Hindseeing: A Life in the World

By Bertram Clive Beardsley

There are not many people alive who can testify to the remarkable twentieth century. Bertram Clive Beardsley, age ninety-one, can—from firsthand experience.

Born in 1924, Kansas City, Beardsley grew up during the depression, served in World War II and Korea, earned a master’s degree on the GI Bill, and worked in countries where Cold War hostilities bubbled under the surface. He married a woman from Belize and raised two biracial children at a time when such a family turned heads and caused comments.

Along the way, Beardsley played baseball and jazz, took his family around the world, and strove to be a man in full.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532016677

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Copyright © 2017 Alvin G. Edgell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1666-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1667-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017901722

iUniverse rev. date: 09/07/2017

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Not So Good A Soldier

Chapter 2 The 279Th Stateside

Chapter 3 Crossing To Europe

Chapter 4 Love Found With Mary

Chapter 5 Unease In The Outfit

Chapter 6 Facing Reality

Chapter 7 One Theater Of War’s End

Chapter 8 Berlin Life

Chapter 9 More With Mary

Chapter 10 Going Home

Chapter 11 A Great, Anomalous, University

Chapter 12 Escape From The Dorms

Chapter 13 Grown Up Pains

Chapter 14 Women (Especially Sygne)

Chapter 15 Capitol Days

Chapter 16 Korea For Hri

Chapter 17 New Friends

Chapter 18 Summer And Baseball

Chapter 19 Love’s Long Fallow Season

Chapter 20 Music Men

Chapter 21 Pointed Overseas

Chapter 22 Into Turkey

Chapter 23 Ankara And A New Peace Corps Project

Chapter 24 The Second Cohort

Chapter 25 Second Cohort

Chapter 26 Valhalla

Chapter 27 Some Turkish Co-Workers

Chapter 28 Next Assignment: Belize, Still British Honduras

Chapter 29 More Tomorrow

Chapter 30 Some Roads Lead To Belize

Chapter 31 Under Cover Of Darkness And Other Trips

Chapter 32 Out Of Belize And Into Nigeria

Chapter 33 Back To School

Chapter 34 Afghanistan

Chapter 35 Lucy And A Lady

Chapter 36 The Great (Aspired To) Circuit Of Afghanstan

Chaper 37 Living Abroad, Hard Softball

Chapter 38 Dark And Light Moments

Chapter 39 Reflections On Afghanistan

Chapter 40 Bolt Hole

Chapter 41 And Then Bangladesh

Chapter 42 Another Try At Belize

Chapter 43 Somalia

Chapter 44 When John Denver Visited Somalia

Chapter 45 Farther Somalia

Chapter 46 Belize, The Magnet

Chapter 47 The Super Trooper

After Thoughts

About The Author

Introduction

Aside from the family archive, my most earnest wish is for this work to be of constructive use in the efforts of front line workers in the urgent endeavors to aid in the development and modernization of the poorest societies aspiring for such advancement. Policy makers and program designers may also benefit from these written experiences, while the persons with interest in world betterment will be more informed.

It seems necessary to note that roughly the more or less second half of this material was composed in my wheel chair at a nursing home where access to files and other references have not been at hand, compared to the early sections which had the advantage while at home of mine and others writing, maps and other general reference materials.

Although I have generally worked alone, my daughter, Holly, has helped immensely in resolving many a critical conundrum, and has been helpful at all stages of onward and upward, perhaps most valuable at the distillation of the final imperfections.

Beyond Thanks and scuds of Love, Holly!

Chapter 1

Not So Good A Soldier

Finding a draft notice in my mail near the end of l943, I applied for conscientious objector (CO), non-combat status. I thought it was a justified war, but I felt unable to kill anyone, both on my understanding of Christian principle and my instinctive repulsion. To my surprise and relief, the local draft board, without any hesitation, accepted my petition and classified me as requested. But as soon as I got a uniform at Fort Sheridan, outside Chicago, I was sent into infantry training at Camp Roberts, California. The hastily mobilized WW II Army was notorious for such SNAFU-ed assignments.

Camp Roberts

When I complained that I should not be in an infantry training camp, a surreal period of several weeks ensued. Barely literate old army training cadre tried to argue and persuade me against my position. That was hardly intellectually challenging, but my complaint was not effective.

One night, very early at Camp Roberts, I experienced my first clear anxiety attack. In the closely packed barracks, I couldn’t bear to lie in my cot unable to sleep. I got up and went to the barracks in-house latrine where I paced for several hours, trying to get some control over my non-specific anxiety. The Officer-of-the-Day on his rounds found me there and assumed that I was homesick, which was, in fact, the farthest thing from my mind. Somehow I got over that spell. I even became something of an example of training hardiness, in physical exercise, sports and crawling under alleged machine gun fire through barbed wire, etc.

One small satisfaction came when a camp baseball team was being formed. I was allowed to win first base in remarkable coincidence, competing with the young man who had been the first baseman for the Marinette town team where I had been discouraged from wanting to compete for that position. At camp, now, I was chosen to play 1st, and he was invited to try another position. But there were only a few practices before we were transferred.

World War One Enfield rifles were racked near our Camp Roberts barracks entrance. There were not quite enough weapons for every last trainee in the barracks. Since everyone else was eager to grab a gun, it was easy for me to hang back and fall out on the parade ground empty handed with out attracting attention, at least at first.

One of the arguments put against my CO’s position was that while I started out on training marches without a rifle, I would come back with one or two draped over my shoulders. Hence I could not be allergic to weapons of destruction after all. Of course, this had happened because some of my fellow marchers, new soldiers, were less fit and after a time, when I offered to carry their weapons they gladly offered them up.

After some weeks I learned that a dozen other COs, scattered all over the huge camp were getting their cases acted upon through a Chaplain, and so I joined the effort. Most of the others were hardly my type, being members of officially recognized ‘objector’ churches: Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, etc. After a few more weeks, during which I was assigned to kitchen police (KP) duty in the mess hall and kitchen, our group of twelve Objectors was sent off to a medical basic training unit at another huge camp outside Abilene, Texas.

After that camp it was off for eight weeks of training in a Surgical Technician course near Fort Bliss outside El Paso, including two weeks down at the huge general military hospital. There I had early found that I experienced unbearable stress and anxiety, even clumsiness, in handling bodies in great distress and pain. Although I made this known, I was told that I had to go through this training until its fixed term.

–

Juarez

Just across the border is Ciudad Juarez, then the preferred attraction for GIs in our training group who were bent on a cheap, wild respite on the eight Saturday nights of passes from our dusty camp above Fort Bliss. One man in our 16 soldier barracks rates a remembrance, Big Bill, was much older, and looked even older, and was well-traveled without ever having left Texas.

Bill hit Juarez every Saturday. On his late return, reputedly with the aid of the Military Police in cooperation with their counterparts on the Mexican side, profoundly boozed, loud and bent on waking everyone of us already in our sacks. His subsequent Saturday/Sunday night arrivals were anticipated for their excitement. After the first few Saturdays, some mischievous mates played tricks with his simple cot; short-sheeting it or fixing his collapsible metal cot so that it would indeed collapse when he sat on it. Some of my barracks mates found entertaining his roars, his tipsy struggles to right his cot, and even his efforts to collapse a few other occupied cots. Since my fart sack was well down the row from Bill’s, he never vented his wrath at my distance although I wasn’t sure of sanctuary.

My own Saturday nights had been spent on our base or a few times in El Paso, just down the hill. When some cautious hut mates wanted a go as a group to wild Juarez, I was willing from a mix of curiosity and danger. Feeling the need of numbers we stuck together for the night. My first novel experience came when the need to piss came upon me. In at least least two bars I was directed to an open-air wall out back designed for that relief.

The most memorable event was my pals setting me up to play the drums with a small noisy band, allegedly by paying them a US quarter. I was as drunk as I would ever get and readily took my seat at the kit. We played Deep in the Heart of Texas, a top hit of the day. Built into the chorus at regular intervals was a break for four uniform hands claps. At each such occasion I attempted a brief drum solo. All went well for several choruses and the band was ready to stop (at a quarter’s worth?) but I continued and the band picked back up. Only when I got tired did our ensemble finally stop. I rejoined my friends and we somehow made our way back to camp in time to experience Bill’s return of the prodigal.

Chapter 2

The 279Th Stateside

I found myself a few weeks later, in mid l944, with the start-up stage of the 279th Station Hospital Company at Camp Bowie, Texas. Except for the officers and non-commissioned officers, we were almost all recent inductees l8 or l9 years old. We were assigned in groups of l6 to very simple hutments in this alkaline scrub country near the town of Brownland.

On the first Saturday in Bowie we were to have our company’s first general inspection, including sleeping quarters. That Friday evening our hut’s non-resident cadreman, one Corporal Chosted directed us to prepare the Saturday-morning display: tightly made-up beds with gear arranged on top of the blanket and all that.

With my tendency to question and even rebel against authority, I considered some of this stupid, especially since we would be sleeping in our beds before the morning inspection. Besides we were jam-packed in the small hut, getting in one another’s way, and there weren’t enough mops for every one to be mopping at once, or so I reasoned.

Other huts seemed not to be preparing at the same time as ours. A few lads were out in the open tossing around a softball, and I joined them. Two or three times Corporal Chosted or his hut-resident deputy came to tell me to return to the hut and get to work. I said I would as soon as there was room, and I continued practicing pitching. Finally, Corporal Chosted ordered me inside. (Chosted strutted about as very G.I. (Government Issue) and was fussy to the point that he had the creases in his army pants sewn in.) But I pointedly had a few more casual tosses as he was leaving and before I complied. Anyhow it was getting dark.

Shortly after I was inside at work on my layout of gear, Chosted came in with Sergeant Fusian to whom Chosted was almost tearfully describing the extremity of my disobedience of his orders. Fuscian expanded on the horridness of my offense. I unabashedly replied that this whole episode was stupid and un-American, and that this way of running an army was probably no better or different than that of the enemy Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese, which I wouldn’t mind observing to see if my suspicions were true. (Ah, the madness of youth)!

This seemed to really upset my superiors, who by then felt that this called for serious treatment by their superiors.

I was escorted to the slightly more spacious, then empty, quarters of the senior Non-Commissioned Officers (Non-Coms). The Company’s First Sergeant arrived soon after. Sergeant Musto just seemed puzzled at first, but then asked why I had behaved so crazy, disobeying orders. I paraphrased my previous criticism of the U.S. military as I found it, which sent him into paroxysms of Sicilian profanity, and he roughly ordered me to stop tapping my foot to the rhythm of a Glenn Miller tune on the hut’s low-volume radio.

His puzzlement, now mixed with anger, seemed to have returned with greater force, and Musto excitedly said that my rebellious behavior required the senior-most attention. I was taken to the Company office which had collected the sweaty heat of the July day, and where a few other Non-Coms loafed or drifted in.

The Officer of the Day was sent for and soon arrived. Lieutenant Needer was a clean cut young man who had graduated from a Texas university, and his speech was high order Texan. His approach to the situation described to him was a calm effort to hear all sides, and I was confident and at my rare best in answering fully and some times more. Needer listened quietly and asked questions out of what seemed genuine curiosity about this young man, so loquacious in answering the questions from all sides. Needer at times had to hold back the attempts at a grilling style of questioning by Musto and other Non-Coms. Musto repeatedly demanded that I address the Lieutenant as Sir although Needer said that wasn’t necessary just now. I said it impeded my speeching -- more madness of youth.

I was at my most expansive and articulate and must have been enjoying the consternation and puzzlement I produced. This went on for some time. Needer’s questions had given me the opening to expound on my whole philosophy of life, such as it was. In the end he said the equivalent of how interesting! And asked that this odd fellow be assigned to his platoon when these were being organized.

After Lieutenant Needer left, Musto and the other Non-Coms were puzzled about what to do with me since Needer had left no further instructions. They certainly felt that I should not be let loose on the 279th world. So they finally decided that I should be put under guard and taken for the night to the guard-house with the off-shift guards who were taking their turns from the Company roster.

As I was getting ready to go to bed there appeared another sergeant who was known to be a person of great piety. In the most mellow of cautionary words, he acknowledged my ‘pacifism’ but quoted the Bible on rendering unto Caesar … As a believer in Christian ethics, I was briefly impressed.

The young guards, about my age, seemed startled to find this new phenomenon, a prisoner, among them, and one whom they were ordered to hold incommunicado and watch. Those near my guard-house cot ogled me from theirs, as if afraid to sleep. I was still enjoying the ridiculous celebrity, and fell asleep before most of them.

The next morning I was taken under guard to get a fresh dress uniform from my own hut. Then I was presented to the Company commander, First Lieutenant Theball, in his office, which was on the other side of the plywood wall next to the small room where I had been interrogated the night before. Who knows what Theball had been told, but this 30-ish officer came on glowering, with the Manual of Courts Martial strategically placed on his desk for my observation, opened at the section headed Offenses Punishable by Death.

For the first time I was becoming intimidated, and maybe I hadn’t slept that well. All I remember about this encounter was its ominous tone, and I was glad this time when it was over. I was returned to my original hut and told that judgment would be rendered soon.

A few days later at the first morning formation of the Company, the First Sergeant somewhat dramatically read out an order of Company Punishment and reduction from the rank of Private First Class for now Private Beardsley for failing to obey orders.

This seemed to be getting strong emphasis as the first punishment for wrong-doing in the new Company to make a forceful point, to dissuade any other potential miscreants. Now I was a Company-wide celebrity. Who knows what the rumors were, but I seemed to become something of an abused brother-man to many.

My first punishment was to clean the stones from the drill field after its use at the end of that day. After drilling, all of us were ordered to shovel and rake the stones into small piles all over the big field. Then the rest were allowed to drift off since this was the end of the formal duty day. A truck was brought up and I was directed to shovel the piles up onto its open bed. A few of the soldiers had lingered behind and began to help me. When this was observed by a Non-Com, they were ordered off and I was thereafter closely watched to ensure that I worked alone. But even the truck driver wanted to be pal-y. The work wasn’t too onerous since I was in good shape and glad to show it off. It continued until I was excused when darkness fell.

The following day at the Company formation after lunch a huge rock was to be seen lying before us on the Company ground. Sergeant Musto read out a notice that, as part of my Company punishment, I was to break up this large stone with a sledge hammer and the small pieces were to be placed as bordering for the paths between the hutments. It seemed expected that this task would fill out the rest of the week of my sentence.

But again, I meant to show them by busting up this monolith as soon as possible. I now realize that by a certain kind of common reasoning I might have more wisely concluded that I would be better off just dragging out the task for the full term. But I was young, marching to my own rhythm section.

I made a game of it, as practice for my baseball swing, and I attacked the monster with fulsome zeal. I had not asked for gloves and none were offered. At the end of the first day I had a few blisters.

On the second day, Musto hauled me before the early Company formation and told me to hold out my hands, presumably as further discouragement to possible transgressors. Then he, with mock generosity, said that I would be allowed bandages and to wear gloves from now till my week ended. But I had already demolished almost half of the huge rock, and after the next day it was completely shattered.

Since the location of the stone made my exertions clearly visible to several passersby during the course of each day, my mythical stature among the rank and file grew. Many of the company wanted, some furtively, to be friendly. My fame could only go down from this point as the real me was gradually exposed.

On the fourth day of my sentence, I was called out before the Company formation and embraced, almost joyously by Musto! Imagine my, and probably the others, surprise! He then complemented me on how diligently I had worked at my penance, even how proud the Company should be about this example. His whole performance was way over the top! I was to be forgiven the balance of my sentence and accepted back into the warm bosom of the Company, and I was urged to apply my rumored softball skills on the Company team being formed.

After a minimum of thought, it occurred to me that Musto’s superiors had taken in the wide, sympathetic response of the young soldiers to my treatment and enhanced image, and that our leaders now meant to show that they vibrated on the same humane wavelength.

Relieved of formal disgrace, I was assigned to work in the Company Supply under Lt. Needer who showed no particular interest in me in my more hum-drum role for the more than a year that we were still together in the 279th. But at this job I met another soldier under Needer who became my best friend for the rest of my army days, and for some time thereafter. He was the somewhat older Sam Turner with whom some further adventures were later shared.

Sports of the Seasons

In full autumn at Bowie we played in a tough touch football league. As the team punter I collected two painful wrists when a burly opposing lineman broke through and hit my extended kicking foot while I was still in the air after I actually got off the punt. This sent me on a backward semi-cartwheel. I tried to break my fall with my hands. The next day I went on sick call over the pain in both wrists. The Dr. simply had me taped up and sent back to duty in the Supply Room. The pain for the left wrist got progressively worse when I tried to use it for one week before I again went on sick call. This time the wrist was x-rayed. A few days later I was told that the x-ray was not clear enough and so it had to be repeated, and this time the left wrist was found to be broken at the navicular. This got me a cast for the usual gang’s signatures and obscenities. It also got me gratefully excused from going on a chilly field bivouac of a week by the rest of the Company. But perhaps because of the delay in protection the wrist was not set right and thus painful for several years, and it has a strange look to this day. But somehow its frequent pain was never too much for me. For years I taped it before sports use.

I was certain to be out there with every seasonal sport. I had mentioned touch football in connection with my broken wrist. But the company had a more formal regular squad as well. We practiced regularly and played two games, one with another Company (Lost) and one with our company’s Officers (won). I was supposed to be a pass -catching End, but that didn’t work in the two games. OuR Quarterback waited too long looking at me when clear.

Later overseas we played base ball between our own randomly chosen teams. My big memory was a huge crash at home plate when I was scoring. The catcher without the ball tried to totally block home plate. He was about my size and knew the game well. I had no choice but plowing through him knocked him several yards backward. But I sustained a knee injury that took months to completely disappear.

One sports failure was the effort of a nearby Welsh farm boy and I to teach baseball and cricket to our opposite number. Somehow we just didn’t click and gave up soon enough.

Train to Boston

I still had the cast on my wrist and forearm when we boarded the train for the then unknown destiny of Camp Miles Standish between Boston and Providence. It was a slow three day journey. When I got my turn at the lower bunk in the ancient Pullman, I hardly slept for looking out the window for wonders. Our smoky train took us through the streets with the fancy iron work of New Orleans and endless miles of featureless swampland after that. When one opened the car windows, bits of soot from the puffing engine wafted in when the wind was right.

At the end of the train ride there was plenty of snow and it was very cold in the empty standard double tiered bunks barrack. After we struggled to get the coke started we tried to keep the two large cast iron coke fed stoves going and tolerated the smoke and particles that floated up. After carefully protecting my cast for weeks during ablutions, I finally let it soak and tore it off in the shower even though it was supposed to last for another week or two.

Somehow Christmas passed with hardly a notice in those last days before shipping out. Sam and I did spend a day in each of Boston and Providence which our camp was between.

Chapter 3

Crossing to Europe

On the darkest of January nights our Spartanly refitted liner Argentine glided past islands and headlands of the Firth of Clyde and near the huge, ghostly shapes of what must have been a large part of the Allied Forces’ navies. When we were at anchor the next morning, I was pleasantly surprised at the moderate temperature and the greenness on the shore, remembering the cold back in Boston. Then I remembered the current that warms northwestern Europe. I was sea sick the whole way.

Upon landing we were herded into the compartmented railway coaches of Great Britain, snatching unappetizing meat-paste sandwiches and milky-tea from NAAFI (UK’s USO) girls along the way. Once underway the train slowed quite frequently, and stopped completely near several gloomily lit stations along the route. I guessed that the slowing and stopping was to let the regularly scheduled routes through. The whole country seemed blacked-out, a dark, silent land. Finally, in the very early morning hours, our coaches were shunted onto a siding near what I later learned was the village of Govilon on a Welsh borderland. At first there seemed to be only a flicker of numerous flashlights in the otherwise pitch darkness. Once we alighted, my eyes focused on a line of miscellaneous, undersized - some seemed improvised - pick-up’ trucks. Ladies of mixed ages, each wearing a similar sort of uniform cap, were scurrying around, the flashlights in their hands were the only illumination.

Once formed up, our troops were ordered to nearby ‘goods wagons’ (UK freight carriers) from which our personal duffel bags and other unit gear were loaded onto the mobilized civilian pickups. Then we were off on British Army trucks to our nearby camp on the compound of the soon to be 279th Station Hospital for a few fitful hours of sleep on straw-filled pallets,

The next few days were simply for settling in at the camp in arc-topped Nissen/Quonset small buildings which would be our homes for a little over a year. Our mission was to set up, and then operate a US Army hospital in the several large brick, purpose-built buildings in the compound that I understood to have been constructed by an American Black unit of the segregated US Army, not long before our arrival.

Once we were settled into the barracks adjoining the simple brick hospital buildings, a few days later a group of local middle-aged people came to welcome and entertain us. There were singers, a few instrumentalists and a short dramatic turn. Their offerings of light classical warhorses and a drawing room comedy skit were not in the style that young Americans of the time were accustomed to: slapstick comedy and Andrews Sisters-sorts. While most of the audience was polite, there was some scattered muttering and snickering. But the earnestness of the performers was touching, and I felt some embarrassment. So did Sam who was from Philadelphia and eight years older and so seemed to my small-town rawness quite the man of the rational world. I felt that I could only follow on his rounds, eager to observe and learn.

The Town of Abergavenny was almost as dark as the countryside. About the only light came through fine scratching of ‘bar’ or ‘pub’ on other wise darkened windows and doors. Those scenes were a bit too smokey and rowdy for our tastes so we wandered further. Having eschewed the pub life in early Abergavenny exploration, Sam and I found another doorway with a whisper of light seeping out. In we went to find a NAAFI canteen (wo)manned by chatty lasses of mixed attractiveness. Tea, a parody of coffee, and ‘biscuits’ and good old meat paste sandwiches were on offer, gratis. One of the lasses was a young woman of well above-average height and attractiveness who leaned over her counter and in the process of offering her array of edible treats began a larky banter with college-educated Sam who relished the encounter and responded in kind. Whatever my limited interpolations, they could hardly have been memorable although I was much taken with this Welsh lass.

As our camp became a working but sub-max hospital and duties more routinized, our restrictions to the camp area gradually loosened until we were fully occupied after D-Day in June l945, the invasion of Normandy. But one still needed a signed pass in the early slack days, which limited outings. Like many others with interests afield I forged a pass of my own and with the growing laxity and familiarity with some of the guards at our gate, I managed to see Mary almost every night.

Chapter 4

Love Found with Mary

I had been fascinated by Mary from the first sighting. Throughout my life tall women have been more immediately attention-getting to me, perhaps an unconscious mother-fixation. Mary’s challenging, teasing, but still conventionally proper manner and easy body movements hooked me with thoughts more romantic than consciously carnal at the start of our closeness. As I try to reconstruct those feelings, I believe the first stirrings and pain were hardly products of reasoning.

During those early, virginal sweet days, Mary would often claim to feel apologetic, usually with a mock-guilty giggle, over breaking up my friendship with Sam. I assured her that was not at all the case. Although Sam found his own outlets off the base, we remained close in our daily routines on the small camp at Gilwern. We actually remained the closest of friends throughout our two more years in the overseas army and beyond our time in service.

The simply sweet days didn’t last over long. From time to time Mary and I got into a sort of flirtatious play. Sometimes she would challenge me to wrestle from her whatever odd artifact came to hand. This led to inevitable, disturbingly welcome, arousal. Certainly for me it was sensational - in all meanings. This led to more erotic fondling, and we soon became full-blown, guiltless, exploratory lovers. I experienced real transcendence in our abandoned, simultaneous immersion in these ecstatic happenings.

As our first coupling was hardly seconds away, Mary, in by-the-way manner, mentioned that her maidenhead had been lost during one of her competitive swimming meets. Since I was in high excitement and moving with unpracticed instinct into a loving position, I muttered and meant it that I could not care less! Reflection in later life leads me to doubt Mary’s explanation at 21. With her high sensuality it wasn’t likely she had waited for me.

Her body was just right in proportion for her height. Most marvelous were her long, splendid legs; so exciting when entangled with mine.

As our relationship deepened, with its strong element of intimate freedom, Mary expressed ever more fascination with my body’s’ distinguishing part and she asked if she could call it Billy. I accepted readily. This called for a loving name for her sublime port for love making and I came up with Muffin. She always used these names included in her poems.

Her Poem: To Billy

There is a spot in meadow green

Where we could lay long day and dream.

The river winds and sings its song

A cloudless sky – deep blue – day long.

The willows dip their branches low

Brushing the buttercups as they grow

Beneath these branches we could lie

And give our passion wings to fly.

I would give you a thousand kisses.

Entwined in your arms – heaven this is.

Your brow with kisses first I’d shower

Your eyes so kind I would them endower

Your mouth so warm and strong

I’d open wide, - and hold you long:

Then kisses on your breasts I’ll lay

Enchanting both with our love play.

As the bee is to the flower

Now I seek for Billy’s bower

Large – firm – lovely and exciting

Billy finds my mouth inviting.

With soft, rhythmic slow caresses

Billy within my mouth I’m pressing

Oh the joy and sheer contentment

To extract honey segment.

Slowly with my lips I kiss you.

Knowing you are in heaven too

Hold me closely firm and tender

To you I’d willingly surrender.

Like the bee I’ve found the honey.

I’ll extract with passionate gesture

Now at last the honey tasted

These precious hours have not been wasted.

Muffin

At times she quite seriously pretended to address Billy directly, almost worshipfully. It seemed to excite her as much as it did me. As I climaxed, she would swallow, with a beatific smile. And excitedly call it honey, including that appearance in a dedicated poem. Other modes of love while joyous were not unusually inventive. We didn’t exhaust the Kama Sutra; we settled on and returned to a modest variety. At times Mary would kneel astride me, and then twist about. Once settled, facing forward, Mary beamed like a triumphant queen on her war chariot, stretched upright, arms skyward, saying that she felt filled up and how marvelous that was!

We were of course concerned not to bring a new life into being while enjoying ultimate loving. Mary had an understanding of her rhythms of fertility, and I followed her guidance on that. On one occasion we were careless and we worried, needlessly as it turned out, about a not so immaculate conception. Mary did say that she would love to have my baby, but that must not happen under the existing circumstances.

But the song asks: What Is This Thing Called Love? It is still hard for me to confidently understand my feelings toward Mary. I think this is always particularly murky when a large element of exciting carnality is involved. Sygne, my first wife, would later write that she had only been in love with my body. In her case that may have also been the overwhelming drive for my own going into marriage with her (body). Was that the case with my unquestioned attraction to Mary? We sustained our wartime closeness for over one year without the slightest hitch in my enchantment with Mary and only signs of the same joyfulness on her part. But was I - or Mary - in love with a whole person, in a way that would be sustained over years together under the much more diverse and changing circumstances of peacetime life? Who knows? Is there such a thing as hormonal love?

Aside from the marvelous shared sensuality, other common interests gave some dimension to our relationship. Early talks touched on personal history and family data. But these weren’t gone into very deeply or persistently. The sparring teasing sorts of conversation were most common and never disappeared. They held an unexamined, pleasantly exciting challenge for me however frothy the topics. We talked about the future of our relationship only very much later when it would become clear that my unit would soon be transferred to the continent.

We shared delight in countryside rambles and bike expeditions. Nature charmed us both. Mary was quite interested in the lyrics of the best of popular songs and romantic poetry. But she only occasionally couldn’t restrain particular enthusiasms and I saw it as an entirely tolerable foible. My own interest in Jazz wasn’t hers, for balance. But there was some overlap in our musical tastes.

Mary’s wartime job was that of a Lily Tomlin-type of telephone operator at the Abergavenny office of the Royal Engineers. All the telephone operators of that region of small towns got on the line to connect calls, and commonly got into chats with callers. Mary was no exception and it was right handy in a few cases when there had been some ambiguity about our ‘dates.’

She belonged to a badminton club composed of ten or twelve members, most of them her work mates from the Royal Engineers. Mary was by far the best female player and was keenly competitive. When she first brought me there, I was acutely embarrassed over my inevitably failing, flailing efforts to even hit the feathered shuttlecock in its strange flight patterns. My humiliation was heightened by my self-image as a fairly well coordinated athlete with some homeland triumphs at baseball.

Eurika – vindication when I eventually caught up with Mary. Badminton remained a playing interest of mine into my 70s, even though my wandering life had permitted only intermittent indulgence. Later I played quite regularly in the USA and reached a decent standard.

Mary’s narrow, shared-walls home, with a small yard space only at the rear, had two upper floors for several bedrooms. It was frequently visited for weeks at a time by two older sisters, usually with their children. So the small main parlor, the only room consistently warmed by fireplace in season, sometimes became crowded. In decent weather Mary and I simply went outside after I observed the expected pleasantries. But in unpleasant weather Mrs. Evans, accepting Mary and me as love-birds, suggested that we could go to a small unused and so closed and cold sitting room on the ground floor, off the long entrance hall. There Mary and I hugely enjoyed one another’s company and bodies. We hardly needed the heat from an available gas-fed grill.

When the women of the house were discussing re-wallpapering the main parlor’s peeling ceiling, I volunteered that I had some relevant expertise since I had been a helper for my father, a practitioner of that craft. My implied offer was hastily accepted, and on the set night I foolheartedly presumed to lead the renovation effort. Just setting up and moving about the means of reaching the ceiling was challenging in that jumbled room. After many a missed step with the paste-covered wallpaper falling over my head a few times and other contretemps, a reasonable job got accomplished. Given the numerous frustrations, the larky, chaffing atmosphere led by Mary throughout the evening enabled us to reach the end of the task in still high spirits.

Love’s Madness

On one night when I expected to find Mary at home, she was not there when I arrived. It seems that some close friend had urgently, at the last minute needed a baby sitter some twelve miles up the narrow vale of the stream Afor Honddu, toward Llanthony Abbey where Mary had gone by bus. Deeply frustrated in my expectations for that evening, I was able to call her and get directions to her location. She seemed shocked that I seemed determined to reach her, and she tried to discourage me from the effort. I was to wait at no. 18. But I was fixedly driven and I set off on my bike in a desperate rush.

The route, by now under deep darkness, was entirely uphill and ordinary bikes in those days were only single-speed! The road was also winding, with the babbling of the unseen Afon Honddu almost constantly in my ear. Lights on bicycles had to be taped over the lens so that only a small slit emitted light, not of any use for the rider’s vision, but only so that the cyclist could be seen. I arrived at the right house in near exhaustion. Mary was surprised to see that I had indeed made the mad trip. She was planning to catch the bus back to Abergavenny at ten o’clock in just a quarter of an hour. Only a few hugs and kisses were possible before Mary was off on the prompt bus. I continued to act foolishly and