On January first when we celebrated the arrival of the 21st century, there were some commentators who said that few, if any, veterans of World War II would survive the first decade of the new century. That view is entirely reasonable. The last shots were fired in that war in August, 1945. That was 57 years ago.
When the fateful meeting took place between General MacArthur and the representatives of the Imperial Government of Japan on the decks of the Battleship Missouri, I was just 23 years old. Nearly all the soldiers I knew fell in the 22 to 26 year range. A soldier who was 29 or 30 years of age was usually addressed as “Pop.” So if you do the arithmetic, a person of 23 years in 1945 will soon be 80 years of age. The life expectancy for 80 year olds is off the charts in life insurance companies so it is reasonable to conclude that not many of us will indeed, survive the first decade of the 21st century.
These are facts of life. There is no need to feel sorry for this state of affairs. Most of us never expected to live this long. On the contrary, most combat soldiers, sailors and airman expected the Grim Reaper to come calling before they hit 25 years of age. So in that respect, all the added years have been a bonus.
On top of all that, it is important to recall that what Tom Brokaw has called “The Greatest Generation,” have seen things and events that would be considered fantasies when the World War II men were teenagers. In my case, I saw a bit of the United States, a lot of North and Central Africa and more than enough of Italy. Seeing how other people lived was very interesting to me. In the 38 months that the United States Army considered me one of its soldiers, I had the opportunity to make new friends from all over this country and our allies.
The pay was not so great and the food and living arrangements, called “rations and quarters,” left a lot to be desired. But to a fellow in the early part of his twenties, it was acceptable because there was no alternative. If the food was not to your liking, there was no restaurant nearby that would make you feel better. That’s the way things were and it provided opportunities for griping, which is one of the main activities of military men.
It is important at this point, to call attention to the fact that my remarks have to do with the enlisted ranks, not officers, who entered the service by being drafted or by enlistment. I leave out the so called lifers who joined the military services and expected to stay until they became pension eligible. These thoughts have to do with citizen soldiers who were determined to return to civilian life as soon as the military services would discharge them. Lifers are a different kettle of fish.
All of this comes to mind now with the patriotic display of flags that has occurred since September 11th. It is to be noted that drivers of gas guzzling SUV’s seem attracted to the idea of having an American flag affixed to one of their rear windows. There may be a perverse message there. One of the obvious reasons we are involved in the problems of the Middle East has to do with our outrageous consumption of oil resources. And of course, SUV’s contribute mightily to that problem. Flying a flag out one of the rear windows doesn’t improve mileage or help this matter at all.
In 1942 and the rest of the war years, there was genuine patriotism evident throughout the United States. It was more than flying a flag out of rolling gas hogs. People who were not free to join the military due to age or to family situations, often went to work in defense industry jobs. My brothers worked their own normal jobs during the day and in the evenings, they worked switching trains at Union Station in St. Louis.
In World War II, citizens took the war very seriously because they knew that many would be called to bear its burdens. There were not many complaints about why the Army was not pursuing some military activity; people knew that tomorrow they could be a part of that Army. What I’m trying to say is that there is a distinct difference between the patriotic feelings of United States citizens in the Second World War and the patriotic display of the flag as seen today. I am fully aware that that war ended 57 years ago and things change – but not always for the better. Well, so be it.
In the current Middle Eastern problem, the volunteer Armed Forces are out there to be followed in news accounts. The United States Government is saying there will be no need for rationing of gas or rubber or sugar or anything else. Certainly there will be no need for a tax increase to pay for the conflict’s heavy expenses. Quite to the contrary, George Bush is still calling for tax decreases on top of the one he pushed through Congress last year. Something is badly wrong with Bush’s thought processes.
On some occasions, my family and friends have asked me to comment on various aspects of my life as a soldier. I never fully responded to their requests. There are some factors that militate against such recall. As I write today in 2002, it marks the 60th anniversary of my enlistment in the American Army. That is a long time if a person attempts to recall events of more than a half-century ago. Some I remember and others were more of less deliberately never placed in my mind’s memory bank. In those cases, I have no desire to revisit those memories. War is a brutal business. Men, women and children get killed in a mindless fashion.
Eric Bogle is a Scot who emigrated to Australia in the 1970’s. He has written two songs having to do with the savagery in the First World War. In 1914 and the rest of the years of World War I, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, urged an attack on what he called, “the soft underbelly of Europe,” that is in the Straits of Gallipoli. The job fell to Australian troops. Bogle’s “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” is set in the failed Allied campaign against Turkish forces at Gallipoli. There are these lines:

“Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I woke in my hospital bed
I saw what it had done and I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying.”

In Bogle’s “Green fields of France” having to do with the British Expeditionary Force, we find these lines about a young Irishman:

“I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen,
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or, young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?”

My point is that war is grim business. Old soldiers, aside from those who hang out around American Legion bars, seldom discuss the war. Jim Lyons was my neighbor for 30 years. He flew for the South African Air Force out of a base in Foggia, Italy. After Jim was homebound by Parkinson’s, his wife, Dorothy, told me of his service with our ally, the South Africans, and that he was based in Foggia, in 1943 and 1944 and perhaps 1945. She told me of this fact only two or three years before Jim’s death. I spent those months and years in 1943 and 1944 with the U. S. Army Air Force in an Allied base at Cerignola, only 20 or 25 miles from Foggia. In 30 years, Jim and I never discussed our service in Italy. It was not forbidden territory by any means. The war was over and Jim and I had other things to talk about.
When I do reach back into those years, it is almost inevitably for a humorous episode. I think about men I knew who have died and others who have moved and thus, the ties have been broken. If I saw one of them now, I suppose I would hug him, but the odds of seeing someone from the 1942 to 1945 period are pretty remote.
All this leads to the thought that some day – or any day, I may cash in my chips of give up the ghost. I’m not quite sure what the ghost expression means, but Protestant preachers refer to it a lot, so if its alright with Billy Graham or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, it must be a divine thought. Who am I to argue?
When I leave, I hope as Eric Bogle says in “Green Fields of France,” that in the transaction, “I hope you died well and I hope you died clean” is applied to me. All things being equal, that’s about the best anyone can hope for. In anticipation of the inevitable, my wife Judy and I have made arrangements with the Ippolito Funeral Home in Summit, N. J. for a prepaid funeral.
It happened this way. In early 1996, one of our friends and an AT&T co-worker and a Navy veteran of World War II, died. He was buried with all the trimmings. Judy and I attended the wake where friends and family crowded around to express condolences to the widow and children. The Navy guy is lying there in an open casket while all the tearful condolences are expressed to everyone. Were he alive, the old Navy guy would have croaked at this scene.
Leaving the funeral home where the wake was held, we thought this is absolutely not for us. No way, no how! So on our way home we stopped to talk to one of the Ippolito family. Before long both of us had signed up for prepaid funeral services costing about $1350. They will pick up the corpse, gift wrap it, and take it to the crematorium and handle other details. And, they pay us interest on our investment. By the end of 2001, there was something like $1660 in the account. The prepaid funeral plan is doing remarkably well when you look at Lucent, AT&T and other losers in my modest stock portfolio.
With the funeral taken care of, one item remained to be dealt with. In both of our cases, there will be no preachers, organists, flowers and other expenses to bother the surviving spouse. So both of us have a clause in our wills setting aside $5000 for the purpose of having a cocktail party. If I have anything to say about it, champagne will be served for our grand farewells. The reader may not agree with this approach, but I think a cocktail party is infinitely better than a tearful wake and a funeral service.
So that’s what will be done when death catches up to us. My hope is that as the champagne works its wonders, that guests will say, “He went out in style.”
Now let’s go on to two post-war programs having to do with buying a house and attending college under what was known as the “GI Bill.” For those new to those terms, G. I. are initials for “General Issue” which represents any standard Army issue. It embraces clothing, equipment, food and everything else, including soldiers who were called “G. I.’s.”
When the war ended in 1945, home construction had not taken place at all since 1941. Prior to that time, the last gasps of the Depression had severely limited residential home building. So when military people came home, they found that supply was desperately trying to catch up with demand. In the meantime, homeowners who might be persuaded to sell, asked what we thought were outrageous prices. They could do that because for several years they had the only game in town.
So some bystanders would say to us, “Why don’t you use the GI Bill to buy a house?” The answer is simple. Under the GI Bill, the United States Government limited its participation to guaranteeing the mortgage. But the U. S. Government would do so only on loans of four percent interest or less. In a town like St. Louis with demand being great, banks wanted at least five per cent interest. The simple fact was that unless your grandma had a lot of extra cash, G. I. loans did not happen all that often. I ate lunch and spent leisure hours with at least six other veterans. None of us lived in his own home. One fellow later married a lovely girl and moved in with her and her mother in a house owned by her mother – but that doesn’t count. The GI Bill for houses was not a snare and a delusion but it was never intended to provide housing for discharged G. I.’s. Only the loans were guaranteed at 4% interest.
So the housing issue got settled by my transfer to Kansas City where AT&T gave its business to a bank that finally gave me a loan with a six per cent interest rate. It was a small house but new, without much of a lawn. And so life goes on.
Now a question asked shortly after the war was why don’t you guys go get a college education under the GI Bill. That is also a reasonable question which deserves a reasonable answer. And so I return to my six other returning G. I.’s whom I met at lunch and on social occasions. Not only did we fail to buy a house under the United States Government’s
G. I. Program, but not one of us said that this is our opportunity to earn a college degree. Not one.
There is a reason or two to explain that situation. Most, if not all, of the men I knew in the Army tended to live as though tomorrow would be their last day on earth. If you live with that mindset for three of four years, it is not easy to turn it off. Some men gambled all their pay away because they might not be here tomorrow. When beer or whiskey occasionally became available, many men would drink themselves into a stupor. Not every man gambled or drank to excess, but many men had those tendencies – or if you like – failings. Returning to civilian life did not make those problems go away. And so it became very difficult to say that a man could put those feelings aside and undertake college studies. Some could but many could not. I understand those who could not very well.
A second reason for not grabbing the GI college offer had to do with the one-two punch that people of what Tom Brokaw calls the “Greatest Generation” had to take. First came the great Depression in 1929 followed by the World War II in 1941. During the Depression it was very difficult, or impossible, to land a decent paying job. In Harold Bauer’s Service Station where I worked, Mark, a Westminster College graduate, worked 60-hour weeks just like the other employees. (Westminster is the college at Fulton, Missouri where Winston Churchill made his famous Iron Curtain Speech.) My father cleaned out sewers and old fishponds to bring home a few dollars. And I helped him.
The point is that money was tight. A fellow who had two or three dollars in his pocket was in good shape. Obviously, that put a large crimp in spending by teenagers, which I was. Dating a girl required planning on an evening that could be afforded. Marriage was out of the question in many cases. In another essay, during the war we all lamented the combat deaths of Bernie Wheeler and Dave Weiss, who worked with us in the AT&T office in St. Louis. At ages 27 or 28 years, neither one was married. It is reasonably certain that finances had something to do with that situation as both were good looking and decent men. The long and the short of it is that young men did not have the financial resources to enjoy what life had to offer during the Depression.
Financial resources had a lot to do with attendance at college under the GI Bill. As I remember it, the Bill paid for tuition at the school of your choice. That was a big load off the student. But housing was a different story. There was no help there as I remember it. For all the returning veterans, there were bills to be paid, rent that had to be accounted for and the costs of everyday living that ate up whatever income the
old-at-23 veterans could muster. Paying tuition was only perhaps 30% of the cost when a returning veteran took up studies under the GI Bill.
These same men were discharged from military services in 1945 and 1946. The vast majority of those men were in their early 20’s. What with the Depression and then the War, most of these GI’s wanted, for the first time, to live a little. Some got married. As a matter of fact, – lots of us tied the knot. Some went off in the woods where they knew that could not hear the command to “Fall Out.” Some elected to travel to places they had heard about but had never seen. In short, these Depression era soldiers wanted to cash in on the American dream that had been denied them for so long. They viewed the end of the war as a time to end their personal sacrifices.
More than anything else, these G. I.’s, old at 23 years, wanted to live a little. And why not? Perhaps these long delayed remarks will explain why the so called GI Bill resonated for a minority of returning veterans.
In this essay, I’ve probably said more about my own thoughts about military service than in any other essay. In a previous essay which had something to do with military service, I offered the thought that military service had nothing to do with medals won, campaign ribbons accumulated, missions flown or things of that sort. All those things are nice. It is good to reminisce about them.
In the end it seems to me that the opportunity to serve, the opportunity to deal with Hitler and Emperor Hirohito, are the important facts here. These dictators threatened my family and all other American families. And they threatened me. I am not an American Legion or a Veterans of Foreign Wars sort of person. I never was. I just thought that it was important for me to have a hand in the defeat of the Axis Powers. Sixty years after my enlistment, I’m glad that things worked out so that I could be there. And I am still here. This old soldier is well pleased.
I don’t go around saying, “Death, where is thy sting?” On the contrary, I’ve had a good and long ride and lots of laughs on the way. What could be fairer than that?
E. E. CARR
April 28, 2002
~~~
Ten years before the fact, Pop pretty much nailed how his own service would go. I’m pretty sure there were flowers there, though, so he fell a little short of 100%. Still pretty close!
I liked this one for the insights into the minds of the soldiers coming out of the war, and how even if the G.I. bill looked good on paper, the soldiers’ mindsets often just weren’t in the right place to capitalize on it.