Do you know what a real hero is?

At least once a week, sometimes more, I scour the obituary columns specifically to look for veterans of WWII who have passed away. I read their obituaries and usually, their war stories that their families have lovingly collected over the years.

The obits I specifically look for, though, are the ones that mention the OSS -- the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA. Those are usually not so detailed. They might give locations of service, but never the recognizable names -- Normandy, Bataan, D-Day, etc. Just very vague service mentions.

Every once in a while, there are mentions of military awards given to these OSS alums. Read about one gentleman who received the bronze star from the legendary founder of the OSS "Wild Bill" Donovan, himself.

I wish to God I knew even a little bit more about my father's record in the OSS.

What I do know, was told to me at unguarded moments, usually fueled by a gin and tonic, or by my mother who somehow got a story or two out of him. One time I found his discharge paper from the OSS taped underneath a file drawer. I made the mistake of telling my father of my discovery and have never seen it since.

When my father died, I called the military service office that handles the life insurance claims -- he had kept up the payments for years. It wasn't a great deal of money, but the reaction of the young, clearly unflappable serviceman on the other end of the phone was curious. I gave him the information -- Name, Social Security number, branch of service, Army Air Corps.

He offered his condolences then typed the information into the computer. Silence. He asked me to hold as he called a "higher up" to come over and see the "problem" he had discovered.

I asked if there was a problem. He said, "No, Ma'am. I just have never quite seen anything like this. You see, there is his name, the Social Security number and the payment record, but the rest of the screen is blank. Absolutely blank. Nothing there. Frankly, ma'am, I don't know what to make of it. We'll send you the check, but this is a new one on us."

I knew what that was about. At the end of the war, one of my father's assignments was to interrogate returning soldiers who were under suspicion for one reason or another, of theft of valuables taken by the Nazis, etc. Since it was an administrative position, he was able to transfer himself to the file room of the Pentagon.

As he told me, "I had a cigarette in one hand and my file in another and gosh, things happen."

He had burned his file and replaced it with another, extremely innocuous file.

The first clue that this story was true was this interaction with the military insurance office.

Finally, having two sons prompted me to want to find out more than just the stories that I had carefully written down over the years told to me by my father. There was always a point that he got a far away look in his eyes, then looked at me sternly and would say quietly, "let's not...."

I knew never to ask. But I wanted his grandsons to know something, anything. Maybe see the medals he received since I have not been able to locate anything except his pilots wings, a flight suit and his parachute. Don't get me wrong -- I treasure those things. But given the stories I had heard, there had to be medals. He had served in Italy, France, the Phillipines -- all over the world, all behind enemy lines in the most dangerous of circumstances. When he left the OSS, he was enraged at how Bill Donovan had been treated that I would imagine that he had thrown his medals into the ocean or some such thing. Dad had no use for such things as it was.

I wrote to the military headquarters that keeps track of those things and filled out the paperwork and asked for his service record and any and all awards, citations, etc.

It came back that he was a career counselor, basically, and that he was stateside the entire time.

As I sat here on Memorial Day prayerfully thanking those who served our nation to keep us free, naturally, I thought about my father. He wanted no attention whatsoever for his service, no Arlington burial, no hoopla, not even a book written about him. Yet I heard the same stories about his "capers" as he called them, from his compatriots in the OSS while I was growing up. All of them are long gone now.

And did my father serve stateside as that "file" said?

I have a picture of him raising the flag at Santo Tomas in the Phillipines, having liberated the prisoners of the Japanese there. Behind that picture stuffed in the frame was a typed list of all of the people liberated from that prisoner of war camp.

The flag had been delivered on orders from Douglas MacArthur by Capt. Sam Wilson, one of my father's dearest friends, also in the OSS. Wilson had asked my father to lead the "caper" because he couldn't do it himself -- his wife and children were held captive there and Sam wanted the best to go in and do it without emotion, but get the job done.

And there is is, in black and white, just as my father had told me. No dissembling, no exaggeration. And no medals or need for fanfare.

God bless him, and the nameless, faceless heroes who have done what they did and continue to do so that we can live in and breathe the air of freedom.

That, my friends is a real hero and thank God there are more like him.