Ernie: The Autobiography (7 page)

The temperature dropped about twenty degrees for me.

I was heartbroken, but what are you going to do? We actually did stay in touch, and some years later I was doing the play
Harvey
on the road with my then-wife Rhoda. We were booked into Minneapolis-St. Paul, where Millie lived. I invited her and Vincent Lang’s wife—because he’d been lucky enough to marry his girl—to come see the show.

I remember Rhoda and Millie talking and looking at me and occasionally laughing. I guessed they were bonding over the crazy guy one had ducked and one hadn’t. We’re good friends to this day, which is more than I can say for most of the women I loved and married.

Upon reaching Honolulu we tied up in Pearl City. They put us in the backwaters of Honolulu Harbor and there we stayed. We discovered this was not a good place for us. If the wind was just right, our ships would be black in the morning from the residue when the sugarcane fields were burned. That was a process which started many years before, when one sugarcane farmer took a dislike to another and set fire to the other guy’s sugarcane fields. But the plan backfired when the victim discovered that the fire burned off all the leaves, saving the harvesters extra work. From then on they all burned their fields.

When the ships were black with soot, guess who had to clean them up?

If you ever wanted to hear unvarnished naval swearing—and I can’t imagine why you would—that was the place for it. The burnt sugar mixed with the salty air and formed a hard substance that clung to the hull like plastic. I used to think, “Where are those misguided spotter planes when you need ’em to blast something?”

Apart from that, Hawaii was great. The climate wasn’t as chilly and misty as San Diego. We all knew our jobs so well by this time that work didn’t always feel like work, and leave was like a real vacation. We would go ashore and catch a bus going into downtown Honolulu. They paid us all on different paydays—the army was one week, the navy another—so that never the twain should meet. Because if we all went drinking on the same night, there would always be a fight over a slur or a girl or somebody’s home state.

There was an ambitious young gentleman, a Japanese guy, who started selling beer on the corner where you caught the bus. First thing you know he was making so much money just selling beer to the sailors that he opened up a big place with a dance floor. We later came to find out that it was also a great place for spies. They could hear exactly where we were going, what we were doing. I’m sure they had spies all over the place telling them what to hit when they fired on Hawaii.

When we were on ship, the commanders started a routine of having our planes fly over for what they called a drill. Everybody went to their general quarters battle stations. Our guns would follow these airplanes. We did that for a half to three-quarters of an hour and then they’d go away. We’d secure everything and go back about our business. That was done six days a week. Things were dicey in Europe—this was 1940—but we didn’t really think we were at risk in Hawaii. And if anything did happen, we felt we were prepared.

But the Japanese were a little smarter. They came on a Sunday, December 7, 1941, when everybody was resting. The rest is history, of course.

I wasn’t there when it all came down. I had finished up in September, 1941. The
Lamberton
also missed that initial action. When Honolulu was attacked, my girl was out at sea pulling targets for the fleet. In fact, most of the firing ships, the aircraft carriers, had stayed at sea over the weekend to prepare for target practice Monday morning. But word reached me at home in Connecticut that the
Lamberton
actually saw those airplanes coming in toward Honolulu. They radioed in and said “There are a bunch of planes coming in with red balls on their wings.”

The guys on the radar reported it and heard back, “Oh, yeah, that’s fine. Those are our planes coming in from the States.” But they weren’t coming in from the States, they were coming in from Japanese ships to the west. It’s easy to second-guess decisions with hindsight, but I wonder how many lives could have been saved if the boys on the other end of that call had bothered to look at a map.

The executive officer who was on board when I left the ship was kind of a nasty guy, and Italian to boot. He was real mad because I could speak Italian and he couldn’t. I used to call him names, but he couldn’t do anything about it because I said them nicely and he didn’t know what they meant. When he knew I was leaving, he said to me, “What do you think you’re doing? We’re practically at war and you won’t re-up?”

I said, “No, sir. I want to go home. My mom isn’t well and I want to spend some time with her.”

He looked at me and said, “Well, enjoy marching in the rear rank while we’re marching up front holding Old Glory.”

That hurt, because no one loved the United States more than I did. But I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to spend my last enlisted days in the brig. But that wasn’t the last time I saw him. Years later, I was in Norfolk, Virginia, doing something with the Barter Theatre. I was in this paint shop buying paint for the show. I looked up and there was this old exec of mine.

I said, “Well, sir. How are you?”

He glanced over. “Oh,” he said. “You’re Borgnine.”

I said, “That’s right, sir. I’m the guy you said would be marching in the rear rank.”

In fact, I hadn’t been—not exactly—but we’ll get to that in a moment.

He said, “Well, Borgnine, I had three ships shot out from under me. Can you match that?”

I told him I couldn’t and said that I was glad he’d made it. Then I told him that I’d been acting and gave him tickets to the show.

He said, “Okay, I’ll be there.”

I never did see him again. Still, I don’t think ill of him. I can’t. Not of a man who served his country the way he did.

Chapter 8

Home Again…but Not for Long

I
left the
Lamberton
and was transferred home. They sent me to New London, Connecticut, which was about an hour from my house.

I hadn’t been there for years. The last time I’d gone had been a sad occasion. Not long after I signed up, my ship was docked in Guan-tánamo Bay, Cuba. This was long before Castro. Cuba was full of friendly, generally happy folks who used to make good rice bread. It was miserably hot and humid there and most of us slept on deck. We’d bring our mattresses up from their swinging hooks and lay them down. You’d have to deal with the flies, but that was better than the heat belowdecks.

Anyway, I was on watch one night and somebody came to me and said, “Borgnine, we just got notice that your grandmother has passed away.”

That’s the military for you: unsentimental and to the point.

While I waited to see if I could get leave to go home, I started thinking about my father’s mother. I’m sure you’ve experienced this: the passing of a loved one brings about all kinds of wistful thinking. The tears would come at some point, probably at her funeral. Then and there, on that dark deck, was a time for remembering.

My grandmother lived nearby and during the summer I would spend a few weeks at her house, helping with her garden and washing and sterilizing bottles for the root beer she made and sold. Like Mrs. Simone and her pizza, my grandmother could have gotten rich off her root beer.

I had a friend in that neighborhood, Spenny Holtz. One time my grandmother caught us smoking in the bathroom. Not cigarettes, which we couldn’t afford, but corn silk that we saved after eating corn on the cob in some poor farmer’s field. Well, this little old lady just tore down the house.

“Out!” she screamed, grabbing me by the hair and hauling me all the way home. I knew she wouldn’t tell my mother, because she didn’t want my mother to worry about anything, since her health was fragile. But she laid the law down. She said “From now on, you don’t do that.”

Not only didn’t I smoke, but I would get a little tingle of fear every time I ate corn on the cob. My grandmother was strict!

I was given permission to go home for the funeral. When I got there, I found out that Joey had just joined the navy, too, and was waiting to ship out. We had lost touch and neither of us knew the other had enlisted. It was good seeing him again, more man than boy now. He introduced me to one of his neighbors, a woman named Victoria Warwick, who was a palm reader. She asked us to let her tell our fortunes. We didn’t believe in any of that, but figured we had nothing to lose.

She took Joey’s hand and said, “You’re in the navy now, and that’s wonderful. You’ll be okay on the sea, but something will ail you. I don’t know what it is, but you should be careful.”

Then she looked at my hand and she was thunderstruck. She said, “You’re never gonna have to work hard in all your life. You’re going to be very rich and you’ll do something that’s extremely different.”

That made absolutely no sense at all, but I thanked her and we left.

As it all turned out, Joey came home from the navy shortly before I did, suffering from ulcers. I heard he wasn’t well and as soon as I arrived I went to see him. I have since changed my mind about Mrs. Warwick, wherever she is. Sadly, the fortune-teller had nailed it.

Joey was very sick due to internal bleeding and died not long after. I was able to visit him just one more time at his home and he didn’t look well. I knew the end was near. I wanted to see him again after that, but I didn’t get the chance. Maybe it’s just as well, because I remember him now as the scrappy little kid who used to filch celery with me.

God bless him.

No sooner had I gotten home than we got a telephone call from a neighbor who asked if we were listening to the radio. We weren’t, and he said, “Turn it on, quick!”

We heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I thought of my crewmates, my ship, my country. I remember thinking, “Oh, my God, what am I going to do?”

I went and got out my uniform and my mother said, “No, no, please. Don’t go. Wait till they call you.”

I said, “Mom, I’ve got to go!”

She said, “No! I want you to wait until they call you.”

Well, she probably saved my life. Had I gone then, I’d have been one of the first men sent to the South Pacific, where our early losses were horrendous. So I went to work at a construction site and one day she called the office and asked to speak with me. She said, in a strong voice that gave me courage, “You got a card. You have to go.”

I went home and put on my first-class gunner’s mate uniform. I went to the local recruiting station and was told to report to the First Naval District in New York City. When I arrived, they looked up my name and said, “Oh, yes. You’ve got in-shore patrol over here at 125th Street.”

Okay—I knew what shore patrol was, but I had no idea what
in
-
shore
patrol might be. Walking the docks? Checking for mines or enemy submarines?

No.

He said, “They’ve got a boat up at 125th Street that picks up the kids from Columbia University to teach them the rudiments of guns and everything. That’s where they want you.”

They signed me up and I went aboard ship. It was a converted yacht called the
Sylph
, donated to the Navy to help in the war against subs on the Atlantic. It belonged to the man who invented the Murphy bed.

I spent my first night aboard the
Sylph
in a comfortable bunk in my own cabin. The next morning this guy by the name of Borguignon came to introduce me to the skipper. Everybody called him “Borgi 1” and me “Borgi 2.” We went up and knocked on the skipper’s door. We heard a “Yes, who’s there?”

I said, “Borgnine, sir, a new first-class gunner’s mate who’s just come aboard.”

He said, “Just a moment.”

We heard some fiddling around with the door and finally he said “Okay, come in.” We walked in and the skipper was still in his bunk. He had a hand underneath his pillow and was looking up. It was like we’d caught him with a girlie magazine or something. I gave him my credentials and told him where I came from and what I had been doing.

He said, “Okay, have Borguignon show you around.”

As we started to leave he got up on one elbow. I saw his pillow flip over and there was a .45 in his hand. We got the hell out of there in a hurry. I later found out the captain was frightened of a certain character aboard ship, the chief carpenter’s mate. The guy hated the assignment because he stood around doing nothing most of the time, and he didn’t like the skipper, who was always on his tail yelling at him to find something
to
do. Well, there just wasn’t a lot of repair work or maintenance, so the carpenter got a lot of shore leave. Then he’d come aboard drunk and would yell down through the ventilator, “You son-of-a-bitch dirty bastard! Come up here, I’ll kill you, you no-good bastard.”

I asked Borgi 1 why the skipper took that. He said the skinny little guy was just afraid of the big carpenter. Period.

The chief carpenter’s mate kept putting in for a transfer and one day Washington granted his request. So they transferred him to a great big vessel that was going to take stuff over to England, carrying planes and everything. He left happy, knowing he’d be setting sail in less than a week.

About three days later, the captain himself got orders to leave and guess where he went? To the same ship where the carpenter’s mate had gone! Well, he had no intention of going and that ship sailed without him. It was the last time the ship was ever seen. It got caught in a hundred-mile-an-hour gale off Newfoundland and went down. But that’s not the end of the story. The carpenter was the only one who was not lost at sea. He said he refused to drown because he hated the captain so much and wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

I lost track of both men after that, though if the carpenter’s still around I’m sure his hate is as rich and deep as it was sixty-seven years ago!

After that skipper left we had another guy who was a lieutenant junior grade and they gave him command of the USS
Sylph
. He was a Yale graduate and still pretty much of a frat boy. He got along great with the kids from Columbia.