Stage Door Canteen (9 page)

The rumor around here is that Churchill and his crowd do not want an Allied invasion of Europe across the English channel, at least not for another year or two. England prefers not to expend any more men and materiel, which it can hardly afford, anyway, but wants to stand back and let the Russians and the Germans fight to the death on the eastern front. As you know from the newspapers, Jen, the slaughter there on the Russian front has been tremendous. Nevermind that both Stalin and Roosevelt have agreed they want a massive Allied assault on Normandy with an aim to getting the war over as quickly as possible. Churchill won’t budge. The Brit Prime Minister stalls and stalls, knowing it’s in the best interests of England to have an all-but-demolished post war Germany. And Communist Russia, too, in the same condition if it can be managed.

Meanwhile, darling Jenny, we are well aware there are position papers we will NOT be asked to write. Sandover, who is a smart chap if one cottons to newspaper sports writers, spends his time hobnobbing around the Washington circuit with other converted civilian newspaper types, picking up rumors, most of them accurate. He finds that, true to Roosevelt’s promise to Stalin and Churchill to make the war in Europe top priority, the Pacific war is indeed an orphan. MacArthur is still being promised planes, ships and fuel that the military brass here to all intents and purposes has no intention of delivering. The general staff believes it will take ten more years to defeat Japan. So MacArthur’s forces are getting less than twenty percent of men and materiel allocated for the war. It is no secret—although it may be to General MacArthur, who has headquarters there—that Australia is being written off. Sad, but true. We plan to abandon the Aussies.

So here I sit, darling Jen, more than a little drunk and writing you tonight what probably makes damned little sense, but which is nevertheless a reflection of my current disheartened state. It’s hard to keep one’s spirits up in the middle of these quarrelling command structures that are supposed to be running the war. I ask myself what those hundreds of thousands of fighting men must be asking themselves right now: What the hell am I doing here? Actually, some maniacal Japanese have made this conflict my concern, and God know I don’t want my country to go down to defeat, that would be unthinkable. But I’m still surrounded here by the relentless, excited activity of ambitious professional fighting men engaged in the war they’ve been training all their lives for. The territorial fighting between the US army, and the navy under Admiral King, makes one’s head spin. Mine, anyway. There was such a fight over who would be the supreme commander of the allied forces in the Pacific that they had to split the ocean down the middle, violating all military doctrine. General MacArthur gets command of the Southwest Pacific, including Australia. While Admiral Chester Nimitz (the navy’s choice) runs the eastern side headquartered in Hawaii. I understand it took months to carve this out, and the table-banging and screaming over who was going to have what reached record proportions. This, now, while the Japanese had bombed our fleet into twisted metal at Pearl Harbor and were still advancing across the Pacific! I am not exaggerating.

One is reminded constantly that these people who are running the war have all come up through the same schools—Annapolis, West Point—they were boyhood chums. MacArthur took Eisenhower with him to the Philippines in the 1930’s as one of his staff and now refers to him as “the best clerk I ever had.” Eisenhower is alleged to have told somebody at a DC cocktail party, “I studied dramatics under General MacArthur for four years when he was army chief of staff in Washington, and for four years in the Philippines.” Then there’s Churchill and the CP, (Roosevelt) who together regard Stalin as little better than a raw-flesh-eating descendant of Attila the Hun. And they detest de Gaulle, who by all accounts is an incredible pain in the ass. They refer to mon general as ‘Joan of Arc.’ And so it goes. Civilians like myself and the rest of INSIPID’s dauntless staff who are recruited largely from the civilian world of journalism, can only marvel.

I’ve said enough. As far as I know stateside mail is not opened for censorship—yet. So I will take this to Silver Springs to mail it. I hope you are still sticking my more inflammatory correspondence in the fireplace.

I can’t drink another Scotch and water, I won’t be able to make it to the elevator. Or if I do, I will miss the bed and fall on the floor between Brownlee’s and mine which I did, once. He never fails to remind me of it when we are out having a few drinks. I need you here to take care of me. I need you here to talk to, sweetheart. I love you, I need you terribly. I just want to put my arms around you and hold you. I will call you Saturday.

Your everlovin’ husband, don’t ever doubt it,

Brad

SIX

The October sky rolled back a bright blue day with a west wind that blew across the Hudson River, up the apartment building cliffs of the Bronx, and down Fordham Road to the intersection at the four-lane Grand Concourse, where it raised the dust before the plate glass windows of Alexander’s department store, rattled the grommets and fastenings of the canvas awning of Schrafft’s confectionery, and flapped the blue and silver skirts around the adolescent legs of the baton twirlers of the drum and bugle corps of the Capt. George W. Keenan American Legion Post Number 32. Which had just finished a rousing rendition of a patriotic medley of I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy, Stars And Stripes Forever, and the tune that singer Kate Smith had made so popular that it was beginning to rival the national anthem, God Bless America.

As the last notes of the Irving Berlin song died away the ranks of the boys and girls in their sparkling uniforms stood at attention, acknowledging scattered applause from shoppers. Overhead a canvas banner with the words BUY U.S. WAR BONDS snapped and ballooned in the wind.

“Nice drum and bugle corps,” Lt. Joshua MacElsmore, the army air force public information officer, observed. “I understand they’re New York state champions.”

“Finalists, they got to the finals.” The reporter-photographer from The Bronx Home News was busy packing back up photographic plates he wasn’t going to use. “A drum and bugle corps from Syracuse actually won it.”

The war bond rally on the sidewalk in front of Alexander’s usually had a star-studded lineup equal to any in downtown Manhattan, like Macy’s on Thirty Fourth Street, or Lord and Taylor’s on Fifth Avenue. At the last moment, though, the Andrews Sisters had cancelled out of the Alexander’s rally, a major blow to the celebrity lineup, as the singers were guaranteed crowd-pleasers known virtually worldwide for their wartime hits, “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

Upon being informed that the Andrews Sisters would be a no-show, the reporters from the two big metropolitan newspapers, the Evening Journal and the Daily News told Lt. MacElsmore that their editors had decided not to cover the war bond rally, leaving him with only the photojournalist from the local daily, The Bronx Home News. Fortunately, after some hectic telephoning by the 1st Army’s Special Services Office, dancer Ray Bolger, who had played the lovable scarecrow in the film The Wizard of Oz, volunteered to take time from his current Broadway show to travel to the Bronx to fill in.

Now, Lt. MacElsmore saw with considerable relief, things appeared to be going fairly smoothly. The crowd drawn from sidewalk traffic was small but attentive. Standing on the red, white and blue-draped platform along with Ray Bolger were six young women known as “The Powers Models,” a new breed of celebrity thanks to the covers of magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. The Powers Models’ job, as far as Captain MacElsmore could see, was to stand around in very short skirts and tight-fitting cashmere sweaters, and laugh at the master of ceremony’s jokes. Which, he had to admit, they did very well. When Ray Bolger came on the girls flanked him, giggled and exchanged banter about his movie role, and helped him plug his hit Broadway musical, By Jupiter. A few more people joined the crowd.

To one side of the platform tables had been set up to sell U.S. war bonds, or sign up those who wanted to buy them at their place of work through a weekly or monthly payroll deduction plan. After a turn at the microphone urging everyone to support America’s fighting men, Ray Bolger, in a business suit and without any music, gamely launched into an impromptu comedy dance routine. The reporter from the Bronx Home News put his Speed Graflex to his eye and took a few shots as the dancer did a soft shoe routine, then a skillful back fall, landing on one hand, followed by a jump that brought him to his feet. The Powers Models applauded vigorously. The audience, Lt. MacElsmore saw, grew appreciably larger.

“Bolger should have worn his costume,” the Home News reporter said, changing plates. “He’d draw more of a crowd here with the scarecrow suit on.”

MacElsmore watched as the members of the bomber crew of the Cincy Gal emerged from the back of the stage and filed into place behind the drum and bugle corps. Their part of the rally was up next.

He said, “I doubt if Bolger carries it around with him. The scarecrow suit, that is. It’s probably back in Hollywood.” Mentally he was checking out the crew to make sure they were all there, and that the question of putting the thing called the ‘former’ back in the top of the uniform hats had been settled. That is, no non-regulation, crushed down, overseas combat-style headgear not officially intended for public appearances.

So there they were: Pettit the tail gunner, Weathersley the navigator, the bombardier Le Tourneau, and the ball turret gunner Eugene Struhbeck. There was a rumor that the FBI had investigated Struhbeck and found that his father and two uncles out in rural Texas were up to their necks in the black market, selling truck and auto tires smuggled from a nearby army base. Struhbeck, fortunately, seemed not to have anything to do with his relatives’ illegal operations, the FBI has informed them.

“The crew looks good,” Lt. MacElsmore told the reporter, “when they’re standing at attention and saluting the flag during the national anthem.”

He started to add this particular pose had proved to be the favorite of newspaper picture editors, but the Bronx Home News reporter paid little attention. He was busy taking grab shots of the Powers Models raptly watching Ray Bolger ease himself up, inch by inch, from a split. The dancer gained his feet with a little bounce. The crowd and the lineup of beautiful girls clapped loudly.

Bolger’s bow to the crowd was the signal for a gray-haired man in a tan gabardine suit to hurry onstage and grab the standing mike and tilt it in the crook of his arm while he, too, applauded. “Mr. Ray Bolger, beloved star of stage and film.” The MC’s amplified voice boomed over the intersection of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse. “Let’s hear it, ladies and gentlemen, for Mr. Ray Bolger, who was featured in the unforgettable Judy Garland movie The Wizard of Oz, and is now appearing in his smash Broadway hit, By Jupiter!” Someone in the back whistled. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ray Bolger,” he said, still embracing the microphone and clapping around it, “the fabulous star of stage and screen who very generously came up here today on very short notice, a very great patriotic gentleman, and a very great entertainer. And now—”

On cue, the commander of the Bronx American Legion Post Number 32, carrying the American flag, mounted the steps to the platform followed in single file by the crew of the Army Air Force Flying Fortress Cincy Gal. In military fashion, they wheeled to face the audience.

Public Information Officer MacElsmore had accompanied the Cincy Gal’s crew on their tour of New York City, and each time they made an appearance he was struck by their dramatic impact in immaculate Class A khaki winter uniforms, visored caps, mirror-bright shoes, combat ribbons, their rigid, slightly tanned, good-looking faces.

“And now, and now—” The MC’s voice was suddenly hoarse with emotion.—”what a great honor, ladies and gentlemen, to welcome the men of the famous Flying Fortress bomber that we have all seen and heard so much about—the heroes of America’s war in the Pacific against the enemies who attacked us there at Pearl harbor—our nation’s finest—the men we owe the greatest debt, our very lives to—the Army Air Force crew of the Cindy Gal!”

The size of the crowd had grown considerably. A burst of applause filled the air. When it died away there was deep silence except for the noise of passing traffic. People strained to hear the next words.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let me read you what happened to this magnificent Flying Fortress and its men out there in the Pacific.” The MC lifted a typewritten prompt card that had been given out with Lt. MacElsmore’s press releases. “A few months ago the Flying Fortress B-17 bomber called Cindy Gal—oops, sorry—CINCY Gal—for the town of Cincinnati where the pilot, First Lt. Joseph Van Dorndt, is a native of. This Flying Fortress B-17 bomber departed from its base at Midway to attack an advancing Japanese naval force. When they had gone about halfway to their destination one of the motors of the bomber went out of commission. The young pilot, Lt. Joe Van Dorndt, lost contact with the other Flying Fortresses. The crew, however, got the engine working again and the plane proceeded on its mission alone.”

They were lost. Lt. MacElsmore had heard this too many times. And the Cincy Gal’s crew were not the only ones that day, apparently, to be over the ocean at Midway wondering where the hell they were.

“By the time the Cincy Gal sighted the Japanese fleet,” the loudspeakers were saying, “the other Flying Fortresses of their group had already passed over, had dropped their bombs, and had stirred up the Japanese ‘Zero’ planes. But despite this the Cincy Gal went in and dropped its bombs, severely damaging a Japanese cruiser and an aircraft carrier, which later sank. As it turned back on its homeward journey, a running fight between the disabled bomber and eighteen Japanese pursuit planes continued for many miles. Four pursuit ships attacked simultaneously at each side, and were shot down with side guns. During this fight, the bomber’s radio operator and co-pilot were killed, the engineer’s right hand was shot off, and both waist gunners were mortally wounded, leaving only one man, the ball turret gunner, to operate both side guns. Although wounded in one hand, this gunner alternately manned both waist guns, bringing down three more Japanese ‘Zero’ planes. While this was going on, one engine on the bomber was shot out, one gas tank was hit, the radio was shot off, and the oxygen system was entirely destroyed. Out of the eleven control cables all but four were shot away. The rear landing wheel was blown off and the two front wheels were shot flat.”