大象传媒

My dad joined the Navy(or what was left
of it after Pearl Harbour) in 1942. He was
assigned to the newly formed construction
battalions under Naval command. These units
became known as SeaBees and my dad was assigned to the 64th Battalion.
In 1963 I had just turned nine years
old. I was fooling around in the pantry when
I discovered this little square box.It was a
35 mm. camera.The only reason that I was sure
it was a camera,it had the word KODAK placed
above the lens.What I found leaning against
the wall,behind the spot where I found the
camera, confirmed my reasoning.
The huge black book had turned a soft
brown from the layers of dust that had settled on it as it stood against the wall on
the back of the shelf.I pulled the photo album from the shelf as carefully as a nine
year old boy could.I wiped the dust off with my t-shirt and sat down beside the little
brown box camera.
Whenever the subject came up,like after a war movie we watched together, or after an
episode of Twelve O'CLOCK High, he would tell
me things like,"They sent us up to Newfoundland to train in the cold weather.We
had to hold on to ropes while we walked to
the mess hall and back.A man couldn't see a
building untill he walked into it." He also
told me that they were sent to the Islands of
the Phillipines straight from all that cold
weather training in Newfoundland.
The 64th SeaBee Battalion arrived in the
Phillipine's a total wreck and things weren't
about to get much better.They had just endured one of the longest boat rides ever
taken.My dad said that was the sickest he had
ever been. The men were elbow to elbow around
the deck of the ship throwing-up,seasick.He
said the sound of those guys dry-heaving just
made it worse.He went below decks and rolled arond with the barrels of oil,diesel and
gasoline and threw-up and dry-heaved there.
Some said that the last time it snowed
in the Phillipines was probably sometime
around twenty to thirty thousand years ago or
whenever the ice age was. Some would argue as
they stood there in their sweat soaked skivy's that the Navy knew what they were
doing. Why else would they send a battalion
of men to the Phillipine's with some of the
best cold weather gear that money could buy?
My dad said that sometimes they went in with
the Marines and sometimes they went in right
after the Marines. Their job was to set up communications,portable landing docks,clear
or build runways and gather and bury the dead.
The rest of the story,a much deeper and
darker story,lay between the pages of the big,black book that I was about to open.

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