here i dreamt i was a soldier
Albert Blithe, G

Matters of Pride

You’re nineteen years old when you volunteer for the paratroopers. Nineteen years old and have never been out of the county, let alone the state. Never mind crossing the Atlantic for Europe just to jump out of a moving plane and onto the frontline of a war.

Your father is thin-lipped and silent when you tell him that you’re leaving for Georgia. He listens solemnly across the table, his face impenetrable and stone-still, while you repeat all of the things the recruiter explained about paratrooping and the Airborne and the Allied advance. Your voice quavers with nervousness and excitement, but as always your father remains quiet and unfazed.

After you’ve said everything you have to say and before you get up to leave, you casually mention the extra fifty dollars that will be sent home every month and suddenly the corner of your father’s mouth twitches. He nods and stands abruptly, reaching out unexpectedly to shake your hand.

“Good luck, son,” he says firmly before sending you on your way.

…

When your mother hears that you’ve signed up to be a soldier, she cries – as you think all good mothers should.

She tries to convince you otherwise by saying things only a mother would say, voicing hidden truths about yourself that only a mother would know. They’re the kinds of things you would never admit to yourself, let alone say out loud to another person as you’re about to go to war.

“You’re thinking too much about this” is how she starts, and her voice wavers like she’s not sure if she needs to hit you or beg you to get you to stay. In the end, she just grabs you, clutching you tightly to her body with both hands, her embrace so strong that it makes your arms hurt.

“You’re too damn smart for your own damn good sometimes,” she says, “but you can’t just go thinking yourself through a war, Albert. You can’t just jump out of a plane and hope it’ll make you something you’re not. You’ve got to fight and get your hands dirty and claw your way through other men. Are you prepared to do that?” When she looks at you, her cheeks are wet and her eyes are dark and red, the makeup around them smudged and running in dirty streaks down her face. She grips you firmly at the shoulders, shaking you hard as she forces the words out between her teeth. “Because I am your mother, Albert, and I know that you haven’t got it in you.”

When she say this, it’s less a slap in the face and more a punch in the gut, so much so that you have to take a step backwards, steadying yourself against the doorframe before you look at her again. Your eyes sting with the threat of tears and when you wipe at your face with the back of your sleeve, you can feel your cheeks burning with shame and anger. Your mother reaches out to touch your face and your first reaction is to push her away, but the skin of her palm is cool and worn – a small, familiar comfort from when you were still young. When you let her smooth your hair and forehead she finally smiles and speaks again, her voice now low and tired.

“I know you’ve got it stuck in your head that me and your father think low of you, but there’s nothing farther from the truth,” she says. “Whoever you think you’ve got to prove yourself to, Albert, it’s not worth it.”

You want to tell her that she’s wrong, that you have everything to prove and no one to prove it to but yourself. But the last thing you want is for your mother to keep talking, so you remain silent, wrapped up in her thin and desperate arms, listening as she swears to you it’s not worth it, over and over and over again.

…

Your first week at Toccoa, Skip Muck bets Don Malarkey ten bucks that you can assemble your rifle blind in less than two minutes. The challenge seems like money in the bag, because by now the entire company knows that you’re not as strong or resilient as any of the others. You’ve got a weak stomach and skinny legs, so Malark just laughs and takes the bet, but what he doesn’t know is that your hands are smarter than the rest of you.

Kneeling on a blanket spread out in the middle of the barracks, you make quick work of the rifle; the metal is cool and familiar beneath your fingertips as your hands move blind between the muzzle and the butt. No one knows it, but you’ve been practicing in the small spaces between PT and formations, stealing minutes between marches and meals, so muscle memory works in your favor as the others form a circle, all cheering and hooting in turn. When you finish with time to spare, Malarkey just smiles and shakes his head, handing over his money to Skip as your squad gathers round to clap you triumphantly on the back.

“That’ll teach you to underestimate our boy Albert here,” Muck announces and then slides a five dollar bill into the breast pocket of your uniform with a small pat. “Knew you had it in you, Blithe,” he says and winks, making you blush with pride for the first time in years.

Officers and Soldiers

Most of what you know about war you learn in a hedgerow outside of Carentan.

It’s late at night on D-Day plus six, long after the Germans have stopped singing and Lieutenant Welsh has moved on down the line. Everything around you is uncomfortable – all damp from rain and smelling of mud: your hands, your uniform, Sergeant Martin dozing beside you. The inside of your mouth is still disgusting from that swallow of Welsh’s whiskey and no matter how many times you spit, the taste doesn’t lessen or fade, only moves around from one place to another – from your teeth to your tongue to the back of your throat.

According to Welsh, war is like football and according to Speirs, you’re already dead, and both philosophies seem contrary and horrible to accept when you realize they’re both longhand for the exact same thing.

The exact same thing, only said in different tones of voice – each located at opposite ends of the spectrum and each difficult and bitter for you to swallow. Welsh with his smiling and sarcasm had made it feel too flip, and Speirs with his stark efficiency had made it feel inhuman, but no matter how you think of it, it all seems cruel and bloodless and desperate.

You think about this for a good long while, playing back the things that they told you, when Sergeant Martin turns unexpectedly towards you in the small foxhole that you’re sharing. He has his eyebrows raised and one eye slit open and when he speaks his voice is hoarse from the wet and the cold.

“Is it true, what you said?” he asks. “About what you did on D-Day?”

“Yes, sir,” you admit quietly, your hands folded dumbly in your lap.

He wiggles for a moment with his arms wrapped around himself, nestling closer to his rifle leaned up against the dirt wall. His face tenses with a tiny yawn before he speaks again. “Well, for what it’s worth, I ain’t dead, and I don’t think you need to be either.”

“Now get some rest,” he adds tiredly with another short look in your direction, before drifting back off into sleep.

…

You don’t actually see the Shermans when they appear like cavalry to save the day outside of Carentan, but you do notice the German position falling back when they start to draw heavy fire. Their infantry scatters beneath the shattering trees as their cover erupts with each new explosion, throwing fresh black earth into the air in giant plumes. Up and down the Easy line, officers are shouting for the men to let ‘em have it, krauts in the open and instead of thinking, you raise your rifle, muttering to yourself to come on, come on, searching for silhouettes on the horizon. When you finally find one taking cover behind a tree, the butt of your rifle kicks back sharply against your shoulder as you pull the trigger. Your throat stings with the acrid taste of gunpowder and the soldier crumbles forward before disappearing behind a passing tank.

He’s gone by the time you try to find him so you follow the scattered trail of blood and bandages he’s left behind deep into the trees, past abandoned artillery and gutted trucks and other casualties that are not yours. The air is full of blackened smoke – the smell of burning rubber and blood making you gag – and your eyes tear involuntarily as you stumble forward into a small clearing, the body of your soldier lying face-up in a puddle of light.

He fell backwards to die, clutching his ruptured stomach, so blood is already pooled in the standing folds of his uniform; his eyes stare blindly into the open sky as you approach. You’ve seen dead bodies before – at Normandy and at Carentan and even once back at home when you were still young – but this is the first corpse that you’ve actually caused. The realization of this dawns on you slowly, accompanied by a fresh wave of nausea; your first reaction is to be sick, but you fight the bile rising in your throat, swallowing down your nausea and grief as you focus on the dead soldier’s face. There’s peace in his blank expression, a kind of gentle calm that you find yourself envying, and you look around the forest once to see if anyone’s watching before bending down close to the German paratrooper, your hands moving towards his lapel.

It feels dishonest to take the soldier’s edelweiss – dishonest and slightly unfair. He did, after all, climb a mountain to get it, when all you did was fire your weapon and cry. After a moment’s hesitation, you decide to take it anyway, carefully threading it into a button whole of your uniform before rising to go.

Because in a way, you can’t help but feel like you’ve earned it, but not in way you’d think the other soldiers would understand.

And because you’ve realized there are harder things to do than climb mountains, and there are more important things to lose than your life.

…

When you return to first platoon, Welsh is waiting for you at the edge of the hedgerow, sharing his canteen with Lieutenant Nixon who nods towards at the small white flower on your uniform. “Did you get him?” Nixon asks amusedly, his face flushed with alcohol and adrenaline.

“Yes, sir,” you say with a slight nod, looking away, and both officers smile as Welsh claps you heartily on the back.

“Good job, soldier, he says, nudging your chin with his fist like a proud father. He offers you his canteen with an encouraging look, urging you with a small nudge of his elbow at your side, and you’re surprised this time when you actually take it. Its contents are as sharp and as strong as ever, causing that deep alcohol burn to spread quickly through your chest, making you cough harshly as Welsh and Nixon laugh with approving looks on both their faces.

“Attaboy, Blithe,” Welsh says and raises the canteen towards you in a congratulatory toast. “What did I tell you? One yard at a time.”

The Canopy

There are birds in the trees on the day that you’re shot. Although you don’t know it yet, this small and simple fact is something that will haunt you for the rest of your life.

The canopy is a latticework of branches and light above you and, for a brief moment after you’ve been hit, nothing happens. Then the silence breaks and the birds scatter and your ears pound with blood and gunfire, a hot burn blossoming at the side of your neck as the world slides by overhead – two sets of hands pulling you backwards through the underbrush.

“Covering fire…covering fire!”

All around is the sound of shouting and suddenly the light and the trees disappear and all you can see is Doc Roe’s sharp and womanish face looming large above you as he blots out the sun and the sky with shadow. His voice is low and molasses-thick as he lays his hands on you like a faith healer, muttering psalms and invocations. His fingers are desperate around your throat, slipping as they try to hold the blood in and the infection out.

“Alright, Blithe, I got you. Nice and easy, nice and easy. You’re gonna be alright now, you understand? I got you; it’s me, Gene.”

These are the sorts of things Doc Roe whispers over and over and over again, and it is the same thing he always says so now you’re beginning to wonder, what with his black eyes and his morphine hands, whether all of this praying is for you or for him. His grip tightens around your throat and the world dissolves into cold shivers that run along your arms and legs as your hands scramble for purchase in the trampled grass.

Today is your twenty-first birthday, and today you will learn the difference between just believing you’re dead and actually being it.

Because today you are more alive than you ever have been before and ever will be again.

Red fireworks light the backs of your eyes as the pain travels down your spine and settles in your belly, making you feel sick. The ground smells wet and green beneath you and you think absently for a moment that, if you were to die right then and there, you wouldn't have chosen it any other way.