Buff Oldridge

[with apologies to Ellen for grammatical liberties]

In the early years of the Second World War (1939-1945), the largest and fastest luxury cruise liner of the day, designed for 2,200 passengers, the RMS Queen Elizabeth, was commandeered as a troopship. It left New York harbour with perhaps as many as 10,000 troops on board. A young soldier, Buff Oldridge, not yet 20 years old, said to the Statue of Liberty, "Lady, tell the man upstairs if I am spared to return, I will do something useful with my life". By war's end, an estimated 416,800 American soldiers had lost their lives in the conflict that was the most deadly in human history (total estimates put the death toll in the range 60-80 million civilian and military personnel). Buff, one of the few who sailed back on a Liberty ship into New York harbour at war's end, said "Lady, I will keep my pledge".

Buff was born in 1924 in the small town of Argonia, Kansas, and was christened Ovle Ambrose Oldridge Junior. "Just call him Buff" said his older brother who was engrossed and more interested in Zane Grey's "Fighting Caravans" novel. It featured the mighty buffalo herds of the Wild West, hence Buff it is to this day.

When he was 2 years old, the family moved to Walla Walla, Washington, the place of "many waters". "My brother, who was 12 years older than me, drove the family of 6 all the way in the family Ford Model T - a thousand long miles on very poor roads for a 14-year old". "There are only two of us left now, me and my older sister who is 96. I phone her every day".

The Depression years of the 1930s was a time of mass unemployment, very little money, and great hardship for many, including the Oldridge family. "My father had no work when the mill where he worked burned down. People did whatever they could - often menial jobs, under the Roosevelt Work Administration Program (WPA). My mother raised us children and fed the family of eight on seven dollars a week, she was truly an amazing woman. I put cardboard in my shoes and kept my feet flat on the floor at school, to hide the holes in the soles ". Buff and I discovered a common echo from the past, and gave a duet rendering to surprised cafe customers of the classic nostalgic song 'When You and I were Young, Maggie' - a favourite vocal piece of our two Dad's of long ago, separated by a continent and an ocean.

Buff completed High School in Walla Walla. He has fond memories of his teachers. "I called them 'A Gallery of Greats' when I would give talks later in life to school groups. I still remember most of their names. The old schoolhouse is gone now, but the trees, now massive, are still there". Buff was in college in Pasadena when war broke out in 1939, and hence was excused from the draft. Nevertheless, Buff came forward as a volunteer to be among his cohorts who were drafted into the military. One week after his marriage to Ellen, he was in 'jump camp' in Georgia prior to joining the 82nd American Airborne Division, becoming a paratrooper with the 505 Brigade for "$50 extra pay per month". "Over 62,000 men replenished the 82nd Airborne as its normal complement of 13,000 full time soldiers was continually decimated during the war".

The paratroopers flew on missions under cover of darkness, in old propeller driven DC47s whose "wings flapped like birds, they probably didn't even need engines". The men jumped "ass-overtea- caddy" into a void of blackness in quick succession at little more than treetop height - "last man out throw the grenade into the cockpit" (apparently there was some envy toward the pilot returning to a "hot date" at base!). "We all carried heavy backpacks, while some of us were laden with explosives strapped to our legs, so only our legs would be blown off if one went off. Very considerate!". The men parachuted in absolute silence - usually - but on occasion the men ended up in a swamp ("He didn't care where he dropped us") and apparently the air then turned blue with expletives! "I used to think I was brave, I realised then I was just stupid!" The trust in one another among the men in the face of danger and death is the selfless stuff of legend. Re-unions at Fort Bragg, always attended by Buff among numbers that get fewer by the year, are doubtless occasions for camaraderie and gratitude as well as for thoughts of those who perished. A call goes out: 'Who among you went to College?' Buff (proudly?) admits "I did".

'Quick march to the kitchen to pots and pans duty'. Buff's memories of the awfulness of War are not carried lightly, as voiced in his plea "Why is it that we cannot live and be allowed to live our lives in peace and kindness toward one another?"

After the War Buff returned to civilian life, completing a Ph.D. degree in Educational Psychology at the University of Southern California and securing a job at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Education.

His calling was to help teachers and to teach neurologically disadvantaged children by virtue of Special Needs programs. Buff's career and many of his retirement years reflect his caring empathy toward the less fortunate. He initiated an educational rehabilitation program for the benefit of inmates in Federal prisons, and he tells me "I must have visited nearly every First Nations school in the Province".

He built his home in Lions Bay in 1964, but, finding the view of the ocean obscured by trees, his novel solution was to buy the lot, clear the trees, move a house by front end loader on to it ("it almost got away on us") and resell for the princely sum of $34,000. The entrance to the Oldridge home sports a 1924 Chassis of a Model T, bedecked with red geraniums all summer long, and an even older (1900) four-wheeled one-pony Doctor's Carriage from Quebec, in immaculate condition. In the garden are many ornaments, one telling us:

'The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth

one is nearer God's heart

in a garden

Than anywhere else on Earth'

Dorothy Frances Gurney

Buff is a devotee of motorcycles and a student of R.M. Pirsig's 'essays on values' as told in the best seller 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. The open road and the wide open spaces call, and are best appreciated astride an uncaged saddle and in control of the effortless power of a purring piston-driven two-wheeler machine. "One time my nephew popped over from Chicago and we drove to Alaska on our two bikes, sometimes meeting up with Harley Davidson boys.

Our bikes were better, they didn't leak oil". Some twenty years ago, on retiring from UBC, Buff took time out to take his motorcycle by plane to Britain and to tour across Europe to the places of his wartime youth. "It was a Yamaha Venture with all mod cons".

Buff Oldridge, a man of his word, has surely kept his enduring pledge to "the man upstairs".

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comment form

Write comment

Name

Email

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment