My Dad In The War (Part Ten)

My father didn’t squander his time between battles with the Japanese.  In town he had a girlfriend.  Her name was Calina, and she was a pretty little Philippine girl who was a singer at one of the town’s bars. An 8x10 signed picture of her was one of the few things he brought back with him from the war.  He had other pictures of her, some of them even came into my possession, but that one was his favorite. He kept that picture until he was in his 80’s, but, after over 50 years of marriage, my mother finally tore it up and threw it away. 

"Why'd you throw away her picture?" my Dad demanded to know.

"Why were you keeping her picture?" my Mom demanded to know.

Since neither had a good enough reason for doing what they did, the argument kind of fizzled out. My Dad went into the den and sat down in his favorite chair, probably remembering back to a time when he was young and strong and the secret behind a young singer's smile, and my Mom went into the kitchen to begin making dinner, satisfied that she had made her point.

Why it took my Mom so long to get jealous, only she knows. My Dad did get pretty angry, though, but even he had to admit he wondered why it took her so long to do it.

Dad’s Philippine girlfriend was a sweet girl. She was with him for 3½ years, and followed him from town to town whenever and wherever he was transferred. She also used to do his laundry. But—and this was a big but-- she was always pestering him to marry her. Dad told her he would, but there was always a stipulation.

“Let me make Sergeant first, and then we’ll get married,” he promised, but when he made Sergeant he only came up with some other condition to postpone the ceremony.  Dad liked her, maybe he even loved her…

…but he didn’t want to marry her.

“After the war,” he told her, “I’ll come back for you and take you back to the United States with me.”

Eventually, Dad received his discharge papers, and he left, not letting the door hit him where the good Lord split him.  He didn’t even tell her good-bye.  Years later, he’d acknowledge that he treated her poorly, and he felt bad about it, especially about not keeping his promise—my Dad was a man of his word, after all--but what could he do about it?  What’s past is past.

In Spanish, Dad told me it was a shitty thing he had done to her, not keeping his promise, and I believe Dad did feel remorse about it. The look on his face, his mannerisms when he spoke about it, told me as much. I’m sure he was also thinking about her as a girl in her twenties, and here he was in his eighties. It’s the same with me, whenever I think about the girls I used to date in high school, I still think about them as the 17 or 18 year-olds they were back then, not the women they are now.

Calina used to sing “Sweetheart, Sweetheart” to my Dad when he was in the audience during her act, and perhaps even in private. Years later, when my parents would argue or Mom would be mad at him for one reason or another, he would sing “Sweetheart, Sweetheart” just to bug her.

After my Dad passed away, my Mom asked me if I had any pictures of Dad’s girlfriend from the Philippines. I told her no, that I didn’t have one, nor had I ever seen one of her or any of Dad’s girlfriends. There was no reason to tell her that I did. She would want to see the pictures, and what she would see was photographs of a very young Asian girl. Sometimes, it’s better not to open a can of worms.

On the back of that picture, his girlfriend wrote:

 

04-19-45

To my Darling Henry,

With much love and care,

Calina

 

In the picture, Calina is—was—very pretty, with a bright smile, good teeth, and wearing red lipstick. Every man’s favorite. Today, she’s either in her early nineties, or dead. Time. Life’s cruel joke.

Whenever I’m with my wife, and we see a Philippine woman, I’ll always tell her, “That’s my cousin,” regardless of the girl’s age. She usually responds with, “She’s young enough to be your great-grand-cousin. But I digress…

During this time, Dad opened up a bar in camp.  He never said where he got his liquor, but I’m sure he had some kind of connection through his girlfriend. 

When he was transferred, he left everything behind.

Although leaving his girlfriend behind in the Philippines might seem a bit callous of Dad, I’m sure he had his reasons. One of those reasons might have been a girl back home. Her name was Estella, and she was a very pretty girl with green eyes, which, for a Hispanic, is very rare. She was supposed to marry Dad, but she ended up marrying someone who didn’t go to war.

Many years later, after my Dad had married and raised a family with my mom, he was in the hospital. As my mother was waiting for the elevator to go up to my Dad’s room, Estela happened to be standing right next to her. She asked if she could visit my Dad, and my Mom didn’t know what to say, so she said yes.

They took the elevator up together, not really talking. It was an awkward few minutes, to say the least.

When they got to my Dad’s room, my mother said, “Honey, look who came to see you.”

Dad took one look at his old fiancé and immediately began cussing her out. She ran from the doorway crying, and they never saw her again.

“Why did you bring her here?” my Dad asked my mother, still upset.

“She wanted to see you,” my Mom told him, but, to tell the truth, she really didn’t know why.

She said that Dad was very mad at her for bringing by his old fiancé.

After telling you that story, this is a good place to tell you this story:

One day Dad’s platoon was at camp taking a break. They had all just got their mail, and one guy started crying and yelling. He was swearing at his girlfriend back home, calling her every name in the book.

He had just received a “Dear John” letter.

Dad, trying to give him some support and make him feel better, told him, “She’s a whore. You’re better off without her.” Or words to that effect.

His brother-in-arm’s eyes grew wide, and before he knew it Dad was facing the wrong end of the soldier’s U.S. carbine. It’s a literary cliché to say that an angry man’s nostrils flared and his teeth were bared, but that’s exactly how the soldier looked. Dad had pissed him off, and the man was going to kill him for saying what he did about his ex-girlfriend.

The soldier kept yelling at Dad that he could call his girlfriend a whore, but no one else could. Dad told me that he had never talked so fast and so carefully in his life. He apologized. He explained his point. Maybe he even told him about what happened with Estella. Whatever he said, it worked. The soldier finally put his rifle down. And he went off. Maybe to cry some more. Meanwhile, it was a learning experience for Dad.

He learned the value of carefully choosing your words, especially when you’re talking to a man holding a gun.

Which brings me to this story:

Dad and a buddy of his were on a boat in the ocean, not too far from shore. His buddy, who was a great swimmer, jumped into the clear, blue water.

“Hey,” he told my Dad, “jump in. It’s not too deep.”

He looked as if he was standing on the sandy bottom, when, in fact, he was actually treading water. That’s how good a swimmer he was.

My Dad, being no fool, looked over the side of the boat. The water was so clear that the bottom did indeed look to be only a few feet away, so my Dad jumped over the side of the boat, and immediately sank into ten feet or more of water.

Not being a strong swimmer, he began to panic, and came up splashing and sputtering.

“What’s the matter?” his friend laughed.

My Dad probably had a few choice words to say to his buddy.

Dad swam back to shore, grabbed his carbine, and took a couple of shots at his buddy. My father wasn’t trying to kill him, or even hit him. He was just trying to make a point.

You don’t play practical jokes on anybody with a gun.

 

 

Raising My Father

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