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| Conrad Frieze (far left) leading a V-12 inspection and review in Husky Stadium, the UW Seattle, 1944 |
"I led my last V-12 review and inspection in the quadrangle on June 16th"
In
April of 1945, my brother Dick, who had been in the South Pacific the whole
time, finally got back to the states and came to Seattle while he was on a long
leave. It was the first time I had seen
or talked to him since 15 September 1942, the day before I sailed from Pearl
Harbor on the USS COPAHEE bound for New Caledonia. I signed my own special liberty pass and we
had one hell of a liberty in the dives of the Seattle waterfront. I do not believe that Captain Barr would have
approved of the condition in which his battalion commander returned to the
campus in the wee hours of 16 April 1945!
It
had been two and a half years since we, who had grown up almost as twins, had
seen each other. Dick was never (and
still is not) much of a hand at writing letters so we had a lot to catch up
on. After a few drinks, he left me in
stitches with his sea stories about all that had happened to him down in the
Solomons. He had been in and out of
trouble countless times, had been busted in rank, had been to captain’s mast
more times than he could count, and had even spent a little time in the brig, but
he had one hell of a happy time at it.
Dick’s
story about coming back stateside from some remote island in the Solomons carrying
a skull in a ditty bag left me roaring with laughter in some bar down on First
Avenue. (Repeatedly I have asked Dick since to tape record his tall tales so I could
write a book titled “Tales of the Soused Pacific” but he has never done
so. He has said that his daughter,
Janice, would take on the chore of recording his exploits but too often nothing
comes of old Dick’s plans.)
Somewhere
along the way before we got tossed out of some joint at closing time, Dick did reveal
that he had gotten a divorce from Diane.
He was obviously still in love with her, but when he came back from the
South Pacific to Honolulu without advance notice apparently, he found his
Japanese wife shacked up with a Marine.
I was sorry to hear that because I liked Diane very much. In fact, I visited with her later just after
the war when I went through Honolulu in the spring of 1946 as a new Navy ensign
on my way to Guam.
(In the end, it turned out for the best for Richard. While he was still on leave in 1945, he went
with our parents back to the Ozarks, met a beautiful brunette from South
Greenfield, and married her. They are
still together and I give credit to my sister-in-law, Mary, for being some sort
of a saint to have put up with Dick’s foibles all these many years.) [My Aunt
Mary Frieze was strong in a way similar to her mother-in-law—Missouri produces
strong women—and so much fun to be around.
And yes, she loved Uncle Dick as no one else could have.]
Dick
joined others of the family and friends that had questioned the wisdom of
becoming engaged to Shirley. Several had
thought I was making a big mistake. One
day I came to the Beta House to find that an eight by ten photo of Shirley that
I kept on my desk was in the waste basket.
When I protested, Dykeman growled, “Aw, come one, Con—that’s what you
ought to do with it!”
Dick’s
comment during our liberty was more to the point, “Hell, brother,--why buy a
cow when the milk is damned cheap!”
Infatuated, I ignored them all.
By
May of 1945, tired of the routine at the UW, I was feeling very keenly the
disappointment that I was not going to be in at the end of the war in the
Pacific. The war in Europe was finally
over. Mussolini in Italy had been long
since assassinated and his body and that of his mistress hung by the heels in
public. Adolph Hitler was dead, and his
cohorts such as Goering had been arrested and would be tried as war criminals. The many stories, photographs, and newsreels
of the Nazi extermination camps were sickening.
Hitler’s Third Reich, designed to dominate the world and last a thousand
years was over, the most infamous chapter in the history of mankind.
Out
in the Pacific, Japan was doomed but was still fighting back as the invasion of
Okinawa was winding down. The
once-mighty Japanese Navy was impotent and had been effectively destroyed. Our Grumman F6F Navy fighters and the
gull-winged Vought Corsairs outflew the vaunted Zeroes and shot them down
almost at will. The most fearsome weapon
the Japanese had left were the kamikazes and their numbers had been
decimated. Boeing B-29 “Superfortresses”
laid waste to Tokyo, except for the Imperial Palace, and other Japanese cities. Now it was only a matter of time before a
long and bloody invasion of the Japanese home islands would begin.
Also
in the back of my mind was the knowledge that when the war ended the V-12 program
would be terminated and I would not get my coveted commission in the Navy. I knew, too, that the requirement for
midshipman’s school was at least two years of college and by the end of spring
semester I would have completed my junior year.
For
once in the old country boy made a right decision. I filled out my application for fransfer to
midshipman’s school, took it to Captain Barr personally, and—almost on my knees—begged
him to forward it. I explained my
background to the captain, pointing out that I had been there at the beginning
and wanted nothing worse than to be there at the victorious end.
Barr,
an over-average career man, could appreciate my reasoning. He forwarded my request to BuPers and on the
last day of May approval of my request came from the Bureau. On 14 June 1945 orders came from BuPers for
me to report to the University of Notre Dame for midshipmen’s school on 12 July
1945. The orders were to be effective at
the end of the semester on the 22nd of July.
I
led my last V-12 review and inspection in the quadrangle on June 16th,
breezed through finals week, and on June 22nd left the UW for South
Bend via a two-week delay in orders that, of course, I spent in Vancouver.
