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Speaking of holidays, as I was in my last article, brings back memories of
other outstanding days not necessarily designated as holidays, but significant
anyway. December 7th 1941, was pre-eminently such a day. Unlike the King of
England who became convinced that he had charged with the cavalry at the battle
of Waterloo, I have not fantasized any personal participation in the events
if for no other reason than that I wasn’t old enough to take part in them at
the time.
At the same time my ears always perk up at the mention of the 7th, and it is
of course one of those days, like Kennedy’s assassination, where you can
always remember just where you were when you heard the news. I was at a friend’s
house with the radio going when the announcer broke into the broadcast with the
news. I went home with this interesting piece of information for my family,
but they had heard about it. My parents weren’t happy, but they had the
consolation of knowing all their children were too young to fight. So they took
things calmly. A day or two later, though, I learned that a real war had
started. We kids were walking with my mother past the IRT (subway) powerhouse on
East 180th St. There was something new there. A soldier was standing outside
with his bayoneted rifle at port arms. He was a black man and he was in full
combat gear -- steel helmet (WWI type), gas mask on his chest, puttees, web
belt, everything. One good look at him and I knew that that powerhouse was
safe, and anybody who interfered with it was very definitely not. I can see
that man today.
The war wasn’t neglected at school either. The bombs at Pearl Harbor had
hardly stopped falling before we were learning songs like “Remember Pearl Harbor”
and “We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again” for the annual Christmas
pageant, I believe, which was going to be patriotic as well as religious this
year.
With this kind of inspiration being furnished, the war continued, pretty
poorly at first, when we had to surrender at Bataan and the British lost
Singapore, but improving later when the Marines landed on Guadalcanal in August and
North Africa was invaded in November. There was one mysterious event -- the
Battle of Midway. Apparently the U.S. did too well in that one and the
Administration decided to suppress the news of it so as not to encourage complacency
among the public and cause them to slacken their support of the war effort.
The news of the battle wasn’t actually forbidden -- I remember seeing a
headline about it in the New York Sun -- but after one day it just tended to
disappear and go unmentioned, to the extent that when a chronology of the war was
printed on V-J day, Midway was still missing. Later the secret came out.
After all no one really wanted to mislead the public, or at least not
permanently. Temporary doesn’t count.
Drives were popular activities for kids to get into, mainly for the
collection of old metal. That was okay, everyone knew that you melted the stuff down
and then it could be used to make new guns or ammunition or whatever. This was
quite within our comprehension, although since we lived in an apartment
district, we couldn’t come up with the mountains of scrap out of attics that were
shown in magazine stories. The drive that puzzled me, as it does to this day,
was the one to collect fats. Fats were crucial to the war effort. Drain off
your frying pans, girls, and save the leavings for Uncle Sam. That was the
message, but the role of fats in war still eludes me.
The war filled the papers, the radio, and most of all, the movies. The first
ones I remember seeing were “Air Force” with John Garfield, and ”Wake Island”
with Paramount’s permanent troupe playing the Marines. Paramount kept this
group on reserve for military assignments as needed, with Veronica Lake added
to the cast if a woman was absolutely necessary. Warner Brothers had a
similar stock company. It was relaxing to attend their movies: their faces were
familiar. So were their plots and dialogue.
There were real heroes as well as movie heroes for us to look up to. Colin
Kelly was the first, the Army flier who crashed his plane into the battleship
Haruna. It turned out he actually didn’t, but he apparently tried. The next
name I remember was John Basilone, who won the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal.
As I recall, some reporter suggested that maybe the Administration had been
looking for a New Jersey hero and Basilone filled the bill, but after all he
was a Marine gunnery sergeant and fighting was his métier. He kept it up for
the rest of the war until his luck finally ran out at Iwo Jima.
We heard of others too, mostly fliers. In the Pacific there was Dick Bong
and Joe Foss, in Europe, Gabreski from Long Island and a man named Martini..
Among the commanders, the most famous were Jimmy Doolittle and Curtis LeMay. In
the rank and file a boy named Kelly from Pittsburgh made a name for himself,
along with Charley Shea from the Bronx, both foot soldiers.
The giants were Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, who held the world in their
hands and struck matches off it for lighting their smokes. Hitler and
Mussolini had been reduced to the size of ants scurrying around the kitchen floor
trying to avoid the cook’s fatal foot. Below the leaders’ level there were the
generals and admirals, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Marshall, Nimitz, Halsey,
Montgomery, Zhukov, et al. They all got on the cover of Time, which even found room
for the enemy, in the person of Rommel. Then Churchill said nice things
about him in the House of Commons. It was no wonder Hitler later forced him to
commit suicide. He could see who was the people’s choice as his replacement.
I’ll summarize my Pearl Harbor phase with a verse I wrote a few years ago
when a crowded hospital emergency room reminded me of war movies:
There was always an actor named Richard JaeckelSo Errol wiped out a division
Who joined up as a new recruityAnd Tyrone an army or two
Just in time for the next debacleWhile over each town Spence’s bombs came down
Where he died in performing his duty.On the insidious Nazi crew.
Then his buddies all swore to avenge himAnd the war went on as before
And to wipe out everything GermanWith all its uproar and commotion
Oh you’d better retreat from the movie eliteWhile Paramount ruled on the shore
When on such revenge they determine.And Columbia was the gem of the ocean.
We kids were in every campaign
Altho’ it was only vicariously
Till at last led on by John Wayne
We emerged from it all victoriously!
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