CHAPTER 8

The war in Japan finally came to an end. The praying and the fighting had finally paid off. Everyone went through the usual gyrations of happiness that follow those periodic cessations of hostilities down through the pages of history. This one was different — we had television; a gadget that was a stepchild radio, but which was soon to become its master. This time I was able to partially partake in the frolicking, for they rolled me to where I could see the contraption and what was on its screen. There could have only been one such picture on the TV set, and it had to be on that occasion of the millions of people in Times Square who were dancing, singing, and Kissing each other. This all went on without any formal introductions or inhibitions. As I lay back to relax and enjoy the view I failed to have the premonition that an older person would have had of the hangover that was yet to follow leaving its human wreckage and carnage on the pages of history.
It didn’t seem possible, but some of the boys were soon to find themselves saying that they regretted that the miserable thing called “war” was over. Our families hadn’t forgotten us; mine even going to the great expense and effort to throw a birthday party for me, but the rest of the populace was soon to find in its mind that the military hospitals with their human residue were off limits. To illustrate the point; at that birthday party every friend and relative whom I didn’t even know visited me. Nothing was too good for Joe. My girl friend spent a fortune on a birthday cake while the Red Cross brought me a little one. Not so teeny as it gives now, but a small one. Everyone had a gift for me; including a priest to whom I gave a rough time. Before he could come through the doorway, I shouted, “You’ve got the wrong room.” That didn’t stop him, and as he kept coming I added, “What do you want?” His bewildering reply was, “Are you Joe Silver?” That was one question I couldn’t bluff my way out of so I confessed. With that he curtly put a kraft envelope upon my chest and retreated saying, “that’s for you.”
I was afraid to open the darn thing, for who knows what I could have possibly done during one of my spells of delirium. I might even have gotten religion with that envelope containing my certificate. Since no one else was in the room I sneaked a quick look, and out popped a twenty-five dollar Defense Bond. Along with the bond came a note from the employees of the W. T. Grant and Company wishing me the best of everything. It wasn’t long after that that a minister came in, and repeated the same process only this time it was from Mr. Anonymous, Esquire.
When my relatives received wind of these doings they felt that they couldn’t be outdone, and came in with a fifty-dollar bill. By the end of the day I was overloaded with presents and birthday gifts. In an attempt to clean up the room I started begging people to take the birthday cakes. Doctor Moore was the only one who was kind enough to risk his stomach on my account. Yes sir; my cup was running over, and so was my head which soon had to sober up, for reality was around the corner.
The WAC who had been my physical therapist had always mentioned the wild and woolly life the paraplegics in Buildings twenty-five and twenty-seven were living leaving me in full agreement with the doctor’s plans for my next move. Building twenty-seven was the exact duplicate of twenty-five including Doctor Shearer’s “Love my patients or ask to be transferred from the ward, for these patients are my pets” sign for the personnel.
As I had just been on the critical list I almost rated the best treatment. I no longer rated highly enough to be given a private room, but was placed in a corner that had windows on both sides affording me a double exposure. I received the best spot in A Ward, and with it came the best nurse, Clare Matre. She was young, beautiful, and delicious. Besides being adored by the patients, Lieutenant Matre was a favorite with the aides, for she didn’t shunt the dirty jobs onto them. As a matter of fact all the relationships on this ward were so impersonal that the bars and stripes were soon forgotten. No one ever called a nurse Lieutenant unless he didn’t like her, which on that ward was a hard thing to do.
While I was busy with my big problems the world had supposedly gotten around to ending its little ones. The “Big Mo” had made a niche for itself in the history books, and the dancing and shouting suddenly were overshadowed by the word “Points”. Now the Purple Heart for the first time since its inception had actual value; five points to be credited toward discharge, but I was gypped. Instead of being hit five times, and receiving twenty-five points, I was hit in five different spots simultaneously leaving me to receive only five points. It really didn’t mean anything as far as my case was concerned, but it gave me something to bitch about.
This dreamland atmosphere was just what the doctor had ordered. I was receiving large doses of noise, excitement, and new faces. The radios in the background were blasting out with singing commercials which when digested said “Vote for Bill O’Dwyer”. The theory behind all this was that in this new environment I could not help but to accustom myself to my unwanted condition. How would I refuse to swallow my troubles when I saw how bravely the other guys were taking their bitter pills?
I made a fairly good start in that direction with the aid of a redheaded nurse who came to my bedside one evening and asked me if I wished to have a back rub. It was a pleasant thought, but I hesitated because I was lying on my back and didn’t enjoy the torture that went along with being turned over on a “Stryker frame” She smiled and said, “Dopey, not that kind, this kind.” She turned around, and the hint was plain; she wanted me to rub her back, which I obligingly did. The character in the bed next to mine whose name happened to be Richard Sealskin called me stupid, and said I should have given her a complete massage. The only complaint that I could think of about her was that she didn’t show up again, and that didn’t help my psychosis any.
Becoming curious about my supposed psychosis I inquired as to why my psychiatrist had not visited me as scheduled. The ward doctor turned to me with a bored look and said, “Oh he was discharged the day that you were transferred to my ward, but don’t worry, I’ll find you a summer replacement.”
A patient’s first days on a new ward are always lonely ones, and with the exception of that fellow Sealskin who had offered me the free advice on how to massage a nurse (female, that is), I had to content myself with reading books on home construction. One afternoon an ambulatory patient who seemed to know his way around this ward although he was not a paraplegic started asking the patients what they thought of the charge nurse. No one gave him any conclusive answers, but he continued his interrogations until finally he asked Sealskin what he thought of the way she was running the ward. Sealskin caustically replied, “Running the ward; why hell, she couldn’t run her nose around a bed pan.” The ambulant angrily replied, “You know you’re talking about my wife.” Sealskin politely answered, “That’s too God damned bad,” and at the same time took a swing at him with a cane which he had kept hanging at the back of his bed. Before the ambulant could return the blow the Catholic chaplain who happened to be standing at the next bed leaped between them and broke up the fray. At this all the boys booed, for he had spoiled their Guy’s best entertainment.
My new psychiatrist didn’t show up right away, but my doctors gave me something aside from ward fights to keep me busy; CT, which in plain English meant Corrective Therapy. This time the Army was truly efficient, for to keep me from loitering on the job I was assigned to a therapist who was an old crone and determined to show that she was loaded with money. It wasn’t that she was so ugly, but one thing that can damage a paraplegic’s morale is for someone to stand at his bedside and constantly recite tales of her good fortunes. I just couldn’t appreciate her handing me dumbbells with her hands that were covered with diamonds. The fact that her daughter came to visit her dressed in a mink coat while my sister had a lousy Persian lamb was not what you would call a shot in the arm.
The second psychiatrist finally came to see me, and though he was much neater and more professional looking than the first; he still threw the same jackass questions at me, as had his predecessor. The difference between the two was great, for here was an individual who didn’t claim to know all the answers. In fact he was quite friendly and actually modest. I wasn’t his only problem, for most of the paraplegics in our building were descendants of the infantry, and by having faced death as a daily routine these ex-dogfaces had learned to sense the true values in life. If they ever had any respect for pomp, ceremony, or rank when they went into combat; they definitely had lost it by the time they came out. To put it into rhetorical form the paraplegics had become anarchists with autocratic beliefs in the Divine Rights of Paraplegics. “Hell I’m as good as any king, and why should kings be the only ones to enjoy ‘Divine Rights’? Sometimes it was the psychiatrist’s duty to be the court jester, and keep everyone happy. Of course he couldn’t be around all the time, and even if he were he could never make us tow the mark.
The ward doctor had a mania for vitamins, and every morning we would find a batch on our bedside tables. The doctor didn’t know it but he was insulting one of the most generous hospital dietetic systems I have ever been fed or tried to be fed by; The boys took all those pills in good stride, and finally found an excellent use for them. When a nurse opened a sterile abdominal bandage package, there was always a rubber band left over which invariably wound up in the hands of the patients. Putting two and two together we invented something more horrible than the atomic bomb: the slingshot! At first our motives were for peace and sport. To pass the time of day and using the nurses’ butts as targets we held shooting matches. For every improvement of mankind there is always a joker, and soon the ward found itself divided into two armies. The boys could no longer find any pleasure playing with the nurses’ behinds; besides the girls were always bitching that it hurt. Since the United Nations was newly formed and not quite ready to police the area the doctors decided that they had chosen a wrong treatment. From then on the vitamins were to be served in the way nature had intended them to be. I’ll give the doctors some due credit, for they did keep many an idiot from becoming blind.
Everyone was having fun but me, as I couldn’t even swallow the natural ones yet alone the ersatz ones. This was the point where I would have liked to divide the men from the boys with a big saw. How when a person roams on this earth of ours if he is connected with a mental ailment he is invariably the subject of abuse and scorn. Many a steak was waved at me by a mongoloid who was positive that he could cure me by increasing my hunger. The more I tried to swallow solids the worse it became. It even grew to a point where when my mother brought my favorite food from home, and I would try to eat it. I would only gag it up in front of her. She would then leave crying. I knew that I couldn’t eat the solids, but I desperately wanted to please Mom.
By this time the psychiatrist had decided that our discussions should take place in a private room, and three times a week we paraded down the center of the ward to the other end of the building. One nice thing about our sojourns was that it helped me to meet all the fellows on A ward.
After a month of these treks the psychiatrist decided that a Levine tube should be passed through my nose and into my stomach to feed me, for the intravenous feedings that were keeping me alive had almost destroyed my veins. It was a shame that no one took a picture of me with the Levine tube in my nose, for it led into quite a complicated plumbing system. The tube connected to latex tubing that led to a litter-feeding jar into which there was daily poured four thousand cubic centimeters of a cockeyed formula consisting mostly of powdered milk and raw eggs. Each thousand cubic centimeter contained sixteen hundred calories maxing my daily intake sixty-four hundred calories. The entire setup was hung to an intravenous standard, and everywhere little Joey went his plumbing tagged along. After a Levine tube is passed it ceases to be painful becoming nothing more than annoying, but there was one catch. I turned into an upside-down Mount Vesuvius. The milk in the formula gave me diarrhea, and since my intake hardly ever ceased I found myself having constant bowel movements. I was embarrassed no end by my end. It was to be thirty days before this vicious cycle was called to a halt. Those were great days, but not so far as my throat was concerned, for the tube accomplished nothing more than to make me miserable.
Aside from the constant stream of manure I found myself forming stones in my bladder. Fortunately those stones passed when the WAC irrigated my urethral catheter. Now this old gal was a good old gal, and a constant boost to everyone’s morale. She always encouraged me by saying that she had said a prayer for me at mass, and that I shouldn’t worry because I’d get to lay plenty of girls before I died.
When the Levine tube, which was supposed to be the cure for my esophageal troubles, was to be taken out the doctor passed the job on to a nurse for whom I had a passionate dislike. It had to happen during one of the days when my regular nurse Lieutenant Metre was off. This bitch who was assigned to me wasn’t too popular with the entire ward, but that did not prejudice me until one day after turning me over she haphazardly leaned the anterior frame of my Stryker bed against the wall. She then strolled away permitting the damn thing to fall onto my chest wounds. Her awkwardness permitted it to land exactly where all my troubles were centered. I let out with a yell that resounded throughout the entire building. Before I knew it every doctor and nurse in the place surrounded me. It was the surprise more than the pain that prompted the yell, but it took at least a half hour to rid myself of the examination happy medics.
When I realized that I was still up against the same nurse I decided to yank the goo-covered Levine tube out of my nose by myself. I then flung it at her without breaking my motion. The satisfaction of seeing her scrambling and screeching made me forget any pain that the yanking out of the tube may have caused.
All this didn’t help my psychiatric standing or my public relations excepting that all the boys on the ward received a great kick out of it. Sometimes though I began to wonder about public relations. There was the little rant of an aide who would walk by the beds, and pay no heed to anyone who was calling him. He always acted as if so were deaf, but if someone would yell, “You little bastard; come here!” he would double time to his caller and say, “What did you call me?” When he was told what was wanted of him, he would leave to do the task muttering under his breath, “If it wasn’t for youse louses I’d a been home discharged a long time ago.” I never did realize what great stinkers we were.
This attitude grew throughout the hospital as our best personnel started being replaced with second-rate flunkies. We even lost the little old WAC who was replaced by a young male recruit who was scared stiff with his introduction to hospital life. On one of his rounds he irrigated a rectal tube instead of the patient’s urethral catheter. He was confused still further as he had never seen brown bladder stones before. He was slow, but he learned. Whenever he returned to the ward the boys teased him by saying that they were afraid to have him touch them, for there was always the possibility that he might strike gold which would give the doctors another reason to cut us up.
Well, it came to pass that as the aides became slower the patients became meaner until one of the boys decided that the fastest method of retrieving an aide was to fling a glass urinal at them. The doctors raised hell about this as ward supplies were hard to get, and they demanded that we become gentlemen. The boys obeyed, and from then on threw only sterile abdominal pad packages. No mess, no bother, and ninety percent of them were still in good shape after having been thrown.
This introduced to us a new amusement: Abdominal pad wars between the two sides of the ward. With some patients acting as gunners and the others acting as forward observers, the packets were flung back and forth across the ward by the hundreds. It was a jolly sport, but every time a nurse opened a packet to do a dressing she automatically reduced the ammunition supply. These pads are used to cover dressings, and for absorption purposes. It wasn’t unusual to see a nude paraplegic with only an abdominal pad on his sacrum. Anyone lying in bed face down in such a situation was considered a well-dressed paraplegic, no sheet of course.
During all these months I was plagued by another prescription that I didn’t want, but couldn’t prove. I was on a glass of wine three times a day before meals. I tried all sorts of ways to drink it so as not to irritate my throat including diluting it with grape juice, sugar, and water, but getting the damn stuff down was a big pain in the arse as well as the esophagus. I neglected to take it leaving it for all to see on my bedside. This terribly annoyed Willy, the colored boy in the bed on my right, and he extracted a promise from me to slip him every shot that I didn’t want. Willy soon became the happiest paraplegic on the ward.
We were all kind of happy; spirits or no spirits until one day every patient on the ward received either a letter or phone call from home stating that the Red Cross had investigated it. It seemed that every patient’s household had been asked the same impertinent question. “How much money does the head of the family earn?” No rational explanation had been given for the asking of this question, and all our families were quite upset.
Naturally every patient was boiling mad, so when the professional Red Cross worker came onto the ward there was hell to pay. She managed to work her way past the maddened throng, and far enough into the ward for us all to hear this unhappy answer. It seemed that Colonel Shearer wanted to know what sort of physical facilities the patients had at home in case it were ever necessary for them to be discharged from the hospital. The Red Cross had taken the liberty of adding a thorough but unwanted investigation.
At Thanksgiving time, and acting in an entirely different vein the Army opened its heart, and permitted each patient to have guests for dinner at his bedside. With the holiday spirit in the air the tables were still there in the middle of the night, and so was the refuse that had been left upon them. Since we had no call light system in our building because it was brand new when the Army commandeered the hospital from New York State we had to resort so whistling whenever we needed help. If that didn’t work we would let out a loud yell. Dear old “spirits fermenti” had taken its toll that evening, and no one answered either the whistling or the yelling. As a last resort I took an unopened bottle of Pepsi Cola from the table, and flung it about ten feet from me onto the terrazzo floor. An explosion rocked the entire building resounding throughout the halls and awakening everyone. All the sides, both male and female, came a hopping and shouting, “What happened?” I nonchalantly replied, “Nothing, I think a pop bottle fell off the table, but while you’re here would you please clean me up, I’ve just had a bowel movement all over myself.” There was nothing they could do but accept the story, pinch their noses, and go to work.
All our battling and hell raising paid off, for the charge nurse whose husband was nearly beaten by Sealskin’s cane was replaced by a gem of a woman whose name ironically was Captain Jewel. She was tall, erect, and every bit an officer and gentlewoman without the aid of Congress. The day after her appointment as our charge nurse the sight of garbage cans setting in the middle of the floor became what you might call the story that was next to the last straw. She went on a rampage, and building number twenty-seven changed from a pigsty into a hospital.
It was a good thing that she had gone on her rampage, for soon after a Broadway troupe came to the ward to present the stage play, “My Sister Eileen”. The settings were improvised, and the stage was at the entrance to the ward, which was also used as an exit for the actors. This wasn’t the fanciest Broadway show I have ever seen, but it was the most highly appreciated. It was truly a case of bedside entertainment, and an excellent Christmas gift. Stage shows may have been wonderful entertainment brought to us by the very best of people, but we were never quite happy because of the many hours of idleness that we still were forced to endure.
I don’t know whether it can be called good or bad, but paraplegia is not the restricted condition people think it is. It happens in the best of families and to the best of people. I do mean the best. It even afflicts Generals. General Ent was the highest-ranking paraplegic whom I have ever met. The General was world famous during World War II for having led a successful bombing raid on the Polesti Oil Fields in Romania. Fate played its usual dirty trick, and the General wound up with a propeller blade sticking into his spine far away from the skies of combat and the ack-ack. Shortly thereafter General Patton broke his back in an automobile accident, but he didn’t live long enough for me to meet him or for him to enjoy top billing.
General Ent as top brass rated the VIP treatment, and was afforded a private suite. The General was a GI’s General, and spent a great deal of his time mixing with the enlisted men on the wards. With Mrs. Ent pushing his chair he would stop at each patient’s bedside and informally exchange a complaint or problem. With the continuation of these visits the saying “Here’s the General” began to sound more like “Hi Bud”.
Just before Christmas General DeVoe, the hospital commander decided to present each of the paraplegics with a silver dollar. Mrs. Ent undertook the task of passing out the coins to the boys, and see decided to accomplish her chore while she and her husband were making one of their usual rounds. When they reached Sealskin’s bed he refused to take his coin unless she first kissed him. With the General’s approval one bent over to give Sealskin his bribe only to recoil back and yell at Sealskin, “You need a shave”; turning her head to the General who was splitting his sides with hilarious laughter, she then added as she pointed her right forefinger at his face, “So do you.” That was the key for everyone within ear range to break into laughter. Realizing that her outburst had put her into an embarrassing situation, she reddened, grabbed the General’s chair, and stoically continued the task of passing out the remaining silver dollars.
There is a saying that “The bigger the guy, the bigger the heart” with General Ent living up to this axiom all the way, but as we went down to the bottom of the ranks to the ward doctor himself, the situation was just the opposite. On the ward we had a Captain whose name was Doctor Youngblood. As a token of respect we referred to him as “Young Doctor Blood”, sometimes prefixed with the words stupid, jackass, bastard, or similar words of a dignified nature. Before a youngster can hang up a shingle he must first take the Hippocratic oath and swear:
I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and Allheal, and all the gods and goddesses, that: according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this oath and its stipulations –

We more fondly and popularly referred to this oath as the hypocrite’s oath using Doctor Youngblood as our prime example. One bright morning he marched into the ward and started calling for attention. After having received about a fifty percent response he started to give a long lecture on why we should start ambulating our braces, and doing daily exercises. The boys listened patiently until he finished and then booed like hell. Shouting at the top of his voice in a vain try to overcome the bedlam he finally conceded defeat and stomped out saying as he left, “And I ain’t fooling” A week or so later he disappeared. When the news that explained the enigma broke we found it to be good for he had broken his leg. Some amplified the story saying that it had happened while he was chasing a nurse in the woods near the hospital, and we had plenty of woods.
The great day came, and our idol returned to duty with a cast on his leg sitting in a wheelchair while being pushed by the ward secretary. I won’t say much for our conduct, but as he made his rounds we made every verbal vituperation short of pornography (only because of the ladies) at him that Webster knows. Our Captain beat a strategic retreat for his crutches, but it was too late. From that time forward he couldn’t even get the mice in the walls to listen to him.
As a final postwar gesture or conscience a group of businessmen underwrote the expenses for those who could go home for the Christmas holidays, and I soon found myself being wished happy nineteen forty-six by people who didn’t know better as I was in no condition to make the happy roster.
A new year always makes everyone ambitious, for at least a few days, and my doctors were no exception. It was then decided that in order to accelerate my treatment I should start sleeping in a regular hospital bed. I was given the old boola boola about getting plenty of exercise, and going out and digging ditches. The only thing I dug into was my pocket to pull out a bill for the kitty being taken up to buy my favorite nurse a discharge present. I found myself starting the New Year all alone in that big wide bed.
A new year, a new nurse, a new psychiatrist, and a new stage play on the ward. This time it was “Petticoat Fever.” With Mom and Pop at my bedside I lay back to enjoy the production when in came two litter bearers with orders to take me to X-ray for reasons that I didn’t know. There was only one way to go out of the ward, and that was directly through the exit doors which were behind our make believe stage. The Thespians didn’t like it, for I broke up the first act; in fact I cut it right in two. After the X-ray and on the way back to my bed in the balcony I repeated my performance, and cut the last act in half. I wasn’t too popular that day.
Many a time though our entertainment was a result of our own efforts to make what was a very unpleasant situation sound like something that was truly the opposite. To illustrate, if a patient were sitting in his bed on a bedpan taking an enema he was simply flying a B-29 during a screen test.
Being popular no longer was vexing, for the new psychiatrist had an angle to cover my minor problems. He gave me his phone number to call him at any time that I was upset about anything. I was probably the first man in the world to receive psychotherapy by telephone.
My new nurse Peggy had a brother who was a priest, and one Sunday he visited her as she was working at my bedside. Seeing him gave her what she thought was to be a brilliant idea, and to which I meekly but doubtingly submitted. I agreed to let him bless my throat with candles. When the “rite” was over I complained that I still couldn’t swallow. I didn’t mean to hurt the priest’s feelings, but my definition of a miraculous cure is something that really happens beyond the powers of man.
Now there’s a magazine in this country called the Reader’s Digest, and in nineteen forty-six it employed a character by the name of Paul DeKreuf who was permitted to write articles on what were supposed to be advances in medical science. Being lazy like everyone else who reads abridged stories I was an ardent fan of that publication. Glancing through one of its editions I came upon DeKreuf’s article on a drug called Prostigmin, and of the wonderful results that were achieved when it was used to treat spasms.
I mentioned the article to Major Reider, which happened to be the psychiatrist’s name and received a doubly dirty look. “My boy,” he said, “I’m going to teach you to understand the old Mark Twain saying, “Never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.’ I’m going to give you the Prostigmin.” With that he turned to the nurse and said, “Bring me his chart, so that I can write the order.” He also told her to bring a hypodermic with a specific dosage, which he enumerated to her outside of my ear range.
The nurse gave me the shot and thirty seconds later I started to throw up all over myself. Staring down at me with the sadistic glare of a hunter who had just made a kill, he said, “Now I hope you’re happy; people like DeKreuf belong in prison not in magazine offices. The futile trouble he has reaped on the American public is irreparable.” From then on I decided to concentrate on the doings and troubles of the other patients, and with my bed buddy Charlie started a column in “The Glue Factory” which was the title of our mimeographed ward publication. It was a makeshift affair put together by the patients and volunteers on the paraplegic service. Our column was entitled “Gossip and News by Silver and Kruse”. Since our two beds were at the end of the ward we saw everything that occurred, and took the liberty to report it. Sometimes there were incidents that, in the interest of protocol, couldn’t be reported. To illustrate: one of the colored boys was having his sister sneak whiskey into him strapped to her leg. He was in a center bunk across the aisle from a buddy of his, and she would transport the bottle to and fro. All went well until one evening when a movie was being shown on the ward. Since the ward was in darkness she too decided to partake in the festivities. At the point of super-saturation she became so careless about the bottle that when she started making her rounds she and old spirits fermenti found themselves silhouetted against the picture screen. The movie started as a drama, but soon became a prime grade comedy.
She may have inadvertently gotten herself into that dilemma, but we were somehow in our innocent ways always trying to send ourselves into one. To illustrate Charlie and I decided that in the following edition of “The Glue Factory” we would design a medal for the aides. Still being the constant jokers we created a medal that was in reality a picture of a bedpan hanging by two chains from a male urinal. On the bedpan section were printed these words, “To our aides for service above and beyond the call of duty”.
We were quite proud of our creation until “The Glue Factory” came off the mimeograph machine. We didn’t know that General DeVoe was an avid reader of our little column, but we soon found out. We weren’t the only ones to learn a lesson on that day, for the Red Cross worker caught holy hell for permitting that little indiscretion to pass her censorship. Well maybe the brass didn’t care for our artistry, but our fellow patients did.