Still a rarity in Madisin, television was the one luxury that Fred allowed himself on his sales trips. He had just turned it on when his room’s telephone rang.
“Hello.”
“This is the front desk. Your wife is returning your call.”
“Thanks.”
“Hello, Fred?”
“Hi, Sally. How are the kids?”
“I got some bad news.”
“Are they sick?”
“No. They’re fine but you got a letter from the Navy.” As she read it Fred stumbled over and turned off the Motorola twelve-inch black and white TV. “Are you still there?” She asked after reciting the name of the Navy Commander who had signed the document.
“Yeah. I’ll start for home in the morning. I better cut my trip short.” He spent hours staring at the cracks in the ceiling and the spiders who traversed them instead of watching the antics of the Aldrich Family, dancers cutting a rug on Arthur Murray’s Dance Party, George Burns and Gracie Allen portraying the humorous side of marriage, or some other cut-up whose jokes were now meaningless for those called to fight to save a peninsula from communism.
Chapter 20
The Korean War began a pattern that United Nations’ sanctioned wars continued far into the next century: America provided six times as many troops as twenty other nations combined to battle the North Korean and Chinese soldiers and USSR pilots flying MIGs, all of them intent on unifying North and South into one communist nation.
“Once a Navy man, always one.” That’s what Captain Uley had said during Fred’s days of surviving WW II.
Somehow Fred no longer felt like one as he tried to readjust to uniforms, orders, salutes, and meetings. His new captain had spent WW II battling German submarines, destroyers, cruisers, and whatever Goering’s Luftwaffe could muster. Captain Ickles considered the present war a mere flash in the pan. Commanding a supply ship was the icing on the cake in his estimation. He assembled his officers ashore at a Japanese restaurant to tell them as much.
“To an early end to this war.” Captain Ickles lifted his glass of Saki as his third toast of the evening.
“Here, here.” His executive officer bellowed.
Ensign Rhinehardt pretended to swallow his drink, which was the remnant of his first. Not much appealed to him about Japan, neither the food, alcohol, women, nor sights. If he never stepped ashore in Korea that would be to his tastes also.
Ferrying supplies from Japan to the aircraft carriers, destroyers, and other ships in the waters off of Korea seemed routine enough. North Korea had no navy and thus far the USSR had not provided any ships to the enemy. The main danger was the mines that floated in the waters surrounding the peninsula. Because their ship sailed at 2300 hours Captain Ickles broke up the celebration early.
“Back to the ship, men.” He rose from the low lying table and stretched. “Don’t want to be late.”
Not until 0120 hours did Fred’s recent diet awake him. He tried to walk the few steps to his room’s head but the pain like a hot poker piercing his abdomen buckled his knees. He writhed on the floor until his groans roused his roommate.
“What’s wrong, Rhinehardt?”
Fred clutched his stomach. “It hurts pretty bad.”
“Sushi get to you?” He tried to lift him but Fred howled in pain.
“Man, you really are bad off. I’ll fetch the doc.”
But the ship’s surgeon had eaten the same raw fish, which was now exiting his body. “It’s coming out of both ends,” he told Fred’s roommate. “Go get a medic and bring the ensign to sick bay.”
Before moving his patient, the medic poked Fred’s right lower abdomen with his finger. When Fred screamed from the slight pressure, the medic shook his head. “Looks like appendicitis.” He sent for a stretcher and helped carry his moaning patient to the small sick bay. Two others stricken by the raw fish sat on its cold metal floor. “Boy, you all must’ve eaten the worst fish around Yokohama last night. Counting the doc, that makes four of you so far. Either of you two hurting on your lower right side?”
They shook their heads.
“I’ll be right back with the doc.”
The medic supported the surgeon as they stumbled to the sick bay. Dizzy from his diarrhea and vomiting, the doctor pulled the medic aside after examining the sickest man on board. “You were right. It’s appendicitis. But I’m so sick I can’t hold a scalpel steady enough to operate in these rough seas. Go tell the captain we need to put ashore.”
But by the time Fred was transported to an Army hospital on land the poison from his burst appendix had seeped outward. Peritonitis spread rapidly and he died two days later. They flew his body home on a C-54 transport so that family and friends could bury him in Madisin.
***
Sergeant Jason Dalrumple disliked his promotion because now he was responsible for a squad of soldiers instead of only ensuring his own survival. Its number varied from five to ten, depending on members killed or wounded and available replacements. Three raw recruits had reported to him for duty during a lull in combat.
“Welcome to Korea, boys,” Sgt. Dalrumple said. “My job is to keep you alive. Your job is to keep yourselves alive. Your number one question is probably ‘when do I go home?’ I bet.”
Two of them nodded as the third fiddled with his M-1 carbine.
“I thought so. You’re lucky. They just dropped the number of points you need from forty-three to thirty-six. You get four points for each month of close combat, two points for duty in the rear echelon, and one point for duty in the Far East, such as Japan, Taiwan, or the Philippines. Once you hit your thirty-six points you are eligible to rotate back to the States. But sometimes some guys end up waiting longer for rotation. Any questions?”
“Is it always this cold?”
“Only in the winter. When you wake up at night shake your hands and stomp your feet to keep the blood flowing so you don’t get frostbite. If you get frostbite you might get gangrene and the docs will have to chop it off.”
The three settled into a defensive line, a series of hills and trenches facing two brigades of Chinese and one of North Korean troops, which waited until dark to attack. Soldiers of the first wave fell about one hundred yards from the line, from the second wave about thirty yards away. By the fourth wave of the seemingly infinite enemy a few were reaching their trenches. One of the new men panicked when his weapon jammed and he rose from his kneeling position. A bullet ripped into his shoulder and knocked him to the icy ground. When daylight came, Sgt. Dalrumple examined the wound as a medic removed the blood-soaked bandage and applied a fresh one.
“Went in and out.” He patted the shaking soldier’s helmet. “Worth a Purple Heart though. You’ll be back in a couple weeks.”
Aerial recon of the enemy’s new position discovered reinforcements snaking toward their forward lines. Unable to respond in kind, the American commanders ordered their troops to regroup 1,000 yards to the south. By dusk Sgt. Dalrumple’s squad had joined the rest of their company in a hilltop bunker abandoned by their battalion’s commanding officer and his staff.
“Just like the Ritz. At least we got a view,” the company’s commanding officer, a lieutenant six months out of West Point said. “The enemy’s going to have to climb this hill to get to us now.”
“They got so many guys it doesn’t matter, sir.” Sgt. Dalrumple said what the other noncoms were thinking.
“I just got off the radio with Battalion headquarters. Enemy artillery blew up part of our ammo dump. The soonest they can bring us any ammo is tomorrow.”
“My men are down to only about four clips each, sir.”
The lieutenant turned toward the other sergeants.”
“About three.”
“Maybe five each.”
“Six at most.”
“How many BARs do we have?”
“Two.”
“Put one on each end of the bunker. Tell the BAR gunne
rs that no matter what happens they can’t let the enemy outflank us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is the trip wire set up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How much fuel does the flame thrower have left?”
“Half a tank.”
“Put him in the middle.” He took off his helmet and pounded it on a wooden plank until some of the dried mud dropped from it. “I have three flares left. When I fire off the last one order your men to fall back down the hill toward the rear lines. Our orders are to hold this hill as long as possible. Dismissed.”
The four sergeants went to their squads to pass along the orders as their commanding officer hunkered down next to the three mortars set up twenty feet from the bunker. He offered their crews gum and cigarettes.
“Fix your coordinates on the trip wire. Wait for my order to fire.”
“Yes, sir.”
The two-man teams set the short metal cylinders for a pattern that would saturate the area on both sides of the 100-foot wire with the thirty-one remaining shells, not enough to stop the thousands of troops waiting to climb the hill, only slow their ascent. Then they waited.
***
Hoping the imperialists would be numbed by cold and darkness into slumber or drowsiness, the Chinese commander of the battalions assigned to take the hill waited until 2300 hours to whisper the order to attack. A young North Korean rifleman’s boot clipped the trip wire, which rang the bells attached to it. The clangs jolted the American commander from his half sleep.
“Fire at will!”
The first rounds from the mortars hit the bottom of the hill thirty seconds later. After two more minutes the last one sailed upward.
“That’s our last shell, sir.”
He fired the first flare. It drifted slowly downward, its tiny parachute granting maximum illumination. Sgt. Dalrumple groaned as the sweating private next to him stated the obvious.
“Good God, Sarge. They look like ants.” He jabbed the barrel of his M-1 toward the shadowy figures.
“They’re going to be crawling all over us if you don’t start firing, troop!”
The bullets from the eighty-four carbines dropped the first fifty enemies to the ground but their lifeless bodies served as traction for the comrades who followed. As they sank into the mud the corpses proved less slippery than the gooey earth that half buried them. The BARs raked the flanks of the hill until their belts of ammunition were spent. By then the second flare had drifted to within twenty feet of the ground.
“Report!” The lieutenant ran from sergeant to sergeant.
“Ammo gone.”
“Down to our last clips.”
He pounded the helmet of the one with the flame thrower. Its forty foot burps of flame ignited the enemy closest to the bunker. Those with burning skin and uniforms rolled down the hill, taking down fellow soldiers like bowling pins. The lieutenant fired the last flare through the two-foot gap between frozen earth and the hundreds of sand bags that formed the roof. One by one, the sergeants ordered their men to retreat down the back side of the hill. Some of them slid. Others tumbled as they tripped.
Sgt. Dalrumple clutched the ankles of a bleeding man as a medic supported his shoulders. Halfway down the hill, Jason turned to watch the first shells from an artillery battalion two miles away hit the bunker, showering mud, sand, wood, and body parts on the fleeing Americans.
At last the bullets stopped whizzing by him.
Chapter 21
“Sally Crenshaw?”
“Here.”
“Stanley Dalrumple?”
Silence.
“Stanley Dalrumple?”
“Huh?”
“Say here, Stan.” Dan Rhinehardt whispered across the aisle.
“Uh, here.”
Miss Lewis glared at the one she considered the worst student of her ten-year career as a teacher. She wrote a note to the principal and ordered Dan to deliver it. Principal Gossrite moaned as he read it. Then he dialed the Dalrumples’ phone number and scheduled an appointment with Stanley’s parents.
“It appears that there is a slight problem.” Principal Gossrite’s eyes danced between teacher and parents. “Miss Lewis feels that your son needs to transfer to a class better suited for him.”
“What kind of class?” Jason stared at his watch. Every minute wasted here was money lost from the remodeling job where he would rather be.
“One for those who are mentally deficient,” Miss Lewis said.
“You saying our boy is a retard? A throwback?”
“Here, look for yourself.” She tossed a paper onto his lap. “I had the district psychologist test Stanley. His I.Q. is only 77.”
“What does that mean?” Thelma studied the document.
“That he is minimally educable. Of the hundreds of students I have instructed, he is the worst one of all.”
Jason shrugged. “Now I’ll be the first to admit that he’s a mite slow. But all he needs is to learn to read and write and his numbers. I can train him to make a decent living.”
“I’m not certain he can learn.”
Talking to her is like beating a dead horse. Jason turned to the principal. “What’s your opinion?”
“I have to concur with Miss Lewis. State law requires children to attend school until age sixteen. You can either put Stanley in our class for mentally retarded children or the school at St. Anthony’s or the one at Redeemer Lutheran.”
“How soon do we have to decide?” Thelma asked.
“You have until Monday.”
Jason stood. “We’ll let you know by then. Meantime we’ll keep Stanley home. Wouldn’t want to inconvenience Miss Lewis with him anymore.”
Her sniff complemented her smirk.
Thelma said that the “special class” was the best option so Jason visited the parochial schools by himself the next day. He liked the habits worn by the nuns at St. Anthony’s School. “They’re like their uniforms for the army of the Lord,” he had told Thelma during breakfast.
Mother Superior Sister Teresa welcomed him. “The secretary said you are considering placing a child with us?”
“That’s right. Stanley’s in first grade.”
“I don’t recall seeing you at Mass. Do you belong to St. Anthony’s parish?”
“No ma’am. We go to church at Full Gospel Evangelical but I was told you let people of other persuasions send their kids here.” He stared at the linoleum tiles. “Uh, do you take kids that are slow?”
She stood and grasped the beads of the large rosary wrapped around the middle of her habit. “Yes. We have a few such students. But at times they feel left out. Especially as our children make their first Confession and Holy Communion and later on are confirmed. Do you think not being able to join the others in the sacraments would bother your son?”
Jason contorted his lips. “I really don’t know.”
“Please consider that before you decide.” She handed him a folder. “Everything you need to register him is in here, including details of tuition. Now if you’ll excuse me, we are having an assembly at nine.”
“Okay.” He stood and shook her hand. “Thank you.” He opened the folder and read it as he walked to his truck. When he saw that tuition for non-parishioners was $10 more a month than for parishioners, he tossed the folder into the trash can in his truck’s bed. He prayed before meeting Redeemer Lutheran School’s principal but when tuition for it proved even higher than at St. Anthony’s, Jason abandoned his hope of his son being educated “around normal kids.”
The following Monday Stanley joined twelve other boys and girls from the school district who had also been labeled as mentally retarded. For Thelma the saving grace of the painful transition was Stanley’s new teacher.
“She’s as nice as Miss Lewis was nasty. You called Miss Lewis the Wicked Witch of the West. That means that Stanley’s new teacher is Glenda, the Good Witch.”
Jason grunted as he pulled the handle on his recli
ner. “I hope you’re right. You and me can only do so much.”
Chapter 22
Thanksgiving of 1955 was three weeks away but eight-year-old Stanley already gave thanks daily for his life, limited as it was at times. Most important of all, he had a dad. Best friend Dan Rhinehardt did not. Curious, Stanley had visited Fred’s resting place at the cemetery on the east end of town. The headstone was ornate, complete with naval symbols such as anchors. Afterwards Stanley had walked the entire graveyard, stopping to pray at each grave that contained a father of those he knew. Those headstones mostly had the years from 1942 to 1945 etched into them.
Second on his list of things to give thanks for was the television set that Jason had bought last summer. Madisin now had a television station and the seventy-foot antenna that Jason had rigged next to a pine tree pulled in two other stations from two distant cities as well. He considered the antenna worth his investment as new programs went on the air that autumn: Gunsmoke, The Phil Silvers Show, Cheyenne, The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason, The Mickey Mouse Club, and Captain Kangaroo, something for everyone.
With the set at his house only pulling in Madisin’s lone station, Dan spent much time at Stanley’s house, especially after school.
“What time is it boys and girls?” His favorite host asked.
“It’s Howdy Doody time!” Dan and Stanley shouted at the flickering images of Buffalo Bob and his sidekick.
On his way home for supper after the show, Dan paused at the edge of the Dalrumple’s property. “Guess I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
Stanley fidgeted, a tic signaling his fear of rejection. “I need to ask you.”
“What?”
“How come you’re my friend? All the other kids just laugh at me and call me a retard or spaz.”
Dan scratched his head. “I never got to know my dad much before he got killed in that war. But Mom says he always helped people out. Since I want to be like my dad I try to help people out too.”
“Oh.” Stanley rubbed his feet in the dirt until a small cloud of dust covered his shoes. “But do you really like me?”