Wind Blown and Dripping

Cover of what is today a rare book: the original version of a collection of cartoons that had first been printed in the Adakian, an Army newspaper published in the Aleutians in World War II. Dashiell Hammett, who created and edited the Adakian (and wrote many of the cartoon captions), wrote this booklet's introduction and paid to have the work printed.

Wind Blown and Dripping, besides being the name of a new play about Dashiell Hammett as the editor of an Army newspaper in the Aleutians in World War II, is the name of the book of 150 cartoons, originally published in that newspaper, that was printed on Hammett’s dime in 1945. It’s possible that some of the paper’s staff may have contributed to the printing, but it was Hammett who got it done and who took no credit for it.

The 150 ‘toons were drawn, 50 each, by Cpl. Bernie Anastasia, Pfc. Don L. Miller and Pfc. Oliver Pedigo. Wind Blown and Dripping, the book of cartoons, was not an official Army publication. In fact, no publisher is listed. The work was issued under the copyright of the three artists, who all were illustrators for The Adakian, the paper that Hammett created and edited.

Hammett wrote the introduction to the book and dated it April 2, 1945. A biographer has said he left Adak for good two weeks later. Here’s an excerpt from the intro:

Military life in the Aleutians is not a whole lot like any kind of life anywhere else in the world, and life on one Aleutian island often differs a good deal from life on its neighbors. But we on the wet rock that’s listed as APO 980 like to think our island is the norm, the others merely slight variants on our pattern. This, of course, is healthy provincialism which shouldn’t bother anybody. In any case it’s a cinch we are more like the rest of the Aleutians than we are like any other place and, if this book shows what we’re like here, then it can safely be said to more or less show what we’re all like up and down the Chain.

A page from "Wind Blown and Dripping," the book of cartoons printed by Dashiell Hammett in 1945, showing two cartoons by Cpl. Bernie Anastasia. Hammett wrote many of the cartoon captions, and it's almost a cinch he wrote the one on the right. (Peter Porco photo of the 1980 edition)

This business of showing what we’re like is the heart of the whole thing. It’s not so much a matter of showing outsiders what we’re like—though we’re not modest enough to have anything against that—what’s important is showing ourselves. With the first-comers to the Aleutians it may have been different. Stepping off a landing boat in icy water and wading ashore on a new island—whether occupied by the enemy or not—was a clear-cut military operation that spoke for itself. But most of us weren’t in that first wave—although millions and millions must have been in one first wave or another if you’re a good listener—and our life here doesn’t fit into any of the familiar martial patterns. Most war art, serious or comic, misses us.

There is in man a need to see himself, to have himself and his pursuits and environment expressed. This is the necessity that set early man to daubing his cave wall with ochered representations of the hunt, that set Anastasia, Pedigo and Miller to scratching mimeograph stencils with a stylus. No art can have an older, a more honorable, a more truly authentic basis.

This, then, is our art and its people are us.

Hammett was big on the “gags,” as he called them, and he wrote many of their captions. His models were the sort of cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker–a drawing of one or more people, usually, with a punch-line caption. The Adakian printed between two and four cartoons an issue.

The paper, while restricted in distribution to Adak only, was nevertheless a sensation elsewhere in the Aleutians. The cartoons made great fun at the expense of the Aleutians weather (above all) and terrain, the lack of women, what the troops saw as the islands’ desolation, various Army frustrations that would have been recognized by soldiers in other posts and the strangeness of the islands, and they must have been a major reason for the paper’s popularity.

It’s not generally known what became of Anastasia and Pedigo, but Miller became famous as the man who created the great mural in the Martin Luther King Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., a narrative of King’s life and career.

Another page from "Wind Blown and Dripping," with cartoons by Pfc. Donald L. Miller. (Peter Porco photo of the 1980 edition)

Wind Blown and Dripping–again, the cartoon collection–was republished in 1980, bearing the words “copyright 1980 Jeanne Culbertson”. In a Forward, presumably Culbertson writes that she had made contact with Bernard Kalb, the noted broadcast journalist who had been an Adakian staff writer, and he gave her a copy of the original book of ‘toons. Because of the booklet’s frailty, she decided she would have it printed anew.

Original copies of the booklet are available online–at rare-book prices(as of late December 2009):

•• Buckingham Books in Greencastle, PA, is asking $1,500 for a copy.

•• Live Auctioneers is asking $150 to start the bidding for its copy, expected to fetch between $300 and $500.

•• PBA Galleries reports that a copy sold in Sept. 2007 at live auction for $402, including a 20 percent buyer’s premium.

•• AbeBooks.co.uk is asking 643 English pounds ($1,037 as of Dec. 31, 2009) for a copy that they say bears the ownership signature of Robert Colodny. Colodny, a American veteran of the Spanish War who served with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade until he was seriously wounded, was stationed on Adak Island at the time Hammett was and contributed to the Adakian. He also ran a radio program on station WXLB and did the research for the short narrative, Battle of the Aleutians, which Hammett wrote.

•• Meanwhile, the Linux Mall is asking $425 for the 1980 republication.

Another page from "Wind Blown and Dripping," the booklet printed by Dashiell Hammett in 1945. Pfc. Oliver Pedigo drew these. (Peter Porco photo of the 1980 edition)