The First Snow of Winter

by Fred Allen

  “Sir, I have spent a couple of hours today reviewing Private Shawkey’s file, “said Rafferty. “It contains some interesting stuff. As you know, when Private Shawkey completes his sentence and that might be a long time the way he’s burning ‘good behavior credits’, there are two recommendations we can make. The first, and what will be the obvious recommendation we will make based upon his first few days here, will be that he be discharged as being ‘Unlikely to become an efficient soldier.’ That’s pretty close to being a dishonorable discharge. The other recommendation available to us is that he be returned to full service without prejudice. Little chance of that based upon his performance so far. But on reading his file there’s a suggestion that he may have got the dirty end of the stick. The President of his court-martial was Colonel Richmond who was my Company Commander in France and one of the finest officers I have ever served under and he suggests that Private Shawkey might just be worth the effort required to rehabilitate him. He had nearly five months at the front as a sniper and received three citations for bravery resulting in one Mention-in-Dispatches. At any rate, I’d like to talk to him and there is just a chance that now you have put the fear of God into him he might just listen to someone for the first time in his life.”

  “That’s all right with me” said the doctor. “I think I can safely assume that you won’t take advantage of him in his weakened condition. But then, judging from what I saw this morning, Private Shawkey wouldn’t present any problem to you regardless of his condition.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” replied Rafferty. “I was quite thankful that it only lasted two rounds. I was very lucky that I avoided those punches of his or you’d have me in one of your sick bay beds and just think of the damage he might have inflicted on this pretty face of mine! I’ll drop in to see him this evening and I’ll keep you posted. The punches this morning didn’t seem to have any positive effect. Now that he’s silenced by fear of the threat to his manhood, words might just penetrate that thick skull of his and make him think for what could be the first time in his life.”

  Rafferty dropped in at the sick bay at about eight o’clock that evening and the orderly opened the door to Sharkey’s darkened room. The light in the room was so dim that Rafferty could barely make out Sharkey’s form in the bed. Sharkey’s eyes were covered with heavy bandages and his feet were elevated on cushions placed at the foot of his bed but he was obviously awake because he recognized Rafferty’s voice as he greeted him..

  “So there you are, you yellow bastard-come to lord it over a sick man after you took advantage of me in my weakened condition this morning.” The voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “Just wait till I get back on my feet, I’ll show you!”

  “Just keep quiet, Sharkey, “said Rafferty. “You know what the doctor told you. If those mumps go down to your gonads what little satisfaction you might have offered to women would be gone forever-not that they would miss it that much what with your sparkling personality. Just lie there and listen to someone for the first time in your life. I’ll make a deal with you. If you listen to what I have to say I’ll make a promise to you. After you get back on your feet, and if you want another piece of me, then I promise I’ll be available on any Wednesday. There’s a waiting list but you’ll go to the head of the queue. I only ask that you listen. I also hope that you’ll think about what I have to say but I’ve seen absolutely no indications that you know how to use that faculty so I’ll settle for just listening.

  “I spent a couple of hours today going through your file and I confess I didn’t start with an open mind. My original impression was that you were probably the dumbest Irishman I have ever met and I come from a large family. The first information I noted was that you have been here only a week and when you arrived you had a potential to earn 25% time off for good behavior and that would be twenty-two and a half days. You are already down to about three days and you still face a possible court-martial for what happened in the dining hall. Prisoners with any sense at all guard these remission credits like they were the crown jewels but not tough guy Sharkey.

  “If we go back to the night of your arrest you reacted in a predictable way to reading the casualty list and seeing that your two younger brothers had been killed in action. Not a smart reaction but easily predictable. Without thinking for an instant about your medical condition, you went over the wall, somehow got some money, and headed for a pub. What in the hell did you think you could achieve? You were due to leave for home on convalescent leave in a few days. Wouldn’t it have made sense to go home and comfort your mother? You are all that she has left, poor woman. But your plan was to get roaring drunk and what in the hell would that accomplish? Then, an inoffensive little Military Police Officer, just doing his job, asked to see your pass and you decided to take out all your troubles on him. Sure, you may have got yourself beaten by the MPs but the officer was thoroughly pissed off and that’s understandable. I’d have been pissed off too if a wild drunken Irishman broke my nose and fractured my jaw.

  “Fortunately, you had enough sense to head off a riot at the pub but it seems that the little speech you gave there was just another demonstration of your “tough guy” image. Then, when you got back to the Depot, you put on your “tough guy” act again when the Medical Officer asked you about the blood and what happened to your stitches and surgical dressing.

  “Then at your court-martial the RC Padre asked to speak on your behalf. All the poor bastard wanted to do was to tell the court about your father and your two younger brothers. But, no, the tough guy didn’t want any sympathy from any of these Limey bastards. I don’t want any God damn sympathy you were saying. You were applying that old soldier’s philosophy which says “Just look at where sympathy comes in the dictionary, it comes between shit and syphilis according to that gem of barrack room wisdom. But you’re confusing sympathy and pity. No self-respecting man looks for pity, but sympathy is a very civilized reaction between civilized people that offers a meaningful measure of the level of human concern that has been achieved by our society in human relations. I’ve lost two brothers, a mother who died of a broken heart, an uncle and three cousins in this war and I’ve received lots of sympathy and welcomed it. Colonel Richmond, the President of your Court, had his only brother die in his arms, left an arm at the front as he saved our lives when our sector was over run. Nobody would even consider showing him pity but sympathy comes from the civilized heart and he welcomed it.

  “Your, problem, Sharkey is that you never realized the important difference between sympathy and pity. You wound up looking for pity and that always starts with self-pity. When you hit the pub that night you were wallowing in self-pity and were looking for more of it. Then you decided to drown your sorrow with booze. Well, Boyo, you’ll learn someday that genuine sorrow is to be shared and that’s where sympathy comes in. But if you try to drown your sorrow, you just sink deeper into a sinkhole of pity that started with self-pity. You found that when you gulped down the booze all alone self-pity can swim and not even the flood of tears helps to drown your sorrows as you grieve alone. So you turned your back on honest, sincere sympathy all in some delusionally misplaced effort to bolster your “tough guy” image.

  “Let’s try and look at your actions that night with some objectivity. You read the casualty list and your first reaction was to be thoroughly pissed off. They were just kids and they were killed on the first day at the front. You’re smart enough to know what happened. There was a patrol going out and they volunteered. You weren’t there to teach the first tenet in the professional soldier’s survival handbook “Never Volunteer!!” They went out on the patrol and got ambushed and just didn’t know what to do and nor did the patrol commander who was probably a very junior second-lieutenant and also a volunteer. They didn’t have a chance and you know it. So what did the big brother do? He decided he would show those God damned Gerries-he’d go out an get roaring drunk and fall into a slobbering mess of s
elf-pity. Then he’d beat the shit out of some poor inoffensive meathead 2nd/Lieutenant, and that would really teach those God damned Gerries a lesson. It would really piss those Gerries off! Do you get the message Boyo? You don’t get mad you get even!”

  While Rafferty continued to speak there was no intelligible response from the figure on the bed. But Rafferty knew Sharkey was listening from his frequent incoherent muttering always uttered in a hoarse whisper.

  “And now, “Rafferty continued. “What about the future? What happens when you complete your sentence, if you ever do? The Commanding Officer here will ask us to make one of the two recommendations open to us. We can recommend that you be returned to duty without prejudice and you go back to fighting the God damned war, or, we can recommend that you be discharged from His Majesty’s Forces “on the grounds that you are unlikely to become an efficient soldier.” That’s as close to a dishonorable discharge as you can get and not a document that you will mount over the fireplace. And just which of these recommendations are you heading for Sharkey? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count!

  “So you get your discharge and go back to Ireland. Oh, what a comfort you will be to your poor old mother. After all, she will have a live son and a dishonorable discharge to be added to his father’s decorations and service medals and the service medals and the special war memorial medal that is awarded to Silver Cross Mothers for sons who made the supreme sacrifice. And what will she say about her oldest son? Oh, yes, he was awarded a Mention-in-Dispatches. But the problem would be that there wouldn’t be a service medal for him on which the little MID clasp could be mounted.

  “Well, Sharkey, that’s all I have to say. Just remember a deal is a deal. You’ve listened to what I had to say and I can only hope that you prove to me that you are capable of thought and think over what I have said. If you want another piece of me just let me know and I’ll put you at the head of the queue. Just make sure that you are ready because I wouldn’t want to take advantage of a sick boy again. And look after those gonads of yours because if you prove to be half as good a man as I think you could be it would be a national loss if the Shawkey lineage came to an end too soon.”

  For some time as Rafferty completed his talk and after he left the sick bay, Sharkey was very quiet. This was the first time that anyone had talked to him about himself in such a way that it made him think. When Rafferty had started to talk all Sharkey could think of was the pleasure he would take when he got that little bastard back in the ring. But as Rafferty continued to speak, Sharkey actually started to think of the meaning of his words. Very grudgingly, he found himself listening and thinking of the true meaning of words for the first time in his life. He realized that, for him, thinking had never precededhis actions and, now that he recognized this fatal flaw, it was that late he could only think about consequences.

  His recognition of Rafferty’s differentiation between sympathy and pity hit him with about the same force as that Mauser slug that had knocked him on his ass that morning in France.

  Then his thoughts turned to his mother. It may sound strange but Sharkey couldn’t remember the last time he had thought about his mother. It was equally strange that as his thoughts turned to her, memories flooded back of a multitude of incidents that had accumulated effortlessly in his memory and were now being recalled in minute detail as he thought of his mother as a person for the first time and a loving and caring person for whom the love and care of her boys had always come first.

  These memories flooding back included Father O’Brien and of the many times he had been summoned to the school by the exasperated Mother Superior and Principal and how the Good Father would spend hours negotiating some compromise to ensure that the boys’ exposure to a Christian Education would not terminate that day.

  He also thought of the trials and tribulations they had inflicted upon Father O’Brien as he struggled to teach these wild sons of Shamus the true meaning of their Catechism. He recalled how, on occasions and by conspiratorial design, they had driven the genial giant of a man almost to the point of applying his own type of persuasion. But he would always control his impulses and send them home to their ever-loving mother.

  It was some hours before Sharkey fell into a fitful sleep. Early in the morning the orderly quietly entered the room to check on his patient. He followed the medical officer’s instructions to change the bandages on Sharkey’s eyes and found to his surprise that the bandages were soaking wet. As he removed them the reason became obvious. Even in the dim light of the room the orderly could see that his patient’s face was streaked with tears. It was apparent that the big tough Irishman had cried himself to sleep.

  Three days later Sharkey returned to duty. The colorful bruises to his eyes were now subdued in hue, he could breath through his nose with only a little discomfort and he had been assured by the doctor that his manhood and the future of the Shawkey lineage had been preserved by carefully following the doctor’s instructions. In religiously following the doctors orders Sharkey maintained a level of apprehensive inactivity never equaled since the day of his birth. In doing so he discovered a capacity for self-discipline that he never knew existed.

  When Sharkey returned to serving his time, Rafferty fully expected that he would immediately demand that Rafferty keep his promise and schedule him for one of Rafferty’s “one-on-one”-counseling sessions. But not a word and it soon became obvious that Sharkey was a changed man.

  Not only had Sharkey’s reaction to the highly rigid tempo of discipline throughout training hours changed but, as the days went by, it became obvious that he was demanding the same high standard of behavior from all others who lived in the same barrack room.

  Part of the modus operandi in the application of discipline at the detention barracks was the traditional approach involving collective punishment. Sharkey was by no means the only tough son of a bitch in his barracks. There were several other real tough guys among the combination of marines, sailors and soldiers. Under the doctrine of collective punishment, if one member of the group screwed up all members of the group would be punished. Every platoon in the detention barracks was subjected to collective punishment weekly; every platoon except Sharkey’s platoon that is and the reason soon became obvious. Several of the real tough guys and heretofore bad actors in the platoon began showing up on parade reflecting signs of wear and tear. Someone in the platoon was laying a beating on any of these guys whose actions posed a threat to a loss of those valuable remission days for good behavior. While staff members welcomed the assistance, such vigilante activities were not approved of by the Prison Commanding Officer.

  Staff members were ordered to investigate the apparent injuries that had been suffered by members of Sharkey’s platoon. The Commanding Officer put Rafferty in charge of the investigation but the little Staff-Sergeant’s initial investigation came up with a dry hole. Rafferty found that some of the toughest, and most physically fit and agile guys in the platoon had suddenly become very clumsy and explained that their various bumps and bruises were the result of slipping and falling in the dimly lit barracks. Sharkey was coming through these activities completely unscathed but Rafferty’s suspicions were aroused by his skinned and swollen knuckles. When Rafferty questioned him Sharkey’s explanation was the most original of all. “Yes, Staff, that seems to be a mystery but perhaps it’s those damn mumps coming back on me.”

  As the time went by Rafferty realized that Sharkey had no intention of calling him on his promise of another “one-on-one counseling session.” Rafferty was just a little relieved that there would be no encore. As the days went by it became obvious that Sharkey was as physically fit as any man, staff or prisoner in the Glass House. This became very apparent as Rafferty watched the various squads participate in what was referred as “unarmed combat” which really meant little more than letting mean, angry, physically fit soldiers to beat on each other and the best man would be the
last man standing. Wherever Sharkey was involved he was the last man standing. It was nearly comical to watch the lengths to which other members of his squad would go to avoid Sharkey in the pairings. The same occurred when the toughest prisoners from every squad were selected for the final demonstration of the effectiveness of the “unarmed combat” training. Again Sharkey was the last man on his feet.

  Back in Ireland Bridget Shawkey continued to mourn her two sons but Father O’Brien told her that her oldest son was safe and secure and far removed from the hazards of the front. The good Father explained as tactfully as possible that Patrick had encountered a little difficulty while on his way back to Ireland on convalescence leave. With the aid of information from the RC Padres at both the Guards’ Depot and the Glass House he had been able to put together a possible-even if not probable-explanation of Patrick’s trouble which, at least, satisfied Bridget.

  Father O’Brien told Bridget that Patrick had run afoul of an overly officious junior officer in the Military Police who demonstrated the usual disdain that most Limeys showed towards the Irish despite the fact that Patrick was just recovering from his wounds. Then the officer made disparaging remarks about Patrick’s country of origin and his appearance with pointed-and what proved to be ill-considered-remarks about the appearance of Patrick’s clean shaven and polished head. As the good Father explained, Patrick had absolutely no choice but to defend his honor and the honor of Ireland. He beat the stuffing-not the word used by Father O’Brien when telling the story to his parishioners at the pub-out of the Limey s.o.b.