Johnny Got His Gun

by Dalton Trumbo

  And that wasn’t all. There was a place in Southern France where they kept the crazy ones. There were guys who couldn’t talk even though they were in perfect shape. They had just got scared and had forgotten how to talk. There were healthy able bodied men who ran around on all fours and stuck their heads in corners when they were frightened and smelled each other and lifted their legs like dogs and couldn’t do anything but whimper. There was a guy a coal miner went back to his wife and three kids in Cardiff. His face had been burned off by a flare one night and when his wife saw him she let out a screech and grabbed a hatchet and chopped his head off and then killed the three kids. They found her drinking beer just as cool as a cucumber down in a saloon that same night. Only thing was she was trying to eat the glass the beer came in. How could you believe or disbelieve anything any more? Four maybe five million men killed and none of them wanting to die while hundreds maybe thousands were left crazy or blind or crippled and couldn’t die no matter how hard they tried.

  But there weren’t many like him. There weren’t many guys the doctors could point to and say here is the last word here is our triumph here is the greatest thing we ever did and we did plenty. Here is a man without legs or arms or ears or eyes or nose or mouth who breathes and eats and is just as alive as you or me. The war had been a wonderful thing for the doctors and he was the lucky guy who had profited by everything they learned. But there was one thing they couldn’t do. They might be perfectly able to put a guy back into the womb but they couldn’t get him out again. He was there for good. All the parts that were gone from him were gone forever. That was the thing he must remember. That was the thing he must try to believe. When that sank in he could calm down and think.

  It was like reading hi the paper that someone has won a lottery and saying to yourself there’s a guy who won a million to one shot. You never quite believed that a man could win against such odds yet you knew he had. Certainly you never expected to win yourself even if you bought a ticket. Now he was just the reverse. He had lost a million to one shot. Yet if he read about himself in a newspaper he wouldn’t be able to believe it even though he knew it was true. And he would never expect it to happen to him. Nobody expected it. But he could believe anything from now on out. A million to one ten million to one there was always the one. And he was it. He was the guy who had lost.

  He was beginning to quiet down now. His thoughts were coming through a little clearer a little more connectedly. He could lie here against his sheet and put things together. He could figure out the small things that were wrong with him in addition to the great. Down somewhere near the base of his throat there was a scab that was sticking to something. By tossing his head slightly to the right and then to the left he could feel the pull of the scab. He could also feel a little tug at his forehead as if a cord had been tied around there halfway between his eye sockets and his hairline. He began to puzzle about the cord and why it pulled when he tossed his head to get the feel of the scab near his neck. In the hole which was the middle of face he could feel nothing so it made a nice little problem. He lay there tossing to the right tossing to the left feeling the pressure and feeling the scab pull. Then he got it.

  They had put a mask over his face and it was tied at the top around his forehead. The mask was evidently some sort of soft cloth and the lower part of it had stuck to the raw mucus of his face wound. That explained the whole thing. The mask was just a square of cloth tied securely and pulled down toward his throat so that the nurse in her comings and goings wouldn’t vomit at the sight of her patient. It was a very thoughtful arrangement.

  Now that he understood the purpose and mechanics of the mask the scab became an irritation instead of merely a curious thing. Even when he was a kid he could never let a scab quite heal over. He was always picking at it. Now he was picking at this scab by tossing his head and drawing the mask tight. But he couldn’t dislodge the mask or start the scab to peeling. The task became a kind of mania with him. The place where the cloth stuck to the scab didn’t hurt. It wasn’t that. But the whole thing was an annoyance and a challenge and an issue of strength. If he could dislodge the mask then he was not completely helpless.

  He tried to stretch his neck so he could rip the cloth from the flesh. But he couldn’t stretch far enough. He found himself concentrating all his energy and all his mind on that tiny point of irritation. And then tug by tug he realized he would never be able to dislodge it. Just so small a thing as a piece of cloth stuck to his skin yet all the muscles of his body and all the power of his brain couldn’t budge it. That was worse than being in the womb. Babies sometimes kicked. They sometimes turned over in their dark silent watery resting places. But he had no legs to kick with and no arms to thrash with and he couldn’t turn over because he had no leverage in his body to start him rolling. He tried to shift his weight from side to side but the muscles in what was left of his thighs wouldn’t flex properly and his shoulders were cut down so narrowly that they weren’t any good either.

  He abandoned the scab and the mask and began to scheme about turning over. He could produce a faint rocking motion but nothing more. Perhaps with practice he might increase the strength of his back and thighs and shoulders. Perhaps after one or five or twenty years he could develop such strength that the circle of his rocking would become wider and wider and wider. And then one day flip-flop and he’d be turned over. If he could do this he might be able to kill himself because if the tubes which fed his lungs and stomach were of metal the weight of his body might plunge the metal into some vital organ. Or if they were soft like rubber his weight would shut them off and he would suffocate.

  But all he could get out of his most violent efforts was that faint rocking motion and even to produce that made him wet with sweat and dizzy from pain. He was twenty years old and he couldn’t even summon enough strength to turn over in bed. He had never been sick a day in his life. He had always been strong. He had been able to lift a box packed with sixty loaves of bread with each loaf weighing a pound and a half. He had been able to throw such a box over his shoulder and on top of a seven foot route bin without even thinking of it. He had been able to do this not only once but hundreds of times each night until his shoulders and biceps were hard as iron. And now he could only flex his thighs weakly and make a little rolling motion like a child rocking itself to sleep.

  Suddenly he was very tired. He lay back quietly and thought about that other that minor injury he had begun to notice. There was a hole in his side. It was just a small hole but evidently it wouldn’t heal. His legs and arms were healed and that took a lot of time. But during all that time of healing during all those weeks or months when he had been fainting in and out of things the hole in his side had remained open. He had been noticing it little by little for a long while and now he could feel it plainly. It was a patch of moisture inside a bandage and from it moisture was slipping down his left side in a slick little trail.

  He remembered the time he visited Jim Tift at the military hospital in Lille. Jim had been put in a ward where there were a lot of guys who had holes here and there that wouldn’t heal. Some of them had been lying there draining and stinking for months. The smell of that ward when you hit it was like the smell of a corpse you stumble over on patrol duty like the smell of a rich ripe corpse that falls open at the touch of a boot and sends up a stench of dead flesh like a cloud of gas.

  Maybe he was lucky his nose was shot off. It would be pretty bad to have to lie and smell the perfume of your own body as it rotted away. Maybe he was a lucky guy after all because with a smell like that constantly in your nose you wouldn’t have much of an appetite. But then that wouldn’t bother him anyhow. He ate regular. He could feel them sliding stuff into his belly and he knew he was eating all right. Flavor didn’t matter to him.

  Things were getting dimmer and dimmer now. He knew he wasn’t fainting again. He was slipping away. It seemed that the blackness in his eyes was changing to something purple something like twilight blue. He was resti
ng. He was simply lying back after a lot of thinking and hard work and saying let it run let it fester because I can’t smell it anyhow. When you have so little left why should you care if part of it is dying? You lie back. The darkness changes to another shade of darkness. Starless twilight and starless night. Like at home. Like at home in the evenings with crickets and frogs and a cow lowing somewhere and a dog barking way off and the sounds of children playing. Wonderful beautiful sounds and darkness and peace and sleep. Only no stars.

  The rat came crawling over him stealthily. It came with its sharp little claws up his left leg. It was a great brown trench rat like the ones they used to throw shovels at. It came crawling and sniffing and smelling and tearing away at the bandage over his side. He could feel its whiskers as they tickled the edges of the draining wound. He could feel its long whiskers as they trailed in the pus from the hole. And there was nothing he could do about it.

  He remembered the face of a Prussian officer they discovered one day. They had just stormed the outer trenches of the German position. It was a trench that had been abandoned a week maybe two weeks before. They all swarmed into it a whole company on their way forward. There they came upon the Prussian officer. He was a captain. He was lying with one leg straight up in the air. The leg was swelled so much the pants looked as if they were ready to bust open. His face was swelled too. His moustache was still waxed. Sitting on his neck and chewing away at his face was a fat contented rat. As they came jumping over into the trench they got the whole picture. The entrance to a dugout toward which the Prussian had been heading when he was hit. The Prussian with his leg up in the air. The rat chewing.

  Somebody let out a yell and then they were all yelling like crazy men. The rat sat up and looked at them. Then the rat started for the dugout entrance. But he started too slow. Yelling and screaming the whole pack of them were after him. Somebody ripped off a helmet and it hit the rat in its hindquarters. The rat squealed and turned to snap at the helmet. Then it dragged itself into the dugout with all of them after it. They caught it there in the dim light and beat it into red jelly. Then they were all still for a second. They felt kind of foolish. They left the dugout and went on with the war.

  He thought about it afterward. It didn’t matter whether the rat was gnawing on your buddy or a damned German it was all the same. Your real enemy was the rat and when you saw it there fat and well fed chewing on something that might be you why you went nuts.

  The rat was eating on him now. He could feel its sharp little teeth as they bit into the edge of the wound and then he could feel the quick little movements through the rat’s body as it chewed. Then it would dig its feet in and scoop out a bit more of flesh and that would hurt and then it would chew again.

  He wondered where the nurse was. It was a hell of a hospital where they let rats come right into the wards and chew the customers while they were trying to get some sleep. He wiggled and twisted but the rat hung on tight. There wasn’t anything he could do to scare it. He couldn’t hit it or kick at it and he couldn’t yell or whistle to frighten it. The only thing he could do was to go into that slow rocking motion. But the rat evidently liked that because it stayed right where it was. The rat was eating very carefully now taking only the choicest parts and then squatting flat on its stomach with its little jaws chewing chewing chewing.

  He began to realize that the chewing of the rat was not a thing that would last only for ten or fifteen minutes. Rats were smart animals. They knew their way around. This one wouldn’t be content to go away and not come back again. It would return from day to day and from night to night to feed at his carcass until he went crazy. He found himself running through the corridors of the hospital. He found himself coming upon a nurse and grabbing her by the throat and putting her head down to the hole in his side where the rat was still clinging and hollering at her you lazy slut why don’t you come and chase the rats off your customers? He was running through the night shrieking. Running through a whole series of nights running through an eternity of nights yelling for Christ sake somebody take this rat off me see him hanging there? Running through a lifetime of nights and shrieking and trying to push the rat off and feeling the rat sink its teeth deeper and deeper.

  When he had run without legs until he was tired and when he had screamed without voice until his throat hurt he fell back into the womb back into the quietude back into the loneliness and the blackness and the terrible silence.

  viii

  The nurse’s hands were on him. He could feel her washing his body and manipulating his flesh and dressing the wound in his side. She used something warm and greasy to dissolve the scab substance that held the mask to that point of irritation near his throat. He felt like a child that has awakened weeping from a nightmare to find itself safe and snug in its mother’s arms. The nurse was company even though he couldn’t see or hear her. She was somebody and she was his friend. He wasn’t alone any longer. With her at hand there was no need for him to worry no need for him to struggle no need for him to think. The responsibility was completely hers and he had nothing to fear so long as she was close to him. Instead of the rat gnawing at his side he felt her cool fingers and the cleanliness of new bandages and fresh linen.

  He knew now that the rat had been only a dream. He was so relieved to discover this that for a few minutes he almost forgot his fear. And then relaxing under the nurse’s care he suddenly chilled all over at realization that the rat dream might come again. It was almost a certainty to come again. He knew that the whole dream was started by his thinking of the wound in his side. His awareness of the wound as he fell asleep brought on the dream of the rat feeding at it. Since the wound remained it seemed almost certain that the same chain of thought would bring the rat back to him again in his sleep. Each time he fell asleep the rat would come and sleep instead of being forgetfulness would become as bad as being awake. A guy could stand a lot when he was awake. But when sleep came he deserved to forget everything. Sleep should be like death.

  He knew the rat was a dream. He was sure of that. All he had to do was to find some way of getting himself out of the dream when it came. He could remember when he was a kid he used to have nightmares. Funny thing about them was they weren’t particularly awful ones either. The worst one was where he seemed to be an ant walking across a sidewalk and the sidewalk was so big and he was so small that sometimes he awakened yelling he was so scared. That was the way to stop nightmares by yelling so hard you waked yourself up. But hell that wouldn’t work for him now. In the first place he couldn’t yell and in the second place he was so deaf he couldn’t hear the noise anyhow. That was no good. He would have to find some other way.

  He remembered that as he got older and different nightmares came he used to be able to think himself out of them. Just when it seemed the awful thing that was after him was going to get him he could think in his sleep here Joe this is just a dream. It’s just a dream Joe understand? And then in a little bit he would open his eyes and look into the darkness around him and the dream would be gone. That system might work with the rat. Instead of imagining himself running and yelling for help the next time the rat came he would just think to himself this is a dream. And then he would open—

  But that wouldn’t work. He couldn’t open his eyes. In his sleep in the middle of the rat dream he might think himself out of it but how would he be able to prove he was awake if he couldn’t open his eyes and look around into the darkness?

  He thought Jesus Joe there must be some other way. He thought it’s asking very little for a man just to want to be able to prove that he’s awake. He thought come on Joe this is the only way you can lick the rat and you’ve got to do that so you’d better figure out some way quick to prove whether you’re awake or asleep.

  Maybe he’d better start from the beginning. He was awake now. He was sure of that. He had just felt the nurse’s hands and the nurse’s hands were real. So when he felt them he was awake. Even though the nurse was gone now he was still awake becaus
e he was thinking about the rat dream. If you’re thinking about a dream that’s proof you’re awake. That’s clear enough Joe. You’re awake. And you’re trying to get rid of a dream that will come when you go to sleep. You can’t wake yourself out of your sleep by yelling because you can’t yell. You can’t think yourself out of it and then prove it’s gone by opening your eyes because you haven’t got any eyes. Better start hi before you go to sleep Joe that’s the business start in right now.

  The minute you feel sleepy like you’re going to topple off why just kind of stiffen yourself and tell yourself that you’re not going to have any dreams about rats. Then maybe you’ll be so ready for it that it won’t come. Because once it comes it’s got you till you wake up and you can’t be sure that you’re awake until you feel the nurse’s hands. You can’t be absolutely sure till then. So when you feel like you’re getting sleepy you just think hard that you’re not going to dream about the—

  Hold on there. How’re you going to know when you begin to feel sleepy Joe? What’s going to tell you that you’re sleepy? Just how does a guy feel before he topples off to sleep? Well maybe he’s all tired out from working and he just relaxes in bed and the first thing he knows he’s asleep. But that’s no good for you Joe because you never get that tired and you’re in bed all the time. That’s no good. Well then maybe his eyes burn a little and he yawns and stretches and finally his lids drop down. But that’s no good either. Your eyes don’t ever burn and you can’t yawn and stretch and you’ve got no eyelids. You’re never tired Joe. You don’t need any sleep because you’re practically sleeping all the time. So how can you get sleepy? If you can’t get sleepy you’ve got no warning. And if you’ve got no warning you can’t stiffen yourself in advance against the rat.