Morning Glory

Chapter 18

18 June 1942

Dear Elly,

What a crazy life this is. Yesterday I was with you and today I’m on a train heading for San Francisco. Red is with me but he isn’t as much company as you. Ive just been thinking over and over about how wunderfull it was being with you and how much I love you and how glad I am that we had that one day together it was like being in heaven green eyes…

June 18, 1942

Dear Will,

I’m writing this cuz I just got to. My hearts so full and feels like its gonna spill over less I tell you how I feel about our night in Augusta. I don’t know when this will get to you cause I don’t know where to send it but feelings are feelings and mine will be just as true even if you read this a month from now. (I’ll save it and send it when you send me your address.) You know Will when I first met you I said I still loved Glendon and I thought I did. Glendon was the first real nice person that ever come into my life. He treated me like I was put on this earth for something besides repenting and being poked fun at. He was a real good man Glendon was and at the time when I was married to him I was real happy for the first time in my life so I thought that meant I loved him somethin fearful. And I did love him don’t get me wrong but when Glendon and me did private things together it was never like it is with me and you. I never told you before but the first time Glendon and me ever did it was in the woods and we did it cause his daddy died and he was greevin. I remember how I layed there on my back lookin up at the green branches and thought about the sound of this one bird that kept calling and calling off in the distance, and I wondered what it was and much later I found out it was a common snipe doing his flight call which is this mournful whistle that lifts up & up & up with each beat. Its funny now to think back on how my mind was always on other things when Glendon and me got private. He and me begot three children and that ought to mean we were as close in spirit as a man and woman can get but Will I had two nights being close with you and they are the two nights that showed me what love really is. The flight call of the snipe was the farthest thing from my mind when you and me were making love Will. I can’t quit thinking about it and how I got to feeling just looking at you before you even got undressed. I watch you move around taking off your tie and your jacket and I feel like heat lightnin is going thru my insides Will. I says to myself nobody moves like him. Nobody unbuttons his cuffs like him. Nobody’s got eyes as pretty as him. Nobody’s luckier than me.

I went back and read what I wrote and it still don’t seem to say it like I feel but telling what love is like is a lot like telling what the call of a bird is like. You hear it and you reckoniz it and its in yourself so strong you think for sure you can repeat it for someone else. But you can’t. I just wanted you to know though that I love you different from what I loved Glendon. They say everybody goes through life searching for the other half of hisself and I know now you’re the other half of me cause when I’m with you I feel hoel…

July 16, 1942

Dear Mr. Parker,

Eleanor shared your last letter with me and together she and I have looked at the atlas and tried to imagine exactly where you are. I have taken her books about the Pacific Islands so that she can see what the flora and fauna are like there, also the weather and the ocean itself.

Things are changing here. The town seems quite deserted. Not only are our young men gone, the young women are leaving, too. The latest billboard pictures a woman and the slogan, "What job is mine on the Victory line?" So many are leaving to find jobs at Lockheed in Marietta, the shipyards in Mobile and at Packard and Chrysler up north, making engines and fuselages and landing gear. When I was young there were few choices given to a woman who did not marry. Teaching, becoming a domestic, or a librarian. Even female nurses were frowned upon then. Today the women are driving city buses, using acetylene torches and running cranes. I cannot help but wonder what will happen when the Allies are victorious and all you men come home. Rest assured, your job will be waiting.

Everything is getting scarce here. Canned fruit (thank heavens I live in Georgia where it will soon be fresh on the vine), tar (the roads are abysmal), sugar (which I miss most of all), bobby pins (the women are shearing their hair until they look like recruits in basic training), cloth (Washington has issued a directive that for the duration of the war men’s suits shall be manufactured without cuffs, pleats and patch pockets), can openers (thank heavens I own one). Even meat and cars. One only chuckles at the mention of a new car nowadays. Yesterday’s paper reported that Mr. Edsel Ford is unable to get a new car of his own until a Detroit rationing board can consider his application. Isn’t that unbelievable when his family has manufactured thirty million automobiles!

If there is one thing this war does it is to equalize.

Things at the library are much as when you left except that since you joined up Lula Peak doesn’t come around any more to better herself. Forgive me my facetiousness but Lula, as you know, is a sore spot. I fear I may lose Franklin Gilmore, who is talking about not going back to high school for his senior year but enlisting instead. Fewer books are being manufactured what with so many of the lumber companies supplying wood for packing crates instead of paper. But one title is being printed in greater numbers than any other, The Red Cross First Aid Manual, which is the bestselling book ever.

I still go to see Eleanor and the children each Saturday but have been unable to convince her to come into town. However, she has developed a friendship with Mrs. Marsh and speaks of her fondly. I am taking it upon myself to send the grade school principal out to your place to see that Donald Wade is enrolled in first grade, come September. I shall not tell Eleanor I sent him and I would prefer if you did not tell her either. Donald Wade is a bright lad and is already reading at first grade level. He can recite verbatim the announcements of many radio shows and is quite a little singer, which you may not know. He and Thomas sang for me the last time I was there, the Cream of Wheat song from "Let’s Pretend." It was amusing but I praised them heartily and told Donald Wade that when he is in school he will be singing every day and took it upon myself to teach him one which I remember from when I was a child.

October gave a party

The leaves by hundreds came

The ashes, oaks and maples

And leaves of every name

The sunshine spread a carpet

And everything was grand

Miss Weather led the dancing

Professor Wind the band.

I believe, however, that Eleanor liked the song as much as Donald Wade, she who takes time to explore and appreciate the wonders of the woods and all its creatures. She sang it along with Donald Wade and hummed it while clearing away our tea things. She is well but misses you greatly.

And with this I must end. I shall not dwell on good luck wishes which seem so paltry in light of where you are and the service you are providing for those of us who keep lights in our windows. I shall simply say, you are in my prayers nightly.

Affectionately,

Gladys Beasley

23 June, 1942

Somewhere on the Pacific Ocean

Dear Elly,

Well I’m on a ship green eyes but that’s about all I’m allowed to tell you not the name of it or our destination, which none of us have been told yet. We all got ideas though, judging from the direction we’re traveling. We rode the train to San Francisco and embarked here 21 June and life aboard a troop transport ain’t so bad. The navy is playing host so we got the soft life for a while and can cork off. Chow is good, all fresh meat and vegtubles and spuds and the navy does KP. About all we do is attend classes on Japanese intelligence and do calesthenics on the deck every day but tomorrow they say we’re gonna have a field day which means we got to clean our bunk area top to bottom. Mine’s in the forward hold, starboard, which is good. Not much engine noise and pretty smooth sailing. Red’s got the sack just below mine they’re like canvas cots. We play a lot of poker and a lot of the guys read comic books and trade them. Some of them read paper books and everybody talks about his sweetheart back home I don’t talk about you tho except to Red cause he’s my buddy and he dont go blabbin everything a man says. I didnt tell him the personal stuff about in Augusta but I told him about the time you threw the egg at me and he laughed hisself sick. He wants to meet you when this damn war is over. Well here’s my address till I let you know different-Pfc. William Lee Parker, 1st Raider Bn., 1st Marines, So. Pacific. I’ll probly write every day till we get to wherever they’re sending us cuz there’s plenty of time on this ship. I told you before how we call our rifles our sweethearts but when I write it now it means you. I love you sweetheart.

Your Will

June 28, 1942

Dearest Will,

This waiting is awful because I don’t know where you are and there’s no way to tell when I’ll find out…

22 July, 1942

Somewhere in the South Pacific

Dear Elly,

We’re anchored offshore again and where we are is the last Navy post office and we’re on definite orders. Tomorrow we sail for the last time and this is it. So tonight is our last night for writing letters and when we give em to our unit postal clerk for mailing we don’t know when we’ll get a chance to write again. We been told now where we’re goin’and why but I can’t tell you sweetheart. All I can tell you is I’ll be riding on a sub tomorrow. I just want you to know that everybody’s calm here. It’s funny, it don’t seem like we’re going into battle except everybodys talking quieter tonight and polishing their rifles even though they’re already shining like the north star. I can tell you this much and hope they don’t cross it off. Where we are there ain’t no north star. Instead we see the southern cross which we have all learned to find in the night sky. I’m laying in my sack thinking of you and the kids and smoking a Lucky Strike and trying to think of all the things that are in my heart that ought to be said in this letter. But all I do is get a lump in my throat and think to myself god damn it Parker your goin back home, you hear? Elly what you did for me in the last year is more than anybody did for me in my whole life. I love you so much Elly that it hurts inside way deep down in my gut when I even think about it. You gave me a home and a family and love and a place to come back to and when I say thank you it sounds so damn small and not nearly as powerful as what I feel in my heart. I looked in Miss Beasley’s book of poems to try to find one that says what I’m feeling but there ain’t even words in there that’ll do it. You just gotta know green eyes that youre the best thing that ever came along in my whole life and no ocean and no war is ever gonna change that. Now I got to go cause I’m getting to feel a little blue and lonesome but dont you worry about me cuz like I said before I’m with the best outfit there is. Just remember how much I love you and that I’m coming home when this thing is over.

All my love,

Will

August 1, 1942

Dear Will,

I got what I think is your last letter you wrote from on the ship and I got to feeling so blue I had to take a walk with the kids in the orchard to keep from breaking down. It’s so awful not knowing where you are or if you’re safe…

August 4, 1942

Dear Will,

It’s a big day today cause Lizzy P is 8 months old and I’m weaning her. My breasts are so full of milk they feel like they’re ready to bust…

August 10, 1942

Dear Will,

Miss Beasley brought the newspapers and the headlines are big today. I always get scared when I see the letters two inches high… this time about a big battle in the Solomons and all the damage to our ships and I’m so scared you were on one of them…

August 11, 1942

Dear Will,

…They just don’t tell us much here except to say the offensive continues with "considerable enemy resistance encountered." It is only Monday but Miss Beasley came out again cause she believes like I do that youre someplace out there in the middle of that awful mess in the Solomons where the Japs are claiming they sank 22 ships and damaged 6 more…

August 18, 1942

Dear Will,

…you can’t imagine how hard it is to read the war news in the papers and still not know anything…

20 Aug 1942

Somewhere in the Pacific

Dearest Elly,

I’m alive and unhurt but I been in battle now so I know how it feels to kill another human being. You just have to keep telling yourself that he’s the enemy and thinking about when you get home how good things will be. I’m sitting here in a foxhole thinking about the back porch steps and that day I washed the boys at the well and we dried them off together. I’d give anything for a bath. Where I am it never stops raining. There’s palm trees and a lot of yellowish grass stretching from the beach to the jungle. I can’t say I like the jungle much but it does have things to eat. We were cut off from supplies for quite awhile and I want to tell you it was a sickening feeling when we looked out at the water and saw our ships gone. I drank so much coconut milk its coming out of my ears, which by the way got some kind of fungus growing in them. Between that and mosquito bites and rain it’s a pretty hellish place here but I don’t want you to worry because today our fighter planes got in. I wish you could’ve heard us cheer when they swung over and landed. It was the most beautifull sight Ive ever seen. Not only did they bring fresh supplies but they said the mail can go out. We never know if it’ll reach you though, but if this does kiss those babies for me and tell Miss Beasley I had to leave my book of poems behind but I tore out the page with my favorite one and I carry it in my field pack. Reading it and your letters is about the only thing that keeps me going…

September 4, 1942

Dear Will,

…well, Donald Wade went off on the schoolbus for the first time today…

Oct. 3, 1942

Dearest Will,

…The boys taught Lizzy P. to say daddy today…

Oct. 4, 1942

Dearest Will,

Your letter finally reached me, the first one from the battle zone. Oh Will I’m so worried about your ears I wish I could drop some warmed sweet oil in them for you and wash your hair and comb it the way you used to like for me to do. Miss Beasley and I think we figured out for sure where you are and we think it’s Guadalcanal and it scares me to death to think of you there ’cause I know the fighting has been terrible there and its Japanese territory…

WESTERN UNION

REGRET TO INFORM YOU YOUR HUSBAND WAS SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN ACTION 25 OCT IN SOLOMON ISLANDS. UNTIL NEW ADDRESS IS RECEIVED MAIL FOR HIM QUOTE CORPORAL WILLIAM L. PARKER 37 773 785 HOSPITALIZED CENTRAL POSTAL DIRECTORY APO0640 CARE POSTMASTER NEW YORK NY UNQUOTE NEW ADDRESS AND FURTHER INFORMATION FOLLOW DIRECT FROM HOSPITAL. J A ULIO THE ADJT GENERAL 7:10 A.M.

Nov. 1, 1942

Dear Will,

I’m so worried. Oh Will I got a telegram and they said you were seriously wounded but nothing else-not where you are or how you are or anything…

Nov. 2, 1942

Dear Will,

I didn’t sleep a wink last night just laid awake crying and wondering if you’re still alive or if you have lost an arm or a leg or your beautiful brown eyes…

Nov. 3, 1942

Dear Will,

…Sometimes I get so upset because all anybody will tell you is Somewhere In The South Pacific but Miss Beasley pointed out an article about Mrs. Roosevelt visiting the troops overseas and even it started "Somewhere In England," so I guess if it’s good enough for the president’s wife it’ll have to be good enough for me but I’m worried sick about you…

November 4, 1942

Dear Will,

It just struck me that the telegram said corporal so you got promoted! I shucked off my drears and turned my thoughts positive cause thats the only thing to do. You’re alive I know it I won’t give up hope and I’ll write every single day whether I hear from you or not…

4193 US Navy Hosp. Plant

APO 515

New York, NY

Dear Mrs. Parker,

I am pleased to inform you that on 1 Nov 1942 your husband, Corp. William L. Parker, 37 773 785, was making normal improvement. Diagnosis wound left thigh.

Thomas M. Simpson

1st Lieut. M.A.O. Registrar

4193 US Navy Hosp. Plant

APO 515

New York, NY

Dear Mrs. Parker,

I am pleased to inform you that on 6 Nov 1942 your husband, Corp. William L. Parker, 37 773 785, was evacuated to zone of noncombat and underwent surgery on wound, left thigh. Is making normal improvement.

Virgil A. Saylor, 1st Lt.,

MAC Registrar

U.S. War Department

Official Business

20 Nov 1942

Dear Mrs. Parker,

As commanding officer of your husband, Corporal William L. Parker who was injured in action 1 Nov 1942 on the Island of Guadalcanal I felt it imperative to reassure you that his condition is no longer life threatening and that eventual recovery can be fully expected. On 6 November he was transferred by air to the Navy hospital at Melbourne, Australia where he underwent successful surgery and awaits transfer to the United States.

Corporal Parker is a credit to his company and to the United States Marines. He fought well and without complaint. On 14 Sept 1942, while engaging the enemy in action on Guadalcanal, Corporal Parker displayed conspicuous gallantry in attempting to rescue Private Otis D. Luttrell by dragging him to a foxhole under heavy enemy fire. On 25 October Corporal Parker again proved himself a leader by singlehandedly knocking out a Japanese dugout emplacement which was holding up our advance. The enemy hole-up was situated in a cave made inaccessible by severe enemy fire from inside. Corporal Parker voluntarily crawled to the cave from its blind side, attempted to knock a hole in the roof and when unable to do so, attempted to kick the rocks away at the foot of the cave. Four times he threw hand grenades inside only to have them promptly returned by the Japanese. Next Corporal Parker tried holding the grenades for three seconds before delivering them. When these were also returned, Parker reportedly "got mad" and made a dynamite bomb which he thrust into the breach killing eight Japanese soldiers but receiving injuries to himself from an enemy fragmentation grenade which simultaneously detonated at the mouth of the cave.

Because of Corporal Parker’s determination and bravery the 1st Raider Bn. won a decisive victory over the Japanese at the mouth of the Ilu River, rendering them a loss of 12 tanks and some 600 troops in the 1st Marine sector.

It is with pride and pleasure that for heroism above and beyond the call of duty I am recommending to the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces that Corporal William L. Parker, USMC 1st Raider Battalion, be awarded the medal of valor of the Order of the Purple Heart.

Yours truly,

Col. Merritt A. Edson

Commander, 1st Marine Raiders

USMC

Balboa Naval Hospital

San Diego, California

Dear Mrs. Parker,

I am pleased to inform you that on 6 Dec 1942 your husband, Corp. William L. Parker, 37 773 785, was transferred to Balboa Naval Hospital, San Diego U.S.A. for further medical treatment.

Balboa Naval Hospital

San Diego

7 Dec. 1942

Dear Elly,

I’m home again and you don’t need to worry any more. A Red Cross nurse is writing this for me because the doc won’t let me sit up yet. I finally got all your letters. They caught up with me in a hospital in Melbourne. Elly honey it was so good to read all those words from you, all about Donald Wade going to school and Lizzy P. saying her first words and how they taught her to say Daddy. I wish I was there with you all now but it looks like that’ll be a while yet. My leg isn’t so good but at least I’ve still got it and it might be stiff but I’ll be able to walk, they say. The docs here say I’m still carrying a piece of metal in my left leg and I may have to have surgery again. But what the heck, at least I’m alive.

I’m sorry they didn’t tell you more right after I got hit so you wouldnt have worried so much. I would have done so myself but I guess I wasn’t in much shape for writing. But don’t you worry now. I’m okay and I mean it.

By now you know I got hit by a Jap grenade while I was trying to flush eight of them out of a holeup near the airfield on the Canal which it’s okay now to tell you where I was, on Guadalcanal. The Canal was rough and we lost a lot there but we set them back and the airstrip is ours now. If we hadn’t the Pacific would still be theirs and I’m damn proud of what we did. I might as well tell you now my buddy Red didn’t make it and thats all I can say about it at the moment because its hard for me to think about it. So as I was saying it doesn’t seem much to put up with a few chunks of steel in your leg. But I have to confess I never was so glad to see anything as I was to see Old Glory waving over the Navy Hospital on good old American soil when I debarked here. Damn, Elly, I wish I could see you but this leg will have to mend first so I’ll be here a while but I’ll sure be looking for your letters. It seems like since I joined the Marines Ive lived for mail call. Now that I’m in one place your letters will get to me so write often, okay green eyes? Please don’t worry about me. Now that I’m back things’ll be just fine. Kiss the kids for me and tell Miss Beasley to write, too.

All my love,

Will

Dec. 9, 1942

Dear Will,

Oh Will your home at last. Your letter just came and I cryed when I read it I was so happy. They won’t send you back will they? Is your leg healing any better? I’m so worried about it and what you must be going through with the operations and the pain. If you weren’t so far away I’d come to you again like I did in Augusta, but I just don’t see how I can come clear to California. But would’t it be something if we could be together for Christmas?…

24 Dec. 1942

Dear Elly,

The nurses strung colored lights across the foot of our beds but looking at them gives me that choky feeling again. I’m layin here thinking of last Christmas eve when you and me filled the stockings for the boys. I want to be home so bad.

Jan 29, 1943

Dear Will,

Happy birthday…

5 Feb. 1943

Dear Elly,

They got me up on crutches today…