Love is a Wounded Soldier (26 page)

~~~

“Please? Please?” the animal at my feet
supplicated in English now. Please. With one word he asked me a thousand
favors. Please don’t shoot me. Please let me live to die another way. Please
allow me to bury my mother and father. Please let me see another sunrise.
Please let me kiss my wife again. Please give me a chance to be a better father
to my children. Please give me a chance to redeem myself. The power of life and
death was in my hands. I lowered my rifle and set it down on the ground.

“Sank you! Sank you!” he sobbed, as I knelt
gingerly and removed the leafy sticks he’d covered himself with. His stubbly
chin quivered uncontrollably. His mouth couldn’t decide whether to laugh or
cry, so it opened and closed like a fish’s.

“Sank you!” he hyperventilated.

“Forget it,” I told him gruffly.

“Sank you!” he grabbed my arm.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now calm yourself down
before I change my mind,” I sailed an empty threat down his auditory canal and
checked him for any weapons. I found a 9 mm Luger and slipped it into my
pocket. He didn’t protest. He lay still, taking deep breaths through his mouth,
as though resting after completing a grueling obstacle course. He had an open
wound on his right shoulder, and it appeared his right ankle was broken. The
wound on his shoulder was bleeding a fair bit, but it wasn’t life-threatening.

“Morphine?” I asked him, showing him the
Syrette.

“Ja,” he nodded his head vigorously.

“Danke,” he thanked me. I waited until the
morphine did its work and began gently cleaning his shoulder. Then I sprinkled
his wound with sulfa powder.

“Here, let me sit you up,” I told him, and
helped him sit up against a tree. He winced when his leg moved, but the
morphine took the edge off what would have otherwise been torturous pain.

“Water?” I asked him, pulling out my
canteen.

“Ja!” he replied, and he greedily gulped
down my remaining water supply. I tossed away the stubby remains of my Lucky
Strike and lit another one.

“Cigarette?” I asked him.

“Ja!” he smiled, as though he could hardly
believe his good fortune. He answered enthusiastically to everything I asked
him. If I would have asked him if he’d like one of my hand grenades for lunch,
I’m sure he would have responded with that exuberant “Ja!” He was high on being
alive. I lit another cigarette and handed it to him.

“Danke! Danke!” he gushed.

“Alright, stay here,” I told him
unnecessarily.

“I’m going to send some guys back to get
you, OK, and we’ll find you some medical help,” I told him. He blinked at me
blankly with a slight smile on his face and nodded. He obviously didn’t
understand a word I’d just said.

“Doctor, I’m getting you a doctor,” I told
him, crossing my index fingers to symbolize the Red Cross.

“Ja! Ja! Docta!” he beamed as the light
came on.

“OK, good then,” I picked up my rifle and
turned to go.

“Sank you! Gott bless!” he called out to my
retreating back.

“Yeah, you too,” I almost chuckled. For
some reason, I felt better than I had all day.
Gott bless. The
square-headed, baby-killing son of Satan believed in God, too! Who would have
thought that?

“We were about to send a search party for
you,” Johnny grumbled when I returned. I detected irritation in his voice.

“From now on, don’t go wandering off by
yourself. Please. Staff Sergeant.” He softened his order by tacking manners and
formality on the end as an afterthought. Had anyone but Johnny addressed me in
that manner, they would have received a sharp reprimand, but I knew my friend
hid genuine concern behind his rough speech.

“We found a stretcher, sir,” Jedidiah
informed me.

“Good,” I nodded. “I found three dead
Krauts,” I told the men, “and one wounded one to the south of them, right
around where you can see that dead tree sticking up above the hedgerow,” I
pointed to the approximate location I’d left the wounded German.

“Capriotti and Gunn, I want you two to take
this stretcher, go back there, find him, and bring him back to the aid station.
We’ll try to get Frankie over there without the stretcher, and meet you there.”

They picked up the stretcher and trudged
off. I looked down at Frankie’s maimed body, wondering where to grab onto him.
I could tell the men were thinking the same thing, just they were all looking
at me, waiting for me to tell them what to do.

“Don’t just stand there, grab on!” I said
finally, not wanting to look like I didn’t want to get my hands dirty.

Hankins, Johnson, and Johnny all stepped up
to help. Taking the lead, I took hold of his left arm and lifted. His body
didn’t lift, but his arm bent unnaturally between his elbow and shoulder. The
bone was shot off. I dropped it, and it flopped back limply, the lower three-quarters
of his arm cocked at a 90 degree angle from the upper quarter. I tried not to
look like I felt ill.

“Grab onto the uniform if you can,” I
instructed. We all grabbed fistfuls of khaki cloth and lifted. His arms dangled
lifelessly, and I tried to hold him away from my body to prevent the bloody
pendulum his arm had become from hitting my leg as I walked. He was a small
man, but even after I’d helped carry him 20 yards, my injured leg was giving me
stern reminders that it was far from being functional.

“Staff Sergeant, let me,” Rudd said,
noticing my obvious pain.

“Thank you,” I said, allowing him to take
it from there. I wiped the sweat from my brow and walked slowly behind the
macabre procession. I looked at little Frankie. Blood poured from the exit
holes in his back. All I could think of were the words Johnny had said
repeatedly just days before, down at Omaha Beach. “What a waste.”

“He’s dead,” I waved off a medic as we set
Frankie down at the aid station.

We were all tired and hungry, so while we
waited for Eddie and Francis to meet us, we rested outside beneath several
trees that looked like they’d been there as long as the house. We ate our
K-rations and smoked in silence. It had been another hard day. Strangely
enough, the one bright spot in my day had been sparing the life of my enemy. As
I slowly chewed my canned meat and biscuit, I thought about what kind of man he
was. I wondered if, after it was all over, he would someday be a guest at my
table. I could imagine us enjoying some of Ellen’s southern hospitality as the
two of us talked about what a damn shame the whole war had been. I wondered if
perhaps the only difference between us was the cut and color of our uniforms
and our mother tongue. I would have to find out, someday. I had to get his
name.

“Johnny, can I get a shot of your water?” I
asked, lowering my empty canteen and screwing the cap back on. Johnny tossed me
his, and I took several swigs.

“Thanks.” I handed it back and lapsed back
into deep thought.

“There come Eddie, Francis, and Jerry,”
Charlie pointed at the two men approaching with the stretcher between them. I
stood up, eager to catch the name of the soldier before they took him inside
for treatment. They set the stretcher abruptly down on the grass. I stared at
the too-still body.

“He looks . . .” I started.

“Dead,” Francis finished my sentence. His
face had a pained “don’t blame me” look on it.

“Jerry here told us he didn’t want any
shootin’,” Eddie grinned. “So I obliged him and scored another point for Betty
Bayonet.”

~~~

It lay cold in my hand. I felt the smooth
roundness of the barrel and traced my fingers around the edge of the trigger
guard. I picked it up by the grip. It warmed to my hand. It felt like it was
made for my hand. I could feel the quality of the Luger, even in the darkness
of a foxhole.

What were you thinking, sending Crazy
Eddie to pick up a wounded Kraut? What the hell were you thinking?

It was six hours since Eddie and Francis
had dropped a stretcher with a dead German soldier named Karl Heinz on it. I
knew his name, because I found a letter addressed to him on his body. Six
hours, and I still had nothing to say to Eddie. Oh, I’d wanted to say plenty of
things. I’d wanted to rip him a new one. But six hours later, I still hadn’t
found words that I wished I could go back in time and share with him.

Technically, Eddie hadn’t disobeyed any
orders. He had played by the rules of warfare. I suppose I could have tried to
explain a higher moral law to him, but I felt that I might have better success
explaining to a shark what it is to be human. There are certain things that
can’t be understood by explanation. Things that your human spirit tells you
that you need not attempt to intellectualize.

Who was Karl Heinz? I thought. What kind of
man was he? More importantly, what kind of man would he have been? Had he felt
betrayed by me, as Eddie coldly stabbed his chest with his bayonet? As his
newfound zest for life ran out of his body through the hole in his ribs, had he
thought of me as a Judas, or was I his last memory of decency and humanness?
Had I renewed his faith in humanity? Had I solidified his faith in a God of
mercy? Who was Karl Heinz? I would never know.

“Gott bless you, Karl,” I murmured to
myself, and slipped the pistol back into my pocket.

“Huh?” Johnny grunted from the other side
of the foxhole.

“Nothin’,” I said.

“Oh, thought you said something,” he said
in the darkness.

“Yeah, just mumbling to myself.”

“Humph.”

I repositioned my game leg carefully,
leaned back, and closed my eyes.

“Robert?”

“Yeah?”

“Why’d you let him live?” I rested my chin
on my chest as I thought.

“Well, Johnny, I guess I just couldn’t
think of a very good reason to kill him,” I finally replied.

“Humph.”

I thought my answer must have satisfied
him, because he fell silent again. I closed my eyes.

“Robert, I know why you didn’t kill him,”
Johnny spoke up again.

“You tell me, Johnny,” I said wearily. The
tip of his cigarette glowed brighter for a moment as he took a drag.

“Because the eye is the window to the soul.
It’s easy to blow the head off a faceless uniform when you’re five hundred
yards away, but when you stare into a man’s soul, you gotta be
hard
to
kill ’im. You gotta be fuckin’
insane
.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I answered sleepily.

Suddenly, his words soaked through my skull
and into my brain. Not “maybe,” it was true. It wasn’t natural to kill. We had
to be trained to kill, brought to insanity by degrees, and then placed into a
hostile situation where our only recourse to save our lives and the lives of
our brothers was to fight back in terror. To fail or show weakness in front of
your comrades was the ultimate disgrace. I knew that, because just a few days
before, in a bout of temporary insanity, I’d run my bayonet through a man’s
throat, for no other reason than to show my men that I was strong. I’d
sacrificed his life for respect. It was a thought so horrible I banished it
from my mind.

I closed my eyes a last time. I’d need some
rest before the insanity resumed in the morning.

~~~

Death was inescapable. It lurked in church
belfries in town, lay in wait in the country hedgerows, and loitered around the
edges of our foxholes, ready to make a call without knocking. Everywhere we
went its fetid stench greeted us. Dead cattle lay in the fields, bellies
bloated, all four feet pointed skyward. Dead American paratroopers swayed
gently by their harnesses from the tree branches. Flies buzzed around their
wounds and crawled into their ears and noses. The ground was littered with dead
Americans. Dead Germans. Dead tanks. Dead half-tracks. It seemed everything
around us was dead, or in the process of someone trying to kill it.

It was a grim reality, and as I sat down
one night to write a letter to Ellen, I struggled with how to describe the
horrendous events that now made up my life. I began writing them down in some
detail, but just reading what I’d written was ghastly, even for me, so I ripped
up my letter and wondered how I could write it in a way that wouldn’t sound so
terrible. There was no such way. There was no way to make the facts sound like I
was engaged in a friendly tussle with the enemy that should be no cause for
alarm. The last thing I wanted to do was cause Ellen to worry any more than she
already did, so I decided telling the truth would be no virtue if it caused my
bride distress.

I picked up my pen, and began writing
again. This time, it was a work of fiction, alloyed with just enough truth to
give it the strength to hold up.

~~~

June 10, 1944,
Normandy, France

Dear Darling,

Thank you for
your last letter. Every word I hear from you refreshes me like the spring rain.
I also appreciate that you continue to put some of your perfume on each letter.
Last night as I lay in my foxhole, I took your letters out of my breast pocket,
where I keep them. It was too dark to read them, but just drinking in the
familiar scent of them was heavenly. I felt connected to you across the miles,
and for a moment, as I lay there in the darkness, I almost believed you were
there. It will be a joyous day when I no longer have to make believe.

As you and the entire world most likely
know by now, we have successfully invaded France. This is a great leap forward,
and it’s something of a relief for us all, since we are done the arduous
business of training, which had sometimes seemed would stretch on for perpetuity.
Now each man feels it’s within his power to hasten the good ship Destiny toward
the certainty of victory, and inevitably, peace and home.

All things considered, I am healthy and
doing very well. We have plenty of good food to eat, and although our accommodations
tend to be decidedly makeshift, they are quite livable.

As for encounters with the enemy, they
are few and far between, and when they do occur, the Germans appear to have
little fight in them. Most of them surrender without incident. Casualties in my
company are almost unheard of. Other fellows have heard reports of terrible
fighting and casualties sustained by other units. On this I cannot comment, for
this has not been my experience where I’m at. Perhaps the fighting is more
intense in other sectors of the conflict, but my suspicion is that the news is
being sensationalized in order to sell papers. All I know is that being away
from you is far closer to being hell than anything else this war is putting me
through.

Have you planted much of a garden this
year? How has the weather been? Have you gotten a good amount of rain?

I’m glad to hear Mr. Matthews has
decided to continue renting the land. I’m sure you find the income most useful,
and it relieves me to hear you have no unfulfilled needs (except me, of
course!). Your well-being is of great concern to me, and it makes being away
much more bearable to know you are well.

Well, I must keep this short. There is
much to get busy doing if we are to whip these Germans and be on our way home.
I have great reason to believe that before too long, you and I will be
reunited. I long for that day, for I love you so.

Till we walk
hand in hand again,

Robbie

~~~

The days ran together into weeks as we
fought town to town, hedgerow to hedgerow. My leg slowly regained its
functionality, but though the wound healed, it retained a degree of stiffness
it never lost.

Each day began to feel the same. Each day
we fought battles that felt identical to the ones we’d fought the day before.
The only thing that changed was the faces we buried. Each day we buried another
friend we knew so well, but not nearly as long as we’d have liked to.

Replacements were plopped in to fill the
gaps. I felt sorry for them. It was hard to be accepted by a group of guys that
had trained together, fought in horrific battles together, saved each others’
lives a time or two, and together buried common pals. It took months to earn
the respect and friendship of the original core of the platoon, and
unfortunately, few of the replacements lasted long enough to prove themselves.
For whatever reason, it seemed the enemy weaponry could sniff out these
terrified greenhorns, and it was eerie how often a replacement would get picked
off beside an unscathed veteran.

Most men that had stayed alive for any
length of time seemed to carry something they believed brought them good luck.
Johnny carried the casing of the bullet he’d killed his first German with.
Charlie held a half-smoked, unlit cigarette in his mouth whenever there was the
possibility of a skirmish with the enemy, which was almost always. He had been
smoking it when the replacements on either side of him got killed in a slit
trench, but he had sustained not so much as a scratch. He held it in his mouth
even when he was smoking another cigarette. I filed each of Ellen’s letters in
my breast pocket together with her picture. They served more so to inspire me
to return safely to her as to ward off bad luck. Or so I told myself. Jedidiah
Hankins claimed he wasn’t superstitious, but he was never without the pocket-sized
Bible he carried over his heart. Each day we buried another man with his lucky
charm. We never considered that our own might fail us.

~~~

My head ached. It had ached for a night and
a day.

“Kill me already!” Johnny screamed, holding
his head in his hands as another shell came screeching in.

We were huddled in a slit trench where we’d
been since German artillery had begun pounding our position 24 hours earlier.
Our mandate was to take the French city of Saint-Lô, but it appeared the
Germans would require some persuasion.

We lay flat on the floor of the trench as
the shell landed nearby. It shook the earth so violently I could feel my guts
vibrate. The ringing in my ears became even louder. I thought my eardrums would
pop. We coughed as the yellow dirt from the trench roof sifted down through the
wooden slats that held it up. The grit stuck to our sweaty skin and irritated
our eyes. The stench of our own feces and urine permeated the trench. Time
ceased to exist as hours and minutes, but rather was measured in short periods
of unsettled silence in between the steady hail of deafening artillery. I knew
how Johnny felt. In certain moments, death felt like a welcome friend.

The next morning the shelling stopped. We
survivors raised our throbbing heads, scarcely believing our shell-shocked
ears. We staggered out of our holes like drunken moles, wiping the grime out of
our bloodshot eyes. When I came to the surface, I couldn’t believe the state of
the hilltop. When we’d sought refuge in trenches and foxholes, we’d been
surrounded by lush beauty. Now, it seemed we’d entered earth, lived two days in
underground hell, and emerged on the dark side of the moon. The relentless
shelling had cratered, pockmarked, and scarred the area, denuding it almost
entirely of vegetation. Skidding shells had plowed long, deep furrows in the
earth. It was a terrifying display of man’s ability to destroy his own habitat.

“Fuck!” was all a bleary-eyed Private Rudd
could say as he and Dick Johnson crawled out of their foxhole and surveyed the
ravaged landscape. There wasn’t much more to say. I stood on shaky legs for a
moment, hoping my head would clear, but to no avail.

“Split up and check for wounded,” I heard
my voice say, as though I was hearing myself from outside my body. Johnny,
Rudd, and Johnson fanned out north, east, and south, and I started out west.

Dazed, haggard men continued to cautiously
poke scruffy heads out of foxholes and clamber to the surface.

“You OK?” I asked Francis Capriotti. He was
lying stone-faced on the floor of his foxhole, staring skyward.

“Cappy?” He slowly shifted his gaze toward
me. He didn’t look at me, he looked through me. The thousand-yard stare.

“Yeah,” he said. The blazes that his eyes
had once been were only empty ash pits. The burning eagerness for life and the
fight had been replaced with an apathy more toxic than despair. Gone were the
visions of valor and a hero’s welcome. The romance of soldiering had been
trampled by the reality of battle. He was cracked.

The next hole had taken a direct hit.
Pieces of its occupants were scattered in and around it. It was impossible to
determine who they were by the remains, but I believed that two recent
replacements had sought refuge in that particular foxhole. I picked up parts of
limbs and larger pieces of flesh and bone around the edge and tossed them into
the hole. I wished I could remember their names.