For God and Country

Donald was a Marine. He was a Marine a long ago in China and he was still a Marine fifty years later. Though he was active duty for only three years he did get the clear message that “once a Marine, always a Marine”.

It took me some time to catch on to just what this meant. At first I thought it was just a kind of a motto, like the Marine Battle Hymn, "From the Halls of Montezuma….”. Gratefully, early in my process of researching Donald’s past, another Marine tipped me off, “Diane, You’ll want to refer to Donald as a former-Marine, there are no EX-Marines.” It would seem that you can be discharged from all of the services for crimes of many kinds, but you never stop being a Marine.
The other layer of my realization about, “there are no Ex-Marines” came into full focus as I began to correspond with other men who were in China when Donald was. I began by subscribing to the Marine Gazette and Leatherneck magazine.

I laughed to imagine what my postman must think when my new Marine magazines arrive alongside my copies of Vogue and The New Yorker. I look at the pictures in the Leatherneck: men in camouflage and covered with mud. In the past I held men who looked like this apart. But now I can’t quite hold that separation. I feel my own class judgments and stereotypes creep in. Do I even understand what it means to be a soldier?

I placed a small ad in each of the Marine magazines. The notice said that I was trying to locate Marines who served in China 1937 to 1940. I gave my address, phone number and email address. I hoped was there might be someone alive who could help me with descriptions of setting, and tell me about the transport ship, the USS Chaumont. I expected to hear from family members who perhaps had their father’s scrapbooks or maybe an uncle’s clippings from China. I was unprepared for what happened.

The first ad appeared in the Leatherneck in September 2000 and the day that my copy of the magazine arrived I began to be drawn into the Marine world and into a very old world. The key word is old. I came home from work one day and my message machine was flashing that I had seven messages. I grabbed a pen to jot down numbers, but when I heard the first message I couldn’t write at all.

A firm male voice said, “This is Staff Sergeant Clifford Wells. I am responding to your notice in the Marine Gazette. I believe I can assist you. I served in China 1938 and departed Shanghai on the USS Truman 23 March 1940. Please call me”. He gave a number—I was sure this person was saluting as he spoke--and then he said; “Now I usually bowl on Monday and Wednesday so it’s best to call me on Friday.” I knew that no matter how young he had been in 1938, this was a really old guy, and he sounded like he was still “Staff Sergeant Wells”.

That week I had several messages like that. Most delivered in the clipped tones of radio bulletins. I also got a call from the son of a former-Marine, one from a nephew of someone who served in China during the war, and I got letters.
The letters echoed the phone calls:

“Dear Mam, I am writing in response to your recent notice in the Marine Gazette. I believe that I may be able to help you. I am… and they gave rank, name, duty assignment and location in China, which always included full date of arrival, and departure. The letters each described for several pages their assignment and duties, special services rendered—chauffeur to the Commander, chef for enlisted men, engineer or corpsman. Somewhere near the end of each letter the writer would tell me his current age—86, 87,88, 89---and how best to contact him. The closings were poignant: “I am happy to help you learn more, but please don’t call. I am extremely deaf.” Or “I will write back to you again but only when my son comes on Thursday to help me with the mail.”

But there was another face of former-Marines: I got email. The ghosts of China came to me through the Internet. The emails were slightly less formal: “Hi Diane. Rcvd ur email msg. My tour of duty in Shanghai was 3 Nov. 1938 thru 18 May 1940. Fourth Marines regimental Hdqtrs. I was C.W. radio operator. I have some phone books of Shanghai…”

That was the other wonder and a writer’s gift: Each man had documents.
Some had scrapbooks, or copies of the Walla Walla, a weekly newspaper put out by and for Marines in Shanghai in the late 1930’s. (The name Walla Walla was a joke, a mimicking of the sound of Chinese speech.) The former-Marines had saved 1938 Thanksgiving dinner programs that included the menu; they had box scores of Chinese ball games, with the roster of players. And they wanted to send it all to me.

Cliff Wells, Frenchy Dupont and George Howe became my phone and pen pals. Along with other former China Marines, these men became my friends and my teachers. They told me what it was like to be young and far from home, to see death all around them and then to have to kill. These men, older than the Greatest Generation, shared that group’s reluctance to talk to family about what they’d experienced, but they were willing, almost waiting, to tell me. It was Cliff who one day said, “Do you understand what “hand-to-hand combat” really means? And then told me in gruesome detail. It was Frenchy who explained what starvation felt like and his panic and fear when, as a prisoner, he realized he was going blind. And it was George who described seeing a guy “go off his rocker” when we talked about what it was like to see dead bodies every day and the strain of being surrounded by violence.

It did make me wonder, as it has since this began: Hadn’t any other historian or journalist stumbled across these guys? Had no one uncovered a group of men who could write the real “We Were There” story of events leading up to World War II? But no one had, and from the urgency I felt from these strangers, their push to get these materials into my hands, there weren’t a lot of people in their lives –not at their own Thanksgiving dinners or at the bowling alley who were willing to listen either. Here were the men who saw the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of the Panay, who lived the high life of Shanghai—“Paris of the Orient”—and the lowest of low life as prisoners in Battaan and Palawan, and who had survived. These men, who had been through all of that, and who still identified themselves first and always as US Marines, had been waiting 60 years to tell their story.

Wanting Three the Possible versus The Actual

Here’s another piece of this: The potential or possible new thing is always more alluring and better than the real or actual whatever: backpack, scarf, shoes, outfit, or job or man. Do I live a potential life rather than an actual or real life? I imagine when I get that whatever: job, man, purse, scarf, necklace then I will: feel good, be happy, impress someone, be at peace. It’s always out there, it’s always in the future, its always potential and possible but never here, never now, never real. The actual and the real (man, job, outfit, haircut) is always imperfect.) As long as it’s possible and potential then it remains perfect and cannot disillusion me. In my fantasy it will always deliver me. Real human beings and real jobs and real things don’t deliver, not perfectly anyway.

Wanting Part Two

There is another day that stands out in my self survey of wanting. This time it is early morning and I am dressing for work. It will be a full day and a tense one. I am looking through jewelry boxes (no I never bought the necklace, it lost its appeal after about 20 days) But I have lots of other badly wanted and had-to-have pieces. I look through dresser drawers, pick up and put down silk scarves, finger some very nice belts, but uncharacteristically I am stumped. I don’t know what I want to wear. I hear myself say out loud, “What am I looking for?” and it strikes me, this too is a kind of wanting. I am shopping in my own closet and wanting some perfect accessory to do something for me today.

I step back from the closet and sit down. What do I want, and why is the choice so hard today? I stop and picture the upcoming activities on today’s schedule. Oh, I see, it’s going to be a difficult day with lots of meetings and most of them with difficult people. There will be several Board meetings and a session with entitled and cranky volunteers. Now I know what it is I am looking for in my shelves and drawers. I want to hang something around my neck, some badge or scapular disguised by silk twill or 14K gold that says simply and clearly: “Do Not Fuck With Me.”

As my real need becomes clear I laugh. Maybe gangsta jewelry is not so bad after all.
Maybe rapper chains with tough words on them are more honest than the Hermes scarf or a John Hardy bracelet. Those designer pieces require translation. A nice fat chain with “Fuck Off” in block letters edged in rhinestones would communicate well even to those who are not trained in sartorial translation.

Lots and lots of words have been written accusing advertising for creating consumer demand. Yes, fine, they’re right, but that’s not the whole story. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him wear Hermes or drink Evian. I know that I am highly susceptible to the influence of advertising but I don’t believe that Madison Avenue is the all powerful and malevolent “other” who makes me want. There is something in me that reaches out to the wanting as much as the advertising reaches in; I am at best a partner and at worst an accomplice.

Wanting

It was a Wednesday afternoon at 5pm; I left the office early to get my hair cut. I arrive early and my hairdresser is late. I don’t mind. One of the perks of coming to this nice salon is the waiting room. It’s filled with comfy chairs and has a coffee bar and snacks and best of all, the latest women’s magazines. I get a fill of junk food in every sense. I hand my coat, and sit down with some tea and cookies and I pick up the new Town and Country magazine.

If, in that very moment, the second I crack open this glossy magazine, you could see me and see into me, you would see a woman who is happy and content. My day was busy but not too hard. I have an interesting job. My home life is good. All is well. In that moment frozen in time all I need is to get my hair cut and buy some milk on the way home.

But in the next 90 seconds my experience of myself changes. I open the magazine on my lap and I am looking at a photo spread of the actress Renee Russo wearing a pretty necklace. The necklace is distinctive. Rather than having a full strand of pearls this necklace is strung and knotted in such a way as to keep individual pearls about an inch away from each other. The effect is that it gives the appearance that the pearls are floating on the wearer’s skin. It is called “The Illusion Necklace”. By now you have seen these…the expensive and costume versions are ubiquitous but that day it was new to me.

What was different for me that day as I sat in the salon waiting room was that I was oddly aware of myself as I read about Renee and her necklace. Maybe because it was a good day, or because I was tired, but for some reason that day, in that moment, I was aware of my body and mind at once. And what I felt was a series of physiological changes as I was reading about The Illusion Necklace.

The article says that the necklace is also called the “Tin Cup” necklace, because Russo wore these pearls in every scene in that light romantic comedy. I remember the movie. Had I noticed the necklace? No, but I look at the photos in the magazine and it is lovely. Do I care? Well, yes, inexplicably and suddenly I do seem to care. What I feel however is my body changing; I feel my respiration and heart accelerating while I am aware of what is going through my head: “This is a great necklace; This is the best necklace; This is the perfect necklace, and then I hear myself think: I WANT THIS NECKLACE.”

Absolutely no more than three minutes have passed from sitting down content with my life, to reading a few words and now—Wham!-- I feel myself wanting this necklace. The message in my head is subtle but it’s there just like background noise that’s always there humming behind my thoughts and what it says is this: “My life will be better, improved, or fixed if I get THIS; and in this case the “this” is a few pearls artfully knotted on a silk string.

Now, you may be well ahead of me, but it was not until I sat to write this that it struck me: the name of this necklace is perfect. It is an ILLUSION.

I tell this story not because this was the first time my mood was changed by an ad but because this was the first time that I was aware of it while it was happening. I was conscious of the process as it penetrated my body and mind. I also saw that my response to this self observation was not necessarily “Oh silly me”. No, even as I watched myself discount my own good life I began to believe that I had to have this necklace. But I knew that something had just happened inside me.

I flipped through a couple of pages in this magazine, wanting to look as inconspicuous as possible. I felt like a prisoner awaiting interrogation who looks down to see the key to her escape at her feet. I was breathing hard. But, as if it was nothing, as if it were no big deal, I tore out the page and picture of the necklace, coughing to cover the sound of my theft.

A few days later at home I looked again at this photo. This was not about a necklace. But what was it and why did I want this then? I made a deal with myself that if I still wanted this necklace so badly in 30 days, then I would give myself permission to buy it. And so the illusion necklace became the beginning of my study of wanting.

I still have the magazine page. Every now and then I get it out and look at it closely. When I find myself NEEDING a certain new red purse or a special shimery gray eye shadow or the perfect—and one more--pair of shoes I first take a look at my photo of pretty Rene and the Illusion necklace.

Willingness Again

I am back to willingness again. Am I willing to be restored to sanity? Am I willing to see things differently? Am I willing to let God change me? What part of willingness takes my effort and what part is a grace?

Here is what I find in a note I wrote to myself in 2005:

“Willingness is a grace. It is a softening. It is leaving the door slightly ajar. It is a movement of energy. It is a freedom.”

Today what I cling to is that image of leaving the door slightly ajar. I cannot swing the door wide open. I am too afraid and the open door feels too vulnerable. But I can leave it open a crack, a tiny bit, slightly ajar. God’s grace has an opening. I am willing to do that.

Go Vote

Part of recovery is entering the world as a responsible person and being part of a community. Today is Election Day and we are privileged to vote for a new president. Please vote today. Exercise your right and your privilege. It doesn’t matter who you vote for but it really does matter that you participate. Action. Service. This too is gratitude.

Amends Prevention

This weekend visiting family I recalled a piece of advice I heard early in recovery:
“Don’t do anything you’ll have to make amends for later.” That is a kind of a failsafe slogan. I remember that it had a lot of impact after I had been working the 9th step and remembered how grisly some amends can be. This slogan reminds me that it can be very selfish and very self-protective to NOT get the last word and NOT make my point.

If you can’t do anything else: Just don’t do anything you're gonna have to make amends for later.