by Larry Colton
Bob’s health continued to decline slowly over the next few years. He had a triple bypass, an aneurysm, a ruptured appendix, restless leg syndrome, gout, and failing kidneys, and his gallbladder had to be removed. He had stents implanted and a new aorta made from a vein in his leg. The doctors marveled that he was still able to stay semiactive. He took to calling himself “the Gray Ghost from the West Coast.”
His relationship with Marty, who had recently divorced, also continued to deteriorate. Marty had moved briefly to Atlanta to try to reconcile with his ex-wife and children, but soon moved back to the Bay Area and started hanging out with the meth crowd. He found a new girlfriend, but he was arrested and sentenced to a five-year prison term in San Quentin for having sex with her sixteen-year-old daughter. He finally got up the courage to write his father, apologizing for his drug use and the way he had burned bridges behind him. He admitted to having attempted suicide four times, but said he had now found religion and hoped to qualify for PTSD compensation upon his release. “The shrinks say I have double PTSD because of your history and mine.” He closed the letter with “I want to shake your hand again, Dad, and hug Barbara. I love you, Dad.”
Bob received the letter and, after considering his response for a week, sent this reply:
Well, Marty, who is to blame for this one? You can put away the whitewash. It just doesn’t sell anymore. I cannot imagine what you told your doctor about me and my experiences. You know nothing about them. You never asked and all you have, if anything, is fabrication. You are good at that!
You have blamed me for so many years for all your failings. I cannot imagine your ending your letter with “I love you Dad.” You have a wall of hate so very high and thick. I don’t think you can see over it. I guess you could blame your mother for awhile. You managed to call her enough foul names these past years.
I almost overlooked your Post Traumatic Syndrome. There’s a good scapegoat. Strange, there were none from WWII or Korea, only Vietnam. I rode the A Frames of a submarine through women, kids, dogs, all screaming and drowning right after we torpedoed their ship. I spent a day on the bottom of the ocean in a sunken submarine that was on fire. The Japs beat me for months. I spent nine months in a solitary cell. What do I have to show for it? A stack of commendation letters from admirals and flag rank captains, years of fitness reports all marked in the 4.0 column written by high-ranking officers. No Post Traumatic Syndrome! How come? You have been “near death” four times—no kidding!
I have been confined to the house and a chair for two years and sit all day with a hose up my nose. I am almost eighty years old and have a very short time left, so do not bother with the “handshake” when you get out.
I probably will not be here. Please do not bother Barbie—she has nothing of value to give you to throw in the corner to gather dust and forget. She will have no extra money and her family will be helping her. Just do not bother her!
You are past fifty now, Marty. Not much time to join the human race and start carrying your own load. You cannot live on the 50% service-connected disability.
I wish you well.
Your father
Marty wasted little time in responding, saying he was sorry if Bob misunderstood the intent of his first letter. He said he felt ashamed and knew he’d been “a piece of crap” the last few years and didn’t expect forgiveness, including from his two children. He closed this letter with “I remember who was there while I was growing up and I love you for it.”
Bob stuck the letter in a drawer. He wanted to believe his son’s words; he wanted to believe that Marty could somehow turn his life around. He remembered riding on a motorcycle together and how proud he was to have such a tall and handsome son. He remembered how happy he was when Marty got accepted into college. So how did it go so wrong? There was a part of him that wanted to reach out again, like he’d done so many times. But at what cost? He felt betrayed. Marty’s behavior ran so contrary to his own sense of right and wrong, strength and weakness. Drinking two six-packs of beer, he believed, was a far cry from the dope-smoking of Marty and his generation. As much as it pained him, he thought it was too late in his life to spend the emotional capital to repair the wounds.
The one thing that kept Bob from becoming depressed over his son was the continued fountain of love and joy he gained from Barbara. On the occasion of her birthday in 1997, he wrote this to her:
Barbara, my debt to you grows by the day. I try all I can to pay it but just cannot seem to catch up. Seventy-five years is a long time to remain as beautiful as you were when you were born.
In spite of my constant sores and complaints, I think of you every waking hour, and everything I do is, for the most part, for you!
You are very loving and loyal to those around you. You look straight ahead and are arrow-like in your flight to your targets.
You have provided me with so many thrills through the years with your sensuous touch and your loving look.
Mostly, I think, I love to touch and hold you. These moments are the most precious and are never repetitive! Each one is a new thrill. I always feel a little pang when we separate.
I look to you for so much and appreciate all the many things you do for me. Thanks, Barbie, for all of the above and for the beauty and thrills I know are in store for the future! Happy Birthday.
Epilogue
There were moments in interviewing each of the men when I was brought either to tears, or laughter, or complete amazement. On my penultimate interview with Chuck, he told me he had recently flown to Florida for a heartwarming visit with Irene Damien, his high-school sweetheart. She was still married to the man she met after Chuck joined the Navy, but she was now totally paralyzed. Chuck had gone to visit her after her husband had called to tell him Irene wanted to see him one last time before she died.
Every time I met with Chuck, I was impressed with the strength of his determination. He’d suffered a lot of physical setbacks in the last twenty years, but he was resisting slowing down. He seemed almost obsessed with being the best grandparent he could possibly be to somehow make up for being an absent father. Thinking back on all the time I spent with him, two things stand out. The first was when he told me about providing hospice care for his son when he was dying of AIDS. He had kept that fact from me for over two years, even though Gwen and Marilyn had already told me. He was reluctant to have me include it in his story. But what he did for his son while he was dying, I think, redeemed whatever shortcomings he’d had as a father.
The second was a conversation we had the last time I saw him. It was just before the presidential election of 2008, and it spoke volumes about his generation. Chuck was a lifelong Democrat, and I asked him if he was going to vote for Obama. “I’ll be go-to-hell if I’m going to vote for that goddamn Muslim,” he replied.
In interviewing Tim McCoy, I was regularly struck by his almost evangelical approach to life. Financially, he was far and away the most successful of the four men and the one with the most braggadocio. But every time I would get to thinking that this guy was too full of himself, out popped a sign of his kindness and consideration, like his total devotion to his wife, Jean, who was confined to a wheelchair. When I asked him to name his greatest accomplishment, he didn’t hesitate: “Taking care of my wife.”
When I first met Gordy Cox in 2001, I figured he had six months to live, tops. He already looked like a cadaver. But the little bantam rooster somehow kept hanging in there, feisty as ever. The last time I saw him was at his prefabricated home in central Oregon, and there was so much cigarette smoke in his living room that I worried it would clog his oxygen tube. But this was a guy who by all rights should have died several times in prison camp.
But of all the interviews and research I conducted for this book, nothing came close to matching what happened on my visit with Bob Palmer. At that point, I had not talked to any of the other men. I had traveled across country to the Maryland shore from my home in Oregon to meet with him and Barbara. They had generou
sly offered to let me stay in a spare bedroom. In return for their hospitality, I was prying into all the dusty neglected corners of their lives.
During our interview, Bob sat in the pink easy chair in his living room, his voice animated and full of energy, his blue eyes as clear as the water in Crater Lake, where he’d spent countless hours as a boy. Barbara sat in a nearby chair.
Shortly after I arrived, he reached out and placed his hand on my forearm. I noticed his little finger, bent and discolored, like that of a catcher who’d absorbed too many foul tips, only I knew that’s not how it got so crooked.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, tears welling in his eyes. “I’ve wanted to tell this story for a long time. People need to know what happened to us in those prison camps.”
Barbara got up to bring him a glass of water. As she passed his chair, he reached out and let his fingers trickle across the side of her leg. In return, she slid her hand over his shoulder, letting it linger for an extra moment. I thought of my own parents, people from the same generation, and even though I never doubted their love and devotion to each other, I couldn’t remember a similar display of affection, at least not publicly.
As I waited for Barbara to return from the kitchen, my eye caught a flat, brightly colored box sitting on the lamp table next to Bob’s easy chair.
“What’s this?” I inquired.
“A Passion Wheel,” he answered.
I got up to examine it. It had a plastic spinner and a dozen multicolored sections, each with a sexy title: Cop a Feel … French Kiss … Dance Naked.
“It’s a game, sorta like spin the bottle,” he says. “My stepdaughter Lynn gave it to me last Christmas.”
Barbara walked back into the room. Actually, it was more of a bounce than a walk. At eighty, she was amazingly fit, a chorus-line member of the Happy Hoofers, a tap-dance team that performed around the state. I eyed her smiling at Bob, one of those secret little glances couples do. It occurred to me that I was in a room with two octogenarians, husband and wife, who were still physically in love: real, honest, hands-on love. Maybe their generation wasn’t as sexually and emotionally repressed as my contemporaries believed. She pulled out a copy of his 1938 high-school yearbook and pointed to a quote next to his class picture: “His favorite saying, ‘Where is Barb?’ will remind us of him always.”
It was nearing the end of the second day of my visit. Bob looked tired, but in my thirty years of interviewing people about their lives, I’d never had anyone so appreciative or eager to tell his story. “Thank you for being here,” he repeated.
I’ve heard it said many times that we need to let the men and women of Bob’s generation know that we applaud and appreciate the sacrifices they made in order that future generations could enjoy the many freedoms and benefits our society has to offer.
“It’s what we had to do,” he said. “We didn’t have any choice.”
Slowly, he rose from his chair, ready to call it a day. It was past his bedtime. “We’ll start going through the box tomorrow,” he promised, referring to a seventy-pound box of memorabilia he kept in his closet. It contained photos, patrol logs, POW documentation, Grenadier newsletters, love letters, transcripts from the 1946–1948 war crimes trials.
“Wait,” I said, pointing at the Passion Wheel. “Before you say goodnight, let me give this thing a spin for you.”
I spun the wheel. It made a couple of quick revolutions before skidding to a halt, the arrow pointing directly at “Feel Above the Waist.” Bob winked at Barbara, then headed down the hall toward the bedroom. He would shower before turning in, just as he did every night. On his list of priorities, cleanliness was near the top; two years without a shower in prison camp can do that to a guy.
Barbara got up to follow him to the bedroom. She stopped and clasped my hand. “Every day before you arrived he’d say, ‘I wish that writer guy would hurry up and get here.’ This means so much to him.”
She walked down the hall and turned into the bedroom. Behind her, I gathered my notebook and reached for the light.
Then I heard Barbara scream. “Bob’s collapsed. Help!”
It took me only a second to reach the room. Barbara was standing at the end of the bed, frantically pointing to the floor. Stripped to his Skivvies, Bob was splayed across the carpet. I knelt next to him, cradling his head in my hands.
“Bob! Bob!” I shouted.
“Check his pulse,” urged Barbara.
I eased his head back to the floor and felt for a pulse in his neck. All I felt was the blood rushing through my own fingers.
“Is he dead?” cried Barbara.
I’d never seen a dead person, let alone touched one, but I had no doubt Bob was already dead, probably gone before he hit the carpet.
“Call 911!” I instructed.
I looked down at him; his face was already turning a purplish blue. His eyes and mouth were open. He gasped slightly, like a fish that’s been lying on the dock for several minutes.
I stroked his forehead, and then felt for a pulse again. Nothing.
Barbara knelt down next to him, gently touching his lips. “Don’t die, Bob, please don’t die,” she whispered. “I love you, I love you.”
I had never seen anything so tender.
It took less than two minutes for the paramedics to arrive. They quickly pulled out the shock paddles, but just as quickly put them back in the case. It was already too late. Bob Palmer was gone.
At Barbara’s request, I stayed at the house for three more days, doing what I could to comfort and support her and the family. I helped write Bob’s obituary, met with neighbors and friends, and listened to Barbara’s stories. A month later she flew out to Oregon with his ashes, and as she put it, “I kept them right between my legs the whole flight.” With her daughter, Lynn, we drove to Crater Lake National Park, where Bob had spent much of his youth, and we scattered his ashes, surrounded by the deep blue water and the wind whistling through the conifers.
In the years that it took me to finally finish this book, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about Bob and that moment when I cradled his head in my hands as his life slipped away.
A year after Bob’s death, I met Marty. He had been released from San Quentin and was living in a mobile home in Novato, north of San Francisco. He was off of drugs, but clearly fragile and, by his own admission, fighting a “horrible battle” with depression. “Vietnam and prison can do that to a guy,” he said. A tall, slender, good-looking man, with deep blue eyes like his father, he talked softly, breaking into tears on several occasions, clearly saddened by the lack of reconciliation with his dad. He showed me poetry he’d written about his experiences in Vietnam and pictures of his mother, who died a couple of months after Bob; he admitted to thoughts of suicide. Several times during the conversation he repeated his mantra: “I’m okay today, and that’s the best I can expect. I’ll deal with tomorrow when it comes.”
Leaving our meeting, I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. I wanted there to be a happy ending to my story. Looking back, I realize that I wanted this to be a story of resiliency and of how these four men had survived the Great Depression, gone off to war, and suffered through the unthinkable, but returned to America and ultimately left that darkness behind. But what I found were four men who came back from war and, although they did live out lives of differing degrees of quiet nobility, strength, and resiliency, carried with them the deep scars of a “good war” not only that never went away but that they passed on to their sons.
I guess one lesson from the stories of these men is that they offer further testimony, not that any is really needed, that there are no winners in war, only survivors.
In 2010, World War II veterans were dying at a rate of over a thousand a day. In late 2009, I found out Gordy Cox finally passed away, six years after the doctor had given him six months to live. Then I got a call from Chuck. I could tell from his voice he wasn’t well. In the past several months, lung canc
er had racked his body. He’d just completed six weeks of radiation. He had lost forty pounds.
“More pain than anything I’ve ever experienced, including prison camp,” he said. “But guess what? I got married.”
“To whom?”
“Gwen. We got remarried. Sixty-three years after the first time. We’re not living together or anything, but I figured she wouldn’t get anything from my Navy pension when I finally croak. Now she will.”
Chuck died a few weeks later.
I’ve always been a little confused about what constitutes a hero. Is it hitting sixty or seventy-four home runs? Inventing a vaccine? Serving your country? Maybe. Probably. But I’ve also got to include a man who, despite his flaws, gives hospice care to his dying son and then makes sure that his ex-wife is taken care of financially. I’d also include a millionaire on that list, a man who listed his greatest accomplishment as the care he’s given his invalid wife. The fact that these men also gave so much in service to their country pretty much seals the hero deal.
Author’s Notes
When I started researching this book in 2001, I couldn’t wait for each day, each new discovery. I knew that I had stumbled on a story that went to the heart of America—love, war, loss, history, failure, courage, and redemption. But something happened along my journalistic way. My journey broke down.
Maybe it goes back to my second research trip. I traveled to Florida to talk with a Navy buddy of Bob Palmer’s. The morning I arrived at his house was September 11, 2001. We sat in his living room and together we watched in stunned disbelief as the image on the television screen framed the twin towers crashing down.
“It’s like Pearl Harbor all over again,” he said.
Two days later I traveled to Georgia to interview Robert York, one of a handful of men still living out of the original crew of seventy-six. He was a nineteen-year-old electrician’s mate second class when the ship went down; now he was seventy-seven. Along with the rest of the nation, he was trying to make sense of what had just happened. I figured that his experience in World War II and the fact that he had been at Pearl Harbor and had suffered unimaginable torture as a prisoner of war would provide patriotic insight that I couldn’t possibly feel. We watched Billy Graham try to bring a measure of peace to the televised hysteria. When a flag flying at half-mast filled the screen, York stood up and saluted.
