Joe Cafaro and Jim Pearce

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This Week's Story

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PROPERTY OF THE USA

Not long after I went to boot camp in Bainbridge, Md., I was playing a game of baseball on the recreation field there. I was a catcher.

An ambulance roared up and a guy with a lot of stripes and stuff on his arm jumped out and called my name. He ordered me into the ambulance and took off for the hospital, where I was told that one of the many examinations I had gone through had turned up a right inguinal hernia, and if I was going to be any good to the Navy, it was going to have to be fixed.

Great, I said, I would keep the hernia. I preferred a discharge to an operation.

"Buddy," said the surgeon (holding the rank of commander), "your (backside) belongs to the U.S. government, and you have no say in the matter. You'll be operated on at 9 a.m. tomorrow."

(Today a hernia operation is relatively nothing. They have you walking the next day. For some reason, in 1945 it was a big deal, requiring a week of post-operation bed rest and three weeks idle time.)

The doctor was as good as his word, and I wound up in a hospital ward for the next four weeks.

There were 54 surgical patients on the ward. Fifty-two of them were genuine war heroes, U.S. Marines and Seabees from Guadalcanal, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. There was one other shaved-head recruit, a boy who had been hurt in firefighting school, and me, with my hernia.

I kept a low profile.

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In the Bainbridge hospital ward, there were a lot of young boys who were terribly wounded.

Some were practically insane with pain, and some had wounds that couldn't be fixed, but there were some who were going to recover physically.

One of those was Patrick Morano, but we wondered at times if he was going to be okay mentally.

Morano claimed to have been one of the men who raised the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Everybody had seen the famous picture, and everybody was certain Morano wasn't in it.

He insisted that that didn't matter, that there had been an earlier flag-raising and he was one of the fellows who put it up.

Some of the fellows went along and said, "Yeah, yeah, Pat," but some were a little cruel and poked fun at him even to the extent of composing and singing a little ditty about "When Morano Raised the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima Isle."

Later, we began to hear rumors that there really had been an earlier flag-raising and we began to wonder if maybe Pat was going to be vindicated.

After some time, the first flag-raising was confirmed in the newspapers and the names of the men involved were published.

Sadly, we couldn't find Patrick Morano's name on either list.

Maybe there were three flag-raisings on Iwo Jima.

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Nick was hurt really bad. He had weighed 170 pounds when he went onto the beach at Guadalcanal. He weighed 90 pounds when they put him on a hospital ship for home.

Months later he still was unable to walk, though he could stand at times for as long as five minutes, with help.

He had a five-inch wound in the middle of his back where the machine-gun rounds went in, and a 15-inch wound in the middle of his front where the bullets came out.

He would live, but his intestines were ruined and his bowels moved through the opening in his stomach as he lay in bed.

Everybody on the ward knew when his bowels moved, because he started screaming as soon as they did and wouldn't stop until he was cleaned by a corpsman.

He cursed constantly, directing epithets at God, the Japs, the United States, the president, the U.S. Marines, the doctors, and most of all the hospital corpsmen.

The only time he ever stopped cursing and lay quietly was on Sunday afternoon, when his mother and father from New Jersey came and spent a couple of hours by his bedside.

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This Week's Verse

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I'll be back in a year, little darling,
Uncle Sam has called and I must go.
I'll be back in a year, little darling,
You'll be proud of your soldier boy, I know.

I'll do my best each day, for the good old USA,
And help keep Old Glory flying high.
I'll be back, never fear, little darling,
Don't you worry, darling, don't you cry.

(1941. Words and music by Ben Shelhamer Jr.,
Claude Heritier and Russ Hull)

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This Week's Mailbox

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To the Poor Town News ~ Reading the story about bank closures made me want to run to my bank to "rescue" funds therein. I recall some terrible stories about losses. ~ Agnes Green, Michigan.

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To the Poor Town News ~ Please put me on your eMail list. I was sent your articles by a friend and enjoyed them very much. I manage the Rea Museum in (the) Murfreesboro NC (Historic District), which houses the Gatling Collection ...... We recently finished building a full-size replica of the Gatling plane, "The Old Turkey Buzzard," and now have it on display ...... Mr. James Gatling (brother of the Gatling Gun inventor) designed and built a plane (in Como in 1873, in an attempt to) achieve sustained flight 30 years before the Wrights flew at Kitty Hawk. ~ Ed Rainey, Historic Murfreesboro.

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To the Poor Town News ~ I have family members in Edenton, who retired in 1998 and moved from San Francisco. I have been forwarding your pages to them and they were wondering if you might add their address to your list. They love reading about our beginnings. ~ Henry Byrd, Northeast NC.

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To the Poor Town News ~ I read your web site all the time and I think it is fantastic. It is so interesting and the pictures of the family are practically the only ones I have ever had. I have a new printer and have had fun printing some of them and making a family album. Thanks for your work. ~ Debbie Motley, Northern Virginia.

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To the Poor Town News ~ Thank you for taking the time to publish the info about my Uncle W. O. Saunders. I hope that (people) will remember the good things he did and the news he published. He loved what he did and always said what he meant. If he were here today I really think he'd give today's reporters a run for their money. ~ Linda Sessor, Northeast NC.

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To the Poor Town News ~ Still enjoying "Poor Town." Keep 'em coming. I intend to submit a few more items for you ...... I just keep so busy (usually facet-cutting gemstones, of all things) that it's hard to find time to write. Guess I'm getting old enough, too, to jot down a few of my own remembrances of growing up in Portsmouth in the early '50s. You'll hear from me again soon. ~ Ron Lupton, at the foot of a dry and frightening-looking Pike's Peak.

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