I’ve had requests for uncle Kenny’s story, so here it is as best as I can remember.
Kenny was not a big man in stature, but he was tough as nails. He went to Beaumont high school in Saint Louis and was a star gymnast. One of my earliest memories of him was being able to walk on his hands all over our living room. I tried to do that for years and never could even stand on my hands.
My grandpa told me Kenny enlisted in the Marine Corps right after Pearl Harbor. He was already a drunk and he told grandpa (his father in law) that the Marines would sober him up. Far from it, he ended the war worse than when he went in. After boot camp, he volunteered to go into Carlson’s raider battalion. Those selected and could finish the training successfully were the best the Corps had.
Their raids were designed to disrupt Japanese operations on islands they held before the famous amphibious landings on Japanese held islands. They would be taken in by submarine and used rubber boats to go ashore. Once ashore, they would scout camps to find out how many troops were there, destroy communication equipment and map out placements of camps. They would quietly slip into the camps and cut the throats of sentries on night guard duty to put a fear into the soldiers there. Later, the raider battalions were disbanded and those Marines were dispersed into the amphibious forces. I know of two islands that he invaded, Saipan and Guam. He may have been on other invasions, unknown.
My grandpa loved his beer, but he could control his thirst. He went every evening to a local tavern for his drinks. Grandpa was a talker and he spoke to all the regulars there. One evening he was sitting on a stool at the bar, beside a man he had never seen before. He was also an ex-marine from WW-2. Grandpa mentioned his son-in-law was also an ex-marine. The man asked about where Kenny served and grandpa was telling him what he knew about Kenny's exploits. When grandpa mentioned Kenny went ashore on Saipan the man lit up and said, "damn, I remember him. We went together onto the shore of Saipan." He told grandpa the night before the invasion he scoured the ship for anything he could get to drink and found nothing. I suppose Kenny was more influential with the sailors on the ship, because he found his alcohol. The next morning Kenny was drunk when they went ashore. The Japanese fire on the beach was fierce, but this other Marine said Kenny was standing tall tossing grenades at the defenders. I suppose that's why the man remembered it decades later. After Saipan, Kenny went ashore on the invasion of Guam. He simply said he was there when I told him I was going to Guam. Kenny was not one to brag about himself, neither was my father.
After the war, Kenny would get drunk and come over to our house in the afternoons. I remember him sitting on the living room floor, always on his knees and sitting back on his heels. He would sing songs, he was happy and sad at the same time. His favorite songs were “The Gray Speckled Bird” and the other was about a tavern. All I remember was the lyric “The Doors Swing IN And The Doors Swing Out, Some People Pass In While Others Pass Out.”
I do remember one somber afternoon, he was sitting there, he looked at me and asked me if I knew what it was like to sneak up on a man in the middle of the night and slit his throat? I was a little puzzled about that. I suppose he was referring to his Marine raider days. It kind of scared me for a bit. On those afternoons Kenny would get up and leave. I remember many times I would wake up in the morning, look out the window and Kenny was in his car sleeping the drunk away.
One Christmas, I was too young to remember, but mom told me. Dad had bought a lot of presents for me. Kenny was broke as he frequently was. He stopped by a construction lot and gathered a bag full of ends and pieces that crews trim away to shorten a 2 by 4 or cut it at an angle for use as a support. All the nice toys dad had bought were barely looked at, because I was fascinated over the bag of blocks.
In 1974 grandpa was dying in the hospital. Uncle Kenny (who also loved him) heard about it and wanted to see him. Being Kenny he stopped at a tavern on the way. He was at the bar drinking and the man next to him was bragging about a huge catfish he had caught that afternoon. Kenny wanted to see it, so they went out to the parking lot where the man opened the trunk of his car. The catfish head was nearly as big as a human skull. Kenny asked if he wanted the head of the fish? The man said, "no." Kenny asked if he could cut the head off to show it to his father-in-law in the hospital? The man said,"go ahead and take it." By the time Kenny was ready to leave for the hospital, visiting hours were long over, but his marine training went into gear and he slipped by the nurse's desk and got into grandpa's room. Grandpa was sound asleep by then, so Kenny left the catfish head under the bed so grandpa could see it in the morning. It turned out grandpa died in the wee hours of the morning in his sleep. The next morning the nurse came into the room and found the head. She freaked out! She called mom to let her know grandpa had died and to ask her if the catfish head had some voodoo or religious meaning? Mom immediately knew it was Kenny because no one else would or could get by the nurses or even attempt to do the deed.
Kenny went all through the war without a scratch. His only injury came when he took up with a bar fly called Mary. They lived together for a short time and one day got into an argument. Mary pulled out a knife and managed to cut off a piece of his ear. I still chuckle when I think about that.
This story is getting too long, though there is more to tell, but not as interesting as the above. Kenny was a devil and an angel wrapped in the same package. After I enlisted in the navy I rarely saw Kenny, only once or twice in 11 years. I was up in Saint Louis after I was out of the navy for a while. I went to visit my brother Tom. While there, his wife Sheri told me Kenny was dying. I needed to get back home, but she said I had better see him then because he didn’t have much time left. I stayed an extra day in Saint Louis so I could go see him. He was living in his sister’s basement. I waited for him to wake up. He did and he came upstairs for coffee. We went down stairs together to talk. Even though he looked like a dead man walking he still had an imposing countenance that was a bit scary. The first thing he asked me was if I wanted a beer? I was about 8 in the morning so I declined the offer. He didn’t talk much, asked a few questions that I answered. His life was soon to end and he knew it. Cancer was eating him up. I left that day and knew I would never see him again. I cried a bit on my way back to south Saint Louis. Kenny passed away a few days later.
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