No Weapon Shall Prosper

No Weapon Shall Prosper

Frankie's dad would have been proud-proud to see his soldier son
accoutered for battle against a world evil. He would have been proud to
see him marching in step, spit-shined boots, back bowed, head held high
and heroic. He would have been pleased that his son was primed to
defend America's freedom and its way of life.
"Those savage rape-mongering Huns," his father would declare with moral
indignation whenever he read the newspaper. "Somebody must bring them
to their knees."
And who would be better equipped than his most noble son? His dad would
be bursting with pride for his son, more pride than when he slapped his
son on the back at the recruiting station and said, "Give em what for
Frankie." Those were his dad's last words before Frankie returned the
slap with a trembling handshake.
Turning to his mother, who, fraught with apprehension ever since
Frankie was drafted, resolved to be brave and stoic like all
born-and-bred Nebraskan mothers, but instead went limp in Frankie's
arms. Her composure had vanished as Frankie's dad came over and wrapped
his arm around her ample bosom, helping her to a vacant bench under a
large ash tree. "Now, now, Mother, be strong. He'll be just fine," his
dad would say, patting her forehead with his handkerchief.
"Francis," she said, trembling, ashamed of her lapse of control, "You
be a good boy and pray to Jesus. You're my only son. I 'spect God would
understand the relevance." She kissed him and slipped his small Gideon
Bible into his coat pocket. "Don't forget to read the scriptures
Francis. I wrote you a special note inside. Read it when you feel alone
or afraid."
Frankie waved goodbye through the dust as the Model T pulled way from
the curb. He saw his mother dabbing her tears, while his father waved a
small American flag, his chest pointing skywards. This was the proudest
day of his life.

But while hunched down in the trenches, Frankie believed that if his
dad could see him now, he would probably reel back like one who has
just witnessed something unbelievably horrible and offensive and state
indignantly, that this isn't the way war is supposed to be fought. It's
supposed to be chivalrous and fair! Who's running this show? Aren't
there civilized rules for killing and maiming?
Frankie had wished his dad's sanitized perception of war were a
reality-like wooden soldiers, erect and colorful with red grins painted
from ear-to-ear, their happy faces chiseled without any trace of misery
or fear or wrath or madness.
But his father's perception would have been crushed and replaced with
blame and self-loathing-loathing his own previous illusions that war
was grand and sacred and glorious and purifying and then blame himself
for burying the truth with pride, as his son goest headlong before the
fall.
"My son doesn't belong here," he would cry, pulling his son from the
stinking trench. "This is an abomination! My son is a good boy and has
never done anything wrong. My God what have I done?" His dad would be
horrified if he could see him now as he blended with the landscape of
darkness and death and the whole stinking affair. Instead of marching
in ranks with spit-shined boots his dad would find him huddled behind a
wall of mud and his shiny boots disappearing under mud up to his
ankles. His rifle wouldn't be pointed at the Huns but jammed with grit
from mud in an ocean of mud.
The only things that weren't bothered by the mud were the rats. They
seemed to flourish there. Their fat, wet bodies scurried about the
trenches, swimming through puddles laced with the blood of his comrades
who had sacrificed themselves to its tenacious mire. Frankie's dad
would have seen bodies left lying in impossible contortions. Some would
gape up at him with bloated faces like parade balloons. Others would be
seen cradling a severed arm while they bled to death waiting for a
stretcher-bearer to rush them to an ambulance.
If Frankie's dad could have envisioned the muddy dugout where his son
fought and slept and shivered from the rain and frost, he would have
been aghast to see how humanity could be so inhuman to send young boys
to such a pathetic place. He would have lectured Frankie's commander on
the rules of civilized warfare, expressing his horror at what is being
allowed to continue unabated. He would have been appalled at the
conditions. After all, this isn't anything like the war his father
fought in.
But then again, as Frankie's mom confessed discreetly one night after
dinner, "Your dad never fired a shot in the war. Your father was an
accountant and never left the medical supply ship except to step onto a
dinghy to collect mail that the troops were sending home. I know,
Frankie, because that's what he wrote to me in his letters."
In the trench, the irony was revealed all at once: His father didn't
carry a gun or a bayonet or a rifle or bullets or a canteen or a
machine-gun or wear a steel helmet on his head. He didn't sweat or dig
or vomit or piss his pants or sleep in puddles and mud or get trench
foot or lice or hear the death shrill of bombs as they cascade around
you looking to tear into soft flesh. He didn't go hungry and his body
didn't ache from stress and fear and he never had to worry about the
rash that spreads between your legs and covers your crotch as you
wonder if all that violent scratching will consume you before any
shrapnel ever will. His dad's eyes never burned like torches from
fatigue and his head never burned from fever and he was never sick from
typhus. His teeth never shook like castanets as the ground opened and
closed around him like an angry god who never gets enough
appeasement.

"You know that dark spot on dad's index finger?" Mom asked. "Punctured
it with a pencil lead. The lead's still there you know. Your dad was a
supply clerk. Why, didn't he tell you that Francis?"
"Sure mom, I knew that." But Frankie had lied because he didn't want
to believe his dad was just a pencil pusher. Not when Ben Talbert had a
dad who fought in the Spanish-American War. Ben was always boasting
about his father and his charge up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt
and with his carbine blazing and how Colonel Teddy proudly jutted those
famous clenched teeth of his while a bunch of medals were pinned on his
father's chest and what a hero he was especially since he lost an arm
for his country and it sure didn't hurt 'Ol Teddy's career
neither.
Frankie's father fought in the same war as Roosevelt but he might as
well have been on a church picnic though he still had lots of stories
to tell but-no medals. Frankie heard all the stories while he and his
dad would fly-fish or work on their old jalopy or while they lied on
their backs during a break in the wheat fields looking up at the blue
sky.
"Yes sir, Frankie my boy, we showed em all right," he remembered his
dad saying. "Our boys chased em all the way back to Spain with a
message for their queen or king or whoever runs that place. Ya don't
mess with Pershing or with Teddy or with The RoughRiders or Americans
or anybody from the wheat fields of Nebraska. We shouted, Manifest
Destiny! Democracy! Freedom! Liberty! God Bless America! "Yup, Frankie
my son, we showed em all right. We charged through a tempest of fire
and steel. You should have seen em once our boys broke through-a
terrible mess. Bodies piled everywhere. It was chaos! Most of them
dropped their rifles in a panic and ran as fast as they could and then
paddled back to Spain. Yup, our boys showed em all right."
Yeah dad, you showed em all right. From an office encased in thick
steel anchored safely away from the shells and bullets and smoke and
heat and pain and malaria and severed limbs and death. But you could
have suffered from graphite poisoning from the lead pencil, and then I
would have had something to brag about to Ben Talbert. I could have
told him you almost died and he would have been impressed because he
doesn't know graphite from saltpeter and he would have probably thought
it was poisoning from some kind of battle wound like gangrene. But you
weren't poisoned or shot at or bombed or sick from malaria or dysentery
or anything. Just a stupid puncture in your index finger that probably
bled no less than a single drop which a single bandage took care of and
then you probably just kept on writing with the stupid pencil without
any more thought of it.
But the more Frankie thought, the more he looked at the issue and
believed that maybe his dad was just relating what had actually happen
in the war without actually being present. To his dad's credit maybe he
was saying what he heard second hand from the boson on the mail dinghy.
Maybe the boson filled him with news everytime dad picked up the mail.
Come to think of it, he always spoke more as an observer, skillfully
avoiding accountability as a participator. Maybe it's better that dad
was a distant observer instead of a participator so he could remember
the details more clearly.
Details are important when telling stories. People are always asking
for details. Did it hurt? Were you scared? What were you thinking when
they were shooting at you? Were you cold or hungry or tired or happy or
sad or worried or scared or excited or just pain crazy? When you're a
participator, you don't remember details because you're to busy trying
to stay alive or looking for a place to bury your head so it doesn't
get shot off. Half the time your eyes are clenched tight hoping to keep
smoke or shrapnel from blinding you while your eardrums are blown away
from artillery so your senses aren't keen and therefore your brain has
nothing to observe. You can get away with not remembering details when
they ask you because you were to concentrating on just staying
alive.
They might ask if you prayed while you were fighting. Surely there's
time to pray while you're being shot at?
Nope, you would say. Can't think about praying. You can't concentrate
on your family or home or your girlfriend or your dog or the farm or
anything like that. You just think about what you're doing like trying
to stay alive and moving forward even when your bowel's are weak and
your throat feels like their stuffed with cotton and you could just die
for a glass of water. You move forward in your own little tunnel and
everything goes in slow motion and your firing crazily but not even
seeing because your eyes are full of grit and sweat and strain but
before you know it the shootings stopped and everybody's cheering and
whooping and then your at their heels because they have no more fight
in them. You begin to whoop and holler yourself; not from victory but
from relief that you held your bowels in check and didn't freeze with
fear or turn coward. Then eventually the shaking stops and you can put
a cigarette to your lips without looking like your scared but then you
start thinking again that the next time you might forget how brave you
were and decide you had enough and turn coward and run the other way as
fast as you can through the sucking mud and the shell holes. But there
was just more of the same behind you if you did turn coward and
run.
Well, Ben Talbert you can have your boasting and goo-goo-eyed girls and
nickel cigars and slaps on the back and free malts just because your
dad lost an arm, but I'm here to tell ya that I'd rather have my dad in
one piece because when I go back I want to have him wrap his arms
around me and kiss me and tell me how proud he is of me and how much he
loves me and put a ring on my finger and slaughter a fatted-calf and
throw me a party and then we'll see who gets the girls and nickel
cigars and all. It don't matter that my dad suffered no more than a
puncture from a lead pencil because I love him more than anything in
the world and will tell him so when I see him again.
But, I won't get to see him by turning coward cause they will sure hang
me if I'm not dead before that. So I'll be all eyes and ears for what
they're worth, but for now all I see is a curtain of fog. But, it's
better than getting gassed and not being able to see at all.
Once gas hits you it burns your eyes and stings your lungs and all
manner of things come out of your mouth and you reach for your mask and
put it on but a trace of gas has already entered your lungs and you
retch violently, so you throw off your gas mask in a panic and then
your dead. So many friends would be joking and laughing one moment and
grabbing their throats the next. But some, if they were lucky just went
blind for a while but the not so lucky were blinded permanently; or
worse if they were hit by mustered gas because it burns everything it
touches.
Frankie knew that there were rules written somewhere about conduct in
war. Of course the normal things of war were acceptable like killing
with guns and bayonets or even burning other's alive with a
flame-thrower. Even shooting prisoners was tacitly condoned in some
circumstances or executing spies without the benefit of a trial or a
number of horrendous things but?gassing? What fiend decided this was
proper conduct? To fill the air you breathe with poison and strangle
him slowly without the benefit of sound or like the rat-a-tat-tat you
get from machine guns or a forewarning attack cry from the Germans as
they make a frontal assault on your position. But there is no sound,
only somebody's alarmed cry of gas but then it's too late for somebody
or maybe everybody.
Frankie thought about his good friend Reginald whom he met in training
and how he had breathed in mustard gas because it's odorless and
sometimes you don't realize right away that you've been poisoned until
you sprout mustard-colored blisters on your skin and your eyes become a
blind sticky mess and how Reginald was always fighting for breath until
his voice became a mere whisper and then complained that his throat was
closing and he knew he would eventually choke to death.
Frankie then pictured a bunch of powerful dignitaries from all the
nations of the world with their pompous self-importance all huddled in
a big room making up a list of rules for war and then voting on those
which were acceptable or unacceptable. Then Frankie pictured a fat
well-fed dignitary stepping up to the podium and with his gavel
pounding the podium to quiet the assembly and over his bifocals reads
the results.
"Blowing heads off-acceptable!" he would say. Dismemberment of legs,
hands, fingers, arms, penises, ears, noses, lips, feet, toes,
-acceptable! Burning alive, -acceptable! Bludgeoning, smashing,
crushing, grinding, strangling, blinding, breaking, stomping, stabbing,
burying, hanging, drowning, freezing, -all acceptable!"
Then they nod their heads approvingly in one accord, satisfied that
their job is done. But one shy dignitary loosens his tie and clears his
throat and mutters the dreaded word 'gas', secretly hoping that it
would get lost within the hubris because he feared rebuke, but the word
lingers in the air like a bad odor and the pompous fat man sniffs the
wind like a prairie dog and says, "I beg your pardon."
"What about poisoning the air with gas?" the timid dignitary
volunteers.
All the dignitaries concede and the man at the podium slams the gavel
down a final time and declares, "Gas-acceptable! Then they all
congratulate themselves on a job well done and march off to the nearest
bar to get good and soused. So there you have it. Rules are rules and
if they've been weighed and judged and guided by their soul and tested
by their moral conscience then the experts and intelligent movers and
shakers of the world must know what their doing.
Then Frankie wondered just what is unacceptable conduct in war. He
wondered what could be worst than being gassed and he remembered
stories he read as a little boy about savage Indians and how the
Indians would slowly skin people alive or bury them up to their necks
under the hot desert sun while fire ants licked molasses from their
heads and entered their ears and noses and mouth while the sun burned
out their eyes.
It was pure torture but they were warned to save a bullet for
themselves in case they were cornered and captivity was certain. That
was the wisdom of all the great Indian fighters like Kit Carson or Davy
Crockett. They believed torture was unacceptable and just plain
dishonorable. You can kill or maim somebody in war in a way that he
suffers unbearably and inhumanely, but you don't' torture him because
that goes against God's moral grain to torture for the pleasure of
seeing somebody suffer. So it stands to reason that torture would have
been deemed a morally reprehensible conduct in war. But everything else
was permitted as long as you didn't torture them for the pleasure of
it. Frankie felt a little relieved now that he figured it out and he
wouldn't have to muse over it anymore.
Then Frankie had another thought that hit him like a ton of bricks.
Didn't God say 'Thou Shalt Not Kill?' He knew that was one of the
commandments in the bible even though he didn't know where because he
never opened it except to read the note his mom wrote on the inside
cover of the small Gideon he kept in his coat pocket when he took his
first step into the trenches. But he knew the commandment was written
there somewhere; large and imposing and nobody could refute him on that
one.
Frankie remembered when a Sunday school teacher read the commandment,
"Thou Shalt Not Kill," from the bible and then rearing her righteous
head upward like an undulating viper and then settling her accusatory
eyes on him, even though he huddled towards the rear behind a group of
boys who were restless and bored. She couldn't have possibly been
seeking him out personally because he was short and insignificant and
she would have had to look right through the larger boys who surrounded
him and in his mind he might as well be invisible. But when Frankie
dared peek over the broad shoulder of the boy in front she was aiming
her steely eyes dead at him.
Then there were the protesters who accosted him back home when he was
in uniform and enjoying a one-day pass from basic training when they
approached him with broad signs with broad letters that were painted in
red, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," and appeared to be dripping paint at their
borders to give the impression that blood would flow from all the
killing and God would hold you to account for it.
"God will judge you," they railed, "God will smite he who sheds
blood?God will draw his sword against he who murder's?God will cast
murderers into the Lake of Fire?God will erase your name from the Book
of Life?God will?God will? God will?"
But Frankie thought about the Germans and how they were the real
murderers and how they were trying to take over the world in order to
take our homes and farms away and rape our wives and girlfriends and
make slaves out of our children. That's what the newspapers and film
reels and recruiters all said. Therefore, I'm not a murderer, he
reasoned, but a defender against evil and if God said Thou Shalt Not
Kill then he meant it for those pagan Germans. I ain't trying to take
over the world and steal their homes and their families. I just want to
end this stupid war and go back to Nebraska and maybe listen to more of
my dad's stories or find me a wife and have kids so maybe someday I can
tell them stories also but nothing that would frighten them into
nightmares.
Then he thought he might start out with right intentions but who knows
how things start to shift and thoughts start to tangle with other
thoughts and before I know it I'm telling my child how once upon a time
a young boy was rousted from his happy and peaceful life and carried
thousands of miles from his farm to try to wipe the German's off the
face of the earth with bullets and shrapnel and gas and bombs and
bayonet and fire and disease and madness and how that young boy would
stay up late in his dugout and exercise his memory of the colors of the
rainbow and how every color would fade to gray then to black and how he
would start over again until finally he gave up from fatigue because
gray and black were the only colors he could see.
Then more tangling of thoughts as they teetered between reality and
insanity would fill the story as Frankie would tell his little
spellbound son how little bunnies who were disguised like fat hairy
hungry rats with huge teeth would eat the eyes out of German's or
French or Turk's or Russian's or even American's if they fell dead or
were unconscious, for the rats were smart and they caught on quick by
going for the eyes instead of the flesh because it took less time and
was probably a delicacy.
He would read on about the happy children playing ball in a pleasant
French village and suddenly their bright red cheeks exploded because
the ball turned out to be a live grenade and isn't this a great story
son? But then a circus came to town and there were great big belching
machines with thick armored scales dressed as dancing bears that spit
fire into the trenches with their cannon and lot's of good sons and
fathers were burned alive and they lit up the wrathful fluffy clouds
until they poured down black rain but they still burned because the
gasoline jell stuck to their bodies until the fire consumed them and
isn't this a great story son? But were not quite finished yet,
son.
Now listen carefully as my memory becomes unhinged and terror robs my
voice. No-man's land was a sea of death and darkness like a pockmarked
moon with no wind or light or color or trees and in the winter the rain
turned shell holes into muddy ponds, but they were not for swimming my
son because lot's of men were buried there; some with their faces under
water and some just lied there and cried for their mothers and some
tried to climb up the muddy walls but they were slippery and fell back
into the hole and became imprisoned in their own slimy hell. I hope I'm
not scaring you son, but this is quite a story.
On one such night we made a frontal assault on a German position
underneath a hail of mortars and machine gun fire and like blades of
grass we were cut to pieces. Some were caught dangling in the barbwire
and were left to do the dance of death as bullets ripped through them,
but I swore to myself I would not dance no matter how many times they
shot me.
Like a sitting duck I also became stuck there in a wall of wire and
couldn't move so I cried out for them to take their best shot and stood
there waiting for my body to die but the shooting and the bombing
stopped just as suddenly as it started. I was left standing there for
the entire world to see but feeling stark naked under the descending
flares as they lit up the skies. Are you getting this my son?
Then, when the Huns saw me standing there lit up brighter than day like
some awestruck child mesmerized by fireworks exploding in the sky. They
became excited because they knew I'd be an easy piece of target so they
began to annihilate me and I closed my eyes and tensed my body but
nothing touched me though I could hear bullets whizzing past me and
feel their wake. I was still alive and breathing and feeling no pain.
Then I thought maybe I was dead because you don't fell anything when
you're dead. But I didn't think I could be dead and still manage to
stand up and feel the rain stinging my face.
I felt the wire moving and heard people shouting as the wire trapped
others who came after me and most were slaughtered as they frantically
tried to free themselves, but the more they tried the more they were
entangled and cut up and their fate was the same as the one's who
advanced with me for they were systematically shot down like a ducks at
a shooting gallery. Then I realized I lost my rifle somewhere but I
didn't fear because I remembered my Gideon and then I read your
grandmother's note. She told me to read the note when I was afraid,
which was every second of every day of every night and I'm getting to
the best part son so try to stay awake.
"No weapon formed against thee shall prosper," the note said, and there
was magic in those words and I knew nothing could hurt me as I recited
them over and over. So I called out to the Huns in their trenches with
their bombs and bullets and every agent of death and misery, "No weapon
formed against me shall prosper," and I could just see them scratching
their heads and wondering what new weapon I had that kept them from
blowing me to kingdom come.
Then the shooting stopped again as if on command and a bulky figure
emerged from the enemy's side and he was all alone and I figured he
would come out and check on this mysterious figure that couldn't be
killed and as he got closer I thought he would try and challenge the
magic of the words and hack me to pieces, but instead he smiled big and
said Fr?hliches Weihnachten and when he saw that I didn't understand,
in guttural broken English he said, "Merry Christmas."
He pulled me from the wire and he offered me a swig of schnapps and a
stale cigarette and we drank and smoked for a few minutes but said
nothing. He was large with heavy sad eyes and looked like a lot of
veteran's who were tired of the war and looked like they would have
been much happier working in a bakery or smoking a pipe by the hearth
or playing tag with their children. He could have been forty years of
age or more and could even have been my uncle or schoolmaster if things
were different.
When we finished he shook my hand and said 'Merry Christmas' again and
I said thank you and he smiled weakly and nodded his huge head and then
he walked slowly back to his trench through no-man's land as if he was
taking a stroll in the park. I watched him till he vanished in the fog
and I thought maybe I was dreaming while at my post because weeks of
fighting can rob you of your mind and you begin to see things that
aren't really there. So you see my young son, this really isn't such a
frightening story after all when the enemy offers you a cigarette and a
drink and shakes your hand after trying to kill you the best he can
because after all it was a Christmas Eve cease-fire and it goes to show
you that even enemies are human beings and take time out from killing
each other out of respect for the baby Jesus. The End.

But it wasn't a story but a reality and on his way back to his trench
Frankie thought about his sobering moment with the kind German fellow
as he skirted the craters and dead bodies that littered them. The
landscape was full of human detritus and he did some artful dodging as
he headed back to his muddy hole and the ubiquitous smell of rotting
corpses and human offal.
Then it occurred to Frankie during his trek that the kindly looking man
in the German uniform on any other occasion would have spared no time
in his effort to kill him a hundred different ways without a trace of
mercy or contrition because when the shooting starts we forget that we
are fathers and sons and brothers and husbands or lovers or masons or
educators or cooks or scholars or carpenters or Protestants or
Catholics. Instead we become automatons-automatons of death and
terror.
We become agents of blind fury. Of fury not from passion for a certain
idealism that the leaders of our world have injected into our blood
with chauvinistic rhetoric and then put guns into our hands and sent us
to this hellish place to defend their interest, but fury of our own
realization that we are helpless and impotent to extricate ourselves
from this madness that we once rallied to en-mass with heady ignorance.
So we react with rage at our own stupidity by killing each other with
everything we got in the hopes that one side will be annihilated or
quit so that we can all go home and never be fooled again.
The enemy soldier who was kind to him at the wire was only kind
because the war had ended for a moment in time and he was a human again
and was not born a killer but was fooled into being one. But Frankie
knew that when Christmas is over and the clock strikes twelve, the
bombs will drop and they will be reminded of their foolishness and
their fury will begin again.

Back in the trench, Frankie found fresh recruits who had already taken
the place of the dead and they thought of him as an anomaly as he
squeezed through the narrow walkway without the shell-shocked gaze or
the slow gait that was common with old-timers. Frankie experienced
something transcendent at the wire with the kind looking German and the
fresh recruits felt uncomfortable at Frankie's esoteric behavior
because he came back from no-man's land whistling a lazy tune and
wearing a cavalier look with a little spring in his step.
Many new recruits were so terrified after their first shelling they
convulsed from shock or vomited or babbled incoherently till the
ambulance took them away to the loony bin. Frankie felt a little pity
for the fresh recruits because he knew that they would soon be sent
over the wire and receive their baptism. Even the most courageous
veterans cringed with abject fear with the thought of having to go back
out there. One time at the wire made even the strongest men cry like
babies.
But Frankie had the magic words written inside his Gideon, which his
mother had written to him and what words could be more powerful than
God's own words? He wanted to share his miraculous experience with
somebody but the first person he recognized was Sergeant Pepperwood. He
decided not to because the Sergeant was a hard man and he was sure he
would be dressed-down. Frankie kept negotiating the serpentine trench
until he ran into Private Steinbrener who was opening a can of cornbeef
with a jack knife and having a hard time of it too.
Steinbrener was a introspective person who was quite intelligent and
was studying to be a chemist before he was drafted into the war and
therefore knew the chemical compounds and formula's of the gas bombs
and it's pernicious effects and it frightened him more than anything
else than the bullets and bombs the Germans were throwing at him. He
kept his gas mask around his neck and inspected it almost
obsessively.
Steinbrener was labeled a critic because found fault with man and
nature and he believed man was inherently evil and was guided by his
animal instincts and war was nature's way of legitimizing his base
impulse to destroy cities and landscapes and all living things. Then,
once man is satiated with destruction and death and has been purged of
his primal need to divide and conquer he regresses back to a learned
behavior of societal propriety, and of love of God and family and law
and order until the next generation rear's it's ugly head and their
son's complete the cycle of wrath and destruction. Frankie understood
Steinbrener's philosophy but he always left his critiques with
lacerating moods of hopelessness and despair.
Frankie scooted next to Steinbrener in his dugout and told him about
his invincibility at the wire and the magic words he recited and the
kind German fellow and how he believed he was impervious to weapons of
war as long as he didn't tempt fate by becoming cocky or presumptuous.
He saw Steinbrener working up a critical rationalization of Frankie's
story and Frankie knew full well what was coming.
"All it means is that you're number wasn't up," Steinbrener said,
almost with a wave of dismissal. "Tonight at the wire you might as well
have been invisible if your number isn't up. But when your number is up
then somewhere out there in no man's land there's a bullet or a shell
with your name on it and there's no magic words in the world that can
save you. The Germans may be raining lead at nobody in particular and
out of the thousands of rounds that find its way through land or sky,
that round will find you whether you stand or sit or duck or hide. That
round was manufactured and packaged with your name on it. It might be
packed in an ammo box somewhere in Germany or on a truck making it's
way to the front right now or it may be cradled by an ammo-bearer as we
speak, or stacked tightly in a rifle magazine waiting silently for the
cease-fire to lift. Then one moment you're alive and breathing with
plans of your own then in a fraction of a second you're dead or
scattered all over the place. I'm not sure if the bullet finds you or
you find the bullet. But it doesn't matter when or how you meet your
end-we're all predestined to die a certain death."
Frankie left Steinbrener and sloshed through the mud to take his place
at his post. He felt dispirited after Steinbrener's analysis. Maybe it
was a fantastic coincidence that he wasn't killed or wounded at the
wire. Maybe the whole German army could have aimed for his heart and
missed. Maybe it wasn't his time and no force on earth could change his
fate. Maybe he would live through this whole stupid war and die of old
age no matter how much he was bombed and machine-gunned or
gassed.
Frankie thought that if what Steinbrener said was true then all the
magic words he could muster couldn't save him if his number was up.
Frankie then took the small Gideon Bible out of his pocket and tore out
the page his mother had wrote on. .

The cease-fire ended but the rain did not. It became a torrent of
misery as the trenches filled with water above every man's ankles and
it continued to rise because there was no proper drainage. Rats floated
on their sides with mouths frozen open and the latrine overflowed and
became a foul concoction of human waste and decay.
Sergeant Pepperwood paced back and forth and admonished everybody in a
harsh voice to be alert because the Germans were restless and may
attack. They believed the driving rain was their ally because they knew
Americans disdained the rain and loved comfort.
Frankie stood on a step cut into the wall and looked out over the bleak
horizon of no man's land. No scene could have been uglier. It was
formless and void. From the trench Frankie would look at a spot on the
moon and wish his mom and dad could look at the same spot and read his
thoughts. He would tell them he wanted to come home, and that he was
finished with the killing and all the destruction. He would tell them
he had no fight left in him and that he wanted a hot bath and a good
meal and he was tired and wanted to sleep more than anything and that
the mud was sucking him under the earth.
Frankie looked down the line and saw tension. Talking was out of the
question, for everybody was pondering his fate. Some nervously check
their gun-sights, others adjusted their posture; making sure their feet
were planted solidly even as their perches eroded from the flooding.
The fresh recruits were easy to spy; they were the ones whose eyes
darted about nervously, looking for some sign of an approaching attack.
The old- timers would rest their weary eyes and wait for artillery to
signal an assault. They waited for an eternity, but all was
quiet.
Sergeant Pepperwood say's the plans have changed and they are to make
an assault upon the Germans. Pepperwood say's the Germans are probably
heavily fortified with munitions because supply lorries could be heard
coming and going throughout the cease-fire. He say's to mount bayonets.
Most are locked on already as he speaks. Some of the fresh recruits
assault him with questions, but Pepperwood ignores them and say's to be
ready to move forward after our artillery does its job. Then he struts
off to his dugout to hide from the rain.
One recruit gives Frankie a pale look and takes to shaking, but Frankie
makes no consoling gesture. There are no words of comfort for condemned
men in no man's land.
Moment's later 9-inch guns whistle above them and crash down upon the
German positions. The ground shakes violently and rattles their
insides. Parched throats crave water but their hands lay heavy upon
their rifles. The shelling stops and Sergeant Pepperwood blows his
whistle as a signal to move out of the trench. The fresh recruits climb
out with nervous alacrity. They are sick with tension and adrenaline
forces them on. They have not yet seen what shrapnel can do to a
man.
The old-timers are weary and cautious; they exit slowly, not wishing
to be the first at the wire. They know there is little chance of
reaching the German's position even after all the shelling, so they
will probably fight from a shell hole or behind a fallen body and wait
for orders to retreat. It is the rule of survival that both sides
understand. Nevertheless, they stagger forward in the muck, some with
numbness, some with rage, but all are open and vulnerable to
indiscriminate fortunes.
Flares illuminate the pitch-black sky and the German's open up with
machine-gun fire. Mortars are lobbed everywhere. There are screams cut
short and young men cry like babies as their legs are blown off. More
flares are dropped just as the others are snuffed out. Frankie glances
to his left and sees dozens of his comrade's drop like dominoes.
Hundreds of others lie in small heaps under the bright flares. Most are
silenced or flail about in the throes of death. The wire has been blown
apart, and a gaping path becomes a vortex of lead and steel. The
Germans have trained their guns there. Still, many pour through, as if
some giant magnet gathers them and drags them to their death.
Frankie passes through and sees Steinbrener holding his neck where a
bullet has passed. He has no time to stop for him because he knows
Steinbrener's number is up and besides the giant magnet pulls him
forward. They are only a few yards from the enemy and many are cut down
like grass. A few of them manage to throw grenades into their trench
and a German counters with a flame-thrower, igniting a group of men.
Their screams are hideous. Frankie reaches the edge of the enemy trench
and through the thick smoke he thrust his bayonet into the first figure
he sees. The figure gasps and falls back into sitting position, holding
his abdomen. The smoke clears and Frankie looks down at the kind German
he met at the wire during the cease-fire. The kind German looks up at
Frankie without malice or surprise. He seems resigned with his fate.
Frankie feels nothing.
Plunging his bayonet into a man is nothing to Frankie. Rage is all he
feels when he leaves himself and is forced to become an automaton.
Human virtue is now an obsolete component when the battle starts and
rage and destruction have become his life's blood. It feeds him and
nourishes him and speaks mesmerizing words to him. Survival has become
his obsession and he must kill or be killed. There is no chivalry or
honor in war. There is only death. Death must be taken in huge measures
and it must never recede. Death is never mitigated, only multiplied.
Death to thousands, to millions, to all that breathes if necessary; but
death must be the only course.
No man's land is a voracious graveyard and human flesh is its only
food. The kind German will only be remembered for his kindness when
Frankie becomes human again-when he leaves the graveyard and the
stinking mud and decay.
When the shooting stops and he's wearing clean clothes and has washed
the filth and the lice from his body and has slept in peace and has hot
food in his belly, then some of the decency in humanity will form in
his memory. But, for the present, all is mixed into one horrific mire
of hellishness.
The German defensive was taken at a great price and the fresh recruits
are now veterans. The kind German was piled into an ignominious heap
with other dead Germans and then dumped into a large shell hole without
any requiem or thought. The American dead lie where they fell, to be
identified and buried later.
Frankie slumped down with exhaustion and scraped the mud off his boots
with his bayonet. Stuck to the side of his boot was a crumpled piece of
paper. He recognized the note and read it like so many times before. It
said, "No weapon formed against you shall prosper." He wiped off the
mud from the paper the best he could and smoothed it flat with his hand
and put it between the pages of his bible. Frankie thought about his
mother and felt close to her. He knew he would return to her someday
and become human again.