AWOL in North Africa
Page 2
I thought he was finished, but he paused for a second, tapped his chin, and asked us, “Notice anything missing?”
He studied our faces in anticipation of our guesses, since obviously we wouldn’t have a clue.
Boy, was I wrong.
“Penicillin,” Julie said. “To fight infections. I wrote a research paper on penicillin in fourth grade. I got an A.”
If any other sixth grader had said this, Greg and I would have been really shocked. But Julie was so smart that it didn’t surprise us anymore when she knew really random things.
“Right,” Uncle Dex said. “They weren’t able to mass produce penicillin until near the end of the war. That’s why early on they had to use sulfa instead. It helped fight infections some, and was the best they had at the time. They’d sprinkle or sometimes just dump it onto wounds when they were trying to save guys who’d been shot.”
He hesitated for a second and then asked, “Notice anything else missing?”
Even Julie was stumped this time, so Uncle Dex answered his own question. “Quinine. Because the Japanese had it all, and nobody else — the Allies, anyway — could get any. That was why early in the war, malaria was such a big problem for our soldiers — the ones fighting in the Pacific and North Africa. Malaria is a disease you can get from mosquitos that causes really high, dangerous fevers.”
He waited for us to ask him some more questions about the whole quinine thing, but nobody did, so he just continued on his own. “They make quinine from the bark of special trees that mostly just grow in the Philippines and other places the Japanese captured early in the war in the Pacific. So that’s why there’s none here in this medic’s bag, and why there was none for the Allies, until they came up with a man-made replacement later in the war.”
“Anything else you can tell us about the medical kit?” Greg asked, ready to move on to information we maybe could actually use, not that the history of quinine wasn’t interesting and all.
“Well,” Uncle Dex said, turning the canvas bag over in his hands, inspecting the straps, and the various scissors and other pill bottles and stuff. “I’d say it belonged to a private, or a noncommissioned officer in the medical corps.”
“How come?” I asked.
“No surgical equipment,” he said. “Just first aid items, things you’d need behind the lines to treat infections and headaches and muscle sprains, and most important, stuff for stabilizing battlefield wounds and injuries, keeping soldiers alive so litter bearers could get them back to safety off the battlefield, and ambulances could get them back to surgical units in the rear. Surgeons were officers. Medics were enlisted men.”
“Uh, ‘litter bearers’?” Greg asked. “Nothing to do with picking up trash, right?”
“A litter was what they called a stretcher back then,” I said. “For carrying wounded guys, like Uncle Dex said.”
“Oh, right. Got it,” Greg replied. “Well, anyway, wouldn’t it be cool to, um, know who the medic’s kit actually belonged to? Like the actual person? You know, so we could return it to him, or to his family?”
“Oh, that shouldn’t be too hard,” Uncle Dex said.
All three of us stared at him.
“Really?” Julie said. “You can help us find out?”
“That would be awesome!” Greg said.
“Yeah!” I added. “But how? It’s just a medical kit. Even if we know it’s from World War II and belonged to somebody who wasn’t an officer, how can you figure out anything else just from what’s there?”
Uncle Dex laughed. “Easy, like I said.” He reached inside the bag and fished for something on the bottom.
“His identification card is right here.”
On the cover it said “United States of America War Department,” and under that was “Medical Department” and “Red Cross” and “Identification Card.” An ID number was stamped at the bottom. Inside was a black-and-white picture of the man we’d seen earlier — or, rather, a younger, cleaner, happier version of the man. And his race and birth date and eye color and height: Caucasian. March 6, 1923. Brown. 5′10″. There was also a military authorization signature, along with a date and place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And a rank: corporal.
And, of course, a name.
“John Wollman.” Greg said it out loud.
“Corporal John Wollman,” Julie corrected him.
I just said, “Wow.” And I was pretty sure I was thinking what Greg and Julie were thinking, too: that this was going to be the easiest ghost of war mystery we’d had to solve so far. In the past we’d knocked ourselves out just trying to figure out the names of the ghosts. Now, though, we were practically done!
“Does it give the name of whatever army unit he was in?” I asked.
“It doesn’t look like it,” Uncle Dex said. “So he was probably either assigned to a medical corps battalion that ran medical facilities near the front lines, or a field hospital away from the battle. Or he could have been assigned to an infantry squad or platoon, going with them into battle to try to save lives and help the wounded there. They might rotate a medic from one to the other, I suppose.”
He gave us a minute to absorb all that, then Uncle Dex said, “So there you go. All you have to do is track down John Wollman’s family — and I’m betting you could start by aiming your search at Philadelphia, since it looks like maybe that was where he signed up for the army — and you can send them his medic’s pouch. And I won’t even charge you anything for it.”
He winked at me. “You kids did find it in my basement, right?”
“Thanks, Uncle Dex,” I said. I started to scoop all the contents back into John Wollman’s medic pouch, but Uncle Dex stopped me.
“Not so fast,” he said. “I should probably confiscate these first.” He picked up the syringes and the morphine vials and dropped them in a box behind the counter. “Pretty sure none of your parents would want you going around carrying narcotics.”
Greg didn’t get it. “What narcotics?”
Julie explained this one, too. “Morphine is a painkiller and it’s not supposed to be used anywhere except in hospitals. During the war, they gave it to soldiers who had been wounded and were in a lot of pain on the battlefield.”
“Got it,” Greg said as I packed the rest of the stuff back into the medical kit. And then the three of us headed back to the basement to sort everything out. Not the stuff in the kit, but the crazy events of the afternoon.
I half expected to see the ghost down there waiting for us, and I looked forward to telling him his name, and showing him all the information on his identification card, and having him remember everything that had happened to him. We had such great information to prompt his memory, I figured it might even be enough to help him remember his entire story — how he died and disappeared and everything — and maybe even go off today to wherever the ghosts go once they have their answers to how they came to be missing in action, and once they’ve found their peace.
Greg and I sat on our amplifiers. Julie plopped down at her electric keyboard. We stared at one another for a minute, with the occasional glance over to the corner of the practice room and the trunk, which somebody had closed, though I didn’t remember doing that earlier.
I fiddled with the canvas medical bag, tracing the outline of the Red Cross symbol.
“So what now?” Greg asked, breaking the silence.
“We get to work,” Julie said. “Trying to find out more about him. Doing our research.”
“I don’t know,” Greg said. “Maybe we should wait and see if he just, you know, remembers stuff for himself.”
“Julie’s right,” I said, “but it’s late already, and we don’t even have any practice time left today, so why don’t we get going on research at home and we can text one another about it later.”
“Okay. Besides, I have to go to a meeting,” Greg said. He didn’t say what kind of meeting and Julie and I didn’t ask because we already knew. Since his dad stopped drinking a month ago,
Greg had been going to Al-Anon meetings, for family members of people with drinking problems. He didn’t like to talk about it, though he sometimes said things to me when we were alone, like one night when just out of the blue he said, “I might think I’ve had a hard time with my dad, but there are people at these meetings that have had it a lot worse.”
And then we moved on to other things.
“All right,” Julie said with a sigh. “But just because this looks like it will be easy — because we already know our ghost’s name — I just have a feeling that it’s going to be more complicated this time. A lot more.”
After that, we trudged upstairs and went our separate ways, all of us dazed. I barely remembered to say good-bye and thanks to Uncle Dex, or much of anything else until I was two blocks away and realized I was right next to the stone wall around the Masonic cemetery. I nervously stopped and got off my bike and went over to the wall. The stones were slick, and it took a minute to find a place to climb up so I could peer over the top. I could have gone around the block to the iron gate, but sometimes that was locked.
The cemetery was empty — except for the people buried there, of course. Not that I expected to see whoever threw or launched the rubber chicken at Greg. They must have been long gone by then. But still, you just never know with these mysteries and how you’ll end up figuring them out, whether it’s about a rubber chicken or a new ghost.
It was good that I stopped, because I found Greg’s beanie in the grass next to the wall. He wore it all the time. The rubber chicken must have knocked it off. I stuck it in my backpack to give to him the next day, but texted him that I had it so he wouldn’t worry.
Mom and Dad were just sitting down to eat when I walked in.
“Hurry and wash your hands,” Mom called out. “We’re having lasagna.”
Lasagna for dinner meant one of two things. Either Mom was feeling better from her MS — multiple sclerosis — and had been in the kitchen cooking, or else she hadn’t made dinner and Dad had picked up takeout on his way home from work.
It turned out to be the first one: Mom was feeling better. MS is an autoimmune disease that sometimes makes her really weak, and can get so bad it’s almost like she’s paralyzed in her arms and legs. The MS never goes away, and generally gets worse as you get older, but it can also be a little easier to live with at certain times. Like tonight. I even heard Mom singing when I came out of the bathroom. Dad was singing, too. Some old Beatles song. They both liked the Beatles. I did, too, come to think of it. This one was called “Got to Get You into My Life,” and next thing I knew I was humming along with them, and thinking maybe our band could do a Beatles song.
“Hey, buddy,” Dad said. “Good day?”
I nodded. “We didn’t get to practice much, though. Greg got hit by a rubber chicken.”
Mom burst out laughing but somehow managed to stop herself and said we should say the blessing first, and then I could tell them all about it. Halfway through saying grace, Dad snorted and started laughing, too. Mom had to say the “Amen!”
It turned out to be about the nicest dinner we’d had in a while. I told them all about Greg and his bloody head and the rubber chicken and the medic’s pouch, leaving out the part about the medic himself showing up. They were kind of concerned, but mostly kept laughing because it all seemed pretty ridiculous, plus I told the story pretty well. I always liked it when Mom and Dad thought I was funny and we all could sit around and just talk about stuff, the way we used to before Mom got sick. We even had ice cream for dessert, which we almost never did at our house. I had mine with chocolate syrup.
The ghost showed up later, just as I expected, and just as I was getting ready for bed. I nearly ran into him when I came back from brushing my teeth.
We both did a double take.
“Whoa! Sorry to startle you,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I squeaked, skirting around him and inching over to my bed. I wasn’t scared exactly. But I couldn’t help being nervous.
He sat in the chair next to my desk and computer. “Your friend doing all right?” he asked. “He get treatment?”
“Oh, well, it wasn’t that bad of a cut,” I said. “It stopped bleeding. He didn’t need stitches after all.”
The ghost — John Wollman — Corporal Wollman — nodded. “Good to hear. Hate to see a man down.”
I waited in case he was going to say anything else, but when he didn’t I decided to get the conversation going again myself. “I guess you’re here because you need us to help you, right?”
Corporal Wollman blinked. “I do?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “I mean, that’s usually how it works. That’s how it worked the other two times.”
He blinked again. “The other two times of what?”
“Of ghosts,” I said. “Who showed up here, like you did.”
He seemed confused. “I guess I’m a little lost or something,” he said. “Afraid I don’t quite know what you’re saying there.”
I sat up cross-legged on my bed. “You do know you’re a ghost, don’t you?” I asked.
He lifted his arm and stared at his hand, then lifted his other arm and stared at his other hand. Both were the same — solid but not quite.
“Huh,” he said. And that’s all. Just “huh,” as if it hadn’t occurred to him before that he was a ghost, or as if he’d just woken up from a really, really, really long sleep, like Rip Van Winkle.
Then he said, “Maybe you could, uh, explain some more about what’s going on here. I’m not sure what to make of this ghost business. Or how my hands look. Or what’s been happening. The last I knew I was in North Africa.”
“North Africa?” I said. “What were you doing there?”
He rubbed his chin for a second, shook his head as if clearing away cobwebs, and said, “Funny, but I can’t seem to quite remember that, either. Except there was the war with the Germans. And that’s where they sent us. And —”
He stopped. Rubbed harder. Then said, “And I guess I do need your help after all.”
And then he disappeared again — just as suddenly as before at the Kitchen Sink.
Julie was right: these ghosts were all different from one another, not only in how they looked and talked and how old they were and where they came from, but also in how and when and where they showed up, and how long they stayed, and how quickly they vanished. None of it made a whole lot of sense, but I guess that’s just the way it is when you’re dead, but not quite done with the life you left behind.
I called Greg right away and didn’t even wait for him to say anything before I launched into the story about what had just happened — about John Wollman showing up suddenly, and not seeming to realize that he was a ghost, and saying something about North Africa, and the war, and then just suddenly being gone.
“And what the heck is this about a war in Africa?” I said. “Why would they send the army to Africa? I thought we fought the Germans in, like, France and Germany. Somewhere in Europe, anyway.”
Greg still hadn’t said anything, so I figured I should give him a chance to speak. “Well?” I asked. “What do you make of all this?”
Greg didn’t answer. His dad did.
“Anderson?” he said. “That’s a pretty wild story you’ve got there. Is this something you boys are writing for school? Greg didn’t mention an assignment.”
I froze. Oh no! What was I supposed to do now?
“Anderson?” Greg’s dad said again. “You still there?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Uh, so is Greg there? I, um, need to talk to him about, uh, yeah, about the story we’re writing. Together. It’s a group project. You know, to make up a story and everything. For history class. About the war. So, uh, this was the idea we came up with. A ghost from World War II.”
“I see,” Mr. Troutman said. “Well, Greg’s in the shower. He left his phone out here in the living room.”
“Okay,” I said. “Would you ask him to call me when he gets out?”
Or they might just stick us in a mental hospital, because that’s probably what I would do if I found out my kid was convinced he had been talking to ghosts.
It was nearly an hour before Greg called me back. “Oh man!” he said. “You told my dad!”
“It was an accident,” I said. “He answered your phone. And, anyway, he just thinks we’re writing a story for school.”
“I know, I know,” Greg said. “But still. I just about had a heart attack when he told me what you said.”
“But he thinks we’re making this up, right?”
“Yes,” Greg said. “He started asking me a bunch of questions, and when he realized I knew zero about it, he went off on this giant history lesson explaining to me about the war in North Africa.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“A ton of stuff,” Greg said. “He even made me take notes, since he thinks it’s for a school project. And thanks a lot, by the way. I had to make up all kinds of things to explain that. I hate lying to my dad.”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah. Well, I guess we sort of have to. Anyway, he said that’s where the war started — for the Americans, I mean. Against the Germans and the Italians. That part of the war.”
We had already learned plenty about the war against the Japanese — or at least the early part of the war, and this hugely important navy battle called the Battle of Midway, which the U.S. won, and which, if we’d lost, would have probably meant we’d lose the war against the Japanese for control of the Pacific. And maybe all of World War II. That research had been kind of awkward at times because Julie’s mom is Caucasian and was born in America while her dad is Japanese, but the Japanese connection ended up being a big help to us in the end.