Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [207]
The habits of a prisoner languished and rattled but never seemed to die. They drank their tea extremely hot, having learned in camp to gulp the brew fast so they could go back quickly for more. They preferred burnt-rice coffee to Maxwell House, and slept better on hard floors than plush mattresses. They prepared the meals they had fantasized about on the railroad and savored them. They met their wives or married their girlfriends, had children who would have to sate their curiosity about the Death Railway from sources other than Dad, flailed at ghosts in their sleep. There were mixed feelings about rice. Some never lost their taste for it; others, when they left the chapel after their weddings, insisted that their guests throw cornflakes. Charley Pryor craved sweets in the jungle camps but seldom ate them after his freedom. More than anything else, he craved fresh lettuce. To Don Brain, a good meal was a quart of milk and a head of lettuce held and eaten like an apple. They caught up with world developments—atomic bombs, helicopters, ballpoint pens, kidney dialysis, aerosol sprays, as well as the new faces suddenly prominent in the culture. They had never heard of this newcomer Harry Truman, but boy, had that youngster Bing Crosby become big stuff. CBS Radio was featuring a sensational new singer named Sinatra.
Jess Stanbrough did well enough in life, but the lesson he took from his POW ordeal had nothing to do with wealth. “I resolved that although I might never be rich, I’d never be poor or hungry. If you come to my house at Cape Cod…if anyone hears this, and they come visit, they’ll see a nice freezer filled up with food. They’ll ask me, ‘Well, you’re a bachelor. Why do you have all that?’ I have a nice big house on a one-acre lot and a big freezer. I’ll say, ‘Well, that’s called POW syndrome.’”
Dentists would marvel at how their tree sap fillings had held up over the years. Doctors would wonder at the dead spots on their legs where tropical ulcers had once rotted the nerves out from beneath their flesh. They cultivated deep religious faith, learned Oriental cooking, went to pieces at the first echo of taps.
In 1978, in Coldwater, Michigan, Bob Charles was immersed in his business interests, running a printing company, resolvedly avoiding Otto Schwarz’s reunions, “determined that the war would not be the biggest thing that had ever happened to me.” One day the war found him, in the person of Pack Rat McCone standing on his stoop. It didn’t take Charles more than a second to see the twinkle in the old Marine’s eye. He showed him around his plant. At once McCone was on his game, casing the facility like a warehouse in Batavia. He thought for a minute, then said, “Charlie, you’ve got thirty windows in this place. You’ve got guys running very expensive and dangerous printing presses, and they’re looking out the window. Not only that, you’re losing heat in the wintertime and losing cool in the summer. Why don’t I cover them for you?”
Ever resourceful, famously adept at odd jobs using odder tools, McCone stayed for dinner and convinced Charles to let him stick around for a while. Before McCone retired to the cot that Charles had set up on his enclosed back porch, the businessman told his wandering shipmate, “When you go down to the lumberyard, mention who you’re doing it for. Charge the company. Get what you need. By the way, you’re on my payroll.”
“Oh, no I’m not.”
“Yes you are. Either that, or you quit right now.”
“I’m not going to quit,” McCone said, “and you’re not putting me on any payroll.”
“Why?” Charles countered.
“Charlie, if you don’t know why, I can’t tell you.”
They knew each other as few other beings can know each other. And they had confronted ordeals few innocents could summon in their most fraught nightmares. In 1980, troubled by the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Fred Quick, at the age of fifty-nine, seriously considered putting that experience to work. “If I had my way about it, I’d find forty-nine other ex-POWs and we’d go over there and relieve those folks,” he told a reporter. “Anyone