Hobble Creek Review
| Hugh Aaron |
Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea, 7/28/44
Dear Mom,
We hear so much about the havoc and destruction in Europe that we
take pity on the populations there. We are like healthy people
watching cripples, and we have no way of understanding their plight.
Only a cripple can know what being a cripple is like.
Here the destruction is far less drastic. We have no big cities, only
the torrid forests and small, unimportant villages. Yet, the local
village in this area demonstrated for me on a small scale what war
can do to someone's familiar back yard or field.
On the day that I first landed in this small, tattered village, I tried
to reconstruct in my mind what it must have been like before the
war. I saw stuccoed mansions, and cute thatched homes. I saw green
fields, running springs, flourishing flower gardens, small children
walking down the country road lined with blossoming trees that
passed through the center of the village. I could see it all as if it
were still there. It took little imagination, and the longer I remain
here the more realistic the scene becomes.
The ruins left me with that picture. But now those remnants have
disappeared.
What I saw that day of my arrival was actually a town that had
undergone a terrific naval barrage. Every structure, cozy bungalow,
and thatched cottage was gutted and torn by bomb fragments. While
no doubt the Japanese had changed the town considerably from what
it was, they made use of its buildings. One home became a
dispensary, another a headquarters, another a brothel. The Japs
made use of every house. But the Americans are different. We are
accustomed to using automotive and mechanical devices when
waging war and building things. Narrow country roads and pretty
homes don't fit our requirements for creating a base. So we change
everything.
On that first day, the church, a simple stucco chapel with a
corrugated tin roof and mahogany pews, had been completely riddled
with machine gun bullets such that the plaster was crumbling from
so many holes. Sections of the tin roof were falling off and not a
window was left. Today both the army and navy are using the chapel
in the very same condition it was in when I first saw it. Suffering
least from the bombardment, a few of the sturdiest stucco mansions
with mahogany verandas and attractive shutters were still standing.
Some had antique furniture inside.
When I first arrived the army converted one of the homes into a
headquarters. An order was flashed: "Send a patrol into the hills to
rescue two wounded Americans with two Jap prisoners." Orders such
as this were common. The invasion was over, but the results were
still ongoing.
As trucks and Jeeps ground sour rice into the earth, its stench clung
to the air. Filth was everywhere. Rotting food manufactured flies by
the second. A European car was a curiosity. A few cheaply made Jap
trucks were the only things mechanized. With bullets and shells
scattered helter skelter everywhere, souvenirs were plentiful. On the
beach old European and Japanese vessels stood wrecked and
desolate, their hulks combed over by us curious Americans.
The only unmarred remains were the crystal clear springs and
gurgling brooks that crossed the town in a checkered pattern. These
still flowed, somehow revealing the original quaint atmosphere that
the village once had.
I found children's shoes scattered about, European footwear,
European literature and children's primers, all evidence of a quiet,
pleasing civilization of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. In
some dismembered front yards, roses still survived and picket fences
still stood in defiance of the bombs and bullets.
Not far from the village, in a pretty green glen beneath low
branching trees, there was a small burial ground overlooking the
bay. During scarcely twenty-five years, no more than a dozen people
were buried there. It wasn't hard to surmise that each grave had a
yarn to tell. A man with a European name had died at the age of
forty-two. A woman died at twenty-three. A child lived only two
weeks, June to July 1939. The stones were carefully carved,
awesomely spelling out human sentiments of devotion and love. They
were unlike our burial stones. Small thatched canopies were
constructed over the length of each grave and an inscription in glass
was framed at the head. A small spring ran through this hollow to
the ocean, as if to keep the dead cool in the tropical heat.
Everything has changed. The grand scale of Americans in action has
dwarfed and crushed everything. The weaker structures were razed
and enormous warehouses now occupy their sites. After tarpaulins
were thrown over their roofs to cover the bullet holes, the mansions
became offices. The once green lawns have been trampled into dust.
A supply depot now stands next to the chapel. The streets have been
widened, filled with the hustle and bustle of Jeeps and trucks that
kick up swirling, choking dust. Telephone poles dotting the area
support a criss-crossing network of wires. Even the once clear brooks
have been made into drainage ditches. The beach is coated with oil
slick from the big freighters that tie up to docks only one hundred
feet from the shore.
I don't recognize the burial ground now. Stones have been stripped
away, name plates torn off the graves, broken glass strewn
everywhere. A blue mark on one grave serves as an elevation point
for the surveyors. A chipped stone on another grave bears witness to
some American boy souvenir hunting. A road now passes through
this once green paradise, and dust and mud insult the sturdy graves.
In war there's no respect for the dead.
Now beside the Stars and Stripes a European flag flies over this
unrecognizable village. Will the original inhabitants ever return? I
wonder. The hundreds of thousands of dollars spent excavating,
building warehouses and ditches will leave a permanent scar on this
place. To bring it back to its former luxuriousness would cost
countless millions. The fields and brooks and burial ground are gone
forever. The spirit that once pervaded this green valley can never be
revived. Those poor people.
The Americanization of a village.
Love, Hughie
Dear Mom,
We hear so much about the havoc and destruction in Europe that we
take pity on the populations there. We are like healthy people
watching cripples, and we have no way of understanding their plight.
Only a cripple can know what being a cripple is like.
Here the destruction is far less drastic. We have no big cities, only
the torrid forests and small, unimportant villages. Yet, the local
village in this area demonstrated for me on a small scale what war
can do to someone's familiar back yard or field.
On the day that I first landed in this small, tattered village, I tried
to reconstruct in my mind what it must have been like before the
war. I saw stuccoed mansions, and cute thatched homes. I saw green
fields, running springs, flourishing flower gardens, small children
walking down the country road lined with blossoming trees that
passed through the center of the village. I could see it all as if it
were still there. It took little imagination, and the longer I remain
here the more realistic the scene becomes.
The ruins left me with that picture. But now those remnants have
disappeared.
What I saw that day of my arrival was actually a town that had
undergone a terrific naval barrage. Every structure, cozy bungalow,
and thatched cottage was gutted and torn by bomb fragments. While
no doubt the Japanese had changed the town considerably from what
it was, they made use of its buildings. One home became a
dispensary, another a headquarters, another a brothel. The Japs
made use of every house. But the Americans are different. We are
accustomed to using automotive and mechanical devices when
waging war and building things. Narrow country roads and pretty
homes don't fit our requirements for creating a base. So we change
everything.
On that first day, the church, a simple stucco chapel with a
corrugated tin roof and mahogany pews, had been completely riddled
with machine gun bullets such that the plaster was crumbling from
so many holes. Sections of the tin roof were falling off and not a
window was left. Today both the army and navy are using the chapel
in the very same condition it was in when I first saw it. Suffering
least from the bombardment, a few of the sturdiest stucco mansions
with mahogany verandas and attractive shutters were still standing.
Some had antique furniture inside.
When I first arrived the army converted one of the homes into a
headquarters. An order was flashed: "Send a patrol into the hills to
rescue two wounded Americans with two Jap prisoners." Orders such
as this were common. The invasion was over, but the results were
still ongoing.
As trucks and Jeeps ground sour rice into the earth, its stench clung
to the air. Filth was everywhere. Rotting food manufactured flies by
the second. A European car was a curiosity. A few cheaply made Jap
trucks were the only things mechanized. With bullets and shells
scattered helter skelter everywhere, souvenirs were plentiful. On the
beach old European and Japanese vessels stood wrecked and
desolate, their hulks combed over by us curious Americans.
The only unmarred remains were the crystal clear springs and
gurgling brooks that crossed the town in a checkered pattern. These
still flowed, somehow revealing the original quaint atmosphere that
the village once had.
I found children's shoes scattered about, European footwear,
European literature and children's primers, all evidence of a quiet,
pleasing civilization of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. In
some dismembered front yards, roses still survived and picket fences
still stood in defiance of the bombs and bullets.
Not far from the village, in a pretty green glen beneath low
branching trees, there was a small burial ground overlooking the
bay. During scarcely twenty-five years, no more than a dozen people
were buried there. It wasn't hard to surmise that each grave had a
yarn to tell. A man with a European name had died at the age of
forty-two. A woman died at twenty-three. A child lived only two
weeks, June to July 1939. The stones were carefully carved,
awesomely spelling out human sentiments of devotion and love. They
were unlike our burial stones. Small thatched canopies were
constructed over the length of each grave and an inscription in glass
was framed at the head. A small spring ran through this hollow to
the ocean, as if to keep the dead cool in the tropical heat.
Everything has changed. The grand scale of Americans in action has
dwarfed and crushed everything. The weaker structures were razed
and enormous warehouses now occupy their sites. After tarpaulins
were thrown over their roofs to cover the bullet holes, the mansions
became offices. The once green lawns have been trampled into dust.
A supply depot now stands next to the chapel. The streets have been
widened, filled with the hustle and bustle of Jeeps and trucks that
kick up swirling, choking dust. Telephone poles dotting the area
support a criss-crossing network of wires. Even the once clear brooks
have been made into drainage ditches. The beach is coated with oil
slick from the big freighters that tie up to docks only one hundred
feet from the shore.
I don't recognize the burial ground now. Stones have been stripped
away, name plates torn off the graves, broken glass strewn
everywhere. A blue mark on one grave serves as an elevation point
for the surveyors. A chipped stone on another grave bears witness to
some American boy souvenir hunting. A road now passes through
this once green paradise, and dust and mud insult the sturdy graves.
In war there's no respect for the dead.
Now beside the Stars and Stripes a European flag flies over this
unrecognizable village. Will the original inhabitants ever return? I
wonder. The hundreds of thousands of dollars spent excavating,
building warehouses and ditches will leave a permanent scar on this
place. To bring it back to its former luxuriousness would cost
countless millions. The fields and brooks and burial ground are gone
forever. The spirit that once pervaded this green valley can never be
revived. Those poor people.
The Americanization of a village.
Love, Hughie
Hugh Aaron is an author of eight books - novels, short stories and essays -
and two dozen plays. The Wall Street Journal has published his series of 18
articles on business management. This letter comes from a collection of
almost 1,000 the author wrote home during WWII. He lives in mid-coast Maine
with his artist wife. This is his second appearance in HCR.
and two dozen plays. The Wall Street Journal has published his series of 18
articles on business management. This letter comes from a collection of
almost 1,000 the author wrote home during WWII. He lives in mid-coast Maine
with his artist wife. This is his second appearance in HCR.
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