busy byways of the city; or maybe the sunken, red-rimmed eyes that you see peering out from a wild growth of gray hair, atop shuffling assortment of ragged, unkempt, multilayered clothes; or, quite often, the hoarse-voiced, “spare change?” that you hear as you sprint for the train at Grand Central or jump out a cab, late for a meeting.  The homeless never seem to be in a hurry.  They always seem to have plenty of time.  You might think that this is because they don’t work, so they have a lot of time to spare.  It is true that they don’t work in the sense that they don’t have jobs, but they are working all the time, just to survive.  This is no small feat on the streets of New York.  The Midnight Run is an attempt to make this a little easier for them. 

      A Midnight Run starts with the organizers at the two local sponsoring organizations – the Larchmont Avenue Church and Larchmont Temple.   The organizers find people to go on the Run; to make the food for the Run; and to collect and sort the contributed clothes.  The Midnight Run takes place about every six weeks. 

      On the night of the Run, volunteers sort the clothes according to size and then loaded along with food, blankets (in the winter) and toiletries into the cars and vans.  We receive a list of stops to make for a central coordinating office.  Our caravan leaves Larchmont Avenue Church about 9:30 Saturday evening.  At each stop, we open the trunks of our cars and vans and the homeless gather to receive what they need.  They all know about the Run and eagerly await our arrival.  

      Finally, I should say something about our interaction with the people on the street.  The main thing to understand is that they are, without exception, extremely grateful and polite.  Although the street people are not pretty to look at, they are people, just like us.  Indeed, they are people who come from all walks of life.   

      At the end of the evening, we have given away hundreds of bag lunches, gallons of soup and drinks and cars full of clothing but we feel that we have received much more than we have given away. 

      The Midnight Run needs your help.  If you would like to volunteer to go a run, contact ___________________  or __________________; to make soup or bag lunches, contact __________________.  To sort clothing on the night of the Run, contact________________.  If you can donate adult clothes, please put them_______________________. 
 

 

 

 

WAR STORIES MY FATHER TOLD ME- WW II

 

              This is the second chapter of my description of my fathers war adventures. This begins in the early 40s in Brooklyn.(By the way,I just came across a letter in my father's old files that he received from the British Royal Air Force rejecting his application to enlist, before the US had joined the second world war. He was always very patriotic and grateful to this country that had taken him in as an immigrant and always ready to fight for it.)

 

              Dad was, I think working for RCA or some such company when he joined the Navy in the early 40s. He said he was sent to Princeton as one of the “90 day wonders”. What this was, I believe, was a quick course in officer training designed to turn promising young recruits into junior officers. I remember a description of it in “the Caine mutiny”.

              He did some work in the New York area area. I remember some description of putting the radio on a sailboat and having it sail around New York Harbor trying to attract submarines to attack it so they could radio for help and get the submarine bombed, I guess.

              Then he went down to Trinidad. The family followed on a long three day train ride down to Ft. Lauderdale for Florida where we lived for three-years, so we could be close enough so he could visit us on leave, which he did. The purpose of that tour of duty was to set up a radio triangulation system so that the tankers which were bringing up oil from Venezuela to the United States and which were torpedoed or who thought they were about to be torpedoed , could radio for help, so that the Navy (I think there was no Air Force yet) could send out a PBY to attack the submarine.

              He told some funny stories about living in Trinidad. There is a picture of him and some other guys climbing around some rocks dressed in shorts and T-shirts labeled “from the Indies to the Andes in our undies,”Then there was a story about some Jivaro headhunter Indians who offered to sell a shrunken head to one of his friends who demurred at the price, saying he wouldn't pay that much for a full-size head. I believe it was also in South America that he was being driven to the airport to take a plane somewhere when the Jeep was stopped by a tree that had fallen across the road. By the time they got the tree out of the way and got to the airport the plane was taking off only to immediately lose power and plunge to the ground . All on the plane were killed. This was another one of his famous brushes with death.

              Then he was shipped off to the Pacific where he was appointed commander of the radio station on Guam which, he said, was the largest radio station in the Pacific and, controlled communications for the entire Pacific theater of war.

              He told about how they would drive through these jungle roads crunching giant land crabs under their tires and how on one of these trips he was ambushed by a bunch of Japanese soldiers, many of whom were still hiding out in the jungle at that time, although, the island had already been conquered by the Americans and taken over Just as the Japanese soldiers rushed out and began to fire, he ran over a hornet's nest releasing a cloud of the hornets. The Japanese soldiers, who were not wearing many clothes ,were driven away by the hornets. Dad was stung as well but ,as he said, better hornets than bullets.

              Another famous incident ( in our family, anyway) concerned what he thought were hornets or bees as well. There was a tall radio tower in the middle of the island and, soon after getting there, he felt the need to climb it and check it out as well as get a good view of the island. As he approached the top he heard what he thought were bees buzzing around him and realized in a flash that the Japanese soldiers, hiding out in the jungle, were shooting at him. He quickly clambered down and at the bottom found a group of Marine guards who were taking bets on whether he would survive.

              It was while he was stationed here that he became an expert pistol shot with a 45.They had cases of 45 caliber machine gun ammunition that they wanted to use up and he described how his trigger finger became calloused from constant use. I think this must have affected his hearing too.

              Well, that's about it for the second world war,or all that I can remember at this point. During the Korean War he used his talents as a radio frequency allocation engineer while he was working at the Pentagon for the Air Force to allocate the appropriate frequencies to communicate during the Inchon landing in North Korea.

              During the Vietnam War, (dad had already retired and was living in Florida) when he heard that there were supply ships which could not leave port to go to Vietnam because of the unavailability of a radio operator. Dad had been a radio operator on ships during the 20s, it was one of the jobs he got after getting out of the Army after the first world war. So he volunteered. As he was fond of saying, a ship could leave port without the captain but not without the radio operator. He made one or more trips over to Vietnam. In fact he and mom had lived there for a year or two during his last assignment while working for the State Department, where his job was putting in communication systems for the government to strengthen internal security. He did the same thing in Korea before that and in Iran before that.

War stories my father told me

My father used to  tell me stories about his experiences in the wars. Notice I didn't say "the war" because he was in
both of them; World War I and World War II although, as used to mention jokingly, they never called World War I during
World War I. They used to call "the Great War" or "the War to End All Wars." Some newscaster wrote a book about the
"Greatest Generation" Referring to the men who fought in World War II. Well, I guess that included my dad, since he fought
in World War II. However since he also fought in World War I, what does that make him? Probably something more than the
greatest generation.
Anyway let me start off with some of the stories and, of course, it's logical to start off with the first world war. One of the interesting things about this war, which probably everybody knows, is that Americans really wanted to fight in this war and that included my father. He was 16 when he enlisted; still in Stuyvesant high school, I don't know whether a junior or senior. He went down to the recruiting station to sign up with a pal of his and told the officer at the desk and he was 18, which was the age one had to be to serve in the army. The recording officer, obviously also eager to have my father served in the Army, told him that if he said he was 18 he would have to see a birth certificate so he should say he was 19, which he did and was, therefore allowed to serve. He asked if he would be serving with his friend who came down to sign up the same day and was assured that would be the case and, of course he never saw his friend again during the war.
He was assigned to a battalion (or division or company, I never really knew the difference) from Texas and Oklahoma, for some bizarre reason. He did some training, somewhere, I believe Fort Totten. I had his diary from these days and a few other little mementos like this. The diary is ready monotonous and unexciting simply reciting day after day of training.

By the way, we used to have a lot more first world war mementos around including one of those German helmets with a spike on top we also had dad's gas mask and gas mask bag. On the bag that was carefully inked the names of a number of French towns that they had, apparently marched through with "Paris" in large letters at the end. While I saw all of these things up to about 1960, I think a lot of them were lost in a flood in Korea of the warehouse were a lot of my parents (and other people's) longings were stored. By the way, again, there are pictures of my dad's first world war rifle, a model 1903 Springfield. I have a picture of that hanging up on the wall of his radio room. It seems kind of strange to me that he was allowed to go home with these things including his weapon. Maybe things were different in 1918 but I think it would be really unusual for any soldier to be allowed to take home weapons these days. I can imagine that he smuggled at home since it would be hard to put under his clothes the thing was four or five feet long.
Well, back to the war stories. His first memory was getting on the ship and having one of his fellow soldiers remark "this thing  is as big as a house." Dad said that many of these soldiers not only had never been on a ship before but had never been out of their state were seen the ocean. Remember this was 1916 or 17 when travel and mobility in this country was nowhere near what it is today. He said they were real country boys.. Another remark that he told me, that he remembered was, at the end of the first day of steaming across the Atlantic one of them commented "I wonder where we are going to stop for the night."
Dad's first, and almost fatal, experience that he told me about during the war was when he was on guard duty at night on the ship. I think he said that there were rumors that there was a spy or saboteurs on board. He dozed off while on guard duty which was, and probably is, during wartime, a capital offense. He could have been court-martialed and executed. He woke up to see a port hole open in the latrine where he was standing guard. This was strictly forbidden because, of course with the port hole open, light would shine out and the ship would be able to be seen by any prowling submarines, and there were submarines definitely prowling about during that war. Someone had obviously crept by the sleeping sentry and opened the port hole for the purpose of allowing the ship to be spotted more easily by any possible prowling nearby submarine. Of course sprang up and quickly close the port hole; peered about to see if anyone had seen him; and resumed his guard duty with, of course, the greatly heightened awareness and alertness that fear of drastic consequences can bring. He never told anyone about his dereliction from duty, naturally, except me and the ship was not torpedoed so there was no harm done.
Dad told me generally about what he did as a "doughboy" and a member of the American Expeditionary Force in France during the first world war. He was a member of the signal Corps. Oh, I just remembered another memento we have of the war, if that's the right word. We have a black trunk about 15" x 3' x 3'. It opens from the top and the side opens on a hinge down to former kind of a desk. He said this is a radio case. We have used it as a trunk For all these years. Dad was already interested in radio and had constructed a little crystal set when he was a teenager and, of course learned the Morse code. So, I guess this is why they put him in the Signal Corps. He described how to communicate with the biplanes that would be flying overhead and going to attack various parts of the enemy line and, perhaps, bomb them. They would lay out big white sheets in various forms and shapes which, I suppose, communicated various directions such as, go and drop a bomb here or there.
Somehow, somewhere he was gassed. I only know this because several times when I was a teenager he went to the veterans hospital for treatment of some residual little pieces out mustard gas that had lodged somewhere in a salivary gland in his mouth. It was nothing serious. I think it was just painful to him at times. He also said that some enormous proportion, a third or a half, of his, (again I don't know whether it was a battalion of company or whatever) died from yellow fever during the war. We have a picture of him in his uniform holding his rifle standing at attention looking rather forlorn. He always said, half Seriously, that the reason he looked that way is because so many of his fellow soldiers had died of this disease. He was a member of various groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the "40 and eight Association". This referred to first world war AEF (American Expeditionary Force) survivors and the name came from the fact that the French railroad cars held 40 man or eight horses.
Well, that's about it for the first World War. Fast forward to the second world war.