Paradise
The Philippines would have been paradise, if the Japanese weren't always trying to kill Dad. The fact that they were also trying to kill every other American soldier there wasn't a comfort.
Manila was known as The Pearl of the Orient, especially in the precincts where the Americans and the Europeans lived and worked. Along the boulevards, the trees were always trimmed and ringed with flowers.
For decades the Philippines had been a backwater post. A collecting pool for those on the way up, young officers eager to get their tickets punched for promotion, and those on their way out, the deadwood, the drunks, those disappointed over being passed over for rank, all of whom waiting to put in their papers and end their Army lives so that they could begin their civilian ones.
But it was a gorgeous backwater, where white orchids grew in coconut husks. There were beaches, ball fields, and brothels where the soldiers could spend their time and energy. Where, for less than a dollar, a soldier could buy enough gin and San Miguel beer to drink themselves senseless. But this was before the Japanese invaded and took over the small country, and before General Douglas "I shall return!" McArthur took it back.
When Dad was stationed there, it was still paradise, but gone were the days where the officers lived like aristocracy, and they could play polo, tennis, and golf at their men's club on the shore across Manila Bay. Dad and his comrades in arms never had the opportunity to visit the fabled Army & Navy Club that looked like a mansion surrounded by palm trees, flame trees, and flowers. Where parties were hosted, women danced with their escorts, and officers toasted one another over centerpieces of yellow trumpet flowers and white cadena de amor.
The Philippines, during our Dad's time there, was still a paradise, but, after two military invasions, it was on a more primitive level. The jungle was lush and beautiful. Thick and green and amazing to someone who was raised in the desert.
Dad and his fellow soldiers slept in tents, while the natives lived in little bamboo shacks. Some natives had little horses the size of large dogs and some had oxen or caribou that they hitched to old wooden-wheeled carts.
However, paradise had its annoyances. The soaking summer monsoons. The suffocating heat of the hot season. The incessant insects and the choking dust. Dad never thought he'd get used to it, but he did.
It didn't just rain in the Philippines during the monsoon season.... it poured. The rain poured down from above, from the sides, and Dad would swear that the rain even came at him from the ground up.
"When you stood in the rain," my father once told me, "you might as well have been standing in a waterfall."
The natives, thick as bees, were always trying to sell you something. The children would beg for food, and the older ones would run from one soldier to another trying to get a job shining their shoes, making their beds, or cleaning their sleeping quarters.
The soldiers had to have mosquito nets over their bunks so that they could sleep without being eaten alive. Not only were there a lot of mosquitoes, but they were as big as hummingbirds. Or maybe they just seemed that way.
The main annoyance, however, was Santa Muerta. Saint Death, who could easily take your life with a bullet or with a bite from a black mamba snake. It didn't matter to her.
To Dad, it seemed like in the jungles of the Philippines, everything was trying to kill you.
(A tip of the hat to Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman, who wrote
Tears In The Darkness.
A book about the Bataan Death March and its aftermath.)
Raising My Father
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jimduchene.BlogSpot.com Fifty Shades of Funny
@JimDuchene
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