Adak, May 29 1944 -- "tundra is strange, springy stuff"

Rosa Darling… 

Yesterday morning I went over to the library again instead of trying to sleep. Sunday is the one bad day of the week for the graveyard shift in operations and signal intel. The difficulty is partly psychological—there is some envy for the men in the other branches who have the day off. But most of the trouble is verbal.  Sunday is the one day everyone is not off at work and with men arguing all day long about when the war will end and how many stripes a lieutenant commander in the Navy wears and whether Shirley Temple is a virgin and kindred weighty subjects, Morpheus is a mite shy.

 

Before going down I took the portable over to personnel so as not to bother the guys who were still sleeping in the hut and typed out my notes on the books I was taking back—“The Men Who Make News” and “Asylum.” I will send carbons of the notes down under separate cover.

The library is separated from the ACS grounds by two ravines and a hill. When I arrived here it was possible to cross both of the ravines on snow bridges, but now only a few dirty patches of crusted snow remain. A regular bridge crosses one of the streams, but the other is unspanned. This leaves a choice of a long walk along the roads or a short one across the tundra up a hill around the end of the ravine and downhill to the library. I love this walk. 

Tundra, or muskeg, is strange, springy stuff. It is covered with grass, about eight inches long, thick and yellow-green. A surprising variety of small green plants none more than four or five inches high, stick up through the grass, which lies flat against the humpy, water-soaked ground.  Today there were about half a dozen small birds, grey-breasted and with brown and black backs, flitting around and singing in short bursts. They looked like streamlined sparrows, flew a little like the Danube flitters, and their songs were beautiful. At least they sounded beautiful, although it may just be that I haven’t heard a bird for so long. I don’t know what they eat, or where they go in the winter. They seem too small to fly south. And as for their current diet, I believe the sailor was right. There are not worms in the ground here. They would drown.

The wetness of the muskeg is unbelievable. Near the surface, on a dry day, the ground is merely damp. But a few feet, even a few inches, below the grass lies a mass of mud. Cutting across the fields today I came on a series of slit trenches. They were all three-fourths filled with water. 

The library is, as usual, almost deserted. The only other occupants were the librarian, a quiet little fellow who does not like to read, and two Negro sergeants, one studying the New York Times of six weeks ago and the other bowed over “Hell on Ice.” The radio was playing a Firestone classical music program you and I heard in the states, last February I believe, and it was very quiet.

I took a long time in picking out a pair of books to replace the two I returned. My choice finally fell on a novel by Maugham—a mystery book of foreign spying based on Maugham’s experiences in the British intelligence office in the last war, and another journalistic study called “The Comics and Their Creators.” Still out from my last trip down are Quintella’s “A Latin American Speaks” and Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon.”

The later is my current reading choice. I believe it is the first novel I have read since coming up here—except for Melville’s “Typee,” which I would just as soon forget. As such, it is something of a vacation, although far more serious reading than much of the nonfiction I’ve assimilated recently. The story deals with the Moscow trials. The hero, or rather, the protagonist, is an old revolutionist arrested as an obstructionist. The story is of his thoughts during his time in prison awaiting execution.

 

Koestler can write. He makes his tired, disillusioned old revolutionary extremely believable. He makes his dialogues with his old friend and untired revolutionary jailor believable in spite of the fact that they are wrestling continually with the problems of ends and means. And he makes the trials—there is no portrayal of the trials themselves in the story, only references to them by the two chief characters—come to life and be no longer abstractions but real terminations of real lives. Try reading it. I am sure they have it, and Koestler’s later “Arrival and Departure” at the University Rental Library.

The remarkable thing about the book is the understanding it gives of a type of mind which has always baffled me: the mind of the humanitarian revolutionary who for the sake of humanity countenances, or even instigates, the slaughter of humans.

…

I’ve gone on so long about the books that I haven’t time to tell you what a marvelous thing it was after coming back from the library and taking a nine-hour nap to find beside my bed the letters Herm West had brought down from the mess hall—four from you (two letters, two enclosures) one from Dad, one from Nate Krems, and one from Bill Fett. I’ll talk to you about them tomorrow. 

All my love,

M

Adak, 27 May 1944 -- The Ox Bow Incident

Dearest Nunny,

 ...

"Peace is indivisible" and lynching is bad.

Yesterday was one of the best I have had up here. Three good letters from you, the Toscanini performance of the Beethoven sixth -- and the room quiet for it, to boot, and finally, the second show I have gone to since coming here. It was "The Ox Bow Incident," with Henry Fonda playing the lead. The story was simple. A couple of strangers come into a western town, get dragged into a mob bound for a lynching and go along lest they be mistakenly picked as the men the mob is after. The posse discovers three men and after a drumhead trial led by a crazed Confederate colonel, hangs them. On the way back to town they meet the sheriff who has captured the real culprits. At the end Fonda reads a letter written by one of the victims to his wife. It was a slightly Hollywoodish letter, almost too beautiful and written after the phrases "for whom the bell tolls" and "peace is indivisible" had been popularized by Mssrs Hemingway and Molotov, but it was good propaganda. Everyone was moved. Everyone left the theatre agreeing that lynching is bad. Even our hut Texan agreed that lynching was bad. "But of course," he added, "they shoulda made it plain there's a difference between hanging a n----- and a white man." Somehow I don't quite think the picture made its point.

...

All my love, Nunny,

M

Murray misplaced a quote: "peace is indivisible" is from Maxim Litvinov, the prewar Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, not Molotov. He tried unsuccessfully to broker an alliance between Britain, France and the U.S.S.R. to rein in Nazi Germany.

Adak Island, 28 June 1944 -- "not even faintly flattering"

It seems I am always packing.

My change to APO 948 has been approved, at least by all local powers, and currently I am sweating out receipt of orders from Seattle. I am supposed to be ready to go at a moment’s notice when the orders to arrive, so today I reloaded my barracks bags. 

I will probably travel by Milair: by Army transport plane. That means my total weight allowance is 300 pounds, including myself. So I will have to ship one of the barracks bags. Most of my packing time was spent wrapping books in old socks, long underwear and wilted fatigues.

Now the bags are untidily lined up beside my bunk and there they may remain for weeks and weeks, this being the Army. On the other hand, I may be out of here at any time. You had better begin writing to the new address…

Springfield rifles in sunnier days

I have several hopes about the trip. One is that I do go by air. Another that it is a clear day, for I can imagine no more beautiful scenery—especially as I will be going in the right direction. I would also like to go before Saturday as on that sad occasion there is going to be an inspection of rifles. This is in line with the re-GI-ing of the post in general and the ACS in particular. My weapon, which hangs on the wall behind my clothes, is an old Springfield, an ’03 which I suspect hasn’t been fired since the Battle of the Marne. Getting it ready for inspection would be like getting Haj ready for a dog show.

The reactions to my impending departure were not even faintly flattering. Hoiman (“The Goiman”) West said, “Scheiss. There goes the typewriter.” Paul declared, “They can’t do that to us. Not when you just got the hotplate.” And Ray rumbled, “You can’t go until I’ve finished reading the book (Barnes’s Intellectual and Cultural History of the Western World).” Of such stuff popularity is made. 

In a way I hate to leave. Especially the hut. While it is crowded and usually too hot [Murray thought anything above about 55 was too hot, an attribute that suited him well to later life at Trout Lake], it nevertheless is what I am used to as an Aleutian home. And we have been improving it steadily. Since I have come we have built a couple of walks leading into it, shoveled dirt around the edges so that the wind no longer whips through the floor, erected a urinal  and put up the storm porch which Perry purloined. Currently the engineers in the hut are planning a running water sink and an oil pipe running to the fifty gallon drums which sit outside the hut.

But there are certainly compensations, even as to leaving the hut. We have become a poker hut, one in which a game is always in progress. This means steady noise, cigar smoke solid enough to fill chinks in the floor, and occasional bad feelings. For me it has been an especially bad development because the games are always played at our end of the hut and it is practically impossible even to keep a lien on my typing stool, much less to concentrate on writing. 

In my last letter I mentioned that I was going to replace Terry Moore, a friend of the Elliotts and Jameses. The subconscious of a former sports editor must be permanently warped. The man I meant was Johnny Moore. Terry Moore exists. In fact there are a couple of them: (A) an infielder with the Giants; (B) a welterweight who once fought 12 rounds with Barney Ross.

Good Bill Green has a letter from Moore describing his station. Moore was not particularly enthused, but his unhappiness seemed to stem from the fact that he was not doing the same sort of work that he and Gene had done in Seattle. He spoke of going on a fishing trip and seeing fox and caribou, which would indicate a more interesting assortment of wildlife than we have here. 

It is true what the strange sailor told us about worms. On the other hand, there are increasing numbers of birds—the early ones of which are bound to be disappointed. We are also getting an early spring influx of insects, including some surprisingly sturdy limbed daddy-longlegs. At one time this forlorn foxhole was commercial foxhole. A trapper bred blue fox hereabouts. I saw his shack the other day. When things were the worst in this area, he turned loose his animals and took to the hills. Later he was evacuated, and now he is back, serving the Army in a civilian capacity. It is said that his foxes are reproducing madly and that if he can round them up after the war he will be in the money. But that is rumor. I haven’t talked to anyone who has seen any of the critters. How they keep hot here I don’t know.

…

When you finish The Telephone Booth Indian (and by the way, I haven’t received any New Yorkers recently), you had better turn to the Mark Twain set and read “Life on the Mississippi” because that is the number one project on our postwar list—just while we are deciding where to go next. And I would also sort of like to show the Columbia who is boss. Box Canyon still bothers my conscience. And so do the last two hundred miles of the Danube.

…

I see the Republicans not only went back to 1920 to get a Harding candidate who represents zero squared, but made the farce complete by picking another Coolidge as the vice presidential candidate. Looks like we have to vote for that man again. (How about the straight Prohibition ticket?) Up here all tidings of the Republican doings were received with momentous unconcern. I doubt that the Demo conventions will raise any more excitement.

Dewey and Gover

From the fact that Willkie immediately congratulated Dewey, I assume that he is going to follow the oldest of political axioms: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Of course there is always the excellent chance that he was always with them

One of the more interesting things should be watching the Luce publications chew up all those nasty things they have been saying about Toothbrush Tom. (Did you notice the repetition of the joke which came out after Dewey was pictured with his Great Dane: “I’m going to vote for the big man with the little dog.”) There was an amusing editorial in a recent Life entitled “Advice to the Republicans.” In it, Life said that it was “non-partisan” but would choose between the GOP and Democratic candidates later. It advised the GOP to think twice before nominating Dewey. By implication, at least, it was for Taft or Bricker. Ugh. 

Roosevelt, Fala, and Ruthie Bie

We had a swell letter from Howard Lewis yesterday. I’ll send it along as soon as I have finished it. Somebody pulled the wrong card from a file and he was yanked right out of his beautiful Miami Beach project and deposited, unadmittedly disgusted, at the Muroc Army Air Field—right in the middle of the Mojave Desert. He is doing publicity work there and still talks as though he expects to be sent overseas before the business is over, although I suspect that his eyes will keep him home. [Howard was in fact sent to Italy, where he earned a Bronze Star.] He sold his “Why I Fight” essay to “This Week,” the New York Herald Tribune Sunday supplement, for $250. Distinctly not fodder.

…

There is a short story in the June Harper’s, “Look at Miss Memford,” which you should not miss. Neither should Phyllis. John-Boy’s Harper reviews are progressively poorer. He seems to me to be busy justifying himself for becoming wealthy out of his writing. He should take his money for granted and quit rationalizing. He has a lot to say of more interest.

Keep writing, my sweet. Your letters are so wonderfully like you.

M

Adak, 24 May 1944 -- "any fake reason for pushing someone else down"

"Fascism can come from an uninformed sense of being ill-treated"

While describing his Adak hutmates to Rosa, Murray gave a prescient foretaste of MAGA talking points. The soldier he describes, Blake Huttula, went on to become a respected pharmacist and family man in his hometown of Elma, Washington.

"He is no respecter of the usual shibboleths. Somewhere in our society, he seems to feel, there is a group which manipulates things for their own benefit. Junior consequently alludes to this mysterious collusion. When somebody says somethings about big profits he says, "Well, you know what's behind that." When I asked him what was behind it one day, he grinned a knowing grin, as though there was were some deep secret we shared, and said, "You know." Another day he asked why reporters didn't tell the "real truth" about "things." When I protested that I didn't know what real truth he was talking about, he threw me another knowing grin. One thing which he says he would like to see exposed is the Federal Reserve Bank. When I asked him what wasn't in the open about it: "You know."

"This sense of protest by emotion is not, it seems to me, particularly healthy. Fascism can come from an uninformed sense of being ill-treated. The attitude is such a beautiful one on which to build myths of racial exploitation or Protocols of Zion or any other fake reason for pushing someone else down."

Adak, June 14 1944 -- "my smugness amazes even me"

My Darling…

I did not write yesterday but instead sent you a little booklet which the Army gave all of us. It tells about the Aleutian campaign from the bombing of Dutch Harbor until the present. Dashiell Hammett wrote it and some of the local artists drew the illustrations.

On the whole the booklet is an excellent job. And I imagine that it will fill a need. One of the minor gripes around here is that the folks at home do not know anything about the war in this area—its history and current problems. This booklet was designed especially to send home. The Army even furnished the envelope and instructions about postage.

Dashiell Hammett and Adakian staff: Diane Johnson collection

On the other hand a few jaundiced GIs have expressed a fear that the homebodies, receiving these fancy pamphlets, will say “they must not be having much of a war up there to be able to turn out books like this.”

…

This has been another good day for everything but sleep. I “won” mail call by a mile: two letters, a book, a New Republic, a New York Times, a PM. One of the letters was a bill from Fortune (I hope you have sent them a check for six dollars) but the other was from you. It was the one you wrote in answer to my D-Day letter, which made the round trip in eight days. That is the best time yet and makes me feel very close to you, my plikka.

You mention that Mrs. Usedane is due to spend a night at the house, and that you hope to get a picture of her to send to me to give to Bill. I hope you can do it. But I don’t think she will be coming over. Bill told me some time ago that she had accepted the invitation in theory rather than in practice because, much as she enjoys Jean, she is tired out by long sessions with her. She is hard at work on practices for a recital she is to give at the University this summer: Brahms, Beethoven and Bartok.

Another visitor you are not likely to have is Virginia Green, Bill Green’s wife, whom I told you might come to talk about Mexico. Bill wrote to her about us and suggested the visit. Yesterday he received her answer. He showed it to me. Of you she said, “People like that scare me.” Of me she said, “I don’t believe I would like Murray. Isn’t he rather temperamental? And he sounds sort of smug. I think you had better find out about Mexico from him.”

I think that her opinion of you stems from my once telling Bill that I had convinced you that we should only entertain people who interest us. From something Bill said while he was writing a let6ter one night, I think he attributed the idea to you. As for her opinion of me, I think that it shows that Bill must write a rather good letter. His reporting of personalities, if not of direct quotes, seems to be accurate.

My smugness amazes even me. I am so superbly satisfied with the way we live. To be more accurate, with the way we lived and will live. I like our friends, I like our dwellings—not even excepting a certain cockroach cubbyhole in mid-Manhattan, I like our books, I like our records. For that matter, I sort of like you. I am even smug about my smugness, verdad?

But one thing which I object to very strongly in myself is my theoretic liking for “the people” and my actual dislike of a very large number of individual people. My attitude toward them is, I fear, supercilious. I have formed several deep dislikes for men simply because they represent attitudes to which I object. On the other hand, I believe I have managed to conceal my dislikes. And I have not mentioned them to anyone except you.

You are right in your estimates of Bill Usedane. He is reserved, intelligent and gentle. Only once, in fact, has he really let down the bars in talking to me. That was the night of the invasion. We sat up in the personnel hut and talked the sun into the sky. He has written a short story on anti-Semitism, somewhat like my “Smart Boy” piece. It is based on an experience he and his wife had on their honeymoon.

They stayed at a rather fancy and very empty beach resort. Everything about their stay was pleasant, in fact, idyllic. On the last day, just as they were about to leave, the complimented the proprietress on the appointments of the rooms and the overall décor of the establishment. She said, “Oh yes, we cater to a very good clientele, people who respect quality. And we keep the Jews out.” It was Mrs. Usedane’s first contact with overt anti-Semitism.

My other good friend here, Vern Jackson, is due to be transferred soon to another post. I will miss him. But in a way his move may work out to my advantage. In the first place, I may stay on the graveyard censor detail. I have grown to like it better than any other work I have done here. Considering my negative reaction to the first days on the censor desk this constitutes quite a change. But the days go pretty fast on graveyard and censoring seems more interesting than crypto. Jackson has had a long run on the graveyard detail and since I am filling in for him now I can hope to have an equally long tenure.

This would have another advantage. Vern has been going over to the supply warehouse, about half a mile from here, every night and practicing the violin from 6 until 10 or 11. I am going to see if I can’t “borrow” the warehouse for that period now to do my writing. It would be a real chance to work in complete solitude—and I can think of nothing more appealing. I have tried to write for the last three days in the hut, but there is always the radio and a very noisy card game and occasional roughhouse interruptions. Also there is the temptation to spend all day playing chess with Ray Howe, who is now leading me eight games to six. The warehouse would be the perfect solution. I will see the officer in charge tomorrow and let you know how it comes out.

I am editing the first six chapters of the novel, and have made a few changes. For one thing I lengthened the shooting scene at the end of the first chapter in an attempt to heighten the suspense. I have brought a bit more political interpretation into chapter three where Angel meets the Indian. And I have lengthened the fifth chapter somewhat t raise doubts as to whether the killer really caught the train and also to point up the inefficiency and political duplicity of the local police. I intend to retype the whole forty pages in a day or two and will send you a carbon of the new business.

About the sinarquistas. You mention an article in the May 29 PM. I don’t get the Sunday edition up here, so if you could commandeer the article—or get another at the stand in front of the downtown post office—it would be helpful. The delivery of papers up here is perplexing. I still get an occasional PM or Time for April. Today’s pair were the Times for the 18^th of May and PM for the 22^nd. The PM had the second of two articles the first of which has not arrived yet. Confusin but amusin, to quote the sage of Dogpatch.

Deliveries of packages seem to be even farther off schedule. So far I have received the slippers and the bed lamp and one of the books, Sunburst, which came today. I think the things you send yourself come faster than those Bill [James] handles. By the way, what give with Bill? And I have another request. It will probably make you laugh. I’d like some vitamin pills. Either the shotgun variety or those with lots of sunshine. The yellow stuff is rather a minus quality here, and so far green vegetables. 

You asked in today’s letter for a copy of the answer to Woody’s ends and means [Woody Wirsig]. I’ll remember the carbon paper. He is logically correct of course. To deny yourself support from demagogues you dislike is to deny yourself power. On the other hand, as Jacqueline [Ford] once pointed out, there are no such things as ends and means. Each act is an end in itself. The links in the chain are of equal value and brass means do not alternate with golden ends. A bad act remains a bad act. I still shy away from the unfavorable act regardless of its consequences. Woody looks at the consequences and weighs between them and the desired second act. His view is the only workable one. It is pragmatically correct. Granted power, I suppose I should have to accept it. But while the discussion remains theoretical, I can quibble. And while quibbling, I can justify myself on the grounds that, as Koestler quotes, a change in the means automatically changes the ends. “Show us not the goal without the trail.” I’ll be writing Woody in a day or two. I wrote Pete, and Carmen, and Bill yesterday.

…

All my love, darling. More tomorrow,

M