Beast of the Field (6 page)

                                                                                                               
May 15, 1918

Hoboken, New Jsy.

Little Brother,

Well, I never would
of thought it, but I am the first Donnan to ever see the ocean.  We are about to board the boat.  So one last quick goodbye from the Good Old USA.  I miss you all.  Look out Kaiser Bill, here comes hell! Jr.

“Hoboken, New Jersey.  Picture it.  Smoke stacks, steam ships, the Woolworth Building and the rest of the New York skyline.  Re-create it in your mind.  Build a world around your big brother,” Tommy said, “then put him in it.”

Millie was trying.  The world part was easier than the brother part.

“Keep reading.  Look where he is next.’

May 19, 1918

Little Brother,
                                                Dover Eng.

Boy o boy you should see Merry Old England.  This is the place for you, T.  It is so pretty here, prettier than anywhere in the Good Old USA.  The English Channel is wonderful, the air is so clear with no dust. 
Quite a nice place.  I keep seeing these airoplanes flying around an I cant keep my eyes off of them.  I think maybe you should join up and become a flyboy.  These guys make a buggy look like a snail, and they do loops and dips and all kinds of things.

I have to go now.  Im in Merry Old England, little brother, can you believe that? 
Your dopey big brother walking the same ground as King Arthur.  If I see Old Billy Shakespeare, Ill tell him you said hi—HAHA!

My Best to All, Jr.

Tommy was starting to get that light in his eye, that life in his step as he paced the mow floor talking. “But think about it,” he said.  “This is England in 1918.  War is the only thing in the world over there. 
An old and dreadful war.  They’re tired, weak, wounded, sick to death of the war.  Now here comes these Yanks, like Junior, pink-cheeked and ready for a fight.  Can’t you hear him talking to me?  It’s like he’s talking right to me.  Go on, from this point on, your big brother is fighting in a war.”

Little Brother, 
                      France, June 2, '18

From now on the censers are going to be "cutting" these letters up even more than they have been already. 

We are still in Northern France, and we are still drilling.  I have been re-asigned to an artillery unit because of my size.  They figure if I can eat like three men, I can carry shells like three men.  There right, I gess.  Anything to do my part, I gess.

We are marching now non-stop.  We pass thru towns that are in ruins, you wouldnt believe.  There are only old folk, mostly, left in these towns.  This was nice country, once.  Not anymore.  The fields are so full of bomb craters they look like the moon.  To eat we have bully-beef and hard tack, and to drink very little water.  I am wasting away, let me tell you.  Some of the littler guys feel sorry for me and give me some of there tins of beef, but I dont know if Ive ever been more hungry in all my life.  I
cant wait to sleep.  In the Army you learn how to sleep when you march or you dont sleep at all.  I cant wait to get to some real fighting.  This game of war is pretty boring so far and I am ready for some action.

Im glad you like that last letter I wrote.  I sure miss you guys.  Send more chocolate!   Hug our soldier for me.

                                                        Best to All, Jr.

It was coming to life in her head.  She had seen enough pictures of the war in the newspapers that she could build on them in her mind.  She could now see Junior in his uniform, marching, dying for food.  He hardly went two hours without eating.  She couldn’t imagine him going a day on a couple cans of corned beef.  No wonder he’d been so ready for a fight.

Little Brother,                                                        France, June 26, '18

We are marching to a place called ___ _______, which is a forest close to
_______ I think.  We might see some fighting there.  Us Do-boys will be fighting with the French, the Canadians, the English and the Australian troops.  Too much for the Hun, you can bet.  We are in range of the German guns now, and have seen some shelling.  It has not come down on us, but close to us.  What a sight. It is like one of the worst thunderstorms like we get in Kan., but the ground shakes the whole time. 

We are training with the French as we march, and let me tell you, these guys know there stuff.  They have been at it for 4 years now.  It is amazing that a guy can fight like this all that time and still smile and joke around.  Tho maybe a lot of there smiling has to do with the bottles of wine they carry in their packs.  One platoon has a mule that jingles with bottles as they tug it along with them. 

We slept in a barn last night, but that was not really sleep at all.  They gave us 4 hours to rest and all we did was fight off rats the whole time. Yes, the rats do fine here.  They have everything from man to mouse to get fat on.  I can barely stand the site of the piles of dead mules and horses.  They get blown to smithereens the same as anything else.  The jerrys aim there guns right at them.  No place for a horse person like you, little brother.

Tell Mother
war is a piece of cake, and Im doing OK.  As always, give our little soldier a big tight hug for me.  When I get home, your getting a big hug too, little brother, like it or not.  HAHA!

             
                                          Best to All, Jr.
               

He was changing.  He wasn’t the brave Yank anymore.  He was becoming scared, sad and angry.    It showed in his handwriting, the words themselves.

Little Brother,
                                          France, Aug '18

They moved me again.  Now when you write to me, send it to Co. A, 1st Army, A.E.F.  Some officer in
a infantry co. saw me gathering up some of the wounded boys that were on the battlefield, and he decided I didnt belong "shoving shells in the artilary units". Anyhow I found the fight but good now.  Weve been stuck here in ______ Forest which is a part of the _______ Forest and we have been stuck here for weeks.  If you ever wanted to see hell, well here it is.  We came into a trench outside the village of __ _______ and it was full of body parts, horse and man, and bloody clothing and bloody equipment.  It was my job—me Clem Heigh and some other boys—to clean it out.  No one should ever have to lay eyes on something like that. 

I got this good buddy from Tex. his name is Clem Heigh--some name huh—I dont know if I told you about him.  You say his name like 'hay.'  Well, it was last week and we havent had any water in three days and the jerrys havent been gassing and so me and him decide to go out to the shell holes and collect some fresh rain water for the boys.  It was nighttime and we thought it would be okay.  We fill up canteens and bottles and were starting back and that’s when the Hun opens up on us.  Let me tell you, I think Mother must
of been praying for me right at that moment, we get back to the trench and those German sons of _______ poked holes in our canteens and our uniforms, but not a scratch on us.  We share the water we got back with our boys and some French boys and it was like passing a wine bottle, let me tell you. 

Well, we got relieved by the 27th so we could get us some sleep. 
Cant wait till this war is over, little brother.  Hug our soldier for me. 

             
                                          Best to all, Jr.

Now it was all clear to her.  Something went click like an electrical switch and she could not only picture Junior, she was there with him.  Sometimes in her dreams the details of something came to life all around her, so realistic, so many thousands of little details, that it had to be real, just had to, but it wasn’t.  Her mind had invented it.  That’s how it was now:  she was in the war with Junior.

Now she would see something that would change Junior forever. 

Little Brother,
                                          France, Spt., '18

Tired, but I got a few minutes.  Something happened.  I lost a buddy in a bad way.  I wrote you a letter about it.  I havent sent it yet.  Maybe never will. Maybe I should never think about it again.  Were in the woods now, pushing the Hun back.  But we are losing men all the time.  Already were stepping over stacks of dead bodys. 
Even pulling our carts over them.  Tired, Going now.  Cant sleep but I have to try.                                                                                                  Jr.

“That’s it?  That was the last letter?”

Tommy didn’t answer.  Something had come over him.  He was there too, maybe.

“Tommy, aint there no more letters after that?  How the hell am I supposed to solve a mystery if there aint no more shit-blasted letters?”

“’
Aren’t’, ‘any’,
Millie.  Aren’t.  Any.  My God, sometimes you sound like Huckleberry Finn,” Tommy said, but he wasn’t cracking wise.  He was still in the middle of something darker than the hayloft of the barn.  “No,” he said finally.  “There were a few more.  There was a field card.  Sometimes a sergeant would walk up one way of a long trench handing out these field cards, then come back and pick them up on the way down.”

He showed her: 

“So that was it?” Millie asked, but she was not surprised or angry anymore; something about Junior just signing his name to them, and not doing anything else made her sad.

Tommy thought hard before he answered.  “Well, this is supposed to be a secret, Mil, but I’ll tell you.  Junior has one more letter he keeps hidden away.  I don’t have any idea what it says.  He won’t let me read that one.  He won’t let anybody read it.  He did let me figure out by asking him questions that it was something bad in it.”  Tommy shook his head.  “It must have been real bad.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because whatever it was, it’s what made
Junior what he is today.”

So Millie spent a few days finishing her story, solving her mystery.  She watched
Junior work.  He was like a mule.  Two mules.  He never said a word, except for the one, “H-y.”  He never complained.  It was like he was doing penance.  For what?  She had wondered.

Suddenly, three days after Tommy showed her
Junior’s letters, she woke up from a dream she couldn’t remember with a brother she could.  Junior was there as she knew him before he left.  The big quiet laugh, the hugs—those huge squeezes that hurt but you still never tried to get out of them—the drunken dancing he used to do in the barn, in his big old boots and a bottle of beer in his hand, the cussing he taught Millie just because it made Mother batty, and yes, the fights too.  The fist fights in town, the cussing with Pa in the fields, the deep shade of red his forehead would get when he got mad.  She remembered it all.  In that moment a mystery was solved.  A story could be told:  The Story of Junior Before the War. 

And that same moment she learned not how
to read, but why to read.