Love is a Wounded Soldier (30 page)

“Put it away!” I pleaded, my voice husky. I
steeled myself for the shot I hoped I wouldn’t hear.

Bang!

My ears rang. My heart raced. I heard bits
of stone and mortar trickle onto the basement floor. And a nervous giggle.

“Oops!” a quiet voice said sheepishly.

“Damn you son of a bitch!” I exploded in
relief. A sob tripped over a laugh and escaped my mouth as a cough. “I—I,” I
blustered, not knowing whether to fillet him alive or laugh. “Aw, shit!” I
laughed uncontrollably through tears. “I oughta have you court-martialed!”

I could hear Johnny laughing and sniffling
over on his heap. “Whew!” Johnny caught his breath. “This war is gonna be the
end of me.”

“Maybe,” I said, seriously now. “Maybe
it’ll be the end of us all.”

I settled back down in my straw heap and
tried to calm my mind. I knew what Johnny felt. Without a doubt, many GIs,
after a day of seeing old friends blown to shreds, had sat in a foxhole at
night, bit down on cold metal, and teased the trigger. I had. Bit by bit, we
were all losing our sanity. I just hoped the war ended before mine ran out. And
as much as I hated to, I decided that maybe I should send Johnny home before
his did, too.

“If you want, you can go home tomorrow,” I
said. “I’ll see to it that there’s no disciplinary action.”

“No!” came the swift response. “If I go
home alive, I go home with my head held high,” he stated emphatically. A man’s
pride is a holy thing to trample.

“Well, if you want to, you just say the
word,” I conceded.

“Uh-huh,” he said, but he sounded distrait,
and our conversation ended.

“Oh, Shenandoah,” I heard him sing to
himself. “Hmm-hmm hmm-hmm-hmm.”

~~~

The stiff resistance we’d faced when we’d
entered Germany began to weaken. The emaciated skeleton the German army had
become was beginning to falter beneath the weight of the Allied forces.

In February we participated in a successful
offensive across the Cologne Plain. Though enemy opposition was muted and
casualties were limited, several events occurred during this time that, at
least for me, made them the most tragic days of the war.

~~~

“I need to get wounded,” Johnny told me
confidentially.

“What?” I turned my head, disbelieving my
ears.

“I need to get wounded,” he repeated
seriously.

We had just finished capturing another
little German village without firing a shot and were walking on toward the next
one just a mile down the road. The dominoes were falling, and we could begin
feeling the winds of momentum at our backs.

I laughed. “Why get wounded now, when
things are getting easy? You’re the only D-Day veteran in the platoon that
hasn’t gotten hit,” I chided.

“That’s the whole problem,” he told me with
the wide-eyed earnestness of a child. “Everyone but me has been hit at least
once.” He studied me to see if I caught his drift. “Robert,” he lowered his
voice, “once I catch it . . . it’s gonna be
bad
.”

It was common for soldiers to think that way.
Many men seemed to believe remaining unwounded was like a poison in the blood;
without occasional bloodletting, the toxic buildup would kill them. To many,
getting wounded was the surest inoculation for death.

“So what, do you want me to shoot you in
the leg or something?” I asked lightly.

“I don’t know,” he replied thoughtfully.
“Maybe.” The look on his face betrayed his serious consideration of that
option.

“Don’t be stupid,” I told him. “Not now. I
can see the light at the top of the well. We’ll be home before you know it.” I
gave him a playful slap on the shoulder.

“Now, stop your moping and have a
cigarette,” I handed him a Lucky Strike.

He didn’t mention it again. But the droop
of his countenance betrayed the weight that hung heavy on his mind. We
continued walking in silence. Johnny spoke again, but I didn’t get the feeling
he was talking to me. It felt more like I was eavesdropping on his thoughts.

“I remember when Maggie and I were young.
Her pa thought she was too young to court, so we always met in secret, down by
the creek, under a big ol’ maple tree.”

I waited for him to continue the story, but
he said no more. He walked along in his own world, a little smile playing on
his lips. I realized he had just told me a story. A beautiful story. A precious
memory that was dear to his heart and needed no further explanation.

~~~

A thin wind blew through our threadbare
pant legs on a soggy afternoon. The sun attempted to slip a few rays through
the clouds that had blanketed the sky for days.

We were wet, cold, hungry, and eager to dry
off and eat some hot food as we walked toward a large two-story farmhouse we
hoped would offer the food and shelter we sought. A farmhouse was usually a
reliable source of bread, cheese, wine, eggs, and when desired, fresh meat, so
it was with some keenness I led the men through the gate and up the lane.

Today, however, we weren’t the first
scavengers on the carcass. Small arms fire spattered at us from an upstairs
window.

“To the wall!” I yelled as I returned fire.
I walked backward, firing all the while, hoping to keep the shooter down until
the men had retreated behind the stone wall that ran around the perimeter of
the yard. When my back touched the cold, wet stone, I threw myself over,
landing with a thump on Dick’s legs.

“Ow!” he grimaced.

“Is everyone alright?” I asked. The men
nodded.

“Good!” I said, and picked up a twig to
draw up a plan of attack in the mud.

“No!” Johnny shouted, jumping wildly to his
feet. A bullet whined off the top of the wall, spraying us with fragments. He
looked around his feet, panic in his eyes, and leapt back over the wall.

“Johnny, get back!” I yelled, peering over
the wall. In the dissipating light I could see two muzzle flashes from the top
of the old farmhouse.

Johnny zigzagged frantically back and forth
like an excited beagle hot on a rabbit scent, oblivious to the bullets that
splattered in the slop around him. I began returning fire, and the other men
rested their weapons on top of the wall and opened fire as well.

“Keep firing!” I ordered, as we cowed the
two would-be assassins with a barrage of lead.

“Johnny!” I screamed at him. He fell to his
hands and knees and I thought he was hit, but he began clawing through the
slush and mud. He picked something up and raised it triumphantly over his head
as he charged 50 yards back toward the wall. His lucky shell had been lost and
was found. Johnny flopped over the wall headfirst, doing a somersault and
landing on his back.

We ducked back behind the wall. I stared at
Johnny dumbly as he held the dirty casing up between his fingers. He turned it
upside down and tapped the end, letting the water and mud drip out of it. He
wiped it with his sleeve, and once the mud was gone, he polished it, almost
caressed it, with a hanky. His lips moved faintly as though he was whispering
tenderly to a lover. Private Haney stared incredulously at him. Dick and Leroy,
the veterans of D-Day, just averted their eyes. They had watched this scene
before. All that changed was times, and players, and settings.

“Robert?” Johnny said, not taking his eyes
off the piece of brass in his hands.

“Yes?” I replied hesitantly. He stroked the
casing with the tips of his thumb and fingers.

“When I die, promise me you’ll give this to
Maggie,” he said. His voice was flat and lifeless.

My mind quickly searched for a rebuttal to
his assumption that he would die. I prepared to deliver one of my stand-by pep
talks I kept handy for situations like that. The words came, but the conviction
to roll them off the tip of my tongue did not. Johnny walked a treacherous road
now, a path so dark words had no power to fortify the heart and nourish the
spirit. And so I sat, speechless.

Still awaiting my response, he turned his
head and looked at me with empty eyes. I gave a nod of agreement. I peered into
his eyes, those portals to the soul, and almost cried out. The Johnny I had
known was gone.

As the light fled before darkness, we moved
quickly to remove whatever threat still remained in the house. Fortunately for
us, fate dealt us a lucky hand, and the two shooters in the second-story
windows had fallen victim in our little skirmish. A third soldier attempted to
escape out the back door, but was cut down quickly by my men.

After posting two men at both the front and
the back doors, I cautiously entered the front door and followed my M1 into the
kitchen. I held up my hand to signal my men to stop. I motioned for two men to
go upstairs, and Dick and I split up and began searching the main floor for
stragglers.

“Nein, schiess nicht!” I heard a male voice
shout excitedly in German.

Running back to the kitchen, I saw Dick
standing there with his barrel pointed down into the cellar. I peered down into
the dimness, and in the light of a candle he held, could make out the
fear-stricken faces of a stout German farmer, his middle-aged wife, and their
11 or 12-year-old daughter.

“Wir sind nicht Nazis!” the woman assured
us emphatically.

“Of course not,” Dick said sarcastically.
Everyone we met claimed they weren’t Nazi supporters. It was uncanny, no matter
where we went, we were told the neighborhood Nazi had just skipped town but
moments before we showed up. After encountering such a dearth of Nazi
supporters, Leroy once mused it was a wonder how Hitler had been able to
conquer most of Europe with only a handful of followers.

“Come,” I motioned to the cowering trio
with my hand, and they hesitantly climbed out of the cellar. Dick relieved the
trembling farmer of the candle and went down into the cellar, emerging with a
loaf of bread in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other. I heard the
carefree clomp of boots on the stairway, and laughter and chatter, indicating
to me that the upstairs was through being searched.

“Go tell Lowe and Haney they can come
inside,” I told Dick. He nodded, took a big bite from the end of the loaf, had
a swig of brandy, and set them both down on the table.

“Party time!” Leroy hollered, seeing the
bottle of brandy on the kitchen table. He sat down at the end of the table and
took a hearty drink. He set down the bottle heavily, wiped the back of his
mouth with his sleeve, looked at the German frau, and roared, “Where’s my
supper, old woman!” He slurred as though he was drunk.

For one brief moment, I felt like I was
eight years old, peering through the crack in my bedroom door, watching Moses
throw a drunken fit at the kitchen table. Raucous laughter snapped me back to
the present situation.

“Don’t just stand there, bitch!” he
continued. Most of the men encouraged his clownish antics with laughter. I
forced a thin smile.

“OK, enough, Leroy,” I said, seeing the
fearful look on the housewife’s face.

“Here Sarge, have the last of the brandy!”
Malone offered festively.

“No, thanks,” I declined, “go ahead.”

“Don’t mind if I do!” he replied, and
eagerly guzzled down the last few mouthfuls.

“Hey, I hardly got a drop!” Private Bertram
Lowe complained.

“Don’t worry, there’s four more bottles in
the cellar,” Dick assured him.

“Whoo-hoo!” he whooped, and made a beeline
for the cellar.

“Private Lowe!” I said sharply above the
rising din. He fairly skidded to a stop.

“Yes, Sergeant Mattox?” he asked, almost
timidly, as though he feared reprimand.

“One bottle of brandy will do for now,” I
said.

“OK, sir,” he said, taking a few steps
before stopping slowly and turning. “Um, Sergeant, did you mean I should only
get one more bottle, or were you referring to the bottle we already drank?” he
asked hesitantly.

I smiled. “The one you already drank,
Bert.”

“Oh.”

“Aww!” a chorus of voices expressed their
dismay.

“I said for now, boys. If I’m feeling
generous I may allow another for nightcap,” I said, trying to placate their
disappointment. I was highly averse to the idea of having my men and their
weapons loaded at the same time.

Dick and I, both being farm boys, went
outside and used our trench knives to slaughter several chickens for supper.
The frau and her daughter were more than willing to cook supper for us. We were
beginning to find that the role of conqueror carried with it the benefit of
being able to easily make the conquered capitulate to our demands.

While supper was being cooked, we stood by
the fire to dry out our uniforms, and listened to Bert lament unceasingly about
how he’d been cheated out of his share of the brandy.

“I could really use a good, strong glass of
brandy right now,” he’d sigh disappointedly. He was barely more than a child,
and it showed.

I gave the farmer a package of cigarettes,
which he thanked me profusely for, and his daughter’s eyes lit up when she
shyly accepted some chocolate from Private Haney.