Old Man in a Baseball Cap: A Memoir of World War II

by Fred Rochlin

Overview

Conceived in a storytelling workshop given by Spalding Gray, Old Man In a Baseball Cap is not your typical story of World War II. Rochlin recounts in gritty detail how he—an ordinary young man—was thrust into outrageous circumstances during an extraordinary time. Whether he's bumping up against the army's bigotry because he's Jewish, aiding in the delivery of a baby by cesarean section, being ordered to obliterate a Hungarian village, or parachuting from his plane in the middle of Yugoslavia and then walking 400 kilometers to safety with an amorous guide, Rochlin captures the Intensely powerful experience of a teenager away from home for the first time. Old Man In a Baseball Cap is an astonishingly fresh, candid look at "the last good war." At once naive, candid, and wise, Fred Rochlin's voice is unforgettable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060932275
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/24/2000
Series:	Harper Perennial
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.35(d)

About the Author

Fred Rochlin lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife, Harriet. Old Man in a Baseball Cap is his first book.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

In December 1941, I finished my cadet training, was commissioned a second lieutenant, and was ordered to Mather Field near Sacramento, California, to meet the crew I was to be assigned to.

We were to take an eighteen-week training course in practice bombing, formation flying, aerial gunnery, and navigation, and do all the stuff that you have to learn to get ready for combat.

We started training flying the very next day, and the first week, we just flew all over the United States, dropping bombs on bombing ranges, practicing formation flying, aerial gunnery, weird navigation exercises; we did very well, so well that, by the end of the first ten days, we were the hottest crew on the base and had the best record in everything.

Shorty Haden, the bombardier, was my roommate at the BOQ, the Bachelor Officers' Quarters, and we got to be really good friends. We were about the same age, and we'd just talk and talk and talk.

When we weren't flying, all the guys would get off the base, go to Sacramento or San Francisco to try to pick up girls or at least get drunk. Kind of relax, try and have a good time, you know, what guys are supposed to do.

Well, not Shorty, he'd go to town and spend quite a bit of time in church. He was very religious and then he'd go and haunt these little antique shops.

The first Saturday we had off, we all went to the Wagon Wheel Hotel in town. Shorty said he'd meet us back at the base later.

I got in about midnight, and Shorty was there still awake and waiting for me and he was just gushing, alive with excitement, and he said, "Oh, you'll never guess what I found today."

I said,"What?"

And he said, "Look here," and he opened the lid to his foot locker and there were his clothes and three little cups and saucers.

So I said, "Look at what?"

He blurted, "At these, at these," and he took out those little cups and saucers and said, "Aren't they just precious? Can you believe this one is a genuine Worcester, late eighteenth century? Can you believe how lucky I am? Aren't you jealous? And this is a Miessen, and this is turn-of-the-century Wedgwood, not really rare but still very nice."

I tried to be enthusiastic, I didn't want to be a wet blanket.

I said, "Swell. Where'd you find them?"

He said, "Sacramento is just a gold mine, no one here knows what they're worth."

"Yeah, what they cost."

"Only eighty-five dollars."

I said, "Jesus, that's half a month's pay."

He said, "Yes, but they're worth five times that, these are museum pieces. Oh, my mother will be thrilled when she gets these. And I have to borrow fifty dollars from you till payday."

Well, I thought, This guy is a nut case, but what could I do, so I said, "Sure."

The next night, he took my fifty dollars, went to the Officers' Club, got into a poker game and won one hundred twenty-five bucks. Then he paid me back the dough he owed me, got in another poker game and won two hundred dollars and change.

Then he went to Sacramento and brought back a whole mess load of those damn little cups.

So I said, "Shorty, what are you going to do with all those damn little cups and where'd you learn how to play poker so well?"

Shorty said that he was an only child and his mother was a widow and she loved these little cups, had a collection of them, and she and Shorty studied about porcelain almost every evening after school when he was home. He knew all about Spode, and Rockingham and Royal Danish, and St. Ives, and Rouen and Lowestoft, and every other damn cup.

And he said, "And everybody in Jefferson City plays poker and it's not too hard to win if you understand how, just be patient, don't be afraid to fold, play the odds, only bet on the good hands, and the most important thing, don't expect God to intervene to make you win."

He thought the guys at the Officers' Club were nice guys, but just didn't know anything about playing poker.

So I figured Shorty wasn't so nuts after all, he just had the hots for little cups, okay? Look, it takes all kinds of guys.

After three weeks Major Ferguson, the chief training officer, called in the whole crew. We were worried, didn't know if we were in some kind of trouble.

Major Ferguson said, "Your crew has been here three weeks and you've got the best performance record of any crew on the base. Do you men feel you're ready for combat? Do you think you can fly fifty combat missions?"

"Yes sir." We were getting excited.

"Well, you've only been here three weeks, but you're doing better than crews that have finished the whole eighteen-week course. They're desperate for replacements in the 15th Air Force in Italy. Can you handle that?"

"Yes sir."

Major Ferguson said, "Okay, we'll issue the orders this morning. Get packed up and fly to Wichita this afternoon and pick up a new plane there. Good luck, gentlemen."

That was that.

Outside, we said, "Italy — WOW!" We were excited, we were hoping for England, we didn't want the South Pacific — never thought of Italy.

We flew to Wichita that afternoon, where we picked up a brand-new bomber, a Consolidated B-24. The next day, we flew from Wichita to Miami. The next day, we flew from there to Trinidad. Next day to Natal, Brazil. Next day, from there across the Atlantic Ocean to Dakar, Senegal, in West Africa. Next day, from there across the Sahara, over the Atlas Mountains into Marrakech, Morocco.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	The Stories We Tell	ix
	Milk Run to Genoa	1
	Rockets	15
	Lieutenant Dan Callahan	39
	Officer of the Day	59
	Major Bradley Duncan Belchore III	71
	Old Man in A Baseball Cap	89
	The Colonel	113
	My Strong Feelings of Family	129
	About Accurate Recall	145

Editorial Reviews

"This simple memoir is not your typical story of World War II. Rochlin has written a collection of brief remembrances that he performs on stage as a one-man show, a monologue of life and death as a navagator on a B-24 bomber in Italy from 1943 to 1945...His observations of people and events are keen, ribald, and very funny."-- "Library Journal"A shining example of how the oral tradition can translate into text. A very good read. I'm proud to be part of Fred's literary achievement."-- Spalding Gray "Fred Rochlin's unassumingly tender reminiscences of his days spent dropping bombs in Europe manage to invest the crude mechanics of war with unforgettable images of the unquenchable beauty of humanity. I was enthralled, touched, and very deeply moved." -- Simon Winchester, author of "The Professor and the Madman""A terrific book, full of sex and violence and honor and kindness. Somehow, Rochlin has managed to keep the kid alive inside him, so the story of World War II reads as if it's being told to us--as it happens--by this young navigator right from the nose of a B-24." -- Susan Isaacs, author of "Red, White and Blue"It's a real-life "Catch-22." I couldn't put it down." -- Michael Korda, author of "Another Life""Old Man in a Baseball Cap remains a recollection that is about as honest as can be of a young man and a time - and oh what a time it was - which lives now only in a wavy light in the waters of memory."-- "The Los Angeles Times"In [the book], Rochlin morphs from old man to man-child and back, unseating himself in time - mentally, at least - like "Slaughterhouse Five's Billy Pilgrim, yet dodging the staged lunacy of "Catch-22."-- "Los Angeles Magazine"Using a series of vignettes, it'sa common person's way of relating the cataclysm of the Second World War and how it affected one 19-year-old from Nogales, Ariz., who joined the Army Air Corps, went to Europe and witnessed things no 19-year-old should - and therein lies its power."-- "The Denver Post"His stories of petty officers, unprepared enlisted men, bombing raids gone wrong, and tiny acts of heroism are fascinating...Rochlin's simple prose makes us comfortable, as if we were sitting at a table with an old friend or relative, someone who had lived a remarkable life and now was ready, after a glass of wine or two, to share a bit of it."-- "Booklist"Rochlin survived 50 missions and made it home, but most of his friends did not. His poignant acknowledgement of their sacrifice and his wonder at his own survival provide a stark glimpse into men at war."-- "Cahners Library Journal"This book version of Rochlin's critically acclaimed one-man show of the same name offers a look at WWII that is by turns horrifying, sobering and hilarious."-- "Publishers Weekly"At moments, "Old Man in a Baseball Cap is laugh-out-loud funny...often harrowing and even heartbreaking."--"Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher

Fred Rochlin does his small part to keep the memory of World War II alive. In his one-man show, Old Man in a Baseball Cap -- and the memoir that shares its name -- he deftly juxtaposes the mundane, everyday drudgery that is the enlisted man's lot with the exciting and often horrific experience of combat.

bn.com

As Voltaire intended readers of Candide to see through Pangloss' naive perspective, so Rochlin wants to wake us up to the world's evils by casting events in the adolescent haze of his younger self.

San Diego Union Tribune

Ribald, adult, morally complex, and occasionally starkly funny, and all the more stirring for being real.

New York Times

Rochlin, a WWII combat veteran, developed this wartime memoir after taking a storytelling workshop from monologuist Spalding Gray. Adopting Gray's form of free-associational autobiographical remembrance, he compiled--through the act of live delivery--a collection of spoken pieces about his experiences as an Army Air Corps navigator flying missions over Germany. Describing his own generation of 70- to 80-year-old men, he notes: "A lot of us went through a lot of stuff that we've been unable to talk about." Once uncorked, Rochlin's stories flowed blunt, irreverent and coarse--hardly the expected misty-eyed history. Most dramatic, he tells of being shot down over Yugoslavia, being rescued while injured by a female partisan and walking to Italy only at night over several weeks. Along the way, he is forced to execute three Germans ("Jesus Christ, I didn't want to shoot anybody") and coerced into having sex by his syphilis-bearing companion, who has asked him to "make fig-fig." The audio book offers an unusual sense of unembellished exuberance expressed through the author's conscious act of performance. Based on the 1999 HarperCollins hardcover. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This simple memoir is not your typical story of World War II. Rochlin has written a collection of brief remembrances that he performs on stage as a one-man show, a monolog of life and death as a navigator on a B-24 bomber in Italy from 1943 to 1945. The eight stories in this short book reveal much about the man and his wartime experiences, from training in Nebraska to bombing missions over Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Rochlin survived 50 missions and made it home, but most of his friends did not. His poignant acknowledgment of their sacrifice and his wonder at his own survival provide a stark glimpse into men at war. Rochlin delivers a baby one day and obliterates a Hungarian village the next. He later parachutes into Yugoslavia and walks more than 400 kilometers to safety, guided by a robust female Yugoslav partisan. His observations of people and events are keen, ribald, and very funny. The book is too short, though--just an appetizer for the rest of Rochlin's tales. Recommended for public libraries.--Col. William D. Bushnell, USMC (ret.), Sebascodegan Island, ME Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal