by Dean Hughes
“Howie’s from your part of the country,” Duncan said. “From Boise.” Douglas nodded, and then he sat down on the bunk next to Alex’s. He began to unlace his boots.
“Is that right?” Alex said, and he wondered immediately whether he might be LDS.
But Duncan answered that question. “He ain’t a Mormon, but he might as well be. He don’t drink or smoke, and he’s scared of girls.”
Douglas looked up and smiled, just a little, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t really look like Gene–Alex’s little brother who had been killed a few months before in Saipan–but something in that faint smile called back an image: Gene as a boy, when he always seemed to say much less than he was thinking, when a little slice of smile would suggest that some irony, some realization, was in his head, even though he felt no need to share it.
“Have these guys been giving you a hard time?” Alex asked him.
“It don’t bother me,” Douglas said, without looking up this time.
The other men were gradually scattering toward their bunks. Duncan was complaining that all the training was unnecessary, too hard, too rigid–or something of that sort. But he sounded like his old self, just happy to have something to beef about.
“How long have you been in the army?” Alex asked.
“Since last winter,” Douglas said. “I finished jump school right before I come over here.”
“Have you lived in Boise all your life?”
“Pretty much. I was born over by Baker, Oregon, but my ol’ man ran out on us, so my mom moved back to where she was from–with me, my little brother, and two big sisters.”
“What were you doing before you joined the army?”
“Just this and that. I quit high school and did some farm work for a while. I know how to weld a little, too, and I’ve run heavy equipment on road construction jobs.”
Alex thought maybe he had asked enough. Private Douglas was nice enough about answering, but not eager. So Alex walked over and chatted with Curtis. Curtis had heard all the same rumors, that the 101st would be dropping into France or Belgium soon. “Are the guys all hoping to get going right away?” Alex asked.
“I can tell you haven’t been here,” Curtis said. “We got briefed last week. We were supposed to make a drop the next day, on August 19, into Chartres, France. They fed us like it was our last supper, and we all got packed up and trucked out to the airdrome, over in Membury, and then we heard on the radio that the Third Army had taken Chartres. So the generals called the whole thing off. All the new guys were disappointed–or at least they said they were–but the guys who were in on D-day partied most of the night. We don’t want to go back any sooner than we have to.”
“I feel the same way.”
“Is it different for you now? Being a married man?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t have to be a hero this time, Alex. Just keep yourself alive.”
“I didn’t try to be a hero last time.”
“I know. I don’t think any of us understood what we were doing until it was all over.”
Alex nodded. Some soft swing music had been playing on a radio somewhere, but now a jovial male voice, British, was ranting about something. “Is that Lord Haw Haw?” Alex asked. “They wouldn’t let us listen to him in the hospital.”
“Yeah, I know. But he doesn’t bother us, and he plays better music than the Armed Forces Network or the BBC.”
Lord Haw Haw was a turncoat Brit who broadcast for the Nazis, from Berlin. He tried to work some psychological warfare on the Allied troops, but no one took him seriously.
Alex walked back to his bunk and sat down again. Douglas was lying down, apparently not ready to make the hike to the showers just yet. “I knew a lot of Mormons in Boise,” Douglas said. “I even dated a Mormon girl for a while.”
“Did she try to convert you?” Alex asked.
“I guess that’s what she had in mind. She tried to get me to go to church with her, anyway. That’s when we broke up.” Douglas laughed, softly.
“Well, it’s nice to have someone around who knows what sagebrush smells like.”
“Yeah, when I was a Boy Scout, we used to throw it on our campfire–just for the smell it made when it was burning.”
“It’s good you like to camp. We’ll be doing some of that before long. You can even dig your own bed.”
Douglas smiled more fully this time, and when he did, Alex thought he looked like a Boy Scout, or just a boy. “Everyone says you were hell on wheels last time over there,” Douglas said.
Alex didn’t want this reputation. “Actually, I wasn’t there very long.”
“How bad is it?”
It was a simple enough question, but Alex remembered how much he had wondered about that before he had seen his first action. The problem was, it was worse than he had expected, but he didn’t want to tell Douglas that. “If you keep your head, play things smart, it doesn’t have to be so bad.”
“That’s not what you did, was it?”
“Well, I wasn’t so crazy as it might sound. We put down cover fire, and we worked under it. We did everything by the book. We just outsmarted the Germans a little. And we got lucky.”
“I heard you got the Distinguished Service Medal. You got it with you?”
“No. I put it away as soon as I got it.”
“Pretty nice to have, I guess,” Douglas said. “A guy could impress the girls back home with something like that.” He laughed. He had taken off his shirt, and his khaki undershirt was stained through with sweat.
“How old are you, Douglas?” Alex asked.
“You can just call me Howie. That’s what everybody always calls me. I’m eighteen now. When I signed up, I was still seventeen.”
“When we jump this next time, you stick with me,” Alex said. “I’m not going to get myself killed. Just do what I do and you’ll stay alive. If we play our cards right, we won’t get any medals at all–including the Purple Heart.”
“All right.” Howie sat up. “I’d better get me a shower before it’s time to eat.”
Alex watched him leave the hut, and he wondered what might be in store for the kid. He also wondered why anyone should have to leave his boyhood behind by going off to war.
Duncan was back from the shower by then. He was still buttoning his shirt when he walked over to Alex’s bunk. “So, are you all healed up?” he asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Can you jump?”
“I’m not supposed to, but I guess I will.”
“I wouldn’t if I was you. I’d hold off just as long as I could. You got that right. You earned it.” Duncan sat down on Howie’s bunk.
Alex, who was facing him, looked at the floor. “I’ll tell you what I told Lieutenant Owen. If I’m going back, I want to go with you guys.”
Duncan stared at Alex for a long time. And then, finally, he said, “I can’t believe I ever hated you so much. You’re some guy, Thomas.”
“Or stupid,” Alex said, and he smiled. But then he asked, “How’s Owen going to be?”
“He’s all right. All the officers believe too much in all
this . . . ” Alex saw him search for a word to replace the one he had planned to use. “You know, this Mickey Mouse training routine. They march us around like Boy Scouts because they’re afraid we’ll have too much time on our hands if they don’t. Then they go off and drink whiskey at the officers’ club while we drink warm beer if we can get any.”
“But does Owen know what he’s doing?”
“Better than most. But he ain’t Summers. There ain’t many guys like Summers in this man’s army.”
Alex knew that was true. The guy hadn’t sent anyone into battle. He was always out in front, leading the way. “What I wish,” Alex said, “is that the war would end, and we could go home.”
“Do you have bad dreams?” Duncan asked.
“Yes.”
“I do too. A lot of the guys do.” All of Duncan’s joviality was g
one now. He rested his elbows on his knees. Alex had never expected to see him look so solemn. “I heard your little brother got killed.”
“Yeah.”
“How are you doing about that?”
“Not too bad, I guess. My sister saw Gene not long before he died. She said he seemed to know something was going to happen. He told her he figured it wasn’t so bad to die, since he believed there was a heaven. It helps me to think about that. But he was just a kid when I saw him the last time. In my head, he’s still back home. That’s when I’ll miss him, I think–when I get home.”
“I guess that’s right–what he said about heaven,” Duncan said, and he wasn’t joking. For a time neither spoke, and then Duncan said, “Look around when you go to mess. About half the guys from our regiment are gone. Some killed. Some missing in action. Some too shot up to come back, like Rizzardi. Some all messed up in the head, like Huish. And we weren’t in it that long.”
“That’s one good thing about the airborne. We get pulled back before the next drop. Those infantry guys have been in the middle of it from D-day straight on through.”
“Sure. But no one takes bigger chances than we do.” He grinned. “We’re the Screaming Eagles–the toughest guys in the army. We drop behind the lines and fight our way out.” But there was irony in his voice. All the men still believed that stuff–to some degree–but the idea had lost its thrill.
“They did whip us into shape. We’re better soldiers than most.”
“I don’t doubt that. But I had it in my head that we’d be out there marching in a parade or something, with a band playing and flags waving. I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t picture all those days in foxholes, with artillery coming in on us.”
“I missed that part.”
“I know. But you ran straight at a machine-gun emplacement when no one else wanted to stick his nose out of the ditch.”
“You guys all went with me.”
“Sure. But only because I saw you and Summers out there, putting yourselves on the line.”
“Well . . . we all did what we had to do.”
Duncan rubbed his hand over his wet hair. He was still a big man, but he had lost weight since the early days, back in 1942, and he had aged. He had never seemed serious back then. “I’ll tell you something I’ve thought a lot about,” he said. “Just before we got pulled back, I saw some German prisoners walking down a road. It hit me like a ton of bricks: they were just regular guys, like us. You know what I mean? Just guys who got drafted or felt they had to sign up. I think that’s bothered me more than any single thing–you know, since we got pulled out. You used to always say that, back in basic, that they were just people like us. I hated you for that.”
“I’ve lived there. I just–”
“Thomas, I can’t do that. I gotta hate ’em. I try not to think how I felt when I saw those guys. I can’t go into battle with that on my mind. I heard a story from a guy in a pub in London–just some dogface from an infantry unit. He got shot through the hip over by Carentan, where we were. He said the Germans were cutting guys’ throats, just so they wouldn’t have to take prisoners. He saw a whole bunch of our guys alongside a ditch over there somewhere, their throats cut through.”
“Our guys did some of that too.”
“Yeah, I know, but . . . they’re worse than us, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think they are. I think we can pray to kill them. Our chaplain here at the camp said a prayer like that one time. He asked God to let us be ‘instruments of fury’ so we could ‘smite the evil forces.’ I remember those words exactly. I’ve been saying some prayers lately, just on my own. And I always say that.”
“I do think Hitler is evil,” Alex said. “I like to think that I’m fighting him–and what he’s trying to do to the world.”
“But not the rest of the Germans?”
“My wife is German, Duncan. You can’t find finer people than her and her family.”
“Yeah, but they went against the Nazis, right? What about all the ones that support Hitler?”
Alex thought for a moment, and then he said, “Look, Duncan, it’s not going to do any good to talk about this. We do have to kill them–until they stop trying to kill us. That’s just the way it is. But don’t think about it. We’ll just do what we have to do.”
“I’ve got to hate them to kill them. I told you that.”
“And I still don’t want to.”
“But I saw the way you killed before. You weren’t holding anything back.”
Alex knew that. And he didn’t really understand himself. He only knew that he hadn’t satisfied his own desire to be righteous, somehow, even in battle. He didn’t know how to kill and carry the spirit of the Lord with him at the same time. And he didn’t know how to take Anna with him.
Somewhere, in another hut, a radio was still on, and Alex could hear the song that was playing: “I’ll never smile again until I smile at you.”
It was a stupid song, and untrue. He could still smile, and everything was going to be okay. Still, he rolled on his side, pressed one ear against his pillow, and pulled his blanket over the other. He couldn’t hear the music now, but the words continued in his head.
Chapter 2
Most of the POWs marched with their eyes straight ahead, but Wally Thomas watched the angry Japanese citizens who lined the street. The people were fanatic in their rage. Guards had to hold them back. Some spit at the prisoners, and occasionally someone lobbed a rock. Wally wasn’t so much insulted or scared as he was curious. How could these people hate him so much? He assumed that American bombers had attacked their country, and he understood that he was the enemy, but he couldn’t imagine the opinions these people must hold, to feel such wrath toward him. Maybe a group of Japanese prisoners would be treated the same way back in Salt Lake City, but he couldn’t picture it.
The walk was not long, but the prisoners were weak from their long voyage from the Philippines. Wally, like most of the men, had been a prisoner of the Japanese since April of 1942. It was now August 1944. The men had been held in squalid camps in the Philippines, where they had been forced to work under unthinkable conditions, with little food. A huge percentage of the prisoners had died of disease or malnutrition. Wally had no idea what that percentage was, but he was certain that more than half his squadron was now dead. Some had died only recently on the “hell ship” that had brought them to Japan. Wally was in a group of one hundred, including his friends from Salt Lake, Chuck Adair and Art Halverson, and his friends Don Cluff, Ray Vernon, and Eddy Nash. Now they were being marched to a train station. That much they knew. What they didn’t know was where they were going or what they would do when they got there.
But Wally was hopeful. Shortly after arriving in the port, the prisoners had been given a hefty slice of brown sourdough bread to eat. The bread had actually made Wally sick, since his system wasn’t used to it; still, it seemed a promising sign. Maybe the prisoners would eat better here. The men had spent sixty-two days on the ship, counting time docked in Formosa, and all their focus had had to be on surviving the heat and filth and hunger. But Wally, like all the other men, had clung to the hope, which was mostly just speculation, that conditions would be better in Japan. Rumor had it that the men would mine coal, and the theory among the prisoners was that anyone doing such hard work would have to be fed well. There was also some sense in Wally that the Japanese–not the guards he had dealt with for two years–were refined people. It seemed that such a people, in their own country, would be respectful to prisoners of war. Now, watching the hostile faces, hearing their screams, he had to wonder what would happen to him and his friends.
The men reached a train station, where they were herded onto waiting passenger cars. This was a big improvement over the cattle cars he and the others had traveled in before, but the technique was the same. The guards kept driving more and more of them into a single car until all hope of comfort was lost. But Wally had foun
d a seat, so he couldn’t complain.
Before the train began to move, a translator stepped into the car. He was a young man who had spoken to the prisoners before. He had been raised in California, and he spoke a perfect American dialect. “I’d recommend you guys keep your blinds down,” he shouted. “As you saw out there, people don’t like you much around here. You’re better off if no one sees you.”
Again, Wally tried to take something positive from this. The voice was almost friendly, familiar. Maybe conditions were going to be better in the camp they were heading to, wherever it was.
Chuck was sitting with Wally, crowded into the same seat. Back home, when they had played football together at East High, they wouldn’t have fit into the space so easily. But neither one was much more than a skeleton now, so their hips didn’t take much room. The men smelled powerfully of the disinfectant that had been sprayed on them as they left their ship, and all of them were still filthy with sweat and grime. But maybe they would be allowed to clean up soon. That and more food were the two things the prisoners kept talking about.
“My guess is, the war isn’t going well for Japan,” Chuck said. “That’s why the people are so mad.”
“We’re probably bombing all the time over here by now,” Don said. He and Art were crowded into the next seat, and Eddy was sitting across from them. The five had become inseparable during the time on the ship.
“I just hope our pilots know where we are,” Chuck said. “I don’t want to get killed by an American bomb.”
Art nodded. “Maybe so, but I hope we hear lots of bombs dropping. I want this war over before Christmas.”
It was what the men always hoped, always promised each other: that they would be home before the year was over. But Wally didn’t know. What he had learned, above everything else, was to take one day at a time. If he thought of endless days ahead, and constant drudgery, he became overwhelmed with discouragement. So he tried to keep his mind on the present, to get through whatever hardship he had to face that day, that moment, and let the future take care of itself.