The End of the War and the Beginning of Something Else

Although we were strictly disciplined, our social lives went on during weekend liberty.  We were encouraged to attend events rather than hang out in bars and were expected to project a gentlemanly image.  Once we were in our grey midshipman uniforms, I rarely went back to the Music Box. I did stop one evening for a drink in the bar but the oldy at the organ did not recognize me in my officer-type uniform.  After that, Johnny Berry and I had “happy hour” at the bar in the LaSalle Hotel where we taught the bartender how to make an “Ile Nou Cocktail” from grain alcohol and grapefruit juice.  On our free Saturday evenings, we went to movies, bowled, or attended a USO or St. Mary’s dance.

The end of World War II same came on 14 August 1945 after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was not a liberty night for we midshipmen and we were not given special liberty.  We had to be content with listening from our dormitory windows to the celebrations in South Bend.  Already knowing that the end of the war was imminent, it was almost anti-climactic to us.  We listened for a while then went back to our studies and to the scuttlebutt as to what would happen to us.

Off and on there were many rumors passed around.  One was that we would simply be discharged and sent home.  Another was that upon commissioning we might either apply for transfer to the regular Navy as ensigns or else go on inactive duty as Ensign, USNR.  A third, shortly after V-J Day, was that with so many officers out there wanting to return to civilian life, we would be commissioned in the regular Navy.  Al proved to be untrue.  (In actual fact we were commissioned ensigns in the Naval Reserve and were required to serve at least a year on active duty before making the choice of transfer to the regular Navy or going on inactive duty but with continued participation in a Naval Reserve unit.)

Early in September we ordered and were fitted for our officer’s uniforms, dress blues and khakis.  That was when I met “Midge”.  When I went ashore for my fitting at the uniform shop, it occurred to me that I had seen officers carrying suitcases instead of seabags.  After my fitting, dressed in my sub-battalion commander’s greys, I dropped into a luggage shop to order a leather suitcase.

I was struck dumb and tongue-tied when I confronted the young lady behind the counter.  She was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever met.  She was small with a slender but mature figure beneath a simple dress.  A mane of chestnut hair framed an exquisitely molded face with eyes more blue than my own.  She was a sort of combination of today’s Christie Brinkley and Vanna White.  I had barely enough presence of mind to note that the small hands resting on the glass countertop held no rings.  I judged she must be about twenty years old.  Her voice was low and musical when she said, “Yes—may I help you, sir?”

When I explained what I wanted, together we selected a brown leather suitcase.  While she filled out the sales slip and I tried not to stare dumbly at her beautiful features, I stated that I would like my initials stamped in gold on the suitcase.  She assured me that could be done right there at the shop.

She then asked, “Will there be anything else, sir?”

I smiled and took the direct approach, “Yes.  I would like your name and telephoe number.  You happened to be the prettiest girl I ever had the good fortune to meet!”

The girl was silent for a minute while she coolly looked me up and down then those gorgeous eyes came to rest on my campaign bars and she touched them with a finger.  “How did a midshipman get those?”

I explained that I had been in the Navy for two years before I was selected for the officer training program.  She was silent again for a moment then her eyes, now twinkling like first magnitude stars, met mine. 

“Well, my name is Elizabeth, but my big brothers call me ‘Midget’.  I prefer ‘Midge’.”

Meanwhile, she finished the sales slip while I reached for my wallet.  When I looked at the slip for the total, I saw a local telephone number written across the top.  I did not want to overdo it with this one so I paid for the suitcase, folded the sales slip, placed it carefully in my wallet and said with a grin, “Thank you, ma’am.  I’ll be back Saturday to pick up the suitcase and I expect you will be hearing form me!”

Hear from me, Midge did.  I telephone her that evening and she accepted a date for dinner and a movie on Saturday.  We never made it to the movie.  I selected the best restaurant in South Bend and we sat and talked so long over dinner and dessert that the last show had started before we realized how the time had gone by.

It developed that Midge was a very intelligent young lady.  She was sensible and she knew as much about the course of the war as I did.  She was twenty-one, not twenty, and she lived at home with her parents.  She had two older brothers, both of whom were in the service—one Army and one Navy.

While we were getting acquainted over dinner, Midge asked if I had a girl back home.  I was honest up to a point, “Sure I do, but home is a long way away.  I expect most fellows have, just like I expect that you have a boyfriend around somewhere as beautiful as you are!”  (I stopped short of telling her I was engaged.)

“That’s pure blarney, sailor, and I love it!  Yes, there are some that hang around but no one special.  I plan to go to L.A. soon to visit relatives and they tell me I should try out as a model.  I haven’t wanted any permanent attachment yet.”

I took a deep breath.  “Look, Midge, Midshipman’s Ball for my battalion is coming up the 21^st.  I would like it very much if you would be my date.  It is our one big formal event on campus.”

My heart came as near to beating fast as it had in four long years when Midge turned on that beautiful mile and simply said, “I would like that very much, Midshipman Frieze.”

That ball is a treasured memory of my days at Notre Dame.  When I picked Midge up in a taxi that evening with a corsage of a single gardenia in hand, she was beautifully groomed and wearing a formal gown with a black lace top.  She did not coyly keep me waiting but was ready.  She introduced me to her parents, placed the gardenia in her hair over her left ear so it would not get bruised while we danced, and was ready to go.

There was a host of lovely girls at the ball with my shipmates but none more beautiful than petite Midge.  On the dance floor, she was a feather in my arms.  It seemed a very short time before the dance band was playing “Good Night, Ladies” and I had to take her home.  On the darkened porch Midge thanked me and came up on tiptoe to give me a quick kiss on the cheek.  Vancouver seemed very far away and the odor of gardenias can still remind me of that balmy September evening.

My final month at Notre Dame passed swiftly.  My log indicates that we completed our final examinations on the 25^th of October.  I finished with a 3.8 grade average.  Baccalaureate was on Sunday the 28^th of October.  

Midge and I dated on two or three weekends during my final month at Notre Dame.  It was obvious she liked me and liked to be with me and I was quite devoted to her.  When I saw her I did, indeed, have a protective feeling and even a pang of jealousy one weekend when she did not go out with me, but went instead to a football game in Chicago with one of her brothers home on leave.

If this were a romantic novel, I would have phone Shirley, called off the wedding, and Midge and I might have wound up together.  The thought crossed my mind more than once during those days in South Bend.

It was not to be.  The old Ozark boy had given his word, the wedding preparations were complete, and gifts were already coming in at the Mills house.  I agonized over it and simply did not have the guts to do it.

I put it off until the first of November then, at the luggage shop the day before I was commissioned, I painfully told little Midge the whole truth.  She reacted a bit numbly and just said something like, “Well, that’s tough.”  Her impossibly blue eyes were sad when we said goodbye.  I left the shop feeling like a louse and not walking very tall.

[Were this a movie, there would be the sound of a record screeching to a halt here.  The elephant in the room is the question as to why my father married my mother, particularly when it seems that he didn’t intend to get engaged to her in the first place.  Despite the fact that I would have not existed or been someone else (there’s an intriguing thought), I wish that he would have displayed the same courage that he did on December 7^th and told her that, no, that he hadn’t meant marriage or realized that friends and family saw what he could not—they were ill suited.  I was born six years into their marriage and my father stayed for me, of that I am sure.  In 1968 I became engaged and not far into 1969, satisfied that he was going to turn me over to a nice young sailor (a Navy man’s dream), my father left our home in Bellevue, Washington.  His explanation to me was pretty similar to what he wrote in his memoir, he simply had never really loved my mother.  She did love him despite the fact that she was terribly damaged by her alcoholic mother and suffered from anger issues that made life in suburbia less than Ozzie and Harriet at times.  There is a fine line between love and hate and my mother crossed it in 1969.  Bitterness filled her life until my father’s death in 2002.  Fortunately, for him, my father did find happiness with my step-mother Phyllis.  They married in December 1973 and were very happy ever after, she keeping him at home until his death.]

(Midge did, indeed, make it as a model.  Four or five years later I was diving into downtown Seattle from East Marginal Way and there on a billboard advertising bread was Midge’s wholesome, All-American, smiling face.  My wife, Shirley, never understood—and I did not enlighten her—why I almost ran into a lamp post on a clear day in light traffic.

I glimpsed Midge once more about ten years later in a television commercial.  I do not remember what it advertised, but she was playing the part of a young matron with some children.  She was still slender and there was no mistaking that lovely face, low voice, and auburn hair.  She looked, sounded, and acted very happy.  I felt very glad for her.)

Lake Michigan isn't Just a Lake

USS WILLAMETTE

Our midshipman curriculum included two training cruises on Lake Michigan.  The first was enmasse by companies on a training ship, the USS WILLAMATTE.  (We Northwesterners found that they pronounced it wrong.  Instead of “Wil-lam-ett” it was pronounced “Wil-a-met”.)  We had gunnery practice from the WILLAMETTE using twenty millimeter cannons.

It was on the second cruise on Lake Michigan that old “Pappy” Frieze was embarrassed.  That cruise was y small groups on YP boats, small harbor patrol craft.  Since I was known as an old fleet sailor, when Lt. Bergen assigned stations for putting to sea, I was named acting ship’s captain.  We were to rotate responsibilities during the one-day cruise which would include practice at ship maneuvering in formation.  Six boats at a time went out.

Bergen ordered me to take the fleet to sea.  I took the bridge, ordered the lines cast off, engine half speed ahead, had signal flags hoisted for the other boats, and led the little flotilla out into Lake Michigan.

It turned out that Lake Michigan does not always act like it is a lake.  On this day Lake Michigan thought it was a full-fledged ocean.  The day was sunny but windy and surprisingly choppy.  The little 40-foot YPs rolled and pitched like destroyers in a heavy sea.

All went well while I had the bridge out in the open fresh air.  Using flag hoists, I led the flotilla through the required maneuvers then it was time to rotate watch stations.  My next watch was navigation officer.  The navigator’s chart table was in the deck house directly over an open hatch to the engine room through which fumes from the diesel engines wafted.

The air was close and stuffy in the chart room and those engine room fumes did it.  Bent over the chart table and holding on with one hand against the roll of the little ship, I gradually became aware that, after being all over the Pacific aboard PITTECANOE, COPAHEE, and the SEA WITCH, salty old Pappy Frieze was getting seasick for the first time in his life.  I plotted one of the two maneuvers, then had to heat for the fantail where I liberally fed the fish my breakfast.

I took a lot of ribbing later from my shipmates but I was not alone.  Three or four others joined me on the fantail, and the other boats had men in the same predicament.

---

Midshipman's School at Notre Dame, 1945

Chapter 36

Midshipman’s School, Notre Dame 1945

Conrad Frieze in the middle of the back row.

Even though I had spent only four months at Notre Dame during my pre-major semester in V-12, it was rather like a homecoming when I arrived on the familiar campus on 11 July 1945.  Notre Dame seemed timeless except that a large Navy drill hall had been erected east of the main quadrangle and just north of of the football stadium.  West of the quad there was a new building that housed the classes of the midshipman’s school.

The first evening I was back on campus, I went to the faculty quarters and found Brother Justin.  The fat, balding lay brother was enormously pleased to see me and immediately challenged me to a game of chess—beating me as usual but gently teaching me tactics as the game progressed.  Sitting there in the small, quiet lounge with him, I had a feeling that I had hardly been away.

I was also pleased that first weekend when I went on liberty in South Bend, wearing my sailor whites because our grey midshipman uniforms were not yet ready, and visited the old Music Box.  When I walked in and sat at the bar, the lady at the organ stared at me for a long minute, then her nimble fingers swung into “Sentimental Journey”.  She remembered me after two years!  I bought her two drinks that evening.

Life at Midshipman’s School was different than the carefree life we had led previously at Notre Dame as college students.  Now we were, indeed, officer candidates and, as such, were far more regimented.  No carousing weekend nights on the town.  We were expected to conduct ourselves as officers and gentlemen.  Special liberty was hard to come by.  Wearing the grey midshipman uniform that was the same as officers grey except that our cap and collar insignias were simple gold anchors, we were subject to demerits for ungentlemanly conduct either on or off campus.  Fifty demerits and it would be back to the fleet in our old “crackerjack” uniforms as seamen.  During our initial briefing by Lieutenant Bergen our company commander, we were asked to look closely at the man on either side of us.  His promise was, “One of the three of you will probably not graduate.”

Instead of strolling across the quadrangle between classes, we now fell in and marched to the beat of a drum, sometimes at double time.  In the morning when the bell rang for muster we had exactly two minutes to be in formation in front of the dormitory.  For meals, we also feel into formation and marched to the mess hall.  We filled in and sat stiffly at attention in our chairs until food was in front of us and the “At ease, gentlemen,” was given.

Infractions resulted in demerits, the number depending on the offense.  They were not irrevocable.  Demerits could be walked off by “penalties tours”—marching with a rifle a number of laps around the drill field.

We had no more general classes from the priests.  All our courses in Navigation, Seamanship, Ordnance, Navy Regulations, Boat Handling, Ship Construction, Damage Control, etc, were taught by Naval officers.  We spent long hours on the drill field under the eagle eye and hawk nose of Lieutenant Tomlin, one of our nemeses, in his always present sunglasses.  Reviews and inspections occurred weekly.

As soon as our 4^th Company, First Battalion, was formed our traditional white hats were changed to blue-banded “middie” hats and we were fitted for our officer’s uniforms.  Two weeks later our grey uniforms were delivered.  Our officer’s dress blues would come only at commissioning.

Once more my record as an experienced fleet sailor resulted in my being appointed a cadet officer and I became sub-battalion commander of the First Battalion.  The shoulder boards of my dress grey coat now carried not only the midshipman anchor, but also the three stripes of a commander.  Since a good friend of mine, Johnny Berry, from the University of Washington was also in my midshipman class, I continued to be known as “Pappy” Frieze.  Johnny also had a distinction.  He was a drummer, joined the band, and was one of the men that beat the tempo on his snare drum for class or meal formation.

On the 11^th of August, we were sworn in as U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipman.  I asked Lieutenant Anderson, the battalion commander, how it could be that I could be in the Naval Reserve when I was a regular Navy enlisted man.  Apparently, that part of my record had somehow been overlooked.  On August 21^st, I was officially discharged from the regular Navy and re-enlisted in the Naval Reserve, back-dated to August 11^th.

Now, away from the distraction of Vancouver and my infatuation with Shirley Mills and being subjected to the discipline of midshipman’s school patterned after the Naval Academy at Annapolis, my grades came back to where they should have been all the time—close to a 4.0.  My letters were infrequent because I had to spend my evenings studying.  Hers were prolific and full of wedding plans.

We were notified that our date of commissioning would be 2 November 1945.  When I wrote Shirley of that, she promptly set the wedding date for November 8^th and the invitations went out.  I was not too pleased when she sent me a copy of the invitation which she had prepared in the form of a theater ticket for a production called “For Life”.  It was a bit too cute for my taste but I let it pass.  If it pleased her, fine—it was not important to me.

Brothers Reunited and Moving to Midshipmen's School

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 16^th"

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 22^nd of July.

I led my last V-12 review and inspection in the quadrangle on June 16^th, breezed through finals week, and on June 22^nd left the UW for South Bend via a two-week delay in orders that, of course, I spent in Vancouver.

Husky Baseball and Bar Fights

Con Frieze, sophomore baseball manager, UW Seattle, 1944

"I continued to wear my campaign ribbons, the red Good Conduct ribbon above the others, on campus and on leave at home, but when I went on liberty in downtown Seattle I would quietly remove them and carry them in my pocket..."

Although during my two years at the UW I continued to go to Vancouver on weekends and between semester leaves, I did participate in some extra-curricular activities at the university.  Early in 1944 Colin Dykeman, who was one of the replacements for Cason and Cramer in our Beta House quarters told me that Tubby Graves, the UW coach of both baseball and track, was looking for milers.  Since the Navy encouraged us to participate in school sports and I had done a lot of cross-country trotting and running in the Ozarks, I decided to try out for the track team.

I went to Hec-Edmundson pavilion one afternoon, met with Graves, and drew a pair of track shoes.  Graves watched me do some laps in the pavilion (it was raining that afternoon so we could not use the track in Husky Stadium).  Afterward =, the coach shook his head and said, “Frieze, I don’t think you are exactly a threat to break the four-minute mile.  You just don’t have the stride of a miler and you carry your hand too high.  By the way—you play baseball?  We can use some players on the Husky squad.”

Graves was obviously not impressed with my track ability and I knew I might as well be honest because he would be watching me on the ball field.  “Well, coached I played a little sandlot ball back in the Ozarks—second base and some outfield—but, no, don’t reckon I’m any great shakes at it.”

“Well, we do need a sophomore baseball manager for the Huskies.  Soph manager mostly takes care of gear, hits some fungos at practice, and shags balls.  Glad to have you if you want to be a Husky.”

I took Graves up on it (I liked and respected him) and for the 1944 baseball season I issued uniforms, hit fungos in practice, and sat in the dugout during all Husky games helping Graves keep players records.  We had a great season, partly due to the fact that all colleges had a dearth of athletes since so many were in the services.  I still have the warm Navy blue sweater that was awarded me at the end of the season with the Soph Manager emblem in gold on it. [I think it should have been a PURPLE sweater—after all it was the UW.]

We had some pretty fair baseball players thanks to the V-12 and ROTC programs at the UW and Graves was one best baseball coaches in the country.  (Graves Field, the baseball diamond north of Hec-Ed pavilion, was named for him.)  We had a winning season against other service teams that included some drafted pro-baseball players.

In July of 1944, having completed four years in the Navy, at one of the V-12 general assemblies Captain Barr called me forward and presented to me the red ribbon of a Good Conduct Medal and informed me that I could now add a has mark on my lower left sleeve denoting my four years of service.  I was now marked as one of the “old men” of the V-12 unit.

I enjoyed the deference accorded “Pappy” Frieze by my V-12 classmates but those ribbons and the hashmark brought on my first good fist fight since Honolulu.  (We were required by Navy Regulations to wear any decorations we had been awarded on our dress uniforms.)  I was on liberty in downtown Seattle one evening and went to the head in some joint.  There were two tipsy Marine privates in the washroom.  One of them looked at the apprentice seaman’s stripe on my cuffs then at the campaign bars and has mark.

“Well,” said one Marine scornfully, “what hock shop did you buy those in, sailor-boy?!”

I saw red.  I let go a right that decked the Marine against the wall.  With one eye on his buddy, I grabbed him by his olive-green shirt front and hauled him back to his feet.  I slammed him against the wall before he knew what was happening and growled something like, ‘Look, you half-assed gyrene boot—I earned those ribbons at Pearl and in the South Pacific while you were still a pimply, snot-nosed kid in high school!  I got bust from first class for beating up on better men than you!  Now you get the hell out of a man’s way!”

The other Marine, caught by surprise by my violent reaction, came at me.  I let go of the first and back handed the second hard enough that he fell back against one of the wash basins, blood welling from a cut lip.  I stood with my fists on my hips, outwardly mean and defiant but inwardly hoping that a Navy man would come through the door.  “Who’s next?!”

The young Marine privates, probably just out of boot camp, had enough.  With a mumbled, “Sorry, Mac” from one they stumbled out the door leaving me vastly relieved and a bit proud of myself.

[Although they inherited my father’s temper, I taught my boys to use words, not fists, to settle arguments, but both of the older ones ending up having to deck a boy each when we moved to Gig Harbor.  That close-knit student community was trying to figure out those Casey boys.  They got suspended, but I didn’t punish them.  Their Papa understood.]

I continued to wear my campaign ribbons, the red Good Conduct ribbon above the others, on campus and on leave at home, but when I went on liberty in downtown Seattle I would quietly remove them and carry them in my pocket for the sake of no more incidences like that.

The Cason-Cramer Capper

King Street Station in Seattle during WWII

To my dying day, I will swear that I had no advance knowledge of the plan Cason and Cramer cooked up.

In January of 1944, we lost Cason and Cramer as our roommates.  They were both from Butte, Montana and both had girlfriends over there.  Regular weekend liberty did not allow enough time to make it to Butte by Sunday evening.  They were unable to get any special leave and decided to go AWOL to have at least one night with their girlfriends.

To my dying day, I will swear that I had no advance knowledge of the plan Cason and Cramer cooked up.  They had to leave by Thursday night to have enough time so they needed someone to answer for them at house muster on Friday morning.  That muster was very informal.  We did not fall into ranks but simply gathered informally in the Beta house entry.  People would be scattered all over including up the staircase and would answer up when the roll was called by the CPO.  I usually answered from the door to our little suite.  That Friday morning someone answered for Cason and Cramer.  All I knew was that they had not been in the bunk room when I woke just before muster.

I have no knowledge of how Cason and Cramer got found out unless the chief smelled a rat and checked.  At any rate, when the two of them got off the train from Montana that Sunday evening the Shore Patrol was waiting on the platform and took them into custody.

There was an investigation held in the office of Captain Barr, the V-12 commanding officer at the UW.  Both Brosy and I were called in since we were roommates of the miscreants.  They called Brosy in first while I waited in the anteroom.  After a few minutes Brosy came out of the office, his face stony.  Obviously on instruction he walked straight past me without a word, but as he passed my chair I caught the faint flicker of a smile and an almost noticeable shake of his head.

When I was called in I was facing the Captain, the executive officer, and one officer I did not recognize.  I was not invited to sit down but stood at attention.  Captain Barr opened the interrogation by saying “Well, Frieze, you might as well be honest and tell everything you know.  Brosy has just done that so all we need is confirmation as to how our two AWOLs planned their little junket and who answered for them at muster.  Was it you?”

I knew full well that Brosy would not have said that we did overhear some conversation that indicated what Cason and Cramer were going to do.  I kept my face grave and said, “No, Captain, it was not me that answered.”

“But you know who did.”  It was not a question; it was a statement.

“No, Sir.  I did not know of their plan and was not aware that they were gone until word came that they had been arrested.  I was in Vancouver on a liberty pass signed by you, sir, until Sunday evening.”

“You mean to stand there and tell me that roommates made such a plan and, living with them, you did not at least overhear their talk about it?!”

“That is correct, Sir.  When we are in our quarters we are studying—“ (I could have added, ‘or I am wrting to and thinking about my girlfriend’ but I did not)”and when I concentrate I pay no attention to conversations around me.  If they talked about it, I did not hear them.”  I gambled, looked directly at the captain, and smiled wryly.  “Try me some time when I am reading the Sunday comics, Captain.  I concentrate the same unless it’s an air raid alarm or a Jap attack!”

“You do know the penalties for perjury, do you not?”

“Captain, I am a fleet sailor and I have been in the Navy for nearly four years.  You will find that I have never even been to a Captain’s Mast.  My record is clean.  I was leading first class petty officer before I got involved in the V-12 program.”

There were more questions from the other members of the investigating panel but they got the same answers—that I knew mothering of Cason and Cramer’s plan and had not aided them in any way.  It quickly became obvious that Barr’s opening comment about what Brosy had said was all bluff.  Brosy and I came off with a clean slate—as we should have.  Cason and Cramer were not fleet sailors, but had recruited directly into the V-12 program.  They were sent to boot camp in Farragut, Idaho, and went to sea on destroyers.  (They both survived the war.  In later years, Cramer was a smoke jumper for forest fires and Cason worked for the telephone company in Butte.)

Bootlegging in College

The key to going into the bootlegging business was that booze was sold in Washington only in state-run liquor stores and, like so many other things in wartime, was strictly rationed.  We got, as I recall, ration stamps for only one bottle of whiskey and two of rum and such per month.  On the street in the Skid Road area of Seattle down on the waterfront, a bottle of whiskey would bring ten to fifteen dollars from the many soldiers, sailors and marines on liberty.

Bob and I set up what amounted to sort of a black-market organization.  V-12 was full of non-drinking youngsters (I was one of the oldest in the Beta house).  We recruited several of them that were of legal age, had them get liquor ration cards and buy their rations each month, then we would pay them a dollar more than the prices they paid in the liquor store (which ranged from a dollar or so for rum to two or two and a half for whiskey in those days).  We had them get cheap brands, of course.

At the Beta House in our ground floor suite we had discovered a perfect hiding place for our stock.  It was a shoe riser in a closet.  The floorboard could be lifted off to reveal a generous space below.  (It was obvious that Beats before us had used the hidey hole.)

We had a perfect route to leave the house after taps without the CPO’s knowledge which made us AWOL, but we did not worry about that as the whole thing was illegal in all respects and had we been caught we would have gone to sea on a destroyer in short order.  Our method was simple.  The bathroom window opened onto an alley.  We could slip quietly out after full dark, walk down to “The Ave”, and catch a bus to downtown Seattle.  We would be carrying a zippered ditty bag with three or four bottles of assorted booze.

Our modus operandi was to get down to First Avenue where the joints and dives were, stash the ditty bag in a dark alley, and carry one bottle at a time under our peacoats.  Watching for SP’s or MP’s in the vicinity, we would spot a group of tipsy servicemen coming out of a joint at the midnight closing.  Nine times out of ten they were looking for a taxi driver or someone who would sell them a bottle of booze.

Regardless of whether we happened to be carrying Two Seal whiskey or a bottle of rum, we would sidle up and offer to sell them a bottle of Old Crow because we were broke, showing only the neck of the bottle with the seal intact inside our coat.  If they wanted to see the bottle we would whisper, “o way, Mack.  Shore Patrol might spot us!  Take it or leave it.”

Almost invariably a quick collection would be taken up and they would take the paper-bagged bottle and slip it under someone’s coat.  By the time they found an alley and pulled the bottle out to discover that they had bought cheap bourbon or run, we were long gone in the darkness and by one o’clock would have slipped back through the bathroom window with some very tidy profits.

For three or four months Brosy and I had money for our regular train rides south and some left over to spend for movies, flowers, dances, and such with our fiancées.  Our bootlegging days came to an abrupt end, however.  One night I was making a run (we travelled separately) and when I caught the downtown bus I wound up in a seat behind two Marines who boarded at Pier 91.  One of them was new to Seattle and the other was briefing him on how to ind girls and booze.

I listened rather idly to their conversation until the briefer said, “Tell you one thing—I’m gonna keep my eye out for that blond-headed sailor (it fitted either Brosy or me) that sold me a cheap bottle of rum claiming it was Old Crow.  If I spot him, I’m going to beat the crap out of him!  Paid him twelve good dollars for a buck and a half bottle of rum!”

The night suddenly seemed very cold.  I scrunched down in my seat, pulling the collar of my peacoat up and tipping my white hat over my eyes pretending to be asleep.  I stayed on the bus for a couple of blocks after the Marines got off, then caught the next bus back to the University District.  That Marine had been a big rascal!  When I told Brosy what had happened he shrugged and said, philosophically, “Well, we had a good thing going but we probably would have got caught sooner or later and been canned from the program.”