AWOL in North Africa

by Steve Watkins

  “But there’s no John or Johnny Jr.?” Julie asked. “Or the third?”

  “Nope,” he said. “None that I know of.”

  “Well, I emailed one, in Philadelphia,” she said. “I sort of explained who we thought you were and I’m hoping he’ll email me back with more information.”

  John just blinked at us for a minute, then said, “Email?”

  “It’s just a new kind of mail,” I said. “Only a lot faster than the mail you know about.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Well, I’ll be curious to hear what you find out. You know I used to live in Philadelphia.”

  “We were hoping so,” Julie said. “That’s what’s on your ID card. Or that’s where they inducted you into the army.”

  “Medical corps,” John said. “I do remember that.”

  “And do you remember North Africa?” I asked. “You said something about that yesterday, and Greg and I have been doing a lot of research about the war in North Africa.”

  Julie laughed. “What Anderson means is that Greg’s dad told him a lot about the start of the war, and about North Africa, and Greg told it to Anderson.”

  “It’s still research,” I said defensively. “Greg took notes.”

  Now John laughed. “You two sound like a couple of kids.”

  Julie sat up as tall as she could. “We’re in middle school,” she said.

  “And we have our own band,” I added, though saying that probably made us sound more like kids — like little kids — than if I hadn’t said anything.

  “It’s okay,” John said, still laughing. “I always liked kids. Heck, it wasn’t that long ago that I was a kid myself.”

  “Uh, how old do you think you are, John?” I asked. “I mean, how old are you?”

  “Twenty,” he said. “Or I was, whenever I guess I stopped being anything.” He looked upset. The smile vanished. He wasn’t laughing anymore.

  “I found out that you went missing — actually absent without leave is what they wrote officially,” Julie said. “Do you remember anything about that?”

  John didn’t answer, just shook his head.

  “We’re sorry,” Julie said. “I know this has to be really hard for you.”

  John rubbed his eyes as if he might start crying. The dirt and smoke on his face were smudged when he took his hands away. “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t mean to make you kids feel low about all of this. Anyway, I appreciate you helping me. And reaching out to me.”

  “It’s been seventy years since the war ended,” Julie said quietly. “Did you know that?”

  John teared up again. He couldn’t seem to speak so just shook his head.

  We heard footsteps on the stairs coming down to the basement, and Greg humming a song I’d never heard before.

  “Your friend is here,” John said. “You all have your band practice, so I’d better go.”

  “Oh, don’t,” Julie said. “We have so much more to talk about.”

  “Hey!” Greg said, bounding through the door. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “I’ll be back,” John said, but his voice already sounded like it was coming from really far away, which I guess it was because when I looked at him again, he was gone and there was nothing — and no one — left to see.

  Julie started crying, too. Greg saw it before I did, and went over to her right away and took off his beanie and even put his arm around her. She buried her face in his shirt and kept crying. Greg had a sad look on his face, even though he’d missed everything that had just happened. He shrugged at me and patted Julie on her back. I kept quiet.

  It took a lot longer than I thought it would for Julie to come back to us. I didn’t know if she was still crying that whole time, or just didn’t want us to see her face all red and splotchy the way some people’s faces get, or whether she just felt awkward and embarrassed that she was crying into Greg’s shirt and they were hugging — which I’m pretty sure is how I would have felt.

  Finally, Greg patted her again and said, “Uh, Julie, are you okay?”

  She pulled her face a little bit away from him and nodded, but didn’t look up.

  I asked if she wanted me to go find a tissue and she shook her head no.

  “Is it because you wiped your nose on Greg’s shirt?” I asked.

  She hesitated, and then nodded again.

  Greg said, “Ew. Gross.”

  There was silence for a second, and then Julie couldn’t help it — she burst out laughing, and that did it for me and Greg. We started laughing, too.

  “Disgusting,” I said.

  “Revolting,” Greg added. I didn’t know he even knew the word.

  Julie responded by actually wiping her nose on Greg’s shirt again and then we totally lost it. It’s weird, and I can’t explain it, but I guess sometimes when you’re the saddest, that’s when dumb things like snot on a T-shirt are the funniest.

  Julie even told a joke. “How do you make a tissue dance?”

  She didn’t even wait for us to say we didn’t know.

  “You put a little boogie in it!”

  I would have run home and changed my shirt, but Greg didn’t seem to care, and once Julie got it together, we actually ended up practicing for the next hour. We didn’t talk about John again that afternoon, but I had a feeling he was still somewhere close by, and I hoped he enjoyed the music. I sang as well as I could, and I was pretty sure Julie and Greg had never played better.

  Julie checked her phone for email messages as we were leaving.

  “I got another response!” she said. “From the guy. From John Wollman III!”

  Uncle Dex had already left, so we stopped at the front desk while Julie read the email.

  “Hmmm,” she said.

  “What?” Greg asked. “Why ‘Hmmm’?”

  “ ‘Hmmm’ because all he wrote me back was ‘What’s it worth?’ ”

  “The medic’s kit?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I told him who we were, and that we found it at your uncle’s store, and that it had John Wollman’s ID, and everything — except about us meeting John, of course, or his ghost. I couldn’t tell him that. But I said we wanted to return the kit to his family and asked if he wanted it.”

  “So we still don’t know for sure if the John Wollman III who wrote this email is related to our John Wollman?” Greg asked.

  “I guess not,” said Julie. “You’d think he’d at least be interested in something besides if he can make some money by selling it or whatever.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s probably why he asked, I guess. So what do we do now? Everybody else was always so nice when we got in touch with them for our other ghosts. All their families and their old friends.”

  We were stumped until Greg spoke up. “He could just be having a rough day and we caught him at a bad time. Or he just lost his job or something. Maybe that’s why he’s thinking about whether there’s some money in it for him. Maybe we should try him again. Give him another chance.”

  “Okay,” Julie said. “I’m going to email him back and ask him again.” She started tapping on the keys on her phone. “We don’t know what it’s worth. We just need to know if you are the right relative. That’s all.” She clicked send.

  “I bet there’s a ton of these around,” Greg said. “I bet it’s not worth anything.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Julie replied. “As long as he thinks maybe he can get something for it, he’ll email us back and we can find out if he’s who we’re looking for. I would like to keep it. But if he’s family, then we owe it to him to let him have the bag.”

  “I bet he’s not going to help us,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Greg, “but maybe there’s some other family member who will help.”

  “If he’s even the right guy,” I said. “Remember, John said he didn’t have any kids.”

  “Well, I hope we find out one way or the other,” Julie said. “But, meanwhile, we need to keep doing our research. I’m going to do more searching on
line for other possible relatives. And I’ll check out some Internet sites and go to the library to find some books on the army and the medical corps and the war in North Africa. You guys need to do more reading, too.”

  “Hey,” said Greg. “I already found out most of what we know.”

  “From your dad,” I said.

  “Still counts,” he said.

  Julie and I both said, “Whatever.”

  We rode our bikes together for a couple of blocks, still debating whether Greg finding out stuff from his dad counted as research.

  “It’s interviewing,” Greg argued. “And interviewing is research. It’s, um, what do you call it?”

  “A primary source,” Julie said.

  Greg grinned. “Right! A primary source. That’s the best kind of source, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Julie said, as if she was the great authority on the subject. Which, of the three of us, she probably was. “As long as you can verify what your source tells you.”

  “Verify?” Greg asked.

  “Make sure it’s true,” I said.

  “And how do you do that?” Greg asked.

  I laughed. “From another source, dummy.”

  “No,” Julie corrected me. “From an authoritative source. Anybody can be a source, but that doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. You have to make sure they’re an expert, or an eyewitness or something.”

  “I doubt my dad was an eyewitness to World War II,” Greg said. “He might be old, but he wasn’t even born then.”

  “So, like I said, boys,” Julie finished, “more research.”

  She veered away from us, taking a right turn just as we got to the Masonic cemetery, which was a lucky thing because just then there was a loud pop and something flew over the cemetery wall. It hit the side of my bike, splattering some kind of goo all over me. Some hit Greg, too.

  “Oh my gosh!” Julie yelled, racing back over. “What is that?”

  Fortunately, whatever hit us hadn’t hurt or done any damage. It was just messy.

  Greg scooped some up and sniffed it. “Yuck,” he said. “Rotten potato.”

  We heard laughter coming from the other side of the wall, so we threw down our bikes and ran over, but by the time we got there, whoever had done it was already disappearing around a building on the other side of the cemetery.

  I was pretty sure I recognized them, though.

  Greg did, too.

  “Belman!” He practically spit the name. And then he surprised me by actually vaulting over the stone wall. By the time I got over, too, he was kneeling in the grass between a couple of ancient headstones.

  “I knew it!” he said, pointing. “Rotten potatoes.” He stuck his finger in one and pulled it out. “The skin is just firm enough to hold it together.”

  “At least it wasn’t a rubber chicken this time,” Julie said, which surprised me since she was the one who usually got the most outraged over stuff like this, not the one doing the comic relief.

  “I bet they have a potato cannon,” she said.

  “You’re joking, right?” I said.

  “No, they’re real,” Julie replied. “They’re homemade cannons. You use a length of PVC pipe, and hair spray, and some kind of ignition switch. They’re very dangerous.”

  “Dangerous to the person who gets hit by the rubber chicken,” Greg said sullenly.

  “And the person who gets hit by the potato,” I added.

  “Well, that, too,” Julie said. “But I meant dangerous to the person shooting the potato cannon. Because it could blow up in their hand if they use too much hair spray, or make it incorrectly, or light it wrong. All kinds of ways it’s dangerous. So we should turn them in — Belman and his Three Stooges. It would be for their own good.”

  Greg and I looked at each other with alarm. “Turn in Belman?” Greg asked. “That’s crazy. First, nobody would believe us, and second, Belman and the Stooges would kill us.”

  “We can’t just let them get away with something like this. And what if they’d hit you guys in the eye? What then?” Julie demanded, hands on her hips, clearly exasperated.

  “Uh, it might have blinded us?” Greg asked.

  “Exactly,” said Julie. “And that’s just what I’m talking about.”

  “Blindness?” I asked.

  “Ratting out Belman?” Greg said.

  “No,” said Julie. “Finding a way to get back at Belman.”

  “You mean revenge?” Greg asked.

  Julie nodded, a very serious look on her face. “Exactly.”

  Later that night, all three of us did research at our various houses — a lot of reading, and a lot of texting back and forth with different things we found out.

  Did you know that at the start of World War II we only had the seventeenth largest army in the world? Greg texted.

  Yes, Julie wrote back, because of course she already knew everything before anybody else. Right behind Romania!

  No way, Greg wrote. Romania’s army was bigger than ours?

  What about North Africa? I texted. Anybody gotten to that yet?

  Yes, wrote Julie. Of course. And get this — when we first invaded North Africa — in Morocco and Algeria — we weren’t fighting the Germans or the Italians. We were fighting the French!

  Yeah, Greg texted. Anderson and I kind of figured that out. The Vichy French, actually.

  Did you guys get the date for the invasion? I wrote. November 8, 1942.

  The British were with us, I added. Don’t forget them. They were part of the invasion. Plus, they were already in North Africa. Over in Egypt and Libya. They’d been fighting off the Italians and Germans there for two years already.

  Right, Julie wrote. The French were on the Atlantic Ocean side of North Africa. We sent this huge fleet across the Atlantic, and another fleet from England, and we landed in Morocco and Algeria and pretty much surprised the French. We defeated them quickly. In just three days. It was all over by November 10. Plus, they wanted to be on our side, anyway, and as soon as they saw they couldn’t stop us, they surrendered and joined us and the British.

  Yay for us! I wrote.

  It wasn’t just some party, Julie replied. Or a picnic. A lot of soldiers got killed just in those three days. And that was only the beginning. I could practically hear the scolding in her text.

  The texts continued for a while longer, but fewer of them, and longer apart, until finally we all admitted we were too tired to read any more and were all heading for bed.

  I sent one last text. Any word yet from John Wolman III?

  Julie sent back a one-word response. No.

  I had just turned off the light and crawled into bed when the original John Wollman showed up. I should have been expecting him with all the things we were learning, all the energy or whatever that Julie and Greg and I had been generating all night trying to solve the mystery.

  He stood quietly just inside my bedroom door. Moonlight poured in through an opening in the curtains, right on him, but he didn’t cast a shadow.

  “Sorry I broke down on you and your friends earlier,” he said. “I heard you playing your songs afterward. Sounded really nice.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “And it’s okay. About breaking down, I mean.”

  He nodded, and then changed the subject.

  “We didn’t think we would actually have to fight the French,” he said. “I do remember that. Even when we were on the landing craft, coming off the ships and heading to shore, everybody thought they would be happy to see us.”

  “So you were in, like, the first wave of the attack?” I asked. “In North Africa?”

  “It was a beach in Algeria,” he said. “Funny how things come back to you like that. I can remember it now. And I can remember how dumb we were about what was going to happen. Even though the officers kept telling us to be ready to fight. But nobody believed the French would fire on us like they did. We thought they’d just want to know what took us so long to get there, and give us wine, and ha
ve marching bands.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Sounds like a lot of it’s coming back to you.”

  “Flashes of it, anyway,” he said. “Like the name you told me, from the ID badge — John Wollman. That sounds right, that it’s my name, but at the same time it sounds like you’re talking about somebody else. Somebody I used to know, or used to be, a really long time ago.”

  I said I thought that made sense, and I asked him what other flashes he had besides being on the landing craft and waiting for the big party with the French once they landed on the beach in Algeria.

  He looked away from me, toward that big moon outside. “I remember the first guy,” he said, his voice much softer, not that he’d been loud before.

  “They started firing on us before we made it to the beach. And they kept it up once we landed. Everybody was scrambling to find cover, but it was already too late for a lot of guys. Some went straight down in the water and never came back up. Others dropped to the sand as soon as they set foot on land. And they didn’t get up, either.”

  He paused. “There was one. He was right in front of me. There was an explosion. It must have been a land mine that he stepped on. His leg, or most of his leg, was just gone. He was screaming and screaming and I knew I was supposed to help him. It was my job. I was a medic. And guys around him were yelling for me. ‘Medic! Medic!’ But I froze. And like an idiot, I just stood there. Bullets and bombs all around, and there I was like a statue. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t make myself do anything. I don’t know how I didn’t get hit, too. But there he was, this poor soldier, his leg blown off just above the knee, and blood pouring out of an artery. He was flopping from side to side and screaming.”

  John paused again.

  “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “I guess all the training took over, because I started doing things I didn’t know I could make myself do. I got down on my knees beside him and pulled back his ripped pant leg, and I leaned on his leg with my stomach to try to slow down the bleeding while I tore off part of his pants to make a tourniquet. I didn’t even have time to get my own tourniquet kit out of my medical pouch. He would have probably bled out by the time I found it.

  “Once I got the tourniquet tied on and cinched as tight as I could get it, then I could dig through my pouch for some morphine. That’s what we had to give them, to deaden the pain. I gave him a shot right in his abdomen, and as soon as that started to work on him, I had to get my biggest needle out and sew up the leg as best I could. I just hoped I could reach the artery and suture that, too, but I really couldn’t tell if I did or not. But it was all I could do. Then I poured on the sulfa powder and the biggest bandage I had. That was hard to tape down because of how slippery the stump of his leg was from all the blood. But finally I got it on.”