CHAPTER 9

One of the boys came up with another source of amusement; taunting the prisoners of war. It was all ironic, but anytime a prisoner of war wouldn’t do what was wanted of him the solution was to threaten him with a newspaper. The second he started dilly-dallying one of the boys would pick up the paper and wave the picture that was on the front page at him. He would say, “See you lazy bastard. If you don’t snap to, that will happen to you. Some of those men actually turned pale when they saw the pictures on the front page, for they were of their countrymen being forced to go back to Germany as free men. It would have been asinine to give up the royal life that they were leading as prisoners of war in these United States, and they knew it, so back to work they went.
This amusement wasn’t continuous or foolproof. One Sunday morning as I reached to my bedside table and started going through the motions of drinking a glass of water my throat snapped shut, and I was forced to gag the water right back into the glass from which it came. My nurse spotted me, decided it was not the soldierly thing to do, and told me that I was a pig. Taking a break between retchings I replied, “What do you want me to do; throw up on the floor? Dammit, I don’t have a basin. Would you please do me a favor and go to hell!” Half crying she answered, “I am going to tell the Captain what you said.” and off she ran to Doctor Blood’s office.
Being the superman he thought he was he came running to my bedside all hopped up with authority and rank. “Silver,” he said, “You are going to stop this faking and start swallowing, or I am going to put you in for court-martial.” “Captain,” I replied, “you can do as you God damn please, for I am not faking.” He went back to his office to prepare his charges against me.
Remembering what the psychiatrist had said to do if I came up with any unsolvable problems I had one of the aides bring the portable phone to me. Despite the fact that I was in the hospital, in order to be certain of completing my call I had to use the portable phone which was also a public phone. Young Doctor Blood and his staff had no idea that I was calling the main building. Making my connection with Doctor Reider was no problem, and in short order I told him my version of all that had happened. His reply was in a manner unbecoming an officer or a gentleman; “Whose patient does that dumb bastard think you are? That’s not the way to treat your case. Don’t worry about that jackass; I’ll handle it from here.” A few days later the medical administration officer came to my bedside, and informed me that though he couldn’t understand why the charges against me had been dropped. The psychiatrist had consulted with General DeVoe, the hospital commander, and together they concluded that if I really had psychosis a court-martial would not be the cure for it.
There was no alternative but to replace my nurse, and she left to take care of Sealskin. Her replacement was younger, prettier, and above all less motherly. One mother is enough for any soldier, and I am quite pleased with the one I have. The only thing that was wrong with this new girl was that she did all her necking with Charlie Kruse. You could always tell when a girl did not have any foreign duty as she would be more inclined to play and less interested in her work. The necking became such a full time job that Charlie and I never again found time to play “battleship”.
I started to forget my troubles until one morning Young Doctor Blood in the best military manner he could muster since the time I had secretly defeated his attempt to have me face a court-martial informed me that I had formed stones in my right kidney. This time he treaded lightly; not even offering me an operation.
The passing time had strengthened my friendship with our charge nurse, Captain Jewel, and one day she presented to me a very strange request. She had been informed that a high-ranking General was about to make rounds, and felt that I as a patient could cut the red tape necessary to speed up the delivery of all the supplies that she wanted. She slyly slipped me a list, which I memorized. When the boys asked me what was up I told them, and they decided that they too had some requests to make.
Colonel Shearer accompanied our visiting dignitary as he made his bedside inspection. The General was surprisingly friendly, and asked if I thought that I were getting the proper treatment. That was all I needed to make me recite Captain Jewel’s list. I enumerated the items so quickly that the General was caught off-guard. He called for a pencil and paper which twenty hands quickly offered. After transcribing my wants he turned to the Colonel and asked, “why don’t the men have these things?” the Colonel stuttered a dozen excuses most of which were lies, and said that he would investigate the matter personally.
Seeing that the Colonel was flustered and on the run the rest of the gang chimed in with demands for changes in the visiting hours and better food. The General promised that he would speak to General DeVoe. Before excusing himself he added that he would have to know more details. The next day the hospital was rocked with changes, for the General was a GI’s General, and had kept his word.
The doctors started haunting me about my throat again. This time they claimed that it was just a case of will power. All I had to do to swallow was to concentrate. I tried, but only succeeded in again torturing myself. Reaching a point of exasperation I told the psychiatrist that I had no strength left, and asked if he would please hypnotize me. Major Reider said that he had no claims to be an expert on hypnosis, but added he would treat me with narcosynthesis, or in plain language “sodium pentothal‚” which is better known in spy stories as the truth serum. A series of these studies was then undertaken.
Before we were too far gone with the pentathol treatments a misinformed friend showed my parents an article in the Saturday Evening Post that told of the boys in England General Hospital at Atlantic City. This article; typical of all press releases on medicine left out the gory details, and gave the world the impression that all a paraplegic had to do to walk was to slap on a set of braces, pick up his crutches, and strut his way out of his misery. I was actually afraid to show the article to the psychiatrist, for I was positive that he would slap me down for reading trash as he had done with the Prostigmin story. It’s a free country, and many times the so-called free press is allowed to tear the hearts out of its readers with false hopes. The days dragged on, and to spite our morale, one of the gang played the record “Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the week” to us. He claimed that the human brain learned by repetition, and it was time that we learned of what life had in store for us.
The doctor tried his bag full of tricks to see if he could make me swallow when I was under the influence of the pentathol. As my favorite drink was grape juice he would offer it to me during these treatments in large doses only to find that it would sometimes cause me to gag despite my having a cheap drunk. He was a gentleman throughout all these sessions, and never asked me about my girl friends or their dimensions. He did manage to extract from me the story of my parting from my one and only girl friend, and then became certain that he had discovered the underlying cause for all my troubles.
They say that it is nice to come home to a love that’s true, but paraplegia makes for many complications. Before going overseas I had a spat with my girl friend over some silly thing, which led me to believe that was that. I didn’t realize how the feminine mind worked. The day that I landed at Mitchell Field and called home to the folks I found to my surprise that she was a member of the visiting party. There were tears in her eyes. She had never written, but neither had she sent a “Dear John”. She had visited with my family during my absence, and together they planned out my future. Despite our being separated for many months she was able to tell me all that had happened to me. She could practically quote my V mail verbatim.
It was a shot in the arm having her with me during the critical months that followed. She outdid herself; bringing me food, presents, and kisses. We were rather young for a love affair; she being eighteen and I only twenty, but that didn’t hinder her. She sincerely believed that I would recover from my paraplegia, and that someday we would wed. Living in the hospital had told me the bitter truth. A woman’s marriage to a paraplegic calls for patience, blood and guts, for it is a full time job. Maybe I was foolish or just plain stupid, but my damn conscience kept saying that it was criminal to take advantage of this girl’s love no matter how strongly I felt towards her. One evening I stiffened up my courage and told her that it was silly for her to continue her visits. There was no “Dear John” we simply said good-bye and that was it.
Another pentathol treatment, and another theory: This time I was Pavlov’s dog. Like the dog whose mouth watered every time it heard a bell ring; the doctor believed that my throat had built up a conditioned reflex to swallowing, and closed every time I attempted to do so. Pavlov showed his dog a steak, rang a bell, and the dog’s mouth watered from the sight of the steak. He repeated this process hundreds of times until one day he played the dog dirty and only rang the bell. The dog’s mouth watered despite the fact that there was no steak present. He called it a conditioned reflex, and I found myself in the same doghouse.
With this new diagnosis came a new treatment. The doctor felt that this reflex could be forcefully relaxed by passing a dilator down into my esophagus, but there was only one catch; he didn’t know how to do it. As a matter of fact no one on the post knew how to do it as Doctor Moore was laid up with his own troubles, and all the other good men had taken their discharges. Young Doctor Blood volunteered for the job, and was politely told to go to hell in a professional manner by his colleagues and myself.
I was to have an imported treatment, not the foreign kind, but the domestic variety. A call was sent out to Fort Hamilton Army Hospital in Brooklyn for its ear, nose, and throat specialist. I was particularly anxious about the treatment, as I believed it to be the end of all my throat miseries. At every opportunity I asked about the specialist’s coming. The staff took my constant questioning as that of a nervous person instead of a hopeful one, and so every inquiry brought an answer that was evasive though an appointment had definitely been made.
I didn’t have to wait too many mornings longer when in walked a nurse who said, “Stick out your arm.” When I asked what for she replied, “You’ve been bitching to have your throat fixed, and now its going to happen whether you like it or not.” Halleluiah! The great day had arrived, and amid the boos and ill wishes from the hoi polloi I again took the famous ambulance ride to the operating room in the main building.
That hypodermic wasn’t all it was intended to be, for I remember too much of what happened next. After being placed on the operating table I was given the usual local anesthetic to prepare me for the esophagus scope, which was next to, follow. There somebody goofed. The tube was down for about thirty seconds when the bulb burned out. Those damn scopes are made of brass, and they don’t bend. Usually there is a replacement bulb handy, but everything going the way it had for me in the past the Operating Room aide had to go to the supply locker to find it. That was when I found out whom the mysterious masked stranger was who had been holding my head down. It was my idol, Young Doctor Blood. He didn’t get to do the scoping, but they did let him go to the Operating Room. He whispered doses of rhetorical courage into my ears, which interfered with my hearing all that was being said by the ear, nose, and throat specialist to the other assistants.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to send to General Electric to have a new bulb made, and the doctor soon started to pass the dilator. The advantage of scope dilation is that the doctor can see where his dilator is going and what it is doing. The specialist said, “My God, look at this.” Naturally everyone and his brother had to go take a peek at what had excited the doctor. Little Joey though was lying there helplessly held down, and could do nothing but groan and moan.
Everybody had a comment to make about the newly discovered redness in my esophagus, and the pus, which the dilator released when it rubbed against the infected tissues. There was also bleeding brought on by the treatment, but few bothered to mention it. When the parade of spectators was over the specialist yanked out the scope and said, “we’ve got to get this boy to a chest specialist right away.” Everyone jumped into the act of taking me off the table, throwing me onto a litter, and setting me out into the hall. There I lay for an hour or so when the specialist who had finished his ablutions walked by. Noticing me lying there he introduced himself, for I had no way of recognizing my unmasked savior’s face. “My boy,” he said, “now we can help you.”
“Doc,” I responded, “they said I was crazy, and that it was all in my head.” He bent over, patted me on the shoulder, made a half-hearted smile, and continued, “I don’t know if its any consolation to you, but you’re crazy like a fox.” I didn’t know whether to smile or cry. Being the brave soldier, I did neither but the truth is I should have cried, for the joke was on me. It took nine months to vindicate myself, and my only consolation was a toilet paper medal.
The news of what had happened preceded me, and when I returned to the ward there was not a nurse or a doctor to be found. The entire place had a pacific air about it. It seemed that building twenty-seven had lost the source of its best joke. It took a few days for the shock from finding out that Joe wasn’t really crazy to wear off when the idle tongues discovered a new angle for humor. I was proclaimed the World’s Greatest Sword Swallower; ready to take on all comers. The only comer I ever wanted to see again was that bastard X-ray man, Doctor Foch who had done such a beautiful job of ruining my life with his stupid misinterpretations of my esophagrams. I had the sincerest desire to wrap a sword around his neck even if it weren’t legal.
My bed buddy, Charlie Kruse was having his troubles too, but of a more serious nature. It seemed that he had overstepped his bounds, and Joyce our nurse decided to slap him down. If he did it once more she threatened to start necking with me instead of slapping his face. Poor Charlie was heartbroken for at least a week.
Spring was in the air, and with the blossoms of romance sprouting all around me I came down with a temperature. It had been such a long time since I had received any form of strong sedation that the doctor had to explain to me the difference between a barbiturate and a narcotic before prescribing anything to tide me through those trying days.
With this new sick spell came new symptoms, and still newer theories. A fistula had reached its way through the surface of the chest wound, and the doctors took it as a source of my throat closure. The Sons of Hippocrates have a chemical called Lypiadol which can be injected into such an opening so that it me be traced by X-ray and fluoroscoped. You won’t believe it, but I can prove it. The day the X-ray was to be executed, and I had to be carried down the end of the ward to the exit there was another stage play, which had to be passed through. This time it was “Petticoat Fever” that was being performed by a similar group of young patriotic Americans, as has been “My Sister Eileen”. If I were paranoid I’d say that someone had been picking on me, for had I not been ordered from the ward to miss one of the finest non-melodramatic gestures ever made to a group of bedridden dogfaces. In all fairness I think some of the boys were from the Air Force, and I’m certain General Ent was…
An X-ray table can be a damn hard thing to lie on, and when you’re in no position to help yourself the taking of a picture can become a process of torture. Unfortunately I survived, and returned to my ward none the wiser, for they had learned absolutely nothing from racking me on that table. The fever didn’t subside, so down my nose, and into my stomach went my favorite Levine tube. I had had beautiful dreams about burning that red snake, but in my next visit with Morpheus I found myself digging up its grave and synthesizing the little bastard back together again. Oh, shades of Humpty Dumpty.
Sometimes habits are hard to break, for when I told the doctor who was passing the tube that he was hurting me he replies, “You’re nervous.” Ever since then I’ve been wondering; perhaps I should have tried to have the psychiatrist use the truth serum on the medical doctor to break his conditioned reflex.
The so-called miracle drugs took care of the flare-up, but my primary condition remained unchanged. I had to have a chest surgeon treat me; the problem now was where to find one, for Doctor Moore was still out ill. Everybody else had an idea. He would make rounds and plans. If it were possible he probably would have shipped me to Timbuktu if for no other reason than to get me out of his hair. The choice finally narrowed down to one of three hospitals out of the dozens originally thought of: Walter Reed in Washington, Kennedy General in Memphis, or Fitzsimmons in Colorado. Out of the Kindness of the doctors’ hearts, and because of my bitching Fitzsimmons was dropped, for it was felt that it was unreasonable to move me so far away from home. Walter Reed had an aversion toward paraplegics, for it was in a city that had to show off to the rest of the world what America was doing for its boys. How could Washington possibly show progress where there was none to be had?
No one could find any fault with Kennedy General in Memphis, so into its care I was prepared to be shipped by Pullman. When I heard that the arrangements were being made to transport me by train I blew my top, and called Young Doctor Blood every name I could think of except the short ones which he could use to court-martial me with, for I wanted to be flown. He being the crude diplomat that he has always been asked me to calm down and said, “Patients with chest wounds can’t be flown.” With that he left, but not before he succeeded in starting me to think about my plane trip over the Atlantic. Was not mine an open chest wound when I had taken all those plane rides?
I was hit by a stroke of luck, for a few days later one of the Colonels who was in the headquarters of the Second Army made one of his rounds of inspection of the hospital, and stopped by my bedside to ask me how I felt. That was all I wanted or needed. Very politely I asked, “Sir, why can’t chest cases be flown?” He courteously replied, “Only closed chest cases can’t be flown because of the differences between the internal and external air pressures on the body. Why, what makes you ask?” I told him of my pending transfer to Kennedy General Hospital, and that I was a chest case who wanted to fly. With that he said, “Roll over so that I may examine your wound.” His glance was cursory, but his reply was sharp. “Oh, you can fly. Who told you that you couldn’t be flown?” Trying to hold back my victorious grin I raised my nose-picking finger, though I would rather have used my arse, and pointed it directly at Young Doctor Blood and said, “He did.” The Colonel with one look diagnosed Doctor Youngblood and said, “Order this man flown to Memphis.” Snapping his heels Doctor Youngblood replied, “Yes sir‚ as the Colonel with a feeling of contempt and disgust stomped down the hall.
There is; as any ex or present day GI can tell you a standard rule in the U. S. Army called “hurry up and wait”. In those days it wasn’t any different except that the Army was bigger than at present. Arrangements were made to transfer me to Memphis through the use of one of the School of Aviation Medicine’s planes. I had slept late that balmy spring day only to be awakened by the clamor of rushing feet and the heads that belonged to them. The mouth in one of these heads said, “Joe, it’s almost twelve o’clock, and you have to be at Newark Airport in New Jersey at noon to meet the plane that is taking you to Tennessee.” I enlisted into the rush, and found that there was no time to pack the majority of personal possessions. I started giving them away. I had an extra liking for my bed lamp, and asked Charlie Kruse to give it to my folks when they visited the hospital that afternoon to find that they no longer had a son in Staten Island, New York.
Five of us started the race towards the air base, but when we reached the middle of the Bayonne Bridge to New Jersey there were only the two of us left: the ambulance and myself. For some damn reason “the meat wagon started to smoke as we reached the center of the bridge, and one of my two so-called aides panicked and yelled, “Fire!” Needing no further convincing the driver cut off the engine, and the three of them took off running head long into the bridge’s rail. The sudden stop sobered them up, and they realized that yours truly was still lying down on the job. I could hear them trying to coax each other to go back and yank me out of my smoking cauldron. Finally the three of them made a mad dash for the rear door, and with empty hearted synchronization pull d me out and away from the ambulance.
By this time the motor stopped smoking leaving us with a confusing situation. Realizing that my boys were not too accustomed to being under any type of fire; I decided to appoint myself commander of the problem. I didn’t know whether or not I was doing the right thing, but I egged my chauffeur into restarting the engine. When no smoke appeared, and when the engine didn’t explode the rest of us felt confident enough to return to our original stations, and I was once again placed into the ambulance. The remainder of the trip to the airport was uneventful and quiet, for it was hard to make conversation with all the yellow spines that were cluttering up the ambulance.
Once at the airport it wasn’t hard to locate the C-47, which was to give me wings. The men lugged me to the ground, and set me along side of the plane. One of the boys called into the open cabin door, but there was no answer. We were doubly positive that we had driven to the right place and the correct airport, but we couldn’t prove it. The entire field looked more like an aviation graveyard with not even a caretaker to guard our plane. After about fifteen minutes of debating as to what our next move would be an Air Force Captain slowly came out and toward us from one of the adjacent buildings. He introduced himself, and gave orders to the men to load me onto the ship.
Once inside the cabin I managed to catch the Captain’s ear, and offered my apologies for being late. He shrugged his shoulders and laughed as he replied, “You’re not late; you are our only passenger. We couldn’t have taken off without you.” As we relaxed and started to taxi our way down the field to the runway, I thumbed my nose at those yellow bastards as they stood next to the ambulance waving good-bye to us.
No sooner were we in the air than my nurse unstrapped her safety belt, and came over to where I was lying to ask if I was interested in crossword puzzles. I told her the truth, which was that up until that second of my life I had never attempted to solve one. My answer did not seem to dismay her, for she soon threw a batch to me that had been clipped from newspapers, and remarked, “Here, keep yourself busy.” Without bothering to find out whether I had a pencil or not, she threw herself on the cot across the aisle from mine; put on an eye mask, took a sleeping pill, and threw back her head in an effort to slip into unconsciousness. It soon proved to be successful as she quickly fell under the spell of dreamland.
It was a beautiful day making it impossible for me to even have a chance to become interested in those crossword puzzles. Once we were airborne the sight of the majestic clouds that we were passing fascinated me. At first they seemed to be little things, but as we approached them on a parallel course I soon discovered that we couldn’t leave them behind as quickly as I had expected. Finding that it took quite a bit longer than a minute to pass one of Mother Nature’s clean white feathers taught me to respect their majesty.
As I had been watching these elongated pillows my mind wandered from the plane to the ride, and then the nurse. Suddenly I found myself hot all over, and starting to heave violently. The sounds of my discomfort were loud enough to arouse the masked stranger from her sleep, and she quickly brought me the usual paper bag reserved for these occasions. I hadn’t gotten a chance to completely fill the bag when I discovered the reason for my display of bad manners, for though I was a guest on that plane, I certainly wasn’t behaving according to Emily Post. Without any notification to us in the rear the pilot had landed the plane on the military field at Atlanta, Georgia thus exposing me to a sudden change in temperature and altitude. Mother Nature took care of the rest temporarily forcing my insides inside out.
Soon men were scrambling on the wings and the “lamp out” order was given. I took the natural conclusion that all that was to happen was our being refueled, and I contented myself with watching the taxpayers’ money going into a little hole in the wing of the plane. I had hardly had a chance to complain about the odor of the gasoline when I discovered two litter bearers climbing into the plane with the usual litter. It took about a millionth of a second for them to discover that I was the only passenger in the aircraft. I then asked, “What’s up, Docs?” “You” replied one of them with an apish grin. “We’re taking you to McPherson Hospital in town for a twenty-four hour layover.” “Oh” I replied, and away we went into the waiting ambulance.
I don’t know whether it was the southern air and the way it affects the natives, but this ride was made on a more safe and sane basis than the previous ambulance ride giving me a chance to enjoy some of the sights of the southern metropolis. What I saw was beautiful, and gave me the expectation of seeing another palace that had been converted into a military hospital.
The insides of that sanctuary of medicine were so old and decrepit that if someone had ever told me that cartoonist Adams had been the architect I would have believed him. My nurse soon made quick work of relieving herself of my charge, for once she had me safely into one of the hospital’s beds, she gave a few hurried instructions to the ward nurse, and then dashed off to join the plane’s Captain with whom she painted the town red.
Her instructions were of little value to my ward nurse, and I was left with the task of supervising my bedtime care. There again was an instance of one of the major problems facing paraplegics the world over. People want to be nice and do the right thing to you, but paraplegia is still not common knowledge. It is even an enigma to the majority of the members of the medical profession to whom the word had not been properly handed down. Fortunately I only wet the bed once that evening leaving me in fairly good condition considering the odds and the ignorance.
My gal Sal or Jones or whatever her name was managed to return in an almost sober condition the next morning to retrieve me. Studying her, I began to think; “I wonder if the Captain has recovered enough to steer the plane in a straight line to Memphis.” Worrying instead of watching I failed to take in any of the sights on the return trip to the airport, but my wild blue yonder boy slipped one over on me. I think he had put one over on my lady also, for his eyes were clear and fresh. His memory was good, but our lady friend’s wasn’t. When on the last lap to Memphis she decided to take another one of her salubrious naps, he then filled me in on the gruesome details. I didn’t shake with horror, but I did drool.
With pilot and co-pilot taking turns at driving the plane and telling me about all their troubles they were having with their women, that last leg ended only too soon, for I was enjoying the bull sessions. The landing didn’t make me ill as the one before, leaving me in better shape for more sightseeing. The ride to the hospital from the air base was short, sweet, and dull, for I had been in Dixie and seen Negro cabins before. It was a strange thing, but later in the hospital I was to be approached my many of the colored workers who knew I was a northerner in the hope that I could steer them to some Yankee source of employment. I did not have the heart to tell these people that the northern cities held nothing but slums for them alongside of hidden bigotry whereas in the south at least they knew if a man wanted to talk to him as a man he would speak to him openly. Aside from that there was Lebensraum with fresh air.