by Dean Hughes
He may have blacked out for a time, because suddenly he found himself looking up, and he was on his back. A man’s face was over his own. “Can you hear me?” the corpsman was shouting, and he was ripping away at Gene’s shirt.
“Yeah,” Gene managed to say.
“All right. Listen to me. You’ve taken a bad hit. You gotta hang on. I’m going to give you some morphine, and I’m going to get the bleeding stopped. We’ll get you evacuated when we can. But it might take awhile. We’re in bad trouble out there.”
Gene couldn’t think. There was nothing to say, no response he could come up with. But he understood. He could see what this all meant; it was in the corpsman’s eyes.
“Letter,” he said.
“What?”
“Pocket.”
“Don’t worry about that for right now. We’ll get you to a ship, and we’ll take care of you.”
“Send it.”
“Okay. Which pocket? Up here?” He slapped at Gene’s vest, and then he reached inside and found the letter. “Is this it?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure it gets sent.”
And Gene, even in the deep confusion that was running through his mind, understood what the corpsman meant.
Chapter 30
Bobbi was at the hospital when the telegram came. Beulah, the receptionist who brought it to her, said, “I’m sorry, honey, but there’s a wire for you.”
Bobbi stared at her for a moment. She wanted to think it was a mistake. But Bobbi took the telegram and whispered, “Thank you.” Then she walked to the nurse’s lounge, which fortunately was empty. She sat on the couch, but she didn’t stop to think what she feared the most; she feared everything. She tore open the envelope and read:
SORRY TO TELL YOU GENE KILLED IN ACTION STOP SERVICE ON JUNE 22 STOP HOPE YOU CAN COME STOP
And the world seemed to stop. Bobbi didn’t cry immediately. She tried to think. How could this be true? How could there be a world with no Gene in it?
When she did start to cry, she couldn’t quit. After a time Afton showed up, but Bobbi didn’t want to talk, didn’t want understanding and attention. She wanted to be alone. So she hurried from the hospital as all the nurses watched her, and she walked across and around the base. She thought of her family, wondered how everyone would deal with this, but every time she thought of Gene, she forced the image away. It simply hurt too much to see him, hear him. She kept telling herself she would meet him again, that life was eternal, but at the moment that didn’t seem enough. Nothing would ever be the same in this life; her family would never know that homecoming after the war that Gene had talked about.
Bobbi got her composure before long, and she walked back to the hospital. She spoke with Lieutenant Kallas and made arrangements for a two-week leave. She didn’t cry then, didn’t cry when she accepted the condolences of her friends. She walked to the base headquarters building, where she was able to arrange to take a military flight to San Francisco the next morning. Then she took a bus into town, where she sent a telegram to her parents. She was trying to stay busy, trying not to think, but once she had sent the telegram, she only needed to pack, and that wouldn’t take long. She didn’t want to be in her room the rest of the day, but when she thought of going to see Ishi she knew that meant talking, and she didn’t want to do that either.
Bobbi walked to the beach, but that hurt too much because it reminded her of Gene’s visit with her there, and so she strolled through Honolulu, and she got away from downtown, where so many young sailors and marines were on the streets. When she finally took the bus back to the base, she packed before Afton finished her shift, and then she went for another walk, on base. She thought about everything in the future, tried to make resolutions, but she didn’t let herself remember. When she came back to the room, she thought to put her Bible in her suitcase, mainly because of the hibiscus pressed inside. But she didn’t open the pages, didn’t look at it.
Bobbi slept fitfully that night, and she woke up angry. All she could think was that the stupid war had robbed her, had stolen a vital piece of her life—and it was still after her, ready to take more. Alex and Wally were just as vulnerable as Gene had been, and now she knew for sure that in spite of all her prayers, God was not going to spare the Thomases—not any more than he was sparing other families. Richard was not hers either. He belonged to this terrible time; the war could do with him as it chose.
But she got up and got dressed, and she finished the last of her packing. She did finally talk to Afton a little, but she said what was expected of her and didn’t admit her anger. “Call Ishi, will you?” she asked at the end. “Tell her what happened. And tell her I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to her. I’ll talk to both of you when I get back—but I just don’t feel like it right now.”
“I understand,” Afton said. She was crying more than Bobbi was. Bobbi finally hugged her. She knew what Afton was feeling. She had brothers in the service too.
By late that morning, after a typical delay, Bobbi was on a long flight across the Pacific. It was the first airplane flight of her life, but she didn’t think much about it. By then, a kind of numbness had set in. She had attempted to find consolations—explored them, exhausted them, felt no better at all, and now she was tired and deeply discouraged.
But she finally let herself remember those last two visits she had had with Gene. The memories were almost too tender to touch upon, but she had been the last in the family to see him, and she knew that everyone would want to know about those few minutes she had spent with him. As she thought about the things Gene had said, she began to come back to herself. He had been so wise for a young boy. He had tried so hard to be fair to Millie, and he had known very clearly that he might be going off to die. She remembered what he had told her on that day they had walked to the beach: “I believe in heaven. So everything will be all right—no matter what happens.’“
Gene was okay now. Bobbi knew that. But poor Wally; what a pain it would be when he found out about Gene. And Alex, off in France somewhere. When would the word catch up to him? Those were sad thoughts, but Bobbi was beginning to feel the first glimmer of strength.
After the flight from Hawaii, she was not able to get a flight out of San Francisco, and so she sat up all night on a train. The ride seemed endless. Sometimes she found herself doing pretty well, assuring herself that she was going to handle this, but certain thoughts would strike her, and she would go to pieces all over again. She thought of LaRue and Beverly, of how much they loved Gene. And she kept thinking of Millie, who was surely devastated.
As the night wore on, Bobbi finally stopped resisting her memories. She had a picture in her mind of little Gene, maybe seven, coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. Bobbi, who had been thirteen or so, had gotten to the Christmas tree ahead of him, and she was looking at her gifts. Bobbi had looked up just as Gene had spotted his Schwinn. She had known that the bike was secondhand, repainted and fixed up, but to Gene it had clearly been the finest bicycle in the world. He had stopped where he was and stared, as though he knew in that moment this was something to savor, to approach slowly.
He had always been like that, never very excitable, sometimes subdued, but he had cared about things of worth.
Bobbi and everyone else had gone outside on that cold Christmas day, and Gene had gotten on the bike and ridden without difficulty. He had learned by practicing on his friends’ bikes, and he had been patient in waiting for his own. Bobbi could still remember how, after the ride, he had put the bike away in the garage out back. He had used a clean rag to wipe it down, so as not to leave any slush from the streets on it. And then, when his cousins had arrived, he had taken them all out to see it.
The memories kept coming once she let them: the trip to Yellowstone Park; the day he was baptized, so gleaming in his white clothes; the day he had broken his arm, falling out of the apple tree out back, and how hard he had tried not to cry. And, of course, the watermelon. By the
time Bobbi reached Salt Lake City, she had savored enough good memories that she was feeling blessed to have spent the night with her little brother. But when she looked at her parents, and at LaRue and Beverly, all the pain returned. Everyone looked so crushed.
She hugged each of them, and they all cried together, and then Dad said, “Bobbi, we have some other news. I hate to tell you this right now, but you need to know.”
Bobbi’s body tensed.
“Alex has been wounded. We don’t know how serious it is. We got a telegram last night that he’s in a hospital in England, so we assume he will live, but we don’t know that for sure.”
“They didn’t tell you anything about his wounds?”
“No.”
Mom looked overwhelmed, her face white, and seemingly ten years older than when Bobbi had seen her last. LaRue and Beverly appeared so grown up, and yet childlike with their reddened eyes and flushed cheeks. Dad was holding on, obviously trying to show some strength but, behind it all, looking deflated and weary and not at all himself.
“I’m sure Alex is all right,” Bobbi whispered, without believing her words. It seemed entirely possible that Alex, too, would be taken from them.
“We’ll be okay” was all Mom said as she took Bobbi in her arms again. “It means so much to me that you could be here.”
***
Alex was in southern England, not all that far from Aldbourne, where he had lived the winter before. The bone in his thigh had not been struck, but the muscle had been ripped open by the shrapnel. A surgeon had cut away a lot of dead flesh, leaving a deep slice in the side of Alex’s thigh, but he had assured Alex all would “come right” with the leg and he would be back in the thick of things before long.
In Alex’s hospital ward, he was being hailed as a hero. Word had filtered back through some other wounded men in his company that Alex had led a patched-together squad that had knocked out four German 105s. A lot of soldiers wanted to hear the story, but Alex gave only the barest of details, and he was embarrassed by the attention.
What Alex knew was that once he had gotten into battle, something had happened that he had no way of explaining. He had performed the way he had in war games. He had been trained to handle certain situations, and when those situations had come up, he had seen what he had to do. But there was also a kind of inherent competitiveness in Alex. He had never done anything without setting out to do it well. The battle, in its own strange way, had seemed like a football game; he had simply set out to win and had found a way. At the time, the Germans he had fought in those gun emplacements had had nothing to do with the Germans he had known during his missionary years. They were like extensions of their rifles and machine guns. They were men who were trying to destroy him, and he had needed to destroy them first.
Now—away from the action—it was hard to realize that all that had even happened. He didn’t want to be complimented for what he had done, and he had to fight against the memories, to tell himself he was all right, that the things he had done had been necessary. The images persisted, however—all the chaos and violence, and the bodies—and sometimes Alex lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering who he was now.
With so many wounded men being processed back into England, then sorted out into temporary hospitals, and finally transported to various parts of the country, more than a week had passed before Alex received assurance that his parents had been notified. He had sent a letter as soon as he could get his head clear enough to write, but he didn’t know how long it would take for it to get to Utah. So he was actually pleased when a nurse brought a telegram to him. It meant that his parents had received notice and knew where he was, and he could stop worrying about that. The first part of the wire was what he expected: “SORRY TO LEARN OF WOUND STOP LET US KNOW HOW YOU ARE STOP.” But then Alex stared at the next line: “SORRY TO TELL YOU GENE KILLED IN ACTION STOP.”
Alex was too stunned to react for the first few seconds. He looked at the nurse, who was still standing by his bed. She obviously saw his alarm. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“My little brother,” he said, but he couldn’t get anything more out. He didn’t want to believe it. His mind kept racing, looking for some way out of this. But he was still staring at the words: “KILLED IN ACTION.”
He realized that the nurse had hold of his hand, and he looked at her, through his tears. “This stinking war,” she said, with her British intonation. “Boys shouldn’t have to die this way. Or get their bodies shot up.”
Alex hardly knew what she was saying.
“You’re such a lovely boy. So good. I’m sure your brother was too.”
And then Alex said something that took him by surprise, something he didn’t even know was on his mind. “I’m not good. I killed a German boy. Just a kid—like my little brother.” Alex shut his eyes and tried to keep control, but he began to sob.
“You can’t help that,” the nurse said. “Other people thought up this war, and then they passed it along to you boys.”
Alex couldn’t say any more, but a thought returned that had slipped in and out of his consciousness many times in the past week. He pictured a family in Mannheim getting the word that their son had been killed in France. His thoughts were still racing, and in the jumble he saw his own family receiving word of the German boy’s death.
The nurse continued to hold Alex’s hand, to pat it. “We need more boys like you,” she said. “I hear too many soldiers bragging about the men they’ve killed.”
“They don’t mean it. They just . . .” But Alex didn’t know how to explain anything right now.
“Listen to me,” the nurse said. Alex looked up at her plump face, her red cheeks. “My son was killed in this war—in Africa. My nephew was shot down over Germany. He’s still missing in action. My neighbor’s parents were killed in the blitz. I knew a whole family that was killed when a bomb hit their house. Death is everywhere right now. But you can’t lose track of one thing: Hitler thought this all up. We didn’t. And Hitler has to be stopped. So do the Japs. Your brother died for something good. He’s a hero. And you’re a hero, not a killer.”
Alex was trying not to cry, trying to accept what she said, trying to think how he could deal with all this. He knew he couldn’t let himself go to pieces.
“Listen, love, this is too much for you—so many things all at once. You need to sleep. Won’t you let me give you a little something to help?”
“No. I want to think.”
“That’s the last thing you need to do. I’m going to leave you for just a bit. But I’ll be back. My name is Margaret, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to be your mum while you’re here. I’m still missing my boy.” And now the tears came to her own eyes. “You’re better looking than he was. I’d rather be twenty-five again and fall in love with you. But all things considered, I’ll settle for the mothering.” She tried to laugh.
But Alex couldn’t respond, couldn’t even think what to say.
She patted his hand again, and then she left.
Alex felt the silence in the big room. He didn’t want to look at anyone. Pictures were blinking into his mind. He thought of Gene falling in battle, but what he saw was the German boy—curled up, his head on his arm. It was as though Alex had gone off to war and killed his little brother. He knew he would have to fight that idea off, in time, but at the moment he wanted the guilt; it was easier to accept the disappoint-
ment he felt with himself than it was to struggle against it. And wasn’t it right? Didn’t all the killers share in the responsibility for all the deaths?
Alex wished he could be with his family, to share the grief with them. But he couldn’t get rid of the idea that if they saw him now, they would see through him, know he had blood on his hands.
“Are you okay?”
Alex looked over. The guy in the bed next to him had been shot through the abdomen at Omaha beach. His intestines were all ripped up. He had already gone through two operations and was scheduled fo
r another. He slept most of the time, and Alex had gotten used to his silence. “Yeah. I’m all right.”
“Your brother was killed?”
“Yes. In the Pacific.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” But the words struck Alex with a force he wasn’t ready for. Alex was so sorry too—for everything.
***
All day, all evening, neighbors and friends and family came to the door at the Thomas home. They entered quietly, usually carrying covered dishes, loaves of warm bread, desserts, hot rolls. They hugged all the Thomases, cried with them, said all the things a person says at such times, especially: “I don’t know what we’d do if we didn’t have the gospel.” Bobbi believed that too—but she grew weary of having to respond over and over, having to talk so much. She felt enveloped in love, and she appreciated the kindness; she was merely tired of all the words.
Lorraine Gardner came late in the day, and she brought a picture she thought the Thomases would want. It was a little snapshot she had taken of Gene and Wally. Gene was wearing an argyle sweater with a bow tie, and he was grinning, reaching behind Wally and holding two fingers up, to make horns. Wally was smiling, posing for the camera, but apparently unaware what his brother was doing. “I took this after church one day, when I was over here,” Lorraine told Bobbi.
“Wouldn’t you like to keep it?” Bobbi asked.
“I have some others of Wally, but I thought your family would like to have this one.”
Bobbi took it, studied it for a time, and then hugged Lorraine. “I thought you were in Seattle,” she said.
“I’ve been home on vacation, but I’m heading back tomorrow. That’s why I came tonight. I won’t be able to make it to the memorial service. My train leaves early.”
“Let’s walk outside for a minute,” Bobbi said. “I need to get out of this house for a little while.”
