Dog Tags

by Stephen Becker

  Gabol asked if he would kill one man to save ten.

  “Sure,” Benny said, “but not on some politician’s say-so. Hell, I’ve killed. You forget I was a corporal once, down there where life is real and earnest.”

  “What about World War Two?” Cornelius pounced, real and earnest. “If you had it to do again, would you fight?”

  They eyed him hard, like wary guards. He saw prison camps, kapos, saw himself in a striped suit, 57359; the blood hummed in him. Hitler! “I might not,” he said tightly, prickling and flushing as vengeful ranks of uncles and aunts surged in hieratic wrath; “I might not,” he said again, breathless (God! leave me alone! all I want is to be left alone!); and sat panting in the warm Pacific air. “Oh hell,” he said, “of course I’d fight.” Hunched and stiff, he rocked briefly. “But there’s another answer somewhere. Something I don’t know yet.”

  “You killed for your country,” Cornelius said.

  “Moy nayshun,” Benny grieved. “What ish moy nayshun?”

  Agog, they dithered and scowled.

  Alex shook his head ruefully. “Benny, you can’t lick us; better join us. Let me ask you something. Suppose I said I thought being Jewish had something to do with this.”

  Hello again. Benny started to say, “I am that I am,” but refrained, not wishing to be offensive. Cornelius spoke for him. “That’s out of order, Alex. There are dead Jewish soldiers buried in Korea.”

  As opposed, Benny thought, to live Jewish soldiers buried in Korea.

  “Amen,” Gabol said.

  Benny rather thought that Alex was right. Alex twinkled. He and Benny understood.

  “And plenty of good white Christians collaborated,” Cornelius said.

  Any second now, Benny thought, he will tell us that there are good and bad in all races.

  “I didn’t say worse,” Alex said mildly. “I only said different. Maybe even better.”

  “There’s good and bad in all races,” Cornelius said.

  “Amen,” Gabol said.

  Benny decided that it was not his quarrel.

  “Let’s drop this,” Alex said. “Come back to it later. Why did the Turks behave so well?”

  “Okay,” Benny said. “Let me think a minute.” He glanced out the porthole; he rose, and went to stare at the calm sea, the deep, serene blue, everlasting. Some day he would learn to sail, and would sit alone in a small white boat, sleepy under the blazing sun, alone and untroubled. “The Turks,” he said, still gazing out at the sea, “were a real army. Superiors had the power of life and death over subordinates. Perfect fascism to do a fascists’ job. They were trained to kill and they signed on to kill, and the big fellows threw the fear of death into the little fellows. Hell, their officers gave orders. Their enlisted men refused absolutely to obey the Chinese, and took orders only from their own officers, and the Chinese respected that. The Turks were soldiers.”

  Cornelius said impatiently, “What’s all this got to do with our boys?”

  11

  Out of a white sky, sweeping across the gray Yalu, an incessant, merciless wind beat down from Manchuria. “I’m a Mediterranean type,” I mourned.

  At the fence Kinsella said, “They don’t want us to die.” We stared emptily at an impassive guard, an armed bundle of quilted garments. Somewhere tailors, stitching, Chinese Jacobs. Kinsella’s eyes roved, sunken, black hollows. “We have to believe that. What did he tell you?”

  “Haircuts. Soon.”

  “Photographers,” he said. “Remember in the war they took pictures, both sides, showing off? Barbershops, volleyball.”

  I shivered. “Let’s go back.” My knees wobbled. The earth was iron-hard.

  Kinsella puffed, “Maybe they’ll give us a banana for the pictures, or a tennis racket.”

  “Better a banana.”

  “Refuse it,” he said. “Tell your men. They’re smart bastards and they’ll use us. I don’t know how but they’ll use us.”

  “I asked him if we could farm in spring. He said no.”

  “God damn. An ear of corn.”

  “Butter. Salt.” My stomach contracted, fluttered.

  “I figured something out,” Kinsella said. “Their turbines are all along here, the Yalu, their dams and power plants. I bet this village was workers’ housing once, and they put us here so we wouldn’t bomb the plants and all. It stands to reason.”

  “Sounds right. Small comfort.”

  “You’re working for them.”

  I was too tired to make speeches.

  “The men don’t like it.”

  “Where you from?” I asked him.

  “Oklahoma.”

  “How long you been in?”

  “Since forty-one.”

  “I heal the sick,” I said. “Most of the time not even that. We’re losing dozens, Major.”

  “You’re working for them too.”

  “For us too. You rather they lock me up?”

  “No skin off my ass,” Kinsella said. “Just remember you’re an American soldier.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “You’ve got an obligation to escape.”

  Less weary, I might have been startled. I scuffed along, skinny and scant of breath.

  “You’ve got an obligation to help others escape. We’ve been talking it over. You’re in a privileged position.” For a dozen paces he meditated. “Beer,” he said, “I want you to bring me every scrap of information that might help.”

  A lunatic.

  “About the guards, the fences, lights, arms, gates—anything. You have a great responsibility and a great opportunity.”

  “Yessir,” I said.

  “Has he said anything about the other camps?”

  “No.”

  “Or where we are, exactly?”

  “No.”

  “God damn. Spring and summer’s the best shot, maybe early fall, lots of cover and growing things. For food.”

  “Right.”

  “If we could get to the river.”

  “If you could get to the river,” I said, “you’d drift down into the bay. Then what? Port Arthur?”

  “Our navy,” he said. “These bastards have no navy. I bet our ships are patroling right now.”

  I was silent. Such a mind exacted admiration.

  “Find out all you can. Report to me every day.”

  “Yessir,” I said.

  I woke in boneless terror, out of breath, freezing; a hand covered my mouth. By the dawn’s milky light I saw that it was Trezevant’s; I breathed, my pulse stuttered alive. Trez’s eyes directed my own; without budging I scouted the doorway, and sighted two lean brown rats, alert, one sitting up on his hindquarters and peering about. I observed. Even in the half-light they were bright-eyed, tiny glass beads, and they were whiskered, and had small ears that twitched and pricked, and long tails. The tails were gray and naked; otherwise these might be pets, wee wild creatures, short-haired, clean, nervous.

  Trezevant sat up. The rats slid out of sight.

  Two dawns later Scafa screamed. I stumbled into the sickroom and found him keening in horror, hands over his ears, fingers stiff, on the edge of madness. “A rat, a rat on my chest.” He heaved and gasped.

  “Just a wood rat,” I said, soothing, crooning; a wood rat, yes, the fields and forests, nature’s creatures, like bunnies and squirrels, “just a wood rat. They eat roots and berries. They won’t hurt you.”

  “Oh, oh,” Scafa said. “You sure, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m sure,” I lied, and after that we saw rats often, at dawn, or in the dugout basement; and heard them, skitter skitter, rejoiced in them, named them, and argued whether this one was MacArthur or Mao. I would have had the men cook and eat them, at least in a stew, but their horror was primordial; they glared, pointed, unclean, unclean; I feared mutiny, anarchy, the chaos of despair, and shut up.

  “Yo, it hurts,” Trez moaned. “Shooting pains in the legs here, at night mostly.”

  I contemplated this big black man. Travel
was broadening, no question. Cela change les idées. We were sipping hot water, two military gentlemen at tea, a brief chat, morale, faction and pother amongst the other ranks. “Me too. Keep it quiet. If we quit they’ll all quit.”

  “Be pleased to quit,” Trezevant said. “Purely love to quit.”

  “Not you.”

  “Well no.” He summoned a grin. “First time in years, though, I wouldn’t mind going home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Lee County, Arkansas, about ten mile from Marianna. Real shitkicker country.”

  “What did you do before?”

  “Ate shit,” he said comfortably, “and joined the army as soon as I could.” The grin again. “Lied about my age.”

  “Sharecropper?”

  “My papa. Still is when he ain’t sick. Mama died from too many children and too little else. I suppose you had it real good.”

  “I did.”

  “I heard you were in the war.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Corporal.”

  “Then you know a little.”

  “A little.”

  “Fight much?”

  “Germany. Purple Heart, even.” Braggart, hero. All men are little brothers.

  “I wonder do you get a Purple Heart for prisoner.”

  “No. Back pay.”

  “Better yet. What about these pains, now?”

  “It’s scurvy,” I said.

  “Scurvy? I thought that was sailors.”

  “It’s diet. No greens, no fruit. They’ll all have it.”

  “Mm. Oldridge going to make it?”

  “No,” I said, “but keep quiet about it.”

  “Funny fellow,” Trezevant said. “Little old Florida cracker, old and fat. They call him Pinky, you know that?”

  “Pinky. I could save him with spinach, oranges.”

  “Oranges. Oranges from Florida. Maybe we ought to eat those rats.”

  “We will,” I said. “Bet a dollar.”

  “That’s a bet,” the big man said. “You first. Officers first.” He laughed softly.

  I treated Turks from the Turkish Brigade, Britons from the 27th Commonwealth Brigade. “Just forget those designations,” Kinsella said crisply. “You know nothing about the units.”

  “They know it all,” I said. “How many Turkish brigades are there? Or British?”

  “Just the same,” Kinsella said. “How many you figure we are, all of us? You move around.”

  “Seven, eight hundred.” Filipinos, Koreans.

  “I don’t suppose we could bust out.”

  “We couldn’t bust out of a used condom,” I said. “There’s a hundred men dying and nobody else can even pee straight.” Thus myself, concertmaster and friend of Beethoven. Gourmets may rhapsodize. Those who eat shit talk shit. In the house of the hanged man everybody mentions rope. Soon we would be speculating on the afterlife. Some would go mad: Beer first. No. I was a species of captain and would leave the ship last.

  Oldridge died that night. In the morning we found him dead and I bore his dog tags to Kinsella. He was a collector of dog tags, a numismatist, a heap in a sack like a hoard of strange shillings. “It’s bad,” he said.

  “It’ll be worse,” I said. “He’s sent for me again.”

  “Tell him we’re dying. We absolutely must have more food. Remind him about Nuremberg.”

  “Nuremberg.” I made a serious effort to comprehend.

  “War crimes,” Kinsella said briskly.

  “Right,” I said.

  Ou-yang’s very bulk lent him authority; I felt scrawny, obsequious, a flunky. “Come with me,” Ou-yang said, and I nodded dumbly. We walked beneath unshaded light bulbs, passed offices, a storeroom, a toilet—a toilet! I gaped: an Oriental toilet, one hunkered, footrests of stone, a chain. I hurried along. The infirmary: a small room, an overhead lamp, a table, cots. Three patients. “These two,” Ou-yang announced, “have a rash. This one has a wet ear.”

  I examined, grunted, emitted the imposing sonorities of expertise. I must consult with Untermeyer, the makings of a tragedy, an epidemic of underwear fungus, evacuate the women, children and bladder. Untermeyer. Ah, to see the Untermeyers here! An unworthy thought. “These two should wash more often. Bathe it twice a day with potassium permanganate. All right then, alcohol. All right then, soap, for God’s sake. This one has an infection. Keep it clean and if there’s penicillin, use it.”

  “Ah, penicillin.” Ou-yang spoke; a soldier unlocked a small cabinet. “Go ahead,” Ou-yang said.

  Dreamily I inspected the vial, the syringe, the needle. “You took these from me.”

  Ou-yang said, “Yes.”

  “My men are dying,” I said. “They need food. They’ve all got pneumonia. They need medicine.”

  “We have no medicine. Keep them warm.”

  I set down the syringe. “I can’t do this. I can’t come here and … I can’t …” What was I trying to say? I prepared the dose, administered the injection. Skin, blood, all skin was skin, all blood, blood. “Have the needle sterilized,” I said. “Is this aspirin?”

  “Yes.”

  I unscrewed the lid and took six tablets. I wrapped them in a scrap of newspaper and defied Ou-yang sullenly, an animal, a dog with a bare bone.

  “Keep them,” Ou-yang said. “Come with me.” He spoke to a soldier. We went back to his office. Already jaded, I ignored the toilet. Ou-yang told me to be seated. “We have no food,” he said. “It goes to the front lines. All over China people are hungry. Some are starving. We have had the country only one year, and there is so much to do. Did you think we wanted this war?” He brooded, stocky and sad. “When there is food it will be distributed. We are not torturers.”

  “That may be too late,” I said. “We have scurvy now, lots of it.”

  Ou-yang shrugged. He gestured and a stately plump bald corporal came from the doorway bearing a bowl of rice on which lay two crossed leeks. I gobbled, shoveling the food into a parched mouth. “Tea? Is there tea?” Ou-yang himself poured. I guzzled, and was abruptly and savagely overcome by shame; my throat closed. I pondered that. Then I summoned up all my moral corruption, and ate. In joyous iniquity I cleaned my plate; there are children starving in China. I grew calm, and sucked a tooth. “A mirror,” I said. “Is there a mirror?”

  “Yes, yes.” Ou-yang rummaged. On his desk, a magazine: eagerly I scanned the mysterious characters. Ou-yang handed me a small mirror, and was amused.

  My dark stringy hair hung like a wild girl’s. My beard—a rabbi! at last!—curled, dry, wiry. My eyes peered from the brush like field mice. My lips were cracked, baked mud. This face. That haunched a thousand hips. “I look like a convict,” I said.

  “You are a convict,” Ou-yang said.

  “You have no right,” Kinsella said flatly.

  “Here,” I said. “Take three.”

  “What is it?”

  “Aspirin.”

  “Aspirin! God damn, man, that’s no help.”

  “He said there was no food. When it comes we’ll have it. I told him it might be too late.”

  “You’re fraternizing!” Kinsella said. “Damn you, Beer, you’re in trouble!”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “You’re a soldier,” he said. To myself I acknowledged now, hardly hearing him as he rattled on, that I had never known what it was to be a real soldier: to wake with energy, to love plans and tactics and camouflage and the heart-stopping glimpse of an enemy in your sights, the lilting recoil; the satisfying, how satisfying it must be if you love it at all, contortions of flopping dolls that had intended your death and met their own. The coffee and the cigarettes and the tall stories about other battles, women, legendary sergeants, enfilades.

  “I had a sergeant once,” I said, “who used to take us out for grenade practice and tell us to watch out for flyin derbis.”

  “You what?”

  “Flyin derbis,” I said.

  “God damn,” Kinsella said. “What’s that
all about?”

  “Right,” I said.

  So I roved my little hell, stumbled over corpses, made my rounds without instruments, without medicine, without hope. I offered vain advice, instructed men in nursing care. I excised dead flesh with a long fingernail, with a contraband metal spoon. I displayed the aspirin to my men, who crowded around me and exclaimed. Trezevant was appointed its keeper. A cold rain persisted, and dark earth swelled through the snow like mange on a polar bear. There was no news of the war. What war? I had a vision: the war was over, the others had all gone home, and these here were penitents, this was their infernal landscape, their limbo, each had killed or betrayed, committed undefined sacrilege, inexpiable. Cuttis went on living, freckled and friendly. Scafa declined. Bewley conversed with Jesus. I stood gaping at the Yalu like a village idiot, and adjured myself to survive.

  We were much beset, and business picked up. In every hut a miser’s hoard of dog tags. My own still lost. I could steal a pair and be anyone ever after. Never. I am that I am. One morning Collins, sleeping like a fetus, was unable to straighten his legs. “Jesus Christ,” he shouted, “I’m paralyzed!” I examined him, stringy Collins, never fat and now all sticks and stones. Wearily but gently, gratefully, it was an occupation, mon métier, I massaged him. Trezevant brought him hot water to sip. The left leg relaxed, millimeter by millimeter slacked and stretched. Ewald worked at the right leg. In half an hour Collins was walking. Ewald went so far as to smile.

  I conferred with Trezevant, and he made the announcement: “Only one way to stay alive and this is it, so you men listen. From now on you get up in the morning when we tell you. Never mind seven o’clock and never mind the Chinese. We get you up. Then you wash. And you wash Cuttis and Scafa and anybody else real sick. After chow you police the hut and the grounds. After that you sit down and hunt lice. You dig ’em out and you pop ’em. From now on we fetch wood every day and not every second day. Also, in that room by Cuttis, we make a checkerboard on the floor. We use stones for checkers and every man gets to play two games every day, and you keep track. A tournament, you hear? Prizes to be announced later. And every day before lunch, calisthenics.”