My Father's Philosophy of War

Part II

The War Years

Forward

This part of my story chronicles my memories of the dark years of World War II and, by epilogue, a summary of the principal events in my life after I went on inactive duty with the Naval Reserve late in 1946.  Once again I have relied on my memory and a few personal records and photographs.  I have attempted to avoid embellishment of any sort.

My contribution to combat was minimal and I was not awarded medals other than for campaigns, areas served in, and a Good Conduct medal.  I was very proud, however of my honorable service in the Navy.  I am also inordinately proud of the fact that when the surprise Japanese attack came on December 7^th 1941, my brother and I did not run away to hide but found a weapon and started shooting back while our base and our airplanes were bombed and shot to pieces around us.

We did not stop to consider that it was an historic event.  We were simply thoroughly enraged and wanted to strike back at the enemy that had suddenly appeared out of a peaceful Sunday morning Hawaiian sky.  We do not consider ourselves heroes—we were simply doing what the Navy had been training us to do.  We do not consider ourselves particularly brave (we knew the acrid metallic taste of fear in our dry mouths) but we did what we could.  I believe I can be excused for being proud of that.

How did it leave me feeling about war?  That is not an easy question to answer because there are different kinds of war and different justifications for restoring to force.  I am happy that I was in the last truly justified war—World War II.  It was brought on by evil aggressive leaders (specifically Adolf Hitler in Germany and Tojo in Japan) ambitious to conquer the world and beat all other races into submission or extinction.  If the Axis powers had won, personal freedom would have vanished from the face of the earth.

I did not feel that the Korean War in the early 1950s was justified.  I am a believer in the natural law of survival of the fittest.  I felt that North and South Korea should have battled it out without intervention for either side and the nation should have been unified with the strongest side in power.  I am a patriotic American, however, and I would have gone and fought my best if my government had ordered me to go.

The war in Vietnam was something else.  As Phyllis can attest, I was opposed to it from the beginning.  Even so, I would have gone and fought had I been younger and my commander-in-chief said “go”.  I have no patience with draft dodgers and cowards that slink away to Candad or Mexico rather than serve in the armed forces. There is no reason for that except plain old cowardice.  As for Vietnam, I felt that it was worthless to the rest of the world and should be left to wallow in its own communist mess without outside intervention.

There is nothing glorious about war even when it is justified.  It is not flags waving and bugles blowing—it is blood, dirt, smoke, fire, deadly steel and lead, the concussion of blasts, and the torn and bloody bodies of friends and shipmates.

War can be justified only by a real threat to world peace.  For that reason I backed and applauded our participation in the Gulf War to stop Saddam Hussien who would have liked to become a latter-day Adolf Hitler.  We claim to have won because we ran the Iraqis out of Kuwait, but actually, Kuwait was not worth it.  We lost because we did not drive on in to Baghdad and hang Saddam Hussien for the aggressive war criminal that he is.  Kuwait is not important (the world seems to be getting along fine without Kuwaiti oil) but world peace must always be our goal.

We must not become complacent because, with the collapse of communism in Russia, we seem to be facing an era of world peace.  As long as there is more than one nation on this shrinking little planet Earth, there can be reasons that world peace is threatened.

It is my hope that, if in the time of your life, the time comes to go to war you will go and serve honorably under our red, white, and blue star-spangled flag.  Go where you have to go and do what you have to do when you get there.  I want to be very, very proud of all of you.
Sincerely,
Papa Con

[My father wrote his memoir in ’89-90 when world peace seemed a possibility.  He was frail and dying by September 11^th.  It was like Pearl Harbor all over again, only on American soil this time.  That fall our family had a little reunion in Ilwaco, my Aunt Sandra and Uncle Jerry having brought my father and step-mother Phyllis down for what was his last trip to his beloved sea.  Even as a pacifist I have to say I was pleased when my uncle came into the house and said that we’d struck Al Qaida in Afghanistan.  Unfortunately, I don’t agree with my father about Iraq.  He did not live to see that debacle drag on to what it has become.  I predicted that we would miss Saddam Hussein because he was all that was keeping the lid on things.  We cannot impose democracy on another country that has no concept of it.  Other than that, I think my father and I agreed on the nature of war.  I know that he loved and was proud that my fiancé was in the Navy during Vietnam.]

Heading into the Unknown

Recruits heading to boot camp

A program called “Bundles for Britain” was set up in the U.S.  President Roosevelt armed the merchant ships that were participating in the convoys of foodstuff and war materials to England.  The president was still dealing with a very divided nation even after two American destroyers were sunk in the Atlantic.

Pacifists like Charles Lindbergh talked isolationism.  The German-American bunds were flourishing in the larger cities of the U.W.  Hitler had signed a non-aggression pact with Russia.  The “Axis”—Germany, Italy, and Japan—came into being.  In the newsreels Hitler ranted, Mussolini pranced and postured, and Premier Tojo of Japan grinned from behind his steel-rimmed spectacles.

Personally, I could only feel that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. would have to get into the war, just as it had happened in 1917 to stop the German Kaiser.  The thought of it starting for us in the Pacific never occurred to me in spite of the continued aggression of Japan in China.  I had paid very little attention to events in that part of the world.

It was the first day of July in 1940 when I went to the Federal Building in Portland.  The Navy recruiting office dug out my record, gave me a thorough new physical, and said they would take me.  The following week, a Chief Petty Officer came to our house and interviewed  my mother and father.  They signed the necessary consent form and on July 16^th I received my orders to report on July 22^nd.

I quite at the CC Store and left a recommendation with Mr. Garrison for my brother Rex.  (Rex subsequently worked there for a year when he got out of high school before the joined the Seabees.)  I said goodbye to my friends at Gearhart’s and to Patty Cross.  She cried a little bit and wished me good luck.

Breakfast was a bit strained on the morning of the 22^nd.  Rex told me goodbye then he took the bicycle—his by the right of succession along with the large bedroom and my model airplane collection—to go off to mow someone’s lawn.  Little Sandra Dean, now a husky four-year-old, hugged me and could not understand why her brother Richard had to leave and now I was going also.  I promised to bring her a present when I came home and that mollified her.

I had packed a clean shirt and my toilet articles in the same little zippered bag Richard had carried when he left (it had been sent home by the Navy along with his civilian clothes).  I remember standing awkwardly in the kitchen to say goodbye to my mother.  My father had not gone to work that morning and would walk to the bus depot with me.

As I have said, we Ozark folks are not normally very demonstrative or given to displays of emotion.  My mother hugged me and smiled, although there was moisture in her blue eyes, and simply said, “You be a good boy, Conrad, and do what they tell you.  I know that both you and Richard are going to make us proud of you.  Go on new—Dad is waiting out front.”

I looked back as we walked off up the street.  Sandra was on the front porch waving to me.  I did not see my mother but I saw the curtain move in the front downstairs bedroom and knew that she was watching me go.  Mercifully, I could not see the warm tears that poured down her cheeks as she knelt there by the window.

Dad and I walked pretty much in silence, as I recall, all the way down to the depot, each with our own thoughts.  It reminded me of my drive from Bona to Fairplay with my grandfather in Missouri just three short years before.  Dad was never one to talk much, excepomwhen he had a few beers, and he had never given us advice after we got into high school unless we asked for it.  He turned to me when we got to the depot and were waiting for the Portland bus.  He held out a folded five-dollar bill.

“Here, boy, you might need this for something extra on your trip down,” he said gruffly and just as my grandfather had done three years before.

I shook my head.  “You keep it, Dad.  I got a couple of dollars of my own (I had not yet found the two-dollar bill my mother had tucked into my bag).  The Navy will take care of me when I get there.  They said that all our meals on the train would be furnished.  You keep it.”

“Never mind,” he said as he took my hand and pressed the folded bill into it.  “I give five to Richard when he left and I want you to have it.  You’ll find a use for it.”

I put the folded bill into my pocket.  He then placed a gnarled hand on my shoulder.  “Ain’t never been on to give unasked advice, Conard, and I hope me and your mother has raised you boys right.  We are proud of both of you.

“Ain’t been one to go to church, much, either, but I will tell you what my Uncle Jim told me when I left to go in the Army back in the World War.  You are liable to run into some rough times down the road there.  Just remember, a real man goes where the hand of the Lord leads him and he does what he has to do when he gets there.  Go on now son, the bus is loading.  Goodbye, boy.”

He dropped his head then, turned, and walked away down the street.  I boarded the bus and got a seat by the window.  As we pulled out, Dad had halted on the corner and was lighting his pipe.  I do not know if he saw me waving but I think he maybe did.

At the recruiting office in Portland, I quickly began to understand why they say that the military is a matter of “hurry up and wait”.  I cooled my heels all morning in an anteroom while other recruits gradually straggled in.  There was the Olsen brothers from Portland, a fellow from Astoria, two or three from the Chehalis area, one from Montana, and others I did not get a chance to talk to.  Finally, after they had sent us out with chits for lunch, we were gathered in an office and a Navy lieutenant came and administered the Oath of Allegiance.  We were now officially apprentice seamen in the United States Navy and they gave each of us a little certificate to prove it.

After we had been sworn in, we waited around for another hour or so, then we had another physical mostly to make sure we all met the height and weight requirements.  Later a yeoman came and handed out chits for a night at a hotel.  We were informed that we would not leave for San Diego until the following day after another batch of recruits arrived.  Those of us who were close to home could go home for the night if we wished.

I did not want to go back to Vancouver.  I had said my goodbyes and that was that.  I did not want to have to do it all over again.  I got together with a recruit from Montana—a tall, lanky young fellow whose name I no longer recall—and we had dinner on another Navy chit, then went to see the new movie “One Million B.C.” at the Coliseum Theater before we bedded down at a hotel.  The movie was good and, of course, I promptly fell in love with a new starlet, Raquel Welch.

The next day it was wait, wait, and wait again while more Pacific Northwest recruits straggled in from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.  Finally, around noon, we were told we would be catching the train to San Diego at twenty-two hundred hours.  It took us a minute to figure out that, on the Navy 24-hour clock, that meant ten p.m.

I had no desire for my family to come over and see me off like a kid leaving for summer camp, so I called the only one I thought of offhand that could drive a car which was Shirley Mills.  She came to Portland about eight o’clock after supper and picked me up in front of the Federal Building.

We drove to Portland Heights somewhere around the zoo and parked to talk and neck a little.  My heart was not in it, however, because I was looking eagerly forward to getting on that train.  I had her take me back to the station before nine-thirty.

I did not want Shirley hanging onto me and kissing me goodbye in front of the other recruits, so I insisted on leaving her there in front of the station so she would not have to go and park the car.  She was weeping a little bit.  I impulsively reached into my bag and produced the Oath of Allegiance I had signed.

“Here,” I said, “you can keep this for me until I get back.”

I got out of the car then and marched into the train station without looking back.  I do not know why I gave her the certificate—I should have sent it to my mother.  I most certainly was not in love with Shirley—she was just a fun date.

The Navy had provided a Pullman car for us and the porter had already made it up for the night when the thirty or so of us boarded.  I was assigned an upper bunk with only a small window beside me out of which to peer at the passing lights of the Willamette river waterfront.  It was not until the train had cleared the Portland suburbs and Oregon City and headed into the darkness of central Oregon that I began to feel the pangs of homesickness.

I lay there sleepless for a long time, thinking of home and knowing that my life would never again be the same.  I thought about what it would be like at breakfast in the morpnig, just the four of them—Mother, Dad, Rex and Sandra—with my chair and Richard’s empty and pushed out of the way from the table.

I thought, too, about the good friends I had left in Vancouver, particularly my confidant Patty Cross and lively and vivacious Elaine.  I vowed to myself to keep in touch with letters (and I did for a long time).

I was still lying awake when the train halted for a short time at Roseburg, Oregon.  This time it was not simply as if a door was closing behind me—this one seemed to literally clang shut.  There was another wide open in front of me, however.  I thought about that and the adventures to come.  When I finally fell asleep with my head on a slightly damp railroad pillow while the train was laboring up the mountain grades toward Mt. Shasta in the pre-dawn darkness, I was probably smiling because I relished the challenge of my strange new world.

(the best was yet to come.)

Dunkirk was the Deciding Factor

I needed someone with whom to talk it over.  I would have called Elaine because, besides being a chatterbox, she was one smart little cookie; however, since I knew she was probably still peeved at me about bringing Shirley to the prom, I did not call.  Instead, after Dick left with the car, I got on my bicycle and pedaled off to 13^th and Kauffman to see Patty Cross.  It was a warm spring evening and we sat on the concrete steps of the apartment.  I told her all about it and how I felt—omitting my wild idea about maybe going to the Naval Academy.

Patty did not have to, nor did I expect her to, advise me.  She simply listened patiently and let me get it all out.  Finally, she asked, “How long would you have to sign up for?”

“One cruise is six years.  Could have signed up for a short cruise—they call it a ‘diaper cruise’—if I had done it while I was seventeen, but it is too late for that.”

“Well,” she said as she snuggled against my shoulder, “six years is not all that long a time.  I would be out of high school before then and probably have a job.  Who knows what may happen?”

When Dick left to go back to Sa Diego four days later, I was still vacillating.  The day after that, while I was changing the women’s wear display in the window of the CC Store, I saw my old high school advisor, Louis Barter, walking up the street.  I scrambled out of the display window, told one of the clerks that I was taking a break, and caught up with Barter.  I invited him to have a beer with me at the Cave Tavern under the bank across from the store.

Over nickel glasses of beer, I told Barter my problem.  I ended by asking, “What do you think I should do, Mr. Barter?”

Barter brushed the beer suds off his sand little mustache, looked keenly at me, and said, “Look, Conrad, you want to be a naval officer and you want to fly.  The best thing for you to do is to get two years of college under your belt, then apply for the naval aviation cadet program.  Enlisting in the Navy in the hope of making the academy would be a long-shot gamble at best.”

It was not the answer I wanted to hear.  I could not see a possibility of making it to college in the near future.  I did not believe that we had two or three years before the United States would be forced into the war.  I thanked Barter, paid for the beer, and bought a package of Sen-Sen before I went back to the store.

Less than a week later my mind was suddenly made up.  I had gone to a movie at the Castle Theater.  The Lowell Thomas newsreel was devoted entirely to the debacle at a town called Dunkirk where the remnants of the British Army, under murderous fire from German guns and the Luftwaffe, was evacuated from the continent.  The newsreel closed with a scene of Adolf Hitler dancing a little jig of elation outside the railroad car at Versailles when the French capitulated.  The Nazis had full control of the continent of Europe.

Richard Comes Home on Leave

Richard’s boot camp training lasted eight weeks.  It was around the middle of May that he came home on boot leave.  When I got home from work and found him sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, I was immediately envious his snappy uniform.

He was wearing dress blues with the three shite stripes around the large collar in back which also had two white stars.  The single stripe of an apprentice seaman was around the buttoned cuffs.  His black neckerchief was tied in a square knot at his throat, and a jaunty white hat was perched precariously on the very back of his curly black hair.

We shook hands and I made him stand up so I could admire the uniform fully.  It looked good on his slender frame.  His black shoes were shined to a high gloss.  He looked more mature than I remembered.

“Well, bird brain,” Dick said, “how is your love life these days?”

I reddened and said, “Oh, it’s okay, I guess.”

“Hear you been keeping company with a state senator’s daughter, old Shirley Mills.  You want to watch out—she gets her hooks into you, you might wind up with a ball and chain.  No sense in buying a cow when milk is so cheap, you know.”

Mother, who was bustling around getting supper, reproved him, “Richard, you shush that kind of talk!”

I noticed a white-winged propeller emblem on

Dick’s lower left sleeve.  “Hey,” I said to change the subject, “what is that?”

“That, my boy,” Dick said, “is an aviation machinists mate striker badge.  I am going to be an airplane mechanic!  I passed the test in boot camp and am being sent to aviation machinist mate’s school on North Island in San Diego bay.  When I graduate from that, I am going to put in or a patrol squadron, get on a flight crew, and be a machine gunner, too.”

My envy was now a shade of deep green.  I said scornfully, “Shoot!  You don’t know anything about airplanes like I do!  I have been for airplane rides twice and you have never been up!”

“Never you mind, boy,” he said.  “In four month I will know more about airplanes than you ever thought of knowing.”

I was so bemused when we sat down to supper that I toyed with my food and ignored Rex’s excited questioning.  Damn, I thought bitterly, here it was my idea of joining the Navy in the first place and I really want to fly.  Now old Dick’s got it all!

After supper Dick regaled us with tales of everything that had happened in boot camp—washing his own clothes, learning to tie knots, rowing a whaleboat, marching on what he called “the grinder”, learning to semaphore and read Morse code, and on and on.  My envy was a torment.

Later in the evening, I lounged on the bed upstairs while Dick gussied himself up to go out with the car and impress his friends.  He neatly re-reolled his neckerchief, tied it higher than regulations specify, and re-shined his glossy black shoes.  As he combed his thick black hair, I asked, “They really tell you that time that they would take me in the Navy?”

He lowered the comb and turned.  His face was dead serious.  “Sure they did.  I wasn’t just shittin’ you, Con.  You could still sign up.  The way things are going in Europe, you would be a real bird-brain not to do it!

“Heck, after the way you and I used to tinker with that old Model T in Missouri, that examination for mech school is a lead pipe cinch.  I made a four of on it and didn’t have to spend half the time of some of the others that made it.  If you know a box wrench from a pair of pliers, you got it made!

“Like I told you, brothers can be stationed together if they want.  We could be in the same squadron.  Come on—wise up!”

“We-ell,” I hedged, “I dunno.”

I was in a real quandary.  I kept thinking maybe it was not too late to get into the Navy and maybe make it to the academy—at least try.  Even if that did not work out, like Dick kept saying, if a war came I would be a lot better off in the Navy than to be drafted into the Army.  It kept occurring to me, however, that what a good thing I had going here at home—good job at the store, money to spend, and a car to drive.

“Aw,” I said, “I got a pretty good job.  Got a raise to sixteen dollars a week not long ago.  Shoot, that’s sixty-four a month and you are only getting 21 bucks a month in the Navy!”

“It ain’t the money that’s important,” he stated flatly.  “Anyway, just looking at that part of it, in two more months I will be a seaman second class and then I get thirty-six.  Six more months and I will be a seaman first and getting fifty-four. Then, after I’ve been in a year, I will be eligible to take the test for third class mech—which is a petty officer rate and they get seventy-two.

“On top of that, by then I can get into a flight crew if I get into PBYs or something and flight skins add fifty percent of your base pay.  Figure it out—that is over a hundred a month in a year!  Shoot, you’ll still be sweeping out the CC Store for two thirds of that.  What chance you got of getting another raise soon?”

He had a good point.  I did not know what the others made, but I doubted that clerks got more than twenty a week and I doubted if the store manager got more than a hundred a month.  I was sure not putting anything in the bank, what with spending most of it on clothes, gasoline, and girls.

Richard settled the white hat on his dark hair with it tipped jauntily over his right eyebrow.  “Furthermore,” he went on, “that Navy pay is free and clear.  They give you your first outfit of uniforms and gear, all your chow unless you eat ashore, and a decent place to live.  You can’t go on freeloading on the folks forever.  You got to go it on your own.  You think about it.”  He departed, whistling “Anchors Aweigh” and flipping the key to the Chevrolet in his hand.

Watching the Submarine Races

I did not call the Navy recruiting office but I sure did sme heavy thinking.  It was stunning news.  I was now eighteen but the age limit for acceptance for the Annapolis examination was twenty.  I had lost a full year.  I also thought long and hard about my job and the fun I was having using the car and dating girls.

Then, too, there was Mr. Garrison, owner of the CC Store.  He was a very kind man and was encouraging me to save my money and go to college and take Business Administration.  He had even paid the fee and enrolled me in a public speaking course evenings that the Rotarians were sponsoring for local businessmen.  Mr. Garrison was taking the course with me.  I had a feeling somehow that if I suddenly left I would be letting Mr. Garrison down.

In the end I told dick “no soap”.  “Dang it, they turned me down once and now things are different.  If the durn Navy doesn’t need me, I sure as heck don’t need them!”

“Okay, nipple-noggin,” he replied, “suit yourself, but you mark my words, there is a war coming and you will probably wind up getting drafted into the Army and go slogging around with a rifle getting shot at.

“Not me, boy.  I am going to be out there on a nice clean ship—or maybe even an airplane—with a good place to sleep and three squares a day!  You will be sorry, just you wait and see.”

I pooh-poohed him and laughed off it off, but I must admit that I watched with a feeling of envy the morning he packed that little green zippered bag and caught the bus to Portland.

It was not long after Dick left for boot camp that I got myself involved with Shirley Mills.  She was one class behind me and had a sister, Mary, who was one class behind her.  I knew them, but casually and knew that their father, Chapin Mills, was a state senator.  They lived over on the east side at 25^th and “F” streets.  Being an old westsider, I considered them to be a bit out of my class.

Shirley was a full-figured girl with a moon-round face and a pug nose.  She had long platinum blonde hair.

  I used to see her sort of drifting dreamily down the halls at school in a shapeless coat, clutching a stack of books to her chest.  I never considered her more than mildly pretty, although she did have very good legs.  I never considered dating her, especially after I heard one of the fellows comment, “Boy, those Mills girls are sure squirrely pair!”

An afternoon in late March, I was coming up the basement stairway of the store with an armload of boxes of ladies’ stockings.  On the middle landing, Shirley cornered me.

“Conrad,” she said, “Mary and I are going to have a party at our house next week and  I would like you to come as my date.”

That jolted me, coming as it did right out of a clear blue sky.  “Well, I dunno,” I stammered.

“Ah, come on,” she said with her best smile, “it will be fun.  You know Mary’s boyfriend, Pat Madden.  Pat will be there.”

I looked her up and down.  She had herself all gussied up and was wearing a sweater that showed off her bosom and a tight skirt over her full behind and plump thighs.  Her calves were nicely tapered to trim ankles.  I probably blushed and finally said, “Well, okay.  What night and what time?”

It turned out that the party was quite small.  There was just Shirley and me, her sister Mary and Pat Madden, and two other couples I do not remember now.  The girls’ parents were out at Eastern Star or something.  They came in later while we were having refreshments, greeted all of us, then went off to their bedroom in the back of the house.

The other two couples left fairly early.  It was obvious that the Mills girls did not consider the evening over but we turned the music down because of the parents.  Not knowing what to say or do next, I finally suggested that we take the Chev, drive over to Swan Island airport in Portland, and watch the big airplanes come in.  We could stop at waddles on the way back.  The sisters readily agreed.

I had been serious about watching the “big” airplanes.  United Airlines had just put the first DC-3s into service and, to me, that was a big sleek airplane.  I drove across the Interstate bridge, and in on Union to Swan Island.  There was a dark perimeter road around the airport.  I parked a little way away from the lights of the terminal.

We ended up necking instead of watching planes.  And so it began.  I took Shirley to the movies then out for hamburgers a couple of times.  She asked me to go to the Class of ’40 senior ball in April, which I did.  That sort cooled my relationship with Elaine for a time.  When I walked into the senior prom with Shirley on my arm, Elaine sort of glared at me and her manner was a bit icy when I danced with her later.  Shirley assumed we were “going steady” but I did not.  I continued to regularly see Pat Cross and some others, but I did continue to date Shirley from time to time.  That full figure of hers was a definite attraction.

Getting a Second Chance with the Navy

One afternoon sometime around my birthday in March when I turned eighteen, I came home from work and found Richard stretched out on my (our) bed upstairs.  His suitcase and a box of things he had at college were on the floor.

“Dick,” I said in surprise, “What the hell are you doing home?!  You flunk out or something?”

He grunted and swung his feet down to sit on the side of the bed.  “No,” he said morosely, making a wry face, “the money ran out.  I had a part time job at the Common building doing dishes at meals that was keeping me going.  They fired me when I got caught playing patty cake with one of the waitresses.  Let that be a lesson to you—do what you want to have funk, but don’t get caught.”

“What you gonna do?”

Dick heaved a long sigh.  “Well, I thought it over on the bust on the way home.  With that war in Europe being what it is, I’m going to join the Navy.  We are going to get into it sooner or later and I sure as hell don’t want to get drafted into the Army like Dad did during the World War.”

“The Navy?!  Well, good luck, Buster.  They turned me down last year, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, but you have that tooth missing and I have a perfect set of teeth.  Not even a cavity in my head.”

“You got nuthin’ but a cavity in your head,” I retorted, otherwise you would not have gotten caught playing around with that waitress.  I hope she was worth it!  You join the Navy, you’ll do something dumb, maybe even in boot camp, and get thrown out!”

That scheming, calculating look that I knew so well came into Dick’s eyes.  He smiled to himself and got off the bed.  As he went by on the way out he said, “We’ll see, flea-brain, we will see.”

Dick borrowed three dollars from me the next morning and caught the bus to Portland.  When he came home for supper, he proudly announced that he had been accepted and would be leaving for Navy boot camp in San Diego in about ten days.

Then he turned to me.  “By the way, numb nuts, when the yeoman at the recruiting office filed my papers, he found yours in the file next to it form when you were turned down.  He showed it to the chief petty officer in charge and they told me they are taking a lot more people now and that you could go with me if you still want to sign up.”

“You’re pulling my leg!”

“No, no bull.  It’s the god’s truth.  All them in the morning if you don’t believe me!”

Getting a Second Chance with the Navy

One afternoon sometime around my birthday in March when I turned eighteen, I came home from work and found Richard stretched out on my (our) bed upstairs.  His suitcase and a box of things he had at college were on the floor.

“Dick,” I said in surprise, “What the hell are you doing home?!  You flunk out or something?”

He grunted and swung his feet down to sit on the side of the bed.  “No,” he said morosely, making a wry face, “the money ran out.  I had a part time job at the Common building doing dishes at meals that was keeping me going.  They fired me when I got caught playing patty cake with one of the waitresses.  Let that be a lesson to you—do what you want to have funk, but don’t get caught.”

“What you gonna do?”

Dick heaved a long sigh.  “Well, I thought it over on the bust on the way home.  With that war in Europe being what it is, I’m going to join the Navy.  We are going to get into it sooner or later and I sure as hell don’t want to get drafted into the Army like Dad did during the World War.”

“The Navy?!  Well, good luck, Buster.  They turned me down last year, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, but you have that tooth missing and I have a perfect set of teeth.  Not even a cavity in my head.”

“You got nuthin’ but a cavity in your head,” I retorted, otherwise you would not have gotten caught playing around with that waitress.  I hope she was worth it!  You join the Navy, you’ll do something dumb, maybe even in boot camp, and get thrown out!”

That scheming, calculating look that I knew so well came into Dick’s eyes.  He smiled to himself and got off the bed.  As he went by on the way out he said, “We’ll see, flea-brain, we will see.”

Dick borrowed three dollars from me the next morning and caught the bus to Portland.  When he came home for supper, he proudly announced that he had been accepted and would be leaving for Navy boot camp in San Diego in about ten days.

Then he turned to me.  “By the way, numb nuts, when the yeoman at the recruiting office filed my papers, he found yours in the file next to it form when you were turned down.  He showed it to the chief petty officer in charge and they told me they are taking a lot more people now and that you could go with me if you still want to sign up.”

“You’re pulling my leg!”

“No, no bull.  It’s the god’s truth.  All them in the morning if you don’t believe me!”