Food
& Other Important Things
Meanderings Far Away - Don
Curto
Some South Pacific Stuff
In September of 1945 I was
a still-new Marine second lieutenant in Guam, twelve degrees above
the equator, serving uselessly in the 12th Marines, the artillery
battalion for the Second Marine Division—uselessly because the
war was just ended and the battalion wasn't firing, even for practice,
and my artillery training was minimal. But under the theory that Marines
can do anything, I was assigned there. We took long marches up and
down the rugged inland part of the island, with heat and humidity
competing for the highest mark. We searched for unexploded shells
in the "impact area" of the firing range and marked them
for later destruction. At night, we sat in the battalion officers' club
talking, singing, smoking, drinking, all the while thinking of women.
Some of us had tried, at first, going down the hill when we could
get permission to Agana, Guam's largest town. Too many people, too
many Army Air Corps guys from the nearby base, not enough women to
go around. The "club" was a South Sea island thatched-roof
hut, with a bar built of local material. There was nothing elegant
about it. There was a good stock of liquor, lots of beer and a Marine
sergeant to bartend and run the operation. For the life of me now
I don't recall how we paid for drinks or what they cost at this place.
We might have used chits and paid on payday. Who cares, anyway.
Our quarters were pyramidal canvas tents with wood floors
and side flaps for ventilation. We slept two officers to a tent. Mosquito
netting was standard, and pity the poor man who under the influence
of too much alcohol didn't get his netting secured mosquito-tight.
My tent mate was a friend from advanced infantry training at Camp
Pendleton in California. He, too, liked Alexanders, a drink made with
Mexican Coffee liqueur and cream. We had managed to stash some coffee
liqueur in our locker boxes, leaving behind some unnecessary clothes.
But, in Guam there was no cream. So canned milk, which we found somewhere,
filled the bill. Not much of a drink, but, even out of aluminum canteen
cups it gave us the feeling that we had not given in to the island
culture and we carried some of Los Angeles with us.
The club was lighted with three bare bulbs strung on a
wire from one end to the other. These didn't provide much light as
the battalion generator was overworked and failed often, but unit
regulations set 9:00 p.m. as closing time anyway. Our biggest party,
in the short time that I was there, celebrated the daring venture
of one of the division recon units which had been unofficially "assigned"
to liberate a new jeep from the Army Air Base (which was rich with
jeeps while we were poor), get it painted Marine Corps green, register
it and not be caught. I don't think the Army ever discovered its loss.
That night, the lieutenant colonel, who was our battalion
commander and a great drinker, shut the club down by borrowing a .45
Colt from the bartender (kept to shoot any left-over Japanese who
might try to get a drink) to shoot out the three lights. He was able
to hit only two of them, and finished a whole clip without hitting
the third one. A sober sergeant finished closing by shooting the third
bulb at the colonel's order. Such was life in late 1945 in Guam.
Fun and Excitement in Peking
By early November of 1945 I had left Guam and sailed
to China to replace Marines who were returning to the States.
My office in Tientsin, North China, was in a former Buick
dealership building in the pre-war American zone, quite close to the
Hai River and on a beautifully wide main street. Circumstances and
a large amount of just plain good luck had landed me one of the best
jobs in China—public information officer for the First Marine
Division—a job normally held by a major. Things at the end of
the war were not normal, and with old-timers having high points for
returning to the States, jobs were filled with people of lesser rank.
I was of the "lessest" rank, with only new gold bars.
Of the twelve second lieutenants shipped north from Guam
to replace returning veterans, my friend Boyd Compton and I were the
luckiest. Ten of the new officers were shipped to platoons guarding
railroad bridges in some of the most isolated country in the world.
An important rail supply line ran from Tientsin to Chin Wang Tao,
180 miles to the north. Communists (we were ordered to call them "dissidents")
regularly disrupted rail service, forcing delays while repairs were
made. The bridges were critical, and if damaged most difficult to
repair. Marine infantry units were stationed at these bridges. From
each of these tightly guarded locations they could send repair crews
to fix broken rails. A light observation aircraft flew daily, weather
permitting, from Tientsin north to inspect the tracks and radio the
nearest platoon if disruption was found. (I made this flight as a
passen-ger/observer, and that is another story.)
My friend was assigned as Officer in Charge of the Marine
radio station for North China and I got the public information job.
I had working with me some of the best, most experienced writers and
photographers one could ask for. Bill Camp was chief writer and boss
of the editorial section. He was the author of Skip to My Lou, a famous
and successful novel about the Dust Bowl migrations of the '30s, which
unfortunately had been diminished in its success by John Steinbeck's
Grapes of Wrath, published just before Camp's book. Bill was a former
newsman in San Francisco who returned there only to die a tragic death
soon after. There was also a public information office in Peking,
ninety miles away, which was under my direction, though the young
sergeant in charge there needed almost no direction from me. I don't
know if there is a statute of limitations for infractions occurring
in China in 1946, but I don't want to take a chance on it and I won't
give his name. Bill could get anything, anytime, from anyone. His
most famous acquisition was required because somehow the editorial
section had lost authority to have a power take-off jeep, which was
required to make wire recordings. Bill was instructed by those in
need of the jeep to "acquire" one, have it repainted and
get it registered to our section without violating the restriction
on our "owning" one. Sometimes a blind eye by the man in
charge is better than offering help or getting in the way. I suspect
that the Tank Battalion searched almost everywhere for it. We later
transported that jeep deep into the interior of Shantung Province
where we used it to make recordings of Chinese bandit groups singing
battle songs. These groups were loosely allied with the Nationalist
forces as mercenaries. Some of these recordings are safely stashed
away in some archives in Washington, from where the original order
to record originated.
I went to Peking as often as I could ar-range it. It was
a much more beautiful city and more exciting things were happening
there. My sergeant had "acquired" a personal rickshaw driver
whom he shared with me when I visited. (In another piece sometime
I will write more about that rickshaw driver.)
It was at a British legation party in the summer of 1946
that I discovered the aph-rodisiac power of Fame. In those days, even
in post-war Peking, when the British had a party, it was elegant and
proper. The old buildings in Peking had been used by the Japanese,
but little was damaged. The outstanding feature of the British legation
that I remember was how large the main room was—it was truly
a ballroom. We had been planning our participation in the party for
many weeks. Many newspaper and magazine correspondents were in the
area, especially because meetings were being held between the communists
and the nationalists to try to implement a cease fire set up under
the auspices of Gen. George C. Marshall. Peking was the center of
the Chinese world at this time. And nothing drew newspaper people
like a good party. The Marine public relations office provided the
correspondents with what services it could—transmission help
to the States, transportation when possible, access to liquor, etc.
Mostly they were a demanding bunch, but some of them were fine.
With the help of my Peking sergeant, I made the acquaintance
of a young woman who worked for a civilian U.S. government agency.
She was dark haired, tall, slim, elegant looking, spoke English, dressed
American and she was not Chinese. It should be pointed out here that
"not Chinese" in China, at this time, was the element that
made even all American or British or Russian women, after a while,
look like Rita Hayworth. We were surrounded by Chinese, and many of
them were very beautiful, but while familiarity may not breed contempt,
it does tend to breed blindness. For every Occidental woman there
were thousands of Marines and some Army, too. (Though with Marines
around, Army never had a chance.)
I did know, at one time, the name of the beauty, but I
have forgotten it. You'll understand if you stick with me now that
you have gone this far. I dressed in the best Marine uniform I had—starched
and pressed khak-is, shined shoes, proper in every respect. I didn't
fool myself even then that it was my intellect, personality or looks
that made the date happen. It was, clearly, my position with many
things available hard to get elsewhere. But, ever the optimist, I
felt sure that this could and would change. We arrived in my personal
jeep, were met at the door by British functionaries from the legation
and escorted into the building. A crowd. We made an elegant couple,
I thought. Heads turned, people whispered to each other. On the edge
of the crowd, paying no attention to me but looking long and hard
at my date, was a very handsome civilian, somewhat older than I. It
was John Hersey, who had come to China to write an article for Life
magazine about a village between Tientsin and Peking: "Red Pepper
Village." He was also the very famous and successful author of
A Bell for Adono and the recent Hiroshima, about our atom bombing
of that Japanese city. My date asked me who he was; I told her. She
asked to meet him; I complied. After that I only saw her from a distance.
I never read anything that John Hersey wrote. Now, he's dead and I'm
alive. But, I think he still won. That was my love life in Peking
in 1946.
—Don Curto
