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And the history books forgot about us
And the Bible didn't mention us, not even once
Regina Spektor, Samson
You are a language I am no longer fluent in but still remember how to read.
Ashe Vernon, "Wrong Side of a Fistfight"
*
“Your hair’s too long, Web.”
I stop eating for a moment and look at Liebgott across the table, trying to decide whether he’s joking or not. It’s the kind of throwaway comment he makes all the time—the kind that’s got a hidden trap door, warning you that if you engage you’re liable to fall into the pit of anger, vengefulness, or mere mischief simmering underneath. I of all people should know, since Liebgott appeared to have made it his private mission to get on my every last nerve when I returned to the company in February. I learned then to either ignore him or give as good as I got; but it’s hard to do the former when he’s sitting two feet away from me.
We rolled into Germany about a week ago. It’s early March, but it already feels like spring. The air is soft and carries the smell of growing buds and early flowering bulbs, and the sun, which rarely showed itself in England, Holland and France, has been out almost every day since we’ve been here. Right now it’s peeking through the window of our improvised mess hall as it sets, casting a soft buttery light over everything, including our despised bean-and-kidney stews. It’s the kind of light I remember from old German paintings, the kind that makes wild, hostile landscapes with craggy rocks and crooked trees look romantic and inviting. It does the same for Liebgott, who’s lounging with his arms folded on the table and his chin resting on top of them, the creases largely smoothed from his brow, a cigarette tucked behind his left ear and his thick brown hair tumbling over his forehead in studied carelessness instead of exhausted neglect for once. He squints up at me, one amber eye lit up by the sun, reminding me of a cat lolling on a sunny windowsill, fooling you into thinking he’s sleeping while secretly scheming to push over the nearest plant as soon as you turn your back. Though we haven’t fallen out in almost a week—being pulled off the line, driving through rolling green hills and sleeping between actual sheets at night does take the edge off—there’s an eager glint in his eye that I don’t entirely trust. As far as I’m concerned, the truce we made after I took his place on the patrol in Haguenau is only a fragile one. I still wouldn’t put it past him to suggest I need a haircut only to “accidentally” make me the laughing stock of Easy Company.
Eagerness. I had been eager to return, actually, even if I hated being back in the cold, miserable dreariness of Europe in February, with Deutschland almost kaput and the fighting harder than ever. In the hospital and the replacement depot I’d missed Easy’s company, the warm feeling of belonging that was the saving grace of army life and that could never be recreated in the rear echelon: the bond I didn’t think would fade away easily, tempered as it was in the fire of battle. And so I could hardly believe it when I walked past the trucks and saw only the empty husks of men I knew, the all-over warmth that filled me at the sight of them trickling down into my boots when their blank, disdainful eyes swept over me, then turned away as if they couldn’t bear to look. All their pluck and good humour had hardened into acrimony and cynicism, and even Liebgott looked like all the fight—and he was all fight—had gone out of him. When I asked Sergeant Lipton about it, the only one who didn’t dismiss me with a shrug and a “You wouldn’t understand, you weren’t there”—as if I had never been in an artillery barrage!—I came to understand the cold, nearly frozen shoulder I was being given. He told me all about the buzz bombs, the screaming meemies and the 88s, the exploding trees and the trench foot and the shallow foxholes in the frozen ground, about Bastogne and Foy and Noville and Rachamps, about Guarnere, Toye, Compton, Hoobler, Muck and Penkala, Smokey Gordon and Skinny Sisk, and others. It sounded like the kind of battle I’d read about in novels about the Western front in the previous war; hopeless, hellacious and without reprieve; to be suffered through rather than fought. Not at all like Holland, or Normandy; if I thought I knew what war was like, he’d emphasized, I knew nothing.
It made sense to me that those who were left were hurt, embittered and traumatized, but not that I was being treated the way old men treat a fresh wave of replacements coming in to fill the spots of buddies now wounded, dead or MIA. Sure I felt embarrassed about rocking up all chipper and obnoxious in my squeaky-clean ODs, asking after those I didn’t see without realising just how much the ranks had thinned. But whenever I did make an attempt to understand, to empathize, inevitably the conversation would be steered away from the Bulge and towards my absence: “We thought you’d gone AWOL. Left us in the lurch,” or, “We just figured you got scared and injured yourself on purpose.” I wasn’t sure which was the worse insult: the one that implied I’d abandoned them without a care for any of their lives, or the one that accused me of being a chickenshit. I was still a Toccoa man, and when even Roy Cobb, who hadn’t even jumped in Normandy, began acting the world-weary veteran with me, I felt the sting of injustice keenly.
In Liebgott’s eyes, which I had constantly felt scowling at me since my return, I expect I was a replacement; a version of myself that was different and inferior to the one that had left. Never mind what replacements got up to—Toccoa men didn’t chicken out. Toccoa men didn’t leave the heavy-duty fighting to others. Toccoa men didn’t choose themselves over their buddies. And as far as he knew, I had done all three. The way I saw it, though, was that by missing the Bulge I had saved my own hide, which is what I had intended to do from the moment I dropped into that cold swamp in Normandy. I happen to think that looking out for yourself, not mindlessly following orders, and not getting upset over little things are all qualities a Toccoa man should possess; and I like to think I have a certain “stick-to-it-iveness”, especially when surrounded by men from Easy Company, who tend to bring out the best in each other. But despite the fact that I care deeply about my fellow soldiers, I don’t want to feel responsible for their fate. Had I wanted to, I could have become a corporal after Normandy, and probably a sergeant after Market Garden. But I wanted to live, and I did not want to spend the rest of my preciously earned life reliving the moments when I had to send men away towards certain death on the orders of someone even more chickenshit than me, who wouldn’t be seen dirtying his khakis. They could call me selfish or chicken if they liked, but I decided how I wanted to pass my time in this war long ago: by observing, not participating, and certainly not by sacrificing myself in the name of some medieval notion of chivalry.
I don’t love the army, and, so help me, I will never ‘Yessir’ anyone again as long as I live, but I know the 506th is my home. When it's all over, I know I will miss the long, bobbing lines of broad shoulders, olive-green helmets, dark-brown rifles and swinging arms, the heavy tramp of jump boots and the soft clatter of shovels and bayonets on moving legs—the feeling of moving together like a great animal, healthy and strong and unstoppable. I went on that patrol because I needed to prove that their assumptions about me were wrong, and in return I needed to feel that deep sense of belonging, to know there were people who always had my back, encouraging me to make bold moves. I needed to regain the respect of the old men, and Liebgott especially. Joe’s bad side was not a place I wanted to be. He's always been scrappy, but he gained some sharp edges during my absence—a glee in watching people suffer that made me uncomfortable, especially when he made me his target. And so I’ve been doing my best to redeem myself by simply being there, by sharing a space or a cigarette with him, by touching his shoulder in passing or squeezing in next to him when boarding a truck, to remind him that I’m here to stay. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the army, it’s that it’s being physically there that counts; it means nothing to “be there in spirit” or at a distance. I remember crumpling up Eisenhower’s letter when waiting on the airfield to jump into Normandy. What’s Eisenhower got to do with us? I’d thought then, uncomfortable in my heavy gear and bored with all the hurry-up-and-waiting. Let’s see him jump smack into ack-ack fire in the middle of the night.
“They got no barbers in the replacement depot? You ain’t had a haircut in four months?”
Liebgott’s chattering pulls me back to the present moment and the rancid taste of the food in my mouth.
“Cutting hair wasn’t their first priority,” I reply, evasively. Frankly I’ve had enough of him going on about the hospital, pretending to be interested in what it was like when really he just wants to draw crude comparisons to the Bulge—“White sheets, huh? The only white sheets we had was the snow”—because it’s getting real old. I focus once more on my stew, scraping the last leavings of it out of my tin, and freeze when I feel him tugging on my hair, none too gently. Getting annoyed now, I lean backward until he lets go, his arm dropping down on the table with a thud. Heffron, next to me, looks up, regards the both of us for a second, then returns to his food.
I expect Liebgott to detonate, but he just blinks at me slowly.
“You want me to cut it?”
I’ve never heard Liebgott volunteer to cut anyone’s hair—people always come to him, and even then, Toccoa men have his services at their whim while replacements need to pony up the currency of the day: money, smokes, Hershey bars, name it. He’s not wrong, though. I do need a haircut—the length of it has been bothering me—and the alternative is asking someone else who is sure to screw it up or going out to find a German barber, and I doubt I can trust myself to sit still for twenty minutes with a German holding sharp tools near my head. Not that Liebgott makes me feel much safer.
I’ve been wondering what it’s like for him to be in the old country. Does it feel like home to him somehow, or as alienating as it does to us? Perhaps it’s both, being so close to where his folks are from but close too to the camps we’ve been hearing about, where the Germans are keeping the Jews; a reminder of why his parents left in the first place. I actually have no idea if he’s religious, but I imagine being here makes him feel newly aware of his Jewishness, and perhaps even as if he has been hand-picked to survive everything they’ve thrown at him so he can avenge his people, like one of those Biblical heroes. Exiled from his homeland, yet forced to come back and restore order to chaos.
Well, I don’t know about order. Earlier this week when we passed a group of Wehrmacht POWs, I saw him shout at one and fire at his feet to make him dance, like a scene from a Wild West movie. It seems to me he’s becoming meaner and more ruthless by the day. Which isn’t all that surprising, I suppose.
It’s why he’s a better soldier than me, though. Like Guarnere’s recklessness, Bull Randleman’s dutiful efficiency and Hoobler’s love of war, Liebgott’s hatred of Germans and complete lack of hesitation in killing the enemy has propelled us all the way here, to the cradle of national socialism, whose proponents’ dutiful efficiency, love of war, hatred of Jews and lack of hesitation in killing the enemy made it necessary for us to come in the first place. He’s the soldier I’m not, and I suppose that’s what drew me to him from the start. I was curious about guys like him who seemed born to fight a war, their lifestyle and their attitudes. I couldn’t help myself in seeing them as ideal objects of study, even when I came back and they were caught in their raw, ugly grief, so different from myself.
Liebgott raises his eyebrows innocently. I remember the first time he cut my hair. We were at Aldbourne, and a bunch of us were getting ready to leave for London on a weekend pass. We had asked Liebgott to smarten us up, and he’d done a hell of a job, wielding his scissors with the same swagger and wisecracks I remembered from barber shops in Brooklyn. He made a lot of pocket money doing haircuts then, at 15 cents a head. God, only a year ago—it feels like ten.
I look closely at Liebgott. His arm is still lying there, one hand next to my mess tin, his chin resting on the other. I try to find traces of malice or mischief in his face, but I can’t find any. I feel my suspicions slowly melt away in the sunlight.
As London’s women and Germany’s POWs know, Joe Liebgott is a hard man to say no to.
I nod at him. “Sure.”
*
Liebgott has dragged a crate from the kitchen outside the mess hall. I sit down on it while he goes to fetch his tools, closing my eyes to bask in the last few rays of the sun before it disappears behind the hills. I think of D-Day, of standing petrified with fear while the battle raged in the distance, the white moon hanging still and bright above my head and the cold black swamp sucking at my feet. It’s almost the negative image of this moment, except there is still a flutter of fear in my stomach, which I try to ignore.
“Whattayasay, Webster? Ready for your close-up?” I open my eyes to see Luz walking past, smiling, trailed by Perconte and Christenson. I smile back, even as anxiety briefly spikes in my veins. What if it is a giant practical joke, and they’re in on it, too? I could always wear my woolen cap until my hair grows back, but—
Here’s Liebgott again, whistling and twirling a tea towel he scavenged from the kitchen. He comes to stand behind me and ties the towel around my neck, tightly enough to catch the falling hair but loosely enough that I can still breathe. Standing closely behind me, he starts to run his fingers through my hair, gently parting and pulling it this way and that, like a sculptor acquainting himself with a hunk of clay. His closeness amplifies rather than soothes my anxiety, making me hyperaware of every movement he makes. My senses, all but completely dulled from marching in the rain and the cold, the constant background noise of artillery and weapons fired at close range, sleeping on the ground, eating bad food and seeing men wounded and dying every day, have not felt so heightened in months. My hands tighten around the side of the crate and my shoulders tense up. Liebgott, of course, catches my discomfort.
“Jesus, Web, will you relax? You’re acting like I’m about to torture you.”
“Well, I can never tell with you.” I mean it as a joke, but after the words have slipped out I realise it’s genuinely how I feel. Joe’s fingers, which have continued to rake over my scalp, still, and I anxiously await his response.
“Don’t worry,” he says after a beat, which tends to be exactly what people should do when he utters those words, but he follows it with, “unless you slept with a German I don’t know about, you’re fine, Web.”
It takes me a moment to realise what he’s referring to, but then I remember, and the insinuation makes me blush. He’s talking about the women in Eindhoven whom we saw being pulled from the bounding, cheering mass of people waving flags and handkerchiefs and pushed down on chairs by men waving scissors and clippers, trying them on the spot for sleeping with the enemy. I was pretty far away at the time, but I remember seeing the faces of the Dutch, kind and smiling up to that point, hardening into grotesque masks of gleeful fury as they exacted their rough justice or cheered on those who did, not minding if they drew blood and shouting things I couldn’t and didn’t want to understand. Meanwhile, men from my platoon were feeling up and kissing other women in the middle of the street, practically cheered on by bystanders. It was all so strange and chaotic, so shockingly violent compared to the festivities, that it made me doubt, briefly, whose side we were supposed to be on. These women were their nation’s Delilahs, but punished like Samsons, their heads shaved to humiliate them and set them apart for all to see.
Later on, when images of liberated camp inmates began to circulate in magazines and newspapers, I wondered again if the Dutch had realised they were treating their own women no better than the Germans had treated their countrymen in the camps by shaving their heads, ostensibly for hygienic reasons but really just to strip them of their beauty and humanity in one fell swoop; or if, in fact, they knew exactly what they were doing—that creating a clear transfiguration from friendly to enemy was the whole point.
Liberation had a face that laughed and cried at the same time. The memory makes me shudder a little, even now. Liebgott’s casual comment makes me feel sure that he wasn’t shocked by the spectacle like I was; given the chance, he probably would’ve picked up a pair of scissors himself.
It feels good, though, to have his fingers running gently over my scalp. I always enjoy when barbers do this; my skin breaks out in goosebumps and my eyes close of their own accord. Sometimes I think I must’ve been a cat or a dog in a previous life, given how much I enjoy people touching my head. Not that it happens very often.
Having finished acquainting himself with the length, colour and texture of my hair, Liebgott says, “Shouldn’t gimme too much trouble. Short back and sides okay?”
“Yes.”
“No mohawk? You sure?” and I permit myself a smile, remembering the paratroopers who’d asked Liebgott for that particular hairstyle just before D-Day, hoping to scare the Germans away just by dressing up like the boogie man.
“Just a trim.”
“Okey-doke.”
Comb in hand, Liebgott starts to part my hair right down the middle. I feel every tiny tooth of his comb as it rakes over my scalp, followed by the light pressure of his fingers resting now here, now there; the gentle tug of a lock being lifted, then another. It’s strange to feel Liebgott’s hands, which I have seen pull many a trigger and throw many a punch, touch me with a gentleness I did not know they were capable of. I let out a sigh I didn’t know I’d been holding and look at the way the evening light stretches our blue shadows across the asphalt, glad that it’s warm enough to sit outside and glad that we have an inside to go back to tonight. It’s incredible what two years in the army can teach you about taking things for granted. The sorely missed sun, the peaceful silence, and my full belly almost make this moment feel decadent. It’s like having an Italian espresso after two years of drinking the tank fuel they’ve been serving us, or reading Tolstoy after a diet of romance novels. Holland and the Ardennes might as well be on the moon.
I feel myself relax a little more, letting the sounds of faraway birdsong and Joe’s idle whistling fill my head, my busy mind settling slowly like sand on a river bottom. The scissors move purposefully through my hair, the ends patter down on my head and tickle as they slide down my neck and land on the towel. A few more stragglers emerge from the mess hall into the sunlight, stretching their shoulders and talking in an animated, breezy tone. They glance at us, smiling but say nothing. That is, until Cobb walks by, halting in front of us.
“Whoa, hey Liebgott, giving out haircuts? Don’t mind if I do.”
“I mind,” Liebgott snarls. “Next time, Cobb.”
“Everybody‘s playing favourites,” Cobb mutters darkly. “It ain’t right.”
“Welcome to the army,” Liebgott says drily. He has paused his movements, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders. I feel his grip tighten as his temper rises.
“C’mon, Liebgott. I’ll pay you good money for it.”
“Like hell! You still owe me from our craps game last week. Now make like a tree and fuck off.”
I watch Cobb walk away and think to myself that that was oddly vehement, even for Liebgott and even for Cobb.
“Jesus Christ.” Liebgott sighs. “Can’t get a moment’s peace.”
“Yeah,” I reply, just to say something, but I go quiet as Liebgott resumes his work. Cobb has cast a stone into a moment as peaceful and still as the surface of a mountain lake, sending ripples and vibrations every which way. I feel myself reeling slightly from the intrusion. Being unable to see Joe’s face, I can’t tell if he’s stewing in his anger or not, and it makes me think I’d feel safer walking point into German lines than I would be sitting here like this for much longer.
The words spring out: “I hope you’re not fucking it up.” By drawing him out, at least I’m putting us back on familiar territory, ready for an answering flare of anger to fuel my own. Explosive though Liebgott’s anger may be, it’s also predictable, and, ironic as it might be for me to say this, something I know by now how to handle. I don’t want us to always be fighting, but it truly seems as if we can’t help ourselves.
“I know what I’m doing,” Liebgott snaps, swift like a mortar answering an 88. But then, just as I’ve begun to ready myself for an argument, he does the strangest thing. He relapses into silence without taking the bait; whether indifferently or curmudgeonly, I don’t know, but I realise I feel relieved. Maybe our truce isn’t so fragile after all.
Suddenly, I wonder whether we could ever be friends. I turn the thought over in my mind, examining it from all sides. If I’m honest with myself, though, I’m not sure I truly want to know Liebgott, or whether he truly wants to know me, or that either of us will like what he finds when he digs a little too deeply. Maybe we’re both wishing for exactly that: not to know each other—only to keep our surface ideas of one another alive, so we’ll always know where we stand. As I process the thought, I realise it makes me a little sad. Neither of us is inclined to be the first to open up, and so we’ll probably remain at a stalemate. I guess peaceful silence is the best we can do, and not the worst alternative.
The sun has almost dipped below the hills in the distance; soon we’ll be sitting in shadow. My thoughts, never idle, pick up where they left off when Cobb interrupted us. Survival. The idea of life after the war, which for so long was something only glimpsed across a chasm, blurry and uncertain, but which grows sharper every day. The idea of seeing my family again, of seeing New York again, carrying memories of a bombed-out, ruined Europe with me into untouched, gleaming Manhattan; I picture myself leaving muddy, bloody footprints on the spotless sidewalks. The thought makes me apprehensive. From the letters my parents and my brother have sent me, it’s clear that despite faithfully reading my letters and all the right magazines and newspapers, they somehow haven’t gained the faintest idea of what it’s like to be at war. It’s not that I’m a bad writer; that my descriptions of army life aren’t sound, or that I cannot find the words. It’s more that somewhere in the journey from my mind to my pen, from Europe to America, their meaning changes. Sometimes it feels like we’re not even speaking the same language; I’ll be writing about an attack and I’ll find that the words that exist for the things I’ve seen somehow do not really get at it; that words like “scared”, “brave”, “frustrating”, “hero”, “loss” don’t suffice, don’t say what I want them to say. I can tell you there’s nothing more frustrating for a writer than when he cannot make words do what he wants them to do. But when you’ve watched a man exercising “bravery” crumple in the middle of the road after taking a sniper’s bullet to the back of his head, or seen a man who was “scared” soil himself during an intense artillery barrage, these words simply lose all meaning they held in civilian life.
I find myself censoring my writing, translating my experiences into a simpler, more palatable language for my parents, and yet I am offended when they don’t get the gist, or when they reply to me in callow, ebullient language copied straight from the magazines, like they’re discussing a hero’s epic or a prize ceremony. I know they’re genuinely concerned about my fate and the world’s, but the only way they know how to express it is in language that implies a bond between us, a shared suffering and overcoming of difficulty. But of course we haven’t shared anything; the way they talk about it doesn’t collude with my role here, neither the hero of the day nor a faceless piece of cannon fodder but simply here, trying to make it through, to contribute in any small way I can. It makes me feel angry, misunderstood, even though I know that with neither me or the magazines telling the truth they have no way of knowing what I’ve really seen, and done, and heard. There’s no substitute for lived experience—yet ironically, the more terrible the experience, the harder it is to describe it with any accuracy.
I remember being driven to the hospital and congratulating myself that I would now become a real war writer at last; a piece of hot metal passing through my leg seemed like a valuable experience that I could turn into copy, and I began composing descriptions of the event in my head there and then. If I told Liebgott that, though, he’d chew me out for it—and rightly so. A writer can start to think of other people simply as characters in their own story, their words as an inspiration for dialogue, real-life events as nothing but copy. It creates a distance between yourself and the world, observing but not engaging. Perhaps Liebgott blames me for that also. Somehow I don’t think seeing Bill Guarnere and Joe Toye lose their legs would count as valuable inspiration in his eyes. He couldn’t translate to me what he went through in the Bulge, and he probably thinks trying to talk or write about any of it is a fool’s errand anyway, because no description comes close, and misunderstanding is inevitable.
Still, there’s much between us that doesn’t need translating, or rather, that goes unsaid. The language of soldiers is a strangely nonverbal one; you learn much more about each other by eating, drinking, fighting and raising hell together than you ever would if you just sat down and talked. There’s no alternative; in the heat of the moment, you need to be able to communicate with a look. And it seems to me sometimes that the main appeal of speaking this language is knowing that it’s only you who knows it, like a secret code, and that people back home wouldn’t understand it. It would be hard for me to explain to my parents, for example, that considering our history Joe Liebgott’s offer to give me a haircut seems to paint a truer picture of love and human nature than any of the songs about loving God and America and a willingness to defend our nation (if I told them that, they’d call me unchristian, unpatriotic), and that this being the longest I’ve heard him go without speaking is a big deal.
Of course, we do love our country and we are fighting for it; but if I’m to believe my parents’ letters, the newspapers spin it as though none of us have any greater purpose in life than to die for it as well, evidenced by their loving treatment of those who “gave their lives to protect our freedom”—heroes, always—and their faithful inclusion of daily casualty lists. Of course it would be disrespectful if they didn’t, but there’s something disrespectful, too, about reducing to clean, crisp, white paper the entirety of a man’s last moments, the state of his body and his mind, which is what we see, absorbing it all like a living portrait of Dorian Gray and showing it too, in the pallor of our skin, the untidiness of our hair, and the thousand-yard stare in our eyes. In an environment like this, it means something to offer to groom your buddy, to make sure he looks alright, to have an excuse to touch each other casually and sit together in silence, reflecting on what you’ve been through together. We might be winning the war, but what did each of us win? An intimate knowledge of the beastly things human beings can do to each other, like the camps, like the Dutch girls being shaved in the streets, which will probably stay with me all my life—but moments like these, too; moments of an unprecedented intimacy and bonding, which might not make it into the history books, but will stay with me nonetheless. It seems to me all there’s to gain in fighting a war, and in life, is knowledge and memory.
Joe’s hands card through my hair, ruffling it so loose hairs rain down, and I feel the cold rush of his breath on my neck as he blows them off and brushes any stragglers away with his fingers. Of course it’s run-of-the-mill work for him, but I can tell he’s being precise, concentrating hard. Perhaps that accounts for his silence most of all. I find I don’t mind it any more; it’s nice to sit here and just let my thoughts unspool. Once more, the world seems to have shrunk down to just the two of us in our small, peaceful bubble. Sitting here with Joe, getting a haircut as if nothing at all is wrong with the world, everything feeling less hard, less of a struggle than even just two days ago, I think about the sheer gob-smacking luck of our survival up to this point, and then about some of the men I met in the hospital, and the strange idea that their cut-off limbs will never grow back while my hair and nails will continue to grow and continue to be in need of cutting and clipping.
Another thing I couldn’t hope to convince my parents of is that barring rank, we’re all equals here; barber skills have the same, if not more value than an Ivy League education. To be the person whom people trust blindly to touch their vulnerable bodies with sharp tools, to improve their appearance so they can go on living and fitting into society, to keep their secrets—Liebgott might as well be a doctor. Perhaps that’s what made it so shocking to me to see the barbers in Eindhoven; it was almost like an abuse of their unique power, a violation of their duty to society. The one holding the clippers as the arbiter of people’s fate; in or out, with us or without us. Army barbers are little different, really; just with less cruel intentions.
Something slots into place in the back of my mind. Maybe this is why Joe offered his services; he’s giving me a chance to redeem myself. Maybe he’s the one doing the redeeming, cutting my hair to make me look like a paratrooper again, thus officially welcoming me back into the fold. I allow myself a small smile at the realization. He makes it hard for anyone to read him, but I’m starting to think I can.
“Drop your chin,” Liebgott orders, and I oblige. He takes out his clippers, pressing their cold steel against the back of my head. I listen to their ch-ch-ch-ing and still for a moment when I feel him blow on my neck again, short and sharp, his lips only inches away from my skin. His other hand rests on the side of my head, to steady himself, or me, I don’t know. Ch-ch-ch, blow. Ch-ch-ch, blow. The thought returns, niggling, that I’ve seen him do the same amount of work before in mere minutes.
And then I realize that Joe’s stalling.
Maybe his silence isn’t an angry or indifferent one after all, then. Maybe he’s actually enjoying himself, and he doesn’t want to spoil the moment or end it any time soon.
Maybe Joe wasn’t just angry with me because I had skipped Bastogne, or even because he thought I was a poor excuse for a paratrooper. Maybe his anger actually came from another source. Maybe Joe had actually missed me, and his anger at my long absence was simply the way he’d expressed it, in fits and starts.
As different as we are, and after the way he treated me in Haguenau, I wouldn’t have guessed for a moment that Joe would have singled me out for friendship. But now I start to think about the way he used to look at me, constantly, eyes staring daggers—hurtful to me, though understandable after my blatant ignorance of what he’d been through, but also—I realize now—unusual for him. Joe’s anger is predictable; he either blows up or looks straight through you; I remember when I just transferred from H Company and he ignored my presence consistently, giving me a feeling of invisibility, of non-existence. Humbling as it was to my vanity, it gave me the ghostly advantage of observing unobserved, teaching myself what I’d need to survive among these guys, a position I was happy with at the time. When we became friendlier, though, if he had a problem with me he’d let me have it without subtlety, without passive aggression. But this—keeping his distance but still seeing me, acknowledging me, even if it was with an angry glare, while the others still looked right through me, had been something else. As if I presented a problem he couldn’t solve; as if he was angry about something he knew he couldn’t very well attack me over in public. Angry that I hadn’t been there with him in Bastogne—yes, but the key words being with him.
And now this uncharacteristically generous offer to cut my hair. Our comfortable silence, and his vicious anger towards Cobb for breaking it. The gentleness of his hands, stretching the moment.
Maybe, just maybe, when he said, “You left us”, he meant: You left me.
As this thought occurs, I realise why, unconsciously, regaining Joe’s approval had meant the most to me at the time: because I had also begun to see him as a friend, or in any case someone who might be a friend; someone I know I would go to great lengths for, and who would do the same for me, even if we would bitch and moan all the way there; why it still means a lot to me, and why my anxiety has after all been unfounded, all this time. I’m still not entirely convinced our common ground doesn’t have a minefield somewhere in it, or that his grudge against me has completed dissipated; nor do I believe it was entirely undeserved in the first place. But something has changed, just now, and not through talking, but through silence: a silence that says more than words ever could.
I feel glad I’m alive, and glad that Joe is alive, and grateful for this moment, this breathing room, this pause in the fighting—both in the little war between us and the big war we’re in.
The longer it lasts, though, the more I want to break it—to see if my assumptions are correct.
“Think we’ll be going home soon?” A line with a hundred percent-response guarantee. Home: a safe prospect to be pondering now that the war actually seems to be coming to an end. For a while, thoughts of home only made the men sad and bitter, and bitterness is about as catching as the diarrhea that periodically goes around. Now, though, you’d think everybody’s last name was Eisenhower for all the strategizing they’re doing based on the rumours that reach us, and all the talk is of when we’ll be getting home, and what—or who—we’ll be getting home to.
Joe says, “Looks that way, don’t it? Going on what the MPs say, the Red Cross girls, won’t be long until Germany surrenders. ‘Course, then we gotta go jump on Tokyo.”
True. There was still that possibility. Japan was showing no sign of surrendering and the Marines were getting their asses handed to them. Still, us old men were hopeful that we’d be discharged soon and replacements sent in to help them out.
“Maybe they’ll send us home before then.”
“Fat chance of that.” A pause, then, “You miss it?”
“What, home?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. But it’s more that I can’t wait to get out of the Army. I wouldn’t mind loafing around Bavaria or Austria for a few more months before crossing. I’m actually not that excited to go back to Harvard.”
It’s true; I’m not. Having seen the beautiful side of Europe now, aside from the burned, collapsed buildings, the starving citizens, the shitty winter weather, I’m hoping I can explore some more; maybe even make it to Italy or Greece.
Joe asks, “That where you learned German? At Harvard?”
I start to nod, then stop myself from moving my head too much. “Some. I was in the German club in high school, and when it looked like we were gonna enter the war, I took a refresher course at university. I thought it would come in handy.”
Joe snorts. “They weren’t worried you were gonna join the wrong side?”
I chuckle. “I did get a few comments of that nature.”
“I’ll say. Well, it’s still impressive. Like I said, your German’s as good as mine.”
I didn’t know what to do with the compliment then, and I don’t know now, because I know it isn’t true. He grew up with German-speaking parents; I plodded through Der Zauberberg by the skin of my teeth. I’ve spoken more German here, with POWs, than I ever did in school.
“Well, they don’t teach you how to cut hair at Harvard,” I reply. “Which is a hell of a useful skill. I’m sure I could never do it.”
“Oh, the hell you couldn’t, Web. Nothing to it.”
“Seriously. I admire you, Joe. Sure, I can write. But if I had a bad haircut, nobody would take me seriously. I think we’d be nowhere without good barbers.”
“Alright, alright. You haven’t even seen it yet.” But from his tone, I can tell he’s pleased. I take a deep breath, preparing to voice the question I’ve been wanting to ask him ever since we sat down. If it’s to happen, it’s to happen in this way, with the small width of space between us and the rolling hills before us, which seem to be telling me I could say anything and everything, casting my words into a green void, lush already in March, forgiving and softening.
“Joe, what’s it like for you to be here? So close to…” my courage leaves me at the last second, and I finish, “close to where your folks came from?”
There’s no response for a good ten seconds, then he sighs. “Well, it’s all weirdly familiar, Web. I mean, my folks had a picture hanging over the sofa that looked just like those mountains over there. I’ve been thinking I’d better be careful—they might mistake me for a local and lock me up. The Nazis I mean.”
His tone is joking, but the tinge of bitterness is unmistakable. I clamp my lips together and shut up again, wondering how best to proceed. I’d like to ask him about his German heritage, about the music, literature, and art that I can’t help but be drawn to, but I don’t know how to do it without offending him. To me, this inviting landscape makes it hard to believe that some of the most evil people on the planet were born here. To him, though, it must be little more than a graveyard.
“I just thought, since you’re Jewish and German…”
“I’m an American first,” he says, shortly.
I take a deep breath, daring to push my luck.
“But do you still have family here?”
“Nah,” is all he says, and it seems wise to drop the subject. I’m sure he doesn’t want to explain to me whether they moved away before or during the war, or whether they’ve fallen victim to Hitler.
“Sorry, Joe,” I tell him, meaning it. “I was just curious.”
“It’s okay.” He pauses; so do his hands. “Really. You’re the only one who’s even asked.”
He resumes his combing, but his thoughts seem to be elsewhere; his clippers stay silent. He sighs. “Hell, I don’t know what to make of it all.”
“Have you written any letters home?” I venture, trying to continue treading lightly.
“A couple. Don’t really know what to say, other than, I’m still alive. It might sound weird, but—it’s almost like I’ve forgotten how to write. So I almost don’t even bother.”
I hum in agreement. We’re silent again for a beat, and he resumes his clipping. I wonder how I should phrase my next question, but then he surprises me by asking me one.
“You still thinkin’ about writin’ a book? About all this?”
I’d told him as much a few days ago when he saw me writing in my notebook. I shrug, then stop myself moving again. His clippers have paused at the nape of my neck, cold as his gaze that I used to feel resting there.
“Maybe. Usually, writing’s my way of making sense of what’s happening, but here… it doesn’t always work that way.” I think back to my earlier thought: something disrespectful about reducing to clean, crisp, white paper the entirety of a man’s last moments, the state of his body and his mind. But how else preserve the memory, pay tribute, make peace with it?
He laughs, mirthlessly. “I hear that.”
He applies the clippers to the last finicky hairs that are almost not there, blows on my neck once more, then stands back to observe his work. I decide to quell the last burning questions I have for him and enjoy the last of our silence. Already I’ve gotten more out of him than I thought I would, and we’ve had a conversation more civil than I ever would’ve thought possible. I take in the lemon sorbet sky, what looks like an eagle circling lazily in the distance, and the hills lying hazy and blue in the foreground, dotted with farms and cows. I wonder what it must be like to live here, around these storybook vistas. This is the real Germany: that is to say, the mythical Germany the Nazis are fighting to preserve; a world that makes you want to believe in the old stories about fairies and gnomes, virtuous farmers and evil forces trying to cast a dark shadow over this green and pleasant land. No wonder their movement was born here, the worm at the apple’s core, under this soft and forgiving sunlight, seducing the Germans into believing the Jews and Bolsheviks would come to steal it from them when they’ve become the ones darkening the skies with thick black clouds of ash.
I shiver; with the sun gone it’s getting cold, only March after all.
Joe comes to stand before me, his fingers tipping up my chin until I’m looking up at him. He looks me over, frowning in concentration, bringing up his other hand with the scissors to nip off a last little bit here, a little bit there. I look at his lips, parted absent-mindedly, the shadow of stubble on his cheeks, his sharp cheekbones, and his eyes. His breath skates over my cheek and across my mouth.
A stray hair lands in my eye, and I squeeze my eyes shut automatically at the sensation. “Ow, it hurts.”
“Fuck, sorry. Hold on.” I feel Joe’s fingertips brushing my eyelids and cheeks, gently picking hairs from my eyelashes.
“Open them.”
I do so, and with one careful fingertip he touches the corner of my eye, carefully removing the stray hair. Imagine the man with no qualms about shooting Wehrmacht troops on sight worrying about hurting his fellow paratrooper.
Hurting his friend.
Joe holds out his finger. “Make a wish, Web.”
“You can’t wish on hairs. You’re thinking of eyelashes.”
“Fine. Don’t make one.” Joe blows it away himself, then turns back to me. He begins pushing his fingers through my hairline, arranging the hairs with quick, delicate movements, deliberately not looking at me, I think—then raises himself back up, nodding.
“All done, Web.”
I reach up for a feel, and look at the pile of dark blond hair on the ground.
“Jesus. How much did you cut off?”
“Not as much as you’d think. You got a lotta hair.” Joe reaches into his pocket and takes out a shaving mirror, holding it up before my face. When I look into it, I see it’s not at all bad-looking. It looks almost exactly like the army regulation cut I got before starting jump school.
“Thanks, Joe. It looks great. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing, goddammit. Just couldn’t have you walkin’ around lookin’ like fuckin’ Samson any longer.” Joe steps behind me and unties the tea towel, and from his tone I gather the spell has been broken: we’re back in familiar territory.
But then he slides his hand down into my shirt collar, slowly and deliberately, to gather up some of the hairs that have slid down there, and my skin breaks out in goosebumps; it feels like it’s burning against his cool hand. Then he brushes the backs of my shoulders; sweeping away, along with the hair, some other weight. Outcast to insider, replacement to old man in one haircut.
I turn around to look at him; he busies himself by wiping his tools on the tea towel. I catch his eye, though, and I hold his gaze.
“You up for cards later?”
He smiles, raising his eyebrows, a little sceptical.
“Sure you don’t wanna get back to your novel? Write down what an Army haircut’s really like before you forget the details?”
I laugh, surprised, and with a disproportionate joy in our easy banter. He knows me pretty well, after all.
“I’ll write about it when we’re home,” I tell him, and I realize that I mean it. To hell with translation and authenticity and observing, at least for now. I’ll have the pleasure of sitting down and looking back on this day later, but not before it’s over.
He nods, and gives me that sly cat-smile again. “Alright. Cards it is.”
I stand up, brushing myself off all over once more for good measure, and turn to look at him again. I realise we might never tell each other how we really feel. I don’t think we’ll ever find the right words. But that doesn’t mean it’ll always be lost in translation.
“You need any help cleaning up?” I ask.
“Nah.”
“Alright. I’ll see you later, then.”
“See ya, Web.”
I stick my hands in my pockets and head towards the barracks, looking over my shoulder just once. Liebgott’s sitting on the crate, cigarette in hand. He takes a long drag and blows out the smoke slowly, contemplatively, looking out at the hills; he taps his cigarette on the side of the crate, releasing a shower of ash and sparks. Everyone else is inside already; he’s dwarfed by the hills, a single figure in a wash of inky blue. I wonder what the landscape is saying to him. Shaking my head with a slight smile, I continue walking—another question he’d chew me out for asking.
I receive shouts and whistles on entering.
“Looking good, Webster.”
“Monty Clift, eat your heart out!”
“Hey, Web,” Heffron says as I sit down on my bunk, close to where he’s gathered with McClung. “Wanna join us for pinochle? We’re a man short.”
“Sure,” I say, a small flutter of joy in my stomach. “But let’s wait for Liebgott; I promised him a game, too.”
Heffron groans. “What’d ya do that for? It’s his game! He’ll clean us out!”
McClung and I shake with laughter, and I feel a last stray hair tickling my neck as I move. I run my hand under my collar to catch it; I study it for a moment, then smile involuntarily as I blow it away. My wish has already come true, anyhow.