stay in Paris was brief, and what followed was what the regimental historian could only call a “mad dash” through France and Belgium. In less than a month (they had reached Paris on August 25; Germany on September 12), they would cross the border into Germany. My father gives voice to one soldier’s exhaustion at this time in a story called “A Boy in France.” 14
Until I read this story, published only in an old issue of The Saturday Evening Post, I was left, along with all readers of “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor,” only to wonder what had happened to thatsoldier between D-Day and the war’s end. Here we meet up with Sergeant Babe Gladwaller, last seen in the story “Last Day of the Last Furlough,” now on a battlefield somewhere in France. It is an extraordinary piece of writing, I think, haiku-like in its brevity and evocative power. Babe, nearly dead on his feet from exhaustion, is searching a rain-sogged, blood-soaked battlefield for someplace to sleep. He finds a foxhole with a stained “unlamented” German blanket in it and begins, leadenly, to dig out the “bad spots,” the bloody places at the bottom of the hole. He takes out his GI bedroll and “lifts this bed thing, as though it had some kind of spine to it,” into the hole. He is filthy, wet, cold, and the hole is too short to fully stretch out his legs. My father, at six feet two inches tall, encountered this same problem all too often. An ant bites Babe, and as he swats it, he scrapes the place where his fingernail had been torn off in the morning’s battle.
What Babe does next is something that grabbed me almost bodily when I read it. It is something my father has done to deal with pain and suffering for as long as I have known him. My strong hunch is that this pattern of coping became part of his being during the trauma of war, but, as I said, it’s a hunch, not a certainty, since, of course, I didn’t know him before the war. 15
Babe examines his throbbing finger and then puts his whole hand under the blanket
with the care more like that proffered a sick person than a sore finger, and let himself work the kind of abracadabra familiar to and special for G.I.’s in combat.
“When I take my hand out of this blanket,” he thought, “my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I’ll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I’ll be home, and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll readmy books and I’ll drink the hot coffee and I’ll listen to the music, and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll open the window, I’ll let in a nice, quiet girl—not Frances, not anyone I’ve ever known—and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll ask her to walk a little bit in the room by herself, and I’ll look at her American ankles, and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me—that one about being chartless—and I’ll ask her to read some William Blake to me—that one about the little lamb who made thee—and I’ll bolt the door. She’ll have an American voice, and she won’t ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I’ll bolt the door.”
Babe takes out of his pocket a handful of newspaper clippings. They are full of vacuous gossip about celebrities and fashions, obscene in the context of war. He crumples them into a ball and lies back in despair. At last he reaches for a letter in his pocket, clutching it for dear life, rereading it for the hundredth time. It’s a simple, beautiful letter from his sister Mattie. She tells him she misses him and asks him to come home soon. The story ends as Babe falls “crumbily, bent leggedly, asleep.”
About this time, the men of the Twelfth, including my father, received a similar, much-needed letter written by a young Belgian girl to the parents of a Twelfth Infantry man. He was
Until I read this story, published only in an old issue of The Saturday Evening Post, I was left, along with all readers of “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor,” only to wonder what had happened to thatsoldier between D-Day and the war’s end. Here we meet up with Sergeant Babe Gladwaller, last seen in the story “Last Day of the Last Furlough,” now on a battlefield somewhere in France. It is an extraordinary piece of writing, I think, haiku-like in its brevity and evocative power. Babe, nearly dead on his feet from exhaustion, is searching a rain-sogged, blood-soaked battlefield for someplace to sleep. He finds a foxhole with a stained “unlamented” German blanket in it and begins, leadenly, to dig out the “bad spots,” the bloody places at the bottom of the hole. He takes out his GI bedroll and “lifts this bed thing, as though it had some kind of spine to it,” into the hole. He is filthy, wet, cold, and the hole is too short to fully stretch out his legs. My father, at six feet two inches tall, encountered this same problem all too often. An ant bites Babe, and as he swats it, he scrapes the place where his fingernail had been torn off in the morning’s battle.
What Babe does next is something that grabbed me almost bodily when I read it. It is something my father has done to deal with pain and suffering for as long as I have known him. My strong hunch is that this pattern of coping became part of his being during the trauma of war, but, as I said, it’s a hunch, not a certainty, since, of course, I didn’t know him before the war. 15
Babe examines his throbbing finger and then puts his whole hand under the blanket
with the care more like that proffered a sick person than a sore finger, and let himself work the kind of abracadabra familiar to and special for G.I.’s in combat.
“When I take my hand out of this blanket,” he thought, “my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I’ll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I’ll be home, and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll readmy books and I’ll drink the hot coffee and I’ll listen to the music, and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll open the window, I’ll let in a nice, quiet girl—not Frances, not anyone I’ve ever known—and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll ask her to walk a little bit in the room by herself, and I’ll look at her American ankles, and I’ll bolt the door. I’ll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me—that one about being chartless—and I’ll ask her to read some William Blake to me—that one about the little lamb who made thee—and I’ll bolt the door. She’ll have an American voice, and she won’t ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I’ll bolt the door.”
Babe takes out of his pocket a handful of newspaper clippings. They are full of vacuous gossip about celebrities and fashions, obscene in the context of war. He crumples them into a ball and lies back in despair. At last he reaches for a letter in his pocket, clutching it for dear life, rereading it for the hundredth time. It’s a simple, beautiful letter from his sister Mattie. She tells him she misses him and asks him to come home soon. The story ends as Babe falls “crumbily, bent leggedly, asleep.”
About this time, the men of the Twelfth, including my father, received a similar, much-needed letter written by a young Belgian girl to the parents of a Twelfth Infantry man. He was
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