“Staff Sergeant Johnson will be in charge of the brandy. Everyone can have one glass, but not one drop more. If anyone decides to disregard this limit, I’ll—” I stopped, trying to make up a reasonable punishment on the spot, “I’ll give you one hell of a headache tomorrow,” I finished. The men laughed as Dick went to fetch the brandy, and began talking loudly.
“Oh, one more thing,” I raised my hand. The excited jabbering trailed off as their attention turned back to me.
“Keep it down. If you guys wake me up, I’ll shoot you.” I was much less equivocal on the punishment for disruption of my sleep.
I turned once again and climbed the stairs. My bad leg throbbed. “I could sure use a night on a nice soft bed!” I muttered to myself in the darkness.
~~~
I huddled down in my foxhole as another incoming shell shook the ground.
“I’m hit! I’m hit bad!” Johnny yelled. I ran to him and knelt down beside him. He opened his mouth and screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
I awoke with a jolt, relieved it was just a bad dream. But the screaming continued. I shook my head and blinked, waiting for reality to replace fantasy. But the screaming continued. Terror, pain, and sadness were each distinctly discernible by the volume, pitch, and tone of the screams. It almost made my hair stand on end.
I could see light from the hallway through the crack beneath my bedroom door as I flung off the covers and found my rifle.
When I opened my bedroom door and stepped into the hall, I could see light spilling through an open door from a room down the hallway. The screams finally transitioned to a wail, then a whimper, and now, I could hear a man’s angry voice and a woman’s hysterical sobs.
Reasoning that I must be walking into a heated domestic dispute, I decided not to interfere unnecessarily, especially as things seemed to be winding down.
But no possible scenario I could have thought of would have prepared me for what I was about to see. As I peered through the half-open door, I could see the broad back of the farmer. He stood barefoot in a plaid green nightgown, holding an axe handle by his side. It was streaked with blood.
I kicked the door wide open, ready to jam the muzzle of my M1 between his shoulder blades. I stopped. On the floor lay the prone body of an American soldier. It was half naked. It was bloody. It was my friend Johnny.
“You son of a bitch!” I screamed, grabbing the club the farmer held loosely as I leapt to Johnny’s side in two adrenaline-powered bounds.
“Johnny!” I shouted as I knelt beside my battered friend. His thick brown hair couldn’t hide the blood that oozed from his cracked skull.
“Oh, Jesus!” I breathed. Blood ran out of his ears and down the sides of his face. He was still breathing. Breath is hope.
I turned him over, desperately praying I would find seeing eyes. But the black vortex of death had drawn him too far. As he drew his last shallow breaths, I grabbed his hand, as though somehow I could pull him back from the darkness. He shuddered, jerking my arm, and as I saw him being carried away, I wished he’d pull me down with him.
A rage only the deepest sorrow can manufacture surged through my blood. I felt it rush through my body, pounding its angry fists on the veins in my neck and temples as though demanding it be released. I rose slowly to turn and face the farmer. I stood, but never did turn.
Until I stood, I was incognizant of everything else in the room. My entire consciousness had been focused with the intensity of a laser on my fallen friend. It was as though until that moment, I’d been peering at something through a small clear patch in a foggy window. But now the fog was wiped away, and I could see and hear everything.
The first thing I saw was the farmer’s daughter curled up on a bed. Her legs were tucked up like a fetus’, her arms clasped around her knees, her head almost buried in her lap, muffling tormented sobs that sounded as though grief itself was wrenching them from the bowels of her soul. The thin, white nightgown that she wore did little to conceal her blood-streaked legs.
Her distressed mother sat on the edge of the bed. “Helga!” she cried in a faltering voice. She tried to lay a shaking hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl jumped as though her mother’s consoling hand was a red-hot branding iron.
“Nein!” she screamed. The frau jerked her hand back as though she herself had been burned. The girl raised her blonde head for the first time, and I saw angry red handprints around her neck. The bluish tinge of bruising was visible even from where I stood. Horror overwhelmed me as the darkness of my wrath was driven away by the light of comprehension.
The woman turned her head and cast accusing eyes toward me. It was like trying to look into an anti-aircraft searchlight in the black of night. I simply couldn’t meet her gaze, and shrank back, feeling ashamed and remorseful, as though I myself had violently trespassed against her daughter. I felt physically ill as my mind attempted to process the immensity of the tragedy that lay before my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly to the floor. “I’m sorry” was all there was to say. And sorry I was, in more ways than the farmer and his frau could have ever imagined.
I lifted my eyes to look at the farmer. He was looking at his daughter. His face was dry, but he fought for control of his breath. Trembling lips twisted into a hateful scowl as he turned to look at me. His eyes were smoldering coals. When he looked at me, those coals burnt hot.
“Raus,” he said quietly. Understanding little German, I just stood there, looking at him.
“Raus!” he said sharply, this time motioning toward the door. I nodded, understanding now. I looked back down at Johnny, and again felt like I’d taken a baseball in the stomach.
“Jesus Christ!” a voice exclaimed from the door. Dick Johnson and Donald Malone stood looking in from the hallway.
“Come here,” I beckoned as I picked up the rumpled blanket that lay balled up at the foot of the bed. I spread the blanket on the floor beside Johnny as the two men came over. The confused looks on their faces were soon replaced with expressions of revulsion as they squatted down with me. Dick and Don stared at Johnny, then slowly back up at me, questions in their eyes. I offered no answers. Their eyes turned from me, to the bloodied axe handle on the floor, to the bloodied girl on the bed, to her mother, to her father, and back to me. I looked at them grimly. The questions had been answered.
“Oh, god!” Dick whispered, burying his face in his hands. “No, no, no,” he shook his head. “Not Johnny!”
Don’s mouth hung open in shock. He swallowed without closing it.
While they recovered their composure, I collected Johnny’s dog tags, his lucky shell, and a few other things I didn’t want to bury with him. Then the men helped me roll Johnny onto the edge of the blanket, and we wrapped him up in it tight like a mummy. That was the last time I saw the remains of my friend; I had no desire for me or anyone else to again see what had become of him.
We picked up the blanket with Johnny in it and carefully stepped over the pool of blood on the floor. The farmer watched us, his face convincing me he hadn’t released the full extent of his anger on Johnny. I kept an eye on him as we neared the door. He spat in our direction as we maneuvered the body into the hallway. As much as I could empathize with him, it still angered me to see my friend disrespected, so I shouted over my shoulder from the hall, “He was a good man!” I bit back a sob. “You didn’t even know him!”
We stumbled our way down the dark stairway and into the dim light downstairs. Sleepy men looked at us curiously from all corners.
“What the hell?” Everett Lane asked, looking at the swaddled body as we set it down.
“It’s Corporal Snarr,” I said curtly. The men pelted me with a flurry of questions, but I was unwilling to give a longer explanation and risk losing control of my emotions.
I held up my hand. “Questions will be answered later. We will move out immediately,” I instructed.
“But it’s four hundred hours, Sergeant!” a groggy Bill Potts pr
otested.
“I know what the fucking time is, private!” I screamed at him, so angry I almost began crying. Bill cowered like a whipped dog. My nerves were in such a frazzled knot I hardly knew which emotion to feel when. I had an overwhelming desire to distance myself from that awful place.
Men began packing their things, talking to one another in hushed voices. They raided the cellar, filling their pockets and packs with food, and I saw several men with brandy bottle-shaped bulges in their packs, but I made no mention of it.
I used three ropes to secure the blanket to Johnny’s body, tying handles on each side to assist us in transporting Johnny to wherever his final resting place would be. When everyone was ready, six of us picked him up by the handles.
Clomp, clomp, clomp, squish, squish. Our boots thudded on the wooden floor before stepping into the muck outside. The air was clear and still. No one said a word, all I heard was the sloshing sound of weary footfalls.
When we reached the road, I looked back toward the house. It was dark, except for one light that shone from an upstairs window. It shone from the darkest room of them all. The stars twinkled as though nothing were the matter.
We kept moving to keep warm. My eyes entreated the eastern horizon to release the sun.
As the men warmed up, they began talking to each other. Questions about Johnny surfaced again, so in subdued voices, Dick and Donald told what they knew about what had happened to him. Quiet exclamations of regret followed. There was a little discussion about it, and I felt myself grow tense, ready to explode if I heard one negative word about him. But nothing of that sort was said, and after a short time, the men fell back into reflective silence.
“We’ll trade off again, and stop up there,” I said, pointing with my rifle to a large tree that reigned over a small patch of grass on the crest of a hill. The sun had finally risen, and I understood why people had worshipped it in ancient times.
We set Johnny’s body down carefully on the ground. Every man in the platoon had taken a turn carrying Johnny, but I hadn’t traded off once. My bad leg was screaming at me, and though I’d switched sides several times, I felt like I’d been hung by my arms for hours. Somehow, I felt I owed it to him, as though I needed to pay penance for his tragic end.
“We’ll bury him here,” I said when we reached the top and set our fallen comrade down on the ground.
I lit a cigarette and looked down the hill at a village several miles away that was just beginning to rouse from its slumber. Smoke exhaled lazily from the throats of a dozen chimneys as though reluctant to leave the warmth of the fire that had created it. A church spire towered above the other buildings as though raising its hand for God’s attention. It was so peaceful, it was easy to forget we were fighting a war.
“Let’s dig,” I said, finding a spot far enough from the base of the tree to avoid too much interference with roots.
I decided to bury him facing the sunrise. The men were eager to pitch in, since not staying active meant standing with your hands in your pockets and stamping your feet to remain warm. In no time at all the grave was dug.
The soft white blanket Johnny’s body was wrapped in struck a stark contrast to the blackness of the grave as we lowered him to its cold, hard bottom. I stepped back to the head of the grave and looked down. The men circled around the grave, staring somberly at the bundle at the bottom of the hole.
My mind grasped for a prayer, a poem, some prose. Words came, thoughts went, and still, I had nothing to say that adequately expressed the magnitude of the loss and grief I felt. And so I stood in silence as the men looked at me askance, waiting for me to say or do something. They shifted their weight restlessly back and forth, their hands thrust deep in their pockets.
Finally, after a silence that lasted several minutes, I cleared my throat quietly.
“When you see a sunrise, please remember who Johnny Snarr really was,” I said, in a low voice that would have escaped being heard on a morning any less calm.
I picked up my shovel and tossed some dirt onto the body. Other men followed suit and began closing the grave. I’d had to bury a lot of men that had died terrible deaths, but never had I felt the way I did then, shoveling shut the grave of a comrade and true friend. My breaths were shallow, as though each scoop of dirt dropped into the hole was being dropped on my chest. My head ached with tension.
“Oh, Shenandoah,” Leroy sang quietly. “Shenandoah.” Johnny’s song.
“I long to hear you!” I quavered fervently.
“Away, you rollin’ river,” a handful of lads raised their voices with ours.
“Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you!” everyone sang.
I let the tears that had been standing in reserve march down my cheeks. “Away, I am bound away—” I began, but my voice lost its footing.
“Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter,” the men continued singing.
As I unabashedly allowed the tears to flow down my face, I felt the tension in my head release. My shovel clanked against another, but my eyes saw nothing through the torrent of tears. Too often had I kept a brave face for the sake of morale. Too long had barbarity and death been all in a day’s work. Too many had been the tears I’d bottled and corked. It was not a day to brush off tragedy. A great soldier and a great friend had died. And that day, I honored him with mourning.
When the final clod was shoveled, and the last tear dried with wrinkled sleeve, we marked his grave. Near the tree lay a heap of stones that a farmer—and probably his father, and his father before him—had collected from a nearby field, so we used some of them for that purpose.
Then, some of us rolled stones off the pile to use as seats, others leaned up against the broad trunk of the tree, and some chose to stand as we ate our pilfered goods and smoked in silence. I had no appetite, but took a few bites of cheese and wurst Dick offered me. Someone circulated a bottle of brandy. The men were tired, and a gloomy mood seemed to pervade us.
“Do you remember the time Johnny shined Captain Ross’ boots?” Leroy asked suddenly.
I took my eyes off the piece of cheese in my hand and looked up at him. We both smiled slightly. Dick let out a low chuckle.
“He was one cheeky son of a gun!” Dick shook his head.
My smile widened as I thought about it. I looked around and saw more curious looks than smiles. Then it hit me that only a handful of the lads there had been with us when we began training in Fort Meade. Most of them didn’t know Johnny as I knew him. Their blank looks prompted me to fill in the blanks.
“Well,” I began, “Johnny had a little, uh, trouble, in basic, adjusting to life in the army.”
Dick and Leroy smiled and nodded as though acknowledging a gross understatement. Most of the men stopped what they were doing and looked my way.
“He didn’t like being pushed around, and so he and Captain Ross, whom most of you never met, would bump heads on a regular basis. Well, they were both as hard-headed as billy goats, and so Captain Ross kind of had it in for Johnny.” I took one last drag from my cigarette and threw it away.
“Anyway, one morning during inspection, old Lizard Gizzard starts ripping Johnny a new one for the state of his boots. Problem was, Johnny’s boots looked no better or worse than any of the rest of ours.”
“It had just rained that night,” Leroy filled in. “We’d all marched through mud and shit.”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“Anyway,” I continued, “Captain Ross starts riding Johnny about how shitty his boots look.”
“What in blazes made you decide to shine your boots with shit, private?” Dick, who could never resist a Captain Ross impression, cut in.
“‘I didn’t,’ Johnny says to him,” I supplied, feeling a smile crack my face.
“Then why do your boots look like shit?” Dick thundered as he stood now, mimicking the smug look the captain had worn whenever he felt he’d scored some verbal points. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.
“Yeah, yeah!” Leroy shook h
is finger in the air excitedly. “And all the while, you could just tell the steam was building up! I remember thinking ‘Johnny’s going to blow like a boiler, and Captain will have the skin melted right off him!’” Several of us old-timers laughed, and some of the newer fellows’ faces began to toy around with the idea of smiling.
“So Johnny goes, ‘Well, I’m no fucking detective, but maybe it’s because I’ve been walking through shit all morning, sir,’” I continued the story, smiling widely as I visualized the scene in my mind.
“No, no,” Leroy interrupted, “I don’t think Johnny said ‘sir’ at the end there!”
“Oh, no?” I laughed.
“No,” he cackled, “No, because I remember cringing when Johnny said that to him, and then when he didn’t say ‘sir,’ I thought, ‘Oh shit, someone’s going to die!’”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Dick agreed, “because right after that, old Lizard Gizzard says ‘That’s how you address an officer, numbnuts?’”
“Right,” I said. “So, the Captain tells Johnny to shine his boots. Says he can use the practice. So Johnny gets down and starts shining Lizard Gizzard’s boots, just using a dry hanky.”
“And madder than a hornet!” Leroy interjected.
“Oh, yeah. I thought Johnny was going to wrap that hanky around the captain’s ankle and set him down on his ass,” I nodded, feeling the mirth bubble up inside me.
“And then the captain goes, ‘You’re going to need a little spit to get the shine I’m looking for!’” Dick parroted in the captain’s nasal Yankee accent.
“So Johnny was spittin’ and spittin’. His mouth must have been as dry as the prohibition,” I recalled, my mouth now fixed in a permanent grin.
“I’ll bet he didn’t piss for a week!” Leroy speculated, and we took a hearty laugh before I continued the story.
“So anyway, Johnny went over those boots about three times. There wasn’t a spot on them, so he figures he’s done, and stands up. Which of course, pisses off Lizard Gizzard.” I looked at Dick to supply the Captain Ross impression.
Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 23