Franky I’d definitely be dead, not just physically dead but mentally dead, psychically dead, psychologically dead – a zombie. I’d lost confidence in the importance of living, the value of being alive, and Franky gave it back to me, helped explain some of what life is about. As a child, an orphan in an asylum, there had never been much joy or meaning in my life, and then there was the insanity of war. It all seemed so meaningless, so awful. Franky gave me a reason for living.’
I look up at Caroline; tears are rolling down her face. She just stands there in front of me. What can I do?
‘Caroline, please, will you listen to me one more time? I want to tell you everything I can remember. You don’t have to believe if you can’t, but it could be good for me to go over it all once more, to remind myself of what did happen, what didn’t happen. If I can separate those things, perhaps, now so much time has passed, I can see the whole experience for what the doctors said it was – only some kind of complicated delusion.
‘I think I made up many things to explain aspects of Franky I didn’t understand myself. I wanted the children to believe with me. Even this morning’s story, I know now, although I told it as truth, was not a story Franky told me. In a certain way, Billy was right when he said I made it up, that it wasn’t true. But it seemed true to me, and I wanted him to feel this truth with me. I couldn’t change the ending just because he wanted me to. That would be lying, untruth.
‘I hate to think those army doctors were right and there really is something wrong inside me, that my head doesn’t work right, that I can’t separate reality from fantasy. But I do accept the possibility there is something different in me. I often have the peculiar feeling I’m not even myself. That’s got to be crazy, doesn’t it?
‘If Franky Furbo isn’t real and I can learn to believe it, I can live with it now, I think. I have you, the children, our wonderful life – that should be enough. It’s been a long time, much has happened, we are so close. You’re right, I shouldn’t ask too much of you. It isn’t right.
‘But would you sit down there, dear, in our other rocking chair, and let me go over the entire experience one more time with you, and please, please, try to listen. Listen to me, knowing I’m not purposely trying to make any of this up, that I’m not lying to you. Listen as if it’s all happening to you, and believe what you can believe. I need someone to hear this with me.’
3
Fox Hole
As you know, dearest, I was only twenty when we hit the beaches near Palermo in Sicily. I was with the Thirty-fourth Infantry Division, and we were all scared out of our minds.
Somehow, after horrible fighting, we made our way up through Sicily and then onto the mainland of Italy. It seems so strange now, thinking of attacking this beautiful land, which has become home to us.
By some miracle, I managed to stay alive and unhurt. We were attacking Germans entrenched in an old monastery on a hill called Monte Cassino. There was ferocious fighting, small arms, mortar, artillery, bombing, much pushing forward and then retreating. It seemed as if we were never going to get past this defense position the Germans had set up. Many Italian prisoners came in, but the Germans were fighting to the last man. It looked to me as if we were going to lose the war, or at least keep fighting until either I was killed or died of old age.
Rumor spread along the lines that we were about to mass a major attack coordinated with division, corps, and army artillery. I, personally, wasn’t ready. I was at the very limits of what I could endure, but then so was everyone else.
I was half asleep in a hole with a friend called Stan Cramer, when Sergeant Messer came up to our hole.
‘OK, you two, haul ass outta there and follow me, the captain wants to see you.’
We crawled back on our bellies, in the mud, to the company CP. The CO was as dirty as the rest of us. Somehow he’d also managed to survive. He was one of the only company commanders in our battalion who had lasted this long.
He wanted us to go on a reconnaissance patrol. The word patrol had taken on a special quality of its own for me. My brain, my insides shook when I heard it. I was so frightened I couldn’t speak. I listened with Stan, as the CO pointed at his dirt-smeared, often-folded map and explained what was going to happen, what we had to do.
‘Now, this is only going to be a “recon” patrol, you two, so don’t get your ass in an uproar. We just want to find out if a little bridge up ahead has been mined or has been set to be blown. If anyone opens fire or you see anything that looks like a serious defensive position, hustle your asses right back here. This whole battalion is supposed to attack at oh-six-hundred, right through there, and if that bridge is intact, it would sure make things a lot easier. Artillery will start coming in at oh-five-thirty, so get on back here before then. You understand?’
He explained how the bridge was over a small stream. The stream could be forded but would be hard for the antitank guns and heavy-weapons people. He wanted to know just what was there if we could find out.
He gave us C rations: hot hash and hot coffee. Then he left us. We ate leaning against a piece of broken masonry near the CP. We didn’t talk much. We rested. It was good to be off the line, even if it was only a hundred yards back. We had four hours before we were to move out.
At four o’clock in the morning we started. We moved behind our own lines, north, till we were in line with where the bridge was supposed to be. I remember the password that night was Lana-Turner. We came up to the last outpost on that part of the line. It was the Third Platoon. They challenged us and we gave the password. We slid down into the hole with them. We told them what we were supposed to do. They told us they hadn’t seen any bridge but could tell us where the stream was, down the hill, just before you had to start up the next hill. They insisted the hill was absolutely infested with Jerry. They scared us with descriptions of suspected mortar emplacements here, snipers there.
We went out carefully; I could taste the coffee in my nose and in the back of my throat – sour. I should never have drunk it. We slid and slipped down the hill. It was hard mud with flat loose shale over the whole surface. We came to the stream. We stopped.
Stan had the map and was sure the bridge had to be farther to the north yet, although it was actually supposed to be more east than north. I had no idea. I was interested only in going through the motions and getting back.
We started working our way up along the draw formed by the stream. It was hard going because it was so dark. The sky had that little bit of light that always seems to come before dawn when you’re on guard duty and waiting for relief. But, as usual, it didn’t help much. Mostly, we guided ourselves by the sound of water running in the stream.
The sides of the draw began getting steeper, so we slipped more and more often into the water. Then Stan stopped. He pointed. There was a bridge. It had to be the bridge we were looking for. It was a typical Italian bridge one finds around this area, constructed of stone part way out on each side and the middle built with heavy wood. It was longer than the stream was wide, so the stream must have run more fully in the spring. We crept up a little closer. Stan leaned close to my ear.
‘You willing to slide out on that thing and take a look-see? I’ll scramble up the side of this hill to cover you.’
I was willing but I didn’t want to. I nodded my head. Stan put his mouth close to my ear again. He had a luminous watch he’d taken from an Italian officer.
‘We
