Here is an article, written by Ida Lupino herself during the height of World War 2, about her experiences visiting with wounded veterans. Her husband at the time, Louis Hayward, had returned a few months earlier from his harrowing experience overseas at the Battle of Tarawa in the South Pacific.
Your Soldier and Mine...
by Ida Lupino
(In Screen Stars, June 1944)
It is our proud privilege to present Ida Lupino's own story, written especially for you. This fine actress dwells on a subject closest to her heart -- and yours -- our soldiers. It will awaken you anew to the debt and deep gratitude we owe these wonderful boys.
OUR returning men will require an even greater courage to face the problems of eventual peace than the blind disregard of physical danger demanded of them to face the enemy.
Even as we have depended on them, now they must depend on us as civilian individuals to make "home" a decent place to come back to. We civilians have only begun our war. A war to do our share in evening the score for our men when they return as veterans to look for jobs—to resume their part in civilian life.
Our men must never feel that they are neglected outsiders. They must never wonder why, and for what reason, they are carrying an empty sleeve, crutches, or a cane.
Every citizen should pledge him or herself to find one job for one ex-serviceman. Suppose there are no jobs—then we must make them. If there are four passengers to be crowded into the back seat of a car which would normally accommodate three—you crowd over—double up. That's the way it must be with jobs.
There must be no "sorry, come back another day." No weeks of trudging the streets, trying to find some way to re-enter civilian life!
Just visit the hospitals! Talk to our men returning from action overseas. Count the cost for them!
There's a kid whose whole life centered on his ability to lift high tension wires. He took considerable pride in this feat. A neck nerve was severed in battle at Attu. He can't lift with either left or right arm. But he has been re-established in the American way of life. Warner Brothers gave him a job in the mailing department. He is no longer conscious of his disabilities as a permanent insurmountable handicap!
There's the great ace pilot who today wears steel plates in his head from World War I. He has trained hundreds of men for the R.A.F. and also ferried planes until his health cracked. True, he could no longer fly, but he said, "I can do so many other things. I', only 40. I can fit in somewhere. I can do something, if I can get a job."
For four weeks, he tried unsuccessfully. Some of us took it upon ourselves to see that he found one. We went scouting around and now he's handling actors. He is again in the active scheme of useful civilian life. And he's happy.
Craig Reynolds returned from Guadalcanal wearing a brace from his knee to his foot. Immediately he was given a job by RKO and a good contract. That is the way it should be. Immediate jobs for every veteran.
Each civilian must say, "I personally will see that the guy who needs a job—gets work." So you go to town and you start contacting people. Come hell or high water you take the individual responsibility. You fight this battle—as only a civilian can.
I may be pretty rabid on this subject, but I have 10,000,000 men who will back me up—and tens of thousands of civilians, too. So it's going to be a little tough to do a job for every soldier. Okay, the war is tough. And battle is tough. And we civilians have been affected the least. Our personal war is this responsibility now—planning a sound post-war world for our boys.
In the meantime, I wonder if civilians understand that they don't have to belong to organizations, nor wait to be asked by special committees to make good-cheer visits to our wounded who have already returned. No one can realize how much it means until they have talked to these boys. Just a smile, an exchange of words—a short chat is enough to brighten their day.
I visit the Norco Naval Hospital at Corona, California, regularly. It is here that you find the real casualties from overseas, It would take three months to go through the tremendous hospital at Norco and give individual attention to each patient, but since I have been free from studio work in the past few months I have visited there weekly—and eventually I hope to be able to say I have met and talked with every man in that hospital.
The great courage and philosophy and sense of humor of these kids—for so many are just kids—is inspirational. I have been privileged to meet some of them on a common ground—through kinship with my own experiences. In the skin grafting wards, for instance, the most amazing miracles of medical science and skill are being effected. There was the boy whose plane crashed. A flaming torch, he managed to drag two of his buddies from the burning wreckage. In a few months, he will leave that hospital with a complete new face. There will never be any surface evidence of the untold horror and suffering he has experienced.
It is fascinating to mark the progress of new noses, new chins, new hands and fingers. These boys and I, as I said, have something in common. When I was thirteen I was run over by a speeding automobile. My face was terribly lacerated. My thumb and knee cap we're practically torn off. I couldn't tell you how many times I've told my story to the kids at the hospital. To help encourage them—to point out how, even in the infancy of plastic surgery, my finger and knee cap mended. I still have the slight scars to prove my story—and the boys who are awaiting their skin grafts and plastic work seem to worry just a little less after we finish talking. Quite justifiably they have the greatest confidence in these surgeons whose results beggar description. They are accomplishing miracles. One has to see them, to believe.
Having fully recovered from an attack of infantile paralysis, I can talk about that, too, with the boys in these wards. We chin by the hour on our "case histories."
I had been visiting at the hospital one day when the C.O. asked me if I'd mind staying to meet some of the new boys. I saw them that night—the kids coming in direct from the South Pacific—hundreds of them. Those that could walk came in with their duffle bags slung cockily over their shoulders. They walked down the corridor of the hospital—and past me.
"Holy Smoke—what a paradise!" they ejaculated. Suddenly, someone recognized me. "Gad awmighty, if it isn't Ida Lupino!"
"Say," somebody else sighed, "I think we're going to love this place. It looks like a regular class hotel and here's an actress from Hollywood to greet us." I wouldn't take anything for the privilege of meeting those kids as they came in that night. I don't care how corny I may sound—it hit me, down deep inside.
Since I am a Marine's wife, I think I am entitled to say just a word or two about my own husband, Captain Louis Hayward, even though he is "set" against any kind of publicity for himself. When he came home from the battle of Tarawa, he was scared stiff by the deluge of requests for photographs and interviews.
"I'm through being an actor," he said sincerely, "for the duration. Why should I pose for pictures? Who am I to spout off about my part at Tarawa? I fought beside heroes—and I saw them die. And you can't talk about that." And he didn't.
It was with Louis that I first visited the Tarawa casualties at Norco. I was little Miss Nobody that day. A moving picture actress didn't mean a thing. The boys were polite, but it was "the Captain we want to see. Where is he?"
There was a bad shrapnel case. "Why Cap," the lad grinned through me at Louis, "why not move in? You don"t look so hot?"
Louis smiled back, "Well maybe I will."
I'm glad I was with him that day. It was inexplicable—the exchange of looks between the Captain and these kids. They'd been through it together, and no one except one who had, could crash the understanding they shared.
To get back to the important business of our Civilian War Front. No one can underestimate the responsibility every individual should assume, in doing their part for the boys who have returned. The honorably discharged... the wounded... require everyone's help in erasing the scars of battle—in helping to restore them to a normal life again—to a feeling of security in the freedom of a land that is theirs, and all of ours. When one gets an opportunity to talk to these boys, they tell you enthusiastically about some of Hollywood's own, to whom they are grateful.
Kay Francis is one of the great unsung heroines of this war. Quietly, without fanfare, she spends every other day of her life visiting the hospitals. And the men virtually worship her.
Humphrey Bogart is the tops of all time. He's so tough, and real, and down-to-earth. Louis told me that the men would wait hours in the rain in the South Pacific, to catch even one sequence of a Bogart picture.
And Joe E. Brown—they can't rave enough about him. No island has been too obscure for him to visit. He is likely to turn up anywhere—unheralded. He just arrives with, "well, here I am, boys"—and the show is on.
Bob Hope, of course, is tireless—one of the great civilian heroes of this, or any war. To say the boys worship him would be understating it.
Unfortunately, few of us can even attempt to compete with his socko entertainment for the men. Since this is a fact, most of us have discovered we do better on a program designed so the boys can join in the fun.
Irene Dunne arrived at a camp to sing a few songs and found there was no accompaniest. Thousands of soldiers sat there quietly, waiting to see what she was going to do.
Irene broke down, and broke them down, with the blunt admission, "Hey, fellas, this is new to me. My accompaniest isn't here—but I can sing a couple of songs if you'll help me out!" A barrage of applause gave their approval. And without accompaniment, Irene started to sing—familiar, popular songs everyone knew. Pretty soon everyone was singing with her—and they kept right on singing—for forty-five minutes.
The kids are wonderful! They don't expect you to be an artist—or put on a terrific act. All they want—and the thing they appreciate most—is for you to be yourself—regular!
My sister, Rita, and I, and Lela Anderson dropped in at March Field one morning. We had no show. We'd had no breakfast, and we'd been driving for hours in an open car. We walked across the field—it seemed miles—in more wind. The rats and hairpins had long since fallen from our fancy hair-dos. But as far as the boys were concerned, we were positive okay. They were glad to see us. They made us feel like we were queens. We were simply visiting. We had no act, nothing planned. But we walked into one of the wards, and Rita started things with the crack: "Say, boys, six doctors rushed us at the front office. They said, 'Okay, casualties ... what campaigns, please ...' and ordered us to this ward!"
The boys roared. And Rita kept right on cracking. We walked through so many wards, we were limp. The docs finally put us in wheelchairs and tagged us the "Sulpha Sisters"—fastest cure they'd ever had in the hospital. By the time we'd completed our "visit" we'd covered 26 acres!
The incredibly high morale of our body who have returned from Attu, from the Marshalls, from the South Pacific—everywhere, is so wonderful that it cannot be described in words. Their great courage, the philosophy they've adopted, their sense of humor is inspirational for all of us. Some of them are expressing themselves in writing—songs, stories, poems. I'd like to conclude by letting you read one of the latter, written by Lieutenant W. D. Del Maestro at Norco Naval Hospital who expresses, far better than I, just how they feel about—