Although she was only in her early thirties, Susan looked haggard to Schneider. She had bags under her eyes from pure lack of sleep, not age. And, he knew, some crying, too. The two of them always seemed to be going to bed angry for the past few months, and waking up the same way. Even in their small bed, their bodies rarely touched, each sleeping on the very edge of their territory. He couldn’t remember the last time they had sex.
“Why don’t you sit down, Susan. I can’t talk to you while you’re pacing like that,” he said in as calm and noncommittal a tone as he could muster.
“I can’t sit down. I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin.”
“Look, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. I have to go.”
“No you don’t, and you and I both know it,” she said, throwing the crumpled paper on the table and stomping out of the kitchen. Schneider was sure she had thrown it at him, but the air intervened and the paper drifted harmlessly down on the table. He opened the letter, smoothing out the wrinkles with the fingers of both hands. Then he read it for the hundredth time.
Order to Report for Induction
The President of the United States to Stephen N. Schneider.
Order 86945
Greetings:
Having submitted yourself to a local board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining your availability for training and service in the land or naval services of the United States, you are hereby notified that you have been selected for training and service therein.
You will, therefore, report to the local board at Walnut Avenue, Philadelphia at 0900 on Friday, 18 September 1942.
DDS Form 105 (revised 15/1/41)
An illegible scrawl filled the signature space. He pushed the paper aside and took a sip of coffee. He reached for the sugar and stirred three teaspoons into the cup. Then he took a fresh milk bottle and pulled off the wire that secured the outer paper seal. He flipped off the cover and exposed the round cardboard cap. He picked at the little semicircular tab and marveled at how the simple task of removing the cardboard cap from a milk bottle could be so baffling to a skilled and highly trained surgeon.
It’s a wonder anyone drinks milk, he thought.
When the milk bottle was open, he took great care not to disturb the three-inch layer of yellow cream that filled the neck, floating on top of the white milk like an ornament.
Next, he took a spoon and pressed down, making a small crater on the surface of his coffee, careful not to let any of the coffee float into the spoon. He slowly poured the cream off the top of the milk bottle, floating it from the spoon onto the surface of the coffee where it made a bright yellow puddle of pure cream. He removed the spoon slowly so as not to stir in the cream, then raised the cup to his lips, closed his eyes, and savored the moment, preserving just a few heartbeats for himself away from the turmoil with Susan. For those precious few seconds, he was not in his kitchen anymore.
He kept his eyes closed as he sipped his drink, feeling the contrast between the thick cold cream on top and the dark sweet hot coffee as they mixed in his mouth and rolled together across his tongue.
He smiled.
“God, Steve! How can you drink that stuff?” Susan said, barging back through the swinging kitchen door.
Schneider didn’t answer. He kept his eyes closed and his mind focused on the pleasure of his morning ritual. He reached for the chocolate-covered doughnut on the table and dipped it into the creamy brew, then took a bite of pure sweetness.
Heaven!
After a moment more, he looked up, bringing himself back to reality. He turned to the clock on the wall, noticing the wrinkles in the wallpaper he had tried to hang when they had moved into this, their first real home. They had no money for renovations back then. So, he had papered the kitchen himself and marveled at what a bad job he had done.
It was approaching eight-thirty. He would be late for rounds and surgery, but this had to be finished. He knew that the operation couldn’t start without him anyway, so he took another bite of the chocolate doughnut, ignoring the reprimand in Susan’s eyes.
“Look, Susan, I’m going. I have to go.”
“You don’t have to go. You’re 4F. You told me when you went for the physical that the draft board said you’re 4F. So why do you have to go?”
Schneider sighed. They had been through this so many times in the last several hours that he just couldn’t stand another rehash, another fight.
“The draft board screwed up. Doctors can’t really be 4F. If I can perform surgery in civilian life, I can perform it in wartime. For Christ’s sake, I’m only 4F for asthma! I’m not risking my life or any one else’s just because I have a mild case of asthma.”
“You can die from asthma! And they said you don’t have to go.”
Schneider took another deep breath. He felt as if he were talking to his little daughters, except that he knew he was losing his composure and felt a touch of hysteria creeping into his voice too.
“I’m not going to die of asthma, Susan. And I’m not going over there to die at all. This war is the biggest thing that’s happened in our lifetime. The whole world is involved. The Germans are overrunning Europe. The Japs are all over the Pacific. Everyone’s fighting. You see the papers. You hear the news. They’re doing something horrible over there to the Jews. My family came from Germany. I know I never go to temple, but I’m still a Jew. Susan, I can’t just turn my back on this…on them. And, all my friends and colleagues are going—”
“So there it is. The real truth. You are making a choice. Your friends over your family. Just say it. Steve, you sound like a twelve-year-old. ‘My friends are going to jump off the garage roof, so I am, too.’”
Again he sighed, barely holding his rising temper in check. Actually, he had jumped off the garage roof with his friends when he was twelve, and had broken his fibula. It was only a hairline fracture, but it still it hurt like hell sometimes. However, he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of admitting to that one right now.
“One more time,” he said with condescending patience. “Volunteer surgical teams are getting together all over the country. They’re forming surgical groups with the people they work with over here. I’ll be with my own group from Philadelphia. I know I technically don’t have to go, but I must go. How can I stay here safe in private practice while our guys are dying over in Europe by the thousands? Thousands! They need general surgeons more than anyone else. We’re the most experienced part of the trauma team, Susan.” He paused for a moment, sighed deeply, then added, “In fact, the truth be known, I’m looking forward to going.”
There! He had finally said it out loud. The unthinkable: that going to war, going to a place where he might be killed, for Christ’s sake, was better than the constant fighting with his wife. It would be a relief.
He said it, and he couldn’t take it back. Susan looked as if she had been slapped. Her cheeks were red, and a tear formed in the corner of each eye, rolling slowly down her cheeks like the raindrops on a windshield, leaving crooked lines in their wake. She turned away for a moment, and when she faced him again, the tears were gone. Her neck and face were still bright red, now from anger, not hurt. She said nothing.
Steve took another sip of coffee and looked away. He began to fold the draft notice into a small ball. Then, when he could no longer make it any smaller, he tossed it toward the garbage can. It missed and fell on the floor. Susan looked at it lying near her foot then looked back at her husband without picking it up.
“I have to go, Susan,” he said again with a weariness she had not heard since his days as a surgical resident, days when he came home after forty-eight hours of constant surgery and emergencies.
“So, we’re not going to discuss this anymore—”
“No, no,” he said, more softly now. “I mean I have to go to work. I’ve got rounds to make and a couple of big cases to do later this morning. And I have to assist Hamm with a case later on. We’ll talk about it when I get home.�
��
He finished the last of his coffee and put the cup in the sink.
“Steve,” she said to his back, her voice calm and cool, without emotion. A chill moved through Schneider’s spine, right down his legs. “What makes you think you can make it over there? They’re not going to keep you in an operating room in England for the whole war, you know. What are you going to do when someone starts shooting at you?” And, dripping with sarcasm she added, “Who’s going to protect you then?”
Susan had a look on her face that made Schneider’s stomach tighten into a knot.
“You’re going to bring that up again?” he said. “I was seventeen, Susan. It was no big deal.”
“Wasn’t it? I’m just asking you, Steve,” she said, her voice hard, quiet. He had heard that tone only a few times in their marriage. “What are you going to do over there when someone tries to kill you?”
He shook his head in disgust.
“I’m going to sign up with the Surgical Group after work today,” he said quietly. “I’ll probably be late for dinner.”
Susan’s eyes narrowed as she folded her arms.
“Don’t hurry,” she said. “There is not going to be any dinner.”
Chapter Four
19 April 1944, 2330 Hours
Nineteen Months Later
The Fox and Pheasant Pub, Devon, England
The smoke was making Schneider’s eyes water, and the beer sat in his stomach like a puddle of gasoline. He never did care much for alcohol and always wondered what everyone thought was so good about it. To him, the Scotch whiskey the others were drinking tasted like tincture of iodine, and his beer like warm piss. But, there was precious little else to do there in that wet, remote place. The rain had been falling for weeks, it seemed. Even when it stopped, the sun never shined. The local roads were a swamp, though the Brits seemed not to notice. Nothing ever dried out, and the cold went right through to the bones. It was far worse than the bitter cold of Philadelphia’s relatively mild winter. Schneider wondered how the Brits put up with it, considering the poor insulation and lack of central heating in their homes. It was absolutely primitive.
Schneider’s surgical group had been in England for over a year. He was happy to be back with Hamm and McClintock after a few months of organization and basic training in the States at various bases. Then, quick weekend farewells. Susan and Steve were still deeply divided over his going. They barely spoke and didn’t touch once during his three-day leave. Steve tried to put on a good face for the girls. They walked through the neighborhood together, Emily and Anna taking turns holding hands in the middle with their parents. At one point, Emily stepped aside and put Steve’s hand in Susan’s. You can’t fool children. Emily’s primal instincts cut through the bullshit in a way her parents could not.
So Schneider gave up his surgical practice just when he was finally putting away a few dollars after the poverty of his six-year residency. Just when things were looking up—at least financially—he threw it all away to go off to war with his buddies. At least, that was Susan’s take on it.
Even though Steve and Susan put on a good show for their daughters, the strain in private was painful. They stayed as far as they could from each other, even knowing they might never see each other again.
Susan never did come around. She remained furious that Steve chose to go to war when he had every good reason to stay home with her and the girls. The asthma was real, after all. He was not making it up. But, for Schneider, there never really was any question of not joining the battle. All his colleagues were going. If he were going at all, he would go with them.
By the time he boarded the troop ship for the crossing to England, the marriage was nearly dead. Neither of them ever brought up the subject of divorce; there were the girls, after all. And except for Schneider’s eccentric uncle in Brooklyn, neither of them knew anyone who was divorced. Divorce was a Hollywood thing.
The long and awful troop ship voyage from New York across a rough Atlantic Ocean was dreadful in every imaginable way. After six long days at sea, they arrived in Southampton where thousands of officers and men disembarked for various camps around the English countryside. Schneider had been seasick most of the way over. There was no shame in it as nearly three thousand men had been sick along with him.
During all of the long months away from home, Schneider had dutifully written letters, but he made sure to write to the whole family, the girls and Susan. This meant that he could avoid any talk of their marital problems and just keep it newsy and light. The girls would, he knew, insist on reading the letters by themselves, Emily reading the letters aloud to Anna.
More than a year and a half later, nothing had changed since the day he told Susan he was going off to war. Nothing.
Schneider looked at his watch. It was almost one in the morning.
“God, this is getting old!” Schneider said. “Same shit every damned day. Same drinks at the same pub with the same guys every night.”
“You bored?” McClintock said. “You’re actually bored?”
Schneider looked into McClintock’s bloodshot eyes and shook his head. “Are you having fun, Ted?”
McClintock rocked his head back and forth. “Could be worse. We could be in the middle of the you-know-what.”
“The invasion?” Schneider said on a stage whisper.
“Oooooh! Loose lips sink ships! The walls have ears…and all that.” McClintock answered.
“Oh, right. Like the Jerries don’t know we’re coming. They’re just sitting over there drinking Schnapps and enjoying the hospitality of the French,” Hamm said.
Schneider looked at Hamm. “How the hell can the Jerries not know we’re on the verge of the invasion? Christ! There are several hundred thousand men and women and machines piled so high they could sink this fucking island.”
“But where, my boy? Where?” McClintock said. “They don’t know where the invasion will be, and neither do we.”
“Well, shit, I can give it a pretty good guess,” Schneider said. “Dover to Pas de Calais is just a hop. But the Jerries are dug in up to their armpits over there. Normandy is a hell of a slog, but the defenses are lighter. Our guys are trying to fool them, and they are pretending to be fooled. We put phony-baloney men and equipment in one place, and they move their men to another place. It’s like the Keystone Kops.”
“Well, I, for one, would like to get it the hell over with,” McClintock said. “I’ve had enough of this shit to last me awhile—the rain, the mud—and I’m drinking too damned much. The birds are OK though,” he said looking at the young British woman sitting across from him.
Hamm looked at the woman and smiled softly.
“From what I hear most of the Brits are not real happy with us,” Hamm said.
McClintock laughed. “Yeah, there’s a hell of a lot of us here. The Brits think we’re over paid, over sexed, and worst of all, over here.”
“I can’t blame them,” Hamm said. “There’s nearly two million of us in this little country not much bigger than Colorado.”
Everyone knew that the invasion was only months away at most. All the soldiers quartered in England, hundreds of thousands of them, were straining to get off the mark and start the invasion that would, they were sure, end the war by Christmas.
“Hey, Hamm,” Schneider suddenly shouted over the din, “I’ve gotta get out of here. I’m just dead.”
“Me, too, I’m exhausted,” Hamm said. “Let’s go.”
Hamm began to push his chair back but felt a restraining hand on his arm. He looked to his right, where McClintock was sitting.
“Don’t go without me, guys. I need to get outta here, too.” Although far from drunk, McClintock had been mixing beer and Scotch. Schneider knew this would translate into a very cranky anesthesiologist in the morning.
No one moved for a few minutes. There was an inertia settling into the group in everything they did. There was hardly any real surgery to do back at the base. The field hospital was set
up for business, but most of their time was spent training to set up and tear down the field hospital as quickly as possible, training for the coming fighting in France. They practiced pitching their OR tents more than they practiced medicine. Schneider and Hamm were overseeing thousands of healthy young men who needed their attention only for the rare appendectomy or training injuries. The night before had been spent patching up a drunk private who lost control of his motor bike on a muddy back road trying to get in before curfew. Mostly cleaning out and sewing up a lot of lacerations while the oral surgeon came in to take care of a mouth full of broken teeth.
Then there were the routine training accidents. More lacerations and a few broken bones. Not to mention a sprained ankle or two in the spontaneous football games on base.
Take away their major surgery, and you have bored surgeons.
McClintock was single, so there was the diversion of the WAC nurses as well as the local British girls, many of whom, to the great annoyance of the locals, were very attracted to the Yanks. Being a tall, handsome and relatively rich Yank ensured McClintock plenty of distractions. He occasionally brought several women along on their nights out, but Hamm and Schneider kept a respectful distance. They all sat and drank together, but the two husbands went home alone.
The general buzz in the pub made it hard to talk, and Schneider’s headache was now over the top. He nudged Hamm to get moving, and Hamm nudged McClintock. Using Hamm’s arm for support, McClintock shoved his chair back right into the legs of a passing infantry captain. The captain’s tie was undone, and the top of his shirt was wet with beer. His face was flushed and perspiring. The man howled as the chair’s crossbar nailed him across the shins.
None But The Brave: A Novel of the Surgeons of World War II Page 3