by James Garner
Oklahoma was a place where people “hunkered up” with each other to survive. It was also a place where a man’s word was his bond. Sure, we had hustlers, but they were so few and far between that you could spot them a mile away. Most people were honest, and they took care of each other. Not like LA. People here—at least those in the entertainment business—will look you right in the eye and lie to you. They lie even when there’s no reason to. I’ve never understood that and never will. Out here, I’m a lead sinker in deep water.
Over the years, Bill Saxon and I played golf together all over the world. He owned a jet (he was in the oil business), and I had entrée to just about any course you’d want to play. We combined our resources, playing everywhere from Pebble Beach to St. Andrews to courses all over Europe and Asia.
Jim Paul Dickenson was also the same age. He was a smartass who thought he knew it all. The thing of it was, he did. He was a handsome kid; everybody said he looked like John Garfield. Jim Paul looked mature and he was mature. And suave. A real ladies’ man.
When we were in tenth grade, Jim Paul dated a senior girl. The two of them were doing things Bill and I had only talked about. We’d be cruising in Jim Paul’s mother’s car and he would stop at his girlfriend’s house and climb in her bedroom window. Bill and I would wait in the car, imagining what was going on. Later Jim Paul would fill us in on the details. Wow! We also thought it was cool the way he used the F-word in front of adults and got away with it. In short, we looked up to him.
Jim Paul’s mother, Fern, was divorced. A lot of people in town looked down on her because she drank. I remember her driving down the street with a beer bottle in her hand. But Fern had a good heart. She owned a rooming house a block away from Campus Corner, a busy district across from the OU campus with shops, restaurants, beer joints, a pool hall, bookstore, and movie theater. “The Corner” was popular with both Norman youth and OU students—the fraternity and sorority houses were within easy walking distance. A number of OU basketball players lived in Fern’s house and it was a great place to hang out because (a) it was near the Corner, and (b) Fern didn’t care if you drank or smoked or stayed up late. There was usually an empty bed, so I often slept there, free of charge.
When World War II broke out, I, like most young men, was filled with patriotic fervor. I couldn’t wait to get involved. And get away. I wasn’t old enough to be in the regular service, but the minute I turned sixteen, Jim Paul and I quit school and joined the Merchant Marine. My dad had to sign papers for me because I was underage. As soon as we enlisted, Germany surrendered. They must’ve heard we were coming.
We went through boot camp in St. Petersburg, Florida, and then I took the train to New Orleans, where I shipped out on a seagoing tug bound for Cuba and South America. I was aboard ship for two months, and I was miserable every minute. I lost thirty-five pounds because I couldn’t keep anything down. The ship’s doctor said I had “mal de mer.” Mal de mer? Hell, I was seasick. Fortunately, the Merchant Marine was like a civil service job: you could quit, and I did. But Jim Paul was a better sailor than I was. He stayed in for several years and went all over the world. I went to California.
When I arrived in Los Angeles, I moved in with Aunt Grace Bumgarner. She was what they used to call an “old maid,” though we found out years later that she’d been married once. In my family, you thought you knew people, but you didn’t.
Everybody said Aunt Grace was crazy about me, but I thought she was just crazy. She was a real busybody, always sticking her nose in other people’s business. She knew exactly what was wrong with everyone, including the family back in Oklahoma. A domineering soul, she decided I should be an actor and would have talent scouts come and look at me at the A&P where I worked, but I refused to talk to them. I didn’t want any part of it. She also tried to make me go back to high school, but I just wanted to goof off. After the set-to with Red, I’d gotten pretty cocky. Nobody was going to tell me what to do ever again. With my father absent and me supporting myself, I didn’t have to answer to anyone.
Bill Saxon joined the Marine Corps late in 1945 and was stationed at El Toro, near San Diego. It was an easy hitchhike to Hollywood, where I was working at a filling station. On a weekend pass during the Christmas season of ’46, Bill and a Marine buddy got a hotel room right at Hollywood and Vine. I joined them and we all went looking for girls. We didn’t find any. It got late, and I stayed the night. There were only two beds so I slept on the floor. The two Marines stayed up all night moaning about how unhappy they were—it was their first Christmas away from home and we were all just teenagers—but I was quiet on the subject. When they pressed me, I finally flashed my good-ol’-boy smile and said, “You know, it doesn’t make any difference to me where I sleep.” Billy Dee told me he never forgot that. They were depressed and homesick, but there I was, lying on the floor, happy as can be.
I was never much of a student. I could get A’s when I applied myself, but I rarely applied myself. I just wasn’t interested in going to school. Not until the day when I saw two beauties on a streetcar. When I found out they went to Hollywood High, I enrolled right away. Goodness gracious, there were more good-looking girls at Hollywood High than in the whole state of Oklahoma.
While I was a student there, the Jantzen people were looking for guys to model their swimsuits, and the gym teacher gave them my name. I wasn’t interested until I heard they were paying $25 an hour. That was more than the principal made! We went out to Palm Springs to shoot over a weekend, and I made good money, but I hated modeling. I felt like a piece of meat. The worst part was having to “look charming and smile,” which is what they were always telling me to do.
I wanted to play football for Hollywood High, but there was a slight problem: I never went to classes and I got kicked out. I was still under eighteen and had to go to school somewhere, so I chose the Frank Williams Trade School, where I think I majored in first aid. I also played football for the Hollywood Boys Club as a punter and linebacker. A coach from Southern Cal saw me and said he wanted me to play for them if I ever graduated from high school.
About then I heard from Harley “Doc” Lefevre, the football coach at Norman High. He said he needed help fast or he was going to lose his job. So I went back to Norman and played for him. I won’t say I was a ringer or that I got paid, but I was two years older than most of the seniors on the team and had open credit at a local clothing store. And I didn’t have to get a job.
Doc wasn’t exactly a role model. The only one of his players who had a car was Pud (rhymes with “good”) Lindsay. Pud’s family owned the Norman Steam Laundry. It was his folks’ car, but he drove it to school every day. Doc didn’t have a car, so he’d get Pud out of class to drive him around town. After running a few errands, Doc and Pud would go hang out in a coffee shop for the rest of the day. I’d get in on it, too.
Doc wasn’t much of a disciplinarian, either. During a game against one of the high schools from Oklahoma City, some guys in the stands began ragging me. “Hey, pretty boy!” and stuff like that. They kept it up, and it got embarrassing. When I came in to punt, I kicked the ball and started jogging off the field, but I kept going right past the bench and into the stands after them. It turned into a brawl, and they had to get the police to break it up. The other guys got arrested and Doc winked at me as I trotted back to the bench.
I was an introvert, but in a group of people, I was a show-off. I pretended never to take things seriously. I was probably trying to hide my insecurity. (What the hell, it worked for me. I’m glad nobody tried to fix it.)
One day a bunch of us were hanging out in front of Woolworth’s in Norman and there were some gumball machines next to the door. I said to no one in particular, “I could steal one of those, easy.”
“Well, bull shit,” they said.
That was all I needed. I sauntered over to a machine, swept it up with one hand, and kept on walking with it right down Main Street. None of the gang thought I could—or would—do it. They were
so impressed at how smooth I was that one of the girls in the group nicknamed me “Slick.”
The girl was Betty Jane Smith and she was my first love.
She was gorgeous, vibrant, full of life. I would have married her in a heartbeat. But there was a problem: Betty Jane was an older woman, by two years. While I was playing football and doing my best to flunk out of Norman High, she was attending OU and dating a college man.
Though I grew up fast in some ways, I was immature in others. I was a real wallflower. Women frightened the hell out of me. (Still do.) I didn’t have a clue how to talk to them. Because I lacked the courage to tell her myself, a girlfriend told Betty Jane I was absolutely balmy about her. Unfortunately, the girlfriend told me Betty Jane wasn’t interested. Not in a million years.
Broke. My. Heart.
I must have been out of my mind: Here she was, a beautiful former Football Queen and Pep Club president, and there I was, a ne’er-do-well with no prospects and no ambition, two years her junior.
Betty Jane eventually married the college man. He ended up a mogul in the record business, and they lived out in the Valley, a few miles from my house. As far as I know, they still do.
It took a long time to get over Betty Jane. I was sure I’d never fall in love again. A big cloud of gloom and doom settled over me, and I didn’t want to do anything or talk to anyone. I just sat there brooding. I couldn’t make a decision whether to take a bath or a shower, so I didn’t do either. I just sat there. For days. At one point, I even contemplated suicide. But eventually I started to come out of it. Little by little, I began to feel like my old self again, until one day I realized that the cloud had finally lifted. I decided to go on living.
CHAPTER TWO
Korea to Broadway
I was the first Oklahoman drafted for the Korean War.
When I got the letter from Uncle Sam in late December 1950, I figured that if they needed me, they were in trouble: I’d already been in the National Guard. I tore up a knee during maneuvers, and they gave me a medical discharge. I had the knee operated on because I wanted to play football again.
When I reported for induction, I asked the doctor, “Hey, Doc, what about my knee?”
“What about it?”
“They operated on it, you know?”
“Well, they must have fixed it. Next!”
I went through basic training at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. One day they put up a list of a hundred guys who were being shipped out, and to my relief I wasn’t on it. That’s when I learned that nobody was supposed to go overseas unless they had boots. One of the guys on the list had feet the size of aircraft carriers and the army couldn’t find boots to fit them, so they took him off the list and put me on it.
I was sent to Schofield Barracks in Honolulu and assigned to the 5th Regimental Combat Team of the 24th Division. It was a “bastard outfit,” an independent unit with no permanent higher divisional headquarters. At one time or another, the 5th RCT had fought under the 1st Cavalry, the 45th Infantry Division, and even a Marine brigade, earning itself a distinguished combat record. In the parlance of the time, it was a “colored” regiment, because it had a large percentage of Hawaiians and Asian Americans. When the fighting heated up, the 5th was rushed to Korea. They needed fodder to stuff up the gap, and we were in the first group of replacements.
On my second day in Korea, as a rifleman in Able Company, I was bringing up the rear of a patrol when I was hit with mortar shrapnel. Most of it glanced off my helmet, but a few fragments caught me in the hand and face and one cut my watchband.
They sent me back to an aid station, but instead of going in, I started picking out the little bits of metal while looking in the mirror of a jeep. An officer came up and said, “Don’t do that! Go inside and we’ll get you a Purple Heart.” So I went in, they bandaged my “wounds,” and I went back to my unit.
A couple weeks later, on April 21, 1951, in what’s now called the First Spring Offensive, 250,000 Chinese Communist troops swarmed across the 38th Parallel. The first thing they ran into was the 5th RCT.
Able Company was dug in on a ridgeline on the RCT’s right flank, with elements of the Republic of Korea 6th Division protecting our right. On the night of April 24, the Red Chinese attacked us in force, bugles blaring. (They used bugles and whistles to signal infantry maneuvers, and it got so the sound of them was more unnerving than the roar of their artillery.)
As soon as machine-gun tracers and mortar rounds started coming in, the ROKs turned tail and ran, leaving our right flank wide open. We were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming fire as wave after wave of infantry slammed our position. I took cover on the lee side of the hill and saw three enemy soldiers running along the ridgeline. Without thinking, I shouldered my rifle and started ripping away. I’m pretty sure I hit one of them because I saw the head snap and the helmet fly off.
The Red Chinese shot us to pieces. Before we knew it, we had only thirty men left out of one hundred thirty, and we were surrounded. Our company commander, Captain Horace W. West, assembled the survivors and told us we were going to execute a “retrograde” maneuver. Which is a nice way of saying we were checking out. Despite bleeding profusely from nine bullet wounds, Captain West led us off the ridge and we retrograded all night long, fighting as we went. None of us would have survived without his bravery and leadership, for which he ultimately received the Distinguished Service Cross.
At dawn the next morning we picked up some ROK stragglers just as our fighter planes began pounding the enemy positions. We were all sitting on a hilltop cheering them on, shouting, “Go get ’em, boys, blow the shit out of ’em!” when one of our own AT-6 spotter planes flew over. Because we’d lost our orange air panels that would have identified us as friendlies, the AT-6 radioed back about a concentration of “enemy” troops. The next thing we knew we were being strafed by US Navy Panther jets firing 20-millimeter white phosphorus rockets.
I was diving into a foxhole when I got hit. In the butt. (How could they miss?) The jets kept firing and there was white phosphorus streaming in all directions, so I figured I’d better get out of there. I jumped out of the foxhole and ran . . . right off the side of a cliff.
I rolled end-over-end about a hundred yards down the hill, dislocating my shoulder and tearing up my knees. Meanwhile, rockets were still raining down, with fragments ricocheting all over the place. I thought of the old line, “It ain’t the one with your name on it you have to worry about, it’s the one addressed, ‘To whom it may concern.’”
A ROK soldier had rolled down the hill, too, and he was worse off than me: he had white phosphorus burns all down his back and I knew it was smarting, because that stuff burns. I could barely move because of my knees, but we slowly dragged ourselves back up the side of the hill. When we reached the summit, it was deserted.
There we were, alone on top of the hill. The ROK didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Korean, but we could communicate with gestures. It didn’t seem like a good idea to stick around, so we headed south, hoping to catch up with our retreating column.
As we made our way down the hill into another valley, I looked to my right and spotted a group of about one hundred fifty soldiers . . . and they weren’t ours. It was what must have been a whole company of North Koreans. They saw us, too. My rifle had been blown to bits by a rocket, but the South Korean still had his, though it wouldn’t have helped much if the North Koreans had decided to open up on us. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life than I was at that moment. I didn’t wet my britches or anything, but it wouldn’t have taken much more.
We just kept walking, right past the North Koreans. To this day, I don’t know how we got away with it. The only thing I could ever figure is that because the South Korean had a rifle and I didn’t, the North Koreans must have thought he was one of them and I was his prisoner.
We walked for maybe six more hours, until we heard the sweet sound of American tanks. As we approached our own lines, I took th
e rifle from the South Korean so our guys wouldn’t mistake him for an enemy soldier who had the drop on me. They sent me to an aid station right away. I don’t know what they did with the South Korean. I’ve often wondered what happened to him.
The next day they airlifted me to a hospital in Japan. By the time I got there, my shoulder and the phosphorus wounds on my backside weren’t too bad, but my knees had swollen up like balloons. I spent about two weeks in the hospital. Most of the guys there were a lot worse off than I was.
In his history of the 5th RCT, Hills of Sacrifice, Colonel Michael Slater writes that my unit fought one of the biggest and most pivotal battles of the Korean War. Of the 3,200 5th RCT troops deployed from Hawaii, more than a third were killed, wounded, or missing in action within six weeks of entering combat. Slater calls the battle “the most bitter close-combat struggle Americans have participated in since the Civil War.” In terms of the big picture, our side had withstood a human wave offensive in which the Red Chinese lost 200,000 men and gained nothing. After that, it settled into a stalemate that finally led both sides to negotiate. The result half a century later is two Koreas tensely divided by the 38th Parallel.
You automatically get a Purple Heart if you’re wounded or killed in action against an enemy of the United States. “Wounded” is broadly defined. The little shrapnel scratches I got were the same as my more serious knee injuries for the purpose. For that matter, a piece of shrapnel gets you the same medal for losing an arm. So I was awarded two Purple Hearts on my service record. But I never got a medal.
Years later, I wrote the army about it because I wanted to have something tangible to give Grandma Meek before she died. Didn’t get an answer. I wrote again, and they finally dug through the old records and found my paperwork.
