Doom Platoon

by Levinson, Len

  “It looks like our vacation is just about over,” Dexter replied glumly.

  Mazursky turned to the Baroness and the Countess. “Will you miss us, girls?”

  Tears filled the Baroness’s eyes. “I shall never forget you.”

  “Nor shall I,” added the Countess, reaching for her handkerchief.

  It was decided that Mazursky and Dexter should go into hiding until the Germans were gone from the vicinity, because they could never tell when some German soldiers might visit the house. Thereafter Mazursky and Dexter always stayed in the house close to the suits of armor, but no Germans ever stopped in. They were too busy fleeing from the Allied Armies. Mazursky and Dexter drank lots of brandy and smoked lots of cigars, because they knew it was all coming to an end pretty soon. They also screwed the women every chance they had. The women seemed to enjoy the additional attention. But the atmosphere in the mansion became melancholy, because everyone knew that the dream bubble was about to burst.

  Late one afternoon a long column of soldiers approached the mansion. Mazursky and Dexter ran to the suits of armor and commenced putting them on, when Baroness Helga, who was looking out the window, said, “They are not wearing German uniforms.’’

  Mazursky and Dexter looked out the window, and sure enough, the soldiers were wearing the khaki uniforms of the United States Army. Mazursky and Dexter felt joy commingled with sorrow. On one hand they didn’t have to worry anymore about being found by the SS, but on the other, they were going to be dogfaces again. The column of soldiers stopped in front of the house. Mazursky estimated that there were at least three companies out there. The soldiers looked filthy, bearded, and battle weary. There was a knock on the door.

  Baroness Helga, Countess Lilli, Mazursky, and Dexter went to the front door. Baroness Helga opened it. Standing on the front porch was an American Lieutenant-Colonel and a few other officers. One of them made a statement in German.

  Baroness Helga smiled. “We all speak English here,” she said.

  The Lieutenant-Colonel cleared his throat. “Madam, I’m afraid I must requisition your property for my battalion tonight. My officers will be staying in your house, and my men in the surrounding buildings. I apologize for the intrusion and any inconvenience we may be causing you, but we didn’t start this war.”

  “I quite understand,” she said graciously.

  “I am Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Holmes,” the officer said, bowing slightly,” and these are two of my staff officers, Major Wooley and Captain Barnes.”

  “How do you do, Gentlemen. I am the Baroness Helga Von Kanzow, and this is the Countess Lilli Von Bitburg. The two men are Sergeant Michael Mazursky and Sergeant Bull Moose Dexter of your Army.”

  Mazursky and Dexter snapped to attention. The vacation was officially over.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Holmes narrowed his eyes at them. “What are you two birds doing here?”

  “We escaped from the POW camp at Schwanditz, sir,” Mazursky said. “These ladies were kind enough to hide us from the SS. They risked their lives for us many times, sir, and we hope you’ll mention that in your dispatches, sir.”

  “I see. Well, report to my quartermaster and get back into uniform immediately.”

  “Yes sir.” Mazursky turned to the ladies. “Well, thanks for everything,” he said.

  “Yeah,” added Dexter. “We couldn’t have made it without you.”

  “It was a pleasure to help you,” Baroness Helga said with a faint smile.

  “We Germans are not as inhuman as people generally think,” Countess Lilli added.

  Baroness Helga turned to Lieutenant-Colonel Holmes. “May I show you my home; sir?”

  “That would be most kind of you.”

  Baroness Helga and Countess Lilli didn’t cast another glance at Mazursky and Dexter, as the ladies led the officers into their home. Mazursky and Dexter were left standing alone on the front porch. They looked at each other, shrugged at the vicissitudes of life, and went off in search of the quartermaster.

  As dusk fell, they were sitting around an open campfire, eating beans and Spam with the other GIs. They wore new green fatigues and wore new steel helmets. They shot the shit with the other soldiers, telling all manner of war stories, some of them true, and occasionally they glanced at the living room window of the mansion, from which came the sound of music and laughter. Baroness Helga and Countess Lilli were entertaining the American officers, giving them cigars, dancing with them, and who knew what other favors they would bestow on them.

  In the morning, Mazursky and Dexter were driven by jeep to a huge repple-depple (replacement depot) in the rear. It was located on a former German Army post, and they stayed there for a few days awaiting orders, enduring medical examinations, and submitting to the questions of officers from various Intelligence sections. Finally their orders arrived; they were to be returned to their former units.

  On the appointed morning they packed their few belongings together and carried them to the motor pool. A transportation officer told them to board trucks parked in front of the motor pool. They were assigned different trucks.

  They stood in front of ten trucks being boarded by soldiers returning to active duty from hospitals, POW camps, and Rest and Recuperation Camps.

  Mazursky held out his hand. “Well, so long, buddy,” he said to Dexter.

  “It’s been nice knowing you, Mazursky.”

  “Good luck, and keep your head down, you scumbag.”

  “You too, asshole.’’

  They shook hands and slapped each other on the back. Then they picked up their gear and boarded their respective trucks. One by one the trucks pulled away from the motor pool and headed for the front lines.

  Painting by Ari Roussimoff

  My So-Called Literary Career

  by Len Levinson

  As I look back at my so-called literary career, which consisted of 83 paperback novels by 22 pseudonyms, I’ve concluded that it all began in 1946 when I was 11, Fifth Grade, John Hannigan Grammar School, New Bedford, Massachusetts.

  A teacher named Miss Ribeiro asked students to write essays of our choosing. Some kids wrote about baking cookies with mommy, fishing excursions to Cuttyhunk with dad, or bus to Boston to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees at Fenway Park, etc.

  But my mommy died when I was four, and dear old Dad never took me anywhere. So Little Lenny Levinson penned a science fiction epic about an imaginary trip to the planet Pluto, probably influenced by Buck Rogers, perhaps expressing subliminal desires to escape my somewhat Dickensian childhood.

  As I wrote, the classroom seemed to vanish. I sat at the control panel of a sleek, silver space ship hurtling past suns, moons, asteroids and blazing constellations. While writing, I experienced something I can only describe today as an out-of-body, ecstatic hallucination, evidently the pure joy of self-expression.

  I returned to earth, handed in the essay, and expected the usual decent grade. A few days later Miss Ribeiro praised me in front of the class and read the essay aloud, first time I’d been singled out for excellence. Maybe I’ll be a writer when I grow up, I thought.

  As time passed, it seemed an impractical choice. Everyone said I’d starve to death. I decided to prepare for a realistic career, but couldn’t determine exactly what it was.

  In 1954, age 19, I joined the Army for the GI Bill, assuming a Bachelor’s degree somehow would elevate me to the Middle Class. After mustering out in 1957, I enrolled at Michigan State University, East Lansing, majored in Social Science, graduated in 1961, and travelled to New York City to seek my fortune.

  Drifting with the tides, in 1970 I was employed as a press agent at Solters and Sabinson, a show biz publicity agency near Times Square. Our clients included Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Bob Hope, the Beatles, Flip Wilson, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Holiday on Ice, Playboy, Caesar’s Palace, numerous Broadway shows, and countless movies, among others. It was at Solters and Sabinson that certain life-transforming events occurred, ultim
ately convincing me to become a full-time novelist.

  The wheels of the cataclysm were set in motion innocuously enough by press agent Jerry Augburn, whose desk jammed beside mine in a large, open office packed with approximately 20 hustling press agents and secretaries.

  Unusual in that raucous atmosphere, Jerry was a well-mannered WASP from Muncie, Indiana with B.A. in English from Ball State U and Ph.D. from Columbia. Through some trick of fate, instead of becoming a professor, he landed in entertainment publicity. Together we represented the New York Playboy Club, and individually worked for other clients.

  One day Jerry complained he wasn’t feeling well. Soon afterwards he was diagnosed with leukaemia, stopped coming to the office, and left word he didn’t want calls. A few months later he died around age 35. Intelligent, capable, good guy, husband and father—suddenly gone. Wow.

  I never thought much about death until Jerry’s passing. According to Hinduism which I studied at the time, death is a normal stage through which all sentient beings pass on journeys to next incarnations. Perhaps I’d return as a chimpanzee, fish or possibly a cockroach someone would stomp.

  Weeks passed; the office seemed to forget Jerry, like he never existed. Jerry’s desk was taken over by Jay Russell, press agent in his 50s, who spent his days writing column items.

  One night approximately three months after Jerry’s demise, Jay and I worked late. I went home around 9pm, leaving him behind. Next morning, I learned that he died of a heart attack that night sitting on his home toilet, writing column items. I’m not making this up. That’s the story I was told. Perhaps he wrote one so funny, his heart burst with glee.

  After Jay’s funeral, I reflected upon Death striking twice at the chair beside mine. Was I next on the hit parade? Meanwhile, the office returned to its usual pressure cooker atmosphere. After a few weeks Jay was forgotten like Jerry.

  I was 35, looking down the road at 40. If I died at my desk or on the toilet, unquestionably I too would soon be forgotten by co-workers and clients. What was the point of busting my chops if it meant nothing in the end?

  I’m not exaggerating about busting my chops. Competition for clients was ferocious. A press agent was only as good as his last media break. If it didn’t break—it never happened. If you didn’t produce steady breaks—you were on the street.

  In pursuit of my paycheck, I spent substantial time on the phone asking editors and reporters to run my press releases, interview clients, and cover events. All too often they rejected my pleading, because they only had so much space, and their phones never stopped ringing from press agents’ calls, their mailboxes stuffed daily with press releases.

  Gradually it dawned upon me that I was in the wrong job for my personality type. But what on earth was the right job for my personality type?

  Since the fifth grade my grandest ambition remained: novelist. In light of Jerry’s and Jay’s passing, I slowly came to the life-altering realization that I didn’t want to kick the bucket without at least attempting to fulfil my highest career aspiration.

  I’d already tried writing at home evenings, after working in the office, but my mind was too tired. If I wanted to be a novelist, I needed to approach it like a job, first thing in the morning, four hours on the typewriter, no distractions. That meant I’d need to quit my regular job. My savings would support me for around a year. Surely I’d appear on the bestseller list by them.

  But I wasn’t totally delusional. I knew that substantial risk including possible homelessness accompanied the novelist’s life. I had no family to provide financial assistance if I hit the skids.

  On the other hand, if I played it safe and remained in PR, suppressing unhappiness, I’d probably evolve into a well-pensioned, gray bearded, ex-PR semi-alcoholic residing comfortably in a West Side co-op, or gated community in Boca Raton, happily married to a former Playboy Bunny.

  BUT the day inevitably would arrive when I’d be flat on my back in a hospital bed, tubes up my nose and jabbing into my arms, on the cusp of Death Itself. And knowing how my mind tends to function, I’d reproach myself viciously for not at least attempting to live my dream, since I was going to die regardless. Why not go for the gold ring of the novelist’s life, instead of getting put down daily by journalists?

  After much meditation on death, heaven, hell, destiny, mendacity and art, I resigned my press agent career and threw my heart and brain cells completely into writing novels. It was the bravest, most consequential and possibly most foolish decision of my life.

  You can call me shallow, immature, irresponsible and/or insane. But I never betrayed my ideal. Against the odds, I went on to write those 83 paperback novels, mostly in the high adventure category, about cops, cowboys, soldiers, spies, cab drivers, race car drivers, ordinary individuals seeking justice in an unjust world, and other lunatics, but never rose above bottom rungs of the literary ladder, and probably was considered a hack. Sometimes even I suspected myself of hackery.

  One of my novels, The Bar Studs by Leonard Jordan (Fawcett) sold 95,000 copies, and I was on my way to the big time, or so I’d thought at the time. Publishers Weekly judged it: “Tough as they come, but surprisingly well done.” My next sold around 20,000.

  My favorite, The Last Buffoon by Leonard Jordan (Belmont-Tower), was possibly most vulgar and disgusting novel in the history of the world. A photo of me adorned the cover, standing in a trash can in Greenwich Village, true metaphor for my so-called literary career. Amazingly, The Last Buffoon got optioned for the movies, but like most such deals, no movie was made.

  Walter Zacharius, President of Kensington Publishing Corporation, took me to dinner at the Palm restaurant near the UN and said he expected my The Sergeant series by Gordon Davis, nine novels (Zebra and Bantam), to make a million dollars. But Lady Luck had other plans.

  Then came The Rat Bastards by John Mackie (Jove), 16 novels about a platoon of American soldiers fighting the Japanese Imperial Army in the South Pacific during World War II. This unquestionably was one of the most freaked-out, violent literary projects ever devised by a sick mind. Soldiers constantly were stabbing each other with bayonets, or blowing up each other with hand grenades, or machine-gunning each other to smithereens. Blood, guts, profanity and occasional heads flew through the air. How could such novels, spiced with gallows humor, possibly fail in the gutbucket action-adventure marketplace? They didn’t exactly fail, but didn’t set sales records either.

  I felt certain that my Western series The Pecos Kid, six novels by Jack Bodine (Harper), would soar to the top of the Western market, becoming worthy successors to Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey and Max Brand. Pecos contained huge dollops of all possible melodramatic elements such as gunfights, fistfights, knife fights, romance, intrigue, suspense, treachery, deeply researched Apache lore, gags, quips, paradoxes, puns, even a cynical horse named Nestor providing his own unique viewpoint. But the Western market wasn’t very impressed.

  My final series, The Apache Wars Saga, six novels by Frank Burleson (Signet), achieved the status of “important historical fiction” in my estimation, comparable to War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy or Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Again the market didn’t agree.

  My so-called literary career crashed totally in 1997. My last editor, Todd Keithley at Signet, said: “They don’t want little profits. They want BIG profits.”

  I didn’t take it personally. Many action-adventure writers got dumped during the 1990s, due to hot new policies implemented by rapidly conglomerating publishing houses. Advances usually paid to low profit writers like us got redirected to possibly profitable new authors, especially in the bestselling category, women’s romances.

  Between 1997 and now, four of my manuscripts failed to find publishers. Obviously, based on cold, cruel reality, my big gamble ultimately flopped. Not everyone’s dream comes true forever, evidently. Just because you place your offerings on the altar of pulp fiction, doesn’t mean every one will be accepted.

  But my so-called literary career wasn�
��t 100% mistaken, I don’t think. At least I needn’t torment myself on my deathbed for not attempting to become a novelist.

  Moreover, I must confess that I enjoyed writing those 83 nutty novels. They allowed me to explore my bottomless imagination, always best destination for an introvert, instead of daily brush-offs by journalists, plus insults from temperamental clients.

  Sometimes when you lose—you also might win. Perhaps the novelist’s life is its own reward. And punishment.

  My so-called literary career isn’t over yet. Every morning I look forward to sitting at my computer. I’m working on a new novel which I consider my best achievement ever, based on the greatest love affair of my life, played for laughs. It probably won’t be published because I’ve relocated to rural Illinois and lost contact with the NYC literary scene. But even that doesn’t stop me.

  In the words of Janis Joplin, as written by Kris Kristoffersen: “Freedom’s just another word—for nothin’ left to lose.”

  Since the above, I’ve discovered that bloggers have been writing about me. Joe Kenney in his blog GLORIOUS TRASH referred to me as a “trash genius”. People are buying and selling my old books. Can it be—is it possible—is it conceivable that my new e-books suddenly will go viral, and I’ll become a zillionaire, appear on the Jay Leno Show, relocate to Paris, and marry a dancer from the Follies Bergere? Like I said, my so-called literary career isn’t over yet.

  John Lennon and Me

  by Len Levinson

  Circumstances leading to my encounter with John Lennon began one morning during winter of 1969-1970, at the height of the Vietnam War. I was a 34-year-old press agent sitting at my desk at Solters and Sabinson, a show biz PR agency on West 45th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues near Times Square.

  One of our most important clients was Allen Klein, talent agent and manager whose most famous client was John Lennon. Suddenly that morning my boss Sheldon Roskin appeared before my desk and announced that he and I were leaving for Toronto that afternoon, to manage publicity for John’s and Yoko’s latest Peace-In. Sheldon said: “Go home and pack.”