NEW JERSEY: Homecoming

Big, muscular Michael Slavik, 23, decided to have another drink. To a man who has killed a dozen-or-so Japs in the jungles of Goodenough Island, Finschhaven and Sanananda, there is not much going on in Passaic, N.J. To Mike, L’s Tavern in Passaic looked like a more exciting place to welcome Christmas in than his neatly furnished cubicle at the Gregory Street rooming house. But even at a bar, an ex-sergeant of paratroopers who has won a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, a shell fragment in his right leg and a bayonet scar on his arm, gets bored—especially after a humdrum day on the job at a New Jersey rubber plant. Mike ordered still another drink.

By 4 a.m. on Christmas morning, Mike did not remember exactly how many drinks he had had or what it was he was trying to forget. He found himself with an automatic revolver which he later said a soldier had given him. He went out on the street, hailed a cab, rode to Newark. Flashing his gun, he relieved the cab driver of $55.

Then he caught a bus to Manhattan and spent the day in Times Square, weaving all afternoon from bar to bar. That evening, in the middle of theatertime traffic, the gun proved useful again. He stepped on the running board of a passing car and scrambled into the seat beside the startled driver, Manhattan Lawyer Robert P. Lord. “Keep quiet,” Mike said, “I’m going with you.” He gave Lawyer Lord directions for driving to Newark, left him $2 in cab fare, but took $8 in bills, a $333 check and Lord’s car. “I bet you think I’m a heel,” Mike said. “Now beat it. You’ll find your car tomorrow at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street.” When Mike showed up again in L’s Tavern with his gun, someone called the police.

“A Bunch of Nerves.” More & more in the last few years, liquor had been helping Mike to get away from depressing things. Time was when he could get away from things by running. At 14, to escape a future in the coal mines, he ran away from the four-room shack in Daiseytown, Pa. where he and ten other Slavik children lived on their father’s scant coal-mining wages. At 16, Mike lied about his age and escaped into the Army. In the Army, Mike won a hero’s medals, but injuries and battle strain were too much for him. He was hurt at Lae, but when he was sent to an Australian hospital, he ran away and was A.W.O.L. for three months. Sent back into the Pacific fighting, he was wounded and suddenly cracked up. He now admits: “I just couldn’t take it any more.” The Army kept him in rest hospitals for a while, then suddenly last August gave him an honorable medical discharge, assumed that he was fit to return to civilian life.

Last week Mike was in the Passaic jail. The hardened cops, a few with sons of their own in the service who must some day begin to adjust themselves to civilian life, treated Mike gently. The charges were serious: armed robbery and carrying a concealed weapon. But no one seemed anxious to press the more serious charge of kidnapping.

Mike’s sister, Margaret, mourned: “He used to be so nice. Now he’s just a bunch of nerves and never sits still.” Mike, dejectedly running his big hands through his mop of brown hair, said: “Maybe I need a psychiatrist.”