THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504280248
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
It has been about 50 years since the end of World War II, and everybody with access to a writing machine is rushing their memories into print. Why not me?
Which of my war stories would you like to hear? Certainly I have told them before, but repetition is a privilege of codgerhood. So would you like me to reminisce about Stein, the Wild Whistle-Tooter? The Baron of the Blackout? About my semi-military career as a Civil Air Patrol drill sergeant, including the night I invented that famous maneuver, the mishmash formation? Or when I opted for theoretical death instead of a broken shoulder?
All of this came to pass in 1945, a (gasp!) half century ago, when I was not quite 15. I whistle-blew because I was an air raid warden's messenger. I had a white helmet with CD for Civil Defense on the front. I had an arm band with the same symbol. I had a whistle. Most of all, I had power!
When there was a practice blackout, I stood on my assigned corner and blew my whistle loud enough to rattle the rings of Saturn. I gave the lollygaggers two and a half or three seconds to darken their houses. After that, I was up on their porches yelling, ``Put those lights out!'' I was supposed to be Civil Defense, but I was more like un-civil defense.
However, one night was bleaker than the blackout. I went over to visit a very nice young lady from my class. While we were chatting, one of my rivals for her affection showed up. She was being neutrally sociable with the both of us when the siren sounded for a practice blackout. Yes, friends, even 50 years later, even knowing that all they did was talk, the annoyance of having to leave her and him alone in a blackout still rankles.
It was small solace that I got off a pretty good line the next day. ``All's fair in love and war,'' the guy said. ``True,'' I said, ``but why should you get the love and me the war?''
Nevertheless, my blackout bellowing turned out to be excellent training for my Civil Air Patrol career. Small kid, large voice. It was like putting a tractor-trailer horn in a Volkswagen Beetle. Stein, said the squadron commander, a loud-mouth like you has the makings of a drill sergeant.
And that's how I happened to be hup-tup-thrup-fouring the squadron of cadets up and down the high school gym floor. I had gotten good enough to be a tad cocky, which can be how it is when you put a little guy in charge. So, naturally, when people I knew came to watch the squadron drill, I opted for razzle-dazzle.
And the drill was going so well that I had to turn around and give the audience a confident master-of-the-situation smile. A long smile. A terrible mistake of a smile. Because while I was ham-boning it for the crowd, the squadron came to the end of the gym floor, hit the wall and dissolved. The orderly ranks crumbled into confusion. It was a human jigsaw puzzle spilled into space. Pass the humble pie, please. I'm gonna eat it all, go to bed and pull the covers over my head.
As the for the bit about the clavicle, I was a Boy Scout being a ``victim'' in a massive Red Cross first aid drill. My injury card said I had a busted clavicle. Well, shoot, nobody told me a clavicle was a shoulder bone. For all I knew, it might be something I didn't want strangers messing with. So while the ``victim'' next to me wasn't looking, I snitched his card. It said I wasn't breathing. Good, I figured, now I can relax.
I smile to myself as I write this and wonder how it's possible that five decades have passed. My images of the night the war ended are as sharp and clear as if I had snapped them into being on my TV. I picture the scenes, and I hear the sounds in happy replay.
It was a warm August evening, and a siren was the signal that set free a deluge of joy dammed up for more than four years. I see myself in a car with some friends, racing alongside a train, unending whistle blast matching our blaring horn, engineer and passengers waving in frantic glee.
Hugs and kisses and tears and cheers at the local firehouse, where it seemed that all the town had gathered to celebrate. No more gold stars in the windows of houses where a husband or brother or son had been killed. No more boys coming home with young-old faces and shattered bodies. No more ration books and shortages.
No more war. Or so we thought. We were wrong, but we were lucky enough not to know it that night. We could savor the moment without the later knowledge that nations and peoples and religions still have so far to go before they learn to live in peace. That triumphant evening 50 years ago was wonderful to experience, wonderful to remember. I'm glad I was there. by CNB