Personal History (27 page)

Phil and my mother also got along well. She adored him from the beginning and was closer to him in many ways than to me, emphasizing to the rest of us in the family that she and Phil—and only they—knew what it was like to grow up poor. He admired her but remained far more ambivalent about her than about my father. Indeed, he was very realistic about her, and at times quite tough and critical.

But though Phil was a great help to both my parents, he always insisted that we lead our own lives. He would always go to their aid if they were lonely or sick or in trouble, but he refused to be used, particularly by
my mother, or to be dominated by her. When she insisted on our coming to dinner because she felt Phil should meet so-and-so, he would respond that he would be glad to keep them company when they really wanted us, but we wouldn’t be just another two seats at her dinner table. Unaccustomed as I was to thinking of declining her invitations, it gradually dawned on me that he was right.

Although he was much the stronger, Phil also learned from me to some extent. What I brought to him was a greater knowledge of the world’s ways, an appreciation of art and music and beauty, and, of course, the world of my parents—the
Post
and Washington—all of which he loved. I also brought him some stability.

But, always, it was he who decided and I who responded. From the earliest days of our relationship, for instance, I thought that we had friends because of him and were invited because of him. It wasn’t until years later that I looked at the downside of all this and realized that, perversely, I had seemed to enjoy the role of doormat wife. For whatever reason, I liked to be dominated and to be the implementer. But although I was thoroughly fascinated and charmed by Phil, I was also slightly resentful, when I thought about it, at feeling such complete dependence on another person.

As the war came to rule our lives, I was amazed that we could continue to be so happy despite the condition of the world. What I remember most from those first years of marriage was our fun with each other, the constant growth and learning, and always a lot of laughter.

E
ARLY ON THE MORNING
of July 27, 1942, Phil left for the Army Air Corps as a private, going first to Fort George Meade, the neighboring army installation in Maryland. The dreadful moment of our parting came at the Greyhound bus terminal in downtown Washington, already a depressing place but made more so by the sight of nervous recruits huddling together. Although I knew I was going to join him wherever he was shipped, the unknowns of the parting got the best of me and I embraced him, turned, and fairly dove through the door of the terminal as he joined the group of jittery inductees. I happened to look down just as I fled, discovered that my slip was showing, and decided that once more I had failed in a crisis.

Phil wrote me from Fort Meade the very next day, describing in great detail his first impressions of army life: the barnlike reception center, the primitive cafeteria with surprisingly good food, the physical inspection, and the un-air-conditioned barracks, in which he sat on the edge of his cot using his toilet kit as a lap desk on which to write. The thirteen men from D.C. had stuck together, with Phil sitting next to the only black man among the recruits on the bus ride from Washington. Phil had quickly noticed that the man was being ignored and readily established that Jim Crow was very active in the army, with the one “Negro” being pointedly cast out of the group.

After a short time at Fort Meade, Phil was sent for basic training to Atlantic City, where I joined him and began my life as a camp follower. I found a room in a boarding house not far from the Boardwalk, where we shared a nightly two and a half hours. Much of the rest of the time I spent watching the men marching up and down the Boardwalk in the humid heat.

In some ways, going to Atlantic City meant getting started on normal life again, but it was depressing for me in almost every way—from the rooming house to the damp heat to the all-too-brief visits with Phil. After
a few weeks, he was hospitalized with the flu or pneumonia, and since I was not allowed to visit him, I went back to Washington to wait to hear about his next assignment. Phil wrote touchingly from the hospital:

Phil was always ambivalent about the army. On the whole, it was much as he expected, and he liked it more than not. What he didn’t like was its illogic. He would get frustrated by the straitjacket of the bureaucracy, the stupid, constant yowlings of the noncommissioned officers, the mix of efficiency with inefficiency, ineptitude, incompetence, waste, and negligence. “Fucking” was the universal adjective. It seemed to apply to everything and everyone—the “fucking chiseler,” the “fucking sergeant,” the “fucking camp.” On the other hand, Phil loved the all-American men, among the best of whom was a young Pole from the steel mills of Pittsburgh who said it was important to trust the men, no matter what they might seem like: “These are good fellows here. I was afraid they’d be toughs but they’re not. You can trust ’em. Christ, you gotta trust ’em on the battlefield, why not here?” Phil liked the men from whom he could get honest and useful information—how to make a bed properly, how to avoid
the morning rush by shaving at night. Knowing these men gave us both a great pride in America. Many of them, although married and already parents, had enlisted because they believed in defending their country. Most of them had a peculiar mixture of gentleness and toughness. I was moved particularly by the patriotism and sacrifice of the boys from the South, who always seemed most heroic to me.

At the end of six weeks, Phil was shipped out of Atlantic City. We knew only that his destination was one of three communications schools run by the air force. By chance, the schools were one, two, and three days away from Washington. When Phil called at the end of the third day to say come right away, he was in the farthest and most remote radio school, the one in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

At first I was worried about what life in Sioux Falls would be like, but then my father said he had “saved the town” in 1923 when he headed the Farm Loan Board and thought that he still had enough contacts to help me if all else failed. In fact, I was really pleased about the posting, because I felt I would rather be in a small and unexpected place than somewhere like Atlantic City or even St. Louis.

I arrived in Sioux Falls in early September and settled in within a few weeks. What we found there was a warm and friendly town, with lots of pretty little white houses with service flags in the windows. The clinging odor of John Morrell’s meat-packing house shared the atmosphere with the coal smoke from hundreds of barracks stoves. We never saw the supposedly picturesque falls that gave the town its name and, in fact, could hardly imagine anything falling anywhere in such a great expanse of flatness. A reclaimed swamp just a mile northwest of town, flat as Florida, provided a superhighway for prairie gales. The camp was located right there, with the school buildings spread down its middle like an assembly line—the men went in one end the first day to learn the fundamentals of electricity and emerged from the other end as radio operators and mechanics several months later.

The military camp itself had a population of forty-five thousand, the town originally having fifteen thousand residents. Crowding was severe, and living quarters for the families of the servicemen were difficult to unearth. There was no possibility of my getting a decent apartment, and though a room in a house was just possible, I opted for a hotel, where I could have my own bath and telephone and privacy.

One thing we both quickly learned was not to believe anyone or anything about the army. Rumors flew around constantly—for example, that the men would all go on to gunnery school from Sioux Falls, and that the average life of gunners on bombers at the front was four minutes. Another rumor was that the whole air corps would be required to have new and different uniforms, which would cost every man $85 apiece.

The truth amid the rampant rumors was much harder for us than I was admitting, even to myself. We really felt for the first time in our spoiled lives what it was like to be at the bottom of the heap and miserable. It seemed as if an unseen hand was involved in a constant plot to make our lives unhappy. The world we lived in was run by half-mad civilian reserve officers recently called to duty, who appeared to respond to their whiff of power by specializing in a peculiar kind of mindless brutality toward privates. Men’s leaves were canceled for no reason, and the men were often punished en masse for minor infractions committed by one or two individuals. Weird things happened, like the men being ordered down on their hands and knees to smooth out the dirt for a general’s visit.

Hoping to master a useful tool while waiting for Phil to be off duty, I enrolled in typing and shorthand courses at the local business college, but found them hopelessly difficult. I missed some classes because of a cold and would have had to start over had Phil not gone on the day shift, allowing me to give up the courses altogether. I must admit I was relieved, especially in light of the young high-school graduates who whizzed by me with their prowess. I also did some work for the Red Cross, rolling bandages with the ladies. I intended to submit stories for the Sunday
Post
, but somehow life in Sioux Falls grew too busy, what with movies, concerts by the draftees, church suppers, lectures, and other social events. All of this was new and strange to me; I had never observed, much less lived, life in Middle America or a small town, or experienced the great kindness of people in such a place toward strangers.

A typical entertainment at a Kiwanis dinner consisted of welcoming the new members and wives (naturally not members), a short talk on some potential amendments to the club rules, a song by a young man from the local high school, and a speech by the chaplain of the Air Force School on the famous Sergeant Alvin C. York, World War I hero, whom the chaplain had once interviewed. I sat next to one of the town’s oldest inhabitants, who had received a medal the year before for being a good citizen. He kept remarking on how much I could eat.

Besides going out to other clubs’ meetings, I joined one myself, “Mrs. Private.” This was a club formed by the privates’ wives to help each other, especially the lonely and homeless. Its slogan was “Happier Lives for Privates’ Wives.” Every conceivable type of private’s wife was there, a good many of whom were pregnant and most of whom had jobs—as waitresses, as salesgirls, or in the meat-packing house. Some local girls married privates, though others just “got in trouble.” One local mother found herself with two unmarried pregnant daughters. When she complained to the colonel, he asked her how he could control thousands of men if she couldn’t control her own daughters!

Much of my life in Sioux Falls, and elsewhere later on, consisted in
waiting for the hours a few times each week when Phil and I could be together. I wanted so much to have a baby, and very quickly again became pregnant—my third pregnancy, counting my early miscarriage. True to form, I started to miscarry and was quite sure that I’d lost a baby again. A general practitioner advised total bedrest, which I dutifully accepted, except on days when I could get up and visit Phil at the camp. After a while, when my troubles persisted, the doctor said it looked pretty hopeless and suggested I go about my business and just let nature take its course. I got up and began to lead a normal life, and eventually, to the surprise of both me and the doctor, things got better. I told the doctor I thought I was still pregnant—and I was.

Phil applied for Officers’ Candidate School. He had a 97-percent average and had worked up to twenty-five words of Morse Code a minute, which helped get him accepted. At the same time, the camp officer asked him if he would like to remain in Sioux Falls to teach, which made Phil even more eager to get to Officers’ School.

I was thrilled with the idea of a stay at home in Washington while Phil was at OCS training, but our momentary euphoria was brought to an abrupt end. An X-ray of Phil’s lungs brought to light seven or eight calcified spots that, typically for the army, would bar him from OCS but permit him to remain as a private in the subzero weather of South Dakota. Tiring of the straightforward approach, Phil decided to obtain letters of recommendation for OCS, and asked Oscar Cox and Felix Frankfurter, among others, for help on a waiver for this minor but normally disqualifying defect. While waiting for the hoped-for waiver, we settled down for at least another six weeks in South Dakota and had Thanksgiving Day together when a new commanding officer let the married men off early, which stunned us both with joy. An unexpected gift like that from the U.S. Army was an exciting and important event in our lives. A kind friend invited us to spend the night at her house and have a late breakfast—a lovely idea that resulted in a happy but sleepless night in a too narrow bed.