After the massive snow, a sudden and massive spring in Garrett Park.

As I walked my acre just now, picking up small limbs from yesterday’s windstorm and large limbs from last month’s snowstorm, I saw the son of friends of ours. They live at the bottom of Rokeby Avenue.

He was bent over in the forest adjacent to our place, examining white flowers. He’s La Kid’s age, studying to be a chef.

“Find any unusual plants?” he asked me. He held open in his hand a guidebook to edible plants. “I’m foraging.”

“Funny you should ask. These … crocuses? … look new to me. I’ve got plenty of smaller ones, lighter purple. These are different.”

“Those are Russian crocuses. They’re
darker. Kind of shimmery gray on the
outside when they open up.”

“How did they get here? Suddenly?
So many of them?”

“The wind maybe.”

“Squirrels.”

“Definitely squirrels.”

“But listen. I find all sorts of strange things in the back.” I motioned to the purple field behind me. “Feel free to forage my territory.”

A car horn beeped.

“That’s my mom. Thanks! I’d like that.”

*******************************************

Another Snapshot from Home, if I may. This one also involves a plant.

A few months ago, Mr UD drove a neighbor – an older man, who no longer drives – around Silver Spring for a few hours as he did some errands. The man, John Wilpers, brought a flowering plant to our house as a gesture of thanks.

(I was very close friends with Terry, one of John’s children, when I was growing up in Garrett Park. She works in Baltimore now. We’re still friends.)

But that’s not the snapshot from home. Here’s the snapshot from home. I’ll give it this headline:

GARRETT PARKER WINS
BRONZE STAR
FOR SAVING TOJO’S LIFE

Washington Post:

More than six decades after the end of World War II, a retired U.S. Army colonel this week received the Bronze Star Medal for his part in the arrest in 1945 of Japan’s principal wartime prime minister, Gen. Hideki Tojo.

The medal, one of the highest honors conferred by the military for combat actions, was awarded to John J. Wilpers, now 90 and living in Garrett Park.

… In January 1947, Wilpers’s commanding officer at the time of the arrest recommended Wilpers for the Bronze Star Medal for his actions Sept. 10-11, 1945. The paperwork describes how Wilpers located Tojo’s Tokyo residence and broke in after hearing a gunshot.

Once inside, Wilpers found that Tojo — who knew his arrest was imminent — had shot himself in the chest. Wilpers reportedly secured Tojo’s weapons and found a Japanese physician who, “faced with Captain Wilpers’ .38 caliber revolver,” administered first aid until U.S. medical officers could arrive.

… What happened to the original recommendation is unknown; it apparently did not make it through the chain of command, or might have gotten lost, said Lt. Col. Mike Moose, a public affairs officer with the Army’s Human Resources Command.

… Wilpers’s family did not learn about his involvement in the arrest of Tojo, who was eventually tried and executed for war crimes, until his son Michael stumbled upon his name while studying at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Wilpers did not pursue the forgotten award until 2002, when he contacted the Awards Branch of the military. In a typewritten letter he wrote: “Dear sir, In the process of putting my military records in order (old geezers tend to do this when they suspect that they may be nearing the long slow slide to Forest Lawn), I came across the attached 1947 recommendation . . . for an award . . . If the recommendation was not approved, just a phone message would do. If it was approved, I would prefer the simplest notification possible… “