Chapter 6
OZZIE
Ozzie could still smell Rita’s honeysuckle scent on his fingers from the night before, and the knowledge that she no longer belonged to him hurt like an open wound.
When he’d told her that he didn’t want to picture her with anyone else, she’d replied, “Then don’t think about it,” as she had nestled her head in the crook of his arm and their warm bodies lay tangled.
“Whatever happens in Germany, just leave it there. If we find our way back to each other, it’ll be with a fresh start. ”
Ozzie chewed his lip at the memory as he let the music on the car radio wash over him.
Uncle Millard was driving his Vagabond-blue Oldsmobile down Dickenson Street.
As he turned left onto South Broad Street, Count Basie’s “One O’Clock Jump” came over the AM station WHAT.
His radio system was so sophisticated that when he hit a small pothole, the station stayed put.
Uncle Millard reached for the knob and turned the radio down low.
“I was listening to that,” Ozzie said.
“I ever tell you how I came up to Philly?” Uncle Millard spoke at the same volume whether he was indoors or out: loud.
Ozzie stayed quiet. He knew Uncle Millard didn’t expect an answer, because whether he’d told him before or not was irrelevant.
“You know that redneck down in the country who took advantage of your mama, putting Sissy in her belly?”
Ozzie ground his teeth. Mama didn’t talk about that.
What they also didn’t talk about was how his older sister, Sissy, left the house most mornings before dawn to travel by foot, bus, and trolley two hours from the belly of South Philly to her job at Strawbridge, a department store on Old York Road nearly to Jenkintown.
Sissy with her milky skin worked in the ladies’ hat department, which, despite grumbling from the NAACP and other civil rights organizations, had a strict policy for their workers: white women only.
If her manager only knew the rest of their family.
“Well, I stabbed him.”
Ozzie turned to look at his uncle. Uncle Millard was one of the coolest men in the family. Smooth toasted-brown skin, pearly white teeth, and hair conked like Nat King Cole’s. He drove with one hand on the steering wheel, the other dangling a Pall Mall.
“Went into a blind rage the moment I found your mama crying, lip busted, with her dress torn. Killed the bastard on his own front porch. Before his body stopped shaking, I had cut through the woods and hopped the train to Philly.” Uncle Millard tapped the ashes of his cigarette in the ashtray.
“You jiving.”
“Serious as a heart attack.” He rocked his head. “Shit. I was so scared that I left my damn knife in him.”
“Evidence?” Ozzie said, wide-eyed.
“Yeah, but more importantly”—Uncle Millard took a drag—“it was the best knife I ever owned. A Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife. Won it off some dude in a game of poker. She was a beauty too. Double-edged stiletto, and I used to wear it strapped to my left ankle.” His face lit up like he was talking about his woman.
“Anyway, I was on the next thing smokin’.
Got up here and changed my name. Been on the run for damn near twenty years. Always watching my back.”
They had reached the Philadelphia World War II had ended nearly three years prior, so he wasn’t overly concerned with dying.
But it was the first time in his life that he’d be all alone, no family, no friends, no Rita, living abroad, so far from everything that was familiar to him.
Despite his best efforts at studying the German-language book that his favorite English teacher had secured for him, he was worried about the language barrier, the taste of food, and what his living conditions would be as a Negro man stationed in the U.S.
Army abroad. Ozzie understood Uncle Millard’s warning, and though he was going to Germany with the intention of behaving, he also had the expectation of being treated civilly.
“Step up,” called out a thin-nosed sailor. “Keep moving.”
There were two lines, one for the white troops and a separate one for the Negroes.
The fishy fragrance of the Hudson River was amplified by the heat of the day.
The troops were all dressed in their khaki cotton summer uniform and low-quarter shoes.
Ozzie could feel sweat trickling from his head to the collar of his shirt as he walked up the gangplank with his B4 bag in one hand and his M1 olive helmet in the other.
The boxed lunch he had wolfed down on the ride made him feel queasy, and Ozzie knew that it was more nerves than indigestion.
As the troops filed onto the massive ship, they were met with navy personnel who checked off their names and called out their enlisted berth information.
The ship was confusing, with compartments and passageways going in every direction.
As Ozzie moved with a group of men, he could hear the hissing sound of steam, pipes rattling, and machinery grinding then halting, grinding then halting.
After getting turned around, Ozzie found the narrow hall and then took the ladder down to the mess hall, as instructed.
There the men were met by a Negro man wearing oval glasses.
“Welcome home, soldiers,” he said.
Ozzie looked around the tight mess hall, which had tables and chairs and very little walking space.
“I’m Sergeant First Class Marshall, your platoon sergeant. I know it isn’t ideal, but because the ship is over capacity, this will be your home for the next two and a half weeks.”
“ ’Scuse me, Sergeant Marshall, but where we supposed to sleep?” asked the string-bean-shaped man standing next to Ozzie.
Sergeant Marshall pointed to the racks above the table.
“Let me show you how this works,” he said, then motioned to the ten men who had gathered to help with pushing the tables back and folding the benches.
He then pulled on a chain that dropped down racks along the wall, each stacked three bunks high, with very little space in between.
The sleeping racks were held up by white posts and metal chains.
The cots were metal frames with stretched canvas.
Sergeant Marshall pointed to a pile in the corner and instructed each man to pick up a white sheet and a coarse blanket. “There are twenty bosun’s lockers. You have six cubic feet of storage for everything that you own. When we run out, which we will, the remaining men can use seabags as storage.”
The mess deck, converted into a berth for the Negro soldiers, was cramped and far smaller than the images Ozzie had seen in the recruitment office.
He couldn’t help but wonder how much more spacious the white soldiers’ quarters were.
He counted the racks. There were eleven suspended on metal chains with three bunks each.
He’d be sharing the mess hall with thirty-three other men.
The space was long but not very wide. Men started claiming their racks, and Ozzie moved through to the closest rack and claimed the top bunk.
He could see that the bottom bunks hung right above the folded tables and would feel like sleeping in a coffin.
Ozzie had slept in a two-bedroom house with his family of six, seven on the rare occasions when his father made it home.
But no matter how tight it got, they were family.
Already, he could smell the ripeness of men who had traveled on crowded buses and trains with no air-conditioning.
“First meal is at zero six hundred, so that means you need to be up and your racks stowed by zero five,” Sergeant Marshall said. “Once you are settled, you may go to the weather deck. The colored section is marked.” Marshall turned and made his way back up the ladder.
After Ozzie stowed his belongings in his locker, he then moved his body sideways and squirmed past the men to the ladder.
On the deck above the mess hall, he found the head.
Two wash basins, two shower stalls, one urinal, and one seated toilet for all thirty-three Negro men.
They had just boarded, and already he could smell that the latrines needed ammonia and bleach.
Up on the weather deck, Ozzie found the rows of wooden benches marked “Coloreds Only” and dutifully took a seat.
The clouds streaked through the open sky, and fresh air gave him a small sense of peace.
As he pulled a canteen of water from his waist, his thoughts drifted back to Rita.
He wondered what she was doing and if she’d be true to her word and write him a letter.
Ozzie was so preoccupied, he had not noticed the three leggy women until they were blocking the setting sun.
“These seats taken?”
Ozzie inhaled a whiff of talcum powder and wondered how the women had managed to smell so good on a ship that already smelled funky. “No, help yourself,” he said, gesturing.
The three women chattered on, but Ozzie could feel their eyes darting back and forth between one another and him.
“Where you from, soldier?” asked one of the women, leaning forward. She wore an Army Nurse Corps cap over big curls.
“South Philly.”
“I’m from Baltimore. My name is Clara Thompson, and these are my fellow nurses, Della and Celestine.”
The three women were various hues of brown, with Clara’s skin being the richest, a velvety sepia tone. She had deep-set eyes, and he couldn’t help but notice how they danced when she smiled.
“Ozzie Philips,” he introduced himself as two of the men from his berth walked over to them.
“Thomas Morgan. Pleased to meet you ladies,” one man said, waving. Morgan had a stocky frame, as if he had played running back in high school. Melvin Thornton nodded hello while shuffling a deck of cards.
Before Ozzie knew it, the men and women were exchanging Negro geography.
Who grew up where. Whose family knew whom.
Then they heard the loud blast of the ship’s horn and felt the slow motion of the ship drifting away from the port.
As they sailed away from America, from everything that they had all known, Ozzie watched a band of seagulls soar into the air.
He tilted his face to the clouds, breathing in the salty scent of freedom.