No Ordinary Joes (42 page)

Chuck Vervalin was holding court, his deep voice rising above the low din of slot machines and gamblers on the other side of the wall. Of the dozen survivors at the reunion, he seemed the most robust, a cross between Ernest Borgnine and Ed Asner.

“Has anyone heard from Johnny Johnson?” he asked, inquiring about his bunkmate at Fukuoka #3.

For Chuck, seeing Johnny Johnson had been a big incentive to attend this reunion. They had not seen each other since the day in 1945 when Chuck and Tim walked out of camp. They’d each sent a few Christmas cards over the years, but there had been no other contact. Johnson lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Chuck in Concord, California.

Since Bob Palmer organized the first
Grenadier
reunion in 1975, Chuck had been to all but one. Now, with most of the survivors in their early eighties, there was a greater sense of urgency; fewer and fewer men attended each year, their ranks depleted by death and illness. A bottle of
Dom Perignon was being held in safekeeping by a son of one of the crew, to be delivered to and shared by the last two remaining survivors.

During dessert Bernie Witzke, who now lived in San Diego, brought up the subject of reparation. He had recently written Senator Orrin Hatch of the Armed Services Committee, inquiring about the status of a proposed bill to make restitution to all former POWs. He pulled a sheet of paper out of a folder.

“I got this form letter back telling me the same old bullshit they’ve been telling us for years,” said Witzke, passing around the letter. “It’s funny how our government has been able to somehow pay $25,000 to all those Japs that had to go into internment camps but has never given us a dime. I’m not saying those Japs didn’t deserve compensation, it’s just that we were the ones fighting for our country.”

As Chuck pushed back from the table, ready to call it a night, he glanced across the room and spotted a handsome, elderly man with thinning silver hair entering the room, escorted by an elegantly dressed elderly woman. Chuck studied the man, trying to place him. Suddenly a light of recognition went on, and he quickly headed toward the couple.

“Johnny!” he exclaimed, his voice cracking.

The two men walked toward each other, meeting in the center of the room. They paused ten feet apart, each trying to peel away five decades. It was Chuck who spoke first.

“You old blanket hog,” he said.

“Friend,” drawled Johnson, “I do believe it was you who hogged the blanket.”

Chuck and Johnny embraced, tears rolling down their cheeks.

After his visit with Irene Damien, and her letter telling him that she wanted to get a divorce and be with him, Chuck wrote back and gently told her that he just couldn’t do it. Instead, he continued exchanging love letters with Gwen in Australia, and in May 1946 he brought her to America on the War Brides Act. Three days after her arrival, they were married in a small wedding ceremony in Chicago, where Chuck was first stationed after
deciding to pursue a career in the Navy. His best man was Eugene Lutz, the Marine he’d met at Fukuoka #3. At Gwen’s request, Chuck converted to Catholicism.

Their wedding night at the Blackstone Hotel was a disaster. Like many young men who’d gone off to war, Chuck had not yet learned a more gentle approach to lovemaking. For Gwen, a virgin, the experience was painful and traumatic. She screamed so loudly for him to stop that hotel security came to the room to make sure everything was okay. Chuck assured them that it was, but it was an inauspicious start to the marriage.

Over the next couple of months, Chuck tried to introduce Gwen to life in America, taking her to a Cubs game at Wrigley, midget auto racing, a Sinatra concert, and even an opera, but for Gwen, the transition was difficult, and she had serious doubts about her decision to move to America. Chuck took her to parties with other Navy personnel and their wives, but she didn’t drink and found it hard to fit in.

Six months after they were married, Chuck was transferred to Pensacola, Florida. By this time, Gwen was pregnant, so she stayed behind in Chicago, living in a $30-a-month, one-room hotel studio, sleeping on a Murphy bed. With no friends or family for support, one lonely day passed into another. When their son, John, was born in July 1947, Chuck did not return to Chicago, and Gwen became deeply depressed.

She thought about getting a divorce, but she couldn’t reconcile that with her strict Catholic upbringing. For the next twenty-five years, while Chuck traveled the globe with the Navy, including a stint in Vietnam, and climbed to the rank of lieutenant commander, Gwen stayed home and raised their children: John and a daughter, Marilyn, born in 1954. Chuck’s career took him out to sea for months at a time, and Gwen resented his long absences. After thirty-eight years, they divorced in 1984. Neither remarried.

It was June 2002, and Chuck was at his daughter Marilyn’s house on a cul-de-sac in Walnut Creek, a suburb twenty miles east of San Francisco. His car, a Japanese-made Toyota with a “WWII POW and Submarine Vet”
license frame, was parked in front. Marilyn was at work at her job as an insurance adjuster, and her two children, Paige, a fifth grader, and Jonathon, an eighth grader, were at school. Chuck, who lived five miles away in nearby Concord, was at the house to supervise the installation of new windows, for which he was paying. Chuck’s son-in-law had died of a stroke three years earlier at the age of forty-two. That same night, Chuck suffered a heart attack after he rushed over to Marilyn’s house; he spent a week in intensive care and missed his son-in-law’s funeral. Adding to the family’s grief, his son John died a year later at the age of fifty-three.

Wearing khaki pants and an Old Navy T-shirt, Chuck sat outside in the sun-splashed backyard, proudly pointing out the deck that he had built.

“I wasn’t the best husband or father,” he admitted. “I was never around when my kids were growing up. I guess I’m trying to make up for it now with Marilyn and her two kids.”

He pointed toward a new flat-screen TV he’d just bought for his daughter. “I pulled a groin muscle trying to unload that damn thing,” he said. “But I did a good job negotiating down the price. The salesman was Jewish. They know how to deal.”

Over the sound of hammers and Skilsaws in the background, Chuck talked about his life over the last sixty years. When he talked about Gwen, he was gruff and surly, but when talking about Marilyn and his grandkids, he was thoughtful and borderline sweet. He also showed signs of the devilish sense of humor that had repeatedly gotten him into trouble as a child, and despite being in his eighties and having suffered a number of physical setbacks, he was clear-minded. When the conversation turned to his time in prison camp, he furrowed his brow and stiffened.

“Those little bastards were fuckin’ evil,” he said, almost snarling. “I’ll never forget what they did to us.” He paused, considering his next words carefully. “But I can forgive them. A few of the guards and pushers were actually nice to me. When you think about it, they were just doing what they’d been trained to do. It was all that Bushido bullshit. It’s like the Palestinians today. They don’t know any other way.”

* * *

Chuck planned well for his retirement; he was collecting a Navy pension, Social Security, disability compensation, and another pension from the fifteen years he worked for the Contra Costa Humane Society after retiring from the Navy. In total, his income was almost $6,000 a month, plus his house was paid off and he was making a little money from investments in the stock market. He claimed he broke even on his regular excursions to the racetrack. In addition to being able to contribute to remodeling and other household expenses for Marilyn, he still made monthly support payments to Gwen, even though they’d been divorced for nearly twenty years. He co-owned her condo in Concord a few miles away.

Chuck vividly recalled the details of the sinking of the
Grenadier
and how Captain Fitzgerald had been waterboarded.

“That’s one thing I can’t forgive ’em for,” he bristled. “That was inhuman. Believe me, Fitzgerald was one tough sonuvabitch.”

Chuck was interrupted again, this time by a phone call from Gwen. They still talked on the phone or saw each other almost daily. Perhaps it was because of a shared grief over the loss of their son, or because they were both deeply involved in the lives of their daughter and grandkids, or because they had met and fallen in love in the frenzy of wartime. Whatever the reason, the connection was still there. When Chuck was sick the previous week, Gwen had brought him meals and done his laundry. The day before, he had gone to her condo to fix a leaky kitchen faucet and help get her car repaired. Although hard-pressed to say anything nice about Gwen, even about her parenting skills, he generously gave her his time and provided a big part of her financial support.

“Two weeks ago is a perfect example,” he said. “I spent almost the whole day taking her to get her medicine up at Travis Air Force Base because it’s cheaper there, but when I asked her for three dollars for bridge fare, she acted as if I was some sort of serial killer.

“And I’ll tell you something else that pisses me off about her. From the day we got married, she has constantly told me how I ruined her life. If you listen to her, I practically kidnapped her from her beloved Australia.
Well, if that’s the case, why didn’t she move back? I’ll tell you why … she’d rather stay here and bitch at me and remind me what a bad father and shitty husband I was.

“I’ve tried to be nice, but it doesn’t work. I tried not talking to her and that didn’t work either. She just keeps complaining. Just once I’d like to talk with her when she doesn’t complain about something. She goes to church every week, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t do her any good.”

The final straw that destroyed their marriage was when Gwen found out Chuck was having an affair. She picked up a pitcher of orange juice and dumped it on him, then tried to slap him. Chuck flew into a rage and grabbed her, he explained, partly because of all the times he’d been slapped as a POW and a vow that he’d never let anybody slap him ever again. Gwen called the police, who ordered Chuck to pack his suitcase and leave. He did as ordered, bringing his golf clubs as well. For the next two weeks he slept in the back of his car in the parking lot of the Humane Society, where he was working at the time. When he finally went to rent a room in a cheap motel, he discovered that she’d wiped out their joint checking account.

When the topic changed to his career in the Navy, however, he talked with pride. “I was a real hard-ass, by-the-book kind of officer,” he said. “My men liked to call me ‘Big V,’ although not to my face. Looking back, I think the Navy and the government treated me fairly. They didn’t originally give me combat disability for the injuries I received as a POW, but overall, I can’t complain.”

One tough time in his career was when he got home from Vietnam. He’d volunteered to go, and served in the Mekong Delta supplying riverboats. He injured his neck in a helicopter accident, and when he came home, the sight of hippies from Berkeley and San Francisco, with their long hair and protest signs, didn’t sit well with him. Neither did Jane Fonda.

“But what was I going to do about it?” he said. “Tell them I was an ex-POW and convince them how much I sacrificed for this country?”

It was during the mid-1960s that John started acting out. Chuck was
trying to be a good father, even joining a father-son bowling league when they were stationed in Hawaii, but it was hard to make up for all the lost time. The low point came when Chuck slammed John against a wall for staying out all night. Later, when John married and had a child, Chuck did not have a good relationship with his daughter-in-law, which further limited the time he spent with his son.

“I wouldn’t give her a nickel to blow her ass to hell,” he scowled.

Eventually, John separated from his wife, and then a year after that, he died. According to Chuck, it was cancer. “It just spread through his whole body,” he said.

Chuck left Marilyn’s house to run errands, and while he was out, Gwen stopped by to check on the progress the contractor was making. In her eighties now, it was easy to see the beauty that made Chuck fall in love all those years ago.

Gwen wasted little time before complaining about her lot in life. “My whole life has been a wreck,” she claimed. “And it’s his fault. And now I have emphysema and he’s to blame. All those years he smoked and I had to breathe it all in. He knew I had asthma—I almost died from it—and yet it didn’t stop him from smoking two packs a day. He was inconsiderate. But at least he finally quit.

“When I first met him during the war, he wasn’t that way. He looked like Gary Cooper, and was very gentlemanly and well behaved. I thought he carried himself well and looked great in his uniform. He took me to movies and skating. We’d go to Leighton Beach and just sit on the beautiful white sand and talk. I was proud to point to him and say he was with me. Because of the war there was rationing, and new clothes were hard to come by, so most of the time I’d wear my military uniform, and if I do say so myself, I looked quite good in it. I still have that uniform, and it still fits.”

She struggled to recall her fondest memory of their marriage. “I don’t have any,” she finally said. “During our marriage he never took me out to dinner, or movies, or anywhere. He never got me anything for my birthdays
or gave me a Mother’s Day card. I gave him a Saint Christopher’s medal just before that last patrol and he said he’d wear it forever. Well, he lost it and didn’t even care.

“He didn’t know how to show affection. He was like his dad, gruff, a man’s man but not easy for me to be around. He was always bossing me. He still does.

“We were married thirty-eight years and he was home maybe five of those years. He was married to the Navy. But I’ll say this about him, he never hit me. He still ruined my life, and it started right from our wedding night. He was rough. He didn’t know he was doing anything wrong, and he just didn’t care. Years later we were watching a video of the movie
Ryan’s Daughter
and there was a scene where a man was forcing himself on a woman. Chuck turned to me and said, ‘I did that to you.’ At least he admitted it.