Love is a Wounded Soldier (33 page)

“Where’s my eye?” was the first thing I
asked. The stranger laughed.

“Right where it’s supposed to be, it’s just
swollen shut. You’re damn lucky, too! You came this close to losing it!” he
said, using the narrow space between his finger and thumb to show me how
fortunate I was.

I thought about nodding, but just blinked
my good eye and tried to recall how I’d gotten to where I was. My last memory
was of me riding in a jeep, then a boom, a flash, a scream and then nothing.

“Yes, sir, you sure were luckier than that
guy!” the chatterbox continued, pointing beside me. I tried to turn my head and
look, but the pain was too much. I closed my eye.

“Who—” I labored, “who is it?”

“Um, let me see.” I heard the voice move
from my right to my left. “Yeah, looks like a sergeant. Uh, Johnson. His name
is Johnson.”

“Aw, fuck,” I sighed.

Pain hit the side of my face with a brick
bat. “Morphine,” I mumbled. We hit another bump and I passed out again.

When I awoke, I was staring up at the drab
green roof of a tent. Turning my head slowly, I rolled my eyeball around the
periphery of its socket. Someone lay on a stretcher beside me. Somewhere
nearby, someone else let out an agonized moan. After a few moments, I figured
out I must be in an evacuation hospital. I stared back up at the tent roof. My
mouth was parched. Pain ran its claws down the side of my head and neck. I
gingerly took my hand and felt the bandages that swaddled my wounds.
It’s
over! Thank God!

“Ah, you’re awake!” A smiling nurse stood
over me.

“Could I get some water, please,” I asked
weakly.

“Certainly!” she said, and left to fetch me
my water.

I’ll bet she’s disappointed a few fellows,
I thought wryly to myself. She seemed like a nice girl, but was homely and
rangy-looking as a longhorn—not exactly fitting the description of the pretty
nurse I’d heard so many lads fantasize about when they talked about getting
their million-dollar wound looked after.

She brought my water to me and helped me
sit up. I took the cup with shaky hands, and she helped me guide it to my
mouth. Water ran down my chin as I drank greedily. After I’d drained the last
drop, she wiped my mouth with the corner of my blanket.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, as I
carefully lay back down.

“Never been better,” I managed a feeble smile.

“Well, you’re lucky to be alive,” she said,
“you came within a half inch of getting your jugular cut.”

“What’s the nature of my injury?” I
inquired. She picked up a paper I assumed to be my chart.

“Says you sustained shrapnel wounds to the
right side of your head, neck and shoulder as a result of mortar fire.” She
looked up cheerily. “No broken bones, just a lot of torn up skin and flesh.”

I remembered now. We’d been ambushed.

“Will I be in here long?” I asked
hopefully.

“Here? Not long. We’ll be shipping you off
to a hospital in England before the end of the week,” she said as she made a
notation on my chart. I blinked as if I had a clue as to when the end of the
week was. England, I thought, as she prepared to give me a shot. England will
suit me just fine.

~~~

Weeks later, I was sitting in a hospital
bed in England, thumbing through an old copy of
Stars and Stripes
. It’d
been a painful stretch, but the doctors told me my wounds were healing nicely.

I tried to keep myself occupied as much as
I could by chatting with my fellow patients and reading stale copies of
magazines and newspapers. But the yearning to go home kept hijacking my
thoughts, and so even when I tried to read, I found myself spending more time
staring out the window than actually reading.

Finally, home seemed to be within reach.
Peace seemed attainable. Rest no longer seemed like a far-fetched fantasy. It
was rest that I needed. Rest for my body, rest for my mind.

I pushed back the tears that threatened to
break through at the corners of my eyes as I thought about the things I’d seen.
It was Ellen that I longed for, because I knew Ellen would understand. She’d
understand when I woke up screaming at night. She’d understand when I’d jump at
every noise. She’d understand when I’d feel like crying at the drop of a hat.
She might not know the reason, for I didn’t know if I would ever be able to
speak of the things I’d seen, but my heart was confident things would be
alright when I reached her arms.

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud
voice in the hall.

“The war is over!” I thought I heard the
voice say. I tilted my head and held my breath a moment.

“The war is over!” the voice announced
distinctly. A second later, Nurse Jane popped her head into my room.

“The war is over!” she smiled before continuing
down the hall to spread the good tidings. I heard whoops and laughter as the
news spread.

The war is over, I mused. Part of me wished
I was with my men in Germany instead of sitting on a clean bed in England. I
could only imagine the feeling of relief and accomplishment that the men that
had survived must be feeling.

A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth
as I thought fondly of the camaraderie that I’d enjoyed with my men. I wondered
if they were thinking about me in the silences between the jesting, horseplay,
and laughter. Or, if in the quiet moments, a sober cloud hung over them as they
contemplated the fallen, and the awfulness of the things they’d seen. Did they,
like me, dread that they would be eternal spectators to the endless theater of
death that their minds had become? Did they fear they would never stop waking
up in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat?

No, the Germans have been beaten, and
we’re going home. But our war is not over.

~~~

“Just a few more,” the nurse encouraged me
with a smile.

I gritted my teeth as the doctor yanked at
another stitch with all the finesse and tenderness one usually associates with
a blacksmith. The nurse winced as the doctor manhandled another one. It was
obvious she would have preferred to personally remove them a little more
gently.

“There you go,” the doctor grunted as the
last stitch came free.

My neck stung. I took my hand and ran my
fingers lightly over my scars.

“Could I see a mirror?” I asked the nurse.
I had yet to see myself in a mirror since being wounded, and was only able to
see the scars on my shoulder.

“Certainly,” she replied, leaving the room
and coming back with a small, handheld mirror.

My heart pounded as I nervously grasped the
mirror by the handle. I took a deep breath and brought it up, turning my head
to the side and looking at it out of the corner of my eye. It looked as bad as
I’d feared. A long red scar ran down the side of my face, looking like
Pharaoh’s plagued Nile with a dozen tributaries. My neck and shoulder looked no
better. I slowly lowered the mirror.

“Well, I guess I should have entered some
beauty contests when I still had a chance,” I tried to joke, but my lips were
trembling. It made me feel silly and vain that I was fighting tears.

I rubbed my mouth with my hand to hide my
emotion as I handed the mirror back to the nurse. Her eyes were clouded with
tears. She’d probably seen thousands of worse cases than me the last few years,
but she just didn’t seem like the type of person that could lose the ability to
empathize.

“You’re in the wrong business, miss,” I
said with a quivering half-smile. She questioned me with lifted eyebrows, as
though her voice was indisposed at the moment.

“You care too much,” I answered. She nodded
with a sheepish smile, as though acknowledging a besetting sin, and left the
room.

Gad, you’re ugly!
I made an opening remark to kick off a personal pity party that
would last all day and well into the night.

“You’re lucky you’re already married. You
wouldn’t have a chance with a face like that!” a demon whispered gleefully from
his perch on my scarred shoulder. I lay down on the bed, suddenly feeling
tired. He was right. It would be embarrassing for me to walk down the street
now. But as much as that bothered me, what began to gnaw away at me was
thinking about how Ellen would take it. Would she be embarrassed to be seen
with me in public? How could she possibly be attracted to me now? Would she
even love me anymore? After all, it had been four years since I’d left home.
Four years! It seemed like an eternity! I’d changed so much, inside and out,
that I wondered if she’d even know me anymore. I hardly knew myself.

Night fell, and still I lay awake, thinking
about it. I thought about how Dick Johnson had died in the mortar attack. I’d
been the lucky survivor.

Lucky! Maybe he’s the lucky one, I mused,
trying to ignore the screams from a patient down the hall.

Thinking it might help if I wrote Ellen a
letter, I found my lighter and used its light to search through my things for
pen and paper. I found some paper, but no pen, so I waited until a ghostly
figure tiptoed quietly into the room to check on Patrick, a patient in my room
with shrapnel wounds far worse than mine.

“Nurse!” I whispered. She didn’t respond.

“Nurse!” I called in a low voice.

“Shhh!” I heard from across the room.

She finished what she was doing, and
stopped by my bed on her way out. “Have a little patience!” she scolded in a
whisper.

“Do you have a pen I could borrow?” I
whispered.

“For what?” she asked.

“Writing a letter,” I replied.

“Don’t you think it’s a little late for
letter writing?” she questioned as she pulled a pen from her pocket and handed
it to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Now don’t be disruptive,” she admonished
as she turned to leave.

Patrick began groaning in his sleep, and
she went back over to attend to him. I ignored the hubbub, put my sheet of
paper against a magazine, turned it to take advantage of the faint light I had,
and began writing a letter to Ellen.

Dear Darling,

I’m coming home!
I am ecstatic to see you again, but I dread you seeing me.

You see darling, my war ended a little
earlier than it did for some of the other fellows. In March (of the exact date
I am not certain), I was riding in a jeep in Germany, and we were ambushed. We
got hit by mortar fire. Two lads were unhurt, a good friend of mine was killed,
and I received some ugly wounds to my shoulders, neck and face. I’ve recovered
well here at a hospital in England, but I must warn you my scars are quite
terrible. I saw them for the first time today, and have spent the whole day
fretting about them. It will take some adjustment for me to feel comfortable in
public, and I won’t blame you at all if you find it embarrassing to be seen
with me.

Please be patient with me, my love. I
have witnessed terrible things that I just haven’t had the heart to tell you,
and quite frankly, I think you’d be better off if I took those memories to my
grave without sharing them. You may find many things about me that have
changed. But the one thing that hasn’t changed is how much I love you. In that
respect, I am the same man you kissed good-bye on the platform in Gatlinburg,
what feels to me like several lifetimes ago.

I long for the strength your love has
always given me, because I’m feeling weaker and less sure of myself than I’ve
ever felt before. My spirit is spent, my soul malnourished, and my will to live
has been sustained only by the memory of you, the beautiful life we’ve had
together, and the promise of the future.

Even as I write you, my spirits have
lifted. I feel like a fool for doubting your love when I think back to the days
when we were together. You have always been my bedrock, the one person I could
share everything with, count on no matter what, rely on to soothe me regardless
of how angry, hurt, or bitter I was. And that’s why I feel driven back to your
arms like a moth to a flame.

Nonetheless, consider yourself
forewarned that the husband that is returning to you may not look like the one
that left you. But also know that I love you more than ever, and I crave your
love. And Lord knows, I need your love more than ever.

Till we walk
hand in hand again,

Robbie

P.S. My leg was
wounded on D-Day, but I never received proper medical attention for it. Just
something else I never told you.

Writing the letter was the therapy I
needed. I fell asleep promptly.

I never did end up posting the letter, as I
was discharged the very next day, and I knew the odds were good I’d reach home
before the letter did, so I held onto it. Still, putting my thoughts down on
paper did a world of good to ease my troubled mind.

~~~

One eye peered at me over the seat beneath
a stack of brown curls. I ignored it. Slowly, another one joined it. I looked
up quickly. They couldn’t have disappeared faster if the curly little head had
gotten bopped on the top with a post pounder.