Double Jeopardy by Martin M. Goldsmith

ever-increasing whine of some great shell. A five-point-nine. I could identify it by its sound. As it came down upon me, making my ears vibrate, I tried to press my body into the wet earth. My fingers frantically dug into the ground; my eyes filled with mud; my teeth clenched until they hurt; and my bowels opened....
     
    Every soldier falls in love with his nurse. I, not much of a military man anyway, did not. The war had not caused me to forget Anita and, despite her very infrequent letters, my thoughts were ever full of her. Yet, somehow, the picture was blurred, pleasurably blurred if you wish, the imperfections blotted out. Moments dwelt on in memory, moments very often of the flesh; memories of moments only to be whispered when we were alone together. Desire is an insidious parasite gnawing at one's body. And so, paradoxically enough, although it was Anita who kept me away from women who could be had for the taking, women like the pockmarked roads of France over which an army marched, it was also Anita who made me glaringly conscious of a need for women. Celibacy is the pathway to depraved thoughts, even as war is the pathway to power of depraved minds. The very fact that Anita wrote so seldom made me want her more. Man usually kills the thing he loves, and cherishes that which ultimately destroys him. In the trenches, with death ever near like a white bird flying, it was not so hard to hold one's emotions in check. So frantically were we endeavoring to cling to life, we wooed and clung to her as though she were our mistress. Then, too, we could always look forward to being relieved, new troops to supplant us in this war that was merely a prelude to all other wars, and then —;a few days in Paris. Actually, the fact that few of us ever got to Paris was of little importance. Paris was a symbol. It represented any woman's arms.
    Lest you suspect otherwise and visualize my nurse as some homely harridan, I would like to make it clear that Mademoiselle Monet was a very attractive person, one with whom many a man might fall in love. And pray do not think that I was viewing her with the astigmatic eyes of war which distorted everything. My nurse was truly beautiful.
    Furthermore, Gilberte Monet was in love with me.
    How this happened, I cannot explain. There have been many jokes made about French girls. There is the story that they considered it a patriotic duty to sleep with each and every one of the Allied troops from the brigadier generals right on down the line. Gilberte was not one of those and her love for me in no way hinged upon my uniform. Well, whatever her reason for loving me, I only know that when I eventually became aware that I was in a long, white ward, a friendly-looking dark-eyed girl in nurse's garb was bending over the bed and whispering some strange, incomprehensible syllables which she later told me meant: “So you are awake at last, my darling.”
    Her voice was gentle, soothing like the voice of a mother speaking softly to her frightened little boy who lay hurt and shivering on his bed, shrinking from imagined horrors. And I was that boy—;but the horrors were ghastly realities. No war has ever been won, not even by the conquerors; and how can one describe that gray, terror-splashed tumult that rages in the frontiers of the mind; that frontier where reason locks with reality? Beyond the trenches lies a region like unto the world in the beginning, without form and void. This I know, for I have been there.
    Yes, Gilberte Monet loved me and it was good to be loved; especially good while I lay broken mentally and physically, afraid to die, yet more afraid to live in a world gone mad.
    You may laugh if you like. I wouldn't blame you at all. It does seem ludicrous that I, a timid, small-town druggist could so play havoc with a woman's heart. I am certainly no Don Juan.
    I was the only American in the hospital and I must have been there quite a long time because none of the other patients were there when I