Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Attu, 25 April 1945 -- Who's the daddy?


EFM telegrams were designed to streamline standardized messages for Armed Forces use. They used numeric stand-ins for words and phrases describing news common to separated families: packages mailed, birthdays, anniversaries, and babies. Rosa sent one to Murray to let him know of the arrival of their friends Phyllis and Otto's first child. It didn't occur to her that he wouldn't immediately know who had given birth to little Johanna, but Murray wasn't much interested in babies and had forgotten the birth was imminent. He thought the telegram was a not-funny prank. 

EFM example: http://atlantic-cable.com/CableCos/Services/index.htm

My wonderful wapiti...

Your EFM caused considerable excitement and not a little confusion here at the office. I was putting in a shift in the Inner Sanctum [Murray was a censor and a code specialist for the ACS, and took turns on those jobs. Coders were locked in to a special room while on duty] which is really another way of saying that I was working on the Aleutian opus, when Bill Ross, the saxonish censor on duty, stuck his head in the door and asked, "How long have you been up here now?" I told him a year and a day and he backed out looking puzzled. A little while later he came in and handed me the telegram, neatly translated and typed out with the EFM figures down at the bottom so I could confirm them personally. He then asked for cigars. 

I was pretty deep in the Aleutian opus. A little while before our OIC, Hoban, had been talking with a couple of friends about sending an EFM and I rather thought that Ross had overheard them and decided to play a joke. It seemed a little corny to me and I said so. Bill said the telegram had really come in and I said "Oh hell yeah, I don't doubt you a bit." He left. I could hear the boys talking in the other room, but I couldn't figure out what they were saying. Whenever I put my head out later in the evening, they kidded me but not much.

Gene came over round eleven. I told him about the bum gag, and he grinned and said they were trying to rope him in on it. It seems that Ross had phoned him at the other building and told him about the telegram and asked if it could possibly be true. Gene had assured him no. But Gene, too, thought the whole thing was something that had been cooked up in the office. Ross said that I seemed upset and that he had been afraid maybe he shouldn't have said anything. Gene told him that I was probably upset at being interrupted in my writing. 

Ronnlund, who is in our hut and is a pretty good friend, told me that the message really came in. Since all such gags are ridden pretty hard, I thought he was kidding too. I'm afraid I was a bit impolite. That evening Gene and I were playing chess on my bed and talking about the gag. Gene said it was just possible that someone in the states had sent the telegram as a gag. I said no, we didn't have any friends who would be doing something like that; none of our friends thought having kids a joking matter. And then, of course, came the dawn. I don’t know how I happened to forget about P and O, except that I've been thinking only of you and the book. 

Phyllis and Johanna, after the war
The next day I spent apologizing to Ross and Ronnlund. I also sent Phyllis and Otto a telegram (EFM) refraining from using number 119, which, translated, is "Good luck. Keep it up."
...
For the last few days I've been getting ready so I can get out of here as soon as my orders arrive. Niel Atkinson, who is at another station but as you will remember came up with me, got his orders the other day, and so did another of the men who came up. So mine should be along at any moment. I can't really expect them to arrive until this weekend, but I keep hopefully watching the teletypes. When they come in I have to pass a routine physical examination, an examination in military courtesy, and turn in my equipment to supply. That usually takes two days ... After that I turn in my request for transportation, and from then on it is just a question of whether the weather is good enough for the planes to get in and out. I'll phone from Anchorage on my way down. ...

You've mentioned in your last couple of letters that I shouldn't change, Nunny, and I've been trying to figure out if I have changed much in the past year. I really don't think so. I think I'm a little less exuberant in conversation, and I know that I am a little more anti-social. I've developed a passionate hatred for radio and a pretty strong hatred for most popular music except Latin-American and, upon occasion, real swing. I know better than ever before that I have no use for popular opinion, of me or of anything else, and that most important thing in the world to me is you. But all of these things are just intensifications of old attitudes. I can concentrate a bit better than before, and I believe I take more pleasure in writing. I think you will recognize me. Somewhere between now and Seattle I must take the precaution of removing my camouflage. It is really quite luxuriant now, and Jimmy Maceda, a new man in our hut, refers to me as Uncle Joe, because of the full-lipped foliage. [With his wavy dark hair, brown eyes and olive skin, Murray did slightly resemble Stalin.]

I'll write to Bill [Fett], explaining that I did not mean to be facetious in my reply to his Fourth Dimension letter. But I can't say a lot more than that because, re-reading it, I still can't figure it out at all. ...

A letter came from Carmen [Fett] a couple of days ago, but there was a mistake. She enclosed one she had written to Alfredo. I'm sending it back down to here and, since it has to go through military censorship and the base censor's (it's in Spanish) I read it. I was surprised at how little trouble I had with the Spanish. It was pretty much like a letter to me anyway, for it dealt mainly with the American attitude toward Spanish and Latin-American writers, and with Steinbeck and Hemingway. The line I liked best was that the Mexicans shouldn't feel superior to American literature because Americans know only machines and money. That is not true, said Carmen: their business is one thing and their literature another. 

That reminds me that I haven't told you about the wonderful, drunken bullsession that Dave and Gene and I had a few nights ago. Dave was doing a diabolic word portrait of a kid who was up her for a while who had pretensions of culture with the C upper-case. Dave defined his attitude as being, "If it isn't art, fuggat." A little later Dave was asking about the cost and time of a Mexican divorce. He wanted to know how long after a Mexican divorce one could marry again. I said I didn't know but I believed immediately. Dave said "Oh, gloryosky! A double ceremony."

And now I must write a couple of other letters that I have delayed for months, my love. Oh so soon, so soon. Hasta prontissimo.

                                                                                                                Your adoring,

                                                                                                                 M

Monday, June 18, 2012

Rosa Morgan to her brothers, 1942, from New York



 Rosa complained often than her two younger brothers didn't write to her. She had better luck with this checklist. 



Friday, June 15, 2012

Attu, 12 February 1945 -- "such a feeling of waste about this year"


1 a.m.  

Darling, darling darling...

I feel six times lower than a sturmtroopen oberfuhrer, my pretty piltzer, for it must be almost a week since I wrote last. It is partly your fault for I have been expecting a letter from you for three weeks now and, not getting any, getting more and more frustrated as each mail call has brought heaps for everyone else and nothing from you for me, I have had a difficult time in not moaning and groaning. On three successive days I tore up letters I started because of their deep blue quality and then I developed a superstition that if I didn't write it might bring a letter. 

Last night I even sent a wire to you about mail, for each time I have wired it has brought mail the next day. But even that totem failed. Today there was no mail for anyone. I came very near crying about it today -- once before when Gene got three letters and I got none I had to get out of the room fast -- but Dave came to my rescue with a bottle of brandy from somewhere and now I am warmly convinced that tomorrow will bring manna from the mail plane...

If it were not for Gene and Dave I would be very unhappy here. We are as crowded as at Station One and other of the same complications which went into the "Change of Station" story are present. But I have finally got back to my writing, Gene is everpresent in off hours to brew tea and bullsession, and Dave is around from time to time to join in the chess, the music, or the bullsessions. 

As I told you, Dave is our first sergeant. He gets some very strange orders to carry out. Today, for example, he was told to find the depth of the snow in all parts of the ACS area. This would entail considerable digging, which of course Dave eschewed. How he came by his estimates I don't know, but late in the afternoon I saw him standing on one foot in a snowdrift, his right leg raised and his knee serving as a shaky desk, while he wrote down figures on the snow. 

For Whom the Bell Tolls: love minus politics
Earlier he and Gene and I went to see "For Whom the Bell Tolls." ... The movie was, naturally, completely devoid of political content. In fact, it was so much so that it may have defeated the very purpose for which it was emasculated. At one scene in the middle of the picture, where a troop of enemy cavalry is seen approaching in the distance, the boys behind us began a subdued argument about whether they were "American" or "German."

I'm still reading War and Peace, which is something of a life's work. Last night I got past the halfway point. I hate to agree with the critics on anything they are unanimous about, but it seems, at the half way mark, to be the best novel ever written. And the funniest thing is that nearly every sequence is essentially corny and could fit into a soap opera. At the end of each could be the question "Will Natasha marry Prince Andrew," "Will Pierre kill or be killed in the duel?" "Will Boris be promoted?" But it is wonderful. Oh darling darling how I wish we could be reading it together. 

I have such a feeling of waste about this year, so strong a feeling of what I am losing by being away from you. That is why it is so bad when there are no letters. They are my only compensation, this new medium of communication with my beloved, and when they don't come I feel trapped and frustrated and I pound the wall with my fist until it hurts too much and now my hair is long enough so that I can again get hold of it to pull. 

USS Essex in 1943, a blimp's eye view: National Archives
Dad forwarded a letter from Vic in which he mentions that his ship, the Essex, is "the fightingest ship in the Navy." It has wrought more destruction on the enemy than any other vessel and holds practically all records. From the articles, Vic says, "you will learn that I have been present at the invasion of the Palau Islands, the raids on and invasion of the Philippines, the raids on the Ryuku Islands and Formosa. We were very much in evidence at the second Battle of the Philippine Sea when so much of the enemy fleet was destroyed." 
 
The Essex was hit by a kamikaze pilot in November 1944
 
Little lover, it's only ten weeks now, and while "only" seems a strange adjective to apply to ten weeks away from you, it does seem possible that we will make it. For a while I did not think the year could ever end. Look both ways crossing the streets -- I worry about you so much, and get some sleep and eat three meals a day and be very very healthy for me. ..

My nunny, you are adored. Please keep loving me,

M

Attu, 3 April 1945 -- "a gripping of fog"


My pleasant capybara...

... I am feeling quite good. Tonight already I have finished five more pages of "The Fight in the Fog," carrying the story of the campaign up through our occupation of Adak. Some of the writing is good and some not so good, but at any rate it is progressing. I will be through with this draft by the time more orders are in, barring the unexpected.
...
I found the copy of the Times in a wastebasket here the other day. No one knows who it belonged to. We've been having a lot of fun reading it, especially as two pages are devoted to reviews, which are very urbane and quite pleasant. One, on a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Haymarket, says:


Max Adrian in 1944: not '14
And then there was Puck. Mr. Max Adrian is a brilliantly clever actor who never fails to delight me. I remember his witty cozenings as Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida, and the superb fatuousness of his Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington in The Doctor's Dilemma. If I were casting a play about Dr. Johnson he would be my first choice for Boswell. But I submit that none of these is Shakespeare's fourteen-year-old leading his victims through bog, through brush, through brake, through brier. Mr. Adrian did brilliantly, of course. But it was the garish brilliance of a Mordkin or a Nijinsky, putting on a rehearsed glitter to hide the fatigue of a world-tour of Petrouchka, followed by L'Apres-midi d'un Faune.

There was also a review of Guest in the House, which I like for several reasons. One of them was that the movie is now on our enchanted island, and Gene and I went to see it. As I remember the play it was not bad. But the movie is incredibly bad. One of the bad things is, strangely enough, the good photography. The photography has greater depth than any I can remember (which is good) and there was some very interesting use of distortion and strange angles. The main trouble was that most of the time there seemed to be no reason for the camera to be peering at the actors through the window, out of the ceiling, from under the bed and perchance from the handle of the vacuum cleaner. When the angle had significance to the presentation of the scene, this sort of thing was excellent. But most of the time the photographer seemed to be shouting, "Hey, look, I can keep the bannister in focus in three feet and have Ralph Bellamy pretty sharp at fifty. Not bad, eh?"  ...

Dave just dropped in and work on Gene's Symphony and this letter stopped while we got off on a wild discussion of Dostoevsky. Dave is reading The Possessed, thinks it wonderful and claims all the characters are credible. I maintained that I could not believe the mysticism of some -- and you can imagine what that led to. A gripping of fog and a wrestling with semantic confusion in which we all belabored mysticism, each other and such assorted characters as Saroyan and Mary Baker Eddy, before coming to the conclusion that we (1) did not know what we were talking about and (2) agreed completely anyway. 

I have grown to like Dave very much, although it always comes as something of a shock to me when he says something like, "You have a beautiful tibia, Murray." He is the best-read man I have encountered since Howard [Daniel], and he has a highly developed social conscience. He is always trying to do things for the general good. For instance, a non-coms club is being formed on the island. Dave disagrees with the idea of distinction between non-coms and privates and pfcs, but he went to the organizational meetings -- and will join. His idea seems to be that of boring from within. He came back from the first organizational meeting elated. He had nominated a Negro for vice-president, his nominee had nominated another Negro and another socially conscious character had moved nominations be closed. This, Dave felt, was a big step forward in race relations, and it certainly was cause for some satisfaction. Another triumph came when the rule was adopted that while a non-com could be admitted to the club if he were not a member, all privates and pfcs could be brought as guests of members. So Dave was happy. But he came back from the second meeting a bit upset. The boys had tried to revoke the pfcs-and-privates-as-guests provision. Before someone broke the news gently that unless the provision was kept Special Services might refuse to kick through with a few thousand dollars for the club, the vice-president had taken a firm stand against having the low graders as guests, explaining, "I worked hard for these stripes and I want something out of them." The final decision was to keep the private proviso as it was but to have a gentleman's agreement about exercising it. Perhaps [       ] a non-coms agreement. Anyway, Dave was unhappy. Me? I get a sort of sardonic kick out of it. I guess I need a trip to Shelton. 

I love you very very much my tender one. I miss you achingly, at every moment, and even twenty-six days can seem a series of eternities ... I adore you. 

Your, M