I’m on the ocean, at sea, going to sea, this is big, good, big. The words were not helping. He tried to pray. God, Father, oh Father in heaven. He couldn’t remember the words, and his heart beat faster. Tight, he felt tight. He pressed his closed eyes tighter, but he could feel the men all around him. They were close, too close.
Out . . . out . . . out. The word started to drum in his head. I can’t, he thought to himself, I can’t. Gotta do this, can’t see me run, can’t run, be okay, but the other word was louder and faster in his head now. Out, out, out.
He was afraid to move, afraid to turn; if he shifted he’d be sick or maybe he’d run. Can’t run, no legs to run. The thought scared him. Even if he got up, he didn’t know how to get out. So many men there, canvas beds and duffle bags hung everywhere. Where is the door? What is it called, the door thing you come through to get in this room? It wasn’t a room, too many men.
Hot, smell of sweat. Vomit smell again.
A man farted loudly, others laughed, then a man belched, more laughter. It’s okay, he said to himself, nice guys, good guys. The man under him turned, and an arm, elbow, or leg thrust into his back. We are lying on each other like we’re dead, he thought, and the panic rose again. His throat was closing. Breathing was hard, hardly any air. He was so hot; sweat dripped from his face, and he felt the sweat roll down his neck.
A man made a crude joke about a woman. Bastard, he thought. Did he say that out loud? He couldn’t tell. “Damn,” another man said. “My fucking back.”
The word was in his head again. Out. This time he couldn’t stop; he turned. He sat up and hit his head on the bottom of the man above him. “What the fuck, Watkins,” the man above said. His leg was over the side. “Don’t fucking have to piss now, man, come on,” the underneath man said angrily. He had one leg almost to the floor. He stepped on the edge of the canvas bed of the man below him. His foot slid loose, and he fell left into the two men across. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, piss in your bed,” one man said. He couldn’t hear now; he couldn’t breathe; he squeezed sideways between the rows of canvas swings with bodies crowded into them. Out, out, out, repeated in his head. Is the door this way? He stopped. He didn’t know, didn’t remember, how the ship worked and how they got there.
“The other way, fuckhead,” a man lying next to his face snarled into him. He swiveled his head. “The other way. Way out. Out.” Then sliding, squeezing, and sliding sideways, he saw the opening. Head down, duck head. He missed and scraped the top of his head on the metal frame of the opening. Out to a corridor. Now where? Head toward the lights. Breath came now in gulps, and vomit was in his throat. A ladder. Squeeze. Up the ladder. Now where? Another ladder ahead. Up the ladder, cooler air now, air ahead. Then he was out, up and out onto the deck.
Cool air hit his face. He was still moving fast, too fast. He tripped and went down on one knee. Cool night air fell on him. He breathed. Tears came to his eyes.
“Hey, Marine. New to sea?” A voice from his left. He kept his head down and bit hard to stop his tears. “Too fucking hot for ya? Then sleep on the deck, man; it’s the only way to do it.”
He looked around now. He could hear again. He heard the man’s voice and a bigger sound. Something was roaring outside of him. Huge, louder, fast, shuddering. It was the water, the water and the ship; the ship was cutting through water. He was at sea.
I placed small ads in the Marine Corps Gazette and Leatherneck. The ad said that I was trying to locate Marines who served in China between 1937 and 1940. I gave my home address, phone number, and email address in hopes there might be someone who could help me learn more about the United States Marines in China. I expected to hear from family members who had a father’s scrapbook or maybe had an uncle’s letters. I was unprepared for what happened.
The first ad appeared in September of 2000, and I began to be drawn into the China Marine world immediately. I came home from work that day, and my message machine flashed, showing I had seven messages. That was a lot for our house, so 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, “Ms. Cameron, this is Staff Sergeant Clifford Wells. I am responding to your notice in the Marine Corps Gazette. I believe I can assist you. I served in China 1938 and departed Shanghai on 23 March 1940. Please call me.”
He relayed his phone 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 no matter how young he had been in 1938, this was a really old guy who sounded like he was still Staff Sergeant Wells.
That week I had more messages like that, delivered in the clipped tones of radio bulletins. And I received letters, which echoed the phone calls: “Dear Ms. Cameron, I am writing in response to your recent notice in the Marine Corps Gazette. I believe that I may be able to help you. I am . . .” Then they gave rank, name, duty assignment, and location in China, which always included the full date of arrival and departure.
The letters described each Marine’s assignments, duties, and 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—eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine—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: emails. The ghosts of China came to me through the Internet. The emails were slightly less formal: “Hi Diane. Rcvd yur 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 . . .”
And with each new contact, I received a writer’s gift: Each man had documents. Some had scrapbooks or copies of the Walla Walla, a weekly newspaper first published by the Marines in Shanghai in 1928. Some men had saved the 1938 Thanksgiving dinner programs that included the menu, and others had box scores of Chinese baseball games with the rosters of players. And they wanted to send it all to me.
Cliff Wells, Frenchy Dupont, and George Howe, along with other former Marines, became my friends and teachers. Despite their age and ailments, they were generous with their time. George, who served with Donald and was now eighty-seven years old, was completely deaf but still wrote to me every week.
These men told me what it was like to be young and far from home, see death all around them, and then 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 asked me one day, “Diane, do you understand what ‘hand-to-hand combat’ really means?”
I hesitated, knowing in that moment my notion of combat—based on movies—was about to change. And then Cliff told me in gruesome detail.
Frenchy explained what starvation felt like and described his panic and fear when, as a prisoner of the Japanese, he realized he was going blind. And a man nicknamed Bones—because he weighed sixty-three pounds as a prisoner of war (POW)—told me about the strain of being surrounded by violence every day. And it was George who described seeing a guy “go off his rocker” when I asked what it was like to handle dead bodies every day.
It did make me wonder, as it has since my journey began, Why has no one uncovered this group of men who could write the real “We Were There” story of events leading up to World War II? From the urgency I felt from these strangers, pushing to get these materials into my hands, there weren’t many people in their lives—not at their own Thanksgiving dinners or at the bowling