O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [1]
Wally had a fight a day, sometimes more. After a year of it, he ran away from the orphanage and begged his father to let him remain hidden in the cottage to which he had returned.
The tiny house no longer had the siren lure of baking bread, as it did when Ma was alive, but had deteriorated into a home for rats drawn by the smell and taste of beer.
Wally spent his time near the navy yard on the Delaware River, where street urchins hung out, and picked up penny work doing laundry and running errands for the sailors. It was a highly territorial environment, where one used his fists to stake a claim to work a particular barracks. Wally fought his way to the barrack housing a Marine platoon.
Some of the Marines had been heroes in the wars against Mexico and the Seminole Indians. There were shoes and brass buttons and buckles to be shined and fresh hay to be changed in the bedding and a potbellied stove to be fed and cleaned. And clean he did. The Marines had far fewer bedbugs than the sailors.
Corporal Paddy O’Hara, an Irish immigrant who had survived the terrible potato famine, became Wally’s big brother and protector. Wally made it the best job in the navy yard. The Marines were generous with smokes, the currency of the day.
On payday, illegal boxing matches were held beyond the main gates. Marines, sailors, shipyard workers, and visiting crews all had their champions in bare-knuckle pugilism. Before the men went to the pit, kids held preliminary fights for pennies tossed into the ring, and an occasional nickel. For Wally Kunkle at thirteen, this was a bonanza. After a particularly bloody match, there was sometimes as much as a dollar to be divided, seventy–thirty.
As a fighter, Wally Kunkle was cursed with a special gift. He could absorb punches and never go down. His talent, born in the alleys of South Philly and honed at the orphanage, won a lot of beer money for the Marines who bet on him. Wally ran out of competition his own age and size and had to take on bigger kids. “Young Ironsides,” the Marines called him, and “Boilerplate” and “Kid Granite Jaw.” Even Paddy O’Hara was unable to get Wally to stop fighting heavier and heavier opponents.
Then the inevitable happened. Wally took on an opponent thirty pounds heavier than himself. He showed the courage of a little bull, but absorbed a fearsome beating.
Corporal O’Hara pleaded, in vain, for him to throw in the towel when a sudden change of fortune occurred. Wally’s opponent became so exhausted throwing punches that he could no longer lift his arms or catch his breath. And that was that. After laying out the bullyboy, Wally collapsed.
Corporal O’Hara lifted Wally in his arms and carried him back to the barrack and declared his boxing career over. The Marines patched him up and carved out a bed space for him on the floor near the stove, where they laid a sack stuffed with hay for Wally’s comfort.
When the juvenile constable came looking, Wally was kept hidden and the Marines advised the constable not to come looking again.
Well, they had pet dogs and such, but Wally presented a different problem. The platoon commander, Lieutenant Merriman, was a right fair guy and, noting the men’s affection for Wally, had some documents fixed up to state that Wally Kunkle was actually sixteen years of age, and he was sworn in as a Marine. At thirteen, he became a Marine drummer boy.
Paddy O’Hara had lost his family—four brothers and two sisters—in the Irish potato famine ten years earlier. The sole family survivor other than himself was his sister Brigid, who became a housemaid in New York. When Paddy was sixteen, he joined the Marines.
Against all odds, Paddy had been a prolific reader as a child, and under his brotherly watch, Wally entered the world of reading and writing. There were always books and magazines circulating in the barrack, mostly about girls and sexual situations.