by Dean Hughes
Wally and Chuck didn’t return to the train immediately. They walked farther down the road and looked at more of the countryside. What they could see was that most families were worse off than the one they had met. By the time they got back to the camp, they were subdued and not saying much. This time, the walk through Omuta had caused Wally to think more about all the homes that were lost, about all the other families in Japan affected by the war.
Just as Wally and Chuck were coming into camp, they spotted a little band of American GIs—in their Japanese uniforms—approaching from the opposite direction. They were leading a cow—a big white animal with brown splotches on its back and sides. The Americans seemed to have found some alcohol, too. They were in a merry mood.
“Look what we got,” one of them yelled. Wally didn’t know most of the men, but he had worked with one of them, a man named McMurrin. He was a loudmouthed old army sergeant.
“Hey, Wally,” McMurrin said, “if you two want in on this, come and help us slaughter the old girl. We’re going to eat steak tonight.”
“Where did you get it?” Wally asked.
“Off a farm out here, not far from town.” He laughed. “She may be an old milk cow, but I figure she’ll taste like corn-fed beef to us.”
“McMurrin, these people here are starving. That cow might be the only source of income for that family.”
“Well, I got a solution for that. Let the little Nips starve to death.”
“Hey, don’t talk like that,” Chuck said. “The people didn’t start the war. Don’t take it out on them.”
McMurrin still had hold of a rope that was tied around the cow’s neck in a crude, tight knot. He stepped closer to Chuck and said, “Don’t give me any of that. These Japs starved me for three years. Now, I say, let them starve.”
The other men with McMurrin had plenty to add to that, most of it disgustingly foul and profane. And then they walked with their cow toward the mess hall.
“Is that what’s going to start happening now?” Chuck asked. “Are our boys going to make life miserable for all these poor civilians?”
“I don’t think so,” Wally said. “Some of them will. But most won’t.”
At least he hoped that was true. What he found after that, however, was that he was more aware of all the Japanese families, especially the kids, who were hungry. He and Chuck went on lots of walks, each time taking with them cans of meat, chocolate, soap, and other things, and giving them out where they saw need. The only problem was, the need was everywhere, and they could do only a very little.
Even more supplies were coming now. Every two or three days an American bomber would fly over and drop crates, usually about twenty at a time. The men would watch for them in the compound and then hope the drop was on target. It was fun to gather the big boxes and see what had come this time. The men were getting braver about staying on the parade ground and watching the cases descend.
And then one day one of the crates broke loose from its parachute. It dropped like a stone, and everyone ran. But one man slipped and fell, and as he was scrambling up, the box struck him. It hit him across the hip and smashed his leg.
Wally wasn’t there, didn’t see it, but he knew the man. He was an American, a kid from Virginia named Weatherby who had been taken prisoner with all the others in the Philippines. He had survived the death march on the Bataan Peninsula, some terrible illnesses at Cabanatuan, and this long, hard year in Japan. Wally prayed that he could survive this.
But Weatherby lost too much blood, was too weak from all he had been through. He died the next morning. For Wally, of all the deaths he had seen, this one seemed the saddest. Everyone in the camp felt the same way.
***
Alex Thomas was sitting at his desk in Frankfurt when his assistant, Sergeant Morrey, stepped to his door. “Lieutenant Thomas,” he said, “there’s a Sergeant Duncan here. He says he’s a friend of yours. I told him how busy you were this morning, but—”
“No. It’s all right.” Alex stood up and in a loud voice said, “Sergeant Duncan? I never heard of a Sergeant Duncan.”
And then Duncan appeared at the door, behind Sergeant Morrey. He was grinning, but what Alex saw was the scar next to his Adam’s apple, a jagged and lumpy red line. “Hey, the real question is, how did you ever get to be an officer?” He slipped around Morrey and held out his hand.
But Alex didn’t shake Duncan’s hand. He stepped closer and grabbed him in his arms. The two laughed and slapped each other on the back. When they stepped back from each other, Alex said, “I got a letter from Curtis a while back. He told me you were alive—which I hadn’t even known for sure until then—but I thought you’d be long gone by now. Curtis was shipping out.”
“Yeah, well, I should be gone too. You know how the army fouls everything up. They’ve got me down for about half as many points as I’m supposed to have. By the time they get it straightened out, I could be here another month or two.”
“Yeah, well, I’m worse off than that. Sit down. Tell me what happened that night you got hit. I tried to find out, and no one knew.”
“It’s pretty, ain’t it?” Duncan said. He stretched his neck a little to give Alex a good look at his scar. Then he stepped to Alex’s desk and grabbed a wooden chair. He turned it around and sat on it backward, leaning his arms on the backrest. “There’s one good thing about it. I got official permission not to wear a tie—a signed letter from General Taylor. Down in Austria, officers are always after me about that, but I just pull out my letter and those guys have to back off.”
“But is it a problem for you? I wondered whether it might have ripped up your vocal cords.”
“Naw. It nicked my throat, but they fixed it up. It grazed a bone in my neck, too, but it didn’t really hurt anything. It was another one of them things where if the bullet had been over just a little, maybe a quarter of an inch, I’d be dead now. It could have cut my spinal cord right through—or tore up my throat and choked me to death.”
“What happened that night after you got hit?” Alex sat down at his desk, across from Duncan. The room had once been an elegant bedroom, with tapestry on the walls, but the desk was a piece of army junk—gray metal. It smelled of stale coffee, apparently spilled at some point into its crevices.
“They took me to that aid station where you saw me, and they got the bleeding under control. Then, the next morning, they trucked me over to France to one of those big temporary hospitals. I had an operation that same day, and then I had to lay around there for about six weeks. When I got released, they put me in one of those Repo-Depots, but I just kept arguing with ’em, telling everyone I wasn’t going nowhere but back to Easy Company. I think they finally got sick of me and just let me go.”
“I thought you’d be on your way home.”
“Yeah, well, I probably coulda been. But I told ’em I wanted to go back. Of course, now that I’d rather go home, they can’t fix it up for me.”
Alex smiled at the irony of it all. But he didn’t like what he was seeing. Duncan looked pale, and he had lost weight. In most ways, he was still his old self, but he seemed a little more subdued, maybe tired. “Why in the world did you want to go back to the five-oh-six? You had your million-dollar wound.”
“I don’t know.” Duncan ran his hand over his chin and then along the scar. “At the time, I think I was worried about our squad—especially the young guys. I thought we were going into some hard fighting, and I . . . well, I don’t know.” He shook his head, looked at his hands, which he gripped together. “It seemed like I was cutting out on all you guys. And I didn’t want to do that.”
“When did you get back to the company?”
“Not until they were over in Mourmelon. I don’t know if you know what happened.”
“Curtis told me a little about it.”
“Those guys got pulled back for R and R in February, I think it was—not too long after you got transferred. Then in April, after the 17th dropped into Germany, they sent us ov
er to occupy an area by Düsseldorf, along the southern part of the Ruhr. But that was nothing. We lived in houses. Most of the guys spent their time drinking and chasing Fräuleins. It was kind of a mess, actually. It’s all been that way ever since then.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just the way a lot of the men have been carrying on. I guess you know, we went down south into the Alps and occupied Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest for a while, and then they stationed us in a place called Zell, in Austria. It’s kind of a resort town, on a big lake. You can’t help but feel like you’re on vacation down there. The brass told us we had to make it to the Alps before a bunch of renegade Germans hid out and tried to keep the war going, but there was none of that. When we were at the Eagle’s Nest, we were sleeping in quarters the SS had used—better than any place you and me stayed in the whole war—and Summers found a cache of wine that could have kept the whole 101st drunk for years. He told the guys to go easy on it, but everyone kept grabbing it up and drinking like they wanted to finish off the whole thing overnight.”
“I never thought you’d complain about having a good supply of alcohol.”
Duncan laughed. “Well . . . I don’t drink much anymore. I don’t like what I see it do to people. But it wasn’t just the wine. Everyone was all messed up—nervous and jumpy. I saw things down there that were worse than anything we saw in the whole war.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Some really sick stuff. A guy in D Company needed some gas for his jeep, and he was drunk. He told a couple of Germans to siphon gas out of their car and give it to him. They tried to tell him the tank was empty, and he wouldn’t believe it. So he killed them.”
“Just shot them?”
“Yeah. Now he’s up on charges. I think some of these dogfaces got certain things in their heads during the war, and now they don’t know how to stop, just all at once. Some other guys I know tracked down a big-time Nazi who lived down by Berchtesgaden. They figured if they turned him over to military police, or something like that, nothing would happen. So they told the guy they’d give him a chance, that he could make a run for it. They let him run a little ways, and then they just stood there and chopped him down with Thompson machine guns.”
“I know about some of that kind of stuff. My CO says we’re going to get more justice that way than we will from any war trials that we hold.”
“Maybe he’s right, for all I know. But a few months ago, we all knew what we were fighting for, or at least thought we did. Now, I don’t know. I just want to go home. Too many guys are acting like they’ve lost their marbles.”
“What are you going to do when you get home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you thought about—”
“I just don’t know, Deacon. All those years have gone by, and I don’t know what home is anymore. My mother is going to take a look at me and wonder who I am. It’s the same thing I think, every day, when I look in the mirror.”
“You’ll be okay, Dunc. It’s just going to take a little time for all of us.”
“I’ll tell you something interesting—something I sort of hate to admit. But it’s one reason I wanted to see you before I ship out. By the way, I borrowed a jeep to drive up here. It wasn’t exactly a legal arrangement. So if I get caught, you’d better pull some strings for me.”
“Hey, I’m no big shot, you lamebrain. I’m a lowly second lieutenant. Any string I tried to pull would break off in my fingers.”
“Well . . . anyway . . . I wanted to see you. You know, to say good-bye, see how you were and all that. But there’s one thing—and I know it’s stupid to even bring up after all this time—but it’s something I wanted to clear up with you.”
“What?”
“I found out I like Germans. I remember that whole thing we got into back at Taccoa.” He grinned. “You know, when you smashed my nose.”
“I got you with a sucker punch.”
Duncan laughed. “Yeah, that’s right. You did. But that whole thing was about you saying you liked the German people, and I couldn’t handle that back then. Now, I’ve been around here for a while, and I like the Germans better than anyone in Europe—except maybe the Dutch, and they’re a lot the same.”
“Why? What do you like?”
“There’s something sort of bull-doggish about the way they’re fighting to survive. They’re battered down, and they ought to throw in the towel, but they just don’t. They’re out there in the streets, cleaning up and doing whatever they have to do to stay alive.”
“You don’t sound like the old Duncan. I hope you’re okay.”
“Oh, yeah. I am. I just feel about twenty years older than I was back when we started this whole thing. And I don’t know—I always told you I had to hate Germans to kill them. Now I talk to these people, find out what sort of folks they are, and I don’t know who it was I thought I was shooting. I know we had to do this, but in a way, I wish I’d gone home that night I got shot. I don’t think I’d be feeling so . . . confused . . . or whatever it is I’m feeling. It sounds stupid to say, but I keep wishing all this had never happened—that I’d never killed anyone. I don’t like the idea of thinking about it the rest of my life.”
“I’m afraid of that too. Maybe some guys can let it go. But all kinds of pictures keep coming back to my mind.”
Duncan nodded. “I still have bad dreams,” he said. “But everyone does. Some guys say they don’t, and then I hear them yelling in their sleep.” He leaned back, was quiet again for a time. And then he said, “Deacon, I need something more like what you’ve got. Something I really believe in. Religion, or something like that.”
“A wife and little son might help.”
“It was a boy?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s his name?”
“We’ve named him Eugene, after my brother.”
“Yeah, of course. That’s really good, Deacon.”
“I think it means a lot to my family back home.”
“Sure. I can see how it would. Curtis told me, when he gets home, he’s going out there to see your family. He said he wants to be a Mormon.”
“Maybe you ought to think about that yourself.” Alex smiled.
“My ma would kill me if I did something like that. I’d better just go to the Baptist Church.” He glanced away and then said, seriously, “But I do plan to go to church.”
“Let’s get in touch when we get home, Dunc. Let’s keep track of each other. Okay?”
“Yeah. I’d like that. I think I might drive out to Utah some time myself. I’d like to see that part of the country. You’re taking Anna there, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. If I ever get out of here.”
“That’s a bad deal. You’re supposed to get extra points for being a father.”
“I know. But they say I’m needed.”
Duncan shook his head. “The army,” he said with disgust. “Say, listen. Have you got time to go get something to eat?”
“Not really. But let’s do it.”
“Okay. But Thomas, I might not say it later, so I want to say it now.” Duncan stood up, but then he looked down at the floor. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known. You and Curtis. I figure I’ll never again have a friend as good as you guys. That’s half of what’s bothering me. This war is the worst thing I’ve ever been through, but it’s the best, too. I’m scared I’m never going to know anything as good again as what us guys had when we were all together.”
“I just wish our whole squad had made it through.”
“We lost a lot of guys from that first group,” Duncan said. “General Taylor told us, before D-day, that a lot of us were going to die. I figured that was probably right, but it didn’t really sink in. I had no idea what we were up against.”
“No one did.”
Alex looked at Duncan, and the two simply nodded. But Alex was sure there were things between them, things they understood about each other, that no one
else ever would.
Chapter 30
The days continued to drag for Wally and the other prisoners. Wally wanted more than anything to feel like himself again, to get back to some sort of normal existence. And he wanted to see his family. For the present, however, he would have been satisfied if he could at least let his parents know that he was alive, but there was no way to do that.
Most of the former prisoners, however impatient, were orderly and controlled, but some were trading food and winter coats for sake, and that was creating some problems. The other group that bothered Wally, and worried him, were those who were obsessed with the idea of taking retribution against their former supervisors in the mine. Some of those men walked to the mine one day and lined up all the mine officials they could find. Then they rated each according to his treatment of the prisoners. Those who received good ratings were let go, but those who were found guilty of brutality were beaten unmercifully.
On September 14 a reporter from the New York Times arrived at the camp. The next day he stood in the compound and gave the prisoners a long lecture. He told about the campaigns of the war, about D-day and the victory over Germany, and about the many Pacific battles, including Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines, where remaining prisoners had been released. When he told of the atomic bomb and the destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the men became quiet. Nagasaki, they were told, was on the same island, Kyushu, across the bay, only about fifty miles away. But the men had never known.
All of this, in fact, was new to the men, and astounding. The world had been locked in the greatest conflict in history, and they had known almost nothing about it—only rumors and sometimes arrogant claims by their captors.
The reporter also said that the occupying army was not likely to arrive in Omuta for another month, but that the Army Air Force, as it was now called, had established bases at the southern tip of Kyushu island. “They’re flying C-47s and C-46s in there every day,” he said. “They’re coming in with supplies and going back empty. If you can get yourselves down there, I see no reason you couldn’t catch a ride to Okinawa. General MacArthur has authorized you guys to use any means of transportation you can find to get to those bases.”
