Follow-on from D-Day

Chapter 14  (continued)  Shower of Frogs

On the evening of September 22 we saw a movie. Once it was over, the enormous hangar was lit up and we had an hour before lights out. The hangar's lights were pale green fluorescent, which gave a washed-out appearance to the human face. I sat on the edge of my cot writing a letter. I looked around me at the dozens of men, some new and unknown to me, others whom I had known in daily, hourly acquaintance for over two years. Some were lying down, some sitting up playing cards, others talking, smoking, joking, fussing with their equipment. There was movement to the letter box, the water fountain, the latrine. I observed the strain in their cheeks and jaws. These men whose faces were once relaxed and whose smiles were easy had tension in the muscles of their faces. Many had accumulated a smattering of gray hairs. Some had a headful. They could still laugh with the unmistakable free and easy American laughter; only it was keyed lower. Their eyes were tired and did not light up with the quick and sudden changes of youth, which was theirs by age. Impression after impression had, upon the sensitive plate in the eyes, left their everlasting pictures.

Weariness, death, a thousand strange and unusual sights in foreign lands; bitter cold, intense heat; fear, sickness, sorrow, and loneliness. The sound of explosions, the stench of bloated bodies, the strain of fog, the tastelessness of food, the rattle of mess kits, the click of rifles, the whispering of challenges in the unfriendly night; the bloodless faces, the whine of motors, the shrill of whistles, the nausea of latrines. The remembrance of the wounded's cry, the repetition of olive drab-the sights, sounds, smells innumerable burning upon the inner eye-all formed into one enormous picture. Eyes that in that brevity of time had seen too much, perhaps. Too much to absorb it all, leaving it, as it were, all jammed up in the outer eyes, making them heavy with strain, meaningful with memories, saturated with history.

Someday, I thought, these men whose eyes searched ever westward will come home. They will come home to tell their stories, individually and collectively. Some will remember much, others little. Some would talk hesitatingly, but most would open the gates of their dammed-up impressions and a great flood would pour forth. These men who were on a pilgrimage of liberation and who on their way saw half a world, most of which lay in various degrees of ruin, death, and destruction, would one day truly come home. They would come home certainly not as heroes, nor seeking applause, nor pity, but only understanding and love. They would come home with a great hope and a renewed faith-a hope for peace and a faith in America.

The next day my glider left English soil, and when it landed I was in Holland, miles from the target, surrounded by Germans. In the days that followed, my feelings about the American soldier were put to a severe test. It was in some cases a shattering experience, a deeply disillusioning experience. It temporarily embittered me toward almost all my fellow Americans, while setting the seal of admiration upon a few and separating me, to some degree, from the rest of mankind. Being a prisoner of war was one of those experiences no man in his right mind would ask for, but once he endured it, it would be equally foolish to deny its compensations.