Chapter One
CALLED UP IN CHICAGO
He had just turned into his twenty-second year, healthy, fast food
for the slavering Army. Seventy-three days after Japanese airplanes
had dismembered the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Draft
Board Number 9 of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA, called
upon this specimen to go redeem the National Honor. It was simple.
Send him a piece of paper in curt summons; the postman enjoys
delivering it: 1235 Addison Street, the two-story grey stone house,
the one with the not always amiable black dog.
The day was February 19, 1942, downcast skies, the temperature
freezing. On the same day, a tentacle of the giant Japanese octopus
was reaching in to partially destroy Darwin, Australia; another
tentacle even touched India. He arose before dawn, leaving the warm
body of his girl Jill slumbering upon their jouncy bed in the little
room in back. (It was a sign of the times that unmarried young lovers
might sleep together in a respectable family setting.) He bent down
to kiss her one last time. The black dog by the bed wagged his tail
limply; no low whistle to get him up. The two young brothers were
sleeping in the front bedroom; their call to arms would come one
day, unlikely as it appeared just now.
His mother, more dutiful than his consort, fried him bacon and
eggs, made toast, poured him juice and coffee; they had agreed that
she would not provide anything so special as waffles or hash. His
father had preceded him to the washroom, where the son, soon to
become EM #3631-9558, now shaved. It was considered that seeing
the soldier off to war was a man's job, said with a smile; the Dad
wouldn't have it otherwise. Little else was spoken.
The draftee was in a decent mood. Maybe no time was a good time
to join the Army, but for him it was high time. He felt he had been
procrastinating, considering how strongly he supported the President's
provocations of the Axis. Himself, he had been inclined toward a
Holy War against Fascism since 1936, even as a boy.
A private in the Army? He didn't mind that either, though people
with lots of education were supposed to be officers somehow. Leaving
Jill did give him pain. They had been spit-fire lovers for nearly two
years, splitting sometimes, then clanging together like hitching freight
cars. He had lots of ideas about winning the war and could imagine
that he should have been put in charge, directly under Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, the Commander-in-Chief, say. Next best thing
was to be a private, and rise from the ranks, for promotions came
fast and there seemed to be little enough to be done to win the war
at any rank below General. He was a dreamer, our lad.
His father walked alongside him up the cold pavements, north on
Herndon, then over toward Clark Street. The ragged City was
looming up, shaping itself out of the dark, about to lurch heavily into
the War Effort. A clutch of types slouched disconsolate about the
premises of the Draft Board. Soon they had to pile into a trolley car.
Then off they went, past Wrigley Field: "Home of the Chicago
Cubs," with an electric hiss and metallic clanking. Dad was left
standing.
The Dad felt things strongly, didn't say them, especially not now,
but practically never anyhow. (The Recruit didn't want him to come:
it would be a lonely walk back.) A son is a son, each was as the
Only One -- so he would say when he erred and called him by the
others' names, Bussie, Ed, Vic. He didn't like to lose them and he
felt that this was the kind of son who would get to shouting
"Banzai!" or "Geronimo!" or whatever the guys are shouting who are
up ahead and get shot first. So the Dad didn't feel too good about
it all, and would not sense his usual elation at going out in the
morning, first in the neighborhood, never because he had to leave
the house, but because he wished to see life at dawn.
Whereas the Recruit, now riding the streetcar, was pulling himself
together as a soldier, getting into the mood, the role, the act. How
do you behave? -- unsurprised, uneager, unashamed, not too
sympathetic, unaggressive, not too much of a groupie, not snappishly
for or against orders, not ideological, not up front, not a laggard --
exhibiting little of your education, loves, travels, workaday life, or
any military experience.
Military experience! Last year his 106th Cavalry Regiment had gone
South -- old friends, their horses had just been taken away, someone
told him, the large black big-bellied steeds, from their riders, from
Johnny Dearham, Jim Cowhey, Frenchy Duvall, Bassdrum Beck, hey,
guys, how're the shit-kickers in the hot swamps? Hadn't learned
much, ridden some, gentleman's outfit, but not gentlemen, just nice
guys with a plain spacious club at the Armory off Chicago Avenue
near the Lake. He had been too busy with his rag-bag of jobs and
getting into Jill's pants and playing around with her to spend much
time drinking and card-playing or even riding with the gang; then he
went off to Columbia University Law School and had to quit, so the
Black Horse Troop had gone South without him.
He had closeted his own trumpet for "the Duration" (a good word
that, it meant for so long as the War might last). The day before, he
had packed it in with a few final tunes. Did they..did Bassdrum Beck
ever go anymore on parade pounding away on his kettle drums, and
Johnny, too, rolling his snares, and Jim blasting his trumpet over the
laid-back ears of his mean black horse: damn, how it hurt when the
animal's skull tossed back and bumped the horn and drove the brass
mouthpiece against your lips,leaving them bleeding and swollen.
There had been the days of fooling around with a machine-gun, and
ammunition belts, loading his horse with the antiquated military gear
of cavalry -- he loved horses but believed in the superiority of
infantry. The Romans won on foot. Discipline did it. Even more, the
machine-gun -- it was amazing how fast and hard it exploded lead --
and, of course, the tank, as an iron horse: these finished off the
battlehorse. And now the infantry rode to battle in trucks, quarter-ton,
half-ton, one-and-a-half tons, two-ton -- some armored -- that's
about all he knew. Ridiculous that he knew more about horses than
about trucks. What explained the Black Horse Troop? -- mossback
generals, romance, politicians, playboys, fun, parades. Why did the
Battleship persist, the Dreadnaught, a sitting duck for warplanes,
hadn't the Japanese just knocked out two British capital ships?
By the time the trolley car was clanging across the Chicago River
bridge, he was back to marching bands, at high school and in college,
drill, uniforms, khaki, olive drab (he had worn it), the bugle calls --
"Come to think of it, I can play them all." He would have scorned
to recall his longest military experience, which I would remind him
of, the years on the parlor floor with the lead soldiers. His parlor
held no place for the braggadocio of militarists of Bolivia and China
and Germany, captured by the newsreel cameras and the chocolate-colored
rotogravure section of the newspapers, but he distilled and
acted out their fury of riot and battle. His dear old friend, Mrs.
Villiers, conducted for him a tiny tots' tour of the Civil War
battlefields via her great heavy picture book and her father's
memories transmitted over sixty years. And "Give a Big H for
Hollywood" -- "Over the Top," "All's Quiet on the Western Front."
Harken, also, to the jeering child singing:
You're in the Army now,
you're not behind a plow,
you'll never get rich,
you son of a bitch..
He knew all about it.
What of the drunken soldiers quarreling with him and Bob King
when the two students were sauntering along the whorehouse strip
of Madison Street one night; he knew the low prestige of the
peacetime army, The theory of warfare, yes, even that, in his writing
an honors paper on the Italian aggression in Ethiopia, arguing over
the Spanish civil war, sorting out the ideas of war and peace
conveyed by the lower schools and at University, playing the cold
Machiavellian, who portrayed violence conquering virtue, admiring
the Clausewitz dictum that war is "the conduct of politics by other
means.
Surprisingly, a pacifist current was still running strong beneath this:
war is hell, butchery, un-Christian, stupid, unnecessary; all men are
equal and brothers. But there was a time for peace and a time for war,
said Ecclesiastes,and so argued he. Seven years of indignation
without action were ending. His war against the Axis began in 1931
at the age of eleven when the Japanese invaded Manchuria and 1933,
at thirteen, when Hitler became Der FÜhrer of Germany.
THE PATH OF WAR and RESPONSES OF OUR CITIZEN
1. Hitler becomes Full Dictator while He, in High School, debates vs.Fascism. (1934-35)
2. Japan resumes China Aggression, which He denounces. Enters University. (1935)
3. Mussolini invades Ethiopia, against which Aggression He writes Thesis. (1935-36, 1938)
4. Spanish engage in Civil War; He opposes Spanish Falangists. (1936-39)
5. Austrian Anschluss occurs, which He opposes. He visits Europe. (1938-39)
6. Munich Pact appeases Hitler and He denounces Czech Dissolution. (1938-9; A.B. 1939.Joins 106 Cav.Res.)
7. Nazi-Soviet Treaty signed and makes Him intensely hostile to Stalinism.
(August 21, 1939; He is Grad. Res. Asst., 1939-40)
8. World War II begins, whereupon He voices strong Support for Allies. (September 3, 1939)
9. Soviets Invade Finland, and once more He denounces Communists. (November 30, 1939)
10. Destruction of Allied Armies impels Him to join Help-Britain
Committee. (May-June, 1940; He falls in love; goes to Columbia in November.)
11. Germans invade Soviet Union and He echoes Churchill on giving
Soviets Aid. (June 22, 1941; back in Chicago, researches &
teaches at Indiana U.)
12. Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and He begins personal Steps to War.
(December 7, 1941, whereupon he moves and stores Belongings.)
13. Japanese reach Australia & India, on which Date He enters Army.
So, surprisingly, a full mental and physical war-kit had been
provided this peaceable citizen -- myths, skills, information, and
attitudes -- and then these thirteen steps had carried him straight
into the great conflict. A typical peaceable-bellicose American he
was, for actually America was not a peaceful nation; it just pretended
to be pacific while it continually carried on warfare, on both a large
and a small scale; hardly ever was it truly at peace.
On December 7, 1941, the crisis had finally climaxed, while the
lovers were reading newspapers, listening to a concert of classical
music on the radio, and brunching in the large old kitchen of the
first floor at 5479 South University Avenue. This was next to the
University of Chicago, an apartment of two large rooms and bath,
premises handed along to them by his brother Sebastian and Miriam,
his wife. Bro Bus had entered the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring
Service of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington,
and was working at the analysis of radio broadcasts from Berlin and
Rome, along with Fred Schuman, John Gardiner, Goodwin Watson,
Ed Shils, Nathan Leites, Hans Speier, and other high-brows.
The attack was still going on. Alfred was incredulous. He felt that
he should leap to the roof, swoop off into the blue and
counterattack. He put his crazed imagination onto the enemy:"The
Japanese are crazy!" he shouted, "I can't believe it!" After hearing
another hour of the bad news, the consorts betook themselves to the
apartment of their friends Jay and Ruth Hall, down the street, there
to expostulate noisily and thence to Steinway's Drug Store on 57th
Street, where they would be sure to find people like themselves,
disgorging novel expressions, like "The Japanese must be crazy. I
can't believe it!" They waited upon fresh newspapers, which, arriving
finally upon breathless headlines, added nothing to the instant flow
of information and directives emitting from everyone's turned-up
radio.
He had been paying attention to Europe, had expected to be drawn
in there. Just two days before, the Chicago Tribune had exposed a
secret top government plan, envisioning an army of five million men
to be landed in Europe to fight the Germans, and the Italians if they
were still around. He discounted the isolationist newspaper as a
reliable source, but was nonetheless pleased with the forward
thinking of the White House and Pentagon. Then the attack came
instead from Japan, what a shock! Nor could he grasp how serious
was the defeat at Pearl Harbor.
Nor could he dream that a Japanese army might cross to Southeast
Asia so swiftly, and even take the Philippines, and invest, indeed, the
whole of the Chinese and Malayan Worlds and venture towards
India and Australia, even while he was squaring away to join the
Army. The Japanese were plaguing the Dutch East Indies, attacking
on the Road to Mandalay, and closing in upon Manila. Hardly had
he left home when President Roosevelt ordered General Douglas
MacArthur to escape from the Philippines, where a mostly Filipino
Army still vigorously but hopelessly resisted the invaders. The first
great credit of one billion dollars had just this moment, finally, been
granted the Soviet Union to cover purchases of whatever was needed
wherever it could be found. The Red Army had stopped the
Germans for the Winter, within sight of the Kremlin's towers, and
was counterattacking with amazing success. In North Africa, within
the space of several weeks, the British forces had swept the Axis
army through Libya and had been just as untidily brushed back.
The Western Front, somnolent after the destruction of the Allied
Armies there in 1940, awaited our hero. The seed of the greatest
armada in history was just now being planted: the U.S. War Plans
Group was issuing (in secrecy, of course, and absurdly, it happened)
a "Plan for Operations in Northwest Europe," foreseeing a small-scale
invasion, to be termed "Sledgehammer," by Fall of the year 1942, if
the Soviets showed signs of collapse, and a main invasion termed
"Roundup" to be launched in the Spring of 1943. If this was far from
reality, even farther out was the Declaration of the United Nations
that was signed on the first day of the year. Still, he agreed 100%
with all of this, as he had with the Four Freedoms, which Roosevelt
had proposed to Congress for the World on January 6, 1941, two
years earlier.
When, on June 22 of the year just passed, the Soviet Union had
been attacked, and Jill and he gaped at the headline-bespattered
papers of the newsstand in front of Steinway's, where they had gone
to breakfast, he had been heartened, and wondered at the temerity
of Hitler in opening up a Second Front, a "No-No!" to all strategists
since Napoleon. Yet when he then spoke with that awesome
authority on things European, Professor Nathan Leites, he found him
most pessimistic: the German armies, Leites predicted, would knock
out the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the several months
before the onset of winter, so weakened were the Soviets by Stalin's
mass purges of the nation's leaders, and by the population's general
incompetence and backwardness. Leites had been barely wrong.
Fallen in love and distracted by this worldwide conflict, our guy
could hardly have been expected to stay on at the Law School of
Columbia University or persist at philosophical researches or count
off a day-by-day routine on a civilian job. In the two years just
passed, he had done a lot of creative work, but it could not last. He
was teetering; it was only a question of who would make the first
move to tip him over.
But why didn't he enlist earlier? Perhaps because it would seem like
the act of a farm©boy or hill©billy: they were forever enlisting. Or a
romantic; he would not play the hero; it embarrassed him. He asked
about direct commissions, not avidly but diffidently; he made a mild
attempt at a job under his former Professor, Harold Gosnell, that
would fit him into the War Effort at Washington, because that was
the way most of the University was going; intellectuals were not
soldiers. In sum, he couldn't think what to do, so shilly-shallyed.
The fact that he was inextricably in love did not help matters;
though he did not speak of it, the thought of breaking up bothered him
continuously. But, hell and ye gods, in fact he was a soldier, a
warrior, and it was with relief that he got the Call: he knew what the
War was all about and he felt at home in the Army even as he
boarded the trolley car. He looked with a maternal air upon the
civilian lads around him. Naive, quite unconvinced about the War,
except for a simplistic, readily stimulated anger; knowing that their
sentiments were shared by all, they might assuredly curse the
"treacherous Japs."
The media, the government, the elite of the Great
Republic generally saw to it that the impression of unanimity over
the Yellow Peril had logically to take in the Nazi Germans, the
Italian Fascists and all their minor allies, so that, if anybody doubted
himself or the unanimity of public opinion, he would think himself
an odd exception who had better shut up. This despite public
opinion polls that showed an isolationist sentiment prevailing among
half the citizenry.
There were a dozen or so recruits in the trolley car, and shortly
they paused to pick up another gang. All were ordered off at the
southern end of the Loop and led over to a dilapidated building. It
was an area where small loft businesses and marginal enterprises
might hold a losing grip on the Chicago economy. He had actually
worked only a few steps away for a couple of months just recently,
with Franklin Meine and Harold Hitchens and the rest of the crew
that was revising Nelson's Encyclopedia, and these characters would
in a few minutes be arriving at work unknowing of his fate. He felt
a pang of nostalgia, one of his weaknesses.
As the rookies entered and approached the decrepit elevator shaft,
a sign greeted them with: "Civilians only! All others walk up." He
tried sarcasm: "Now you guys know what you're in for!" and they
laughed; they knew, alright. So up the iron stairs they trudged to
where a lot of men congregated, and they turned over their identity
slips to some clerks who were continually hollering out names, and
he met one of his students, from East Chicago, that's where he had
been teaching American Government, at Indiana University there,
last semester. The teacher had disappeared from the scene, but not
before the Dean had given him a little tea party, sending him off as
a hero; the faculty and staff felt just fine at making this sacrifice on
behalf of the War Effort. He said ironically to his former student,
"Well, now you can see the practical side of American Government."
He had left this guy in the classroom: "Poor chap," the ex-teacher
was thinking, "he is feeling very low; I have left a lot of living behind
me, but he feels worse, probably, than do I, because what he left
behind him, it took a lot for him to get -- you can see it in his Slavic
working class features, in his toughened hands, in the tired
expression on his face, and he knows he hasn't much on the ball and
he is several years older than I".
They rode out to Camp Grant together, a couple of hours from the
City, so the man came to feel better, but that was the last seen of
him. The Lake View draftee was used to High Mobility, and would
have much more of it -- "the last I saw of him was..": it will match
thousands of encounters to come, companies, battalions, boat loads,
landing party loads, visiting parties, gangs on leave, detachments,
friendlies, allies, enemies, co-belligerents, crowds of faces of all
degrees of cognizance, as expendable as ammunition.
And now it was the same day and afternoon, and at Camp Grant
the Lake View men were diffused among thousands upon thousands
going this way and that among scores of wooden barracks, and
eventually they lost sight of one another. Medical examinations --
"short arm inspection" included: "drop your shorts and peel back your
foreskin," yells the corporal in charge of the group, while the medico
comes hurrying past, casting a sharp eye downwards. Meanwhile the
recruits glance up into space or down uncomfortably, or compare
their own genitals with the run of the mill; this particular recruit
estimates himself on the average, whereas he had been less than
average on the swim team at college but larger than Mac the Coach
who weighed 300 pounds, moved through the water like a flying
saucer, and never saw himself piss. What happens to them when
they stand stiff; do they rise all proportionately, equally erect? Grubby
thoughts. But what else can the men think about, lined up there
stupidly?
They spent much of the time with their clothes off, bundled in
their arms, and holding an envelope that they were told would be
more important than themselves before long, because it would
become "Your Record!" and there would be nothing but the
Guardhouse for them without that folder. And the dog-tags that
soon come their way: what religion? (he answered "Catholic" because
he wasn't told he could say "non-sectarian");what blood type? "B" the
Army told him after drawing his blood -- the Army thinks ahead:
what are the last two things you will ever need? A blood transfusion
and a prayer in your cultic jargon. And then the woolen khaki
uniform, complete from the overseas cap to the high©laced thick
shoes, none of it fitting him well, no stitch of distinction, badge,
medal, stripe, unit affiliation, nothing -- just quintessential General
Issue, the perfect G.I.
The medical examination caused no trouble; the shots were a pain
-- smallpox, typhoid, tetanus vaccinations, blood samples for syphilis
and blood-types -- and a couple of guys got sick and vomited; sore
in the arms and feverish, nobody was feeling too well. Many of them
had been the honored guests of sending-off parties, and had drunk
themselves sick the night before. And nearly everybody, of course,
was smoking cigarettes by the pack. Not to mention that the stuff
dumped upon your metal plate at mealtime was not gourmet cooking
or even fast food.
As Our Hero glumly edged through the chow-line, he heard a
cheery bellow, "Al de Grazia!" and looked about; it was Tom
Stauffer, stalwart and relaxed, a Big Intellectual on Campus
camouflaged in fatigue greens, nestling a huge pot between his long
legs and peeling potatoes; they laughed, exchanged a few words, and
that was the end of him.
Without regard to the misery and stupor of the newcomers,
uncaring of their hangovers and agonized heads, their custodians
administered to them beautifully designed and pretested
examinations, whose scores would affect their placement in the
infinite variety of Army jobs, from rifleman to electronic technician,
and determine whether they might apply for Officer Candidates
School.
The psychiatrist, like the rest, was handling men fast, a couple of
questions and then if the guy seemed to be a nervous wreck or
claimed to be a creep or a homosexual or congenital criminal, they
put him aside, examined him later and maybe sent him away to
bother the rest of society. The most obvious cases and some of the
subtle ones had surfaced in pre-induction examinations. Yet some
draft boards were so crazily patriotic as to believe everyone was
normal when it came to defending his country. In the end, at least
two kinds of weirdos made it into Service: those who hoped to get
all the financial benefits of honorably discharged veterans after the
discovery of their symptoms, and those who wanted to get into the
military more than anything in the world; it was as much of a
problem to keep them out as it was to evaluate the seemingly larger
number of guys who wanted to stay out at the slight cost of being
deemed lunatic.
When our recruit was beckoned into one of the dozen cubicles, the
psychiatrist within asked, is there anything in the way of medical
information you have not yet provided, or have you any other kind
of problem -- you know, "Problem!" -- that is bothering you? The
Recruit ponders for a moment, and said, well, I don't know what's
to be done about it, but I worry a little with this trick shoulder of
mine; it slips out of joint easily, I might dislocate it while thrusting
a bayonet, or maybe in hand-to-hand combat. The medic looks at
him as if he had found the prize nut of the day, but then says it
would not matter and passes him along hurriedly. He probably had
a good story to tell at mess.
It wasn't an hour later that the draftee, now Private in the Army
of the United States, found himself standing at a desk before an
Assignment Corporal, who put soldiers onto their Army career path
-- headed for extermination, or for a cushy seat in the Quartermaster
Corps, and who would it be but Stanley Beves, a student from the
correspondence courses in politics that he offered through the
University of Chicago this last year, who just now cannot talk politics
but is delighted ©© he got a good grade, and, with a glance at the
long line waiting behind this recruit, told him that he, Stanley, was
assigned permanently to Camp Grant, where life wasn't bad, and,
then, remarking the Recruit's proficiency as a musician, with
experience in the administration of bands, he said, "I can get you
into the Camp Grant Band. Would you like to be assigned to Camp
Grant?"
Just imagine, the recruit told himself, fast as lightning, you can be
at a great place, near home, living with pussycat, doing some of the
things you are best at, terrific!, but then he said, "Well, I'm in the
War now. This wouldn't be much of a war. I wouldn't feel right.
How can I get a little closer to the action. How can I get to where
I can become an officer after a while," and Stanley, instead of
berating him for a fool and assigning him forthwith to the Camp
Grant Station Band for the Good of the Country, looks at him with
a slightly envious regard, yet a friendly look, and says that he could
probably get into officer's training soon enough from where he would
be sending him; he labelled him as "Branch Immaterial", and put him
down for shipment with a gang of other guys, saying, wryly, "It's a
secret where."
It was the last time that he would see Stanley. The Recruit knew
little about the army or war, yet thought he might control everything
-- he had a streak of megalomania. Still, he felt less proud than
dismal as he walked away from Stanley's desk and its promise, for he
remembered that he was in love, hence, as soon as he could, he
called, home, there to learn from his kid brother Vic that Jill had
gone off on a skiing trip with some friends to La Crosse, Wisconsin,
whereupon he felt jealous and neglected. She had spoken of it
longingly. Still, she should have stayed with the folks and worn black
for a couple of days anyhow, he wanted to tell the world -- but he
never told anybody of such thoughts anyhow, anytime, never.
He groused about the barracks grounds, itching and scratching in
his new Army uniform; it had been tossed to him piece by piece at
the warehouse. His civilian clothes had been sent home; the Army
was insistent upon this; the U.S. Mails obliged. Tomorrow, he
reflected, will tell me where I'll be and it will be a real army camp
where I'll be enjoying the experience of a new gang of guys, and then
afterwards I would arrange to see her somehow. So the day and the
night passed, and the germs of tetanus, small pox and typhoid made
his arms hurt, while a fever disturbed his sleep.
The next morning he knew that he was heading toward the
Southland: his mimeographed Special Order, tucked in his folder,
told him so. A railroad took them there, a clumsy troop train hitched
onto a freight train, powered by a steam locomotive. There was track
all around the USA in those times, up every alley and byway. Nolonger
was so much of it overgrown and rusting. You could still get
anywhere and nowhere by train -- with most Army camp sites
located in Nowhere -- and every rusty tank-car, flatcar, boxcar, and
battered coach was employed, every rail shining pridefully with use.
He merged now into a roaring obstructive nuisance such as blocked
the roads in those war days when an overpass was rare. As his car
banged over the crossings he well remembered waiting inside a bus
at one and then another of them, going to and from the classes he
taught at Indiana University, those times when he was impatient to
get home to the Midway and cursing the hundred-car conglomerates
screeching and rattling by. He had changed places, but it was from
the frying pan into the fire. Ugly, ugly, too, foul upon all the senses,
uglier than battle!
The Nation's self-destruction advanced in stages: there had been
the age of the razing of the land in the name of Progressive
Agriculture, then the coal and steel holocaust in the name of
Industrial Progress, followed, after ten years of catatonic Depression,
by the delirious War Effort. Everything that the Hog Butcher of the
World could command was bull-horned to out-totalize the
totalitarian foe. Himself included. He was a proud piglet of the gross
War Effort of the Republic.