Here Is Your War–The Complete List

Here is the list of military personnel and their street addresses from Ernie Pyle’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Here Is Your War</span>, which I’ve just finished reading.  I started with Flying Fortress bombardier Lt. Anthony Coreno, an Alpha Phi Delta Ohio State alum.  Lt. Coreno’s information appears on page 119, which is the point at which it occurred to me to keep track of the full names and street addresses Pyle listed for some of his warrior friends and others.

I went back through and re-read pages 1 through 119 to complete the list.  Now, I’ll have to see about creating a Google map that marks all the addresses found and will have a look at Street View feature to see where these people came from and the condition into which the nation has fallen since (most of) these men and women served in World War II. 

Names and addresses found:

Page	Rank	Name	Street	City	State	Assignment
30	Unknown	Ben Smith	620 S. 5th St.	Terre Haute	Indiana	Pharmacist’s Mate
70	Warrant Officer	Luke Corrigan	816 Hemlock St.	Scranton	Pennsylvania	Supply
81	Private	Israel Tabi	245 Broome St.	New York City	New York	Arabic Interpreter
81	Private	Abraham Casper Leon Saide	343 ½ Seneca St.	Buffalo	New York	Arabic Interpreter
86	Private	Thomas Doyle	1422 Woodward Ave.	Lakewood	Ohio	Waiter
87	Corporal	William C. Barr	1314 Logan Ave.	Tyrone	Pennsylvania	Corpsman
92	Lieutenant	Gordon Carlisle	14 Cass St.	Exeter	New Hampshire	Message Center
93	Private	Frank T. Borezon	631 Payne Ave.	Erie	Pennsylvania	Message Center
93	Private	Julius Novak	1613 Avenue V	Brooklyn	New York	Message Center
93	Private First Class	(First Name Unknown) Doomchin	1944 Unionport Rd.	Bronx	New York	Message Center
93	Private	Gerald Kelly	22 Central St.	Elkins	West Virginia	Message Center
93	Private	William J. Harrington	908 Greenfield Ave.	Pittsburgh	Pennsylvania	Message Center
93	Private	George Murphy	172 Grand St.	Lowell	Massachusetts	Message Center
93	Private	Ed Sailor	2542 N. 31st St.	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	Message Center
94	Corporal	Russell T. Harrell	902 E. Burlington St.	Fairfield	Iowa	Message Center
94	Private	Primo de Carlo	255 N. 7th St.	Steubenville	Ohio	Message Center
94		Mrs. Sara Harvey	227 Natchez Pl.	Nashville	Tennessee	Wrote Letter to Pyle asking him to look up her husband and “tell him to hurry up and get the war won and get back home to her”
95	Sergeant	Burt Thompson	3660 E. 151st St.	Cleveland	Ohio	Medical supply; assembled on his own initiative a small medical kit for fighter pilots to carry
107	Lieutenant	Jack Ilfrey	3122 Robinhood St.	Houston	Texas	Fighter Pilot
119	Lieutenant	Victor Coreno	11002 Woodland Ave.	Cleveland	Ohio	Bombardier
130	Lieutenant	Davey Williams	3305 Williams St.	Fort Worth	Texas	Navigator
134	Sergeant	Ray Aalto	4732 Oakton St.	Skokie	Illinois	Unknown
146	Sergeant	James Bernett	1541 Cheyenne St.	Tulsa	Oklahoma	Jeep Driver
150	Corporal	Edward Dudek	8322 Vineyard Ave.	Cleveland	Ohio	Cook
159	Sergeant	Vernon Gery	305 W. Navarre St.	South Bend	Indiana	Unknown
176	Sergeant	Donald Schiavone	666 4th Ave.	Brooklyn	New York	Unknown
180	Corporal	William Nikolin	1105 W. New York St.	Indianapolis	Indiana	Aide
181-182	Sergeant	Walter Hickey	401 76th St.	Brooklyn	New York	Unknown
184	Corporal	Lester Gray	2443 Farwell Ave.	Chicago	Illinois	Laboratory Technician
187	Unknown	Mildred Keelin	929 Ellison Ave.	Louisville	Kentucky	Nurse
187	Unknown	Eva Sacks	1821 N. 33rd St.	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	Nurse
187	Unknown	Kate Rodgers	2932 Wroxton Ave.	Houston	Texas	Nurse
217	PFC	Joe Fox	4513 Filmore	Pittsburgh	Pennsylvania	Headquarters Officers’ Mess Table Waiter
279	Private	Bill Connell	183 Menahan St.	Brooklyn	New York	Unknown
279	Private	Bill Connell	251 Grove St.	Brooklyn	New York	Unknown
279	Unknown	Unnamed German P.O.W.	253 Grove St.	Brooklyn	New York	Unknown
286	Private	Walter Wolfson	714 W. 181st St.	New York	New York	Military Policeman, Ninth Division
287	P.F.C.	Joseph Lorenze	963 Holly St.	Inglewood	California	Unknown
292	Private	Patrick Fitzgibbons	315 W. 97th St.	New York	New York	Unknown

 

Pyle, Ernie. Here Is Your War. 1. New York: Henry

     Holt and Company, Inc., 1943. Print.

Another Saturday on Dry Land

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been helping family members move things, carry things as they’ve gone through the belongings of the oldest surviving family member.  He has realized that he will not be living independently again, and has given the go-ahead to clear out the home he had built in about 1973 and had lived in up until a few months ago.  In his right mind, this 96 year-old man now resides in an assisted living facility and, although he complains a little about the quality of food served there, has expressed in my hearing no other complaint

I drove over to the house early Saturday morning after staying up until nearly the stroke of midnight to meet a deadline.  Unshaved and unwashed I drove through Stepford at a time when most of the town’s residents are still in their pajamas or thinking about eating fattening convenience foods they can microwave.  Hot as heck already by 7:20 or so a.m.  Workman were resurfacing one of the main routes across town, and I had a longer than usual stop until a flagman waved me past after the asphalt truck had gone by.

I drove past three big mainline denominational houses of worship.  One of these is the First Big Southern Denomination meeting house.  As I drove by, I wondered whether, if I showed up there one Sunday morning, I’d recognize anything that happened under the building’s roof as particularly Christian.  Not.  Probably not.  But I may be too critical of the religious practices of others who, like me, claim to be Christian.

After spending a couple of hours helping my mom move some stuff out into the garage for the auction people to haul off, I drove out to the Pot County seat Administrative Plaza to visit a friend who works over there on Saturday mornings, then drove back to Stepford (which, oddly enough, is not the county seat) to put gas in the XC before returning to the house.

At home, I found my son and wife had already eaten breakfast.  My wife went to the store, and I made a bowl of oatmeal.  While it cooled, I watched the last part of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with Seventy-Six.  He didn’t want to watch the part where Caractacus, Truly, and Benny Hill visit with the kids in the watery cavern under the castle, and asked me to fast-forward to part where Gert Frobe and Anna Quail sing a comically lethal duet, which never fails to amuse the child.  I shared my bowl of oatmeal with my now 3 1/2 year-old son while we sat in bargain faux-wicker furniture in our somewhat dilapidated sunroom.  Second breakfast for him.  The boy is exceedingly tall for his age (95th percentile height, 75th percentile weight), and when he jumps (cannon-ball, knees-first) on my back if I’m lying on the carpet reading a book, the impact is no joke.

After my wife came home from the store with the week’s groceries, I got my shower and changed.  We ate lunch as a family – BLT sandwiches, while good tomatoes are in season and available.  My little boy only wanted grilled cheese, but was willing to eat a piece of low-fat bacon.

Shortly after lunch, I called my friend, neighbor, and relative by marriage, John T., to ask whether I could borrow his small pickup truck to carry off some things from the house across town.  He said, sure, come on over.  I walked over to his house and as I approached observed him pulling the truck out and parking it in the shade of a tree in the driveway.  We exchanged greetings and he asked whether I could use any help.  Any time a super-intelligent 88 year-old World War II veteran with a realistic sense of humor, and whom you’ve known all your life asks whether you’d like his help, the right answer is “Yes.”

“You drive,” he said.

We made a couple of trips.  Hot all day, the small truck has no air-conditioner, so we drove with all the windows open, including the wind-wings.  Cars now don’t have them, but they permit one to direct a flow of wind toward the car’s interior as it is driven.  I sometimes wish my 850 had them.

I’ve been reading Ernie Pyle’s Here is Your War, only the copy I’m reading came out of a rural Indiana farmhouse and was published in 1943 or 1944.  The cover is present, but not worth mentioning as it is ragged, the insides of the hardbound cover at front and back have yellowed newspaper clippings pasted into them in the style of old fashioned scrapbooks.  About a dozen to 20 other clippings are stuffed into the middle of the book, and notes handwritten in pencil on a folded seed-company mailer postmarked dating from 1944.  I’m using the seed-company mailer as a book mark.  I’ll read the clippings after I’ve read the book.

John is a veteran of World War II.  A year or two ago, he told me about his Honor Flight tour of Washington, D.C.  It sounded interesting, but I found myself wishing someone had provided such a tour for him and other veterans when they were all younger and more independently mobile.  John said he enjoyed the whirlwind visit to the memorials and monuments honoring the men and women who fought and served in that defining conflict of the mid-Twentieth Century.

I don’t know how, but we got onto the subject of cellular telephones and John said he and Irma, his wife, had been at a movie and the cell-phone of the woman seated next to him rang three or four different times during the film’s showing.  Although annoyed, John didn’t say anything to the woman because, “You never know if it’s someone who’s going to try to shoot you.”  We started talking about the debased state of even semi-rural society here in Southern Middle Tennessee, about how it seems at least 75% of the population is using psychoactive medication with or without medical advice, and another 10% probably ought to be prescribed something.

I asked John, “Is this (motioning with my hand to indicate a mix of current circumstances of place and the things we’ve been talking about) what you guys were fighting for?”

“No,” he said, “it’s not.  We went to war to defeat Hitler and Stalin.  And the Japanese.”  When asked, he denied with a shake of the head any regard for the manner in which the victory of his generation had been spent to build a medicated welfare state.

It’s Friday again as I return to complete this post – the last Friday in July.  After the preceding paragraph, I’d started to write a bit about the following Sunday, but just now returning to it, I’ve completely forgotten what it was I’d wanted to say about last Sunday.  I recall that my family and I skipped worship service and performed all manner of ox-freeing work on the small ‘c’ cultural ‘c’hristian Sabbath for which the Almighty will doubtless not condemn us, the Sabbath being made for Man and not Man for the Sabbath.  And anyway, Sunday’s just the first day of the ancient world’s working week, and Christianity was at first a working man and woman’s religion.  Do not make the mistake of reading any kind of Marxist cant into my remarks thereby missing entirely their various points.

Yesterday, or the day before, an idea occurred to me as I was reading or thinking about Pyle’s book that I’ve mentioned above.  And that idea is this – wouldn’t it be interesting to find some accessible and clear way to contrast the United States of 2011 with the United States Pyle wrote about in 1943.  My copy of Pyle’s book bears the publication date “December, 1943.”

One of the things Pyle did was to report the names and street addresses of some of the military personnel about whom he’d written .  That struck me as odd and an obvious security breach.  How on earth could even a half-sentient military censor allow something like that to pass into print?  I can think of one or two possible “conscious” answers to the question.

But that idea I had is this – Wouldn’t it be interesting to Google Street-View those 1943 addresses in 2011?  The visuals might indicate whether or to what observable degree the United States of America has improved since winning World War Two.

Here’s one I jotted down today (I wish I’d thought of this when I started reading and had kept a list):

Page 119

Lt. Victor Coreno

11002 Woodland Ave.
Cleveland, Ohio

It’s a parking lot on the corner in a run-down neighborhood near public housing projects.  Maybe it’d been a storefront with apartments above, or a two-storey frame house, or just an apartment building like the brick buildings beside or behind it.

Here is another one:

Page 130

Navigator Lt. Davey Williams

3305 Williams St.

Fort Worth, Texas

I wasn’t able to find a Williams Street in Fort Worth using Google Maps.  The address at Williams Avenue is a run-down strip mall in what looks like it is now a run-down commercial-industrial area.

I was able to find a Williams Street, and re-linked the address above.  What I’m finding with Google Maps and Street View is that addresses are so approximate in many instances that the online “service” or whatever it is a lot of the time plants its little orange markers in the middle of intersections.  Still, the entire length of Williams Street is pretty badly run-down.  You’ll note a family group reclining on living-room furniture out by a dumpster behind an apartment building nearby.

Today I came home early from work because my head felt like it’s bones were splintering like one of those cinematic werewolf transformations.  Explains why I’ve been cranky last two or three days – coming down with an intractable head-cold that only rest will cure.  Once home, I watched the third and apparently final episode of the BBC Masterpiece Theater “Sherlock” – an updated adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle characters and stories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  I thought I’d hate it completely, but found that I very much enjoyed the short series.  What bothers me, or that irks at the back of my mind, is that an updated Sherlock Holmes posits a hundred and twenty or so years of history without Doyle’s character embedded, so to speak, in the culture.  Can you imagine a world that’d never heard of or been influenced by those stories and that one particular character?

Old Math

Wentworth-Smith's Essentials of Arithmetic

About three weeks ago I spent a dollar to buy a very old math textbook Essentials of Arithmetic: Primary Book. Printed in 1915, I found the line-drawing illustrations on many of its pages, as well as the narrative/details of the word problems fascinating artifacts from a lost world. But the numbers, the diagrams, the simple math is the same today as it was then; the book struck me as same-time antique and modern.

I keep thinking that if I reach back far enough, I will understand what went wrong with me mathematically. At the age of 45, I am beginning to understand the problem and hope to be able to write about it sometime fairly soon.

Saturday, on the anniversary of the day Allied forces invaded German occupied Europe, I recalled a college professor in 1981, an old man, talking about the French military man, Marshal Petain, saying that he had been a hero in the Great, or First World War, but a Vichy collaborator with the Third Reich in the Second World War. He concluded that Petain had “lived too long.” I remember thinking that was an odd thing to say, because I was young enough then to think the lives of others were not to be so flippantly dismissed. I was a little shocked.

Last Saturday I thought that I am old enough to have heard people who were old enough to have known the names and deeds, and to have actually thought about heroes of the Great War and villains of the Second World War. I have one foot in the lost world, and am every day becoming more and more a part of what for my son’s sons will be a lost world. Who knows what artifacts of my passage through this time will be found in theirs?

Here is a scan from the book, pages 8 and 9:

How many of the children?

Inside, in a messy cursive hand, someone has written the following childish curse:

Do not steal this book, my lad

For 53 c it cost, my lad

And on that day the Lord will say,

‘Where’s that book you stold away?’

And if you say you do not no,

The Lord will say, ‘Step below.’

According to Bettelheim (sp?), children, being innocent, demand justice, whereas adults, knowing their own guilt, prefer mercy