“Holler for a medic, Ack-Ack,” Kafak said, thinking to give the new guy something to do.
Acker started hollering. His hysteria sounded in his voice for the first few shouts, but then, as he got more and more hoarse from the continued yelling, he seemed to calm himself down. A medic finally came and checked Stoddard.
“He’s dead, all right.”
“Figured.”
“You didn’t need a medic for that.”
“Hey, it’s your fucking job,” Marshak said.
Kafak spoke quickly.
“Sorry for making you come out in the daylight, pal.”
“Sure,” the corpsman said, staring hard at Marshak.
“Don’t mind him,” Kafak told the medic, pulling him aside. “He’s just upset about our pal getting hit and all.”
“I get it,” the medic said. He calmed down a bit.
Kafak said, “I suppose you ought to look at this while you’re here.”
He showed the medic his arm. The corpsman put some stitches in it, threw on some disinfectant that burned like hell, then wrapped it up in a new bandage to keep it from getting infected.
“Keep it clean,” he told Kafak. “It’ll heal just fine. You’ll be all right.”
“Why should he be all right now?” Marshak said. “He wasn’t never all right before.”
“Fuck you, Sleepy Ass,” Kafak said.
Marshak laughed, and the medic said, “I’ll send someone to get the body. Soon’s it gets dark.”
The corpsman left, and Kafak spoke to Marshak. “You hear that, Sleepy Ass? Someone’ll come for the body soon as it gets dark. Right?”
“What the hell?” Marshak said. He shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. After a pause of no more than a moment, he shook his head again and smiled. “What the hell?” he said again. “Let’s just have Denny bring back the bread bag.”
“Fucking idiot,” Kafak told him.
Then he went back to sleep, listening to Marshak having a conversation with Stoddard. Later, when Kafak woke up again, he asked Marshak, “Why you wasting your time talking with Stoddard when you got a perfectly good Ack-Ack right there?”
“Cuz Stoddard’s more interesting than Ack-Ack.”
“Fuck you, pal,” Acker told Marshak.
“Hell,” Kafak said, “he only prefers Stoddard cuz Stoddard can’t talk back and tell him what a fucking asshole he is.”
“That’s another good reason,” Marshak said.
That night their Top Kick, Sergeant Barnes, came with the two men who’d arrived to take Stoddard’s body back to HQ. He waited for the body to be retrieved, watching Marshak watch the retrieval unit.
“What the fuck’s up with you, Marshak?” Barnes said. “Why you so interested in their work, all of a sudden?”
“Nothing,” Marshak said.
“He’s just trying to find bread crumbs in the bag.”
“They use different sets of mattress covers for the two things,” Barnes said.
“I know that, and you know that, Sarge,” Kafak said, “but Marshak don’t believe nothing the army tells him.”
Barnes snorted, then told them he’d send some more guys up to share their hole that night. Acker had already returned to his own comrades. Then Barnes told them, “Here’s the good news, the brass has finally seen fit to send us some galoshes.”
“Wow,” Marshak said. “I guess they finally realized this rain ain’t just a passing summer storm, huh?”
Barnes grinned.
“Bet you wish you were back in North Africa now, complaining about the heat, don’t you, Sleepy Ass?”
“Hell, I’d give my left nut to be back in the fucking desert, Sarge.”
“Yeah,” Kafak said, “the desert wasn’t so bad.”
Then Marshak said, “Wait.”
“What?” Barnes said.
“You can still fuck with one nut, right?”
Kafak and Barnes laughed.
“What the fuck?” Kafak said, shaking his head.
“Well,” Marshak said, “I just wanna know the bargain I’m making, is all.”
“Well, don’t worry about it, Sleepy Ass,” Barnes told him. “You ain’t gotta give up anything for the desert on account of you ain’t going to no desert. Ain’t nobody getting off of Anzio.”
“Except in one of them bread bags,” Kafak said.
“Don’t I know it,” Marshak said.
Then Barnes said, “Anyway, when the two new guys get up here, you two head back. The supply guys dumped them galoshes behind the church back in Anzio. You got a nice moonless night to travel by, so you shouldn’t get shot. Still, watch your fucking asses.”
Barnes left then. Within an hour Martinson and Pizzoli arrived. They both wore new galoshes.
“Like ’em?” Pizzoli said. “I got a fucking discount.”
“Yeah, free if you’re in the fucking army,” Marshak said.
“What a life we got, eh, boys?” Pizzoli said.
“Three meals a day and a nice mushy bed,” Martinson said, and Kafak told Marshak, “Come on.”
They crawled out of their foxhole and kept crawling through the mud until they’d gone a couple hundred yards from the very front of the front lines, and then they rose up into a running crouch and ran the rest of the way back to the beach. They found the pile of galoshes behind the church. Dozens of guys were there, going through the galoshes, trying to find their sizes. Some of the guys had one rubber boot on, two more in each hand, and were staring down at the pile for a potential match. Boots were flying everywhere as soldiers dug through them. Kafak and Marshak jumped right in.
“I can’t see shit in this dark,” Marshak said.
“Just take anything close to fitting,” Kafak said.
They couldn’t afford any light. German artillery wouldn’t allow for it.
They took about half an hour, but Kafak ended up with one boot that fit pretty snug while the other banged about loose upon his foot. It would be the best he’d do, he figured. He looked for Marshak. Sleepy Ass was still digging for a pair of boots that matched.
“I ain’t found nothing yet,” he told Kafak.
“I guess they don’t make them in girls’ sizes,” Kafak said.
“Yeah, fuck you, pally.”
“Come on, Sleepy Ass. We got to get back.”
“Fuck it, Dash, longer we’re here, longer we’re out of the firing line, right?”
“Hell, Pizzoli’ll figure us for dead and start going through our stuff.”
“I got nothing the army can’t replace,” Marshak said. “Ha!” he said then. “Lookee here, lookee here!” He found a pair of boots that looked to be a matched set. He tried one on. “Fits perfect!” he said. The next one didn’t. “Fuck!” he said.
“Come on,” Kafak told him. “It’ll have to do. I’m going.”
“Go without me. I’ll be there later.”
Kafak returned to the hole alone. He went to sleep. He woke up when he heard Marshak scrambling back into the mud.
“Well?” Kafak said, half-asleep. “How’d you do?”
“Came close, but no cigar. They’ll do OK, though.”
“Good,” Kafak said. It was raining. “I’ll take the next watch.”
Marshak and Martinson slept, and Pizzoli kept up a running, albeit quiet, commentary on everything he could think of. From baseball to movies to weather to how he wanted to come back to Italy and see it as it really was once the war was over and “my fucking home dagos clean the fucking place up a bit.” Kafak said nothing, just listened. He lit a Lucky with his battered Zippo, hiding the flame, and cupped the burning end of the cigarette in his hand. When the cigarette was done, he tossed the butt and drew his blanket tighter around himself against the rain, but it did little good.
When Marshak and Martinson woke up to take their turn on watch, it was still raining. Kafak tried to sleep. He tossed and turned a bit. The blanket was so wet it only made him colder. And the galoshes kept tangling his feet. He
kicked them off and threw the blanket aside. He shoved his gloved hands beneath his armpits and curled up in the bottom of the foxhole. He felt exhausted, but he couldn’t drop off. “Fucking rain,” he said.
He fell back asleep.
9
The next morning when Kafak awoke, his ear was on fire. It ached and throbbed and burned all at the same time.
“Shit,” he said.
He touched it, and that made it shoot pain.
“You don’t look so good, pally,” Marshak said.
Pizzoli said, “You look like shit. You know,” he said, “more shit than you usually look like.”
“My fucking ear,” Kafak told them.
He looked down where he’d been sleeping. A puddle spread there. The water was cold and his side and back were sopping wet.
“You’d better get a medic up here,” Marshak told him.
“I don’t want some guy risking his life cuz I got a fucking earache, Sleepy Ass.”
“Here, lemme feel your temperature.”
Marshak pulled off his glove with his teeth and reached for Kafak’s forehead, under his helmet.
“Don’t,” Kafak said.
“Shut up and gimme your fucking head,” Marshak said. Kafak did, looking sheepish about it, and Marshak said, “Fuck, pal, you’re on fire.”
“It’s just your fucking hands are cold.”
“Hell, a hot meal would feel cold to you right about now, Dash. You need a medic.”
Kafak shook his head no, but Pizzoli hollered for a corpsman, and one came within the hour. He looked at Kafak, felt his forehead, and said, “Come on, let’s get you back to the rear. Have a doc look at that ear.”
“I’ll take him, buddy,” Marshak said, volunteering quickly. “So’s you can stay on duty up here where the troops need you.”
The medic frowned at Marshak. He told him, “Go ahead, but there ain’t no dames back there, you know. It’s too dangerous for female nurses on Anzio nowadays. Even at the rear.”
They saw how that could be true, too, Kafak and Marshak, when they reached the beach where the hospital tents had been set up. One had been blown to hell. They were using some of the ruined buildings for hospital work as well, but mostly those were used as headquarters along with the huge underground system they had built. Engineers had sunk the large red-crossed tents a few feet into the ground and surrounded them with walls of sandbags. Random shells exploded nearby, but nobody seemed to notice; they all just went right on working. Even with the huge red crosses painted on the tents, the Germans didn’t stop bombing the area. Doctors and the male nurses were often killed. It was exactly because it was so dangerous that the army didn’t want to allow female nurses to be stationed on the beachhead any longer.
“Shit,” Kafak said. “I’d’ve been safer staying in my hole up front.”
“Fuckin-A right,” Marshak said. He was peering around the compound, searching desperately. “Shit,” Marshak said after a time. “There ain’t no women here.”
“The corpsman told you that, Sleepy Ass.”
“Who fucking believes those bastards, anyway? They’ll say anything to keep a guy on the goddamned line. And keep the dames to themselves.”
Kafak reported to one orderly, a corporal, and the guy told him to get into line. Marshak stayed with him in order to help him stand. Kafak felt incredibly and increasingly weak. His ear hurt more and more. Marshak stood on his left side. Kafak waited at the back of a line of about forty guys. He noticed none of them had any bullet or shrapnel wounds. They weren’t being treated for wounds; they were being treated for illnesses. Like Kafak.
Guys went into the tent, one at a time, then came back out the same way. Some of them reclaimed their equipment from the orderly station and headed back toward the front lines. Others skipped the orderly station and walked toward a tent nearer the bay. They sat or lay down there on cots under the open-sided tent. It, too, had a big red cross painted on it, which meant nothing.
“Hey,” Marshak said, his voice sudden and urgent. “Look there, Dash! It’s a dame. A bona fide female nurse.”
“Bullshit, Sleepy Ass. You’re seeing things.”
“No, I’m telling you. I saw one.”
“They told you there weren’t any female nurses here.”
“That corpsman was full of shit. I’m telling you, Dash. I saw one. A real looker, too.”
“Sure,” Kafak said, “she would be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marshak said.
They argued like that for a time. Kafak figured Marshak was trying to keep his mind off things. He wondered, though, if Marshak really had seen a female nurse. Kafak didn’t see any.
Kafak still waited on line, maybe a dozen guys before him now, more men constantly filling in behind him, when four soldiers came running in carrying a man on a blanket. The man had a wound in his neck. Blood was pouring out of it. Medics applied pressure to the wound, but it was doing no good. Blood covered his entire shoulder and chest area.
“Looks like a sniper,” Marshak said.
“Yeah,” Kafak said.
He watched the man be rushed straight ahead and into the tent, bypassing the line.
“What the fuck is with that?” Marshak said. “We been waiting here.”
“That guy needs a doc way more than I do,” Kafak said.
“Jesus, Dash, a fucking fever can kill you just as good as any fucking Kraut bullet, you know.”
“Thanks for the reassurance, you fuckhead.”
“I’m only telling you how it is, pally. You’re looking worse by the fucking minute.”
“I’ll live. I can wait.”
By the time Kafak got into the tent, he saw a couple of doctors still working on the wounded trooper. The line had fallen into a slower pace once that soldier had been carried into the hospital. Kafak saw now it was because there were only two other doctors available for the injured and sick. One of them approached him and said something.
“What?” Kafak asked.
The doctor repeated what he had said. At least, Kafak figured he did. Kafak saw the doctor’s lips move, but he couldn’t really hear anything but a blurred mumble. Then he realized the doctor was standing on his right-hand side, talking to his right ear, the ear that hurt so bad.
Kafak pointed to the ear and said, “I can’t hear.”
The doctor frowned and stepped to Kafak’s left-hand side.
“Can you hear me with this ear?”
“Yeah,” Kafak said. “Sure.”
“You’re having problems with that ear, then?” the doc said, pointing to the right ear. Kafak nodded. “What happened?”
“I woke up this morning and it was on fire. Hurts like a son of a bitch, doc. If you could just give me something for the pain, I can go back up to my hole.”
“Sit down,” the doctor told him.
Kafak sat. The doctor took his temperature.
“How’s it look, Doc?” Kafak asked.
“Bad, but not too bad.” The doc paused, thinking, then grabbed a pad and wrote something down on it. “Here,” he said, ripping off the top sheet and handing it to Kafak.
“What’s this?”
“Three-day pass to the rest area.”
“Oh,” Kafak said. “All right.”
He handed him another sheet of paper. “And here’s a prescription for some medicine. Give both of these to the orderly over at the rest area. Right?”
“Sure thing, Doc.”
But the doctor was already calling in the next guy.
Kafak stood up and nearly fell over. His equilibrium had been impacted by the infected ear. He hadn’t noticed before, with Marshak holding him up. He grabbed onto a nearby cot to steady himself. He had to make his way to the exit from the tent by lurching from one piece of furniture to another. The doctor saw him and stared at him. Kafak smiled at the doc. The doc turned away, frowning, already examining the next patient. Kafak figured the doctor must have thought he was faking the stumbling routine
. Kafak only wished he was. He felt like he was going to puke.
Marshak met him just outside and said, “Well?”
“Three-day pass at the rest area,” Kafak said.
“Rest area?” Marshak said. He sounded disbelieving. “There ain’t no fucking rest area on goddamned Anzio, Dash.”
“I know that,” Kafak said. “You know that. But I figure that doctor don’t know it.”
“Son of a bitch. You gotta be fucking dead to get off this fucking shitass beach. It ain’t fucking right, pal.”
“Don’t I know it,” Kafak said.
He stumbled toward the rest area with Marshak supporting him. The rest area consisted of some tents, some cots, and some radios playing big-band music piped in from somewhere. He handed the orderly the papers the doctor had given him, and the orderly pointed him to a cot. Marshak humped him over to the bed, and Kafak plopped down on it. Kafak lay down in the same filthy clothes he’d been wearing for weeks now. Maybe two months. Ever since he’d been on Anzio, anyhow.
“You be all right, Bobby?” Marshak asked.
“Sure,” Kafak said. “Sure.”
He was already falling asleep.
“I’ll be by to see you soon’s I can,” Marshak said.
“OK.”
“Take care of yourself, Bobby.”
“Sure,” Kafak said, smiling. “Why the fuck not?”
Then he fell asleep.
Kafak woke the next day to the smell of bacon frying. He almost fainted from the beauty of it. His mouth watered. He hadn’t had a hot meal in weeks, the entire time he’d been on Anzio, really. He couldn’t wait for the breakfast to be served. Even if he didn’t feel much like eating because of the pain in his head and the queasiness in his stomach from his fucked-up equilibrium. A doctor had entered the tent. A different guy from the one who had seen him yesterday. He moved from cot to cot, checking on the patients. They all seemed to be getting better. At least that’s how it looked to Kafak, judging by the doctor’s expressions and words of encouragement. Then he came to Kafak. He looked at the papers the last doctor had made out, that the orderly had taken and then pinned to a board that now hung at the end of Kafak’s cot.
“How we doing, son?” the doctor said.
“I feel fucking great, Doc,” Kafak said.
One Man's War Page 10