Love is a Wounded Soldier (16 page)

Till we walk
hand in hand again,

Robbie

P.S. Please put
a little of your perfume on your letters.

~~~

The weeks flew by. We were given uniforms
that looked like World War I hand-me-downs. Captain Ross had us uncrate
.30-caliber machine guns and 81 mm mortars, and we used gasoline and rags to
wipe off the Cosmoline, a thick, Vaseline-like anti-rust jelly. We all had
physical examinations, and were given shots and short military haircuts.

A new crop of Yankee draftees arrived, and
the new guys were from a different world. They talked funny, with words,
expressions, and customs we Southerners had never encountered, apart from maybe
in a book or on the radio. We found each other mutually entertaining at first,
but the novelty of our respective accents wore off, and we started not to think
of each other as Yankee or Southerner, but fellow brothers-in-arms of the U.S.
Army.

Army training was hard for me at first.
Everything was dictated to us; there was no room for personal style or
preference. We did what we were told. We marched the same, dressed the same,
saluted the same, made our beds the same. I’d always valued the independent
American spirit. I liked being the captain of my own destiny. There was no room
for individualism in the United States Army. There were times it enraged me,
that in the costliest patriotic service to my country, I was reduced to an
automaton, made to feel like I was a child unable to make a simple decision
like how to make my bed. However, after several weeks, I was beginning to make
the adjustment. Johnny Snarr had a little more difficulty.

~~~

We stood at attention on a Friday morning,
after a night of driving rain. The rain had ended, but the day was still only
slightly sunnier than Captain Ross’ disposition. The captain walked slowly down
the line, inspecting each of us and meting out a generous scowl to each soldier
he passed. He held his peace—until he reached Johnny.

Now, the captain and Johnny just hadn’t
seemed to hit it off. Every time Captain Ross got near him, you could almost
see Johnny raise his quills. When talked to, he would glower, and there were
times you could tell he could hardly contain his urge to reach out and give the
captain a sizeable dose of his own medicine. Today was no different.

“Well, private,” the captain started in on
him with a mocking smile, “what in blazes possessed you to shine your boots
with shit?”

Johnny stared forward intensely, his jaw
clenched, nostrils flared.

“Answer me, dipshit!” Ross roared.

“I didn’t. Sir.” Johnny spat the words
through his teeth.

“You didn’t?” the captain feigned
incredulity. “He says he didn’t,” he informed us, as though somehow we hadn’t
overheard the exchange. His eyes narrowed, and he pushed his nose into Johnny’s
face.

“Then why do your boots look like shit?” he
bellowed. I glanced down at my boots and those of the men on either side of me.
The sloppy ground had left few boots unblemished.

“Well, sir, I’m no fuckin’ detective, but I
reckon it might have something to do with the fact that I’ve been walking
through shit since I shined them this morning,” Johnny answered fearlessly.
There were no right answers to the question, but Johnny’s answer was most
certainly less right than others he could have chosen. Veins popped out of
Captain Ross’ neck and forehead.

“Is that how you address an officer, numbnuts?”
he screamed. “Shine my boots,” he snarled, “you could use the practice.” The
look Johnny gave him nearly singed the captain’s eyebrows.

Johnny slowly squatted, as though gravity
had reversed and he had to muster all his strength to lower himself.

“On your knees! Bitch!” Ross was determined
to take him down a few rungs. He dropped a handkerchief down on the ground,
crossed his arms, and waited expectantly. Johnny picked it up, shook it twice,
and wrapped it around the back of the captain’s left boot. I held my breath,
thinking he might yank his leg out from under him, but he didn’t, he just
calmly began polishing, in his leisurely, measured way.

“Oh, you’ll need a little spit to get the
shine I’m looking for,” the captain informed him after a minute. Johnny
complied grudgingly. He was stone-faced, but I could see the intensity building
in his eyes.

Ten minutes later his mouth was dry, and
the shoes were shined. Or so he thought. He stood up and held out the hanky for
the captain.

“Did I tell you that you were finished,
dickhead?” Ross thundered. “Now you get down there and finish the job. I will
let you know when you’re finished!” Johnny genuflected with rusty joints. He
managed to produce a little saliva, and began the procedure over again. The
rest of us watched restlessly. You could taste the tension in the air.

“That’s a good girl,” the captain praised
him sarcastically. “Yessirree, I want those boots shiny like fuckin’ mirrors. I
want to be able to see the bottom side of my pecker in ’em once you’re done.”

Johnny worked up some more saliva, but this
time for speaking, not spitting. “Well, captain,” he said calculatingly, “I can
shine ’em into mirrors, but it’d take a goddamn magician to make ’em into
microscopes. Sir,” he added with a faint smile.

Captain Ross swung his foot back as though
he had intentions of punting Johnny’s head. Johnny braced himself with eyes
shut, but the captain’s judgment took effect just in time, and he checked his
swing.

Now it appeared the captain had many things
to say. But they must have gotten piled up on the expressway between his brain
and his tongue, so all he managed at first were some incomprehensible
vocalizations. Finally, one of them worked itself free.

“Private, you don’t know who you’re fucking
with!” he sputtered. In his fury, he spewed out an assortment of things
regarding revoking of passes and KP duties. Had he made a casual calculation of
his threatened punishments, he would have realized that if he was to follow
through, Johnny would have remained on the premises, peeling potatoes, well
past the conclusion of the war.

“You—you don’t know who you’re fucking
with!” He ended his tirade with no attempt at originality. He wheeled around
and stalked off, his face florid with rage and embarrassment. We stood dumbly
like sheep without a shepherd. Johnny stood up slowly. He held the handkerchief
in front of him, and shook it out with both hands.

“Anyone else needin’ a shine?” he asked
dryly. Hearty laughter drove the tension away.

~~~

That night I lay on my cot, reading Mark
Twain’s
A Tramp Abroad
, and the book of Psalms, by turns. Most of my
comrades had gone to town on a pass, or were otherwise engaged, and I was happy
to enjoy a time of solitude.

“Hey, Mattox,” a voice quietly requested my
attention. It was Johnny Snarr.

“Yeah?” I responded, wondering what he
could possibly want.

“You wanna play cards?” he asked. I was
surprised at the invitation. He wasn’t one to extend himself socially.

“Sure,” I answered, slipping a picture of
Ellen in my Bible as a bookmark. Johnny produced a pack of cards from under his
cot, walked toward me, and sat down on the cot beside mine, pulling the wooden
crate I used as a nightstand in between us.

“Cigarette?” he offered. Playing cards and
smoking cigarettes were two of the few things to do in the barracks, and I’d
picked up both habits.

“Thanks,” I accepted, and he lit his Lucky
Strike and then mine as I leaned forward. He clamped his cigarette in the
corner of his mouth as he shuffled the cards.

He dealt, and we played in almost complete silence,
making only the occasional comment about the game, if deemed necessary for its
progress. I was feeling a little melancholic, and wasn’t about to try to elicit
small talk from him to determine if he was in a chitchatting sort of mood.

“How do you like soldiering?” he inquired
after twenty minutes of surprisingly comfortable silence.

“It’s taking some getting used to,” I
admitted, “but I’m coming along.”

“Humph,” he nodded.

“You?”

He shook his head and made a face like he’d
just eaten something distasteful.

“I don’t know,” he said, surprising me with
the frustration and emotion in his voice. “I’m tired of being treated like a
fuckin’ kid. Tired of them trying to humiliate us. All they’re lookin’ to do is
break us down and replace our will with theirs, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let
that happen. I’m not cut outta that bolt of cloth.”

I knew precisely what he meant. At times it
felt as though my only assets were an able body and motor skills. But I was
beginning to make sense of it all.

“I know what you mean. It seems like such
bullshit. I mean, will a Kraut or a Jap care how you press your uniform when
you run him through? But you know, they have to make us fight like a unit.” I
put my cards down, took a drag from my cigarette, and exhaled a cloud of philosophy.

“There is the possibility—God forbid—that
we could fight shoulder to shoulder someday, and we all need to know how the
man beside us will react. Our training could be the difference between
thinking, acting, and getting shot, or reacting instinctively, and staying
alive.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I suppose you’ve got
somethin’ there,” he conceded. We lapsed back into our respective
contemplations.

“Got family?” he almost startled me with
another personal question.

“A wife,” I nodded. “You?”

“A wife and a little girl,” he said,
reaching into his pocket and pulling out a picture of a pretty little brunette
holding a grinning, curly-headed tot who was maybe a year old. I studied it for
a moment, and when I looked up, there was a proud warmth about his face. Eager
to share now, I retrieved Ellen’s picture from my Bible and handed it to him. I
searched his face for signs he was impressed with my beautiful wife, but if he
was, he masked it well. He just nodded understandingly and handed it back.

“Yeah, that’s the worst part of this whole
damn exercise,” he vented. “I can handle them bustin’ my ass and eating shitty
food, but it’s being away from home that’s the worst of it.” I was stunned at
how candid he was. His cards sat neglected in front of him, as he talked without
removing the cigarette from the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Some days I’m pretty
near worried sick about Ellen. She says she’s fine, but . . . who knows . . .”
I trailed off and took a long drag. Our cards lay forgotten on the crate, and
we talked for what seemed like hours about life and family and uncertain
futures.

Our conversation was still going full steam
when a group of eight or ten guys came back from the bar. We weren’t discussing
anything particularly personal, but Johnny lowered his voice as though every
word was confidential, and I matched the volume of my voice to his.

“Hey, who said you could sit on my bed,
asshole?” a voice slurred. We both looked up. It was Barney Clement. He’d been
promoted to Private First Class the day before, and had been strutting around
like he was the cock of the walk the past day or so. He appeared to be
intoxicated with a rank blend of promotion and liquor.

“Oh, didn’t think you’d mind,” Johnny said
calmly. His eyes flickered with irritation, but he remained nonchalant,
standing up and pulling the sheets straight on Barney’s bed. Apparently that
wasn’t a satisfactory response.

“Shut up, you goddamn redneck son of a
bitch!” the enraged New Yorker screamed, hoofing the crate our cards lay on,
overturning it and scattering the cards all over the floor. His drunken rant
brought back too many childhood memories, and rage boiled in my mind and
knotted my hands. The thought of potential repercussions was the only thing
that kept my rage barely contained. Johnny had heard enough, too.

“Well, well, well.” Johnny was smiling
slightly, but somehow he didn’t look amused. “Someone’s got a temper. Alright
you little
fuck
, either you’re gonna pick up every one of those cards
off the floor,” he dictated, his voice so composed and bland it almost belied
the threat of his words, “or someone is gonna have to pick you up off the
floor.”

Now Johnny had the attention of every man
on the floor, and a few of them edged over to get a front row view of the
proceedings. Several stragglers came in loudly, but when they saw the ruckus,
they quieted down and almost tiptoed along, like latecomers to an opera. Barney
was red-faced, but had a smile on his face, like Johnny had just said something
funny. He was a strapping, fresh-faced kid, and might have had a few pounds on
Johnny, but they were soft pounds, while Johnny’s whole body was lean and
muscled from working hard.

“Oh, yeah?! Oh, yeah?!” Barney was
sputtering now, and confidently began to dance clumsily toward Johnny with
ready fists.

“We’ll see who—”
Pow!
Johnny’s fist
drove forward like a piston, and the swaggering private must have thought his
face had wandered into the path of a wrecking ball. Johnny’s knuckles hit his
forehead with a cracking sound, and Barney didn’t teeter or totter, he just
dropped. He lay on the floor like a side of beef.