“Are you sure they can’t take you, Chuck? Aren’t they calling up the reserves?
“Only after the women and the children.” I sighed, contemplating my first malted milk with distaste. “It’s the active reserves they’ve called up. I was inactive and my term expired in June.”
We were sitting in Petersen’s on a drab September evening. Rosemarie, having added twelve of her intended fifteen pounds, was now limiting herself to but one malt. I didn’t feel like a second, but for the sake of my reputation I would have to drink it.
The jukebox reminded us that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”
Rosemarie brushed her ring possessively.
“Do you feel bad that you’re not over there fighting?”
“No. I did my time. I feel bad that Christopher and Leo are over there and that, if this foolish thing doesn’t stop, Vince and Ed and all my friends will be over there too.”
The American public was supporting the war, as it always did when the war was new and the casualties were light. If the war stretched on and more and more young men were killed, then the people would turn against it.
Chris had been in the Western Pacific before the invasion. Leo was there now too. Since the First Marine Division had not been in combat yet, there was obviously something afoot. I prayed every night for both of them.
I accepted the conventional wisdom that we had to draw a line beyond which Stalin could not go. But I hated the war and had begun my pilgrimage toward opposition to war—at least to long overseas wars fought by draft armies. My hatred for the war was based on the fact that my generation had to fight it—my friends, my classmates at St. Ursula’s and Fenwick and Notre Dame and Chicago. I was very happy that I would not have to join them.
Coward?
Never said I wasn’t.
Christopher had sent me one brief note.
Can’t say where I am or what’s up. Action soon I think.
I’m scared. Pray for me. Love to Rosie.
Chris.
I called Jane Devlin to ask whether she had heard from Leo.
“Lunkhead called our house at Lake Geneva before he left. I wasn’t home. He left a message. It was a week before anyone told me that he’d called. I don’t know what the message was.”
She sounded so sad, almost like she had lost him already.
“No… it was kind of a strange relationship, Chuck. We loved each other, I think. Mostly at the Lake in the summer. We weren’t close when we were in Chicago.”
That was weird, but who was I to talk about a weird relationship with a woman?
“You didn’t break up or anything like that?”
“I don’t think so. We were very close and not that close at all. He didn’t invite me to his graduation from Loyola. I guess they didn’t give him time in June before they sent him to camp somewhere. … I’m worried sick about him.”
I promised her my prayers.
“I hear that you and Rosemarie are engaged. Congratulations!”
“A lot of people are saying that. She has a diamond and she claims I gave it to her. So I guess we’re engaged.”
“Same old Chucky.”
Her laugh was sad and lonely. My heart ached for her.
It had been a bad summer. The Catholic War Veterans’ softball league had dried up. The vets were now for the most part responsible husbands and fathers. Some of them were back in service. They had stayed in the active reserves to make a few extra dollars and now would be in harm’s way again. None of my crowd were at the Magic Tap anymore. The Greenwood Community had collapsed, as communes do. Some of the members had been called back into the service; others were threatened with the draft. They were fighting one another over ideology; the Pope’s condemnation of the New Theology had disillusioned them. Many of them never finished their dissertations and were teaching at small Catholic colleges. Of those who did finish, only one or two had distinguished careers. There would be many more young Catholics at the University in later years, some of them destined to be brilliant scholars. But the enthusiasm of that first wave was never matched.
I had taken my classes at the University and worked at O’H and O’H. My parents had proposed to provide me with the money for a seat on the Board of Trade—the last refuge for a young Irish Catholic male who didn’t seem to be qualified for anything else. Rosemarie was behind it, of course. I had procrastinated. Wait till after the wedding, I had argued.
“Chucky, dear, you don’t seem like a young man who is engaged to be married at a Christmas wedding.”
“I’m worried, Mom.”
“Poor dear, you always worry too much. You laugh a lot and cut up, but deep down inside you’re a worrier. That’s a shame because you’ll be happy with Rosemarie … eventually.”
That settled that.
Nevertheless, I continued to worry.
About marriage, about the war, about my friends, about Peg and Vince, about the future. I didn’t hang out anywhere, except one or two nights a week with Rosemarie at Petersen’s.
The North Korean army was far better trained and equipped than Americans had anticipated. They had wiped out the Twenty-fourth Division, the first American outfit to arrive in Korea, and pushed us back into a small enclave around the port of Pusan at the bottom end of Korea. However, we had held them there and there were rumors of a counterattack.
That meant the First Marines and Leo and Christopher.
The Twenty-fourth had been part of the Army of Occupation in Japan, no more prepared for battle then we had been in Bamberg. No wonder that our infantry broke and ran—“bugged out,” as they called it—at the first sign of an enemy.
“You’re worried about them, aren’t you, Chucky?” Rosemarie asked me that night at Petersen’s.
She touched my hand with her fingers and sent a shot of warm electricity through my body. Would her touch always do that to me?
“I guess so.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“Do you remember when Dad was at Fort Leonard Wood in 1941 and likely to go to New Guinea or some other terrible place?”
“Sure! You said he would be a menace to all the troops, including himself.”
“And a certain obnoxious little ten-year-old said that if I knew so much why didn’t I do something about it.”
She colored and lowered her eyes. “I can’t imagine who that would have been.”
“You don’t remember saying that?”
“It sounds like me, Chuck, but I don’t remember.”
A remark that changed my life and she doesn’t even remember!
“Then you don’t know what I did?”
She shook her head.
“I went over to see the Congressman and got Dad transferred to Fort Sheridan where he belonged.”
“You did? Chuck, how wonderful! And you were only thirteen!”
“Yeah, so the Congressman asked me if I played football and I said I did, which was true. I didn’t say I was fourth string quarterback on a team with three strings, and that’s how I got into that comedy of errors when we beat Mount Carmel for the Catholic league championship in 1945.”
“You beat Carmel, Chucky, all by yourself!”
There was no longer any point in arguing. Even Rosemarie, who knew the facts better than anyone, had reinterpreted them. The facts were that I was a mascot and the holder for kicks. When the real quarterbacks were wiped out by injuries and the flu, they sent me in with orders not to call my own play, of which there was no danger in any event. The team moved down the field toward the Mount Carmel goal line by dint of my skillfully keeping out of their way. On the last play the Carmel defenders broke through our line. In sheer terror, I threw a pass in the direction of no one. Some idiot blocked it and it fell on my head and then into my unwilling hands. I saw this ten-foot monster—Ed Murray, as it later turned out—coming toward me and I ran for my life. He hit me like a locomotive. I flew into the air and the ball flew out of my hands, according to the ref only after I broke the plane of the goal line.
Somewhere there must be movies that show the truth.
“You’re sure you don’t remember telling me that if I was so smart I would do something about it?”
“I don’t. But I was a terrible little bitch in those days. … Oh, you think you should do something about Vince and Leo and Christopher and Ed!”
I shrugged and slurped up the rest of my first malt. The young waitress, knowing the game, promptly replaced it.
“That’s ridiculous, Chuck. You can’t assume responsibility for everyone.”
I shrugged again.
The jukebox played “C’est la Vie,” which didn’t help my mood.
“I sent Timmy Boylan an airmail invitation to our wedding,” I said. “I put in a note saying that we would expect him.”
“Do you think he’ll come?”
“No. But he’ll know we haven’t forgotten him.”
“Are you marrying me to save me, Chuck?”
Bad question. Wrong time. Maybe I was.
“I’m marrying you because I think you’ll be a good lay!”
“Chucky Ducky!” She turned purple. “What would the good April say if she heard you!”
“Something like ‘Well, darling, that is one of the things men, poor dears, want from their wives, isn’t it!’”
We both laughed.
I was pleased with myself. I had avoided the question.
“Well, Chucky Ducky?”
“Well what?”
“Do you think I will be a good lay?”
The music changed to “Younger Than Springtime,” our song. We began to sing it, an obligation we always honored. Like everyone else who witnessed our little act, a musical comedy come to life, the Petersen’s people applauded.
“Well… ?” she persisted after the applause died.
“Certainly you will. The point is, Rosemarie, I’m marrying you because I love you.”
I wasn’t so sure that I had the faintest idea what love meant.
It was an evening like the whole summer. I felt miserable after Rosemarie dropped me off at the O’Malley house on East Avenue and drove off to “our” place on Euclid, where she was living some of the time so she could supervise the construction.
I knelt by my bed. The words would not come. All I could say to God was “Help!”
Three days later the X Corps, which included the First Marines, landed at Inchon in the most brilliant American military tactic in history. They recaptured Seoul, the capital of Korea, and joined with the Eighth Army, which was driving up from a breakout at Pusan. The North Korean army was destroyed. We had won the war. There was nothing to worry about.
I could not have been more wrong. Without asking anyone’s permission, General Douglas MacArthur crossed into North Korea and drove toward the Yalu River border with China—the worst mistake in American military history. The Chinese repeated their warnings to stay away from their border. MacArthur did not listen. He was so popular in America that no one dared to try to stop him. The First Marines landed at Wonsan on the east coast of Korea and marched toward the Yalu. Then, in the snow and the wind and the bitter cold, a hundred thousand Chinese troops attacked. Despite plenty of warnings, MacArthur was caught by surprise.
The First Marines were trapped in mountains at the Chosun reservoir and buried in snow and cold.