Before the Crossing
Commentary and a chapter
Eighty years since D-Day yesterday. Arlen, the protagonist of my novel Victory Ruins, wasn’t there — just almost. He crossed, like the rest of Old Hickory, the 30th Infantry Division, a week later, when the waves still lapped at bodies on Omaha. Whatever blooding he and his comrades might have missed there, they more than made up for in the eleven months to come. But not yet — not yet. Waiting on the English side of the Channel, they were not “in it,” but neither were they out. What was that like?
Much of Victory Ruins came out of my conversations with WWII vets in my adolescence. In those days, the late ‘90s and early 2000s, they began to share things that they never had Perhaps it was the cultural milieu, perhaps a sense of impending mortality. I had a good sense for what those men were like as men, but it was hard to grasp what they went through. I remember my grandfather’s friend telling me over the dinner table about how he escaped capture during the Battle of Bulge and about the seeing the Germans kill Americans. He choked up badly in front of us all. He’d never told anyone before, even his children. He could hardly articulate it, even after all those years. What had he seen?
As the book took shape, I encountered a conundrum. Call it the demands of competing fidelities. On the one hand, I wanted to portray the historical truth of the war such that the reader might understand, through an accurate setting and well-described action, how that war was fought, so that through the details they might know something of how external forces irrevocably transformed those men. On the other hand, I also wanted to capture the inner experience of the G.I. and how he as a man found his way through. But being no soldier myself, having seen no war, how could I speak of it? In what possible way could my judgments about the matter at all be accurate and thus truthful?
The drafts sprawled on and on, swaying between pedantic and melodramatic. The war was becoming the whole book, when it should have been only the second act. I set it aside for a while. When I returned, I had a clearer view. Perhaps I’d remembered my grandfather’s friend’s moment of bared memory. Perhaps it was some distillation of all the stories I’d heard not just from WWII veterans, but from veterans from Korea, Vietnam, and the GWOT. Even when they would freely speak about war, they could not say what it was.
Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” If this is this true, then those who have “seen the elephant” have seen an entirely different world than their own. For they experience the limits of language in trying to convey what they went through. No matter the volume or clarity or accuracy of the words, they still fell short of that full, embodied experience.
When I realized this, the way ahead for the book became clear. It was not mine to do what others could not. The new fidelity was to speak as those men had. I readjusted the story and the prose to fit the way men of that age wrote, like Eugene Sledge in With the Old Breed and Frank Irgang’s Etched in Purple. And it all came together.
In memory of those men, I offer you an excerpt from Victory Ruins. I feel it is fitting to honor them, and also relevant for the rest of us today. Whether we like it or not, we are caught up in a war. It is fifth-generation warfare, waged in and against the spirit and the mind. It comes at us from all sides, from and against all nations. And we all have the sense that it is about to become much greater and more terrifying, but in what way we do not know. We are sitting on the edge of our own Channel, waiting to cross to face what we may hopefully be prepared for, but which is not guaranteed.
I hope you enjoy.
Victory Ruins
Chapter XVII
The din of the rain on his steel helmet sounded like a tin roof under a hurricane.
“Why couldn’t he have picked a place under some goddamned trees?”
No one should be talking now, not with the enemy close by. He turned his head to see who. A rivulet of water that had gathered on a fold of his poncho hood poured down his back. Cold Tennessee rain. Indian summer had gone. He pulled his M1 rifle in closer and kept his hand over the action to keep it dry. The platoon was exposed, silhouetted at the crest of a hill. The road was a morass of red clay.
“All right, up and at ’em. We’re moving out.”
The whole squad rose to its feet quietly. Sling rifles, heft gear, look ahead, and wait: one, two, three, four, five paces — now step off. Long strides covered distance quickly. The rain began falling harder. It was really hard this time. Hitch up your poncho, lower your head, press ahead through the muck. Legs spattered with mud, red clay dripping down calves. The heavens opened like a spigot. The deluge shook tree branches and drummed through the poncho like fingers on a piano.
“Halt!”
They stopped in the open. He felt warm vapor rising from his collar and caught the rancid smell of his wet, dirty self. The squad stood perfectly still, taking the brunt of the downpour, the din against their helmets a choir of misfit bells.
Time rolled back: it rained like this once. But when? The past year’s rains at Camp Blanding were brief, soaking showers of a warm Florida afternoon. Before that, the rain at Fort Jackson was a steamy patter. This rain was hard and steady, unrelenting, nourishing or destructive, the difference between its gift and its wrath all in the duration of its uncontrollable volume.
Rain like this sours corn and leaves it fit only for the hogs.
Why did that cross his mind? It was familiar for some reason. Familiar, but not immediate.
“Move out!”
They stumbled along again, a few who still did not know left foot from right. What good had all that drill done? All the back and forth, stirring up dust that coated their eyes and choked them. Certainly it gave them endurance. Or perhaps they had the officers to thank for that: endlessly obsessing over the tiniest hanging thread or unkempt necktie, they taught you to bear with anything, for there was no dignity for you, not even for the volunteer. And a volunteer he was and deserved respect for it. He fought them back, overtly and covertly, and his time was filled with KP and sentry duty, and the squad suffered for his sins just as he suffered for those of others. The only thing he understood was the march and the rifle, the two things he had thought of when he thought of war before he thought of going to war. He had tough feet and shot expert, so in the end, the Army forgave all. He did not.
Be magnanimous. Look at what Uncle Sam made you. Stronger, quicker, a razor edge put on his woodsman’s senses: he was more than he ever had been. And in secret he could admit that he loved his new strength and that while he regretted the way it had come to him, he gladly accepted that it had and thought of no other way it could be. They beat him down and they built him up and he had vowed that though it was worth it, his Army days would be over.
Yes, he had, hadn’t he? So certain at the end of year one. Then the politicians made noises about keeping the troops, enlisted and conscripted, in the service longer. All in the name of national defense. Along with the other soldiers, Arlen had scrawled on the barracks wall O.H.I.O: Over the Hill In October. Word came filtering down from on high: Old Hickory, the 30th Infantry Division, his outfit, would be demobilized in December. Worry not, they would have Christmas at home.
Pearl Harbor came first. In truth, he could hardly remember before that. Much of what he knew of the Army came after, even if it felt like before. Yes, it all blurred together as it grew faster and more complex. The division was like a deck of cards flying through the air. One regiment was split off for another division. Soldiers were transferred to other divisions or branches. New volunteers and draftees poured into their places. The regiments and companies had been filled with North and South Carolinians and Tennesseans and Georgians, each one drawn from a small town or modest city. Overnight, those transplanted communities vanished and an olive drab wind blew in, new draftees and volunteers from the North and the Midwest. They all had two left feet and odd accents and outlooks, and there was no trust to be had. The division began again from scratch. A year lost.
Yes, that was how it was. But why think of it now? For all that had changed, it was all still the same.
Indeed, he had remained. Men came and went, the propaganda slogans changed, and the officers were replaced. Nothing stayed the same, but he stayed right where he was. Almost another year at Fort Jackson, almost two total, close enough to home that maybe he could have gone, if there were not a war on. No liberty for him. Not even for home.
Home: where Wade had to hire men for planting and harvesting, shiftless men who wanted more money than they deserved for their work. His father had fired them and hired a few Negroes. They worked better than the white men, except for the one who said he was glad to do be working for Wade because he didn’t have to go fight this white man’s war. And Wade had kicked the man off the farm for that and cussed his name up and down for weeks. So Legenia said in a letter.
There was more than that, but what?
And then Florida. Forced marches and calisthenics under rays of sun so harsh they could make a man sick. Drill, shoot, march, and repeat. That was where he qualified as expert and his already calloused feet became impervious to any road. And the division having been gutted, filled up again, and hammered back into shape, the big brass ordered Old Hickory to Tennessee, to these mock battles in the hills against the Second Army.
And only now were they finding out if they had the skills to fight.
How long had that taken? He counted: Camp Forrest this year, Camp Blanding last year; Fort Jackson for most of ’42; Jackson for all of ’41. And I got there the September before that.
That made it three years. Almost to the day.
For all he knew now, it could have been the only three years in his life that mattered. He was a soldier now. What else did he know? Oh, yes, home, that’s right. There was a home for him. Wade and Legenia and all that, that something else.
Three years, a long time for a young man. It could have been thirty times longer in reality. What did he know? How could he measure? Only the growth of his callouses seemed to mark the passage of time, like rings on a tree.
“Halt!”
The sergeant appeared through the grey rain. “Corporal, you’ve done your orienteering work, come with me.”
At the front of the long column, the lieutenant huddled under the platoon guide’s poncho, scowling, contorting his peach-fuzz cheeks into all manner of wrinkled shapes. “Ah, Corporal, there you are. The sergeant here says you know your way around a map and compass. Maybe you can settle this for us.” He pointed to a mess of contour lines. “I think we’re here, but the sergeant disagrees. I know for a fact I’ve maintained a north-by-northwesterly course and haven’t deviated one bit. It’s the damn map that’s wrong.”
“Lieutenant, I don’t think the map is wrong,” said the sergeant. “Arlen, tell him what you see.”
His eyes told him the truth before the sergeant even spoke. They were not lost. The lieutenant was simply shooting azimuths down the road every time they halted and matching it to a miniscule section of road on the map. A fool’s way to navigate.
“Well, Corporal? Who’s right?”
He snatched the map and compass from the lieutenant and hopped out up onto the overgrown grassy bank and vaulted a barbed wire fence beside the road. The lieutenant and sergeant both shouted hoarsely at him, but not too loudly, for fear of alerting the opposing side. Crossing a small field at the double, he began climbing the small hill on the far side. Bent nearly in half, he slipped again and again on the long, wet grass. The rubber tread of his boots went wee-ick, wee-ick. Near the treeline, he stopped for a second, leaning forward and resting slightly on his fingertips. He crept around the curve of the hill until the treeline moved up higher and the view of the land opened. Crouching behind a knobby piece of ground, he flattened down a patch of grass and rested the map there, with the compass atop. Find magnetic north, adjust the compass, shoot a bearing on that hill off on the left — from that peak crease the map with his thumbnail along the azimuth. That hill over there: do it again. The spot where the two lines was where he stood. It was actually far to the front of where the lieutenant thought they were. Check again: yes, it was right.
He didn’t walk down the hill, but just tried to control his slide on the wet grass with an outstretched hand, the other clutching his rifle sling. He was moving too fast to stop and the momentum carried him across the small field right to the fence. Climbing over, he sank almost immediately up to his ankles in the red mud. He put the map in front of the platoon commander.
“Marvelous, Corporal. How did you know how to do that?”
The sergeant’s face said, Don’t say anything.
“But, Corporal, don’t you ever go off alone like that. Never again. You need to wait for orders, and take a buddy with you when you do.”
Dutifully, he just stood there and let the lieutenant lay into him for another minute or two. He didn’t even nod in acknowledgment. He just stood there and resisted the temptation to gnaw on his lip. “All right, let’s move out,” the lieutenant said with absolute confidence in himself, as if everything was moving according to plan. And look here, it’s the company commander, marching up the road with his entourage, surely upset about the hold-up. The lieutenant puffed himself up like a peacock, drenched though he was, and strutted toward his commander. With his skinny shoulders thrown back and fists confidently on his hips, there was no doubt in the looie’s mind who made the map solution.
That sonuvabitch, I made that solution. You bastard, you officers are all the same, I ain’t no draftee, ain’t no greenhorn, I volunteered, I’m a Guardsman, I’ve been in three years and you can’t treat me like that, not no more, no sir, you bastard, you come here—
“Hey,” said the sergeant, grabbing his sleeve before he could charge at the lieutenant.
Fuckin’ greenhorn looies, bastards gonna get us all killed, ain’t gonna get me killed, you come here—
“Arlen!”
The jerking on his sleeve was fierce now.
I ain’t going to war with the likes of you, you sonuvabitch, this ain’t what I signed up—
“Arlen!”
His eyelids burst open to bright light. He blinked painfully until he could see again. The skies were a dull silver, sun shining from somewhere behind a thin, even ceiling of clouds. The air was damp, but no smell of rain.
“Arlen, wake up.”
Arlen smacked away the hand that grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t touch me.”
“Oooh, testy, aren’t we?” The short man next to him took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt away.
Arlen sat up. His head was pounding as if he had a hangover, but he hadn’t touched alcohol, not since they were moved down to the staging area.
“You were grinding your teeth. What were you dreaming?”
“We were back in Tennessee, on maneuvers.”
“Oh, God, that’s a nightmare. Was I there?”
“We got any coffee?”
“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, no, I don’t have any coffee. You were asleep for a couple hours. Was I there?”
“Where, Paine?”
“In your dream,” said Paine.
“No.”
“Why not? I was on maneuvers with you. That was the first time we shared a foxhole.”
“Paine, I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot of things.”
His fellow soldier snorted. “Then what do you remember?”
The dream had slipped past him, like a skinny woman in a crowded corridor who turned your head but was gone. You looked back, trying to catch a glimpse of her as she was farther and farther away, but there was so much that was closer. Like General Hobbs telling them a week before that it — the big it, the invasion — was coming soon, and the very next day they awoke to thousands of planes in the air, headed south. And then the division was turned out of its billets in a frenzy and loaded into trucks and driven here to the big tent city, where they had waited and filled out wills and written letters — oh, how the officers insisted they should — and waited some more. Waiting to board the boats that the big brass said were here. Waiting to get across the Channel and through the narrow door into Fortress Europe that the Allies had knocked in. Waiting for the fighting.
None of that was in his dream. He knew that there was something missing from it and it wasn’t Paine. He rolled back and back in his mind, wondering where it was. He remembered rain in the dream and tried to recall what kind of rain, but the only rain he could picture at the moment was the perpetual English drizzle. Good Lord, had this place become all he knew? Back and back, grabbing for that sensation that had left him wondering what he was missing, but all he got was the frigid walk up the gangplank onto the troopship in Boston harbor. The winter seas had scared them all to death. The ship would crest a wave and then pitch forward steeply down the other side; the screws burst from the frigid water into the air and the ship’s engines screamed through the hull as the propellers turned without resistance; and then as every G.I. stomach heaved, they plunged back in and a muffled hum fell over the ship as the screws churned along through the water as they began to ride up the next wave. Eighteen days of constant sickness and anxiety. Every ship had to take its turn as the last one in the convoy, the “graveyard position.” Colonel Ward ordered life jacket drills, and the men practiced putting them on and scrambling topside from the lower decks. Arlen had questioned aloud what good a life jacket would do in icy black water that would freeze you as surely as suck you down. The division had landed in Glasgow and there was the solace of rich green hills and solid ground under their feet. They entrained and moved south under bombing raids. Soldiers and equipment packed the island so tightly it seemed the whole of the country would sink under the weight. Everywhere you went, there was war and preparations for more of it. The big it was coming, although nobody knew where or when. A few times a week, they escaped their drafty quarters to a pub and drank watery war-time beer and swapped rumors, always betting on their next destination. Half said France, half said Norway; the next day some switched from one to the other, and on rare occasions, threw a curveball: Denmark, or Holland. Or no invasion at all: they would be transferred to the Italian front. Or the Rooskies would cut a deal with Hitler and no more second front. Paine would often tell a newcomer to their table that Field Marshal Montgomery was taking command of the division. Nobody wanted that cocky Limey s.o.b leading them into battle and the G.I. would swear endlessly until the others assured him it was all a prank.
That was all there was. He had not left anything out.
“Arlen, wake up.”
“I just closed my eyes for a minute.”
“You want me to go find you some coffee?”
Arlen shook his head.
“Look alive, Sarge is coming.”
Arlen sat up. Sergeant Gunderson was nearly on them. “Private, Corporal, do you have any final letters? Last chance before we get on the boat.”
“When are we going?” asked Paine.
“Soon,” said the sergeant. It was the perpetual answer. “Letters?”
“Not me, Sarge,” said Paine.
Arlen hopped to his feet. “Sarge, you got any mail for me?”
“It’s not mail call. I’m asking you for letters.”
“I was just hopin’ something came through.”
Sergeant Gunderson laughed. “What, are you afraid your gal forgot you?”
Arlen felt a chill up his spine.
Oh Lord, that’s what it was. I forgot her.
He plopped down on the ground.
Paine’s mouth moved, but the sound of passing trucks drowned him out. He looked in annoyance at the convoy, then turned back to Arlen. “What is it?”
It would do no good to admit anything to Paine. He still hardly knew the boy. Arlen thought of him as a boy, for although he was only a few years younger, he had been with the division only a year. He was a randy, foul-mouthed, energetic boy who lusted after — and bedded with shocking regularity — every red- and tow-headed nurse and lonely girlfriend he could. Paine had no self-control, what could he possibly understand about holding onto the hope of the same girl for so many years? How could he understand? They were not the same men.
How could I forget you, Caty? How could I let you go? Why did I let myself?
But he did not. It was not his doing. It was the dream. He had no control over the dream, indeed, no control in it. He did what he did, remembered what he remembered, suffered what he must, and that was that. There was no guarding himself against his baser impulses, no yearning for his Caty that sustained and tormented him. When he had no control, she did not exist to him.
Oh, Caty, I’m so sorry.
But she did not know and never would. What did it matter?
“Arlen, what is it?”
Too embarrassed, Arlen blurted out, “Caty forgot to write me.”
“Oh, hell, you can’t be worrying about her.”
“Dammit, Paine, I do.”
When his comrade spoke again, it was with a more comforting tone. “She didn’t forget you, there’s no way she could.”
“I don’t want her to forget me.” Arlen looked at Paine. “How do you forget all those girls?”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I’ll just say this: I don’t spend my time writing them letters and looking at their pictures every fucking day.”
Arlen looked down dejectedly. “I just want to put everything right. I had so much time . . . I wish I had put things right. Reckon I didn’t. Got to carry that with me.”
Paine snorted. “No way, Arlen. Don’t do that. That’s an extra piece of gear. One piece too many. You carry a woman like that, checking on her all the time, wondering if she’s still there, one day she might not be and then what were you so worried about? And think about what you’d miss in the meanwhile.”
He was not a complete fool, that Paine. Arlen could miss a lot of things: a sniper in the trees, a machine gun nest, an ambush.
“You can do that,” said Paine, “or you can take her, your little piece of kit, and just put her in your foot locker. Lock her up tight and send her on ahead. She’ll be waiting there for us in Berlin. But you gotta forget about her until then.”
Another convoy rumbled up. The G.I.s shouted and made rude gestures to Paine, who hopped up and gave it right back to them. “Those Company L bastards! Look at them, they get to ride in the deuce-and-a-halfs! Those sonsabitches. We get all the hard breaks.”
Paine’s gleefully griping grin was wiped away as he turned back up the road. He grew serious and reached for his helmet. “Grab your pot, Arlen. We’re going.”
And down the road came the company commander, Captain Smith, carbine in hand. It was indeed time. They were going to the boat.
So the final movement was here at last, the time they had prepared for all those years. They were so prepared, it seemed routine. And so perhaps that was why Arlen did not hesitate too long before putting on his helmet. He reached into his chest pocket and pulled out the photo of Caty that he carried there. She had sent him a new one last fall — she looked better than ever. He gave her one last look, like a long drink of cool water from the bucket before walking to the plow and taking up the reins. Then he put her picture inside the front of his helmet, nestled in the liner. He set his helmet on his head, but took it right off again. Too easy to see her there. He moved the photo to the back. There, now she could see where he was going, and he could just look ahead. It was only war that he needed to see now.
“Arlen, let’s go.”
“All right, all right, hold your horses.”
“I’m pissed about having to march. Wish we had those deuce-and-a-halves.”
“You quit your bellyachin’,” said Arlen, smiling suddenly. “You’re gettin’ an all-expenses paid tour of Europe courtesy of your Uncle Sam. You never had it so good.”
“Jeez, aren’t you sore,” said Paine.
“I ain’t. I’m just tired of hearin’ you run your mouth all damn day.”
“Well, you’re stuck with me now,” said Paine.
“And don’t I know it.”
The platoon formed up and fell in with the rest of the company. The long, olive drab column tramped its way down and down, the smell of salt air growing stronger. The smell of the English Channel. Yes, the war really was coming.
Lord, it’s just you and me now. I might forget you at times, Lord, but don’t you forget me.