The War to End All Wars
I rolled onto my side to look toward Walt’s half of the bed. The extra pillows he’d gotten to help with his heartburn were still there, but he wasn’t. Walt was up in Reading where I’d taken him to recover in the peace and quiet. That’s what I told him. What I was really doing was getting him away from the stress of the restaurant.
If he stayed in our apartment, his mind would always be on Walt’s Special and every time I left him alone, he’d slip into the bustling kitchen to check on things. Checking on things would lead to him doing things and pretty soon, he’d be right back to work. I wanted to get him away from the strain which had caused his heart attack in the first place, so I badgered him until he agreed to let me take him away from the city. I packed him up and drove us both to the home of his childhood, sixty miles away from Philadelphia to the quiet of Reading.
The heart of Reading was a bustling little burg, but the sprawling country around it was pure tranquility, mostly family farms and disused coal mines. The house Walt grew up in was on the outskirts of the town. It was an ancient stone cottage with a substantial addition of red brick. The main living area was the oldest part of the house which was the cottage part. The brick part held the utilitarian areas of the home, including a reasonably modern kitchen, the master bedroom, and the bathroom.
Walt loved the house, like his father had before him. He loved the history of the place, but that was his whimsical side. I saw the building for what it was, a drafty old house with an inefficient fireplace that burned twice the wood of a modern unit and only gave half the heat. I offered to have a coal-fired insert installed in the gaping maw of the old stone hearth. Coal would be easier to manage and cheaper in the long run. Walt rejected my suggestion out of hand. He said it would be a desecration to install a modern insert into the hand-built fireplace.
I smiled at the stack of pillows on his side of the bed. My husband was a modern man, even more so than me, but there were certain things he held sacred. He disdained when classic literature was misquoted, and he loved everything about the home his father loved.
Thoughts of my husband and his likes and dislikes motivated me to rise from my warm bed. Had he been there, he would have wanted us both up and moving. There were things to be done.
I shoved the covers back and set my feet on the floor. I rubbed my face to wake my expression and heaved myself up. My old joints popped and crackled as I forced them to move. I plodded into the bathroom and started my daily routine. As I went through the automatic motions of getting ready for the day, my idle mind returned to the day I met Doc.
* * * *
My nephew Ben, or Mister Forsythe as the students called him, loaded a spool of film into a strange little projector. He pulled a screen down in front of the blackboard and switched the projector on. He turned a wheel to advance the film to a cell which read ‘FOCUS’ in block capitals. He used that cell to adjust the image, then switched off the projector.
He took his black-framed glasses from his middle-aged face and slipped them into the pocket of his collared shirt. The shirt fit his trim figure well, though its design was too modern for my taste. It was a garish yellow with red checks. He wore it with hunter-green polyester slacks. The students were dressed in a similar kaleidoscope of colors.
The peacock way that young people dressed was off-putting. I didn’t understand modern fashion. I probably looked very ‘square’ in the muted colors of my plain brown suit. I wondered what the young people thought of me. I guessed they thought I was a very old man, which compared to them, I was.
Ben clapped his hands to quiet the mutter of the classroom. His clap got my attention as well. He waited barely a moment for the noise to stop, then started the lesson. “Today we begin our exploration of modern warfare. We’ve already talked about the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. Our next course of study will be of modern, mechanized war.
“As we’ve learned, while war has great cost, it also has great benefits. War mobilizes people to work towards a common goal. Therefore, it produces great advances in science and technology. Many of the biggest technological advances of the modern age can be traced to their origins in World War Two. Jet airplanes, television, rockets to space, satellites, nuclear energy, even the interstate highway system all have their origins in that conflict.
“War also drives social change. The liberation of women and the integration of our public institutions began with the need for plentiful labor to out-produce our enemies in wartime. If not for the philosophy of total war, many of the negros in this country would still be on farms in the South. The ladies should also be thankful for the war. If not for that same need for plentiful labor, most modern women would be limited to a life as homemakers. The current Civil Rights movement and what is being referred to as Women’s Lib, can both trace their roots to seeds which were planted during the two World Wars.
“Our special guest, Mister Lawrence Edwards, is here to discuss the First World War. He is a veteran of the Western Front which stretched across France and much of Belgium. World War One, also known as The Great War, is considered the first modern war and the first mechanized war. Mister Edwards will describe what it was like to fight in the trenches.”
I stepped forward to introduce myself. I began by correcting Ben’s use of my full first name. “Good morning. My name is Law Edwards. As Ben said…excuse me, as Mister Forsythe said, I was a solider in The Great War.”
I explained to the thirty or so young people that I’d volunteered to fight. I told them a little about my basic training at Fort Dix Army Base in New Jersey. I explained how I was sent to England to train some more and then flung across the English Channel to France. I was part of the American Expeditionary Force and the First Army under John J. Pershing. I’d been a Private in the 120th Infantry during the St Mihiel Offensive and later the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
As I gave my talk, I did my best to make eye contact with as many of the students as possible. I wanted to engage the young people. I wanted them to understand what I was saying and why it was important. As I shifted my attention to the back of the classroom during the second or third pass of the students, I noticed one young man who didn’t belong with the rest.
He was obviously older than the others, maybe by as much as a decade. He wore a scraggly beard and had long, unkempt brown hair. His dress was careless, almost deliberately sloppy, and his clothes were too big for him. The most striking thing was his haunted gaze and gaunt face. He had bright blue eyes which darted around the room like he expected unseen enemies to pounce on him from under the nearest desk. His expression was drawn and white, like he carried all the cares of the world on his bony shoulders. I wondered about him.
I didn’t allow my eyes to linger on that youth or any other. I wanted their attention, but I didn’t want any to feel singled out. I did my best to explain who I was and why I was qualified to talk about World War One, then I gave the floor back to Ben so he could introduce his film strip.
He switched the little projector back on and gathered a black controller at the end of a wire into his hand. He pressed the only button, and the projector advanced the film by one cell. The image on the screen became a map of France with the phases of the war drawn in different colors to show the movement of the front at different times.
He pressed the button again. The map of France went away and came back covered with the zig-zag lines of the trench system which had stretched hundreds, if not thousands of miles. I didn’t have much information to add to the maps. The war I fought had been much smaller. Ben provided some facts and figures for the maps, then he clicked the button to advance the film again.
After the maps, there was slide after slide of antiseptic photos of the war. The students and I saw trenches with dry bottoms, smiling soldiers eating hot food, and clean horses harnessed to shining artillery pieces. We also saw generals and other brass gathered around the technological wonder of the first British tank.
I told about each image. I explained the way the trenches were built and how the doglegs in them were a safety feature. The short lengths of straight trench between right angles would prevent the blast of a shell from traveling too far and killing too many. The doglegs directed the blast up and out of the trench so each shell would only kill a few soldiers instead of many.
I spoke about the sandbags and timbers which held the trenches open. I explained the various artillery pieces and the small arms we used. I talked about the food we ate and the weather we endured. I talked about all kinds of things until there were no more images to prompt my speech. At the end, Ben turned off the little projector and put down the controller. I stood at the front of the room before a group of young people on whom I’d plainly had no impact.
Ben asked if I had anything to add to the talk I’d given. I moved to stand in the center of the projection screen like I was just one more antiseptic image in the slide show. Instead of the filthy, stinking, hate-filled creature I was in 1918, I was a clean old man in a brown suit. As far as those kids were concerned, I was as far away from a soldier as fifty years of time could take me. All the things I’d said were nothing more than words which could have been read from a dusty history book.
As I stood before their expectant faces, I knew I had one chance to make them understand. I wanted them to understand. I searched the classroom for something to hold onto; some interested face to whom I could speak. My search brought me to the young man at the back, the one who didn’t belong. He met my eyes with a searing blue gaze. Something in his expression reminded me of the men I’d been a soldier with. Something about the intensity of his stare, a stare which looked at me, and also through me, brought my thoughts back to a time and place when I was a part of ‘the war to end all wars.’
I spoke my piece directly to him. “These pictures were great. I wish I knew who took them. I wish I spent my entire time in France with that photographer because the war he witnessed was nothing like the one I fought. Everything around that photographer was clean and dry and nice. Those photos could have been from an ROTC summer camp. Between them and my anecdotes, you’ve learned exactly nothing about what war is really like.”
I shut my eyes to try to remember. I wanted to remember back through all the long years I’d lived in between this time and that one. I wanted to talk to the students in a way that would make them feel like they were there with me, like the other men had been, like Peter had been. I took a deep breath through my nose. My breath taught me where to start. I opened my eyes to speak.
“War stinks. My memory of The Great War is a memory of sensations. The worst one was the smell. Everything smelled rotten. It smelled rotten because it was rotten. The pictures we saw showed dry trenches. I don’t know where they were taken because I’ve never seen a dry trench. The ones I was in were muddy and wet. What was on the bottom, what foul horrors lay in that mud, you can barely fathom.
“Trench mud is not just water and dirt. Trench mud is water and dirt and human waste and the awful rotten flesh of man and beast. Living in a trench is like living in a festering boil on the ass of the world. Rats scurry everywhere. They run along the planks in the bottoms of the trenches. They climb the walls of sandbags. They run across your feet when you stand still, and they bite you when you sleep. The rats are huge, as big as cats. They’re fat from gorging themselves on the flesh of the dead.
“When a man falls, when he’s shot or blown up out in no man’s land, which is the space between our trenches and theirs, that’s where he stays. The dead, ours and theirs, lay where they fall because no one is willing to risk their own life to retrieve them. They lay under the sun and the rain, and they rot in the open. The rats feast on the exposed flesh. When that’s gone; when the faces are nothing more than empty eye sockets and the hands have been eaten down to long, thin bones, the rats move inside the uniforms. You can see them wriggle under the clothes like the corpse is possessed.”
I paused my tale of horror to take a breath. When I did, the man at the back of the room nodded to urge me on. I could tell he wanted to hear the whole of what I had to say. I heaved another breath which drew the corrupt scent of war into my nose. I exhaled it out of my mouth and used it to fuel my voice.
“The other sensation I remember is the sound of war. War is loud. During an attack, when all us doughboys were ordered over the top, our ears would ring with the ratchety sound of machine guns. The lead cut down everything in its path. Wounded men would shout and scream. Those mortally wounded would groan as their life left them. The sound a man makes when his last breath leaves his body…there’s no other sound like it. I swear as I stand here, I’ve heard the hollow laughter of the angel of death as he crossed our battlefields to gather the dead.”
I shivered from the memory and shook my head to rattle my brains. “By the time the order is given to attack, the carnage and death barely registers. By then, our nerves were so shattered from the shelling that the quiet of death seemed preferable.
“I’ve lived through shell barrages that lasted for days. Try to imagine that. Try to imagine the sound of cannons, the distant boom, boom, boom, boom, the howling shells, then shattering explosions as they fall all around. You take cover. You know deep in your soul that each moment you live might be your last. You know that the odds of a shell landing right in your lap are just the same as them landing anywhere else.
“And it doesn’t stop. It goes on and on and on, for hours and days. All you hear is the boom, boom, boom, and the howling, and the shattering explosions. The earth shakes. Trenches collapse. Men are blown to bits. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You can barely breathe from the smoke of high explosives. You can’t even move because the earth won’t keep still long enough for you to take a step. It goes on hour after maddening hour. Just when you think it can’t possibly last another moment, it does. It just keeps going.
“If you’re especially unlucky, you’ll get to see a man go mad. I’ve seen it. Something inside of them breaks. When a man can no longer endure the unendurable, he breaks. It happens like the snapping of a twig. Anything, if put under enough pressure, will break. A man is an incredibly resilient creature. He can take a lot of punishment, but inside every man there is a point where, if pushed beyond, he can take no more.”
I snapped my fingers in the air. “It happens just like that. I’ve seen it, more than once. Some men scream, some shake. I watched a man go right over the top. The sun rose on the third day of a barrage and this man could take no more. He started screaming. He climbed a ladder and ran into no man’s land. His name was Terrence. He was a limey, a big, tough son-of-a-bitch. Terry was one of those guys who seemed like nothing could phase him, but even he had his breaking point. The Krauts shot him down. I remember thinking he was lucky. I watched him fall and I wished I was where he was. If given the choice, I might have done what he did. I didn’t because I had a friend to protect. The only reason I didn’t follow Terry into the quiet peace of a quick death, was because of my friend.”
My mind filled with the image of Peter, thin and filthy and scared. I remember sitting with my arms around him, hour upon hour as the apocalypse thundered around us. A hand touched my shoulder and startled me into the present. My nephew looked at me with a question on his face.
I shook my head and cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. I guess I got carried away.” The classroom of teenagers had grown uncomfortable. My speech had shaken them. I tried to make my point. “Young people, your teacher says that war has great costs and great benefits. I can’t speak to the benefits, but I’ve seen the costs right up close. Whatever the benefits, the costs are too damn high.”
I stepped back, toward the blackboard. Ben stepped forward. He clapped his hands to get the class’s attention. “For homework tonight, I want you to write a five-paragraph essay about Mister Edward’s speech. The subject of your paper is to be ‘What The Great War means to me.’”
Ben said a few more words. He told the class to thank me for being there that day. The kids were prompted into some faltering applause. I raised my head to nod appreciatively at them. As I did, I noticed the man in the back of the room. He had his gaze fixed on me. His eyes shone, like they were full of tears, but none ran down his face. I wondered about him again.
The bell rang and class was dismissed. The kids fled toward the cafeteria and their lunch. Ben stayed behind, as did the man at the back of the room. The man waited until all the students were gone before he got up from his desk and came to the front.
Ben introduced us. “Uncle Law, this is Lowell Docherty. He goes by ‘Doc.’”
The man grinned sheepishly. He had beautiful, white teeth which were neatly arranged in two perfect rows. The man’s teeth were too perfect to be real, but they were. I assumed he came from money. Only the wealthy had the resources to have braces put on their teeth to straighten them as perfectly as his. “Most of the men in my family go by ‘Doc,’ especially those of us cursed to be the oldest boys. My full name is Lowell Sherman Docherty the third.”
I shook his hand. “I’d go by ‘Doc’ too. Your name is even worse than mine. I’m Lawrence Edwards. I go by ‘Law.’”
“Nice to meet you, Law.”
“Same.”
Ben expanded on his introduction. “Doc was a student here a few years ago. He went on to medical school and was almost done with his residency when he decided the army needed him more than his patients. He just got back from a tour of Vietnam.”
I made the obvious joke. “I guess ‘Doc’ is your name and your profession. What are you doing here? You interested in an old man’s memories of The Great War?”
He shook his head. “Mister Forsythe asked me to talk about the Vietnam Conflict, you know, in a few weeks after the other wars. I was nervous, so he said I could come today and watch.”
I was about to say something self-deprecating. I planned to ask if my speech had taught him what not to do, but Ben interrupted. “I’ve got to go, or I’ll miss my lunch. Can you both find your way out?”
We said we could. Ben hurried away, and I strolled to the parking lot with my new friend.
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