Islands of Deception

by Constance Hood

  Although the vision of a Nazi Europe haunted him, Hank had very mixed feelings about re-crossing the Atlantic. Nazis had obliterated his future, and now they were coming after the men and boys from his neighborhood. Hank was one of a very few who had seen the hard evidence. There was a chance that, as an American soldier, he could locate his family and bring them to safety. He signed up for the official interview and marched out the door.

  Walking back to the rooming house, he wondered what he had just done. The afternoon sun and the brilliant fall leaves went by unnoticed as he mulled through the possibility of military service.

  There was no obligation for Hank to participate in this conflict. He paused on the steps to the brownstone, turned his key and entered a darkened hallway. The small writing table at the end of the hall held a telephone, pencils and notepads. Someone had forgotten to turn the green desk lamp off, and Hank sat down. He folded a sheet of paper, lining up the corners and drawing a neat line down the middle. His question was, “How can I help the war effort?”

  In the right hand column he wrote down the risks that would be involved for the young man who had arrived in the United States. Holland had been crushed like a beetle under German boots. He did not have the physique of a combatant. He couldn’t run quickly and he had never learned to fight. He could lose his life, and no one would ever know he had existed.

  Or he could pursue this unlikely future. For some inexplicable reason, Hank did not respond to fear with panic. Instead an absolute clarity unfolded through his mind when others worried. He could remember facts by the thousands, and he could keep his mouth shut when he needed to. Order prevailed in the most unlikely situations. In a box with his cufflinks was a gold crossbow, the sharpshooter award given to him by Queen Wilhelmina. It wasn’t for marksmanship. In 1937 he had posed as a skinny German hiker walking along the Dutch border. His photographs of the concrete Siegfried Linie convinced the Dutch palace that Germans were preparing for a war. Hank could definitely do battle with a camera in his hand.

  He decided to keep his appointment.

  It was a one-way trip behind the glare of glass doors and shining windows. The recruiting sergeant walked him into offices behind the counter. A single Stars and Stripes hung in the corner of the vast beige box, which was partitioned into more and more beige boxes. Each little office was only a few meters square, with enough room for a heavy oak desk and a chair on either side. There were no decorations of any kind, no colorful collections of flags, no heroes on posters.

  The recruiting sergeant offered him a seat and began to ask questions, attempting to size up the young man with the information on the paperwork. Hank sat quietly in the muffled noise of busy offices and looked straight ahead.

  Name: Hank Burns, aka. (Hans Bernsteen)

  Birthplace: Amsterdam, Holland

  DOB: 13 FEB 1918

  Occupation: Photographer

  Height: 6’2”

  Weight: 147

  He pulled out his green card and proudly showed the personal letter of recommendation from Mike Hicks to the recruiter, who noted it in his file under “previous service.” The photo showed a pale young man with a big grin, hair slicked back, and ready for business. Finally the sergeant spoke. “Buddy, do you think you can gain five pounds by next week? You are right on the line for physical fitness. Actually, you’re one pound underweight. You will have an extensive medical exam before we induct you into the U.S. Army.”

  A year of Canadian food rations had simply not been enough. He knew he was thin. His older clothes were loose, and he didn’t dare put on slacks without a tight belt.

  “Well, I love to eat. I just hate to cook.” The only thing Hank had learned to make was a sandwich. He didn’t even ask to use the stove at the rooming house unless he wanted a pot of tea. “… and you know, restaurants are expensive.” Solitude had its consequences, and one result of it was that Hank did not enjoy going out alone.

  The sergeant slowed his speech and looked directly at his recruit. “Can you make it a point to get a good dinner each night? Starches will really fill you out. You might try spaghetti with extra meatballs. It’s not too pricey. And eat dessert, that’ll pack on the weight. We need to get a little more meat on your bones.”

  Hank shifted in the hard chair while the sergeant paused and examined the next part of the form.

  “I see here you speak Dutch, German and French.”

  “Oh, yes…and some Malay.”

  “Malay?”

  “My father was in the import-export trade. We did a lot of business with China, Japan and Singapore. When I was a kid, I went on some of the trips.”

  The recruiter squinted at the young man and marked something on his checklist. “Look, we need you to take a basic test to determine your mental fitness. It’s the office down the hall, and they will take care of that. Good luck.”

  The questions on the mental fitness test were not what Hank expected. He figured they would be determining his aptitudes, how well he could process information, read, write, and maybe show off his mathematical skills. He had an extraordinary memory. Instead there were a lot of questions that had no answers. They gave him several little stories to read, and then choose from four ideas of what he would do next. Even stranger were little pictures like puzzles. This was childish. There was nothing on the test that showed off his talents. He did notice that several questions required the ability to follow directions, and then put pieces in the correct order. He hadn’t thought about what a soldier should do and he was pretty sure it wasn’t about puzzles. Maybe the soldier’s life was not for him. He had better continue job hunting.

  The examiner asked, “Do you like to take long walks?”

  Sure, if I’m alone… “Yes, I take walks to think.” What the heck was that about?

  Ten days later instructions arrived to report to the Military Entrance Processing station in Buffalo. Nervous young men gathered, bragging about fights they had been in. There were no friendly greetings or welcomes here. The sergeant took his clothes, along with his bag of personal belongings, and issued him a set of boxer shorts. Nearly naked teenage boys and young men lined up, flexing arm muscles and teasing each other about slight paunches, acne, and freckles. His thin white legs, and his narrow chest were conspicuous as the line advanced to a corps of doctors and nurses. At the first needle jab, some of the bolder young men winced or swore. The needle jabs continued down the line, with nameless injections entering the bloodstream followed by a tourniquet and extraction of a vial of blood to go who knows where? What the heck is Blood Type B? And why was that important?

  Still in their underwear, the men performed physical tasks. Yelling surrounded them. “Move it on!” Sergeants noted each gasping breath, red face, and straining muscle. “At ease!” Twelve at a time the recruits pushed into a closed room. “Congratulations! You are now all members of the U.S. Army. Ten-hut!” The lieutenant did not look at any of the men. They were invisible. “Please raise your right hand and repeat after me:”

  I, (Hank Burns), do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

  Hank’s name was now “private.”

  ***

  Six weeks later, Hank admired his physique in the mirror. His trim waist was now defined by lean shoulders and visible muscles. He was glad he had gained 14 pounds since his enlistment, but he had to get serious about building some strength. A 10-mile hike through the woods with a 40-pound pack and weapons had nearly done him in. He had requested assignment to combat photography. Where the heck was he supposed to put his camera bags? Surely the photographers didn’t carry cameras and rifles
klunking against each other. It was hard to know.

  As the men learned to fight, they began to brag about how they could win by defeating enemies man to man. As a teenager, Hank had seen the odd Japanese wrestling rituals. They didn’t fight the same way as the American boys. The drill sergeant drew a big circle on the dirt, one that would hold all thirty-six men of the platoon. “Stand in, and when I blow the whistle, you guys start shoving men out. Let’s see who can really take it on.” Large farm boys began to push. One lost his footing, and tried to step back in. “Out!” “Once a foot is out of the circle, you are a dead soldier.”

  No one bothered to go after the tall skinny guy. Anyone could take him out, so he stayed in the circle while combatants screamed and snarled at one another. Suddenly, he looked at the two largest men. They were going to come after him and then duke it out for top position. He backed up as if to retreat, then ran at them, head down, right into the solar plexus of one, grabbing the second man by the shoulder and flipping him like a fish. “Sarge! He’s fighting dirty!” The crowd stood around dumbfounded, as the sergeant stated,

  “We’re going to need guys who can fight dirty. Burns seems to have picked up jujitsu along the way.”

  The next morning, Lieutenant Steiner stood at attention reporting to Captain Olney. “Company C is finished and ready for deployment.”

  “Everybody except your boy Burns.” Olney tossed the file onto the desk. “I’m going to put through his request for combat photography after I send him to the stockade at Fort Dix for a month.”

  Lieutenant Steiner stared at him. Olney was a patient man. Burns was kind of a jerk, but he had followed his orders. “The stockade? What did he do?”

  Olney began to laugh. “Not as a prisoner. I’m just not sure what we’ve got there. Weren’t you a little surprised by that fight? He didn’t confront anyone, they all ignored him.” The Captain took a deep breath and placed his hands on the desk, forearms straight and fingers curved like lion’s paws. “But he didn’t run – he stood there in that battle with 36 guys beating each other up, and he came in like a mongoose at the very end.”

  Steiner didn’t comment. He had seen the teasing, and he had seen Hank’s wary responses.

  The captain paused and lit a cigarette. His brow tightened, and then he flicked the ash and looked at Steiner. “The guys don’t like photographers. These damn journalists are extra men in companies where every fist counts. Burns will have to deal with real threats and real situations. I’m going to make him an MP.”

  Steiner stared at the captain. “Are you kidding me? He has more nervous ticks than a clock museum. Burns won’t last two days in there.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fort Dix, New Jersey

  January 1942

  “A date which will live in infamy” ~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 7, 1941

  Sergeant Hood was unlike anyone Hank had ever met. The prison guard had a huge grin that didn’t match his squinting eyes. As a teenager visiting Java, Hank had seen monkeys grin during play, and then bite a friend viciously. He politely shook hands and then followed the sergeant. The guy didn’t seem real bright. He spoke very slowly searching for words. Hank was stunned. Hood was born in the U.S., but his English wasn’t as fluid as Hank’s. Hood seemed to cut through in a very different way. He looked straight into Hank’s face.

  “So Hank, tell me a little bit about yourself.”

  “Well, I am from Amsterdam…”

  “No, not the file, I already read that. Tell me something about you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something you enjoy doing, sports, a best friend, something funny about your sister – whatever.”

  Hank blanched at the odd interrogation, searching for the right answer. “I like to take photographs.”

  Hood started to correct him with “we know that” but instead asked, “What is it about photography that rings your bell?”

  “Rings my bell? “

  “You know, gets under your skin – gets to you.”

  “Sometimes I see something, and I want to remember it. I like to remember things. You mean like that?” Hank looked across at Hood, doubting that he had the right answer.

  “Sure, so tell me about a memorable photo.”

  Hank flinched. He had taken pictures of Greta at the waterfalls just before the awful dinner with her brothers. Her hair was thrown back, and she was laughing. He had wanted this image of his future bride. He reached for a handkerchief. This was not going well.

  Hood looked at him, “So memory really touches your soul, does it? You’re the soldier who will see the poppies in the field after the bodies have been buried.” Hank had never thought of such things. He wasn’t a poet. Hood was deeper than he looked.

  “We are going to put you on the front gate. What I want you to do is to observe people as they come in. How do they act? What is their business?” Hank’s ears pulled back tightly against his head. In the months at the photography store, he had spent as much time in the darkroom as possible, preferring to remain in shadows, seeing and unseen.

  After five days, Hood put him on duty in the prisoner recreation area. Hank was terrified of the prisoners. He didn’t know them, but he imagined a room full of cutthroats, thieves, and cold-blooded killers. Hood showed him how to walk slowly along the blocks. He mimicked Hood’s facial expressions: eyes forward, listening and no movement in the lower half of his face. “Obviously this block is minimum security. Petty thieves, guys who have disobeyed orders, that sort of thing. Some of them really have balls, most have just done something inappropriate. They are motivated to behave because they will get out someday.” Hank nodded. Thank God he wasn’t going to get murdered tonight.

  Hood stopped and faced Hank. “So, tonight you have a two hour shift in the rec room. Three things: don’t sit down, do not read, and never let prisoners get between you and emergency phone on this wall. Is that clear?”

  Hank watched as Hood strolled away to the front desk. He was on his own now, and this didn’t look too hard. In the corner, a small group was playing cards. He watched them, and they watched him. The prisoners had a table and three chairs. Five guys stood and sat around the table. Hank quickly became bored and wandered around the large open room, counting floor tiles. There were 33 tan and beige squares going lengthwise and 25 crosswise. So this room was a total of 825 square feet? Boring. What else was there? He couldn’t just watch the guys. They weren’t goldfish in some little bowl. Well, actually they were, and that made him even more uncomfortable. He picked up a spare newspaper and glanced through the headlines. Lots of war news, and here he was in the stockade. Hank sat down to finish the paper and before he was finished he found himself surrounded by the biggest and ugliest prisoners in the barracks.

  An angry bull of a man stepped forward. “We need the chair,” said the group’s leader. The tattoos on his forearms moved as he clenched his fist. Three of his comrades stared at Hank.

  Hank looked up at the group and a sideways glance showed him the prisoners were between him and the phone. He couldn’t shake, he couldn’t act nervous. Frozen in place, he remembered a game that he used to play with his brother and sister in Holland, sort of a bullying version of musical chairs. Hank turned toward the man. “Take it.” And he kept sitting, reading. The prisoner looked at him, fixed in place. Assaulting a guard would extend all their sentences. Then the leader said, “He’s all right” and walked away. Hank waited exactly two minutes and pretended to read, while he looked around the room from behind his paper, keeping his eyes on the goldfish.

  ***

  Hank learned the routines of prison life. Roll call, watch, roll call, watch. There were a number of jobs for well-behaved prisoners. Food was prepared and served by prisoners, and prisoners cleaned the facilities. Rainwater was a big Indian who kept the stainless steel kitchen of the mess hall absolutely sparkling. His
auntie had owned a Barbeque joint in Texas, and he had been cleaning his whole life. Hank appreciated Rainwater’s work. The man treated him with respect, called him “Sir” and was as busy as a Dutch housewife. Rainwater often stayed in the kitchen after everyone was gone, polishing the pots and the stoves over and over. They left him alone. He would be released any day now.

  On a quiet Friday afternoon, Hank went into the kitchen to inspect the area. The knife drawers especially needed to be secured, all knives and implements accounted for. Everything seemed to be in order, but he heard an annoying drip. Someone had left a little water on, and he wanted to find the leaking faucet and put in the call for maintenance. In the corner of the kitchen, next to the shelving for bags of flour, sugar and potatoes, one utility door seemed to have a broken lock. Better have maintenance fix that too. He looked inside at the cooking equipment. The giant soup kettles were shelved carefully, but in a dark corner he saw cooking utensils that had never been out on the mess hall line. A milk can was on a shelf, and attached to it was a hose, a large pipe at the top, and a slanted pipe that didn’t seem to be hooked up into anything. A thermostat indicated that the contents were warm, and some sort of liquid seemed to be dripping out of the slanted pipe. On the floor were five one-gallon pickle jars full of water. The place smelled like rubbing alcohol, so they must have cleaning supplies in there along with the big pots.

  He left the area and notified the desk sergeant that a lock needed to be repaired, and that a big pot of something was cooking unattended. The platoon sergeant came in.

  “Sergeant?”

  Hood looked at Hank. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Can you look at something? I’m not sure what this thing is. I really don’t know how to cook, but this thing has been left on. Is it part of the plumbing?”