One Man's War

by P. M. Kippert

  They laughed because it was a familiar expression to them, an expression that had nothing to do with war. Or maybe something only tangentially to do with war.

  The expression came from their being tested for venereal disease. It took place in the whorehouses in North Africa. In order to alleviate the spread of VD, the army had commandeered certain whorehouses to make them as safe as possible for US soldiers to visit. After a trooper had finished his business, an MP took charge of him. The soldier was forced to undergo a three-station treatment.

  The first station consisted of the guy washing his genitals and pubic area very thoroughly with an antiseptic soap. It was green-colored. Then the soldier would move on to station two. There he would have his penis, the urinary canal, injected with a dark purple solution that burned and disinfected. But the solution wasn’t just injected and let loose. Instead, the trooper had to hold the head of his penis, pinching it closed between thumb and forefinger. He stood before a urinal holding the disinfectant inside in this manner until a medical orderly shouted at intervals, “Man on the end, let it go.” The guy would release, and the purple fluid would be evacuated from his penis. A minute later, the next soldier, the new man on the end, would be ordered to let it go. The final station consisted of spreading a white, gooey ointment on the head of the penis and covering it with toilet paper. The soldier would then be stamped as having received the prophylactic treatment required after a visit to the bordello in North Africa.

  It became something of a joke for the men, the second part of the treatment, and that line turned into an oft-used expression that could relieve tension among the troops. Still, the treatment seemed to work in North Africa.

  Later, in Italy, where such draconian measures were not put in place, the incidence of VD grew far higher.

  One day another bombardment erupted, similar to the one the Germans had sent that day after Kafak had quit with the shits. This one, though, came from the Allied artillery joined by the Allies’ naval guns. It started at 0430 one morning, waking everyone who might have been sleeping. The guns pounded for more than half an hour. Kafak could hear the whoomp of the guns going off behind the lines and hear the thunder of the explosions out in front of them, on the German lines.

  “Something’s up,” he told Marshak.

  “At least it’s ours and not theirs this time,” Marshak said.

  “Fuckin-A right,” Kafak said.

  He listened to the shells exploding, feeling bad for the Germans. Well, in a way. He knew, they all knew, what it was like to live through something like that.

  While the barrage went on, Collins came up with a couple of other guys from L Company. They dropped into the hole beside Kafak and Marshak.

  “What’s up, Sarge?” Marshak said.

  “HQ got word that the Krauts are planning an attack this morning. So they opened up with everything we got to fuck with their lines and their formations. Once this is over, be ready, cuz the fucking Krauts will be coming.”

  “Sure thing, Sarge,” Kafak said.

  The five men crouched in the foxhole, staring out toward the German lines. Nothing obscured their vision. Everything here was fairly flat. Every piece of vegetation had long been blown away. There was nothing but mud and ditches and slit trenches and foxholes and some rocks. All the way to Cisterna.

  After between a half hour and an hour, the shelling stopped, as suddenly as it had begun. A short silence ensued. One filled with tension.

  “Get ready for it,” Collins said.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” one of the new men said.

  Then the Germans’ guns opened up, returning the favor. An incredible downpour of whistling bombs exploded all over the Allied lines. All the men ducked deep into the hole. The bombing went on and on. One of the new guys in the hole started shaking. He didn’t say a word, just started shaking uncontrollably. The other new guy just hugged himself tightly and kept repeating, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Marshak howled a long, harsh, ragged scream and then fell silent, looking sheepish that the sound had come out of his mouth.

  Collins moved to the guy who was shaking, and Kafak thought how the sergeant had brought these two guys along with him for a purpose, to keep herd on them, as it were. Collins, Kafak thought, must have seen something, realized something was up with them.

  “Come on, Peterson, snap out of it,” Collins said. His voice wasn’t harsh, but strong and commanding. He wasn’t yelling at Peterson; he was only talking. “You’re all right,” Collins said. Like he was insisting this would be true. “Snap out of it, son. You’ll be all right.”

  Peterson didn’t snap out of it, though.

  Marshak said, “He OK, Sarge?”

  “He’ll be all right,” Collins said, snapping the words out at Marshak. “Peterson’s been with me since the Kasserine Pass. We’ve seen this before. We’ve seen worse than this, haven’t we, Peterson?”

  Peterson didn’t answer, just kept shaking. But he glanced at Collins now, and Collins smiled at him. “Sure,” Collins said, “you’re gonna be fine.”

  Then Peterson’s eyes cut toward the other new guy in the hole and Peterson’s eyes somehow grew wider and Kafak said, “Oh shit!” and Collins spun around to look and the other guy in the foxhole shot himself in the mouth with his sidearm and dropped down into the bottom of the hole, dead.

  “Son of a bitch!” Collins shouted. “Goddamn son of a fucking bitch whore fuck!”

  Collins moved to the other soldier, but the guy was dead. They could all see that. Before any of them could even move, the guy had done the job. The shock of it popped Peterson out of his shakes.

  “Shit, I’m sorry, Sarge,” he said. He whispered it. He said it again.

  Collins shook his head.

  “Got nothing to do with you, son. Son of a bitch.”

  “He was with us at the Pass, too,” Peterson said.

  “I guess he just couldn’t take no more,” Collins said. “It all adds up on a fucker. You know?”

  Nobody replied to that. What was there to say? Collins didn’t expect any answer either. He kept them focused on the task at hand. Waiting out the bombardment. Then being ready for the German assault.

  Kafak followed the sergeant’s orders, kept crunched down, kept watchful. He started thinking, though, squatting and waiting in that hole. He started wondering if it would all add up for him at some point. And when that point might come. Especially in view of his earlier thoughts about his fear and what he needed to do to conquer that fear. He wondered would the fear at some point conquer him.

  He hoped not. He prayed not.

  “Lord,” he said. He spoke aloud but in a mumble that no one else could hear with that horrendous pounding raining down all round them. He hoped God could hear over the explosions, though. “Lord,” he said, “please watch over me and give me the strength to do my best. Don’t let me let the guys down. Not now. Please.”

  Soon after, the shelling stopped, and out of the smoke and dirt still flying through the air rushed hundreds of German soldiers. Kafak saw them coming, and he readied to fire. He began firing. He took his time, aimed at the laundry. Just shoot at the laundry, they’d told him in basic, and never mind the guy inside of it. Kafak doubted it mattered much, though. The Third Division had positioned tanks and tank destroyers on the front line. They provided a withering fire that annihilated the lead assault companies of the German forces. Kafak didn’t figure there was much work for his M1 to do, but he kept firing anyway, looking for targets and shooting where he saw any.

  “Get those fucking Nazi bastard fucks!” Marshak screamed at the tanks. “Get them fuckers!”

  Not that he could be much heard over the boom of the guns and the barking of the machine guns. Kafak said nothing. Just kept firing.

  As the Germans fell back, the men cheered. The Third had maintained their positions in the face of the assault before Cisterna.

  “That evens up the score some for what those bastards did to us when we attacked Cisterna,” Collins sai
d. He spoke in a grim tone. Kafak figured he was still thinking about the guy they had lost, the one who had shot himself. That had struck all of them hard, seeing something like that. Knowing it could happen. “Shit,” Collins said then, mumbling more to himself than to the other three men in the hole with him. “They still owe us plenty, goddamnit.”

  Sporadic fighting continued on their front all day long, but there never appeared any danger of their breaking. Kafak didn’t think so, anyhow. He kept firing when there was someone to fire at, and he kept his head down otherwise and let the armor do its job.

  He wasn’t scared now; he was just acting. His training had once more taken over.

  They heard rumors as runners came to give messages to Collins that things were going harder on other areas of the front. Kafak wondered if they’d be pulled out and reassigned as reinforcements where there was more danger of a German breakthrough. But that order never came, and then night fell and the fighting slowed off.

  Collins said, “Stay alert cuz they’ll be sending out patrols and probes, trying to exploit any weaknesses they can find. Fucking Germans are good at this shit. Don’t relax!”

  “No, Sarge,” Kafak said.

  Collins left the hole, and Kafak, Marshak, and Peterson kept watch. One of them suggested a sleeping rotation, and the two others agreed. Marshak jumped at taking the first rest, and Peterson shook his head, amused at the little trooper.

  “That fucker sleeps more than anybody I know.”

  “He don’t sleep,” Kafak said. “He only wants to sleep.”

  “That’s right,” Marshak said, chirping in quickly. “If I ever actually got the sleep I tried to take, I wouldn’t need no sleep, and then I wouldn’t be trying to sleep all the time.”

  “Whatever you said,” Peterson said. “It’s fucked up and makes no sense. You’re the sleepingest fucker I ever seen.”

  “Sleepy-assed Marshak,” Kafak said, grinning.

  “Fuck you guys,” Marshak said.

  Marshak lay down and pretended to be immediately asleep. Maybe he was at that, Kafak thought. It was hard to tell with Marshak. Still, after that he was always Sleepy Ass to everyone in the company.

  Peterson and Kafak kept an eye out for German infiltrators. With the tanks there, though, they felt fairly comfortable. Still, you could never know for sure, so they didn’t relax, as Collins had ordered.

  They were quiet for a long time, and then out of the darkness Peterson said, “Goddamnit, it’s such a fucked-up piece of shit, you know.”

  “What’s that?” Kafak said, not looking at him but keeping his attention trained on the area around their foxhole, the area through which the Germans would come if they were coming that night. Memorizing the shadows and the outlines of things.

  “That shit with Jake.”

  Jake Czeshevski, Kafak had picked up, was the guy who had shot himself.

  “Yeah. Hell of a thing,” Kafak said.

  Peterson fell quiet again for a few moments; then he said, “I don’t know what the fuck came over me, you know, back there.”

  “Hell,” Kafak said, “this shit is fucked.”

  “You got that right,” Peterson said. Kafak thought he detected a note of relief in Peterson’s voice. A thankfulness for being forgiven, Kafak expected. Something like that. Only Kafak didn’t figure there was anything to be forgiven for. It could happen to anyone, Kafak thought. It could happen to him. He just wished Peterson would drop the subject. He didn’t like thinking about any of that.

  Peterson said, “You ever wonder what you’re doing here, anyway, Kafak?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. Here.”

  “In Italy? Anzio?”

  “No. In this fucking war. This whole fucking thing. You ever wonder what the fuck you’re doing in the middle of this fucking shitstorm?”

  Kafak stopped to consider that, still staring out at the ground around them. Still on guard. Did he wonder what he was doing here?

  He hadn’t. Not really. Not until now.

  His country was at war. He’d been drafted. You went to war for your country. That’s how it worked. There was nothing else, nothing more to it, really. It wasn’t anything a guy had to think about. You just did it. He shrugged internally over that. He couldn’t see any other way about it.

  Once you were in, of course, you did what you were told to do. You went where you were told to go. That was the point of orders. That was the point of a military structure. How else were you supposed to think about it?

  Kafak knew, of course, that there were deserters. Every army, everywhere, every time, had its deserters. The thought of deserting, though, never occurred to him. He wouldn’t ever do something like that. He might run; he might cower; he might shoot himself like Jake Czeshevski had done. All of those things seemed entirely within the realm of possibility in Kafak’s mind. But the idea of deserting was not a thing he would ever contemplate. It seemed somehow dirty to him. A betrayal not only of your country but, more importantly, of your pals. The guys fighting beside you. He wouldn’t let them down like that. They were his buddies. Sleepy Ass and Peterson and all the rest of them. He owed them. And he knew they felt the same way about owing him something. No, he’d never desert.

  None of that, he supposed, really answered Peterson’s question, though.

  Kafak recalled when he’d been drafted. He’d been afraid, of course, there was that definite trepidation about what was going to happen. On the other hand, he’d been excited, too. He saw it as an adventure. The start of an adventure. There was a decided excitement playing within his mind and heart. He wanted to go. He looked forward to it, even, in some ways. The adventure every boy dreams about. The biggest adventure anyone could ever possibly face. Sure. It was the Big Adventure.

  But after a few times in combat you understood that this wasn’t any sort of boy’s play. This wasn’t playing army in the backyard, up and down the street. This shit was real. You learned that damned fast. It only took one bomb exploding close enough to rattle your skeleton. One bullet whizzing by like a bee in your fucking ear. After that you knew. You understood. Because then you realized you could be killed at any moment. Your life ended. All your hopes and dreams, everything you thought you wanted in the future, a future, maybe any future, could be ripped away from you in a moment. Kafak knew that. Understood it. Or thought he did, anyway. So, no, this was no boy’s adventure any longer. This was real fucking shit, and he knew that now.

  Of course, he was here now, too. So there it was.

  Kafak didn’t answer Peterson. He didn’t feel able to.

  Instead he said, “Well, why you here, Pete?”

  Peterson shrugged. Kafak, even without looking at him, could hear the sound of his uniform rustling in the dark quiet.

  Peterson said, “I wish to fuck I fucking knew.”

  They both were driven to silence by the pure agony of incomprehension expressed in Peterson’s words, if not exactly in his tone. Then, after a couple of seconds, Kafak snorted a laugh. Peterson looked at him, and Kafak looked at Peterson for the first time, and then Kafak laughed out loud, but keeping it low, quiet in the night, and Peterson grinned and then they both shook their heads as if to say What a couple of fucking assholes we are, and then they both laughed until Sleepy Ass woke up and took Kafak’s place and Kafak lay down and fell asleep in the mud.

  4

  Kafak and his comrades saw some more action over the next few days, some of it getting pretty thick, but they didn’t get the worst of it.

  Rumors abounded, and the company commander, Captain Cole, visited them several times over the next week, putting the wrong rumors right and letting them know as much as he knew about the bigger picture.

  “We got a new boss,” he told them one day as he squatted in their foxhole next to them. He traveled during the day through smoke to visit his men. Kafak thought that was a fine thing, that their leader would care enough about their welfare that he would risk death or wounding to vis
it with them, talk with them, keep their morale up. He thought a lot of Captain Cole. He knew all the guys did.

  “Who’s that, Cap?” Kafak asked him.

  “General Truscott is taking over the Sixth Corps. Lucas has been relieved.”

  “Why’d they do that?” Kafak asked.

  “Because we’re sitting here instead of in Cisterna, I expect,” Cole said.

  “That’s bullshit,” Kafak said.

  “What the fuck, Cap?” Jackson said. He was a corporal and had joined Kafak and Marshak in their foxhole over the last couple days. Peterson had been hit by a sniper and killed two days earlier. “Lucas did everything possible with what they gave him. We took the fucking beach. We’re still here despite everything the Krauts could throw at us. What the fuck more do they want from the guy?”

  “Hell, you got me, One-Eyed,” Cole said. They called Jackson “One-Eyed” as in one-eyed jack. “Not up to me who runs the outfit. I just follow orders. But General Truscott’s a good man. He cares about the troops as much as Lucas did, but he’s probably more of a go-getter. And that’s what Clark wants, I guess.”

  “Go-getter,” Kafak said.

  “Shit,” Marshak said, using the same tone of resigned disgust that had sounded in Kafak’s voice. “Hell, Cap, we all know what fucking go-getter means. It means we get to go and get our asses shot off some more.”

  “Your ass is so sleepy, Marshak,” Cole said, “it won’t know it’s been hit for hours.”

  “Right,” Kafak said, grinning. “Until it wakes the fuck up.”

  They all shared a laugh, even Marshak joining in. You had no choice but to laugh at yourself since they all took their turn being the butt.

  “Shut the fuck up, you gawky-assed son of a bitch,” Marshak told Kafak, still laughing.

  Ever since he’d been tagged “Sleepy Ass” by Kafak, Marshak had been trying to tag Kafak with the name of “Gawky Ass” or “Gawky” since Kafak was six feet tall and skinny as hell and walked around with a kind of slouch. Some of the guys said it was just natural, but others said he had developed a permanent crouch so as to make himself less of a target. But somebody said he was too damned skinny to hit with a bullet and it would take a bomb to do him in. Kafak only grinned at them all and said, “I hope it ain’t no fucking bomb.”