I walked up by the stones, between the rows of names. Warwick. Eban. Ava.
Icie. What kind of name is that for a woman. You always asked why I didn’t try harder to find her. Why should I? She left me.
The cemetery was still and clean, though the grass was ragged. You know I thought of the leper; hadn’t thought of him in years.
I never saw the inside of that shack. What did he do all day. No country, no family, no job. No one. Maybe he wasn’t sure anymore who he was. He was a secret. I was the only one ever saw him. He could have stopped talking because I didn’t seem real either, only another sound he heard in the woods. A sound in his head. During the war I used to dream of him, walking toward me on one of the tarmac landing strips we laid in New Guinea. I’d wake up in a sweat.
I was a secret myself. I used to lie awake nights when I was a kid, before I slept. I grew up in different places: with Bess, with Ava, with cousins at the farm. I’d fall asleep and hear a voice I’d never heard. I was called Mitch, or nicknames like Cowboy. But this voice said, “Mitchell … Mitchell … Mitchell …” with no question, till the sound didn’t seem like a name or a word.
WAR LETTERS
Mitch
1942–45
Physically the Japanese is a mixed race of all shapes and sizes. He is intensely patriotic, aggressive and stubborn. He is mostly an ignorant villager drilled to fight to the end through years of teaching. While of an inferior type to the civilized Western nations he believes himself to be immensely superior to everything on earth, so he does not surrender freely and is eternally disgraced if taken prisoner. He is liable to run if surprised or rushed by a determined attack and on these occasions you will hear him utter loud squeals. He is entirely treacherous and has no sense of a sporting instinct. He will attempt any number of tricks.
—Soldiering in the Tropics
(Southwest Pacific Area),
prepared by the General Staff, LHQ., Australia,
and issued under the direction of the Commander,
Allied Land Forces Headquarters, SWPA.
(Revised edition, January, 1943)
FORT WARREN, WYOMING
March 31, 1942
Dear Aunt Bess. Was glad to hear from you, got all five letters at once. So far I have not been able to see much here because we have been under quarantine ever since we arrived, measles and scarlet fever, some fun. We have classes and daily drill anyway but we are not allowed out at night. Maybe it is just as well. They keep us on the jump and by the time night arrives I am ready for bed. The sun comes up every day but there is always a strong, steady cold wind and it carries a lot of dust. I am 2 miles south of Cheyenne and about 500 miles from Yellow Stone Park, don’t know how far from Sun Valley. On the train out I didn’t see much—we traveled at night a lot—but what I did see was just level flat land and once in awhile I could see a house. The boys were looking for Cowboys & Indians but we didn’t see any. Guess that has all passed. Everyone says they will never go to another Western Picture. People live here just like you do at home. Give Clayton my best and I wish I could come East before I leave this country. I look to be sent to the West Coast and then on across, where I don’t know. However I have at least six weeks more here. Well Bess, hope you are taking care of yourself. Tell Katie Sue and Chuck the Twister hello from Old Man Mitch.
Love to all,
Mitch
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
Pvt. M. Hampson
Company C
327th ZMC Bn (Port)
Subport of Oakland, CA
May 26, 1942
Dear Clayton. We hope to go across soon. Have been issued all our clothes and helmets and lack only our rifles—I understand we are getting a short, 30-cal. rifle, carbine type with lever action, something like the old 97 model Winchester shotgun. Everyone is anxious to get across. Of course none of us know what we are getting into, I expect we will find out soon enough. I am classified a labor foreman and have been made a corporal and might be a Sergeant before we sail. I am getting $54.00 a month now, new pay. You asked how it is here. I had always heard that it was hot in this state of California but it is not as warm as home, people wear coats in the evenings. Would like to have seen you and Bess and the kids but it won’t be possible. Would be an expensive and hard trip out there and I can’t get off to come home, so it will have to be put off who knows how long. I hope you like the new job at Reeder, I was there a couple of times while working at Wheeling. Clayton, stay in good health and keep the kids straight. Thanks for everything you have done for me. Maybe I could have done better but we all have one way to learn—experience. Good luck and I will see you.
Mitch
June 9, 1942
Dear Aunt Bess. I have just a few minutes to write this so it will be short. The alert is off for today, for how long no one knows—saw a shipload of troops leave here Sunday afternoon, a lot of workers for Pearl Harbor were aboard. Not a sound as the boat pulled away from the dock, no cheers or good-byes; it gave you a funny feeling. I am not worried about the car, it is yours & Clayton’s to do with as you please, I owe you both a lot more than I could ever repay. Have to close now. I will send the kids a birthday telegram if I can, hello to Clayton. A lieutenant said we would be on the high seas by July 4, but can’t tell. Don’t fret about me.
Lots of love,
Mitch
AUSTRALIA
Brisbane
August 14, 1942
Dear Aunt Bess. We did not have a bad crossing though it seemed long. I am lucky to have an apartment, in town here with another lieutenant for a few weeks (Lieutenant Estimatakis—he is from Ohio, up near Youngstown). Word is the outfit will go by train across Australia to Townsville, then somewhere in New Guinea. For right now I have no complaints, I have a place to go always, which is good because everyplace else is so crowded and expensive. Liquor is very hard to get except on the black market and is very costly. I get a weekly ration, 1 bottle of spirits and 6 bottles of beer. It doesn’t last long. When I go to town it’s on the electric train, takes thirty-five minutes. The city is alive with men on leave and of course the Base Section Commanders are always present. If you know the right people and places—and have plenty of money—you can have a very good time. Transportation is the big problem but when you learn the trick you are all right. The girls here are very nice (mostly) and there must be 40 for every man. They all want to marry a Yank so they can go to the States. Do not worry about Lorraine—the rumor about us getting married before I left of course was not true. I don’t know why anyone would get married before going to a war. If I had of wanted Lorraine I would have done something (as you thought) about it before enlisting. I am surprised she didn’t find someone before this. Now, I will not be getting any mail for quite awhile, until the outfit moves north, and so you will not hear from me much. But I am well, keep writing letters, they will all catch up with me at once when base camp is established at our next Post.
As ever,
Mitch
NEW GUINEA
APO-929, New Guinea
November 15, 1942
Dear Reb. Letter from you in the first mail delivery though I have not heard yet from anyone else. Tell them all I am all right, have not had time to write, also there is not much to say. I left Townsville, Australia, with my outfit (am still with 41st Engineers) and arrived at Port Morsby, New Guinea, then we moved by truck to Ora Bay. Tell Clayton I have a 10-yd. dragline and two dozers working now and several cranes. Patched or built them all with junk. We have established a good Base camp here, built tarmac strips for a landing field, etc. I am in charge of the motor pool and all equipment. A week after we got to Ora Bay the Japs landed at Morsby, about 200 of them, but they were surprised by about 60 infantry with machine guns. It was open beach and all the Japs were killed. I was sent down with some men and dozers to bury them—the heat here is infernal, hot as hell, and such a stink as you have never smelled. We wore masks and buried them in pits. Of course you will not say anything about th
is to the family. It is the worst that has happened as yet, though shelling is sometimes bad—mostly we are kept busy loading and unloading the supply ships, patching the loading machines with scrap, and building more airstrips. We get little news and scant mail. I am well but awfully tired. It’s very difficult for me to sleep but that is the way this climate affects you—nothing to worry about. You are lucky Doc that you did not get pulled in. Take care of yourself and let them know you heard from me.
Mitch
APO-929, New Guinea
January 3, 1943
Dear Katie Sue. I had a letter from Mother today and she told me that you have both gone to Columbus to the doctors there. If the pneumonia has gone to rheumatic fever, you must be very careful. I am praying for good news from you. You should be back home by the time this letter reaches you. Are you being good? Doing any romancing and are you still practicing the piano? You better be and so had Twister. That brother of yours should be pampering you now you are sick. I hear I am getting a picture of you, how about one of Twister too? Are you going to stay in school this year? I know it would be a bad break not to, but if it is necessary you wouldn’t mind too much, would you? You must do what Mother and Doc Reb and the other doctors say, so you will be there, right as rain, when Old Man comes back. Will you do that for me? Well, Honey Bunch, write me soon. The snapshots are for you and brother.
Lots of love,
Old Man Mitch
APO-929, New Guinea
March 1, 1943
Hello Darling. Thank you for the very nice pictures of yourself and Twister. You don’t look like you’ve been sick at all. And both so grown-up, I would not have recognized either of you. Boy, that brother of yours will surely be a ladies’ man. I am glad you are popular, however don’t let it go to your head—and don’t grow up too fast or I will never catch up with you. We do a lot of work here but some play—I have been hunting three times, killed a 9-ft. snake, and some Wallaby. (Small edition of the Kangaroo. One had a little one in its pouch. The natives eat them, and when you go out hunting you always take a guide. You pay them by shooting a few Wallaby for them.) Still summer here and it is hot and muggy. I’m glad you got everything you wanted for Christmas, I was thinking of my best girl on that day and now I am so glad you will be all right and Doc Reb has said you can start school again. You are a very Good-looking dame and I suppose you know it—I am glad you are, and I’m sure you will be a joy and the apple of your father’s eye. Take care of yourself Honey, and stay in love with me—
Love & Kisses,
Old Mitch
PHILIPPINES
Philippine Islands
April 19, 1945
Dear Reb. Thanks for writing, yours is the first letter in weeks. I sure hope to get out of here soon. Though it is an interesting enough place, I am tired of being away. A great number of the little boys and girls go stark naked—a lot of them have been to school or will go this coming year. The pigs and chickens live in the house with them. I went into a house the other day (am drawing up leases on buildings the Army used, and finalizing payment) and the house started to crack, so I jumped out—they all laughed & said “too Big.” Most of the houses are made of Bamboo (floor and framework) and Coconut leaves woven into mats (called Nipa) for the sides & roof. I want to send some things back if I can get the boxes to mail them. However as for most of what you can get over here, the five and ten store at home has much better ones—surprising but true. I believe it is worse here than New Guinea, hotter, damper, and the water is terrible, the chlorine comes off in waves and you taste it very strong even in tea and coffee. But we are beginning to make improvements, existence here should pick up. You say Lorraine is expecting; I am not surprised. She must be a sight, she isn’t very big. Well, I wish her the best, she will need some luck. So long, Doc, you say you are tired of tonsils and rationing, but I would gladly trade places with you. See you, and we will have a drink on it all.
Mitch
Philippines
June 10, 1945
Dear Aunt Bess. The news continues to be very good and I believe the war will be over by the 1st of next year. Weather here is even hotter now, especially until noon, then we have heavy showers all afternoon and the ground steams till dark. Then it becomes cool. The moon and stars are beautiful, people who wrote of these places must have gone out only at night and then let their imaginations run on. Bess, Reb wrote me that you are working too hard at the hospital again and that you may have had rheumatic fever when Katie had it. Quit working so much and take care. I still have the note you put in my bag when I left. I have read it many times and it always helps. I hear that the lights came on again in the States and that more gas will be had soon. One thing I know, no more of these places for me, when I come back it must be to stay. Am sending a pair of Filipino native shoes for Twister, a mesh bag for you, flight jacket for Clayton (if it fits) and two native armbands for Katie Sue—I washed them, clean them good before you handle them. Just now the evening shower is on us. Another month half gone, these months really roll around. It is cool—the evenings are lovely after the terrific heat of the day.
Love to every one of you,
Mitch
MACHINE DREAMS
Mitch
1946
The smell was bad, horrible and terrible and full of death, he couldn’t think of a word to say what the smell was, it rose up underneath and around him and he turned to get away. Behind the smell someone kept crying, weeping like a child on and on as the smell broke in the heat, ten in the morning and hot, already hot as hell and the sky a seering bright blue mass over the dried rust red of the bodies. A twisted khaki of limbs and more he didn’t want to see clearly opened flat and mashed and rumpled, oh, the smell, like a deadness of shit and live things rotted, some gigantic fetid woman sick to death between her legs had bled out her limitless guts on this sandy field flattening to the green of Ora Bay. Nothing to do but go ahead, hot metal seat of the dozer against his hips, vibration of motor thrumming, and that kid still crying, some island kid, get a detail over there to keep those kids away, got to get pits dug and doze this mess. The smell blew against and over him; he felt the whole awkward dozer tilt, rolling on the ocean of the smell as on the slanted deck of a transport. Bad seas, it was a bad, bad sea, he looked down over the metal dozer track to his left and one of the bodies lay closeby, the rear of the trousers torn open, the small hips yellowish and mangled like the crushed halves of a peach. The shirt had caught fire and burned nearly off, the splayed arms above the head were sleeveless past the shoulder and one arm was a blackened stick with the hand still curled at the end. The hands, all small and delicate like the hands of big children, and the averted faces smooth and beardless. He tightened his mask and realized the dozer blade was already down, when had he lowered it? What the hell, he was losing his mind, he shoved the gear into forward as the smell assailed him, pushing, pushing back. He felt the give of the earth, just earth, had to think it was all just earth like at Wheeling, working on the Reeder road with Clayton. But the crying was louder and he couldn’t hear the motor of his own machine anymore, just the rush of a big wind and then distinctly, in the empty air, the discreet soft latching of a door, and footsteps on a wooden floor. He was falling and falling toward the quiet of those steps, the throbbing shift of the dozer still rattling in his hand, and he woke with his fist clinched beside his jaw. The footsteps continued past his door toward the kitchen at the back of the house, and when he opened his eyes he saw, very near, the round white face of the alarm clock, its black numbers afloat like fragile, meaningless shapes. Bess had been up with Katie Sue again; only those red shoes of hers made that quiet sound on the floor.
Now she would be making coffee in the tin pot; yes, there was the rattle of the stove drawer where she kept the pans. He heard water running. Quietly, she would dispose of the bottle Clayton had drunk empty last night, easing it into the garbage where it made no sound against peels and meat scraps and leavings, never putting it in sight besi
de the pail and the empty cans, the glass jars washed compulsively before being saved or discarded. He could nearly see her, standing beside the sink in one of her seersucker housedresses and her red wool sweater, her long straight body, her back and shoulders erect as always but taking on now a slightly brittle aspect. How old was Bess? He lay motionless, figuring slowly, watching the cold March light fall from the window across the polished bureau top. He was thirty-five, since September on the transport train from the coast: that made Bess fifty-five the month before he’d come back. No wonder her hair had gone gray, a steely, peppered gray that was bluish and strong and sad. And the war. Keeping the hospital going with the rationing, Katie being sick, and Clayton hitting the bottle a little more. Katie was ten now; she’d just started school when Mitch left. Twister had been eight—Mitch remembered him as sociable, a chatterbox, always wanting to tag along. Now he was an independent, silent kid who went his own way, paid mind to his sickly sister only when he thought no one noticed.
Wasn’t the first rheumatic fever in ’43, and then pneumonia, and she was out of school that next year? They’d all tried to make light of it in their letters. But Katie was almost an invalid, a kid invalid. Strange sometimes, how when she lay in bed in the dimmed child’s room he remembered, sheets pulled up to her shoulders, she looked so much like the smaller girl he’d left—maybe even younger, her features more frail because her face had lengthened and paled. When Mitch had first come back in the fall, she’d been up and back in school, though restricted by Bess’s regimen of naps and liver oils and hot soaks. But the winter had been long and now Bess would take her out of school for the rest of March, waiting for warmer weather. They’d told her last night; must be why she’d cried and hadn’t slept.
Machine Dreams Page 6
