Beast of the Field (28 page)

Ive been
meaning to write you for a couple weeks now.  Just couldnt.  I havent been able to get the words down, much less talk at all since it happened.  I dont know if I ever told you about my good buddy Clem Heigh from Texas.  I may have, I maybe didnt.  He was my buddy, big like me.  He was a farmboy too, but talkier, and funnier then all get-out.  You say his name like Hay, like that stuff he put into bales all summer long and truck off to the neighbors.  The boys, they got a big kick out of this.  "Hey, Heigh, hay!" theyd say and point, when we came across one of those big tower bales they got here.  Anyways, he got killed a couple weeks ago, outside Belleau Woods, blown to bits by those shit blasted Jerries.  He was my good friend, an Im the reason he was killed.

I knew it was a bad day right from daybreak.  It was raining for two strate weeks before this day, so everything was covered in mud and soaked through and cold as hell.  We come across a little hamlet and
thats when we knew it was going to be a bad day.  There was dead Frenchies everywhere--soldiers I mean--and some Canucks too.  Theyd been stepped on and rolled over with wagons and they had the pockets of there coats and pants turned out and some of them had had there teeth taken out too.  Then we find this little pit and its full of women and girls, and most of them got their dresses up over there heads and there hands tied which means those shit stained German sons of whores had been at there usual you know what with those poor girls.  Well this got us in a fighting mood if all that rain didnt.

Well we got our fight that night.  The shelling came first like it always does but usually they do it for a couple days before they send the foot soldiers, this time they blasted the guts out of us for about three hours then sent the troops right in.  They were good fighters too, from Russia since those cowards gave up the fight.  Well this is how the Germans
are, they send there boys in and just keep right on lobbing those shells into the fight.  It goes on till dark, just keeps on going.  The worst fight weve seen yet.  There was so much noise and so much flashing lights, a guy could barely tell where he came from and where he was going.  Well I was picking up doughboys who had been wounded, and some of them were bad.  You cant know how frale a thing your flesh and bone is till you stick it up against hot and fast moving metal, like shrapnel or a bullet. I was finding out that night, carrying boys three at a time from the battle to the rear trench where they had a medicle tent.  By the time I found Heigh I was already soaked thru in blood and carrying ten pounds of French mud with me everywhere I went.  Heigh is the one who saw me, he yells Donnan Donnan!  and how he needed a stretcher.  Well there was no getting a stretcher out there, no way.  I was already taking a big gamble going out there with those rounds wizzing by my head.  I says Heigh!  Your coming with me!  He says no leave me, I cant move, I been shot bad, I need a stretcher.  Nobodys going to bring you a stretcher out here, come on, I says.  He says, leave me till they can, Ill be alright.  But I dont leave him.  I pick him right up and toss him onto my back and run like the blazes back to the trench.  This is just when that same machine gun nest Heigh and a couple boys had gone out to shut down opens up on me again and I hear those Jerries yelling in that Godawful tongue of theres to use stick bombs, which they do.  So now I got those machine gun rounds wizzing by me like hornets and I got those little potato masher explosions kicking up the little craters in the mud every other step.  Hold on Heigh! I says, Were almost there.  Heigh! I holler.  Heigh Heigh Heigh Heigh!!!!  But I figure hes passed out.  Well I make it back, I jump into that shit corpse stinking muddy trench and flop Heigh over to a stretcher and theres nothing there, little brother.  I had been holding his arm and there was a shoulder and a neck and a head hanging off that arm and a long string of guts hanging out behind him, but there wasnt nothing else.  One of those stick bombs had blown him to bits.  I had his blood and is bits of meat and bone all over my back to the skin. 

Think about that.  He wanted me to leave him be where he was.  So not only did I kill him by trying to get him back, but he saved my life—he took that blast for me and saved my Goddamn shit blasted life.  And I dont feel too good about that, little brother.  I dont feel good about that at all, in fact I wished it was me that was in small pieces.

Anyways, well thats it, thats what I wanted to say.  I havent been able to talk to anyone here about it.  I havent said a word one to anyone about anything at all, in fact.  They tell me I scream his name in the night, sometimes I whisper it too, they say.  Over and over again.  I dont know.  I dont know.  I do know this, if theres any good in all this, its that Clem Heigh loved America more than I do and he loved his outfit and he might have even loved me, and even tho I killed him, I know he died the way he would want to die.  For some reason you got to die, little brother, so love ought to be that reason.  At least then your not alone when it happens.

Hug our soldier for me. 
Jr.

THE END