Chapter 7

“New Guinea Nightmare”

 

Down here there are no Ten Commandments
And a man can raise a thirst,
Here live the outcasts of Civilization
Life’s Victims at their worst.

 

Down the steaming Guinea coast
Live the men that God forgot,
Battling the ever present fever,
The itch and the tropical rot.

 

Living with the natives,
Down in the sweltering zone,
Rooting like hogs in a wallow,
Ten thousand miles from home.

 

Nobody knows we’re living,
Nobody gives a damn;
Back home we’re soon forgotten—
We soldiers of Uncle Sam.

 

Drenched with sweat in the evenings
We stew in foxholes and dream,
Killing ourselves with alkie
To dam up memory’s stream.

 

At night we lie on our pillows
With ills no doctor can cure.
Hell no, we’re not convicts,
Just soldiers on a tour.

 

We have but one consolation,
And that to you I shall tell,
When we die we’ll all go to heaven,
Because we’ve done our hitch in hell.

—ROD SERLING, verses sent home
while on deployment

I SIT AGAIN ON the floor surrounded by my father’s letters from training camp. They are now more than fifty years old. I am overwhelmed, barely able to get through this poignant collection. Letters from his mom and dad and his friends, and the ones he wrote to them before he is shipped overseas, are yellowed and musty and brittle. I handle them with care, as if they will dissolve in my touch and disappear forever.

I open them slowly, tentatively. Some are typed, some of the words in ink have vanished. I get out a magnifying glass and try to recapture them. I think of my dad at eighteen, a boy sitting on a cot beside other boys on their cots, also just eighteen, reading letters from home for the first time, unknowingly about to step into their own Twilight Zones.

At the bottom of this box of letters is my dad’s high school yearbook, The Panorama 1943. I leaf through it and look at the faces of his friends and acquaintances smiling back. They look so young, so expectant and happy. This is truly the last glimpse of their youth.

His belt buckle that says: “11th Airborne Div.” is also in the box. Beneath it is where I find the Airborne 511 booklet. After the pages my father has annotated are the rows of tiny photographs, no larger than postage stamps, below which are the names of the boys in his platoon. They wear their brand-new army Garrison caps and uniforms, and I know, with this dreadful gift of hindsight, who won’t make it back.

I think of a Twilight Zone from the first season, a war episode called “The Purple Testament,” about a lieutenant who, while looking into the faces of the soldiers in his combat platoon, sees a strange light that reveals who among them are about to die. In his opening narration, my father says:

Infantry Platoon, U.S. Army. Philippine Islands, 1945.

These are the faces of the young men who fight. As if some omniscient painter has mixed a tube of oils that were at one time earth brown, dust gray, blood red, beard black, and fear-yellow white, and these men were the models. For this is the province of combat and these are the faces of war.

When passing a small shaving mirror, the lieutenant sees the light glow off his own reflection. As I watch this episode years later, I understand what my father is saying; you can’t experience the deaths of your fellow soldiers without a piece of you dying as well.

In October 1944, my father’s division—the 511th Airborne—lands at Bito Beach on the east side of Leyte Island in the Philippines. The tough living conditions are described in a worn news clipping also tucked into the box:

When it rains they walk in a gumbo of mud. When the sun shines they sweat in temperatures approaching 100 degrees. At night they shiver in the chill mists that billow down from the mountains . . . High in the central part of this island they are surrounded by a sun-baked airstrip hewed out of a tangled jungle forest. The camp is entirely supplied by air and none but the hardy, jungle-trained fighters and natives can negotiate the trail that leads to the outside world.

My father’s first brush with death comes in one of the battles for Leyte. Suddenly, out of the jungle a Japanese soldier is standing right before him, his gun pointed directly at my father. My dad freezes, staring back. He can’t move; there is nothing he can do. The soldier has a perfect shot, and my father knows that. In that instant his war buddy, Richard, seeing the enemy, shoots him over my father’s shoulder. I first hear this story when this friend visits my dad at the cottage so many, many years later and I follow them down the path to the lake and listen to them talk. I hear my dad say, “I have never been so God damn scared in my life” and his friend responding but I am only about seven, too young to comprehend the significance of the words or the depth of this friendship. Now, though, I imagine that terrible day where, in an excruciating instant, my father’s friend altered everything that would happen from that day forward. I think, too, of these young soldiers, kids, thrust into unimaginable conditions.

The battle of Leyte is considered by many historians to be among the fiercest fighting of the war. Recently, Amy Boyles Johnston, a writer researching my father’s early work, found a folder of his early writings among a collection of his college papers archived at the University of Wisconsin. It contained a short story called, “First Squad, First Platoon.” It opened with a dedication to his unborn children:

To My Children

I’m dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren’t very well received at this point. I’m told they’re out-dated, untimely and as might be expected—make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don’t like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their “forgetting” quite admirably.

But you, my children, I don’t want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and “88’s” and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy “Peace in our time.” A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words . . . less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the War that came before.

All this was in my time, youngsters—I hope not in yours. Perhaps some day men’s—

The rest of the letter is missing. But the story begins:

The Pacific rain thundered down from the skies, smashing in sheets against the heavy jungle foliage, driving into the muddy ground like millions of bullets. Driving, incessant rain that dissolved the earth in a fluid mass; uncomfortable hostile rain that caked mud on weapons, uniforms and equipment . . .

They all listened . . . and heard . . . the dull, roaring throb of the airplane motors. A hundred throats became dry and throbbing with hope and excitement. Everything was riding with those planes . . . relief was coming on wings . . . food was en route from the sky . . . food food food to end their gnawing hunger pains . . . food and ammunition to keep them going and best of all discovery! The regiment had found out where they were.

Corporal Levy suddenly found his sense of humor.

“Scorecards,” he screamed. “Scorecards. Can’t tell a piper Cub from a P-40 without a scorecard!”

Men yelled their laughter.

“Chow call.” He screamed again, “Chow call boys . . . ham and eggs by airmail . . . ham and eggs and fried potatoes boys...”

He didn’t even know what he was saying . . . only knew that something inside him made him scream out of his happiness.

“Chow call!” It boomed and echoed down the ranks of yelling, overjoyed men.

Then the planes were visable . . . three . . . four . . . five piper cubs winging their way in at less than six hundred feet . . . the blue Air Force Stars plainly visible on their wings.

First pass over the clearing—tiny men at the plane door could be seen pushing out bundles. There goes a red chute popping open like a flower bud . . . there goes a green chute another red. Beautifully dropped, gentleman of the Air Corps . . . the equipment chutes were landing directly inside the perimeter—dead center aiming.

The planes circled the clearing and came in for another pass . . . this time heavy crates, unchuted, were falling in clusters from the sky . . . fifty pound boxes of K-rations . . . a hundred or more of them hurtling earthward.

“Make it kosher, boys,” Levy screamed, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Make it Kosher . . . even if you have to drop a Rabbi.”

Men convulsed with laughter.

But suddenly the new danger was recognized. The heavy crates were smashing into the earth close to their holes. Men started shouting in alarm.

Lieutenant Panders raced around the perimeter, slipping and sliding in the mud, shouting for the men to take cover. Once he threw himself headlong into a puddle to narrowly escape getting crushed by one of the boxes.

The men leaped into their holes as box after box plowed into the earth and fell closer and closer to them.

Levy just stood there where he was waving his arms and shouting, Sergeant Etherson pulling at him from behind trying to get him down in the hole. But Levy was oblivious to all around him except the food which poured down.

“It’s raining chow boys . . . it’s raining chow.” His shrill voice pierced the air all around.

Then there was a sudden dull thud as a crate hit the ground near the first squad’s positions, throwing mud into the air and all but covering up the holes with it.

Sergeant Etherson climbed slowly out of his hole, wiping the mud from his eyes and grinning broadly. He noticed Levy lying face down a few feet from him. “Ok Mel . . . you can come up for air. Ok Mel start singin’ they quit droppin” . . . Hey Mel . . . Mel . . . Levy!”

He stopped short and noticed all at once that Levy’s head rested a few feet from the rest of his body.

Mel Levy was one of my father’s best friends.

 

 

On patrol in the jungle one afternoon my father is wounded when an exploding mortar shell sends shrapnel into his wrist and knee. He is awarded the Purple Heart for his wounds and Bronze Star for bravery in combat on Leyte. Years later he keeps these medals in his dresser drawer in their cases and sometimes takes them out and shows them to me.

The knee injury, an omnipresent ghost, will haunt him throughout his life as a painful souvenir of the devastation of war; a constant reminder, too, of his friends who never made it home.

Frequently his knee gives out and spontaneously begins to bleed. Often he wears a knee brace, but occasionally he goes without it, and walking down the stairs, suddenly having no control, he will fall. It is frightening to watch. My sister and I witness this many times and cry. From where he has fallen, my dad always tells us he is fine, but it takes a while for him to get up, and the strain on his face is heartbreaking.

 

 

In 1945, while still in combat, my father meets Russell Schwen. “I first met your dad in April 1945 in the Philippines,” he tells me. “The fighting in Luzon was winding down, and we were bivouac’d at the base of Mount Malpunyo just outside the village of Lipa. Your dad’s company and mine were in the same area. I think the reason we first gave a ‘Hi’ was that we were both somewhat vertically challenged among a bunch of six-footers. We found out that we had many common interests in books, old movies, religion, and general philosophy of life. We were both affected greatly by the war, as I think everyone who was in combat situations was, especially in the Infantry, which was many times a face-to-face encounter. Killing is not easily forgotten. I still have combat nightmares after sixty-five years . . . We spent many hours talking. I was so impressed with your dad’s knowledge of things. At the time he was nineteen and I was eighteen. We both grew up reading the dime novels in the drug store. Sci-Fi, Amazing Stories, Adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille—flying in World War One, et cetera. Your dad loved to perform. I remember the short stories he used to write and recite with great flourish for our small group. I can picture him so clearly; almost hear his voice . . .”

 

 

My father continues to serve in the Pacific until the end. Russ recalls the celebration when they heard the first A-bomb was dropped: “In the coming invasion of Japan, the Eleventh Airborne Division was scheduled to jump over the Tokyo area which would have been a slaughter for both us and the Japanese. Doubtful that we would have survived. A couple of days later we were loaded into planes and flown to Okinawa to a war that was still in progress. While there, the second bomb was dropped and we knew the war was over. We flew into Japan and landed at Atsugi airfield in Yokohama on August 29, 1945. On September second we were at Yoko-suku naval base in Tokyo and we could see the battleship Missouri where the surrender was being signed. We were then loaded on a train to Morioka. Your dad was with us through all of this. When the point system started, everyone was looking forward to the trip going home. Your dad was in slightly before I was; he had more points, and so we would not be going home on the same shipment.”

Shortly before my father’s group is ready, he gets the terrible news from the American Red Cross that his father has died of a heart attack. Sam was fifty-two years old. My father immediately asks for an emergency leave. It is refused. Sam’s death in the midst of the horror of war, coupled with the army’s refusal to allow him to go home, destroys something within my dad. It is a loss of such magnitude that he will never truly recover.

Russ recalls: “I met your dad in the hall right after he received news of his father’s death . . . I have never seen anyone so devastated.”

I can only hope that my dad remembered a letter he wrote his father (that my mother just sent me):

January 7th

Philippines

Dear Dad,

Your letters, though infrequent, are never read less than two or three times over at a sitting and I never fail to read parts of them to the guys; they’re letters any son would be proud to receive. See what you can do, Dad, about putting a few more through to me—they’d be appreciated.

Just as you and Mom thought mainly about some future Christmas—my thoughts were along the same line on my birthday. We were still in combat—but you’d be surprised—a guy can do some thinking in a fox hole. You know Dad–if you and I have had differences—and little run-ins occasionally it’s not for you to apologize. All my life you’ve given me everything I’ve wanted—I never so much as gave it a thought that you might find it tough to keep supplying me with every whim and the idea of repaying you never entered my head. Accordingly my gratefulness was a shallow, momentary thing that couldn’t of made you understand that your efforts were REALLY appreciated.

So Dad—when that future Christmas when we’re together again rolls around—you can put aside all thoughts of making up for the past—it’ll be for me to start showing that twenty years of your slaving away and worrying just for my benefit wasn’t thrown away on a selfish and thoughtless kid. Sure I’ve had it pretty tough at times—I’ve had my share of being wet and cold and hungry. I’ve dodged plenty of lead and faced the Japs but it’s made a man out of me Dad—it made me realize that I had to put out for myself because I didn’t have a self-sacrificing Dad around to look out for me. It’s done some good, I guess Dad.

Hope I don’t sound too maudlin—I guess that may be the case when you think so much of a person as I do of you. However, be assured that my every thought, and hope and prayer is of our eventual reunion—that’s something worth fighting for—right there.

Tell Dearest I’ll write tomorrow—I feel fine.

Rod.

Over the following weeks there is a great deal of trauma. Russ remembers they were living in what had been a Japanese agricultural school. “Our building caught fire in the middle of the night and we had to go out the windows. Lost all our guarded stuff we were going to take home. Just before that happened, our first sergeant committed suicide in the orderly room right next door. He was such a nice guy, much older than most of us . . . I think he was 28. I could not understand why after going through the whole war, he would shoot himself . . . I can remember several suicides. War and killing is a devastating experience for people.”

Years after the war, my father will say, “I was bitter about everything and at loose ends when I got out of the service. I think I turned to writing to get it off my chest.”

He will be plagued by nightmares of war throughout his life; yet will forever wear his silver paratrooper bracelet. Sometimes I hear him scream in the middle of the night, and in the morning he tells me, “I dreamed the Japanese were coming at me.” He transforms one nightmare into a Twilight Zone titled “A Quality of Mercy.”

It’s August, 1945, the last grimy pages of a dirty, torn book of war. The place is the Philippine Islands. The men are what’s left of a platoon of American Infantry, where dulled and tired eyes set deep in dulled and tired faces can now look toward a miracle. That moment when the nightmare appears to be coming to an end. But they’ve got one more battle to fight, and in a moment, we’ll observe that battle. August 1945, Philippine Islands. But in reality, it’s high noon in The Twilight Zone.

Although my father’s physical wounds are a daily reminder of the war, they pale against the emotional scars he and many war veterans endure. He turns to writing as catharsis. Like so many writers of his generation, the war continues to provide material and motivation throughout his career. While teaching an adult writing class at Antioch College in the 1960s, he sums up the effects of war like this: “Shrapnel wounds and mangled, bullet ridden bodies are not the only casualties of war. There are casualties of the mind. Every war produces a backwash, a residue of pain and grief.”

 

 

My dad returns home almost three years to the day after he enlisted. In this dark time in the South Pacific, he has narrowly escaped death, his father has died, and several of his war buddies have been killed. He is, in fact, one of the few who survived from the squad he started with.

On the final page of his story, “First Squad, First Platoon,” he writes about the day he left, January 13, 1946:

Snow was falling in bleak, gray Yokahama harbor and the troops boarding the ship huddled closer together in line by the gangplank awaiting orders to board it. The big ship sitting at the dock was covered with flags and gaily festooned paper and signs.

“Stateside Express” the one huge sign read on the side of the ship.

Serling looked at the decorations and wondered to himself why they seemed so hollow and incongruous.

He was going home, he kept telling himself—going home. How many times during the past three years had he pictured this scene, how many hopes and dreams and plans he’d pictured in his mind . . .

The boat whistle sent smoke and shrill noise into the sky and the troops started shuffling ahead up the gangplank.

Home.

Warm comfortable home.

Peaceful, quiet, happy home.

Serling put his jaws close together and forced the other images out of his mind’s eye . . .

Out of his mind he pushed them . . . or tried to push them, but as he came to the top of the gangplank and stepped aboard, the images still stuck, still persisted, still ran up and down his consciousness.

A sailor approaches and says:

“This way soldier—down those steps . . . whatsa matter—you don’t look happy.”

“Happy? Hell, I’m the happiest goddamn guy aboard.”

The sailor laughed.

“I doubt that . . .”

And as Serling lugged his duffle bag down the narrow steps to the hold, he said under his breath, “I doubt it too.” And little formless ghosts inside his mind echoed his words, “I doubt it . . . I doubt it too . . .”

I envision my dad on that day as he is leaving, twenty-one years old and weighing one hundred and eighteen pounds, wearing, still, his combat boots and uniform. I imagine his hands, cut and calloused, holding that filthy bag on his shoulder as he descends into the Liberty ship, the USS Herald Of The Morning, and begins the long trip home.

I look at a photograph of the ship, a steel gray monster, and think of it plowing through rough waters, the troops quartered below on their bunks five high and close together. I imagine them convening on deck, shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the rails, sharing a smoke, and when they catch sight of each other, I wonder, do they startle for a moment? Just before they turn away, do they see the ghosts of the boys they once were dissolving in the eyes of the men staring back?

 

 

Two decades after the war, in 1965, my father decides to go back to the Philippines, back to his past. My mother is meeting him there a few days later. He writes to two of his friends—Alden Schwimmer (a vet who fought in Europe) and Bill Lindau, who was in the Philippines with my dad.

Dear Ald,

Been an odd day . . . It’s all quite incredible—not that twenty years have gone by nor even that I survived . . . it is just to walk over the same ground after so much has happened and to remember it all with such infinite clarity.

Last week, I went back to a little village outside of Manila called Paranaque. My last visit there was February 4, 1945, and I spent one day and one night getting shelled. So I took the nostalgic walk one early morning and drank it all in and began to feel sad because nobody came up to me as they did twenty years ago and grin and say, “Victory, Joe!” So three hours later I went through a tiny alley and wound up on a dirty beach overlooking the ocean, and this little grimy 8-year-old kid comes up to me and says, “What are you looking for, Joe?” And I cup this dirty little brown face in my hand and I answer, “My youth, Joe.”

Hey, Ald! You can’t go back. At least you can’t go back and experience. You return as a tourist just to observe. Like visiting a cemetery. Nobody’s around to talk to you and reminisce, even though deep in your gut you have this urge to tap some ghost on a shoulder and say, “Hey, buddy, remember that afternoon . . .”

And to his friend Bill Lindau:

You walk in the place and suddenly somebody does something to the years. And you’re back. You’re a long way back . . . from where you landed a couple of eternities ago. And you break into a sweat because the recollections are so damned bitter-sweet and so incredibly clear . . .

So what the hell do I tell you about this trip? . . . You don’t purge any of the stuff that’s been eating there for so long. All it really does is bring it up to the surface and makes you wonder about your attitude of the day before yesterday and the sort of person you were and how in the hell have you aged so much in the ensuing time. It’s not cathartic for the imposed ills of the lifelong post-war regrets. But it does take them out of the pores and lets you examine them in daylight. And then I guess somewhere along the line you put them back inside you.