The Pittsburgh Press (February 6, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
‘I wish it wasn’t over!’
By Florence Fisher Parry
This is the way I heard it; I wish I didn’t have to give it to you second hand. But I have a funny feeling I was there, the picture comes so clear; his weird face, his painful gestures, his twisted figure slumped above his one remaining foot resting on the brass rail of the bar…
You see, I had seen him when he came back. Didn’t know who he was – no one did. Well, from the right side you might have caught the resemblance, his face on that side hadn’t suffered so much damage. But the other side threw the whole visage out of balance. His voice sounded as though it came from the roof of his head – metallic.
Well, anyway…
This friend of mine was standing there at the bar and noticed him.
“Well, Dave?”
“Hello!” he answered in a voice way up there.
“No job yet? Gosh I was sorry we couldn’t find a place–”
“That’s OK. No one can. Not anybody’s fault. After all–”
He let his eye travel downward.
“And remember, I do get a pension. But you’d think, wouldn’t you, that a third-of-a-man could get a part-time job of, say, a few hours a day.”
He drank the drink carefully, tilting his head like a seal that had been trained to juggle.
“I wish,” he said, “I wish it wasn’t over.”
‘Sounds kinda cockeyed’
“Wish what?”
“I wish it wasn’t over. The war, you know.”
“But say – that’s saying a mouthful.”
“Yep, guess so. Killing over, all that, does sound kinda cockeyed. But I wish it wasn’t over all the same. There was a place for me there while the killing was going on. Until I got shot up, that is. Now, now they won’t take me back in the Army, even. When I think of the things I could still do in the Army! If only shoot my head off telling green guys some of the things I’ve learned about combat.
“I’ve had it knocked into me that I’m no good as a civilian, too; there’s no place, no place at all for a half-man even, let alone me. But the Army? What I don’t know about tanks!”
“Well, what?”
“Why there’s nothing I don’t know. First hand, mind. What you get when you’re inside, cooking, or standing up outside, as I was most of the time.
“You know how they’re built? You can sit inside, crouched down, with a slit to see through, or you can stand up and know just how and why you’re being blasted to hell. I did it the standing way. That was early, remember, when we had to attack with so few tanks we couldn’t see each other. Later Patton could spearhead 500 or 1000, and of course the mortality dropped.
As it was in the beginning
“How’d I get through? Don’t ask. It’s cockeyed. When I first got in – that was right at the start – they gave me camouflage – pasteboard tanks and wooden rifles and yet they trained us READY. We were good, and we landed on the beach and of the 303 days we went through combat I was in 301 of ‘em.
“We’d have one tank supported by 200 or 300 troops. So what happened to the tanks? Well, ask a pilot in the Eighth Air Force, one of the first, what happened to them. At first they were shot down, no fighter escort. Same thing. Same thing. The first ones got it.
“Why do I say I wish it wasn’t over? Why because even though it was hell you were part of it, you rated, they could use you. But home? Home to me, and those as bad off or worse?
“Say, I’m married, I have two kids. Look, fella, you’re the first one I’ve met since I got back from the hospital who’ll look me in the face straight on. My wife can’t do it; she looks at the one side of my face, my one eye. The kids – but I won’t go into that.”
“It ended too quick. Just like it missed finishing me off, it missed all around. It came too quick for us and it ended too quick for us. This peace is like a scab over a sore still lousy with infection.”