In today’s Character Confessions, I’m speaking with Carl Schenfield, the investigative reporter who went to Drewsport in 1949 to research the story chronicled in my dad’s novel, Bluebell. “In 1934, Carl had signed on with Trans-World-Wire; and, by 1939, was one of its top correspondents in Europe. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor he was transferred to the Pacific…” and that’s where I want to start our interview.
Scott: You met someone while you were in the Pacific that greatly impacted you…can you tell me about that meeting?
Carl: He was a “young man, a gunner’s mate from a PT squadron, at an airstrip on Leyte. They were there waiting for transportation north. The boy was being reassigned after having been hospitalized for injuries incurred when his boat was blown from beneath him.”
Scott: And you talked with him for a long time?
Carl: No, it was “a brief encounter…war rarely leaves time for proper introductions. Such meetings might be no more than sharing a slit trench, a life raft, foxhole, or being slung over the shoulder of some guy who’s risking his life to save your butt.”
Scott: That doesn’t sound like ideal circumstances for investigative reporting.
Carl: Actually, “these situations, and the myriad of others created by war, make room for an openness that is seldom achieved in more refined circumstances. Maybe there’s an attraction, maybe there isn’t; it’s of little consequence. In the next minute either, or both of you, could be dead. It had been that way with…Jeremy.”
Scott: Other than what he told you, what stands out about your time together?
Carl: We “were together less than an hour” but even in that short time, I “learned a great deal about the boy, his family, friends…and his hometown.”
Scott: Being a reporter during the war, you probably “had seen more death than a hundred men would see in a lifetime. In the midst of such wholesale slaughter, why would hearing about the death of one man make such a lasting impression?”
Carl: During my time in the Pacific, “there had been atrocities enough on both sides to foster grave misgivings concerning the state of the ‘civilized’ world.” Then the kid told me what his town had done, and “I was forced to acknowledge the truth: Ignorance, and the fear it breeds, will always combine with hate to produce the same crop.”
Scott: Thanks Carl for speaking with me today. Can we arrange to have you back for another session?
Carl: Sounds doable to me.
Scott: Well folks, that does it for today but to know when Carl and I speak again, plus get updates on other new articles posted on this blog, get in touch and say, “Sign me up”!