CHAPTER 12

We were, to say the least a glum crowd the next morning, and those of us who were not too tired from staying awake all night were too disgusted to say anything. We were all half-heartedly gazing off into space when suddenly Roza, the boy from Puerto Rico, let out a heart-rending scream that almost made us all rise up and walk. He started to jabber incoherently and pointed at the windows. It was the first snow of the year, and we all behaved like spoiled little children when we saw it — all save Roza; he was more than scared stiff. He had been reared on that balmy island, and this was the first time in his life that he had ever seen real snow. It took a while for him to stop shaking, but when he was again fully composed he realized that he was the only one in the room who had not become overjoyed by what was happening. He managed in frightened and broken English to ask what was going on. His bed buddy finally translated the situation to him although to this day I honestly believe that that man was convinced that he was seeing either an act of the devil or a miracle.
It was great fun to worry about our snowfall and still greater fun to be concerned with the well being of our mice, but “well being” included good nutrition, and every time I used the term my throat put itself in the way. I couldn’t forget my stricture, or the old problem of breaking in a new doctor to do my dilations.
I found myself up against a type of a doctor who was the exact opposite of the madman who had worked on me at Walter Reed. He would not dilate me without scoping me at the same time, and never had the skill to pass a decent size dilator. The scar tissue once again became master of the situation, and gradually my esophagus started to shrink down. As I was no longer able to swallow solid foods, I prodded him about the “plumber” dilators that had been used on me in Memphis. He said that he never heard of them. Afraid of what I might have to face should he try to learn to use the “plumber” with me as a guinea pig, I stopped complaining and took a few treatments his way. The situation started to back up on me, and I gagged on every solid meal that I tried to eat. I was soon left with no choice but to revert to a strictly liquid diet. Milk in those days was the mainstay of energy in any liquid diet, but after a while it began to taste like poison.
The Swift Meat Packing Company was fortunately putting out pureed meats for babies, and not being able to be too proud I struck upon a new formula. After convincing the dietician that milk was a horribly boring food she agreed to send me at each mealtime a few glasses of gravy. Mixing the gravy and the pureed meats with pureed vegetables I drank my meals with gusto. It may not have been as far as taste was concerned the real thing, but it had the same metabolic effect. I soon found it necessary to increase my enema schedule.
The nice thing about the Army is that it always is getting new members, and with the coming of my next enema one of these young brave recruits was passed on to me. He was fresh out of the Medical Corps basic training program, but from the uncertain manner in which he undertook the unholy ritual I concluded that the boy needed a firm guiding hand. Having been under this sort of attack before and feeling that my past experience rated me as an expert, I decided to interrupt his efforts with a few suggestions. That did it! Without a word of explanation he dropped the colon tube, and ran away leaving the soapy solution to drain onto the floor. A few moments later Effie appeared, and with a mean look in her eye started to take up where the recruit had not so bravely left off. Becoming extra curious as to the cause of the unwelcome change, I asked her where the aide had gone. She replied, “You spoke so roughly that you frightened him.” I vainly tried to convince her that I was just trying to help out, but she was a stubborn female, and less than interested in my arguments.
She then asked, “Do you have good arms and hands?” I naturally replied, “Of course I do.” She then added, “Well, here. Shut up and hold these,” as she pushed my scrotum up and out of her way. I blushingly complied with the lady’s adamant request. Silence reigned, and I grew even redder though not for the last time. Once you are a paraplegic the personal parts of your body are no longer your privates or your Pfc’s; they are public domain.
After I survived that enema I thought Effie would never want to speak to me again. As things turned out it was quite the contrary, and she spent many a pleasant moment telling me of her old man’s drug store in Pittsburg. If I ever dared to try to take the floor from her, or inject a few words into the one-sided conversation, she simply threatened to give me an oral enema. Speaking of oral enemas; Percy Jones Hospital was the only one I have ever been in that had a portable dental office completely equipped for bedside use. The advantages of such a setup are tremendous, but why none of the other hospitals ever thought of having one I’ll never know.
Not all the boys fortunately for them were having the complications that I was, and the doctors soon broke down and started giving out some passes that were good until midnight. It’s a strange but true thing that if you turn the average GI loose after a long confinement he is going to come back to you stinking drunk. When the clock struck twelve and their Cadillacs turned back into wheelchairs the boys were tucked safely into their hospital beds. They should have been more tired out from the combination of whiskey and exercise, but the joy that came with their newly found freedom wouldn’t let them sleep. Their tongues started wagging, and their case histories flowed out of their mouths.
Most of these biographies were dull repetitions, except for the tale heard from a short, stubby mild-looking kid who claimed that paraplegia was a good thing. Positive that he was insane I lay back to let the idiot rant on. My ears perked up when he reached the part about his being court-martialed. It seemed that Uncle Sam had decided to put him away for a long stretch as he hadn’t been too good a boy, but he couldn’t see it Sam’s way, and didn’t want to go. When with a group of prisoners he was being transferred to the train depot from where they were to be brought to Leavenworth, so he decided to leave and leave he did. That was where initiative failed him, for no one had ever told him about Newton’s first law of inertia. When he hit the ground he was brutally enlightened to find that he didn’t stop moving. They never did carry out their threat to send him to prison, and that is why paraplegia to him was such a wonderful thing. The poor ignorant slob may not be alive to know it today, but his prison time was up a few years ago. For his exemplary behavior, he was given a wheelchair with a purple ribbon on it.
When the doctor made his rounds early the next morning, he said nothing about the all-night party, or the fact that the boys had brought a few extra bottles of wine. He simply commented that since everyone was getting around so well, it was time that we all had a more stringent physical exercise added to our program. From then on we were to go swimming daily, and he didn’t want to know about how many bedsores we might have had.
The thought of making that long, lonely trip to the pool was horrible enough yet alone going into the water with our half dead bodies, so we started looking for an out. We all managed to find an excuse for the first day save Roza who wasn’t too hep to our American language. We all agreed to leave whatever we were doing that afternoon in order to be back on the ward in time to see if Roza would come back to us dead or alive. Roza came rolling back onto the ward all right, but far from dead; instead it was with a broad grin on his face, and singing a Spanish tune which when translated into English could only be classified as pornographic.
We rushed to him all asking what had happened. His smile grew bigger and he shouted “Ole!” “Ole, hell,” I yelled back as everyone chimed in. “Si,” he said, “you should have seen her, what a shape, what teats, what an ass.” “Ole, ole, what do you mean ‘her’?” we threw back at him. He replied, “The therapist, he is a female in a bathing suit.” Our faces dropped as we started to blame each other for playing hookey from the pool. Everyone had a hard time falling asleep that night, for all he could think of was an excuse to have her hold him when he went into the water the next day, which was too many hours away.
They told me later that they had sent an officer to the ward to chase us to the pool only to find himself alone when he discovered that we had all left on our own prerogative. He slowly left for his office with a strange smile on his lips. We could have told him what the smile was for; when we arrived at the waterside there was a female all right, but not the bathing beauty who had been assigned the day before. In the water was the permanent therapist who was built more like a Mack truck than Venus. The mermaid had been a red herring, and we fell for it like the dumb fish that we were.
We hated ever to admit it, but as soon as we hit the water we were damn glad that the doctor had done what he had regardless of the cruel methods he had employed. The water, because of its buoyancy, temporarily gave us a lift that returned us some of our lost freedom. We were able to move around practically in an upright position without braces. The therapist then gave us water wings, and threw us a rubber ball. A hot game of water polo soon followed, and for an hour or so paraplegia became a word out of an ancient medical book.
Provisions were made for those of us who had open bedsores to receive fresh dressings when we came out of the water. We were each placed into cubicles, and a therapist was assigned to give us an ultraviolet bath before she put on fresh dressings. It was hard to keep my face down during those few minutes that the sight-destroying lamp was on, for I did so want to stare at the cute little thing who was working on me. When all the bandaging was completed, I was rolled onto my back for my physical therapy. That was where the fun really began, and as the days rolled on it became more than fun. When the doctor asked us what we thought of his idea to send us to the pool for the combined therapies; we simply shrugged our shoulders and replied, “It’s pretty good for an appetizer.” We might have said more, but we were afraid that he might change the prescription, or decide to give us a bill.
They brought in a head injury a few days later, but this one was different from the one I had known at Walter Reed. He was dead to the world, and would simply lie there day after day gazing up at the ceiling. His mother would visit, ask him to speak to her, break into tears, and leave crying on a friend’s supporting shoulder. Ironically, he provided the personnel with a great source of amusement while flattering him with snide remarks as they poked his bladder in half-hearted efforts to make him void. Don’t ever get hit in the head, for you can stay in the hospital a long time, run up a horrible bill, and not even know about it until you are dead.
I don’t know if it were the Army’s love for uniformity or the ending of the war, but with the coming of the snow our nurses were given the option of wearing white uniforms. This was all to our delight and amazement, for we soon discovered that those seersucker bags that had been strutting around the ward contained females in them with feminine bodies. Though our thoughts were insubordinate, temptation got the better of us, and going one step further we whistled. No one was court-martialed for the making of any remarks about the officers’ backsides that day. The girls had their whites, and the squirrels on the hospital grounds their blacks. Russian black squirrels to be exact; sent here in the early days by the Reds we presume to undermine and take over our free animal world.
When troubles start they never come singly. It was the same as the Scotchman who stood crying over a broken bottle of whiskey while saying, “Troubles never come singly; yesterday my wife died, and now this. The doctors, upon making their rounds, started commenting upon the fine shape I was in, considering all that I had been through. If I showed them the way that the tips of my fingernails were turned down, they simply shrugged with a comment that all chest injuries show that symptom.
When they felt that enough psychological groundwork had been laid they let me in on their little scheme. “Joe,” said the Major who was also the ear, nose, and throat doctor who found it so difficult to dilate my esophagus. “These dilations aren’t doing you any good. What you need is a permanent cure.” “Permanent cure, Doctor?” I queried, “Why didn’t anyone mention it before? Tell me all about it.” He then lowered his vocabulary to what he believed was my level, and went into a long explanation of the gastro-resection procedure. A simple explanation of this operation is that the patient first has a hole cut into his stomach through which is inserted a feeding tube. After a period of time during which his nutrition is built up he is prepared for the second step. The second move is more gory, for it consists of cutting loose the afflicted parts of the esophagus along with the stomach and duodenum. The entire combination is then moved upward to replace the diseased portion of the esophagus, which has been previously removed.
This sounded wonderfully to me, but it also started me wondering. Here was a man who could not pass a decent-sized scope to dilate my esophagus without being timid. In all the time that I had been at Percy Jones Hospital he had failed to enlarge the diameter of my esophagus, and it had never reached the width at which it had been when I arrived; yet now he had the gall to ask me to permit him to insert a knife into my body. I pondered: what should I do? Why hadn’t all the other doctors suggested such a procedure? It sounded so simple. Doctor Hughes down in Memphis was no crackpot surgeon, but he never mentioned this operation to me. He had the gift of God in his hands, and he certainly wasn’t the sadistic type who enjoyed inserting painful instruments into his patients’ bodies. It didn’t take too long before I came to a quick decision. I simply told those people that I would think about it, and if I were ever interested I’d let them know. “You know; don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
The doctors didn’t like my decision, and retorted with a quick answer. My refusal left them with no alternative but to discharge me from the service, and have me transferred to the Bronx Veterans’ Administration Hospital. Shades of perdition. Those so-called men of medicine had me where they wanted because I wouldn’t permit them to use my body as they would have a guinea pig’s. Was my only alternative a sentence to the Bronx? How to stay out of that “Black Hole of Calcutta” was a problem. Remembering that Doctor Hughes had decided to stay on with the Veterans’ Administration at Kennedy Hospital in Memphis as chief of thoracic surgery, I placed a long distance call to him. I wasn’t able to make direct contact with the good doctor, but by speaking to the Kennedy switchboard operator I confirmed the fact that he see there.
That was my “out”, and I pulled every string that I could reach to have it come true. They told me it was against Veterans’ Administration regulations, for I was supposed to be discharged to the Veterans’ Hospital nearest my home. If I didn’t want to go to the Bronx the Government could no longer be responsible for my getting back home. I shook the Medical Administration officer’s hand, and said it was a deal. A few days later in walked an officer with his aide. He was loaded with a dossier of papers from which he began to read to me at machine-gun tempo. The concluding line sounded something like, “And the discharge shall be effective upon arrival at the Veterans’ Administration facility at Memphis, Tennessee.” Until he read that last line I was positive that I was being court-martialed, for I had had the impression that a “certificate of disability discharge board” meant just what it said; not two men. The Army; strange as it may seem had used intelligence, and saved money on what was a far-gone conclusion.
It was a long painful wait, but September twenty-ninth my great day of liberation arrived. I wasn’t the only one scheduled for Memphis, and a safari was made up with none other than my ear, nose, and throat Major in charge. It consisted of three drawing rooms on a Pullman, one for the personnel, one for the two colored boys making the trip home with me, and one for little Joey. The route, though indirect, was scenic, and I had a good view of America’s giant industries along with its wide-open spaces. Fortunately for me, we had to disembark at Chicago to lay over until the train that would take us South arrived. Ambulances that had been waiting soon carried us through a good portion of the city, giving us a fine tour, and a chance to laugh at the policemen dressed in their Keystone uniforms with big stars as badges on their chests.
The Army has at least one office in every town that is sacred to the heart of every GI. It is called a “pro station”. That is where we were taken, but unfortunately for the wrong reason. Our station was high up in an office building in the center of town, which gave us more of an opportunity to scan the city from its windows as we waited for the time to pass. Remembering that the Marshall Field store was in Chicago I asked the Major if he would permit one of the aides to go to it to buy some baby food for me. Without a word he assented. He then ordered two aides to
take my shopping list. He didn’t even warn them not to stop off at any of the local outs to have a drink. They made it back with time to spare, and with their noses tinged from Chicago’s famous wind. No one would really have had a right to say a word if they had imbibed, for surely the cold air was a good excuse.
That afternoon we were placed on a streamliner that was heading south with the same bedding arrangement as before. There was no sightseeing as we headed for Dixie, for before we finally pulled out of the station the sun set. I did a fifty-fifty job of sleeping though I should have done better as I was not on my way to a strange hospital. Since it was the second time that I was making an entrance to Kennedy, I was able to make a more complete observation of the surrounding area. I noticed that the signposts on the corner had the names “Park” and “Get Well” on them. At first I was a little surprised at the strange coincidence, but then I remembered seeing it in the newspapers as part of a “strange as it seems” report. I was quickly taken into a ward and bedded down. The Major who had been clearing my papers with the registrar came in, handed me an envelope and said, “Congratulations, you are a civilian.” We shook hands on that, but I erringly yelled ”Good-bye, sir” as he left.
I was positive that it was Sunday and one of his days off when in walked Doctor Hughes to greet me. I remarked about my being surprised at his presence there on a Sunday to which he smiled and said “A good dose of Southern hospitality is a necessary part of the prescription.” I answered by saying that the signpost on the corner of “Park” and “Get Well” streets would have would have been enough. At this he laughed and quipped, “Mayor Crump changed that signpost when he learned that the Army was to build this hospital here. Originally it read ‘Park’ and ‘Shot Well’. If that doesn’t frighten you, I’ll schedule you for dilation tomorrow. You can start swallowing the suture as soon as I leave.” I replied, “Agreed,” as he left. Tomorrow didn’t arrive too soon, for with its treatment would come the end of my baby food diet.
The nurse wasn’t interested in Doctor Hughes or my stricture. She simply wanted to settle me down to my daily ward routine. After introducing herself she asked, “What’s the level of your injury Mister?” When I didn’t respond, she tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey Mister, stop playing around.” It was then I realized that Mister meant me, and I blurted out, “Dorsal ten.” Smiling and taking advantage of the breach she had finally made in my military brain she went into a long dissertation on the dos and don’ts of ward routine.
Once I had her off my back I settled down to write a batch of postal cards to all my friends and enemies with the trite quotation, “Call Me Mister.” Every ex-GI in his own way has gone through a similar routine, but at that moment he is in a world by himself, and he is not interested to know whether his actions are always corny or stale.
Black Monday rolled around and the dilation with it. The nice thing about that treatment was that I had company. There were four or five of us with the same complaint, and by raising enough hell we made the treatments sound more like a class reunion than the agony they were.
It took a few days to overcome the misery of my treatment, and what it had left in its wake before I could enjoy its results. Now the innocent ex-GI I started to complain about the steam heat being run too high for the autumn. In came the old thermometer, and someone to tell me that the heat was off. October in Memphis is not October in Michigan. Added to my rise in temperature were the coughing and choking with which I was so familiar, but never had grown to like. In came Doctor Hughes with a package of long sterile needles, one of which he was going to use to aspirate me. He aspirated my chest {sucked the pus out with a syringe), and again the old flood of pus that I thought was ancient history made its appearance. I felt better, and was ready to fit into the ward routine as best as I could.
One of the boys had brought in a case of beer that night, and wanted me to participate in the local festivities. I knew that the more the guys drank the more they would pester me to join them, so I had him open one and set it on my bedside table. With each new offering I raised my can–and said, “Ain’t finished this one yet.” Managed to get through the night sober with only half a can in me, and my throat none the worse for the lies and little sips.
Woke up next morning with the same old coughing and choking spells as before. Began to wonder to myself, “What the hell is going on? Had I not been discharged from the army with a clean bill of health save only for two kidney stones, a strictured esophagus, a half dozen bed sores, and paraplegia?” How could it be my chest since they had X-rayed it but a few days before I took my train ride? Five minutes later back came Doctor Hughes, but this time there was no needle; instead he had me transferred to a private room on Seven A; the shock ward. Friday morning came and the symptoms worsened. Call it Black Friday, or Good Friday whatever you will, but in came the old “Consent Slip”; surgery was necessary.
I didn’t need any diagnosis from the doctor to tell me the score, for in came Chaplain Berry whom I didn’t want to see. I asked him to leave, but he said, “You need spiritual guidance. I replied, “Chaplain, I’m not worried, I’m not going to die. Besides I like to take my problems directly to the Boss.” Being the good guy he always was he said, “Well, I’ll see you after your operation. We can still be friends; can’t we?” Working up an artificial but painful smile I replied, “Okay; it’s a deal. By the way would you call my brother in New York City?” I then attempted to give him the phone number and the necessary money, but he only took the number.
Off I went to the operating room for my fourth chest operation, and would have remembered more of the details of that gory affair except that I soon became delirious. One thing I do remember was Doctor Hughes’ remarking to one of his assistants when he had my chest open on how he couldn’t understand my throat condition, for from the inside of my chest it appeared unaffected. I went for a ride during that spell of delirium with Lil Abner, his Mammy, and his Pappy. We were all locked up in a moving freight car, and it was hot as hell. Woke up back where I started from, only this time I had intravenous fluids running into my arm through a silver needle for a souvenir.
Speaking of Silver; my big fat brother was sitting there with his face as glum as usual. As he was an accountant I had always called him “Pencil Pusher.” Okay, pencil pusher I remarked, “I’m going to live, you can go home.” He wouldn’t take my word for it, but after a few days even the doctors agreed with me. He then made preparations to leave, but only after he was certain that the younger of my two older sisters was able to take his place.
That was when the fun began. The news soon spread that I had a girl hanging around my room. Overnight I became a celebrity. Everyone was not up on the status of our relationship, and one evening she came running into my room giggling and yelling “Joe!” One of the boys came chasing behind her. “Oh, he said, “pardon me I didn’t know you were married,” and blushingly left. Trying to act the part of an irate husband I threatened not to give her the money for her room rent, but she kept on laughing. We never did clear the room of one bum when another would find his way in, and start bragging about what a war hero he was. One even told us how he was only working in the hospital so that he could earn his way through college. Deciding he needed a lesson we lured him further into my room and then yelled at him to get the hell out which he obligingly but slowly did.
The next night she went up quite a few rungs of the social ladder, for she came in with the ward physician who had been teaching her his recipe for oyster stew in the ward kitchen. That was when I had my chance to find out why I was able to recover from my surgery so quickly. The doctor’s answers were simple. I was receiving streptomycin as my antibiotic, which if it had been available the day I was hurt, would have meant one thoracic procedure instead of four with none of the secondary complications. In one week’s time I was off the critically ill list, and had accomplished something that eight shots a day of penicillin couldn’t do in nine months back in nineteen forty-five.
Now I could concentrate on the troubles of the kid in the room next to mine, for troubles did not come singly to him. He was recovering from a kidney stone operation when his mother, who was visiting him, died from a gallstone attack. I was waiting for some smart aleck to say “That’s the rocky road of life,” but no one did.
Enough of the melancholy life: Once off the critical list the doctors ordered me back to my regular ward Four A West. On the return trip I noticed a strange phenomena. As I rolled past Ward Six A, the officer’s ward, not one of them was wearing his brass. I pondered about what I had seen all the way to my ward, but it finally hit me as I was placed into my old bed. Not one of them wanted to be an officer; it was too costly. It was to his advantage to resign from the service, and apply for compensation the same as any enlisted man. Our monthly compensation checks were greater in value than his pension check. Most people in this country don’t know it, but there is a great difference between the meanings of the words “compensation” and “pension.” These so-called disciplined officers soon adopted a slogan of “The hell with work; give me money, for only a General can live on his pension.” I noticed something else on that return trip; there were two bibles racked on the wall of the ward just before the entrance to the cubicle section. The Army had had religion, and was passing it on to the Veterans Administration.