Imperial Valley press., 1945-05-01
PyIe's Last Story
From War Front
Praised CoInrade
Continued from Page u

NOOHIluueQ from rage -
seas veteran of the last war. His
son is grown and in the army. Fred
has seen great deal of war for a
man his age.
He was just about to start back to
An,erica when he died. He had
grown pretty weary of war. He
was anxious to get home to have
some time with his family.
NO INKLING OF DEATH
But I'm sure he had no inkling
of death, for he told me in Guam
of his postwar plans to take his
family and start on an ideal and
easy life of six months in Europe,
six in Ameria. He had reahed the
point where life was nice.
Fred Painton was one of the
modest people: I mean real down.
deep modest. He had no side
whatever, no ak to grind, no coy
ambition.
He loved to talk ard his words
bore the authority of sound COM
mon sense. He had no intellectual
isms. His philosophy was the prac-
tical kind. He was too old and
experienced and tco wise in the
ways of human nature to belittle
his fellow man for the failures that
go with trying hard
Fred didn't pretend to literary
genius, but he did pride himself
on facility for production. He
could get thousand dollars apiece
for his articles and he wrote a score
CT them year. And his pieces, like
himself, were always honest. I've
known him to decline to do an as
signment when he felt the subject
prohibited his doing it with COM
plete honesty.
FAMILIAR FIGURE
Fred's balding head and crooked
nose, his loud and friendly nasal
voice, his British army trousers
and short leggins were familiar
in every campaign in Europe.
He took rough life as it came and
complained about nothing except
for an occasional bout with the
censcrs. And even there he made
no enemies for he was always sim
cere.
There were a lot of people Fred
didn't like, and being no introvert
everybody within earshot knew
whom he didn't like and why. And
+ have never known him to dislike
anyone who wasn't a phony.
Fred and I have travelled through
lots of war together. We did those
bitter cold days, early in Tunisia
and we were the last stragglers out
of Sicily.
We both came home for short
furloughs after Sicily. The army
provided me with powerful No. 2
air priority, while Fred had only
the routine No. 3.
He left the airport at Algiers
within four hours of each other on
the same morning. 1 promised Fred
1 would call his wife and tell her
he would be home within week
GOT HOME FIRST
When I got to New York l called
the Painton home at Wetport,
Conn. Fred answered the phone
himself. He beat me home by
three days on his measly little pri-
ority! He never got over kidding
me about that.
AS the war years rolled by we
have become SC indoctrinated into
sudden and artificially imposed
death that natural death in a COM
bat zone seems incongrous, and al
most as though the one who died
had been cheated.
Fred had been through the mill.
His ship was torpedoed out from
under him in the Mediterranean.
Antiaircraft fire killed a man be-
side him in a plane ever Morocco.
He had gone on many invaSions.
He was in Casino. He was ashore
at Two Jima. He was certainly
living on borrowed time To many
it seems unfair for him to die
prosaically. And yet .
The wear and the WEAKNESS of
war is cumulative. To many a
man in the line fear is net so much
of death itself. but fear of the
terror and anguish and utter hor-
rors that precedes death in battle.
I have no idea how Fred Painton
would have liked to die. But some
how I'm glad he didn't have to go
through the unnatural terror of
dying on the battlefield. For he
was one of my dear friends and I
know that he, like myself, had