Johnny Got His Gun

by Dalton Trumbo

  That night Corporal Timlon took a full burial squad out. They also took a sheet to wrap Lazarus in. It wasn’t very tasty work because Lazarus had gotten to the runny stage by that time but they wrapped him in the sheet and planted him six feet deep and then all of them stood around the grave while Corporal Timlon read the burial service maybe skipping over a few ands and ors but getting the general idea across pretty well.

  About the middle of the service a couple flares went up from the other side and just as the corporal was throwing the third handful of dirt into Lazarus’ face somebody got a bead on him and shot him right smack through the bottom. Corporal Timlon hollered out god ’ave mercy on your soul amen those bloody barstards ’ave shot me in the arse that’s wot they’ve done mike for cover men. And they all scrambled back to the lines.

  Corporal Timlon got eight weeks hospital leave which was lucky for him because the whole Limey regiment was almost wiped out three weeks later. A couple days after Corporal Timlon was shot Lazarus stopped another one and hit the fence again with his sheets flapping in the wind and parts of him dripping toward the ground. One of the Limeys said that was to be expected because Bavarians never held up very well after the first week. The whole regiment opened fire on poor Lazarus and managed to shoot him off the wire. You could still smell him but you couldn’t see him any more so everybody tried to forget him. They would have too if it hadn’t been for the new subaltern.

  He was just a kid only eighteen with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes looking like a six foot baby anxious as hell to win the war all by himself. He was a cousin of the captain or something and the officers made a regular pet out of him. He came up to the front two days after Lazarus was shot off the wire. The Limeys were so fond of him they kept him pretty well under cover and the kid somehow got the idea he was being picked on and that the men would think he was a coward. He begged all the time to be assigned to night patrol duty and when it was no go he sneaked out on his own one night. They missed him about three o’clock in the morning and it was almost dawn before they found him. Somehow he had wandered out beyond the first line of barbed wire. When they came on him he was lying on his stomach in a pool of vomit. In stumbling through the barbed wire he had fallen and struck his right arm clean up to the shoulder through Lazarus.

  The detail that found him brought him to the officers’ dugout. He was babbling and crying and smelling to high heaven. The captain sent him back the same night. He said it was a penalty for befouling the officers’ dugout and he got very stern when anyone inquired what had happened to the kid. When Corporal Timlon came back with his seat repaired and someone told him the story he asked well how is the kid getting along? A little guy named Johnston who kept the whole regiment posted on such things said oh hell he’s mad as a hatter they haven’t even let him out of the straight-jacket yet. Well said Corporal Timlon when is he going to get better? The doctors say he ain’t never going to get better said Johnston he’s bad off that one.

  Poor young blonde English guy wanting to win the war so bad and going stark crazy before he even got into action. Poor Limey kid somewhere in a hospital behind barred windows yelling and crying and brooding forever. That was a funny thing. The young Limey had legs and arms and he could talk and see and hear. Only he didn’t know it he couldn’t get any fun out of it there was no meaning to it for him. And lying in another English hospital was a guy who wasn’t a bit crazy but who wished he was. He and the young Limey should swap minds. Then they’d both be happy.

  Somewhere crying and sobbing in the dark—it was night now almost new year’s—there was the young Limey. And here he was in the dark sobbing and crying too. On new year’s eve. Poor young Limey don’t cry it’s just new year’s just think a whole fresh year stretching out in front of both of us. Wherever you are Limey—and maybe you’re right here in this same hospital—wherever you are we have lots in common we are brothers young Limey happy new year to you. Happy happy new year…

  xiii

  During the second year of his new time world nothing happened except that once a night nurse stumbled and fell to the floor setting up a fine vibration in his bedsprings. During the third year he was moved to a new room. The heat of the sun in the new room came in over the foot of his bed and by checking against the bath hour he figured that his head was to the east and his other end to the west. His new bed had a softer mattress and its springs were stiffer. They carried vibrations longer and that helped him a great deal. It took him months to locate the door and the dresser but they were months filled with calculation and excitement and finally with triumph. They were the shortest months he could remember in his whole life. All of this made the third year whisk by like a dream.

  The fourth year started very slowly. He spent a lot of time trying to remember the books of the bible in their order but the only ones he could be sure of were Matthew Mark Luke and John and First and Second Samuel and First and Second Kings. He tried to put words to the story of David and Goliath and Nebuchadnezzar and Shadrack Meshack and Abednego. He remembered how his father used to yawn loudly around ten o’clock at night and stretch his arms and get up out of his chair and say Shadrack Meshack and to bed we go. But he couldn’t remember the stories that went with the characters very clearly so they were poor time fillers. That was bad because when he couldn’t fill in the time he got to worrying. He got to thinking I wonder if I haven’t made a mistake in figuring the days the weeks the months? He got to thinking it wouldn’t be impossible to drop even a whole year if a person were careless. Then he would get excited and frantic. He would check back and back to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake so far back that he would get more confused than before. Every time he fell asleep he tried to have the day and month and year numbers firmly planted in his mind lest he forget them while he dreamed and every time he awakened his first panicky thought leaped at the terrible possibility he might not have remembered correctly the numbers he had in his mind when he fell asleep.

  And then an astonishing thing happened. One day toward the middle of the year the nurse gave him a completely fresh change of bed linen when he had received a change only the day before. This had never happened before. Every third day he was changed no sooner and no later. Yet here everything was upset and for two days in a row he was getting the change. He felt all in a hub-bub. He felt like bustling around from room to room and chattering about how busy he was and what great things were going to happen. He felt all bright with expectation and excitement. He wondered if he would get a fresh change of linen every day from now on or whether they would return again to the old schedule. This was as important as if an ordinary man with legs and arms and other parts were suddenly confronted with the possibility of living in a new house every day. It would be something to look forward to from day to day throughout the years. It would be something to break up time to make it something a guy could stand without mulling over Matthew Mark Luke and John.

  Then he noticed something else. In addition to giving him an unexpected bath the nurse was spraying him with something. He could feel the spray cool and misty against his skin. Then she put a clean nightshirt on him and folded the covers back at his throat. This was different too. He could feel her hand through the covers as it passed over the fold smoothing smoothing smoothing. He was given a fresh mask which the nurse arranged very fussily so that it fell to his throat and there was carefully tucked under the fold of the bedcovers. After that she combed his hair carefully and left. He could feel the vibrations of her footsteps as she went away and the little jar of the door closing behind her. Then he was alone.

  He lay perfectly still because it was a very luxurious feeling to be so completely redone. His body glowed and his sheets were cool and crisp and even his scalp felt good. He was afraid to move for fear he would spoil the good feeling. There was only a moment of this and then he felt the vibrations of four maybe five people coming into his room. He lay tense trying to catch their vibrations and wondering why they were there. The vibrations got heavi
er and then they stopped and he knew that people were gathered around his bed more people than ever before had been in his room at the same time. It was like the first time he went to school and was embarrassed and bewildered with so many people around. Little tremors of expectations ran through his stomach. He was stiff with excitement. He had visitors.

  The first thought that passed through his mind was that they might be his mother and sisters and Kareen. There was just a chance that Kareen forever lovely and young was standing by him was looking down at him was even this minute putting out her hand her soft and tiny hand her beautiful beautiful hand to touch his forehead.

  And then just as he could almost feel the touch of her hand his delight turned suddenly to shame. He hoped more than anything else in the world that it was not his mother and sisters and Kareen who had come to visit him. He didn’t want them to see him. He didn’t want anybody he had ever known to see him. He knew now how foolish it had been to wish for them as sometimes in his loneliness he had. It was all right to think about having them near it was comforting it was warm and pleasant. But the idea that they might be beside his bed right now was too terrible to cope with. He jerked his head convulsively away from his visitors. He knew this dislodged his mask but he was beyond thinking of masks. He only wanted to hide his face to turn his blind sockets away from them to keep them from seeing the chewed up hole that used to be a nose and mouth that Used to be a living human face. He got so frantic that he began to thrash from side to side like someone very sick with a high fever who can only monotonously repeat a motion or a word. He fell into his old rocking motion throwing his weight from one shoulder to the other back and forth back and forth back and forth.

  A hand came to rest on his forehead. He quieted because it was the hand of a man heavy and warm. Part of it lay on the skin of his forehead and part of it he felt through the mask which cut across his forehead. He lay still again. Then another hand began to fold the covers back from his throat. One fold. One and a half folds. He grew very quiet very alert very curious. He thought very hard about who they might be.

  Then he had it. They were doctors come to examine him. They were visiting firemen. He was probably a very famous guy by this time and the doctors were beginning to make pilgrimages. One doctor was probably saying to the others you see how we were able to do it? You see what a clever job we did? You see where the arm came off and you see the hole in his face and you see he still lives? Listen to his heart it’s beating just like your heart or mine. Oh we did a fine job when we got him. It was a great piece of luck and we’re all very proud. Stop by in my office on your way out and I’ll give you one of his teeth for a souvenir. They take a wonderful polish he was young you see and his teeth were in good condition. Would you like a front one or would you prefer a good thick tusker from farther back? The thick ones look best on a watch chain.

  Somebody was plucking at his nightshirt over his left breast. It was as if a forefinger and thumb were pinching up a portion of it. He lay very quiet now deathly quiet his mind jumping in a hundred different directions at once. He could sense that something important was about to happen. There was a little more fumbling with the pinch of nightshirt and then the cloth fell back against his chest once more. It was heavy now weighted down by something. He felt the sudden coolness of metal through his nightshirt against his chest over his heart. They had pinned something on him.

  Suddenly he did a curious thing he hadn’t done for months. He started to reach with his right hand for the heavy thing they had pinned on him and it seemed that he almost clutched it in his fingers before he realized that he had no arm to reach with and no fingers for clutching.

  Someone was kissing his temple. There was a slight tickling of hair as the kiss was given. He was being kissed by a man with a moustache. First his left temple and then his right one. Then he knew what they had done to him. They had come into his room and they had decorated him with a medal. He knew furthermore that he must be in France instead of England because French generals were the ones who always kissed you when they handed out medals. Still that might not be true. American generals and English generals shook your hand but since he had no hand to shake maybe this was an Englishman or an American who had decided to follow the French custom because there was no other way to do it. But still the chances now seemed even that he was in France.

  When he snapped back from thinking of where he was and adjusting himself to the idea that it might be France he was a little surprised to find that he was getting mad. They had given him a medal. Three or four big guys famous guys who still had arms and legs and who could see and talk and smell and taste had come into his room and they had pinned a medal on him. They could afford to couldn’t they the dirty bastards? That was all they ever had time to do just run around putting medals on guys and feeling important and smug about it. How many generals got killed in the war? There was Kitchener of course but that was an accident. How many others? Name them name any of the soft-living sonsofbitches and you could have them. How many of them had got all shot up so they had to live wrapped in a sheet for the rest of their lives? They had a lot of guts coming around and giving medals.

  When he had thought for an instant that his mother and his sisters and Kareen might be standing beside the bed he had wanted to hide. But now that he had generals and big guys he felt a sudden fierce surging desire for them to see him. Just as before he had started to reach for the medal without an arm to reach with so now he began to blow the mask off his face without having mouth and lips to blow with. He wanted them to get just one look at that hole in his head. He wanted them to get their fill of a face that began and ended with a forehead. He lay there blowing and then he realized that the air from his lungs was all escaping through his tube. He began to, roll again from shoulder to shoulder hoping to dislodge the mask.

  While he lay there rolling and puffing he felt a vibration way down in his throat a vibration that might be a voice. It was a short deep vibration and he knew that it was making a sound to their ears. Not a very big sound not a very intelligent sound but it must seem to them at least as interesting as the grunting of a pig. And if he could grunt like a pig why then he was accomplishing a great thing because before he had been completely silent. So he lay thrashing and puffing and grunting like a pig hoping that they would see damned well how much he appreciated their medal. While he was in the middle of this there was an indefinite churning of footsteps and then the departing vibrations of his guests. A moment later he was all alone in the blackness in the silence. He was all alone with his medal.

  Suddenly he quieted. He was thinking about the vibrations of those footsteps. He had always carefully felt for vibrations. He had measured the size of his nurses and the dimensions of his room by them. But suddenly to feel the vibrations of four or five people tramping across the room made him think. It made him realize that vibrations were very important. He had thought of them up to this time only as vibrations coming to him. Now he began to consider that also there could be vibrations going from him. The vibrations which he received told him everything—height weight distance time. Why shouldn’t he be able to tell something to the outside world by vibrations also?

  In the back of his mind something began to glimmer. If he could in some way make use of vibrations he could communicate with these people. Then the glimmer became a great dazzling white light. It opened up such breathless prospects that he thought he might suffocate from sheer excitement. Vibrations were a very important part of communication. The fall of a foot on the floor is one kind of vibration. The tap of a telegraph key is simply another kind.

  When he was a kid way back maybe four years ago or five he had a wireless set. He and Bill Harper used to telegraph each other. Dot dash dot dash dot. Particularly on rainy nights when their folks wouldn’t let them go out and there was nothing to do and they just lounged around the house and got in everybody’s way. On such nights he and Bill Harper used to dot and dash at each other and they had a hell of a good time
. He still remembered the Morse code. All he had to do in order to break through to people in the outside world was to lie in bed and dot dash to the nurse. Then he could talk. Then he would have smashed through his silence and blackness and helplessness. Then the stump of a man without lips would talk. He had captured time and he had tried to figure geography and now he would do the greatest thing of them all he would talk. He would give messages and receive messages and he would have made another step forward in his struggle to get back to people in his terrible lonely eagerness for the feel of people near him for the things that were in their minds for the thoughts they might give him his own thoughts were so puny so unfinished so incomplete. He would talk.

  Tentatively he raised his head from the pillow and let it fall back again. Then he did it twice quickly. That would be a dash and two dots. The letter d. He tapped out SOS against his pillow. Dot-dot-dot dot dot dot-dot-dot. SOS. Help. If there was anybody in the whole world needed help he was the guy and now he was asking for it. He wished the nurse would hurry back. He began to tap out questions. What time is it? What’s the date? Where am I? Is the sun shining or is it cloudy? Does anybody know who I am? Do my folks know I’m lying here? Don’t tell them. Don’t let them know anything about it. SOS. Help.

  The door of the room jarred open and the nurse’s footsteps came up to the bed. He began to tap out more frantically now. Here he was right on the brink of finding people of finding the world of finding a big part of life itself. Tap tap tap. He was waiting for her tap tap tap in response. A tap against his forehead or his chest. Even if she didn’t know the code she could tap just to let him know she understood what he was doing. Then she could rush away for someone who could help her get what he was saying. SOS. SOS. SOS. Help.