Friday, October 7, 2011
Thomas B - Texas
Below, you'll find a beautiful story of a lifelong friendship of two young boys who grew into two wonderful men. Their loyalty over decades is inspiring. One can only hope for a friendship as strong and lasting as theirs.
Claire
My best friend the whole time we were growing up lived beside us. We played together all the time: cars, marbles, tops, you name it, sliding in the mud, anything. His name was Billy and we were the same age.
Because of the month of his birthday, they had made arrangements for him to start school the year before I did. I didn't like that because I had to wait all day long for him to get home from school. I couldn't wait until he got home from school.
The house he lived in and the house I lived in both had big, nice porches on the front. We would play and we would fuss sometimes. He would run up on his porch and I would run up on my porch and we would look at each other. We would look at one other and think about it for a good, long while. He would come back over to my house or I would go back to his house and we would start playing again. We did that several times. We played outside every afternoon and all the other kids too, there were four or five or six of us.
Late one afternoon, this big German Shepherd dog showed up from somewhere and he was playing with us. We were hugging his neck and all that. Real early the next morning, we heard this big commotion in the backyard. We got up and this German Shepherd dog was attacking Billy and was biting him real bad on the face and the ears, all over. It almost killed him. Then the dog took off.
My grandpa didn't know what the commotion was, so we told him. He said, "Let me get my gun." Then he took off on foot in the direction that the dog went. There's no telling how many miles he walked tracking this dog until he got close enough to shoot him. He shot the dog and cut the dog's head off, carried it back to town and mailed it to the health department down in Austin. They notified him that the dog had rabies and that anyone who had been bitten would have to take the rabies shot. So they had to take Billy to Temple, I don't remember how often, to get the rabies vaccine in his stomach. But it saved his life and he lived to be 80 years old.
Billy had graduated high school and I was still a senior. He said, "Let's join the Navy." I said okay. I was only 16, so we had to get our parents’ permission. My daddy wasn't in favor of it, but I kept after him and aggravated him and decided I wasn't going to quit. So, he signed permission. I wrote to Billy and told him that I had permission. He and I got together in Austin and went to the Navy recruiting office. We took that eye test and I was having trouble calling out the numbers and colored dots. They told me I was colorblind and they couldn't take me in the Navy because I was colorblind. I said, "I'm not colorblind! I'll show you any color out the window there!” The officer said, "I don't care. That's not what we go by." Billy didn't have any trouble. So that was a big disappointment for me because we had been so close and I wanted to go into the Navy with him.
Before I turned 18, my dad and some of his friends from Troy took me fishing. When I got home, I had a letter waiting for me. It said, "Greetings from the United States government…" It notified me that I needed to report to a courthouse in Austin on a certain day. So I did. While we were there, they told me that they were taking me to San Antonio for an Army physical. They told me to go and stay home until I was notified to report, and that was one option. The other option was that you could volunteer for immediate induction. I volunteered along with two or three others.
Anyway, time went on, and Billy and I kind of lost track of one another. Last I heard he was in Washington DC when I was in basic training. After basic training, I got to go home for two or three days before I went to West Virginia. It was December, and I left on Christmas Day. From West Virginia, I was in deportation training, and got on a ship to Germany. The war was just over. They deactivated the third division and sent them to the States. And, of course, since my group was the largest group and we had just gotten there, they transferred us into the 19th division. And that's where we stayed until we got out. After the occupation in Germany and our tour was up, we came back and we were discharged in New Jersey.
I don't know if Billy ever had to leave the States or not. I had another close friend who was in the Navy, and didn't. So I don't know if Billy did or not. I saw more water than they did and they were in the Navy and I was in the Army. But Billy never let me forget that I didn't pass that test and that he did, that he had to leave and go by himself. Good-naturedly, of course.
Billy and I stayed in touch. He called me every now and then. One day, his wife called me and told me he had died of a heart attack. That was awful news. I had known her since high school, even though she was about three grades behind us. I went to the funeral and to the cemetery. I went to see her, and talk to her, and hug her neck. Billy had two or three boys. I shook hands with the first one and he said, "So, you're the one who joined the Navy with my daddy and didn't pass the eye test." I said, "Yeah, I'm the one!"
