Marvin “Wish” Patrick
Wish Patrick:
I was born in ah, 1929, December sixth on the Umatilla Reservation. That’s up on McKay Creek area— Hautme. Mc Kay Creek and Johnson Creek area was my sandbox, you might say, my big playgrounds.
Arlie Neskahi:
The experience of war leaves indelible scars not only in the body, but in the mind and the spirit. Today, we hear the true story of Marvin “Wish” Patrick, who returned from the Korean War haunted by those he had killed.
Patrick:
I was brought up by my grandmother and my grandfather. And my grandfather, he used to bring me back of the garage and he’d get some 2×4’s, 4×4’s and he’d whittle. He’s sharpen up his knife and then he’d whittle. And he’d tell me what’s all going to happen to me.
I was about fourteen when I come down here and stayed with my folks. My dad was a police officer then. We stayed together until ’51, and I went in the service. And my mom and dad, they asked me if I wanted to get out of the service. And I told them, “No, there’s no need.” So I stuck it out and I went to Korea. When I came back I was a different guy altogether. I kind of switched over from—the kind of guy I was before I went in the Service, I was going to be a preacher.
I come out of the Service and they were asking me if I want to go back in, told them I couldn’t. They says, “Why?” I says ah, “Just better for myself.” And they says, “Well you got all your money. You got all your things to go down.” I says, “But there was one thing that you folks hadn’t prepared me for: ‘Thou shalt not kill’.”
My grandfather told me never to point a gun at anybody, at any human being. But he didn’t know that I was going to war. “You didn’t tell me what to do.” But these people, these Koreans are coming over here and going to kill me. So I, I just had to shut my eyes and squeeze the trigger. It took me, I don’t what, twelve to thirteen clips, I guess, before I opened my eyes. And ah, my grandfather, I prayed to myself, I told him, “Forgive me.”
And I come home, and I told my mom—she used to come and wake me up—I told her just holler at the door or I’ll hear your feet. She didn’t believe me. This one time she kind of snuck up on me. She just touched me like that, and I grabbed her hand and I threw her on the bed and I was, and I told her, “No.”
So after that then, then I had to leave because I was drinking quite a bit and I was going, going to the other side, going to the dark side. And I got married and I settled down for a while, and I started ah, drinking heavy. Something was wrong and it wasn’t, wasn’t my family or anything but it was eating up my insides. I was going about three months at a time. I’d come home and maybe change clothes and take off again—two weeks. It got to where I was almost like a walking zombie or something.
And I come home and I was ah, sleeping it off. It was in the afternoon about like this. And in my dream all these guys come into my room. They wouldn’t say nothing, they just come in. And look at them. I wouldn’t tell them nothing, and they’d look at me and nod to me, and I’d nod to them.
And I was thinking about a dream that I had about three months ago before that. My grandmother and them, and they were all sitting around the, the camp. And these people—I was sitting there looking at them—and they were all in their buckskin outfits. And I’d sit there and I was the only one that had chaps on and my street clothes. And I says, “Why can’t I go with you folks?” They says, “You got to go back and do your work.” I didn’t know what they meant by that. So he, my grandfather told me that ah, “You got to go back and you got work to do. Lots of work.”
And I thought I was all through my dreams, and all of a sudden the dreams come back again. Start ah, working on me. So I, I went down here to ah, Susie Williams’ place down here. And they had ah, Shakers there. So the Shakers, they worked on me down there. And when they worked on me that night—I come home, went to sleep, and I woke up. I mean, I didn’t wake up but these Koreans were coming after me and I was getting ready to shoot them. And like that always happened all the time. And they come out about so far and they just stopped. And they started rattling their bones and they started dancing. And I was sitting there and I’d look at them, and I’d think, “Gee, what’s going on now?” And these Koreans were Shaker dancing out here. And then I could hear their bones rattling. Ever since that time I’ve had no dreams, nothing to scare me no more.
So now I just sort of stay at home now and I, I think back of all the things that happened to me and try to ah, measure them. I do things differently now than what I used to do. I used to get in and try to get involved in things. But now I sit back and I, I watch other people. Then I, I go back and I think it over, and then I go tell them.
Neskahi:
Marvin Wish Patrick, who passed away in 1999 is fondly remembered by his family and fellow tribal members as a leading singer and storyteller. We present this story with the kind permission of his son, Tobey Patrick.