Love is a Wounded Soldier (17 page)

Private Frankie “Twitch” De Luca, a short,
twitchy kid from New Jersey, who was known in the company as always being the
first to speak—and the last to stop—lived up to his reputation and blurted out,
“Is he dead? I think you killed ’im, Johnny!” almost before Barney hit the
floor. If dirty looks were yolks, he would have had egg on his face.

We watched Barney lie still for a few
seconds, groan, and stir. Johnny massaged his knuckles with his other hand, and
began picking up the cards as though totally apathetic toward whether his
opponent ever got up or saw the light of day again. He righted my nightstand,
turned, and walked to his cot, not even bothering to look down at a couple of
fellows helping Barney up into a sitting position. The woozy private staggered
to his feet like a new foal and belly flopped onto his bed. Then everyone
split, murmuring like pigeons.

Barney was docile the next day. He looked
like he’d like to trade heads with someone. There was a huge goose egg in the
middle of his forehead, and for the next few weeks, everyone called him
“Unicorn.” I think he was relieved when the nickname lasted only slightly
longer than the lump on his head.

~~~

From Odenton we got shipped down to Camp
A.P. Hill “Hell” Reservation in Caroline County, Virginia.

Following two months of hot days and muggy
nights, our division participated in the North and South Carolina war games.
Like real war, we had no idea what to expect day to day; all we knew for sure
is we’d be getting a bag lunch with one bologna sandwich, one jelly sandwich,
and an apple. And that we’d all sweat until the point of collapse. Ronnie
Fisher once commented Camp A.P. must have been selected as overflow for hell,
and no one disagreed. No one was sorry to leave, and we were all glad when
summer made way for cooler fall days.

In December of 1941, the mornings had
become snappy, and most of us were thinking about not being able to go home for
Christmas. Many of us were also looking forward to the new year. I was sure the
last few months of service would flash by once 1942 rolled around.

On the evening of December 7, we were
bivouacked in the woods near South Hills, Virginia. I sat beside a campfire
that evening, playing poker with Ronnie Fisher, George London, and Leroy Green.
AJ “Honky-tonk” Borkowski sat to my right, riffing on his harmonica. He was a
Polish kid from Philadelphia, but he liked southern music; country and western,
gospel, bluegrass, blues, so everyone called him Honky-tonk. He seemed to like
it, and had even taken to saying “y’all” and mimicking our southern accents,
and we all got a kick out of hearing a Philly boy with a slight Polish accent
speaking Southern.

The lively notes blew through his harmonica
in steamy puffs of breath before vaporizing into the blackness. The air was
crisp, the sky clear, and I was enjoying breathing the clean, cold air, and
feeling the heat radiate from the fire, when Johnny walked up beside us. He
stood for a moment, smoking in silence. We didn’t pay him much heed.

“I was talking to some guys over in 1st
Battalion,” he stated.

“Good for you,” George answered in an “I
don’t give a damn” tone. George was almost without exception sarcastic,
impatient, and would often tell Johnny to get the shit out of his mouth when he
was talking.

Johnny wasn’t going to be rushed. He blew
smoke at the stars as he looked toward the Big Dipper.

“The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor this
morning,” he delivered his news, his voice flat and emotionless. The soft tune
Honky-tonk was playing ended in an abrupt, discordant squawk.

“Bullsh . . .” George started, but trailed
off. Had any one of a hundred other guys come with that news they would have
been met with disbelief, but Johnny wasn’t known to play jokes or mess with
your head. Honky-tonk’s mouth hung open, his harmonica suspended in front of it
like he was poised to bite into a sandwich. Ronnie and Leroy just sat there
with stunned looks.

“How bad?” Leroy finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Johnny admitted. “All I
know is we’re at war.” We all fell into a numb silence.

“You know what this means?” Ronnie said
finally.

“Yeah, it means we’re at war,” George said,
just a little sarcastically.

“No, it means we don’t go home in
February,” Ronnie replied, his face downcast. The rest of us were so shocked
with the news we hadn’t connected the dots yet. We were soldiers. The country
was at war. We were at war.

The game was abandoned for sober
reflection. The snap of the fire was all that interrupted the silence.
Honky-tonk picked up his harmonica, which had slowly sunk to his lap, and
struck up a mournful rendition of “I’ll Be Back in a Year, Little Darlin’.” The
rich tones quavered, reminding me of the voice of old Mr. Burnside who led the
singing in church before he passed away.

“For Chrissakes, stop playing your goddamn
lies!” George snarled at him as the song got progressively slower and more
melancholic. Poor Honky-tonk exchanged his harmonica for a hurt look and left.

The following morning discharges were
suspended. Germany, Japan, and Italy all declared war on the United States. We
weren’t going home for Christmas, and we wouldn’t be going home in spring. Many
of us wouldn’t make it home at all.

I couldn’t sleep that night. My restless
thoughts kept me flipping from front, to back, to side. I finally sat up, took
a pen and paper, and wrote a letter to Ellen, using a flashlight under my
blanket.

~~~

December 8,
1941, South Hills, Virginia

Dear Darling,

I was overjoyed
to receive your last letter. Every word you put to paper delights and sustains
me, sweetheart.

It made me happy to hear you’re doing
well, and that your brother supplied you with enough firewood to last the
winter. Give him my thanks, for it is difficult for me to be so far from you,
powerless to be of any use to you. It saddens me that I am not there to care
for you and protect you, but it does hearten me to hear that family and
neighbors are helping fill in the gap.

One thing I neglected to mention to you
in my last letter is that you should get someone to check to see if the chimney
flue needs cleaning. I hadn’t cleaned it for some time before I left, so it
could be a fire hazard if it’s too dirty. It would ease my mind if you could
get that done.

It is with a heavy heart I write you
news you undoubtedly already know. Now that the United States has declared war,
our discharges have been suspended. It is almost a certainty that we will be
shipped to either the Pacific or European theaters.

It is with pride I will represent our
country, and I hope to do Old Glory proud. But it is you that will inspire me
to fight if I’m called on to do so. And fight I will! But as noble as the fight
against tyranny is, I will fight for something far more important. I will fight
for my life above all else, because I must return safely to you. That is the
promise I made you, and that is my chief objective, so to that end will I
battle.

Ah, my love, fate can be cruel! It was
with great anticipation that I looked forward to being home this spring. I
couldn’t wait to share with you the sense of awakening and renewal spring
brings. I’d imagined it to be the beginning of an exciting new chapter in our
lives, a time of promise and togetherness. But alas, Providence had other
plans. My eagerness has been replaced with sorrow, yet I will undauntedly hold
firm my resolve to fulfill my obligations to my country, and to you.

I may not be coming home in spring, but
my heart will be with you until I do, whenever that time may be. Until the time
we are reunited, please keep me in your prayers, and think of me often. Only
the thought of returning to you soothes the sting of being apart. Though I am
surrounded by people, I still feel an aloneness, because there is a part of my
spirit that only your companionship can satisfy. May the very world that
surrounds you remind you of me. When the summer wraps the hills in warmth,
think of my embrace. When you hear the gurgle of the brook, remember the times
my passion gushed like a river. When you see a stone, know that my love for you
is a steadfast thing, as sure as the rock of Gibraltar. I love you madly,
darling.

Till we walk
hand in hand again,

Robbie

~~~

The new year I’d been waiting for came, but
the hope that I’d anticipated it coming with did not. I wished someone would
put a bullet in Hitler’s head so we wouldn’t have to beard the lion in his own
den. It took us all some time to readjust our minds to the fact that it might
be years before we’d see our loved ones again—if we were so lucky.

Table of Contents

SIX

GOOD-BYE HOMELAND, HELLO CLAUDIA

It was September,
1942, and we were marching. I loved military maneuvers, and I loved marching.
There was something about marching in step with my comrades that made me feel
untouchable. It was a feeling of invincibility we shared with locusts, a sense
that anything in our path must flee or else be utterly annihilated. Something
about us changed when we marched; we became stone-faced, steely-eyed, and
unswerving. We usually marched purposefully, as though our exercise were of
paramount importance. Today was different. Today lacked some of the stiffness
and formality of our usual marching.

We had just been shipped from Camp
Blanding, Florida, to Camp Kilmer, at Brunswick, New Jersey. Camp Kilmer was an
East Coast processing center for troops being shipped overseas. The inevitable
was finally happening; we were being prepared to be shipped to Britain. We were
happy to receive new, better uniforms and helmets, and trade the bolt action
Springfield ’03 for the semiautomatic M1 Garand. We were somewhat less
delighted with being vaccinated so many times we felt like human pincushions.

Now we had just detrained at Jersey City,
New Jersey, been ferried across the North River, and were marching two by two,
like Noah’s animals, to the troopship loading dock.

Dingy clouds shared their misery with us,
drenching us with rain as we struggled to maintain control of the rifles on our
shoulders, and the slippery, sodden packs on our backs.

Our destination was the RMS
Queen Mary
.
The British Crown had stripped this former luxury liner down to accommodate
troops, and the once-opulent craft had been reduced to a vulgar caricature of
her former self. She was painted a dull, camouflage gray. Few vestiges of her
previous majesty remained, but her imposing mass rendered us landlubbers
awestruck nonetheless.

It was midnight by the time we’d all
boarded the ship. We were led to our assigned part of the mammoth vessel by a
special guide. As large as the ship was, there still wasn’t enough room for
everyone, and we had to eat and sleep in shifts.

We slept in hammocks strung one on top of
the other, and they were far from comfortable.

I tossed around as I tried to sleep that
night—at least as well as one can toss around in a hammock. But wasn’t the
gentle rocking of my incommodious bunk that kept me awake, though, it was the
carousel of thoughts that circulated through my mind. I thought about war. I
thought about fighting. So many of my comrades could hardly contain their
enthusiasm for seeing battle action. Though not that much older than most of
them, I couldn’t bring myself to share their gusto for going to war. Time would
teach me that the eagerness to engage in battle is found almost exclusively in
young, untested soldiers, and a rare, dangerous breed of battle-hardened veteran.
Coping with the thought of living as an ordinary man did not keep me up that
night, it was dying a hero that rattled me.

I thought back to my first fight, the one
I’d had years before with Roy the Ripper. I remembered the rush I’d gotten
after defeating him, but I realized that I hadn’t killed him, either. Would it
feel that much different to fight in war? Would it feel anything like that to
exact the ultimate toll from my enemy—his life? Would I really feel like a just
victor, or would killing be a stain on my soul that I could never wash off? All
those things worried me, but what troubled me most is that it could be my life
that would bleed away on the battlefield. It wasn’t that I agonized over having
my life sacrificed, but more so that I couldn’t bear to think the pain Ellen
would suffer if I were to die and be buried on foreign soil.

~~~

I woke up the next morning feeling more
stiff and tired than when I went to bed. It was Sunday morning, but it didn’t
feel like a Sunday. It didn’t feel like any day I could think of.

I stood on the deck as tugboats pushed us
out of the channel and into the ocean. We all stared at the Statue of Liberty.
I’d read about her, but never dreamed I might actually see her, at least this
early in my life.

The salty breeze coming off the Atlantic
evoked uncertainty and excitement about our impending voyage. It seemed so
anti-climactic; there were no marching bands or tearful kisses to send off the
men of the 29th Division, many of whom were sailing off to keep an appointment
with death.