“The distance across the island is not far, as the crow flies, but unluckily we can’t fly. The nearest I came to flying was while descending the slippery side of a mountain in a sitting position. . . . After advancing a few yards you find that the handle of the machine gun on your shoulder, your pack and shovel, canteens, knife, and machete all stick out at right angles and are as tenacious in their grip on the surrounding underbrush as a dozen grappling hooks. Straining, sweating, and swearing avails you nothing so you decide on a full-bodied lunge—success crowns your efforts as all the entangling encumbrances decided to give up the struggle simultaneously. Just before you hit the ground a low swinging vine breaks your fall by looping itself under your chin, almost decapitating you and snapping your helmet fifteen yards to the rear. . . . You untangle your equipment, retrieve your helmet, and move on. The flies and mosquitos have discovered your route of march and have called up the reinforcements including the underfed and undernourished who regard us as walking blood banks. We continue to push on. . . . ” – Unidentified soldier, quoted in Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Bernard C. Nalty, and Edwin T. Turnbladh, Central Pacific Drive, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. III, “The Return to Guam”

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“The assembly area for the Japanese attack force, principally men of 2/38, was the mangrove swamp in front of the 22d Marines. In apparent preparation for the assault, sake was passed about freely, and the Marines manning forward foxholes could plainly hear the resulting riotous clamor as the Japanese worked themselves up to fever pitch. Finally, just before midnight, a tumultuous banzai charge erupted out of the swamp as a disorganized crowd of yelling, screaming men attacked . . . The resulting carnage was almost unbelievable, as artillery forward observers called down the fire of brigade, 77th Division, and III Corps artillery on the surging enemy troops. . . By 0200, the action died down . . . Daylight revealed a gruesome scene, for the mangled remains of over 400 enemy dead lay sprawled in front of the Marine lines in the impact area where over 26,000 artillery shells had fallen during the counterattack. Marine casualties in Company L were light, despite the close-quarter combat, and the flanking platoon of the 4th Marines did not lose a man, although it counted 256 Japanese bodies in the vicinity of its position.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Bernard C. Nalty, and Edwin T. Turnbladh, Central Pacific Drive, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. III, “The Return to Guam”

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“Bundschu Ridge was one of those inherently worthless pieces of land which were emotionally remembered by the men who fought there in World War II . . . It was so situated that even a handful of well-hidden men, using mortars and machine guns, could repel a much larger force moving up from below. Captain [Geary R.] Bundschu’s company [Company A, 3rd Marines] had already suffered from enemy fire while on the water and on the beach. Now, with but a few minutes for reorganization, he started the attack, moving across the rice paddies toward the ridge, with two platoons in assault and one in support. By 0920 [on 21 July 1944] the lead platoons were pinned down in a gully to the west of the ridge by Japanese mortar and machine gun fire . . . About 1400 he asked Major Aplington [CO, 1/3 Marines] for permission to disengage, a request which had to be denied because the company was so involved. Captain Bundschu reorganized what was left of Company A and prepared to undertake again the last 100 yards of the ridge. At nearly the end of a day oppressive with tropical heat, the Marines tried again, knowing the odds. They once more encountered the machine gun fire that had stopped the initial assault; now, however, . . . ‘a thin line of Company A men reached the crest.’ Other Marines, shot en route up the steep slope, fell backwards to the ground far below. At the top of the ridge, enemy fire of savage intensity prevented a reorganization for defense of the ground gained; the foothold became untenable. The second attack on the ridge had cost the life of Captain Bundschu and further depleted Company A. At nightfall, the enemy still held Bundschu Ridge, and the Marines were reminded of this fact by the Japanese fire which kept up through the unhappy night.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Bernard C. Nalty, and Edwin T. Turnbladh, Central Pacific Drive, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. III, “The Return to Guam”

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“Despite the fact that Guam had been an American possession for almost a half-century, the sum total of knowledge held by American authorities concerning the island was relatively small.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Bernard C. Nalty, and Edwin T. Turnbladh, Central Pacific Drive, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. III, “The Return to Guam”

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“No obstacle the enemy imposed, whether a mine underfoot or a hidden gun, equalled the well-trained Japanese soldier himself. On Tinian, he exhibited the usual professional skill in attack and a calm order in withdrawal which contrasted to the emotion of the banzai charge. The enemy withdrawals before the pressing Marine advance, which marked the battle on Tinian, illustrated, as did camouflage, the Japanese art of furtive action. Troops moved usually at night, in small groups and with few losses due to detection. The heavy Japanese casualties resulted from impatience to defeat the invader not by a well-concealed defense, at which they were masters, but by a hopeless open attack against superior firepower and Marine infantrymen who were second to none at close combat.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Bernard C. Nalty, and Edwin T. Turnbladh, Central Pacific Drive, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. III, “Assault on Tinian”

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First published in NuCity Weekly, Vol. 4, No. 25, June 28-July 4, 1995. Copyright 1995 by Tetman Callis.

i was three fingers deep into eleanor when elvis presley’s kid brother threw on the overhead light. what happened next could rhyme if a body would let it. some discomfort was involved. this wasn’t the night james died. the night james died, i didn’t have much, if anything, inside of eleanor. her sister was in the front seat. was her sister torn between being disgusted and wanting to watch? isn’t torn a little harsh? it was, after all, the night james died, wasn’t it?

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now i’ve got it! the notorious kid sister was nowhere in sight. the night james died was the night eleanor tore the buckle off my belt. now, that — that was torn. an auto mechanic who stole what he wanted welded my belt buckle back into place.

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hey, you should have heard the gasp, the way the air just came right in. i’m talking about after the business with the overhead light, but before the business with the pretty-boy’s lap, and what with eleanor’s mouth and tongue and all.

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i don’t mind. i’m the understanding sort. it takes time. you can count on me to understand, to be a patient, waiting man. i can pray a lot.

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eleanor tore my buckle off. the notorious kid sister was nowhere in sight. diana held the back of james’s neck. diana didn’t just get here; she’s been sitting in the corner, on the floor in the dark, her knees drawn up to her chin while i plumb the depths of eleanor. elvis presley’s kid brother is hugging the pretty boy in the next room. someone is sobbing, or it may be a murmuring singing like a lullaby, but i can’t make it out enough to tell what or who or from where; and anyway, i’m busy, distracted, or intent. it is otherwise almost quiet. what noises there are are the hushed, muffled kind.

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i didn’t even know james had died until diana said, james just died, but he’s come back. if he saw anything on the other side, all those bright lights and tunnels people are always going on about, he never said. the next day he came looking for the pills he’d spilled.

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i lied.

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eleanor put her tongue wherever she god-damn pleased.

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“Colonel Ogata’s well-planned defense of Tinian had irrevocably collapsed; most of the Marines were either on or near the concluding objective line. At 1855 on 1 August [1944], the American commander declared the island secured. A statement like that, however, was a sort of partial truth on any Pacific territory captured from the Japanese. On Tinian, even more than elsewhere, the residue of the enemy force was troublesome. Some of the Japanese preferred self-destruction to surrender, but the proportion of soldiers and civilians that committed suicide on Tinian was smaller than on Saipan. Some of the Japanese civilians who killed themselves were members of the Civilian Militia, or Zaigogunjin, which had been quite inoperative. The men had received a bit of military training but no weapons, and their prime interest was fleeing to safety with their families. The Japanese soldier that chose to live was a die-hard type, able to hide out for months. Most of the Marine casualties after 1 August were caused by those Japanese, who faithful to their military code, decided to forego security and die in combat.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Bernard C. Nalty, and Edwin T. Turnbladh, Central Pacific Drive, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. III, “Assault on Tinian”

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“Sometimes we are devils to ourselves, when we will tempt the frailty of our powers, presuming on their changeful potency.” – William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida 4.4

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“A President who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution. In our constitutional order, the President is tasked to be a conscientious custodian of the law, albeit an energetic one, to take care of effectuating his enumerated duties, including the laws enacted by the Congress and as interpreted by the Judiciary.” – United States District Judge Beryl A. Howell, “Memorandum Opinion,” March 6, 2025 (Wilcox v. Trump, et al., United States District Court for the District of Columbia)

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“In the hangover after the Shoah there was a lot of international support for a Jewish homeland; but the notion that Palestine was a ‘land without people,’ where Jews had a long-expired lease that they could simply renew, was the original sin.” – Art Spiegelman (interviewed by Will Simpson in “I Can’t Go On, I Must Go On”)

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“It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.” – Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

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“Take the instant for honour travels in a strait so narrow where one but goes abreast: keep, then, the path; for emulation hath a thousand sons that one by one pursue: if you give way. Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, like to an enter’d tide they all rush by. And leave you hindmost; or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank, lie there for pavement to the abject rear, o’er-run and trampl’d on: then what they do in present, though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours; for time is like a fashionable host, that slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand; and with his arms out-stretch’d, as he would fly, grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, and farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit, high birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, love, friendship, charity, are subjects all to envious and calumniating time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,—that all, with one consent, praise new-born gawds, though they are made and moulded of things past; and give to dust that is a little gilt more laud than gilt o’er-dusted. The present praises the present object.” – William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida 3.3

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“’Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with fortune, must fall out with men too. What the declin’d is, he shall as soon read in the eyes of others as feel on his own fall: for men, like butterflies show not their mealy wings but to the summer; and not a man, for being simply man, hath any honour; but honour for those honours that are without him, as place, riches, and favour, prizes of accident as oft as merit: which when they fall, as being slippery standers, the love that lean’d on them as slippery too, do one pluck down another, and together die in the fall.” – William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida 3.3

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First published in Knee-Jerk Magazine, July 2013. Copyright 2013 by Tetman Callis.

Cribbage was the game my brother and father played, the two of them stretched on the living-room rug in front of the television with its Sunday afternoons of football or basketball or baseball, neither father nor son paying attention to the television until the crowd would cheer and they would look up, distracted from their game.

Mother-May-I was the game my brother and I played winter nights with our mother in the living room and down the hall while our father was away at one of the wars, his latest letter on the table by the door, still unread in its envelope while our mother taught us to ask the proper permission for every move we thought to make.

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My memory of my brother and father playing cribbage on the rug on Sundays while the television spilled its world of sports into our living room is toned with the dulling shade of my ignorance of cribbage, its varnished board, its colored pegs and deck of cards. But I never wanted to play, even if they had invited me. I preferred to retire to my room by myself after saying, “Mother, may I go to my room?”, and with her blessing me closing the door behind me and spreading my toy soldiers, tanks and warplanes on my rug to set up and play out yet another re-enactment of the bombing of a European harbor, the storming of some Blue or Red beach, or a desperate last-ditch stand in the jungle against overwhelming odds.

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The Sunday dishes, stacks of pans and plates and pots from a respectable dinner of roast, potatoes, onions and carrots, were washed by my mother and dried by me while the television was being turned on, the cribbage board was being set up, the cards were dealt and the crib was formed, and the first few peggings were being played. My mother could have used a daughter, I believe. My father had my brother, named after an uncle who had died in one of the wars, but my mother had me, named after her secret lost true love of long ago. She didn’t demand that I play house with her instead of war with myself, but she couldn’t keep from telling me from time to time that I was pretty, and from telling me to help her with the dishes while the boys played.

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Here I am now, decades beyond those Sunday afternoons, in a place where my own son, his mother absent through no fault of his own, stands in front of the television and watches football games while I stand at the kitchen sink to wash the smattering of dishes from a Sunday featuring a few bites to eat in this home where no one has to ask permission to be alone and where, when stories of war are shown on television, they are what I watch. All my son’s pleading will not get me to change the channel back to football or over to any other game. If his disposition turns, I send him to his room and close his door behind him. He settles down to play with his toys.

Sometimes I go outside and peek in through his bedroom window to watch him play. I watch him from where he cannot see me as he takes his fleets of cars and trucks and divides them into opposing teams. Later, when the clattering tackling of tiny motor vehicles is done, he hugs a teddy bear and lays himself down among his toys, rocking himself to sleep. I return to the living room, sit in front of the television, turn the sound down low while fighter planes strafe.

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“Being willing to destroy is very important. To destroy something in a purposeful and orderly way, not in a hysterical way.” – Helen Garner (quoted by Sophie Elmhirst in “The savage suburbia of Helen Garner: ‘I wanted to dong Martin Amis with a bat’”)

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“You’re walking, and you don’t always realize it, but you’re always falling at the same time. With each step, you fall forward. Over and over, you’re falling, then catching yourself falling, and this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time.” – Laurie Anderson, “So Happy Birthday”

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“To make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.” – William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida 3.1

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“Were the Americans, either by combination or by any other sort of violence, to stop the importation of European manufactures, and, by thus giving a monopoly to such of their own countrymen as could manufacture the like goods, divert any considerable part of their capital into this employment, they would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One

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