'LOADED & FIRED MACHINE GUN...'
Lynch, John
ty that some vivid dreams have, sharp in detail but slightly surreal. _9 On guard duty somewhere in France on a bright moonlit night, the shadows black and sharp-edged. I distract myself by...
...But an officer standing in a jeep, pistols visible in his holsters, drives around examining the area...
...As our hospital ship pulls into a New York Harbor, we can hear and see through a porthole the band that greets us...
...9 Home again...
...I realize that I am not afraid of dying but that I am deathly afraid of being painfully wounded...
...9 Lying flat on the ground in a thinly wooded grove, my ears filled with the noise of bullets and shrapnel passing overhead, my eyes fixed on the bloated dead body in front of me, I begrudge the thin layer of leaves that prevents me from hugging the ground even closer...
...I wake to hear gasping moans at the edge of our foxhole...
...9 In a hospital in Bournemouth, near the south coast of England, we hear the drone of V-bombs, the silence, and then the explosions...
...We have advanced almost not at all, expected supplies do not Commonweal | 4 April 24, 1998 arrive, we cannot get dry, and we cannot take off our boots because putting still-wet socks and feet back into frozen boots is impossible...
...9 After a long march, we pause in a relatively open field and are told to dig foxholes...
...Some of us are driven to a barn where we are told to remove shoes and socks and dry our feet...
...El y experience in the war was not as prolonged or as intense as many of those of whom Ambrose writes, nor the damage I suffered as severe...
...Getting on my feet, I repeat the performance...
...Doc had waked with the morning light and had gotten out of the foxhole to look around...
...In the bottom of the foxhole we make a small trench to hold the rising pool of water that gathers and, although our feet are already soaking wet, we try to keep them on the ledge each side of the trench...
...My then-buddy shares the surname Savage with a pulp-magazine hero and is automatically called "Doc," that character's nickname...
...It persists for some days...
...A short time later we are glad we did...
...As we wait to be taken off the ship, kindly Gray Ladies--so named because of the gray outfits they wear--pass through with their welcome-back gifts...
...Ambrose quotes Paul Fussell: "Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be, petty harassment of the weak by the strong...small-minded and ignoble...
...A couple of German planes that seem to have strayed into the area spray down bullets that thud heavily into the ground around us...
...In spite of the fact that we can hear German voices not far from us, our weariness is greater than our fear, and we trust to our guards and the pitch-black night to provide security for us...
...In what was to ~lrn into a nine-months' passage through a string of hospitals, six months of which I can neither stand nor walk, my own turn into purple, then black, scaly balloon-like appendages that cannot suffer even the weight of a bed sheet...
...9 On one of the few, sun-brightened days I am by myself--although I don't know how that could have been--as I enter a small, empty church...
...A great silence has fallen on the air and a great feeling of peace comes over me...
...I distract myself by kicking a stray GI boot down the slight slope in front of me...
...Since we believe that we are likely to push on in only a few hours, most of us make only half-hearted efforts to dig deep...
...In late December, casualties from what was to be called the Battle of the Bulge begin to stream through our ward and I learn that my outfit has been thrown into that battle...
...Like most other soldiers, I go back to pick up the loose threads of my former life...
...I am thrown into a frustrated, impotent, and incoherent rage as our smiIing Gray Lady extends to me, and I silently accept, her gift of chocolate and comic books...
...Shafts of sunlight pass through the jagged opening and pick out the gilt edges of the altar and meager ornaments...
...The roof has been partly destroyed...
...I learn that I have trench foot, a World War I term I had never heard before...
...General Patton says we had better dig those #@%*$+ holes deep, and right now...
...Getting out of my foxhole one morning, I stumble and fall in the snow...
...9 In the dark, our company has entered a rather dense forest heavy with rain mixed with snow...
...That is, I try to, for the boot scarcely moves and I gradually realize that it still encases a foot that is, in turn, firmly attached to the body that lies in its shallow grave...
...My feelings are only compounded when my three cabin mates pounce on them eagerly...
...Alternating and intermingling waves of guilt for not being with them and gratitude that I'm not sweep over me...
...I notice others performing similar antics...
...Even if it's only to be a few hours we all feel a blessed relief...
...We are unable to walk...
...We have no idea if the planes are ours or theirs...
...It qualifies me, however, to respond personally to the question of why we fought, of what forged us into fighting units, and to the question of the criminality of the war...
...The tracer bullets make beautiful abstract patterns against the dark sky...
...The brief periods of silence are the most frightening...
...And yet again...
...But as if to underline the difference between those on the front line and those in the rear, when the chickenshit officer in charge of our ward comes through for inspection, those of us who cannot stand are ordered to lie at attention in our beds...
...9 Months later, at the hospital center at Camp Carson, Colorado, I receive my honorable discharge, one line of which reads: "EAME Ribbon, 1 Bronze Service Star Good Conduct Ribbon Combat Inf Badge...
...He dies soon afterward...
...Ambrose himself makes severe judgments of particular decisions and individual soldiers, not excluding the highest-ranking officers, even of Dwight Eisenhower whom Commonweal | 5 April 24, 1998...
...Doc and I do our best to find a patch of ground where we can dig a foxhole big enough for both of us...
...A sniper had shot him in the stomach...
...Comic books...
...As we drink it we look out over the valley and see planes firing at targets below them...
...9 In the same forest, the snow and cold continue...
...Soon an order comes down...
...9 In a small house in a deserted village perched on a hillside, we find a very large, flat-bottomed, clear green bottle practically filled with wine...
...But our waxy-white feet begin to swell and turn colors...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 8
