January Dawn (18 page)

He took good care of all Echo Company soldiers. When a replacement in Third Platoon lost his shoes in an artillery barrage, Elroy stole a pair off a dead Yankee and gave them to him.

When I had night watch one evening and I had trouble staying awake, Elroy jumped in my slit trench, pulled out a portable kerosene stove from his pack and brewed me the best cup of coffee I ever had.

When they finished their meeting, Alex hobbled back to us. He had tweaked his ankle the day before by tripping over a root.

“What’s the news boss man?” Hayes asked.

“We’re hunkering down for twenty minutes and then we hit the road again,” he said.

“Hallelujah. I’ve had a pebble in my shoe that’s been pestering the shit out of me the past two hours,” Junior said.

We shuffled back to the shade of the woods for a wonderful gift of twenty minutes rest.

“Leah, your shoulder’s bleeding again,” I said, noticing the reddening bandage on her back.

“Damn,” she said. “Would you mind?”

Carrigan threw her pack to the ground and sat down straddling a log. I sat down behind her and peeled the soiled bandage off her back. She winced in pain. The grisly gash stretched down her shoulder blade. The stitches that the medics sewed her up with had opened up. She reached into her bag, pulled out a first aid kit and handed it back to me.

I took off my combat gloves, opened up the kit and slipped on a pair of surgical gloves. The futility of the gloves stroked an inquisitive nerve in me. In theory, you’re supposed to protect yourself when dealing with another’s injuries, but when I thought back on all the combat injuries I’d dealt with those past few weeks, it made me chuckle.

In combat you don’t have time to spend putting on a pair of latex gloves. When a friend’s life is on the line, you forgo caution to the wind and put your own life at risk without the slightest hesitation.

War is unique. It’s unparalleled in every aspect. I had come to learn that how it affects the individual is something miraculous. Combat overwhelms all of your senses. The gunfire of dozens of rifles firing at once, explosions, people yelling and screaming for help or barking out orders, the groan of vehicles, everything meshes together into a loud buzz that rattles your brain to numbness. You can feel the ground shake with every exploding grenade or feel the air around you part from the path of a searing bullet.

In battle, you have mere seconds to apprehend what’s going on around you and delineate who’s friendly and who’s not. It’s easy to get turned around on the battlefield and forget which way is which. There is too much going on to comprehend everything accurately.

But somehow, in the midst of all the chaos, a soldier has a sense of clarity, a singular vision that keeps his focus and his instincts on point. When you get past the initial fright, you begin to realize that it’s not just you out there, your buddies are going through the same thing.

Elroy was right. And when you finally realize that, you are freed from the paralyzing shackles of shock. Only then can you can react with your true potential and perform your duty justly.

Justly?
There was nothing just about what we were doing.
When I killed my first man, I felt like I had betrayed the very life I was given. It was wrong. I wanted to punish myself. The soldier had done nothing to me, yet still I took his life.

Four days after initial contact we were positioned along the outside edge of a trailer park. It was well after midnight and I was on night watch. I stayed on my feet looking east into the woods. The rest of Second Squad slept silently around me in the dried up creek we had bedded in for the night. The night was especially dark and overcast. I had to squint real hard to discern shapes, even with my eyes adjusted.

Toward the end of my shift my eyelids had grown heavy with exhaustion. I was nearly asleep at my post when I heard the dry crackling of pine needles. I stayed as still as possible as the noise got closer. If I moved, I risked being seen.

Mosquitos buzzed around my face and ears. I resisted the urge to swipe at them in fear for my life. Whatever was moving toward me was getting closer. My heart beat violently as I wished for the noise to turn and go the other way.

When I heard the sharp snapping of a twig directly in front of me, I panicked and fired a shot into the darkness. In the immediate blue and yellow flash that burst from the muzzle of my rifle I saw a man’s face contorted in agony. It had only lasted for half a second, but the image remained etched in my memory.

His body slumped forward, falling flat on his face a mere three feet from me. Echo Company awoke at the sound of my rifle and began firing at the rest of the Yankee scouting party. My rifle had dropped to the ground by my feet as I stared at the man whose life I had taken. Sleep did not come for me that night. I lied awake unable to shake the horrid image of the man’s face.

The next morning I found myself staring at the soldier’s body. A black pool of congealed blood had leaked down the slope of the creek and caked the bottom of my boots in gore. I finally forced myself to look away.
What’s done is done.

We all were dirty, tired and beat up. As I looked around at what was left of Second Squad it was a stark contrast to what we looked like over a month ago. We went in as green recruits, but quickly established ourselves as fierce warriors. We came in looking immaculate in our freshly pressed combat uniforms and unsoiled rifles, but now we looked like we marched to hell and back and decided to do the whole trip a second time.

None of us had taken a shower in over a month. We were covered in dirt, blood, sweat and feces. We smelled of body odor and urine and foxhole rot, but after a while, nobody really noticed. Living in the woods and sleeping in the dirt every night will do that to you.

Our fatigues were tattered and faded. Most decide to cut away their sleeves or completely shed their shirt and opt for just the undershirt as a way to beat the incessant heat, but I just rolled up my sleeves, because sometimes it got cool at night.

As a soldier in combat you quickly learn what is essential for survival and what is not. What is not, is immediately discarded and what is, is highly coveted and sought after. After a battle our dead are usually stripped of their belongings. We never take anything personal. That would be disrespectful and immoral. No, if you’re smart you take his canteen and any extra ammo you can hold. Carrying more ammo and water was never a bad idea.

As I cleaned up Carrigan’s wound, the rest of the boys collapsed where they stood. Hayes opened up an MRE and squeezed a pouch of grape jelly down his throat. Beauregard crawled up in a ball at the base of a tree and drifted off to sleep.

We all were just as tired as he was. I think I could speak for everyone when I say that we felt worse than we looked.

“Mail call,” someone yelled. It was Ian McCormick, Echo Company’s First Sergeant. He had a huge sack full of mail. This was the first time we had gotten mail delivered in over a week.

“Hutchens.” That was Danny from First Platoon. He was a good man, and a longtime veteran that we all looked to for guidance.

“Carrigan.”

“Here,” she said, raising her hand on her uninjured side.

Hayes, Alex and Shannon got mail also. Beauregard and Junior were disappointed when McCormick kept on walking and didn’t call their names. I never got any mail and I didn’t expect to, but I could see how much it meant to everyone else. It was their last true tether to the civilized world. Hearing news from their family back home was like some special elixir that brought them back to life and put the color back in their cheeks.

“What you got there, Shannon, my man?” Junior asked.

“This one is from my pops. It says: Hey Derek, I hope all is good over there. Everything is fine back here at home. The Army is imposing a curfew on us now…and a blackout. We have to be home by sunset and no light can show after dark. We hung up sheets over all the windows. We barely have enough to sleep on now! The Military Police showed up at the door last night. They fined us $200 for a ‘light infraction’. Can you believe that? There was a little bit of light showing out of the kitchen window when your momma was cooking dinner. I guess I have to pay it. What choice do I have, right? Your mother is doing alright, but still worried sick about you. She works late most nights at the hospital and then comes home crying. She sees what war can do to the human body and she’s scared for you. I keep telling her that a bright young man like you knows how to stay safe. Your sister says hello. She had her last day of First Grade today. She drew you a picture, so check the envelope. Write back when you can. Keep your head down and stay safe son. Love, Dad.”

Shannon folded up his letter and checked the envelope for the picture. He unfolded it and stared at it with quivering lips. Tears streamed down his grime caked cheeks.

“Let’s see it, Shannon,” Carrigan said. He held it out for us to see. It was a house colored in crayon with a family of four stick figures standing outside under a big yellow sun. In bold, scratchy letters it said: I love you. “It’s beautiful.”

We all knew the homesickness that Shannon was going through. Everyone got it from time to time, especially on those starless nights when you found yourself huddled in your foxhole, dreaming away boredom.

I dreamed of Tess. If I thought real hard, I could feel her, and hear her soft whisper telling me to come home to her.
If only I could get the chance to see her again.

“Wait, your name is Derek?” Beauregard asked, waking up from his slumber.

Shannon sniggered in-between his sobs and smiled, “Yeah Beau, my name is Derek.”

I placed a gauze pad over Carrigan’s wound and taped the edges.

“Thanks, Colt.”

Hayes sat with sunken shoulders. He balled his letter up and threw it to the ground.

“Hayes?” I asked.

“My Uncle’s dead,” he said.

“I’m sorry, buddy.”

“I’m not. I’m proud of all that he’s done. He died for the country he loved. We could all be so lucky. My mother sent me this,” he said, holding up a Bronze Star medal.

I don’t know if it was the sheer weight of the fact that Hayes lost his uncle or that we came to appreciate that all of the stories he had told about him were true, but we all brooded in silence in respect for a fallen comrade.

Hayes didn’t seem too upset. He was really never good at sharing his emotions. Besides, war had hardened him. As it did us all. It sounds awful to say, but if it didn’t affect us directly, we tended not to care.

As an infantryman your world is what’s around you. It’s the holes you sleep in, the trees you take cover behind and the men around you, friend and foe alike. What happens three hundred miles away has no more importance than what happens ten miles down the road.

It was nice to hear news from home and other fronts, but no words could help save us from the horrors we had to face every day. We had to do that ourselves.

“Hey, Colton, come here for a second,” Alex said. He was looking at the letter in his hands.

“What’s up?” I said, walking over.

“There’s something in this letter for you.”

“For me?”

As I leaned in close to look at the letter, Alex grabbed me by my vest and kissed me on the cheek. He made sure to include an obnoxious suction noise.

“Ah, what the hell?” I said, wiping my face.

“That’s from my sister,” he said. Tess would send me well wishes through Alex’s letters, but never a kiss.
At least she’s still thinking about me
.

“Whoa, hold up now. Your sister? Colton, say it aint so,” Hayes said, his normal personality snapping back into place.

“What?”

“You hooked up with Alex’s sister?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you did, didn’t you? Admit it.”

I could feel my face burning red with embarrassment. Everyone’s eyes were on me expecting an answer. I didn’t know if Alex knew or not. I didn’t want him mad at me.

Hayes bounced up and down like a rabbit, a big white smile spread across his face. “Ooo wee, Colton, my man!” He said, slapping my butt. “Now, tell me something. She must be one fine piece of ass if you’re going to pass up that hunky man right there,” he said, indicating Alex.

“I’ll bury you here in these woods if you talk about my sister like that again, Hayes,” Alex said.

“Now hold up. Don’t get your panties in a wad. We all know about this special
bond
you and Colton have,” he said with air quotations. “And let’s face it, we’ve
all
seen you in the showers Alex. You’ve got the endowment of a Neanderthal. So, logically, I’m just curious as to why he’d give up such a handsome and gifted individual such as yourself for a young, tight...”

“That’s it.” Alex charged Hayes. It was like watching some comical cat and mouse game as Hayes evaded capture by using trees and people as shields to keep Alex at bay.

“Calm yourself, tiger. Why are you chasing me? Colton’s the one who slept with your sister,” Hayes said in-between fits of laughter.

Now you’ve done it Hayes, you’re going to get me beat
.

Alex stopped his pursuit of Hayes and turned in my direction.