Chapter 10 [Shower of Frogs (WWII memoir), William Stigall]
It was now the middle of November (1943). We were somewhere in the cold North Atlantic. We heard the high-pitched, pulsating honk of seagulls. They swooped above us crying with delight as they dived into the garbage-filled wake of our ship. Experienced seamen, as we now were, we smelled land. Rumors and guesses got all mixed up with wishes and hopes. The choices were as extravagant as the longings. Scotland, Norway, Ireland, Greenland, Iceland, England, of course, and wistfully, the States. I do not recall the moment of docking on the east coast of North Ireland. But I vividly remember the first images. They persisted and are with me still.
One visual: the lumbering, ponderous Cydesdale horses pulling small solid wagons loaded with whiskey barrels over the cobbled streets of modem Belfast. One auditory: the joyous and friendly sound of Irish voices speaking the cadences of my native tongue.
...
I had treasured the sun breaking over the lovely inland Lough Neagh and had experienced one of the
most memorable New Year's Eves of my life. After five years of silence--a silence imposed upon themselves, a silence of all the church bells of North Ireland, which, were they to ring, would announce an invasion by the Germans-the breaking of that long five-year silence by ringing all the church bells all over North Ireland at midnight December 31, 1943. The bells of Ballymena rang
joyously to bring in the year 1944--the year of the great invasion of occupied Europe.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Monday, July 9, 2018
The Atlantic: November 1943
The Atlantic, November 1943
Sea voyages were all alike: that is, for soldiers they were all alike.
Days were long; hours passed slowly. All effort was irksome. Time
hung upon inactivity. Our quarters, the hold, "the interior cavity of
a ship where cargo is stored," was sealed off above by a hatch covered
with coarse, airtight tarpaulin. The tarp and hatch were never
removed. In the cavity the air was at best secondhand and grew
heavy for want of oxygen. It was further weighted with the stale
odor of men, for in spite of excellent bathing facilities, we smelled.
...
In two days we dropped anchor in the port of Oran, Algeria.
Oh, no! Not North African again? Rumors and rumors. No shore
leave. Rumors and more rumors. In two days we hoisted anchor,
joined a convoy, and headed out into the Mediterranean Sea. At
noon the next day the public-address system reported Gibraltar on
the starboard side. We went on deck, sailed westward past "the
Rock" out to a great ocean of mist and fog. Whereupon I lost all
sense of direction.
...
Stacked in steerage, silent and smelling, I felt like a body in a
morgue. With no other desire than to be left alone, I thought back to
the day of my enlistment and of the appalling waste of my life. Such
thoughts were, for thousands of us, a recurring and corrosive experience.
Gigantic forces were at work in the world outside. I seemed
to be standing in a hole that got deeper and deeper. A soldier 's life
was consumed with waste time. He found "hurry-up-and-wait"
humorous because it was hopeless. Mail brought news of births and
deaths, of graduations and weddings. They stirred the juices of a
man's ambition and fermented his sense of waste time and life.
Fretting as a prisoner of the great war, I thought I saw a Fifth Horseman, Waste, riding an olive-drab horse through Revelation.
Added to waste and life was wasted talent. No matter how
ingenious a soldier might be, there seemed little he could do to
affect his world. I enlisted because I sat by and watched country
after country in Europe fall before the Nazis. In my infinitely small
way I felt responsible. I felt guilty for the events that had led to Pearl
Harbor. As an educated man, I was aware of world events, but I had
chosen to pursue my own ends in a safe midwestern America. I
grew up a pacifist, believing that war was evil and that there had to
be another way. The smashing tactics of Hitler upon an undefended
Europe convinced me of the fallacy of my views.
I would soon have been drafted, but I wanted the decision to be
mine. Only in this way could I live with the army. Six months after
enlistment I realized that anything less than combat would seem
like but two acts of a three-act play. I had to know what war was
like. I had to find out what I and other men were like in war. Quite
by chance I was assigned to an outfit destined to provide me with
the third act.
Also, as an artist, I felt it was necessary to experience the great
event of my time. Reading about it would not be enough. I had to
live it. But I did not want to be destroyed by it. I especially did not
want to die, nor even to lose my way in it. But having once penetrated
the swamp of that dark forest of war and the preparation of
war, I could not turn back. My mind was too curious, my heart too
engaged.
Sea voyages were all alike: that is, for soldiers they were all alike.
Days were long; hours passed slowly. All effort was irksome. Time
hung upon inactivity. Our quarters, the hold, "the interior cavity of
a ship where cargo is stored," was sealed off above by a hatch covered
with coarse, airtight tarpaulin. The tarp and hatch were never
removed. In the cavity the air was at best secondhand and grew
heavy for want of oxygen. It was further weighted with the stale
odor of men, for in spite of excellent bathing facilities, we smelled.
...
In two days we dropped anchor in the port of Oran, Algeria.
Oh, no! Not North African again? Rumors and rumors. No shore
leave. Rumors and more rumors. In two days we hoisted anchor,
joined a convoy, and headed out into the Mediterranean Sea. At
noon the next day the public-address system reported Gibraltar on
the starboard side. We went on deck, sailed westward past "the
Rock" out to a great ocean of mist and fog. Whereupon I lost all
sense of direction.
...
Stacked in steerage, silent and smelling, I felt like a body in a
morgue. With no other desire than to be left alone, I thought back to
the day of my enlistment and of the appalling waste of my life. Such
thoughts were, for thousands of us, a recurring and corrosive experience.
Gigantic forces were at work in the world outside. I seemed
to be standing in a hole that got deeper and deeper. A soldier 's life
was consumed with waste time. He found "hurry-up-and-wait"
humorous because it was hopeless. Mail brought news of births and
deaths, of graduations and weddings. They stirred the juices of a
man's ambition and fermented his sense of waste time and life.
Fretting as a prisoner of the great war, I thought I saw a Fifth Horseman, Waste, riding an olive-drab horse through Revelation.
Added to waste and life was wasted talent. No matter how
ingenious a soldier might be, there seemed little he could do to
affect his world. I enlisted because I sat by and watched country
after country in Europe fall before the Nazis. In my infinitely small
way I felt responsible. I felt guilty for the events that had led to Pearl
Harbor. As an educated man, I was aware of world events, but I had
chosen to pursue my own ends in a safe midwestern America. I
grew up a pacifist, believing that war was evil and that there had to
be another way. The smashing tactics of Hitler upon an undefended
Europe convinced me of the fallacy of my views.
I would soon have been drafted, but I wanted the decision to be
mine. Only in this way could I live with the army. Six months after
enlistment I realized that anything less than combat would seem
like but two acts of a three-act play. I had to know what war was
like. I had to find out what I and other men were like in war. Quite
by chance I was assigned to an outfit destined to provide me with
the third act.
Also, as an artist, I felt it was necessary to experience the great
event of my time. Reading about it would not be enough. I had to
live it. But I did not want to be destroyed by it. I especially did not
want to die, nor even to lose my way in it. But having once penetrated
the swamp of that dark forest of war and the preparation of
war, I could not turn back. My mind was too curious, my heart too
engaged.
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