Destined to Fight Hitler

Grandma Annie, who often took me shopping in preschool and grammar school days, on two occasions took me on foot to the nearby synagogue for Friday night services, called in Yiddish shool. My impression was that she attended frequently and was the only one in my family who could be considered religious. I recall at the services only a few were present and they seemed to me all grandmothers, certainly no other children. I was much taken by the service, and comforted with its prayers, singing by the cantor, response of the participants, and perhaps a sermon and organ music. I never attended a synagogue again until, acceding to the desires of a few Jewish classmates, I went on the high holidays, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, once or twice during my MIT undergraduate years.

When I was a preschooler a playmate asked me if I was Jewish. No one had ever asked me that. My mother heard me answer, “I don’t know.” She made this into a family joke, repeated a few times to the great enjoyment of relatives. Some years later I studied a little Hebrew in supposed anticipation of a bar mitzvah, including some private lessons for me and a cousin my age. When I was not enthused by the private lesson teacher, my mother stopped the process and I was never bar mitzvahed. I was certainly not converted to religiosity of any kind by such experiences.

What did involve me deeply were the discussions at dinner between Mom, Dad, Annie, Uncle Eddie, Grandpa Max, and sometimes others about what was happening to the Jews in Germany. Mostly I listened. Over the dinner table, Hitler and his gang were discussed as archvillains, the world’s greatest evil. Every piece of national and international news was parsed as to whether it was good for the Jews or bad for the Jews. Much of the news available in the U.S. was sketchy. Before I was ten it came through to me that I would have to fight the Germans someday. When I walked home from school in the fourth grade for the first time with two classmates, David Haggerty and Heinz Moes, the war was still years away. Heinz had a German accent and was smaller than me. I began pushing him around. David did nothing. I soon realized I was bullying Heinz, not Adolf Hitler, and I desisted. I got along fine with Heinz thereafter.

My grandparents on my mother’s side, Max and Annie, had separately immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian empire, Annie not far from Vienna, Max more in present-day Hungary. They came through Ellis Island in the early1890s, worked their way out of the Lower East Side of New York City, loved America, and were very patriotic, especially Max, who had unsuccessfully tried to enlist in the Spanish-American war. I can remember him taking me to see a Memorial Day parade, the year 1930 or close. At one point he got very excited as he caught sight of a small contingent of old soldiers, more ambling than marching. “I didn’t know any of those guys were still alive.” They were Civil War veterans. Much later I figured out they had to be at least eighty years old—about the same age I am now.

My father’s father, Wolf Kay, came about the same time from Russia to London, where he worked for a few years learning the tailoring business. All my grandparents left the old country to avoid pogroms and military drafts. A word about names: My parents and grandparents were given Yiddish names by their parents before they adopted American (i.e. English) names when needed in the U.S. Not true in my generation. We were 100 percent Americans. I never even learned Yiddish, in part because my relatives used the language to talk over the heads of the children. Well, let them do that, was my reaction. I’ll never learn their dumb language. So there!

When I was nine or ten, Max decided to go back to see his relatives and to assess the Eastern European situation. I was excited by the prospect. There was some discussion about his taking me with him. He decided against it. When he came back from Europe, in my hearing he said little about what he witnessed. He had traveled around quite a bit, including risking going into Germany, the belly of the beast. I did hear him say with great sadness in his voice that the situation was “much worse” than he expected.

When I entered MIT in the fall of 1942, the effect of the heating up of WWII was emerging in many different ways. First, MIT went on a year-round schedule, three semesters per year instead of two. Then ROTC became mandatory for most students. Classmates were beginning to volunteer for military service, with an increased chance of getting a better assignment than waiting to be called up in the draft. At age sixteen, I could not enlist unless I lied about my age, which I was not going to do.

More life-changing developments ensued. In one issue of The Tech, a free weekly MIT newspaper, a headline exclaimed that there was no truth to the rumor that the military was going to take over the campus. In the very next week’s issue the headline made it very clear: No ifs, ands, or buts, all of the on-campus dormitories and the cafeteria would have to be vacated within one week to let the army move in. We students rooming on campus immediately started looking for rental space. We split into groups that took a half day off to go in different directions, working every possibility. I and about five others decided to move into a boardinghouse on Mass. Avenue, a mile north of MIT. Hyman Fisher and I doubled up in one room.

Then the two of us found a place still further north. The distance wasn’t so important. We were biking by that time, and later my father, knowing I was going to be drafted in a year or so, gave me a used Plymouth coupe. With gasoline severely rationed, I used it only occasionally. The place we found was close to a couple of inexpensive restaurants and closer to Radcliffe.

With all this, we managed to keep up with our studies. In addition, about every second or third night for a year or so, I ambled over to Eliot Hall at Radcliffe whenever my workload was not too pressing. Having had no sisters and not much understanding of women, I learned a lot, made acquaintances, had a few dates, and sometimes got into a bridge game. Occasionally there were distinguished guests and bright, even eloquent, conversations about almost every subject of interest. I loved those evenings.

I received three six-month deferments that allowed me to complete the first semester of my junior year and a few weeks into the second semester, when I had to report back to my home draft board in Maplewood, New Jersey, that needed to meet its quota of draftees every month.

I was not inducted in early August 1944. Sick at home, I got a one-month extension. I was required to show up at an armory in Newark a month later. The arrangements were in a little disarray when I got to the armory, and after some standard orientation about what was going to happen in the next few days, we were told to go home and come back early the next day. I was called aside by someone there who knew my father (who at that time was a captain in the New Jersey State Guard), who told me he could do me a favor and get me into the navy. Most guys would have preferred the navy on the theory that you wouldn’t spend days and nights in muddy foxholes. I didn’t, because I had a greater fear of drowning than spending days in a foxhole. Besides that, I had been saying good-bye so much I didn’t want to go home overnight. I told them I was staying there. They gave me a meal. I’m a pretty flexible eater, but that slop was ridiculous.

After I somehow finished that, I said I was going out for a while. That was no problem. What I really did was take a twenty-minute walk to Max and Annie’s house, the place in East Orange where I lived for eight years from age four to age eleven. My appearance surprised them. I realized it was the only time I ever spent with the two of them without other relatives, particularly my mother, present. I don’t remember a thing we said, other than that I felt more like an adult then I ever did with the relatives around. It was a very pleasing way to say good-bye. I walked back to the armory. They both lived a decade or two longer, but I never again saw them at home together without others around. It had been a unique, precious moment in my lifetime.

The next morning we draftees were inducted and sent by train to Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for infantry basic training. The first day’s orientation included some tough talk. “You’re all young and full of piss and vinegar,” and advice: If you get an erection too distracting to deal with, “Put it on the windowsill and slam the window down.” Clearly army life was going to be blunt and tough.

There are some things all WWII soldiers seemed to learn in their earliest training days and retained forever, unless they became commissioned officers. Here is the wisdom of years of militarism: (1) If the sergeant was about to explain something, he began with, “There are two ways to do things: the right way and the army way.” Lesson: It was supposed to be a joke but it wasn’t. (2) If the sergeant asked for anyone who had certain special skills, like math… Joke: “Well, is anyone good at math?” No answer. He looked around in disgust. He hadn’t fooled anybody. He hit back: “Police the ground. Each soldier picks up thirty pieces of paper, cigarette butts, or any junk… if you can count. Show it to the corporal.” When you reached the corporal with your thirty pieces, he didn’t even look at your collection, just pointed to the trash barrel. Are you so dumb to think the corporal wanted the junk? Lesson we followed: “Never volunteer.” (3) Rushed through lining up to be ready to march off for training might be done at double speed. Then we stood around, waiting for something else, maybe the next squad to show up or whatever. Sometimes waiting took a long time. Lesson? The army does this all the time: “Hurry up and wait.”

(This is an excerpt from MILITARIST MILLIONAIRE PEACENIK: Memoir of a Serial Entrepreneur by Alan F. Kay and reprinted with the permission of the author)