flashquake - Spring 2002 - Nonfiction - Little Orphan Annie and I Go To War by Gerald Kamens

Nonfiction

flashquake
Little Orphan Annie and I Go To War
by Gerald Kamens

I became a brigade captain in 1944, at the age of ten.

One morning at our school assembly a few months after D-Day, a man from the Philadelphia Inquirer talked about the important job several lucky students could play in the war effort — collecting scrap paper to help defeat the Nazis. Our principal, Dr. Strang, said those volunteering the following Friday could be captains, but we'd have to recruit and train our troops ourselves. If there'd been much competition, I would've bowed out quickly. But only a few boys enlisted. Girls didn't volunteer for such things in those days, or at least not in my working class neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia. Which, in hindsight, was odd because the inspiration for these brigades was Little Orphan Annie.

Perky Annie, accompanied in the Inquirer comic strip by her faithful dog, Sandy, went around town with a little wagon, collecting old newspapers and magazines. She was a go-getter, obviously less of a traditionalist than the girls I knew. When Annie rolled those big vacant eyes at people, they showered her and her chums with old newspapers, which somehow got transformed into war materiél.

graphic of a street scene featuring a little red wagon, labelled Little Orphan Annie and I Go To War by Gerald Kamens

After a dubious blessing from my shop teacher, Mr. Prone, who'd been delegated to shepherd our efforts, I managed to inspire Bernie, Ronald, Mickey, and Harold in my sixth grade class and from my immediate neighborhood, to join my brigade. I could understand Mr. Prone's skepticism, since I'd recently taken five weeks to craft a barely usable rolling pin in his class.

"We're helping fight the war," I told my boys after school that first day, "and our soldiers need, uh, supplies." I wasn't clear about the Army's need for old newspapers, but Harold suggested it was to make toilet paper. After I divided the territory each afternoon and gave out assignments, we'd trudge our separate ways, pulling our wagons up to each brick rowhouse in our neighborhood, ascending four concrete steps, knocking on doors, and playing up to our neighbors' patriotism.

When we'd collected over a ton of paper the first week, Mr. Prone began to smile at me as I labored to create an off-centered broom holder -- upon which my mother would hang her brooms for many years thereafter. A month later, by Armistice Day, we'd gathered almost five tons. But our territory was pretty cleaned out. We went into outlying streets, which had other, competitive, Orphan Annie brigades.

My boys' spirit of volunteerism was fast flagging, maybe because our men overseas were doing so well. They probably had enough toilet paper to last until war's end, which we knew would come any day.

Fortunately, just when mutiny threatened, Mr. Prone told me one afternoon, that, because my brigade had collected the most in the school, the Inquirer was sending a photographer to take our picture for a story. After class Friday, we were ready for action at the schoolyard bin, wearing our orange caps with Annie's smiling face, and clambering over big newspaper piles, mostly gathered, of course, by other brigades. Our nicked red wagons, carrying symbolic loads of paper, stood in close formation outside the bin's door.

By 4:30, Mr. Prone said he had to go home, and that the Inquirer's photographer was undoubtedly still at some other school, taking pictures of their brigade. Strange as it may seem nowadays, in that long ago time none of our mothers worried if we weren't home right after school, so long as we got there by supper. But by 5:30, it was close to dark. Still no photographer.

As captain, I knew a command decision was needed. But the boys soon realized I'd no idea of how to get hold of the anonymous photographer, or even Mr. Prone. I never got the chance to issue an order. The other boys, seeing I had no solution, began taking off their caps, squashing them into their belts or back pockets, and slowly pulled their wagons off into the November dusk.

Mr. Prone told me the following Monday that the photographer had gone to the wrong school, but the newspaper had enough pictures from other schools to assemble their story on the city's Orphan Annie brigades, out the following weekend. I suspected Mr. Prone had gotten the photo business mixed up to begin with. But, by then, it didn't matter any more.

Mr. Prone said what really mattered was the five tons of paper we'd collected for our boys overseas. That was more important than passing fame, whatever that meant. The non-photograph was enough to finally disband my brigade. I never told my parents about the newspaper story, and never read it. I got a little more distrustful of adults' explanations of how the world operated.

The only thing I had to show for my diligence was that dopey little orange cap and my cloth captain's bar. Later in Cub Scouts, I got a whole uniform, blue, with knickers. As it turned out, our nation's subsequent wars, my college deferments, and my early entry into parenthood combined to keep me from ever getting any other uniform. Many years after 1944, I discovered that, in the big picture, a captain was not that high in the pecking order, and, normally, a general commanded a brigade.

It all comes back to me sometimes, if I run across that little orange cap in my attic or hear a moppet belting out "Tomorrow" in some dinner theater. In hindsight, I'm mildly astonished that my classmates would let me run the show. For the first time in my young life, I discovered that lots of people were quite willing to take part in a large effort, often without much credit, so long as someone else takes the leadership, and often much of the plaudits. I learned how to organize, to get people to do things, even a bit about marketing — all of which prepared me for the decades ahead. Thanks, Annie!