the dream of a Bridge

In 1942 at the Subsistance Research Laboratory in Chicago, Major Thomas Dennehy invented the P-38 can opener.

Although hung around the necks of just about every combat veteran since then, few veterans talk about their can openers. Yet those tiny but utilitarian 1.5” long jobs opened just about every meal in the field.

Only about 10% of the troops were actually in South Vietnam combat areas. Even fewer went on patrol as moving targets for AK47s or rocket propelled grenades.

Support services, the barracks bed-riding bureaucrats were fed at the officers’ club.

Their can openers were electric.

My hill-humping and rice-paddy-slogging war-torn brethren and I all lived on C-rations, as they were called from World War II to every fire fight in the Vietnam War.

In South Vietnam, we were at a turning point in field rations. The C-ration cans were giving way to freeze-dried food readily reconstituted in the field as long as the water was drinkable. Even if it was not, halizone tablets would clear out germs that might disrupt our lower digestive tracts.

In a hurry, most troops on patrol preferred less tasty C-rations over freeze-dried because the can could be opened with the trusty P-38 and the meal spooned out without waiting for frozen beans to soften.

Such close connection among millions of veterans deserves commemoration. We have the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington and a wall of South Carolina’s war dead in Memorial Park in Columbia on Washington Street.

What we don’t have is that common memory of ham and beans and P-38s.

Artist Claes Oldenburg is still cranking out oversized sculpture. At the National Gallery in Washington, Oldenburg’s Typewriter Eraser is on display. It needs to be seen for its outrageous jump in scale. Such a leap in dimensions is necessary to separate art from mere depiction.

For a local jump in scale, the little P-38 needs to expand to 80’ high, suitable for walking around and sitting under.

The whole world would be watching as our 80’ high P-38 is sculpted and installed. And the world’s veterans would enjoy the reminder they don’t have to open their meals with the P-38 anymore.

To them, the P-38 ranks in life’s progress up there with the 1st pinup girl or 1st automobile. It’s Pop Art, all right, but it has enough pop to delight the world.

Where to install the world’s largest combat can opener? On The Bridge, of course.

Architect Temple Ligon is an advocate of building a hotel, restaurants, shops and an arts center on “The Bridge” over the Congaree River beween Columbia and West Columbia.