I am looking forward to Sunday’s debut of the HBO miniseries The Pacific, which focuses on the experiences of the marines who fought America’s island war against Japan. One of the early episodes will focus on the battle of Guadalcanal. It was there, relatively early in the long campaign to control of the island, that my uncle, Marine Sgt. Andy Malanowski, died a hero’s death.

I do not know much about Andy, mostly because my father was seldom given to talking about his childhood or upbringing or family. But some years ago I grew curious about Andy and his service and the circumstances of his death, and so I contacted the Marine Corps, which sent me a copy of his service record. I also published a notice in a Marine Corps Veterans’ newsletter, and a number of Andy’s comrades shared with me their recollections of him.

Anthony Peter Malanowski Jr. was born in Baltimore on January 31, 1914, the fourth, I believe, of Rosalie and Anthony Malanowski’s ten sons (one ahead of my dad), and called Andy to distinguish him from his father. He enlisted in the marines in July 1933. Obviously this was a Depression-era choice made by more than few 19 year olds, although perhaps unique in his family; although his brothers Babe, Mooney, Steve, Cliff and Joe all served in the armed forces, I believe Andy was the only one who enlisted during peace time.

Andy’s records show that he was a good marine, scoring 4.5’s on a five-point scale for Military Efficiency and 5’s for Obedience and Sobriety (the only three categories) in his regular evaluations. At various times during the 1930s he was stationed in San Diego, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From 1933 to 1935 he was part of the marine detachment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga as it conducted exercises in the Pacific and Caribbean, and he spent 1938 (and perhaps 1937 as well—the copy of his record is feint here) with the marine garrison in Peiping, China.  (A marine who met him in 1940 would refer to Andy as “an old China hand,” even though this service occured a scant two years earlier.) One can assume not as was well with that assignment; Andy, who had been promoted to corporal, was busted back to private for Intoxication, and his evaluations show a drop in his marks for Sobriety to a 3 and then to a 1. Whatever difficulties he was experiencing, however, seem to have been resolved up when he returned to the States. By 1940, his commander in Portsmouth was recommending that Andy, by now again a corporal, receive a Good Conduct Medal based on his long clean record prior to the drinking incidents. “Malanowski is an excellent man,’’ wrote H.L. Smith, “and is reenlisting.’’

H.L. Smith wasn’t the only  person who had a positive view of Andy during this period. In 1934, Joseph Seborowski, who went on to have a distinguished career in the Marine Corps, was a ten year old neighbor of the Malanowski family on Chester Street . In a private memoir he shared with me, he remembers Andy returning home on leave:

“Small events are the origin of great world history. So it is with the life of a man. For Joe, there was a singular event during that enchanted summer of boyhood in 1934, which ordained him to his journey. He looked up one day from his boyish games, and saw striding toward him down Chester Street a rare Being of blue and gold and shining brass. A United States Marine.

Marines do not simply walk. They march. They might even strut, or even swagger, but they never merely walk. This one strode in Dress Blues, coming home to the old neighborhood where he was born. Women turned their heads to see him better. Ordinary men watched with pretended disinterest, and envied him in their hearts.

Joe knew him. He was Anthony P. Malanowski Jr., who had become in the eyes of a ten year old boy, a god of battle. Maybe Joe was not entirely sure what marines did, but he resolved to someday wear that excellent uniform.’’

By the end of 1940, Andy had reenlisted, been promoted to platoon sergeant, and was transferred to the seventh regiment of the First Marine Division (1/7), which was commanded by the famous Maj. Chester `Chesty’ Puller. Andy spent 1941 and the first half of 1942 in Guantanemo Bay, Cuba, training for amphibious landings.

In a letter, Leland de Rocher of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, who became Andy’s runner and tent-mate in March 1942, wrote “I can honestly say that my platoon sergeant was the finest man’s Marine I ever met during my four years in the Corps. I never heard him swear; he did not smoke or chew. He had one close friend, the company’s 1^st Sgt. Ford. They had both served together in China. Sarge was always neat in appearance, setting a fine example for us all. The best I can recall is that he was a man 180 pounds, 5’8’’, barrel-chested with very strong arms and legs, and without any facial hair on his round face, and none on his head. He always wore a cap or helmet. His carriage was that of a military man.  He was not inclined to talk unless there was a need to. While I am not sure, I think he went to mass when available.’’

De Rocher reports that the 1/7 left Cuba for Guadalcanal on Easter Sunday 1942. It was, he reports, “a great trip,’’ one that took them through the Panama Canal and eventually to British Samoa, where they spent three and a half months training. “We set up camp on the former British polo grounds,’’ wrote de Rocher. “ Pineapples and cocoanuts were plentiful and also fresh water to bathe in. We played baseball and were allowed two cans of beer a day. The friendly natives spoke fluent English and we got along well. They treated the marines to a luau when we were leaving the island.’’.

They were leaving for Guadalcanal, a 2,510-square mile island, about 90 miles long, part of the Solomon Island chain in the southwestern Pacific.  The Japanese landed there in May 1942 and were constructing an airfield which would have served as a base for bombing Australia and Allied shipping. Elements of the First Marine Division landed in August and entered combat almost immediately. They captured the Japanese airfield, renamed it Henderson Field, and defended it against several furious Japanese counterattacks that resulted in high casualties on both sides. The 1/7 arrived on September 18 and saw action almost immediately. Before a week had passed, on September 23, de Rocher, standing next to Andy on a patrol, was shot in the hip by a Japanese sniper. The wound became infected, and he was sent home.

On September 27, the marines launched a three-pronged offensive operation near the mouth of the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal’s northern coast. One detachment of a regiment called Edson’s Rangers was supposed to land on the coast and move inland, and join up with another detachment of Edson’s Rangers that was already in position. Meanwhile, further east, near Point Cruz, elements of the 1/7,  Andy among them, was supposed to land on the beach, move inland, and at the appropriate moment, join the two groups of Rangers in converging on a Japanese position that was supposedly lightly held by about 200 troops. But as Richard Wheeler writes in A Special Valor, his history of the marines in the Pacific, “the operation was a fiasco from beginning to end.’’

Essentially, both Ranger forces encountered heavy resistance, and neither was able to come close to meeting its objective. Meanwhile, the 500 men in the 1/7 moved up the hill from the beach, through a coconut grove, and into position on a grassy ridge, where they saw not 200 Japanese troops, but a large column advancing against them, and moving to encircle them and cut them off from the beach.

A desperate fight began. The 1/7’s commander was killed and his second-in-command wounded by a songle mortar round. Radio communication was knocked out. Japanese soldiers assaulting the ridge came so close that the marines had to aim their mortars almost straight in the air so that the descending shells would hit  their targets. With the radio useless, a signalman employed semaphore flags to communicate with Puller, who was offshore in navy ship called The Ballard. Puller immediately signaled the marines to fight their way back to the beach, and he had The Ballard use its big guns to clear the enemy from the path of retreat.

Chaos prevailed: noise and smoke from the exploding shells, the marines plunging headlong down the hill, the Japanese pursuing, other Japanese who had survived the bombardment jumping out of the jungle to ambush the marines. One Japanese officer leaped from the brush and beheaded a marine with his sword. Finally the marines reached a clearing near the beach, but with the enemy closing in, Andy took a Browning Automatic Rifle from a wounded marine and set it up behind a fallen log. “You take Doc Schuster and the other wounded on down,” he said to Captain Regan Fuller, “and I’ll handle the rear. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’’

Fuller says that when he and the others reached the beach, he heard a rapid burst of gunfire, and then silence.

In a letter, Donald Dillard of Fenton, Michigan said “I was the last marine to see your uncle at Point Cruz. He was slumped across a log. I rolled him over, took what was left of his ammo, and ran for it.’’

After more desperate combat on the beach, the marines were evacuated.  Andy was one of 24 members of his unit who were killed that day; another 23 were wounded. With terrible fighting on both the island and the sea surrounding it, the battle for Guadalcanal lasted until February 1943, when the Japanese finally evacuated their forces. According to one source, 1500 Americans and 25,000 Japanese died on the island, and many more died at sea.

In Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller, Burke Davis writes the Puller recommended that Andy be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, and says that Andy received it. In A Special Valor, Richard Wheeler reports the same information. It is not clear what their source was.  In the event, Andy was awarded The Navy Cross, the navy’s highest decoration.  The citation accompanying the award, sent in a letter on December 8, 1942 by Admiral William F. Halsey, reads “For exceptional heroism in action against the enemy on September 27, 1942, near Point Cruz Guadalcanal. Sergeant Malanowski, with an automatic rifle, covered the withdrawal of his company until overrun and killed by the enemy. By his exhibition of the highest bravery, unselfish courage, and utter disregard for his own personal safety, he inflicted great loss on the enemy, greatly assisted in the withdrawal of his company, and gave his own life in the action.’’

“I was a young marine of 17 when your uncle led us,’’ wrote Louis Clabeaux of Redington Shores, Florida. “Your uncle saved the lives of our platoon.’’

Combat conditions prevented the immediate recovery of Andy’s body, and subsequent attempts to locate the body by the Graves Registration Company, including one as late as 1947, were unavailing. Donald Dillard rather trenchantly reminded me that the Japanese were known to mutilate the bodies of the enemy.

My father once told me that the military offered to put a marker in honor of Andy in Arlington National Cemetery, but that my grandmother declined, satisfied with the plaque that hangs in the vestibule of Holy Rosary Church that lists Andy’s name among the parishioners who had been killed in action. No matter; Andy’s real monument is the admiration of the men who knew him.

(Pictures: Marine Corps Identification Photo; three pages from Andy’s service record, showing all his deployments and ratings; note the final entry: “27 Sept 1942: Killed in action by enemy fire, details not known. . . .If discharged, character would have been `Excellent.”’; Chesty Puller; Marines on Guadalcanal; Map prepared by Graves Registration Company, showing the 1/7’s line of advance, line of retreat, and approximate location of Andy’s stand; the Browning Automatic Rifle; The Navy Cross; Copies of newspaper clippings from the collection of Joseph Seborowski.)

If anyone has recollections of Andy or knows stories about him, please leave them in the Comments section.

I finally caught up with The September Issue, R.J. Kutler’s documentary about Anna Wintour and the making of Vogue’s large, vital September issue, this time in 2007. I thought it was great. I loved seeing Anna Wintour–I have never met her, but she reminded me of some of the great editors that I worked for, a person whose insistence on quality was so strong and uncompromising that she is considered tough and unfair and monstrous by the less perceptive, less committed people around her. I thought the movie captured very well the enormous pressures that she alone at the magazine carries on her narrow shoulders–meeting with the designers, the advertisers, the retailers, her publishing colleagues, even as she captains this complex, creative enterprise called Vogue magazine, demanding not only that it produce but lead, not only that it appear but that it astonish. I actually found her a sympathetic and approachable figure. I also loved the film’s depiction of Wintour’s relationship with Creative Director Grace Coddington (pictured left, with Wintour), which is often depicted as tense or testy, but which is clearly one of mutual respect and affection where the tension is a product not of ego (well, not altogether of ego) but of fierce commitments to slightly different imperatives (Coddington’s is to artistic vision, Wintour’s is to the overall success of the enterprise) that are usually but not always in sync. But the film was great–my stomach clenched, my heart raced, and I found myself wishing I had a magazine to go to work for.

Cara and I spent Thursday and Friday visiting two colleges that she’s interested in, Morrisville State College, one of the very few SUNY schools that offers equine studies, and Cazenovia College. Cara and her mother had visited Cazenovia last summer, and when we pulled out of the driveway, it was the school that definitely headed her list (based mostly on the palatial barns in which their 70-odd horses reside.) Now I think Morrisville has moved into the top spot, based on the amount of hands-on work (that’s hands on a horse, in case you were wondering) they require. For example, they offer a course in breaking a horse in which the student spends four hours a day with horse every day. Sounds excruciating to me, but Cara’s sees the muddy barns and smells to manure and her heart races. She also liked the dorms and there’s a nearly even male-female ratio which appeals to her as well.  Cazenovia is much prettier and seemingly preppier and offers a strong business program which I, with my advanced wisdom, believe will serve her well as she makes her way through life’s torrents and eddys.  She’s not hearing any of it, at least not now; at Morrisville, we met a poised and articulate girl who had mud on her boots and straw in her hair, and Cara believes she glimpsed her future. Morrisville costs half of Cazenovia, so who am I to argue?

The Writing Center of Marymount Manhattan College celebrated its 17th anniversary with a dinner at Doubles in the Sherry Netherland on Wednesday night, and thanks to El Directore, Lewis Burke Frumkes, I got to attend. Among the others present were Bruce Jay Friedman (who told me a funny story about how he hired Mario Puzo over Arthur Kretchmer to work at the pulp fiction he once ran), Patty Marx, Molly Haskell (whom talked to me more about Gone With The Wind, which I had seen her discuss at the Jacob Burns Center in January), Hilma Wolitzer (that’s Molly and Hilma, pictured), Malachy McCourt and Judith Kelman. The Writing Center repeated its lovely custom of inscribing the names of all the writers present in icing on a cake (I’m there somewhere on the upper left.) During dinner I sat between Hilma (author of the novels Hearts, The Doctor’s Daughter and Tunnel of Love) and Judith, author of the novels The Session, More Than You Know and The First Stone), and they regaled me with stories of the writing life in the seventies and eighties, when publishing houses would send writers on book tours to exotic places like Seattle and Australia, and the paperback rights to books would be auctioned for fantastic sums, and and editors would arrive in limos to take writers to lunch at restaurants that were just two blocks away. Drool. “Now all I want is to be able to work,” said Hilma. So say we all.

Thank goodness for whatever inspired Kurt Andersen to collect all of the covers of the issues of Spy which he edited, and to put them on his website, and to share them with his former colleagues–because now I can share them with you. Here they are, as Tad Friend dubbed them, “the 71 horses of the Apocalypse.”

Sen. Chris Dodd, the jolly legislator who spent his career partnering with Ted Kennedy in roistering and promoting the liberal agenda, is spending the most significant moment of his political widowerhood by turning into a puddle of goo. Charged with reforming the banking system–what he has called “one of the two most important issues of our time”–Dodd, who has announced his retirement from the Senate, seems to be collapsing in the face of an onslaught of lobbying, and is leaning to taking one of the key provisions of the plan—creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency—and turning what ought to be a ferocious and independent tiger into part of the Department of the Treasury. Some valediction

Forget for a moment that the Consumer Financial Protection Agency has earned the staunch backing of Elizabeth Warren, whose reputation for intelligence and integrity is burnished every time she opens her mouth. Just think about what we’ve learned about the working of government during the last two years. The Department of the Treasury exists to promote the general welfare and well-being of the banks. As a matter of philosophy and religion, Treasury believes strong banks mean a strong America. I don’t think this implies that Treasury is complicit in chicanery or that even it would make sense for Treasury to believe anything different, and as anybody who worked for Lehman Brothers can tell you, Treasury doesn’t roll over just because a bank wants it to. But read a book like Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin and it will be clear: placing a consumer advocacy within Treasury is either to consign it to oblivion or to invite it to be compromised.  If this agency is to do all the good it needs to, it’s mission can’t be subsumed under anyone else’s agenda.

One reason Dodd is pressing for this alternative is that he is emulating the fool’s errand President Obama has continued to pursue, and is seeking bipartisan support. Never has there been a moment when an enemy–fat cat bankers–presented a riper target of opportunity. Why Dodd and Obama and the Democrats are holding their fire in favor of pursuing some weird, spiritual quest for zen bipartisanship is a stumper.

Last year at this time, we were imbibing on a fine spring wine, Nouveau Obama, thinking of all the wonderful things the president was going to accomplish in his first hundred days. A long year later, the hangover not yet dissipated, we are unhappy to read about the lingering health care reform bill; to read Gretchen Morgenson’s column in the Times about how credit default swaps continue to threaten the dry timbers of our economic superstructures; to read in Paul Krugman’s column in the Times about the idiotic notion that a Consumer Financial Protection Agency can be safely tucked into the manifestly, justly, pro-bank Treasury Department. We read about the president’s continued dream of solving America’s problems with a wave of the wand of bipartisanship. We are haunted by the questions Candidate Hillary Clinton raised in 2008 about the neophyte’s readiness to lead.

Sometime, somewhere, some friend of the president needs to give him a swift kick in the ass. Somebody ought to explain to him that the country is hopping mad, and it’s mad not because `government is too big’ but because people don’t have jobs and the government isn’t doing anything about it and—here’s the kicker—highly bonused investment bankers whose skins were saved by the public continue to wager and collect without impunity. It would do the president a world of good if instead of inviting Republicans to come over for milk and cookies, he began throwing his weight around—ordering this, directing that, opening an investigation on something else. He must stop yielding his authority to compose the national narrative to tea baggers and Fox Newsmen.

The president needs to return to whoever sold him the idea of bipartisan support for programs and get his money back. It’s a pretty idea but nonsensical.  No bill was ever improved by who else supported it. The president would do well to recall what the great teacher of politics Machiavelli famously wondered, whether it be better to be loved than feared? “It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved . . . [because] men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.’’ In other words, forget bipartisanship, and bring me the head of Mitch McConnell.

If Machiavelli doesn’t do it for the president, let him dial up the great teacher of life and politics, Al Davis, the owner of the Oakland Raiders. “Just win, baby,’’ was Davis’s mantra, and it’s one both he and the president should endeavor to remember. Obama’s predecessor launched a war without enough regard for the essential truth of Davis’s point, and by the time he got around the winning the war, he had lost his country, his raison de’etre, and his place in history. Obama needs wins. He has spent a year without one, and the country will stop following him if he fails to achieve success.

Happy Birthday to Cara. At top left, two days old, coming home for the first time after another big snow in the stormy winter of 1993; at bottom left, deigning to have her picture taken, but just once, and only for the requirements of posterity.

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Snow is not exactly a stranger in these parts, and even some eventful ten and twelve inch dumps that may have inspired shock and awe in other places get shrugged off like the play of a high school guard who averages a tidy sixteen points per game: nice, but we’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again. But the storm that came up the coast on Thursday was memorable indeed. It began in early afternoon, and twenty four hours later was still delivering flakes in a steady but dilatory fashion, like high school seniors wandering late into a assembly they didn’t much want to attend. In the meantime, a foot of snow had arrived, heavy stuff that got into the tall branches of the big oaks and maples and larches that are all over the county. The added weight flattened the short evergreens and naked azaleas, but worse, snapped the old branches and sent them crashing all over, blocking roads and tearing down power and cable and phone lines everywhere. We were reasonably lucky—last night (Sunday) we drove over the hills to Ossining, and there were still large swathes of dark in places where we knew to be homes, dark acres broken only by the flashing amber lights atop Con Ed trucks.

All we lost was the outside world—cable, internet and phone. It was an interesting experience: the TV I didn’t miss much, and the phone not at all, except for the nagging suspicion that somebody might be looking for us (so seldom the case that it shouldn’t have been worth the bother.) But I soon began to get itchy without the internet, and by Sunday, I was in the clutches of full withdrawal: cranky, irritable, depressed. I’m lucky I didn’t have cold sweats and hallucinations. I finally got some relief with a session on Molly’s laptop at Starbucks. Whew!

The most refreshing experience was to read the newspaper in what was otherwise a news blackout. Big headlines in the Times: Gov. Paterson Drops Bid for Reelection! An 8.2 Earthquake in Chile! What a shock! A sudden trip back to 1978: a couple of items and some scores from Chip Cippola or Donna Fiducia on WNEW-FM, and then the real news at the subway station or the deli from the barking headlines of the papers.

Drove up to my house last Friday afternoon, found a guy in a car with Virginia plates in my driveway. This isn’t exactly a vision we’ve never experienced before. We’re the first driveway off the first street off an exit of a reasonably busy road that forbods people from making a left hand turn and going on their merry way. Hence: a right turn, a left onto the first street, a left into the first driveway; reverse course, and off they go. But this guy was different; he wasn’t turning, he was sitting–gabbing on his cell phone. I hovered nearly and honked–once, twice–but got nada: no wafted fingers promising an imminent response. So I elaboately turned around (in my neighbor’s driveway), parked on the street, grabbed the two big shopping bags I had with me, and went over and rapped on his window. So absorbed in his conversation was he that he leaped in his seat, and then turned to me. “I’m just turning around!” he blurted. The blatant lie of an excuse angered me. “Bullshit!” I said. “You’re talking on my phone. Now get the fuck out of my driveway.” And he immediately did so, and drove away. So: nastier phrasing than that used by Clint Eastwood’s cranky old man in Gran Torino (“Get off my lawn!”) and probably less provocation. But then I wasn’t brandishing a gun.