Life After the War
My life was changed by that stint in the Marine Corps and the G I Bill. I didn’t know how limited my horizons were until I ended up with guys from all over the country, from various backgrounds, and with different philosophies of life and different levels of education. I didn’t know how our nation, ill prepared, had become embroiled in a massive struggle with world-shaking consequences, and how we ever picked ourselves up after the knockdown blow of Pearl Harbor and went on to fight, and to win, and “ to make the world safe for democracy,” again. What I’m trying to say is that I recognized the limited scope of my knowledge and the need to do something about it, like going back to school. But first, a few family details I had to tend to.
Things hadn’t gone well for the folks during the war and they had to give up the business. On top of that, the old Studebaker had to be put out to pasture so getting around was a problem. My mom’s brother, Uncle Dan, insisted that I fly to Detroit, visit a spell, then drive back in a Ford he had been using as a runabout. Well, it turned into quite a visit. He and Aunt Marie lived in a fabulous home on Lake St. Clair where I would have been happy to camp out. But I had to be shown the town so the next day we had lunch in a fancy restaurant and then, strangely enough, walked through the kitchen and into a big room where results from every race track in the country were being posted. Bets were being taken over the phones and the activity and excitement were something else. This was eye-opening to me, not accustomed to life in such fast-moving circles. Next day at the ball park, it was a box on the first-base line and a never-ending line of people coming over to say hello to Danny. At the hotel where he had an office, he parked where it said “NO PARKING,” slipped the cop a twenty and asked about his family, and was greeted by a host of others as we made our way in. Apparently, what was going on was not exactly “according to Hoyle,” but nobody paid it any heed and everybody seemed to be in on it. I learned later that a new administration decided to clean up the place, so Uncle Dan eventually had to pack up and buy into a club in Reno.
I drove the Ford back to St. Louis; the Smith family was mobile again; and I decided to work for a time and make some necessary money. I landed a job at the Naval Station attached to Lambert Field, helping sailors fill out discharge papers, file medical claims, and-the-like. That lasted for a short time when I started working for a cartographic outfit mapping areas from films that had been shot. But I was just marking time until the next semester came along. I had dropped out of high school and was 23-years old, and I couldn’t imagine going back for a diploma. So I called upon all my literary skills and wrote an impassioned letter to the registrar of St. Louis University asking for an interview. I let it all hang out: three landings in the Pacific including two of the bloodiest, Saipan and Iwo Jima; a Purple Heart and a Silver Star; and the fervent desire of a Roman Catholic to attend a Jesuit College. On the strength of that, they kindly offered to see me, and after an oral interview and a battery of tests, allowed me to enroll on probation. Three-and-a-half years later, I had a bachelor’s degree.
Looking back, as I’m certainly doing now, I have to throw out a “Way to go, Harry” to President Harry Truman who had the courage to give the go-ahead to the dropping of the atom bomb and the enactment of the G.I. Bill of Rights while he was head honcho in the ‘40s. To this day, some argue that the dropping of the atom bomb was unnecessary and unjustifiable. I doubt that many ever saw combat. We had just taken Okinawa after brutal fighting and some 50,000 casualties, plus the loss of 34 naval ships and damage to hundreds of others, due to Kamikaze, or suicide, attacks from the air. Japanese casualties on Okinawa totaled some 250,000 military and civilian which told us they were in no mood to surrender. Now, at this point in World War II, we had already sustained some 900,000 casualties, and we were facing a nation fanatically determined to defend the beaches at Kyushu with two million troops, plus a civilian militia of 28,000,000 men and women up to 60 years old who would fight the invaders inland while 5,000 planes were readied to deliver Kamikaze assaults. The resulting deaths from continuation of the “conventional” fighting would have been astronomical. The atom bomb provided a merciful end to this uncivilized holocaust known as World War II.
Elated at the prospect of continuing my education with the help of the G.I. Bill, I chose History and English as my areas of concentration. After what had just happened, I wanted to know more about what got us into that mess, and I wanted to be able to talk and write about it in a clear and rational manner. Trouble was, I didn’t have any specific goals in mind, yet I was enthralled with the whole idea of meeting people, being lectured to by brilliant professors, and hearing and digesting the opinions of others. In my first speech class, perspiration dripped from every pore as I was called upon to deliver a short oration.
I had often sounded off to my tent mates back on Maui about how poorly the war was being conducted or how fiendish the cooks were who prepared that day’s meal, but in this room of people who were judging my ability to speak clearly and concisely, I almost died. However, after seeing others appearing as distraught as I had felt, I was able to adapt an attitude and ultimately become a pretty good speaker.
When I compare educational costs today with the ‘40s, I’m shocked. This problem still exists in my mind and perhaps in the minds of others who lived during Depression times, because we can’t reconcile the difference between the dollar then and the dollar now. In those troubled thirties, a college teacher was doing pretty well on three-to-four thousand dollars a year unless he was a big spender and put out $650 for a new Chevy and maybe another $600 for a mink coat for the wife, or friend. If he bought a new Chevy and a mink coat today, that same college teacher might have to moonlight in an effort to supplement his $75,000 salary. Thanks to Uncle Sam and the G.I. Bill, my books and tuition were paid, plus a monthly stipend of, I think, $65, and if I’d had any sense, I would have used all the time allotted to me for another degree. But I didn’t, so the story goes on. And since all things are said to be relative, I suppose the wage-earner making $4,500 a year in the thirties would have had just as much difficulty sending his kid to college as the guy making $85,000 today. But I still don’t understand it.
Jim, Paul, and I went through boot camp together in San Diego, but when we split up, Jim ended up in an air wing somewhere, Paul became part of the Third Division, and my home was with the Fourth Division. We were discharged at different times, but Paul and I, through an acquaintance, met two great girls with whom we got along real well. They were classmates in a girl’s college, smart, attractive, and lots of fun, the perfect