Baylor MilitarySchool
Evansville, Wisconsin
January 14, 1944
Day is done
“Nine o’clock! Lights out!”
Stamp books closed, all trading stopped.
Letters to mom and dad held off, to be written the next day.
Checkerboards folded. Red and black checkers and black and white chessmen put into their boxes and the boxes put onto the game shelf.
Hands and face scrubbed. Teeth brushed.
Squeaking of bedsprings. Rustle of bedding.
A whisper: “Shhh!” A giggle: “Quiet!” A burst of laughter: “Settle down!”
“Quiet in there! Squad leaders making rounds.”
“Floor two, west section all accounted for!”
“Thank you, Frankie. Good night.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Stoldig. Good night.”
Two hundred and fifty-two boys lay in warm, clean beds. Eyes closed or looking at the dimly iridescent ceiling, or through the window at the slivered, silver moon.
Waiting… Waiting.
It started.
The bugle.
Muted, as though coming from a great distance…
Soft. Sad. Crying.
Taps: Day is done.
Gone the sun.
From the lake.
From the hills, from the sky.
Day is done.
For the boys lying awake, it was their time of personal reflection. Sadly thinking of a loved and missed mother, father, brother, sister… home.
Remembering for all the make-believe, even though it was remote and far away from this small, peaceful place in southern Wisconsin, there was a war being fought, and those that had remembered that their father or big brother was “there”… wherever “there” was.
Children.
American children.
John Wayne. Randolph Scott. The Lone Ranger and Captain Midnight.
Pictures in pencil or crayon: A B-17 Flying Fortress with its bomb bay open. “Bombs away!”
Bombs falling on the “bad guys”: on Germany, on Japan.
A Lockheed Lightening with its white- and blue-winged star.
“Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,
flying high into the sky!”
Children. American children.
For them the war was far away, a distant, romantic montage of movie shadows and radio sounds.
RATATATATATAT! The staccato burst of machine guns.
“Tail gunner to pilot!”
“Yeah, Joe?”
“Hey, Cap, there goes another good Nip!”
The Japanese Mitsubishi Zero, fire and smoke spewing from its engine, spiraled madly towards earth.
“Yeah, good shootin’, Joe!”
“Say hello to Tojo, Nip!”
“Squad leader to squad! Hiennies coming in at two o’clock!”
RATATATATATAT!
“I say, Captain. There goes another ‘good Hiennie’!”
The German Mercedes Messerschmitt, fire and smoke spewing from its engine, spiraled madly towards earth.
“Good show!”
“Say hello to Hitler, Hiennie!”
They lay in their warm, clean beds, sleeping, dozing, or talking softly. They talk of this and that: of parents, of brothers, of sisters, of pets, of friends… of home.
Burrowing a little deeper in their blankets, soon all are asleep.
Thin, wispy clouds scuttled across the sky.
The wind blew, rustling dead and dried leaves.
All was quiet… Day was done.
January 15, 1944, 1:23 AM
Mitchell was on an extremely comfortable plateau. He felt the cool breeze that came from beneath the parted window and heard the soft, even breathing of the other three boys. Pulling the blanket over his head, he felt the warm vapor of his breath, and his comfort, both physical and mental, was complete.
The well of sleep deepened.
There was a bright form in the tunnel’s dark, vaporous distance. Mitchell moved towards it. As he came closer the figure dwindled. As he began to run the figure receded into nothingness, leaving the tunnel in total blackness.
The light! He ran to find it. Running. Running, but he remained in blackness…
Suddenly the figure was back and it was closer but still too far away and he could not see what it is, but he must see what it is and he ran to it.
The light remained stationary, yet as he came to it, it came no closer so he ran faster, faster.
Closer…
The light is her!
Waving his arms, “Wait!” Running, “Wait,” he called. “It’s me, the little kid!”
The light’s away motion suddenly stopped.
“Wait, Lou Ann, wait! It’s me, the little kid!”
Stationary now, she opened her arms to him.
Louise Ann was as he remembered, then… naked.
He could see her so clearly: her face; her long, braided hair… her breasts.
“Lou Ann,” he said, “I want to touch your titties! I want to taste your vanilla!” He reached to her, but she was just out of reach. “Lou Ann, I want to see your cunt!” He looked “there”… but there was nothing there. Nothing but a perfectly symmetrical, one-dimensional hole that he was able to see through, to the blackness behind Louise Ann. “Lou Ann, I want jack-off in your cunt, only then it’s called fuckin’.”
“But,” pointing her finger at him, “you’re just a little kid!”
Looking down, he realized he was naked, and that he had an erection. But it was not his penis, it was Salvatore Diamond’s penis.
Holding it tightly, he moved his hand down, forcing the dangle of foreskin to glide over the glans… then up again, and down again, and each time he did the head of a rabbit popped through, and it looked so funny….
And it felt so nice.
“Lou Ann!” Lifting his/Sal’s penis in his hand, “I am not a kid!” Proud of it, showing it to Louise Ann, “See? I’m not a kid ’cause I got a boner!”
It felt so nice holding his/Sal’s penis.
“Here!” Pointing it upward so Louise Ann could see it better, “See?”
Moving his hand upward, and downward.
And it felt sooo nice.
Up and down.
Holding himself through the opening of his pajamas, unaware of the movement, the sensual feeling relaxed him even further and Mitchell dropped deeper into his tunnel… deeper.
Throughout his nine and a half years he had fondled himself hundreds of times, always at night or in the morning when the need to urinate had caused an involuntary erection.
Now it was different. Now the sensation was more pronounced.
Up and down.
More urgent.
Up, down.
Normally a boy his age will not have had this need, but his conversation with Frank on Sunday had brought the picture of Salvatore Diamond and Louise Ann Richtor vividly back to mind, then, being pressured by Frank to ask Miss Stoldig the difference question on this day had created a high degree of nervousness, then the session with Skorupski, and his dream now had caused an erotic, sensory overload.
Harder, faster.
More friction was created along the hard, thin shaft of the nine-and-a-half-year-old boy’s penis.
Harder, faster. Up, down. Up-down.
His body jerking with the powerfully wrenching spasms, Mitchell moaned aloud from his deep place as he sensed the warmth that began in the area of his rectum, testicles and groin then spread throughout his entire body that, even in his sleep, caused him to shudder at the convulsing sensations of a child’s first orgasm…
Finished, it’s immediate end was deeply relaxing, as though having relieved himself of a very full bladder after holding off for a long time—a very long time.
His eyes opened.
