BOYD PHILLIPS
Boyd Phillips had been raised a world away in Bostonian privilege, educated within the confines of prep schools bearing the names of distant relatives, and then sent to an Ivy League college, one of the bastions of America’s future ruling class – a destiny he’d managed to short-circuit.
What had drawn them together was a shared belief that you did what was right. You gave your word. You backed up your friends. You killed America’s enemies. Period. Full stop.
There were plenty of significant differences in their past circumstances, but none of these mattered as much as the time they’d spent with the OSS in the mountains and jungles of Northern Burma. Protecting each other. Surviving.
Almost thirty pounds lighter than Shredds and as almost as tall, Boyd carried the outward appearance of an Oxford don combined with a fallen angel, complete with the knowing smile and a few of the scars and bruises from the bumpy ride down. There was an inner toughness to him as well, something he’d acquired during the long days and nights fighting running gun battles against the Japanese army. And fighting against his own fears.
In Burma, Second Lt. Phillips knew damn well that it wasn’t the thought of an enemy bullet coming out of nowhere and killing them that kept the men in his squad awake all night. No. A bullet would be fast. Clean. An actual relief even for men who’d spent weeks slogging through the stiflingly hot Burmese highlands, expecting death around every corner as they trudged mile after mile, suffering from either scrub typhus, cerebral malaria or dysentery, diseases that left them exhausted, in constant pain and misery. So yeah, dying from a bullet might be a goddamn relief.
Night was the worse. As the darkness closed in they’d sit around small fires in groups of four or five, chapped hands cupped close around their smoldering cigarettes, talking in hushed whispers. They were all constantly hungry, critically undernourished. Thanks to the shortened supply of C rations that failed miserably to provide the calories needed to move fast then fight off the larger Japanese units all around them.
A typical U.S. Army snafu created by some behind the lines pencil-pushers, safe at their desks, looking for ways to save Uncle Sam a few bucks. Letting the poor slobs stuck out in the shit suffer the penny-pinching consequences. Boyd saw it every day, the blisters, boils and fevers that left his men wrung out and weak.
After the small fire had died out, they’d wrap blankets around their shoulders. Most of them had gotten into the habit of tying a thin strip of cloth over their mouths as well. And then they tried to sleep. None of them had been provided with a hammock or netting, or a tarp cover to keep them off the wet ground. Another stupid U.S. Army screw-up. So all they could do was lay curled up on the damp, bug-infested ground. At the edges of fevered dreams, they listened to the jungle as it came alive around them, heard the rustle of dry leaves nearby. Small animals skittering through the underbrush. Close. Then, eventually, it would get quiet. It always got quiet before they came.
At first, there’d only be one or two, the scouts. Then others would follow. The smell of the bloody diarrhea encrusted on the men’s pants drove the jungle rats nuts. In their frenzy, they ran across exposed bare legs. Their sharp claws leaving bloody scratches. Then more of them came. Swarming out of the jungle. Looking for a man too weak, too racked by fever or dehydration to fight them off. All any of the other men could do was pull the strip of rag they’d stuffed into their mouths even tighter in order to muffle the sound of their own screams.
In the morning, the ones who’d survived another night staggered toward the early cooking fires. They ate, talked quietly. Smoked. Everyone smoked. Later, they’d tried not to look at the ravaged faces of their friends, the bite marks along the arms and legs as they wrapped a final blanket around them and covered them with dirt. The same dirt they’d slept in.
As the sun broke through the high jungle canopy, they’d pack up their gear and move on.
On more than one occasion, Boyd had wondered if the fortunate ones weren’t those they’d left behind, finally loosed from the karmic wheel of existence, freed from suffering and now oblivious to further pain and torment.
It was really too damn bad they were dead – unable to enjoy the perfect irony of it all.
MITCH SHREDDOWSKY
Standing well over six feet tall with wide shoulders, dark hooded eyes, Mitch Shreddowsky, “Shredds” as his pals had called him since he was a teenager, had grown up on the streets and sidewalks of a walk-up tenement apartment neighborhood that backed onto a fetid stretch of East River backwater. He had been one of the Gowanus Boys, street-tough Jew boys that nobody ever called kikes or sheeneys. That ever happened? The offending loudmouth would be spitting teeth, compliments of a Louisville slugger slammed into his stupid face.
It was a mistake that a lot of people made where Shredds was concerned, his outward “palooka” exterior obscuring what was in fact, a razor-sharp intellect.
Ever since he’d been a young kid in Brooklyn, Shredds had carried around a book, usually a paperback stuck into his back pocket, something foreign and indecipherable to the other guys on the block whose taste ran more toward comic books or the funny papers. Shredds’ horizons had been higher. His sights set on CCNY – City College of New York, of “Harvard on the Hudson” as it called by the locals. Unlike most east coast universities with admission restricted to Protestant students only, CCNY had an eclectic student body made up of whip-smart Jewish and immigrant working-class kids. He’d been accepted, full scholarship included and would be the first of his family to attend college. That had been the plan. Franco’s fascists in Spain and Hitler’s Nazi ghouls marching across Europe had changed all that.
The Gowanus Boys had taken a ride out to East Brownsville. They’d found a place on the curb under the Saratoga Street “L” where they could watch the guys who hung out at Midnight Rose’s candy store across Livonia Avenue. Headquarters of the “Kosher Nostra,” the Jewish mob in Brooklyn. Big shiny cars slid up, men in silk suits, fedora hats pulled down low over their eyes went inside. A little while later they came back out. Drove off. Gone to take care of another job for Murder Inc.
One of the flashy mob guys had stepped out of the Rose’s doorway, movie-star good looks. He turned and stared across at the punk kids lined up on the curb, an intimidating glace that had all of them suddenly finding something else more interesting to look at. Except the big kid at the end. He didn’t look up. Didn’t look away, kept his nose stuck in the book he was reading. Leaving the two-toned Lincoln convertible parked at the curb, the mob guy walked across the street toward the big kid, sizing him up.
“’Boychik,’ you like to read? That’s good, real good. I always say, you wanna be somebody in this world, you gotta be smart,” he’d said as he handed Shredds a rubber band-wrapped paper bag, an address scrawled on it. He took out a fifty-dollar bill, held it up, then ripped it in half. Shredds knew the routine. You got the other half after you ran a little errand. “And don’t be a ‘schmo’ about it nether, unnerstand?” Meaning, don’t look inside. Don’t ask questions. “You come back, we’ll see. ‘bout something else. Smart boy like you.” He gave Shredds half of the fifty, a light slap on the cheek, and a wink before he walked away.
Shredds knew that plenty of older kids from the neighborhood had tried to make a move into the glitzy world of mobsters and wise guys. It was a dumb move since most of them, either got tossed into the Tombs, or wound up face down dead in some rat-shit, no-name back alley. Any way you cut it, a wasted life.
Shredds had done the right thing, the smart thing. He’d made the delivery. And never went back to collect the other half of the fifty.
Because, whatever else was happening around him in the neighborhood, Shredds was certain that there had to be something more worthwhile fighting for than a bigger piece of the local rackets or an adversary more threatening than the flatfooted Irish cops on the block – Irritating as hell, but not the enemy. It didn’t take a genius to understand who the actual enemy was out in the world these days.
The rise of Nazi anti-Semites gangs targeting Jews around the world had galvanized Shredds’ anger and pointed it straight at the fascist bullies strutting across Europe and Asia. He’d planned for years to be the first one in his family to go to college. Dreamed about becoming a scientist, an engineer. , maybe. Design buildings. Create something good and useful.
Instead, still a week shy of his 17th birthday Mitch Shreddowsky hitched a ride over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, lied about his age and got himself a crew slot on one of the U.S. Lend Lease ships headed out that night for what he thought would be Europe. Instead, the ship was sent to Australia. Part of the war in the Pacific. Still, a world away from life along the Gowanus canal back in Brooklyn, USA.