I’m sure the officers think it’s a pretty good scam, too, because no one ever does persecute or prosecute Pete, or even try to make his life miserable. But they check everybody’s full field pack after that. From then on, our ‘water marches’ are for real.
DOCTOR SMET
Well, finally we’re getting ready to ship out. We’ve been prepared for sixteen months now, to go to the South Pacific. We’ve been doing mock beach landings, jungle survival and those water marches. They issue special equipment and uniforms for fighting in the South Pacific. That’s a place we don’t want to go.
Then, at the last minute, we’re issued new equipment. Overcoats, galoshes, wool knit caps, olive drab long johns with trap doors. After a long train trip with the blinds down, we’re packed into the biggest damned boat I’ve ever seen in my life. Going up the gangplank it looks like a wall with round windows. It turns out it is the biggest ship in the world at that time – the Queen Elizabeth. We dash across the Atlantic at twenty-three knots per hour in five days, without escort. We’re supposed to be faster than submarines can shoot or something like that. But I doubt it, I rarely take my life jacket off. There are fifteen thousand of us packed into that ship, most of us are seasick after the first day. I spend as much time as possible floating in an old bathtub I find. The water sloshes over the sides with each lurch, but I stay more or less steady, waterlogged but not sick. Simple physics.
Eight of us pack a tiny third class cabin built for two. The mess lines are so long, one can just finish one meal in time to stand in line for the next, but most of us aren’t into eating much anyway.
We land in Scotland, and are then shunted from train to train. European trains, all darkened, shades drawn, with little cabins, chock full, smothering in full field packs and new uniforms. Finally, in the middle of the night, we arrive at what had been an old textile mill in the town. We’re supposed to be hidden here, for who knows how long. But this is impossible. You can’t really hide a whole division and there’s division after division hidden all over England waiting for the big moment.
We’re virtual prisoners in that smelly mill. Then somebody finds out that a black transportation unit had stayed in this mill just before us. So, without asking anybody, the goofy southern crackers throw all the mattresses out the window, into the courtyard, and burn them. After that, we sleep on the woven canvas straps of the bunks. Max Corbeil would have felt right at home.
One day I’m picked for a detail moving officers’ footlockers out of some trucks. I don’t know what these officers store in these footlockers, but they’re heavy enough for dead bodies. There are too many officers and not enough enlisted men in a Regimental Headquarters Company.
Pushing a heavy one up onto a truck, I really hurt myself. I’m sure I have a hernia, I hope I have a hernia. I’m transported to a hospital in a civilian ambulance. It turns out what I’ve done is develop a varicocele. I don’t know what it is, but hope it’s serious. It turns out to be a varicose vein in one of my testicles. It’s tender and I can feel it, like little worms, but it’s not what the doctors call ‘disabling’. We’re within weeks of the big move, nobody knows anything for sure, and if they do, they’re not telling.
I spend as much time as possible complaining, writhing, moaning, groaning. They give me a little canvas bag to wear on my balls. It’s like a cross between a G-string and a jock strap. They even give me an extra for when one gets too smelly. Two days later a doctor stands at the foot of my bed. He smiles.
‘I guess we ought to operate on this, but it’s not going to kill you and you won’t need to do any heavy lifting.’
I can tell he’s never carried a full field pack or an officer’s footlocker.
‘You just stay in bed here and I’ll have you back to your outfit in no time. Don’t you worry about it.’
He says this as if ‘getting back to my outfit’ is my fondest dream, like going home.
After he leaves, I’m really in pain; mental anguish. This could have been the chance of a lifetime for me to stay in England, practically like a civilian for the whole damned war.
My prime qualification is as rifleman. That’s the worst MOS you can have. The second worst is scout, that’s my second MOS, but my third is typist. I’d learned to type in high school and had gotten a good score on the army typing test. It’s my ace in the hole, a deep hole, unfortunately probably a foxhole. I know that if the outfit leaves without me, they’d need me in England. I’ll volunteer to type out forms, or maybe some Major’s personal war novel. Anything. My fingers itch to type.
The next time Doctor Smet comes around I’m curled up in agony out of habit more than anything; but he’s written off that varicocele. Yes sir, he’s going to do me a big favour and get me back to my outfit. He’s my friend. He’s going to save me from that nasty operation. I think he expects me to kiss his hand.
But now, of all things, he becomes interested in my right foot. I’ve always had a bump sticking out on the back of my right heel, since I was a kid. Whenever I buy new shoes I develop a blister there. It’s one of those things you learn to live with. He probes it with a finger, then a needle. He tries jiggling it back and forth. He keeps asking me if it hurts and I yowl. Tears come to my eyes. He writes on his little clipboard.
He brings another doctor over to look at it. I scream some more, pretending to be brave. He tells me I have what’s called a calcaneus spur. He asks me if it hurts when I walk.
’Well, yes Sir, it does. It gets all red and swells up on marches and I have blisters it’s so sore.’
He writes some more on his clipboard. Maybe I have a second shot at England.
I’m in the hospital four more days. Every time I have a chance, and nobody’s looking, I bang that calcaneus spur on the metal siding of the bed. I start limping when I go to the bathroom. It begins to hurt so much I need to limp. I stay awake and moan at night a lot. The nurses give me aspirins to shut me up.
The next day, Doctor Smet comes around with another doctor. This one seems to be a specialist. He turns me on my stomach, bends my knee up, twists my ankle in all directions and starts hitting the back of my foot with a little rubber hammer.
Of course, I’m screaming, howling, the whole time. I don’t need to fake it much because with all my thumping on the bed, that foot’s practically a piece of hamburger meat. The two doctors step back from the bed, ‘consultation time’ I figure. Maybe they’ll decide to discharge me, give me a medical discharge. I’ll have a disability pension. The second doctor comes up to the side of the bed. He has his clipboard at his side.
‘You’re in Headquarters Company, Regimental Headquarters, isn’t that right Soldier?’
‘Yes sir, I&R.’
‘Well, you won’t need to march much then. Just take care of that foot.’ He writes on the clipboard. He looks down at me and winks. Doctors, especially military doctors, should never wink.
‘I’m assigning you back to duty. The nurse will give you some Band-Aids for that foot. Nice try.’
And so the future painter, engineer, teacher, psychologist, writer is condemned to death, with a wink!
NEED A BODY CRY
When I come back to our mattress-less mill, I flop out on the canvas strap bed, trying to get it into my mind that I’m still in the army, the same army. All I have to show for my medical malingering is two dinky ‘ball holders’ and a sore Band-Aided foot. It isn’t an hour later when Diffendorf, our balding mail orderly, comes in. He’s the one who first announced to me the happy fact that I would be balder than he is before I reach thirty. Perhaps it was a classic example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway, from then on, I’m aware of my constantly expanding forehead. I now have a forehead that goes practically all the