August 19, 2025 • 24 mins
A horror and fantasy anthology series that delves into the eerie and the unknown, offering stories that unsettle and provoke thought. Its minimalist production enhances the chilling narratives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Quiet, Please, Quiet Please. The Usual Broadcasting System presents Quiet Please,
(00:25):
which is written and directed by Willis Cooper and which
features Bernice Chappell Quyatt Please for Tonite is called in
memory of Bernethine.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's a long long ride home.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
It's been a long long war for me, and I've
seen places I ever expected to see.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I just assume not have seen them. But I'm going
home now last. It won't be the kind of homecoming
Bernadine and night plan, not at all.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
How are you depending on a woman, the woman you're
in love with, I mean, how you like me? I
suppose not. I imagine I'm different. I depended so much
on her that.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I well, I don't know how I got.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
By without her, so matter of fact, I suppose I didn't.
I guess that's why her memory is the memory of her,
I mean, is still so.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Important to me? What did I do before I met Bernade?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
You know, it's strange the part of my life before
her is all hazy and indistinct, Like uh like when
I was a kid in school and we made water
color sketches. The paper was wet and the colors all
ran together, no matter how carefully you drew in a.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Tree or her house or something. That's the way my
life seems to me.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Before Bernity, and that's the way. There's two since this
other thing happened while I've got now is her memory?
Well that'll last me, and.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I wish I could see it though. Everything it'd be
all right.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
It was Latin, you know, high school Latin, I was
a prized dumbhead and Latin. I remember the first semester
I got a fast twenty on the examine. Mister Patten.
We used to get a laugh out of his name,
mister Patten. He teaches Latin. Mister Patten said to me, Charlie,
I have enormous admiration for you as a full back,
and I protect a great career for you in college.
But Charlie, he said, if you want to be all
(02:38):
American at Northwestern or wherever you're going, I advise you
to avoid the studies of Latin, because, Charlie, he said,
if you don't avoid it, he'll throw.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
You out on your ear.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
After about twenty minutes, no matter how far you can
throw a football, and that will be sad. Charlie, he said, Well,
it was good advice, certainly. But Bernardine said to me
in the Latin class, so I stayed. Remember that thing
in Cicero, I guess it is where he's talking to
(03:10):
the Catiline, the place where he says, how long o catiline,
would you continue to try our patients? Those squay tondam
up with Tata katalina by the Antiagos. I'll never forget that. Then,
mister Patten will never forgive me. Well, I was dreaming
about something, Bernardine maybe, and he called on me, and
(03:31):
I got up and said, bos squay tandamapatorta, mister Patten,
Pardi antianostra.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So I got thrown out.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Isn't it funny how things start so silly, How a
little thing like that can affect your whole life.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
When I was sitting in a little.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Drug store on Brynmore that afternoon, no no send kids
came in there much, and I was feeling sorry for myself.
You know, it is the football big shot, and he
makes the food of myself. I was drinking Walden all
alone in a booth back of a magazine racking. Somebody
stopped alongside me and I looked up.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It was bernd Hello, Charlie, Hello, Bernardine mont It down
with you.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, I was just gonna go.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I'm only gonna be a minute, so I drank my coat.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sure, sure, so down we.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Gonna win Saturday.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I don't know. Hi, Park's got a good team.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
We got a good one too.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Sure they weren't miss me.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Not gonna play.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
After that, cracked to mister Patton teacher's latin, I'll be
lucky if I stay in school.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
He hasn't going to do anything about it. You, Oh,
he isn't I know?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
How do you know?
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I know? I asked him?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
What do you mean? You asked him?
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Oh, I got to drinking. I knew you didn't mean
he wouldn't court.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Everybody does things like that sometime.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oh, he was pretty sore. Listen. Did he really say
he wouldn't do anything about it?
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Well, he spirs, he was pretty sore.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
After wall, he laughed a little bit, and he told
me about how ast mighty he used to be. He
laughed some more, and he said, well, we have to
be high cards, don't we. So I guess I'll overlook it.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
No kidding, no, no, kitten, Charlie, how about that, I'm
coming you'd really go to town and Latin Chartie from now?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
On.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, sure, what you mean, I get back in the
Latin class, of course, But look, Bernardine, I can't understand laughing.
I mean I only stayed in the class in the
first place on account of you, I mean.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
On account of last shine.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Well, well, I don't know. Listen, Bernadine, I'll fluck. I
know I will know you won't.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
I'll help you.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, but say, wait a minute, why you talk that
and then letting me stay? Didn't you? Well? Why well?
Speaker 4 (05:46):
School spirit?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
I guess school spirit?
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Sure you know, die for your old stand and stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
You know, I don't believe that, Bernadine.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
You don't know what do you believe?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Then I'm scared to tell you.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
No, go on, tell me, will you? Well?
Speaker 2 (06:04):
You know why I that Patti to let me stay before? No,
don't you?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yes, Charlie, I think I do.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well. Is that why why you ask him not to
throw me out? I mean the same reason? Maybe?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Well?
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Ooskla tandem abuchi Charlie, patientia nostra. Oh, Charlie, you do
need somebody to take care of your.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, a thing like that, and it affects the rest
of your life, your life and hers, and the thing
rolls on and on, like the snowballs we used to
push around when we were kids, and pretty soon in
a little bubble you're late.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
In high school. Is the effected the lives of hundreds
and hundreds of other people?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Maybe a German corporal named Helm the Schwartz would still
be alive instead of dead in the snow.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Bank in front of the boys' school and dealers.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Maybe Harry Foster would be dead. Maybe, Yeah, it's no
good wondering. Now, I want to think of Bernadine. Bernardine
said I needed somebody to take care of me man
in the years that had slipped by, since I knocked
the glass of wail, the milk all over a green
and white sweater. She's done it until now, and now
(07:30):
I have just the memory of it. We we made
a joke out of that laughing thing, You know how
family jokes are never very funny to anybody else, but
they're real stoppers to you. That And it is funny
how many times that phrase how long crops.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Up in the conversation. We we made a ritual of it.
We never said how long. We always said what was great? Tendem?
It's funny. I wanted this to get married as soon
as I was graduated from Sam but Berenadine.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Said no, I was to go to college. So I
went to Northwestern one year, and of course she went
with me. Well, I wouldn't have gone otherwise.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
And when we got married, I understand Charlie, no you No,
you don't, Bernadine, I think I do.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Darli, Well, well, I just can't help it, of course not.
Do you think I'm a no, Charlie. Well, I can't
help it, Bernandine. Do you think I'm a weak sister?
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Why should I think?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Say?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Well, I don't know, but I depend on you so much.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
I'm glad you do. Charlie.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I don't know what I'd do without you.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
I don't know what I'd do without you.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You do love me, I do love you. Oh it's
a great.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Don't you remember what doctor Watson said, Darling, till death
do us part?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Oh? Yes, I remembered, and I could never forget us.
I could never get it out of my mind.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
If I should lose Bernadine, I suppose I was more,
but young men often are, especially when they're in love
with girls like Bernadine. I suppose I was tiresome to her,
with all my mooning about did she love me, would she.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Always love me?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And with my constant leaning on her for support and
everything I did. I wonder if many women realize how
important they are to the men they marry. I know,
quite simply and surely that I would.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Never have am, not to do anything without Bernadine.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Him.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Now that's a chapter that's closed. The whole book's closed.
And when you close that book, it began to look
like war was coming.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Sooner or later, a lot of fellas I knew had
joined the National Guard. I sort of well, I sort
of toyed with the eye, me and myself, and.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
One night I mentioned it to Bernardine.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I'd gotten my habit of consulting her about everything.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
I just mentioned it to her. She looked at me
over her glasses and she.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Said, I'd be very proud of you, Johnny.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
There's something rows up in my throat and I can
see the choking me and till I heard my voice steaking,
and I didn't recognize it at first.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Wow, it's it's been a long time since you've been
proud of me, hasn't it?
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Call it? What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I don't know what had hold of me. I couldn't
stopped no, i'd started, I said, I mean just what
I say. Here, I am with a little true bit
peddling job, and we.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Haven't got enough money to buy you a decent dresses.
And I had to bow ninety hours on my salary
last month, and hast talking about cutting down the staff
of the office, and oh, cut it out. I don't
understand or your daughter.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Then why did you say you'd be proud of me?
You haven't said it because.
Speaker 6 (10:57):
You're not proud of me, because you don't give a
hoot about me, because you're you're sorry, you're married.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Is something wrong with you?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
That's right? Rub it in. I'm a failure. I have
to ask your advice about everything. I haven't got sense
and up and she came over to me and reached
from my hands and I jerk my hand away and
I struck her. Yeah, I can see her now, there's grace.
(11:27):
I can standing there and.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Then trance of my hand across her cheeks standing out
scarlet red against the white, and.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
A little drop of blood welled up from her cheek,
going where a glasses that color. No, I've seen bloods
in plenty of it, but.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
That I'll never forget, not it And I never got
that picture out of my mind.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Oh, forgive me for any day what It's one of
my memories of her. Yeah, I'll always have had hurt.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
More than you, levering, Obert. I can't talk about that anymore.
I I had to tell you, and now I've told you.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Now you'll be charitable to me and listening. Yes, yes,
I joined the National Guard, the one hundred and thirty
first in the black Old Armory at sixteenth in Michigan. Now,
I was pretty unhappy after a month or two. I
(12:38):
have wondered why I let myself in for such a thing.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
It was easy to stay away from drill Thursday nights,
and I you know, I did a couple of times.
I'd made up my mind to skipping for a third week.
That was the night the Messianist I walked out of
my office too.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
I thought we'd have dinner downtown and I'd go over
to see I'm raid with you town.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Why. Well, I was going to go over these invoices for.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Hampson to night, honey, and I help you with him
when we come home. You know you were telling you
about that wonderful place where you have lune so often,
he said, he has this wonderful spaghetti. I haven't had
any spaghetti for so long.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Well, of course I was trapped.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I like spaghetti too, and Bernardine liked me in my uniform,
and after phil when I came downstairs with Harry Foster,
mind but phill sergeant.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
She told himself, I think.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Johnny made them very good looking, So.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Sergeant, don't you I certainly do. I would just saying
that to.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
The captain the night. And I suppose the ROTC experience
instead makes a difference. He doesn't hurt.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
How long did it take to get to be a sergeant?
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Why Johnny will have to be a corporal first, you know?
But maybe you can't tell he won't take too long.
That's the way it was. Bernardine could do anything. No, No,
she didn't work on Harry Foster. I wasn't made a
corporal because Harry liked me. I didn't get to be
a sergeant because of it either. I worked for promotions
(13:57):
because Bernardine.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Man, you understand, you know. So when nineteen forty came.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And they called the Guardian the Federal Service, I was
a first lieutenant tell at Hooma, Tennessee. People called it
a lot of names. But but for me, bernadineon I
was a very good officer, I was told, and I
knew why I was, of course, And as the certainty
(14:30):
of eventual war grew and grew, I began to think
about the future. I that was all right here where
I could go home to Bernardine almost every night and
be quietly reassured anything.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And I had no illusions about myself.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
What would happened when the inevitable time came and I
would lead troops in battle without Bernadine Coleana. And I
think Bernadine new her too. She must have known that
without her I was what I said once in a
week's sister. Then I think she was afraid too. It's
(15:06):
not as afraid as I was. Time came when they
sent at down to Louisiana for the big maneuvers. This
was to be the first test for me alone. Not
a miracle happened. They assigned me the General ben Lear's
second Army is a sort of cheap clerk to vary
on important job.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And we moved into the.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Schoolhouse at Winfield, far far back from the Bayou country
where I've now, and Paton and Kruger and tough old
ben were watching the young officers and deciding who made
the great in the wooden.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
And then one night a couple of wild eyed soldiers
in one of the opposing Third Army office.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Decided to pull a commando raid on Second Army headquarters
and see if they.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Could kidnapp a general or two. And I was sitting
in would have been the principal's office, and the raids started,
and I opened the door just in times of in
hill about half the contents of.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
A gi swamp candle which the raiders were using to
stimulate grenade. Well, this is when you get a munkle
of that stuff all the night dot it with kidding anyway,
I passed out, and it seemed long hours afterwards. I
came to out on the lawn. I recognized Bill Westlake
(16:14):
standing beside me, and Rus Watson and Bonnie Oakfield.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I had my head in somebody's lap, and then that
somebody spoke to.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Him feel dead at Darling.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Sure it was.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Bennett Bernade folding my head in her lap, and Windfield
weaves Diana and in the little of what was the
hoff close to the.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Wall, nice Field Charlie Darling, the jockey said you'll feel
dead in a little while.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
How did you get here?
Speaker 4 (16:47):
I just thought i'd come see you. You glad?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yes, I was glad. You know what she did.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
She wangled three days for me from ben Leer, and
she took me Laate, Charles and Curtis to wear in
the p r O. There got us a room in
the Charleston Hotel and and I got well fast. Then
we got to talk to night before I had to
go back to win you well.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I have to tell her about my ouse of myself
and when the pears that were gnawing at me and
I did I swarm? Now when I I remember all.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
Things like that, I know, Donnie, you don't have to tidy.
Please don't talk anymore, Charlie. I'll always be with you.
I'll never leave you. You don't have to.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Worry there wherever you go, I'll go, like Charlie. Whenever
you're worried about something, you just think about me, Donnie,
think about me, and I'll be there besides you. No
matter where you go, Donnie, I'll go to sleep.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
You go to you.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Bernadine's here where you Bernadine who always be with you?
How gass you went? Pie remembers go to see him.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
The captain of Infant sreets in the Gami of the
United States in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in September of nineteen
forty one, three short months before Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Oh A pretty sight, yep.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I was an assurance of strengths there in that room
with me, the strength well behind anything I'd ever known, and.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I slept the sure faith of anything. That film is
not much more to my story.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Brenadine went with me wherever I went, to the Carolina maneuvers,
to Fort Benning, the Fort Bragg, to Kilmer. When the
day came and there was only time to ys a goodbye,
the train waiting beyond that a dock and the ship,
and an ocean and the water Africa and Sicily, and
(19:05):
I worked at a death England, and the day in
June in France, and the winter coming out, and suddenly
I was ordered to an infantry office. I thought of
Bernardine so many times I had plenty of opportunity to.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Write to her. She wrote to me, I was safe,
but now well, Harry Foster. By one of those.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Unbelievable coincidences of war, Harry, from the one three one
I told you about him. Harry was second in command
of an outfit of the sister division that I was
assigned to command.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I remember snow, I remember German tanks.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
I remember Luxembourg and the the smashed cattle on the
hill of gun, and cold and snow and dead men.
Then and night came, and night when I knew I
was done, I knew I should I'd go mad before morning,
I went.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
With Harry Foster alongside the wall of the railway Yards office.
It would have been a boys school invictus.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
There was that German corporal I told you about, Helmet Schwartz.
He had a p thirty eight pistol and a potato
mash of grenade. Harry shot him just as he was
raising his arm to toss the grenade Addison. I saw
the snow turn dark under his body, and at that
moment I knew I hadn't enough. Harry had just started
(20:29):
over as a dead German when I saw the long
nose of an eighty eight inches away through a smashed
window in the school and directly in front of the
gun's muscle.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
You sernite.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I heard him stream your name, Brindine, and I looked
up just in time to throw myself, blast of the
snow shell over and over my head. I remember he
had hit an abandoned locomotive to the yard and I
got back to Charlie. I got back just as the
German tank moved in on us. I feel like my
back turned to it.
Speaker 8 (21:02):
When the blastom machine gun hit me. I was knocked
right out. I remember how he stood over me. The
machine gun slugs were cracking the air all around me.
He nipped down at.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Me and he said, your name again, Bernadine, he said,
And then he turned back to the tank and I.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Could see and Bernadine was there, just as she said
she would be. Bernadine's arm was around here like a
feverish strength flow into me.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And then there was another tank coming up, and I
wasn't afraid, Bernadine. I wasn't afraid at all. And now
I'm almost home. On the homecoming I dreamed about so often,
and it sold me well.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
No bands, no no people smiling, no laughing, All away
from Luxembourg, across France and the sho If with all
the quiet soldiers and the train pulling into the South
Street station with me and a few other Americans.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Him boxes and the flag over each one of 'em
and all of us with our memories, throte, and why
do I keep remembering? That's been a question about Oh
who's quat hungry? How long? How long? It's forever, isn't it? Verny?
(22:34):
He saidn't till death do us part? That's forever, isn't.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
No, it's not forever, deary guests can bring us together
again someday for who's quaite? Tondam m.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
You have listened to Quiet Please, which is written and
directed by Willis Cooper. The man who spoke to you
was Bernice.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Chaplin, and Bernadine was played by Nancy Sheridan. Harry Foster
was Malcolm Ruick. Music for Choi Pleases composed and played
by Jean Parazzo, who, by the way, cocoos his.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Engagement with us tonight, friend Jeans Bill, and I want.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
To thank you for your helpful and artistic collaboration of
the past six months. We're going to mischief and I
know our listeners.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Will thanks him. Good luck. And now for a word
about next week's quia please, Here is our writer, director
Willis Cooper.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Next week story is called Come On Eddie, which is
about an unexpected visitor at midnight, and so on until
next week. At the same time, i'm quietly or as
Ernest Chapel choie please comes to you from New York.
This is a newtual broadcasting system.
Quiet, Please, Quiet Please. The Usual Broadcasting System presents Quiet Please,
(00:25):
which is written and directed by Willis Cooper and which
features Bernice Chappell Quyatt Please for Tonite is called in
memory of Bernethine.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's a long long ride home.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
It's been a long long war for me, and I've
seen places I ever expected to see.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I just assume not have seen them. But I'm going
home now last. It won't be the kind of homecoming
Bernadine and night plan, not at all.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
How are you depending on a woman, the woman you're
in love with, I mean, how you like me? I
suppose not. I imagine I'm different. I depended so much
on her that.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I well, I don't know how I got.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
By without her, so matter of fact, I suppose I didn't.
I guess that's why her memory is the memory of her,
I mean, is still so.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Important to me? What did I do before I met Bernade?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
You know, it's strange the part of my life before
her is all hazy and indistinct, Like uh like when
I was a kid in school and we made water
color sketches. The paper was wet and the colors all
ran together, no matter how carefully you drew in a.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Tree or her house or something. That's the way my
life seems to me.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Before Bernity, and that's the way. There's two since this
other thing happened while I've got now is her memory?
Well that'll last me, and.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I wish I could see it though. Everything it'd be
all right.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
It was Latin, you know, high school Latin, I was
a prized dumbhead and Latin. I remember the first semester
I got a fast twenty on the examine. Mister Patten.
We used to get a laugh out of his name,
mister Patten. He teaches Latin. Mister Patten said to me, Charlie,
I have enormous admiration for you as a full back,
and I protect a great career for you in college.
But Charlie, he said, if you want to be all
(02:38):
American at Northwestern or wherever you're going, I advise you
to avoid the studies of Latin, because, Charlie, he said,
if you don't avoid it, he'll throw.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
You out on your ear.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
After about twenty minutes, no matter how far you can
throw a football, and that will be sad. Charlie, he said, Well,
it was good advice, certainly. But Bernardine said to me
in the Latin class, so I stayed. Remember that thing
in Cicero, I guess it is where he's talking to
(03:10):
the Catiline, the place where he says, how long o catiline,
would you continue to try our patients? Those squay tondam
up with Tata katalina by the Antiagos. I'll never forget that. Then,
mister Patten will never forgive me. Well, I was dreaming
about something, Bernardine maybe, and he called on me, and
(03:31):
I got up and said, bos squay tandamapatorta, mister Patten,
Pardi antianostra.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So I got thrown out.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Isn't it funny how things start so silly, How a
little thing like that can affect your whole life.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
When I was sitting in a little.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Drug store on Brynmore that afternoon, no no send kids
came in there much, and I was feeling sorry for myself.
You know, it is the football big shot, and he
makes the food of myself. I was drinking Walden all
alone in a booth back of a magazine racking. Somebody
stopped alongside me and I looked up.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It was bernd Hello, Charlie, Hello, Bernardine mont It down
with you.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, I was just gonna go.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I'm only gonna be a minute, so I drank my coat.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sure, sure, so down we.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Gonna win Saturday.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I don't know. Hi, Park's got a good team.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
We got a good one too.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Sure they weren't miss me.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Not gonna play.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
After that, cracked to mister Patton teacher's latin, I'll be
lucky if I stay in school.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
He hasn't going to do anything about it. You, Oh,
he isn't I know?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
How do you know?
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I know? I asked him?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
What do you mean? You asked him?
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Oh, I got to drinking. I knew you didn't mean
he wouldn't court.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Everybody does things like that sometime.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oh, he was pretty sore. Listen. Did he really say
he wouldn't do anything about it?
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Well, he spirs, he was pretty sore.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
After wall, he laughed a little bit, and he told
me about how ast mighty he used to be. He
laughed some more, and he said, well, we have to
be high cards, don't we. So I guess I'll overlook it.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
No kidding, no, no, kitten, Charlie, how about that, I'm
coming you'd really go to town and Latin Chartie from now?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
On.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, sure, what you mean, I get back in the
Latin class, of course, But look, Bernardine, I can't understand laughing.
I mean I only stayed in the class in the
first place on account of you, I mean.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
On account of last shine.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Well, well, I don't know. Listen, Bernadine, I'll fluck. I
know I will know you won't.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
I'll help you.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, but say, wait a minute, why you talk that
and then letting me stay? Didn't you? Well? Why well?
Speaker 4 (05:46):
School spirit?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
I guess school spirit?
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Sure you know, die for your old stand and stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
You know, I don't believe that, Bernadine.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
You don't know what do you believe?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Then I'm scared to tell you.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
No, go on, tell me, will you? Well?
Speaker 2 (06:04):
You know why I that Patti to let me stay before? No,
don't you?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yes, Charlie, I think I do.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well. Is that why why you ask him not to
throw me out? I mean the same reason? Maybe?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Well?
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Ooskla tandem abuchi Charlie, patientia nostra. Oh, Charlie, you do
need somebody to take care of your.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, a thing like that, and it affects the rest
of your life, your life and hers, and the thing
rolls on and on, like the snowballs we used to
push around when we were kids, and pretty soon in
a little bubble you're late.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
In high school. Is the effected the lives of hundreds
and hundreds of other people?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Maybe a German corporal named Helm the Schwartz would still
be alive instead of dead in the snow.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Bank in front of the boys' school and dealers.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Maybe Harry Foster would be dead. Maybe, Yeah, it's no
good wondering. Now, I want to think of Bernadine. Bernardine
said I needed somebody to take care of me man
in the years that had slipped by, since I knocked
the glass of wail, the milk all over a green
and white sweater. She's done it until now, and now
(07:30):
I have just the memory of it. We we made
a joke out of that laughing thing, You know how
family jokes are never very funny to anybody else, but
they're real stoppers to you. That And it is funny
how many times that phrase how long crops.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Up in the conversation. We we made a ritual of it.
We never said how long. We always said what was great? Tendem?
It's funny. I wanted this to get married as soon
as I was graduated from Sam but Berenadine.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Said no, I was to go to college. So I
went to Northwestern one year, and of course she went
with me. Well, I wouldn't have gone otherwise.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
And when we got married, I understand Charlie, no you No,
you don't, Bernadine, I think I do.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Darli, Well, well, I just can't help it, of course not.
Do you think I'm a no, Charlie. Well, I can't
help it, Bernandine. Do you think I'm a weak sister?
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Why should I think?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Say?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Well, I don't know, but I depend on you so much.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
I'm glad you do. Charlie.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I don't know what I'd do without you.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
I don't know what I'd do without you.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You do love me, I do love you. Oh it's
a great.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Don't you remember what doctor Watson said, Darling, till death
do us part?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Oh? Yes, I remembered, and I could never forget us.
I could never get it out of my mind.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
If I should lose Bernadine, I suppose I was more,
but young men often are, especially when they're in love
with girls like Bernadine. I suppose I was tiresome to her,
with all my mooning about did she love me, would she.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Always love me?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And with my constant leaning on her for support and
everything I did. I wonder if many women realize how
important they are to the men they marry. I know,
quite simply and surely that I would.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Never have am, not to do anything without Bernadine.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Him.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Now that's a chapter that's closed. The whole book's closed.
And when you close that book, it began to look
like war was coming.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Sooner or later, a lot of fellas I knew had
joined the National Guard. I sort of well, I sort
of toyed with the eye, me and myself, and.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
One night I mentioned it to Bernardine.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I'd gotten my habit of consulting her about everything.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
I just mentioned it to her. She looked at me
over her glasses and she.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Said, I'd be very proud of you, Johnny.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
There's something rows up in my throat and I can
see the choking me and till I heard my voice steaking,
and I didn't recognize it at first.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Wow, it's it's been a long time since you've been
proud of me, hasn't it?
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Call it? What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I don't know what had hold of me. I couldn't
stopped no, i'd started, I said, I mean just what
I say. Here, I am with a little true bit
peddling job, and we.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Haven't got enough money to buy you a decent dresses.
And I had to bow ninety hours on my salary
last month, and hast talking about cutting down the staff
of the office, and oh, cut it out. I don't
understand or your daughter.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Then why did you say you'd be proud of me?
You haven't said it because.
Speaker 6 (10:57):
You're not proud of me, because you don't give a
hoot about me, because you're you're sorry, you're married.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Is something wrong with you?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
That's right? Rub it in. I'm a failure. I have
to ask your advice about everything. I haven't got sense
and up and she came over to me and reached
from my hands and I jerk my hand away and
I struck her. Yeah, I can see her now, there's grace.
(11:27):
I can standing there and.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Then trance of my hand across her cheeks standing out
scarlet red against the white, and.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
A little drop of blood welled up from her cheek,
going where a glasses that color. No, I've seen bloods
in plenty of it, but.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
That I'll never forget, not it And I never got
that picture out of my mind.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Oh, forgive me for any day what It's one of
my memories of her. Yeah, I'll always have had hurt.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
More than you, levering, Obert. I can't talk about that anymore.
I I had to tell you, and now I've told you.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Now you'll be charitable to me and listening. Yes, yes,
I joined the National Guard, the one hundred and thirty
first in the black Old Armory at sixteenth in Michigan. Now,
I was pretty unhappy after a month or two. I
(12:38):
have wondered why I let myself in for such a thing.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
It was easy to stay away from drill Thursday nights,
and I you know, I did a couple of times.
I'd made up my mind to skipping for a third week.
That was the night the Messianist I walked out of
my office too.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
I thought we'd have dinner downtown and I'd go over
to see I'm raid with you town.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Why. Well, I was going to go over these invoices for.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Hampson to night, honey, and I help you with him
when we come home. You know you were telling you
about that wonderful place where you have lune so often,
he said, he has this wonderful spaghetti. I haven't had
any spaghetti for so long.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Well, of course I was trapped.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I like spaghetti too, and Bernardine liked me in my uniform,
and after phil when I came downstairs with Harry Foster,
mind but phill sergeant.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
She told himself, I think.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Johnny made them very good looking, So.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Sergeant, don't you I certainly do. I would just saying
that to.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
The captain the night. And I suppose the ROTC experience
instead makes a difference. He doesn't hurt.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
How long did it take to get to be a sergeant?
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Why Johnny will have to be a corporal first, you know?
But maybe you can't tell he won't take too long.
That's the way it was. Bernardine could do anything. No, No,
she didn't work on Harry Foster. I wasn't made a
corporal because Harry liked me. I didn't get to be
a sergeant because of it either. I worked for promotions
(13:57):
because Bernardine.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Man, you understand, you know. So when nineteen forty came.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And they called the Guardian the Federal Service, I was
a first lieutenant tell at Hooma, Tennessee. People called it
a lot of names. But but for me, bernadineon I
was a very good officer, I was told, and I
knew why I was, of course, And as the certainty
(14:30):
of eventual war grew and grew, I began to think
about the future. I that was all right here where
I could go home to Bernardine almost every night and
be quietly reassured anything.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And I had no illusions about myself.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
What would happened when the inevitable time came and I
would lead troops in battle without Bernadine Coleana. And I
think Bernadine new her too. She must have known that
without her I was what I said once in a
week's sister. Then I think she was afraid too. It's
(15:06):
not as afraid as I was. Time came when they
sent at down to Louisiana for the big maneuvers. This
was to be the first test for me alone. Not
a miracle happened. They assigned me the General ben Lear's
second Army is a sort of cheap clerk to vary
on important job.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And we moved into the.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Schoolhouse at Winfield, far far back from the Bayou country
where I've now, and Paton and Kruger and tough old
ben were watching the young officers and deciding who made
the great in the wooden.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
And then one night a couple of wild eyed soldiers
in one of the opposing Third Army office.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Decided to pull a commando raid on Second Army headquarters
and see if they.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Could kidnapp a general or two. And I was sitting
in would have been the principal's office, and the raids started,
and I opened the door just in times of in
hill about half the contents of.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
A gi swamp candle which the raiders were using to
stimulate grenade. Well, this is when you get a munkle
of that stuff all the night dot it with kidding anyway,
I passed out, and it seemed long hours afterwards. I
came to out on the lawn. I recognized Bill Westlake
(16:14):
standing beside me, and Rus Watson and Bonnie Oakfield.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I had my head in somebody's lap, and then that
somebody spoke to.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Him feel dead at Darling.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Sure it was.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Bennett Bernade folding my head in her lap, and Windfield
weaves Diana and in the little of what was the
hoff close to the.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Wall, nice Field Charlie Darling, the jockey said you'll feel
dead in a little while.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
How did you get here?
Speaker 4 (16:47):
I just thought i'd come see you. You glad?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yes, I was glad. You know what she did.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
She wangled three days for me from ben Leer, and
she took me Laate, Charles and Curtis to wear in
the p r O. There got us a room in
the Charleston Hotel and and I got well fast. Then
we got to talk to night before I had to
go back to win you well.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I have to tell her about my ouse of myself
and when the pears that were gnawing at me and
I did I swarm? Now when I I remember all.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
Things like that, I know, Donnie, you don't have to tidy.
Please don't talk anymore, Charlie. I'll always be with you.
I'll never leave you. You don't have to.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Worry there wherever you go, I'll go, like Charlie. Whenever
you're worried about something, you just think about me, Donnie,
think about me, and I'll be there besides you. No
matter where you go, Donnie, I'll go to sleep.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
You go to you.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Bernadine's here where you Bernadine who always be with you?
How gass you went? Pie remembers go to see him.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
The captain of Infant sreets in the Gami of the
United States in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in September of nineteen
forty one, three short months before Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Oh A pretty sight, yep.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I was an assurance of strengths there in that room
with me, the strength well behind anything I'd ever known, and.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I slept the sure faith of anything. That film is
not much more to my story.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Brenadine went with me wherever I went, to the Carolina maneuvers,
to Fort Benning, the Fort Bragg, to Kilmer. When the
day came and there was only time to ys a goodbye,
the train waiting beyond that a dock and the ship,
and an ocean and the water Africa and Sicily, and
(19:05):
I worked at a death England, and the day in
June in France, and the winter coming out, and suddenly
I was ordered to an infantry office. I thought of
Bernardine so many times I had plenty of opportunity to.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Write to her. She wrote to me, I was safe,
but now well, Harry Foster. By one of those.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Unbelievable coincidences of war, Harry, from the one three one
I told you about him. Harry was second in command
of an outfit of the sister division that I was
assigned to command.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I remember snow, I remember German tanks.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
I remember Luxembourg and the the smashed cattle on the
hill of gun, and cold and snow and dead men.
Then and night came, and night when I knew I
was done, I knew I should I'd go mad before morning,
I went.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
With Harry Foster alongside the wall of the railway Yards office.
It would have been a boys school invictus.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
There was that German corporal I told you about, Helmet Schwartz.
He had a p thirty eight pistol and a potato
mash of grenade. Harry shot him just as he was
raising his arm to toss the grenade Addison. I saw
the snow turn dark under his body, and at that
moment I knew I hadn't enough. Harry had just started
(20:29):
over as a dead German when I saw the long
nose of an eighty eight inches away through a smashed
window in the school and directly in front of the
gun's muscle.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
You sernite.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I heard him stream your name, Brindine, and I looked
up just in time to throw myself, blast of the
snow shell over and over my head. I remember he
had hit an abandoned locomotive to the yard and I
got back to Charlie. I got back just as the
German tank moved in on us. I feel like my
back turned to it.
Speaker 8 (21:02):
When the blastom machine gun hit me. I was knocked
right out. I remember how he stood over me. The
machine gun slugs were cracking the air all around me.
He nipped down at.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Me and he said, your name again, Bernadine, he said,
And then he turned back to the tank and I.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Could see and Bernadine was there, just as she said
she would be. Bernadine's arm was around here like a
feverish strength flow into me.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And then there was another tank coming up, and I
wasn't afraid, Bernadine. I wasn't afraid at all. And now
I'm almost home. On the homecoming I dreamed about so often,
and it sold me well.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
No bands, no no people smiling, no laughing, All away
from Luxembourg, across France and the sho If with all
the quiet soldiers and the train pulling into the South
Street station with me and a few other Americans.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Him boxes and the flag over each one of 'em
and all of us with our memories, throte, and why
do I keep remembering? That's been a question about Oh
who's quat hungry? How long? How long? It's forever, isn't it? Verny?
(22:34):
He saidn't till death do us part? That's forever, isn't.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
No, it's not forever, deary guests can bring us together
again someday for who's quaite? Tondam m.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
You have listened to Quiet Please, which is written and
directed by Willis Cooper. The man who spoke to you
was Bernice.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Chaplin, and Bernadine was played by Nancy Sheridan. Harry Foster
was Malcolm Ruick. Music for Choi Pleases composed and played
by Jean Parazzo, who, by the way, cocoos his.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Engagement with us tonight, friend Jeans Bill, and I want.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
To thank you for your helpful and artistic collaboration of
the past six months. We're going to mischief and I
know our listeners.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Will thanks him. Good luck. And now for a word
about next week's quia please, Here is our writer, director
Willis Cooper.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Next week story is called Come On Eddie, which is
about an unexpected visitor at midnight, and so on until
next week. At the same time, i'm quietly or as
Ernest Chapel choie please comes to you from New York.
This is a newtual broadcasting system.
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