The Selection: “The B-29s” from “Last Chapter” a collection of “dispatches” from late World War II, particularly from the Pacific.
The Author: Ernie Pyle should need no introduction. An incredibly popular reporter of the war from Dana, Indiana, it’s sad to think, while reading these reports, that he would be dead within a year of writing them. He was killed by a Japanese bullet on Iwo Jima in April , 1945.
I didn’t really know anything about B-29s before reading this piece. All of my “experience” from movies and television dealt with the B-17 “flying fortress” and not the B-29, whose nickname, by the way, was “Superfortress.” Pyle writes of it that it was “unquestionably a wonderful airplane. Outside of the famous old Douglas DC-3 workhorse, I’ve never heard of an airplane so unanimously praised by pilots.” His descriptions of the missions and especially his first-hand accounts of their Indy 500-like – and literal -“flying start” were thrilling and gave me a new appreciation for the crews and ground support of those planes.
The missions that he witnessed started at Marianas (also where the photo above was taken), where the writer happened to have a nephew stationed. Their primary target on the missions was Tokyo itself, which was about a 14-hour round trip. I found it particularly interesting when he related that this time during the mission when they were en route or returning was almost as challenging as the, relatively speaking, brief time over the target and when they were fighting off the enemy’s defending fighters and anti-aircraft. Often, planes were damaged and effectively “limping” home. How stressful must that long flight home have been, wondering if you could indeed make it back without having to “ditch” in the open Pacific.
I’m kind of sad that this is the final Ernie Pyle piece that I’ll read for Deal Me “IN” but, like I’ve said previously, I’ve now fortified my library with additional writing by Pyle, and a biography of him that I’m also looking forward to reading.
♫Personal Notes: One of my all-time favorite movies is the classic “Twelve O’clock High” starring a young Gregory Peck. It’s definitely worth a watch if you’ve never seen it, and I was reminded of it while reading this week’s story. I think it did a good job of capturing the “anticipation” of those on the ground waiting for their comrades to return, and counting the planes as they got back, praying the same number returned that took off. Sadly, there were usually fewer planes landing than had originally taken off.
The Card: 4♥4 Four of Hearts.
TheSelection: From 2014″A Conversation with Tim O’Brien” from Butler University’s “Booth” journal. I found this piece in the journal’s online archives, when I was specifically searching for selections to include in “Deal Me IN” Read it for free online here.
If you haven’t already heard of Tim O’Brien, you should probably go buy his famous book, The Things They Carried, and read it soon. In fact, it’s way more important that you read that instead of this blog post so go ahead and come back later to read this; take as long as you need.
That’s a staggering perspective on the Vietnam War, isn’t it? I’ve read The Things They Carried several times now and recommend it often when people pay me the compliment of asking if I have any ideas for “what they should read next.” I usually describe it as a very powerful book. After hearing the author speak a couple times now and now reading this conversation, I think the word “powerful” still applies.
It’ll only take about 15 minutes to read this piece, and it would be time well spent. Just click the link in this post’s header to read it online.
The Card: ♥10♥ Ten of Hearts.
The Selection: “The Devil and James Whitcomb Riley” from Mythic Indy, an anthology of “New legends, fairy tales, and myths about Indianapolis.” I have a couple copies of this anthology, one signed by many of the authors, which I received since Bibliophilopolis was one of many sponsors of the project, and another, now more beat up copy that I carry around with me, reading a story here and there… The story may also be read online at Punchnel’s Magazine where it was originally published.
Stories have power. That’s something I’ve come to appreciate more and more ever since I started blogging about them back in 2010. Many authors have written or spoken about this as well. I remember in particular an author event at Bookmama’s Bookstore a few years back that featured Indiana author James Alexander Thom. He was there to talk about a book of his on the “art and craft” of writing historical fiction and talked about how stories around the campfire by ‘primitive man’ were the start of everything. Stories about what a hunter found ‘the next valley over’ (or whatever) were the birth of geography. Stories about certain plants that eased certain pain or injuries became the birth of medicine. And so on, and so on. I don’t want to spoil an upcoming Deal Me “IN” post, but I have on deck an interview with author Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried) where he shows a respect for the power of the story as well. James Whitcomb Riley had a reputation as one of the greatest storytellers of his time. A reputation that also made him known, in this story anwyay, to the Devil himself!
Shortly after his death in 1916, Riley’s spirit, “at rest in crown hill cemetery” is accosted by a strange voice, one that he knows, deep down, is that of the Devil. The Devil demands that Riley entertain him with a story and, perhaps for the first time in his life – er, perhpas I should say “existence” – Riley’s “got nothing” and can’t quickly come up with one. The Devil gives him a year to come up with one and he does. Satisfied, the Devil decides to make this a recurring contract, one that Riley eventually tires of, prompting the interchange quoted above. The year he refuses, 1945, something bad happens. Something very bad. Nuclear weapons are used for the first time in human history. Riley’s ghost blames himself and keeps his end of the bargain up going forward, but to what end?
This is the final story from “Mythic Indy” that I’ll be reading for this year’s short story project, but there remain several stories in the collection which I have yet to read “at large.” Maybe I’ll save some for a future year’s iteration of “Deal Me In.” I recommend picking up a copy of this book check out http://www.secondstoryindy.org/2015/09/pre-order-mythic-indy-and-support-second-story/ online for details or maybe check at Indy Reads Books bookstore Next time you’re in downtown Indy.
Above: The burial site of James Whitcomb Riley, at the top of Crown Hill cemetery. It’s the highest point in Indianapolis (for you trivia fans out there).
♫ Personal Notes: The Indianapolis home of James Whitcomb Riley (above, from Wikipedia) is now a museum, in the downtown”Lockerbie” neighborhood. It’s just a few blocks away from the location where one of my book clubs meets (the Rathskeller – you should try it sometime if you’ve never been) and after this month’s meeting, eight of our members adjourned to an afterparty featuring a walking ‘ghost tour’ of the area. This event was sponsored by the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library in conjunction with one of the books (dealing with “haunted Indiana”) in their summer reading program. The tour itself – though I found it very interesting – provided few true frights. The Riley home was the last stop on the tour, and we learned that some visitors have reported seeing the ghost of “The Hoosier Poet” on the grounds.
Okay. Full disclosure time. I’ve been a pretty rabid Indianapolis Colts fan ever since their relocation in 1984. I suffered through some horrible seasons with them early on, saw some brief glimpses of the glory possible (the Ted Marchibroda/Jim Harbaugh-led run to the almost Super Bowl in 1995, then finally in the 2006-07 season got the payoff with our only Super Bowl win. In the past ten or twelve years I’ve been a regular attendee of the games and have been a season ticket holder for most of that time. SO… I was really interested to read this piece by writer David Hoppe.
This piece was written in early 2012, when the handwriting was beginning to appear on the wall that Manning’s time in Indy was likely coming to an end (“unceremoniously by injury”). The decision to let Manning go and draft Andrew Luck was divisive to Colts fans in Indiana. Many felt he “deserved better” or saw it as another opportunity to denigrate our somewhat troubled owner, Jim Irsay, for “letting him go.” Those of us fans who have an understanding of the NFL beyond the personal, emotional attachments that surround players who are your favorites knew that the “Manning, Out – Luck, In” transaction was likely more the result of circumstances beyond both sides’ control.
Image below from andrewluckbookclub.com (I read both these books and have read 5 of the 6 selections he’s come up with so far.
The Card: ♦10♦ Ten of Diamonds.
I really liked this one! It was almost a custom-written story for me, as someone who has read The Iliad of Homer multiple times and even minored in Classics at Wabash College right here in Indiana. But I guess I should check first, do you know who Heinrich Schliemann is? He was a famous “Bulldozer Archaeologist”/Treasure Hunter of the 19th century, whose claim to fame was the discovery of the ruins of ancient Troy in Turkey. Until his time, the going opinion was that The Iliad was largely a work of fiction and that there was no actual “Trojan War” that it describes. Well, many parts of it may be still be fiction, but Troy was a real place – one Schliemann was convinced he could find and actually did. He also “excavated” the classical ruins of Mycenae in Greece, famously digging up the gold “Mask of Agamemnon” and making the massive “Lion’s Gate” of that city (drawing, from Wikipedia, below) famous.
We get to see the city of Indianapolis in its early years through the eyes of a wealthy European: “The city was built overnight. It is the newest of cities in the state, evolved from nothing save a swamp. There was not even an Indian village on the site. No one had lived here before. It is an example of parthenogenesis and pride. I am taken by this. Here are a people who build cities for no other reason than that the locations are geographical centers of arbitrarily decided government regions.” We also get “As a general rule, classic literature is despised here owing to the universal enthusiasm for acquiring material wealth; thus classical education is at a low ebb.” Easy for you (who was born wealthy and retired at thirty-six) to say!
♫ Personal notes: I was wholly ignorant of Schliemann’s time in Indianapolis until a few years ago, when I attended a special program exploring his time here at the Indiana State Library. Fortunately, this was after I became a “book blogger,” and I can refer you to that story by linking to my post from long ago. See here if interested. Also, there’s one final “personal note” that I’d like to share. The Schliemann of this story shares how the city was built on what was once swampland and frequently complains about the temperature, once saying: “On account of the humidity, the heat is unbearable and oppressive.” Some things haven’t changed in Indianapolis in the last 150 years….
The Card: ♠4♠ Four of Spades.
The Selection: “Men From Mars” from “Final Chapter” – a collection of “war reports” from the Pacific Theater in World War II. My copy was printed in 1946, and I found it at Bookmama’s Bookstore in Indianapolis.
The Author: Ernie Pyle should need no introduction. An incredibly popular reporter of the war, who was from Dana, Indiana, it’s sad to think, while reading these reports, that he would be dead within a year of writing them. He was killed by a Japanese bullet on Iwo Jima in April , 1945.
This piece chronicles Pyle’s time with a company of the First Marine Division on the island of Okinawa. Initially, he’s sharing hillside dugouts with the grunts, fending off rain, fleas, and, with less success, swarms of mosquitoes that were unrelenting. (“Okinawa mosquitoes sound like flame throwers…”) Calling himself “the world’s choicest morsel for mosquitoes” Pyle relates that “every morning he woke up with at least one eye swollen shut.” Most of the “Japs” on their part of the island had fled or were dead if they remained. A few captures of unresisting stragglers occurred, though.
Eventually, the company Pyle was with “settled down” for several days in a small village. Pyle writes that “It’s wonderful to see a bunch ofAmerican troops go about making themselves at home wherever they get a chance to settle down for a few days.” and shares some nice tales of their interaction with the local civilian population: “A good many of the Okinawan civilians wandering along the roadside bowed low to every American they met. Whether this was from fear or native courtesy I do not know, but anyhow they did it. And the Americans, being Americans, usually bowed right back.” I liked that.
♫ Personal Notes: As in the other piece of Pyle’s that I’ve read for Deal Me “IN” 2016, he often gives the hometowns and addresses of the rank and file soldiers he writes about. In this work there were two who were from my home town of Indianapolis. The address of one marine, Charles Bradshaw (nicknamed “Brady”) was on a “Holmes Ave.” which I had to look up. I had even considered being ambitious enough to go see what the house looked like today. Before I went that far, though, I googled him and was quite saddened to find him on a list of “NAVY DEAD” from a newspaper archive at the Vigo County Library. He’s the first name listed in the screenshot below. Kind of a sobering reminder that these were real lives that Pyle was writing about and that many of them didn’t make it back alive. R.I.P. Corporal Bradshaw.
My brother served in the Marine Corps in the ’80s, but was never deployed to where he saw any combat. I still have a camo mini-duffel bag he gifted me that I used for decades for carrying around my chess equipment to tournaments. When I ‘came out of (chess) retirement’ last summer, it did too. Pictured below (note my lucky “Mockingjay” pin – a more recent addition. 🙂 ) from a recent tournament.
I also spent “countless hours” on afternoons after school during grade school watching re-runs of the tv show “Gomer Pyle, USMC” on WTTV – something my parents didn’t approve of, as that show was just “silly” – which it seems to me now as well, but at the time, all I knew about the Marines was from watching those episodes. I remember especially liking the shows where they went on maneuvers and wore battle fatigues and helmets. Do YOU remember that show?
The Card: 2♣2 Two of Clubs.
The Selection: “The Boyhood of Christ” first published by Harper and Brothers of New York in 1888. I found a copy online at https://archive.org/stream/boyhoodofchr00wall#page/n135/mode/2up which includes some great illustrations, a couple of which are included below.
For week 25 of Deal Me “IN” I drew the two of clubs. In my version of the Deal Me In challenge, “deuces are wild” so I get to pick an “at large” story, preferably staying within the theme of the suit. Why did I choose this story? Well, partly because when I first announced my bicentennial version of Deal Me In December, I was scolded (good-naturedly, I presumed) for not initially including anything by Lew Wallace in a so called “Legendary Indiana Authors” category. Point taken, I made a mental note of it. So when the wild card came around, off I went in search of this lesser-known work of the author of Ben-Hur.
“‘You are mistaken, Uncle,’ said Nan.