Death Is Not Enough
Death Is Not Enough SpecM from London, by the Now Ltmdtr Correspondent m Noruumdy , DEATH is in the nuking and more men will die. Thai ia the one real, unmistakable fact in the ocean of...
...Bakeries have been act up to give fresh bread to troops —and bread tastes like the rarest cake when you have been eating hard biscuits for every meal of every dsy in many weeks...
...They cannot forget what they have seen...
...What sentence in the laet conversation with my aan do you remember word for word...
...The world mutt be made a place for greatnetl in the living...
...A plsne was trying to wriggle out of a searchlight cone...
...i niiiisashsisil An air-raid was in progress and we were steading under the Jutting coping of an underground station which we had just left...
...And the feeling you may have is: "They have been through it...
...My friend whose field ef •twdv had...
...And the sentence I remembered was my friend saying: "J swaaaer if the mams damned ehoni will he repeated*in fsaaaSj gears...
...A world which with all its human hate and misery, its slums, crime, wretchedness and disease etill was good and sometimes there wss sunshine apd sometimes there was laughter...
...What did I want and what haven't I found...
...To the nineteen-year-old youth It was a world that mattered that he was leaving behind...
...It is for that sense of human dignity, that sense of life reduced to its bare, tenacious Integrity that men wish to return to the hell of the battlefront...
...The column would pause while the engineers threw a Bailey bridge across a river and then would continue...
...ft*s*d-fertahaed eeshu...
...I dea't knew...
...I do so no longer...
...Yet it is not the smite...
...But there are other stories, perhaps, that we hesitate to send—not because tbe censor forbids it, not because the facta are not confirmed, but because there is something in all of us which turns away at probing the torment of one man, applying the scalpel to another man's soul...
...But often there was the feeling that there were other questions they wanted answered...
...And they think: It man doomed to know grandeur only in death and conflict...
...And then in painful snatches hs said to as who were around him: "It's not dying thst scares me...
...In the field there are stories war correspondents do not send because questions of security are involved and the censor'and »hs writer Judge ft inopportune to release certain information...
...And when in Algiers and in London, in Washington and Nsw York in these post weeks I heard men on leave or men on new assignmentt say: "I wish I were back"—I knew what they meant...
...Why have I that vague feeling of disappointment...
...Near the Sangro river in Italy we hare taken off mud-spattered clothes*, unchanged for weeks, snd plunged under hot showers supplied by mobile baths...
...Before the dawa attack wsa to begin he was deed...
...The division I was with had advanced rapidly up the coast but we were still about twenty miles short of Pizto where the newly srrived tending force wss bat tling fiercely agsinst considerable odds...
...Q«r armies art wall fed and where it is possible, well-billeted snd even entertained...
...It was a hard question to answer...
...Then, coming back, bit by bit they have seen the great fortress msde by the deed crumble in the petty concerns of living behind the bsttiefrontt, in the tussle to "get your share...
...Cannot men build a world where the beat of what it in a man will bt wanted in peace a* it it now...
...I eeubJ have said...
...I once wondered about this...
...They look sad sometimes, these men who come back, and they are silent where before they talked easily...
...Reconnaissance and the uprooting of minefields were done in record time...
...How many times It has been said since this second World War began...
...In New York I met the fsther of s pilot friend whom I saw off on a Fortress trip over Germany from a flying field in England...
...And a man la a man and he has meaning because he Is then with you and because his life or yours may be forfeit within the hour...
...NoWHERE does dignity count for mors among men than when together they share a common closeness to the finality which is desth...
...Life waa more than a ecramble for jobs, a competition for petty advancement, a snag bank account and a amug unconcern for the welfare af one's fellows...
...The Gar-mans had installed powerful defeasea on the heights overlooking the inlet and ss the landing barges approached the shore s hail of shellfire received them...
...I have told them that sometimes life near the battle front may not be so different from life at hums...
...We learnt when the returning planes had landed that his had been hit...
...They have listened to the inadequate •rowers sod limited reports that a single observer can give...
...That is as it should be...
...It is a dignity forged on the bloody anvils of war at the front—the front which is that comparatively small area bounded by imminent death—when everything elss turns into shadow of remembrance...
...Do we toll her...
...What sort of government would Italy have...
...Discovery ean change worlds, it also chsnge* the human bains...
...In Italian and in French a long statement that sounded like surrender terms was being read...
...Here are the friends, the homes, the laughter—all ia the sams...
...Then the enemy, fearful of being out flanked, was retresting...
...By that time it waa too late...
...I've aever learnt to swim...
...And more perhaps even than on the fighting front" ixople sre thinking about it...
...And returning one wonders "Why aren't things ss I thought...
...We beard hie weep-throagh the wight grow fainter and fainter...
...We heard the coded directions for landing craft approaching the beaches and the battle orders...
...Bat I've done ae little...
...We drew nearer and nearer...
...The hesvy eighty eight* were taking a toll of the landing force but nevertheless the operation proceeded as planned...
...Do we toll her that he waa ripped by a shell which tore sway his arm and his side and left fragments la hie face...
...Every delay teemed an eternity and impatient men wished their vehicles could lesp the river gorges over which the enemy bsd destroyed the bridges...
...I REMEMBER a rainy night in September when an Eighth Army armoured column was moving np to the relief of the British fore* that had landed and was fighting up ths hilly roade at Piaao in Italy...
...And this is the discovery: first you grope towsrd it slowly, then suddenly it comet in a flash— Oat there where they crossed the rivers—the Primosole and the Trigno, the Ssngra snd the Vol turno—end men died in the eaiekaand aad the awollen watera, each had found something...
...What dees one say to a Mother in a British or Aateriesn village wkeee aea we knew and whose death we saw when she aaks, as only she has the right to eat: How did he die...
...I remembered general points of our conversations in London, but what was one to tell the father ? I fumbled and finally the father said: "Just toll me this...
...We pieced the information together snd there on the bsttlefield we knew—what I suppose the rest of the world had known for hours—Italrhad surrendered...
...Aad that despite this he lived for a while aad waa cseanioaa...
...Out ef It all he did net see a new end greater euety rising...
...how they art thinking...
...I aever loved a girl...
...Thai ia the one real, unmistakable fact in the ocean of speculation on which these somber weeks ride...
...The plane crashed with him in a cascade of blazing petrol...
...Trailing smoke and flame it started to plunge toward earth, then the others saw it righted though it Was rapidly losing sltitude and from the fuming aircraft members of the crew parachuted one by one...
...Under the flares in the night shattered by gunfire they have seen it as a great fortress—men who hsve died to shield something real and noble in themselves—something real and noble in all that i* struggling, hoping human life, moving toward something better...
...The cleverness of snappy remarks in London or New York—the wit of gsy parties snd the emotional exaggerations attached to minor events—how trivia], how forgotten they are...
...Aad always the res) issue was: Tan we believe what they tell ua...
...been economic had followed clearly tbe part., treaties, agreements, charter*, grewiag like ¦sahriili em the aad mf war...
...division must make Contact with the Pizzo forces...
...I wss in a signal car and we were getting the ususl mysterious indications that a landing battle was underway...
...Every soldier wanted to join the relief column...
...Word of the surrender traveled like a flame down the column...
...They know that a mountain of corpse* must be more than a pile of dead men...
...They, found that united in greet pnrpeeee, in the winning of battle*, the eonqssst of mountains, tha bloody croisiag of river* the Uvea of man become mean ingfal, his suture great, hie dignity ImperiahaMe...
...Will people live more fully, expand living into something more than existence, aee hope develop into something more than dreams washed from the mind...
...The burning questions were not remote because death was near...
...All this it true end sll this I told them...
...They too spent many of the slow-passing waiting hours in mud and loneliness from the world thinking and talking about the world for which they were fighting...
...What were the armistice terms...
...Cannot there be a meaning and glory in living jutt at there ie in dying...
...Under the personal command of the general a mobile armored column was organized within the hour...
...Questions they did not quite know how to phrase snd answers they felt it might be unfair to ask a man to give...
...how they are talking...
...But only a few naturally could take part in this swift jab across the no-man's land of twenty miles that stretched between the enemy and ourselves...
...Mobile cinemas delve deep into combat areas to show films to tha troops...
...Be we tell her that with sight remaining la one eye he leaked open his shattered body and wept bitterly...
...All but the pilot...
...In the distance we could hear the sound of artillery and we wondered how the battle was going...
...8a little thst mnttered...
...Nothing very strange about that...
...I have talked to civilians, ia North Africa and ia Brits** in South America and tha United States...
...Word had paased around that our men at Pizzo were in trouble and that was enough...
...The sound of gunfire rolled like stormy weather over ths hills...
...Will It be a better world...
...They have asked about their fighting men—how they wm living...
...I'm not afraid of that...
...It was good .newt although we were learning at the ssmc time thst a grim light for the Salerno beaches was going on further north...
...And, there with the sounds of battle echoing men discussed the events with an interest and realism which might have done credit to a congress or parliament...
...That would net have keen the truth...
...This is not so...
...The bsttle simmered down and for tbe first time we hesrd strange phrases coming over the radio...
...Sitting in a New York restaurant, where food is plentiful, looking out on the lighted streets, the stream of cars, the rapid walkers—everybody seems to walk fast in New York—the pilot's father wanted to know what his son thought What he said...
...la Ita dank...
...The barrage was la full awing, the night filled with its thunder and the skies with the beads and fleshes of light...
...It was his last trip...
...Me saw expediency and he waa aad eentmtair...
...In the lata afternoon the orders came through that a flying column from our...
...Wss fascism finished forever...
...So little that mattered"—ft was that unforgettable phrase we took away...
...The dead knew it, the wounded knew it, and if they wept in the night, and sometimes died before morning, it was because this realization had made life richer, fuller, more important and they so hated to die now that they had found it The living who return know it...
...Death it not enough...
...In the drizzling rain soldiers shouted questions to the signs...
...netded in war...
...Modern war has involved a world in war, but modern wsr has also placed the magnificent technique snd even amenities of peacetime at the disposal of our armies store than ever before...
...Tbe father asked me about conditions overseas...
...And the father asked me: "Did he think It would...
Vol. 27 • January 1944 • No. 27
