Fannie Flagg - Standing in the Rainbow

They were supposed to have been relieved a week ago by another company but they had been pushed back so far behind the lines, they couldn't be sure they would be found. In the frantic scramble they had lost most of their K rations and had no idea where they were or how far away the other Americans were.

Everything was cold and white. They couldn't see more than a foot in front of them. When it wasn't snowing, a white misty ground fog came in. It was such a strange, surreal war, as if it were being fought in cotton. The sound of machine-gun fire was all around them, soft and muffled, but still they knew it was deadly. So strange to be so terrified with the whole world gone soft and white or to be covered with sweat in the middle of a snowstorm. They could occasionally hear voices calling out in the distance, to them or to one another, they didn't know. Most of these men, including Bobby, had grown up in movie theaters watching World War II movies, and the shrill, high-pitched, Oriental language that sounded just like Japanese struck a twelve-year-old's fear in their hearts. But this was no movie. And their sergeant was not John Wayne. He was a twenty-two-year-old kid from Akron, Ohio, who had just gotten married a year ago. Soon they had run out of everything, food, ammunition, and any options. They could not signal where they were or they would be ambushed. They were trapped. Dead if they moved, dead if they didn't.

Then, at about one o'clock that afternoon, Bobby suddenly said to the man beside him, "The hell with this. I'm going to go and find them."

He handed the man his gun and crawled over the top of the ditch and disappeared. He knew he could not stand up without getting his head shot off, so he crawled. As he slowly inched forward in the snow he suddenly remembered something Jimmy had told him at the Trolley Car Diner years ago, right before the bubble gum contest: "Don't look to your right. Don't look to your left. Concentrate. Remain calm, stay the course." He kept repeating it over and over in his mind. Thinking about that day, thinking about the bubble he blew, thinking about the applause… Don't get rattled. Concentrate. Like and easy all the way.

While he continued to move forward inch by inch, moving for his life and the life of the other men on the line, thousands of miles away in Elmwood Springs, the high school senior class was busy with such benign matters as who to vote for in "Who's Who," what color stone they wanted in the senior ring, and who they were going to ask to the prom. That afternoon his best friend, Monroe, would be sitting in the drugstore drinking cherry Cokes with his girlfriend, Peggy, and asking Doc if he had heard from him.

Twenty-eight hours later he had crawled within six feet of a dead body and twenty feet past a North Korean machine-gun nest, where three soldiers were sleeping. But he never saw any of them. After he in front of them. When it wasn't snowing, a white misty ground fog came in. It was such a strange, surreal war, as if it were being fought in cotton. The sound of machine-gun fire was all around them, soft and muffled, but still they knew it was deadly. So strange to be so terrified with the whole world gone soft and white or to be covered with sweat in the middle of a snowstorm. They could occasionally hear voices calling out in the distance, to them or to one another, they didn't know. Most of these men, including Bobby, had grown up in movie theaters watching World War II movies, and the shrill, high-pitched, Oriental language that sounded just like Japanese struck a twelve-year-old's fear in their hearts. But this was no movie. And their sergeant was not John Wayne. He was a twenty-two-year-old kid from Akron, Ohio, who had just gotten married a year ago. Soon they had run out of everything, food, ammunition, and any options. They could not signal where they were or they would be ambushed. They were trapped. Dead if they moved, dead if they didn't.

Then, at about one o'clock that afternoon, Bobby suddenly said to the man beside him, "The hell with this. I'm going to go and find them."

He handed the man his gun and crawled over the top of the ditch and disappeared. He knew he could not stand up without getting his head shot off, so he crawled. As he slowly inched forward in the snow he suddenly remembered something Jimmy had told him at the Trolley Car Diner years ago, right before the bubble gum contest: "Don't look to your right. Don't look to your left. Concentrate. Remain calm, stay the course." He kept repeating it over and over in his mind. Thinking about that day, thinking about the bubble he blew, thinking about the applause… Don't get rattled. Concentrate. Like and easy all the way.

While he continued to move forward inch by inch, moving for his life and the life of the other men on the line, thousands of miles away in Elmwood Springs, the high school senior class was busy with such benign matters as who to vote for in "Who's Who," what color stone they wanted in the senior ring, and who they were going to ask to the prom. That afternoon his best friend, Monroe, would be sitting in the drugstore drinking cherry Cokes with his girlfriend, Peggy, and asking Doc if he had heard from him.

Twenty-eight hours later he had crawled within six feet of a dead body and twenty feet past a North Korean machine-gun nest, where three soldiers were sleeping. But he never saw any of them. After he made it up the hill, he stood up and ran and fell and ran again until someone heard him yelling at the top of his lungs, "Hi-yo, Silver, away!" The Americans, nervous and quick to shoot at anything that moved, knew at once that this was no Korean and came out and found him.

He was half out of his mind and had no idea why he had been yelling, but it saved his life.

By the time he was able to lead that company to his outfit, six of the men had already frozen to death but they were able to save the rest. He refused a medal and never told anyone what he had done. As he explained to the major, "There was nothing brave about it. I was just too scared to stay there and die."

Bobby came out of the army happy to be home but a very different man from the one who had left. He was quiet and introspective and seemed to have lost his old zest for life. Although his parents did not say anything, they were worried. He did not seem to have any desire to date or go out with his old friends. While he was gone Monroe had married Peggy and was working for her father down at the tire store.

They had gone fishing and bowling a few times but he mostly just sat around the house or went down to the diner and talked to Jimmy.

After a few months Dorothy became very concerned. She began to wonder if he would ever go back to being his old self or be able to find a girl he liked. She thought if he just found a nice girl and fell in love, maybe it would help him. She did not know it, but her son had fallen hopelessly in love and he was not over it yet. Maybe it was because he had seen too many movies, but Bobby had always been wildly imaginative and full of idealistic visions of knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, and living happily ever after. He had had his little crushes on girls for years but when he was seventeen he had fallen so completely and painfully head over heels in love that it had almost killed him. It had consumed him like a raging fire. She had been the first thing on his mind when he awoke and the last thing he thought about before he went to sleep and dreamed about her. It had not been just an infatuation. This was a real overwhelming passion, an obsession, and he had been almost sick with it. So in love with her that at times it hurt to breathe. When she'd smiled at him or spoke to him in the most casual way, he had lived off of it for a week. He was a gangly, awkward, pimply-faced boy and she was a grown, mature woman of twenty-eight. He could not tell anyone, not even Monroe, about how he felt, so he suffered in silence. He was sent flying into the heights of ecstasy and thrown down into the depths of hell by her slightest move, sometimes in the same day.