Love is a Wounded Soldier (32 page)

We kept moving to keep warm. My eyes
entreated the eastern horizon to release the sun.

As the men warmed up, they began talking to
each other. Questions about Johnny surfaced again, so in subdued voices, Dick
and Donald told what they knew about what had happened to him. Quiet
exclamations of regret followed. There was a little discussion about it, and I
felt myself grow tense, ready to explode if I heard one negative word about
him. But nothing of that sort was said, and after a short time, the men fell
back into reflective silence.

“We’ll trade off again, and stop up there,”
I said, pointing with my rifle to a large tree that reigned over a small patch
of grass on the crest of a hill. The sun had finally risen, and I understood
why people had worshipped it in ancient times.

We set Johnny’s body down carefully on the
ground. Every man in the platoon had taken a turn carrying Johnny, but I hadn’t
traded off once. My bad leg was screaming at me, and though I’d switched sides
several times, I felt like I’d been hung by my arms for hours. Somehow, I felt
I owed it to him, as though I needed to pay penance for his tragic end.

“We’ll bury him here,” I said when we
reached the top and set our fallen comrade down on the ground.

I lit a cigarette and looked down the hill
at a village several miles away that was just beginning to rouse from its
slumber. Smoke exhaled lazily from the throats of a dozen chimneys as though
reluctant to leave the warmth of the fire that had created it. A church spire
towered above the other buildings as though raising its hand for God’s attention.
It was so peaceful, it was easy to forget we were fighting a war.

“Let’s dig,” I said, finding a spot far
enough from the base of the tree to avoid too much interference with roots.

I decided to bury him facing the sunrise.
The men were eager to pitch in, since not staying active meant standing with
your hands in your pockets and stamping your feet to remain warm. In no time at
all the grave was dug.

The soft white blanket Johnny’s body was
wrapped in struck a stark contrast to the blackness of the grave as we lowered
him to its cold, hard bottom. I stepped back to the head of the grave and
looked down. The men circled around the grave, staring somberly at the bundle
at the bottom of the hole.

My mind grasped for a prayer, a poem, some
prose. Words came, thoughts went, and still, I had nothing to say that
adequately expressed the magnitude of the loss and grief I felt. And so I stood
in silence as the men looked at me askance, waiting for me to say or do
something. They shifted their weight restlessly back and forth, their hands
thrust deep in their pockets.

Finally, after a silence that lasted
several minutes, I cleared my throat quietly.

“When you see a sunrise, please remember
who Johnny Snarr really was,” I said, in a low voice that would have escaped
being heard on a morning any less calm.

I picked up my shovel and tossed some dirt
onto the body. Other men followed suit and began closing the grave. I’d had to
bury a lot of men that had died terrible deaths, but never had I felt the way I
did then, shoveling shut the grave of a comrade and true friend. My breaths
were shallow, as though each scoop of dirt dropped into the hole was being
dropped on my chest. My head ached with tension.

“Oh, Shenandoah,” Leroy sang quietly.
“Shenandoah.” Johnny’s song.

“I long to hear you!” I quavered fervently.

“Away, you rollin’ river,” a handful of
lads raised their voices with ours.

“Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you!”
everyone sang.

I let the tears that had been standing in
reserve march down my cheeks. “Away, I am bound away—” I began, but my voice
lost its footing.

“Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter,” the
men continued singing.

As I unabashedly allowed the tears to flow
down my face, I felt the tension in my head release. My shovel clanked against
another, but my eyes saw nothing through the torrent of tears. Too often had I
kept a brave face for the sake of morale. Too long had barbarity and death been
all in a day’s work. Too many had been the tears I’d bottled and corked. It was
not a day to brush off tragedy. A great soldier and a great friend had died.
And that day, I honored him with mourning.

When the final clod was shoveled, and the
last tear dried with wrinkled sleeve, we marked his grave. Near the tree lay a
heap of stones that a farmer—and probably his father, and his father before
him—had collected from a nearby field, so we used some of them for that
purpose.

Then, some of us rolled stones off the pile
to use as seats, others leaned up against the broad trunk of the tree, and some
chose to stand as we ate our pilfered goods and smoked in silence. I had no
appetite, but took a few bites of cheese and wurst Dick offered me. Someone
circulated a bottle of brandy. The men were tired, and a gloomy mood seemed to
pervade us.

“Do you remember the time Johnny shined
Captain Ross’ boots?” Leroy asked suddenly.

I took my eyes off the piece of cheese in
my hand and looked up at him. We both smiled slightly. Dick let out a low
chuckle.

“He was one cheeky son of a gun!” Dick
shook his head.

My smile widened as I thought about it. I
looked around and saw more curious looks than smiles. Then it hit me that only
a handful of the lads there had been with us when we began training in Fort
Meade. Most of them didn’t know Johnny as I knew him. Their blank looks
prompted me to fill in the blanks.

“Well,” I began, “Johnny had a little, uh,
trouble, in basic, adjusting to life in the army.”

Dick and Leroy smiled and nodded as though
acknowledging a gross understatement. Most of the men stopped what they were
doing and looked my way.

“He didn’t like being pushed around, and so
he and Captain Ross, whom most of you never met, would bump heads on a regular
basis. Well, they were both as hard-headed as billy goats, and so Captain Ross
kind of had it in for Johnny.” I took one last drag from my cigarette and threw
it away.

“Anyway, one morning during inspection, old
Lizard Gizzard starts ripping Johnny a new one for the state of his boots.
Problem was, Johnny’s boots looked no better or worse than any of the rest of
ours.”

“It had just rained that night,” Leroy
filled in. “We’d all marched through mud and shit.”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Anyway,” I continued, “Captain Ross starts
riding Johnny about how shitty his boots look.”

“What in blazes made you decide to shine
your boots with shit, private?” Dick, who could never resist a Captain Ross
impression, cut in.

“‘I didn’t,’ Johnny says to him,” I
supplied, feeling a smile crack my face.

“Then why do your boots look like shit?”
Dick thundered as he stood now, mimicking the smug look the captain had worn
whenever he felt he’d scored some verbal points. I couldn’t wipe the grin off
my face.

“Yeah, yeah!” Leroy shook his finger in the
air excitedly. “And all the while, you could just tell the steam was building
up! I remember thinking ‘Johnny’s going to blow like a boiler, and Captain will
have the skin melted right off him!’” Several of us old-timers laughed, and
some of the newer fellows’ faces began to toy around with the idea of smiling.

“So Johnny goes, ‘Well, I’m no fucking
detective, but maybe it’s because I’ve been walking through shit all morning,
sir,’” I continued the story, smiling widely as I visualized the scene in my
mind.

“No, no,” Leroy interrupted, “I don’t think
Johnny said ‘sir’ at the end there!”

“Oh, no?” I laughed.

“No,” he cackled, “No, because I remember
cringing when Johnny said that to him, and then when he didn’t say ‘sir,’ I
thought, ‘Oh shit, someone’s going to die!’”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Dick agreed,
“because right after that, old Lizard Gizzard says ‘That’s how you address an
officer, numbnuts?’”

“Right,” I said. “So, the Captain tells
Johnny to shine his boots. Says he can use the practice. So Johnny gets down
and starts shining Lizard Gizzard’s boots, just using a dry hanky.”

“And madder than a hornet!” Leroy interjected.

“Oh, yeah. I thought Johnny was going to
wrap that hanky around the captain’s ankle and set him down on his ass,” I
nodded, feeling the mirth bubble up inside me.

“And then the captain goes, ‘You’re going
to need a little spit to get the shine I’m looking for!’” Dick parroted in the
captain’s nasal Yankee accent.

“So Johnny was spittin’ and spittin’. His
mouth must have been as dry as the prohibition,” I recalled, my mouth now fixed
in a permanent grin.

“I’ll bet he didn’t piss for a week!” Leroy
speculated, and we took a hearty laugh before I continued the story.

“So anyway, Johnny went over those boots
about three times. There wasn’t a spot on them, so he figures he’s done, and
stands up. Which of course, pisses off Lizard Gizzard.” I looked at Dick to
supply the Captain Ross impression.

“Did I tell you that you were finished? Get
down and finish the job!” Dick shouted, getting extra marks for realism by
making the veins pop out on his face. Leroy hooted and clapped his hands as he
anticipated the story’s ending.

“Yeah, I want them shiny like fuckin’
mirrors. I want to be able to see the bottom of my pecker when you’re done,”
Dick sneered, looking down disdainfully at his feet with his arms crossed.

Leroy’s glee was contagious, and I had to
stifle a fit of laughter to deliver the punch line.

“So—so Johnny says, real calm-like, like he
always did, ‘Well, captain, I can shine them into mirrors, but it’d take a
goddamn magician to turn ’em into microscopes!’”

Leroy was already wiping tears from his eyes
by this point, Dick was bent over in hysterics, and the laughter I’d dammed up
rolled down my cheeks before becoming lost in my beard. I saw the scene so
vividly in my mind, and laughed even harder.

We were just beginning to settle down, when
Dick gasped, “Any—anyone else need a shine?”

“Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” Leroy sobbed, and
once again we laughed until our bones turned to jelly.

Suddenly, my emotional pendulum swung, and
the tears I laughed were ones borne of sorrow, as I thought of all the good
times I’d had with Johnny. Good times that really hadn’t seemed like good times
until that particular moment. And so I laughed even harder, because I was just
too sad to cry.

Many of the lads patronized us with bemused
smiles, not really understanding what we found so funny. Others allowed a
tolerating chuckle one affords a grandfather who recounts a story that he finds
so much more entertaining than everyone else.

As our laughter subsided, I dug out a hanky
and wiped the tears of laughter and sadness that mingled on my cheeks. Dick
blew his nose loudly. “He was a hell of a good man, Sergeant,” he assured me as
the emotional roller coaster I was on entered the long, dark tunnel of
melancholy.

“Sure was,” Leroy agreed.

I nodded my head thoughtfully, my eyes
fixed on the hill of soil that covered Johnny’s grave. A slight breeze laid an
icy hand on the back of my neck. I shivered.

“Would you like some brandy, Sergeant?” a
quiet voice guided my mind back from the land of the dead. I looked up to see
Private Haney offering me the brown bottle.

“I’d love some,” I said.

Table of Contents

ELEVEN

HOME!

Guilt. It became my
companion. Not a companion I desired, but a companion I felt I deserved. I felt
guilty that I’d allowed Johnny to remain in action despite the obvious signs
that his mind was worn out. Remorse consumed me when I thought about how low
he’d been brought. Regret wracked my mind when I thought about the little girl
he’d hurt. It wasn’t his fault. I had raped that girl. I had killed Johnny. I
should be dead. But I wasn’t, and so I was left carrying a burden of guilt,
paying for a dead man’s sins.

By the end of March, 1945, we could feel
the German Reich begin to cave in on itself. Hope was no longer merely a mirage
shimmering on the horizon. Men began to allow themselves to dream once again of
home and a life after war.

Even I had moments where hope and optimism
were able to cool the guilt and grief that afflicted my mind like a raging
fever. But those moments were brief, because no sooner would I allow myself to
think of home, and peace, and Ellen, that I’d be reminded that if I reached the
light at the top of the well, I would have done it standing on the bodies of
Johnny and a thousand other men. And it was that thought that made my guilt
inescapable.

~~~

“Looks like the war is over for you,
Sergeant,” a cheery voice shouted above the sound of the wind and a diesel
engine. I looked up at a strange face through one eye, wincing as the vehicle I
was riding in hit a bump. It seemed I hurt everywhere.