One Man's War

by P. M. Kippert

  Collins visited them shortly after Cole left.

  “How’s the feet, boys?” he asked them.

  They all knew what he meant. They had seen what could happen.

  Kafak remembered one of the guys from L Company named Preston. Preston had been around for a while. Kafak had met him back in North Africa. Here on Anzio, Preston had begun the whole thing with shaking his feet. Kafak clearly remembered that. How Preston would always be shaking his feet. Hell, they all did it. Lying there in your foxhole, unable to move all day because of the German snipers, the cold and the wet sneaking into your boots, all of them got numb feet now and again. So you shook them to get the blood going. Or you stamped them if you could stand up at all, like you sometimes could at night. Kafak recalled how Preston had begun stamping his feet. A little at first, then more and more as a few days passed. Then he started complaining about them.

  “I can’t hardly put my weight on them anymore, guys. They hurt like fucking shit.”

  “What’s the pain like?” somebody asked.

  “Like they’re on fucking fire. I’m telling you. This is impossible. If the Krauts come through, I ain’t going to be able to run away from the cocksuckers.”

  Everyone laughed and passed it off. But Preston was in true pain.

  One day when he took off his boots to look at his feet, the stench of rotting flesh hit them all like a wave of shit from a sewer. Only worse.

  “Son of a bitch, Preston,” Marshak said. He sounded awed at the smell of Preston’s feet, at the sight of them. “What you been doing to your fucking feet?”

  “What the fuck?” Kafak said.

  “It’s the fucking cold,” Preston said. “It’s the goddamned water everywhere.” He looked around. “Ain’t your guys’ feet just like this, too?”

  The other guys looked at one another. They didn’t say anything. They looked a little sick, all of them. Preston most of all.

  Then Kafak said, “You better talk to a medic, Pres.”

  Preston stared at Kafak. For a long moment. Finally, Preston looked back down at his feet and said, “Fuck,” under his breath. With true fear. “Jesus Christ fuck.”

  Kafak and Marshak half-carried, half-walked Preston back to the nearest medical aid station. They wished him good luck, then returned to the front line and their foxhole there. They didn’t hear anything more about Preston for a while and sort of forgot about the entire thing, and then one day Captain Cole was visiting them and told them that Preston would be going home.

  Kafak, Marshak, and a couple of other guys who were there looked at one another. Then Marshak spoke to the captain. He said, “He gets out of this shithole because he’s got sore fucking feet, Cap? Hell, my feet suddenly don’t feel so hot neither. You know?”

  “Preston got trench foot,” Cole said. “They had to amputate most of his leg.”

  “Most of his leg?” Marshak said.

  “Fuck!” Kafak said.

  Cole nodded.

  “Preston lost one leg to just above the knee, and the other one around the ankle,” Cole said. “Way I heard it, anyhow.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Kafak said. He shook his head, astounded.

  “He just had sore fucking feet, Cap,” Marshak said. “Fucking army doctors. Why’d they cut off his fucking legs, for Christ’s sake?”

  “I told you, trench foot, Sleepy Ass. The problem is, once it gets bad, gangrene sets in. That’s what happened with Preston. He let it go on too long, and then it was too late. He had gangrene in both feet. The doctors start off by cutting off only as much as they think needs it. But they can’t always tell how far the decay of flesh has set in, see. So with his one foot, they stopped at the ankle and that was the end of it on that side. But on the other side, they had to keep cutting until they went above the knee. But they finally got it all. Least, that’s what I heard. So Preston’s luckier than a lot of guys. A lot of guys they don’t catch it even in that time, and those guys end up dead.”

  “Holy shit,” Marshak said. “From fucking sore feet.”

  “He don’t sound so lucky to me,” Kafak said.

  “He could be dead, Kafak,” Cole said.

  Kafak looked at the captain but didn’t reply. He only shook his head. Dead. Or no feet and only half of one leg. He shook his head again, falling silent.

  Cole said, “Anyway, Preston wasn’t the only one, like I said. There have been others. Too many others. So the army’s instituted a new procedure. New boots and socks. The shoepac procedure. And you’re all going to follow it, because if you don’t I’ll be sent back to the States and lose my command. And I am not about to lose my command because of,” and he paused and looked at Marshak, “a lot of sore feet.”

  Marshak nodded, but he said, “I was you, I wouldn’t mind being sent back to the States, Cap.”

  Cole smiled at him.

  He said, “I can’t afford to let them send me back. If I left you guys out here on your own, I’d never overcome the guilt. You all wouldn’t last a day without me and Collins on your fucking asses, now, would you?”

  “Shit,” Marshak said. But he said it quietly.

  Kafak said, “You got that right, Cap.”

  Cole laughed and left the hole. Marshak looked at Kafak and said, “Kiss ass.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a kiss ass. I ain’t alive cuz of Cole or Collins. I’m alive cuz I watch my fucking ass for myself.”

  “You’re alive because you’re too goddamned small for the Krauts to hit,” one of the other guys said.

  “Fuck you,” Marshak said, but they all laughed. Then he looked back at Kafak. “Kiss Ass. That’s what we should call you, Kafak.”

  Only that name didn’t stick either.

  So when Collins asked them, “How’s the feet, boys?” they all knew what he meant, all right.

  “’Fraid you’re gonna get busted, Sarge?” Marshak said.

  “Hell,” Collins said, “I’d be glad to lose this job and not be responsible for a bunch of fuckups like you guys.”

  “Aw, Sarge, we love you, too.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Sleepy Ass, and change your fucking socks. All of you. Shoepac it right now.”

  “You gonna watch, Sarge?”

  “Since I don’t trust you half as far as I can throw your little ass, Sleepy Ass, yeah, I’m gonna wait and watch and make sure you all do it right. Get on with it now. And keep your dumb fucking heads down.”

  Kafak sank as low into the foxhole as he could. Sleepy Ass and Jackson crouched right beside him. Collins kept an eye out but half an eye on them as well.

  Kafak had to scrape wet, sucking mud off his boots before he could even unlace them. He pulled off his left boot and pulled out the insole that had been added as one of the measures to combat trench foot. The piece of thick felt was sopping wet. Not from the outside water in the hole, because the boot he was wearing had been especially designed to keep that water out. The insole grew wet from the condensation of his own perspiration in the heavy socks and boots. He slipped a fresh insole into the boot. Well, fresh was a relative term, Kafak thought. It was the one he had used yesterday and then taken out to dry. It didn’t dry completely in the rotten weather, but it was a lot less soggy than the one he was removing this morning. After that he removed the two heavy wool ski socks he had on and put on new ones. These, too, were not actually new, but the ones he had used yesterday. They were still damp and cold but not as wet as the ones he was taking off. There was no way to ever actually dry the stuff out because they couldn’t light any fire. They lived cold. They ate cold. They slept cold. Cold and wet. Everything on the Anzio beachhead front lines happened cold and wet. Kafak tried not to think about any of that overmuch. Nothing you could do about it except hate it and curse it, and they all did that. And then lived through it.

  Kafak put the boot back on and laced it up, tight. Then he performed the same ritual for his right foot. He silently thanked the Germans for not messing with them in the midmorning, the time
when this shoepac discipline usually took place. The Germans’ early rolling barrage had ended, and their patrols and probes wouldn’t start until dark. The thought had no sooner floated through his brain than a single shot chinged off metal nearby. Everyone ducked.

  “Anyone hit?” Collins said. “Call out!”

  “I’m good, Sarge,” Kafak said, checking himself quickly, though he knew there was no real need. He hadn’t felt anything, and he’d heard it so he knew he wasn’t hit. Still, he checked himself. Every time.

  Marshak patted his body all over as well, making a show of it. Then he said, “Fuckers didn’t get me.” Then he turned his head a little and shouted out, “You didn’t get me, you cocksuckers!”

  “No, not this time,” Collins said. “One-Eyed? How’re you?”

  Jackson didn’t answer right away. Kafak and the others all looked at him. Jackson was sunk low in the hole and had his helmet off. He was rubbing the back of his head, near the top. He held his helmet in his other hand. There was a small dent in the metal.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. His voice was colored with amazement. “Some fucker gave me a knot on my fucking skull you wouldn’t believe.”

  But he was all right, and Kafak could see the relief on Collins’s face. The sergeant shook his head.

  He said, “I don’t know if it was the helmet saved your ass or just your hard fucking head, but keep down from now on, will ya, ya stupid bastard?”

  “Will do, Sarge, believe you me.”

  “That goes for all of ya.”

  “Sure thing,” Kafak said.

  “I ain’t going nowhere,” Marshak said.

  “Tell me something I don’t already know,” Collins told him.

  Things had fallen into a pattern for Kafak. He knew that the Allies were building up their forces, almost daily, because Captain Cole had informed them about that. Besides, they would still watch German raids on the ships in the harbor, and there wouldn’t be ships in the harbor if the Allies hadn’t been sending in more men and more equipment and more supplies. For Kafak, though, on a day-to-day basis, he didn’t do much. He woke up in the morning. Pissed against the side of the foxhole while poised on his hip. Took a shit if he needed to. Ate a can of hash or stew or beans. Tried not to throw up. Drank some water. They mostly got their water from the drainage ditches. They scooped it up in their canteens or their helmets and then tossed in the tablets they’d been given that would disinfect the water. It tasted like shit, but it wouldn’t kill you. At least that’s what the army told them. Kafak was never sure he trusted it when the army said something wouldn’t kill him.

  After all that, he waited out the Germans’ good-morning rolling bombardment. Then came the shoepac ritual, which Kafak followed religiously, with or without Collins’s presence and prompting. He’d never forget that stench when Preston had removed his boots that day. That alone proved spur enough to make him self-enforce the discipline with his shoes and socks and insoles. Then it was a matter of keeping his head down. Then it was a matter of boredom and waiting.

  The Germans wouldn’t attack this late in the day. If they didn’t come in at dawn, they weren’t coming. Not in force, anyhow. In the dark, smaller groups of Germans oftentimes came. Or tried to. They were usually knocked back. Occasionally, on other parts of the front, rumor had it that their probes were more successful. The thing you didn’t want happening was to get shot by one of these patrols. Or captured. That was the main thing you had to watch out for during those weeks after the Germans’ big counterattack. When things had settled into this back-and-forth probing with these small pushes to extend one’s lines.

  The Allies sent out patrols as well. See where the Germans were at. Try to capture prisoners. Kafak had been spared that much so far.

  During those long, boring hours, there wasn’t much to do. Sometimes Kafak tried to zero in his rifle. That wasn’t easy, though, because there was nothing much to shoot at. If he was in a foxhole farther back, he might shoot out to sea, but they were soon told not to do that because their bullets were reaching the ships in the harbor and annoying, when not actually injuring, the navy boys. And you couldn’t shoot in front of you at the rear for fear of hitting your own guys. When he was in a foxhole on the front line, he couldn’t fire either, because you had to stick your head up for that, and you were only asking for trouble then because the Germans would spot you and pull a One-Eyed on you. That’s what it had become called if you got hit in the helmet. Most times, you weren’t going to survive that the way One-Eyed Jackson had, though.

  There wasn’t much else left to do but daydream about home or something like that. Kafak thought a lot about the Italian girl. He wished he knew more about her. Once in a while he’d look at her picture, but he didn’t like doing that because it might get ruined and also because the guys would rib him about it. Call her “his girl.” Stuff like that. Yet he didn’t even really know her but to say hello and one day ask for a photograph. Prove he had been there, in Naples. That’s all it had been at the time. Now, it had become something more. Only he couldn’t really say what.

  The other thing they did was they talked with one another.

  Kafak thought Marshak could be annoying, but he liked him. Everyone thought Marshak could be annoying, but everyone ended up liking the little guy. He and Kafak had a lot in common. They were both from Detroit. They talked a lot about the city, where they’d grown up, the places there they hung out, liked to visit. They spent hours talking about the fate of the Tigers ballclub. They were both avid fans.

  A guy named Pilotti was from Washington State. He said he intended to make his living following the horses when the war was over. He knew a lot about racing. He never tired of passing on his knowledge. Some of it Kafak even found interesting. He wasn’t into gambling, though, so most of it he didn’t pay much attention to. Still, Pilotti could make it all sound damned interesting, and Kafak enjoyed the hours spent with him.

  Another guy named Chandler said he had a girl back home who was a Hollywood starlet. He showed all the guys a picture. The girl was a knockout, no doubt. A real looker. Chandler told them all her name and said, “Watch for her. You’re gonna see her hit it big in the movies one of these days. And after the war, we’ll get married. She’s going to be a big star, and I’ll manage her career.” They all wished him luck. Marshak later told Kafak he didn’t believe Chandler for a minute. “That picture probably came with the fucking wallet,” Marshak said. Kafak thought Marshak was probably just jealous. The girl had been something, after all. And Chandler was a good-looking guy. Marshak hated that, Kafak knew.

  There were other guys, too. They all had a story. They came from all over the country and had different experiences, and Kafak loved hearing about each and every one of them. All the differences between them. And all the similarities. That surprised Kafak the most. How much alike they all were in the end, despite how different their backgrounds and origins were.

  Kafak especially loved talking to the guys from the South. Guys who had grown up on farms or in the country. Dirt poor, most of them were, so Kafak had that in common with them. But they had such interesting stories about hunting and living off the land, and just everything about their lives was so entirely different from his, him being a city boy and such. He enjoyed getting to know these guys and all the stories they told.

  One day there were about five of them sharing a larger foxhole, not at the head of the front line this day. They still had to keep their heads down, though. The Germans could see the entire beach, after all. So the five of them sat there in mud and puddles of rainwater, and Marshak said, “Bobby, tell these guys the story of how a pair of glasses saved your fucking useless life, buddy.”

  “Naw,” Kafak said. “That’s all right.”

  But the other guys had never heard the story, and they wanted to. They wouldn’t let it go. So Kafak finally surrendered and told them the story.

  “I’d just finished basic, and they gave us all a seven-day pass. So I went home
for a visit. On the way home I somehow lost one of my pairs of glasses. The army gave me these glasses I’m wearing, right. The army gave me glasses, new teeth, more food than I’ve ever eaten in my life, better clothes, too. Sure, the army gives you everything. And all they ask in return is for you to put your ass on the line to get it shot off. Fair trade, right?

  “Anyhow, I lost one of the pairs of glasses I was given on the way home. I lost the other pair on the way back. I could still see all right, but what the hell? You know how the army is.

  “So, anyway, once I got back to my company, we all got shipped out to Camp Shenango. Now, Camp Shenango was a one-third camp.”

  The guys laughed quietly over that. They all knew from their own days getting prepared to be shipped overseas what a one-third camp was. One third of the men in the camp were AWOL, the second third were chasing them down, and the final third were waiting to be shipped overseas. Kafak was in that last third.

  “Now, like you guys know, when you’re in a one-third camp like Shenango, the first thing the army wants you to do is get all your fucking equipment up to snuff. All false teeth and glasses were to be replaced and reissued if you’d lost them. Well, I had my teeth, OK, but I had lost both pairs of my glasses. So they finally told me to go get my new glasses cuz they’d come in and were ready for me. So I went. When I got back to the barracks, all the other guys I had trained with had been moved out to another part of camp for disembarkation. The officer in charge there told me I was too late to join them. All those guys went on without me.

  “Later I got a letter from a pal of mine. He told me they’d been shipped to England, so you know they’re there to be used in the French invasion when it comes. I figure they’re gonna get themselves ripped a whole lot of new assholes when they land against Fortress Europa. So, instead of that happening to me, I’m right here, happy and content in beautiful Italia.”