Sayonara Read Free Page A

Then he said, apologetically, “You’re engaged to a fine, good-looking American girl. You showed me her picture one night.” He smiled as I automatically reached with my left hand for my wallet pocket. “When you’re flying and things begin to get rough you pat that picture for good luck, don’t you?”
    I said I did. It was a gimmick I had picked up when I shifted from propeller planes to jets. Like most pilots, I was scared of the jets at first so whenever it looked like trouble I would pat my wallet for luck, because Eileen Webster had been good news for me ever since that special weekend I met her in San Antonio.
    Chaplain Feeney said, “If the opportunity presents itself, show Kelly your girl’s picture. Let him remember what a fine American girl looks like.”
    I said, “I’m not selling anything.”
    The padre was a smart man. “Who asked you to?” he said. “When he says he’s determined to get married tell him you understand. Tell him you’ve seen some really wonderful Japanese girls.”
    “Trouble is, Padre, I haven’t. They’re all so dumpy and round-faced. How can our men—good average guys—how can they marry these yellow girls? In ’45 I was fighting the Japs. Now my men are marrying them.”
    “I’ve never understood it. Such marriages are doomed and it’s my job to prevent them.”
    “I agree.”
    “Then you’ll speak to Kelly?”
    “Wouldn’t it be simpler for the colonel just to order him not to get married?” I asked.
    Chaplain Feeney laughed. “Some things can’t be handled that way. We’ve investigated the girl Kelly wants to marry. She’s not a prostitute. She’s not subversive. As a matter of fact, she got a good recommendation from our investigators. Used to work in a library. Kelly has a right to marry her.”
    The word
marry
caught me strangely and I was swept back four years to a spring weekend in Texas when a gang of us left Randolph Field for a big time in San Antonio. We were walking down some stone steps to an open-air theater by the river that runs through the middle of San Antonio, when suddenly I saw this beautiful girl coming up. I did a double take and cried, “Aren’t you General Webster’s daughter?” And she gave me a dazzling smile and said she was and I stood right there staring at her and asking, “Why didn’t you look like this when you lived across from me in Fort Bragg?” and she said she’d always looked like this but I had been too busy going away to the Point to notice. I tried to recall but couldn’t even remember her clearly from those days so I said, “You must have been a long-legged kid of eleven when we were at Fort Bragg.” Then she said something which stopped me cold. She ignored the other Air Force men standing beside me and said, “I’m still a long-legged kid.” And she was right and eighteen days later we sort of made up our minds to get married. But Eileen’s mother and Korea took care of that.
    So I brought myself back to Korea and told Chaplain Feeney, “I’ll do what I can.”
    “Thanks, Gruver.” As I started to go he asked, “Mind if I speak to the colonel about you?”
    “What for?”
    “You’re as tense as a watch spring, son. I’m going to tell the old man you ought to be grounded.”
    I laughed and said, “The doc beat you to it. I’m on my way to Japan.”
    “Wonderful,” he said. “Tokyo?”
    “No, Kobe. My girl’s father is general down there.”
    “That’s fortunate.”
    “It has its drawbacks.”
    “I mean Kelly is going to Kobe, too. You can keep an eye on him.”
    I was disgusted. “You mean you’re flying him back to where the girl is?”
    “His Congressman insists on it.”
    I started to say what I thought of Congressmen who butt into military affairs like this but the padre said, “You might save the boy.”
    I thought of mean, sawed-off Joe Kelly and said as I left, “Nothing could save that bum.”

JOE KELLY :
“G.I.’s married to Jap girls always look as if they knew