I was already so far around that I was as close to Hoboken as to San Francisco—and closer to Wiesbaden. However, policy called for shipping returnees back via the Pacific. Military policy is like cancer: Nobody knows where it comes from but it can’t be ignored.
The Fairy Godmother Department woke up and touched me with its wand.
I was about to climb aboard a bucket called the General Jones bound for Manila, Taipei, Yokohama, Pearl, and Seattle when a dispatch came granting my every whim and then some. I was ordered to HQ USAREUR, Heidelberg, Germany, by available military transportation, for discharge, at own request see reference foxtrot. Accumulated leave could be taken or paid, see reference bravo. Subject man was authorized to return to Zone Interior (the States) any time within twelve months of separation, via available military transportation at no further expense to the government. Unquote.
The paper-work sergeant called me in and showed me this, his face glowing with innocent glee. “Only there ain’t no ‘available transportation,’ Soldier—so haul ass aboard the General Jones. You’re going to Seattle, like I said.”
I knew what he meant: The only transport going west in a long, long time had sailed for Singapore thirty-six hours earlier. I stared at that dispatch, thinking about boiling oil and wondering if he had held it back just long enough to keep me from sailing under it.
I shook my head. “I’m going to catch the General Smith in Singapore. Be a real human type, Sarge, and cut me a set of orders for it.”
“Your orders are cut. For the Jones. For Seattle.”
“Gosh,” I said thoughtfully. “I guess I had better go cry on the chaplain.” I faded out fast but I didn’t see the chaplain; I went to the airfield. It took five minutes to find that no commercial nor U.S. military flight was headed for Singapore in time to do me any good.
But there was an Australian military transport headed for Singapore that night. Aussies weren’t even “military advisers” out often were around, as “military observers.” I found the plane’s skipper, a flight leftenant, and put the situation to him. He grinned and said, “Always room for one more bloke. Wheels up shortly after tea, likely. If the old girl will fly.”
I knew it would fly; it was a Gooney Bird, a C-47, mostly patches and God knows how many millions of miles. It would get to Singapore on one engine if asked. I knew my luck was in as soon as I saw that grand old collection of masking tape and glue sitting on the field.
Four hours later I was in her and wheels up.
I checked in aboard USMTS General Smith the next morning, rather wet—the Pride of Tasmania had flown through storms the night before and a Gooney Birds one weakness is that they leak. But who minds clean rain after jungle mud? The ship was sailing that evening which was grand news.
Singapore is like Hong Kong only flat; one afternoon was enough. I had a drink in the old Raffles, another in the Adelphi, got rained on in the Great World amusement peak walked through Change Alley with a hand on my money and the other on my orders—and bought an Irish Sweepstakes ticket.
I don’t gamble, if you will concede that poker is a game of skill. However this was a tribute to the goddess of fortune, thanks for a long run of luck. If she chose to answer with $140,000 US, I wouldn’t throw it in her face. If she didn’t…well, the ticket’s face value was one pound, $2.80 US; I paid $9.00 Singapore, or $3.00 US—a small gesture from a man who had just won a free trip around the world—not to mention coming out of the jungle still breathing.
But I got my $3 worth at once, as I fled out of Change Alley to avoid two dozen other walking banks anxious to sell me more tickets, Singapore dollars, any sort of money—or my hat if I let go of it—reached the street, hailed a cab, and told the driver to take me to the boat landing. This was a victory of spirit over flesh because I had been debating whether to snatch the chance to ease enormous biological back pressure. Good old Scarface Gordon had been an Eagle Scout awfully long and Singapore is one of the Seven Sinful Cities where anything may be had.
I am not implying that I had remained faithful to the Girl Next Door. The young lady back home who had taught me most about the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, with an amazing send-off the night before I was inducted, had “Dear-Johnned” me in basic training; I felt gratitude but no loyalty. She got married soon after, now has two children, neither of them mine.
The real cause of my biological unease was geographical. Those little brown brothers I had been fitting, with and against, all had little brown sisters, many of whom could be had for a price, or even pour l’amour ou pour le sport.
But that had been all the local talent for a long time. Nurses? Nurses are officers—and the rare USO entertainer who got that far from Stateside was even more thoroughly blocked off than were nurses.
I did not object to little brown sisters because they were brown. I was as brown as they were, in my face, except for a long pink scar. I drew the line because they were little.
I was a hundred and ninety pounds of muscle and no fat, and I could never convince myself that a female four feet ten inches tall and weighing less than ninety pounds and looking twelve years old is in fact a freely consenting adult. To me it felt like a grim sort of statutory rape and produced psychic impotence.
Singapore looked like the place to find a big girl. But when I escaped from Change Alley, I suddenly didn’t like people, big or little, male or female, and headed for the ship—and probably saved myself from pox, Cupid’s catarrh, soft chancre, Chinese rot, saltwater itch, and athlete’s foot—the wisest decision I had made since, at fourteen, I had declined to wrestle a medium-sized alligator.
I told the driver in English what landing I wanted, repeated it in memorized Cantonese (not too well; its a nine-toned language, and French and German are all I had in school), and showed him a map with the landing marked and its name printed in English and drawn in Chinese.
Everybody who left the ship was given one of these maps. In Asia every cab driver speaks enough English to take you to the Red Light district and to shops where you buy “bargains.” But be is never able to find your dock or boat landing.
My cabbie listened, glanced at the map, and said, “Okay, Mac. I dig it,” and took off and rounded a corner with tires squealing while shouting at peddle cabs, coolies, children, dogs. I relaxed, happy at having found this cabbie among thousands.
Suddenly I sat up and shouted for him to stop.
I must explain something; I can’t get lost.
Call it a “psi” talent, like that stuff they study at Duke. Mother used to say that sonny had a “bump of direction.” Call it what you will, I was six or seven before I realized that other people could get lost. I always know which way is north, the direction of the point where I started and how far away it is. I can head straight back or retrace my steps, even in dark and jungle. This was the main reason why I was always promoted back to corporal and usually shoved into a sergeant’s job. Patrols I headed always came back—the survivors, I mean. This was comforting to city boys who didn’t want to be in that jungle anyhow.
I had shouted because the driver had swung right when he should have swung left and was about to cut back across his own track.
He speeded up.
I yelled again. He no longer dug English.
It was another mile and several turns later when he had to stop because of a traffic jam. I got out and he jumped out and started screaming in Cantonese and pointing at the meter in his cab. We were surrounded by Chinese adding to the din and smaller ones plucking at my clothes. I kept my hand on my money and was happy indeed to spot a cop. I yelled and caught his eye.
He came through the crowd brandishing a long staff. He was a Hindu; I said to him, “Do you speak English?”
“Certainly. And I understand American.” I explained my trouble, showed him the map, and said that the driver had picked me up at Change Alley and been driving in circles.
The cop nodded and talked with the driver in a third language—Malayan, I suppose. At last
the cop said, “He doesn’t understand English. He thought you said to drive to Johore.”
The bridge to Johore is as far as you can get from the anchorage and still be on the Island of Singapore. I said angrily, “The hell he doesn’t understand English!”
The cap shrugged. “You hired him, you must pay what is on the taximeter. Then I will explain to him where you wish to go and arrange a fixed fee.”
“I’ll see him in hell first!”
“That is possible. The distance is quite short—in this neighborhood. I suggest that you pay. The waiting time is mounting up.”
There comes a time when a man must stand up for his rights, or he can’t bear to look at himself in a mirror to shave. I had already shaved, so I paid—$18.50 Sing., for wasting an hour and ending up farther from the landing. The driver wanted a tip but the cop shut him up and then let me walk with him.
Using both hands I hung onto my orders and money, and the Sweepstakes ticket folded in with the money. But my pen disappeared and cigarettes and handkerchief and a Ronson lighter. When I felt ghost fingers at the strap of my watch, I agreed to the cop’s suggestion that he had a cousin, an honest man, who would drive me to my landing for a fixed—and moderate—fee.
The “cousin” turned out to be just coming down the street; half an hour later I was aboard ship. I shall never forget Singapore, a most educational city.
TWO
Two months later on the French Riviera. The Fairy Godmother Department watched over me across the Indian Ocean, up the Red Sea, and clear to Napoli. I lived a healthy life, exercising and getting tan every morning, sleeping afternoons, playing poker at night. There are many people who do not know the odds (poor, but computable) for improving a poker hand in the draw, but are anxious to learn. When we got to Italy I had a beautiful tan and a sizable nest egg.
Early in the voyage someone went broke and wanted to put a Sweepstakes ticket into the game. After some argument Sweepstakes tickets were made valuta at a discount, $2.00 US per ticket. I finished the trip with fifty-three tickets.
Hitching a flight from Napoli to Frankfurt took only hours. Then the Fairy Godmother Department handed me back to the Surprise Party and Practical Joke Departments.
Before going to Heidelberg I ducked over to Wiesbaden to see my mother, my stepfather and the kids—and found that they had just left for the States, on their way to Elmendorf AFB in Alaska.
So I went to Heidelberg to be processed, and looked the town over while the red tape unwound.
Lovely town—handsome castle, good beer, and big girls with rosy cheeks and shapes like Coca-Cola bottles—Yes, this looked like a nice place to get a degree. I started inquiring into rooms and such, and met a young kraut wearing a studenten cap and some face scars as ugly as mine—things were looking up.
I discussed my plans with the first sergeant of the transient company.
He shook his head. “Oh, you poor boy!”
Why? No G.I. benefits for Gordon—I wasn’t a veteran.
Never mind that scar. Never mind that I had killed more men in combat than you could crowd into a—well, never mind. That thing was not a “war” and Congress had not passed a bill providing educational benefits for us “Military Advisers.”
I suppose this was my own fault. All my life there had been “G.I. benefits”—why, I had shared a bench in chem lab with a veteran who was going to school on the G.I. Bill.
This fatherly sergeant said, “Don’t take it hard, son. Go home, get a job, wait a year. They’ll pass it and date it back, almost certainly. You’re young.”
So here I was on the Riviera, a civilian, enjoying a taste of Europe before using that transportation home. Heidelberg was out of the question. Oh, the pay I hadn’t been able to spend in the jungle, plus accumulated leave, plus my winnings at poker, added up to a sum which would have kept me a year in Heidelberg. But it would never stretch enough for a degree. I had been counting on that mythical “G.I. Bill” for eating money and on my cash as a cushion.
My (revised) plan was obvious. Grab that trip home before my year was up—grab it before school opened. Use the cash I had to pay board to Aunt and Uncle, work next summer and see what turned up. With the draft no longer hanging over me I could find some way to sweat out that last year even if I couldn’t be “Herr Doktor Gordon.”
However, school didn’t open until fall and here it was spring. I was damn well going to see a little of Europe before I applied nose to grindstone; another such chance might never come.
There was another reason for waiting; those Sweepstakes tickets. The drawing for horses was coming up.
The Irish Sweepstakes starts as a lottery. First they sell enough tickets to paper Grand Central Station. The Irish hospitals get 25 percent and are the only sure winners. Shortly before the race they draw for horses. Let’s say twenty horses are entered. If your ticket fails to draw a horse, its wastepaper. (Oh, there are minor consolation prizes.)
But if you do draw a horse, you still haven’t won. Some horses won’t start. Of those that do, most of them chase the other horses. However, any ticket that draws any horse at all, even a goat that can barely walk to the paddock, that ticket suddenly acquires a value of thousands of dollars between the drawing and the race. Just how much depends on how good the horse is. But prizes are high and the worst horse in the field has been known to win.
I had fifty-three tickets. If one of them drew a horse, I could sell that ticket for enough to put me through Heidelberg.
So I stayed and waited for the drawings.
Europe needn’t be expensive. A youth hostel is luxury to a man who has come out of the boondocks of Southeast Asia and even the French Riviera isn’t expensive if you approach it from underneath. I didn’t stay on La Promenade des Anglais; I had a tiny room four floors up and two kilometers back, and the shared use of some plumbing. There are wonderful night clubs in Nice but you need not patronize them as the floor show at the beaches is as good…and free. I never appreciated what a high art the fan dance can be until the first time I watched a French girl get out of her clothes and into her bikini in plain sight of citizens, tourists, gendarmes, dogs—and me—all without quite violating the lenient French mores concerning “indecent exposure.” Or only momentarily.
Yes, sir, there are things to see and do on the French Riviera without spending money.
The beaches are terrible. Rocks. But rocks are better than jungle mud and I put on trunks and enjoyed the floor show and added to my tan. It was spring, before the tourist season and not crowded, but it was warm and summery and dry. I lay in the sun and was happy and my only luxury was a deposit box with American Express and the Paris edition of the N.Y. Herald Tribune and The Stars & Stripes. These I would glance over to see how the Powers-that-be were mismanaging the world, then look for what was new in the unWar I had just been let out of (usually no mention, although we had been told that we were “saving civilization”), then get down to important matters, i.e., news of the Irish Sweepstakes, plus the possibility that The Stars & Stripes might announce that it had all been a hideous dream and I was entitled to educational benefits after all.
Then came crossword puzzles and “Personal” ads. I always read “Personals”; they are a naked look into private lives. Things like: ‘M.L. phone R.S. before noon. Money.’ Makes you wonder who did what to whom, and who got paid?
Presently I found a still cheaper way to live with an even better floor show. Have you heard of l’Île du Levant? It is an island off the Riviera between Marseilles and Nice, and is much like Catalina. It has a village at one end and the French Navy has blocked off the other for guided missiles; the rest of it is hills and beaches and grottoes. There are no automobiles, nor even bicycles. The people who go there don’t want to be reminded of the outside world.
For ten dollars a day you can enjoy luxury equal to forty dollars a day in Nice. Or you can pay five cents a day for camping and live on a dollar a day—which I did—and there are good cheap restaurants anytime
you get tired of cooking.
It is a place that seems to have no rules of any sort. Wait a minute; there is one. Outside the village, Heliopolis, is a sign: LE NU INTEGRAL EST FORMELLEMENT INTERDIT. (“Complete nakedness is strictly forbidden.”)
This means that everyone, man or woman, must put on a little triangle of cloth, a cache-sexe, a G-string, before going inside the village.
Elsewhere, on beaches and in camping grounds and around the island, you don’t have to wear a damned thing and nobody does.
Save for the absence of automobiles and clothes, the Isle of the Levant is like any other bit of back-country France. There is a shortage of fresh water, but the French don’t drink water and you bathe in the Mediterranean and for a franc you can buy enough fresh water for half a dozen sponge baths to rinse off the salt. Take the train from Nice or Marseilles, get off at Toulon and take a bus to Lavandou, then by boat (an hour and a few minutes) to l’Île du Levant—then chuck away your cares with your clothes.
I found I could buy the Herald-Trib, a day old, in the village, at the same place (“Au Minimum,” Mme. Alexandre) where I rented a tent and camping gear. I bought groceries at La Brise Marine and camped above La Plage des Grottes, close to the village, and settled down and let my nerves relax while I enjoyed the floor show.
Some people disparage the female form divine. Sex is too good for them; they should have been oysters. All gals are good to look at (including little brown sisters even though they scared me); the only difference is that some look better than others. Some were fat and some were skinny and some were old and some were young. Some looked as if they had stepped straight out of Les Folies Bergères. I got acquainted with one of those and I wasn’t far off; she was a Swedish girl who was a “nue” in another Paris revue. She practiced English on me and I practiced French on her, and she promised to cook me a Swedish dinner if I was ever in Stockholm and I cooked her a dinner over an alcohol lamp and we got giggly on vin ordinaire, and she wanted to know how I had acquired my scar and I told some lies. Marjatta was good for an old soldier’s nerves and I was sad when she had to leave.
Glory Road Page 2
