And Sudden Death

The Navy casualty list, published this week, showed that 2,317 Americans had been killed, wounded or missing from April 16 to May 10. To most of the U.S. the curt, dry list of names brought no shock. The war was still far away, bloodless, unreal, fought abroad by unknown men.

But the lists were growing. As the totals mounted, more & more people came closer to the war. The men who were dying were husbands, sons, fathers--the boy who used to work at the corner grocery, the young lawyer who took down his shingle and joined the air forces, the Dad who had spent a couple of weeks each summer with the National Guard.

First the realization came to the small towns, where people lived close together. Many of the little towns now had lost one of their boys; many of them had a service flag with a gold star hanging in a parlor window along one of their shade-dappled streets. To little, ink-smelling newspaper offices went a mother or a father, holding stiffly the telegram from Washington and the picture that had stood on the mantel.

The Faces. The faces of the missing men stared from the front pages of the county papers, usually snapshots, a little blurred: shots of a blond sailor on furlough, his arm around his best girl; a soldier squatting on one heel and grinning at the camera; a National Guard platoon with an arrow pointing to a blurred face.

Some of the men were not in uniform: they were in the cap & gown of high-school graduation; they were out hunting with leather jacket and a bird dog at their feet; or they sat stiffly with hair slicked back and smile a little strained, for a portrait that was to be a Christmas present for a family or sweetheart. They were boys from the best families and boys from across the railroad tracks. Now they were dead, somewhere far away, or captured, or--worst of all--"missing." In some towns nearly everyone had lost a relative or a friend. Salinas, Calif, (pop. 11,586) had nearly 150 men in a tank company on Bataan. Harrodsburg, Ky. (pop. 4,673) had given 76 men to Bataan. In the anonymity of the big cities, the stories were hidden behind the walls of apartments. But every number on the lists meant somewhere the sense of loss.

Clinton, Tenn. In their weekly Courier-News, Clinton folks looked at the picture of Joe F. York, grave and unsmiling in his Army uniform, his hat tilted proudly to the right. They read the letter his family had received a few days before he was reported dead or captured on Bataan:

"Dear Mother and Dad:

"I will now write you a few lines to let you know that I am all right. I have been lucky so far. . . .

"Mother, I am sorry that I didn't write you more often than I did. Mother, I'm sending you some pictures of me that I had made some time ago. I hope you will get them. . . .

"It looks pretty bad for me right now, if I don't get back don't worry about me, you will know that I went down fighting for Uncle Sam and the good old U.S.A. One thing, I will help fix it so none of my sister's sons will ever have to go to war. When we get through with these Axis powers this time, they will never be able to bring war on anybody else. . . . "I hope you get this letter. I probably won't be writing you again soon. . . ."

Atlanta. Mr. & Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Sutton lived in a grey, asbestos-shingled cottage (rented) in a solid, modest, workingman's district. Ted Sutton, 38, was a truck driver for the Railway Express. On Sundays he was an usher at the Baptist Church, sang in the choir.

In the '20s, Ted Sutton had served four years in the Navy. After Pearl Harbor he enlisted again. He sold his car, gave up his plans to build a home of his own this autumn. His letters arrived home regularly until the end of March. Then came the dreaded long silence, then the brief Navy telegram: missing in action.

Mrs. Sutton's brown hair has a trace of grey now. Sitting in her neat living room, under one photograph of her husband in civilian clothes, one of him in uniform, she sometimes reads the message in which Ted told her he planned to enlist. It is in her diary, under Jan. 4, 1942.

"To my wife--"Sometimes it is hard to say or write the things we feel, and this is one time in my life that even thinking becomes very hard.

"I want you to be brave and strong while I am away. I know you will meet with trials and tribulations, and the burden will seem, at times, too heavy to carry. But some day we shall look back and find that the load wasn't too heavy after all. We must not be like those who think only of themselves.

"My decision to enlist was brought about by the ruthless attack the Japs made upon our country, my country. In some puny way I may be able to help. . . . We must not, we will not, allow them to take away the freedom, the liberty, the things we hold dear. . . .

"Yours for now and always, Ted.

"P.S. Out of the money I send back to you I want you to spend as much as you can for defense bonds. Yours always, Ted."

San Francisco. Willis T. Geisman's family lives in an upstairs flat on Ramona Avenue. His father owns the building, rents out the downstairs, works in the basement as a photofinisher for neighborhood drugstores. Willis was his father's assistant through grade and high school, went to the University of California, went to Alaska as a Government photographer. He joined the Marines in 1940, was stationed first in Shanghai.

A picture of Willis Geisman leading his company in review in Shanghai hangs over the stairway. Over the living room mantelpiece hangs another: Willis Geis man in the uniform of a Marine lieutenant.

When he was promoted, last New Year's Eve, his father painted a captain's bar on the photo.

The last letter the Geisman family received was from Bataan, dated Feb. 20, saying only: "At times . . . the environment is not quite so pleasing. ..."

A Navy telegram arrived in April: wounded in action. Mr. Geisman is a little sheepish about the way he reacted: he took a streetcar to the Army transport docks, tried to get to the Philippines him self. Says he: "They were nice to me, but they explained that it was doubtful that any boats would be going to Bataan.

. . . Hell, I'm 60, but I don't feel or look older than I did 20 years ago." When the Navy sent a check for $1,100, three months' pay, the Geismans bought a defense bond with it, in their son's name. The second Navy telegram read: killed or taken prisoner. But they have not given up hope.

The People Speak. To such families, the war was neither unreal nor bloodless. To them, Memorial Day had a fresh meaning. In the little towns, where everyone knew the boys off fighting and the homes now broken, the editors of weekly news papers spun the real story of the war. This was no sophisticated writing such as the military experts' speculations, or Government pressagents' idea of morale, or dry with the necessary callousness of communiques. But their writing told what the people were learning, with a mixture of grief and pride and anger:

Another 'we regret to inform you' has come from the Navy to sadden our entire community, said the Cochran (Ga.) Journal. James Forehand of Cochran, Georgia fought in the battles of Bataan and Corregidor! It makes us all proud!

The war came home to Burke county in a very real way this week, said the Morgantown (N.C.) News-Herald, when two homes received official notices of sons who had been . . . 'lost in action in performance of his duty and in service to his country.' . . . We will keep green the memories of these young soldier-heroes, who have given . . . their lives to the cause of freedom. Homes are bereft and friends saddened, but the grief should be mitigated by the consciousness that to die for one's country is not to have lived in vain. . . .

The U.S. was learning.

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