One Degree of Separation

This story, partly fiction, partly based in reality (you'll be able to tell which) is based at a time when Dad had been commissioned a temporary 2nd Lt. in 1943 during World War II. Because it does hark back to that time, I include a booklet from his time in training, in which he became a platoon leader. 

We were commissioned in the first month of 1943, he a week later than myself.  We met for the first time some three months later, at a port of embarkation, in Pennsylvania, on the border of Warren, Ohio.

For both of us, it was as if personnel had lost our records.  This was curious, since our category of officer was being destroyed with assiduous regularity.

I had no complaint.  I was in no hurry. The immediate benefit of this situation was my only consideration.  Later, I would discover that the military was remiss in not giving us training in full units, the kind we were scheduled to command.  One dark and moonless night, I would be unceremoniously deposited on an Italian hill and installed as a platoon leader of a unit, dug in, dispersed, under German fire and told,

"Here's your platoon.".  But this is a story for another seance.

It would be another three months before some classification clerk would come across our names for shipment overseas.  In the meantime, we lived an unsupervised, day to day existence, were assigned quarters, were fed in universal messes.  Otherwise we were free to explore the neighboring cities for surcease from care and boredom.

Frank was young and boyish, and unsophisticated--perhaps approaching twenty years old. He came from a town in Nebraska, was barely out of high school.  When his "Greetings" arrived; was spirited out of a somnolent rural existence before even he had time to find a "girl next door" to sit under an apple tree and wait for him to return.

Nevertheless, he was of good, trusting humor, patient, and proud of his neophyte officer status. He once admonished me for turning around at a shriek whistle.

"An officer never turns around at a whistle," he said.

I do not know what manual of arms he got this maxim from, but I responded with the amount of penitence this deviance called for. Frank was too serious for humorous rejoinder.

He was an opera lover.  In fact, our association began when he asked if I would like to see an amateur performance of the opera, Rigoletto, which was to take place in Warren, Ohio.  I was and still am an aficionado.

Warren was a local bus trip from our camp.  The performance was in a high school auditorium.  It was a recognizable effort, and Frank sang, sotto-voce with the profligate Duke, the famous aria, "Questa O Quella," the song about his difficulty in choosing one mistress over another.

The bus for our return trip to camp had only two other passengers--two girls, visibly attracted to our uniforms, chatty and willing to establish congress.

Frank was in love from the outset.  Norma, his girl, responded.  Frank told me within a week of their encounter, that he would never have the dilemma of the operatic Duke.  She was his choice forever.

I have fond recollections of my friend, Angelina.  She was Italian, wore and engagement ring, had nine brothers, was very possessive from the outset, despite her betrothal, made excellent Italian dinners for all of us, and for the nonce, must appear only peripherally in this story.

It was she who told me the intimate details confided to her by Norma, graphic, passionate, glorious, but never consummated.  Frank said he would not dishonor the woman he was to marry.  She wanted his child.  The torrid embraces were not enough to seduce the very obdurate Frank.

My luck suddenly came to a resounding end.  I was shipped at the end of three months.  Angelina was, I was told, preparing dinner for us alone.  She did not believe that anything but another woman could keep me from our date.  Norma's letter told me how she went from camp to camp making inquiries, and was unceremoniously escorted out of the base by two Military Policeman.  Though we communicated by letter for four years, there was never mention by her, of the event and the nine, irregular shaped Italian cigars I left her--one for each of her nine brothers.

Norma implored me to take care of Frank, who was shipped out a week later.  I could not tell her that the likelihood of my meeting him ever again was very slim, if at all.  I promised that I would, for whatever comfort it would bring her.

I was wrong.  I did meet him in an Officers' Club in Oran.  He was seated at a table, alone, a picture of dejection.  I startled him with my effusive greeting.

"Frank, what the hell are you doing here?"

He was overjoyed in his greeting.  I asked him what outfit he was with. He said he was not assigned currently and was on his way to Casablanca.  I was curious as to why he was travelling with the fatigue uniform and the steel helmet.  He avoided explanation.  All he wanted to do was to talk of Norma, and how long it would be before he would see her again.  How he regretted the precious moments he denied them both.  He talked late into the night of his pain until it was time to part.  In the morning, I wrote a hasty letter to Norma telling her that Frank was OK, how he talked of his love for her and his longing to see her again.  There was little time.  Personnel had caught up with me.   I was on my way to Salerno.

I saw Frank briefly in Naples, several months later.  He seemed to be entering the San Carlo Royal Opera House, the legendary baroque edifice at the end of the famous Via Roma; but the crowd, pushing to get into the theatre kept me from reaching him.  Suddenly, he was gone.  I did not know if he had entered the theatre or had gone elsewhere. Anyway, he was in Naples.  I would find him later.  I thought it an amazing coincidence that the opera that was featured was called "Norma".

Several  more weeks passed before my long delayed mail reached me.  I had had no communication with the outside world since I embarked for Salerno.  There was a large bundle of letters together with my footlocker and the uniforms I left behind in Oran that day of embarkation.

The clothing was mildewed and smelled of damp warehouses.  The letters were no better off, the ink smudged and now illegible on the moist envelopes.  There were many from Angelina and Norma, from my family, copies of the GI newspaper, "Stars and Stripes".  I read them avidly to fill in the gaps left by my enforced absence.

Suddenly I felt cold, frightened.  Norma's letter was in response to the one in which I talked of meeting Frank in Oran.

"It was not possible that you met Frank," she wrote.  "He was killed a month before the date of your letter.  He had named her next of kin, and beneficiary of his National Service Insurance policy.

"For he was likely, had he been put on
To have proved most royally; and
for his passage
the soldiers' music and the rites of war
speak loudly for him."

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit."

William Shakespeare