Ode To My Dad
Tough fucker but still my Dad
My father was born in Hopkinsville, KY in 1920. He lost his father when he was eight. Historians write about the 1920’s as “The Roaring 20’s” but in Hopkinsville it was a hard scrabble life for my Grandmother Dolly and Dad. After my Grandfather died, the bank foreclosed on their house and they were forced to take up the only lodging they could afford in a squatter’s lot in “darktown”. You know, across the tracks, far away from the gentrified white side. There were three other families, eleven people (including kids), living in the squat.
Dolly spent her days doing white people’s laundry and cleaning their houses (she worked for 3 families and got paid a total of $9/wk). After her 14 hour day (seven days a week) she would walk the four miles back across the tracks to the hovel she shared with three black families and fix a meager dinner for my father and herself. She kept pheasants and rabbits behind the shack so there was always meat for their meals and she shared the bounty with her shackmates.
My Father sold newspapers (black run) from predawn until he had to get to the segregated (read that black) grade school for the first four hours, then he shined rich folks shoes in front of the bank that had repossessed their home for another eight hours (he would typically earn about 60 cents a day) after which he would walk back across the tracks to their clapboard and timber squat and tend to the pheasants and rabbits. About every third day, he’d slaughter and skin a rabbit or ring the neck of and pluck a pheasant. When his mother got home they would prepare dinner and share with their fellow squatters.
While this all sound pretty grim, there were good times like when the families sharing the place would all get together with neighbors in the front yard and sing and dance and share stories. One neighbor would bring his guitar and another would break out his harmonica, another might bring a banjo. There was a trumpet player who would show up occasionally. There would be potatoes and sawmill gravy, cornbread, grits, green beans and black-eyed peas. And, of course rabbit or pheasant. Once in a while, someone would bake a pie or a cake. A little later, they would open a mason jar or two of moonshine and the party would shift into full swing. Oh! how they could sing and dance! The rhythms of the blues and Scott Joplin would carry across the fields and gospel voices would fill the air. My Dad told me once that was his church.
In 1930 thing got really shitty. Two of the white folks Dolly took care of lost everything in the Market Crash and moved away. While she tried to get more families, folks were broke or scared and no one would take her on even for two dollars a week. The black run newspaper went broke and two of the squatter families moved west to find work. Many of the black families moved west. Dolly and dad were stuck in Hopkinsville. No family to help them, no way to move west. They talked about trying to get to Memphis but an itinerant fellow Dad met told him he’d just come from Memphis and there wasn’t any work for poor people.
Dad was ten and quit school. He scoured Hopkinsville for any kind of work occasionally finding a short term job doing scutt work. He mucked out sewer pipes as part of some government project, chopped wood for the banker who had foreclosed on their house, he’d hire on to move people’s belongings out of houses that had been foreclosed on by that same bank. He could make upwards of $4 doing that. He and my Grandmother lived on the rabbits they raised; they had to stop raising pheasants because the feed was too expensive.
They started a garden and grew potatoes, beets, carrots, radishes, tomatoes and onions. Dolly would collect jars from people’s trash piles so she could put some of the vegetables up for the winter months. Dad had helped himself to a Victorio strainer and a canning pot while he was moving some formerly rich but recently poor family from their repossessed fancy home. He’d heard them say they were going to California and probably wouldn’t be needing some of their stuff. They just left much of it on the street. All Dad and Dolly needed now were canning lids for the jars and they bartered a few rabbits for them from the store down the road.
This was their life for the next five years. When Dad was fifteen, a handsome, dapper gentleman called on Dolly. He worked for the Works Projects Administration and lived in a fine house in Clarksville Tennessee. For the next few months he courted Dolly and finally asked her to marry him. His name was Koons (Dad never told us his first name, just called him Granddaddy Koons). Dolly married Granddaddy Koons and moved to Clarksville. Dad didn’t want to live with Koons so with his mother’s permission, he lied about his age (you had to be seventeen) and joined the Marine Corps. Dad was not a tall man but after all the hard labor of the past five years he was strong and stout. All the time spent out of doors left his skin dark and leathery giving the impression that he was older than his actual years. No one ever questioned him about his age.
Dad left for Boot Camp at Parris Island, South Carolina in June 1935. Boot Camp was twelve grueling weeks where recruits were turned from wimpy civilians to hardened Marines. The Marine Corps of the thirties was the toughest, most well trained fighting force in the world. Hands down they were the fucking best. Dad found himself a home in the Corps. He excelled at hand to hand combat, he qualified with the second highest score at the rifle range among all recruits that summer.
In late August, he shipped out for Gunners School in La Jolla California. He had now seen the Atlantic Coast and would soon see the Pacific Ocean. The world was opening up to him. At the Marine Corps Ranges in La Jolla he was trained to use the Browning water-cooled machine gun. Here again he got top marks. It was time for a permanent duty assignment.
In late November 1935, now Private First Class William Pugh received orders to the Fourth Marines in China. He arrived in Shanghai in December. His first duty assignment was an attachment to the US Consulate where he provided armed escort for the supply trucks going and coming from the US enclave in Peking. You have to keep in mind that in 1935 China was fighting with Imperial Japanese infiltrators who harassed Chinese supply route and infiltrated Chinese town and military bases. The United States was, at that time, a neutral country. Even with neutrality, US Forces were wary of the Japanese sappers. Too, there were Chinese bandits who would slit your throat for the supplies being transported by the Marines. It was some seriously fucked up and hazardous duty for which Dad received an additional six dollars a month. By 1937, Japan and China were at war and the resupply route came under constant harassment by both sides.
Dad often said he enjoyed his duty in China. He spent six years there during which he learned to speak Chinese (albeit not formal Mandarin) and Japanese. He collected some pretty amazing art pieces that he sent home to Dolly and later displayed in our home. And he saved a fuckload of cash (apparently he was a damn fine poker player). He was also promoted to Lance Corporal.
In early November 1941 the American Consulate in Shanghai received a top secret communique from Washington stating that the Japanese were planning to attack the United States and ordering all Americans to leave China. By 27 November nearly all Americans desiring to leave had boarded ships for Hawaii. Dad was part of the Rear Guard and was one of the last Marines to board the last American ship out of China. As he and six other Marines were running down the wharf, Japanese soldiers were taunting them and shooting over their heads. The story goes that when they got to the launch that was to take them to the ship, Dad stopped, turned around to face them, fired three quick rounds, striking the radiator of their truck causing it to start steaming and shouted in Japanese, “Omae no hahaoya o okashita” (I fucked your mothers!). Then boarded the launch.
The ship was to travel north to Quindao to collect members of the Fourth Marines stationed there then travel south to Guam and then to Pearl Harbor. The entire journey was to take fifteen days including the stopover in Guam. On 8 December 1941 while steaming for Guam the ship received a radio signal telling them that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and ship was being commandeered for service in the US Navy. The ship was ordered to go to the Philippines and await orders. While heading to Manila, the Japanese attacked the Philippines. The ship was ordered to Australia to await orders. They arrived at Darwin on 29 December 1941.
Dad spent the time in Darwin training while more and more Marines arrived in Darwin. He was promoted to Corporal. They were feverishly training for amphibious assault operations. On 7 August 1942 they assaulted the atoll, Guadalcanal.
The campaign known as “OPERATION WATCHTOWER”, was the first major allied land action against the Japanese Army in the war. The battle for Guadalcanal was fought between 7 August 1942 and 9 February 1943, and involved major land and naval battles. The US suffered 7,100 dead and almost 8,000 wounded during the campaign. The Japanese tallied over 60,000 casualties.
My Dad distinguished himself on Guadalcanal earning a Silver Star for valorous service. He didn’t talk much about his time in combat and we all knew it left a very dark mark on him. It was while waiting for evacuation from the ‘Canal that Dad was field commissioned a Second Lieutenant and ordered back to the States to attend an accelerated college course in electrical engineering at Purdue University.
While at Purdue Dad met and married my Mom. But that’s a whole other story, maybe some other time.
Dad graduated in January 1945 and the Navy Department sent him to New Jersey to work on a top secret project that had something to do with outfitting fighter planes with RADAR. That’s all I know about because Dad didn’t talk about it.
Between 1946 and 1950 Dad was in the Marine Corps Reserves and was promoted to Captain. I was born in December 1949 and in March 1950 Dad was reactivated and sent to Japan to help deal with the North Korean invasion of South Korea. It was during this time that Dad once again saw combat. During the retreat from Seoul in June 1950 he was one of only a dozen or so Marines who stayed behind to destroy documents preventing them falling into North Korean hands. There was a single DC 3 on the runway when he and the other Marines drove, under heavy enemy fire, onto the airstrip and boarded the plane. During takeoff the plane sustained damage to the tail section that would hinder their landing in Japan. When they did come in for a landing at US Air Force Base Iwakuni Japan they had no control of the tail flaps and crash landed. Everyone survived due to the skill of the Marine Corps pilots. He was promoted to Major.
Dad went back to Korea during the Inchon invasion in September 1950. It was during this time he again distinguished himself by continuing to man a machine gun in the face of overwhelming enemy forces during the Battle for the Chosin Reservoir on December 10, 1950. His citation reads:
“For heroism in the face of overwhelming enemy forces during the Battle of The Chosin Reservoir on 10 December 1950 when Captain William Max Pugh bravely held his position and continued to provide withering fire upon the enemy while members of his Company made their withdrawal to safety. Because of his bravery, thirty seven Marines safely withdrew. For his outstanding bravery, Captain William Max Pugh is hereby awarded the Navy Cross.”
When he was relieved, there were enemy casualties numbering over one hundred, some within mere feet of his position. He was airlifted out to Inchon on a helicopter with three bullet wounds, none life-threatening. The only reason I know this story is because my Uncle, my mother’s brother, shared it with me after my Dad died.
He didn’t return to the States until 1952. During this time my Mother, two brothers and I relocated from Illinois to Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, North Carolina. He came back to assume leadership of the Operations and Maintenance Squadron for the 2nd Marine Air Wing.
We hadn’t been in North Carolina very long when Dad was summoned to the Pentagon to meet with Admiral Hyrum Rickover, Chief of Operations for the Navy’s soon to be commissioned Nuclear Fleet (actually one submarine and one aircraft carrier). He wanted to know if my Dad would be interested in working with a federal contractor in the design and implementation of the nuclear power components in the vessels. It didn’t take long for my Dad to say yes. We moved to Western Pennsylvania and Dad began working with the design team for the submarine USS Nautilus and the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. He was the sole Active Duty member of the team. He was also promoted to Lt Colonel.
In 1958 we moved to Idaho when during the escalating Cold War it was determined the work would be best done secretly at the Atomic Energy Commission National Reactor Testing Station (AEC NRTS), Arco, Idaho. Dad once told me it wasn’t really much of a secret since the Station held over a dozen nuclear reactors and the Soviets considered the location a First Strike target. He said and I quote, “If you see a giant fuckin’ red ball there in the west, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.”
Dad retired from the Marine Corps as a Colonel in 1964 after 29 years of service and two wars. He was highly decorated but pretty damn humble about most of his service, refusing to talk about his combat experiences (except with my uncle who became his best friend).
Sometime around 1960, he learned he was afflicted with Rheumatoid Arthritis and subjected himself to experimental and sometimes bizarre treatments. None of which cured him, some of which relieved his pain. It was obvious to me that he was in some serious fucking pain. He could no longer hold a pencil, he couldn’t work with his passion - his HO gauge trains, nor could he drive any more. The primary treatment was frequent cortisone shots (weekly, even daily for a while) and those treatments were eventually the cause of his death. He died of organ failure after complications from surgery in the VA hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah in October 1975. We mingled his ashes with my mother’s after she died in 2002. They are together at Lake Meta near Eagle River in northern Wisconsin, a place they both loved dearly.
Living with my Dad was difficult for many reasons. His thought process was mathematical, mine was creative. Everything was black and white for him, I wanted color and grey areas. There was only one way to accomplish anything — his way. He would come home and drink enough Scotch to kill any other man and get up the next morning to go to work. He wasn’t interested in the debate tournament or the school play or the speech competition I was involved in. He expected absolute obedience from me, I was not interested. He wanted me to go to collage and become an engineer, I wanted to be a writer. He would have done absolutely anything for my Mother including putting up with a commercial kennel with over two hundred dogs on the place, I couldn’t wait to get away. I joined the Marine Corps. (I guess I showed him!)
Boy do I miss him.