Fredi Says
by Fredi Washington
PV’s Theatrical Editor
June 2, 1945
p. 18
Some of the many boys in the armed services with whom I have been corresponding are now returning home from the various theatres of operations. Some are affected by what they’ve lived through more than others and in talking to them you get the feeling that many times they are more concerned with the friends they left behind in the hospitals than they are with their own immediate futures.
For instance, I talked to one returned veteran who holds the Purple Heart and though he had been seriously wounded and had had a series of operations before returning to this country and is now awaiting the final one, which is major and will prove whether or not he will limp for the rest of his life, he was most concerned about a buddie [sic] he left behind in the hospital minus an arm.
WIFE JILTS WOUNDED VET
Losing an arm was something that this 27-year-old soldier had reckoned with when he knew he was going into combat but the letter he received from his wife in which she told him that she could not use a man with one arm and so far as she was concerned, he need not come home, was news that was more deadly than any bullet fired in the entire war. Prior to this heartless and cruel statement by the one person in the world who should understand, this soldier had the courage and ambition to start life anew but now, the spirit is gone. To live has no meaning for him.
Some readers may ask why I should discuss a woman who is anything but typical of the many women who are shouldering their share of the war’s responsibilities and who are awaiting their men’s homecoming with love and determination. While the above is true, there still are far too many women who have become emotionally unstable and have used the war and its ill effects as an excuse to cater to and further their own selfish gains.
These women who are not fit to count themselves among the female sex, should along with the rest of the civilian population, ask themselves, for whom and what did our gallant boys suffer hell on earth? Are the sacrifices being made so that we here at home can shed our responsibilities and go on a thrill-seeking binge? Or are they being made so that all of mankind might live with dignity and the right to the pursuit of happiness?
NO TOLERANCE DUE
I’m inclined to think our young men and women, both Negro and white, fought and are fighting to make the latter a reality and, woe be unto those who are prostituting their noble and lofty aims. We can rest assured the veterans of this war will have little or no tolerance for those men who have undermined their future happiness during their absence or the women who have been a party to the vile business of two-timing.
The wife in question, and any woman for that matter, who has conveniently forgotten she has a man in this conflict had better reexamine herself, her motives, her actions and the inevitable results to herself, her man, her community and her country.
Let us wake up and prove to our men that we are worthy of the sacrifices they are making for us.