Richard Sherman died two weeks ago. He and his brother Robert were composers for a bunch of Disney hits particularly Mary Poppins. I was in Los Angeles when that doc about them premiered, maybe fifteen years ago. Amazing Los Angeles experience. The brother who served in World War Two was memorable for being troubled. He stood out very differently. One brother couldn’t understand the darker side of the other brother, his needing to walk away from the music business, pursue visual art and start over in England. He was already in his 50s or 60s. I heard he wrote a memoir and I ordered a copy through the university which coincidentally just came to me three weeks ago. It is called Moose. A very amazing account of WW2 up there with The Seven Beauties by Lina Wertmüller, The Pianist by Roman Polanski, The Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich and the French Serial Un Village Francais. Here is an excerpt:

(by Robert Sherman)
Randy enjoyed comic books. Naturally, just the pictures. He once received a letter and carried it in his pocket, unopened, for a week. He thought it was from his girl back in the hills. He smelled the perfume in which it was drenched. He held it up to my nose: “Smells like her little pussy,” he said. He asked me to read it to him. When I opened it, out fell a snapshot of a pretty little barefoot girl about thirteen years of age. It looked as though she was carrying a little doll in her arms. I asked Randy if this was his kid sister. I saw him laugh for the very first time.
“Hee-ell no, Jew boy, that’s my girl friend Mary-Louise and our baby boy, Ted!” Her pitiful little letter expressed her loneliness for him and told of the tough life she had, working for the farmer. She couldn’t wait until the stupid war was all over so Randy could come home to take care of her and their child. He dictated a reply and I wrote it down for him.

From then on I thought that Randy and I were friends. But one night, when he was desperately drunk and I tried to quiet him so he wouldn’t be arrested by the MPs, he began swinging at me and shouting abusive remarks. It seemed strange coming out of that really innocent big oaf’s mouth because he had once confessed that I was the first and only Jew bastard he had ever seen and he thought I didn’t look a hell of a lot different than anyone else. The next day he was deeply sorry. He remembered how poorly he had behaved. He begged me to slug him hard in the face a couple of times in order to get even. Of course I refused. He said:
“Well, buddy, any ol’time ya got the feelin’ fer it, I owe ya a coupla punches in my pan. That seemed to make him feel better. I said
“Thanks, buddy, I’ll remember that, so watch out.” From then on our friendship did continue. He confessed many things to me. He told me that his two pairs of GI boots were the first shoes he had ever owned. He wondered if we got to take them home after the war. He guessed that you could if they looked beat up enough. He told me that he was going to marry Mary-Louise when he came home. She was twelve years old when she gave birth to their son.

Several months later the eighty-eights were incessantly landing on our position, and it appeared as if the enemy knew that their “now or never” had finally arrived. The hellish explosions, the noise, the screams of agony rivaled anything that Dante had ever conceived. Randy was crouched in a shallow, root bound hole next to mine. We were kneeling there, motionless and silent. Then, close to my ear I heard what sounded like soft whimpering. I turned toward Randy.

“Hey, buddy, you“
“No, Sherman, I ain’t.”
“Yahit?”
“No, goddammit, I’m not hit!”
“Then what?” Between louder sobs, he said:“Oh Jesus—JESUS, I ain’t hit!”
“So what the hell is it?”
“Oh God, Sherman, I shouldn’t be here! I shouldn’t be here at all!” He was really panicked.
“None of us should, Randy!” He shouted for the world to hear over the explosions:
“I mean it! Be-lieve me, I Goddamn mean it! Don’t joke with me!” “Hey, buddy, what’s buggin’ ya?”
“Today is my fuckin‘ birthday!”
“Yeah? So happy birthday. We’ll celebrate next Tuesday.”
“It’s my fifteenth birthday. I’m fifteen years old! I’m too young to die like this. I got a baby boy back home!”
“You’re fifteen! My God, what are you doing here, Randy?” This remark from an ancient eighteen year old. OK?”
“Fifteen? No sh*t!” He radioed the Captain. “Captain says to send the son of a bitch to the battalion command post. They’ll probably send him back to division on an empty ammo truck. Cap’n’ll radio ahead. Says the son of a bitch better not be shitting me. If he’s just running away in the face of the damn enemy then it’ll be his ass and a court martial!” I crawled back to Randy and told him what he had to do. The last I saw of him was his large, lumbering shadow, wiping his tears away on his sleeve. He was crouched over, jogging through the explosions, jogging toward the west, jogging toward West Virginia, jogging toward Mary-Louise and his baby boy, jogging toward life.

Softly, I whispered “Happy birthday, Randy.”