A short story by Rod Serling from The Twilight Zone is published for the first time: NPR

Rod Serling enlisted in the United States Army after graduating from high school. He trained to become a paratrooper and was assigned to the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 11th Airborne Division.

Courtesy of Anne Serling

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Courtesy of Anne Serling

Rod Serling enlisted in the United States Army after graduating from high school. He trained to become a paratrooper and was assigned to the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 11th Airborne Division.

Courtesy of Anne Serling

There’s a reason Rod Serling is considered one of the boldest and most incisive storytellers on scripted television and a lot of it comes from his experiences during World War II. The Emmy and Peabody Award-winning creator of The Twilight Zone spent three years as a paratrooper during World War II. He received a Bronze Star for bravery and a Purple Heart for the shrapnel wounds he suffered to his wrist and knee.

Serling enlisted to fight the Nazis the day after he graduated from Binghamton Central High School in New York. Even though he was only 1m70 tall, he completed his paratrooper training and was assigned to the 11th Airborne of the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was sent to the Philippines to fight the Japanese.

“He saw major fighting in the Philippines on the islands of Leyte and Luzon,” says Nicholas Parisi, author of a biography of Serling and president of the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation. “It scarred him for the rest of his life. He saw a lot of friends die. And it really became a defining chapter in his life.

Shortly after returning from the war in 1946, Serling attended Antioch College in the GI program. There, in his early 20s, he wrote “First Squad, First Platoon,” a short story that will be published for the first time Thursday in The strand. It was one of his first stories, marking the start of a writing career that Serling said helped him get the war out of his guts.

“It was like an exercise for him to face the demons of war and fear,” said his daughter, Jodi Serling. “And he kind of turned it into fiction, even though there was a lot of truth in it.”

The truth in Serling’s short story

The story takes place on the island of Leyte, amid “thick jungle foliage” and “hostile rain that covered weapons, uniforms, and equipment with mud.” Each of the five chapters of the 11,000-word story is about a different soldier and how they died.

As he often did in his writings, Serling used the real names of people he knew. One of his closest friends on the team was a fellow New Yorker named Melvin Levy. In the story, Serling describes Corporal Levy as “the comedian of the team – the wacky, the witty, the guy who lived to laugh.”

After several days hiding in muddy burrows, with no food and low on ammunition, the team hears the sound of approaching U.S. Army planes.

When they get low enough, they start cutting back on their rations. He writes:

“…heavy crates without chutes were falling from the sky in clusters – boxes of fifty pounds of K rations, a hundred or more rushing to the ground. ‘Make it kosher, boys,’ Levy shouted, tears streaming on his big cheeks.

To avoid being hit by the falling cargo, the men go back down into the burrows. Except Lévy:

“‘It’s raining food, boys…it’s raining food,’ his high-pitched cry

the voice pierced the air.

Then there was a sudden thud as a crate hit the ground.

near the positions of the first squad, throwing mud in the air and everything

but by plugging the holes with it.

Rod with his father Sam Serling c. 1943.

Esther Cooper Serling/Courtesy of Anne Serling

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Esther Cooper Serling/Courtesy of Anne Serling

Just like in real life, a crate crashes into Levy, killing him instantly. Serling and his team watched in horror.

“I knew my father was suffering from trauma because I vividly remember hearing him wake up in the middle of the night screaming,” said another daughter, Anne Serling, “and in the morning when I I asked him what had happened, he told me that he was dreaming that the enemy was coming to him.

“First Squad, First Platoon” was discovered in a collection of Serling’s writings at the University of Wisconsin by Amy Boyle Johnston, author of a book about his career titled Unknown Serling. She told the story to Anne, who included excerpts in her memoir. As I knew him.

“First of all, I was so stunned by the fact that my father was so young,” Anne Serling said, “and still so aware and willing to share his thoughts.”

To add to the trauma, Rod Serling’s father died suddenly at the age of 52 while Rod was still overseas. Anne said he was not allowed to return to the United States to attend her funeral. “He was always very angry,” she said.

“The war must be discussed”

When The strand Asked about the publication of this news, Anne Serling replied that she and her sister did not hesitate. She said her father believed that “these things about the war should be discussed.”

Serling dedicated the story “To My Children,” even though he didn’t have any at the time. He wrote that he didn’t want them to be the kind of people who “don’t like to remember unpleasant things”:

“I want you to know what the shrapnel, the ’88s, the mortar shells and the mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, however indirectly, some semblance of the sensation of a torn limb, of burned piece of flesh; the paralyzing, numbing sensation of fear; the desperate emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complementary to the realm of war and friction, and they should be taught in classrooms with the more heroic aspects. uniforms and flags, honor and patriotism.

With ongoing wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere, The strandEditor Andrew Gulli said he thought it was important to read the details of Serling’s story now. Gulli said that Serling’s “laconic” prose includes the “brutality” of war, “Yet (the) characters always retain their humanity. You always felt like you were reading about real people, people to whom you could identify you.”

Serling’s feelings about the war were manifested in The Twilight Zone. “The Purple Testament” and “A Quality of Mercy,” for example, are set in the Philippines and are imbued with the same sense of dread found in “First Squad, First Platoon.”

“My father said when he came home that he would never hurt another living thing again,” Anne Serling said. But she said he also wore his parachutist bracelet “throughout his life.”

Rod Serling died on June 28, 1975 following heart surgery.

This story was edited for broadcast and digital by Meghan Collins-Sullivan.