Romance in Time of War
I used to watch all these old wartime movies about heroic (and always buff) young servicemen falling in love with the most good-looking foreign girls in exotic places. It was so commonplace in England during WWII that the Brits coined a phrase about American G.I.s It went “They’re overpaid, over-sexed, and over here.” I never thought it would happen to me, but that’s the whole point about writing this kind of story. So I’ll just give away the plot right at the beginning and admit that, yes, I succumbed to the lure of a tropical island, with all its native charm and hula girls running around the place in grass skirts while dispensing leis to military guys fresh from battle. Now that’s maybe just a slight embellishment on the facts, but I think you get the point. Besides, it was a long time ago and today’s memory tends to see things the way it would have wished them to happen.
I landed with my crew on the balmy island of Gum in early 1967. We had just completed a seventeen-hour ferry trip from a base in Georgia in our B-52D bomber, complete with two aerial refuelings en route. We were ready for a beer, a debriefing, and a flop on the nearest available bunk. After a nominal crew rest, we were given a quick orientation of Andersen AFB and the mission of the provisional wing of which we were now an integral part. We were one of two bomb wings, plus selected portions of others, deploying to the island at the time. The Viet Nam war was hot. We had received recent training in bombing with conventional munitions which was a real change from the nuclear weapon missions that had been the Strategic Air Command’s mainstay for many years. Within a few days my crew and I flew our first twelve-hour mission into enemy territory, and thereafter the regular rotation called for us to fly about every three days, sometimes more frequently, depending on the size of the particular mission. In between flights, there were always ground duties, more training, and target study, with breaks, when we could cadge them, to tour the island and enjoy the local attractions. The beaches were lovely, we soon discovered, but where were the girls?
The long-standing reputation of horny American airmen had preceded us, and Guamanian Mamas were all but fitting their daughters with chastity belts. I resigned myself to lonely nights at the officers club bar, and prepared myself for a long six months on an island that now seemed bleak and barren. Oh well, I’d save a little money and maybe buy a better car when we rotated back to the Big Island.
As my dumb luck would have it, one of my friends had a car. Not just any old car, but a true “Guam Bomb,” the affectionate name we gave to the rust buckets that generally made up the available inventory. Flight crews would often pool their money and buy one of these beauties for their whole crew to use. You could always tell a Guam Bomb by its distinctive look: it resembled a speckled trout with a permanent halo of smoke around it. What the heck, the farthest spot on the island was only twenty-five miles down the crushed coral highway, and the standard precaution was to carry a spare case of engine oil for emergencies.
One day an old friend and I caught up with each other at the club bar, and he confided with me that he had scored a date with an American nurse who worked at the local island hospital. She had a friend, he continued, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could make it a double date. I wondered what kind of bribe he would demand, but it seemed that he was really a true friend who trusted me to act like a gentleman so as not to spoil his own chances to impress the fair maiden.
So we had the date, dinner and dancing at a pretty nice place in Agana, the island’s capital city, which at the time was little more than a village of leftover World War II corrugated steel hovels. My date was a lovely young lady from South Dakota, who had signed on with the Guamanian government to work in their hospital for a year, after which they would pay her way to fly the rest of the way around the world. She was tall, slim and well-spoken, with the sort of self-confidence that told me she was on her way to doing big things with her life. I was instantly impressed, but I figured that she could have her choice of anyone she wanted on this island full of depraved G.I.s. When we parted that night, I was resigned to never seeing her again.
But fate had different plans, and a few days later I received a call from this spectacular girl. She had enjoyed our date much more than I could have expected, and wouldn’t it be a good idea if we could repeat the experience. I was as elated as the class nerd who had scored a prom date with the class beauty queen. We agreed on a time just a few days out, and I immediately went into full operational mode. I took a bus into town and bought a car! Not a Guam Bomb, mind you, but a very clean, five-year old Volkswagen Beetle. I also picked up some island-appropriate clothes. I was ready.
The next month went exceedingly fast, and by then I was seeing my lady at every opportunity. In one moment of particular clarity, she made a statement that sealed my fate, for she said to me, “You’re never getting off this island single.” I took this to mean she was going to corral me and make sure I wouldn’t slip away without us tying the knot. So I asked for clarification, and she made it abundantly clear that she was ready to alter my marital status herself. We immediately began to make plans to get married in the base chapel, and we each lined up best friends to stand up for us. The next month was busier than the last as we worked out all the details, including renting a small apartment form a gentleman who managed an island insurance business. Combat mission obligations notwithstanding, we were going to do this first class. I think I was the happiest guy in the world during that time. At least I was the most envied among my envious crew members.
We planned an evening wedding at the base chapel, set the date for a time in mid-June 1967 when I wouldn’t be on the flying rotation for a couple of days. The night before the ceremony, all my “Class B Bachelor” friends threw a bachelor party for me at the club, which my bride-to-be and her friends dutifully crashed. Then it was game on. We wound up drinking
the club completely dry of champagne, had a glorious time doing it, and finally left for the apartment, having been over-served by a multiple of at least five. On the way home, my darling announced that she was sick and needed to expel the demons. So I quickly found a place to pull off the road – in a driving island rainstorm – and she exited the car to take care of business. An island policeman pulled up behind us, and I just knew he was going to give us a sobriety test. First he asked for the usual credentials, then, peering intently into my eyes, said “Have you been drinking, sir?” I looked as worried as I could, which wasn’t too hard, then relied , “Officer, my wife is pregnant, and driving in all this weather has made her sick. I need to get her home as soon as possible.” He looked at my bride-to-be and assessed her growing resemblance to a drowned albino rat, and his compassion overruled his sense of duty. He said, “Drive carefully, sir, but get your wife home as soon as you can.” Thank you, God.
The morning of the wedding dawned dark and sinister, at least inside our heads. But we bravely attended to final preparations, with occasional detours to hug the porcelain convenience. For luck, of course. Toasting each other with a final Alka Seltzer, we then set off to face the moment that would change our lives dramatically. Despite the previous evening’s folly, the ceremony went well, as I recall, and at the brief reception afterwards we wisely limited ourselves to club soda. We were able to make our departure early, to the hoots and leers of the assembled rowdies. By then we were feeling almost human, and we both leered back at the crowd with looks that would provide story material for all our unwillingly-celibate, lecherous friends.
The night was dark and clear as we made our way down the single lane road to town. As we approached one particular intersection a vehicle slowed at the cross-street stop sign on the left, then made a right turn in our direction. But what was this? The car, a full-sized Chevy, suddenly veered left right in front of us, and I smashed into it almost head-on, at around forty mph. I don’t know how long I was unconscious, probably not more than two minutes. My first thought was of my wife. She was unconscious herself, and I could see a large cut over her left eye. I pretty much went on autopilot at that point, switching off the ignition, forcing open my jammed door, and staggering around to my bride’s side of the car. The door came open without a problem, and I unbuckled her and began to attempt to lift her out before any potential fire could start. It was not a successful effort, as i realized that I had been hurt and couldn’t lift her at all. I was able to pull her about halfway out the door, but the effort made me pass out again, on the pavement beside the car. When I was able to gather my senses, I saw that there were other people gathering around and they were urging me to lie down while they finished extracting my wife from the wreckage.
Because the Navy base had a bigger and better-equipped facility, they sent an ambulance from their own base hospital, and they transported us there. From accident to arrival, the time was no more than thirty minutes. The ER did their triage on us right away, and I learned that my wife had a concussion to go along with a single large cut, which they sutured immediately and wheeled her off to a recovery room. My examination was somewhat more
detailed because of my groaning complaints about pain in the hip and left chest. I was administered a pain killer while they did x-rays, and the ensuing diagnosis showed that I had two broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a near-broken hip. I still remembered thinking that I would be court-martialed for dereliction duty, despite having learned that the occupant of the other car involved was a drunken Guamanian woman who had been trying to make a turn into one of the island gin mills. What a lucky break that we had enjoyed a night of forced sobriety. I say lucky because any alcohol in my blood would have cost me my career, plus time in the brig. We would get through this, and maybe find reason to celebrate another time. But at the time, it was pretty difficult to be feeling lucky, except for the fact that we were still alive.
Needless to say, I spent a sleepless night in a lot of pain. In the morning I saw that I had tubes sticking out of various places, but I was lucid and began to inquire about my wife. The attending nurse told me she was down the hall, resting comfortably in her room, and had sent me a cheery message. I decided right then that they couldn’t keep me from seeing her, so when I was alone and able to stand and untangle all the tubes on the bedside cart, I checked to make sure the hallway was clear, and stood up, carefully and shakily. Grabbing the cart handle, I shuffled off down the hall to where my bride lay, propped up in her bed and drinking coffee. I had never seen such a beautiful sight, and I made my way to her bedside, where we exchanged the warmest embrace I had ever had. So warm, in fact, that despite gazing through a fog of pain, I began to feel a feeling that you only feel when you’re feeling in those very special moments. I leaned closer and whispered “the words” in her ear. Yes, a was “asking for the order.” She offered her enthusiastic assent and scooted over to the side of the bed. And right there, balanced on a crutch and groaning with pain/ecstasy, we consummated our marriage. While we were fully engaged in the process, the door of the room swung open and the face of the charge nurse appeared. Her eyes growing as large as island coconuts, she placed a hand over her mouth and half-whispered “Oops.” Then the door silently closed and we were gloriously free to complete the marriage ritual. To the best of my knowledge, not a word was spoken about the “incident” by anyone on the staff. Life was good, and was getting better all the time.
The rest of our remaining time on Guam went smoothly, if war and honeymoons can be compared in the same context. At the end of the tour of duty, I had to take a flight home as a passenger in one of our tanker aircraft. I weaseled a space-available seat for my wife on a commercial airliner which was flying troops back and forth on a contract basis. By comparison the rest of my twenty-year career was fairly ordinary, except for my serving another year’s combat tour flying electronic reconnaissance aircraft in the Southeast Asia war zone. After retirement, my wife and I both returned to college for our respective bachelor’’s degrees, and I stayed another year to finish a masters. Then it was her turn to work on the master’s, so we relocated from Omaha to Austin, where she completed her MS in nursing and was hired to teach on the faculty of the U. of Texas College of Nursing. She really had done well in her program, as it happened, and she had gotten a “plum” job.
One of my wife’s best friends and colleagues at the College was a very pleasant lady named Joyce, who happened to be a retired U.S. Navy nurse. During the course of an evening of entertainment at her home, we began to compare our respective military histories, and we told Joyce the story of our marriage and resultant automobile accident. She politely inquired as to the date of said experience, and that’s when her eyes began to take on the look of island coconuts. Where had I seen that particular look before? The rest of this “small-world” story came tumbling out of us all at once. For Joyce had been the charge nurse at the Guam Navy hospital the night we blood-soaked survivors had been wheeled into the ER. Moreover, she had thoughtfully taken the time to look in on us the next morning before her shift change. She had observed the scenario in all its pain and glory! Instead of making the required report about it all, she chose to keep our naughty little secret, in the interest of good inter-service relations, I’m sure. The circle had now been completed, and we enjoyed Joyce’s company on many subsequent occasions. My (now ex-) wife is a retired professor of nursing and is a registered nurse practitioner. Sadly, our friend Joyce passed on several years ago, but i’m happy to toast her memory and help to keep it alive.
George Thatcher, 2022
George is an American Bad Ass. He grew up in Jersey, flew B-52s in Vietnam, taught English, Spanish and other languages to children around the world, makes his own salsa, has been known to enjoy a beer or two and has called Lubbock home for a few years, just to entertain the locals. Welcome to Raiderland, Major. We are going to feature some of his writings going forward. Some new, some old. Some rhyme, some don’t. When it comes to George, there’s no box. So… enjoy our friend and enjoy his writings! – Hyatt
