At eighteen I enlisted in the active reserves, completed one semester at the University of Pennsylvania, and went on active duty in the United States Army. I was not physically active as a growing boy; my first exposure to serious, heavy manual labor was in basic training in the army. My back hurt. My unit served in Leyte and Luzon in the Philippines. Though we were settled into sedentary work in a medical laboratory at Santo Tomas University in Manila, my back pains became worse and my left leg throbbed with pain, so that I found it more comfortable to work while hunching forward and keeping the leg bent. Perhaps it was the long hours of sitting on a stool peering into a microscope that aggravated the back; I do not know. The underlying cause, spinal tumors, was not diagnosed until years after I left the army. In September 1945 I left Manila for San Francisco on a hospital ship of wounded heroes. This story is about my return home.
We sailed across the blue Pacific. It was not luxurious – I was an enlisted man – bunk beds, restricted to enlisted areas and so on, but there were plenty of good books in the library and plenty of time to read them all day up on the deck, guys to talk to, flying fish, hot meals. In the evening one could sit alone back aft on the deck, listening to the drone of the motors and watching the long fading trail of phosphorescence stirred up by the propellers. It was a time to stretch out and relax.
Almost a month later and one day out from San Francisco, a squadron of navy fighter planes dove at us, looped the loop, roared low over the sea, and buzzed our deck wiggling their wings. We packed along the rails, roaring in enthusiasm. I loved the show. It was so good to be coming home! The planes flew off and we settled down to enjoy the warm fog-free afternoon. The next day we saw land. We awoke to find the ship adorned with all her flags. Several Navy vessels, flags flying, came out to escort us home. As we approached San Francisco, two boats motored along close beside us, one on each side. Their rails were lined with young women in bright clothes, waving scarves, calling and talking to us across the waters. The girls smiled and laughed. They were beautiful. A navy band struck up. The squadron of planes returned and roared around us, climbing, diving, flipping over and buzzing the gay party. The ships fired flares and signal guns. We were singing to the songs of the navy band, we were shouting and waving to the girls. I began to cry. I looked, ashamed, at those beside me; they were crying too. As we passed under Golden Gate Bridge, its walkway lined with waving pedestrians two hundred feet above, the bridge fog horns signaled the chorus to begin. We entered San Francisco harbor. Moored ships blew their horns, factories tooted, and the band played on. It was all I could bear.
A line of busses awaited us at the dock. The seriously wounded were transferred in litters and ambulances to Letterman General Hospital. The rest of us, the ambulatory, piled into the busses, half-filled with the waiting girls. Close up, the girls looked even better. Real American girls! We took a tour of San Francisco, the hills, the houses, Chinatown, the business streets, the people – American people. They sure looked good! Then to Letterman General for all of us. Our duffel bags were waiting for us, but first to the cafeteria! The rules of the cafeteria were that they were open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You could have anything you wanted, as much as you wanted, whenever you wanted it. I drank fresh milk, cold milk shakes, ate some steaks, ate lots of baked potatoes – real potatoes, not dehydrated potato powder to be mixed with water, ate fresh eggs – real eggs, not dry, powdered eggs. The pity was that there is only so much you can eat. Each of us had a bed waiting, with a mattress and clean, white pressed sheets. I can still recall, now some fifty-six years later, lying in my clean cool bed and saying to myself, “This has been the most beautiful day of my life. Don’t forget it! Never forget how good a baked potato tastes, a fresh glass of milk, an egg.” The simple pleasures, if appreciated, will give us a life of happiness. But lying in my bed, another thought disturbed me, one that I was to have many times in the next few months: “I don’t deserve all this. But a lot of these guys do, and more. A lot of them have left parts of their anatomy in the Philippines.”
A week later I was on a hospital train headed for McGuire General Hospital in Richmond Virginia. Beds lined the cars of the train, with each bed aligned by an oversized window from which, lying in our beds, we could look at the passing countryside – the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Great Salt Lake, the Rockies, the great plains of Nebraska and Iowa, and then Chicago, Pittsburgh, and south to Richmond. The scenery was spectacular, but what lasts in my memory was the people, the welcoming committees. In America, everything is organized. I don’t know whom to thank for the welcoming committees; no doubt there was some organization to be thanked. Out in open lands, or in fields of corn, our train would slow down and stop at some little town. Townspeople, usually older people, would be waiting along the track. Men, perhaps veterans of World War I, would be standing at attention, saluting; women, with their hands on their hearts. They would come on to our train with offerings: cookies they baked, fruit, decks of cards, newspapers, magazines, books. They would sit on our beds and ask what they could do for us, could they write to our loved ones, could they say a prayer with us, or for us? They would chat for a few minutes and thank us and depart. As the train speeded up to the next little town, I would hide my face and smother my emotions. It happened once or twice every day across the three thousand mile breadth of our land.
Richmond treated her visiting soldiers like guests in her home. Girl’s schools invited us to afternoon teas and dances. Docents took us to the art museum, and history buff guides took us to Civil War battlegrounds.
McGuire General Hospital cared for soldiers with every sort of injury, from mentally stressed-out to metal plates where the skull used to be. But the hospital appeared to specialize in prostheses for missing parts. I do not know this to be a fact; I only infer it from the prevalence of soldiers on crutches, in wheel chairs, or with arms missing. A man in my ward had lost both his legs. He was told that he would not be discharged from McGuire General Hospital until he learned to dance on two artificial legs, to run – and fast – and to walk up and down a flight of stairs without touching the railing. At that point he could run, but not fast, and he was afraid to walk down stairs unsupported. I left the hospital before he was discharged. Another young man, one I became friendly with, had been a student of classical piano. His right arm had been blown off. He was struggling to master the Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, a piece Ravel had written for a pianist who had lost his right arm in World War I. My friend was having a hard time dealing with the impossibly difficult passages Ravel had written to deceive the listener into believing he was hearing two hands. My friend was having an even harder time dealing with the recognition that life as an instrumental performer was over for him. When we had a movie in the hospital theater, it was a scene that I suppose is only equaled at Lourdes. One could hardly get into the theater or to a seat, for the wheel chairs in the corridor outside, the crutches and artificial legs protruding in the aisles and between the seats.
Army doctors performed several horrible tests on me – the myelogram was memorable – but were unable to discover the source of the problem. A few months later I was discharged. I was a civilian, home again.
