Dog Tags (9 page)

When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business; but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken. Benny was granted that much. In September of 1950, when Joseph was four months old and Carol had someone else to love, the government of the United States, which had paid for much of Doctor Beer's medical education, sent him the bill. He was impressed into service—an emergency, they assured him—and was sent to Korea, where a war had been agreed upon.

Pee-joe Die-foo

5

The bronchial truck ran a fever and died, Beer's luck, at the lip of a long downhill sweep, died with a clank and a rattle and a last obscene poop. Swede let her run down the hill, there was a building, shelter and maybe water. Closer we saw how big it was, how solid, and I worried about the enemy. By now no one knew for sure who the enemy was. Ewald steered our dead dinosaur into a courtyard; we tumbled out and inspected the building, an inn it was or a roadhouse, disused and silent, cavernous. Outside again we poked at the radio with cold fingers. Squeals. A voice, officious, crackled through static. I was staring at brown mountains, a bloated gray sky, skeletons of endless forest; my breath steamed and I was sure there would be snow and I felt like a damn fool saying “Blue two, Beer on.”

Blue two did not know who Beer was.

“Your doctor,” I said. “Your friendly neighborhood gynecologist. I need another truck.”

Blue two complained.
He
complained. So I apologized. Blue two meditated that. Blue two asked where I was, and I gave coordinates. I heard no gunfire. I described the building.

Blue two said that all of them might be falling back, and perhaps I should set up where I was. That was agreeable. “There's another doctor on the way,” I told him. “On the main drag there. Noonan. No. N for Nan. Send him here if you fall back. Also transport. Trucks, for the wounded. Could they cut us off to the south?”

Blue two said, “Yes.” Blue two went on at length, as if it was important to explain this defeat to Lieutenant Beer. I truly expected to live only a short while, and was bored by these details.

“Blue two out,” Blue two said finally.

“Bye bye,” I said.

“How bad is it?” Ewald wanted to know.

“Very bad. Even the good parts are bad. Lots of Chinese, they think. Anyway, this is home. Let's unload.”

“Home,” Ewald repeated, and moved to the tailgate. Ewald was short, fat, yellow-haired, a buttery boy of twenty-one, and it is my fault as much as any man's that he is dead. I remembered being twenty-one and wanting desperately to be twenty-two. Now I was twenty-six and wanted desperately to be twenty-two. The afternoon air was crisp and still; no aircraft streaked the opal silence, no gunfire. I looked about me, great distances, far across the barren mountains. I saw patches of snow. I stared to the north, suddenly breathless, alien. I was fifty miles from Manchuria.

Two fireplaces. A well out behind, bucket and windlass, and the water tasted good, cold and sweet. We opened the ponderous drafts and built fires, and Ewald made coffee. I lay on a blanket and smoked a cigarette. This was not a war for cigar smokers.

Ewald brought me coffee and said, “What's so funny?”

“Nothing. Thinking of my little boy. Soldiers in far-off places always supposed to think of their little boy. No way to fight a war.”

“Not much war right now.”

“Don't knock it. You realize if I was a banker or a broker or some god damn yachtsman I wouldn't even be here?”

“You talk like a three-year man.” Ewald had a slow, bright, round smile as on some blue-eyed boy doll, eyelids flipping open, fat arms.

“I am a three-year man. Almost. I got ribbons. I'm five years older and nothing's changed.”

“You'll be too old for the next one,” Ewald said.

“I'm too old for this one,” I said.

“Quiet out there,” Ewald said.

“That plane scared hell out of me.”

“It was ours anyway.”

“They're all ours.”

“Not all,” Ewald said. “We knocked one of theirs down a while ago. Jet against jet. First time in history. It was on the bulletin board.”

“Another milestone for the human race. I wish I knew what it was all about. I get the feeling we're not even in Korea. Chile, or Siberia. And we sit here with a dandy little clinic, and a dead truck, and several dollars' worth of equipment, snake oil and rectal sandpaper and such, and the god damn phone doesn't even ring.” I must have smiled about then, sourly.

“You missed the worst,” Ewald said. “They shot prisoners.”

“We will too.”

“I don't believe that.”

“Believe it.” I felt harsh, remote, old. The first surprise in that war: everybody was so young. “I've seen red-blooded American boys shoot down German prisoners, white men, blue eyes, blond hair. Gooks are nothing. Cockroaches.”

“They started it,” Ewald said sullenly.

“Right,” I said.

Ewald made peace: “I hear there's tigers in this country.”

“I heard that too. And snow leopards. We got a weapon in here?”

Ewald shook his head. “Against the rules.”

“Right,” I said.

Ewald's father had farmed until the big war and then opened a liquor store in Minneapolis. Ewald's mother was a good cook and missed the farm. She hated the city. Nothing tasted right. Ewald's father was a rural agnostic but Ewald himself was inclined to believe. Ewald's mother had had her gall bladder removed. Ewald's father suffered a recurrent stricture; he required the old man's operation but kept putting it off. Ewald had two sisters, both younger, one of them engaged to a water-softening expert who was also a qualified surveyor, and a Catholic, which distressed the parents on both sides. Ewald hoped to marry soon. It must be great to sleep with a woman every night.

“Right,” I said.

The radiophone crackled. “Beer on.”

“We're falling back all right,” Blue two said. “Noonan's dead. Mortars.”

“We're ready,” I said.

“See you soon,” Blue two said. We were both wrong.

We began badly but soon had no time for omens and auguries. A jeep skidded into the courtyard, the driver shouting, and Ewald was there with a stretcher and an unconscious soldier was on the table in seconds and I was cutting his uniform away. It was a single shot in the abdomen. “Aaach,” I said, knowing, and felt the faint, fluttery pulse, washed the belly with one quick motion, a little excited now, a real patient, echoes and memories of a hundred classrooms and clinics, but the man was dead before the dressing touched him. The driver pushed in with another case, this one walking, or stumbling, bandages caked brown on an arm that had to come off. They toted the corpse into a corner and shot number two full of morphine and I went to work; trimmed the wound, pumped a little plasma into him. Ewald tagged him, and he was ready: “Take him,” I said. “Where?” the driver asked, another boy—God Almighty, how young they were! “Anju,” I said. “Just run south. Take that body too.”

“Body.” The boy shook his head.

“You've got room. We haven't. Or leave him for the crows,” and there was hubbub outside, and Ewald ran to the door. “Jesus,” he said. There was plenty of noise now, jets, and farther off crumps and rattles. “Jesus,” Ewald said. I was afraid, cold, but again there was no time. Men staggered in; men were carried in. “Christ, he's all gray.” A raw red hole in him, hipbone to kidney, blood vessels; more plasma, while I swabbed and packed. “Transport. What've we got out there?” “Two trucks.” “Plenty of room.” “For now.” “Any officers?” “Not conscious.” “Call home,” I said. “Tell them we're busy and need wheels. Or choppers. Tag this man.”

Next on the table a Negro. That was another difference, Negro soldiers, a surprise. Otherwise the world seemed much the same. The language was as foul, and before long I would regain my former virtuosity. Perhaps not. I felt forty. Perhaps as we aged we spoke less, reserving grand obscenities for true crises. The choppers were a difference too, but there were not many, not enough. “And find out what's happened to the chain of evacuation. Are we number one or what?” I remembered a phrase: “quickly to restore to duty those suffering from minor ailments.” No minor ailments today. Chest. Good Christ, what can I do about a chest? I staunched, cleaned, packed, a mechanic. My God, I'm all alone. Ewald with the syrette. Oh Christ, the femoral artery too. Hunter's canal wide open. Barges, tugboats. My gloves slipped through blood, tripped and groped through small masses of jelly. “He's dead,” Ewald said. “God yes,” I said. Men lugged it away. It was replaced. “Good,” I said. “Broken femur.” “He's conscious.” “Knock him out.” “They'll send trucks,” Ewald said. “A bunch coming down. Choppers if they can. The mobile hospitals are on the run too, so we're just about number one.”

“Call back,” I said. “Tell them we're it and we need everything. Doctors, medics, plasma, dressings, the works. Lamps, even. All right, that splint now. Keep these men warm.” No one listened; no matter. I worked, I muttered; iron-headed generals killing their own men, too good to think about a retreat. Chinese won't dare! There. You're all right, mister. You'll live to fight again. Move him. Next. A corporal would have done better. Corporals
always
think about a retreat. I heard motors, horns, shouts. Corporal Beer wondered if we would all be overrun, dead by dawn; Doctor Beer worked. Men crowded into the room, and icy breezes froze my sweat and I hollered, “Shut the door.” The line was longer. “Ewald: Get some of these live ones to work. Keep the bad ones warm and comfortable. No water. The others can clean up some of this shit. Find me a live officer.” Holy Jesus Christ, a nose and an eye. The room tilted and I took hold of the table. After some blinking and deep breathing I was well again. “Easy, fella, you'll live.” Time. An hour perhaps, seemed like seconds.

“Sir.”

“What do you want?”

“Lieutenant Hovey. What can I do?”

“Take charge,” I told him. “Everything not medical is yours. Organize evacuation. Steal all the rations you can, and medical supplies, sulfa, syrettes, stuff we'll need here, before you send men out. Don't let anybody run off with an empty vehicle. Nothing goes south without a wounded man. That's orders. Anybody argues, shoot him. Get somebody to supervise loading, somebody else unloading. Clear the dead bodies outside.”

“Yessir,” Hovey said, greenish.

“How many healthy men out there?”

“About thirty.”

“Thirty!” I straightened up, stretched. “A real retreat?”

“Looks like it.”

“Damn. Get on the radio. Find out how bad it is.”

“Yessir. Sounds like a chopper coming in.”

“Good. Next! Next, for God's sake! Get out there and have them clear a pad. Ewald! Ewald, where the hell are you?”

He pushed through the crowd. “Yessir.”

“Tag the worst ones for the chopper. Make up a detail and move them carefully.”

“Lieutenant,” Ewald said.

His eyes were hard, ice-blue and mock-old in the round young face. He was acting. He had seen many exciting war movies.

“Some of these bad ones,” he said. “Some of them—well, some of them going to die pretty quick. Should we maybe—”

“No,” I said. “Tag the worst ones for the chopper.”

“Yessir.”

“Hovey,” I said. But Hovey was gone. “You. Sergeant.”

“Yessir.” Black, frozen.

“Anybody not hurt or working stays outside. They can build a fire, eat, anything, but outside.”

“It's snowing.”

“Tough. Damn. Can they use choppers in snow?”

“I don't know. Never saw snow before.”

The innocence of it. “Clear this room anyway. It's a hospital, not a hotel.”

“Yessir.”

I stared down at a liver, and experienced the beginnings of a vast arctic horror. Don't cry.

By nightfall my arms were weary. I worked. I made and lost acquaintances. Hovey was gone, replaced by a captain named Wyatt. Sergeants assumed responsibilities and shortly moved out, omitting farewells and leaving confusion behind. With darkness the firing diminished. Trade remained brisk. I had not understood how truly random nature could be. Bullets flew about like atoms and hit anybody anywhere. I had idiotically imagined a war in which soldiers were politely shot in the shoulder or the fleshy part of the leg. Or cleanly, painlessly, expired from a single clean and painless wound won in a noble action. The triumph of myth over experience. I knew better but my mind had balked. It was still balking but without conviction, mainly because I was repairing arms, legs, bellies, necks, heads, hands and feet, white bone, red meat, slippery veins and slippery arteries, some of the meat nicely marbled. I must remember to tell Pinsky; I was carving a brisket, well marbled. I neatened up: removed a pair of mashed testicles and looked for further damage; none, it was a clean shot, the coup du roi, a hundred points and a teddy bear, nothing touched but the scrotum and that gone forever. Perhaps it had been a double. Over and under or left and right? Into a bucket. Future Einsteins, Kallikaks. Better off dead. That was wrong, they would say that was wrong but I could oppose a vigorous argument. It would bear thinking about. Instead, or also, I thought of Carol, and was immobilized by a flaming, inexplicable burst of pure rage; then for an instant stupefied. That too would bear thinking about. “That fire outside,” Wyatt said. “It's a target.”

“Any planes up?”

“No.”

“Artillery?”

“Damn little. But if they take a big enough hill. Or come close enough for mortars.”

“You watch,” I told him. “Some general's going to get a big fat gold medal. Good news, they'll say. An exemplary retreat. Christ, Wyatt, I just got here. I haven't even talked to a Korean yet.”