FIRST LEAVE
September–October 1942
The troopship out of Pearl Harbor was just packed—three, four hundred rowdy sailors—and we were all headed home on leave. I don’t remember the name of that ship, but it was huge. The main deck was so big they even had room for six or seven cars parked at one end. I didn’t know whose cars they were. If they belonged to any of the enlisted men on board, it must have cost them a month’s pay to take up that much space on a Navy ship. If I’d bought a car in Hawaii, I might have done the same. It was worth it, because you couldn’t just go out and buy yourself a new one when you got home, not for any amount of money. The car companies weren’t selling cars any more. They weren’t making anything but weapons and vehicles for the military. If you were lucky enough to own a car before the war, you would do just about anything to keep it.1
We were still admiring those cars when the ship began to move. Just outside the channel, the captain turned on the loudspeaker and told us we weren’t going to San Diego. We were on our way to San Francisco instead, to some Navy base called
Treasure Island.2 I’d never been there before. Everybody groaned when the captain said it would take us six or seven days to get to San Francisco. A destroyer could have made that trip in half the time. The smokers complained about the rules: They weren’t allowed to light up outside after dark. That was fairly standard policy for all ships during the war, to keep from being spotted by the enemy at night. I didn’t think there were very many Japanese submarines on the prowl between Hawaii and California. The greatest danger I could see was right there on the ship, when they broke out the dice and the cards. The stakes were way higher than normal.
The poker games were especially rich. Guys were betting ten-and twenty-dollar bills like they were nickels and dimes. I had over three hundred dollars myself, but I wanted no part of that action. It took me all summer to save up for this leave. I was going to keep my wallet in my pocket and watch everybody else’s money change hands. The poker game that drew the biggest crowd had six players; the rest of us were standing about three-deep behind them when this guy named Scott ran out of cash and bet his car. So then we all ran across the deck to see which car. It was the dark red Zephyr, and, oh my, that was a beautiful car.3 He could have sold that thing for five hundred dollars to just about anybody on the ship, but now it was in the pot. And he lost it. All he had was three of a kind. What an idiot. I never would have bet that much on a hand of poker unless I had a royal flush. I lost all my money in the latrine.
The sanitary facilities on that ship were, shall we say, a little primitive. For the enlisted men, it was basically a horse trough with boards on each side if you needed to sit down. There was a constant stream of saltwater piped in from one end, and the whole contraption was tilted so everything emptied into the ocean through a big drain hole at the other end. So that’s where I was, along with about ten other guys, when this joker sneaks in with a great big wad of toilet paper and lights it on fire just before he drops it in the trough. It went sailing like a torch underneath our bare behinds. We all stood up cussing and laughing and pulling
our pants up so we could go chase the guy, and then I saw my wallet go down the drain. It was probably sticking out of my back pocket to begin with, and must have fallen the rest of the way when I jumped up and grabbed my pants.
I hardly noticed the Golden Gate Bridge when the ship pulled into Treasure Island. I was too busy looking for the nearest pay phone. I felt bad about calling Adeline collect. I hadn’t heard her voice in over five years. When I told her how I lost my wallet this time, she couldn’t stop laughing. I didn’t think it was very funny at all: I was flat broke until next payday. Thank goodness, I still had my travel voucher from CinCPac. It was good for a seat on a civilian airline from Oakland to Spokane. The only catch was, I had to make my own reservation. I didn’t think that was any big deal until I started calling the airlines. Every single plane out of Oakland and San Francisco was full for the next three days. I couldn’t even get sympathy from the guys that came in on the same troopship as me. Some of them had to wait longer than I did. I guess the trains and buses were full, too.4
Everybody had to stay on Treasure Island for at least a day or two. I ended up bunking with about twenty other sailors in a special section of the barracks curtained and roped off from the rest of the building. We didn’t know why. We didn’t even know each other. As far as I could tell we had just one thing in common: We were all Yorktown survivors. It got weirder when we went to dinner. They had a separate table set up for us in the mess hall, away from all the others, and there was an announcement over the loudspeakers as soon as we sat down. It went something like, “The men at table number such and such are from the Yorktown. Do not approach them and do not ask them any questions.” We couldn’t understand why the Navy didn’t want anybody talking to us. I still wonder about that.5
There were no other restrictions on us at Treasure Island, at least not that I remember. I know most of the Yorktown survivors went out on the town in San Francisco that night. I saw them slapping on the aftershave, and they were all joking about who was going to be writing his name in that book in sick bay in
the morning. No question about it, those guys were hunting quail. That’s what sailors called the women they met for one-night stands in the port cities. If she was less than eighteen, she was “San Quentin Quail.” San Quentin was the name of a prison in California, where you might end up if you got caught messing with the younger girls. I was invited to go along—they even offered to chip in a few bucks apiece so I could—but I said no. I wasn’t interested in meeting any girl but Adeline. I just went to the library on Treasure Island and checked out all the books they had from Radio Materiel School. Took a couple of cold showers, too.
I was really looking forward to my very first ride on a regular civilian airline. The plane was a DC-3, similar to the military’s C-47 cargo plane, only bigger. When I boarded that plane in Oakland, I thought I’d be with Adeline in three or four hours. It was only a few hundred miles from there to Spokane. Well, that flight took all afternoon and most of the night, because we touched down in about a dozen cities in between. Sacramento, Portland, Boise. I think we even stopped in Walla Walla—twice, it seemed like—and every time we landed, the flight attendants ordered all the passengers who weren’t getting off to stay seated and pull down the window shades. I assume that was for security. As if I was going to look out and count all the military planes on the runways and tell it to an enemy spy. Whatever. Anyway, because of all those stops, it was two or three in the morning when I finally landed in Spokane. Thanks to Adeline and Western Union, I had enough money for a taxi and a room at the YMCA.
I never even turned back the covers on the bed. All I did was change clothes. I would rather have stayed in my whites. My two black petty officer stripes showed up better on the whites, but the dress blues were warmer, and it was pretty chilly in Spokane. I know, because I spent the rest of the night walking around downtown. I called Adeline at six thirty in the morning; she promised to meet me in an hour. So I’m pacing back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the YMCA, waiting for my big breakfast date. Every five minutes I checked my watch. Seven
thirty. No Adeline. Seven fifty-five. She didn’t come. Five more minutes. I decided to give her five more minutes. If she wasn’t there by eight, it meant she changed her mind, and I was going to be on the very next plane out of town, and I didn’t care where it was going. And then I saw this ’38 Plymouth come screeching around the corner and stop in the loading zone.
The engine was still running when Adeline jumped out. She didn’t even close the door on the driver’s side. She just ran to me on the sidewalk. And she was crying. Something about trains—too many trains—waiting for trains to go by. I didn’t care about trains. I just wanted her to stop crying. I’m sure we made quite a spectacle of ourselves. I remember cars going by, honking at us, and there were lots of people on the sidewalk. I could feel them brushing against my back as they walked around me. I didn’t care about them either. Nothing mattered except the way she was kissing me back.
I could hardly put three words together over breakfast. I don’t remember saying anything intelligent at all, except that I liked her new hairstyle. It was longer, below her shoulders, turned under at the ends. She said it was the latest thing, something called a pageboy. I liked it. I did not like the parking ticket that was on her windshield. The fine for leaving your car in a loading zone was very high, something like five or ten dollars, as I recall. I thought it might help if I talked to the judge, so we drove straight to the courthouse. I told him it was partly my fault, and could he maybe give a poor sailor a break and reduce the fine, just this once? “Well, no,” he said. “Can’t do that.” And then he tore up the ticket and thanked me for my service to the country.
Adeline’s mother would not hear of me staying another night at the YMCA. Nothing would do but for me to move into their guest room for a week. Better yet, Adeline took time off from her job—she was still working for the newspaper then—so I got to spend seven whole days with her. I couldn’t get over how much more beautiful she was than when we first met. None of the pictures I’d lost did her justice. She was so pretty, guys would
turn and whistle at her when we walked down the street. I didn’t mind a bit. It just showed I had good taste. I loved everything about her, including the clothes she wore. Adeline was really into the latest fashion, and the skirts were getting shorter—several inches above the knee. They were a lot longer than that the last time I was on the mainland, before the war. The more leg, the better, as far as I was concerned.6
The nights with Adeline were wonderful, too. We went out to dinner a couple of times, and I think we saw two or three movies. I can’t tell you which ones.7 We always sat in the back row, and I wasn’t exactly paying attention to what was happening on the screen. I do remember the night we got home late—very late—and we decided to just sit there, parked in her parents’ driveway for a while longer. We were sort of looking at the stars, but then the car windows got all steamed up and we fell asleep. Next thing you know, the sun was up and so was Adeline’s mother. She was out there in her bathrobe, tapping on the windshield with a wooden spoon. And she was laughing. “Breakfast is ready, you two!” Well, her dad was in the kitchen, reading the newspaper, drinking his morning coffee. He was not laughing. I was in the middle of a big long apology for keeping his daughter out all night when he slammed his cup on the table and said, “You sailors think you can get away with anything!” It was all I could do to keep a straight face. Adeline had two older brothers in the Navy.
I hadn’t seen my own family in over three years. As much as I would have liked to spend the rest of my leave in Spokane with Adeline, I knew it wasn’t right. I had to go home to Arkansas. When I got off the plane in Little Rock, there was my brother Velton, fresh out of basic training in his brand-new Army Air Force uniform. Some people called it the Army Air Corps; Velton said that was the old name.8 He wanted to know about the Navy. It felt so strange for my older brother to be asking me, “What’s it like to be in the war?” I told him as much as I could, which wasn’t very much. It was only a half-hour drive from the airport to Vilonia.
When we pulled up to the farmhouse, my parents were standing out on the porch. Mom was crying. My little sister Jo said she did that a lot since the war started. I think that was when I made a conscious decision not to talk about the war while I was home. I couldn’t keep my mother from knowing about the attack on Pearl Harbor. She read the newspapers, and I guess it was all over the radio, too. If she’d known what happened after that, especially on the Yorktown, it would have just scared her more. It was better for her and easier for me to avoid telling her anything at all.
I spent most of my leave at home on the farm, but I did drive into Vilonia a few times. Most of the guys my age were in the military. I think I was the first to come home after the attack on Pearl Harbor. I hope all of the other soldiers and sailors from my hometown got the same reception I did. Wherever I went, people wanted to shake my hand, and my money was no good. I don’t believe I bought a single hamburger or a Coke or even a bag of popcorn at the movies the whole time I was in town. It was all “on the house” or paid for by the folks in line behind me. Some of them I didn’t even know. I guess that was their way of showing their support for the war and how much they appreciated everybody in the military. That was fine. I just didn’t like it when they called me a hero. I knew very well that I was not, and I told them so. It was embarrassing.
If I heard it once, I heard it a dozen times—how the whole town thought I was dead for several weeks after the war started. They said the post office closed down on the day that card I filled out at Pearl Harbor finally arrived. The postmaster pulled down the shades and locked the door and delivered it himself. Nobody had ever seen him drive that fast. My sister said she saw this big cloud of dust come up the lane, and he jumped out hollering and waving that postcard, “He’s all right! He’s all right!” I made a special trip to the post office to thank Mr. Moore for that. I also paid a visit to my high school principal, Mr. Bollen. Of all my teachers, he was the one who took the most interest in me, and I wanted to thank him, too. I’m glad I did. He told me there was some new test for guys like me. If you passed it, you could get
your high school diploma. He made me promise that I would take that GED test and let him know how I did.9
I never meant to lie to my parents while I was home on leave, but I had no choice. When my mother asked me why I didn’t ask that girl in Spokane to marry me, I said it was because I wasn’t sure. The truth is, I was very sure, and I had every reason to believe she would say yes. I just didn’t think it was right to ask her until I was sure I was going to survive the war. If it wasn’t over by the time I got out of Radio Materiel School, I assumed the Navy would send me right back to a warship in a hot combat zone. I couldn’t think of a truthful way to explain that to my mother. She had three sons in the military, and she knew there was a lot of war left to fight. The last thing she needed was another reason to cry.