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288 Saturday night - 28 July 10:15 pm My dearest darling, Tel and I are just back from seeing “This is the Army,” an excellent show and one that I wouldn't have missed. It is interesting and a little painful to see how the typical USO shows which come out here miss their mark of providing acceptable entertainment. Sex shows for instance, with lots of suggestive wiggling and dirty cracks don't go over at all - they make the men mad and disgusted, or at best leave them cold. It's not prudishness; the same thing with an all male cast including female impersonators might have them rolling in the aisles. But largely it's the mediocre, Hollywood glamourish “talent”; the only good USO show out here has been “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” with Moss Hart. It was Army night, but the most convenient time for us to see it; so we wore our dogface caps and changed our Navy cap insignia to a bar. 1st Lieut. Johnston at your service, Madam. [pg 2] This morning on my way back from taking Mr. [?], the OWI man (he has in the 6th section at Columbia, then a Coast Guard officer; has seen and remembered you and Wendy. Do you recall the time we took a taxi to 125th St., took some Columbia men with us and forgot to pay the fare when we arrived? Well, he was across the street that time, and later was the one I tried to pay the money back to) to catch a plan for Saipan, I stopped in at the Navy Hospital to see Slicer and find out when we might expect him back, if at all. He has been there for a couple of weeks, almost, getting a complete medical check up in hopes of being surveyed out of the Navy. You would have found it interesting to sit in on my conversation with his doctor there a large, heavyset man in late middle age, one whom I think you’d trust with a gentle and thoughtful but straightforward manner, he was not too sympathetic toward Slicer [pg 3] and his avowed intention of getting out. It was true, he said, that that kind of man should not have been taken in the first place, and yet it made him a little tired - though he continued to be kind - to have to listen to Slicer's story. When he saw so many boys who had been out longer, been wounded and were still not going home to their families being essentially cheerful about it all; or when he heard the protests of some who were being surveyed and didn't want a medical discharge. He went on to recall, gently, how he himself had had no obligation to get in the Navy except what he had felt himself; that this existence including professional practice, was altogether dull and often futile-seeming compared to civilian life; that he felt no story or comfort or satisfaction in it except for the hard satisfaction of knowing that it had to be done and that he would never have felt right not to have had a part of it if he was needed. (And darling, the sincere [pg 4] are always needed in something like this) It is much the same with all the doctors at that hospital. Most of them are 40 or over, only 2 or 3 35 or under. They are losing a lot of money by being in the service; their existence is uncomfortably dull (With a particularly obnoxious C.O. and exec. at that station who treat them like children, whereas they are an exceptionally mature and highly trained bunch of specialists; and they miss their families just as I miss you. It is a little different, of course, their being established and not just married and beginning to settle down, yet I suspect that from the standpoint of some of them they can less afford this drudgery now at a time when they had earned freedom, leisure and comfort than we can. That is a moot point, of course, and one it would never [pay?] to argue. The point is, darling, that we are not the only sufferers from this hateful war [pg 4] which nevertheless must be seen through - and we must not be first to call quits of our own decision. Of course I will take the first opportunity to get out that I decently can. I am quite sure there will be no opportunities other than honorable, anyhow; none of my own making. You see, darling, while I endeavor (to any reasonable extent) to help Slicer get his survey, at the same time I unconsciously put him in a different class from myself. I would not take a medical survey if I could have it right now unless it was forced on me, or unless I realized that something really serious was amiss and that I would be foolhardy not to. In other words, if I were Slicer I should be ashamed to be surveyed out; the doctors find nothing medically wrong with him. Perhaps that sounds like false pride to you or you will think ‘Just being stubborn because a long time ago Dr. Millet told him he didn't have the guts to survive any length of time in the service (or words to that effect)’ [pg 6] - and no doubt, darling, it must sound selfish to you sometimes, too: here am I way off somewhere, busy enough with satisfying work to be reasonably happy (or if not happy, at least not forced to think about it), and I preach to you about patience and forbearance. I should not be surprised if you were suddenly angered at the thought of it sometimes. And I should understand that. Yet there is something I would have you understand thoroughly, my darling, and become reconciled to - not with any sense of personal defeat or of being mastered by circumstances, but rather with pride and a feeling of mastery. And that thing is: if we will have our children strong, we must be strong ourselves. Such strength with its attendant modicum of self-discipline is not a denial of the good things of life, of joy, of exuberance of spirit; it is an affirmation of them. It means that we are capable of making our own lives and thereby our children's far richer and more meaningful than our parents were able to make their own, or ours. It is not to be presumed that they are to blame for their deficiencies; they labored under the handicap of knowing themselves less well than we know ourselves, and a person cannot begin to grow [pg 7] until he has come to grips with - to a sympathetic but overindulgent understanding of- himself. I do not presume that Slicer is to blame either; it isn't for me to judge, and I shall be glad, I suppose, if he gets his survey. But the fact remains that I think of Slicer as being without guts. If I felt the same way about myself, what sort of husband do you think I’d make you? ‘Ah,’ you say, ‘but that's what I'm for, darling - to give you strength and comfort and be there when you need me.’ I do have need of you, and you do give me strength and comfort, and I do desperately want to have you near me. But if I am to have anything to give you (for you have, perhaps, even greater need of me) I must be an undivided personality, lest I give you only confusion. It's hard to put succinctly what I'm trying to say, but darling, I think I know where your greatest need of me lies, and it isn't always in direction you are conscious of yourself. I am not seeking to be hard; I hate sacrifice and self-denial for their own sake; I think that love and the expression of love are greater than any other force making for personal strength [pg 8] of character; and yet you must be very careful by what you read into ‘love’. Would you have our children like those of certain indulgent parents? Sweetie, I would so much rather be near you to [?] [?] without words or much conscious thought the things I am saying in words which, however you take them to heart, must seem like so much sound and fury to you at times. But I cannot be now, and I would not be on any other terms than those which apply to the [?] of the men out here (which include, of course, the possibility of a ‘break’). I don't want to ask for special favors. If it were 2, or 3, or 4 years out, yes - I’d feel as though I had a right to. Just now I don't, knowing that on the whole we've had better fortune than the law of averages could be held accountable for. Try to bear with the situation, darling, and most of all with me. Do you remember the letter about ‘growing’ that I wrote you some months ago? I said that every little experience which made you grow seemed at the [pg 9] time - if you accepted it - to be taking some part of you away, to be threatening to destroy you a little? You can avoid that unpleasantness sometimes by sidestepping, by refusing to embrace your fate, by seeking false solace in this or that self-deceit: it would be so if you had me (supposing that I could) finagle my way out of the Navy now. ‘But I still wouldn't hesitate if there was a chance,’ perhaps you say. ‘Being’ with you now is all that matters to me, and I have faith that the future will take care of itself.’ I am not so positive that I could state unreservedly that that is not true for you personally, taken as an individual, my darling. But are you to be taken merely as an individual? Your future involves me more than any other single factor, and therefore the kind of man I am is more important to you, probably, than anything else in the world. I am not willing, therefore, to let the kind of man [pg 10] I am to be determined by whim and accident. It isn't a matter of trying to find the hard way to do things. I've learned a lot in these past several months about the difference between a superficial sort of literal or verbal, exclusively personal integrity which exists only in the mind, and a creative kind which is willing to sacrifice small things to achieve basic values. I have learned to discard most of the remnants of a holier-than-thou attitude toward other men and their judgments, an attitude engendered by formative years of too much self-counsel. By that I mean to imply, among other things, that when I felt the time had come for me to try to get out of the Navy, I would not stop till I had succeeded. I should like to go on writing you for hours darling (it is now Sunday morning), but Tel and I are particularly busy at this time what with having no yeoman and with taking over the scouts and the churches, and he is expecting me in the office about now. Dear heart, I love you twice over for every stern word I write. Warren
