Beyond the Western
A Letter to Those Lost and Those Gone Beyond
Tom Sheehan
Beyond the Western
Dear Big John and Little
John and Billy and Hughie Menzies and Londo and Eddie McCarthy and
Breda and Kujawski and the comrade I carried to his death whose name
I never knew and all the others I pray for every night yet, the men
of the 31st Infantry Regiment and brother outfits of the 17th
Regiment and the 49th Field Artillery Battalion, and all the comrades
and all the wars.
Every reading I've done for more than 66
years simply begins this way: John Maciag was all bone, knees, elbows
and jaw, hated his rifle, proficient at killing, wanted home so badly
it burned his soul. We leaned up that mountain near Yangu,
frightened. War's hurricane tore our ranks, trees of us lifted by
roots. I came running down three days later. Like cordwood the bodies
were piled between two stakes, all Korean but that jaw of John Maciag
I saw, a log of birch among the pine. The sergeant yelled to move on.
I said no, maybe never. I am going to sit and think about John
Maciag's forever, whose fuel he is, what the flames of him will
light. Perhaps he will burn the glory of man or God.
I have memorized, on my choice, one poem of mine, as just read; a poem, "Shot Down at Night" by John F. Nims, and the lead paragraph of Fred Foye's article in a 1941 Boston Glove game recount, Saugus vs Melrose, both of which I'll recite here at this time:
Shot Down at Night
by John Frederick Nims
A boy I once knew,
arm's gold as saddle leather,
lakeblue eyes,
found in foreign sky
extravagant death.
Dreamy in school,
parsed tragic Phaeton, heard
of war, arose surprised,
gravely shook hands
and left us.
His name, once grey
in convent writing, neat on themes,
cut like erosion of fire the peaks
of heaven.
The Arab saw strange flotsam fall;
the baseball-sounding spring,
the summer roadster
pennoned with bright hair,
the Halloween dance,
the skaters' kiss at midnight
on carillons of ice.
When asked to read to
celebrate my new book of memoirs, I wanted to let the audience enter
the cubicle where the work came from. This is what I told them: I'll
celebrate with you by telling you what I know. I'll tell you how it
is with me. This is what I know. This is what I am and what has made
me:
Just behind the retina and a small way back is a little
room. It has a secret door and passageways and key words other than
Sesame. If you're lucky enough to get inside that room, at the right
time, there's ignition, there's light, there's a flare, now and then
there is a pure incandescence like a white phosphorous shell at
detonation. It's the core room of memories, the memory bank holding
everything you've ever known, ever seen, ever felt, ever dislodged
spurting with energy. The casual, shadowy and intermittent presences
you usually know are microscope-beset, become most immediate. For
those glorious moments the splendid people rush back into your life
carrying all their baggage, the Silver Streak unloaded, Boston's old
South Station alive, bursting seams.
At times I have been so
lucky, brilliantly, white phosphorescently lucky; it's when I
apprehend it all. I see the quadrangle of Camp Drake in Yokahama,
Japan in February of 1951. I know the touch and temperature of the
breeze on my cheek and the back of my neck; the angle of the sun on
me and a host of my comrades, how it has climbed past a chimney of a
long, long, gray barracks, and withers on a mountain peak of an
unknown horizon flaring at darkness. I know the weight of a rifle on
a web strap hanging on my shoulder, the awed knowledge of a ponderous
steel helmet on my head, press of a tight lace on one boot, wrap of a
leather watch band on one wrist.
I am lucky to know it all
again. Pete Leone from McKees Rocks, PA is on my left. Pete Marglioti
from McKees Port, PA is on my right. Pete and Re-Pete. Frank Mitman
from Bethlehem is there, an arm's length off. Minutes ago, from a
standing still position in all his gear, he did a full flip in the
air and landed on his feet. John Salazer is behind me. John Maciag,
Big John, is in front of me. Oh, how he appears again and again.
Behind me, John Salazer is the comrade with two brothers not yet home
from some place in World War II, who the captain calls one day and
says, "You're going home tomorrow. Get off the hill before
dark." "No, sir, I'll spend the last night with my buddies
down in the listening post." After darkness settles, a Chinese
infiltrator hurls a grenade into their bunker.
The count
begins again, the eternal count, the odds maker at work, the clash of
destinies. On the ship on the way home, on the troop train rushing
across America, in all the rooms of sleep since then, there are
spaces around me. Memory, at times fragile, becomes at times
tenacious. It honors me as a voice, and it is my will to spread that
tenacity.
I bring pieces of it with me today, pieces I have
captured under white phosphorous as true as a rock in place. They
come from the little room with the secret door just behind the
retina, just inside a bit deeper.
Knock with me. I share
"Milan Carl Liskart, the Coalman," with you, and my
grandfather Johnny Igoe, the Yeats' reader, and a few other shining
lights that, with tenacity, have found these pages of A Collection of
Friends, dedicated For those who have passed through Saugus (and
every town), those comrades who bravely walked away from home and
fell elsewhere, and the frailest imaginable soldier of all,
frightened and glassy-eyed and knowing he is hapless, one foot onto
the soil at D -Day or a statistical sandy beach of the South Pacific
and going down, but not to be forgotten, not here.
I had their
attention. We shared. I said: The shells were cannonading when he
died in my arms, blood setting the sun down. Night or darkness now
and I cannot find his face again. It is lost, I search for it,
stumble, and lose my way. October is rich again, exploding.
Sixty-four Octobers have burst the air. I inhale it all anew, leaves
bomb me, sap is still, muttering of the Earth is mute. I remember all
the Octobers; one tears about me now, but his face is lost. How can I
find his face again?
Men of this command would not speak the
name of comrade knowing the fragmentation of loss as if bones could
dwindle. I cannot speak of time coming, only of time past and the
laughter/cries of young voices sounding vibrant horns. I hear only
echoes from mountains of years in the quick tumbling. You must hear
the same mountain, the uncluttered system of their thoughts, the
brass and velvet of young men at thinking sometimes down precipices
sharper than truth; they would have twinned this command, yielding
neither dreams nor arms, ideas set as hard as Excalibur before Arthur
pulled it from the rock. Now their softness mingles in mind's debris
trying to say what they knew and took to grave. John never hurried
anyplace but to die. He talked to the mountain and we are
listening.
This is what John listened to: The day had gone
over hill, but that still, blue light remained, cut with a gray edge,
catching corners rice paddies lean out of. In the serious blue
brilliance of battle, they'd become comrades becoming friends, just
Walko and Williamson and Sheehan sitting in the night drinking beer
cooled by Imjin River waters in `51 in Korea. Three men drably clad
but clad in the rags of war.
Stars hung pensive neon.
Mountain-cool silences were being earned, hungers absolved, a
ponderous god talked to. Above silences, the ponderous god's weighty
as clouds, elusive as soot on wind, yields promises. They used church
keys to tap cans, lapped up silence rich as missing salt, fused their
backbones to good earth in a ritual old as labor itself, these men
clad in the rags of war. Such a night gives itself away, tells tales,
slays the rose in reeling carnage, murders sleep, sucks moisture out
of Mother Earth, fires hardpan, sometimes does not die itself just
before dawn, makes strangers in ones' selves, those who wear the rags
of war.
They had been strangers beside each other, caught in
the crush of tracered night and starred flanks, accidents of men
drinking beer cooled in the bloody waters where brothers roam
forever, warriors come to that place by fantastic voyages, carried by
generations of the persecuted or the adventurous, carried in sperm
body, dropped in the spawning, fruiting womb of America, and born to
wear the rags of war.
Walko, reincarnate of the Central
European, come of land lovers and those who scatter grain seed, bones
like logs, wrists strong as axle trees, fair and blue-eyed,
prankster, ventriloquist who talked off mountainside, rumormonger for
fun, heart of the hunter, hide of the herd, apt killer, born to wear
the rags of war. Williamson, faceless in the night, black set on
black, only teeth like high piano keys, eyes that captured stars,
fine nose got from Rome through rape or slave bed unknown generations
back, was cornerback tough, graceful as ballet dancer (Walko's
opposite), hands that touched his rifle the way a woman's touched, or
a doll, or one's fitful child caught in fever clutch, came
sperm-tossed across the cold Atlantic, some elder Virginia-bound
bound in chains, the Congo Kid come home, the Congo Kid, alas, alas,
born to wear the rags of war.
Sheehan, reluctant at
trigger-pull, dreamer, told deep lies with dramatic ease, entertainer
who wore shining inward a sum of ghosts forever from the cairns had
fled; heard myths and the promises in earth and words of songs he
knew he never knew, carried scars vaguely known as his own, shared
his self with saint and sinner, proved pregnable to body force, but
born to wear the rags of war
I came home alone. And they are
my brothers. Walko is my brother. Williamson is my brother. God is my
brother. I am a brother to all who are dead, we all wear the rags of
war.
I can take you back to all the hard places, to the
adjectives and verb ends; to the quadrangle in Japan in 1951 and the
cool wind coming through Camp Drake and the voice of death talking in
it and calling Maciag's name (Body Hunger) and little Salazar (Arab
Dagger) and Captain Kay (Memphis Peon) and Billy Pigg (Cowpoke) and
Stoney Mason (Pennsy Slateman)and Anadazio (Bread You Can't Imagine)
and Dan Bertelsen (AKA The Knife) and you listened and it didn't talk
your name and you still felt sad and knew you were the only ear. In
three weeks they were gone, all gone, and their voices went into
ground, and all their words, and they built on the word rock and now
they still dance sadly... such words that make you cry with music
still in them, and they come long and slowly out of another time
funnel, like Billy Pigg crying as he rolled over in your arms and
Captain Kay saying, "I just want to go home for a little while
and tell Merle and Andy I love them. Just for an hour or so."
And
I can say to Hughie: You think I don't remember you. Your nose was
red, ears outsized, you moved lanky in your lanky way, you had blue
eyes, your cheeks red. In front of the State Theater on Saturday
matinees you towered over us. But I do remember you, Hughie. I do!
Your hair was tall in front, dark; your arms were long, your nose
English like mine's Irish but mostly for word music. You wore dark
blue denim dungarees; once a blue jacket with red sleeves. You didn't
skate with us, but I remember your picking leaves, watching the sun
fall all the way through the filaments. I saw you Saturdays, later
on, watching us play football at the stadium. Then, how Time plays
tricks on all of us, we were in Asia, carrying carbines in the Land
of the Morning Calm. That far Asia's sun set down on you, Hughie, but
I walked free of that hole. Most morning after, on my way to school
or work, old shells echo, shy infiltrator eyes me, cursed land mine
sits a maimed turtle in my path, dark clouds grow darker, dread rain
becomes yellow madness, deep earth opens its welcome arms, and your
name flies its black letters on a gray cast iron sign in East Saugus.
Once, when I was late for work, snow on the hillside, flowers rimmed
the pole. I keep wondering for you, Hughie, who put the flowers out
in January? Is there a friend with long memory? A girl who dreams?
Did you visit?
Or send a letter to Londo 50 years later, after
Korea, after finding each other: There was a silence at midnight.
Cold leaped in pieces like slate falling. Feathers coming loose.
Burned bread tossed three days early is sought. Find the jam in cans.
Look in the sump holes. Find the raspberry. The sour strawberry. Find
jam and old bread harsh as leather. No milk here. No mother's milk.
No sour cream on a bet. No cow's cud. No cow. Just cold. Cold smooth
as slates. Cold gray as slate. Cold in thin sheaves, like knives in
the wind, or emptiness or worn sleeves. Remember the rain we had.
Just days earlier. How warm it was, cleansed us down to our toes,
inside out, newness. Remember the rain. How warm it was. In puddles
it shone on your face. Showed you, me, in pieces. But warm. How warm
it was. How mild. The grass in mountain grips shone. Now it flares
cold with light. Draws attention to itself. Freezes. Tells us it
freezes. Says don't hold on to us. The mountain talks back. If you
listen, you hear me, it, us, and the cold. Tells us it also is cold.
Leans inward. Wants the rain more than we do. And knows better, all
its storms cashed in.
I think of you in Las Vegas now, the
wind across a desert raw as lonely can be, both of us wondering where
Jack Slack was hanging his hat all this time, finding him at last at
Fort Bliss National Cemetery, Section PG, retired as M/Sgt. John. R.
Slack, fifteen years hidden from our grasp, but still in the ranks.
Then, in June of 2017, Chuck Rumfola visited me at home in Saugus, MA with his daughter Carol and her husband Pete Kostraba. He signed the 1000 Won banknote that had been in my wallet since 1951 and had missed the signing by our squad when he was off on special assignment in the combat zine. He penned his name at this Saugus visit, went home and died 5 days later at 93, after his two wars.
I said hello for all of you, to this other brother of ours, and he said it back to all of you, not forgotten here, never forgotten.
