After the War
My first act as a civilian was to proceed to the nearest bar in downtown Chicago, which happened to be the Hotel Sherman. I was still in uniform, although I did not wear any medals or ribbons, just my First Marine Division shoulder patch, my ruptured duck,1 and what I hoped was a sweet smile.
It worked, and I later thanked each of those two ladies that I met during those first couple weeks. They gave me their special, effective treatment for my own minor version of PTSD. The first gal was built real nice, but not too bright; what we would call today no rocket scientist. So what? I was not particular at the time. Actually, I never was. This nice lady turned out to be a memorable one-night stand.
The second gal I hooked up with the next day turned out to be some bandleader’s wife, and like it happens so frequently, he was on the road and this pretty lady, neglected even when he was around, was now alone and depressed. We were immediately attracted to each other, her because she was just lonely, me because—well, because I was me.
We spent our initial night together in an apartment I was able to get for a short time, and I must say, those first couple nights, she really put her heart into making me well and we gently made love. At one point, she teased me by saying, “You know, sometimes I like my sex a little rough.” I thought she was serious, so I tried to accommodate her, although I must admit, most of the time I was embarrassed because I had never done anything like that, and I was not used to it. Of course, nothing really kinky happened, and we both ended up laughing about it. I really liked her, and she in turn was so happy to be with me, that she happily paid for my room for some five days. Hell, she easily could afford it, and I didn’t argue.
That week with those two “nursing ladies” for the most part washed away most of those bad memories that had been swimming around in my head. I still might have an occasional nightmare of being in combat. But each of the two ladies did a lot to bring my humor back, and to put a big old smile back on my face.
When that week was over though, I had spent all my mustering-out money. I was hung over and now I was also broke. Still, mentally, I was in a much better place than I had been. So I hitchhiked back home to Akron. It was 2 o’clock in the morning when I walked up my street to our house. Tired, I went up the steps and knocked. Finally, my mother came to the door and gave a big whoop. She then hollered for Liz to come down and see who was back. We then sat down on the steps and began talking.
For several years after returning home, I would continue to have occasional nightmares. While they mostly varied in specific details, there were common themes in them. In the dream, I would find myself being chased by one or two Japs. They would have these caricature features, with big glasses, buck teeth, and big maniacal grins as they chased me. I would usually have some sort of weapon with me, but something would always be wrong with it. Either it would have no ammo, be jammed, or missing a piece. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to use it and would have to run. One of my biggest fears when I had been in combat was that I would run out of ammo. That was why I always carried around an extra weapon. Now, in my dreams, carrying a useless weapon, I would be reduced to running in fear. I would usually wake up scared, sweating, and totally exhausted.
Still I resolved that I was not going to let the nightmares get to me, and I was not going to get to the point where they really bothered me. I did not want to get reduced into a state of constant terror of sleeping. After about five years, the nightmares ceased, and for decades, the war became a foggy, distant memory.
After Melbourne, I had tried to toe the line and stay out of trouble—well, okay, except for that one time on Okinawa at the end of June. Still, I think that I had turned out to be a fine NCO, and if it had been a longer war, I probably would have ended up being an officer. After all, I had acted like one on Okinawa. I had ended up second in command of L Company. I had no intentions though, of staying in the Marine Corps. I knew that I would always be a Marine, but regarding the travel and adventure that I had signed up for back in August of 1941, well, I had damn sure gotten my belly full of it. And I knew if I reenlisted, I would not stay at just one duty station. I would be moving around a lot, with not much of a life.
The hell with that. I was now out of the service.
I had just returned home when I got a surprise. My old girlfriend Phyllis and her mother came over to see me. With Phyllis sheepishly sitting next to her, her mom broke the news that Phyllis was three months pregnant. I think that they were nervous about how I would react. I took it in stride, though. Actually, the truth was that I still was not ready to settle down, and so her getting pregnant was an easy out for me.
For a short time, I lived there with Mom in the house that Alex and I had bought during the war and were making joint payments on. Also living there were my sister Liz, her new husband, and our kid brother, Steve. I found out that Alex had left Chicago and moved to Florida.
My sister Liz filled me in on her new marriage. During the war, she had married a 27-year-old Jewish fellow named Samuel E. Rosker. Pop hated the guy and refused to ever talk to him. Sam had joined the National Guard in 1937, and had become an officer. After he married Liz, he was shipped off overseas and served somewhere in France, doing something in the rear with supply. Now he was a captain, stationed in New Orleans. He had served in France, but had not seen any action. On the contrary, he was stationed in Paris after the city was taken, and because he was a supply guy, he never had to be in combat. His two brothers-in-law though, as Marines, had seen all kinds of combat and had earned medals for valor, and I was told that this was driving him crazy. I laughed when I heard that.
Around this time, Waddy returned home too and came over to see me. Naturally, we wanted to trade stories, celebrate the end of the war and being alive, and the good fortune to be able to get together again. We had to get stamps to purchase whiskey because it was still being rationed.2 We pooled our ration stamps and found that we had enough to get us each a fifth of cheap PM.3
We went to my house and sat in the kitchen. We had a great time shooting the bull as we drank our fifths, with Mom tsk-tsking us once in a while. When our whiskey was gone (the bottles were only pints), we decided to go into town, despite Mom’s protests. We started out, planning to go all over the neighborhood: Kenmore, Portage Lakes …
We walked four or five blocks east and ended up at a Portage Lakes nightclub. We got into a scuffle somewhere for badmouthing someone. Both of us drunk, we came across a car parked off Kenmore Boulevard. Surprisingly, the key was in the ignition and it was running. Waddy looked at me and smiled. “Let’s go for a ride,” he said.
He jumped in behind the wheel, and I climbed into the passenger seat. He put the engine in gear and roared off. Now you have to understand that Waddy was a wild enough driver when sober, so you can imagine how terrible his driving was now that he was smashed. To me, it was borderline suicidal.
“He’s gonna wreck us,” I thought to myself (as best as I could, given my condition). Another screech of tires as he merrily took a curve, and I thought, “Wreck us, hell! The sonuvabitch is going to kill us!” I offered to drive instead, but he just laughed and shook his head. Obviously, Waddy was having a ball.
Finally, when he was looking out to his left at the night scenery, I discreetly reached over and turned off the ignition key. We slowly coasted to a stop in the middle of the road as we looked around to see where we were. I somehow realized that in his crazy driving, Waddy had sideswiped another car.
As we sat there, we heard sirens away off in the distance. We tried to start the car again, but it stalled and wouldn’t start. So we got out, recognized that our “borrowed” car was still sitting in the middle of the road next to a bridge, and realized that we had to get the hell out of there. Not, of course, before we staggered into a nearby bar and had a drink first. We were really plastered. Three guys followed us into the bar and sat down, watching us. We didn’t know it, but they had been in the car that we had sideswiped down the road. They just sat there, staring at us.
We finished our drinks and walked back out to the car. We stumbled to the front of it and popped the hood. While we were looking at the engine, the three guys came up to us. They seemed calm as they talked to us. Suddenly, one of them busted a beer bottle over my head and they started to jump us. Despite the glass breaking on my noggin, I didn’t go down. This made them hesitate, probably wondering if attacking us was the right move, and they stood off for a few moments. There were three of them versus us two, but what the hell, we were Marines. Still, we were drunk and caught off guard, so we backed off. After all, there was still the highway.
I shook off the blow and tried to think. I knew that we were fighters, but we were outmatched. The cops were coming and we had stolen a car while drunk. And we were clearly in no condition to take on these three bastards. So I decided to make a strategic maneuver. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Jump over the rail.”
We ran over to the highway railing and bolted over it, tumbling down the embankment. Luck though, was against us. This was not some gentle, five-foot grassy slope, like our booze-addled brains had just assumed. It was instead a ten-foot steep drop with bunches of rocks and stones, and I swear, we must have hit every other one going down the slope.
We got up, woozy, shook ourselves off, and took off down the creek. Discretion, we clearly felt, was in this instance definitely the better part valor, and when we had to, we were masters at eluding folks. So after a while running down the creek, we fled into the woods. Once in the trees, we were safe.
For a while I drove a truck delivering beer. I never told friends or family about my wartime experiences and what I had gone through, but once in a while, when I’d be over at Waddy’s house, his mom would catch me staring off at the wall. She’d smile, and say something nice, like, “Oh, you just grab yer fishing pole. Go down to the canal and go fishing, and you’ll get back to normal.”
I’d look at her and smile, but I would be wondering what the hell she talking about. I mean, I felt okay. After all, the war was over with. Still, for the next forty years, I would never reminisce. Except of course, with my buddies at the reunions. But even then we kept it light. Other than that, there was no one around us to talk to about it. I did though, think about those years once in a while. Sometimes, I would get a little peeved at historical accounts. It seemed like only sob stories were getting written up. The regular guys, we got nothing, even though that was for most of us the way we wanted it. Just leave us the hell alone. Some guys used the public thing as a crutch so they tried making something about it. Me, I was okay, and did not want anyone thinking I was messed up or anything.
George, Sam, and Alex, taken in late 1945 in Akron. (Author’s collection)
Job wise, I found that being a war veteran did not necessarily open any doors for you, especially now that the war was over. There were so many veterans now back as civilians. Before I had joined the Marines, my job experience had mostly been in soil conservation. That had provided me a good education on life, but just like veteran status, it did not automatically open any doors for you, and you could not use it to further a career.
When I first got home, I probably had four or five jobs in just a couple months, because none interested me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. A stubborn fellow to begin with, I guess that I still had a problem with authority. After taking orders—and some of them were really stupid—in combat for 32 months, I found it difficult letting anybody tell me what to do.
Now my brother-in-law Sam Rosker had a 1941 Plymouth that he had left with mom. It was in reasonable condition, and in late December of 1946, he wrote to us, asking if I would drive it down to him in New Orleans. We negotiated “expenses,” and I finally agreed to do it.
I left Akron on a freezing morning at the end of January and headed south down U.S. Route 21, through Marietta, and into West Virginia, then turned and headed southwest down some older roads; remember there were no freeways in those days. Unfortunately, the Plymouth’s defroster did not work, so between that and the cold, the windshield kept fogging up from my breathing. I had to drive slow, because I was having trouble seeing the highway. Once in a while, I had to stop and wipe a hole on the inside of the windshield with a cloth to clear the condensation so that I could see. Naturally this got worse as night came on, but since there was little or no traffic around, I managed to keep going. So there I was, driving down a dark road, now somewhere in Tennessee, wiping the windshield, driving and then wiping again.
Finally, cold and miserable, I saw a light up ahead. I pulled over to what looked like a little restaurant, and I went inside to warm up. Shivering, I ignored the couple of people in there, walked over to the counter and sat down. I ordered a cup of hot coffee.
The attendant stood there and looked at me. After a moment, he said, “You … you don’t want any coffee. You don’t wanna drink in here, do ya?”
I looked up at this fellow and thought, “What the hell’s the matter with this guy? Is he crazy?” So I said, “Yeah, I wanna cup of coffee.”
He looked at me, paused, and said, “Ah, I … I don’t think you better have one in here.”
I stared at him and then slowly looked around the room. It suddenly hit me. Everyone in there was black, the guy that was waiting on me, the folks at the tables … I was in the South now. If word got out that this guy had served me and was now serving white guys in here, he would really catch hell.
I looked back at him, having realized what was going on, and said quietly, “Well, I’ll be damned.” I got up and packed my crap. I thanked him for making me aware of my mistake—he was real nice about it—and I left.
As I started driving on, I thought about what had happened. I sure as hell wasn’t tuned into that damn racial crap. I had not been around many black folks in my life, so I hadn’t been exposed to that way of thinking. Even when I was hitchhiking through the South in 1941, I hadn’t seen much of it. Oh, I knew the South was segregated, but that was about as far as my thinking had ever gone. I remember that there had been one or two Negroes in our high school, and it was almost a novelty when you saw one in Akron, let alone our school. But so what?
I shook my head and continued on in the cold, as night turned into dawn. I only stopped for gas and to check the car fluids. Luckily, the weather warmed up, so I didn’t have to wipe the windshield anymore. I kept going and finally made it to New Orleans and met my brother-in-law. He greeted me and escorted me into the army base there.4 I stayed there for a couple days in one of the empty cots, visiting with Sam and Liz.
It was still winter, and for weeks now, I had realized that I was not yet used to Ohio winters again. Between the snow and the ice and the cold, my body, accustomed to tropical weather, had not yet acclimated again. So I figured I stay down South where it was warm for a while. Before the war, seeing those chain gangs and hearing those stories, I had just wanted to get the hell out of there. Now though, having gone through all that hell in the Pacific, I really did not give a damn about the conditions and went through the South without a fear.
Since Alex had since moved south from Chicago to Miami, I decided to go see him. I guess that I loved to travel and was still looking for adventure. I had grown up with a roadmap in my hip pocket, and it was still there. So after a few days visiting with Sam and Liz, I took what clothes I had brought, and left them to go see Alex. I hitchhiked my way eastward from New Orleans to Miami and found my brother working there. He had landed a job singing in some theater bar, and working with him was this new comedian, a guy named Jan Murray.5 I stayed with Alex for two weeks or so before hitchhiking back to Akron and doing more odd jobs.
Around this time, I stopped drinking. I mean, I just stopped, cold turkey. Looking back on it, this seems a strange thing to me now. From when I was 15 years old until I was 24, I would drink—well, shall we say, rather liberally. Then one day, I abruptly decided that it was over. I totally quit drinking. A large part of the reason was the fact that I woke up one morning with a terrible hangover. Then, through the cobwebs of my memory, I realized I had spent all night with this really pretty girl, and I could not remember if we had actually messed around or not. That was it, I said to myself firmly. No more alcohol. And I haven’t had a drink ever since.
I guess that in many ways, 1946 was a momentous year for me. For one thing, I was still adjusting to civilian life, and trying to forge some sort of future for me. I moved south from Akron Ohio to Columbus in September to go to school. I had decided that I wanted to get some more education, so I enrolled at The Ohio State University in September of 1946 to take some business courses. Then something happened in my social life, something that was to take me down a whole new path.
Being a veteran, I had begun making visits to the VA for various medical issues that came up. Near the end of November, I went there to have some work done on my teeth.
During my visits, I became acquainted a sweet lady working as a stenographer and a secretary. Her name was Juanita Shilling. She was two years older than me. We struck up a conversation and I came away liking her. After that, every time I went to the VA, I would chat with her. One day she mentioned that she played on a bowling team with several of her friends there at work. She asked me if I bowled. I was not into that sort of sport, but I faked it and told her that I guess I did sometimes. She then asked me if I would want to go bowling with her and her team some night.
I shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?”
So she gave me the specifics, and that night, I went bowling with her. I suppose that I did all right for an amateur, because the next thing that I knew, I was on their team. That night, we crossed the street from the Olympic Bowling Alley and went into this bar. We sat down, had a couple drinks, and listened to this gal singing at the piano.
We started dating, and that became a regular haunt for us. I continued going to Ohio State, as well as working two jobs. I dated Juanita for about a year and a half, and the more we went out, the more we talked about our future. Finally we talked about getting married. Well, technically, she proposed to me, but what the hell—we weren’t kids by then. Anyway. I told her it was something I had to think about. I mean, it was a big step for me.
That night, I mulled it over. Crap, something inside of me said that I didn’t want to get married. But then I reconsidered. I was 25 years old and not getting any younger, and I wasn’t going anywhere in life. So I finally agreed, and we got married on June 27, 1948 in the town she grew up in, Ado, Ohio. We were married in this big church across the street from Ohio Northern University. Over the years, Juanita and I would have two children: Nancy, born two days after Christmas 1950, and George Lee, born some ten years later on February 16, 1961.
A little after we got married, I quit going to Ohio State and took a job in the evenings selling vacuum cleaners and then a third job at Ranco Controls.6 I kept selling vacuum cleaners in the evenings as backup, because Ranco had a bad reputation for laying people off. And that’s how it went for the next five years. In the spring of 1952, I finally got fed up with all three jobs. The sweepers were not bringing me in any decent money to speak of, and Ranco was jerking me around. I was going crazy. I was in Production in that plant over on Russell Street, weighing screws that came off its production line.
We had often been told that we should try to become salaried employees, because no one on salary got laid off. So, one day, disillusioned with my job and again being told I might get laid off, I got sick and tired of the whole lousy thing. Mad, I decided to take a gamble and complain. I went over to my superintendent’s office. I walked in and he asked me what the trouble was. I started in.
“You know, no disrespect or anything, but I’m sick of this gawddamn job. I’ve got a little education and I think that I can do better.”
“Yeah?” he said, looking at me.
“Yeah. I’ve been working here for about four years. You could teach a monkey to do what the hell I’m doing. It’s just setting there doing the same damn thing over and over. So I’d like to be a machinist.”
He expressed doubt as to whether I could do that.
Looking him straight in the eye, I told him, “Well, if I gotta keep doing what I’ve been doing, you pretty much got my two weeks’ notice.”
So he made some calls, and by damn, he somehow made it happen. I was happy and thanked him. As luck would have it though, two weeks later, I still got laid off, the first salaried employee in that plant that did. Just my luck …
So that June, with me laid off, Juanita and I took a daring risk. We pooled all our savings together and invested in a small convenience store. It was in the Short North, on North High Street. We called it “The Loop Carryout.” I would run it, and Juanita would be our bookkeeper.
I was taking a risk owning a store, but at least I could be my own boss and no longer have to take crap from some self-inflated jerk full of himself. Still, The Loop Carryout was sure as hell not anything fancy. When we first opened, all we sold was beer and wine. Our suppliers included five wine companies and eight or nine beer distributors that delivered to the store. Soon after we expanded to include pop, candy, some canned food, cigarettes, cigars, paperbacks, some magazines, and some convenience items. I later included some liquor, but only that watered-down stuff that you find in big grocery stores and tastes like crap; nothing over 40 proof.
I also sometimes sold firearms out of the store, but mostly using catalogs and brochures: special orders. I did have a small inventory of pistols, shotguns, and rifles, but I sure as hell never had any in the store—well, except of course, the one I carried on me. It was a 1911 model .45 cal. semi-automatic. I had purchased it through the NRA from the Redfield arsenal for just $14 (I still have it, in fact). But that was the only gun I carried in the store. And it was always loaded—cocked and locked.
Perhaps inevitably, I sometimes got into trouble. I soon learned that the liquor agents were a nasty group of guys, and many of them were shakedown artists in one way or another. Today these dirty bastards would get exposed quickly, but not so back them. Most of them it seemed were rejects from various police departments, or were cop wannabes.
One day an agent from the ATF Bureau7 name Pugh came into the store, showed me his badge, and said, “Let me see your inventory.”
I told him that I couldn’t do that because. I kept my inventory at home.
His look was one of skepticism.
I smiled and added, “I think you can see why.” Hell, if I kept firearms in the store, especially in this part of town, I’d be getting broken into a lot.
“Oh,” he said sternly, “you can’t keep them there. You gotta keep them here.”
I gave him a puzzled look and said, “Uh, no, I don’t.”
At least he was not bellowing at me. “Yes you do,” he insisted.
I had already checked on this long before, so I stared back at him, nodded, and said, “I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.”
Well, we talked some more, but he kept telling me that I would have to store the guns in the store.
Amazingly, a couple days later, he came back and apologized to me. “By God, you know, you were right. You can keep them in your home.”
I was shocked. I think that was the first time that anyone in civil government was actually decent enough to do that. I had concluded a while back that most of those officials were dirtbags. I thanked him and again pointed out that he could see why I did that, and he agreed with me. All in all, a nice guy. Unusual, for a liquor agent.
In 1969, I had a squabble with the State of Ohio. These three state liquor-control agents that liked to frequent my convenience store in Columbus, Ohio had a real beef with me and were always trying to pin something on me. They often came into the store and inspected it, looking for signs of illegal alcohol, gambling, or anything else that they could find.
Finally one day, frustrated at all their unsuccessful attempts, they accused me of selling pornographic material. They charged me on the spot, immediately revoked my liquor license, and confiscated all my magazines. As it turned out (unknown to me), some of the magazines actually did have some “inappropriate photography.” Naturally, I tried to tell them that I didn’t know about it, but that did not matter to the State of Ohio, and I was charged and fined.
Angered over the injustice, I appealed the verdict. My defense centered around two points. First, the liquor-control agents actually had no jurisdiction over anything in the magazines I was selling. Second, I had not been aware that there was pornographic material in any of my stock, and even if I thought there might have been something there that could have fallen into that category, that I was no authority on what was legally obscene and what was not. Nor were they. When I won the case, the state appealed. The Ohio Supreme Court in the end decided that they would not take my case, so the state stubbornly appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Surprisingly, they actually did agree to take it, and after more years of litigation, I successfully had the charge appealed in 1979.8 My liquor license and the stuff that had been confiscated was returned, and my article was in several newspapers. But it had been a ten-year fight that had cost me a good $20,000.
Alex had been wounded at Guadalcanal in the summer of 1942 under the command of Lt. Col. Herman Hannekin, an old-timer.9 According to Alex, during a firefight with the Japs, his unit was forced to fall back. As they did, Alex was shot in the knee and left behind, sitting there in pain, stranded, alone, and barely able to move. Things got even worse when a mortar barrage began.10 A nearby shellburst flung a few pieces of shrapnel into his ribs and started more bleeding. Somehow though, by some miracle, he managed to control the bleeding, dodge enemy patrols, and survive through the night. The next day, his unit went looking for him and found him. They immediately sent him to the rear for treatment. Alex was soon evacuated off the island on the USS Solace11 and sent to New Zealand, where he spent nine months recovering. While recuperating, he was transferred to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. As a wounded hero, he went on a couple bond tours, and a prominent article was written up about him in the Akron Beacon Journal. When the reporter asked Alex what he wanted to do now, he supposedly replied, “I want to go back there and kill some more Japs.”
After the war, when I ribbed him about that, he looked at me sheepishly and said, “Hell, I never said that! That damn reporter added that.”
Alex was processed out in 1943 and after the war, he moved to Miami to get into entertainment. He landed that job as a singer in a Miami nightclub, working with comedian Jan Murray. When he was offered a screen test in Hollywood, he jumped at the chance. Over several years, he did a number of commercials out there for different products, such as cologne. As many starting out there did, he decided that Alex Peto was not snazzy enough a name and did not have enough pizzazz. So he changed it to Alexander Darson. Now sporting this thin moustache, he had a sort of Errol Flynn look about him, so he had a few opportunities to make it to the silver screen. He also did a number of films working as a stunt man, and once in a while, a few voiceovers and commercials. When Walt Disney’s “Zorro” series began in 1957, Alex was lucky enough to get hired as a backstage assistant fencer who helped many of the characters learn how to fence. Alex’s name though, never appeared in the credits.12 He later married and raised two boys and eventually retired after a half century of being in television and film.
My younger brother Steve did not serve in the war, because he was diagnosed as having a bad kidney. He had always been a sickly kid, and his health remained an issue the rest of his life. Still, he tried to make the best of things. A natural pilot, he became a pilot instructor at the nearby Barberton Airport. In his condition, he probably never should have been given a pilot’s license, but his flying skills were well qualified. Somehow, he got a doctor friend to sign the physical part to his pilot’s license application.
Not just a flyer, he also became experienced at working on aircraft as well. In November of 1945, just as I was coming home from the war, Steve was lucky enough to land a job working for an aviator named Cook Cleland, who had been a decorated navy pilot during the war.13 Cook’s company owned these four Corsair ex-fighters in this huge hangar located along Route 224, southeast of Akron. Designed to be the single biggest one-room hangar in the world, it had been designed to build dirigibles and later on, blimps. Because this damn thing was so huge, small clouds actually sometimes formed inside of it, and once in a while, they actually created some light drizzle.14
Since Steve did not have his own car, I usually drove him to work, and he took great pleasure in showing me around and getting me in with his co-workers there. Eventually, the work that they did on those Corsairs paid off. Cook Cleland came in sixth in the R Division in 1946 with the Corsair FG-1D, and won first place in 1947 and again in 1949 with the F2G Corsair.15
Steve moved to California in 1950 to live with Alex, and for a while, they shared an apartment. He pursued his career in flying instruction, teaching Roy Rogers how to fly, and eventually in charge of Veronica Lake’s aircraft.
In early March 1953, Alex got a phone call from mom, telling him that Steve was really ill and needed us. Alex at that time had a short-time job in New York City, selling coin-operated oxygen machines. When he got mom’s call, he called me immediately and told me he was going to come get me, so that we could drive out to California together. Although I had only had my convenience store for nine months, I agreed to go, and he ended the phone conversation with a simple, “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
Alex drove all night to Ohio, and the next morning, we left. We drove straight through, only stopping for gas and some coffee. Unfortunately, we were delayed in Texas by a sandstorm that was so fierce, it sandblasted a good part of the paint off Alex’s car, and pitted the windshield.
When we finally arrived, we were told that Steve’s prognosis was not good. He had contracted a serious case of uremic poisoning.16 He was still alive, but the doctors told us he was going fast. There was not much that could be done, especially since there were no kidney transplants back then, even though Alex and I each volunteered to donate one of ours. We sat with Steve for a while, but Alex absolutely hated hospitals and finally just had to leave. I remained with Steve though, and his girlfriend. We stayed with my little brother for four long days, never leaving the hospital. We ate at the cafeteria and slept on chairs or sofas. Mom and Alex visited occasionally. Steve’s condition continued to worsen, and occasionally the poor guy became delirious. I sometimes held his fevered hand, and once in a while, I’d put ice on his lips to cool him down. At times, he thought that his bed was an airplane, and that we were flying it high over the country. To make him more comfortable, I every now and then would raise or lower the front of his bed end by cranking on a wheel at the side, and he would sometimes blurt out, “Crank that wheel!” Those were his flying instructions to me.
Discouraged to see that he was not getting any better, I finally went to talk to his doctor. “Do something, fer crissakes,” I said.
The doctor looked at me sadly, shrugged, and said, “Nothing much else that we can do.”
Frustrated, I grumbled, “Well, he’s not getting better. Try something. Anything.”
My insisting finally got them off the fence. As a last-ditch attempt, the medical staff decided to give Steve a whole blood transfusion. He had been a likable patient, and I could tell that the nurses liked him and felt sorry for him. In fact, as they readied him for the procedure, one of them actually looked away and started crying. On March 25, 1953, Steve died at the age of 26. He slipped away as I sat next to him, holding his hand. I would do the same thing with my wife Juanita when she would pass away almost exactly sixty years later.
At Steve’s funeral, his pilot friends flew their aircraft over the service, performing the missing-man formation. He was buried in a cemetery near the National Guard Armory in Burbank, California.
In 2004, at age 84, Alex became ill. When I talked to his doctor by phone in Columbus, the physician did not pull any punches. He told me that Alex was so full of cholesterol that there was not much they could do for him. I knew that there was nothing that he could do, so I decided not to go out for the end. Alex died on September 5, 2004 in Tehacapi, California.17 He had wanted to be cremated and his ashes spread into the Pacific Ocean, but his son thought it would be more appropriate if his ashes were dispersed on a military base. So Gregory took his father’s urn and traveled south to the Marine base of Camp Pendleton. He drove up the back road behind the base, and had Alex’s ashes scattered along the road.
Because my brother-in-law Sam was in the Army and then later the National Guard, he traveled quite a bit. When the Korean War broke out, I went to visit them and found out that Sam had gone back into the Army and was on his way overseas. She confessed to me that since the end of World War II, he had been considerably bothered by the fact that both Alex and I had seen heavy combat in the war, while he had not. It really ate at him to the point where, not to be outdone by his brothers-in-law (and maybe to look more like a patriot to his wife, although he never admitted that), he had signed up again and had volunteered to serve over in Korea.
He got his wish, and went over as an artillery observer, not too different from what I had done with the mortars (I guess it ran in the family). He stayed over there until the conflict ended in 1953. Elizabeth and Sam eventually moved to Burbank, California and had a boy and a girl. My sister passed away on March 6, 2004 at the age of 87, even though she had been a chain smoker in her later years. Sam died on March 1, 2010 at the age of 93.
My father had been a wild man all his life, with a good many of his crazy quirks. On top of that, he was an alcoholic, and the combination finally ended up to be more than my mother could bear, despite the fact that she loved him. Finally, in 1943, she had enough and left him. Mother moved out to California, and Pop stayed in Akron, where Alex and I eventually bought a 12-acre farm for him just south of Barberton. He built a small house on it, where he lived alone. Even though he still drank a lot, he mellowed some later on, and with my combat experiences, he developed a new respect for me, and so despite the fact that he was still a drunk, we managed to have a working relationship.
After the war, Pop sold firewood. Sometimes, we would start in the morning and cut wood all day. We had plenty of trees on those 12 acres, and we made sure that we planted trees to replace the ones that we cut down. In the end, we ended up with more than we had sold. One of our special products was wild cherry wood, which we kept and sold two cords at a good price for one special customer.
Later on, Pop developed serious problems with his stomach and digestive system and had to have an operation. Recovering, he struggled to continue on his own. I occasionally helped him at the house and often paid his hospital bills, since I could afford to. Mother had regrets that she could not come back to Ohio to help him.
Again, Fate took a hand. She somehow landed a ticket to see a TV game show back then called “Queen for a Day.” The show’s premise was simple: several female contestants for a number of prizes would be introduced and questioned about their lives, and what she needed most in her life, usually something medical or financial. Then at the end the audience voted by means of an applause meter. The winner would be crowned and given roses like a queen, and her need would be taken care of. She would also get a lot of extra prizes.
So Mom went as part of the audience, and on one show, she was lucky enough to be selected as a contestant. She gave her spiel about her simple life, and at the end, when they asked her what she would like most in the world, she stated simply that she be able to afford to go back to Ohio and take care of her ex-husband until he recuperated. Incredibly, Mom won, and the program granted her request. They agreed to pay for a round-trip ticket to Ohio and back. Sure enough, she returned to Akron and took care of Pop until he recovered. Then she went back to California.
Dad lived for years on my farm. In 1981, his health started going downhill. Four years later, on Saturday, April 6, 1985, he called me up at 11 p.m. “George, come on up. I want to talk to you.”
I was tired though. I had worked at the convenience store for eleven hours that day, and I did not feel like taking a trip up to Barberton. So I told him, “Pop, how about I just see you in morning.”
He paused and said quietly, “I won’t be here.” I realized at once that he knew he was dying.
I told Juanita, made me a thermos of coffee, and left. I drove up to Barberton, worn-out, my mind wondering all kinds of things. I got up to the farm at a little after 1 a.m. I went inside and confirmed my suspicions. I told him that he should go to the hospital. No, stubborn bastard that he was, he didn’t want to. But he did want me to hang up a clean shirt for him, so that if he had to make a trip to the hospital in the morning, “I’ll be ready.”
I looked at him and said, “Hell pop, let’s go now.”
“No, if I do, they’ll keep me. Let’s just stay here for now.”
Not wanting to start an argument, I gave in and said, “Okay.” I thought about it, and added, “Let me know if you change your mind.”
A while later, exhausted from not getting to sleep, the drive up, and the stress over his condition became too much. I yawned, stood up, and told him, “Pop, I’m tired. I’m gonna lay down on the davenport for a while.”
He looked at me and nodded. I went over to the sofa, collapsed, and quickly fell asleep. I remember that, a couple hours or so later, half awake, I felt him brush by me as he walked by, headed for the bedroom. A while later, I woke and heard him quietly moaning in the bedroom. I listened for a bit and then fell asleep again.
I finally woke at 8 a.m. It was Sunday, the 7th. My bladder was full from all that coffee, and I had to go real bad. The bathroom was down the hall and to the right. I paused at dad’s bedroom and listened. I didn’t hear him breathing or anything. I thought, uh oh, that ain’t good.
I walked around the corner and saw Pop there in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. I could tell that he had died. I stood there, looking at him. Despite finding Dad like that, I could not wait. I quickly went outside, took two steps, and relieved myself. I finished, went back inside, my mind numb, and sat down. I tried to think, but my mind drew a blank. So I got up, made myself a cup coffee, sat down again, and wondered what the hell I was going to do now.
I decided to call his second ex-wife. Then I changed my mind and decided to call her daughter, Ruby Bedita. She and her husband John lived over the hill about a half mile. Luckily, Ruby was home. I told her that Pop had passed away in the night, and after being shocked for a few moments, she told me that she and John would take care of everything. And they did. The funeral parlor, the showing, all of it.
After the funeral, as the hearse pulled away with Pop, I stood outside with Ruby’s husband, John. The sky had suddenly gotten dark, and it began to snow. It really came down, a heavy, wet snow, with the damn biggest thick snowflakes I had ever seen.
We both stared out into the dark sky without saying a word. John finally looked over at me, took a deep breath, and said quietly, “Well … the old man’s raising hell now somewhere.”
I watched the snow coming down and nodded. Pop had been a wild, crazy, mean drunk—quite an instigator.
Mom died 17 months later in Burbank California in September 1986 at 90. We had been told her health was failing, so Juanita and I decided to go see her one last time. Unfortunately, Mom passed away while we were in New Mexico, and we did not get to California until the next day.
Five years after World War II ended, I had another close call with the Marines. I had toyed with the idea of joining the Marine Corps Reserve. I had talked to a recruiter about it, and he told me that if I did reaffiliate, I could get my old rank of sergeant back. It would not only bring in a couple extra bucks every month, but as a World War II veteran, I would have something to do one weekend a month, with a prestigious reputation in whatever unit I went into. My buddy Alvin Ott had been in the navy during the war, and he had decided to go back into the Naval Reserve.
We talked a couple times about reaffiliating, and finally we agreed towards the end of June that we would go downtown together and join up again. There was a small Marine Corps company barracks located on the Scioto River in the southwest part of Columbus. I had already been down there once to fill out some preliminary forms. So we decided we would go down, and I would sign my final papers to reenlist. Then we would go over to the naval reserve center, and Alvin would sign his papers.
As it turned out though, something came up that Alvin had to do that Saturday, so he suggested that we wait until Monday, the 26th. I was in no hurry, so I agreed.
But on Sunday, June 25, 1950, the North Koreans invaded South Korea, and the balloon went up over there. The U.S. started to actively support the South Koreans. Things looked like they were escalating quickly. I figured that the U.S. would put a huge effort into this, and thought about going to war again. I definitely did not want to do that. I had been married a year and a half, and I had just planned on joining the reserve for something to do.
It was one of the best and luckiest decisions I ever made in my life. Had Alvin and I joined that Saturday or a week before, I most likely would have been shipped over there to fight again with the First Marine Division. Training onboard ship was their boot camp. The only plus to that would have been that I would have been serving under Chesty Puller again. In hindsight though, balanced against that would have been the misery of the Pusan perimeter, the Inchon landing, that miserable freezing Chosin Reservoir, a thousand screaming Orientals coming at me again. On top of that, my reoccurring nightmares from World War II had finally gone. I did not need new ones. No thanks.
So once again, I was lucky. I had been saved by the bell. Even so, I still explored some possibilities. I later went down to the recruiting station at King and North High Street. They told me if I pressed the issue, I could probably get back into the Corps. But as it was, my record was too “overloaded” as they put it, with my time from World War II. That was good enough for me. If I went in, I would have something to prove. I would have had to stick my neck out to show them what the Old Breed was like. I probably would have been killed.
No, no more war for me. I had seen enough.
1 The pejorative term refers to the Honorable Service Lapel Button awarded to U.S. veterans who had served in World War II and subsequently were honorably discharged. Issued from September of 1939 to December of 1946, it was a gilded brass (or plastic, when there were brass shortages) ring through which an eagle was getting ready to take flight. The pin was an official indicator to honor the veteran and to prove that he was not a deserter or AWOL. Since Federal law prohibited discharged veterans from wearing their uniforms, this pin allowed one to identify veterans separated from active duty. As such, the official pin commonly served to identify honorably discharged veterans to railroad and bus companies, because most of them honored such veterans by giving them either free or reduced cost transportation. While the term “ruptured duck” was enthusiastically taken up by the veterans by its very nature, its source is somewhat hazy. One version has it that during the war, the manufacturing plant that made the pins stamped it on the boxes they were shipped in, so that any enemy agents in the area would not know what was in them. Another is that because, as many remarked with a laugh, the term was accurately descriptive of the image, as the bird’s head is turned to the right during a hernia exam when the patient is told to “cough.” Naturally, the term was a huge hit with the sardonic veterans and immediately adopted.
2 Rationing in the U.S. during the war encompassed a wide variety of critical products such as rubber, nylon, silk, sugar, shoes, coffee, tobacco, fuel, and a host of other conveniences as well. This included such things as new cars, zippers, bicycles, vacuum cleaners, stoves, phonograph records, and typewriters. Whiskey distilleries were put into the rationing program as well, because critical components such as sugar and grain became valuable commodities. All distilleries were modified to mostly produce industrial alcohol. This was a vital component in the production of such wartime products as torpedo fuel, smokeless powder, bomb components, fuel additives, life vests, and gas masks. Whiskey chemists were channeled into working on yeast-similar drugs, such as penicillin. Fortunately for the alcoholics, the President’s “Good Neighbor Policy” with Latin America made some spirits like tequila, rum and vodka readily available. It did though by necessity, require a change in one’s drinking preferences.
3 “Pleasant Moments.” A low-end National Distillers blend that came in different sizes and was comprised of anywhere from 49% to 71% distilled grain spirits, and the rest straight whiskey.
4 The Jackson Barracks Army base. It was later turned over to the Louisiana National Guard.
5 Jan Murray, 24 years old at the time, began as a standup comic before he moved up to star in various early television shows. He later became a game show host for such programs as Dollar a Second and one that he created called Treasure Hunt. He also starred in a number of TV dramas and movies. He died in 2006 at the age of 89.
6 Ranco moved to Plain City, Ohio in April 1980.
7 Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
8 Cook, Donald vs. Peto, Jr., George, U.S. Supreme Court Ohio Southern District Court, Case No. Civ. No. 70-57, docket://gov.uscourts.ohsd.Civ. No. 70-5; 409 U.S. 1071 / 93 S.Ct. 675 / 34 L.Ed.2d 659 / 5-19-1972. The court ruled against the agents (under Donald Cook, Director of the State’s Department of Liquor Control at the time), and the department’s declared claim to have the authority to regulate the Loop Carry Out’s magazine material was wrong. The court stated that the state’s liquor control agency had no authority to control the material in the magazines George sold, and to do so was to the court a threat to free speech, stating that the “seizure of material was based solely on the personal predilections of the liquor control agents.”
9 Lt. Col. Lewis Puller at the time commanded the regiment’s 1st Battalion.
10 Alex Peto never found out if the mortar barrage that came in was from the Japanese or friendly fire from the Marines to slow down the enemy advance.
11 The USS Solace (AH-5) was a famous ship that saw a good deal of action in the Pacific. Commissioned as the passenger liner the SS Iroquois in 1927, she was purchased by the U.S. Navy in 1940 and renamed the USS Solace on July 22nd. Refitted as a hospital ship, she was commissioned on August 7, 1941 (just two days after Alex and George were sworn into the Marine Corps). With a crew of 470, she could make up to 18 knots and could accommodate 425 patients. On the morning of 7 December 1941 when the Japanese attack began, the Solace happened to be at Pearl Harbor, moored northeast of Ford Island and about 125 yards north of the USS Arizona. It was a visiting Army doctor aboard her, Dr. Eric Hakenson, who went topside and shot the famous 8mm film footage of the Arizona blowing up. The Solace immediately went into action and lowered her two motor launches with medics and aides to evacuate wounded off the stricken ships. Risking their lives under attack, they rescued struggling and wounded men covered with oil, taking many off the Arizona and pulling others out of the burning water. They took them to their ship, where a makeshift emergency room was hurriedly put together. The boats went out and returned again and again, rescuing hundreds from the water and from the burning hulks in Battleship Row. The Solace served throughout the entire war, sailed some 170,000 nautical miles, treated over 25,000 service members, and evacuated thousands of wounded men, ultimately shuttling many back to the United States. She earned seven battle stars and was finally decommissioned in February 1946 at Norfolk, Virginia. In August 1947, she was sold to a Turkish ship company, refitted once again as a passenger liner, and renamed the SS Ankara. This historic vessel was finally scrapped in Turkey in 1981.
12 Head trainer Fred Cravens received credit for Guy Williams’s fencing lessons and choreographing those scenes.
13 Cleland received his wings just before Pearl Harbor. During the war, he flew an SBD dive bomber off the USS Wasp (CV-7) in the Guadalcanal campaign. On September 15, 1942, flying ASW cover for the carrier, he spotted a submarine periscope. Flying down, they marked the spot with a smoke flare, but could not notify the carrier because his radio was out. Cook (nicknamed “Cookie”) landed on Wasp as it started turning into the wind at 1445 hours to launch an air raid, when that Japanese submarine IJN I-19, having maneuvered close in, fired a full spread of six torpedoes as Cleland was just walking away from his aircraft. The first passed in front of Wasp and hit the destroyer O’Brien. The next three torpedoes though, struck the carrier’s port side, and the sixth finally hit the USS North Carolina some seven minutes later. Cook, injured by an explosion, managed to make it back to the stern, and along with the task group commander (Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, Commander Task Group 61.1) jumped into the water. He floated for four hours in his life preserver, while destroyers depth-charged the area, trying to get the sub that had fatally crippled the carrier. It was a painful experience for the men, because every time a depth charge exploded the shock wave would slam against their bodies. Cook later claimed that each time there was an explosion, the concussive shock would force water up his butt. So he had to actually put his finger in his rectum to prevent that. He wryly added, “I guess this is where you would say, ‘Desperate times calls for desperate measures.’” The Wasp finally went down at 2100 hours that evening. The next year, on the second USS Lexington (CV-16), Cleland distinguished himself by becoming an ace, with five enemy aircraft to his credit, an extraordinary accomplishment for any pilot who flew any aircraft that was not a fighter. He was later awarded the Navy Cross for having crippled the Japanese aircraft carrier Junyō in the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June, 1943. Near the end of the war, the Navy made him a test pilot for various captured enemy aircraft to assess their capabilities. Cook went back to flying a Corsair when the Korean War broke out, and, in 1951, he was shot down and later rescued at sea. He died on June 13, 2007.
14 The Goodyear Airdock, built in 1929. Sudden changes in the temperature could cause condensation inside, resulting in a type of fine mist rain.
15 With the war over, the Cleveland Air Foundation was created to reestablish air racing. Taking advantage of advanced military technology, and a surplus of aircraft, the military services took a keen interest in these races. Cleland bought four new Corsairs, promising to soup them up and fly them to give the Army P-51s that were being entered some competition. These Corsairs were not built by Vought (F4Us). Because of war production demands, Corsairs were also built by the nearby Akron-based Goodyear. Cleland bought four, each for about $1,400, although each one had cost the government today’s equivalent of a million dollars.
16 A condition where high levels of uric acid contaminate the bloodstream. Symptoms include weakness, fatigue, nausea, shakes, deliria, and high levels of acid. Severe conditions can cause renal failure, coma, and death.
17 106 miles north of Los Angeles.