Salinger Page #5

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that he had written to her

and his life was in danger.

For a soldier like

Salinger, walking into a camp...

...there was a stillness to it

and a craziness to it.

They were caught off-guard.

These weren't liberations

in the sense of

busting down the gates

or anything like that.

These soldiers were

walking into a place... open.

This was like

falling into a graveyard.

In the case of the camp

that Salinger saw,

that was the Krankenlager,

the camp for the sick.

Naked bodies stacked up,

bodies that looked like

they were dead people,

but sometimes discovering

sounds coming from the bodies.

Salinger was an experienced

fighter by this time,

but nothing prepared him

for this kind of sight.

This kind of

desecration of humanity.

The Germans had locked

prisoners into flimsy barracks

and set them on fire.

They were burned alive.

The sentence that Salinger says

is that you never really

get the smell of burning flesh

out of your nostrils,

no matter how long you live.

The National

Broadcasting Company

delays the start

of all its programs

to bring you a special bulletin.

It was announced in

San Francisco half an hour ago

by a high American official

not identified

as saying that Germany

has surrendered unconditionally

to the Allies,

no strings attached.

There would be

no more firing, no more death,

no more killing,

no more destruction.

It was over.

They could

look forward to life.

The sacrifices

that had been made,

the horrors they'd seen

were over.

V-E Day meant that they were

on their way home.

On behalf of the commanding

officer and his staff,

I wanna extend a hearty welcome

to all of you.

There's no need to be alarmed

at the presence of these cameras

as they're making

a photographic record

of your progress

at this hospital

from the date of admission

to the date of discharge.

As a result of the horrors that

he witnessed in World War II,

J.D. Salinger suffered

a nervous breakdown.

Salinger's stuff is

all about innocence, somehow,

and the damage done to

innocence in the world.

J.D. Salinger went from D-day

all the way through to V-E Day -

299 days in combat.

What Salinger experienced

was basically a continual

assault on his senses,

mentally, spiritually,

physically.

He would have been under

immense, unimaginable stress.

The probability

of not making it,

either by being

killed or wounded,

is really... was really there

from day to day,

and that makes

people snap later.

The statistic is that anybody -

doesn't matter

how you were raised,

how tough you are mentally -

anybody after 200 days

goes nuts.

After 200 days of combat,

you are insane.

Shortly after he was

released from the hospital,

Salinger wrote

the first short story

narrated by Holden Caulfield.

It was called 'I'm Crazy'.

After his nervous breakdown,

Salinger signed up for

a longer tour of duty

so that he could be part of

the denazification program.

Salinger got to be a

detective, detective in uniform.

His basic job was

to chase down the bad guys,

whether they be Nazis that

were pretending to be civilians,

whether it was collaborators,

black market operators.

He actually got to look into

the dark heart of Nazi Germany

and interrogate the people

who committed

the greatest crimes

in human history

and bring them to justice.

There has been a rumour

for many years

that one of the people Salinger

arrested and interviewed

was a woman

by the name of Sylvia.

She was reported to have been

a member of the Nazi Party.

Salinger and Sylvia supposedly

fell in love and married.

This has led me

to travel in Germany,

following the footsteps

of Salinger,

the various places

where they could have lived,

the hospital in Nuremberg

where Salinger was treated

for his nervous breakdown,

but we drew blanks.

So then we hit upon the idea

of looking at

the passenger arrival forms

of ships arriving in the United

States in May and June of 1946.

Eureka! When I first saw it,

I couldn't believe it.

I actually jumped up

and people had to shush me.

But there it is. We have

the passenger arrival form.

Sylvia Louise Salinger.

Age - 27.

Place of birth -

Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Now we know that woman

really was married to Salinger.

American soldiers

were not allowed

to marry German nationals

during 1945 and 1946.

Salinger took an enormous risk.

He could have been

court-martialled.

It's absolutely

fascinating that

he would actually

do the opposite

of what any so-called

decent American would do,

which was to go

and marry a Nazi.

It suggests that he

really got to a place

intellectually and emotionally,

importantly - emotionally -

whereby he could

identify and sympathise

with the victim and perpetrator.

He told me his first wife

was extraordinary,

that they had

a telepathic communication

and they met in dreams.

When Salinger

brought Sylvia home

to his parents' house,

she walked into

this Jewish household

with a Nazi Party affiliation.

How he ever thought

this would work is beyond me.

My father was best man

at J.D. Salinger's

first wedding,

and my father later on received

a letter from Salinger.

"Sylvia and I separated

"less than a month after

we returned to the States.

"If I gave you all the reasons

for the separation,

"I would have to go

straight back to the beginning,

"as most of the details

would probably depress you.

"Almost from the beginning,

"we were desperately unsuited to

and unhappy with each other."

Within months, Salinger filed

to have the marriage annulled

on the grounds of deception,

which may indicate that

he found something troubling

about Sylvia's past in Germany.

The very next story that

he submitted to the magazine

was one called 'The Bananafish'.

Salinger comes back

from the war aware that

the devastated and

shell-shocked tone is his tone.

Just as the Civil War could

give us Mark Twain and Whitman,

World War II gave us Salinger.

Jerry always said,

"You have to get away

from fantasy.

"Write about something you know.

"There is no passion

otherwise."

I remember his words.

"There's no fire

between the words."

'A Perfect Day for Bananafish'

is very much about

a man who's suffering from

having gone through

the Second World War.

Seymour Glass on the beach

talking with

a charming little girl.

Goes to his room,

lies down on the bed

beside his sleeping wife

and shoots himself

through the head.

You've got to

accentuate the positive...

The story made a huge splash,

and it signalled

a success streak,

a winning streak, for Salinger.

Everyone was

totally captivated

by his writing.

We'd call each other

on the telephone about it

when the 'New Yorker' came,

and, "Have you read this?"

"Have you seen this?

Isn't it wonderful?"

People whom I didn't even know

were talking about,

"Did you read that story?"

"That little girl -

isn't that remarkable?"

It caused a great buzz.

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