Plodding up that jungle trail one early morning, I met a Papuan native man, a stranger, coming my way: colourful woven loin-cloth, braided arm-bands, wooden comb stuck in his bountiful hair. Any part of his apparel, I thought, would have been welcomed by the museum, but how do you ask a man for his clothes? We squatted down to chat, rays of sunlight streaming down through the tall trees and lighting up great scarlet flowers, white cockatoos flying high overhead. We both struggled to communicate in local pidgin-English; after an exchange of greetings, I learned to my surprise that he was hoping I could provide him with some condoms. It turned out that somehow he had misunderstood the function of prophylactics. He was anxious to acquire some because he thought that this would increase his sexual pleasure. Using a stick to make a sketch in the bare clay before us, I tried to correct his misunderstanding. A difficult exercise. Though he nodded agreeably as we parted, I’m not sure he really understood.
Corporal Robert Nero with Papuan friends in New Guinea, 1944. Courtesy Richard Fox.
One Sunday, village elders invited me to attend church with them. It turned out that they had been converted to Catholicism many years earlier by Dutch missionaries. I’m not religious, but it seemed appropriate to accept their offer. The church, like their dwellings, was mostly made of bamboo, but it was their largest building. Inside, there were rows of wooden benches on a clean, bare clay floor. A stout wooden crate comprised the altar, with a rusted tin can of G.I. vintage holding wildflowers. To my surprise, I was asked, as a guest, to sit on a bench at the front, facing the men and boys seated on one side, and the women and girls on the other side. During the benediction, one young woman nursed an infant and a bright green gecko, a kind of lizard, crawled along high up on one wall. At one point a large colourful rooster stalked past the sunlit door opening. It was enchanting. Everyone participated in the hymn-singing with great enthusiasm and skill. For me it was exciting and uplifting.
Another day, prowling through the burned remains of a dwelling, perhaps one destroyed by the Japanese—who at the time still held more northerly areas of the island—I found what I presumed to be a relatively recent artifact. That discovery led to the writing of a poem that later would be published—one of my first poems in print—I was elated.
In the Philippines I had neither time nor opportunity to look for artifacts; after all, we were at war. In northern Luzon, seeing handsome native Igorot men carrying gleaming steel-headed spears, filing down the narrow mountain roads beside us with their bare-breasted women and naked children, all of them bedecked with gold necklaces and bracelets, I thought again of the problem of collecting personal effects for the museum. Another day, I watched an Igorot man in full regalia being photographed by a soldier. When urged to do so, he thumped his spear on the ground, made an awful face and growled savagely at the camera. An impressive sight. A few minutes later, I overheard that colourful person as he identified Japanese-held positions, pointing to our Colonel’s map spread on the ground. I was intrigued to hear the Igorot man using the English language better than the officer. Afterwards, when I quizzed this English-speaking native, he admitted that he’d been educated at Oxford, and that he’d gone back to his native garments and spear in order to conceal his background from the Japanese.
SHIFTING VISION Watching tears streaming down the face of the Japanese speedskater last night as he received the Olympic gold medal I suddenly recalled how I felt mre than fifty years ago in the Philippines when I excitedly peered at prisoners-of-war: “Japs” standing glumly in a hastily erected stockade beside the road as we passed by awed to see the enemy alive and up close so thin and tired-looking, so shabby at variance with their dead in tidy uniforms.
Then the camera focused on the youthful
skater’s mother who put hands to her face,
moved across to fans waving bright flags
rising-sun flags, the same bright emblem
we young soldiers ardently sought:
gingerly tipping back drab Jap helmets
nervously, hopefully peering into pockets
even remorselessly looking under shirts
recalling the day I found, not a flag
but a packet of family photos: parents
slim pretty wife, two young children—
that’s when I stopped looking for souvenirs.
After the war, my spirits undampened, and encouraged and supported by the G.I. Bill, I returned to my university studies at Milwaukee. Restless and anxious to rid myself of some of my old ties, I gathered up nearly all of my carefully catalogued personal collection of arrowheads—nothing of great value, really—and took it all in to the Milwaukee Public Museum. Dr. Robert E. Ritzenthaler, then Curator of Anthropology, tried to discourage me from donating it, but he took if off my hands; no doubt the stuff sits in a box there to this day! Like McKern earlier, Ritzenthaler encouraged me to go on in university. When I somewhat tearfully mentioned to him that a girl I’d met during my military service had broken off our relationship, he gave me this fatherly advice: “O.K., that solves your problem; stop worrying about it and get on with your life.”
Not long after that, upon seeing a pretty blonde girl walking across the street towards me in downtown Milwaukee, I found a new love. When the attractive girl I was eyeing boarded a streetcar, I followed, even though it was not the one I was supposed to take. All alone on the streetcar with her, I invited myself to sit beside her, then proceeded to overwhelm her by pulling a dried piece of cat hide, still with the hair on, out of my briefcase, proof that I was studying comparative anatomy. It broke the ice. Well, it was her first day on a new job, and she was only seventeen—impressionable, and blue-eyed. Ruth Hoenecke was soon traipsing across farm fields with me in search of Indian artifacts. A stone axe-head which she found one day in my company near the Root Creek, south of Milwaukee, is one of our cherished possessions. No, that’s not true. I may cherish the axe-head, but Ruth is convinced that I’m the one who found it. Well, her sights have always been set on more important things: children, family, birthdays…. I keep “her” grooved axe-head on my desk. A poem, “Arrowhead Eyes,” published in 1997, in a limited way describes our relationship.
ARROWHEAD EYES Nowadays, when the snow begins to disappear and I’m walking in parking lots at bus stops, by phone booths in front of malls, along dusty curbs I play this looking game keeping an eye out for a lost penny or larger coin and find them I do, getting my kicks each time, savouring the moment carrying them home to show my wife.
“It’s your arrowhead eyes”
said Ruth, “You always were good
at spotting artifacts,” referring
to long days before we married
when I dragged her across farm fields
in search of “Indian relics”…
on these bright days it’s a relief
to look down and scan the ground;
I’m reminded of childhood days
when I hopefully chipped away at
ice on the sidewalk, circular spots
resembling nickels or quarters
but only uncovered bubbles.