By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 29, 1945.
“Whoa!” barked Jimmie Frise. “Those were soldiers!”
“I looked,” I replied, keeping right on driving. “I didn’t see any discharge buttons.1“
“I could tell they were ex-service guys,” said Jim, “by the way they stood. Those measly little discharge buttons are too hard to see.”
“Those of us,” I admitted, “who have been picking up nobody but soldiers and airmen in uniform the past few years are going to have to reorganize our system. Now, you are likely to pass some lad in homely civvies who is just home after five years at war; and pick up some guy in uniform who has only had it on three months.”
“Yes, and lots of guys still in uniform,” agreed Jimmie, “are just going on a 48-hour leave, whereas the little crowd of boys in civvies standing forlorn on the corner, awkwardly begging a lift, are men just discharged, facing the formidable problem of fighting their way back into the civil war of life. And maybe thumbing their way to a far town in search of a job.”
We passed another little knot of three young men on the highway. We slowed down while Jim and I peered at them for sight of that little silver shield-shaped button with the spray of three tiny red maple leaves on it – the discharge button.
But when we got close we could see they were just kids, probably hiking to the next village and a juke box.
“Aw, give the kids a lift,” protested Jim, as I stepped on the gas and looped past them.
“Yeah,” I retorted, “and half a mile down the road we’ll see a guy on crutches.
“Okay,” sighed Jim, scanning the road. “I wish they had figured out a better discharge button than that little silver shield. Probably it was designed by a board of senior officers who had in mind a nice, discreet little button that would look nice on a gentleman in a business suit or sporting tweeds. Discreet and in good taste, veddy good taste. Nothing large and vulgar, such as could be seen on the coat of a guy with a bundle thumbing a lift on a long and lonely road.”
“Well, I’m not one of those,” I submitted, “who goes for an old soldier wearing his medal ribbons on his civvies. But for the first few months, until we get these boys all settled back into civil life and on their feet again, I’m not going to be uppity if I see the veterans wearing their ribbons for a while.”
“Better than ribbons,” suggested Jim, “would be for them to wear their regimental cap badge on their lapels. Easier seen.”
Behind us, a big commercial lorry, speeding, hooted its horn and swept past us. As it passed, a soldier smiled down from the cab; and as it rushed on half a dozen soldiers waved cheerily at us from the open back end. On the lorry’s gate was the large notice, “No Passengers.”
“Probably the driver,” speculated Jim, “is a recently discharged soldier.”
“Or maybe the president of the firm,” I suggested, “has a few sons in the services and has instructed his drivers that soldiers are not passengers within the meaning of the company rules.”
“What happens this coming winter,” declared Jim, “as far as the behavior of our returning army, navy and air force is concerned doesn’t depend on what the government does half as much as on what the ordinary citizens do. Those who don’t want the returned soldier to get any breaks – for any of the various good reasons they know in their mean hearts – will be loudest in demanding that the authorities do something. Those who know that all the most perfect regulations in the I world can’t solve the mystery of a soldier’s return to civil life will go out of their way, every day, every hour, to do something personal to help every ex-serviceman they encounter to ease back, into the way of peace.”
A Matter of Spirit
“Neatly said, Jim,” I muttered. “But why do you say solve the mystery of a soldier’s return to civil life? Mystery?”
“Because,” said Jim, “the return of a young man, after years of living a harsh, death-threatened, day-to-day life, to the slow, unromantic, thinly flavored life of peace is a matter of the spirit rather than of the body. More of the soul than of the brain. It is therefore a mystery. A separate mystery in the case of each separate man. Some will come back to peace as easily as a boy comes back from his summer holidays to school. Others will find it a long agony. Worse than trying to cure a drunkard. Some men, not many, but some, love war. They love the spice of it, the hourly challenge, the gamble, the risk and thrill of it. Just the way, in a gang of boys on a summer resort wharf, some love riding a surf board while others prefer to take modest dives off the dock and flirt with the girls. Those who loved the danger and challenge of war will be desperately lonely back home here. Many loved the authority war gave them, as officers or non-commissioned officers, or as pilots of fighter planes – what more intoxicating authority can you imagine than being free of all the laws of earth, riding a Spitfire 20,000 feet high, looking for a deadly enemy to kill? Now these young men have to come home to no authority at all. They have to find a place in the tawdry little economy of business, with maybe a middle-aged woman in spectacles as their immediate boss.”
“Yet they’ve got to do it,” I admitted. “There’s not much adventure in life, actually.”
“Well, there’s falling in love,” enumerated Jim, “and getting a raise of pay, or winning a golf game, or getting promoted to assistant deputy chief clerk.”
“Do you remember being 17, Jim?” I inquired. “When you are young, there is a sense of adventure to life. Each year brings you closer and closer to the boundless possibilities of the twenties. You are well into the twenties before it dawns on you that life is not an adventure but a pretty grim business, consisting largely of pitfalls.”
“A kind of a path,” put in Jim, “through a bog.”
“Most of these returning soldiers,” I pursued, “went to war before they made that discovery. They went in their late ‘teens and early twenties, while they still thought life was filled with possibilities. In war, they got their fill of adventure and misadventure. Now, they have to make the discovery of what a dull treadmill life is for so many human beings.
“After all that adventure….” mused Jimmie.
As we came round a bend, we saw in the distance two khaki figures standing at country intersection. And as we drew nearer, we saw they had on purple berets.
“Paratroopers!” I exulted.
“Airborne!” corrected Jim excitedly. “It paid to wait.”
“Mister,” I gloated, “it’s an honor to give space in our car to kids like these.”
“They’re the pick,” agreed Jim fondly.
“Physically, morally,” I agreed. “They have to make so many jumps from a plane even before they are allowed to go into battle. Not a hitch, not a pause – blind into the air, with their fighting kit….”
As we slowed the car proudly for them. we could see how trim and stylish they were, how long and lean and young, with a kind of lithe force radiating from them.
They did not leap forward and snatch the car door. They stood and waited until we spoke.
“Can we give you a lift?”
“Thank you, sir,” and they stepped up and in.
One proved very shy, the slighter one. The other was the spokesman.
“Going to the city?” I asked.
“Yessir. We’ve just had some leave.”
“Home in the city?”
“Nossir. We are going down to try and enter ‘Varsity2. We’re pretty late. We were intended for the Pacific. By the time we got in line for our discharge, it was too late to get into ‘Varsity in the ordinary way.”
“There’ll probably be some way,” suggested Jim, leaning around to talk to them. “What are you going to go in for? Engineering?”
“No, divinity, I think,” said the Talker. “At least, my chum is set on that. He’s going in for theology.”
I wished I could let go the wheel and turn around too.
“Theology?” I exclaimed. “Paratroopers?”
“Oh, yessir,” said the Talker. “We had all kinds in the Airborne. My chum here has always been going to be a minister.”
“I should think,” I suggested, “that your training for airborne fighting would have taught you so many things… I mean, the battle practice you guys did, the sort of scientific murder you were taught…..”
Chuted into Normandy
“Commandos, you’re thinking of, sir,” smiled the Talker via by rear view mirror. “Although we were taught a few tricks, too. But any number of the Commandos were divinity types, too. The best instructor I had in fighting with the knife was a young American who was a highly successful child psychologist in Chicago.”
“Mmmm,” said Jim. “Were you lads in any of the actions?”
“We were both in the Normandy landing,” said the boy, “and a couple of the winter shows.”
“You’ve made a lot of jumps?” I inquired.
“My chum here,” chuckled the Talker, “has made plenty. And some very queer ones.”
“Tell us about them,” I enthused.
But the quiet, slight lad behind me uttered never a word.
“Come on, man,” I coaxed, and Jimmie faced him.
“What kind of queer ones,” I pleaded.
“Oh, he’s an expert,” said the Talker, “in some very strange lines.”
“Aw, cut it,” said the slight lad quietly.
And the other cut it. He leaned back in the seat with a stiff smile.
“What I mean,” I said, “is that it is very interesting to meet a couple of young fellows heading to Toronto to investigate theology classes…”
“I don’t say I am going into theology,” said the shy lad softly. “We probably won’t be admitted anyway. Everything is so crowded.”
“Were you at Arnhem3?” I persisted.
“No, sir,” said the shy boy. “Do you go anywhere near the university?”
“I pass right by it,” I subsided.
Which is so often the way. The boys with most to talk about can least be persuaded to talk.
At which moment, a car flashed past us, at the same time blowing its horn in short sharp toots. And I saw that the driver was a traffic policeman.
“Now what?” I demanded hotly, glancing at my speedometer.
I slackened speed. The cop slowed ahead of us until we stopped and then ran his car a little ahead and walked back to us.
He was reaching for his book.
“And whither,” he demanded in that grimly facetious manner so many cops use, “do you think you are hasting?”
“Do you mean speeding?” demanded Jim. “We certainly weren’t speeding.”
“You,” said the cop, placing his foot on the running board, “were doing close to 50 and you passed me on a curve.”
“Fifty!” I cried. “In this car? I haven’t done 50 in it for four or five years.”
“I paced you,” said the cop, wetting pencil and searching for the next white space in his book, “and you were doing a good 50. And you passed me on a curve. Under certain circumstances, that constitutes reckless driving. Harrumph.”
“We were doing 38 miles an hour,” said the soft-spoken paratrooper behind me, quietly, “and when we entered the curve, you were already 40 feet behind us.”
I looked at the boy with astonishment. I hadn’t even seen any car, cop’s or otherwise.
“Oh, is that so!” said the cop, surveying the young lad coolly. “And how come you are so sure of your detail, my boy?”
The Talker got up and stepped out of the car.
“What he sees,” he said with a curious grimness, “is correct. He’s trained, Mr. Cop. He’s an expert. Thirty-eight miles it was. And we were 40 feet past you when we entered the curve.”
The policeman laughed bitterly and motioned to me.
“Let me look at your license,” he commanded briefly.
The shy boy unbent his lean length and got out too.
“This car,” I argued firmly, “is 10 years old. The tires have gone 50 or 60,000…”
“Trying to make a sale?” inquired the cop icily, as he proceeded to make his notes from my license card.
“What I mean,” I said pleasantly, “I wouldn’t dream of going 50 miles an hour in this crate. My pace is around 38…”
“Experts, Eh?”
“I see you’re all agreed,” said the policeman. “Experts, eh?” And he turned and gave the shy boy a long up and down look. “Experts, eh?”
The Talker seemed to swell up with rage.
“Look,” he said, stepping up boldly close to the cop, “this man sees everything. He is a trained airborne paratrooper. He has been in 100 tight spots and he never misses a trick…”
The policeman flipped his little black book shut and backed away to check the car license plate at the back.
“That’s all, gents,” he said. “You may go. But watch your step. And besides, I wouldn’t be so cocky if I was you. The war’s over, maybe you didn’t know? You experts.”
The Talker took a powerful breath in between his teeth. But we all climbed back into position. The cop’s car proceeded ahead at about 30 miles an hour for a mile or two. Then he put on speed and disappeared at something over 40.
“I wasn’t going anything near 50,” I said angrily. “That’s the first time I’ve been stopped in years. I bet I wasn’t…”
“You were going 38,” said the shy boy quietly. “I noted the speedometer several times since you picked us up.”
“Maybe he dislikes open cars,” suggested the Talker.
So we proceeded to Toronto, talking of Arnhem and open cars and courses in divinity and how much it costs a careful university student to live in Toronto from October to the end of April.
And we came in down Avenue Rd. and through the Park and so to the university where we let the two paratroopers out.
At which time the students were swarming amid the buildings and up to Hart House, many cars were honking for passage. And the shy young paratrooper came around to my side of the car and saluted me gravely with a most wistful smile.
“Thank you, sir, for a nice ride,” he said, “and if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about that cop.”
And he held out his hand and placed in my hand a small black book.
I looked at it astonished. And when I looked up the young men were gone.
When with shaking fingers I opened the book and looked up a second time, the boys had been swallowed up in the traffic of students.
“Hey!” I yelled. “The cop’s book!”
That is what it was. And students’ cars were tooting and honking behind for me to get on, and Jimmie had snatched the book from me and looked. So we moved ahead a few yards and found a spot to park in front of the Medical Building.
Jim stood up and watched over the campus. But there was no sign of our purple-hatted friends.
“What’ll we do?” I moaned. “What’ll we do!”
“We could mooch around to the different theological colleges,” said Jim, “and watch outside…”
“I never saw that boy.” I marvelled.” anywhere near that cop!”
“Battle practice,” said Jim.
“There are six or seven theological colleges,” I groaned. “We’ll miss them.”
“Mail the book back to the cop,” suggested Jim, “and confess the thing just the way it happened…”
We found the cop’s name and address in the front, together with sundry pages of undecipherable detail of crime and misdemeanor.
Then we stood and looked over the misty campus and all its swarming young students.
“Jim,” I said tenderly, “if I could ever find out where that young man’s parish is going to be, some day, I’d be his elder.”
Editor’s Notes:
- Discharge buttons or General Service Badge was a way of indicating that the person had completed military service. ↩︎
- “Varsity” was a generic term to refer to the University of Toronto at the time. ↩︎
- Arnhem refers to the Battle of Arnhem in 1944 that was a part of the Allied Operation Market Garden. This was a British plan using airborne soldiers, consisting of paratroops and glider-borne troops dropped at sites where they could capture key bridges and hold the terrain until the land forces arrived. It was a disastrous failure. ↩︎
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