{"id":7112,"date":"2024-03-19T02:04:43","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T02:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/read-an-excerpt-from-charlottes-war-by-j-lawrence-graham\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T19:50:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T19:50:04","slug":"read-an-excerpt-from-charlottes-war-by-j-lawrence-graham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/read-an-excerpt-from-charlottes-war-by-j-lawrence-graham\/","title":{"rendered":"Read An Excerpt From Charlotte’s War By J. Lawrence Graham"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlotte\u2019s War<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and its abridged edition\u00a0The Hidden Front Line<\/em><\/a> chronicle one remarkable woman\u2019s fight across three wars, spotlighting the often-overlooked power of women behind the front lines. Below is an excerpt from Charlotte’s War<\/em><\/a> by J. Lawrence Graham.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cambridge, MA, 1944<\/h1>\n
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What fun, being away from home, and doing the boogie-woogie! They all looked forward to getting the boys into the game, because the best swing involved airtime, lifts, rolls, spins, and more.<\/p>\n

The graduate student resident assistant waited for \u201cBugle Boy\u201d to end, then yelled down the hall, \u201cLong distance for Fletcher.\u201d That can\u2019t be good,<\/em> Charlotte thought. She ran downstairs to the phone. It was her mom. And it wasn\u2019t good. It was the feared worst. Mom started to talk through her tears, then just gave up.<\/p>\n

After a long pause her dad spoke, also sounding upset. \u201cChar, we just got a telegram from the navy. Chris was shot down over the Philippines. He is listed as missing in action. Let\u2019s pray he\u2019s okay. We\u2019re so sorry to pass this along, but we knew you would want to know right away. We\u2019ll let you know when we hear anything else, of course. Anything. Right now, all we know about is the telegram.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Laguna Beach, CA, 1948<\/h1>\n
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At their favorite part of the beach just north of Crystal Cove, which was almost always deserted, John put knee to sand and simply said, \u201cI love you so much. Will you marry me?\u201d<\/p>\n

It seemed to her that he thought it was less a question and more a foregone conclusion. \u201cJohn, I love you so much. I truly want to marry you and have children with you and live the rest of my life with you\u2014but not quite yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

John was crushed, embarrassed, and a bit angry, if he was being honest. With brow deeply creased, he sat down in the cool sand. \u201cSo, Charlotte, what\u2019s your time line?\u201d he asked stiffly.<\/p>\n

She sat directly across from him so they could see each other in the moonlight. \u201cFor the next four years, our careers will tend to have us apart. You\u2019ll be gone half the time and halfway around the world. I\u2019m okay with that. But in 1950 or 1951 I\u2019m going to have to spend a year doing my dissertation field work in a place I know not where. So, I intend to say yes. No, I\u2019m dying<\/em> to say yes! But I have one condition: I don\u2019t want to have children until I\u2019ve finished my PhD. So, I guess I\u2019m asking for a four- or five-year engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n

John\u2019s second mistake of the night\u2014the much larger of the two\u2014was not thinking through his response. \u201cWhy is your career so important to you? Your job will be mostly in the home,\u201d he blurted out.<\/p>\n

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UC Berkeley, 1951<\/h1>\n
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Psychology can be hilarious at times. In the class we\u2019re currently focusing on Sigmund Freud. The prof had us each study a different segment of his work and report to the seminar. Then we discussed. Burley was assigned the topic of penis envy\u2014that\u2019s funny by itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo big Ben begins, \u2018I hope it\u2019s all right to start out this quite serious topic with a little humor.\u2019 He ignored the professor\u2019s raised eyebrows. \u2018This little girl and a boy about the same age are playing games out in the neighborhood. It ends up the girl is better at everything\u2014running, jumping, throwing rocks, and so on. The little boy\u2019s pride is suffering, so he says to her, \u201cYou may be able to do all that better than me, but you don\u2019t have one of these.\u201d He pulls down his pants and points to his penis. She looks down and realizes she is uncompetitive in that department. So, she starts crying and runs into her house, leaving him with a big grin. Not two minutes later she pops out her front door with a smile even bigger than his. He asks her, \u201cWhat are you so happy about\u2014a minute ago you were bawling like a baby.\u201d And she says, \u201cI went in and told my mother what you said. And my mother told me not to worry about it and told me to say to you, since I have one of these, pointing at her vagina, I can have as many of those as I want!\u201d\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBen Burley is a smart man,\u201d John admitted, chortling.<\/p>\n

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San Francisco<\/h1>\n
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Later in 1968, Charlotte helped organize a remarkable protest in Golden Gate Park. She and about fifty other mothers of draft-age boys lay down, totally naked, on a grassy knoll and spelled out NO DRAFT with their bodies. The press was invited to take pictures. As the spokesperson, Professor Charlotte Shipwright told TV interviewers and reporters from the San Francisco Examiner<\/em> and the San Francisco<\/em> Chronicle<\/em>, \u201cWe did it because of the children. This protest was sparked by the vivid photograph of the naked nine-year-old Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack on her and other children. We thank the photographer, Nick Ut of the Associated Press, for his brave journalism. Our naked protest today is in her honor, in part.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we are also protesting something else that is quite disturbing, the drafting of young American boys just twice the girl\u2019s age. Our land-of-the-free American government is taking away the freedom of our sons by the hundreds of thousands. It is literally coercing them to learn how to, practice how to, and then kill innocent people like her.<\/p>\n

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Aboard the USS Kittyhawk, off the coast of Vietnam, 1972<\/h1>\n
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Jack started speaking directly toward Crutcher. \u201cSir, I refuse to participate in this mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone in the room was stunned. Crutcher shot back, \u201cWhat the fuck are you talking about, boy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jack was adamant. \u201cI refuse to participate in this mission. It is illegal for me to follow an illegal order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crutcher was now red-in-the face furious. \u201cMy order is not illegal, and by God, you\u2019ll follow it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Jack responded calmly, \u201cI suppose the matter of the legality of your order will ultimately be decided at my court-martial. I am satisfied with that prospect.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Haiphong Harbor, Vietnam, 1972<\/h1>\n
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Perfect, it\u2019s inside-a-buried-coffin black, <\/em>was his first thought as the thick, dark water enveloped him. His second thought was, I\u2019ve been snookered! Fuck this!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Charlotte\u2019s War\u00a0and its abridged edition\u00a0The Hidden Front Line chronicle one remarkable woman\u2019s fight across three wars, spotlighting the often-overlooked power of women behind the front lines. Below is an excerpt from Charlotte’s War by J. Lawrence Graham. Cambridge, MA, 1944 What fun, being away from home, and doing the boogie-woogie! They all looked forward to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[349],"class_list":["post-7112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-gad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}