The closest I ever got to the front lines was in the summer of 1969, working in a dusty factory in suburban Philadelphia. All day long, lifting forty-pound bombshells onto skids, while giving little thought to the people they would be killing a couple weeks later in Vietnam. So callous, it disgusts me now when I think about it.
Except for the backbreaking work, the place was fun. With the radio on full blast, employees would pop into impromptu dances. One slim guy with a ratty beard and long, blond stringy hair—known as J.C. for obvious reasons—would float around the building as if he walked on foam rubber. Everyone else walked on cement, but they didn’t have to spend the bulk of their day sitting with their noses over a paint trough.
At lunch break, inmates on work release from Holmesburg Prison would box bare-knuckled, raising welts on cheeks, loosening teeth, donating blood to the filthy ground that served as the canvas of the makeshift ring. Silly me, I ate lunch on my lunch breaks, caught my breath and tried to rub the soreness out of my arms.
A year later, I was among the counterculture protesting the war on the comfortable, scenic Penn State campus, and on a couple trips to Washington D.C. But again, even there I didn’t put real faces on the conflict. That came later. To be honest, I was driven then less by principle than by lust for hippie girls and the potential of free love, a fantasy at best.
I never served my country, but I always respected the courageous people who did. My father, grandfather, uncle and cousin all stepped on bloody terrain. A college 2-S deferment and a high draft number in the lottery kept me out of Vietnam. My luck is evident on the rare occasion that I look closely at the framed, yellowing, black-and-white photo on the wall of my den. It is a shot of my childhood baseball team. In the right hand corner is the face of the kid who died on his first day in Vietnam. The cause of death was heatstroke, I heard. Hard to believe that.
Even today I can conjure up the smiling face of a talented basketball teammate who also died there. There was a plaque in the old Levittown Shop-O-Rama listing the names of those from the area who died in that war. Thankfully, it was a short list. Regrettably, I knew most of them.
I was against the war but I knew my cozy philosophy didn’t mean squat to those who were up to their chins in the muck of the jungle. I despised the military machine and decision-makers that put us there, but never those brave souls or ill-fated innocents on the front line.
To me, they were my former teammates, wearing fatigues instead of athletic uniforms. I remember them laughing while shagging flies or shooting hoops. They were sucked into the hell overseas, swayed by circumstance to do something they would have avoided, if they’d had energy for an alternate ambition or the desire to overcome their resignation. Seen in convenient, clear hindsight, they were foolish. At the time, they were unbelievably brave for youngsters.
I admire anyone who has the guts to risk his life for a cause. I was eighteen when I spent the summer putting bombshells on skids. When my dad was seventeen, he lied about his age to join the Marine Corps. He grew up swiftly on Peleliu Island in the South Pacific, during World War II. He was honored for bravery after leading a charge to knock out a concealed machine gun crew that had killed his superior officer and a bunch of his mates.
He never mentioned the situation that led to his medal, but plenty of times he would entertain us with cheerful, inspirational, war background music. “From the Halls of Montezoo-oo-ma to the shores of Tripoli,” he would bellow. He also sang some silly ditty, “When Frances dances with me, holy gee,” but that paled in the omnipresence of the Marines’ Hymn.
He once let his guard down and talked about landing on an island with a small group. Within minutes, he was one of the few not ripped apart by bullets whizzing from thick vegetation. It was an ever so brief comment, but the image of horror was palpable on his face. He immediately tucked it in the back of his mind.
My uncle, two cousins and two second cousins were also Marines or as Marines would say, they still are because there is no such thing as an ex-Marine. My dad and uncle are both gone, having survived war, but not the ravages of leukemia and asbestosis, respectively. I never thought much about my dad as a soldier when he was alive, but I envision him in uniform a lot these days, with the war drums beating daily in this country and in Iraq.
I didn’t think all that much about my mother’s father until after she died. I never met my grandfather Joseph Little, who was being scouted by the Philadelphia Athletics as a catcher before getting caught up in the turmoil, and joining the National Guard at the age of 22. He died in 1939 at the age of 47. My mother was only 12.
My grandfather served his country as an infantryman in WWI. He was regular Army with the 109th Machine Gun Battalion on a field in France, a hand-grenade instructor with Company F. After being transferred to a machine gun unit, a bullet pierced his forehead and ricocheted out of his skin near his left ear. It tore into the tissue of his brain. The doctors gave him a couple months. He lived two decades. The cause of death on the certificate was a coronary, but relatives said it was from accumulation of poison gas from the war
He left behind intense, but limited, memories for his daughters, Emily and Alice. My Mom, Alice, is gone, and Emily is in her early eighties. Their offspring know Joe Little through faint recollections and faded photos.
One of my most prized possessions is a copy of correspondence, probably from a military publication, heralding the return of Corporal Joe Little to Matthews Street in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. It is dated November 1918, and reads:
“I had been over the top five times when I was transferred from my company to a machine gun squad, and went over the top for the sixth time with this bunch on Oct. 5th.
“I was hit in the head but did not lose consciousness. I did not have my first aid kit so I crawled fifty yards to where field doctors were fixing other wounded men.
“I smoked a cigarette when waiting and then, feeling tired, I went to sleep. When I woke up several days later, I was in a comfortable bed with a nurse beside me. The first question the doctor asked me was if I were Irish. ‘I sure am that,’ I said, ‘and don’t you forget it and I have the Irish luck.’”
According to the report, he also had a triangular-shaped scar on his left forehead and two red scars—one running into his hair and the other toward his left eye. Perhaps the best thing he had was an extremely competent German surgeon.
“It’s great to be back in God’s country and God’s own city,” said Joe, who was a machinist and semipro baseball player before the war. “I went to France with the nerviest bunch of guys that ever came down the pike. I saw them drop, some days a few, but more often in large numbers. Our company was filled up time and again with casuals but it never stayed near its full complement any length of time. Finally it came my turn and it’s good to be alive and have all the horrors behind me. Time and again I saw men killed beside me and had machine gun bullets whistling between my legs and between my arm and my body and never was scratched before.
“Sunday was our unlucky day. We were always heavily shelled on the Sabbath.”
Unlucky on a Sunday, when a bullet ripped through his head, but he had the Irish luck to survive it.
About 15 years ago, a co-worker of mine was cleaning out his desk. In one brief moment of insensitivity, he tossed a small American flag in the trashcan. I immediately retrieved it, and stuck it in the crack between my desk and his. A few years back, we moved to new offices, seven flights down in the dungeon of the building. The flag found a new nook on my new desk. As usual, there wasn’t much thought in my behavior. Only instinct.
But I decided to keep the flag with me and in my heart. As long as I live, it will wave for Joe Little, a stranger who grows closer as I age.
