Читать книгу L'Americain - John Launois - Страница 9

I never discovered southern California’s “golden dream.” I found the sun, Pacific Ocean, Mojave Desert, mountain ranges, and new friends—my “early American architects,” as I came to call them, who would mold me into the American I would become. But that’s all I ever found. Perhaps southern California was where America’s restlessness overflowed and never came to rest.

In the spring of ‘51, I was informed by Selective Service that I would be heading westward, toward Asia. With my U.S. draft number, 4-83-28-727, I was classified “1-A” and immediately eligible to fight in the Korean War.

Joe was shocked and said, “How can the U.S. draft you? You are a French citizen, damn it! You survived four years of war. Then you were drafted by the French Army. France is an ally. They can’t draft you!”

But Joe was wrong. I had a permanent resident’s visa and under U.S. law, I could be drafted. My night college courses wouldn’t delay my “call to duty,” but joining the National Guard might, unless my unit was called into federal duty.

So on June 15, 1951, I joined the California Air National Guard’s 146^th Fighter Squadron Air Group based in Van Nuys. Major Douglas Parker, the squadron commander, swore me in. Issued the light blue uniform of the U.S. Air Force, I became Airman Jean René Launois, U.S. 281-934-55. Eventually I grew tired of being called “Gene,” as the Americans pronounced my first name, so I translated it into Johnny, and later into John.

Major Parker immediately assigned me to the squadron’s photographic unit, which had a laboratory, a couple four-by-five Speed Graphics, and a K-20 for air-to-ground photography. We generally served one day every other weekend. I found myself with a group of World War II heroes who had flown missions in Europe and the Pacific. The squadron was made up of P-51 Mustangs, the fastest aircraft in World War II.

With these pilots, I broke out of the isolation I felt. Soon I was flying missions in a T-6 trainer with First Lieutenant Bob Boal, a veteran of the Pacific and our public relations officer.

Teaching myself air-to-air photography, I composed photographs at 12,000 feet, carefully placing several Mustangs in my camera frame as we all flew at high speed over California mountain ranges. Half the veteran pilots in my photos had flown missions over my head, escorting B-17 bombers on their way to bomb Germany, when I was a kid.

Looking for new ideas, I decided to photograph an F-51 Mustang taking off directly overhead. Major Parker had to be persuaded. He resisted, argued safety, then relented. We rehearsed the shot a number of times, then finally, on a stormy day in California’s rainy February season, First Lieutenant Erfkamp’s Mustang took off. As I lay supine in the middle of the runway, looking at the great sky, the Mustang roared above just 12 feet over my head. I caught the graceful airplane on film with its gears retracting against a darkened sky and mountain range. My photograph, published locally and nationally, was an instant hit. All the pilots wanted enlargements—so did the men in the squadron.

Overnight I became the pilots’ photographer. I spent many weekend evenings at the Officers’ Club even though I was merely an enlisted man. In the early 1990s when I asked Major Parker, who had retired as Colonel Parker, why the pilots had ignored the Air Force rules of fraternization between officers and enlisted men, he simply said, “John, you had a special rank among us. You were our photographer and we were weekend warriors.”

So for a while, I delayed my draft into the Korean War and had new friends among the pilots and crewmen. Meanwhile, when not on assignment with Joe, I began shooting my own stories.

At Grauman’s Chinese Theater entrance on Hollywood Boulevard, I became fascinated watching people trying to fit their own hands and feet in the prints of celebrities set in concrete. But as soon as people saw me with a camera, they shied away, so I decided to photograph them from a rooftop with a telephoto lens.

I got permission from the director of Grauman’s Theater to climb the straight-iron ladder leading to the roof. The ladder anchored to the outer wall of the building had no safety guides, and the first time I climbed, the ladder’s anchors came partially out of the wall. My section of the ladder no longer matched the section above me. At some 300 feet above the ground and just inches from the wall, holding a four-by-five Graflex and a tripod, I was unable to reach the upper section. So I bumped my chest against the ladder to drive the anchors back into the wall until inch by inch, the anchors went in, and I reached the upper section to the roof.

Unseen, I photographed people trying to match their hands and footprints to the great stars of Hollywood. It took several days to take enough photographs for an essay. Each day, I looked at the thickness of the anchors, trying to figure out if they would come out of the wall, and each day, I had to bump my chest against the ladder, driving the anchors back in. Thankfully, the ladder held until my essay was finished.

Black Star sold the essay to a Sunday newspaper supplement and my name was bylined. It was also sold in Europe and made $700. With my full agreement, all money for that and other assignments I did for Ebony magazine were credited to Joe’s account at Black Star. I saw none of the money. Eventually, Joe couldn’t even pay me my $20 weekly guarantee.

I knew Joe had financial troubles but never understood why. He began telling me, “I can’t pay you now but, instead, I’m giving you part of the laboratory.” That was not much of a consolation—I didn’t even have cash to go to the movies.

Soon I owned part of the lab. One day, when I was again rented out with Joe’s strobes, we had technical problems. When Joe suggested the problem was my fault for failing to check the strobes, I blew up. Enraged, I ripped the air conditioner from the window of the photo lab and threw it to the floor. Then I drove to the edge of a cliff by the ocean near Malibu. Near tears, staring at the Pacific in the night, I knew my time had come to move on.

A few weeks earlier, I had been offered a photographer’s position by the State of California to cover the Air National Guard’s 146^th Fighter Air Group. I told Major Parker that I’d take the offer. It may not have been photojournalism, strictly speaking, but at least I’d earn a decent salary and be able to continue college courses.

By late 1951, I had a few dollars in a savings account but not enough to buy a Leica or Rolleiflex. Palmer, the man at the Texaco station, found me a small studio shack to rent in Vanowen. It wasn’t much of a place, but it had a shower, toilet, and a room with two beds and a kitchen.

I packed my cardboard suitcase from Paris, threw it in the trunk of my 1938 Buick, and moved to a place of my own about 20 blocks from Joe. Leaving wasn’t easy. I kissed Paddy, little Mark, and hugged Joe goodbye. “Johnny,” he said, “this is a passage of time in your life. We will miss you. Don’t be sad. You are a very talented young man. You will make it and part of the lab is yours.”

I said, “Joe, forget all that stuff about the lab. You owe me nothing. I owe you all I know in photojournalism.” Joe Pazen was my first mentor and the first of my “American architects,” the men I encountered in my early years on the road to becoming an American.

During that time, I kept in touch with Claude, my childhood friend from France. In Paris, he became an excellent pastry cook and chef, and by February 1952, he had saved enough to come to California.

His arrival was exciting. Within two weeks, Claude found a chef’s position at the Beverly Hills restaurant, Jean’s Blue Room. Pay was good and the restaurant’s credit rating got him an immediate loan on a 1946 Chevrolet coupe.

To a World War II boy from France, arriving in California as a young adult, quickly acquiring a job as a chef and a car of his own within weeks, California was indeed the “golden state.”

Claude and I began sharing rent for our room. We updated each other on our lives. When he heard about my leaving Joe and Paddy, Claude prepared a gourmet meal for them in our “shack.” It was a feast. Claude even found good French wines for the occasion, and Joe and Paddy thought Claude had brought over a little bit of France to California.

On Claude’s nights off, we’d drive to Santa Barbara, often racing each other, breaking the 65-mile-an-hour speed limit. Since my ‘38 Buick was older than his ‘46 Chevy, it was a point of pride to win the race, and I easily did. But one night I overdid it. After passing Claude, I was pulled over by a state patrolman and issued my third speeding ticket in less than three months. A month before, the judge warned me, “One more ticket and I’ll send you to jail for one week to slow you down.”

I dreaded appearing before the same judge. Though I normally didn’t wear it during the week, I showed up for my court appearance in my Reserve Air Force uniform. It worked. The judge fined me $20 and said, “Young man, if you were not serving your country, I would have sent you to jail for two weeks.”

For the 146^th Fighter Squadron, my job proved to be far more technical than anticipated. I’d photograph defective engine and aircraft parts for documentation as well as make calculations for air-to-ground photography.

In the summer of ‘52, the 146^th Squadron was shipped to Boise, Idaho, for a two-week training mission. General Dwight Eisenhower paid us a visit, gathering votes for his presidential campaign, and I was happy to photograph the great hero of my adolescence.

Having no political views of my own and still a French citizen in America, I thought Eisenhower, like Presidents Roosevelt and Truman before him, was a Democrat. To me, all Americans were Democrats. America was the world’s oldest democracy.

But in Boise, Idaho, First Lieutenant Bob Boal, a Republican, began my American political education. Almost half a century later, my dear friend, Bob, from conservative Orange County California, would still be trying to convince me that all good Americans were Republicans.

I liked Eisenhower’s speeches about ending the war in Korea. The idea of one more war in my life was sickening. His promise was still in my mind when I was drafted out of the Air National Guard into the U.S. Army Infantry and ordered to report to Fort Ord, California, on March 10, 1953.

The war in Korea was claiming daily casualties. In November, I’d be 25 years old. I wondered why I should fight North Koreans and Chinese when I had yet to begin my life.

It was a moral dilemma. I was a French citizen yet emotionally American. The Americans had saved me, my country, and Western Europe. In my head, going back to France would have been an act of cowardice, so I reported for war duty as ordered.

Driving north to Fort Ord, near Monterey and Big Sur, I reflected on what it was like to be an infantry grunt. Life magazine’s war coverage looked grim and miserable.

Drifting in my thoughts was Patricia’s beautiful face, my first American love. She was a student psychologist at the University of California. A few weeks earlier, on the delightful Santa Barbara campus, she told me she was pregnant and needed $300 to help pay for an abortion.

On our last trip to her parents’ home at a naval research base in the Mojave Desert, she spoke of her need for post graduate work. As a psychologist, she was sure I could not be in love with her. “I am the mirror of your idealistic America,” she said. “I am the California girl, the golden dream, the marshmellows roasted on the beach of Santa Barbara. But you cannot love me, and you must not love me. I don’t want a child.”

My generation was rather naive about sexual matters, or at least I was. But I was always careful not to make her pregnant. Patricia insisted it was an accident and I believed her. I was just able to raise the money she wanted. It wiped out my savings, and I had to take out a loan from Black Star, which would take a long time to repay.

I was stunned as we departed in the cool night of the Mojave Desert. I drove back to the San Fernando Valley in a kind of infinite sadness that lovers know. The next day in the 146^th Fighter Squadron’s lab showroom, I tore up all her 16-by-20-inch pictures displayed among the Mustang airplanes.

Back in basic training, I was exhausted and slept the few hours the Army allowed. I was comforted by a photograph of the luscious young Hollywood starlet who tried to console me before “my going to war.”

Patricia eventually receded from my mind, so I was surprised in the early 1990s to receive a letter from her University of California roommate. “I tried to reach you for decades,” she wrote, “but I had no idea where you were. Last week I saw your name, and your agency gave me your address. What I wanted to tell you is that you were right in questioning your paternity with Patricia decades ago. Patricia became pregnant by a South American playboy who disappeared after he had an affair with her while you were in the San Fernando Valley. She told me that herself. She told me she felt bad you were going to war but she was desperate. My conscience bothered me for all these years. I’m glad I finally found you.”

Stunned by the letter, I telephoned Patricia’s ex-roommate in Ventura, California. All she told me was that Patricia had a talk show on television “somewhere,” giving advice as a psychologist. On the phone, in the background, I heard her husband say, “You’ve cleared your conscience! Now drop it!” I dropped it too. If indeed Patricia had been my California “golden dream,” then it certainly was a tarnished one.

Back in basic training, the American Army was physically demanding and emotionally crude, designed to turn 18-year-olds into disciplined fighting machines. After four months of running in deep sand and enduring punishing exercise, I felt more physically fit than at any other time in my life.

Our first sergeant had just returned from a tour of duty in Korea. He described the “gooks” storming his entrenched position. “All we can do here,” he said, “is give you the best training in the world and that won’t be enough. You will train day and night, sleep some, and when you are exhausted, ready to fall, you will have to go again until you really fall.”

The military, as it prepared us for the stresses and dangers of warfare, wanted us to learn to depend on each other. But because one of our men had gone AWOL, “absent without leave,” my platoon became known as the “Goon Platoon.” Our sergeant, saying a man of such low character would endanger our entire platoon in combat, suggested that all of us, some 60 boys and a few men, should “teach him an everlasting lesson and make the third platoon proud again.”

We all understood “the lesson” meant a beating, but I didn’t think anyone would follow the suggestion. When the soldier came back from yet another absence without leave, a dozen of his buddies, dressed in fatigues and combat boots, waited until he entered the darkened first floor of the barracks. Switching on the lights, they jumped him.

The soldiers began beating him with fists and kicking him with combat boots. When I heard the screams, I ran downstairs barefoot to the first floor. I couldn’t believe the savagery. I tried to calm the mob saying, “He should be judged by a military court.” One guy crushed my toes with his right boot and told me to “Shut up.”

After the incident, suffering a black toe for my interference, I limped for days. But the badly beaten soldier “shaped up” and never again went AWOL for the remainder of basic training. The third platoon was no longer the “Goon Platoon.”

We went through extensive rifle practice, grenade throwing, undergoing the infiltration course under live-ammunition fire, marching with heavy packs day and night, compass training, night navigation, and other challenges to mind and body.

Though I had no thought of killing while firing my M-1 rifle on the range or thrusting my bayonet into a dummy while screaming for psychological effect, I was reminded that soon I might have to kill other men. During our short hours of sleep, I’d dream the dummy was a faceless, screaming man charging me.

My platoon sergeant continued to incorrectly pronounce my name, Launois, as “Illinois” instead of “Lawn-wah.” Exasperated after two months of training, I refused to respond at roll calls until the sergeant said my name correctly. He finally did but my defiance cost me an extra day of kitchen-police duty.

All our instructors had seen combat, and they pushed us mercilessly through training using foul and vulgar language I had never heard before. When they spoke to us directly, they shouted orders two inches away from our faces and spat the words.

Using obscene language during basic training in the U.S. Army was common practice in 1953. Younger recruits in my platoon saw it simply as “bullshit,” which would end with our graduation from basic training. But as the oldest man in our platoon, I found the humiliation difficult to take. It reminded me of the abusive language the French and German police used during the occupation of France.

When we were first indoctrinated, we were read our military Bill of Rights, and I vaguely remembered that a soldier could not be abused verbally or otherwise. I didn’t know how and when to exercise my rights, but I assumed, as a French citizen in the U.S. Army, I had the same rights as my American buddies.

One day late in the fourth month of basic training, we had to ready ourselves for the Inspector General’s official inspection. All squads spent the entire morning cleaning, dusting, and checking the special folds on our double bunks in preparation for inspection. In my squad, our clothing lockers, footlockers, everything, including our feet, stood in perfect lines. None of us understood what authority an “I.G.” actually had. I knew vaguely that he had investigative powers.

The officer, a full colonel, arrived to look us over. We stood at stiff attention. From head to toe, he inspected the barrack floors, windows, bunks and lockers, or so I assumed. Standing at attention with my eyes looking straight, I couldn’t see what he was actually looking at.

Then he nodded to our platoon sergeant who gave the order, “At ease, men.” Addressing our two squads, the colonel told us, “I’m here to listen to any complaints you men might have, any mistreatment…”

Nobody said a word. Sensing our discomfort in front of our sergeant, the colonel asked to be left alone with us. Still no one said a word. Realizing it might be my last chance, I stood again at attention, introduced myself as Private Launois, and blurted out that I resented and was disgusted by all the foul language and obscene names we had been called during the last several months.

There was a long silence. I felt absolutely alone. Suddenly, more than 30 voices shouted in anger, “He’s right sir. He’s right!” The colonel ordered me, “At ease.” He asked the men to gather around. Everyone confirmed what I had just said. One soldier added, “If we are men enough to go kill or get killed, then we shouldn’t be called the scum of the earth.”

When I was standing alone reciting my grievances, it occurred to me that my young buddies in the third and fourth squads might have thought I was a wimp to make an issue of obscene language since they had dismissed foul language as “bootcamp bullshit.” But their dignity had been hurt too. Some who had called me “Frenchy” in the past said, “Thanks for speaking up.” Others began to call me the “French Revolution.”

The colonel assured us he would look into our complaints. He did. The next day, the obscene language ended.

After basic training, all the men in K-company expected to ship out to Korea. In retrospect, we had been superbly trained both physically and psychologically. The graduation ceremony was moving: not only had the U.S. Army made us fighting men, it had made us American patriots. When we were ordered, “Eyes right,” we saluted and looked at the reviewing stand with its officers wearing their stars and eagles, brass band playing, and the stars and stripes flying in the Monterey wind. We thought of ourselves as the proudest Americans Fort Ord had ever seen.

We were going to fight for freedom against the “Commies” in Korea. I thought of my father and how he had told me that, “Communism was a noble idea in the nineteenth century, born out of a reaction to excesses of capitalism, but it became a monstrous experiment in the 1930s.” He said its fraudulence was confirmed by Stalin jumping into Hitler’s bed when the two dictators signed their nonaggression pact in 1939.

So there I was in mid-July of 1953, an American patriot in U.S. uniform with an “alien registration card” in my pocket, ready to fight for America as a French citizen, because I knew America had saved me and Western Europe during World War II. Now, in the Far East, America was needed again. At that time, things seemed just that simple.

After graduation, we were given a pep talk. The sergeant read the names of the few who were assigned “stateside.” A week earlier, the colonel who ran Fort Ord’s photographic activities told me he was impressed with my experience, so I suspected I would be among the lucky few. I was and soon found myself working in the colonel’s Photographic and Public Relations Department.

Then, on July 27, 1953, less than two weeks after our basic training ended, an armistice was signed in Panmunjon, Korea, leading to the division of the Korean peninsula.

Beginning my new assignment, I learned the 7:00 a.m. roll call was made by a “professional private” who had been in the Army for years and had gone back and forth between private first class to plain private time and again because he picked a fight with every newcomer.

He was from Poland and insisted on being called “Polack.” From his last fight, he had an infection from being bitten by his adversary. His right hand was still bandaged. Because he was a regular Army volunteer and I was a draftee, Polack predictably picked a fight saying, “You were the last one to fall out!” even though it was not true.

On the way to mess hall, he grabbed me. I turned around, held his collar, and asked him, “Do you have a car?” “No,” he answered. So I said, “Polack, because of your last fight, you’re a one-armed fighter. So tonight, you and I will drive to the beach in Monterey in my car, and I will beat the hell out of you. But don’t expect me to bring you back.”

Before finishing breakfast, Polack came to my table and told me what I had said made sense. With his left hand, he shook my hand and never bothered me again.

Because of the armistice, all my bootcamp buddies and I had escaped war in Korea. Most told me I was lucky to remain stateside, but my photographic assignments at Fort Ord were rather dull. With the war over, there was little satisfaction in photographing medals being pinned, VIP handshakes, and fresh recruits being trained. During basic training, I had seen the seriousness in my comrades’ faces, but after the armistice, the looks of new trainees had none of that anxiety or sense of urgency.

For something new, I asked permission to photograph the faces of trainees in infiltration courses as they crawled through a barrage of live ammunition. My request was considered for a while but ultimately rejected as unsafe for the photographer and planners of the course. My ambition of course was to have my work published in a national magazine and bylined, “J. Launois, U.S. Army.”

Knowing I was unhappy that my request was rejected, my colonel tried to cheer me up, saying, “Launois, you’re our best photographer and I promise you’ll get the best assignments. I want to keep you satisfied. Think of all your buddies in Korea while here at Fort Ord you have everything, Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur. As soon as regulations permit, I’ll promote you to private first class.”

But by that point, I was psychologically prepared for Korea. It sounded exciting and exotic—I wanted to see and photograph people of “the land of the morning calm” and capture images of “Heartbreak Ridge” where so many Americans fought and died.

The colonel was shocked when I requested a transfer to the Far East, to Korea or Japan. Instead of forwarding my request, he gave me another enthusiastic talk about my advantages at Fort Ord.

I submitted my request again, and again he didn’t forward it. His attractive blond secretary told me, “Your request is still on his desk. The old man said you’re a nitwit to want a transfer from California to Korea.” Even so, she liked me enough to reveal an address where I could request a transfer directly and bypass my colonel.

From the French Army, I inherited the military tradition of referring to the colonel as “my” colonel even though an officer is not “yours” at all: you are at his command. I didn’t want my ambitions to be compromised by my colonel. With his secretary’s help, I submitted a direct request for transfer, and in late November 1953, I received orders for a Far East assignment.

I decided to make one last trip south to sell my car and see my old friend Claude in Van Nuys. Goaded by friends in the car, I pushed my ‘46 Pontiac too fast and blew out my engine. The car was sold as scrap for $10.

Returning to Fort Ord by Greyhound bus, I wrote a goodbye note to Claude, packed my duffel bag, and headed north to a briefing area for processing. There I endured lectures on Japanese and Korean cultures and the dangers of sexual promiscuity in the Far East.

We soldiers were reminded that Japan and America had signed a peace treaty the year before and we were to behave as guests in a “host country.” They told us, “As ambassadors of good will, your conduct in Japan and Korea is to be exemplary. You are expected to respect cultures you do not understand and learn from them.”

The lectures reminded me of post-World War II days in Germany and how disturbed I was when Americans treated the defeated Germans as friends. “The French and Germans have been killing each other since 1870,” my father had said. “Millions of the dead speak to us today. These two enemies must share their destiny.” Father had been a pro-European advocate long before the Treaty of Rome was signed. Now America was demonstrating exactly the same spirit of magnanimity toward Japan.

I wondered how a man with only a primary school education could be so wise. Though his family had lost everything in the First World War, father could still tell me why “enemies must seek reason.”

After the briefing lectures, we had to watch films about sexual diseases in Asia. They described diseases I’d never heard of; the corrosive effects of syphilis were illustrated by men on the screen with faces, noses, and lips falling off.

As a romantic I couldn’t completely believe in all the horrors in the film. I suspected many of the men we saw were afflicted with leprosy. But the Far East had its share of deadly venereal diseases, and the U.S. Army made it clear that a prudent soldier will restrain himself, abstain from sex, and contain his lust until returning home to the U.S.

I decided my own sexual energy could be eased by working very long hours. Thus far I had experienced love making with Patricia and the young Hollywood starlet doing her “patriotic duty” to comfort me before I went off to war, but such encounters pretty much summed up my sexual experience.

Shortly after my 25^th birthday, I boarded the troopship Saint Patrick in San Francisco. I couldn’t help thinking, “When I get out of this, I’ll be going on 27, and my chances of making it with Life magazine will be close to zero.”

My orders didn’t say where I was going, but all 5,000 of us soldiers were convinced we were headed for Korea. The multileveled bunks in the ship were stacked one on top of the other. I made the mistake of choosing an upper bunk where the smells and heat of the ship rose till it was difficult to breath, and the problems of seasickness were more distinct. I ended up sleeping on the deck.

By midmorning, we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, and all of us were on the rails of the Saint Patrick to gaze at the magnificent structure. For me, the “Golden Gate” held special meaning, symbolizing the search for another land. I had always gone westward, from France to New York, to California, and now to the Far East. Once again, I sensed something ending and something beginning.

The difference between the relative calm of San Francisco Bay and the vast rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean initially made almost everyone sick. In the first hours, then days, many of us never made it to the dreaded “chow calls.”

I learned if I could stay up on deck, let the Pacific wind and saltwater spray my face, I could make breakfast, lunch, and dinner without throwing up. But watching others be sick required reminding myself that food was energy and therefore essential. I made a habit of waiting till “last call” for dinner, so I could see more of the last light of day from the deck.

After the first few miserable days of crossing the Pacific, I began to feel a stirring of unknown emotions. I was going to where the sun sets, fulfilling some early personal yearning.

Thousands of us were going to Korea, but Japan was considered the ideal assignment. A short list of names was posted for the few men disembarking in Yokohama; though I’d expected to go to Korea, I was delighted to find my name on the list for Japan.