This is the second chapter in the story of Dan Marshall. If you are interested, the first chapter can be found in the archives of June. As I mentioned before, this story is based upon a series of interviews conducted approximately two years ago. It took India, and a lot of spare time, to finally set it down in ink. Dan Marshall is dying. I am certain that he will be missed by all of Shutesville, and many places beyond.
"Introduction Reprise"
When I set off on this third Indian journey, I filled my pack with a well-honed collection of traveling essentials: light, rugged clothes, (with plenty of t-shirts for the heat), a mosquito net and repellant, a traveled pair of binoculars, digital camera, and an assortment of forward-thinking antibiotics and medications. I also packed a few things that I had never brought before, including a computer, and a thick legal pad filled with notes from my conversations with Dan Marshall. On the day of my departure, a cold February morning, I tucked the pad next to my laptop, the two forming a solid, flat surface, which rested firmly against the curve of my back.
Nearly three months into the travel, I have chosen Rishikesh, a small town on the banks of the Ganges, as the location to write this story about Dan Marshall. Rishikesh gained international fame in the 1960’s, Dan might say ‘notoriety’, when the Fab-Four paid a visit, staying at an Ashram that today borders on collapse.
Celebrities aside, the town is a renowned center for yoga; the various classes and yoga methods proliferating like the legions of endearing, miniature cows that amble down Rishikesh’s narrow streets. The same streets also host countless wandering Sadhus; saffron clad Hindu pilgrims who have renounced all their ‘worldly possessions’, but for a few belongings thrown over their shoulder, and a round, silver lunch-bucket that invariably hangs off their strong, seasoned wrists.
There is no direct link between Rishikesh and the stories of Dan Marshall, other than the surprisingly high concentration of beggars claiming schizophrenia; perhaps a small tip of the hat to Waterbury’s storied past. Still, there is something about this place that is conducive to writing. It may be the pure jade-like waters of the Ganga, flowing fast and cold, no more than a hundred miles from their glacier source. Or it could be the pervading, contemplative quiet; a rare and welcome change from India’s congested cities and towns.
This is the second story I’ve written beneath the spell of Rishikesh. Five years back, I started a story on my grandfather, Egmont Wennberg, the father of my father. I filled the piece with flashes of memory, stories, and impressions, many of which I had gathered from our long conversations around an evening meal, white wine at hand, the table invariably lit by candles. “Granddad” was still alive then, his much-loved presence strong and unbowed, despite the deep, bending curl of his bone-thin back.
The stories of Egmont and Dan do not easily conform to meaningful comparison. Their lives began oceans apart and followed different trajectories from there. I do take comfort, however, in the similarity of their perspectives; two old men taking the long view, not without hints of remorse, but still determined and hopeful, even after ninety years.
At one point early in my conversations with Dan, perhaps on the second or third Sunday, I scribbled a brief quote at the top of the notes. It read: “Let me tell it in my fashion.” I am certain that it was a reminder from Dan, perhaps a subtle admonishment, to sit back and allow the story to flow at his pace.
Throughout the first section, I ignored his advice, instead trading the narrative back and forth, moving from Dan’s childhood to mine. It seemed like the right thing to do, the proximity of our experiences providing a measure of time’s changes and constants. Now, however, with Dan about to enter World War II, I will heed his original request and allow the story to flow at his pace, words and ‘fashion’. Given the singular nature of Dan’s war experiences, this also seems to makes sense.
If the quantity of notes is any measure, Dan’s life and memory were profoundly influenced by his four brief years in the Marines. Of the more one hundred pages I gathered, spanning the full breadth of Dan’s life, at least half dwell on his experiences in the Pacific.
These stories take place on small, specks of land, little more than smudges in a vast swath of ocean blue, miniature stages for unimaginable concentrations of fire power. Dan tells the stories through the eyes of a Shutesville farm boy, his words peppered with metaphors and images from his native Vermont. The narrative is personal and the details, vivid; one man’s experiences lived close to the ground, from the malaria-infested swamps of Bougainville, to the hot, volcanic ash of Iwo Jima.
I cannot include all of Dan’s stories in this piece; there simply are too many. In selecting one story over another, I hope to provide a glimpse of Dan, the tall, lanky lieutenant, never quite sure of himself and not all that athletic, who somehow rose to the occasion time and again. And I hope to capture the collective terror, loss, and resilience of men, ordered to do the extreme; frequent images in Dan’s wide-ranging collage of war.
Two years is a long time to wait to write a story, and some nuances of our conversations have inevitably slipped from memory. In spite of times passage, however, I still retain many clear impressions from our Sunday afternoons. I know that Dan mostly let his words tell the tale, his body leaning deep into the armchair, legs propped on an aging, padded stool, hands resting at his side, cradling his tea, or reaching to cup the weight of his long, rectangular face. And, I remember the context; the patter of rain falling on a clouded window-box, the hollow of my own voice raising a question or two, and the shifting features of an old man, reaching back to a place, time, and experience that would forever change his life.
"A Shutesville Soldier"
On the day that Dan began his stories of World War II it rained. Thick gray clouds climbed down over North Hill as the rain mixed with fog, and our dirt road turned soft with mud. It was January; the fifty-degree days had long since lost their novelty as the last remnants of snow crumbled and melted. Everywhere I looked, a persistent, and dull brown.
I walked down to Dan’s house, picking my way through the sinking mud and gravel, trying to set aside nagging but useless frustration at Vermont’s wayward winter. Turning off the road, I climbed Dan’s narrow driveway, the two dirt streaks laced with sodden, brown grass, and made my way towards his sagging garage. Dan had laid a dark plank to the wide, wooden door, an improvised footbridge across pools of water that bounced with drops of rain.
I swung open the door, which leaned off its hinges, and wend my way through his dark garage, breathing in that same familiar smell; old, forgotten stuff, stacked in precarious piles, crowding the narrow alley to his entrance. Dan opened the kitchen door before I had knocked twice, offering a soft, aging palm as a greeting. “Well, how are you Marc?” he asked, and I gave him a brief run-down on my doings, talking long about the rain, which splashed against his roof with muffled clatter.
After gathering our tea, we settled in his living room, Dan in his chair, pulling at the collar of a weathered flannel shirt, and I on the Victorian couch, catching glimpses of my profile in the mirror across the way. Our conversation began slow as we cleaned up a few remaining details from his years as a teacher in Essex. Then, with warm January rain streaking down his windows, Dan spoke about his entrance into World War II.
“I was drafted in the summer of 1941, and I joined the Marines, but not because of the uniform.” he began. “I was twenty-four. I didn’t think we were going to war. I was just hopeful to be posted in an embassy overseas. I didn’t want to put my life on the line.”
“Boot camp was an interesting thing. I was sent to Paris Island, in Florida. I had been a Vermont farmer and I was glad of that. I’m all for hard training for someone being poured into the front line.”
“We had a belt-line; the boys gave a strapping to everyone who ran through. They enjoyed it; it’s what bonded them together. I had to go through once every mail call. If they had known I was a former teacher, I don’t know what would have happened. Most of the boys in the marines had been expelled from school and given a choice by the police.”
Dan’s voice dropped down, as he spoke again. “I’m sure those boys felt the brunt of the Japanese attacks.”
Dan pulled at the crest of his faded, worn overalls, which reached up over broad, curving shoulders. “A Lieutenant from Paris Island,” he continued, “recommended me for flight officer’s school. I didn’t ask to be, didn’t campaign for it. I passed all of the physical exams, but not the psychology exam. I wasn’t as aggressive as they might like. I wasn’t a pugilist on the ground, why be one in the air?” Dan asked, his question giving way to rain-filled silence.
“You know,” Dan said, “we’re surrounded by deer hunters here in Shutesville. I’ve shot more men and I’m not proud of it.”
“After completing boot camp, I received my orders from the Drill Instructor. I was put into the category of ‘Clerk Typist’ and sent to Quantico Bay, a quiet base just outside of Washington D.C. I was paid $21/month plus living expenses. Colonel Harold Campbell, also called ‘Spud,’ was in charge of Quantico. He was a graduate of Waterbury High School and a very experienced pilot, but he was a soak and a womanizer, so the Marines wouldn’t do a thing for him. They had to wait till he died off…”
“The first time I met Campbell I was shaking in my boots, standing at attention. Colonel Campbell asked me if I remembered his father. I said ‘yes,’ and he asked me what I remembered. Then he answered his own question. ‘Your father combed my father out for having butternuts too close to the chimney.’ Campbell paused for a second and then said- ‘No Drill Instructor could have done a better job than your father.’”
“I had heard that Campbell ate 2nd Lieutenants for breakfast,” Dan said, “but he was a gifted man as far as air goes, and he was good to me.”
Dan leaned back into the chair and pulled his long, creased fingers across a cheek thick with stubble. “Pearl Harbor changed everything. We lost half of the marine aviation in one day, and two weeks later we lost Wake Island. The Monday after Pearl Harbor, my typewriter was placed right outside the Colonel’s door. The order came down from Washington; we had to move all of our equipment out to San Diego. We had to decide who to fly and who to send via land.”
“We went to see Brigadier General Geiger. Colonel Campbell said ‘Follow me,’ and I followed, I didn’t walk beside him,” Dan said, straightening his back as he made his point. “Campbell reassured Geiger that I was to be trusted. ‘Dan is a well-educated Private,’ Campbell said, ‘and they’re going to be more of them; we’ve got to learn how to use them.’ He was representing me.”
“There were three of us; a Brigadier General, a Lieutenant Colonel, and Private Marshall. I listened in as they developed a five-paragraph order to move the base to San Diego. After they firmed up the order, I typed all night long.”
“We were trying to rescue Wake Island,” Dan explained, “but we were too late. It was too desperate; Wake surrendered. Geiger was later put in charge of the Okinawa Campaign and he was eventually invited by General McArthur to represent the Marine Corp at the formal surrender of the Japanese.”
Dan lifted a wobbling cup of tea to his lips and took a sip. “I also went to San Diego,” he continued, “spending six months in overcrowded quarters. We were living in a huge hanger filled with cots. The weather inside was not predictable from the outside. There were too many people living together, and not enough bathrooms.”
“Eventually, I was routed back to Quantico for Officers Training. I had been recommended for a Warrant Officers Commission, which was ranked with the Commissioned Officers. I was to be placed as a forward observer of an artillery unit, to help with the targeting, but headquarters refused; they said I had to go through regular officers training. I don’t know why,” Dan said, his voice trailing towards quiet.
“I traveled to Quantico by train in Officers Class; it took five days and four nights. The ride was comfortable and the government paid all the meals. Some businessmen and women wanted my company and tried to vet me about Pearl Harbor, but I kept my counsel. They were good people, just curious.”
“When I got to Chicago,” Dan said, as he reached to cradle his face, “I had to change railway stations. I carried this old O-3 rifle, it was made for World War I. I couldn’t figure how to get it into the limousine without splitting in a passengers face. In the end I put it in the trunk. From what I had heard about Chicago, I wouldn’t think about coming there without a rifle. It was the first time I held one of these things in my hands.”
“Quantico was another boot camp but with this difference. In Paris Island, the Drill Instructor swore at us. It could be pretty insulting. Here they didn’t swear, they just used a lot of shame, saying things like; ‘where did you go to school, Princeton?” Dan waited for my laugh and then joined in, his eyes narrowed and brows arched, lines upon lines scoring across his face.
“All of the officer candidates” he continued, “were recent college graduates and athletes. I wasn’t athletic, and I suffered from the heat. I hated it. I didn’t have enough command presence- the big bow-wow.”
“I wasn’t alone in this; one candidate committed suicide, and another, a fellow from Stowe didn’t make it through; I felt bad for him. But I didn’t want to wash out; there was no margin for error in the program.”
“In the end, I made it through, very generously. I was made a 2nd Lieutenant. I received a dollar when I was given my first salute. It was a military tradition.”
Dan leaned towards the dark gray light that pushed through the window box, the rain slowing to a drizzle. “I was assigned to New River, North Carolina,” he said. “When I got there, it was like a mud city. There were tents everywhere and a big mock up of a transport ship with a landing net.”
“We came down on a special train. There were fifty other Lieutenants and we each had to fill up our platoon. We rushed off the train to pick our men; it was like a slave market. I tried to pick out men who were savvy, intelligent. I also recommended one to two people for officers training.”
“I stayed at New River until it got cold. We did have a kerosene heater but it wasn’t enough. There was a Captain of Greek descent, and all he had was an overcoat. I thought I was a fair-haired boy because I threw my blanket on him one night, but I still get Christmas cards from his widow,” Dan said, stretching his palm to the air.
“There was a much more informal structure to the military than people realized,” he continued, “a lot of give and take. We had a hard ass major at training. I had my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t be taken in his regiment; you couldn’t work with him long and not feel that he was a pathological liar.”
Dan leaned back into his chair, eyes closed, as he struggled to recall the name of the officer; he was tired, his voice taking on a quiet rasp. “Oh yes, now I remember,” he said, opening his eyes again. “Behind his back we called him ‘Hank with Rank,’”
After jotting down the name, I closed the notepad and pulled on my coat. We chatted for a little while longer, sharing news about Shutesville and neighbors, before I rose to leave. Dan stayed deep within the chair, legs cast upon his stool, flashing a broad, appreciative, smile as I offered my hand. Then, I headed for the door, stepping back into the thick, wet January air.
The next time we met, winter had reasserted its tight, cold grip, freezing the ground hard and fast, leaving the road marked with deep, permanent ruts. Dan ushered me into his warm home, the wood-fired heat pouring from old iron grates. He lifted a tray that skittered with tea and saucers and moved to the living room, placing them on the low glass-covered table. Then, after we had each taken our seats, he picked up the narrative from the previous Sunday, as his unit is preparing for departure from North Carolina.
“The whole unit is full,” he began. “We’ve done the training, the landings, and the takeaways. I’m ready to go wherever the railroad will take us. My seatmate, Stevie, was a chemist from North Carolina. When we passed through New Orleans, he bought a bag of peanuts from a black girl, and they spilled. She fell into hysterics; it was a sign of death. He was a friend of mine,” Dan said, “and he was later killed on Iwo Jima.”
“By Christmas of 1942, we are back at Camp Elliot, in San Diego. I’m still impressed in memory at how many marines made the trip home for the holiday with all of their savings, for just one or two days. They were supposed to be back by midnight but I pushed the clock back by ten minutes. It was the last trip home for some of these boys.”
“We also continued with our training, including repelling. I wasn’t very good at it, but I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of my men. I didn’t want to do it again, but I vowed that I would jump. In the end, I did it.”
Dan paused, taking a long sip of tea, and clearing his throat. “We received our orders for departure in early 1943. We boarded a luxurious passenger ship called the Lurline. It was a fast boat. For the first two days and nights, we had a destroyer escort. After that, we zigzagged our way south.”
“We didn’t know where we were going,” he continued. “We tried to keep a log of our ship and bets were taken. Every officer had a map of the pacific and we knew we were going south, south, south, either to New Zealand or Antarctica. There probably were 3-5 thousand marines on that boat and most everyone shared a cabin. We got the most luxurious food; the old contract of the Madsen Line was still in effect and they had great cooks.”
“When a submarine was spotted, we had to report where our troops were. You could feel the depth charge deep in the hole. It was a terribly frightening feeling for a landlubber like me.” Dan said, and he paused to reach for a biscuit, taking a few crumbling bites, before resuming his story.
“The Marines,” he continued, “had a very old initiation for when we crossed the equator; it was called the ‘Order of the Deep’. A sailor, dressed as King Neptune, crawled out of the hoss-pipe; he looked like a pirate and his command presence was high. The uniform of the day was skivvies; all the men in the same underwear, with the nurses gathered on the upper deck.”
“A huge crowd gathered in the back of the ship,” Dan said, as he swept his arm through the air. “The Brigadier General was the first to be initiated; he had to guard an empty clothesline for 24 hours. For my initiation, I got a terrible paddling. I couldn’t sit for two days. Then I was told to climb a ladder and make out with the nurse commander like a teenager. She was old enough to be my mother, and she apologized to me for the embarrassment.”
Dan fell quiet for a moment, leaning to the side of his chair, and cupping his face with an outstretched palm. “I did look like a teenager,” he said, breaking the silence. “Behind my back, my men called me ‘the kid.’ I didn’t feel like a natural leader.”
“That day,” he continued, “the head nurse and I shared our fears and anxieties; we really did act like teenagers. She had been a nurse in World War I and she had seen it all before. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to happen all over again,’ she said, ‘young, graceful, dynamic young men are going to get maimed and killed.’”
“She came to my cabin at the end of the voyage. I admired that woman more than anyone else on that ship,” Dan said, as he reached for his tea.
“We arrived in Auckland on a Sunday morning. It was a beautiful harbor. There was a band to greet us, every player with some kind of disability; we later learned that all of the young men were in Africa fighting Rommel. There were only old people left and they were happy to see us, they felt more protected.”
“My best buddy, Chuck Taylor, was from Maine. He was a superb baseball player, and quick tempered. Most of my colleagues were star athletes, so every time we played volleyball, the opposition would concentrate on me. It bothered me. I felt a lot of shame. But Chuck told me, ‘Dan, we’d rather lose with you than win without you.”
“The island was filled with attractive young woman, and gray old men. One of the young women winked at Chuck, so we reported back to the other officers that the ‘natives were friendly.’ Chuck had his first love affair in New Zealand, with the help of his fellow officers.”
“He was the first of my friends to be killed.”
Dan paused to look out the window as a few idle flakes of snow dropped across the glass. “During my first liberty,” he continued, “I went to the library in Auckland. I met a woman from Fiji and called her three weeks later to see if she wanted to go to the movies. She said she couldn’t because she had too much Latin to translate, so I offered to help.”
“It was a translation of the Roman historian Livy and I made quick work of it. She was very surprised, announcing to her friends, ‘I can’t believe it, he can do it.’ Later I invited them all to the movies, one lieutenant with five women. I would have liked to tell my Latin professor,” Dan said, his face drifting towards a smile, “but nothing happened really…”
“New Zealand was a beautiful country,” he continued, “with an appealing climate. I felt at home; there were sheep as far as I could see. I had sheep in Fayston and I helped Edgar Emmit sheer his sheep. We were company to company, in small clusters, and the bugles would pass down the line one by one. The sheep would stop and listen to the music.”
“On a hot summer day, I’d take my weapon platoon and we’d practice taking out a machine gun nest. We did it the same way on Guam and Iwo Jima so it was valid training. I was all by myself, which helped me develop my control over the men. I remembered what a Colonel had once told me ‘A military troop is like a horse’ he said, ‘either you’re in charge, or you’re a victim.’ He saw the process.”
“We also made long marches, 25, 50 and 100 mile hikes. The New Zealand farmers would toss us apples as we marched by. One time we marched through this small town, about the size of Moscow,” Dan said, referring to a small collection of homes and businesses, two miles north from Shutesville. “The town had a nursing home and all of the residents came out and applauded.”
“Due to my upbringing,” Dan continued, “I was made the liaison officer to two farmers where we were doing our training. We used to have to knock down their fences during our night maneuvers. When I got to their door, there were two dusty scalps of the Maori posted just above the entrance.”
“One of the farmers was beaten up, he had fallen off a hay wagon, so I offered to help around the farm. It was the first and only time I ever milked a cow from the left side,” Dan said, and he gave a brief, quick, laugh.
“I also proposed to help mow the hay with their horses. If anyone in Shutesville could pitch loose hay, it was me. I was tall and lanky and always looking for loose snakes to push up to my brother and frighten him. I went over early the next morning and the horses sensed I wasn’t a stranger, so I led them into the fields. I was very proud of the way I was cutting hay.”
“Later, my men woke up and saw me leading the horses and cutting hay. They were all impressed, saying, ‘my god, the kid can do something.’ By showing them I could run a pair of horses, it gave me a big boost.”
“Our time in New Zealand was just about over. I knew it would happen,” Dan said. “Some night trucks would come and take us to Auckland to board a ship, and that’s what happened. On the night of our departure, the two old farmers heard the clatter and brought us fresh milk. All the Lieutenants signaled to the Captain that they were all there. It was the last fresh milk that some of them ever had.”
As Dan finished his stories from the island, I glanced up at the clock, the narrow black hands magnified by a curving glass cover. Two hours had passed, quicker than usual, lost to the flow of his narrative. I rose from the couch and thanked Dan, making plans for our next visit on the following Sunday.
Two weeks passed before I could make it down to his house again. In the interval, several storms had swept across our hill, leaving thick blankets of white that rose and fell with each boulder, hill, and cleft of grass. I walked down our road, taking in all of the sharp, blinding, white, feeling a strange sense of reassurance; Vermont could still produce winter.
I reached Dan’s house, welcoming the moist warm air that rushed through as I opened his door. Dan sat at a small, speckled linoleum table, crowded with tilting piles of newspaper and mail that seemed ready to slip to the floor. He offered his hand, peering over a pair of reading glasses perched low on his nose. “I was just looking for a few articles,” he said, and he handed me a stack of paper, the first page titled “21st Marines: Recollections of the ‘The Kid’”
We retreated to his living room, tea in hand, and quickly settled into the next chapter of Dan’s stories; his first live combat on the Island of Guadalcanal. “It was not a hostile landing,” he began, “but there were air-raids. There was a lot of confusion. Half of the men were in the boat, and half in the landing net, and there were Jap planes flying overhead. We landed at this native village in a pelting rainstorm. Men rushed without orders for the chapel, without permission, and I worried all night long that the church would be hit.”
“I was glad I was distracted from the bombing,” Dan continued. “We built our home in a coconut grove, dug slit trenches and made showers. We all got jaundice and nutrition was poor. My friend Chuck dropped from 170 pounds to 95. But we were lucky to have things to do. We patrolled the beach very heavily and we made patrols inland as well. There were other men who were just waiting. The burden was heavy on the officers.”
“On one patrol, I got way inland and came to a native Chimaro village. I gave the natives everything I had except for my field glasses. The head of the village wasn’t pleased. He patted me down; he wanted my field glasses. When he found them, he gave them to another villager who looked through the reverse end and was delighted,” Dan said, as his eyes pulled tight, and a smile flashed across his wide mouth.
“I was shot at on that patrol,” Dan continued. “As Churchill once said, ‘nothing will clear your head like being shot at.’ It clears your brain fast.”
Dan paused to take a sip of his tea, lowering the cup before he continued. “We were on Guadalcanal for about six months, until we received orders to go to Bougainville.”
“On the way to Bougainville, my friend Herb, who did live a full life, was on a ship that was hit by a torpedo. He had a life preserver and everything went as we had been taught; ‘go to near end of ship and jump off.’ I was in charge of a rescue boat and I pulled in the hard-ass sergeant from training camp; I grabbed him by the hair. When I pulled him into our boat, I said ‘Welcome aboard sir,’ and he answered, ‘Good to see you brother Marshall.’ Later, he’d tell a formation that I’d saved his life. One of my friends, who also knew him, wasn’t as happy. He asked me, ‘Dan, why didn’t you hold him under?’ That’s all part of the informal side of the military,” Dan said, and he leaned back into the chair and crossed his legs.
Dan paused for a moment, allowing me time to scribble the last of the notes, before he resumed. “I had a new pair of boats, which I gave to Herb once we got back to the ship. A lot of the men had to land without equipment: no rifles, helmets or shoes. They had to wait until there were casualties and then they could be equipped.”
“The day before our landing, we were served steak on the destroyer. There was a lot of dark humor; we called it the ‘last supper.’”
Dan leaned forward as his voice dropped a notch closer to quiet. “We went in two days after the initial landing. Our orders were to put in an airfield on very swampy land. That first night on the island was tragic for our company.”
“When we were in New Zealand, Chuck Russell and I had traded our liquor for two jungle hammocks. The two of us hung our hammocks in the coconut trees, but I hated being above my men, and I hated the smell of the hammock. It also was too short for me. During the night, I progressively moved to the ground into a slit trench.”
“The Japanese dropped a daisy cutter on our bivouac. I had my belt next to me and it was riddled with shrapnel. I flashed a light on my friend Chuck; he was dying. You could smell it, the blood flowing away, but he was peaceful. Sixteen of our company was killed that night,” Dan said, and then he fell quiet, as my pen and hand rustled across the half-filled page.
After a brief pause, Dan again picked up the narrative, leaning forward in his chair as he spoke. “A letter was circulated by the men that severely criticized Chuck as a bad officer. I was so hurt. I went to the Commanding Officer and asked to give up my commission; he had paid the price. I was wrong, but I was angry.”
Dan took another sip of his tea, cradling the saucer in his lap as he lifted the cup to his lips. “Bougainville is where “Hank with Rank” was arrested,” he continued, as he lowered the cup next to his chest. “The Colonel told him ‘You’ve raised hell from the front end of the line to the other end. I’m putting you under arrest.’ I was chosen to take his place. I’m in the midst of a patrol, my guns are firing, and I was ordered to report to the Lieutenant Colonel. I was put on his staff and promoted to captain.”
“Why was I chosen?” Dan asked, lifting his tea cup in the air. “Probably because of my special ability at map reading. I was made a Front Line Intelligence Officer. The Colonel knew I would keep my mouth shut. Patrols forward of the line, and engaging in hand to hand combat wasn’t my cup of tea, but fortunately the campaign was nearly over.”
“I learned a lot on Bougainville;” Dan said, “about the Marines, combat, and leading men. We were ordered to take a hill. The Japanese tended to defend the backside of the hill, not the front. There were some marine air troops who were fed into the line. The airmen suffered bad casualties; they were too aggressive, they wanted to do it in a day. During one of our first patrols, we found a wounded major who had been deserted by his men. We carried him out on a stretcher. On another of our patrols, I asked a marine to take up a position where there was a dead man. I made him go through that understanding.”
“I also was lucky,” Dan continued. “During one patrol, a Japanese grenade trickled through the mahogany forest and landed at my feet, but it didn’t explode; it was wet.”
“I must have saved one or two cigars from New Zealand, because I celebrated leaving Bougainville by smoking a cigar. We made it back to Guadalcanal.”
Dan was about to begin again, when the phone rang, a loud, jarring ring that pierced the afternoon silence. He lowered his tea and saucer onto the table and pushed up from the seat, gathering his balance, before crossing to the heavy, black phone. He spoke briefly, his back leaning over the antiquated phone, and then turned to me, saying, “I’m sorry Marc, I have some visitors who have come from Boston and are in the area. They would like to stop by.”
Before he turned his attention back to the phone, we made a quick plan to meet again. Then, after gathering my things, I walked back out into the cold Vermont winter, filled with mounds and mounds of searing, white snow.
We met, as planned, two weeks later, with February knocking on the door of March. The afternoon air, frozen and calm, bore more resemblance to winter than spring, but town meeting day was approaching fast, and the sugar-makers were tapping their trees, waiting for the first solid runs of sap. I joined Dan in his living room and he wasted little time picking up the narrative, back on the Island of Guadalcanal, preparing for his company’s next assault.
“At first we were told to prepare for a landing at Kevieng,” he said, clearing his voice as he began. “We prepared for a landing but then it was called off. Kevieng was the headquarters of the Japanese navy and it was too heavily fortified. We probably didn’t control the air well enough to make the landing.”
“Colonel Blake was very disappointed that we didn’t go through because his Brigadier General star depended on the campaign. Blake was in his mid fifty’s, and a real disciplinarian, but we respected him. He drove into camp one day and I didn’t have a mosquito net on my pith helmet. He gave me a berating.”
“Blake moved on and we got a Lieutenant Colonel Duplante, whose experience was with tanks. Intelligence Officers were fearful that he was losing his mind. He invited a private into the command tent, oriented him to the situation, and then asked him what he should do. Duplante had a Masters in Philosophy.”
Dan lifted a biscuit to his mouth, taking a large crumbling bite, before sweeping away a few crumbs that clung to thick, gray whiskers. “Once Kevieng was called off,” he said, as he continued chewing, “we began to prepare for Guam. It was an intelligence officer’s dream. We were taking back land that had been American. We went in by heavy amphibian tractor with aerial support, landing at H-Hour when the first tractor hit the shore. We didn’t know if the tractor could make it onto the coral reef so we had to delay until the highest tide of the month.”
“My battalion commander was a bit bold,” Dan continued. “He ordered the coxswain ahead. It was almost as dark as night from all of the rockets that were blasting. I sensed that we were in when the wheels of the tractor began rolling. We rolled right over a machine gun nest. My unit was trained enough to grab the Japanese prisoners, tie them up, and send them back to the amphibian. My battalion was lucky to get in without heavy casualties; the one to my left was held up by a cliff.”
“There is a lot of luck in war,” Dan said, and then he leaned back into his chair, running a hand across his heavy, wool sweater that folded towards his waist.
Dan took a sip of tea, before resuming. “Even though I was told to be cautious about my canteen, I never was good with water discipline. When my adrenaline began to flow, I had to drink. When I reached the Guam shore, I filled my canteen in a stream. When I went around a bush, there were two dead Japanese lying face down in the water.”
“The first two or three nights on shore were hellish,” Dan continued. “The Japanese on Guam were good fighters but not as disciplined as either at Iwo Jima or Bougainville. They were led by a friend of the emperor and they had heaps of tinned crab meat; it was a privileged assignment.”
“Each night, the Japs came out in big banzai attacks. They would get doped out on Sake and make an all-out attack. You could hear their yells, ‘Banzai’; ‘May you live a thousand years!’ We didn’t make night maneuvers; we just waited for the banzai attacks.”
“I had three men killed by their attacks. They fell asleep and the Japanese stuck them in the jugular. I felt terrible; I thought I could have done something and I vowed that I would be tough on Marines who were sleeping on duty. But, it’s all part of war,” Dan said, and he took another slow sip of tea, casting a glance out the graying glass of his window.
“I was soon taking patrols forward of our line with great, good, luck,” he continued. “Two patrols are merged in my memory. On one, I took five to seven of my men at least a half-mile into Japanese territory. I found out that the jungle wasn’t unlike the brush of Shutesville. You could use it for your advantage,” Dan said, and he raised a single stretched finger to the air. “We moved all around a Japanese stronghold. There was a Japanese soldier who was cracking open a coconut. With every blow of the hammer, we would take another move.”
“I was playing things to the limit, even though I was being called the ‘lots of luck captain.’ The men knew I was willing to risk my life.”
“Getting back through our own line was the most difficult. There was a code word. First, though, you had to get through the Japanese line.”
“I remember the hardest patrol I ever made. I couldn’t get through the Jap line. We tested it and tested it, but couldn’t find an opening. They didn’t know we were there. There were five or six of us on this patrol, and I had the men scattered apart, but coordinated. We moved towards the ocean, thinking we might be able to swim around. We were tired and scared and making a lot of noise; we were not at our best.”
“There were two Japanese machine gun nests, about as far as the little red house,” Dan continued, lifting his arm towards the old Favella residence, a small, dark house about twenty yards past his home. “Further on, there were American tanks. I came up with a plan. I told my men; ‘were going to hold our guns in the air and we’ll sing the Marine Corps song out loud.’ We walked right by the two Japanese nests, singing away, as we looked each other in the eye,” and as he said this, Dan raised both his arms in the air, clutching an imaginary rifle as his voice pushed towards laughter.
“We made it through,” he continued, the smile fading from his face. “The Japanese were disciplined. They didn’t want to give away their machine gun positions. When I crossed our line, I didn’t give away their position. That Japanese soldier saved my life and I hope he survived the war.”
Dan leaned back into the chair, lifting his legs back onto the stool. “One of my worst nights of the war took place on Guam,” he continued. “I knew something was afoot. The Japanese soldiers were being led by rope through the jungle; typical of a Banzai attack. I went into the ‘blackout tent’, a thick double canvass tent with lights to read maps. The telephone rang, and a major was dressing down a lieutenant. That’s when the Japs cut the line. Three or four bullets went through the tent and doused the light.”
“I buried my operation’s chart and had a hard time finding my way to the exit. I vowed right then and there never to get into another blackout tent again. The Japs had swept around the front lines. They had surrounded us. The headquarters took it much harder than the front lines.”
“We were a group of thirty officers and men. It was a real, real tough fight. The men had M1 rifles. I had one too. We were very lucky because we had one box of machine gun ammo, which fit the M1.”
“Eventually, we started to run out of ammo. I was ordered to send an ‘urgent message’. We used an Indian talker, a Navajo, but he wasn’t as skillful as some. He sent a message, letter by letter, ‘Ammunition gone, surrounded by enemy, need help.’ The reply came back- ‘Hold fast. Help is on the way.’ I was frustrated by this.”
“I was lying on the ground and this Japanese came up with a fixed bayonet. I fired right into his face. He toppled over. I didn’t dare get up to do the tout-de-grace. All night long I listened to him die.”
Dan paused for a moment to stroke his face, his curving fingers coming to rest just below a high, prominent cheek. “I had a hard time forgetting it,” he said. “Eventually I did, until Desert Storm. I had very little hangover from the war, but that one did stay with me.”
“About a week later,” Dan continued, “I got hit. The bullet went through my plate, two tins of crabmeat, which I shouldn’t have had, and came close to my heart. I withdrew and got back with my men. I was hospitalized on Guam. I had jaundice, malaria, plus the wound in my back. The ride to the hospital was awful; I was delirious, I thought the corpsman was a Japanese. There was nothing worse than the change of high fever; you knew that the chill was going to set in.”
“When I recovered, I was sent back out on patrols, but by that time, most of the island was under our control. We were just doing clean-up operations. The Colonel ordered me to take a squad and remove a nest of Japanese from a hill. On the way, I met a doctor who was attending several soldiers. He asked me for water, saying, ‘half these men are going to die if they don’t get water.’ I disobeyed my Colonel’s orders. We made it a water party, climbing a hill with a steep drop off, like North Hill,” and Dan lifted his arm towards Shutesville’s patron hill, which rose and fell in the distance.
“On another patrol,” Dan continued, “we were going to Patty Point, which was quite a distance from the front line. A non-descript Japanese soldier approached me and surrendered saying, in perfect French, ‘Je suis un prêt.’ (‘I am a priest’). He was a Jesuit, his name was Father Komatsu, and he told me that he thought there were many more Japanese soldiers and civilians who wanted to surrender. He had been sent to Guam to preach propaganda. He told all of this to me in French. I did write to him in Japan, one or two years later when I was working there, but he didn’t invite me to come and see him. I think he was fearful about what might happen to him and his family.”
Dan lifted a hand to his brow, pulling at the narrow crevice of his eye. It was nearing three and thin, yellow sunlight flared across the back of Dan’s sofa, rising up to the nape of his collar. “Every intelligence officer,” he continued, after lowering his hand, “was given a German Police dog. On maneuvers, the dog was used to send messages between the officer and the Colonel. During one of our first patrols, the dog sensed that we were scared and took off into the jungle. When I got back to camp, I made the mistake of asking whether the dog had made it back. Later, it came sauntering back, with its tail between its legs.”
“The Colonel ordered the dog shot. I tried to make a rational argument, but to no avail. I hated it,” Dan said, his voice rising as he spoke. “A farm boy from Shutesville, I believed that the dog would adjust. The Colonel could see in my eyes that I was upset. Later, he told me, ‘Dan you would have shot me that morning if you could.’
‘No sir,’ I replied, ‘I would have put you on bread and water,’” and a glint of determination, still alive some sixty years later, flashed across Dan’s face.
“The whole operation on Guam,” he continued, “took about three months. We landed in summer and by the fall, we were setting up our base on the island. Life on Guam was pleasant. The climate was colder than Bougainville but we lived in tents.”
“We should finish for the day,” Dan said, dragging a hand across his brow, “but let me tell you one more story from Guam. Shortly before our departure for Iwo Jima, we were given a heavy marching order to cross a mountain and then drop down to a submarine C-Base. When we got to the other side of the C-Base, there was beer for everyone. The colonel dropped out of sight, saying, ‘It’s time for the staff officer to take charge. But remember Dan, they’ve got live ammunition…”
We both laughed as I jotted down the last sentence, my pen leaving a trail of black scribbled lines. After saying goodbye, I stepped out into the sharp, winter, air, and turned up our road, walking into a deep blue shadow, which stretched long and narrow in the timid sun.
When we met again, three weeks later, spring was on the move. Billows of steam poured from the local sugarhouse, a few miles down Shutesville hill, and the cumulative piles of snow were receding from our yard, leaving patches of matted, sodden grass, hunting grounds for clusters of robins, bounding about with their fat crimson chests.
I walked down to Dan’s, my feet sinking into the soft, moist, gravel. The air moved from warm to cool, fleeting pockets that seemed to change with each muddy step. Dan opened his kitchen door and I removed my shoes, leaving them next to the door as I padded across his thin, tile floor, carrying the tray of tea to the living room.
After settling into our places, we shared a bit of news, talking at length about the recent Waterbury town meeting. Soon, however, Dan was picking up his story, this time on the island of Iwo Jima, a small stretch of ground coral and smoldering ash about six-hundred miles from Tokyo.
“We attempted to land on Iwo Jima on the 2nd day of attack,” he began. “We had listened to the initial attack on the radio. The Japanese commander of the island was much more competent than at Guam. The island was extremely well protected, with bunkered guns and underground hospitals.”
“We woke at 4 or 5 AM and had a beefsteak breakfast. We boarded a Higgins boat and circled and circled, but there was no space on shore to land. There was dreadful congestion on the beach. Eventually we had to go back to the ship, which was a tricky thing to do.”
“On the third day, we did the same thing over again, including the breakfast. We circled for half the day before we were able to go ashore. Everything had been blown to bits.”
“Once on shore, I was sent out with a runner, a boy from Texas, who I am still in touch with,” Dan said, and he paused to take a sip of his tea. “We had to determine where the line was and we came across a dead Japanese soldier. He was dressed in an expensive silk uniform and high riding boots. I tore his pockets apart to find out who he was. It was unusual to find a dead officer alone, and my hunch was that he was suicidal. I later learned that he had won an Olympic equestrian medal in California and that he was a friend of the Emperor.”
“We were going from battalion headquarters to battalion headquarters,” Dan continued. “There were snipers all along the way. I watched a commander talking on the radio get hit in the mouth. The bullet entered one side and exited the other. He didn’t even notice; I had to tell him. Somehow, in all of that fire, we managed to get back alive. The runner, that same boy from Texas, claims that I taught him how to survive,” Dan said, with a brief, lifting smile, before he resumed his story.
“Iwo Jima was very difficult terrain. It was very hard for tanks to move, they were bogging down in the sand and volcanic ash. There were very heavy defenses of all sorts, with caves, and big bomb craters from the naval and air bombing. You couldn’t dig a foxhole because the ground was so hot. There was steam coming out of the dark earth. It was more like hell than paradise.”
“It was a bloody, bloody fight; a frontal assault, but the marines had greater fire power. There was hand-to-hand fighting and the battle kept going back and forth. The captain of I-Company was killed, a big football player from Cornell. My commanding officer told me ‘Rock has been killed; you creep forward and take command of I-Company. Don’t make many mistakes, Dan. These are Rock’s Company and the men will do what you order them to do.’ He had tears in his eyes. You can’t feel adequate in such moments.” Dan said, and he leaned back into the chair, lacing his fingers across his folded waist.
“I was now in charge of a 150 men,” he resumed, “and my orders were to hold at all costs that night, and we did. The two machine guns saved the night.”
“After the initial landing we were pinned down. We couldn’t move forward. The Brigadier General came up with a plan, a ‘Sustained Roll and Barrage’, which he said he would teach to the two captains; one, who would later be killed in action, and the other, a boy from Shutesville. If he could have read what was going through my mind when I heard the plan,” Dan said, and then he paused, as I hurriedly scribbled down my notes.
“I didn’t want to step into the limelight as much,” he resumed, “but my memory was good then. It had to be. The gunfire was precisely timed, and we stayed just a few steps behind the falling shells. I kept looking at my watch to make sure we didn’t get ahead of the fire.”
“A destroyer walked right up the island with me. I didn’t feel qualified to control naval gunfire, but that was much better than land-based artillery. I brought the fire a lot closer than I should have, but when we hit a target, the men cheered. I opened the butterfly on my radio so that the ship could hear. Their fire was pretty accurate, but we bypassed as much resistance as we took out. There was a lot of cleaning up to do afterward. Our tail was pretty exposed.”
“All day long, we kept getting orders to press the attack. It worked. I hadn’t been for it; I thought it would get a lot of men killed, but I had to follow my orders,” Dan said, and he lifted his tea, holding the cup next to his lips for a moment before taking a sip.
“Later that night,” he continued, “I found out that my friend Herb had overshot the front line in an ammunition truck. I radioed to the Colonel to say that I was doing a rescue mission and got there just in time. One man was shot in the leg, but we got very lucky. Herb felt indebted to me and he later named his son after me: Daniel Marshall Radke. I told him ‘I wasn’t trying to save you; the marines just wanted their chow.’” Dan said as he leaned forward, his face reaching towards laughter, and a streak of sunlight flashed across his creased, rising cheek.
“Stevie,” he continued, “was the other captain on the ‘Barrage and Roll’. He was a druggist by training, and a graduate of the University of North Carolina. He liked to talk to people and joke and I questioned whether he could be serious about anything, but he was a good officer. When bullets began to whiz, he was in his element.”
“My unit had taken a lot of friendly fire during the ‘Roll and Barrage’, mostly smoke shells, but still too close. Despite all of the luck, I was under a lot of strain and losing my grip. I had begun to give up, thinking to myself, ‘Better die today, than tomorrow.’ I wasn’t proud of it, but I was willing to be killed.”
“Stevie and I had to meet together and coordinate our companies, and I had to cross a whole space, about from here to Olive’s house,” Dan said, and he pointed towards Olive Sweetser’s white two-story home, another of Shutesville’s longtime residents. “I carried an M-1 rifle, and told my radioman not to follow me. Instead of zigzagging, I just walked across the space; I was tuckered out and I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“When I got to Stevie, he yelled, ‘Dan, what the hell is wrong with you!’ I told him I didn’t care if I lived or died. Stevie didn’t wait. He just said, “Well, I want to live damn it!’ Stevie bucked me up, made me sensible again.” Dan paused to reach for his tea, the cup trembling in his hand as he took a long, slow sip.
“Later, I got a call from Stevie. He had spotted a heavy naval gun entrenched on a hill. Then I heard a terrible sound in my ear. He and his runner had been blown to bits. He was dead, and I’m living to ninety.” Dan said, and his voice trailed back to silence.
“After the ‘Roll and Barrage’,” he continued, “I was ordered back to a rest area, still very close to the front. There had been a lot of casualties. Some were injured, some had been killed, and some went berserk. Maybe half were left, I’m not certain.”
“I knew the men were very tired. I was sitting on the edge of a foxhole, probably brooding. The men were having some kind of fun; I could hear their laughter. I didn’t want to turn around and discipline them. Someone tapped me on my shoulder, and when I looked up, it was General ‘Howlin Mad’ Smith, head of the Marine Corps. He had been acting like a misbehaved schoolboy creeping up on his teacher.”
“‘I’ve come ashore to shake your hand for the Sustained Roll and Barrage,’ he said. Smith noticed that I had received a wound in my kneecap. In spite of his reputation, he reminded me of my grandfather, who used to sit on this porch, and point out Sugar Loaf, and Bare Rocks, and Worcester Mountain,” Dan said, as he raised his arm towards the invisible curve of the Worcester range. “General Smith was very sympathetic about the wound, and I sort of broke over… I also referred to Stevie, the other captain who was part of the mission; we all mourned him.”
“Later I told the General that we had met before, saying that I had been a typist at Quantico. ‘I had heard your speech to the pilots,’ I said. He seemed interested, asking, ‘Well, what did I say.’
“I answered, ‘Well, I’m sure you said many things much more important sir, but what I remember was that you told the pilots ‘don’t worry about venereal disease, you’re not going to live that long.’’ Smith didn’t dispute it,” Dan finished, a smile still playing across his face.
“Little by little, we moved towards the ocean, further away from the front. It was my pleasure to tell my men that they could take off their shoes and wash them in the water. Frankly, I don’t know how many I had left.”
“I’m sitting with my fingers crossed,” Dan continued, “hoping that I wouldn’t have to do another mission. General Erskine called me to his headquarters and thanked me for the “Sustained Roll and Barrage,” saying he wanted ‘the pleasure of pouring me a cup of coffee.’ He served it from a large silver urn, but I was disappointed that it didn’t taste any better than what they were bringing up to the front. The men called it the ‘Muddy Maunee’ after a river in Toledo, Ohio. Fortunately, I didn’t have to return to the front. I was given a one-month leave and I returned to Shutesville.”
Dan sat back into his chair, and looked out the window of his farmhouse; the light had dampened to a palpable gray. “Well Marc,” he said, his voice sounding tired and hoarse, “it looks like the weather is changing; maybe we should stop for the day.” I agreed and gathered my things, pausing to shake Dan’s hand and pull on my boots.
When I emerged from Dan’s garage, I took measure of the Shutesville sky; ominous dark clouds had swept in from the west, burying the sun and riding a strong, cold wind that hinted of snow. The old weathered maples, which lined our road, swept back and forth, their bare limbs knocking together and filling the air with creeks and groans. It was cold, much colder than before, and I hurried home, stepping across mud and surfacing ice, looking forward to a hot cup of ‘Muddy Maunee.”
It was a while before we met again, perhaps four or five weeks. I had traveled off the hill, visiting friends in Boston, and then Dan had received guests, their white rental car nudged against the fender of his dented, green truck. By the time I made the walk back down to his house, May was in full bloom; lilacs and daffodils, fields of golden dandelions, and Shutesville’s gardeners happily digging in their dirt.
After a brief reminder from my notes, Dan picked up the thread of the story, back on the mainland. “Before leaving California,” he said, his words gathering pace, “I stepped into a bar for a beer with a fellow officer. The waiter took my friend’s order but he asked me for my I.D; it phased me such after Iwo Jima. My friend, Coleman Jones, was outraged and he pointed to my shoulder, saying, ‘Don’t you see these Captain’s bars.’ The waiter brought me a beer.”
“Later, I took a train from San Diego to Springfield, Mass; the wheels never stopped rolling. In Springfield, I caught a crowded train for Vermont at the last moment; it was an antiquated railroad car, which was heated by a coal-burning stove.”
“I arrived in Waterbury and went to the foundry. My brother was working there; they made tripods for machine guns. I wanted the keys to his car to go home. When I drove up to the house, my father thought I was my brother. The first question out of his mouth was ‘Are you alright?’ They had received news from two officers that I had been severely wounded in Guam. I had kept writing but I hadn’t mentioned my injuries.”
“I do have one memorable thing about returning home,” Dan said, his face lifting towards a smile. “I had this old, blind workhorse named Jack. I hollered to my horse when I got to the gate, and he blundered on down; I felt good about that.”
“While on leave,” Dan continued, “I did a lot of farm work, spreading manure on the fields, milking cows. I wanted to do it; it helped me to forget the war. I couldn’t shake the sound of the Japanese man dying.”
“I didn’t talk about my war experiences very much. I didn’t think my relatives wanted to. It was the neighbors that I got the most comfort from. There was a large Irish family on the first right of Gregg Hill: the McMahons. I went there for frequent visits.”
“When I left Iwo Jima, General Erskine said that he would look out for me and make me a courier in Washington D.C. But in Vermont, I got a letter from the Marines; my orders were changed. I was being sent back to North Carolina to assemble a new company to prepare for the shores of Japan. My father detected my disappointment, he could read my mind.”
Dan stretched his legs onto the stool, and leaned back into the chair, hands crossed behind his head. “When I got to New River, North Carolina,” he resumed, “I saw an Intelligence Officer who I knew, Major Percy, and I made some comment, ‘Same old lug; we’re going to Japan.’ Percy responded, ‘Well, maybe not Dan.’ He had picked up news about a ‘new weapon that might shorten the war;’ it was the atomic bomb. Percy had such a record, that I thought it was credible.”
“I didn’t stay long in North Carolina; my orders were changed again. Norpelli (a friend) and I were sent to the Intelligence Center in Camp Ritchie in Maryland. We had to train a group of Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) on how the Japanese fight. Then the Nisei would be sent around to various bases and be used in the training of soldiers who were headed to the front. The Nisei hated the idea that they were representing the Japanese.”
“We were teaching them about night infiltration. During one training session, I crept close to a Nisei foxhole where a Japanese boy was reading Gone with the Wind by flashlight. I spoke to him over the edge of the foxhole; I said, ‘If your light had been brighter, I could have seen the page.’ He hadn’t seen or heard me,” Dan said, his words mingling with laughter.
“I was at Camp Ritchie when the Russians joined the battle in the Pacific. On V.J. day (Victory Japan), I met a Russian Captain at the bar. I offered him a drink and we slowly got drunk. He commented on the victory saying, ‘It didn’t take long after Uncle Joe got involved.’ It’s the only time I got so inebriated that I went from table to table imitating General McArthur.” Dan drew forward and laughed again, pulling his hands down to his legs, as his face widened with smile.
Then, as if to set the record straight, he said, “McArthur was ambitious, but I did have great admiration for his bravery and wisdom.”
Dan fell silent as he reached to stroke his face, sun tilting through the window. I thumbed back through my notes, searching for a question that I had jotted down after the last meeting. When I found the page, I leaned forward over my crossed legs, and asked ‘how were you changed by the war,’ surprised by the sound of my own voice.
That’s a good question,” Dan said, and he paused to consider his response.
“The Marine experience, living with other people, and the war,” he began, “it gave me more self-confidence. To get the respect and warm feelings from athletes; that meant a lot to me. I felt more comfortable around other people.”
“You also have to accept human frailties,” he continued. “Best to expect them rather than be surprised. It used to bother me that the Marines would remove the gold teeth of dead Japanese. Some thought I was too friendly with the prisoners of war, but that was just their youth.”
“On Iwo Jima, I took a Japanese prisoner; he was a medical officer. He asked me how the war was going in perfect English. I told him that we had landed in the Philippines. He said ‘that’s the end of Japan.’ I had fond feelings for him. Having been a teacher probably made a difference. In war, you have to walk in a roily stream. Ethics are hard to maintain.”
Dan hesitated for a moment, the warm spring light flashing against his back. “I lost six close friends in the war,” he said. “Our company lost twelve or thirteen men in one day on Iwo Jima.”
“My friend Stevie, who was blown to bits. He had time to bullshit with anyone and enjoy it. But in battle, he had the composure of Robert E. Lee, and he was a ladies man, in spite of his marriage. We used to squabble like two cats but the next morning it was over.”
“Every woman was regarded as his life. I don’t know what his charm was. The most attractive nurse asked him whether he was married and knitted him a little ‘toque’. Stevie had pictures of all of the woman he knew; after he was killed, the corpsman said ‘I’m glad I knew what his wife looked like,’ when he was sorting through Stevie’s things to send back home. I was the one who took the toque back to the nurse and told her that Stevie was dead.”
“You remember them forever and you remember them young,” Dan said, his words flowing slow and measured. “The Marine Corps were much younger than the army. They capitalized on the young men’s feelings of immortality. You think of them more often as time goes on. I lived with them and knew their inner thoughts. You don’t know what happened to the people whom you came in contact with and then disappeared. I used to grieve in the middle of the war, but tears came reluctantly. They returned during Desert Storm.”
Dan leaned back into his chair, a look of fatigue spreading across his face. In the absence of his voice, the farmhouse slipped into quiet, broken only by the occasional pop of wood expanding in the brilliant, spring sun. I knew it was time to leave, so I closed my pad, pulling my things around me and lifting off the couch. Dan raised a hand before I reached his chair, and we made our customary goodbye, a brief, passing shake.
As I walked back home, sun upon my back, I sifted through the stories of World War II. We had covered a lot of ground that winter: four years and four islands, countless images and recollections, and the irreversible and somber growth of a Shutesville farm boy.
Dan would return to civilian life, and as events would prove, make an eventual landing in Japan… as a teacher. But those were stories yet to be told. For the moment, my mind moved back and forth, from a weathered Shutesville farmhouse and an old man bent with age, to the recovered image of a young soldier, confronting things he never imagined possible; unspeakable violence, blood-bound friendship, and irretrievable loss. And somehow, through it all, he survived to tell the story.
