WHAT WAS IT LIKE, DADDY?

My son has never really asked me that. We have talked about many things, he and I, but not really about the ten years I spent away from his mother and himself in prison. It's not that I am ashamed of the "why", but it has just simply not made itself available as yet. As children can be, there are furtive looks, casual remarks, or feigned bravado while anticipating some gesture or sequence described on the movies concerning prison. To be sure, there have been the frequent discussions during dinner, over a much anticipated home-cooked meal, which we talk about Robert J. Mathews, the uncle he has never met, will never meet on this earth. You see, his uncle died long before my son was born, murdered in fact, by members of the security forces of the United States, a nation that my son's uncle knew as his own. At least that is what he had always been taught. It is what I was taught. My son, a good lad and strong, has something in common with you, the reader, for like him, you have never met Robert J. Mathews either; but many of you know more about him than my own son. And that is how it should be. For those of you who do not know who this man was, you owe it to yourself to find out.

But that is not why I was asked to write something to you all, those of you who support and donate your time, money and wisdom to the FOURTEEN WORD PRESS* . What I was asked to write about was my release from an eleven year ordeal; a prison stay in which my mettle was tried, heated, tempered, and established by surviving and staying a whole man. But not only that. There is also a "why" of a thing, as well as the "doing" of a thing.

In the early 80's, there were certain men, a tribe actually, who called themselves die Bruder Schweigen, or Silent Brothers, and developed a concept roughly this: there were traitors, men of deceit, bad character, and greedy for power, which had destroyed a once great People, as well as their nation. These men thought that silently, they would change things, events, and history, for it was their Nation and People that had been destroyed. Well, as stories tell, these brave and gallant men failed in their attempt to change events but no story is ever really over, and no final chapter is planned any time soon. For even though these silent brothers are now fading in jungles of concrete and steel, their spirits remain ignited with the same passion for those Folk they sacrificed all to defend. They live, in part, because people like you believe in them, what they stand for, what they have died for.

I made the same stand. I did not die, although for eleven years, you could not have convinced my wife of that. She stood by and with me for a decade and more, while lesser individuals left their mates in much shorter time. She stood by me during the tortured days of my arrest, where agents of the existing regime threatened to kill her and my unborn son, while little was left with her but the dignity and clothes she wore. As I and my fellows were put through the travesty many call American justice, my wife held my infant son, barely able to hold his head up as he drooled on his blanket. Her tears were held back when the judge pronounced the forty year sentence; yet she shed them when given a very small space of time with me before I was taken away. That was eleven years ago. She is making dinner as I write, whatever it is, it smells good. It is home. A place that has not been mine in eleven years.

But there is more. Sacrifice remains. There are many men, my brothers and yours, who remain in those concrete jungles; iron their only paintings. The sounds and smells unfamiliar to most of you. The daily grind a ritual that masks such loneliness that only monks, prophets, and martyrs can imagine. It is the result of sacrifice, it is an act of complete love and devotion which placed these men inside this living tomb. These are Men Against Time, and they are holding their own. For you, my brothers and sisters. Like them, I thought about you all. The dreamers, visionaries, and philosophers; the young and the old, and I wept for you all. I wept for our children, for our women, and for our men who cannot seem to fathom the very real predicament we find ourselves in. I am sure my brothers and yours have done the same. They, after all, love you all.

It has been eleven years. I am home now, and trying to make a living. There have been many who vowed to be with me till the end and they are gone now, but others are slowly taking their places. Promises have not been kept but others are being made that may hold. In short, it is as life wills, as destiny has ordained. But I am home. The sky is blue; it rained today; and Dire Straits is playing Brothers in Arms, while my son plays outside. My brothers long to see their own play, to smell the clean air, and feel the rain. It has been eleven years. I am often asked whether it was all worth it, the sacrifice, denial, and imprisonment. Can one answer with a simple yes or no? Can water be held still? Can spirit be defined? Yet it was worth the effort. The effort of pure love. the baptism of fire was worth the pain if even one white child may thereby benefit and know, then, just who are his brothers, fathers and ancestors. That these were men, these Silent Brothers, simply fallible men to be sure, not always making the right decisions, but holding up the ideals and dreams that will yet make us a strong people.

This is the legacy of any real man: a man tries what he must, what he can and no more. Every man has to die, but before that, one must Live, and to live for something is what being a Man or a Woman is all about. It is not whether you fall that counts, but whether or not you pick yourself up, and start again. It is the living that is hard. It is what marks the higher man/or woman. To stay the race, not just start it.

My comrades are doing the best that they are able. Their cycle will come, and they will be reunited with their families. But you, the reader, also have a cycle, and you have yet to fulfill it. How many of you have written to these men, the least of your obligation?

Don't buy for a minute those who say these men have too much to do and so cannot or do not want to write. If you have money, send it to these men or their families through the FOURTEEN WORD PRESS. In ten years, my wife received monies from basically three sources on a consistent basis; even then we are heavily in debt. But so it goes. It means, among other things, that most "movement" people are crass and lazy, if not downright apathetic to those who claim to be in the vanguard of the racialist struggle. The Seinn Feinn organization could raise and distribute 50 times what I received during my whole stay, for the men and women of the IRA. Do they believe any more strongly in their struggle than we do ours? Think of the Fourteen Word Press as our public corporate entity, who looks after the fallen Bruder Schweigen and their families and when you give to them, you give to us. Life is going to be hard on the men when they are released. It is hard on me now. With financial aid, [and mark your money orders specifically to those you want to receive the funds] it will be possible, as I asked many of the "leaders" to do years ago, and have been sorely disappointed, to provide for these men some financial cushion, or give them some funds by which their families may overcome medical illness that may happen to consume their wealth, when they get home. This is, after all, only the right thing to do and it is what we all expect from a professional movement and a movement we expect to aid us in our political imperative.

Sorry for the pitch, but it is made with the confident hope that you will not fail men who have given their all for you, even though you were , most of you, infants when their battle took place. And to those of you who remember when this war against our cultural destroyers took place, when was the last time you supported these men and their families, instead of those who "say" they lead, but do not? Each of these men have an anniversary coming up. Let us all celebrate, or simply remember, what these men have sacrificed for the Folk.

Let the memories of Robert J. Mathews and his comrades be nourished and cherished for the generations to come.

Frank L. DeSilva
Bruder Schweigen, former P.O.W.