I’m an unremarkable person who has lived an ordinary life with a few odd, but singular moments.
I have a beautiful and caring wife, and had three children. We lost a handsome and talented son due to a drug accident. My remaining children are happily married each with a son and a daughter.
Until ninth grade I never read an assigned book. I couldn’t be bothered by such nonsense. My time was too valuable playing stickball, softball, football or street hockey.
In ninth grade, at Hermann Ridder Jr.H.S., my English teacher, Ms. Goldberg distributed texts of King Lear and assigned the class to read the first two chapters for the following day. I was so impressed with Shakespeare’s use of the English language relating to the King’s tragedy that I thought, eventually I’ll have have a go at it.
After King Lear, we read The Odyssey by Homer. Ms. Goldberg asked the class to find the Homeric epithets throughout the first three chapters. Then she asked us write an essay using our own epithets. This was my opportunity to see if my nib could scratch out the muse in me.
My General Science class preceded the English class. Mr. Rosenthal, our very bald and very nervous teacher made a near-tragic event out of each demonstration. His hands trembled as he dipped litmus paper into an acid solution. He tried to show how water can be broken down to hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis. As the period drew to an end, he finally located the electrical socket, but sent for an extension cord because the wire was too short. Of course, the period ended with neither hydrogen nor oxygen.
To demonstrate the magnetism of electricity, Mr. Rosenthal was going to show how the coiled wire in a bell becomes a magnet in order to draw the little hammer to the bell. As we had anticipated, after a number of attempts, it did not work. George Liker called out,
“Maybe the battery is dead!”
Angrily, Mr. Rosenthal shouted, “Raise you hand if you want to be recognized”
The bell rang after Mr. Rosenthal sent for another battery. Hallelujah!
I decided to relate a period in Mr. Rosenthal’s General Science class using Homeric epithets. My essay closed with: and so a period of joy ends with the man with theCold Ground’s Been My Bed well-polished head. Ms. Goldberg thought so much of my essay that she had me read it to the class. The class roared, which gave me the motivation to write without constraint for the rest of the term.
But what were my singular moments that the average male had not been exposed to?
After the personnel manager in the Garment District told me I was fucking around with the girls in the office, I told him if this was so, he knew what he can do about it. He knew. He mashed his cigar and replied,
“Get the Hell out of here!”
Soon after that event, I was hired by the NY Central RR as a switchtender/brakeman. I simply threw a manual switch so that an oncoming train could switch to another track. A very simple job before technology replaced all the switchtenders and brakemen.
One day a brakeman at the rail yard called in sick. Brophy, the yardmaster assigned me to brake for the day. This consisted of climbing up the ladder of an empty freight car and to a brake wheel. The freight car was connected to an engine, which pushed the freight car to a long incline called, The Hill. At the top of The Hill, the freight car was separated from the engine. The lone freight car with the brakeman on it hurries down the hill towards a group of empty cars knuckled together for an outgoing freight run. While moving down The Hill the brakeman turns the braking wheel with a bat slowing the freight car, and then jumps off before it rams into the waiting car.
I sped down the track with the Hudson River to my right and the Ripley Men’s clothing factory on my left. I decided that if ever I would see this panorama again, I would not be standing on the ladder of a rushing freight car and turning its brake wheel. My expiration date had more years in its inventory. In spite of the generous salary, I quit.
Within a few months, again, I found myself a recipient of a greeting with another expiration date. I was drafted for the Korean War. As an infantryman. I was shown a hole in the ground on the frontline of Korea which was to be my home. Usually, a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) is given to the tallest or strongest man in the platoon. I arrived, 5’7” and weighing 135 lbs. I was greeted by my platoon sergeant with a loaded 20 lb. BAR. A month later when our platoon was sent to reserve, I was assigned to be a runner. Since walkie-talkies were ineffective in Korea, the runner communicates with the point man (first on a patrol or raid) and the platoon leader.
The battered landscape was practically devoid of greenery. It was a battle for hills. If a tourist would look at them he would be completely unimpressed, but in three years 36,516 US young men ended their lives there, 8,176 are still Missing In Action, and 92,134 men were Wounded In Action.
Our company returned to the frontline at the end of July. On August 8, 1952 our platoon heading for a raid on Hill 117 was ambushed by the Chinese. My sergeant was hit. He wasn’t moving. I asked Poodles from the third platoon to give me a hand to recover him. He ran off. I crawled through Chinese burp gun fire and grenades to recover my Sgt. Massengale. He lay prone on the ground. I carried him down an 60′ rocky cliff and waded with him for about a mile down the Imjin River, and back to our position. I surrendered Sgt. Massengale to Graves Registration. For this action my company commander cited me for the Silver Star Medal, but it was downgraded to a Bronze Star Medal with a “V” for valor.
For forty-three years the chaos of the Korean War was completely hidden from my psyche. Then my platoon sergeant, Flaherty called to ask if I would write a newsletter to the men he found from our company in Korea. He knew I had helped the men in my platoon write to their wives or girlfriends. I wrote a number of newsletters then we had a reunion. During the reunion everything I had experienced in Korea returned to me. As a result, I wrote Cold Ground’s Been My Bed: A Korean War Memoir.
It all began with my appreciation of Shakespeare’s King Lear in junior high school that put the tips of my fingers on my computer keyboard to recall a few singular moments in Cold Ground’s Been My Bed, followed by Seabury Place, A Bronx Memoir, and finally, Coming Home: A Soldier Returns From Korea.
For the complete story, read Cold Ground’s Been My Bed: A Korean War Memoir. danielwolfebooks@aol.com