CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’m gonna give you just as short a version of the whole story as I can,” Tom began. “Still it’s going to take quite a while.”
Fred went on the alert. He had never forgotten the training the Army had given him when he was in counter-intelligence. Without being noticed, he could vigilantly watch an individual and catch his tell-tale signs of stress, honesty, fear and lying. The latter served him well in his role as county historian. Some people could surely stretch the truth.
However, it wasn’t the truth that Fred was concerned about. He knew that he would have to jump in at the first sign of stress. His heart was made up. If the truth NEVER came out, he would do his utmost to protect his best friend against anything that might put him over the edge again. No one in that room ever needed to see what a war-torn mind could really do to a person.
Tom started with a little chuckle, “Does anyone here know what I enlisted in the Army to do?”
This seemingly innocent question almost startled Arthur. “You mean you didn’t join the Army to fight?”
“Well, yes I joined to fight but you would never guess it by the job they gave me,” the soldier answered with a sly smile. Hearing a chuckle from Fred made him glance in his direction. Ryan had his mouth covered in a vain attempt at to stifle his laugh. He knew his son’s inquisitive nature would get the best of him. And, if Ryan’s hunch was right, Tom had realized it and was playing it to the hilt.
Tom only vaguely answered his question, “O-o-h, I shoveled hay into one end of a mule and then shoveled away what came out of the other end.”
Arthur was the proverbial deer in the headlights. A big smile was trying it’s best to keep Olivia from busting out laughing as she answered, “That’s what Grandma always told me.” Then, acting like she was trying to think real hard she continued, “Let’s see. She called it …………skinning the cat, I think.”
Arthur looked at Fred. But, he was busy looking at his fingernails. He turned his questioning look toward his dad.
“That’s a mule skinner, Dear,” Ryan corrected her.
“Oh, yeah,” Olivia played, “he skinned mules. That was his job.”
With mouth wide opened Arthur slowly locked eyes with his great-grandfather. With the available information, Arthur quickly put two and two together and came up with eighty-four. He reached up with his hand and grabbed Tom‘s arm and asked the only question his mind could grasp, “You fed mules and skinned them? Holey-moley, were you a cook, Grandpa?”
Oh, here we go. Those were two words that Wendy could say. She mimicked her brother on the other side and grabbed Tom’s other arm and asked with a grin, “Cook, Pop-pop?” She sat up and put her head on her mother’s shoulder nearest to Tom so she could be more of the center of attention. Of course, her giggle didn’t hurt either.
Tom smiled at her before he put his arm around Arthur to explain, “No, Son. We’re just playing with you. I enlisted in the Army to be what was called a mule skinner. My job WAS to take care of the mules that were assigned to me. Back at the beginning of the war, the United States didn’t have all the trucks and cargo carriers that they have now. The majority of supplies could only get from one place to another by the way of mules. After I got out of basic training, I was sent over to a country called New Guinea. When we got there, we found ourselves in the middle of the thickest jungle I had ever seen. Now, I was raised driving a team of mules on flat ground. Over there, I had to drive them up and down mountains covered by thick jungle. That was a big, big change.
“By 1943, the United States had built plenty of trucks and jeeps so they declared that the mules were obsolete. They shipped out the mules and brought in a new commander. His job was to transform the 98th Field Artillery Battalion into the 6th Ranger Battalion.”
“Holey-moley! You were an Army Ranger?” Arthur blurted out. “Rangers are some of the toughest guys there are. There’s a bunch of them that go to church with us. They’re all the time telling us about the stuff that they do.” Arthur threw his arm around Tom’s midsection and continued, “Wow! My Grandpa was a Ranger.”
Little Miss I-need-to-be-the-center-of-attention came to life. She slipped over to Tom’s lap, and rested her head on his chest as she declared, “My Pop-pop.” With all her strength, she tried to stare Arthur down.
Arthur started to say something in return until he noticed how slowly she was blinking her eyes. He looked at his mom and gave a slight nod and then sat back. It would be over in a few minutes. And, indeed, Miss Wendy didn’t even raise her head off of her great-grandfather’s chest. Before his next two paragraphs were out, she was history herself.
“Yes. And you can tell those Ranger friends of yours that I was trained by none other than Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci. They’ll know that name for sure. It took him a whole year to whip 500 mule skinners into fire-breathing Rangers but he did it. And, every single one of us was so tough we felt like we could take on the whole Japanese army by ourselves.
“One of our first assignments was to rescue some 500 American prisoners being held captive at Cabanatuan, a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines. It had to be a surprise move because the prisoners would have probably been executed if they knew that we were going to attack.
“Three of us volunteered to blow up an ammo shed to create a diversion so we could get the prisoners out before they realized what was happening. It seemed like an easy enough job to do. The Filipino guerrillas had already infiltrated the camp and were also waiting for us in the woods behind the shed. They had already put four sandbags underneath the open window in the back of the shed so somebody could climb in very easily. We drew straws and that somebody turned out to be me.
“Right at dusk, we made our way into the compound. I had my pistol in my right hand and a couple of sticks of dynamite with a small timer wired to it in my left. It wouldn’t take much to blow that whole shed to smithereens.”
Fred shifted nervously. So far, Tom displayed no signs of trauma.
Tom caught his movement and saw the look on his face. “Yes, Fred, this is where my nightmares always begin.” He looked down at Arthur and ran his fingers through his hair. For the first time since he left his son behind to go to fight for his country, Tom had someone who was blood kin looking up to him. Somebody was proud of him.
“I’m no longer afraid,” he said with a sigh. “And, I’m quite eager to tell the story. I guess I need to pass it on to my next generation, so to speak.” He glanced down at a sleeping great-granddaughter and chuckled, “That is if it doesn’t put everyone to sleep.”
“She’s gone so soon?” Olivia asked as she got up to retrieve her little jewel from Tom’s lap. “Let me put Miss Puddin’ Pie to bed. You just go right ahead, Grandpa. If I miss anything, I’ll ask you about it. You and I are going to have lots of time together now that you‘re home.”
He bent his head down to give the sleeping princess a goodnight kiss. A new reality began to take a hold of him. Deep in his heart he prayed, ‘Home.......I never thought I would be …..at MY home…..with MY own family. Heavenly Father, I have served You faithfully since that day in the jungle. You didn‘t have to do this, but You did. God, You‘ve been so good to me.’
He reluctantly released his hold of her and continued, “I remember it was just getting dark that night. We needed the cover of darkness for our men to be able to get to their strategic places without being seen. But, I couldn’t see a thing inside that shed. I stepped up on the sandbags and stepped inside the shed very cautiously. Both hands were full and I couldn’t risk touching the tin walls and making some kind of sound. I remember standing there for a moment trying to see anything that might be in my way. But, it was pitch black in that shed.
“I had already sent my buddies back to the squad leader with an approximate time for the explosion. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my temples. All I was going to do was take two steps forward toward the center of the shed, flip the switch to start the timer, put it on th
e floor and scoot back out that window.
“The second step I took, I stepped on a sleeping guard. I fell and dropped the dynamite without tripping the switch. He yelled and I yelled. He scrambled toward the door and I made for the window. In my rush to get out, my belt got caught on the window frame or something and I couldn’t get free. The other guard came through the door and shone a light on me. They pointed their bayonets at me and started toward me as one of their comrades came through the door behind them. I heard him click the safety off of his machine gun and he started shooting in our direction. The last thing I remember in that shed was a blinding flash”
“The whole place exploded?” Arthur asked quietly as if he was afraid of the answer.
Tom replied, “I reckon so, son. That’s all I remember at the shed. Like I said earlier, some Filipino guerrillas were already in place watching over us. They said that the explosion belched fire, debris and a jumble of bodies out of that shed.”
“You…….what?” Olivia asked as she sat back down beside him. “You were blown throw the air? By an explosion? You should have…”
Tom finished for her, “Been blown to pieces? Yes, by all means. The noise of waking up the guard caused two of the guerrillas to start toward the shack. They saw me stuck in the window and started over to help me. I guess you could say that they had a front row seat when it exploded. They ran over to the tangle of bodies and saw that I was still alive. I was bloody from head to toe, but they heard me moaning.
“Of course, pandemonium broke loose. That explosion was planned to kick off the entire attack against the base. The guerrillas had expected it but didn’t expect all the turmoil. Japanese were running everywhere. In the light of the explosions going off around the camp, they saw a group of soldiers headed for what was left of the ammo shed. So, two of them picked me up the best they could and headed for the woods while the other two fought off anyone that would try to follow. With everyone running around, nobody paid any attention to them. As it turns out, several of the Japanese, or let’s say conscripted soldiers ran into the woods at the same time we did.”
Arthur looked confused. “Con…scripted? What does that mean?” he asked.
Fred explained, “It was not unusual for armies to force local natives to act as soldiers during the war. They would go from village to village and pick out the strongest men and many times teen-agers to force them to fight for them. Many of them didn’t even know how to shoot a gun.”
Arthur asked, “They didn’t have any training or anything?”
Tom answered, “Sometimes they weren’t even given any weapons but a bamboo rod or a big stick. They were told to just go run towards the enemy, knowing that they would be killed.”
Olivia repulsed, “Oh, Grandpa. That’s awful.”
“Honey, there’s nothing about a war that’s much good anyway,” Tom acknowledged. “Most of the guys running into the woods like we were could have been Filipinos. We found out later that a lot of them were Japanese soldiers who knew that the Americans were angry for what they had done and knew that we would come back with a vengeance.”
“So was that where you got your scars from?” Arthur asked again.
“Yes, sir, it was,” he answered.
“Uh,….what kind of scars…..,” Olivia cringed as she asked. “I, uh, really want to know….but I don’t want to know. You know? So, could you kinda give me the short version? Kinda the not so gruesome kind of thingy?”
As a smile played across Tom’s face, it became very evident where Arthur got his peculiar type of babbling from. He had been looking at Arthur when Olivia had started talking. He didn’t want to turn to look at her for fear of laughing at his first thought. He looked over at Ryan without moving his head and raised his eyebrows. ‘I bet you she must have been something else when she was younger,’ he thought.
As if reading his mind, Ryan gently nodded the affirmative and smiled, also. You know what? Olivia has a lightning fast mind. The thought of looking at some gruesome scars had thrown her mind for a loop which created the garbled sentences. It was a character trait she thought had long been overcome. She caught Ryan’s smile and demanded, “OK, you two, so the thought of seeing scars got me discombobulated a little bit, but you don’t have to take it much farther than this room, you hear me?”
Before he could stop himself, Tom said to Ryan, “I bet she was fun on a date.”
Fred almost choked on the sip of coffee he was taking and had to go to the kitchen for a napkin…….or to laugh.
The only answer he got from Ryan was a laugh that caused him to sit back in the easy chair he was sitting in. He politely put his hand over his mouth in a vain attempt to look solemn.
Of course, Arthur was as impulsive as an eleven-year-old could be as he started to blurt out, “Tell him about the time she……..”
“Threatened to beat her son and husband black and blue and tell God that they fell down the stairs?” Olivia finished for him. Like a hen fluffing her nest, she stood up and put some throw pillows in the place she was sitting. “That’s to keep me from throwing them at certain uncouth individuals.”
Then, she tucked her legs underneath herself and continued, “And that’s to make myself a little taller so I can put my arm around my favorite man.” Her left arm went across his shoulders and with her right hand she patted his chest a couple of inches below his chin. “Of course, it also makes it much easier to choke you should I deem it necessary.” To prove her point she grabbed his neck with both hands. “That is, right after I kiss your whole face.” And she promptly gave him three quick smooches on his cheek. She finished with a great big smile on her face as she popped off, “Say. When are you gonna shave, old man?”
Tom gave her a bit of a sideways glance and then looked at Ryan and asked with a foxy grin, “When did you say we were going fishing?”
As Ryan opened his mouth to answer, Olivia butted in very sweetly but very matter-of-factly, “O-o-o-oh, the Saturday AFTER I get through asking you EVERY question of my sweet little ol’ heart.” She clasped her hands together on the other side of his neck and laid her head very lovingly on his shoulder. However, her eyes were looking straight at her husband with an announcement in them that he had seen before.
Fred knew beforehand what was coming up and had already propped his elbow on the arm of his chair and was resting his head in it. His eyes were closed and a smile played across his lips as he waited for Ryan’s inevitable answer. Ryan crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows as he answered, “Mr. Dandridge that means that the first day that you qualify to go fishing will be three years from this Saturday.”
Olivia grinned like the proverbial Cheshire cat.
An explosion of laughter came from the men. Arthur jested, “Guys, now that we all know our future, whatcha say we learn some more about Grandpa’s past.” A little bit of a devious grin played across his face as he looked at his father. He reached down to pull up Tom’s britches leg and said, “Hey, Grandpa, let’s all get a look at that place on your leg where you said that the explosion almost took your whole leg off.”
“Arthur,” Olivia raised her voice in command. Arthur froze before he even got a good hold on the cuff of Tom’s pants. With a sugary sweet voice she asked him, “Honey, do you really want to live to be twelve?”
“Gentlemen, it looks like show-and-tell will have to be put off for some other time,” Tom suggested.
The three other very intelligent gentlemen in the room all looked at each other and shook their heads affirmatively. A-a-a-n-n-d, the Cheshire cat kept grinning but finally relented, “You HAVE to finish the story, Grandpa. All of us want to know. But, for my sake, no graphics, please. I don’t think I could handle it tonight.”
Tom reached up and patted her hand and said softly, “Of course, my Dear. I would never purposely do anything to upset you.” And for that answer, he got another kiss.
“I do have three fairly long scars,” Tom began. “One begins at my right wrist and travels almost
to my shoulder. One starts at my left hip and travels towards my chest. And, the ugliest one is the one on my right leg. It looks like something tried to rip it off of me. The edges are all jagged. If my memory serves me correct I was only half-way out of the shed when it exploded. Possibly, it got caught on the piece of tin that the shed was made out of. That was everybody’s best guess. The ones on my arm and on my left side were pretty clean cuts.
“Of course, I was knocked out cold or sedated the whole time so I will relate this part of the story as it was told to me by a couple of my rescuers. As it turned out, they were guerrillas that had lived in the village that I would finally wind up in. There’s a lot to learn about that village, by the way.
“The two guards that ran towards me must have cushioned the force of the blast and kept me alive. When I got well enough to see the cuts clearly, I realized that they must have been made by their bayonets raking across me from the force of the blast. The two guerrillas that picked me up said that they had to pick me out from underneath the partial bodies of the guards and smoldering debris. I landed on a hot something or other and got a couple of burn marks on my back.
“When they got me to the hidden safety of the woods, they looked at my wounds and realized that I practically needed to be held together by tourniquets. They told me that when they heard me moaning, they went ahead and shot me full of morphine. He followed that with something to put me out for several hours. He knew that it was dangerous to give me both but he had his doubts about me living through the journey we faced to get me to safety.
“Two of the guerrillas risked their lives by running back into the compound and stripping uniforms and belts off of the bodies of dead soldiers. Then, they dodged bullets and soldiers to ransack some of the sheds. Luckily, they found a supply shed and came back with an armload of blankets and sheets. One guy tried his best to clean my wounds. Two guys cut uniforms and sheets into strips and tourniquet material. The other guy used his foldaway shovel to cut down a couple of strong saplings to make a stretcher with. They were extremely resourceful men. That’s for sure.
“They attached me to that stretcher like I was a larva in a cocoon. Every available scrap of material was packed around my body to try to soften the ride. The hard job was getting me to safety. In the middle of the night, they had no idea who was friend or foe. The only thing they knew to do was to take off on one of the local native trails. However, as they got a little ways away from the camp, they realized that Japanese soldiers were following them. They presumed that the battle must not have been going as well as planned. If they got caught, they knew that they would be killed outright. If the enemy captured an injured American, they might………..well, they really didn’t know.
“Of course, I was unconscious and knew nothing about what was going on. Later, I found out that they walked as fast as they could without jostling me very much. Still they traded places every half mile or so just to stay as fresh as possible. They had gone several miles when they met a group of men from their home village who were returning from a trading trip in the lowlands.
“Back then, I just called it lucky, but now I know it was God’s doings. Among these villagers was a Japanese minister. He had started a church up in the mountains among the remote Aete people. He quickly assigned two of his villagers to go ahead of the group with the guerrillas. They tied one end of the stretcher to the back end of one of the donkeys. That meant that only one out of the six had to carry a bit of the load. He gave us provisions and instructions not to stop until we got to the safety of the village. He was going to stay behind with the other village men to confront those behind us. They might be friendly, they might not. He just trusted God.
“After we left and the Japanese caught up with him, he found out that they were running away from the Japanese as much as they were the Americans and needed a place to hide. The pastor had the idea to lead them to a different mountain that he knew was filled with caves that they could hide in. And, since he spoke their language fluently, they trusted him.”
“Why didn’t y'all just double back? Didn’t we win?” Arthur asked with a concerned look on his face.
“We had no idea at the time,” Tom replied. “There were only a hundred of us Rangers and about as many guerrillas. There could have been from five hundred to a thousand Japanese in that camp. All we knew was that the men following us spoke Japanese. In the heat of the moment, we didn’t know if they were running away or trying to capture us.”
Tom had a quiet nudging from within that suggested that this might be a good spot for some intuitive teaching. Tom smiled down at him and posed a question, “Did I live through the whole thing?”
“Well, yeah, but you’re being banged around on a stretcher and you’re in pain…….” Olivia added. She, too, had that same worried look on her face. She and Arthur could have been twins right at that moment. Their facial expressions were identical. It was like they were expecting the grim reaper to come through the back door and kill them all.
A smile began to play across the faces of Ryan and Fred. They looked at each other and chuckled. Ryan admitted, “Tom, the longer that you hang around, the more you’re going to understand, the apple didn’t fall too far away from the tree.”
Olivia and Arthur looked at each other and immediately realized that he was absolutely right. The look of fear on their faces matched perfectly. They realized how silly they both looked and wound up chuckling at each other. Then they turned their attention back to Tom.
“Here’s something you can use to handle problems as they come along, my boy,” Tom said as he once again patted Arthur’s knee for emphasis. “When you read the Bible and you know the end of the story, whatever happens between right now and the end of the story is not a whole lot to worry about. You can look at me and tell that God delivered me quite well. Now, it’s was a long and hard process with lots of pain and set backs at times, but the end result is, I’m well.”
Then with a look in Fred’s direction he added, “And in a clear-thinking mind.”
Fred smiled and nodded.
Arthur piped up and said with a slick little smile, “See, Momma. There’s nothing for you to get all nervous and jittery about.”
Olivia just did her ‘Momma thing.’ She folded her arm, raised one eyebrow and posed the question, “That’s not your bedroom I hear calling you is it, sweetie?”
A wide-eyed Arthur looked back over at his dad. Ryan just shrugged his shoulders with a the-ball’s-in-your-court look. He looked back at his mother with his puppy dog eyes and said, “No Ma’am, I think it said, ‘Arthur, you need to keep your big mouth shut.’ Don’t you think so, Dad?” He glanced back at Ryan for a bit of help.
Hid dad nodded his head in the affirmative, “Yep, I think that is just exactly what it said.”