The Warmth of a Song

The squad had to momentarily stop their crawling as another shell came screeching down and pelted the little troop with debris.  With every ounce of strength he had left, Hawk crept along.  “You’ll be tasting Betty’s pies again real soon,” he kept talking to Ty.  “What’s your favorite flavor again, pecan right?  Just think, you’ll be able to read to your kids again.”  Ty moaned in his ear.  “Good, good, keep dreaming of those pies.  Think about Betty in that sweet little house in East Tennessee.” 

As Hawk crept along with his heavy cargo, he felt a twinge of jealousy at the thought of Ty’s homelife.  He paused to duck bullets flying overhead, and yelled above the din, “Hell, you’re the luckiest sonovabitch I know!  You got a wife and kids like that, what more do you need?” 

“I know,” moaned Ty lowly in his ears.  

Hawk laughed and butted his head against his sergeant’s head in an affectionate gesture.  Knowing that Ty was still conscious, filled him with renewed determination to crawl even faster to bring him to a medic.

Miraculously, the troop of GI turtles reached the edge of darkness unscathed by any bullet.  Once out of the light and in the safe bosom of the night, Snyder turned around and sat looking at the battle as it played out before them.  The others followed suit.  The black sky was continually punctuated with the brilliant yellow, blue, and orange flashes of shells bursting into flame.  If it weren’t war, it would have been a radiant spectacle of fireworks.  In areas where no shell had hit, the virgin, white snow lay glistening like diamonds beneath the search lights, making it look as though powdered stars had fallen upon the earth.  Hawk shook his head in amazement.  So many times since the war had started, he had witnessed the face of ugly contrasted so sharply against a body of beauty.

A truck drove by on which some GI had painted the American flag.  The canvas sides of the truck flapped back and forth as it bumped along, making it look like a real flag flapping in the wind.  All the men followed it with their eyes as the truck drove by, staring at the flag.

Suddenly, Mancini’s beautiful tenor filled the night as he sang out, “The rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air -”

Hawk joined him singing, “Gave proof to the night, that their flag was still there.” 

Together, Schein and Snyder joined in as all the men sang together, “Oh say, does that star spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Never before had the words to their National Anthem rung more true.  The squad of brave men sat swaying and watching in silence. 

As he sat watching the battle, Colonel Ewing’s words echoed in Hawks ears.  “It isn’t Hollywood out there, Hawk.  It is a more gruesome hell then you can ever imagine...If you’re smart, you’ll be scared ‘cause that’s a sign that you’re still human.” 

In the beginning, he thought, this makeshift platoon of green dogface boys had been scared to death all right.  Now, as he looked at those remaining, Hawk realized that they had become seasoned killers in a matter of only four days.  They were, however, now too numb with fatigue to feel much of anything else.  Hawk surprised himself, as he suddenly realized that he did not know what day it was.  How many days have we been fighting, anyway?  Has it, indeed, been only four?  Is that all?  Hell, it feels like a lifetime - like nothing else has come before this and nothing else will ever happen again, he thought.  In war’s heated battle, living for the moment, craving hot chow, and looking out for one’s buddy becomes the all encompassing focus of existence.  The past was dead.  The future held no meaning.  There was only the here and now and the question of if would one survive into the next moment of time or not.  What had started as the grandeur of fighting for God and country, had soon become the struggle to fight simply for each other, and to stay alive.