The war has not ended quickly. I think often about the woman who confronted the older men in the corner table at the Atheneum, informing them that her son was training at Fort McCoy and would soon be sent overseas, and praying that he would be home for Christmas. Soon after that day, the couple stopped coming to the Atheneum for their weekly lunches. I saw them for a time, the woman and her husband, on Sundays at St. Spyridon, but a few months passed and I did not see them again. Whether they moved away from Sheboygan, whether their son has completed training and been sent off somewhere to fight foreign enemies, I have no idea.
For months, even after Pearl Harbor was bombed, the war for most of us was far away, almost imaginary – something you read about in Newsweek, talked about with your friends, heard reports about on the radio, tried to picture. But lately, the war has come to Sheboygan, in an unexpected way.
We first hear about it from our high school civics teacher, Mr. Robson. If any of you are wondering why Akiko hasn’t been at school… He pauses and looks around the room to make sure that he has our attention. …President Roosevelt has signed Executive Order 9066 placing all citizens of Japanese descent in American internment camps. There is nothing in Mr. Robson’s words to indicate how he feels about this, but from his severe tone of voice I can tell that he does not approve.
I had read about the President’s order, and I had noticed that our classmate Akiko Kobayashi had missed several days of school, which was unusual. But neither Nicholas nor I had put these two pieces of information together. Akiko is one of the half-dozen or so smartest kids in our class, although her braininess is a quiet, modest kind. Everyone realized, of course, that her family was Japanese-American, but it was ridiculous to suspect that the Kobayashis would have any loyalty to the Emperor. In fact, since Pearl Harbor, the kids at school – and to be honest, I have to include myself – have been ranting openly about the Japs, trying to outdo each other with our patriotism, without giving Akiko a second thought, as if she were somehow exempt from her own heritage. Only, she is not, and now she is gone.
And before long, the war grows nearer yet. This time, we hear the news from Papa. They’re bringing German POW’s to Sheboygan, he announces at the supper table one Sunday evening in April. Italians too, he adds, as if this information is barely worth mentioning.
Mama drops her fork and lets out a great sigh. Why would they bring German and Italian prisoners of war to Sheboygan, of all places? I don’t know where you hear these stories.
Papa stiffens. It’s true, Katerina. They’ve been flying them in since January. They’re housing them at the old asylum outside of town. I heard it from Kyle Headley, who ought to know.
I have no idea know who Kyle Headley is. But the name apparently carries enough weight with Mama that, after another great sigh, she drops the argument. And the story turns out to be true. A few weeks later, Nicholas and I, along with our friend Kenneth Cobb, drive down to the old Sheboygan County Hospital for the Insane, park outside the fence, walk up to the gate and ask the guard on duty what is going on inside. From a distance, we can see men walking around the property, but there is no way to tell if they are Germans or Italians or Americans.
You know what a POW is? the guard asks. He puffs up his chest, as if the appearance of three ignorant young people has suddenly inflated him.
They’re Germans? Kenneth replies. And Italians? And Japs too? What are they doing in Sheboygan?
No Japs here. The guard takes his hat off and scratches his head. He looks around as if he is uncertain whether he should be talking to us. They were being kept in England, but I guess the Brits thought it’d be better if they were a little further out of reach. I don’t know exactly.
It does not make a lot of sense to me, but not much about the war makes sense, even now. Nicholas and I agree not to tell our parents about our fact-finding mission to what was once the county insane asylum. The place had a long history, of which I know a little, before it began taking in German and Italian war prisoners, and Mama especially would not approve of our adventure. Legend has it that fire broke out two years after the asylum opened, back in the 1870s, killing several patients and destroying the original building. The place was rebuilt, but a few years later a watchman was killed in another fire. Then lightning struck the building, tearing off part of the roof. Kenneth insists that more than one on-duty nurse killed herself on different occasions, and that their spirits haunt the place today. I doubt this part of the story, but I do not think that I would want to be one of those POW’s, either knowing or not knowing that they are being housed in a converted and possibly haunted asylum for the insane.
The summer of 1944 is one for the books, as Papa would say. For Nicholas and me, it begins with our graduation from Sheboygan Central High. A few of our classmates who have already turned eighteen had dropped out of school early to join the military, usually with great celebration from the community. But the big date for us is still, to Mama’s relief, several weeks away. So, after graduation, we return to our nonpaying jobs at the Atheneum, biding our time. One of our neighbors, Lowell Potts, who is actually eight months younger than us, has a real job working at a filling station on Union Avenue, and he does not miss an opportunity to remind everyone that he has money to throw around. That bothers me sometimes, but Nicholas tells me that it doesn’t matter, that we have everything we need, and that kids our age in London are worried about their houses being firebombed, and kids in Russia are worried about starving to death. Nicholas and I both follow the news about the war, but for some reason Nicholas has always been more empathetic than anyone I know – including me.
Papa feels bad about Nicholas and me working without pay, even though neither of us have ever made a fuss about it. So he and Mama agree to give us free time Monday and Tuesday afternoons, which are usually not very busy. But around town there is not much to do, with the public pool closed because of the polio outbreak. So we usually pass the time at home, reading or playing checkers or throwing darts or listening to the radio or just sitting on the front porch talking about what we plan to do with our lives.
On July 20, President Roosevelt is nominated at the Democratic National Convention as the party’s candidate for a fourth term. He tells the delegates that he will be running on a three-point plan: to win the war, to secure the peace with force if necessary, and to build an economy with full employment and a high standard of living. Over the years, Papa has been hot and cold on Roosevelt, but he tells us now that FDR is the only person who can win the war and keep the country together, and that anyone opposing him in this day and age is working against the best interests of America. Mama’s only comment is that she will vote for Roosevelt if winning the war means ending the war. The rest of it, she says, is just politicians talking politics to people who do not know any better. Mama has become more cynical since the war began, but at least she and Papa have found a way to disagree without being disagreeable.
On July 22, at last, Nicholas and I celebrate our 18th birthday. Last year, Papa expanded the restaurant, adding a large room in the back which now serves as a gathering place for the local Greek community, and today the room hosts a private birthday celebration for my brother and me. Mama has decorated the place with blue-and-white crepe paper streamers, blue-and-white balloons, and hand-lettered signs with different messages of congratulations. Blue and white are the national colors of Greece – blue representing the sea and the sky, white representing purity and the Greek struggle for independence. Despite Mama’s constant reminder that we are red-white-and-blue Americans, Papa has prevailed this time on the birthday party color scheme. After all, he often reminds Mama, usually attempting to settle an argument, this may be America, but ours is a Greek restaurant. Or maybe we should start serving hot dogs?
Mama makes it clear that she does not appreciate the sarcasm. If she had her way, I think she probably would add hot dogs to the menu of the Atheneum, to cater to those families with young children whose tastes are either more patriotic or more humdrum than lamb stew and feta cheese and spinach pie. But Mama is wise about choosing her battles.
The day is a birthday celebration, but there is much more to celebrate. Last month, more than 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. Newsweek called it the largest amphibious military operation of the war, and it has pushed the Germans into retreat. For reasons I do not understand, they are still occupying Greece, as Papa will remind anyone who walks into the Atheneum with some new announcement about the war. But the Greek resistance movement has held strong. The Fascists – or the Goddamned Italians, as Nicholas and I refer to them, mimicking Papa – are also losing ground. Hitler is pushing Il Duce around like a piece on a chess board. Across the globe, even the disciplined Japanese seem to be in chaos.
With the way things are going in Europe, Nicholas and I have discussed the possibility that the war may be over by the time we enlist. This is, I know, something that Mama is desperately hoping will happen. But Nicholas and I are conflicted about it. We have read enough in Newsweek, and have seen enough returning soldiers, to not romanticize the war. We know that the battle scenes in the movies have very little to do with actual combat, and that real war has more terror and loneliness and boredom, more suffering and death, than moments of bravery and heroism. But we also believe that this war especially is a battle against true evil, that this may be our generation’s defining moment, and that our own lives may be measured in the end by whether or not we took part in the fight.
Our parents have closed the restaurant early, so when the party begins at five o’clock, we have the place to ourselves. Mama and Papa have invited some of the neighbors and a few of the Atheneum’s regulars, as well as the couple who own the flower shop down the street, the butcher who provides most of the restaurant’s meats, a widower who works the neighborhood news stand, Father Gregory, and a few other people I do not know. Nicholas and I have invited some of our friends from school, including Kenneth Cobb and Lynette Markey, who is Nicholas’ current girlfriend. He has had three girlfriends over the past year and a half, but he and Lynette have been together for almost eight months, and Nicholas seems especially serious about her. Any thoughts about his joining the priesthood have pretty much vanished. I have had one girlfriend over the same period, Monica Noonan, but we broke up because I failed to notice that she had changed her hair color. She has not been invited to the party. Monica Noonan and Rose McLaughlin are the only girls I have kissed in my eighteen years.
Nicholas and I spend the first hour of the party with our friends, while Mama and Papa roam around the room. We talk mostly about the war. Lynette has an older brother who has enlisted in the Army and whose vision is apparently better than Papa’s, because he has been sent to Fort McCoy for training. Kenneth, the only Negro in the room and one of the few Negroes at our high school, is a month older than Nicholas and me, and he tells everyone that he has enlisted in the Navy. This comes as news to me. If America is still at war after he has completed training, Kenneth says that expects to be on a ship somewhere in the Pacific, killing Japs. I keep it to myself, but I am skeptical. I know that there are Negro soldiers and Negro sailors, but I have not heard of them fighting alongside white soldiers and sailors. Which seems strange when you consider who are fighting against and what we are supposed to be fighting for. In any case, after Pearl Harbor, we had all thought that, with America finally joining the Allies, the war would quickly be over. But here we are. Mama is always lecturing us that ending a war is a lot harder than starting one, and I can see that she knows a thing or two.
At six-thirty, two of the Atheneum’s waitresses appear from the kitchen with platters of lamb and stuffed grape leaves, bowls of orzo, plates of cold zucchini and eggplant, and baskets of pita bread. Mama directs people to mix, which breaks up all the little cliques that have formed – although Nicholas and Lynnette are allowed to sit together – and everyone eats.
In the middle of the meal, Mama stands and raises her glass. Eighteen years ago, life changed forever for Damianos and me, she says. We had this restaurant, we had each other. Now, a family. She looks at me, then at Nicholas. It almost seems as if she is fighting not to cry. These two boys have made us so happy. I cannot imagine our lives without them, our Julian and Nicholas. She lowers and then quickly raises her glass again, and everyone else in the room does the same. I notice that Lynette Markey is holding Nicholas’ hand in what Mama would call a death grip.
For months, Nicholas and I have had whispered bedtime conversations about enlisting in the military. Kenneth has been lobbying for us to join the Navy, but imagining myself on a huge ship somewhere in the middle of the ocean gives me nightmares, so Nicholas and I have agreed that, if we go to war, it will be as U.S. Army soldiers. As twins, serving in different branches of the military is even more unimaginable, although we understand that we will have to serve wherever we are sent.
Until now, trying to enlist for military service would have meant lying to the local draft board about our age. Kids everywhere are doing it, and the government seems only too happy to play along, if it means being able to send more young men into combat. The law does allow for a seventeen-year-old to enlist with the approval of their parents, and Papa would probably have consented if asked, but that would have unleashed hell in the household, so Nicholas and I decided not to put him in that position. But we are both eighteen now, which means two things. First, registering for the draft, as Papa informed us after Pearl Harbor, is no longer even optional. And second, however Mama might feel about it, we can choose to enlist with or without parental consent.
And so, at nine o’clock on the morning of Monday, July 24, Nicholas and I leave the house and head down on foot to the Sheboygan draft office – a place, I recall, that was once a beauty salon. I have seen the office, but I have never been inside. I open the door with no idea what to expect. The room seems somehow larger than it appeared from the outside. A half-dozen metal chairs, all of them vacant, are arranged in a row in the center of the room. A wooden teacher’s desk faces the chairs. There are two men occupying the place, neither of whom I recognize. The older one, who is seated behind the desk, is dressed in a gray business suit. He is shuffling through a stack of papers piled in front of him. The other man is dressed in some kind of military outfit – brown shirt, brown pants, brown cap. He is standing beneath an American flag, which is hanging from a pole anchored to the wall. I feel a sudden urge to salute either the flag or the man beneath it, but Nicholas simply nods, so I do the same.
Boys, says the older man. He gives us a grim smile, as if he were expecting us.
Nicholas explains that Saturday was our eighteenth birthday and that we are there to enlist in the Army. The man opens a drawer, pulls out a form and writes something at the top of the page. Papa had not detailed what was involved when he registered for the draft after Pearl Harbor, or later when he tried unsuccessfully to enlist. But Nicholas has gotten the rundown from Lynette, whose brother is now undergoing basic training at Fort McCoy in western Wisconsin, so we have a pretty good idea what to expect. Because of his eyesight, Papa was classified 4F, which meant rejection from military service for physical, mental, or moral reasons. It seems to me that they could have rejected Papa without lumping him in with the moral degenerates – but I suppose we are going to be learning that the military has its particular way of doing things.
So far, the man in the uniform has not so much as acknowledged us, but now he pulls a chair up to the desk, sits down next to the older man and makes eye contact with Nicholas and me. You boys are brothers? he asks.
Twins, Nicholas and I say at the same time.
And you’re eighteen?
Nicholas has already answered this, so I repeat the information. Two days ago.
The older man introduces himself as Vernon Kohler. The other one has a badge with his last name on it, Walker, which he apparently considers enough of an introduction. We usually do these interviews one at a time, says Mr. Kohler. But I don’t see why we can’t talk to both of you boys. He looks at Walker, who says nothing.
The furniture in the room does not seem very well arranged for an interview. Walker instructs us to pull up two of the chairs, and Nicholas and I take our places in front of the desk, and we wait. The initial questions are more like what you would expect to be asked in a regular job interview: Have you both finished high school? What were your grades like? What are your interests? Why do you want to serve in the military? Have you ever been arrested or been in any kind of legal trouble? How do your parents feel about your enlisting? Nicholas and I could respond with pretty much identical answers, but Kohler and Walker want to hear from each of us, in turn. Eventually, the questions begin to focus more on our fitness for service: any childhood illness, injuries, family history of disease, medications prescribed, whether we have ever been diagnosed with vision problems requiring glasses, episodes of depression or attempts to commit suicide, homosexual inclinations. Nicholas and I had measles and chicken pox when we were children, and Nicholas broke an arm trying to climb out of a friend’s second-floor bedroom window, but there is nothing else very remarkable about our medical histories, and certainly nothing that would disqualify us from military service. Mr. Kohler takes notes while Walker sits back, listens and scrutinizes us.
Over the next several days, Nicholas and I are sent to three different offices for different evaluations. Our height is measured, our weight is taken, our vision and hearing are tested, our teeth are checked. A nurse takes our temperature and our blood pressure. A doctor who appears to be not much older than us looks at our feet. We are given basically the same reading and comprehension and writing test that we took at the end of sophomore English. We are quizzed on who the president is and what the three branches of government are and what distinguishes a democracy. Later, I ask Nicholas whether he supposes we would have disqualified ourselves if we were not able to correctly identify the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, and what he thinks the question has to do with fitness for military service.
Of course, Mama is anxious and unhappy about the path Nicholas and I are pursuing.
Why in the world would they send two brothers to fight a war? she asks at Sunday supper. She is looking at Papa, but it is obvious she is not expecting an answer. Our only two boys? It doesn’t make the least bit of sense.
I am surprised when Nicholas replies. It’s our duty, Mama. I know you don’t like it, but we’re physically fit and old enough, and our country is at war.
Mama is speechless for a moment. She looks at Papa as if he has put the words into Nicholas’ mouth. Finally she slaps the table for attention. I know that, she says. I’m asking why this family has to sacrifice the only children we have. Do you think that all the senators and judges and the president of General Motors are sending their boys off to war? They aren’t! It’s the working families who are sending their children off to fight this stupid war!
Until now, Papa has held his tongue, but calling it a stupid war is apparently more than he can tolerate. And so the Sunday supper degenerates again, as it has so many times before, into a noisy argument about Nazis and Fascists and Japs, freedom and tyranny and, of course, the plight of the people of Greece who want nothing more than to be left alone but who are cursed with having a good strategic location and a weak fighting force.
Nicholas and I learn quickly that we are acceptable candidates for the United States military, and we are ordered to report to Fort McCoy. Our leaving will probably force Mama and Papa to hire at least one more full-time worker at the restaurant, which I know they cannot afford. But Papa tells Mama as gently as possible that every family in Sheboygan is doing their part for the war effort, and this is their share of the Pappas family commitment. I wait for Mama to argue, but events seem to have beaten her down and she says nothing.
Nicholas and I are excited at the thought that we will soon be part of the action, after so many months of whispered conversation and plotting. But we know that we cannot show excitement around Mama, so the days before our departure are a bit like a slow dance. Mostly, we put in our hours at the Atheneum, act somber when adults grab our hands and tell us they will pray for our safe return, do our chores at home without complaining, and avoid Mama as much as possible. Uncharacteristically, Nicholas takes to sneaking out of the house every night to see Lynette, after Mama and Papa have gone to bed. I am usually asleep when he returns, but even when I am not asleep I do not pepper him with questions. I know that leaving Lynette will be even harder for Nicholas than leaving Mama and Papa. I wish there was someone that I would miss that much, but that person is someone I have not yet met.
The government has chartered buses to periodically take recruits from eastern Wisconsin to Fort McCoy, about three hours to the west. Our departure date is a Wednesday, the first week of September, and Papa has floated the idea of closing the Atheneum for the day and driving Nicholas and me. I am relieved when Mama points out that the restaurant is not in a position to close in the middle of the week, and she insists that we say our goodbyes in the morning. So when the day arrives, we all shamble through our normal morning routines before climbing into the back seat of the car, our bags in the trunk, and make the slow drive downtown to the bus terminal. Papa had a radio installed in the car last year as a birthday gift to Mama – an extravagance she came to appreciate very grudgingly, after months of scolding and squabbling. Today, the radio station is playing one melancholy song after another: You Always Hurt the One You Love by the Mills Brothers, I’ll be Seeing You by Bing Crosby, I’ll Walk Alone by Dinah Shore. These are the songs, ordinarily, that Mama loves. But today, each one seems weighted – more sorrowful and poignant than the last. Finally, Mama snaps off the radio and we make the remainder of the trip in silence.
We arrive about fifteen minutes early, but the bus is already there, idling alongside the curb. I recognize two of the kids standing near the rear of the bus, talking to each other and kicking pebbles. Their parents are standing back a respectful distance, engaged in conversations of their own. There are another half-dozen or so kids I do not recognize, some of them nuzzling their girls. My guess is that their parents drove them here from nearby towns like Plymouth and Cedar Grove and Elkhart Lake, and that they are navigating the same awkward ritual as Nicholas and me – wearing a mask of calm bravado, trying out the role of citizen-patriot, alternating between excitement and terror, mostly anxious for the adventure to begin.
Mama is the first out of the car. She stands and waits for Nicholas and me to emerge, and when we do she gives each of us a long, desperate hug. Come home to me, she says. Let others be the war heroes. Be my hero and come home to me. Safe, she adds.
I am, at first, a bit surprised not to see Lynette here. But Nicholas is wiser than most kids about segregating the parts of his life that need to be kept apart. They have said their goodbyes, I am sure.