Arlington Anthology, Part 1
by Charles D. Phillips
Major Rush Hawes
U. S. Army
1885-1918
In autumn in the mountains of Tennessee, I dearly loved to watch the morning fog swirl up and blanket the warm lake. We would sit in duck blinds, surrounded by the fading smells of coffee, biscuits, and ham, while the smells of sipping whiskey and gun oil gained strength in the warming air. In France, the barrages lasted for hours, and your boots would fill with fetid water while you shook and waited, squatting midst the odor of human waste and fear. After the barrage ended, I led my men to our firing steps. As we moved, I could see steam rise up in the cold air from the gaping wounds of those who remained lying in the mud. We counter-attacked from shell hole to hole, then trench to trench. I blew my whistle and moved my men on. In the holes that marked our observers' posts, bloody vapor mingled with the lingering fog and gas. Life and death intertwined and slid away on the cutting wind. With each step, that sad dew dampened my greatcoat and permanently tinted my heaving lungs.
Capt. Aaron Grant
U.S. Army Air Corps
1915-1944
A flash to one side, then the deep burning in my shoulder and chest. One of the starboard engines raced out of control. Looking at it, I could almost feel its terror as I watched its more and more frantic efforts to tear itself loose from the wing, free itself of the plane's dying weight, skim the treetops and fly home alone. Then the explosions lost their brittle edges. Shells seemed to blossom. Ominous black flowers grew enormous in the cold, thin air, then disappeared.
David C. Pardue
U.S. Army
1930-1999
I was always afraid. No blinding rage or detachment to move me on. Just the fear growing like a tumor, filling my chest, squeezing my heart, making it pump faster, making me cough because it was so hard to breathe. I advanced afraid. I retreated afraid. I killed afraid. I ate afraid. I shaved afraid. In my dreams, I died writhing, coughing, and afraid. I would awaken shaking, smoke a cigarette and try to take a piss in the snow. I was always afraid.
Capt. Sidney Kahn
U.S Army
1920-1994
I was a hematologist, board-certified, fellowship-trained, and working in a university hospital, studying anemia in children. I went there and became a carpenter, pursuing my new craft with sterile, stainless steel saws, hammers, and locking pliers. To a hematologist, blood is a slowly undulating river full of life. To a carpenter, it is just a fluid that leaks from perforated containers. For the surgeons, it was a chance to gain something like a month's experience in just a few days. For the rest of us, it was something else. I walked inside the perimeter fence, holding long conversations with a woman a million miles away. I would tell her about the color of blood from different sites, the smell of different wounds, and my almost incessant desire to drop to my knees in the mud, hold my head in my hands, and cry. Not weep, but cry like some dying animal with its foot mangled in a trap. Later, I would tell her nothing except that while I talked to her, I had to picture her doing things nearly absolute in their normalcy.
Private Leroy Peterson
U.S. Marine Corps
1946-1966
I was the new guy. The medic didn't know me. He just did his job in a whirlwind of morphine, packing and gauze, then stuffed me into the chopper. In WWII, my Dad's buddies carried him miles back to the aid station, and stayed with him until the doctors shooed them away. At home, when he had too much to drink, his voice would catch when he told that part. But, they laid me outside a tent against a wall of sandbags. The mortars started, and they all ran for the bunkers. And I didn't want my Mom. I wanted buddies like my Dad's to pick me up, put my arms around their shoulders, take my full weight across their sweaty backs and carry me away.
Private Wayne Arrington
U.S. Army
1947-1984
You know, I was never wounded. Not a scratch, and I was in the shit so much. I spent time in the Mekong, the Parrot's Beak, and even spent some time deep in Cambodia. Never wounded. No Purple Heart, just the clap a couple of times and a sprained ankle when I was completely stoned once in Saigon. I mean guys just exploded next to me, and I never got hurt. A mortar shell dropped so close that it knocked me out. I was covered with so much of the guy next to me that they were strapping me onto a stretcher when I woke up. They told me to just lie still. They were waiting for the chopper to evacuate me. I convinced them that I wasn't concussed, but I had bad pain and needed morphine. They shot me up, and I went into a nod. When they got me back and cleaned me up, they kicked my ass back to the bush. But, hey, I got dope, two chopper rides, a hot meal, clean gear. The morphine, though, was about as good as a handjob, nowhere near as good as the shit I could get any place on the street, not even close, but, hey, I had been in the field for two weeks and in a pinch you do with what you got to. Same thing later back in the world. Always hard to find the really good stuff, you know, but always good to find the really hard stuff. I came back to Texas with three tattoos, a Combat Infantryman's Badge, a Unit Citation, a Bronze Star, and The Royal Order of the Poppy Jones with Marijuana Leaf Clusters, but no friggin' Purple Heart.
Charles D. Phillips is a public health professional who lives and teaches in College Station, Texas. He has published widely for many years in professional and technical journals. His literary non-fiction has appeared in The Touchstone. His literary efforts now focus on flash fiction and short plays.