Book Review: Yardbird Myers

Title: Yardbird Myers

Author: Martin L. Myers

Date: 1944

Publisher: Dorrance

ISBN: none

Length: 230 pages

Quote: “I have learned...that a real Marine knows there is nothing on this earth as great as being a ‘Leatherneck.’”

In 1944, this comic novel about boot camp was part of the War Effort. Myers set out to communicate to young people that, although the purpose of boot camp is to turn fun-loving kids into tough soldiers by exposing them to as much of all kinds of stress as can be arranged, the ones who complete Basic Training can be proud. He did this with a reminiscence about the Basic Training experience of “Yardbird Myers, the Fouled-Up Marine,” who among other things spends a whole afternoon re-cleaning his rifle before it occurs to him to remove a dab of grease from the head of a screw.

Part of the comic effect comes from an early twentieth century tradition in which writers worked hard to communicate that a character was using words that most publishers just refused to print. Many early twentieth century speakers of English actually did use phrases like “son of a feminine canine” to express a milder degree of anger, or anger defused with humor. Then again, part of the ongoing stress tolerance test in boot camp was having to listen to a lot of fighting words from people the recruits weren’t allowed to fight.

In 1944 vaccination was a less exact science than it is today. The risk-benefit analysis of some vaccines that is still going on was still being applied to the whole idea of vaccination. Some vaccines in use in 1944 are no longer in use because they proved to do more harm than good. Children often weren’t vaccinated--for health reasons. Another part of the stress of boot camp was that, whether a recruit had had any vaccinations in childhood or none, he got all of them as a “boot.” “After each ‘shot,’ our [drill sergeant] gave us a nice work-out on the drill field for an hour or two...On minute you were standing at attention just as ‘chipper’ as could be and the next minute you would feel yourself swaying gently back and forth and then the first thing you knew your face hit the ‘deck’” in a reaction to this deliberate challenge of the immune system. Apart from the basic immune reaction to each vaccination, most soldiers thought they were “good as new” after the course. In historical fact, some of those vaccines did permanent damage to some bodies.

Then of course there’s the basic academic, mechanical, and physical training...As a child I remember looking at my uncle’s boot camp “yearbook.” Dad hadn’t taken to Army life or saved a photo album of his time in boot camp, but his younger brother was a career recruiting sergeant. I saw pictures of Big Kids running, climbing, doing stunts on structures of bars much more interesting than the little “monkey bars” occasionally offered to children, and I remember thinking, “That looks like fun! I want to do that, too, when I grow up.” The yearbook didn’t show the frantic, preparation-for-mortal-combat pace at which the exercises were done, or the supervisors watching the recruits with loaded weapons. It was a few years before adults explained to me that, although in boot camp those Big Kids learned to do all the stunts Little Kids like me were seldom even allowed to try, the learning process was meant to be anything but fun.

That’s the point Myers makes, repeatedly, for the middle school or high school boy readers to whom this book was primarily addressed. “Drill,” a sort of sex-free alternative to line dancing in which kids do synchronized body movements to march music, was something Little Kids did for fun (and some still do). Marine boot camp drill exercises were different, “an important part of the training for...when you get into the thick of” trench warfare. “[S]ome guy...failed to execute the movement and plunged headlong into the man in front of him... ‘Somebody is gonna get killed doing ‘to the rear march’ before you guys get wise...I’m gonna have you fix bayonets...if you don’t wake up then, you’ll get your blasted heads cut off.’ The D.I. never carried out that threat...but...he sure had us plenty scared.”

Some things Myers describes were criticized, and changed, over the years. Because “Suzie Rotten,” the prototypical disease-ridden hooker on a mission to infect enemy soldiers, was a real threat, Myers says that the Real Marine “is respectful to good women, but hates the fast and loose type with a vengeance.” I’ve read other things about how Marines, especially, were trained to identify just about any woman outside the immediate family of anyone present as Suzie Rotten, and how deliberate training to detest Suzie and all her ways led to confusion when young men realized that not only their wives and daughters but even their mothers had probably thought about sex. One thing that made changes necessary was the spread of AIDS in the 1980s; Suzie Rotten, our military learned fast, could be male.

It seems necessary here to mention something an editor got wrong with a book review I wrote for Associated Content long ago. Reviewing a work of feminist humor that men weren’t meant to like (Mary Daly’s Wickedary) I’d mentioned that even in the 1960s homosexual men had been attracted to military men. My Significant Other, a macho military type, said that was when he was taught to turn homosexual admirers away, laughing, with the line (uttered woefully) “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body!” A recognizably, not tediously, homosexual male e-friend commented on that review, “I’d like to meet him.” I wasn’t sure what the e-friend intended to say—that he liked being rejected? that he was persistent? that he wanted to see whether a sixty-year-old man, however macho, still had any use for that joke?—until I reread the article. The AC editor had changed a joke into the cliché, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body,” which of course was not what the U.S. Army found useful to deflect homosexual admirers. Obviously the homosexual reader just wanted to know how it might have been possible to make that line work as described! I don’t believe any man I’ve ever dated has ever claimed to be a woman trapped in a man’s body. Before Lyme Disease, however, my Significant Other was competent at wearing “low top” boots and at several other Things Lesbians Do.

Anyway—that line about women is all Myers has to say about sex. Really? A lot of males in their twenties and late teens...don’t even talk about sex? If readers doubt that that’s literally true, we can at least understand how it might be useful. During any period of abstinence, the less you talk or think about what you’re abstaining from, generally, the better.

Myers does, however, talk about gender roles. In 1944 some people were still infatuated with the old French Socialist notion that women might be conditioned to prefer being “angels in the home” to having any civil rights or money of their own, although women were already dismissing this notion as something that happens when people ingest too much cheese and wine. Men were being told that cooking and cleaning were beneath them. Spoiled sons of “career homemaker” mothers ran smack up against military reality: soldiers do their own cleaning. “First, you fill your bucket about three-fourths full of water. Then you dump your clothes in and let them soak...pull out a piece of clothing, lay it flat on the cement rack, rub the bar of soap over it a few times and then manhandle it with the brush.” One of the boots says, “Some of the guys say that when they get out of here they’re going to get a gallon of whiskey...the first thing I’m going to do is to hunt me up a good laundry woman,”  but they all become independent, self-cleaning, Real Men in the end.

And in the end...here we have a pleasant little book about a part of contemporary reality that was, in reality, unpleasant. Every nation needs a well trained, well equipped army, and although a sound biblical case can be made that it’s immoral (and stupid) to send anyone into combat without confirming that he’s willing to die for his country, a sound case can also be made that all young people’s education should include some level of military training. (Even if they don’t get into the actual military service, yes. The U.S. Army doesn’t have to cater to food intolerances or work around odd religious rules in order to defend the country. Let’s hope it never does. That does not, however, mean that young people who have food intolerances or live according to odd religious rules can’t benefit from some level of basic training.)

The perennial question arises: But when we-as-a-nation train and equip armed forces, doesn’t that create pressure to justify the expense of those armed forces by fighting wars?

The answer: Switzerland has had an army and avoided using its army to fight wars for hundreds of years.We in these United States,too, have at least an ideal of “Don’t start a fight, but don’t lose one.” But in 1944 nobody wanted to pursue the question of how the United States might, in this one way, be more like Switzerland.

Yardbird Myers has become a collector's item, and although I'm willing to sell the copy I physically own for less in cash, under current conditions a copy sold through this web site will cost $20 + $5 per package + $1 per e-payment. (Sometimes when I post collector prices here, readers are motivated to offer books they own on Amazon for less...yes, if this web site gave a price that exceeds the current price on Amazon by more than $5, in the past, and you want to buy a cheaper copy or reprint, salolianigodagewi @ yahoo is willing to negotiate.)