 presents Peggy King and George Nader. From Hollywood, the Mutual Network in Cooperation with Family Theater presents The Thin Red Line, starring George Nader. And now here is your hostess, Peggy King. Thank you, Tony LaFranco. Family Theater's only purpose is to bring to everyone's attention a practice that must become an important part of our lives if we are to win peace for ourselves, peace for our families and peace for the world. Family Theater urges you to pray. Pray together as a family. And now to our transcribed drama, The Thin Red Line, starring George Nader as Dan. It's just as well you didn't. They didn't say very much. Didn't say much? No, it's going to take a little time. I suppose they have to analyze reports and things like that. But when will they... The doctor said he'd call me as soon as he knows one way or the other. Whether I'm stuck with blindness or whether an operation will help. Baby, all we can do is wait. Oh, I suppose. Might as well make use of the time, huh? What were you doing when I came in, finishing up that article for The Legion Magazine? Oh, no, I got that off this morning. Dan, how did he sound? I mean, will did he sound optimistic? Baby, he sounded right in the middle, bedside manner stuff. He won't know until he sees the reports. We'll just have to wait. And now, what were you working on, huh? Oh, got a couple of letters from the Western Pulps. They're wondering why you're not submitting anymore. I'm just writing nice diplomatic letters. Want me to read them to you? No, I don't think so. How about the thin red line? It's here. Let me see. Oh, here it is. Fine. Read what we got so far, huh? Dan. Yeah? Dan, I... I just don't see how you can be so... so phlegmatic about it. Baby, getting excited won't do any good. It won't make the time go any faster. It won't affect the outcome of the reports. We'll just have to wait. Now, if we don't get this story done, the Saturday evening post will have to come out with a lot of blank pages. I did. Or colliers. Now, what have we got so far? Oh, all right. Let's see. The sun was a circle of ice in the sky. It had no warmth to give. Only a pale and unreal luminescence as it cast its light through the clouds of winter and the smoke of war to light the battlefield. A foreboding of snows in the air. And yesterday's fall lay in gray and yellow patches on every unbroken surface of that section of Korea commanded by our machine gun. Mm-hmm. There was snow on the waist-high scrub brush that flanked the nest and an inch of it covering the sandbags that hid us from the enemy and the enemy from us. Oscar, better take another look around. Nuts, you want to know what's going on? You take a look around. What did you say? And please, don't go making a big thing at him, Sergeant Stripe's big-time. I've been a sergeant more times than you've seen pay days. And I don't like guys who give orders just for a sake of giving them. Hey, listen. No, you listen. Now, that's going to be hard for you because I don't think you know how, but try. Everything's quiet in this sector right now and that's the way I like it. Nobody's taking pot shots at nobody because there's nothing to shoot at. Maybe you never heard, but motion attracts the eye. If I stick my head up to take a look, I'm the only thing moving on this hill. Now, when we get the breeze and the bushes move and everything over here moves, then I'll take a look. But if it has to be done right now, you can do it yourself big-time. You know, you're buying yourself a lot of trouble, Oscar. Oh, yeah. Well, let me tell you something. This is my second war, 11 years in the Army. I got 14 decorations. Reserve commission awarded in the field at San Lowe, July 12, 1944. You can check that. I got more friends in general and field grades and you got hairs on your head. If it comes to a showdown, I'm not real worried about whose word they're gonna take. For a guy who's not smart enough to be anything but a professional soldier, you're pretty sure of yourself. You bet I am. If anything, they'd give me a medal for sticking it out for five days in the same hole with a creep like you. Take a look. I don't have to take a look. I know what's out there. There's a gook with a rifle waiting for something over here to move, waiting for someone over here to take a look so as you'll have a target. And I got a wife and kids in the States hoping it won't be me. You got any kids big time? No, no, I guess you wouldn't. No sane woman would have you. All right, Oscar. I'm gonna try to get you court-martialed. But if you're right, if it doesn't work, I promise you I'll flatten you myself. You come up and see me sometime when you grow up. All right, I'll come and see you all right. Hey, are you gonna play peek-a-boo with the commies? You better put your pot on. If I want any advice from you, I'll ask for it. I put on my steel helmet and inched my head over the rise of sandbags. There was nothing new to see. The view was the same as it had been the day before and the day before that. Even the smells were the same. The fetters that are a thousand times more a part of war than any tales of glory the fiction writers write. The putrescence of the unburied dead. The stench of the burnt cordite and sulfur. Of stale rations and stale sweat. The rancid odor of sickness. And that metallic corrosive smell that matches the taste in your mouth. The adrenaline the body produces when the soul's afraid. The smells were there and they were the same. Just as the view of the enemy's territory was the same. But as long as you're in a shooting war you never quite get used to either one of them. I raised my head a little more and let my eyes graze the hillside foot by foot. Everything was still. The black half acre that had been burned out with napalm. The upended tank and company had knocked out with recoilless rifles a couple of days before. Splintered remains of a log barricade. The snow patches, the scrub, the trees. Everything was quiet. Feel better now, big time. Then I saw something out of a grove of small trees on the other hill. There was a glint, the reflection of dull sunlight on metal. I knew what it was, but I couldn't move. And the flashes that came from it, I knew it was machine gun fire even before I heard the sound. I turned my head and started to duck when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. That thin red line of the tracer. Hey Coleman, hey, Coleman. Oscar? Yeah, it's Oscar. What happened? I can't see. I know you got hit. You got a compression dressing over your eyes. Over my eyes. You shut up and listen to me. My eyes, am I blind Oscar? Will I? Shut up and listen to me, I don't know. We haven't got much time. I gotta drag you out of here. Oscar, tell me. Shut up. Call a medic. I'm not moving till I find out. Medic! I have to hold my hand over your mouth, I will. Now you listen to me. You got hit. All right, it's rough, but you're still alive. But when you got it, you gave opposition a way too. I don't know whether they're sneaking up on us now or whether they're gonna zero us in with their mortars. But either way, we're not gonna be here. I'm gonna take my hand off your mouth and I don't want you helping them by losing your head. You understand? I understand. Okay, now hook your hands around my neck. I can't send. Hold on. Man, I must have lost too much blood. I'll have to tie him. Come on, we gotta move. Why does it have to be me? Why does it have to be me? Well instead of me, you're some other guy because you think you know it all and nobody else knows anything because you think the world owes you a living. Well, you're wrong. You don't know everything and the world owes you nothing. You know something else? When you see somebody else get it, inside you're glad it's not you. That it's somebody else and not you. But you think that you never say it. Well, this time I'm saying it. I'm glad it was you and not me. Maybe, maybe you better leave me here and send back. I'm not dragging you back because I love your Coleman. Remember me? I'm the professional soldier. This is part of my job. Remember getting out of here. I don't remember much about the trip to the aid station or the helicopter ride. But in the plane to Tokyo, there was a brief period of consciousness and it was in that brief period when I think I first heard about how badly I'd been hit. No more plans. Yes, doctor. Now where's the card on this one? Here it is, doctor. Coleman, Daniel A.U.S. 56102964. Daniel A. Coleman, the news commentator. What, doctor, I used to listen to him all the time. I'm afraid it's not likely you'll be listening to him anymore. Let me see his chart. Oh, it's such a shame. He had so much promise to me. There may be a chance to save a little of his vision. I see they gave him opiate sedation. Yes, sir, a quarter grain of morphine at soul. No more opiates. They have an effect on the iris. I don't want any dilation or contraction till I have a chance to look at him in Tokyo. Yes, sir. But a mark on their name on his dressing. Now this one. Multiple fractures in concussion, doctor. Here's his card. In concussion, never mind his card. Let me see his chart. You hear about things happening to other people, and you nod your head and you say, too bad. And then you dismiss it from your mind. These things never happen to you. And if something bad does happen to you, there's always the great consolation, the knowledge that in time the trouble will pass away and things will be normal again. And you fight to make them normal. You fight and you hope and you pray to make them the way they were. It was that way with me and the months that followed. But I wasn't alone. There were doctors and nurses fighting and hoping and praying right along with me. But the best they could achieve was to give the least part of my vision back to me, a blared and hazy consciousness of light. And time, that great panacea that carries other people's troubles into the past, was only time to me. Time to wonder about the sounds around me. And time to brood and build up a bitterness about my change in state. That I, who had always been so independent, had come to be as dependent as a man can get. Needing another human being to drag me from a battlefield, others to read and write my mail or orient me to a dinner trade. Now, sergeant, the potatoes are at 12 o'clock. They're all grottin'. Butter beans at two and your steaks at six o'clock. It's all cut by its eyes for you. Looks very good. The bread and butter is at 10 and your beverage and milk is at half past one. It's a fine dinner. Now, if you need anything, just press the button. She used to say that at every meal. If you need anything, just press the button. And every time I wanted to scream out after her, which button do I press to turn the lights back on? And then, at night, I dream about my thin red line, the trajectory of the tracer bullet that seemed to run from eternity into infinity and mark the borderline between the old me and the new. Nurse, I... You're all right, Coleman. You're all right. You're just dreaming. Wellington, you're doctor. It's a dream again. And that's what we're reacting to. You're all right. A natural reaction? But you're having them too frequently. Nurse tells me you're not getting your exercise. If you don't exercise in a daytime, you won't sleep all night. Cigarette. There you are. You're a strange bird, Coleman. I can't see why you persist in taking the attitude you do. Can't you, Colonel? Have you ever been blind? Do you know what it's like? No. I don't know what it's like. But I know you've got to get used to the idea. And perhaps in a couple of years... A couple of years. Actually, you've got quite a bit left, Coleman. Yeah, suppose you tell me all about it, doctor. Have you talked to any of the totals in this hospital? Do you know what they give? Even have the blurred vision you've got? Do you know what they give to be able to see color, distinguish between day and night, see motion? What's the difference? Talk to them if you want to know the difference. All right, all right. You've got quite a bit left, Coleman. With the tracer bullet took away, we've been able to replace surgically to a degree. And if no perforation takes place, someday we may be able to restore sight to that left eye. If the tracer had passed a hundredth of an inch closer, you wouldn't even have that hope. Is there much hope? What are the odds? I don't know the odds that coach you. That bullet left a lot of scar tissue on the cornea. You'd say it frosted the glass in the lens of your eye. The particles of phosphorus embedded in the cornea act as a constant irritant, enlarging the scar tissue and increasing the opacity. It's much the same as a cataract. In other words, the tissue is growing. When the growing stops, that's the time to start thinking about corrective surgery. Until then? Until then I'd advise you to stop building your bitterness. Stop indulging in self-pity unless you want psychotic trouble to add to your blindness. I've been worried about you, Coleman. Thanks. And I've done a little checking. You've always been hard to get along with, in the army and before. One of your associates even wrote that they're the best of his knowledge. You never had a friend, not one. That's true, Coleman. You just stick to your doctoring, Colonel. Well, you'd better start changing. It's possible you may need plenty of friends from now on. And where you're going, bitterness doesn't impress anybody. What do you mean, where I'm going? I'm sending you back to the States, to a school for the... For the blind? A school for reorientation and rehabilitation. As long as we don't know about your chances for sight, we'd better get you used to living without it. I don't remember what I expected the school to be like, but I know that it was not much like my expectations. There were classes in subjects I expected, Braille reading and the use of the Braille typewriter, music appreciation and character guidance. But there were other classes, too, that concerned themselves with subjects the average person never really thinks about. There was a course in acoustics. Listen carefully, gentlemen. I'm going to play two recordings, and I want you to identify the sounds. And now the other. There they are. Mr. Coleman, can you tell me what made the sounds? Well, one sounded like a stick being broken, and the other was a pistol shot. Well, thank you, Mr. Coleman. Actually, gentlemen, both sounds were pistol shots, both fired from the same weapon. One recording was made out of doors, hence no true echo, and the other was made in a tiled room. The sounds were the same, but the sounding boards were different. Now, in this class, we will endeavor to study the nature of sound and the things which affect it. Now, probably the greatest natural master of acoustics is the bat. In flight, the bat sends out ultra-high frequency sounds. He gauges the nature of obstructions and his distance from them by listening to the echo that comes back to him. And so, gentlemen, it appears that my job is to make you all into a bunch of bats. There were classes in selective listening, which you could call listening only to what you want to hear or need to hear while excluding other sounds. There were practice periods in directive listening and identification, and a great many other things. But for those first few weeks, I didn't take much interest. I was much too busy with my brooding. Then one day, when I stepped out of the class for a cigarette, something happened to change all that. Light? Huh? Do you want a light for your cigarette? Oh, yeah. Thanks. Where... I'll put it. You just puff. Where'd you come from? I work here, administration. I mean, I didn't hear your approach. I was standing here in the hall when you came out. I was coming to get you, and I heard the music through the door. It's beautiful, isn't it? Coming to get me? Why? To talk to you. To talk to me? Mm-hmm. My name's Amelia Grant. You're Daniel Coleman. I've seen you around for quite a few weeks. But, uh, what'd you want to see me about? About your grades. They're awful. What's the matter? Are you stupid? Stupid? Well, you must be. Everybody's trying to help Dan Coleman, except Dan Coleman. That sounds pretty stupid to me. Look, why don't you just run along? You know, I may lose $5 because of you. I don't care if you do... It was foolish, I know, but one of the instructors bet me that you weren't human and that I wouldn't like you if I knew you. And I bet otherwise. You know, in my league, $5 is Beverly Hills money. I can't afford to lose. Beverly Hills? You from Los Angeles? Hollywood. All the pretty girls moved to Hollywood, and all us ordinary girls come to the Middle West. I sound pretty, though, don't I? Well, uh, you... you sound all right. There, you laughed. Well, it sounded like the first time. Since I got it? It sounded like the first time ever. Look, how about helping me save my $5, hm? How about a date? A date? Yeah, you know, you take me out, buy me dinner, take me dancing and spend a lot of money and polite conversation on me. Then you take me home and try to kiss me goodnight and I slam the door in your face. You've heard of dates. But, well, why? Why? Oh, I could give you a lot of reasons. Maybe because I think you're nice-looking. Or maybe because it's Saturday night and I don't have a date. Or maybe... Maybe because I think you're not giving yourself a chance and I feel I can help. Okay? Mm-hmm. Okay. And when I try to remember what things used to look like, I keep getting the same picture. You mean the last scene you saw? No, just the most vivid thing in it, the orange red line that Tracer made coming out of nowhere and seeming to go on forever. Does that sound strange? Yeah, a little. But it always seems like a dividing line between the old Dan and the new one. The old? And which Dan do you think would be the better man? The better man? You're a news commentator. Yeah, that's right. And a pretty good one, too. And as such, you had a reputation. Or a notoriety. I didn't get fan mail, I got pan mail. There are quite a few columnists and commentators who make a living out of being disliked, out of being disagreed with, and I was one of them. Well, why am I telling you all this? Because I'm a friend. A friend? A friend. Why say it like that? Well, I never went out of my way to make any friends. Do you want to now? I never felt I needed them much before, but now, well, being lonely is one thing I got used to that, but being lonely in the dark, well, that's something else. You know, it requires a lot of give and take. But I don't think I'd even know how to go about making friends with anyone. Oh, you'll catch on. And until you do, I'll lend you some of my friends, okay? I know a lot of people around town as well as out at the school. You're a strange one. You see how much progress the new Dan has made already? You've learned how to laugh and you've got one friend. Oh, all that beautiful music going to waste. Come on, Dan, let's dance. But how can I... No, don't tell me you used to dance with your eyes open. How unromantic. Come on. Danced in years. You're doing very well. You used to write news, didn't you? That was the old Dan. Well, have you ever tried to write anything else? I mean, books or short stories? Well, there's a great deal of difference between writing news and writing fiction. But have you ever tried? You think I have to? Very few publishers read braille manuscripts. My dancing partner seems to be going a little sour. Oh, I'm sorry, but how could I write anything? Dictate. I type and take shorthand. I'm really a very good secretary and my rates are low. Well, they'd have to be. 25% payable on publication. But I've never written any fiction before. What have you got to lose? Dan, will you try? Like you say, what have we got to lose? The first story sold. It was published in a magazine called Western Romance and Adventure and brought in a check for $39.50. A year and many successful stories later, Amy told me that she'd had to spend $12 for stamps in order to send that manuscript on its first rounds. 28 publishers read and rejected it. One bought it. But assets from that first sale were not to be counted only in monetary gains. Wait a minute, Dan. What's the matter? Too fast for you, baby? I think I missed a word. Let me see, that was not to be counted... Oh, Dan. That ought to be the doctor. I'm afraid to answer it. What if... Only way to find out, baby? Hello? Yes, this is Mr. Coleman. Yes, I'll wait. Is it him? No, it's his nurse. Hello? Yes, I'm still on the line. Yes, I'll wait. Oh, Dan, I want you to see very much, and I'm so afraid of what this could do to us. To us, Amy? If he says yes, and I don't look like he expects me to look, I'm not beautiful, you know? Oh, baby. Baby, beauty is a matter of opinion. And the new Dan has learned something that old Dan could never have learned. I can recognize beauty when I'm near it. With my eyes or without you, you're beautiful to me, Amy. Hello? Hello, Doctor. Say, Doc, hold on a minute, will you? And, Amy, if he says no, if there's no hope, well, I've thought a lot about that, too. Almost two years, I want my sight back, and I'd gamble my life to get it, but whether I get it or not, whether it's going to be darkness or light for me, I should know you've made mornings of all my days. Nothing will change for us. Now, you understand? Yes, I understand. Okay. Hello, Doctor. Nine o'clock tomorrow morning? Oh, Dan. Don't eat breakfast, but bring a toothbrush and some dark glasses. Yes. Yes, I think I can make it, Doctor. I think I can make it. All right. This is Peggy King again. You've probably read newspaper stories about the wonderful computing machines that are being made these days. Machines which can solve almost any sort of mathematical problem in a matter of seconds or at most minutes. Problems which might otherwise take a hundred mathematicians tons of paper and months of time to solve. Wouldn't it be nice if these machines could be used to solve human difficulties or just mathematical problems? Wouldn't it be nice if we could feed our problems into one end of a machine and then sit back and wait for the solution to come out the other end? Actually, if there were such a device, I think it would answer most of our problems with the same solution. The Eleventh Commandment Christ gave to his apostles at the Last Supper when he said, A new command I give you, that you love one another. And if this seemed too difficult a solution, a growing machine would probably suggest prayer. For through prayer, we are brought closer to God who is the author of love. Actually, we don't need a machine to tell us that any problem is easier when we have help. So doesn't it follow then that with the divine assistance we can obtain through prayer we can accomplish anything? And when you pray, pray together as a family for the family that prays together stays together. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Family Theater has brought you transcribed The Thin Red Line starring George Nader. Peggy King was your hostess. Others in our cast were Lillian Bayef, Jack Krushan and Jim Nusser. The script was written and directed for Family Theater by Robert Hugh O'Sullivan with music composed and conducted by Harry Zimmerman. This series of Family Theater broadcasts is made possible by the thousands of you who feel the need for this type of program by the mutual network which has responded to this need and by the hundreds of stars of stage screen and radio who give so unselfishly their time and talent to appear on our Family Theater stage. To them and to you our humble thanks. This is Tony LaFranco expressing the wish of Family Theater that the blessing of God may be upon you and your home and inviting you to be with us next week when Family Theater will present Uncle Jim starring Donna Reed. Dennis Day will be your host. Join us, won't you? Family Theater has broadcast throughout the world and originates in the Hollywood studios of the world's largest network. This is Mutual, the radio network for All America.