Art Kramer

ART KRAMER'S WWII STORIES

I DON'T GET NO RESPECT

It's not my fault. I have a baby face and I always looked a lot younger than my age. When you are 18 and look 14 that causes a lot of embarrassment in the U.S.Army Air Corps. Comments like, "They are robbing the cradle. We must have lost the war" or "Is that officer old enough to shave?" "Scotch all around except for that officer. He'll have a Shirley Temple". Life was hard. It was especially bad when I arrived at the 344th Bomb Group with my crew. We were replacements. Cracks like, "We are taking them younger and younger every day". Or "That officer is just a baby. He should be in the infantry. Yuck yuck."

Then Paul and Bob starting calling me junior. I didn't mind. They used the term with affection. But others overheard it and pretty soon everyone was calling me junior, Enlisted men would come up to me and say "Lt. Junior Sir!." God, they thought that was my real name. But sometimes the embarrassment was huge like the times when announcements came over the loudspeaker system full blast with stuff like; "Will the following officers report to the orderly room. Shorts. Monson. Junior." Of course Paul and Bob thought all this was hilarious. I went along with it but the humor escaped me.

Time went by and the war dragged on. We flew our missions and I was getting older. I turned 19. Then 20. And that peach fuzz on my face turned into a real beard. Fewer and fewer called me junior now. But on my 21st birthday I had had enough and I lay down the law. No more junior any more. And the guys respected it. I was never called junior again.

But last summer, 57 years after the war ended, Paul Shorts and his wife Invited my wife and I to join them for a week in Montana. Just a get together for old times sake. We were in our 70's now. We were sitting on the patio of his summer house when he absent mindedly said, "Hey junior, pass me a beer. Ok?"

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