Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

Paul didn’t know, but he made up his mind to make some telephone calls in the morning to see if he could possibly get a commission. After all, it wasn’t just a matter of pride or absurd dreams of glory. Officers got paid a lot more than enlisted men, and he had a wife to support, didn’t he?

Before Paul got a chance to call anyone in the morning, his brother, Bill, telephoned him.

“I’m going to join the army air force,” Bill said exuberantly. “That’s where the real action’s going to be! What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” Paul replied.

“Listen, I’ve got an idea for you. I hear the Coast Guard is going to take over a whole bunch of yachts for an offshore patrol. If they took the Valkyrie , they’d fix her all up, and they might let you go as skipper. They’d probably make you a chief boatswain’s mate. You’d get good pay and you’d probably get back to Boston every week or so.”

“Why don’t you do it that way?”

“Hell, I don’t want to fight the Germans with an old yawl. Give me a P-38. You were always the great sailor in the family anyway.”

“I’ll check into it,” Paul said, but he already had decided that he too did not want to fight the Germans with an old yawl, despite the attractions of the scheme.

“Just don’t get yourself drafted, boy,” Bill concluded. “I hear the infantry ain’t good for the health.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Paul said, and he envied the apparently carefree bravery with which his brother was planning to join the army air force. The only thing that scared him more than the thought of being machine-gunned in a muddy trench was the vision of crashing in a burning plane. Putting on his best blue suit, he drove to the Boston headquarters of the Coast Guard.

This day, Monday, December 8, 1941, the streets and sidewalks were crowded with people and the bars were overflowing. Long queues, some of them stretching around a block, stood before each recruiting office. Every car, store and bar had a radio turned on loud to await news, and the sound of music was mixed with an excited babble of voices.

Paul could not get anywhere near the district office of the Coast Guard. For half an hour he stood in a line that stretched over the top of a hill, seemingly to infinity. Gray-haired men with the collars of old pea jackets turned up around their ears stood in that line, middle-aged men, some of whom were kept company during the long wait by their wives, and many boys who looked too young to be out of high school. They were almost all unusually cheerful and joked about the possibility of the war being over before they got a chance to enlist. Their breath frosted in the cold December air, and some of them danced little jigs to keep warm. A good many carried bottles and were quick to offer a swig to strangers. When a pretty girl walked by on her way to a nearby office, a few of the men whistled. A tall thin man in a trench coat which looked much too thin for that weather called, “Come join up with me, baby!” Instead of sticking her nose in the air and hurrying away, she gave him a brilliant smile and blew him a kiss. The long line of men applauded, clapping their mittened hands together as loudly as possible. To this she responded with a pretty curtsy just before disappearing into a doorway and the crowd cheered.

The long line appeared to move hardly at all. Halfway up the block a stout man dressed in a Chesterfield coat and wearing a homburg hat tried to cut into it and was jovially rebuffed by a short man in a brown leather jacket.

“You push ahead of me, Jack, and you won’t have to wait for no war. You’ll have one right here!”

The crowd laughed, and with hasty apologies the well-dressed man hurried to the end of the line.

All this was interesting, but Paul soon grew both cold and bored. Reasoning that he might do better with telephone calls, he ducked into a bar. Long lines stood there, too, both in front of the two telephone booths and at the bar itself, but here it was at least warm. A jukebox blared in the corner: “Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar.” At the crowded tables men and women sat drinking and talking intently to each other. They leaned against each other, touched a lot and held hands — the atmosphere was certainly a lot sexier than it ordinarily was in a Boston pub at ten o’clock on a Monday morning. When three chief petty officers, resplendent with gold hash marks, walked in, a place was immediately made for them at the bar. Many people offered to buy them drinks and asked them if they knew what damage had actually been done by the Japs at Pearl Harbor.

It took Paul only about twenty minutes to get to a telephone booth. He was not surprised to find that he got a busy signal when he called the Coast Guard office, and settled down to a routine of repeating the call about every two minutes. He was surprised when his fourth call got through. Figuring that he would get nowhere if he asked to speak to the busy recruiting officer, he told the harried girl who answered the telephone that he wanted to speak to the district Coast Guard officer. After a series of buzzes, a weary male voice said, “Lt. Christiansen speaking …”

“Are you the district Coast Guard officer?”

“I’m one of his assistants. Who is this?”

“My name is Paul Schuman. I’m the master of a charter boat and I’ve got three and a half years of college, two in the Navy ROTC. Can I get a commission in the Coast Guard?”

“You should be talking to the recruiting officer.”

“I know, but nobody can get through to him. I just thought you could tell me if I have a chance, and maybe you can mail me some forms or something.”

Lt. Christiansen laughed. “You sure know how to expedite,” he said. “I bet you’d make a good supply officer.”

“I want to go to sea. I’m good with small ships.”

“You are, are you? Give me your name and address. I’ll send you the forms.”

“Paul Schuman, Two-oh-nine Fieldstone Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts.”

“Well, you’re lucky,” Christiansen said. “At least you live around here. We’ve got people from all over sleeping in men’s rooms and railroad stations.”

“I guess that must be quite a problem.”

“You said it, boy. I got my own wife and kid in a hotel that costs more in a week than I make in a month.”

An idea hit Paul then. He didn’t know whether it sprang from the milk of human kindness, from the practiced opportunism of his older brother, or from a lesson he had learned in some odd, reverse way from his father. Instead of simply sympathizing with Christiansen, he said, “If you want an apartment, I can find one for you out in Wellesley.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Like you said, I’m an expediter.”

Christiansen’s voice suddenly turned sharp. “Look, I can’t do anything for you because of this except send you some forms. But if you can find me an apartment near this crazy city, I’d sure appreciate it.”

“It will only take me a few minutes,” Paul said. “Do you have a telephone number it won’t take me half the day to reach?”

In a clipped voice Christiansen gave him a number and abruptly hung up, perhaps in confusion. Putting another nickel in the telephone, Paul called Lucy Kettel, his mother-in-law.

“Mother,” he said, using the appellation she wanted, though it never seemed natural to him, “I just met a young Coast Guard officer who can’t find an apartment around here for his wife and child. You must know plenty of people with big houses.…”

“Well, I don’t know anybody who wants to rent …”

“There’s a war on. Isn’t it our patriotic duty to help servicemen?”

“I know, but I don’t know anyone who wants to take a stranger into her home.”