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Epigraph

lo maggior don che Dio per sua

larghezza/fesse creando …/

… fu de la volontà la libertate

THE DIVINE COMEDY

Par. V, 19 ff.

1 Days

‘It’s incredible, it really is, isn’t it? Ever think you’d be humping along some crazy-ass trail like this one, jumping up and down out of the dirt, jumping like a goddamn bullfrog, dodging bullets all day? Don’t know about you, but I sure as hell never thought I’d ever be going on all day like this. Back in Cleveland I’d still be asleep.’ Barney smiled. ‘Jesus, you ever see anything like this?’

‘Yesterday,’ I said.

‘Yesterday? Shit, yesterday wasn’t nothing like this.’

‘Snipers yesterday, snipers today. What’s the difference?’

‘Guess so,’ he said. ‘They’ll put holes in your ass either way, right? But shit, yesterday wasn’t nothing like this.’

‘Snipers yesterday, snipers today,’ I said again.

Barney laughed. ‘You don’t like snipers, do you? Yesterday there were snipers, a few of them, but Jesus, today that’s all there is. Can’t wait ’til tonight. My God, tonight will be lovely. They’ll really give us hell. I’m digging me a foxhole like a basement.’

We lay next to each other until the volley of bullets stopped. We didn’t bother to raise our rifles. We didn’t know which way to shoot, and it was all over anyway.

Barney picked up his helmet and took out a pencil and put a mark on it. ‘See,’ he said, grinning and showing me ten marks, ‘that’s ten times today. Count them – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN! Ever been shot at ten times in one day?’

‘Yesterday,’ I said. ‘And the day before that and the day before that.’

‘Oh, it’s been worse today.’

‘Did you count yesterday?’

‘No. Didn’t think of it until today. That proves today’s worse.’

‘Well, you should have counted yesterday.’

‘Jesus,’ Barney said. ‘Get off your ass, let’s get going. Company’s moving out.’ Barney put his pencil away and jumped up like a jumping jack, a little kid on a pogo stick, then he pulled me by the hand.

I walked a few steps in back of him. ‘You’re the optimistic sort, aren’t you, Barney? This crap doesn’t get you down.’

‘Can’t let it get you down,’ he said. ‘That’s how GIs get wasted.’

‘What time is it?’

‘I guess about four, judging by the sun.’

‘Good.’

‘What’s good about four, you getting tired? I’ll carry some of that stuff for you.’

‘No, it’s okay. We should stop soon. I’ll help you dig that basement.’

A shrill sound, like a woman shrieking, sizzled past our ears, carried on a waft of the day’s air.

‘Jesus Christ almighty,’ Barney shouted, already flat on his belly.

‘Jesus Christ almighty,’ I said, kneeling beside him.

‘You okay?’

‘I guess. You okay?’

‘Yeah. They were aiming at us that time, I swear. You and me.’

‘They know who’s after them,’ I said. ‘You and me.’

He giggled. ‘Sure, we’d give ’em hell, wouldn’t we. Strangle the little pricks.’

‘Let’s go, that wasn’t worth stopping for.’

The trail linked a cluster of hamlets together, little villages to the north and west of the Bantangan Peninsula. It was a fairly wide and flat trail, but it made dangerous slow curves and was flanked by impenetrable brush. Because two squads moved through the tangle on either side of us, protecting the flanks from close-in ambushes, the company moved slowly.

‘Captain says we’re gonna search one more ville today,’ Barney said.

‘What’s he expect to find? Whoever’s there will be gone long before we come.’

Barney shrugged, walking steadily and not looking back.

‘Well, what does he expect to find? Christ, Charlie knows where we are, he’s been shooting us up all day.’

‘Don’t know,’ Barney said. ‘Maybe we’ll surprise him.’

‘Who?’

‘Charlie. Maybe we’ll surprise him this time.’

‘Are you kidding me, Barney?’

He shrugged and chuckled. ‘I don’t know. I’m getting tired myself. Maybe we’ll surprise Charlie because he’s getting tired, too.’

‘Tired,’ I muttered. Wear the yellow bastards down, right?

‘Actually, this trail seems pretty good. Don’t you think? Been on it all day and not a single mine, not a sign of one.’

‘Good reason to get the hell off it,’ I said.

‘What’s the matter, you want to be the one to find a mine?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that.’

‘Well, it’s a damn good trail around here if you don’t hit a mine.’

‘It means we’ll find one sooner or later. Especially with Charlie all over the place.’

The company stopped moving. The captain walked to the front of the column, talked with a lieutenant and moved back. He asked for the radio handset, and I listened while he called battalion headquarters and told them we’d found the village and were about to cordon and search it. Then the platoons separated into their own little columns and walked into the brush.

‘What’s the name of this goddamn place?’ Barney asked.

‘I don’t know. I never thought of that. Nobody thinks of the names for these places.’

‘I know. It’s funny, isn’t it? Somebody’s gonna ask me someday where the hell I was over here, where the bad fighting was, and, shit, what will I say?’

‘Tell them St Vith,’ I said.

‘What? That’s the name of this fucking place?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s the name of it. It’s here on the map. Do you want to look at it?’

He grinned. ‘What’s the difference, huh? You say St Vith, I guess that’s it. I’ll never remember. How long’s it gonna take me to forget your name?’

The captain walked over and sat down with us, and we smoked and waited for the platoons to fan out around the village.

‘This gonna take long, sir?’ Barney asked.

Captain Johansen said he didn’t think so.

‘Don’t expect to find anything – right, sir?’ Barney said.

Johansen grinned. ‘I doubt it.’

‘That’s what O’Brien was saying. But like I told him, there’s always the chance we can surprise the gooks.’

‘My God, Barney, they were shooting at us all day. How the hell are you going to surprise them?’ I was indignant. Searching the ville, the whole hot day, was utterly and certainly futile.

The platoon finished the cordon, tied it up neatly, then we joined the first platoon and carefully tiptoed through the little hamlet, nudging over a jug of rice here and there, watching where we walked, careful of mines, hoping to find nothing. But we did find some tunnels, three openings behind three different huts.

‘Well, should we search them?’ a lieutenant asked.

‘Not me, sir. I been shot at too much today, no more luck left in me,’ Chip said.

‘Nobody asked you to go down.’

‘Well, don’t ask me either, sir,’ another soldier said.

Everyone moved quietly away from the lieutenant, leaving him standing alone by the cluster of tunnels. He peered at them, kicked a little dirt into them and turned away.

‘Getting too dark to go around searching tunnels,’ he said. ‘Somebody throw a grenade into each of the holes. Make sure they cave in all the way.’ He walked over to the captain and they had a short conference together. The sun was setting. Already it was impossible to make out the colour in their faces and uniforms. The two officers stood together, heads down, planning.

‘Blow the goddamn tunnels up,’ someone said. ‘Christ, let’s blow them up before somebody decides to search the damn things.’

‘Fire-in-the-hole!’ Three explosions, dulled by dirt and sand, and the tunnels were blocked, ‘Fire-in-the-hole!’ Three more explosions, even duller. Two grenades to each tunnel.

‘Nobody’s gonna be searching those tunnels now.’

Everyone laughed.

‘Wouldn’t find anything, anyway. A bag of rice, maybe a few rounds of ammo.’

‘And maybe a goddamn mine. Right?’

‘Not worth it. Not worth my ass, damn sure.’

‘Well, no worry now. Nothing to worry about. No way anybody’s going to go into those three tunnels.’

‘Ex-tunnels.’

Another explosion, fifty yards away.

‘Jesus, goddamn you guys,’ the captain shouted. ‘Cut all the damn grenade action.’

Then a succession of explosions, tearing apart huts; then yellow flashes, white spears of sound, came out of the hedgerows around the village. Automatic rifle fire, short and incredibly close rifle cracks.

‘See,’ Barney said, lying beside me, ‘we did find them.’

‘Surprised them,’ I said. ‘Faked them right out of their shoes.’

‘Incoming!’

‘Incoming!’

‘Jesus,’ Barney said. ‘As if we didn’t know. Incoming, my ass.’ He looked over at me. ‘INCOMING!’

‘Nice hollering.’

Thanks. You hurt? I guess not.’

‘No. But I’d guess someone is hurt. That was a lot of shit.’

The company, the men on the perimeter of the village, returned fire for several minutes, spraying M-16 and M-70 and M-14 and M-60 fire down the trail, in the direction of the enemy fire, in the direction from which we’d just come.

‘Why don’t they stop shooting?’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for God’s sake, they aren’t going to hit anything.’

‘CEASE FIRE,’ Captain Johansen shouted. ‘Cease fire, what’s wrong with you guys? Stop wasting the goddamn ammo. CEASE FIRE!’

‘Cease fire,’ the lieutenants hollered.

‘Cease fire,’ the platoon sergeants hollered.

‘Cease the goddamn fire,’ shouted the squad leaders.

‘That,’ I told Barney, ‘is the chain of command.’

Bates, one of our buddies, ran over and asked how we were. ‘Somebody had to get messed up during all that,’ he said. He peered down at us. He held his helmet in his hands.

‘We better look over there,’ I said. ‘That’s where the grenades came in.’

‘Grenades?’ Bates looked at me. ‘You sure you’re not a sailor?’

‘Not altogether.’

‘Not altogether, what?’

‘Not altogether sure I’m not a sailor, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Damn straight, not altogether,’ Bates said. ‘Those were mortar rounds coming down on us. Eighty-two-millimetre mortar rounds.’

‘You sure?’ Barney always asked people that question.

‘Well, pretty sure,’ Bates said. ‘I mean, I was a mortar man before they made me a grunt. Those were mortar rounds.’

‘It’s gonna be a nice night,’ Barney muttered, smiling like a child. His face had the smooth complexion of a baby brother. ‘Just as I was saying before. We aren’t gonna get much sleep.’

We walked to where the mortar rounds had exploded. Some soldiers from the third platoon were standing there, in the wreckage of huts and torn-down trees, looking at four holes in the dirt. ‘Nobody’s hurt over here,’ one of them said. ‘Lucky thing. We were all sitting down, resting. Anybody standing when that stuff came in would be dead. I mean really dead.’ The soldier sat on his pack and opened a can of peaches.

The captain ran over to us and asked for casualties, and the same soldier told him there were none. ‘We were all sitting down, sir. Resting. Pretty lucky for us. We should rest more – right, sir?’

‘Okay, that’s good,’ Captain Johansen said. He told me to call battalion headquarters. ‘Just inform them that we’re heading off for our night position, not a word about the little fight just now. I don’t want to spend time playing with gunships, and that’s what they’ll make us do.’

We hefted our packs and guns and straggled in a long line out of the village. It was only a two-hundred-metre walk to the little wooded hill where we made our night position, but by the time the foxholes were dug and we’d eaten cold C rations, it had been dark for a long time. The night was not as frightening as other nights. Sometimes there was the awful feeling in the air that people would die at their foxholes or in their sleep, but that night everyone talked softly and bravely. No one doubted that we would be hit, yet in the certainty of a fight to come there was no real terror. We hadn’t lost anyone that day, even after eight hours of sniping and harassment, and the presence of the enemy and his failure during the day made the night hours easier. We simply waited. Taking turns at guard, being careful not to light cigarettes, we waited until nearly daybreak. And then only a half-dozen mortar rounds came down, none of them inside our circle of foxholes.

When it was light Bates and Barney and I cooked C rations together.

‘You need a shave,’ Bates told Barney.

‘I need R & R. And a woman; a lay’s what I need. She can take me with or without whiskers.’

‘You haven’t got whiskers,’ Bates laughed.

Barney rubbed his face, feeling for hair. ‘Well, Jesus, why do you say I need a shave?’

‘Do you ever shave?’

‘Not often.’ Barney stirred his bubbling ham and eggs.

Slowly, the camp came alive. The heat was what woke us up, cooking through the poncho liners. Then flies. Everyone stirred slowly, lay on their backs for long minutes, talked in little groups. At that hour no one really kept guard. A look out into the brush now and then, that was all. A cursory feign. It was like waking up in a cancer ward, no one ambitious to get on with the day, no one with obligations, or dreams for the daylight.

‘That wasn’t a bad night, really,’ Barney said. ‘I was looking for the Red Army to come thunking down on us. A few measly mortar rounds.’

‘Maybe they’re out of ammo,’ Bates said.

‘Could be.’ Barney looked at him, wondering if it were a joke.

‘Sure, we just put their little town in siege and wore them down. A war of fucking attrition, what.’

Barney stared at him. ‘Well, they probably got some ammo left.’

‘Probably.’

‘Did you sleep last night?’ I asked Barney.

‘Sure, I guess so. You know, you get tired walking the whole damn day, so not even the Red Army could keep me from my Zs. You sleep? You looked like you were sleeping; I saw you on guard.’

‘What? I wasn’t sleeping on guard.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Barney said, feeling good about inadvertently drawing some blood. ‘I mean while I was on guard. I saw you sleeping pretty well.’

‘Until two hours ago. Something woke me up, sounded like someone trying to kill me.’

‘Must have been a dream.’ Bates turned away.

‘Ah, that wasn’t anything,’ Barney said. ‘They’ll go away soon. We better get saddled up, Johansen looks like he’s fixing to move out.’

We gathered up our gear, stuffed it inside green packs and found our places in the single-file line of march off the hill and into the first village of the day.

2 Pro Patria

I grew out of one war and into another. My father came from leaden ships of sea, from the Pacific theatre; my mother wore the uniform of the WAVES. I was the wrinkled, swollen, bloody offspring of the great campaign against the tyrants of the 1940s, one explosion in the Baby Boom, one of millions of new human beings come to replace those who had just died. My bawling came with the first throaty note of a new army in spawning. I was bred with the haste and dispatch and careless muscle-flexing of a rejuvenated, splendidly triumphant nation giving bridle to its own good fortune and success. I was fed by the spoils of 1945 victory.

I learned to read and write on the prairies of southern Minnesota, in towns peering like corpses’ eyeballs from out of the corn.

Along the route used by settlers to people South Dakota and the flatlands of Nebraska and northern Iowa, in the cold winters, I learned to use ice skates.

My teàchers were brittle old ladies, classroom football coaches, flushed veterans of the war, pretty girls in sixth grade, memories of hot-blooded valour.

In patches of weed and clouds of imagination, I learned to play army games. Friends introduced me to the Army Surplus Store off main street. We bought dented relics of our fathers’ history, rusted canteens and olive-scented, scarred helmet liners. Then we were our fathers, taking on the Japs and Krauts along the shores of Lake Okabena, on the flat fairways of the golf course, writhing insensible under barrages of shore batteries positioned under camouflage across the lake. I rubbed my fingers across my father’s war decorations, stole a tiny battle star off one of them and carried it in my pocket.

Baseball was for the summertime, when school ended. My father loved baseball. I was holding a bleached Louisville Slugger when I was six. I played a desperate shortstop for the Rural Electric Association Little League team; my father coached us, and he is still coaching, still able to tick off the starting line-up of the great Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the 1950s.

Sparkers and the forbidden cherry bomb were for the Fourth of July: a baseball game, a picnic, a day in the city park, listening to the high school band playing ‘Anchors Aweigh’, a speech, watching a parade of American Legionnaires. At night, sometimes after nine o’clock, fireworks erupted over the lake, reflections.

It had been Indian land. Ninety miles from Sioux City, sixty miles from Sioux Falls, eighty miles from Cherokee, forty miles from Spirit Lake and the site of a celebrated massacre. To the north was Pipestone and the annual Hiawatha Pageant. To the west was Luverne and Indian burial mounds.

Norwegians and Swedes, a few Dutch and Germans – Giants in the Earth – had taken the plains from the Sioux. The settlers must have seen endless plains and eased their bones and said, ‘here as well as anywhere, it’s all the same.’

The town became a place for wage earners. It is a place for wage earners today – not very spirited people, not very philosophic people.

Among these people I learned about the Second World War, hearing it from men in front of the courthouse, from men who had fought it. The talk was tough. Nothing to do with causes or reason; the war was right, they muttered when asked, it had to be fought. The talk was about bellies filled with German lead, about the long hike from Normandy to Berlin, about close calls and about the origins of scars just visible on hairy arms. Growing up, I learned about another war, a peninsular war in Korea, a grey war fought by the town’s Lutherans and Baptists. I learned about that war when the town hero came home, riding in a convertible, sitting straight-backed and quiet, an ex-POW.

The town called itself Turkey Capital of the World. In September the governor and some congressmen came to town. People shut down their businesses and came in from their farms. Together we watched trombones and crêpe-paper floats move on a blitzkrieg down main street. The bands and floats represented Lismore, Sheldon, Tyler, Sibley, and Jackson.

Turkey Day climaxed when the farmers herded a billion strutting, stinking, beady-eyed birds down the centre of town, past the old Gobbler Café, past Wool-worth’s and the Ben Franklin store and the Standard Oil service station. Feathers and droppings and popcorn mixed together in tribute to the town and prairie. We were young. We stood on the kerb and blasted the animals with ammunition from our peashooters.

We listened to Nelson Rockefeller and Harold Stassen and the commander of the Minnesota VFW, trying to make sense out of their words, then we went for twenty-five-cent rides on the Octopus and Tilt-A-Whirl.

I couldn’t hit a baseball. Too small for football, but I stuck it out through junior high, hoping something would change. When nothing happened, I began to read. I read Plato and Erich Fromm, the Hardy boys and enough Aristotle to make me prefer Plato. The town’s library was quiet and not a very lively place – nothing like the football field on an October evening and not a very good substitute – nothing like screaming for blood, nothing like aching with filial pride, nothing like hearty masculine well-being.

I watched the athletes from the stands and cheered them at pep rallies, wishing I were with them. I went to homecoming dances, learned to drive an automobile, joined the debate team, took girls to drive-in theatres and afterwards to the A & W root-beer stand.

I took up an interest in politics. One evening I put on a suit and drove down to the League of Women Voters meeting, embarrassing myself and some candidates and most of the women voters by asking questions that had no answers.

I tried going to Democratic party meetings. I’d read it was the liberal party. But it was futile. I could not make out the difference between the people there and the people down the street boosting Nixon and Cabot Lodge. The essential thing about the prairie, I learned, was that one part of it is like any other part.

At night I sometimes walked about the town. ‘God is both transcendent and imminent. That’s Tillich’s position.’ When I walked, I chose the darkest streets, away from the street lights. ‘But is there a God? I mean, is there a God like there’s a tree or an apple? Is God a being?’ I usually ended up walking towards the lake. ‘God is Being-Itself.’ The lake, Lake Okabena, reflected the town-itself, bouncing off a black-and-white pattern identical to the whole desolate prairie: flat, tepid, small, strangled by algae, shut in by middle-class houses, lassoed by a ring of doctors, lawyers, CPAs, dentists, drugstore owners, and proprietors of department stores. ‘Being-Itself? Then is this town God? It exists, doesn’t it?’ I walked past where the pretty girls lived, stopping long enough to look at their houses, all the lights off and the curtains drawn. ‘Jesus,’ I muttered, ‘I hope not. Maybe I’m an atheist.’

One day in May the high school held graduation ceremonies. Then I went away to college, and the town did not miss me much.