Love is a Wounded Soldier (27 page)

There were few wounded men still alive.
Most that had sustained injuries had already succumbed to them many hours
before. I saw to it that the few survivors were helped, and trudged back toward
my foxhole.

To my left I could see Johnny sitting on
the edge of a foxhole a hundred and fifty paces away. The nausea I’d felt a
short while before seemed to have abated somewhat, so I rummaged through my
K-rations and found a compressed cereal bar to eat.

As I prepared to sit down on a heap of dirt
to eat and smoke, I saw Johnny still hunched over the foxhole. I assumed he was
doing the same as me, and decided to walk over and join him. As I neared him, I
could see his shoulders shaking. I walked up behind him and looked down into
the hole. Jedidiah Hankins sat at the bottom, his faithful acolyte, Honky-tonk,
beside him. Honky-tonk had his tousled head leaned on Jedidiah’s chest, like a
toddler finding comfort from his father. It looked so serene, as though they
had both just drifted off to sleep. But it wasn’t sleep that rendered them
motionless. The Angel of Death had gently extracted their souls without
disturbing their bodies.

There was a sizeable crater near the hole,
and I presumed the shock from the salvo must have been to blame for killing
them. Jedidiah’s Bible lay beside him. He’d undoubtedly been reading it when
the shell hit. Sadness pierced my leathery heart. I looked down at Johnny.
Tears flowed freely down his face, cutting trails through the crust of dirt
that covered it. He held a cigarette in between fingers that shook
uncontrollably.

“Th—that was a good man,” Johnny stuttered
between sobs, pointing an unsteady finger at the hole. For the first time in
what seemed like eternity, I felt twinges of genuine grief. For a moment, I
allowed myself to feel human emotions. Everyone had liked the hillbilly
preacher. He’d been the real deal. I swallowed my sorrow and rested my hand on
Johnny’s shoulder.

“It is well with his soul, Johnny,” I said
quietly. He nodded as I turned to go. I was worried about him. He’d never lost
his composure to that extent before, and I wondered if the shelling had begun
to unglue him. Though I had momentary thoughts of sending him home, I decided
instead to keep a closer eye on him, and talk to him to get a sense of where
his head was at before sending a valuable resource like Johnny Snarr back to
America.

As for Francis, it would be his last
battle. I sent his body home the next day. The fragments of his mind stayed on
a bloody, battle-scarred ridge called Martinville.

Table of Contents

NINE

FRIENDLY FIRE

“When are they
gonna take us off the goddamn line?” a surly Dick Johnson asked his tin of
canned ham and egg. “I’m sick of eating this shit!” He hurled the empty tin
over the top of the foxhole and reached for a cigarette.

“We won’t get moved off until we take
Saint-Lô,” I replied, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it, instead of
bummed out like I felt.

“Well, if Saint-Lô was being held by crows
instead of Krauts, we’d be long done. You fellas look like a bunch of goddamn
scarecrows,” Johnson observed.

Eddie Gunn snorted. “You need to take a
look in a mirror, Dicky.” Private Johnson looked just as gaunt and ill-kempt as
the rest of us. Weeks of K-rations had whittled us down to bony frames, and our
filthy uniforms hung on our bodies like baggy sacks.

“Wonder how long we’ve been on the line? A
month?” Dick mused.

“I dunno,” I sighed. “I stopped counting at
two weeks.”

“Twenty-six days. Twenty-six days of hell,”
Johnny answered.

“Shit,” said Dick.

“Yup,” said Johnny, his right eye
twitching. It’d begun twitching ever since we’d gotten shelled on Martinville
Ridge, and he seemed more skittish and snappy. He had also taken to singing or
humming “Oh, Shenandoah” a lot, especially at night.

“Come on boys, it ain’t so bad!” Eddie
grinned as he blew smoke through his nose. “We have a little grub to eat,
unlimited ammunition, and a license to kill as many Krauts as we like. What
more could a fella ask for?”

It was a typical comment from Eddie that we
usually chose to ignore. His enthusiasm for war and killing was not shared by
many any longer. What was unsettling was that he didn’t make his bloodthirsty
comments simply to impress his comrades or stir the pot, he genuinely enjoyed
being at war. His fascination with killing won him few friends.

“Shut up, Gunn!” Johnny snapped.

“What?” Eddie looked stunned, like he’d
just been hit over the head with a shovel.

“I said, shut up!” Johnny’s face contorted
with rage. “No one wants to hear your bullshit about how this is the life! I’m
sick and tired of you yappin’ about how much you love shootin’ and stickin’
Krauts! I just won’t listen to it anymore!” The calm, deliberate Johnny I’d
once known had been replaced by a sputtering madman.

The stunned look on Eddie’s face lasted
only a moment before being replaced by a derisive smile. “Now Snarr, you keep
talking like that, somebody’s bound to get hurt,” he said, flicking his cigarette
butt coolly toward Johnny.

Quick as a cat, Johnny leapt up and had his
trench knife at Eddie’s throat. Eddie didn’t move. I waited for either one to
say something, but they didn’t. Eddie looked up at Johnny, not with fear, but
with an inquisitive look a puppy gives a butterfly. Of all the things that
Eddie might be scared of, death certainly did not appear to be one of them.
Sweat beaded on Johnny’s forehead.

“Johnny,” I said in a low voice. “Sit
down.”

He continued to hold the quivering knife
suspended in front of Eddie’s throat. I rose slowly and took Johnny’s wrist,
guiding his hand down to hang limply at his side. I put my hands on his
shoulders, gently pushed him back, and sat him back down on the ammunition
crate he’d been sitting on. He dropped his knife and began to cry. It was
pitiful. Eddie opened a chocolate D-bar and began eating it like nothing had
happened.

“Lunch is over, boys,” I told Dick and
Eddie. “You’d best see if you can get your foxhole dug another foot or two
deeper, while things are still quiet.”

“Yes, sir,” Dick responded soberly, and he
and Eddie returned to their foxhole. I didn’t envy Dick, having to share tight
quarters with the likes of Crazy Eddie, though sharing my earthen
accommodations with my friend Johnny was turning into no picnic, either.

“Johnny!” I chided softly. “Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny!”

He lifted his head and roughly wiped his
face with a ragged sleeve. His sunken eyes mirrored his hopelessness. I could
have cried. He was a man I respected. He had won my respect. I loved him,
looked up to him like an older brother. It was like seeing your invincible big
brother get whupped in a fight. You feel sad not only because his greatness has
been diminished in your sight, but because you feel his humiliation.

I sat down beside him and leaned forward,
hands clasped between my knees. “What was that all about?”

He shifted his weight uneasily. His eye
twitched. He looked down, ashamed. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.

We sat in silence. I felt tired. It was
more than physical. I felt a mental, emotional, spiritual fatigue, as though
every possible part of my being was utterly exhausted.

“Do you want to take a break?” I asked,
almost timidly, not wanting to insinuate he was weak. “You know, get behind the
line a bit, take a shower, shave, eat some hot meals?”

He thought for a minute, though whether
about my question, I wasn’t convinced. “No,” he answered, and I didn’t press
the issue.

We listened to the distant rat-tat-tat of
machinegun fire, thankful that, for the moment, we weren’t the ones giving or
taking it.

“Cigarette?” I offered. He stretched out a
hand that shook like an old man’s, took a cigarette from me, and put it in his
mouth. I lit it for him.

“Thanks,” he said through the corner of his
mouth that wasn’t holding the cigarette. I nodded.

The midday sun shone into our foxhole. I
could feel its warmth seep into my muscles. It penetrated to my bones. I closed
my eyes. As much as I felt like I needed sleep, my mind refused to allow my
body that luxury, so instead, I fretted over Johnny. He looked so utterly used
up. Old beyond his years. He reminded me of Black Beauty. I’d read the story a
thousand times as a boy, about Black Beauty, that proud, majestic steed,
reduced to a lowly nag through the cruelty of men, worth little more than dog
food. That was Johnny. Beaten down. Hammered flat. Worn out. Good for little
else but to use up the little that was left of him. The Little Joe Green in me
wanted to set Johnny free from what was squeezing the life out of him. Give him
proper nourishment, rest and peace. I wanted to make him young again.

“I had a dream last night,” Johnny said
suddenly.

“That so?” I replied, not bothering to open
my eyes. I heard him blow smoke through his lips. He began telling me his
dream, unconcerned with whether I cared to hear it or not.

“I dreamt I was standing in the bottom of a
great big pit, or dry well. It was pitch black in there, black as all fuck, but
I could see faces. It was me, and you, and Frankie, and Cappy.” He paused.
“Honky-tonk, Hankins, Green, Meeker—a whole shitload of us, you know, guys we
trained with. We were standing on bodies, and someone was throwing in the
bodies from the top, like they were trying to fill up the whole goddamn thing
with bodies. And we just kept on having to climb on top of the bodies to keep
from getting buried. Most of our buddies eventually got bodies thrown on top of
them, and got buried with the rest of them. And I’d have to climb on top of
them too, just to stay alive. Well, more fellows kept getting buried, and I
kept on climbing, and finally, when most of the fellows I recognized were gone,
the bodies were piled so high, I was starting to see the light at the top.”

He took a drag from his cigarette, and I
waited for him to continue. But he didn’t. I opened one eye and looked at him.
He was studying the smoke rings he’d blown at the sky.

“And then what?” I prompted.

“Nothin’,” he said.

“Nothing?”

He shook his head. “That was where it
ended.”

I felt a shiver down my back. “Well, I
should make the rounds,” I excused myself abruptly, rising to my feet and
lifting myself out of the hole with my hands. I walked a half dozen paces
before I stopped and turned back. “Johnny?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“At the end of your dream, you know, when
you saw the light. Do you remember if I had already been buried, or was I still
there with you?” I could scarcely breathe as I waited for his reply. He
furrowed his brow thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” he finally said, “Yeah, I—I think
you were.” I nodded and walked away, wondering if I’d made it to the top of the
well.

~~~

“I feel like a new man,” Leroy Green
grinned over a steaming bowl of mystery goulash.

We had finally been relieved of frontline
duty and been sent back behind the lines for some rest.

“I’m just happy to feel like any sort of
man again,” Donald Rudd said. Every head at the table nodded understandingly.
Forty-two days on the cusp of the offensive had reduced us to feeling like
little more than animals.

That morning I’d taken my first warm shower
in almost two months, and its effects on my emaciated body did my spirit good.
It was more than a physical cleansing, it was cathartic. It felt like being
reborn, to be able to scrub away my skin’s grimy rind, rinse out the dust and
dirt from my hair, and feel the water gently cleanse the open sores that had
developed on my exposed skin. And, for a few moments, my mind was cleansed of
42 days of horror.

I’d seen myself in a mirror for the first
time in a long time that morning, and I was shocked to see I looked just as
gaunt and aged as my comrades. But a shower, shave, haircut, and clean uniform
had worked wonders for our morale.

I looked around the room. Men who hadn’t
smiled for weeks were beginning to laugh and joke once again. I hoped, somehow,
the war would miraculously end before we were pressed back into service. But I
wasn’t holding my breath.

~~~

On July 22, 1944, I was promoted to
Sergeant First Class. While I supposed the army meant it as a compliment to my
service and abilities, a promotion in rank failed to excite me as it once would
have. Battle had already taught me that the more stars and bars they stuck on a
man’s uniform, the more likely he was to put himself in harm’s way. You were
expected to lead then. I had assumed leadership of the platoon the moment 1st
Lieutenant Stavely had gotten shot on D-Day, so in a way, the promotion was a
long time coming.

None of us knew how long we’d be behind the
line. I greeted each morning ambivalently; I celebrated being off the line, but
the nagging thought was always there: Is this the day we get sent back?

While we were no longer on the front lines,
the army believed idle hands and minds were the devil’s tools, so we were made
to participate in a full schedule of training, from weapons firing to
close-order drill. In many ways, it was good to keep occupied, since the dread
of returning to the line was never far from our minds. I could see the tension
on the faces of the men. Sometimes a fellow would get a haunted look, as though
he were being hunted. Each day that passed brought us closer to the inevitable,
and I believe many of the men would have handled actually combat better than
the suspense of respite.