by John Hersey
Mary said, “You can’t do it overnight, Joe, you can’t do everything all at once. It takes time.”
FUNK
A Short Talk with Erlanger
FUNK
THIS IS a story of a failure of nerve that sheds some light, by reflection, as it were, on courage.
It cannot be said that the soldier of this tale survived because of an act of cowardice, for, as the colonel points out, the mortars that night simply may not have had Erlanger’s number on them. Indeed, in some ways this man acted bravely. The moral of the tale is that survival in high-explosive warfare sometimes depends upon strength, courage, endurance, patriotism, or a nourishing belief in a righteous cause, but very often it does not, for fate can be blind, sardonic, and witless.
By 1945, when this piece was written, the United States Army had admitted to its hospitals more than a million cases of men suffering from what was popularly, but not quite accurately, called combat fatigue. Erlanger was one such. The treatment he receives in this tale, one of many therapeutic devices that were invented or adapted to meet the critical conditions of wartime, was called narcosynthesis. Basically the administering of a so-called truth drug for hypnotic effect, it had what a few doctors considered a short-cutting value in at least one type of disability, in which a “hysterical conversion symptom” is manifested—a paralyzed limb, a heavy tic or twitch, loss of speech, a digestive disturbance, or some other physical failing for which there is no physical cause. The treatment was never a cure but only a possible step toward one. I witnessed many sessions of narcosynthesis at Mason General Hospital, in Brentwood, New York, and while a few achieved immediate outward results, like those in this account, others were unsuccessful. At any rate, the point of this tale is obviously not the therapy that is used, but the substance of Erlanger’s brush with fate.
A Short Talk with Erlanger
THE PATIENT rode in on a wheel chair.
A lieutenant colonel, an Army psychiatrist, standing in the room, said, “Good morning, Erlanger.”
The patient said, “Morning, doctor.”
“How do you feel this morning?”
“I feel fine. Except my leg. It won’t carry me to walk. It hurts here. It worries me, my leg, sir.”
“All right,” the colonel said. “We’re going to try to help that leg.”
An attendant, a nurse, and Erlanger’s ward officer helped Erlanger to hop on his left leg from the wheel chair to the edge of an iron cot. The patient was a huge man, but he seemed to want aid in everything he did. The nurse helped him take off his red hospital jacket, eased him down on the cot, and straightened his limp right leg. The colonel pulled up a wooden folding chair and sat beside the bed.
Erlanger asked, “What are you going to do to me this morning?”
The colonel said, “We’re going to give you an injection that will make you feel good.”
Erlanger said, “Shots. I got enough shots in me since I come in the Army. I got everything. I got typhoid, yellow fever, I don’t know what all I got.”
The nurse handed the doctor a hypodermic needle, a pad of alcohol-soaked gauze, and a rubber tourniquet tube.
Erlanger said, “You got enough in that needle for a horse.”
The colonel said, “It’ll make you feel good.”
“I mean a very big horse.”
The colonel pulled the tourniquet tube tight around Erlanger’s husky upper arm, cleaned the hollow place at the bend of his arm with the gauze pad, and stuck the needle into the antecubital vein. As soon as the needle was in, the nurse pulled the shade down over the window and drew a curtain across the door. The crippled man lay in semidarkness.
The nurse snapped the tourniquet tube loose, and the doctor slowly pushed one cubic centimeter of ten-per-cent sodium Amytal solution into the vein, left the needle’s point still embedded, and said, “Count backwards from one hundred.”
Erlanger said, “That I can do.” And he began, “A hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-four…”
* * *
—
Everything the colonel knew about Pfc. Fred M. Erlanger was contained in a manila folder that lay next to the nurse’s white instrument tray on the table across the room. This was Erlanger’s medical record, which the colonel had studied carefully before the patient came in. The first item in it was simply a beaten-up slip of rough paper with a notation on it that after a night patrol action near Nürnberg, Private Erlanger had been admitted to the 109th Field Hospital incapable of walking and claiming that blast from nearby mortar explosions was responsible for his condition. On the same slip there was a second note, that two days later, after examinations had failed to turn up any wounds, lesions, bruises, or degeneration of tissue that might have been caused by concussion, he was sent on to the 182nd Evacuation Hospital. There, according to succeeding papers, he had been given further tests, which showed no disturbance in the structure of muscle or nerve or bone such as might have been caused by blast, indicated that he was not suffering from infantile paralysis, that he had not had a stroke, and showed nothing clinically except fatigue and slightly higher-than-normal blood pressure. He was, so far as science could tell, sound of wind and limb. Yet he could not walk. The hospital tried a fortnight’s rest, with massage and heat therapy, but the leg did not get better. Erlanger was, therefore, referred for neuropsychiatric examination. The most important document in the record was the form filled out by the evacuation hospital’s psychiatrist. It read as follows:
Chief Complaint: Weakness, simulating paralysis, of right leg. Pain, centering in thigh.
History of Present Illness: The patient states that he felt well and was not bothered by excessive anxiety before April 16, when, during a patrol skirmish at night, his best friend was killed, and he himself was under severe mortar fire for some time. First began to notice weakness in leg while withdrawing from patrol. Next day could not walk. Patient insists that his condition must have been caused by concussive effect of mortar fire.
Military History: Inducted into Army as selectee Nov. 10, 1943. To England September 1944. Received grade of private first class November 1944. Joined division in Germany as replacement January 1945; saw 46 days continuous front-line action Seventh Army front in reconnaissance combat team. Understands he has been recommended for Bronze Star as result of action in which he was “injured.”
Past Medical History: Mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough as child. T & A age 7. Appendectomy age 17. No serious accidents. VD denied.
Social History: Born in Skaneateles, N.Y., Sept. 17, 1924. Lived for 16 years on his father’s dairy farm, then left family to go to Syracuse, N.Y., where he worked as truck driver delivering bottled gas, as electrician’s helper, road-construction laborer, and grocery delivery boy and clerk. Unmarried, says he could not afford it; had several girls and wanted to marry one just before he was drafted but has since given up idea. Does not write to this girl. Corresponds seldom with his family. Smokes, moderate social drinker. States he gets on well with people and dislikes being alone. Enjoys hunting and fishing; has not participated in team sports despite powerful physique.
Family History: Father, age 54, living and well; described as being “strong”; “wouldn’t stand for any nonsense.” Mother, 51, living, a calm, quiet person. Siblings: one older brother, two younger sisters—one sister “nervous.”
Psychiatric Examination: Patient describes his symptoms with classic belle indifference but insists on their crippling effect. Has no insight into possibility that they may have been related to situation anxiety. Describes himself as being rather conscientious and says he always wanted to do the best he could in everything he tried. Wishes he had had more education. Says he is sick of army life. Speech is badly blocked when he tries to tell about night patrol of April 16, and he gets quite upset when talking about loss of friend in that action. No psychotic symptoms.
>
Impression: Anxiety state, severe, with hysterical conversion symptoms manifested by paralysis of right leg.
Disposition: Since action has ended in this theater and since patient’s division has orders for redeployment to Pacific theater, it is recommended that patient be boarded for return to Z.I.
Next in the folder came the order which took Erlanger home from Europe: “…The board, having carefully examined Pfc. F. M. Erlanger and the clinical records pertaining to his case, find that he is unfit for further duty in ETO, U.S. Army, because of: anxiety-hysteria state, severe, following combat. Line of Duty: Yes. In view of the above findings the board recommends that this patient be transferred to the Zone of the Interior for further hospitalization and treatment.”
The last pages in the history had to do with Erlanger’s admission and orientation to Whittier General Hospital. There were reports on further physical examinations, nurses’ notes on the patient’s daily routine, and the summary of an exploratory interview that the lieutenant colonel had had with the patient. All these things put together said the same thing. There was nothing physically wrong with Erlanger’s leg. The paralysis was a “hysterical conversion”—a device contrived in the hidden caverns of his spirit. Erlanger had no conscious knowledge of the true causes of his paralysis; he could not, therefore, be classified as a malingerer.
On the basis of this history, the lieutenant colonel had decided to have a talk with Erlanger while the man’s conscious mind was off guard. He would do this with the help of a trickle of a barbiturate drug, which would disarm Erlanger’s inner censors and allow him, for a few minutes before the drug put him to sleep, to pour out in their full intensity some of the overwhelming emotions that underlay his sickness. Now, as Erlanger counted, the Amytal began to take effect.
* * *
—
When in his counting Erlanger reached the number eighty-four, he raised his head off the pillow and, without stopping his recital, blinked and looked around. He said, “Eighty-three, eighty-two, eighty-one, eighty, seventy-nine…”
He dropped his head back on the pillow. His voice had become thick. The sibilants of the seventies fell off his tongue blunted, as if he were drunk. The numbers came slowly, “Seventy-eight, seventy-seven, seventy-six…seventy-six…”
Erlanger stopped counting. He lay still for a moment. His head rolled twice from side to side. His eyes grew big and looked frightened, and he closed them with a frown but opened them quickly again, as if the shadows moving across the insides of his eyelids were unbearable.
He said, “O-o-oh,” and the breath rushed out of his throat as he pronounced the syllable.
The colonel said, “What’s the matter?”
Erlanger said, “I don’t like the dark.”
“Why.”
“O-o-oh, those God-damn patrols.”
“Tell me about the last one you went on.”
“No, I don’t like to remember.”
“Remember it,” the colonel said firmly. “Tell me about it.”
Erlanger began at once, with a rather surprising calmness at first, to tell about the patrol. “We were dug in there, we were dug in on a hill. Not exactly a hill, a kind of a rise with some of those terraces, had grapevines on them. I remember Ting, we were trying to eat, Ting said something about, ‘Write my mother I was a brave boy.’ He meant it funny. So there we were dug in on that hill, and the captain told us we would jump off around ten o’clock.
“I was pooped. I hadn’t been sleeping so good at that particular time. So Ting said he’d take the point. It was my turn to take the point, but Ting knew I was played out and pooped so he said he’d trade the point for four butts. The thing I’m glad of, he smoked all four butts I gave him before we started—I’m very glad of that, anyhow.
“However, time came to get up off our duff and go. The idea, what the captain said the idea was, we were supposed to find out where the Jerries were so the division could go through where they weren’t; that was the idea. There were some woods up ahead off to the right and some of these small farms with stone walls to the left. Most probably the Jerries were in the woods, or maybe the farms, or maybe both. We didn’t know, we were going to find out, we were so God-damn smart we were going to find out.
“So Ting assumed the point of our platoon, he was the first man and cracking wise the whole time. I was about twenty yards behind him, I guess I was that much. If our lieutenant had been any good, he would have taken the point up there; however, he was chicken, he led us from where he could watch our shoulder blades. That is why, also me being pooped, is why Ting was way out in front.
“Up over this rise. Barking your shins on the grapevines.
“Near the top of this first rise, I got very scared. It was so quiet that night you could hear the worms eating the grape leaves—that was what Ting said before we started—so I shouted to Ting in a whisper, I said, ‘Ting, for Christ’s sake let me take the point.’
“All he said, he whispered, ‘Shhh, you want to get us all killed?’ ”
In telling this much, Erlanger had been showing increasing signs of agitation. Now, however, he broke off and lay calm, as if he had begun to think of something else, something tolerable.
To stimulate him the colonel said, “Who is Ting?”
Erlanger said, “Ting? You didn’t know Ting? He was my friend.”
The colonel waited.
Erlanger said again, “He was my friend.” After another pause he said, “He was a little guy and look at me, I’m a great big horse, and he could do ten times as much as me. Hell, he used to look out for me. ‘Did you remember to draw your PX ration?’ ‘Have you got your grenades?’ ‘You better eat something, Fred.’ Always after me. Always jumping on me.”
A shadow of a smile disturbed Erlanger’s lips. “Why,” he said, “he was the worst God-damn robber. He would rob your last sheet of paper, right when you had a dose of the trots. Son of a bitch. Lazy son of a bitch. Whenever the work came around, very sorry, he was busy, something important to do.”
Erlanger paused again. Then, with a sudden flood of intense emotion, he said, “He took the best care of me.”
The colonel said urgently, “All right. You were on that hill.” As he said this, he rearranged the needle, which still lay pricked into Erlanger’s vein, and forced a second cubic centimeter of Amytal into the arm.
* * *
—
Erlanger began to speak in a low, urgent voice. “Ting should’ve let me come up in front there, it was my turn, he should’ve let me…. I was glad I wasn’t up there. I didn’t want him to lead us into the woods. Christ, it was light, I never thought a quarter of a moon could make it like that. We came to this road, they’d told us in the briefing it might have mines. The thing was to follow Ting. I was thinking we ought to stay out of the woods. Oh, I liked the grass where we came to it, on the other side of the road; you could hide in it. They should’ve mowed it, I remember I thought they should’ve taken the hay in before that. We could’ve stayed there in the grass. I didn’t want Ting for goodness sake to take us in the woods. That grass smelled so good.
“Ting, he was sensible, he bore off. They’d told us, go in the woods, but he was exactly right, I would’ve done the same; those farms looked better, less dangerous.
“Oh, I was so scared. The farms had some stone walls; these walls were nice. Built good. You could hide there pretty good. We went over a couple and across this plowed-up land.
“I wanted Ting should look out. He was going too near a house there; they could see us out there in that damn moonshine.
“Oh my God, I heard a dog barking. I wondered how far away it was. I wondered could it smell us out. I couldn’t tell anything at night.
“We got past one farm, one farm behind us. I looked back and I could see some dumb bastards back there standing up against the sky. Get down, you dopes, get dow
n, I wanted to shout.
“Then we went through a terrible place to go through. Couldn’t Ting have stayed away from undergrowth like that, bushes like that? You couldn’t tell anything in there, where you were, even. You just hoped you’d come out right.
“Whew, then it was better, in the open…. Those barns didn’t look so good…. Skirt around, Ting!”
Erlanger started, as if someone had jabbed a pin deep into him.
An electrifying change took place. His eyes closed. Some gear shifted in his mind, and he began speaking in the present tense. He was evidently transported back to the very situation and had heard in his skull a dim echo of a shot.
He said, “Oh my gosh, who did that?”
Suddenly Erlanger loosed a series of ejaculations and twitched and grimaced in fear. He stopped talking coherently.
The colonel asked, “What is happening?”
For a few moments, in answer to this question, which recalled him part way from his real-seeming memory, Erlanger hovered on the edge of speech; then, shivering, he whispered, “The Jerries have opened fire. I think they’re behind that stone fence—in around those barns in there. Oh, they’ve got us. They got cross angles on us. I got to work over toward that side wall.”
Again Erlanger broke off and grunted mere syllables of surprise and fear. He was now gripping both sides of the bed with his hands. His face was pale and his breath came fast.
The colonel asked, “What’s that?”
“Ting. He’s hollering. He’s hollering and screaming my name. They must have hit him with a grenade, there was some grenades went off right near. Oh Jesus, Ting…. Stop that screaming. I hear you; everyone can hear you….”
