Shadow of the Bomb

Chapter 3

With American entry into the war now nearing the one-year mark, increasing numbers of us were impacted. Consider the Headquarters press room alone:

Although I could not enlist because of my history of rheumatic fever, I did have a cousin who was serving. Charlie Malek, son of my late father’s younger brother Frank, was a corporal with an Army unit that had just landed in Algeria. I checked every week or so with Uncle Frank and Aunt Edna to see how he was faring. He wrote them almost daily, and Frank would sometimes read portions of a letter to me over the phone, including one in which Charlie wrote that his closest buddy in the platoon had been killed instantly by a mortar blast not twenty yards from him.

Anson Masters’ grandson served on a destroyer in the Pacific and from the deck had witnessed the sinking of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown at the Battle of Midway.

Dirk O’Farrell’s stepson Dean served as a navigator on a B24 Liberator bomber that had just begun flying missions over Germany from an airbase in Britain. Dirk came into the press room one morning and reported that Dean’s plane had been hit by anti-aircraft fire and limped back across the English Channel on two engines and a disabled landing gear. “They made a bumpy landing,” Dirk told us, “but everybody survived, although Dean got a concussion and the nose gunner suffered three broken ribs and a busted leg.”

Scott, the older brother of Joanie from City News, was less fortunate. He was an Army lieutenant stationed at Bataan in the Philippines when the Japanese overran the peninsula in April, and he was one of thousands of U.S. troops captured by the Japanese. He has not been heard from in months and either was captured or is dead, most likely a casualty of the infamous “Bataan Death March.” We have stopped asking Joanie about him, hoping (but doubtful) that one morning she will come in with happy news.

I still hadn’t heard from Pickles Podgorny a couple of mornings later when, in the Headquarters press room, I opened my three-star final edition of the Trib. “I’ll be damned,” I said to no one in particular as I scanned Page 1. “They found Rickenbacker alive at sea, along with those other guys from that plane crash. Only one of ’em died. More than three weeks in rubber life rafts out in the Pacific. What a story.”

“Yeah, and here’s the corker,” Packy Farmer responded, looking over the top of his own copy of the same edition. “A sea gull lands on Rickenbacker’s head, he grabs it, and that poor bird becomes a meal for these guys.”

“Rick must have nine lives,” Eddie Metz marveled, “after everything that happened back in 1918.”

“I guess I don’t understand,” Joanie from City News volunteered.

“No reason you should,” Anson Masters responded in his best Dutch-uncle tone. “You’re far too young. Along with Sergeant York, Rickenbacker was the gold-plated American hero in what some of us still refer to as the Great War. He was a fearless fighter pilot, a wild man in the skies. He shot down more than twenty German planes in a very short time — a few weeks, I think, back in ’18.

“Then along comes this war, and our government, actually Secretary of War Stimson, sends him to the Pacific to look over our air operations there, and his plane goes down in the drink off some God-forsaken place like New Guinea. Ran out of fuel.”

“I read about that crash when it happened a few weeks ago, but I didn’t read up on his background at the time,” she said somberly.

“It’s certainly no exaggeration to call the guy a legend,” Dirk O’Farrell said between drags on his cigarette. “What we need now is more like him, the way we’re struggling. Think there are some new Eddie Rickenbackers around, this time to shoot down the Japanese Zeros and the Nazi Messerschmidts?”

Before anyone could respond, Anson Masters proclaimed the beginning of the work day. The crew all rose, none with enthusiasm, and filed out the press room door to their various beats. I was just getting up to follow them when my phone rang.

“Hey, Snap, got a minute?” It was Pickles.

“For you, I always have a minute,” I said as the last of the press corps left the room. “What, pray tell, have you learned?”

“I hadn’t been on the campus in a good long time, and things have really changed, Snap,” he said. “Whole buildings have been boarded up, and they’re off limits. They’ve got uniformed guards, soldiers that is, keeping people out. In fact, there are uniforms all over the school, and by that I don’t mean cops.”

“Army?”

“Army, Navy, the works. Place looks like a damn military base.”

“Not so surprising,” I said. “I’ve been reading that colleges across the country are filling up with military recruits taking courses that will help them get a commission — something called V-12, although I don’t know what it means.”

“Well, these guys are all over the place — even in the bars. Although not in uniform then.”

“Which I’m sure you quickly discovered, Pickles.”

“Hey, I did tell you I was going to visit the U.T. at 55th and University, which I did.”

“Okay, and what came of that visit, other than the consumption of some amber-colored liquid?”

Pickles cleared his throat. “The place was mobbed — students, maybe some faculty members if I was to guess their professions, a few blue-collar-type guys who look like they might drive trucks or work in the stockyards, and also a number of soldiers and sailors, at least that’s what I think; they were wearing civilian clothes. I was lucky to find a stool at the bar, so I plopped myself down and ordered a stein of draught. And a very good draught it was.”

“Pickles, I’m happy to learn that you were able to please your palate, at my expense, I might add. But is this narrative going anywhere?”

“I’m getting to it, my typewriter jockey friend. After I’d been in the place... oh, maybe half an hour or so, a couple of joes with tweed sports jackets and ties, they were maybe in their late thirties or so, coulda been profs maybe, sit down just to my right, and they’re talking about the war, see?”

“A natural subject these days.”

“Yeah, well the one guy, he’s all mopey about how our boys are takin’ a pounding both in Europe and out in the Pacific. He’s really depressed, says he’ll probably get drafted just in time to see the Jerries invade New York and the Japs take over San Francisco.”

“A real cheerful Charlie, eh?”

“Uh-huh. But what the other guy, who has a little beard, says then really gets me to listening close.”

“Which was?”

“He says, ‘If you only knew what I know, you wouldn’t have any worries at all about us winning this war.’ The other guy asks him what he means by that, and the bearded one starts to clam up.”

“So that’s all?”

“Will you let me tell it, Snap? The mopey guy keeps on pushing, and the other one starts getting kinda nervous and doesn’t want to say any more. They lower their voices, see, but even with all the noise in that saloon, I got real good ears. Comes from listening for footsteps from outside when I’m in the middle of a crap game. Or used to be in the middle of a game.”

“So stipulated. Pray continue, before I have to break for lunch.”

“Very funny. Anyway, the mopey one, he keeps askin’ questions, and the beard says something big is goin’ on right there on the campus, so big it’s gonna change the whole world, he says.

“The mope then asks if that’s why some of the school’s buildings are boarded up and off limits now with soldiers out in front, and the other guy nods his head, but he won’t say any more.”

“Interesting. Did you get the impression this man of secrets hangs out in that saloon regularly?”

“Couldn’t tell for sure, Snap. Although he did seem like he knew the barkeep, a fellow named Chester.”

“Good sign. Can I talk you into being in that same saloon again this evening, Pickles? I’ll pick up the tab, as well as reimburse you for last night, of course.”

“I had planned on taking a chair in a friendly little game of five-card draw with some friends in my neighborhood, but they’re always there for the plucking, so I will graciously accept your generosity. What time?”

“When did you see this fellow last night?”

“A little after eight.”

“I’ll be in the U.T. at eight tonight.”

Leaving work at twenty past five — the Trib’s evening man, Ellis, was invariably late in relieving me — I decided to hang around downtown instead of going north to my apartment on Clark Street near Wrigley Field. I polished off a so-so beef potpie and not-very-good coffee in a little beanery on Van Buren, under the elevated tracks just west of State, and then made up for it with two steins of very good beer in the grand old Berghoff Restaurant on Adams. Thus fortified, I took the Illinois Central electric train down to the university community of Hyde Park, no more than fifteen minutes south of the Loop.

Being late fall, it was of course long past sundown when I got off the train at 55th Street and went down the dank concrete stairway to the street. The evening was mild, which made my stroll through the little business district around the station a pleasant one. The neighborhood was quiet, at least outside the University Tavern... the din hit me the moment I opened the door to the watering hole, which seemed to be filled with the entire population of Hyde Park, every one of them yakking and drinking and smoking.

Through the nicotine-blue haze, I spotted Pickles Podgorny on a stool about halfway along a bar at which every seat was taken. He gave me a salute and ambled over.

“Got here early, mate,” he said, cupping a hand to my ear to be heard above the clamor. “Wanted to make sure I got a spot next to the guy. That’s him.” He gestured to a dark-haired, bearded specimen hunched over the seat beside the one he had just vacated, although the half-filled stein on the bar indicated the stool still had an occupant.

I thanked Pickles, let him take his beer away, and sat down, looking straight ahead. After about a half minute, the bartender came over and I ordered a Blue Ribbon on draught. “Things don’t look so good for our boys these days overseas, do they?” I asked when he delivered the frosted stein.

The barkeep, a burly, bull-necked specimen of about forty-five, who was indeed named Chester, shrugged. “I dunno, seems to me like we’re doing better in the Pacific these days. Y’know, Coral Sea, Midway, those navy battles, they turned out okay.”

I shrugged, avoiding any glance at the figure on my right. “At least that’s what we’re being told,” I said. “But even at Midway, for Pete’s sake, we lost that carrier, the Yorktown. And after all the ships that got sent to the bottom at Pearl Harbor, we sure as hell can’t afford to keep losing them. I still say these are bad times.”

My pessimism finally drew a reaction from the right, as I had intended. “Things are going to get better, a lot better, you can bank on that,” the bearded fellow said to me, spacing his last five words for emphasis.

“Really? You think so?” I swiveled to face him. He looked to be in his late thirties, as Pickles had estimated, with shaggy dark hair hanging down to the tops of equally shaggy eyebrows and a beard that hadn’t seen a trimming in weeks, maybe months. Thick-lensed horned-rim glasses magnified coal-black eyes, giving him a manic appearance.

“I know so,” he stated, as if daring contradiction.

I watched him as I sipped my beer. “You seem awfully confident. I wish I could be.”

He allowed himself a slight smile. “You don’t know what I know,” he said smugly.

“Sounds like we’ve got some kind of a secret weapon,” I replied, intent on keeping the conversation alive.

Another brief smile. “At the place where we surrendered... that’s where we shall rise again,” he announced, setting his stein down firmly on the bar as if to add an exclamation point to his cryptic comment. “A good evening to you, sir — and to you as well, Chester,” he said, nodding and rising to leave.

“Unusual fellow,” I remarked to the bartender.

“That’s the professor,” Chester said as he wiped the polished mahogany surface of the bar. “Comes in here a lot.”

“He certainly seems confident about the war,” I said as Pickles Podgorny slid into the just-vacated seat beside me.

“Sure, and I am too,” the man behind the bar said with a touch of belligerence in his voice. “What’s the matter, aren’t you patriotic?”

“I am indeed. But that doesn’t keep me from worrying. That professor talks like he seems to know something.”

Chester turned his beefy palms up. “He knows a lot about a lot of stuff, but then he’s a wisehead. They’s different from you and me.”

“I won’t argue that point. What does he teach?”

“Beats me, I wouldn’t understand it anyway. Something about physics, I think. Over there.” He made a head gesture in the general direction of the campus.

“Thanks,” I told him, getting up. “What did you say his name is?”

“I didn’t, but it’s Bergman.”

It was a name I was not to forget.