Love is a Wounded Soldier (31 page)

When supper was finally served, the room
fell silent except for the clank and clatter of silverware, and the contented
sighs of hungry men. I shoveled down my first plate of food, by-passing my
taste buds entirely and delivering it straight to my impatient stomach, all the
while marveling at what culinary wizards the woman and her daughter were. I was
well into my second plateful before I realized that the chicken was
undercooked, the potatoes overdone, the gravy too thin, and the bread stale. It
would not have passed for good cooking at home, but compared to cold K-rations,
it was manna from the hands of angels.

After supper we sat around the fireplace
and smoked. The men were in good spirits, except for Johnny, who sat off to the
side by himself, ignoring their loud banter and boisterous laughter. He
fingered his lucky shell and stared at the fire as though hypnotized. His eye
twitched constantly as he rocked gently back and forth like an old man, his
cigarette burning down near to his lips. I looked at him for a minute, trying
to make eye contact. I thought maybe I could lighten his mind with a wink or a
smile, but his mind was not in my world. I wanted to go over and talk to him,
tell him his war was over tomorrow whether he wanted it to be or not. Let him
know he had fought a hell of a good fight, and that he could go home to Maggie
with his head held high. I wanted to tell him how much it ripped me up to see
him like that, and how badly I wanted to see him become who he’d been once
again. If I could only convince him the end was in sight and persuade him that
his chances of survival were getting better and better. But it felt like a lost
cause to reason with a mind that wasn’t there, so I just stared into the fire
and felt sad.

“They didn’t even offer us their beds! And
we’re the guests! We should make them sleep in the barn, and we can sleep in
their beds. Damn Krauts!” Bill Potts exclaimed as the farmer and his family
retreated upstairs to their bedrooms.

“We should fix bayonets and storm the
master bedroom!” Don Malone joked.

“Yeah, that ain’t very hospitable!” Bert
chimed in. “I could use a night in a nice soft bed! What do you think, Sergeant,”
he asked me, “should we send the Nazi swine to the barn where they belong?”

Until that point I had just listened to the
conversation like one listens to the cackle of chickens, so it took me a moment
to divert my stream of thought to their conversation. I looked at him blankly
for a second, processed his question and the preceding comments, and replied,
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

“Aw! I could sure use a night in a nice
soft bed!” he whined. He was beginning to sound like a pouting child again.

“There’s a nice feather bed in the spare
room upstairs,” Leroy offered.

“I call dibs on that!” Bert said quickly.

I got up and took one last drag from my
Lucky Strike. “Sorry, Bert, but someone beat you to it,” I told him.

“Damn it!” he cussed. “Who?”

I flicked the smoldering butt of my
cigarette into the fire. “I don’t remember,” I furrowed my brow as though
puzzled, “but I’m going to go up right now and make sure no one steals it from
him,” I finished with a smile. Everyone laughed at the disappointed look on
Bert’s face.

“Good night,” I said, stepping over Bill’s
legs to get to the stairway. I noticed several fellows whispering to each
other, like a couple of kids discussing which one should ask their father for
ice cream money.

“Sergeant?” Haney called as I mounted the
third step.

“Yes?” I stopped, turning my head and
ducking down so I could see him.

“The brandy?” he asked hopefully.

“Ah, yes, the brandy,” I yawned. “The
brandy.” I rubbed my forehead. Every face looked expectantly up at me.

“Staff Sergeant Johnson will be in charge
of the brandy. Everyone can have one glass, but not one drop more. If anyone
decides to disregard this limit, I’ll—” I stopped, trying to make up a
reasonable punishment on the spot, “I’ll give you one hell of a headache
tomorrow,” I finished. The men laughed as Dick went to fetch the brandy, and
began talking loudly.

“Oh, one more thing,” I raised my hand. The
excited jabbering trailed off as their attention turned back to me.

“Keep it down. If you guys wake me up, I’ll
shoot you.” I was much less equivocal on the punishment for disruption of my
sleep.

I turned once again and climbed the stairs.
My bad leg throbbed. “I could sure use a night on a nice soft bed!” I muttered
to myself in the darkness.

~~~

I huddled down in my foxhole as another
incoming shell shook the ground.

“I’m hit! I’m hit bad!” Johnny yelled. I
ran to him and knelt down beside him. He opened his mouth and screamed. And
screamed. And screamed.

I awoke with a jolt, relieved it was just a
bad dream. But the screaming continued. I shook my head and blinked, waiting
for reality to replace fantasy. But the screaming continued. Terror, pain, and
sadness were each distinctly discernible by the volume, pitch, and tone of the
screams. It almost made my hair stand on end.

I could see light from the hallway through
the crack beneath my bedroom door as I flung off the covers and found my rifle.

When I opened my bedroom door and stepped
into the hall, I could see light spilling through an open door from a room down
the hallway. The screams finally transitioned to a wail, then a whimper, and
now, I could hear a man’s angry voice and a woman’s hysterical sobs.

Reasoning that I must be walking into a
heated domestic dispute, I decided not to interfere unnecessarily, especially
as things seemed to be winding down.

But no possible scenario I could have
thought of would have prepared me for what I was about to see. As I peered through
the half-open door, I could see the broad back of the farmer. He stood barefoot
in a plaid green nightgown, holding an axe handle by his side. It was streaked
with blood.

I kicked the door wide open, ready to jam
the muzzle of my M1 between his shoulder blades. I stopped. On the floor lay
the prone body of an American soldier. It was half naked. It was bloody. It was
my friend Johnny.

“You son of a bitch!” I screamed, grabbing
the club the farmer held loosely as I leapt to Johnny’s side in two adrenaline-powered
bounds.

“Johnny!” I shouted as I knelt beside my
battered friend. His thick brown hair couldn’t hide the blood that oozed from
his cracked skull.

“Oh, Jesus!” I breathed. Blood ran out of
his ears and down the sides of his face. He was still breathing. Breath is
hope.

I turned him over, desperately praying I
would find seeing eyes. But the black vortex of death had drawn him too far. As
he drew his last shallow breaths, I grabbed his hand, as though somehow I could
pull him back from the darkness. He shuddered, jerking my arm, and as I saw him
being carried away, I wished he’d pull me down with him.

A rage only the deepest sorrow can
manufacture surged through my blood. I felt it rush through my body, pounding
its angry fists on the veins in my neck and temples as though demanding it be
released. I rose slowly to turn and face the farmer. I stood, but never did
turn.

Until I stood, I was incognizant of
everything else in the room. My entire consciousness had been focused with the
intensity of a laser on my fallen friend. It was as though until that moment,
I’d been peering at something through a small clear patch in a foggy window.
But now the fog was wiped away, and I could see and hear everything.

The first thing I saw was the farmer’s
daughter curled up on a bed. Her legs were tucked up like a fetus’, her arms
clasped around her knees, her head almost buried in her lap, muffling tormented
sobs that sounded as though grief itself was wrenching them from the bowels of
her soul. The thin, white nightgown that she wore did little to conceal her
blood-streaked legs.

Her distressed mother sat on the edge of
the bed. “Helga!” she cried in a faltering voice. She tried to lay a shaking
hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl jumped as though her mother’s
consoling hand was a red-hot branding iron.

“Nein!” she screamed. The frau jerked her
hand back as though she herself had been burned. The girl raised her blonde
head for the first time, and I saw angry red handprints around her neck. The
bluish tinge of bruising was visible even from where I stood. Horror
overwhelmed me as the darkness of my wrath was driven away by the light of
comprehension.

The woman turned her head and cast accusing
eyes toward me. It was like trying to look into an anti-aircraft searchlight in
the black of night. I simply couldn’t meet her gaze, and shrank back, feeling
ashamed and remorseful, as though I myself had violently trespassed against her
daughter. I felt physically ill as my mind attempted to process the immensity of
the tragedy that lay before my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly to the floor.
“I’m sorry” was all there was to say. And sorry I was, in more ways than the
farmer and his frau could have ever imagined.

I lifted my eyes to look at the farmer. He
was looking at his daughter. His face was dry, but he fought for control of his
breath. Trembling lips twisted into a hateful scowl as he turned to look at me.
His eyes were smoldering coals. When he looked at me, those coals burnt hot.

“Raus,” he said quietly. Understanding
little German, I just stood there, looking at him.

“Raus!” he said sharply, this time
motioning toward the door. I nodded, understanding now. I looked back down at
Johnny, and again felt like I’d taken a baseball in the stomach.

“Jesus Christ!” a voice exclaimed from the
door. Dick Johnson and Donald Malone stood looking in from the hallway.

“Come here,” I beckoned as I picked up the
rumpled blanket that lay balled up at the foot of the bed. I spread the blanket
on the floor beside Johnny as the two men came over. The confused looks on
their faces were soon replaced with expressions of revulsion as they squatted
down with me. Dick and Don stared at Johnny, then slowly back up at me,
questions in their eyes. I offered no answers. Their eyes turned from me, to
the bloodied axe handle on the floor, to the bloodied girl on the bed, to her
mother, to her father, and back to me. I looked at them grimly. The questions
had been answered.

“Oh, god!” Dick whispered, burying his face
in his hands. “No, no, no,” he shook his head. “Not Johnny!”

Don’s mouth hung open in shock. He
swallowed without closing it.

While they recovered their composure, I
collected Johnny’s dog tags, his lucky shell, and a few other things I didn’t
want to bury with him. Then the men helped me roll Johnny onto the edge of the
blanket, and we wrapped him up in it tight like a mummy. That was the last time
I saw the remains of my friend; I had no desire for me or anyone else to again
see what had become of him.

We picked up the blanket with Johnny in it
and carefully stepped over the pool of blood on the floor. The farmer watched
us, his face convincing me he hadn’t released the full extent of his anger on
Johnny. I kept an eye on him as we neared the door. He spat in our direction as
we maneuvered the body into the hallway. As much as I could empathize with him,
it still angered me to see my friend disrespected, so I shouted over my
shoulder from the hall, “He was a good man!” I bit back a sob. “You didn’t even
know him!”

We stumbled our way down the dark stairway
and into the dim light downstairs. Sleepy men looked at us curiously from all
corners.

“What the hell?” Everett Lane asked,
looking at the swaddled body as we set it down.

“It’s Corporal Snarr,” I said curtly. The
men pelted me with a flurry of questions, but I was unwilling to give a longer
explanation and risk losing control of my emotions.

I held up my hand. “Questions will be
answered later. We will move out immediately,” I instructed.

“But it’s four hundred hours, Sergeant!” a
groggy Bill Potts protested.

“I know what the fucking time is, private!”
I screamed at him, so angry I almost began crying. Bill cowered like a whipped
dog. My nerves were in such a frazzled knot I hardly knew which emotion to feel
when. I had an overwhelming desire to distance myself from that awful place.

Men began packing their things, talking to
one another in hushed voices. They raided the cellar, filling their pockets and
packs with food, and I saw several men with brandy bottle-shaped bulges in their
packs, but I made no mention of it.

I used three ropes to secure the blanket to
Johnny’s body, tying handles on each side to assist us in transporting Johnny
to wherever his final resting place would be. When everyone was ready, six of
us picked him up by the handles.

Clomp, clomp, clomp, squish, squish.
Our boots thudded on the wooden floor before stepping into the muck
outside. The air was clear and still. No one said a word, all I heard was the
sloshing sound of weary footfalls.

When we reached the road, I looked back
toward the house. It was dark, except for one light that shone from an upstairs
window. It shone from the darkest room of them all. The stars twinkled as
though nothing were the matter.