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Streetcar.

Article Excerpt
When I hear the word streetcar I suppose I should think immediately, as everybody else does these days, of the New Orleans streetcar that Tennessee Williams made famous half a century ago in his play A Streetcar Named Desire. It seems imperative that I should, since I am one of the few people still alive who knew him before he became Tennessee Williams. In the 1930s when we were students together at Washington University in St. Louis and he was just beginning to write plays, he was a totally innocent but industrious aspiring young poet named Thomas Lanier Williams. I think of Tom often, but at the mention of "streetcar," my thoughts turn not to him and his play but to myself. Let me explain.

In January 1944 at Casablanca during World War II I was assigned to duty as a U.S. Naval liaison officer on board a French warship, the aviso colonial, La Grandiere. It had been built as a patrol vessel, or gunboat, for use in the French colonies. Three hundred fifty feet in length, it had three five-inch guns and a special apartment for a visiting governor. It was quite elegantly fitted out, and I had far more pleasant quarters than I would have had on an American ship. La Grandiere had fought against us in Casablanca. Afterward, a British officer had been put on board as liaison officer, and the ship had escorted convoys up and down the African coast. Then the French asked that it be sent to join the American fleet in...

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