by Amanda Dykes
“A wonder,” she said. “Probably the descendants of the vegetables Papa and Grand-père once ate.”
I could see it, then. How a potato, of all things, was knitting a cloak of security about my Mira. A sense of belonging and family. Thank you, God.
“How did you do all of this?” she asked with eyes wide. Not in ridicule, as some might have done when taking in the homemaking efforts of two bachelors. It didn’t have the touch of comfort that a home dwelled in did—not blankets, or flowers in vases, none of that. It truly did resemble more a fort built by kids, or a bachelor apartment. But the similarities to her home in the forest echoed the better for it.
Henry shuffled his feet. “We just moved a few things around, is all.”
George gawked at his friend. “If by ‘moved a few things around,’ you mean ‘moved heaven and earth to assemble this grand scene by staying up late into the night and scouring the corners of this cavernous château,’ then yes. You are correct.”
Henry shrugged a shoulder. “Anyway. It’s a little bit of home for you, we hope.”
Mira was walking each inch of the perimeter, letting her hand run fondly over each of the worn pieces of furniture. “It is remarkable,” she said, eyes shining. “Thank you,” she said to them, and then to me. “For bringing me home.”
39
Henry
October 1918
“The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Celia Petticrew’s words, cloaked in the sweetness of her voice, carried an edge to them, as if they had been the sharpened weapon of which she spoke. Cutting through the slough of words I’d written since landing on the shores of France. Slicing away the fog of propaganda. Carving out the shape of something true in this landscape, and inviting me—no, urging me—in.
“We bivouac here,” Matthew said in the fading light. His voice was quiet, and whether the life had gone out of it or had come into it so much he could not contain it, I could not tell.
Earlier in the day, after having shown our papers to a convoy en route to the Meuse-Argonne, we were pulled into a truck of men. Slapped on the back in instant brotherhood and deposited here once the river turned and our route diverged from theirs.
In silence, we made camp beneath a clump of trees. And in that silence, this night, worlds swam in and between us. The pulse of truth: This might be the last moment the Seventeenth Band would ever see one another, alive or dead.
The morning would find us back at the front—the sounds of warfare in the distance told us we were close, as did the map. Reports of the Meuse-Argonne offensive were many and varied, but they all resounded with an ominous common thread: The battle was intensifying. The end of this endless war was near—for better or for worse—and the soil of this land unequivocally soaked in the blood of its allies and enemies, ever more so as its end approached.
There was finality in the air.
A country across the sea, waiting to hear.
I took up my pen.
Your Boys, America!
By a Humble Observer
It is time for something different, America. I have asked much of you in these letters. This war has asked much of you. The unending war, the “war to end all wars,” the “Great War.”
Great War.
You may wonder, from the hollow ache of your heart, how can it be called “Great”? What mind, attempting to describe it as far-reaching and all-encompassing, landed so ironically on a word that also implies something good?
Tonight . . . I have no tidy words to offer. No grand orations or inspiring prose of courage and daring. I have been sent here to observe and report. Perhaps, if we are being honest, to put a gloss on this unimaginably hard place. But tonight, I have none of those things.
I have something more. Something much, much better.
I have something truly great, in all senses of the word.
It is simple and true and tells a thousand stories in the space of a hundred yards. It is the scene unfolding before me, here on the eve of battle. May I invite you in? May I wrap these images around words and deliver them to your hearts as the scene unfolds?
Four men are making camp. They have just been on a journey that’s spanned a handful of days and many lifetimes. As you know, in order to protect the safety of the American Expeditionary Forces, I am not permitted to give specifics. By order of General Pershing’s office, the men are not even permitted to keep journals. But if you’ll lend me your ear and your imagination, I can give you more. I can give you their hearts. A captain, a chaplain, a sergeant, and me.
After you read this, close your eyes and envision: It is October in France. The air is warm for an autumn night. In the distance, the rumble of war. The incessant shelling, bombing, shooting, marching, digging—and the earth has been trembling with it for four years now. Trembling so that she is tired near unto death. She is scarred deep and forever, this swath of earth stretching north and south, jutting east and west in ever-changing salients, breeching country borders up into Belgium and down to where Switzerland meets France. Scarred and drenched with the mingled blood of allies and enemies. She will never be the same.
The captain, who intersected our path on his own return to the front, looks grave. An army of shadows haunts him, even as he seeks to lead an army of living men into victory. He has taken a lantern from his haversack, and if we watch, we may find out why. This is of interest, for as you must know, men do not light so much as a cigarette by night, for fear of drawing enemy fire. There are patrols whose job it is solely to watch for such from ten miles away, and trust me: they do. They ensure the lights—and those who hold them—are extinguished by force of sniper or bomber.
As the captain retreats and disappears into the edge of the woods, our attention shifts from him to the chaplain. This younger man is pacing, wearing his own trench into a six-foot span of earth as he squints and holds a book of prayers so close, in the dying light, that his nose is literally stuck in the pages. He mutters, making out the words, and once he has a handle on them, he repeats them again and again, each time with growing conviction. I have rarely witnessed somberness descend upon this typically jovial man, but it has cloaked his entire presence, this night, as he speaks,
“‘O God of Might, we implore Thee: help us that our arms be strengthened against our foes . . .’”
At the far edge of our little camp stands the platoon sergeant with his back to the warfront, facing a Paris too far west to see. His story is not mine to tell, but I think I can say this, and I think you will understand: He has left his heart there. Wholly, deeply, in a love for the ages to rival the tales of old, his is a heart completely given to and for another. He faces her now, through a night whose end may mark his end, too. Beyond that, I cannot say more of the story, but there is more. Very much more, dear America, and it would break your heart if you knew it. Lend them yours, this night, and your prayers, too.
The chaplain reads on, his prayers weaving back into the moment. His voice grows thick and hoarse. It wavers, trips over a dry patch. Whether dry in throat or spirit, it is impossible to say. His words run out.
At the silence, the platoon sergeant raises his head. He tears his gaze from distant Paris. Stoops to pull a worn canteen from his small heap of earthly possessions. A tin cup, too. Approaching the chaplain, he pours what little he has left into the cup, the melody of water gathering into a void filling the silence. He offers it to the chaplain. Pushes it gently but firmly toward the man when it is first refused. And that water, the gesture of a broken man giving the last of his own so that the prayer might go on, seems to infuse the chaplain with strength.
So, he keeps on:
“‘O God of Might, we turn to thy most loving heart as our last hope. O King of Peace, we humbly implore the peace for which we long. Dismayed by the horrors of a war which is bringing ruin . . .’”
Dark is coming. The captain returns, and in the last veil of light on this last day— perhaps the last day— I see that his lantern is full. Not of light
. . . but of bracken. Leaves, twigs, grasses.
But there—quick as a breath—a flicker of light. And another, and another.
It’s the trench trick of the glowworms. Their light is small enough that it won’t draw fire, but strong enough that it can make way for sight. Just enough to spear the darkness, transform its oppressive weight into hope.
A reminder that the God who created the light also created the night.
There is nothing to fear here.
The captain, without a word, sets his insect-filled lantern amid a swath of tall grasses. He begins to outline a ring of rocks around it, as if it is a bonfire to gather by. Stones thumping against ground, clacking into one another. In like silence, the others draw near. One by one, they sit.
I join them. For these men—though they are soldiers, battling against both militaries and principalities—they have allowed me into their brotherhood. I count it the deepest honor to be among them. None of us speak it, but each of us know: They live to die, and die to let live. Dear countrymen, tomorrow comes their battle as they arrive again at the front and press forward.
Inside the lantern, the glowworms shine steadily on, one or two of them in a dance of flickering life. I think on them—the way they have burrowed into muddy chambers beneath the ground. The way they wait then on wings to grow, wait to take flight.
I think on the men—the way they have burrowed into muddy trenches beneath the ground. The way they wait now on morning, wait to take flight.
I ponder sharing this with the men—“The Seventeenth Band,” an unofficial moniker they have claimed, for brotherhood is a hidden gift of war. I ponder sharing this with the Seventeenth Band. Attempting to inspire them with such comparison—for when glowworms become fireflies, fire flies . . . light takes to the sky . . . and anything is possible.
But I recall the end of the story: when the glowworm’s transformation into firefly is complete and the wings take to flight, an invisible clock begins to tick. The small creatures, who ascend from dugouts of mud into victorious flight—they will live only days, perhaps weeks.
But while they live . . . they live to light. They shine. And because of it, they cause life to go on and on, giving way to more of their kind, time without end.
I look in silence on these faces: the captain, the chaplain, the platoon sergeant. I think of my own unremarkable face, sitting here beside them. Any one of us, America. Any one of us, flawed as we all are, could be next. And any one of us would go forth into that destiny, if it means life might go on for others. The captain with his army of shadows and broken compass—he holds it in his palm, as if it might give him an answer he has long sought. The chaplain, with his prayers wrung from a place so deep that none of us knew he was capable of it. And the sergeant, who is the invisible thread binding us together, showing us what it means to buckle down and live. Truly, truly live.
He shifts, turning to cast one last glance westward, where he has left his heart. As he does, his boot shifts, and jostles the lantern just enough to slide its lid akilter.
A flash of light skitters loose, circling the lantern once . . . twice . . . vanishing away into the night. A solitary firefly, leaving the safety of this place.
This is what it was born for. To rend the darkness.
It rises above a land scarred with the footprints of armies. A land tattooed in trenches, gouged in graves, running with veins of wires that carry electrical impulses through them like blood to the heart. Beneath villages, underneath weddings and battles, orchards and bakeries, cobbled roads and rivers that dare, in their indefatigable currents, to hope for a life after all this. Into war offices where telegrams are transcribed into words, and men are thence sent to battle, to live or to die. The little light ascends over all this, a topography etched in lives. Flits with a force even the “war that will not end” cannot extinguish.
An invisible clock begins to tick.
The chaplain’s words descend with the night’s utter darkness:
“‘O God of Might, give me strength to die a true and valiant soldier.’”
Amen.
40
Captain Jasper Truett
October 1918
The sun rose again today. I looked down the trench and saw the boys—“green-gilled college boys,” I used to call them. Well, maybe some had Harvard degrees stuffed in their brains, but their education these past months had been the hardest kind of all. The kind a man should never have to receive. The kind so bad I never, in all my life, imagined war to be this way. Not in any of my campaigns till now.
It made me think it couldn’t get much worse.
And that scared me senseless. Every time I thought that, I was proved wrong. These boys . . . any one of them could’ve been mine. If I’d been a better husband, a better father. If I’d been there for my family.
But I wasn’t.
So I’d be here for these boys now.
I searched the trench and spotted Petticrew. First time I ever laid eyes on him at Plattsburg, he looked like a giraffe, craning his long neck to find the stables. He’d left here on his journey a broken man, weary. They’d made good time to Paris, had been delivered back from the city to the front by a transport unit coming with ammunition. The best weapon among them being the man who had checked all the boxes:
Constantly aware of his surroundings. Petticrew was on high alert now. Determination driving his awareness farther than ever.
Keen insight into geography and terrain. I watched as he circumnavigated a clutch of soldiers and caught a roll as someone dropped it.
Calm in a crisis. So calm it was eerie.
Able to command respect without belittling his charges. Truer than ever, as evidenced by the way the men in his platoon approached him with respect but not trepidation.
Yet in all this, there was something more about him now. Behind the determination . . . there was light. Fierce, the sort that wouldn’t be easily extinguished.
He’d need it.
Soon we would take the Argonne. Or begin to. One of the last places in this once beautiful country to be untouched by war, at least in parts. The Boche had been laying traps and wire, digging trenches for weeks now, but my scouts had it all mapped.
It was a wreck. All those roots and trunks, mangled branches above and below. Slick hillsides, deep pits, sharp cliff’s edges. A death trap, layered into dastardly perfection during its last hundred years of undisturbed rest. It had been preparing for us all this time, and we’d only had two weeks to prepare for it.
I thought of the girl. The one who came out of that forest. Maybe there was good in there, after all. And maybe if she lived in such a place, was born in such a place, grew life in such a place—maybe there would be good there for us, too.
I shook my head, pulling myself out of this cloud of thought. This wasn’t my job. I was losing my edge. And if I lost my edge, I’d lose lives. These boys would be the ones to suffer.
I blew a whistle. “Men!” They gathered, received orders. I saw those telltale signs I’d come to know as the pre-battle silent symphony: pulling pictures of sweethearts out, kissing them. Twisting wedding bands on their fingers. Muttering silent prayers. One or two retched. Two or three slept. This was what they did as they prepared to live—and die—all in the same space of time. It was a heavy silence, thick and vibrating with erratic pulses of a thousand men. One of them, Private Schulman, muttered a word over and over. Hineni. Hineni. Hineni.
I asked him what it meant. “It’s Hebrew,” he said. “It means—something close to ‘here I am.’ It means you are listening. You are ready. You will live into what comes next, with everything you have.”
I nodded. The man had conviction. It was serving him well.
I watched the sky. I watched my clock, chained to my being.
“We are close, men. This war has been turning, these past months. There’s hope on the horizon. And that hope is you.”
I meant to buoy them with these words, but they settled with grave realization
. They were—in essence—the hope of a world so war-weary it had forgotten how to hope.
I knew the feeling.
“Captain?” A voice pierced my recollection. It was George Piccadilly, British chaplain to the American Expeditionary Forces.
“Chaplain,” I said.
He looked at me more serious than I’d ever seen him. “Send me up, too.”
“Chaplains don’t go over the top.”
“This one does. That is—this one wants to. Go over the top, that is. Sir.”
“No.”
He hung his head. “With respect, sir, if I may.”
Exhaling, I nodded.
He raised himself to a proud stance, spreading his shoulders wide and lifting his chin. “You cannot afford to leave me behind. I have extensive experience in—in—” He seemed at a loss for words, for assuredly the first time in his life.
“In arguing your point?”
“Just so, sir. But also . . .” His stance muddied a bit, shedding its clamped-on pride. “This is what I’m here for. These men are going in. Facing . . . death.” He fumbled over the word. I could tell such a serious subject felt foreign in his mouth. But important to him. He took a breath to fortify himself and repeated. “Facing death, injury, all the lovely things this war is known for. And—that’s why I’m here.”
“I thought you were here to dodge the war.”
“So I was, and look how that turned out. I can’t help but wonder . . . perhaps I was meant to be here all along. I don’t know a great sum of things.”
I bit back an affirming answer. Too easy a target.
“But I know a chaplain is likened to some kind of shepherd. And I know a shepherd goes in when his sheep need him. Frankly, sir, I’m more sheep than shepherd. But at least I can show up. At least I can stand with them. Pray with them. Do all the things a chappy’s supposed to do. Right in the thick of it.”
He had a point. My boys could be in there for days, at least. War was a snarling, growing being, which had a way of splintering maps, oozing into tactical plans, engulfing everything in a thick swamp of dark. Anything could happen in those woods. And the way Piccadilly twisted the corner of his jacket in his hands betrayed vulnerability in this soul full of bravado, for the first time. I couldn’t help but respect that. And yet . . .
