Luncheons around this house consist primarily of foie gras and truffles. As I was consuming my sixth helping of truffles, news came over the radio and television that shocked me. It seems that Larry King, the ace broadcaster on the CNN network who does wide-ranging interviews, is now being sued for divorce by either his seventh or eighth wife. There are those of us who say that if you have had seven or eight wives, there is no point in counting any more. But the news broadcasters like to get things right.
Apparently the beef seems to be that Larry King, who is 76 years old, was sleeping with his wife’s sister. From what I can observe, Larry King is a busy man taping interviews with the likes of Levi Johnson, the young man who impregnated the daughter of Sarah Palin. But the news about a man sleeping with a woman is old hat. In the instant case, I have a more salacious story to offer you. For the last 14 months of my service to the Army of the United States abroad, I regularly slept quite openly with a male soldier from St. Louis, with the Army’s approval. His name was Sylvester Liss, a man who had achieved the rank of Buck Sergeant in the Army.
In Biblical times, Leviticus warned males such as myself, that sleeping with one another would lead to grave trouble and would prevent entry into heaven. But Sylvester and I ignored the warnings of Leviticus and slept together for the better part of 14 months. Unfortunately, this is not a totally salacious story but it is one of the happenstances that occur in the American Army.
In 1944, when I was finished with my detached service in Italy, the Army sent me back to my original unit, which was the Air Transport Command. The main base for African operations was located in a place called Accra, which is now the capital of Ghana. At that time, the country was called the Gold Coast. For much of the Second World War, our air force was forced to use a route across the Atlantic Ocean that contained many hops. It was a lengthy route, but judging by the results, it eventually got the job done.
And so it was that when I left Italy to go to Accra, I wound up in a barracks called G-17. From what I can retrieve from my faulty memory, there was a bed open near the exterior wall. So it was assigned to me. I suspect that the salacious nature of this essay will be doomed in view of the fact that it was a bunk bed and I wound up in the top bunk. The person in the bottom bunk was a fellow from St. Louis, also a buck sergeant called Sylvester Liss. It might be supposed that two fellows from St. Louis serving out their time in the army would have a merry time of it with felicitous feelings everywhere. But that was not to be the case.
Sylvester Liss was a loud man who had opinions on nearly everything. I soon came to be realize that he was a Neanderthal whose main strength was that he seemed to dislike almost everyone. But we were stuck together and so both of us tried to make the best of it.
Our initial meeting had occurred as I was preparing my C-47 to return to the factory which built it in 1935. I had been selected to be the aerial engineer on this flight. As I was preparing the airplane for the long flight across the South Atlantic and over the jungles of South America, I got to know Sylvester Liss somewhat better and increasingly I disliked what I had seen. Nonetheless, I knew that after we had delivered the airplane to the factory in California and I reached St. Louis, there would be a period of five days before I had to leave to return to my station in Accra. I told Sylvester Liss that in those five days, if he wished to send an uncensored letter to his wife, I would be glad to mail it. I also offered to go by his house to speak with his wife. Alternatively, Liss may not have wanted his wife to know of his circumstances in the army, so I specified that in that case I would say nothing. In the end, after a delay of three or four days, Sylvester Liss said that it would be appropriate for me to visit his wife and at this time he gave me her address. The flight took place and at the appropriate time I called Mrs. Liss and told her that I would be willing to come see her. She was quite warm and welcoming and so it was that on a cold December evening in St. Louis I went to see Mrs. Liss.
As it turns out, Mrs. Liss was somewhere around my age, which was then 22. She was a very bright person. She was well-dressed and she was a resident in her parents’ home. As I left the place where I found Mrs. Liss, I started to shake my head. How could a good-looking woman with a great deal of common sense wind up marrying a burly worker who was a loud-mouth Neanderthal? But I guess that questions like this have existed since the beginning of time and all that I could do was to simply ponder that age-old question.
So I returned to Accra and Sylvester Liss and we maintained our chilly relationship for the rest of our time there. Mrs. Liss had written Sylvester a letter from which he showed me two or three lines that thanked me for coming to see her. If Sylvester ever thanked me for going to see his wife, I cannot now recall that. Let us say that he did express some gratitude.
At the time that these events were taking place in 1944, it is my general belief that the general public assumed that everyone in the army or in the naval service regarded the other members as good buddies. May I assure you that that was not necessarily the case. The men who were involved in the Second World War were fulfilling their patriotic duty, but in no way did they dismiss their prejudices before they enlisted in the military. In my case, I did not like loud-mouth Neanderthals like Sylvester, but we had to put up with him until the peace accord was signed and eventually we could all go home. In other words, what I am trying to say is that everyone in the military forces was not best buddies of the man standing next to him.
After the war, I returned to St. Louis and I presume that Sylvester Liss returned to his job making Budweiser beer in St. Louis also. In that whole span of time of more than 65 or 70 years since then, I never called Sylvester and he never called me. And I assume that we were both happy with that arrangement. The point once again is that because men share the experience of military service, it does not make them best buddies or even half-best buddies. In the case of Sylvester Liss, even though we slept together for 14 months, I cannot say that I had any great affection for him.
One other occasion comes to mind here. As we were preparing to leave the Twelfth Air Force, an arrangement was made for some of us to spend a week in the capital of Eritrea, called Asmara. That was one of the territories that had been conquered by Mussolini. I went to Asmara with Ted Werre and Ralph Tuttle as my companions. Happenstance tended to bring us together. During that week of sort of furlough, we had several laughs together but that did not make us life-long friends.
Following the war, in about 1948, I acquired a beat-up De Soto sedan and set out with my new wife to tour the country. When we reached the Dakotas, I went out of my way to look up Ted Werre. We found him in a wheat field. The greetings were quite warm but it was fairly clear that Ted Werre wanted to get back to his work of tending to his wheat field and he did not really care how far out of my way I had come to visit him.
On another occasion, I was in Chicago on union business and I called Ralph Tuttle to see how he was doing. Ralph was cordial enough but it was clear that he was not going to join me to have a drink or two; mostly he wanted to get on with his life.
So you see, when men are thrown together, as in the case of the military services, they tolerate one another’s faults but do not necessarily become best buddies. In my own case, I suppose that I would make the world’s worst American Legionnaire. Often they are far from best buddies. For example, I was sleeping with Sylvester Liss in the upper bunk and he was in the lower bunk and for 14 months, we maintained a very chilly relationship. The chill was broken on pay day when the ration cards for beer were distributed and, in a moment of weakness, I had agreed to give my ration card to Sylvester Liss. I don’t regret that move because I don’t care for beer, but I would not want it to be misinterpreted as a sign of great buddyship. So sleeping together does not demonstrate great affection.
In the case of Larry King, who is alleged to be sleeping with his wife’s sister, about all I can say is that I don’t watch CNN and if he is sleeping with the wife’s sister, he must be commended for keeping it all in the family.
E. E. CARR
April 15, 2010
Essay 448
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Kevin’s commentary: I’ll be the first to admit that I subscribed at least in part to that particular fallacy. The media has certainly given me cause to believe that all soldiers are friends forever, but upon actually stopping to think about it that notion is pretty absurd. Some people just don’t get along. Moreover especially when it comes to people of different ranks, I believe that being friendly with one another is frowned upon.
Google tells me that old Sylvester has been dead for three years now. In fact, he died right about two weeks before this essay was drafted. I wonder — did Pop somehow learn of this, and that was his reason for writing it? Maybe Syl’s ghost stopped by New Jersey on its way up to heaven and reminded Pop that he existed.