Diary of a sergeant. (1949)

[Music] this was the day I lost both my hands on this June day in 1944 someone else's fingers were writing down my words in my diary that just weren't any words for many of the things I thought of I had a lot of time for thinking I had all day and more of the night than anyone knew crazy thinking at first like remembering a kid's party where they tied my hands behind my back and made me take a bite out of an apple hanging by a string I thought at the time in the meat market where I worked before the war when I sliced the tip of my right middle finger and had to get along with my left hand for a week just the tip of one finger yet I was 50% helpless how would it be now with stumps instead of fingers and palms and wrists how would it be I couldn't even handle a cigarette by myself then I began to remember stories from civilian days of armless men who learned to paint good pictures with the brushes held between the toes and back home I'd heard of a woman without hands who knitted sweaters for the Red Cross with her feet that wasn't much of a conflict it was clever and was okay if someone's ambition were to paint portraits or knit sweaters with his feet but it wasn't what I wanted with the help of my neighbors I could get by I found that out early and felt better for it but I didn't want to go through life dependent on others most of us in the ward felt that way days we'd get each other and have plenty of laughs but after lights out I wasn't the only one who'd stare into the dark thinking I still thought of that kids game with the Apple on the strength grip we'll fixed it up for me to smoke probably thought of other things like walking across a frozen lake on stilts [Music] he lost both feet at Anzio one thing I envied the others though they got theirs in combat I got mine on d-day all right but it was in North Carolina one half a pound of TNT exploded ahead of schedule I didn't have a chairman scalp hanging from my belt I didn't have a Purple Heart I didn't even have an overseas ribbon all I had was no hands then three weeks after I went into the ward something came along that made a big difference to all of us lying there day after day worrying and wondering they've shown us movies before but this one was special it wasn't a single blonde in it but they said we'd all feel better if we'd take time out to meet McGonagall [Music] this is my neighbor Charles McGonagall I'd like you to meet him I think he's an interesting fellow watch him shaving for instance what's unusual about that well Charlie has no hands no hands other than these ingenious substitutes but he does things that easily we were a tough audience for movies a day before one of our guys who left a foot at Kwajalein had thrown his crutch at the screen when the hero recited poetry to some pin-up girl but we listened hard this day all of us Johnny with one leg buck one leg Frenchy one arm Bailey one leg read one arm credere no legs papa Frank one leg and me I listen because here was a man named Charlie McGonagall a man without hands since the last war doing all the everyday things I thought I'd never do again doing them with hooks nothing fancy like pole vaulting or repairing watches or even knitting with his feet just the acts of normal living like shaving and eating and dressing himself he does it alone from the first sock to the final tilt of his hat this vest is gonna buttoning up in the regular way hooks together for convenience Charlie can handle buttons but the hooks are time-saver in a world where the tendency has always been to streamline time there a forecast the zipper vest that you and I'll be wearing when Hitler and Hirohito are things you talk about only in the past tense like Dillinger Model T even the leg boy seemed encouraged by what they saw on the screen it show them what a man could do if he tried Charlie has none of the characteristics of the Superman he's a man who lived normally before the war and instead of snow no goal but to live normally after it he succeeded because he had patience he had faith in himself knew took a little while [Music] right then I knew I could get there too perhaps even a little faster than McGonagall after seeing the picture for the first time I really put something into the daily calisthenics I didn't just fan the air with my arms anymore I worked out as though I had a date to play in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day actually it was going to be a bigger show than the Rose Bowl the date I had was with McGonigle's way of living place a normal world I'm hmm that was a big question mark I spoke to the doc about it and said I was figuring on about three months like McGonagall well he said maybe six if I'd said six months he'd probably have said maybe nine that's the way they were in the hospital cautious they didn't want to build us up to a letdown the doc told me to begin toning up and what we called the workshop which was less of a mouthful than the orthopedic occupational therapy shop with a cuff attachment things became easier right away I wrote the words dear mother again I hadn't done that since June the fifth five weeks before the writing wasn't as pretty as it used to be but it could be read and it was my own I discovered that I owed a great debt to the man who invented the typewriter and the nurses who were patient when I got the keys into a traffic jam ping pong helped limber up my arms and shoulders I couldn't reach the ones on the far outside but my control was good and I won more games than I lost August the third was a great day less than six weeks after my accident the doctor told me my stumps looked okay and it was time he gave me some new hands well I felt like turning a couple of cartwheels but that wasn't quite possible so I just thanked him and made a date to get downstairs it used to take chubby an hour to make a plaster cast in civilian life but he was having more customers these days and could do it in a breeze chubby assured me I'd be dealing myself a pat royal flush and months from now a month that was more like it well said chubby maybe six months everyone was playing at cozy there was nothing left to chance with the plastic forearms called buckets they had to fit snugly with no more tolerance than you'd find in the cylinders of a p38 the reach had to be just right everything had to be just right because these were going to be my new hands strong enough to carry a trunk sensitive enough to thread a needle some fellows have dress hands with fingers that would fool anyone when covered with the glove but there's not much you can do with them except look pretty I got my prosthesis as they're called a week after chubby took the mold and the doc explained just how to work them the normal position of the hooks is with the tips together locked by strong elastic bands each hook is opened by a cord which is pulled by moving the opposite shoulder it had been nearly six weeks since I'd held anything under my own control and that had been half a pound of TNT in North Carolina I got quite a kick out of holding that pencil when I came back to the ward I couldn't help flashing my new hooks I sure felt cocky I puffed casually on a cigarette and swaggered as the white won the Medal of Honor with oak leaf cluster I wanted to drink a toast to the world with my own new hands even if it had to be milk boy was I riding high no straw for me was like catching one in the belly maybe the dark schedule was ripe and mine was a lot of optimistic hooey instead of trying to run before I could crawl I started off from scratch practicing every chance I had to keep adjusting the hooks to find out the best angle and tension for different jobs had to develop new muscles and a whole new sense in place of a sense of touch that I'd lost for instance it seemed unnatural to have to move my left shoulder if I wanted to do something with my right hand I began to think of it as a sort of remote control like looking in a submarine periscope to see something up on top after a few days and night it came more easily but I wouldn't be satisfied until I could do it automatically without having to tell myself left hand right shoulder right hand left shoulder every time I took a pencil or a box of matches it was slow dull work and it was hard there's no sense pretending it wasn't but one thing I knew it wouldn't do any good to cry over a bottle of spilt milk things were better in the orthopedic workshop where they dressed up teaching to make it more like a game the checkers were different shapes and weights and I didn't win often because the nurse could figure out her next three moves while I was making one it was a funny feeling coming face to face with gadgets that a child could operate and realizing that I had to learn them all over again in the first couple of weeks with my hooks I dialed more numbers than there were Smiths and Joneses in the New York phonebook and they weren't just collect calls either I dropped enough coins in the fare box of a bus to take me all the way across the country the cup was more difficult because it was slippery and breakable and from the time I sat in a high chair I'd always picked it up with a thumb and two fingers every time I handled a glass I thought of a certain bottle of milk and that saved the War Department plenty of petty cash for breakage maybe it wasn't the most exciting work in the world but they'd rigged it up for our benefit and every hour a man spent practicing brought him just that much closer to home which was what the hospital wanted for us it wasn't all work and no play they provided us with just about every kind of sport there is outdoor and then I would never play basketball at Madison Square Garden but in the pool I found that I could breeze along because speedin swimming comes as much from the legs is from the arms [Music] most of us had jalopies in the garage back home and we used to win this sometimes how it would be to sit behind the wheel again they had a practice car for us and I soon found out I wasn't going to have to be a backseat driver all my life though there was one time I wished I had a chauffeur [Music] I wasn't the only one who was making progress it was wonderful to see how quickly the fellas had lost a leg or both legs had learned how to handle themselves [Music] watching them I learned something about guts and the knack of having fun again [Music] on September the 6th exactly three months after I lost my hands I got a furlough I was going home for the first time in a long while I was way ahead of the docs schedule and it felt great a furlough is a beautiful way to spend a piece of calendar I was hopped up about it [Music] but something happened on the train that got me unhappy I spotted a seat and I saw who was on the other half of it well I didn't want to scare away like Little Miss Muffet [Music] so I sat there thinking of how I would have done it if I had met a girl like that when I still had my hands I'd have had a conversation going in two seconds flat tough travelling nowadays I'd have said if that hadn't worked I have talked about the weather which works when nothing else does and then I'd offer a cigarette if she took it I could see whether she wore a wedding ring or not somehow I was sure she didn't I'd have asked her where she was going and wherever it was I'd have said I was going there too and what's more I'd have gone there whatever was written on my furlough papers there I was sitting across the way scared that it would scare her to see my hooks I thought about the dress hands that look natural covered with gloves I thought is this the way it's going to be with me from now on and I thought about the weather that's what I thought 420 miles of track or maybe 30 [Music] wherever a man's home is that's where the water is softest and I never felt so clean in my life is the first day home was easy to work up a lather with a sponge gadget Fred Selby next-door whipped up in less than half an hour I had three showers that one day nothing had changed at home the grass was in pretty bad shape because mother wasn't husky enough for the lawnmower and there aren't many men left in our neighborhood since the war but I took care of it the first afternoon everything else was the same I don't know how they managed over food it must have been saving up points for weeks by the second day I wondered if I'd have difficulty fastening my belt not the cause of my hooks but because of those meals [Music] one of the important items on my furlough schedule was to make arrangements to go to college before the war I wasn't able to do much about it but now with a good pension and a generous educational allowance from the government I could easily afford to take a crack at something I'd always wanted a college degree inside the university getting myself oriented it occurred to me that study might come hard after all these years away from school they had some fairly impressive names for most of the courses and every one of them looked a lot different from basic training almost everyone that is [Music] but I was soon convinced that going back to school wouldn't be as tough as I thought when I was a kid I was somehow always in touch with my teachers but here was the president of Boston University asking me to sit down with him instead of making me stand in the corner he told me there was no course I had to reject the cause of my physical disability I could learn to be just about anything except maybe a brain surgeon or a concert violinist and for the first time I knew how long something would take four years not maybe six or maybe eight but four years flat that made good listening that night I dressed as carefully as if I were going to stand Saturday inspection and in a way I was I had a date and it couldn't be a hair out of place I kept thinking of two things that train ride from the hospital and the weather I thought about them so hard I'd still be getting into my blouse if it hadn't been fitted with those time savers I saw in the mechanical picture it had been quite a train ride after those first 20 or 30 miles of track yes when you want to meet somebody whether it's snow or sunshine whether it's very warm for me or very cool for September it's the weather that gives you the opening I guess it always works hooks or hands this time anyway it worked like a charm as for the hooks she didn't ignore them completely that day on the train that would have been more embarrassing than staring at them all the time she noticed them but she took them for granted like too many freckles or flaming red hair and after five minutes I didn't feel I was much different from anyone else she knew a bit luckier that's all because she lived only a mile from now here I was dancing with it [Music] I had a swell fellow I saw my old friends and made lots of new women the only girl who turned away when she saw me was Peggy Sam when I forget her name and she'd been doing that ever since we were 12 when I put gum in her inkwell at school so I almost liked her for not changing it certainly was good to know that I hadn't lost my touch and so that night just a little more than three months after I was hurt I found myself writing this is the last entry in my diary because I think a diary is mostly to help remember things in the past right now I'm more interested in the future and I'm really looking forward to the next 45 years of my life or as the doc would probably say maybe 80 ladies and gentlemen the Surgeon General of the United States Army Major General Roman T Kirk the picture that you have just seen is the story of one man's fight to regain his place in society there are many thousands of men who are today engaged in that same struggle the struggle to be able to take their place in normal everyday life they are the men who fought and won your war we must make certain that they win their fight for equality and opportunity they are the men who lived normally before the war and whose one desire is to live normally now without your help they cannot possibly succeed for regardless of how much patience faith and sheer courage they may have they must also have the equipment the hospitals the nurses and the doctors this will take money tremendous sums of money money that you can furnish by buying and holding bonds your bonds represent the best investment in the world your share in America they will give our wounded fighting men the opportunity to win the struggle they are making to live as normal men once the game [Music]