Strength to Carry On
Don Malarkey/Joe Liebgott, PG

There are mornings, three a.m.s, midnights, when you wake up and marvel that you are still capable of waking. There is a sense of amazement that your body still works after Toccoa, France, Holland, Bastogne. Sometimes you aren’t sure how you keep going; it would be so easy to just slip away, to join Buck in some vacant-eyed, helmet-less land. But each day you wake to four functioning limbs and a mind that can still do its job.

Some nights the ghosts are too strong. You wake with Toye’s voice ringing in your ears: “Jesus, Malark, what’s a guy gotta do to get killed around here?” Or you can still feel Skip’s name in your mouth, silent shouts the others never hear echoing off the walls. On nights like these, when you know sleep will not come, you go to relieve the sentry, who may as well sleep if you can’t. And so you sit and guard your men from the darkness, rubbing the indentation of a cross invariably left on your palm.

This is one of those nights. You wake from a dream of digging. Muck and Penkala laughed in the distance as you tore into their foxhole, heedless of frozen ground ripping at your fingernails, sure that if you only dug deep enough they’d pop out, grinning at their prank. You claw your way from that dream to find blood on your hand, where you’d squeezed Skip’s cross too hard.

After struggling from a tangle of blankets you go downstairs to find Babe rubbing his hands in the cold and blinking sleepily into the night. The platoon has grown accustomed to you by now and Babe only offers the smallest of concerned nods before gratefully seeking his own blanket for the rest of the night. Babe always looks so young when he sleeps. You’re young yourself, but you don’t feel it.

You’ve climbed the ranks since the days of Private Bullshit and now all the men in this decimated platoon are yours in a way that they can never belong to any of the rotating lieutenants since Buck left. You proudly wrote home about your first set of chevrons but never really wanted to lead, more comfortable following men like Winters or Buck or Lipton than trying to imitate them. But then the army rarely offers a choice and you often think that watching over these men may be all that keeps you going.

You know every one of the guys scattered through this German house, how they sleep, where they’re from; seen them happy, drunk, bloody and scared. You’ve all worn the same clothes, fought the same battles, and, more likely than not, screwed the same whores. There’s Heffron, who left his youth in the snow of Bastogne, torn apart when Julian died and later losing Guarnere, the man who’d practically adopted him. And Webster, the Harvard man, still adjusting to all the changes after returning from his wound in Holland. And then there’s Joe Liebgott, you think, hearing a muffled shout from upstairs. You know that soon, as often happens on nights like this, Joe will be joining you.

Most of you enlisted from some youthful sense of patriotic duty, some combination of foolish bravado and desire for adventure after growing up in the throes of the Depression. Joe Liebgott enlisted to kill Germans. You all sense his difference long before he tries to throttle Guarnere halfway to England. There is something about the fierce determination with which he approaches drills, the quiet distance he keeps, not unfriendly, but a little wary. He bunks across from you, trains with you, runs with you, and yet you never really notice him.

In France you all learn to trust him with your backs, if only his desire to kill Germans seems to overpower even the value he places on his own life. Yet he shocks you all by displaying an unexpected caring, nurturing side with Tipper and Talbert and Alley. He flips from cold, deadly, and bitter to laughing, worried, and protective so fast it gives you whiplash. But you have your buddies and still rarely notice him. Not until the Kraut shells strip away every guy you rely upon.

The hellish nightmare of Bastogne seems so absurd it is almost possible to pretend none of it is really happening. By the time Muck and Penkala are hit you are numb enough that nothing sinks beneath the frozen surface. Luz finds you, and wide-eyed and pale, talks of dodging shells and Muck and Penkala disappearing before his eyes. You want to laugh, to cry, to scream at Luz to deliver the punchline to his joke already. But he only looks at your sadly and you find yourself unable to react to his news. You certainly aren’t going to laugh if the company clown can’t.

You silently follow him through that splintered forest, ground laid bare by fresh blasts, tree limbs littering the ground. You keep your distance, unable to come closer as Lipton and Roe and Luz search for anything the shells spared. There is little left, no body to say good-bye to, almost as though a giant hand had scooped them away, removed any evidence that they ever existed. Luz hands you a single object. Nothing is sacred to artillery and most of the beads are lost, but Skip’s cross glitters unmarred in your hand, and you stare at it, unable to wrap your mind around what it means.

It seems like an eternity since the Sundays when your mother would drag you and your brother from bed, shove you into itchy collars and pinching shoes, and march you off to Mass. There, as the incomprehensible Latin rolled over you, you and your brother would sit and pinch each other when you mother wasn’t looking. Now you almost wish you’d paid attention.

The convent at Rachamps is the first church you’ve been inside in a long time and the warmth and shelter are a welcome relief even with the sting of thawing fingers, toes and ears. The others are collapsed in pews, listening to the choir, reading hymnals or lost in thought. But there is something you need to do.

You aren’t sure if you ever believed in this stuff, but Skip did, and it’s for him that you make your way to the memorial candles in the back alcove. You light candles for Muck and Penkala, and one for Hoobler, whose unloaded Luger you still carry, though it seems too cursed to pass on to your brother. Clutching Skip’s broken cross you kneel down, close your eyes, and try to remember how to pray. Skip would know. Skip brazenly wore his cross dangling from his uniform, though you were never sure whether that was a statement of faith or defiance of army regulations. He faithfully attended all of Father Maloney’s jeepside services. Lot of good it did, you think bitterly, when the shell didn’t even leave enough to bless.

Your concentration is broken by the sound of scuffing feet and you turn to see Joe Liebgott awkwardly shifting his weight behind you. Joe has been antsy and tense since you entered the church, more than he ever was in the Bois Jacques and you briefly wonder if he’s ever been inside a Catholic church. He’s watching you with a mix of curiosity and concern. You nod to him and, as you turn back to the candles, you hear him kneel beside you.

You struggle to remember the right words, one broken bead on the shattered cross at a time, before dropping your hands with a sigh.

“Does it help?” Liebgott’s whisper echoes painfully loud off the walls.

“I think it’s supposed to. But I can’t seem to remember how. Skip would know.”

Joe nods silently and turns his gaze back to the dancing flames. Slowly, carefully, he begins chanting in a language you can only assume must be Hebrew. There is something powerfully ancient and otherworldly to the sound and as it washes over you, you are hit with the awfulness of reality. This is not some horrible dream from which Skip will soon shake you awake with jokes about talking in your sleep. The shock at the sudden pain sends you reeling and you desperately stifle the sob that threatens to escape. Unwilling to let anyone see tears and unsure they can be stopped, you stumble out the back door into the cold night and find an alley to be alone with your grief, oblivious to Joe’s worried look behind you.

The tears that come are painful and hot and surprisingly few. You squat in that dark alley, leaning against a cold brick wall, and gently prod at the pain, feeling out the size and depth of the wound. Then with great care you weave a bandage over it, protecting it and cutting it off to heal. You place Buck and Toye and Guarnere in a special place where you can believe you will see them again someday and then you take Muck and Penkala and package them up, seal them off somewhere they can be safe but you don’t have to daily brush against them. You shiver at the hollowness where you used to keep everything now sealed off, utterly alone for the first time in years.

When you finish this mental bandage you look up to find Joe silhouetted at the mouth of the alley. Something inside says you should be upset at this violation of privacy but the lonely part of you is only too glad to see him there. You also know, somehow, that this isn’t the angry Joe who kept firing long after the Germans were dead in Holland. Walking towards you is the Joe who held a shattered Tipper in Carentan

He looks down at you, concern written on his face. “Are you okay?”

You poke the mental bandage, find it secure, and look up. He starts a bit at the look in your eyes, but reaches out a hand in response to your nod and pulls you to your feet. He puts his arm around you and you’re grateful for the support as he leads you from the alley.

You don’t look at anyone else in the showers, for that is the unwritten rule of public showers: “Thou shalt not cast thine eyes upon another.” By now, with all you’ve been through, with the month in Bastogne that stripped you all beyond naked even while wearing so many layers, it seems vaguely ridiculous. But there is the unwritten rule, the measure of pretend civilization, and you look at no one as the water washes away a month’s worth of grime. Not that you really see anyone, look at anyone, outside the showers.

But you know that if you did look – to Joe behind you or Popeye or Alley or most of the guys really, you’d see scars. Small or large, freshly-healed pink or faded white, puckered or creased, they all have permanent mementos to take home from the war. And you know that if they looked at you - which they won’t - all they’d see would be pale skin with a scattering of freckles. Completely pristine. Unmarked. Only your hunched shoulders betray the still-rupturing scar hidden deep within.

You must have some of the Irish luck your grandfather spoke of, lyrical voice spinning stories for you and your brother on summer evenings. You stopped counting the number of days you’ve spent on the line without a scratch, the number of times you should have been killed since your failed Luger hunt on D-day. Bullets, shells, grenades seem to explode around you, veer in their path to avoid your skin. The problem is they still need to hit something. Someone.

There’s no real reason why Toye was stuck in the open while you found a foxhole. Why Guarnere told you to stay put and then went out himself. Why it was Buck weeping on that log and not the tattered remnants of Private Bullshit. And you can’t explain why you didn’t go back with Muck and Penkala to shoot the shit that night like you had so many other nights. Sometimes you aren’t sure the luck is worth it.

You hear footsteps on the stairs and look up to see Joe, still a bit disoriented by whichever dream woke him, hair disheveled enough to betray how well he didn’t sleep. Joe Liebgott is haunted by ghosts of his own, but unlike yours, who are few and personal, his ghosts are a great multitude of strangers.

You can still remember Landsberg, not that any of you worry about forgetting. Lipton had initially asked you to watch the forest, though you don’t know what threat he imagined from that direction. Joe had joined you, very carefully completely ignoring the camp. In retrospect you think he must have known all along what you were all about to learn.

Joe had been uncharacteristically talkative, telling you more in those ten minutes than he has in the three years you’ve known him. He told you that his parents had come from Germany and his father, scarred from the last war and bitter at the country, had forbidden any mention of it. But his mother told him stories, taught him the language. He spoke of long childhood hours playing games with all the imaginary cousins, aunts, uncles he’d never met.

When Lipton called Joe’s face fell into the same pessimistic certainty you’d seen in the German soldier from Oregon on D-Day. Soon you all learned what Joe had already known, that this camp wasn’t full of criminals or war prisoners, but ordinary people thrown there because of the culture they were born into. You wonder if his strange openness had been some desperate luck charm, a chance at preserving a memory about to turn sour, of trying to protect the phantom relatives from being found there.

You looked for Joe that night, thinking to return what he had once given you. When you finally found him he was most of the way through a bottle of gin, huddled in a corner with Webster crouched protectively nearby. Webster told you he’d walked in shouting about forgetting the words – that they were stale and pitiful and hopeless. But as the gin disappeared, Joe began muttering in Hebrew faster and quieter and retreating further away. He was too far gone to even know you were there, but you stayed in that room all night as Easy trickled down, one by one discovering sleepless nights.

Joe sits next to you and, pulling legs into his chest, stares off into the night. You find the pack of Lucky Strikes Luz slipped you earlier and light one, taking a drag before offering it to Joe. You pass the cigarette back and forth in silence until it burns out.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Joe asks you.

You think a minute. “I don’t know. My grandfather used to tell stories from Ireland and my brother and I always begged him for ghost stories. Later we’d try to scare each other, pretending to be banshees. But I don’t think we ever really believed the ghosts were real.”

“My mother always told me Yiddish stories about dibbuks – restless souls haunting places or people. My father called it old world superstitious nonsense. Now,” Joe shivers slightly, “I’m beginning to see where the stories came from.”

You nod, feeling all too qualified to understand what Joe means. The rest of the night passes in companionable silence, shared cigarettes and a wind that sounds enough like a banshee the raise to hairs on your neck.

The mental bandage has done its job, though you find yourself often poking at the rough scar that remains. The ghosts are quieter here in Austria. Which is almost a shame because Skip would have loved Austria. You have real beds, hot food, and the scenery is beautiful – both the mountains and the native girls. And on the nights the ghosts do come back, there is plenty of alcohol to drown them out.

But tonight the ghosts are especially strong and the gin tastes stale in your mouth. In desperation you decide to find a place Talbert mentioned, where the girls are supposedly clean, friendly and willing for the right price. It’s two miles out of town but you walk, hoping the fresh air can clear your mind.

The girl is pretty and nice and does her job well. Your body enjoys itself but instead of distracting you, it only re-awakens old memories.

It’s late April in Aldbourne and though they haven’t told you anything, little changes like extra drills and better food hint at something big coming. An air of expectancy hovers over the base. Most of the guys have visited the Aldbourne whores by now and come back full of bravado. Skip has been hounding you for weeks to go with him and give it a shot. You are still young and innocent and uncertain about the whole thing. Skip is innocent too, but he would never admit it.

At dinner that night, week’s pay burning holes in your pockets, he tries again and your protests grow feebler. Finally, in desperation, he waves his spoon at you. “Come on, Malark. We’re going to war soon. Live while you’ve got the chance.” The unsaid sentence sends a shiver up your spine: “You don’t want to die a virgin, do you?” You finally give in.

The girl Skip finds you is plenty nice, if a bit too businesslike to pretend this is anything but what it is. There is no romance like in the movies but she is professional enough to take your nervousness in stride. In what seems like no time you’re walking back with Skip, torn between the elation at getting away with something and a hollow feeling of “that’s it?”

The whole time with the girl in Austria, all you can think about is this first time in England, and you leave with a similar feeling. As you walk down the hallway a door in front of you opens and Joe Liebgott stumbles out, still buckling his pants, with his shirt tucked under an arm. You can hear a woman shouting in German before the door slams shut. Joe looks horrified at seeing you and hurries down the hall and out the door. He’s walking that way he does when he doesn’t want people to know he’s drunk and you hurry after him to make sure he’s okay.

Joe is out front buttoning his shirt but when he sees you he turns and heads down the road in long, angry strides. Your cry of “Joe, Wait up!” only makes him walk faster, and you jog to catch him. By the time you reach him the road has bent enough for the house to be out of sight. You put your hand on his shoulder, hoping to slow him down, get him to look at you. “Joe, what happened?”

He turns on you with almost a snarl, slapping your hand away. “Nothing a good Catholic boy needs to worry about.”

You mutter “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” at his retreating back and hurry ahead to walk beside him. After a few minutes you try again. “C’mon, Joe, what’s eating you?”

He sighs, stops, and looks at you. “She didn’t want to fuck a dirty Jew.”

“Are you serious?”

“No. That’s the nice version of what she shouted.” He turns away to keep walking and you can just make out a mumbled “Story of my life.”

You stand there shocked for a minute and then catch up to him again. “It’s just one stupid whore, Joe. They’re not all like that.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? The whole world’s like that. Our entire history is this country kicking us out or that country killing us. When I was a kid every week I had to beat up some guy who thought it was fun to tease the Jew. So don’t go telling me they aren’t all like that.”

“I’m not like that.”

Joe’s glare is fierce enough to make you step back. “You telling me you spoke up every time Gonorrhea called Sobel a kike or Yid? You played with the other Jewish kids growing up? Stepped in when someone harassed them?”

“Well, no.”

“Then you’re just as bad. You stand there and watch people like that whore, listen to what they say and you support them, laugh with them. And then something like Landsberg happens while people like you were busy not giving a shit and suddenly you care and you’re sorry. Well, sorry isn’t fucking enough.”

He stalks off again leaving you to stare after him, stunned. Then you call out, “Joe, that isn’t fair!”

He stops stiff and for a second you wonder if he’s carrying a gun. He turns to you and his face is stone in the moonlight. “Don’t you fucking tell me what isn’t fair. Why don’t you go find those people from Landsberg and tell them what’s fair? Go find every kid who’s had his face shoved in the dirt for being born Jewish and tell him what’s fair. Go find every one of us who has to carry the weight of history, of our entire fucking people on our shoulders each and every day. Go find them and then come back and tell me what is fucking fair.”

You stare at him a minute, carefully controlling your fear, anger and pain and placing it in a corner like you learned to do long ago. Once you’re sure you can be steady you walk toward him and see his eyes widen a hair as you pass him and continue up the road. You aren’t surprised to hear footsteps behind you a minute later.

“Look, Malark…”

Your voice is even, calm, quiet and perfectly controlled. “You know what, Joe? Not being Jewish doesn’t automatically mean someone has an easy life. You want to hear about fairness? Go ask Lipton about his father dying. Go talk to Guarnere about his family trying to find food during the Depression. Go meet my grandfather and ask him about the famine that made him leave Ireland. Life isn’t fair, Lieb, and it’s not limited to the Jews. And don’t think you’re the only one who’s been hurt by this war. We’ve all got memories we’re going to dream about the rest of our lives.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, but when he does you can tell he’s calmed down and just maybe listened to what you said. “I know, Malark. It’s just so hard sometimes. There used to be this old man who would sit outside our temple and rant about how Jews were made to suffer. And he’d tell us that we each carried all of Israel on our shoulders, that everything we did affected every Jew in the world and it was our job to carry them, defend them, protect them.” He pauses when his voice almost cracks and for a minute the silence in the forest is deafening. You turn and wonder if Joe is drunker than you thought. He’s swaying a bit and his mouth is almost trying to form words.

He sits down by the side of the road, a controlled collapse, and shakes his head. “I don’t think I can do it anymore. I can’t carry it all. I can’t get revenge for all of them.”

You suddenly remember what Webster told you the other day and things become clear. Webster spoke of visiting a hut with Skinny and Liebgott, and Liebgott’s following of an order that looked more like revenge. At this point Webster had shaken his head and quoted what he told you was Shakespeare, “If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

You sit next to him and light two cigarettes, handing him one. The twin columns of smoke intertwine in the night air. “You don’t need to carry all that alone, Joe. Nobody can. That’s one thing you should have learned from this war. We could never have done what we did without each other. And all the revenge you carry out won’t bring those people back. You need to take care of yourself, and you need to trust us enough to share some of that weight. Maybe I didn’t understand before. But I do now. We all do now. Let us help.”

You stand and reach a hand out to help him up, reversing the roles you had so many months before outside the convent. He looks to you and you can see his uncertainty at relying on anyone. You feel a surge of relief when he grasps your hand and you pull him from the ground.

As you steady him you can’t help but mutter to yourself, “Crazy fools, the Irish.”

He looks at you in confusion. “What?”

“Never mind.” You shake your head, smiling a little. Walking back he puts his arm around your shoulder and you can tell from the weight that it’s not merely friendly. He needs the support, and you’re glad to give it to him.