Unrequited Love

It was a nondescript steamer trunk that sat buried deep in a closet; its place was so deep and dark that unless it was being looked for it would never be discovered.

Above it hung Sunday dresses and two-piece slack suits, silky tops and clam diggers, winter coats and old sweaters. The trunk was camouflaged with bags of clothing and yellow bras and stout shoes scattered like jigsaw puzzle pieces.

The chokingly pungent aroma of moth balls erupted from the trunk as it was opened; white balls strategically placed like marbles to preserve the contents. A yellowed telegram lay folded among other papers; the thin lines of press applied twenty-five years earlier still crisp like Band-Aids bearing bad news.

In my boredom I had discovered the trunk at about 10-years-old. Our house sat empty; my mother working, my dad and little brother were off doing something, my siblings had scattered to lives of their own.

I fingered a medal I’d discovered in the trunk; the satin ribbon was purple, it had a gold heart attached to the bottom with a silhouette of what appeared to be George Washington emblazoned within the heart.

I read the telegram; it was entirely cryptic to a juvenile mind; it might as well have been a map to the lost city of gold.

My mother had left her hometown of Fordyce, Arkansas at 17-years-old after graduating from high school. In her independence she moved to Little Rock, took a room at a rooming house, got a job at a theater selling popcorn and candy.

It was 1944; my mother had played in the Arkansas State Championship basketball game for girls earlier in the year. Black and white photos that have turned yellow with time revealed her to be particularly feminine, not at all tom-boyish.

The freedom my mother had come to experience must have seemed like a great emancipation from the rural farm life she’d known and lived all her life. She had picked strawberries for an entire summer to earn enough money to buy her prom dress. My grandfather had been a sharecropper early in my mom’s life; she had picked cotton, plowed fields and rode in wagons and horses.

Southern urban living in the mid-1940’s suited my mom well; shopping, night life and the busyness of Little Rock was a world away from what once was.

Thousands of miles away, across two oceans, war was raging. Hitler had devastated Europe and Tojo was raising hell in the pacific; United States soldiers died by the thousands; soldiers the same age as my mom. Boys who could barely shave sent to fight in a war from which over 400,000 fell headlong into eternity.

Buried deeper in the steamer trunk were soldier stripes and uniform patches and photographs rarely resurrected and remembered. They too protected by moth balls.

My mother stood on the sidewalk window shopping, dreaming of having enough money for new dresses, new shoes and new nylons. Undoubtedly her sleek form reflected in the Arkansas sunshine and bounced off the store’s window catching the eye of passing soldiers.

Little Rock, Arkansas was teaming with G.I.’s like piss ants trudging through a wood; they were there by the thousands, training for deployment to Europe, the Pacific and places unknown.  

Each week hundreds of teenagers bedecked in green uniforms invaded the theater my mom worked at; some would smuggle in beer or strong alcohol to go along with their popcorn. My mom received dozens of marriage proposals, each one eliciting a smile the size of the Brooklyn Bridge from a country girl who had come to the big city.

While gazing into that store window two soldiers approached my mom. A breathing female, in a dress, with red lipstick and pretty smile and nice legs was the usual target.

“Cottrell” was stitched across the chest of one soldier; he was an 18-year-old young man with a ruddy complexion; cheeks that looked as though he’d applied blush. He had an effervescent smile, bright humor and was polite. “Cottrell” engaged my mom in a conversation as his buddy looked on.

My mom had come from Fordyce, Arkansas to meet John Cottrell. Attraction gave way to love and love was consummated a month later when my mom and John Cottrell married.

The woman who managed the rooming house my mom lived in connected my mom and John Cottrell to a Little Rock pastor and the two were married in the rooming house. They honeymooned in that old rooming house as John Cottrell juggled life in the Army as a Staff Sergeant with his new wife.

Strong, squared shoulders held the green stripes of John Cottrell’s Staff Sergeant Designation; pinned to his uniform were patches of the 66th Infantry Division “Black Panthers.”

John Cottrell had had only been married to my mom for several weeks when his Division was deployed to Europe. My mom surrendered her husband to the demands of a world war, and John Cottrell sailed across the Atlantic to England.

In that dimly lit closet I read history in that telegram, not knowing it was history. I thumbed those Black Panther patches that my mom had once thumbed in saying goodbye to John Cottrell.

Life in Little Rock, Arkansas went on as usual; my mom had changed jobs and was working at a department store, having left behind the sweet and salty life behind the candy counter at the theater.

Ruddy John Cottrell arrived upon the dank shores of England; a war waited. One simply cannot put into words the longing of two hearts separated, especially hearts that had been so recently united as my mom’s and John Cottrell’s.

I never heard my mom speak of John Cottrell as a kid; that was a name to be whispered at best, but most often simply to be remembered and ached over. There was plenty of pain in that steamer trunk; a pain I could never know or feel.

The Allies were making great strides in prying Europe from the hands of the Axis. In early December, 1944 The Battle of the Bulge was taking shape. The Germans were engaged in a great effort to disrupt the progress of the Allies, and John Cottrell was being deployed to fight in The Battle of the Bulge.

My mom never knew the mission John Cottrell was on; all she knew was that the man she’d had been married to for only weeks was off traipsing through Europe somewhere. Everybody knew the risks of war, the risks of being married to a soldier, the risks of saying goodbye.

John Cottrell’s mother lived in Little Rock; my mom would discover after she and John Cottrell were married that John had had a childhood illness and was unable to father children. Had that not been the case my mom would have been pregnant by the time John Cottrell shipped out for Europe. Who knows the mind of Providence?

My mom had buried that old steamer trunk in the most recessed corner of her closet out of fear.

On Christmas Eve 1944 John Cottrell boarded the S.S. Leopoldville, a troop transport ship, and rode it through the rough waters of the English Channel toward France. At 5:55pm a torpedo from a German U-boat slammed into the S.S. Leopoldville which carried 2,500 U.S. soldiers; one was John Cottrell.

In Little Rock, Arkansas my mom prepared for Christmas, enjoying the season’s revelry with friends and family, not knowing John Cottrell, her husband with boyish pink cheeks, the man that she loved, life was in peril.

It was the spring of 1945; I’m sure it was like any other day in Little Rock, in the life of my mom. She’d awakened early that morning and readied herself to go to work; left the rooming house and caught a bus to work.

My mom was working at the department store when her manager came to get her. John Cottrell had died on Christmas Day, 1944 as the S.S. Leopoldville sank in the English Channel. The telegram arrived shortly thereafter. It would take another 60 years before the U.S. Government would declassify the sinking of the S.S. Leopoldville. My mom had never known what had happened to John Cottrell.

In her grief my mom learned that John Cottrell’s body had been buried in France. Some years later the military exhumed John Cottrell’s body and brought him back to America; he was buried in Tennessee.

The trunk became the resting place of John Cottrell’s stripes, his patches, his purple heart and that fateful telegram. The only remembrances my mom had of John Cottrell had to be hidden.

My mom married again; my dad was a jealous man, jealous of the unrequited love of John Cottrell.

My mom turned 86-years-old today.

I had dinner with her last night in her room at the nursing home. On the wall next to her bed hangs a frame that I gave her for her 75^th birthday.

The frame holds a purple heart, two Black Panther patches, a Staff Sergeant stripes, and a photo of ruddy John Cottrell.

We talked of John Cottrell; he’d made it out of the trunk and into our conversation.

~ by Ken Dillman on February 13, 2012.