My Life As a Muckracker As told to Dr. Freud (part four)

My near disaster with Bette and the Queen Mary gangplank cast an ominous cloud over what was to be my triumphal and perhaps romantic return to Europe. 
Doc, I was just a young buck being a young buck. I was acting almost normal, right?

Not a word from the master. But I detected a slight smile curl up from his lips. Absolution, I thought...

In spite of the chaos, (I called it a misunderstanding) Bette decided to stay in London with me at the Sloan Square Hotel she had booked for us, while I visited the social service agencies, hospital and senior centers. I was treated royally by my hosts wherever I went, giving me a badly needed psychological boost.

The one major hang-up was the Morris Minor mini car I rented from an agency on Piccadilly Circus. It was tiny, like a toy. The driver's seat was on the wrong side and I had to shift with my left hand.

Ever been on Piccadilly Circus, Doc? It's like a merry-go-round that never stops. It is almost impossible to get off of. Even with a normal car.

Well to make a long story short, I finally got off the Circus. I did my thing, while Bette went back to Oxford to finish up the term. I was in denial, Doc. I found the much heralded British health and welfare institutions neat and clean, full of mostly happy, blue eyed Anglo Saxons who all seemed like they belonged to the same Rotary Club.

This is not Cleveland, I told to myself.

I found it pretty much the same in the Scandinavian countries later on, by the way.

On the fourth day I finished my royal British adventure and headed up to Oxford, reminding myself to drive on the left side. I promptly got lost. Finally arrived at four. I had promised to pick Bette up at one, and found her waiting with her bags in front of her dorm, not happy. The following days were difficult, but we moved on. We took the ferry from Dover across the channel to Esbjerg, the port for Copenhagen. That rainy day in Denmark added a touch of gloom to our fading relationship. Very early on the morning of the third day.... well, it happened, Doc, it happened. Very early, like at five, I heard her wandering around the room, packing her bag, and heading for the door. For some reason I didn't say a word.

Honest...she left note: “I will be at the railroad station in Bonn, Thursday afternoon.”

I didn't quite know what to make of it. Remember, I was in state of denial.

I spent the next two days on my scheduled visits to some very impressive senior centers. One evening I was hosted by a club of old folks in a government run center. Again, blue eyed happy folks in the land of Danny Kaye's "Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen." Again, not Cleveland. Not even Columbus, I thought to myself. I made a mental note.

Then it was time to sail off for the Deutschland on a ferry from Esbjerg to the port of Hamburg, from where I had sailed home ten years prior with my division. That town took a terrific beating during the war. At my hotel I had to explain to them that I was flying solo. It was okay. So was the famous the St. Pauli neighborhood that I toured in the evening. It was good day, in spite of everything.

Thursday morning I took the midday train south along the Rhine, a beautiful trip to Bonn and destiny.

I spotted Bette in the crowd with a gentleman. My heart sank.

“This is Professor Dinbgbat from the university here. We're old friends. We’ve decided to spend a couple of weeks together. See you back in Cleveland?”

I was speechless. I said goodbye, sort of. I never saw Bette Daneman again.

Assmannshausen on the Rhine

I grabbed the next Rhine mail barge down the river through the most beautiful river valley in Europe, and jumped off at Assmannshausen, because I liked the name. I found a room in a small hotel with an attached (typically German) tavern then I cried my eyes out, sipping perhaps the most delicious finely crafted beer in the world.

That's what men do, right Doc? Right? Have a brew and move on beyond the despair of the moment.

I reminded myself that as a reporter, there was work to do.

Zurich, Vienna and Tito's Zagreb lay ahead.

My Life as a Wolverine with PTSD As Told to Dr. Freud

Frankly Doctor, the end of the war may have solved the world's problems, but not all of mine. Let me explain.

Yes. I was home, alive, a hero of sorts, clutching a four year free ride at the University of Michigan, thanks to the GI Bill.

Yes, the home of the Victors Valiant, where athletes were students, where winning was a tradition. Where campus life is everything that a battle weary soldier might desire. I wanted to become one of them. A victor, a winner.

A man.

But it really didn't work out that simply.

First my girlfriend Rita and I broke up. Once I shed my ribbon draped uniform the glamour was gone. That hurt, Doctor. It really did! Was I less handsome? Less masculine? Inside I felt okay. My hormones were raging. Perhaps hers weren't. You know what they say about Jewish girls.

Dr. Freud looked up at me through his squinting eyes.

"Son, you should know that is a myth," he said with a knowing smile.

("That little old guy was a fount of wisdom," I remember telling myself a couple of years later.)

Rita moved with her family to Waukegan, Illinois and attended the University of Illinois. (More on that later.)

I told myself that campus life in the coveted Ann Arbor, would heal the wounds of my fragile sense of self, as I made the transition into civilian life.

The first psychological blow was my assignment to live in Willow Run Village, a make-shift development built by the government to house laborers in Henry Ford’s Willow Run Bomber Plant, where they built the B-24 Liberator bombers that helped win the war. Now it was empty and the university, desperate for housing, grabbed it.

When I arrived in Ann Arbor I found the town and university swarming with ex Gl's, most on the GI Bill. I was one of them; just another number at the very overcrowded university.

The "village" looked very much like the barracks back at Indiantown Gap where I did my basic training. It was in Ypsilanti, an ugly town, 12 miles from Ann Arbor. 

Can you imagine Doctor, my dream of campus life, relegated to a barracks and riding a school bus to and from campus? Maybe that was it, Doctor. Was that it? There weren't many women at Willow Run Village.

He grunted. Put down his pipe and and picked up his pencil.

"Ya" he said. “Tell me some more."

What I saw of the campus was through the window of a rattling school bus. The high point of the barracks life was listening on my radio to the Cleveland Indians play the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.

Even that didn't rock my soul.

I wound up the session by telling the doctor, of my difficult experience with class registration. We gathered in huge, impersonal classrooms (lecture halls) where professors, some well known, read from their so called scholarly books.

For example, our European History class with Professor Reichenbach was held in the lobby of the University museum. There were, perhaps, 500 folding chairs in this cavernous space. Since the bus from Ypsilanti was usually late, I always sat near the back. I could barely understand or hear what he was saying as he read from his book, which I am sure was a great literary document. I rarely took notes. It was uninspiring, to say the least.

I knew that something unsavory was happening. I couldn't concentrate. I was depressed.

Finally, I went to the University Health Service to see a "counselor". There was what he called a “Worry Bird" on his desk.

"Give your problems to the bird. Maybe you will feel better".

I scoffed.

Can you imagine that, Doctor? A worry bird!

Instead I headed back to Cleveland for a serious mid semester rest and visit to a real therapist, who I had known. That, and the change of scenery helped and I soon made it back to Ann Arbor, just in time to finish the semester with acceptable grades.

There was hope.

Next: My major campus achievements in Ann Arbor...

My Life with PTSD As Told to Dr. Freud (Part One)

“PTSD? Vat in the Vorld is that?,” the old man murmured as I started telling my story.

I understand, Dr. Freud, they hadn't dreamed up the disease in those days, sir, but let me explain.

In the spring of 1944 the 95th Division was wrapping up the war in Europe. We had taken Metz in a brutal battle that had cost us 50% casualties. Our first sergeant, a fine man from Indiana, was dead from a fatal wound to the stomach. Several of my close friends had been killed in an ambush. Our regimental commander was sent back to Paris for psychiatric treatment. Then there was a brush with The Bulge, another trauma.

I was still a callow 19 year old, shaken but not battered by these events. We ended up the war by crossing the Rhine and taking Dortmund, a Cleveland-like steel town on the Ruhr, destroyed by the battering of the final surge of the war.

We were the labeled “Victory Divison.”

On VE day we celebrated with the rest of them.

We took off our steel helmets and simultaneously breathed in the fresh spring air. No guns, no carbines, no M ones. The weight was off our shoulders.

It was like being reborn, Doctor. You understand the feeling. I was alive, I had survived the war!

“Ya, ya,” he murmured, showing absolutely no emotion.

I was ready to become a human being again. I was a young buck ready to come home a hero to my beloved girlfriend, who wrote me almost every day. To my grandmother, Goldie, my twin sister and some adoring friends. I was joyous.

But there was a hitch. There always is, Doctor.

Right?

Word somehow slipped out, perhaps through WikiLeaks, that our unit would soon be moved to the port of Hamburg and shipped back to the states to prepare for the invasion of Japan!

OMG, I screamed to myself...What will I tell my mother?!

Compared to Japan, Europe was a piece of cake, Doctor Freud. I was really anxious.

I tried to pretend this was all a bad dream, Doctor.

Why me? Why the 95th? What did we do to deserve this?!

We tried to kiss it off as just a wild army-type rumor, as we climbed aboard the troop ship in late May for the trip back to Boston and wherever destiny would take us. We were the first combat division to go back.

Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud are you asleep?

You dropped your pencil! I was going to Japan, Doctor. Did you hear me?

lnvade. Japan. A terrible place! I can't even speak the language.

The old man scowled, a bored scowl.

He mumbled, “You're time is up, son. I will write you a prescription for Valium. Take two before you go bed. You'II feel better.”

But Doctor! Japan!  Banzai! Kamikaze!

Unmoved, he murmured, "Stay calm, call my secretary in two weeks. Maybe I can help.”

(To be continued)

My Life with PTSD As Told to Dr. Freud (Part Two)

Thank you, thank you so much, Doctor for seeing me again! I'm so sorry about not paying you last time, but your wife wouldn't take my MasterCard. She didn't know what it was.

MasterCard is modern day miracle, Doctor. It's a scientific wonder. But I brought dollars this time. They are as good as Deutsche Marks. I promise!

But back to my story.

As we were heading to Boston in the troopship we were told we each would get a 30 day leave at home before regrouping at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, for "jungle training" before heading for the Far East for the invasion that would make Normandy look like child's play. Japan had pledged to defend its country to the death of every man woman and child.

You know what sublimation is, Doctor. I sublimated, big time, all the way home on the train ride from Beantown to Cleveland, as I prepared for my grand entrance back home as a hero.

In Cleveland, you come into the terminal under ground, not like in Europe, Doctor.

So there I was, trudging up those steps (that was before escalators) to the grand hall, one of the grandest terminals in America, with my duffle bag on my shoulder and battle stars and an air medal on my chest. It was the hero's welcome I had envisioned.

My mother was in tears. She rarely cried. Little did she or the rest of them know that I was carrying a lot more baggage than that heavy duffle, but more on that later.

This was a time for joy and celebration. We were among the first back from Europe. When I walked down the street, people saluted. Honest. And sometimes I saluted back. I had been faithful to my girlfriend Rita Barnet, a sweet high school senior who would graduate Heights High in the spring. One of the high points was the day she took me to school to show off to her classmates. (They looked like children to me, Doctor after my year and a half away. And I, of course, was a man! A hero, a warrior.)

At the beginning of our 30 day leave, I hooked up with my friend Lawrence Siegel, a neighbor in Cleveland Heights. He had been assigned to the 104th division which took the brunt of the surprise Nazi attack in the Battle of the Bulge. What was left of the division was pretty much decimated and sent back to the States. He didn't talk about it much. I didn't push. He was one of few survivors of his unit.

So Larry and I did the last dance in Cleveland, you might call it. We took our girlfriends out early, dropping them off about eleven, then headed downtown. It was pretty lively in those days. Nothing much was said about Japan but I felt it, Doctor. It had a doom-like quality finding a special home in my brain... get it Doc?

Baggage…doom…BRAIN…PTSD.

At the end of our month I was shipped down to Mississippi, and Larry went to a military hospital for rehab, whatever that meant in those days.

My trip took me first to Camp Atterbury near Indianapolis for a few days for reassignment work. By some huge coincidence I ran into my first cousin Malcolm Krohngold, who had spent several years in Australia, and was also ticketed for Japan.

On the second day in Indiana I picked up a copy of the lndianapolis Star. It had this huge headline: TRUMAN SAYS WE DROPPED AN AUTOMATIC BOMB ON JAPAN.

OMG I said to myself and then to Malcolm, “What the hell is an automatic bomb!?”
"You're reading it wrong. It's atomic bomb." my cousin said.

I didn't know what the hell it was except it was another weapon to scare and kill a lot of people. We had already carpet bombed Tokyo, killing two hundred thousand human beings in one night...what could be worse?

Little did I know.

There was a lot of talk and speculation, but nothing for certain. As we climbed aboard I the train I noticed something unusual. There were no Negro* troops in our car. They were all sent to the back of the train, to the last two cars.

I wondered why, but I didn't think much more about it. There were no Negroes in my division. Didn't see many in combat. They were mostly in quartermaster units. Maybe that’s why. I’d known of two at Heights High. Both smart. The son and daughter of the custodian of the apartment next door, I remembered.

As we moved along the tracks heading south, we crossed into Kentucky at Cincinnati and into another world, where I was to learn a lot about the disgusting treatment of Negroes in the American south.

Hattiesburg, here I come, where we would prepare for the landing on the southern island of Japan. As the train pulled into to the station I was stunned. I hadn't seen any like this before. Over the entrance to the station there were large signs over two separate doors. One sign said "White," and the other, “Colored”.

Welcome to the land of Dixie, I thought to myself. Aren't we all fighting the same war?!

I turned to Dr. Freud.
“Does this remind you of those signs in the stores and houses in Germany? Big stars of David and the word JUDEN?”

I had seen some in Dortmund.

“Ya, ya,” he said quietly, barely showing emotion.

“Remember to take your Valium, son. See you in two weeks.”

I swallowed hard, gave him the money and turned away. I wonder how long he will put up with me, I said to myself as I turned and walked out down the narrow staircase and out the door...

(to be continued)

* In this essay African Americans are referred to as "Negroes," as this latter terminology is what was used at the time. Usage here is meant to reflect the language of the period and is not intended to be derogatory or disrespectful.

My Life With PTSD As Told to Dr. Freud (Part Three)

"It's over Doctor, it's over," I gleefully announced as I marched into Dr. Freud's office for my appointment, not even taking time to close the door.

Ah, you're feeling better, son.

No sir, it's not my PTSD. Not the election. It's the war.

Grab a pencil and paper so I can finish the story. You remember how the Japs* suffered after we dropped the first bomb? But the Emperor wouldn't give up.

It turns out we hadn't burned and mutilated enough bodies with the first bomb, so we did it again on another city, probably bigger than Cleveland. Tens of thousands of civilians were horribly destroyed by fire, radiation and explosion.

Remember, Doctor. And the Japs and their Emperor had had enough.

We celebrated. Can you imagine that? We celebrated the end of the war.

We celebrated the bomb.

And all that death.

Truth is, Doctor, we really celebrated because we wouldn't have to die on the beaches of Japan's southern island.

I felt a joyful, self-serving pleasure of the moment. No one, not I nor anyone else, stopped to think about what we had done. The Bomb, the Doomsday bomb, had saved our lives, but created the monstrous weapon that would haunt the world for the rest of our lives. I felt guilt inside the joy.

Joy and guilt. Is that a hint, Doc? Joy and guilt. PTSD?

But there was another hitch, Doctor. Remember in life there always a hitch. This time it was Wikileaks again, telling us that our division, the heroic victors of Metz, were to be re-trained to go to Japan for another perhaps three year stint as the Army of occupation.

"They've got to be kidding," I told Capt. Compton, our company commander, an intelligent guy, a teacher in real life. 

“We've gone though hell and now they want to make us glorified MP’s. Keep us away from home for two or three more years. Good God, haven't we done enough?” attempting to appeal to his spiritual side.

“And,” I added, perhaps thoughtlessly, “I promised my girlfriend I would be home by Christmas.”

He showed no emotion and stared at me.

“You're in the Army, Private Weidenthal. We follow orders here. No romantic bullshit about Christmas and girl friends.”

He must have wondered why a nice Jewish boy like me was so into Christmas.

I had fallen back into depression, Doctor. Orders were orders, and that was that.

But there a few guys in our unit, officers and enlisted men, who were sure that we could turn it around. We would take our appeal to the nation. A 1945 version of a media blitz.

Take the Victory Division out of the army of occupation. We've done enough. Huge casualties. Six months straight of combat without a day of rest. The Bulge. Haven't we done enough!? That would be our theme.

We sent letters to President Truman and his wife Bess at the White House who we thought might be sympathetic and influence the president. We wrote to our senators and representatives, to General Marshall, our military commander in chief. Then we turned our public relations blitz on the media: Walter Winchell, Pearson and Allen, who happened to be broadcasting from nearby New Orleans (we went to their studio while they were broadcasting).

We wrote to The News Orleans Times Picayune and sent letters to our hometown newspapers.

It was an all out assault to get the good guys on our side.

And we waited and waited.

Meantime we moved forward with MP training, learning Japanese customs and language lessons.

There was a lot free time. We spent weekends in the French Quarter on Bourbon Street. It made Soho in London look like Sunday School, Doctor.

But I remained a virgin, doctor and I was proud of that. At 19 I remained pure, Doctor. That's good Doctor, right? I did the right thing? I stayed pure. I know you have some unusual ideas about sex. Would I have been better off exercising my manhood?

Silence. A nod. Nothing more.

One day in late October while were out taking lessons on how to bow and shake hands Japanese style, the word came down. General Marshall had decided that the 95th division should be disbanded, and its members honorably discharged and sent home.

I was ecstatic. I would see Rita by Christmas. My mother would be so happy.

As I headed north to Columbus for official discharge, I had some lingering thoughts about all the uncivilized inhuman restrictions on people of color AND HOW UGLY IT SEEMED. But my thoughts slipped back to Rita and four years of college ahead, and later a career as a journalist.

I did my bit and I felt proud.

No time to be a reformer.

But it wasn't as easy as it might seem, Doctor. There was trouble looming ahead.

Unexpected trouble, Doctor.

"Ya,” he said, "in two weeks. "

(To be continued.) Next: From Warrior to Wolverine and the Worry Bird

*In this essay "Japs" reflects wartime rhetoric of the time. Usage here is meant to reflect the language of the period and no disrespect or offense to contemporary readers is intended.

Dr. Freud, Wake Up!

Recently I read in the Times that the decision makers of the Psychiatric profession at their annual meeting have declared the malady called “hoarding phobia”, an official mental illness: eligible for treatment by a certified shrink. Covered, thank the lord, by Medicare.

I’ve often wondered how they decided these things. So now I know. And I am delighted. Indeed, Dr. Freud should be alive to share this milestone of medical science. I wondered to myself how he would react to this historic moment.          

With me, saving stuff is sort of a personal thing. Not a disease, simply more of a sentimental habit.

Got it doctor? A habit, not a compulsion. Not an obsession.

I simply don’t throw significant stuff away. Dr. Freud, are you listening? For very logical, non-psychiatric reasons.

I have become more aware of this in recent years since Margie has become my partner. She doesn’t have my compulsion to keep things. She a cleaner, a straightener, a thrower away. As you know that hasn’t been labeled a sickness. Not Yet.

Stuff, it turns out, is in my mind the essence of life in these days of digital non-existence. Without stuff, what is there? what’s left that has any meaning? Digitalized faces and words, down in the bowels of some computer somewhere on a discarded iPhone...only to be relegated onto some cloud up there somewhere never to be seen or heard from again.

That’s not stuff. That’s not essence. That’s not human, doctor.

As I move more deeply into my octo years, I tend to fixate on this kind of stuff. For example, aging photos of my grandfather Maurice and Grandma Lida on the beach at Lake Erie in 1911. I never knew him.

But he is there in my heart, as a good looking man and a warm human being. I cherish dozens of hand written love letters between the two lovers when they were courting. They both worked downtown. Passion. You could feel it growing through the months of courtship... The earliest letter started with “Leda”, then Dear Friend Lida, My Dearest Lida, and then simply, Dearest. You could feel the passion growing, as Grandma Lida began more to respond, sometimes passionately...and then the wedding.

I know Grandpa Maurice through his written, articles in the Saturday Evening Post about Mark Hanna and President McKinley, about theater and politics in the Plain Dealer. His crusade to have Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice taken from the curriculum of the Cleveland schools for their anti-Semitic overtones.

Yes I know, Dr. Freud that sounds like censorship. But things were very different for Jews in the in the 1920’s and thirties. You must remember. When you got kicked out of Germany simply because you were Jewish.

And then, Dr. Freud, there was the fate of Grandma Belle, Grace’s mother, a magnificent woman who taught kindergarten in the New York City schools most of her life, starting in a one room schoolhouse on Staten Island. She died unexpectedly in the 80’s. And by the time we got to the apartment on the west side of Manhattan, her husband, a very pragmatic pharmacist, was cleaning out the closets of every stitch of her clothing.  He piled up the school things and other mementos, and wanted them out.

Sadly, there was a truck driver strike in New York. No one could pick up anything. So we decided to give it all to the custodian, a nice man with a family, who promised to get it all to the proper place, where it would be useful.

A couple of days later, after the funeral, we were walking out of the apartment on busy W. 79^th Street to hail a cab to LaGuardia, and there it all was, strewn on the sidewalk and the gutter. The essence of her life simply waiting for the rubbish drivers strike to end. There was absolutely no distinction on the sidewalk of this busy Manhattan street between the rubbish, the garbage and Grandma Belle. I had a lump in my throat, Grace was in tears as we headed out to the airport. She didn’t stop crying until we landed in Cleveland.

It was over, very much over.   

Today in the antiseptic digital age...they simply close down your Facebook homepage and it’s over. No muss no fuss.

“Dr, Freud, are you listening?” I said “It all started when I was a nervous little kid. I starting saving newspaper articles. I still have them.”

What? Am I covered, by what??? Yes I have full Medicare, and AARP gap.  You’ll be paid in full, don’t worry doctor. As I was saying, I was a little boy. I think I felt guilty when I thought about sex, and...Dr. Freud you’re dozing off again...Dr. Freud!