A Soldier Overseas

London, England, December 23, 1944

Carl — his family called him Buddy — was in England, in the army, an hour by train from London.  He was sitting on the step to the brick barracks at Camp Piddlehinton.

Things sure looked different now that the US had practically won the war.  After D-Day, the allied forces pushed the Germans out of France.  The rumor was that Hitler was on the verge of quitting and accepting whatever peace terms were thrust upon him.

Buddy didn’t know what to do with himself, so he stood and returned to his bunk with the straw mattress inside the barracks.  He collapsed on it.  About that time, Hank showed up, a tall lanky guy from the mortar section, with enormous feet.  “Let’s go into town, Carl,” he said.  “Let’s go see the sights!”

“You know there’s more to life than ‘sights,’” Carl replied.  [Pause.] “There’s great big bouncy babes, too.”  They laughed.

Carl grabbed his tie from the foot of his bed, inexpertly tying it as they walked over to the command tent where they could get 24-hour passes to town.  With the Germans on the run, passes were easy to get.

Inside the tent, Carl and Hank had to stand for a few minutes behind five or six other GIs who were waiting to speak to the clerk who worked for the First Sergeant.  The men called him the “First Shirt.”

Sure enough, the clerk filled out passes for them.  They didn’t need to be back until the next morning at 11am. Christmas Eve was Sunday and the men had high hopes of spending some of their pay on presents for their sweethearts and for their families back home.  Carl was hoping to do a little bar-hopping with his friends, maybe get drunk, then “va va voooom,” he thought, smacking his lips.  He hoped to kiss beautiful British women.  Hell, he heard there were plenty of women in London who would do it in a doorway for a pair of black market silk stockings or a carton of Lucky Strikes.

The train station was about six miles away in Dorchester, so the men stood by the road with their thumbs out.  Soon a soldier they recognized as a general’s aide stopped his jeep for them.  He was able to give them a ride the whole way.  The clerk had to meet someone from the train station, top secret, he boasted.

The train car was wooden–wooden seats covered with plush cushions–wooden walls, varnished and shiny.  The locomotive spewed huge clouds of black coal smoke.  Luckily the wind was blowing from the land out to the channel that morning, because the cloud didn’t gag the men in the train as they headed for London.  The group had the above-mentioned Hank and Carl, but also Bill Loughborough, Bill Moomey, Al Salata, Maurice O’Donnell, and Randy Bradham.  Enough to start a game of bridge, even though they’d have to stop playing in just over an hour.

The train took them to Piccadilly Circus in London and they all piled out.  Some of the men went to find something to eat.  You could get fish and chips almost anywhere for a shilling. A couple of shillings and you could get a warm English beer, too.  Only the beer in England was a true pint, way bigger than American beers.

Carl managed to slip away from his friends, saying he wanted to go browse a store for a chess set.  He did this after all his friends committed to going to a show.  A burlesque show with honest-to-goodness women with big, bouncy breasts.

Here’s where the story gets murky.  Bill Moomey and Hank Anderson swore that Carl returned to the camp with them, but Bill Loughborough said he wasn’t quite so sure.  In any case, subsequent events didn’t permit any easy answer to this question.

Chapter five

Standard Street apartments in Santa Ana, California

Penny and I married in Lewistown, Montana, January 30, 1971. She and I had a brief honeymoon: we went by train from Bozeman to Missoula where we stayed a couple days in the Palace Hotel, in a room with a noisy radiator that had been painted silver. I don’t know how we got around after that. I think we walked. Somehow, we got to my mother’s in Dillon, perhaps by bus.

Penny lived with my mother in Dillon for several months while I returned to Santa Ana to the helicopter squadron.

For those months, I continued to save nearly all of my military pay–about $100/month– at the base credit union. I lived in the barracks and ate in the mess hall. I needed several dollars a month to buy razor blades and laundry detergent, two items I couldn’t live without.

Each evening after work, I changed into civilian clothes and I bicycled around Santa Ana looking for an apartment to rent. I gravitated toward the majestic old bungalows with rooms to rent and shiftless looking people hanging out. I was a hippie at heart.

Then I got serious. I checked out the places other Marines rented. I found a modern-looking, if cheap, apartment on Standard Street in Santa Ana for $115/month. It looked something like a two-story motel with an inner courtyard. Other, similarly designed places, had swimming pools, but ours didn’t. The place I rented was on the second floor.  An avionics guy from Texas in my squadron lived with his wife a few doors down from ours. He had a Volkswagen Bug and offered to give me rides. I had a bike, though, so I didn’t take him up on his offer unless necessary. He gave Penny and me a ride to Saint Joseph Hospital when Todd was born.

I asked around the helicopter squadron if anyone knew how I could earn some money. A gruff sergeant, who ran the group mail room, helped me get a job cleaning a Xerox regional office a few miles away. I had a bike to get me there.

Penny joined me in Santa Ana, California, in April, with a suitcase full of sheets and blankets and towels. Sergeant Bobby Haines drove me into Los Angeles to LAX to pick her up and drive us to our Standard Street apartment. 

We had a dining room table, chairs, and a bed. Our books, most of them given to me by Corporal Jim Harrington, were lined up on the floor. Penny’s radio didn’t work. I kept my bike in the living room.  As soon as I could, I bought a $50 radio with our savings.  

A Stater Brothers grocery was on the next block, and Penny bought some rice, cheese, and cauliflower. I bargained with a produce man for a wooden orange crate to make a small bookcase. Cost me a dime. I bought a square iron skillet for a dollar, or so. I don’t know. Round ones looked so ordinary. I found a piece of weathered driftwood about a foot long and put it in our living room as an art object. Everything looked so plastic in the city. I needed something earthy, like a piece of driftwood. I’ll bet it’s around here somewhere, even fifty years later, like the square skillet.

The only recreation we had was reading to each other. Penny read aloud Monkey, a Chinese Folk Story, translated by Arthur Waley. When she finished, I read her Don Quixote, translated by Putnam. I was still reading Don Quixote when Penny was in labor with Todd. 

Each morning, I cycled through the Santa Ana orange groves to the helicopter base where I worked until 4:30. Then I pedaled home to eat the cauliflower, cheese, and rice that Penny cooked. We couldn’t afford meat. We kept a notebook to record our expenses.

After supper, I bicycled to my evening job cleaning the Xerox building. I got shit from my boss for talking to the other cleaners. My supervisor was the same sergeant who worked in our squadron mail room, a depressed-looking guy who didn’t like me to lean on my broad dust mop and talk. I quoted to him from the I Ching that said words to the effect that a little recreation makes the work lighter and improves morale. The sergeant scowled, but I didn’t care. 

I studied the Xerox corporate amenities that got more elaborate as I proceeded down the hallway and upward in the chain of command. Here’s what I noticed: The pipe tobacco of the vice president was Balkan Sobranie; in the president’s office, it was Black Mallory. I remembered Peter Koch telling me, back in 1969, about Black Mallory. Finest tobacco anywhere, he said.

The regional president had his own shower and dressing room. Vice president had a large waiting room, but none of the other stuff. Down the chain, the offices got smaller.

As we workers cleaned our way down the hallway from the apex of power, I noted a curious phenomenon: the number of staples in the rugs increased exponentially.  We picked them out of the carpet with needle-nose pliers.

In those days (1970s), computer work meant punching eighty-column key cards. I never found out what all those staples were used for.

I’d get home to Standard Street about nine each night, ready for more reading. 

Todd was born on April 29. I was in the maternity waiting room when Dr. Wing came in. “Mr. Struckman, Mr. Struckman, what do you want?” he asked.

I stood up, puzzled by the question. I replied, “A cup of coffee?”

“It’s a boy, Mr. Struckman!”