A Short Break (25)

     Before travelling With Capt. Pfile to his next destination, I'd like to share a chapter from a gem of  a book I discovered in the flea market yesterday.  It's entitled C/O Postmaster by Corporal Thomas R. St. George, and was published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, in 1943.  Cpl. St. George was shipped to Australia in 1942 and sent a number of articles and drawings about his experiences from the time he left San Francisco until he left Australia in 1943 to the San Francisco Chronicle, which were later published as a book.  This is from a chapter entitled, "The Everlasting R--n":

"Probably the only thing that we really disliked about our first few weeks in Australia was the weather.  That we didn't like the weather, that we thought the weather was miserable, that the weather was interfering with our plans and training, that the weather spoiled many a precious pass were all bad enough; but what was worse, we couldn't write home and complain about the weather.  You see, they told us, there are only about three places in Australia where it ever r---s, and if you write home that it is r-----g the Japs will know where you are.  That, of course, was taboo.  But, we wondered, if there are so goddamn many places in Australia where it doesn't r--n, why don't we move?  They told us we mustn't worry about that.  Where we moved, or didn't move, was something G.H.Q. would decide.  We had visions of G.H.Q., diabolical monsters, all colonels no doubt, hunched over a report of mean annual rainfall of Australia, gloating at the spot they'd found for us.
     To add to our disgust, what mail we received, though welcome of course, added little to our appreciation of the climate.  Most of our letters had been written while we were still playing Hearts on the broad expanse of the Pacific, at which time our friends knew nothing except that we had left Frisco.  But did any of them imagine that we might possibly have 'arrived safely' in Alaska and console us accordingly with promises of hand-knitted sweaters or useful brown mufflers?  No!  To a man, and to a woman, they were convinced that we had or would shortly arrive, not where it was cold and damp, but where soft tropic breezes would play softly through our hair.  Some of them became positively lewd concerning our supposed existence on a secret base in the South Pacific Seas.  Where clothes were sheer absurdity, dusky native lasses a necessity or a luxury depending on the point of view, and gracefully waving palm trees laced a tapestry across the sky and protected us from the glare of the tropic sun.  (The above was lifted, practically intact, from The National Geographic and forwarded to me by a young lady with whom I immediately severed all diplomatic relations.)
     The gracefully-waving-palm-tree myth had already exploded right in our faces.  There were some palm trees near camp, but they didn't lace any tapestries to speak of.  They stood around in the rain with the rest of us and looked cold and miserable and out of place, like nudists in a gooseberry patch.  Obviously, we decided, the mere presence of palm trees does not necessarily insure a sub-tropical climate.  And how I wished, those first few weeks, that Josie knew as much.  Nor did these palm trees at any time protect us from the glare of the tropic sun.  If one of us so much as saw a small patch of pale wintry sun, he staked a claim on it.

     The natives insisted that the weather was all 'very unusual,' but we'd heard that before (in California, for one place) and expected to hear it again, wherever we might go.  We ignored them unless they became too insistent or too loud or harked back too far ('the winter of 1810,' for instance) in their efforts to remember a similar season and convince us that the weather we were experiencing was truly an experience for all but the very oldest of settlers.  In fact, a phenomenon.  Then we asked them, 'If this is so goddamn phenomenal, why do you build your houses eight feet off the ground?'
     We suffered and cursed the exigencies of the service that demanded we live through 'Two winters in a row!'  Our camp being more or less paved, we had no mud to contend with, only
r--n and the everlasting chill.  The former (the r--n) had an ugly habit of coming at night when we were inside anyway and therefore had nothing to gain.  During the day it usually held off until some optimistic lieutenant got a hike well under way, caught us with our pants down two miles from camp and drenched us till we treaded water.  The everlasting chill worked a twenty-four hour shift, seven days a week, being heart and soul in somebody's War Effort, just whose we could only suspect.  Particularly this chill cut us down at Reveille, and on one occasion provided the background as a macabre bit of humor as ever appealed to Nero.
     Louis, a thin shanky sort of youth, one of Spotlight's luckless platoon and the unwilling recipient of a good share of Spotlight's decidedly heavy-handed wit, was standing more or less at ease preparatory to 'falling in.'  I say more or less.  His bony shoulders were hooped against the wind, his whole attitude indicating that here was a man on the verge of collapse.  Worse than that, he had his hands in his pockets, a place where 'good soldiers' wouldn't be caught dead with their hands.
     Spotlight, always disgustingly full of vim, verve, animal spirits, and according to most, bologna, even at 6 A.M., saw Louis, surged up to within four inches of that hapless young man's pinched face, roared, 'Are you cold?'
     Louis stammered y-y-yess, he was cold.
     'Well,' roared Louis' leader, 'GET WARM!' "
     

Gene in that "unusual weather"