(Lobby poster for the Bob Hope-Dorothy Lamour 1941 comedy about love and conscription. Image Paramount Pictures).
I was looking out the window of the apartment at the western end of Big Pink, watching the sky dump another couple inches on the crusty white remains of the last storm. I am getting really tired of this particular winter. I am longing for Spring, and would take great delight in the return of summer. Looking through the morning messages, I saw a note from a colleague, noting that he was from Iowa, and from what part of the Hawkeye State Mac Showers hailed.
I scratched my head, I knew stuff like that but it had long faded from my memory. I knew I could find it, if I could unscramble my notes. I thought it was summer when we talked about how things worked in the Spring of 1941, with everyone knowing something was coming for America, sooner or later, since the doughty Brits were fighting on alone against the Nazis.
Uncle Dick had already gone down to join the Air Crops, and be a pilot. I tried to capture things in order, and was eager to be done with 1942, but Mac was his own man, and looking through his papers, found things he wanted to show me and talk about. The wine was chill in the dimness of the Willow Bar. They turn the lights down at 5:15 each afternoon to encourage the enthusiasm of the regulars. The pork spring rolls from the neighborhood restaurant menu were hot.
Humidity was refreshingly tolerable on the sun-drenched streets outside. Jake was doing some business at the bar, and Mac and I were at one of the little tall cocktail tables that line the deep brown wooden divider that separates fine dining from the usual suspects in the lounge.
I was scribbling like mad, since I have everything out of order. Mac brought some documents and books to review. He had the CIA monograph on the end of the Pacific War, and the new book on the Berlin Airlift. Just what I needed, more books to look at, and with the war years of 1943 and ’44 still to get though. But the craving to understand is an ongoing imperative, as insistent as thirst at the end of a summer day.
“Charles Nathan” were the Christian names of Mac’s father, but he was on travel someplace when the event that utterly changed his life- first of many-occurred. Mac’s Mom, Hedwig (“Hattie”) Showers came to the door, and Captain of Police Laurence N. Ham told her why he had driven her son over from the field house at the University of Iowa.
The Draft Act had not been passed yet, and there were some legal niceties that had to be accommodated, even though they would soon be swept away on the road to global war.
Captain Ham cleared his throat. “Your son is just ten days away from his 21st birthday, Ma’am. I need to get your written authorization for him to join the Navy.”
“Are you sure you want to do this, Son?” Hattie asked with a Mother’s concern. The rolling low hills of Iowa were at peace. The trouble in Europe was someone else’s problem for the moment. Mac nodded that he did, and she went ahead and signed her name.
(Back of Mac’s first Navy ID card, Iowa City, Pay Entry Base Date 15 Aug 1940. Photo at Willow, Socotra)
With that, Captain Ham produced an inkpad and Mac smeared his thumbprint on the now faded ID card that he pulled out of an envelope and placed on the table in front of me.
I was careful not to drip the savory dipping sauce from the spring rolls on it, or on the draft registration card that he produced as a companion piece a moment later.
“My Dad was president of the Johnson County Draft Board, and when the Draft Act was passed the next month, he insisted that I sign up, even though I was already in the Navy,” he said, taking a sip of his savory red beverage. “He said no son of mine is going to be accused of not doing his duty.” He shook his head at the ancient remark. “I was long gone before anyone could utter a word.”
(FDR signs the Selective Service Act, September 14, 1940. Photo AP)
It was the 15th of August, 1940. By acting as he did, Mac missed the lottery choice that everyone a month younger faced. Mac instantly became a Seaman Apprentice in the United States Navy. Had he waited, his lottery number (like mine, a generation later) would have given him a few more months of liberty, but perhaps delivered him as a second lieutenant of Infantry in some dog-face outfit conducting a frontal assault on a beach somewhere.
He wrote down the number on his Draft Card, just in case. 6618-238-2523.
With the passage of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burk-Wadsworth Act, millions of American men a month younger than Mac were subject to the whims of the Selective Service.
It was quite a transformation. In 1940, the total number of Americans serving in the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines and Merchant Marine were 458,365. That represented a surge of about a quarter from 1939 as Germany invaded Poland. By the time Harry Truman was deciding to end the conflict decisively in 1945, there were 12,209,238 Americans of all walks of life and both sexes in uniform.
61.2% were put there by the Draft. As Mac put it, “That’s a mobilization for you.”
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303