Audace In Aurora

My uncle Audace (pronounced, accent on the second syllable, "Ow-dah-chay" in Italian) was born in Manhattan and celebrated his twenty fifth birthday while in the Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado, ninety five years ago yesterday and seventy years ago yesterday, respectively.  My grandfather named him for his courage or rather for his "audacity" in daring to live after coming into the world on what was one of the hottest days in New York city up until that time (1917). Placed outside on the fire escape of the tenement building where the family lived, the infant was apparently stillborn and attempts to revive him were initially not successful.  No doubt, Grandpa's temper, hotter than the thermometer, persuaded the midwife in attendance to further bend every effort to get little Audace to breathe. Breathe he did eventually and the little baby was deemed to have provided the greater part of the moxie needed to fight and win the battle for life.

Fast forward twenty five years, beyond a happy childhood, the early acquisition of a lifelong nickname, "Chris" as in Christopher Columbus (dubbed by his impatient playmates who had learned quickly of their companion's Sicilian parentage), college, a first "adult" job and then a war in Europe that had had a certain inevitability about it, and that by 1941 had spread its dark clouds closer and closer towards North America.  Audace made the decision to enlist in the fall of that year and his choice of the army's cavalry was an interesting one.  His training in and near Ft. Reilly, Kansas in the fall and the winter of '41-'42 occurred during the fateful attack on Pear Harbor, H.T.  The future was now dramatically more exciting as well as uncertain, until the cold rains and the ubiquitous mud of one of the series of maneuvers he was involved in brought forth even more questions about events and their consequences in these perilous times. Chris had contracted pleurisy while laying too long in the aforementioned mud. That brought him to Aurora for treatment and recovery.

By the early summer of '42 he had already languished in the hospital for several months and his family clamored for the latest news.  Letter writing was not a dead art in the America of seven decades ago.  Chris was an obliging son and brother and his most recent missive even included a photograph in his army issued pajamas with a pleasant grin on his face that he was confident would allay any fears of his aging parents in New York.  Upon viewing his pallid complexion, sunken eyes and rail thin frame underneath the p.j.s, my grandmother commenced to cry fiercely and it was quickly decided that Audace's sister, my mother, would journey to Colorado to check on him and to cheer him on his birthday. She made the two and a half day trip on a Greyhound bus and it was long, arduous, dusty and an education of the first order.  Besides prairie dogs that were often the only signs of life as the omnibus crossed the Great Plains, there were the myriad of characters among her fellow passengers (these included an old evening school professor of hers who got on in Pittsburgh) who added a bit of color to the generally tedious trek of waiting, watching, reading, eating, and fitfully sleeping (while seated, of course).  America was a beehive of activity and the movement of troops, i.e. men and materiel crisscrossing the continent, as well as the numerous civilian travelers like my Mom (many if not most heading to or from vital "home front" war work), made for a momentous and pulsating atmosphere perhaps not matched since, especially if considering what was the unity of purpose and the quality of our nation's energy level then, like what Confucius (via the late Stanley Link's cartoon character Ching Chow) reminded his disciples of: "Remember to be thankful for our enemies; they have the power to bring out the greatest efforts in ourselves."

Well, Mom arrived in mid-July and Chris was overjoyed to have company, from home no less!  Both their spirits were buoyed and two weeks, like many a vacation of novelty, new sounds and rhythms as well as sightseeing shared with a loved one, made the time not "fly", but enriching while making it denser and hence actually lengthening the perception of it without it seeming to "drag." Chris was in a festive mood the whole time, not surprisingly. One imagines however, his desire to ride a horse in the pastoral Rockies, unlike his dutiful, brief and no doubt often unpleasant "saddle ups" under Uncle Sam's auspices, was a bit of an aching frustration given his condition and the relative abundance of equine opportunities as well as hitching posts (see my blog entry of July 22nd, inst.) of the Aurora and Denver area of mid century.  The U.S. cavalry was on the verge of disbanding in the summer of 1942 and Chris must have had mixed feelings about that military decision at this particular point in his life.  It was a harbinger of so many other changes that life after the war would usher in.  Curiously, a last "hurrah" for mounted soldiers in combat would occur only a few weeks later on the plains of western Russia.  Italian horsemen would initiate a cavalry charge against unsuspecting Soviet forces that would win the day (though certainly not the war).  Chris's future lay with a mechanized unit (in the Tanks Corps) and he would end the war, finding his natural niche, like his brother and my father, in Military Intelligence.

But what of Audace's partying ways during that tiny portion of the calendar of that long ago summer?  He understood well the brief life span of Mom's visit and that certainly heightened the gaiety and intensity of their time spent together.  There were no A.T.M.s in 1942. Chris's meager paycheck, like all G.I.'s was a typical source of humor during the war and Mom had neither credit card nor checkbook to supplement the resources in the little pocketbook that she clutched more than halfway across a continent.  They dined out nearly every day and bus trips to National Parks outside of the Denver area were not without some cost and even room rates at the Y.W.C.A. can add up after a fortnight.  When Mom set out on her return trip home, she had to carefully husband her funds, eating hamburgers for most of the way and arriving back in Woodside with less than a dollar in change to her name.

Finally, what can one say about the Aurora of then compared to the mightily shocked town after the events of two weeks ago?  There are no profound pronouncements or distinctions that I can rightfully offer.  Human nature is essentially unchanging.  However, a solitary monster is, intriguingly, arguably comprehended with greater fright than an entire globe consumed by a maelstrom organized on a grand scale by men of means and determination to destroy or maim entire societies.  Somehow, faith in the civilized world of one's family and friends and then fairly easily extended to larger units of church, local, state and finally, federal government entities, neutralized and even trumped the horror of a Tojo, a Hitler or a Mussolini.  A lower threshold of pain for the infliction of harm today, given all that we have gained, materially as a people (and conversely, all that we may or can lose because of acts of evil on any level) may be part of the cause of our malaise that seems to haunt this new century of incredible technological superhighways of communication contrasted with a psychic traffic jam that literacy and old fashioned disciplines of logic, clear thinking, because of their tremendous decline along with Faith, are seemingly incapable of breaking.