William Wharton - Shrapnel

‘At ease, soldier.’

I take the position the military calls ‘at ease’. That is, you spread your legs about eighteen inches apart, stiff-legged. If I’d had my rifle, I’d have gone into something called ‘parade rest’.

‘Soldier, deliver that rifle to the orderly room when inspection is over.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

He wheels away, still holding his hand out at his side. The Captain takes over the rest of the inspection. I know I’m on ‘private report’ and dread what is sure to come.

The rifle is still lying in the parade ground dust and dirt. I reach down and pick it up. I’m probably breaking at least five army rules doing this, but I don’t care. I love that rifle. I’ve carefully zeroed it in to ‘expert’ level for everything from two hundred to five hundred yards. I still remember the serial number of that rifle, 880144.

The crazy thing, among many crazy things, is when I finally do go overseas, they issue me a new rifle, one I didn’t get to zero in, don’t know at all. I feel nothing for that rifle. I kill human beings with that ‘piece’ but it’s never really mine. I feel I don’t actually do it. Maybe that’s the way military planners want it to be – nothing personal.

When we get back to the barracks, Williams is frantic with excitement. He pulls me aside and into the latrine. He has a paper sack full of coal dust and a tube of airplane glue. I watch, numb, as he mixes them into a gooey running paste and pours this mess down my rifle barrel and into the action. He’s trembling with a combination of fury and mirth.

‘Now that bastard’s really got something to work with. Birnbaum’s revenge. I’m almost tempted to include a package of steel wool.’

I decide that would be too much, they might stand me up before a firing squad.

I deliver the rifle, with Williams pushing behind me, to the orderly room. We dash back to the barracks. Next morning the rifle is delivered by the mail clerk, it’s like new. I check the serial number and it’s mine all right. I don’t know who cleaned out that mess, or how. Not a word is said. I hope it’s Muller, I’m sure it isn’t Perkins – I suspect it’s the mail clerk.

We ship out three days later. I’m sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, to an infantry division. I’m hoping I’ll never see Lieutenant Perkins again and I don’t look very hard.

During basic I got to know Corbeil, the fellow who sleeps in the bunk below me. He’s one of the few in our group who has much education beyond high school. He’d been in the Master’s programme at Columbia when they drafted him and he hates the army even more than I do. He’d been a philosophy major with a special interest in existentialism, and considers the whole war an uncalled for, unjustified, interruption of his life. His name is Max and he reads books, half of them are in French, which he had sent from home. He considers the post library a literary garbage pit. I’ll admit I don’t even know where the post library is. One weekend he comes back from town with an alarm clock. Now the last thing in the world you need in the army is an alarm clock.

Regularly, before light, about fivethirty, the Corporal of the Guard comes through yelling. He makes sure everyone’s rolled out of bed, he’s kicking the beds as he goes along, yelling and hollering. If you pull your covers over your head he’ll rip them off the bed and dump them on the floor. This means starting the bed from scratch.

Most of us make the bed for Saturday inspection, and then slip ourselves under those blankets like letters into envelopes the rest of the week. We slide out the same way. These blankets are virtually glued to the frames. That way we can snatch a few minutes in the latrine before the thundering herd descends upon us.

By six we need to be lined up in the company street, dressed, shaved, clean, with our rifles and helmet liners. There’ll be roll call, the orders of the day, a few kindly words from Muller or Perkins about what rotten soldiers we are, then we go to mess hall for breakfast. The KP have already been rousted out at four.

I ask Corbeil, incredulously, ‘Why the alarm clock?’

Corbeil holds the clock next to his ear and smiles. ‘This little ticker’s going to get me out of the army.’

I figure all the reading has pushed him over the edge. My mother always insisted reading softens the brain.

That night I hear him wind his clock. I hang over the edge of my bunk and watch as he tucks it under his pillow. In the dark of night I hear it go off. I’m a relatively light sleeper. He lies still for a few minutes, then carefully slides out of his bed onto his knees. He pulls his top blanket off the bed onto the floor. Then, still kneeling, he starts peeing on the bed, spraying back and forth. Using a penlight, he resets his clock, pulls his still dry pillow off the bed and wraps himself in the blanket on the floor.

I again hear the alarm go off just before the Corporal of the Guard comes at five thirty. He jumps up, hides his clock on one of the rafters to the barracks, then curls up in his blanket again.

After roll call, he takes all his wet bedding to the supply sergeant and gets new ones. This happens every morning for a week. Muller becomes a raving maniac. He puts Corbeil on sick call. They give him some pills he doesn’t take. He offers them to me. After a week, the supply sergeant won’t give him any more clean bedding and they take his stinking mattress away.

Corbeil starts sleeping with just a blanket over the metal slats of his bunk. But the alarm keeps going off and, in the dark, I can hear the splash as he pees on his sheet. It begins to get awfully smelly around our bunk.

As far as I know, besides Corbeil, I’m the only one who knows what’s happening. After two weeks they send Corbeil to a doctor, then a psychiatrist. When he’s around with the rest of us, not on sick call or in the hospital, he does his work like everybody else.

Muller is all over Corbeil, calls him ‘piss head’ and even more vulgar names. Corbeil is very modest, sorry about everything. He even gets a bucket of hot soapy water and scrubs the saturated floorboards under his bed. He apologises to everybody, claims this had been a problem for him all his life. Far as I know, he didn’t have any trouble until he bought that damned alarm clock.

One day he doesn’t come back from sick call. He’s gone for almost a week. I borrow a few books from his footlocker. Even with the ones in English, I can’t understand them.

I begin to sleep through the night and things smell better under the bunks.

He comes back smiling. They’ve issued him a mattress, mattress cover, blankets. That night I hear the alarm go off again. I listen as he goes through his full routine. I need to hold my mouth to keep from laughing, and the whole double bunk shakes. Corbeil looks over the edge of my bunk.

‘Take it easy, Wharton, it won’t be long now. Wait till tomorrow.’

He resets his alarm and goes to sleep. Corporal Muller screams, hollers and curses Corbeil. Non-coms aren’t allowed to touch enlisted men, but he comes close, nose to nose, spittle flying. This is an insult to the whole US Army, he claims. He rants and raves, makes Corbeil wash the blankets, the mattress cover, air out the mattress.

But nothing is going to stop Corbeil. He’s removed from the barracks again. The alarm clock is still in its hiding place. I wait. About three days later, we come in from field exercises and there’s Corbeil. He’s emptying his footlocker into his duffel bag. He’s wearing his dress uniform, not fatigues. He smiles at me. I wait until nobody is close by. Everybody’s in the latrine washing up. We’d just spent the day in a dusty field learning the difference between creep and crawl. You creep like a baby and crawl like a snake. I think, or it could be the other way round.