Easy Company Soldier (26 page)

“Sergeant,” he said. “I salute you.” And did so.

He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't place him. I just
nodded a thanks, feeling a bit embarrassed. He got off on the next floor.

“You must be something special,” said the woman next to me. “I ride the elevator with him every day and he's never removed his hat for anyone.”

“Who in the hel—uh, who is he?” I asked.

“That is the premier tenor of the New York Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Lauritz Melchior.”

Nobody asked who I was, which is just as well. After being saluted by one of the finest voices in the world, my buttons were about to pop. Only later would I learn why seeing my 101st Airborne patch had meant so much to him. I'd forgotten: Melchior was Danish. The Germans had occupied his homeland for five years.

Incidents like that made a guy feel good. I remember another one involving another famous person, General Patton. The previous July, two months after V-E Day, along with some other Easy Company guys, I was on a three-day pass and wound up in the “U” section of one of Hitler's stadiums in a city named Worms. In the morning, the head of the facility came to me, the ranking noncom, and asked us to come salute Patton, who was coming by for an inspection. At the appointed hour, we heard sirens. Motorcycles led Pat-ton's staff car in, flags flying. His car stopped. I called our group to attention.

Patton looked us over and said something about the 101st Airborne Division I'll never forget: “If I had two divisions of you bastards, I would have had the Germans blowing straws up their asses by Thanksgiving and you would have been home by Christmas.”

Maybe so. Instead, we'd fought nearly six more months of war, which, in retrospect, had soured Bernice on any future
we might have. She had a career to launch. I had a war to fight. The two proved to be giant obstacles. In New York that day, I kissed her good-bye—she couldn't believe that
the
Lauritz Melchior had paid me such respect—with the understanding that I'd be back. But I think we both wondered if that would really happen.

Airlines were booked for weeks. Soldiers were trying to get home. It was Christmastime. I took a train. In Portland, I was met at the station by my aunts and uncles and cousins. A cousin, Hugh, ran at me full tilt, eyes full of tears, catching me by surprise.

“I thought you'd never get home, Donnie!” he said, then wrapped me in a bear hug.

The reception at home was warm with my mother and sister, but, as usual, awkward with my father. Not quite like that famous
Saturday Evening Post
cover where everybody stops what they're doing to notice a soldier's return. My father didn't have any emotions anymore that amounted to a hill of beans. He shook my hand as if he hardly knew me.

A light rain was falling. I grabbed an umbrella and went to see Gram's grave in the Ocean View Cemetery. Looking at the two headstones next to hers, Gerald's and Bob's, I couldn't help thinking she was finally back with the two boys she'd lost to war. I stood there in that cemetery with all sorts of mixed feelings, remembering the words of my grandmother:
If anything happens to you, Donnie Malarkey, it'll be the end of me.
She'd gone to bed on D-day and never gotten up. A wonderful woman, the closest thing to a saint I'd ever know. But I hope she died knowing I'd kept my end of the bargain. I'd stayed alive. And though nobody gave a hoot
about it but me, in a strange way I'd also kept my deal with my uncles, who I somehow imagined being proud of me. I'd brought home a P38 pistol, not a Luger. It didn't matter.
We, the Malarkey boys, we made it.

Above, a squadron of seagulls flew by. In the distance, the Pacific Ocean crashed ashore, and smelling the salt air, I was reminded how much I loved the wildness of this state. The last beach I'd seen, Utah Beach, was strewn with the litter of war. I'm not one of these guys who prays all the time, but in war I'd prayed lots. And in that cemetery, I thanked God for the answers, even if they weren't all quite what I'd wanted.

Later, at the Liberty Grill, I scarfed down a hamburger steak and mashed potatoes, catching up with Bernice's folks between bites. It's not like heads turned whenever someone in Astoria saw Don Malarkey home from the war, but I'd been the only paratrooper from Clatsop County. They'd read about the Screaming Eagles. And so it wasn't surprising to have someone buy me a meal now and then.

After dinner, I drove to the top of the hill that Astoria is chiseled into, above the old house on Kensington, and looked west, to the mouth of the Columbia River where it empties into the Pacific. I thought of Bernice, how she could be standing in a building in New York and look east and see the harbor that empties into the Atlantic. It reminded me how much distance there was between us. If we were to marry, would she—a New York City singer who wanted to sing internationally—be happy back here in Oregon, where even Portland, the state's largest city, was backwoods in the eyes of the Big Apple? And what about me? What do you get in New York City to replace the Nehalem River? Or the simplicity of Eugene, where I could literally walk two blocks from the frat and be on campus, another six
and be downtown watching a flick at the McDonald Theatre? Somehow, I was afraid that distance between us was just too much.

I stayed in the Cow Creek cabin for a few weeks. Took lots of walks along the Nehalem, the river swollen from Oregon's infamous winter rains, the blackberries still six months away, and left the day after Christmas for the University of Oregon. Just like I'd promised Ike when he'd shaken my hand in England while reviewing the troops, I was going back to school.

Despite three years in the service—I was now twenty-four—I got back in the swing of college; it wasn't as if there weren't a few other GIs in their mid twenties doing the same thing. But every now and then I was reminded that everything wasn't the same, /wasn't the same.

Sure, I still had the zest for fun. Still loved to sing the big-band songs. Still liked an occasional drink. But I'd been to war. And coming home, you can't just check it at the door like a hat or a coat. I'd see or hear things that would suddenly bring it all back: a combat movie at the McDonald. The eyes of some freshman who reminded me of that sixteen-year-old German kid I'd shot in Foy. The backfire of a truck; once, on Thirteenth Street, that happened and I literally dove for cover because it was still so ingrained in me.

Every now and then, I'd wake up tangled in my blankets and sweating like a pig, sure some German soldier had just popped out from behind those skinny firs in Jack's Woods and jammed a bayonet in my gut. Or those bloody legs of Toye's and Guarnere's in the snow. But would you tell anyone about this stuff back then? Hell, no, even though, when you're sleeping in a fraternity sleeping porch, it's hard to hide thrashing around like that.

I'd served thirty days of combat in Normandy, seventy-eight in Holland, thirty-nine in Bastogne, and thirty in Haguenau. And I wonder if, with war becoming such a part of you, you become like the Toyes and Guarneres of the world, people who lose a limb and yet have that phantom sensation that it's still there.

Sometimes, I couldn't get back to sleep. Or I'd just read or try studying at a desk, not that I was very good at that. I couldn't concentrate like before the war. I'd be reading some book and suddenly realize Roe was sitting beside me.
Malark, I'm sorry, but it's Skip
… I feared my grades were slipping badly.

Once, a guy in the house who'd been in the navy started asking me all these questions about what it was like to jump out of a plane with a parachute, and before you knew it, he had me up on top of my desk, demonstrating. I was going through the whole works, you know, when I heard some snickering behind me; there, in the hallway, were a bunch of frat brothers watching, laughing like hell. It had been a setup, a joke just to make me look like a fool. At the time, I wasn't laughing.

I remembered after Skip had died and how I'd wanted to write to Faye but the government wouldn't allow it. I was told I couldn't write her until they were certain “enough time has elapsed.” Just how much time is “enough?” Outside, I was Joe College. Inside, I was still Sgt. Don Malarkey.

One day, I took out a photo of Easy Company and a black felt pen. Starting in the front row, left to right, and going upward in rows, I looked at every man in that photograph—117. For some reason, I marked “KIA” on the chests of those who'd been killed in action and “SWA” on the chests of those who'd been seriously wounded in action. There were
thirty-five KIAs. And sixty-one SWAs. That left fewer than two dozen of us with clean chests. And, for that matter, clean consciences because of survivor's guilt. Which is why I'd look at that picture and feel the tears coming on nearly every time.

In March, I had a call from Bernice. She was in Astoria, visiting her folks, who liked the idea of their daughter maybe marrying a hometown boy. I agreed to take a bus to see her. Her mother was cordial to me, but her dad was cool to me, as if he knew a wedding between me and his daughter wasn't to be. We all ate at the Liberty Grill, and then Bernice and I drove her family's Pontiac upriver, to a hill overlooking Tongue Point, where plenty of neckers were fogging up the windows. We'd been up there plenty of times, but tonight it was different. We looked out at the navy ships anchored on the Columbia below. There was lots of awkward silence.

“Bernice,” I finally blurted out, “I'm too damn mixed up to even think about getting married, much less going to New York.”

She understood. In some ways, I think she was relieved. We parted friends, this time for good. I thanked her for all the letters that had been morale boosters for me during the war. “You helped me keep my sanity,” I said. “Or at least part of it.” I returned to Eugene, for whatever was in store for me there, and Bernice returned to New York and her first love, her singing career.

Come summer, I moved to Portland to work at Monarch Forge and Machine Works, where I'd worked before the war.

Where that German soldier I'd met in Normandy had worked across the street. I remember thinking,
Whatever happened to him? Where is he now?
(Unlike in the HBO
Band of Brothers
miniseries, he and the other prisoners we'd encountered had not been gunned down by Captain Speirs right after that; I'd like to think the soldier was shipped to a POW camp in America, released after the war, and is now enjoying his grandchildren's soccer games in Munich.)

While in Portland, I lived with my mom's parents, Grandma and Granddad Trask. It was a pretty hard time for me, living away from my pals, struggling at school, breaking it off with Bernice. I remember that Sinatra song “I'll Never Smile Again,” playing over and over, as if to remind me.

A few weeks later a car pulled up in front of the house. It was John Warren, our fraternity's adviser, a guy who had coached many of Astoria's great basketball players and come to the University of Oregon to be an assistant basketball coach. I respected him highly.

“Don,” he said, “I've got some bad news. You're flunking out. You and 460 others, mostly vets.”

I didn't know what to say. Other than my ROTC washout, I'd not failed at much in my life.

“Hey,” he said, “I know it can't be easy, with the war and all, Donnie, but it's sink-or-swim time, pal. I've pulled some strings. Got you a meeting with George Hall, assistant dean of men. See if we can get you back in school. Will you do it?”

I felt pretty small about then. Hell, I could go out on night patrol in Holland, take eight guys prisoner, but now I couldn't get a passing grade in political science. At first I thought,
What's the use?
Then I thought again.

Warren was a little like Dick Winters, one of those guys
who believed in you and made you want to bust your butt for him. “Sure, John, I'll meet with him.”

Hall was putting his neck on the line for me; he said he'd vouch for me, scholastically, if I wanted to file an appeal to get back in. I did. Two weeks later, he called. Six of the 460 had been reinstated. I was among them. I quit my job in Portland and moved back to Eugene to take a few summer courses.

One night, in early November, I was returning to the Sigma Nu house after completing an assignment in the library—not the kind of thing I would have done the previous term—when I stopped at the College Side Inn for a Coke. It was to become the most momentous soft drink I'd ever had. The inn was an English-style gathering spot with candy and soft drinks. The interior was all-natural dark wood with counters, booths, balconies, and a large meeting room.

She was with some other Gamma Phi Beta sorority sisters in a booth near the front: blond hair. A great smile. And brown eyes that made you want to look into them forever. I was smitten from the get-go with this gal. Her name was Irene Moor.

“Will you join us, Don?” someone asked.

They didn't need to ask me twice. I sat next to Irene and enjoyed getting to know her a little. She was from Portland, a Gamma Phi pledge. Later, when she brushed past me to get out of the booth, I thought a bolt of lightning had struck me. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced in my life—OK,
once,
when Bernice had brushed past me when we were high school freshmen. But this was different. I hadn't been back at the Sigma Nu house more than an hour when, through a friend who knew her, I'd arranged a date.

We started seeing each other a lot. I remember singing some Sinatra songs to her in the Pioneer Cemetery across from McArthur Court, a gesture that she loved and which apparently made up for my being a klutz when it came to jitterbug dancing.

Meanwhile, my grades started improving. The Sigma Nus started reestablishing themselves in the classroom, the intramural ball fields, and, of course, the social scene. I cheered on the University of Oregon's sports teams. Tipped more than a few in their honor. Became president of the fraternity. Took a fraternity house known for being jocks and whipped them into good enough shape as singers to win the all-campus sing. My frat brothers started calling me Little Caesar and Sarge for my demanding leadership style.