(Sequel to the book, "Cornfield Laughter")
(A Short Novel, on the Great War, and Selected Short Stories :)
"If you haven't seen Verdun, you haven't seen anything of war (WWI)" Unknown Soldier 1914-1918
Prelude: The Battle of Verdun ended on 19 of December, 1916, 230,000 soldiers dead, 700,000-wounded; the Germans had taken the little village of Douaumont, in February, and held it until December, demolished it in the interim. All civilians were told to evacuate, all did but one woman. It was a 300-day battle, in a 2.27 square mile area; Shannon O'Day, was in that battle, fighting with the French, a corporal status, with a battery of men (or squad) of eleven men, not including himself.
It would prove to be the bloodiest and intense battle of the Great War, also known as WWI. The story is fiction. Although the author's grandfather served in the military during this time in this area, during the Great War, it is not to be taken as he was part of this battle or story though, and the author is war veteran himself, of Vietnam. If you were to go to Verdun today, you would see 'The Trenches of Verdun' they still cross the French countryside.
Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and ... a nest for herself..."
Psalm 84
One Sparrow shall not fall on the ground without your Father knowing.
Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than the sparrow.
Matthew 10:29
The Lank Figure
(Shannon's dream-vision) He was near a skeleton figure, lank, with only a thread deep of flesh over his frame, a dark figure, age-hard to define, with long black hair, irregular; rather long-drawn-out features. His chin and jawbone hung low, as if he were of some ancient subspecies of humans, perhaps of the Neanderthal civilization. He lurked consistently at a holy man, Shannon couldn't make out if he was a priest, angel, minister of some organized church member, evangelist, or prophet, but the holy man kept distinctly skeptical, gazing eyes at the lank figure, he could not have gazed harder, had he been a statue.
The lank figure and the holy man were both particularly sensitive to each other's voices. Shannon had learned he had severe injuries, had he not, the lank figure would not have bothered with him, he knew this intuitively. And so he watched the movements, gestures of the two figures in robs, their mouths, tongues, eyes, knees as their movements made their robs ruffle.
"He drinks and he smokes, and he is dying," said the lank figure, said about Shannon O' Day, "and he has killed, and killed, without a morsel of remorse, or so it would seem," there was the faintest suggestion of derision in his voice.
"If death can possible be avoided," the holy man said.
"Whose loss shall it be?" said the lank figure," For I have much to do!"
"I think it is possible to keep your honor and dignity, and vow," said the holy man, "should you walk away from this lopsided sparrow?"
The holy man and the lank figure sat at a table both resting their arms upon it, and waiting the next development of this unsatisfactory situation.
"Of course," said the lank figure, as if he had deliberated the issue with himself, "you must have some sort of comfort, I understand that.... (The holy man nodded his head). It is easy enough to say as many do, leave this man or give me that man, or don't stand over him or her, the truth is, you want them all full of God-and second chances, and you don't even know if it is a good or bad thing, giving second chances, good for humanity, or bad for humanity, when they are due to die they should die, but you always try to get to them before me; whose to say what is good and what is bad?"
"I can't for an instant tell you to leave, but I can stay by his side and pray against these uncertainties, for didn't the Lord say in so many words: '...ye are of more value than the sparrow.' And is not this sparrow irregular?"'
"Here I confess, we are like publishing a book before the final chapter has been completely written; but you must agree-this man is dying and is in a state of hallucination, he will not even notice the crossover, or pain."
"But truth be told, essential truth that is, is hidden. It always is."
"I follow you," the lank figure said, "that is always so! Perhaps there maybe some violent link in all this, some contradictory fact, some accident or some subtle change to take place," and death had a feeling, he paused. Even the holy man was reluctantly interested. It meant something, described something, the holy man admitted, he too had intuition, supernatural intuition.
"I never believe in concealing my own thoughts from an intellectual being, such as you," he said with a quiet offensiveness, "I left that back in the Dark Ages. I will inform you of my guesses and suppositions. At the base of this all, is a man who is due death, as a matter of fact in time to come he may very well die of over drinking, he consumes more alcohol than air, so it would seem. I'll make you a deal-contract. I'll leave here for a day, twenty-four hours, and upon my return, you will leave for ten?"
The holy man nodded, and the deal was sealed.
Part Two: The Great War
Chapter One
Rain of Shells
In ill-fitting khakis and a bent helmet, looking like the most un-heroic figure of WWI, Shannon O'Day was in near staggering agony. He took on the look of death, as it was one of the paths his life was bound to take, although, strangely enough, his will, the fight or die, faction of his will, against all odds, its probability, was opposed to it-said no! Therefore it employed its endurance to survive, in this particular case, and death would have to wait-he would be no martyr for a war today. It was his will's choice, had it been a horrible chance of mutilation, the will's impulse, its intellectual act, to survive would have lost its strength, and the will's weakness inseparable, entangled, would have given into other probability odds. Had he been killed or shot in the brain or blown apart and laying about in fragments, from high-explosives shells, the objectors in the will, his will, who in point of fact protested, would not have.
(To the poor fools, necessity gives them death.)
But this was no illusion. He saw his comrade's mass dead, dead into her tracks, as if at a rabbit shoot, dead is dead and he seen his comrades bloody. Now looking undetectable beasts and there was nothing unrealistic about it. Death, of course like a vulture, admits naught why it lurks and lingers, it simply waits, loiters about, specifically for you. If you live you live, with memories, if you die, it's all settled for you. Memories intertwined into nightmares and dreams.
The men in front of you, or in the back of you, or along side of you, in trenches, in the open, traumatized and disemboweled, then shot; and after the numbness-if you are not shot- undeniable compassion of man for man, you have lived and learned. Then he forgets what he learned, and saw, the mind clicks, to the next notch, like a bicycle chain in motion. "No," his will says, "I shall not be like that, not yet anyhow." But it is.
(Narrator intercession: He had told an interviewer a month ago, for some New York magazine or newspaper, he couldn't remember which, doing articles and dispatches on: 'War and Peace' he had said to the correspondent: "In war you kill on the side, and for the side you have chosen, then you do what is called ornamental killing-to show off, then you simple kill to kill, even if you don't want to or need to, you have the skills, the trade, and you want to outwit the enemy, that is why so many soldiers go and become a hired gun after they get out of the military, you become good at it.
I am no different than a Chicago Gunman, imported to do killings for Europe, for France, Russia, Bosnia, and England. That's how I feel. You know what I mean; I become a weasel of death, sent to hunt for the bad guys. The big difference is the hired gunman gets $100 to $400 dollars per person per kill; I got a hot meal if I was lucky.")
He looked around him in the long narrow trench it was all to quiet, he had passed out, awoke then he knew why it was quiet-the dead are always quiet, there is no quieter more stillness than in a dead body, even if their blood still be warm. One minute they were all laughing, smoking cigarettes, showing each other pictures, getting ready for battle (this was the last day of the battle, April 19, 1916; the battle had gone on for 300-days, 230,000 dead, 700,000 wounded) now empty of life, they were all, all nine of them starting to stiffen as like manikins. He looked at them, two were missing, out of the eleven; he was the twelfth of the squad (the battery). He must have been out for a while, flies had gathered around the bodies, and a stench of death filled the air, he had to leave the trench but which way? Who went were: referring to the Germans and the French?
One should not break from his company or platoon, but surely they thought he was dead, he sobbed, got his emotions out, he was only seventeen, in the night of iron darkness, alone. He filled his lungs with air, as he crawled over the edge of his trench; the battle had gone elsewhere he figured, at least for the moment. Or it had ended. He moved his belly in the direction of the village called Douaumont, and as he moved inch by inch he imagined the comforts of a beautiful woman. The sweet smells of her perfumes, the soft touch of her flesh; when he stopped thinking along those lines, he could hear the bugs moving along side of him, the crickets, the unnamed bugs, as if they were chewing on grass, saw the fireflies.
He didn't care to be a corporal, he was too young he told the Captain; also he told him he was too young to be in charge of a squad, in charge of men twice his age, but he was in charge, and now injured, his soul sank into oblivion.
Chapter Two
Streets of Paris
(Before the Shelling)
When Shannon O'Day was in Paris, it was a different world to him, before he got sent to defend France, on French soil that was taken over by Germans in February of 1916, called "The Battle of Verdun" and to make his new home in trenches. He was from the Midwest of the Untied States, a somewhat country boy, from a conservative city, who on weekends visited his older brother-older by ten-years-Gus and they'd drink whiskey in the cornfields, as he'd help his brother plant and harvest. Paris was completely different, here people ate outside, on tables spread out, not indoors. Women sat on the church steps knitting with their babies, begging for food, or loose change. Horses pulled grand buggies by Notre Dame Cathedral, while men and women of prestige would disembark them.
The Luxembourg Gardens was nearby, passersby looked at him as he'd walk through them, in his uniform, and clap their hands in applause as if to say thank you for coming. And if he could have read their lips, he'd had sworn they were saying, 'Be patient soldier, the war will soon be over.' The people even smiled heroically as if saying hurry up and win it for us, make it disappear like smoke. Tell America to send troops over, Shannon had joined the French Army, in fear he'd not be able to see action, and now he was hesitant about seeing the action he so much wanted to classify as adventure.
While in Paris he went to the theater, couldn't make heads or tails out of it, could only understand a few words of it, it was in French. It was Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." All he could remember was Quasimodo, the disfigured hunchback, and his carrying a woman on his shoulders into the Cathedral. It really didn't much matter to him, it occupied his time.
He noticed other soldiers having leisure time in Paris; the rest of the world in Paris appeared to be either on edge, busy or in a hurry.
A woman said, "We are pretty in red dressed, don't you think so?"
She was for sale, and that night with Shannon, they drank some strong red wine, walked by the doors of Notre Dame de Paris, the Rue Saint Jacques, naked as two jaybirds, stopping traffic wherever they went, laughing like he used to do with his brother in the cornfields back home with a bottle of wine or rum or whisky (such other details I must leave out, for whoever has a liking for them, must at this point use his or her imagination).
It was not until he woke up, he put two and two together, that he was still alive, and in French dirt, but nearer to Douaumont, crawling inch by inch, that it dawned on him, he was dreaming of the few days he spent in Paris before he got his assignment for this great battle of battles. He was now reluctant to move. He must have crawled quite a distance since last he was conscious, he took as fact.
Chapter Three
The Village of Douaumont
He saw chimneys in the distance, roofs of houses, mostly delegated but a few could be seen erect; he had been in the village called Douaumont before, prior to the 300-day battle, it had about a dozen structures or more, not much more. A few two story buildings, mostly one building connecting to the next structure-wall to wall that is. Narrow doorways, a dirt road for a main street, wide and with embankments on the side, rubbish laying along side the adobe houses, and during its best day it was somewhat rundown, now after the 300-day battle it was completely destroyed, yet he saw roofs and chimneys, and smoke.
Shannon wanted a moment to rest. He wanted to lay hidden until his company found him, or he regained his nerve, or just plain died, the war was not unfinished, perhaps the ongoing battle was, that is all.
He told God he could use a friend now. And he laid there for hours, preoccupied with formless dreams, a brooding mind; remote and unstoppable reminiscing. He was out of the trench, out of the latrine like trench, now in a field of dirt, by a tree, behind a rock. He un-tightened his belt so he could breath better. He had been through it. He was like the enemy, a savage, and brute no better, why should God help him, if not the enemy. He could not hold anything new called humiliation. He had the worse gaunt and grubby appearance a human could have. He was nothing but a sad, pitiful primitive creature.
There he laid blood stained uniform, a scornful indifferent look. "Where's my men?" he questioned, muttered in his under breath, his mind answered 'Blown to bloody fragments in the trench!"
((Dozing off and on, dreaming: Was he not the Good Shepard? He questioned himself; if so he left his flock stiff and smelly and dead, he would have given his life for the sheep, his sheep, the ones he was in command of, yet they gave their life for his, so it appeared, and when the wolf came, they left, and then he left, so he felt, and now a voice in his haunting semi-sleep, was saying- 'let the dead bury the dead' although he didn't really say that at the time, he now heard that in his head.
His job was to tend to his flock, and he had two of his flock missing, and to the French Army, he was dead, and they said, must had said, 'Let the dead bury the dead' and they didn't tend to their flock. They thought like soldiers, wounded or dead, we are the living, we are the ones that can fight, we are the ones that count, let the Germans have the wounded, they can care for them, we'll give them medals when the war is over.)(After the war was over he'd be given for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty, by virtue of an act of Congress, to be approved 4 March 1921, the Medal of Honor. But he'd refuse it; saying "Give it to the two missing"; although in 1930, he would take the Croix du Combattant, for valor; feeling it more befitting.))
He talked to himself-anxiously, in a voice, unsteady and near breaking. He was hungry and the sun was coming up, bright like a shinny orange, near flawless, symmetrically round. His mind told him it was breakfast time, he felt in his coat pocket, a piece of old beef jerky, he had saved it from his rations while in the trenches; he pulled it out, unwrapped it, it was only two inches long, but it was enough, and he ate it, like a famished wolf, chewing it like rawhide, squeezing with his teeth every ounce of flavor out of it.
Chapter Four
Drops of Sleep
Corporal O'Day did not sleep, yet he did not feel like he was awake. Light was illuminating his youthful face. He was now the apotheosis of his own soul, he had reached the highest point man could, to the face of God, near death had done this. He had just tasted how the Germans made war. It was as if he had just seen a Great Battle at Troy, endured the bombardment of Troy's great walls, in his trench, and he was overrun, like Troy was over run. The mystery of war all the chances of this adventure, its charms became real, in this long drawn out day after day battle, but the 19th of April was its epitome, its personification, the image that would be imprinted in his mind for all the days to come. He saw his youthful glorious destiny rising and sinking, all in twenty-four hours.
Could all this good action, to cleanse the world of evil, be a bad one? He questioned such things as he lay there, looking at smoke coming out of a chimney, in the supposedly, deserted village that wasn't evidently, completely deserted, it was suppose to be, but there was smoke, his intuition was correct. There would be a new page in history written about today, or now it was yesterday, history would write about yesterday he muttered as if talking to the rock he was laying against, then in a generation or so, hidden if not erased with a whole new generation, and new wars, perhaps even greater than this one.
It was now an era when each man had his won individual dream. Each one wanted to be all he could, a general, a president of a company, a great writer, a whatever, wherever. Nothing was good enough unless you had it all. Self-interest was the name of the game, the corner-stone to existence, a real existence. A clear hypothesis that would be called 'The Jazz Age,' yet to be coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald, with no obstacles, freedom to do as you wished was developing, circulating-America and Europe, to be fully indoctrinated a year after the Great War would have ended.
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