Hi, Diary. GBH here.
The Old Grove, four blocks away from our house, is mainly for kids who'd not yet passed the eighth grade. Teenagers and adults stayed away except for the kindly, bespectacled (Thank you, Readers Digest) retired Protestant minister who was always dressed in black and wore a Roman collar. He walked behind his ever so quiet but friendly, panting, liver and white springier spaniel. The minister stopped here and there, etching with the end of a branch he had removed from a bush, a threesome of owls on the warn paths above the Old Grove hill. Most of us avoided walking on those owls. Sooner or later, the sun or a strong wind would erase them.
Kids could play all sorts of games at the Old Grove without getting yelled at by parents to come home for this or that reason. Of all the make-believe games we played, "War" was our favorite. We wore steel helmets, some of us bought at the Army Surplus store in town. Some helmets were gifts from fathers, uncles, cousins, or older brothers who wore them in Europe, fighting Nazis. Others had been targets on Pacific islands in the bloodiest of clashes with Japs.
Bobby Kell and Bob Amundson carried BAR's (Browning Automatic Rifles). Well, they weren't exactly real guns or even play guns. They were pieces of wood each boy had taken from their dads' lumber piles. I had with me my make-believe flame thrower, a length of garden hose glued to a large tin can with an actual brass nozzle on the other end of the hose. Since nobody would ever choose to be the enemy, we were—every single one of us—United States Marines.
Once, a group of us kids got together and agreed we'd play War, we headed north on Tenth Street. After we crossed Baker Street by the Farish house, we had only three more blocks to go to reach the Old Grove. One block further, however, we stopped to gather additional troops, Roger Aton and Jimmy Lokken and maybe Timmy Lattimore and Billy Schroeder. While we waited for them to search for weapons, we aimed ours at Nazi Storm Troopers and fired away.
"Missed 'em," Bobby Kell yelled. We sprawled on our bellies on Lokken's front lawn although it wasn't much of a lawn. Some of us hid behind their huge tree as the enemy shot back. "Kush, Kush," was the sound of enemy rifle fire. After reinforcements joined us, we continued our trek north and finally made it to the Front, the bridal wreath bushes that hid the Old Grove from sight.
Before we moved beyond those bushes, we lobbed hand grenades. "Pullin' a pin," was a must warning. That's when the rest of us hit the deck. Uh, ground. We waited nine seconds exactly. That's when the Gyrene who tossed the pineapple had to make a loud "Ka-wooosh" sound. After the explosion, the rest of us lifted our heads as we lay on our bellies or stuck our heads out from behind trees. The Marine who tossed the grenade had only two choices, and that was to yell, "Gottem," or "They got away, the Nazi dogs."
Before the end of each afternoon, when we knew we'd better head home or get a licking, we got to kill Hitler and cut off his ridiculous mustache. Even if in real life he committed suicide, we couldn't let him do so at the Old Grove. "Heil, Hitler, you're dead, you Nazi son of a bitch," Jimmy Kell yelled. And that was that. We were finished for the day and headed home for a well-earned supper.
On other War days, our enemies were "Yellow-bellied buck-toothed Japs." We considered them nastier than Nazis. We had resolved if we were captured by Nips, we'd surely die on a Death March. Sounding out the blast of our grenades meant to kill Japs, we'd yell, "Ga-whooom." Those grenades were next of kin to 100-pound bombs.
"Flame thrower," yelled Jimmy Kell who insisted on being John Wayne whenever we hit Iwo Jima's beach.
"Yes sir," I shot back.
"Don't call me, Sir, Private Hoffman. I'm a sergeant, not an officer."
"Sorry about that, Sarge."
"So, Private, enough of your B.S. Get your ass in gear and burn those Jap bastards outta them bunkers over there." Stryker pointed to the fortifications of concrete and steel, up to that moment, impenetrable dugouts with slits for the nips to look out to see us and kill us.
"Yessir, Sarge." I pointed the nozzle at the bunkers and went, "Fooooooosh" repeatedly. Satisfied that burning, screaming Nips were exiting either their bunkers or caves, I screamed in their language, which sounded like fox-chased chickens, "Squaw-squaw-squawk." Then, I eyeballed the sergeant. "Gottem, Sarge."
"Let's go, boys. Attack," bellowed Stryker.
The rest of us ran straight at the devastated bunkers, making all kinds of noises. It was fun those days to be winners in War.
There were times Jimmy wasn't with us. Instead, he often sat on an overturned steel milk case inside a Divco milk truck, accompanying Delbert Gumm, the man who delivered milk in town for Vradenburg Dairy. (By the way, Vradenbug isn't pronounced the way it looks. Jimmy told us the owner of the dairy, Mr. Vradenburg, told him his last name is pronounced, "Rainberg."
Thus, if Jimmy was riding shotgun on the Divco, then somebody else got to be Sgt. Stryker. Billy Schroeder was the heaviest but Bob Amundson was the tallest. Older people called him "String Bean." Everyone knew John Wayne was usually the biggest and tallest guy in most of his movies.
Also, there were those days that neighborhood girls insisted on joining us instead of playing with their real or paper dolls. Hen House Helen Kell and her younger sister, Betty Ann, Judy Amundson, and Crazy Annie, my sister, volunteered to be front-line nurses. They preferred their assignment inside the outhouse-sized electrical building, built long ago on the side of Old Grove hill. Unless it had rained recently. That meant a ton of mosquitoes would be dive bombing them. If it hadn't rained, then the girls could use the building. Nobody knew why that electrical bunker was there. Not a one of us could explain its existence to anyone else's satisfaction.
However, Bobby Kell had to run in front of the rest of us so he could hide his dad's cancer sticks Bobby had earlier hidden under a pile of crackly, last year autumn leaves. The Raleighs were for his and my occasional use that Bobby had "lifted." Recently, his Dad changed brands of coffin nails to Raleigh. Al Kell used to smoke Philip Morris, but ever since Raleighs came with a brown coupon inside a pack's cellophane wrapper, he changed to that brand. If a smoker saved enough of them, he could trade them in for some nice prizes. "Yeah," I told Bobby, "Al can buy an iron lung he'll need for smoking so many cancer sticks." We both laughed because just about everyone knew smoking was not a healthy activity. Once Bobby hid the Raleighs in a temporary hiding spot, the girls headed to the Field Hospital where they tied old baby diapers or worn dish cloths around our arm, leg, and chest wounds. Not a one of us ever died, but when the girls were around, we suffered plenty of wounds mainly because Hen House brought along liquid medicine, cherry Kool Aid.
Even John Wayne got wounded once or twice when the girls were there, but after he drank most of the medicine, the pig, he led on. "Let's get those Yellow Bellies," roared Sgt. Stryker.
We followed him into that Valley of Death, that is, the one reserved for our enemy.
The Old Grove, four blocks away from our house, is mainly for kids who'd not yet passed the eighth grade. Teenagers and adults stayed away except for the kindly, bespectacled (Thank you, Readers Digest) retired Protestant minister who was always dressed in black and wore a Roman collar. He walked behind his ever so quiet but friendly, panting, liver and white springier spaniel. The minister stopped here and there, etching with the end of a branch he had removed from a bush, a threesome of owls on the warn paths above the Old Grove hill. Most of us avoided walking on those owls. Sooner or later, the sun or a strong wind would erase them.
Kids could play all sorts of games at the Old Grove without getting yelled at by parents to come home for this or that reason. Of all the make-believe games we played, "War" was our favorite. We wore steel helmets, some of us bought at the Army Surplus store in town. Some helmets were gifts from fathers, uncles, cousins, or older brothers who wore them in Europe, fighting Nazis. Others had been targets on Pacific islands in the bloodiest of clashes with Japs.
Bobby Kell and Bob Amundson carried BAR's (Browning Automatic Rifles). Well, they weren't exactly real guns or even play guns. They were pieces of wood each boy had taken from their dads' lumber piles. I had with me my make-believe flame thrower, a length of garden hose glued to a large tin can with an actual brass nozzle on the other end of the hose. Since nobody would ever choose to be the enemy, we were—every single one of us—United States Marines.
Once, a group of us kids got together and agreed we'd play War, we headed north on Tenth Street. After we crossed Baker Street by the Farish house, we had only three more blocks to go to reach the Old Grove. One block further, however, we stopped to gather additional troops, Roger Aton and Jimmy Lokken and maybe Timmy Lattimore and Billy Schroeder. While we waited for them to search for weapons, we aimed ours at Nazi Storm Troopers and fired away.
"Missed 'em," Bobby Kell yelled. We sprawled on our bellies on Lokken's front lawn although it wasn't much of a lawn. Some of us hid behind their huge tree as the enemy shot back. "Kush, Kush," was the sound of enemy rifle fire. After reinforcements joined us, we continued our trek north and finally made it to the Front, the bridal wreath bushes that hid the Old Grove from sight.
Before we moved beyond those bushes, we lobbed hand grenades. "Pullin' a pin," was a must warning. That's when the rest of us hit the deck. Uh, ground. We waited nine seconds exactly. That's when the Gyrene who tossed the pineapple had to make a loud "Ka-wooosh" sound. After the explosion, the rest of us lifted our heads as we lay on our bellies or stuck our heads out from behind trees. The Marine who tossed the grenade had only two choices, and that was to yell, "Gottem," or "They got away, the Nazi dogs."
Before the end of each afternoon, when we knew we'd better head home or get a licking, we got to kill Hitler and cut off his ridiculous mustache. Even if in real life he committed suicide, we couldn't let him do so at the Old Grove. "Heil, Hitler, you're dead, you Nazi son of a bitch," Jimmy Kell yelled. And that was that. We were finished for the day and headed home for a well-earned supper.
On other War days, our enemies were "Yellow-bellied buck-toothed Japs." We considered them nastier than Nazis. We had resolved if we were captured by Nips, we'd surely die on a Death March. Sounding out the blast of our grenades meant to kill Japs, we'd yell, "Ga-whooom." Those grenades were next of kin to 100-pound bombs.
"Flame thrower," yelled Jimmy Kell who insisted on being John Wayne whenever we hit Iwo Jima's beach.
"Yes sir," I shot back.
"Don't call me, Sir, Private Hoffman. I'm a sergeant, not an officer."
"Sorry about that, Sarge."
"So, Private, enough of your B.S. Get your ass in gear and burn those Jap bastards outta them bunkers over there." Stryker pointed to the fortifications of concrete and steel, up to that moment, impenetrable dugouts with slits for the nips to look out to see us and kill us.
"Yessir, Sarge." I pointed the nozzle at the bunkers and went, "Fooooooosh" repeatedly. Satisfied that burning, screaming Nips were exiting either their bunkers or caves, I screamed in their language, which sounded like fox-chased chickens, "Squaw-squaw-squawk." Then, I eyeballed the sergeant. "Gottem, Sarge."
"Let's go, boys. Attack," bellowed Stryker.
The rest of us ran straight at the devastated bunkers, making all kinds of noises. It was fun those days to be winners in War.
There were times Jimmy wasn't with us. Instead, he often sat on an overturned steel milk case inside a Divco milk truck, accompanying Delbert Gumm, the man who delivered milk in town for Vradenburg Dairy. (By the way, Vradenbug isn't pronounced the way it looks. Jimmy told us the owner of the dairy, Mr. Vradenburg, told him his last name is pronounced, "Rainberg."
Thus, if Jimmy was riding shotgun on the Divco, then somebody else got to be Sgt. Stryker. Billy Schroeder was the heaviest but Bob Amundson was the tallest. Older people called him "String Bean." Everyone knew John Wayne was usually the biggest and tallest guy in most of his movies.
Also, there were those days that neighborhood girls insisted on joining us instead of playing with their real or paper dolls. Hen House Helen Kell and her younger sister, Betty Ann, Judy Amundson, and Crazy Annie, my sister, volunteered to be front-line nurses. They preferred their assignment inside the outhouse-sized electrical building, built long ago on the side of Old Grove hill. Unless it had rained recently. That meant a ton of mosquitoes would be dive bombing them. If it hadn't rained, then the girls could use the building. Nobody knew why that electrical bunker was there. Not a one of us could explain its existence to anyone else's satisfaction.
However, Bobby Kell had to run in front of the rest of us so he could hide his dad's cancer sticks Bobby had earlier hidden under a pile of crackly, last year autumn leaves. The Raleighs were for his and my occasional use that Bobby had "lifted." Recently, his Dad changed brands of coffin nails to Raleigh. Al Kell used to smoke Philip Morris, but ever since Raleighs came with a brown coupon inside a pack's cellophane wrapper, he changed to that brand. If a smoker saved enough of them, he could trade them in for some nice prizes. "Yeah," I told Bobby, "Al can buy an iron lung he'll need for smoking so many cancer sticks." We both laughed because just about everyone knew smoking was not a healthy activity. Once Bobby hid the Raleighs in a temporary hiding spot, the girls headed to the Field Hospital where they tied old baby diapers or worn dish cloths around our arm, leg, and chest wounds. Not a one of us ever died, but when the girls were around, we suffered plenty of wounds mainly because Hen House brought along liquid medicine, cherry Kool Aid.
Even John Wayne got wounded once or twice when the girls were there, but after he drank most of the medicine, the pig, he led on. "Let's get those Yellow Bellies," roared Sgt. Stryker.
We followed him into that Valley of Death, that is, the one reserved for our enemy.
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