Before Their Time: A Memoir

by Robert Kotlowitz

  There was another soldier sitting across from me in the truck, slumped over in his seat. I eyed him without staring. I was careful about that. I could tell that he couldn’t bear to be stared at. His pack rested between his legs, his helmet lay on the bench alongside him. His mouth was turned down at both corners. I knew the expression. Defeat and depression, also to be read in his lackluster eyes. Not one of the gods, definitely. We nodded at each other.

  “Any idea how long it takes to get to Nancy?” I finally asked, in a friendly way, settling down on my bench slats. Without the drugs and the truth serum, in the absence of my soul balm, my voice sounded a little strange to me. I had trouble making it go at the right speed.

  He didn’t answer at first, but after a moment he said, “Dunno.” Very slow, very lazy, but shrugging expressively as he spoke the single word. Then he looked out of the back of the truck at the road behind us, to avoid my eye.

  I decided to introduce myself, shouting over the truck’s engine. He had to look at me then. I don’t know whether he heard my name or not. I waited. “Charlie Beale,” he called back, showing small, squared-off, yellowing teeth. I could see how tall he was sitting there, tall and skinny and pigeon-toed.

  “You going to the depot?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Been there before?”

  “First time.”

  “Me, too.”

  He nodded again. “What happened to you?” I asked. That was a mistake, I instantly realized. The question had come too fast and too soon. I should have waited a few days, maybe even more, before asking that.

  Charlie Beale looked mildly disappointed in me. And of course he didn’t answer.

  “I lost my whole platoon,” I heard myself say, again too quickly. I felt myself flush. I had embarrassed myself. Was I beginning to boast about my little adventure? And was I beginning to enjoy the boasting?

  There was a silence again. We stared at each other for another moment, then looked away. I knew I had ruined the exchange by my eagerness. I had always been over-eager and had ruined a lot of possibilities that way at school, especially with girls, speaking up too quickly. I would have to watch myself. Nobody likes people who talk too much, especially when they’re strangers.

  We drove on. The truck careened, the driver blowing his horn and scattering pedestrian traffic in front of us. Later, there was a brief stop at a jammed crossroad while our driver waited his turn to proceed. I breathed in the chilled autumn air, lit up a cigarette, gazed at the rustic scenery: trees and a couple of blasted houses. There was a lot of traffic moving toward Nancy, mostly Army trucks. The drivers were all yelling at each other. I didn’t like the noise. It made me shake, but in a way I could control. Still silent, Charlie Beale and I avoided each other’s eyes. We rattled along, already ten miles from the front, I guessed, and with each mile my sense of well-being increased. I took a little nap and woke up a few minutes later in a suburb. We were passing a sign advertising Dubonnet. I didn’t even know what Dubonnet was. But actually, I was beginning to feel pretty good.

  RAY Landis and Willie Goodenough were waiting for us at the depot when we arrived. They stood side by side on the front steps, tall and short, like cartoon figures, with their hands in their pockets, ready to make a judgment. (So were we.) More strangers, I thought, then proceeded to identify myself as we jumped off the truck. I had to say my name three times before they got it right.

  “Okay,” Ray Landis said, “your name’s perfect inside my head, I can hear it clear as a bell, but I can’t promise that I can always get it out that way. What is it, anyway?” he asked, looking at me a little suspiciously.

  “Polish. And Jewish.”

  “Hmm,” Ray Landis said, eyeing me up and down as though he was looking for sinister protuberances. Horns, say. Willie Goodenough, who was the short one, as light-boned and slight as a drummer boy, said nothing. But he looked me up and down, too, from where he stood next to Ray Landis. What did he see in me? I would have liked to know. I marked him as a sidekick, disdainfully, somebody who ran errands and did other favors for the boss, who, in this case, was named Ray Landis.

  “And I’m Beale,” my new friend said unexpectedly, into the silence. “Charlie. Protestant and English. Half-English, anyway.”

  That little speech took me by surprise, given Charlie Beale’s initial reticence, but I have to say for Ray Landis that he laughed at it, although not spontaneously. He just let a beat go by while he thought about it, then let loose. He had a big laugh and a big chest, about three feet across, like a wrestler. His laugh boomed out, a little too loud for me. Then, without comment, Ray Landis and Willie Goodenough took us into the depot’s outer room, showed us the straw pallet we were to share with them at night, which measured about ten feet by ten, showed us where to stash our stuff on shelves along the wall, how to work the defective stove without burning the place down, and where rations were kept—in a metal drum, with a lid on it and a couple of bricks on top of the lid to keep the rats out. I could tell, from the way his eyes bulged at the word, that Charlie Beale was not happy about rats. Neither was I.

  When they finished with the preliminaries, Ray Landis and Willie Goodenough took us into the warehouse itself. This turned out to be a vast, dilapidated shed built on concrete floors that had cracked here and there like ice floes. To move around, we had to jump from one broken section to another. Overhead, there were old unpainted iron beams supporting glass ceilings that were filthy with soot, like a nineteenth-century train station. Duffel bags filled the huge space, piled high in stacks that reached halfway to the ceiling. The shed was probably the length of a football field. I stared at all the baggage, at the endless rows of green canvas bags. I had never seen so many duffels in one place.

  Landis pointed out the rat droppings while Charlie’s eyes bulged again. He also indicated where the most serious leaks in the ceiling were, warned us against smoking in the duffel bag area itself, and only then got down to business.

  “We’ve been doing this single-handed,” he said, pointing at Willie Goodenough and himself, “so you could say that we’re glad to see you. Right, Will?” Will nodded. He came up to Ray’s shoulder. “Anyway, you see all those duffel bags,” Landis went on. “They’re pretty hot stuff. Worth a lot of money and sentiment, but non-negotiable.” Landis paused a moment to laugh at his own joke. Already it was clear that he had a philosophy about duffel bags, and I admired him for it. It gave him a kind of clarity. “There’s a duffel bag in here for every frigging GI in the YD,” he went on. “Think about that. And they’re not just sitting around helter-skelter, every man for himself. It’s all a careful system. If you know the system, and you will, you’ll be able to find your own bag in five minutes. Less, even.”

  Our job, Ray Landis continued, was to guard the warehouse. That was part one, he explained, and pretty damn important. The warehouse, he added, was a prime target for black marketeers. He let that one sink in, looking serious. Willie did the same. I guess it was serious. I mean, black marketeers. I had never known a black marketeer, but where I came from they had a rotten reputation.

  The second part of the job, Landis said, was also pretty damn important. It was to pick out the duffel bags of YD casualties, mostly the dead. Again, Charlie Beale’s eyes began to work when Landis explained this. Mine probably did, too. It was a little hard to take in. After the bags had been separated out, Landis went on, as though he was offering us a bonus, we would then open and ransack them for personal effects, which would eventually be gathered together and shipped home to the next of kin in the USA. A going-away, never-to-return present, I thought, feeling myself heading into a stupor—a morbid cottage industry guaranteed to grow to factory size, and soon.

  This was to be my treatment, as developed at the base hospital by the good doctor. It would be Charlie Beale’s as well, whatever he was suffering from. (Plenty, it seemed obvious to me, from the way he looked.) This would be how we would recuperate and find our beloved selves again, by k
eeping an eye out for black marketeers and thieves, and by plundering the dead behind their backs.

  After Ray Landis had finished his explanations, we began to wander back to our “quarters.” Willie Goodenough had disappeared, without explanation—not that he owed us any. The shed smelled of stale water and guano. I looked up past the iron beams to see if there were any signs of bat nests around. (Bats vaguely bothered me, too.) Charlie looked depressed again, as though he had taken in all he could for one day. I felt pretty much like that myself. Stuporous, as I’ve said. I had heard enough for the moment. But Ray Landis had more to say.

  “No officers around, either,” he began, rolling his eyes. “Not bad, as long as we keep our noses clean, don’t make trouble, make sure the duffel bag count is up-to-date. That’s the point of the whole thing, the count. If you ask me, we’re pretty damn lucky to be here, when you consider.” (Much nodding from Charlie Beale at this.) “Hot food gets delivered once in a while, mail every three days. We make our own duty roster, share and share alike. It’s important for all of us to get out every now and then—not at the same time, of course. It’s not a bad town. If you like frogs. Whores all over the place. If you like that kind of thing.”

  He rolled his eyes again, lubriciously, and gave a small ambiguous smile, suggesting perhaps that liking such a thing was probably an impossibility for Charlie and me. Charlie smiled back, showing his yellow teeth. I didn’t respond. I never did in such conversations. I had too much to hide. The secret of my life was that I was still a virgin, and I intended to keep the secret my own. I didn’t know about Charlie Beale. Or Ray Landis. For that matter, I wasn’t sure about anybody in the Yankee Division.

  “So,” Ray Landis wound up, suddenly sounding domestic, “make yourself at home. I’ll get some coffee going. Be sure the lid is always on top of the stove or we’ll burn like Joan of Arc.” He paused here to give us a piercing look. “Another thing,” he said, “we have a bath every other day. That’s a rule and regulation. There’s a tub just outside the door. I think it was used for dyeing stuff in the olden days, and we collect rainwater for the purpose. Go easy on the water. There’s always enough, so far, but still no reason to be profligate.”

  As I would soon learn, Ray Landis liked three-syllable words. They represented a simple challenge for him, and Ray liked challenges, especially if they could be met. But, for all that, he was surprisingly ignorant of the great world around him. It was as though his experience did not quite match his curiosity, so that he was always having to play catch-up. He claimed, for example, when we knew each other better, that I was his first “Joo.” Where he came from, in Utah, there were no “Jooz.” I believed that. And I believed that his curiosity was innocent, that his questions totally lacked malicious intent.

  Why do Jooz always live in cities? he wanted to know. I thought that was a legitimate question. Why do they always live together? Why do they look down on the gentiles? (No offense, he quickly added.) How had they lasted so long? Why were they?

  Patiently, I explained what I understood of the matter. (It is true that when a Jew is faced with such questions, he feels responsible for the safety and well-being of every other Jew. Each word must carry its real weight, each answer fit the case. In short, an accurate response must be made; it is the heart of the matter.) I related history, anecdotes, horror stories of the past. I described pogroms, persecution, treachery. And I have to say for Ray Landis that he paid attention.

  I’ll have to think about all that, he said when I finished. There’s plenty there to cogitate about. Hmm, he began, trying to assimilate the exchange. Willie Goodenough was listening, too, but silently. God knows what he was thinking. You could never tell with Willie. Charlie Beale, meanwhile, stood behind him, tall and skinny, warming himself at the stove and looking quizzical at Ray’s responses. I was growing to like Charlie. There was a sweet modesty about him, an unresisting diffidence that made me want to draw him out, sure that I would hear something unexpected, maybe even memorable. Early on, Charlie had nicknamed Willie Goodenough “Boris.” I thought that was pretty unexpected, and I really appreciated it. Charlie had his wits about him. He was smart, but with no edge. I liked that. But Charlie still hadn’t told me what had happened to him—had never, in fact, referred to it.

  “And what brought you here?” I finally asked Ray Landis, when we had finished with the Jews. I thought that was a simple enough challenge, and I tried to make it sound as though I was talking about the weather.

  “None of your frigging business,” he answered, smiling at my nerve.

  WE BEGAN to thread our lives together, in the most ordinary way. Housekeeping routines were established, schedules organized. In-ter-de-pen-den-cy, Ray called it—a jackpot word. And it worked, with a minimum of shoving and pulling. It worked because each of us insisted on it. It was a matter of mutual pride and necessity. Nobody ever raised a voice in that echoing shed, nobody made absurd demands, or demands of any kind. (Our bad tempers and natural irritability we each kept for ourselves, alone.) And we were careful never to crowd each other—never, if possible, to touch. Only at night, when one of us might roll over on the vast straw pallet we shared, was there ever a problem, solved in an instant with a simple apology.

  We took alternate shifts, Ray and Willie Goodenough, Charlie and I. While they guarded the warehouse, we began to wander around town, tentatively at first, a little gun-shy. We were both uneasy and still shaky out in this new urban world we were exploring, almost as though we were learning how to walk again. Anything might set us off. A strange street noise on our travels, an artillery-like discharge from an Army truck, could trigger a fast retreat to the warehouse, and no questions asked. But in each other’s near-silent presence we could pretend to be almost normal, and we soon found enough confidence to make it all the way to the Place Stanislas, where we admired the rococo iron grillwork and the impressive statuary that filled the square. Charlie seemed to know a lot about that kind of thing. We even settled on a favorite café on the square—favorite because the waiter recognized us the second time we showed up, boosting our confidence—and learned to sip cognac in the middle of the day without losing our equilibrium. Charlie was better at it than I: two cognacs to my one, as though his were milk.

  The Place Stanislas was the heart of the city; everything in Nancy began and ended there, and the sight of French civilian street life suddenly revealed in all its common-placeness, gave us a shock. We wondered about all these vigorous Gauls, bustling about in their strange civvie clothes, confidently ignoring us. The women in their wedgies and swept-up hair, the men in their stiff wartime suits, rigid as boards. Did they know what was going on just a few miles north of their beautiful little city? Did they have sense enough to feel threatened? And did they know what had happened to me, and, by extension, to Charlie? Prickly questions, never asked aloud by either of us, as isolated strangers making our way through town.

  Sometimes, for these excursions, Charlie and I would trade partners, and I would find myself walking the streets of Nancy with Ray Landis. Ray talked a lot as we wandered around the city—talking was one of the things he was good at—mostly about whores, and whorehouses, and the sexual proclivities (his word, of course) of French women. Ray had quite a range. The strength of a French vagina, for example; the French addiction to oral sex; the French eagerness to experiment; and other matters of equal sophistication. I questioned nothing. What did I know? I believed everything I was told. But Ray never, to my knowledge, made an actual move of his own in that direction. It was all talk, obsessively driven. He finally confessed to me that he had been raised as a Mormon, as though that explained everything. Perhaps it did.

  As Ray had said, our situation was not bad, as long as we kept our noses clean. The hot food arrived, as promised, every now and then—stew, it was called. Mail, too, poured in, the first since Normandy, fourteen letters in one delivery for me alone, a dozen of them from my mother, who wrote as though America existed on another planet, in another
orbit, in a perpetual springtime. But what a feast for me, reading and re-reading those letters.

  Our stove, meanwhile, remained a constant threat. All four of us slept with one eye open as the sparks flew throughout the night. But no real damage was done—one singed sock belonging to Charlie and a burn on Private Goodenough’s thumb, which was his fault. And not a single black marketeer ever showed up; nobody ever tried to corrupt us.

  This peculiar domesticated life went on for several weeks. We got on together, knowing what was needed. I answered all of Ray Landis’s questions about the Jews, and he responded to mine about the Mormons, delicately explaining the history and significance of polygamy, which was what really interested me, and trying hard to clarify the usual misconceptions about his religion. (If it actually was still his religion; I suspected that he was a serious backslider and was still too unsure of himself to talk about it to an outsider.) I finally learned, too, that Charlie Beale was an engineer, out of the artillery; that he was also, once you got beyond his modesty, a kind of expert on baroque music, of which there were very few in 1944; and that he played the organ, sometimes in public recitals, in Dayton, Ohio, his hometown—all news that amazed me. Of Goodenough, I learned little. He was from Philly, as he called it, he pasted up billboard signs for a living, and he had never finished high school. There the information stopped.

  We had made an infinitely tiny world of our own, held together by personal consideration and mutual responsibility, which we never failed to honor. That seemed to me a real achievement, given the universe that tiny world was a part of. All we hoped for was that we would be forgotten by the military machine, that the war would pass us by, that we would be left forever in the city of Nancy to guard the duffel bags of the Yankee Division. These shared hopes had caused us to grow cozy together, a folly in wartime. I had learned that lesson several times before.

  When a jeep pulled up in front of the depot one morning and an imperious young corporal leapt out and asked for Private Goodenough, we lost our innocence and our sidekick, all at once. He was gone within a half-hour, back to his unit. Poor Willie, packed into the rear seat of the jeep, refusing to look at us as the jeep pulled away.