Judy, Bruce, and David Morrison hold the late Dale Morrison’s souvenir handkerchief in Tunisia, 82 years after the Traer soldier purchased it while serving in World War II. Dale is Bruce’s father and David’s grandfather. PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID MORRISON

TRAER – Veterans Day reminds us to honor those who served but also to listen to their stories before they are lost. My grandfather, Dale Morrison, served in World War II but died long before I was born. Like many veterans of his generation, he rarely spoke about his service. Yet more than 80 years later, a small wartime souvenir he sent home to Traer became a tangible link to my family’s history across decades and an ocean.

When I learned I had been assigned to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia, my dad recalled his father had served in the Army Air Force in North Africa, part of the Allied campaign against Nazi and Italian forces to secure control of the Mediterranean. My dad didn’t know much more about Grandpa’s time in the service but remembered there was a box of his wartime relics tucked away at home. We found the journals he kept as a soldier, listing the places he had fought across North Africa, including Tunisia. We also found a small handkerchief, embroidered with “Tunis 1943” and a camel – a keepsake that a young Dale had sent home to Traer during the war.

Holding the handkerchief, I pictured my grandfather in Tunisia as a young man, enduring a war far from home in a place he never expected to fight. Coincidentally serving in the same foreign country myself, I never expected to feel such a direct connection to the grandfather I never knew, through one simple piece of cloth.

That thread of family history inspired my parents, Bruce and Judy Morrison, to travel to Tunisia earlier this year and visit the North Africa American Cemetery near my new home. Operated by the U.S. government and reminiscent of Arlington with rows of white crosses, the cemetery is the final resting place for more than 2,800 American service members. Touring the grounds brought the war to life in both sweeping and deeply personal ways. Standing before the grand mosaic map that tells the story of the North Africa Campaign, we imagined the journey of a man I never met whose presence felt closer with every step. Among the 3,700 names on the cemetery’s Wall of the Missing, we saw names of men from my grandfather’s unit from Iowa, comrades he may have known who never made it home.

In a quiet moment beneath the Tunisian sun, that handkerchief became something more: a thread through time, a symbol of remembrance and connection. It had first been held in Tunisia by my grandfather, a young soldier in the midst of war, then lay tucked away in a box in Traer for decades, until it crossed the ocean again, back to the place it was made, linking three generations of our family across 82 years.

Dale Morrison's "Tunis 1943" handkerchief in front of a mosaic of the World War II North Africa campaign in Tunisia. PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID MORRISON

The trip to Tunisia gave my dad a gift he never expected: a deeper connection to a father he lost more than 50 years ago, and a chance to know him, not only through faded keepsake chosen by a young soldier, but by walking the very land where he once walked.

Veterans Day reminds us of the opportunity to hear the stories of those still with us and, for those who are gone, to discover the memories they left behind. These can be found in the unexpected simplest souvenirs of service, like a handkerchief that bridges generations.

David Morrison, a 2006 North Tama graduate, is an American diplomat currently serving at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. His previous assignments include China, Iraq, Libya, and Washington, DC.

The North Africa American Cemetery in Tunisia, the final resting place for 2,800 American service members. PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR