He Ain’t Heavy. He’s My Brother

Jim Alley got hit thirty-two times. In 1994 he went to the hospital again, even this late in life, and they still found a piece of shrapnel in his body.

~ Joe Lesniewski

[...]airborne outfits that go into combat are supposed to be relieved within three to five days. But it never happened; not with us, anyway. Normandy was thirty-four days combat. Holland was seventy-four days combat. When we got to Mourmelon, it was right into battle again. By the time we got into Bastogne, we were all flaky to start with. Then we were forty days combat in Bastogne. If it wasn’t for each other, I’m sure a lot of us would have gone crazy. That’s where the cohesion comes in. We were brothers.

Me and Mike Massaconi were in a hole in the Bois Jacques woods. Snow was all around, and I saw a goddam bird stick his head out the side of my hole. I told Mike to look at it, but there was no bird there really. Mike gave me a hug and brought me down. That’s what I’m talking about. You’re flaky after all that combat. Crazy. One little thing sets you off. I swear to Christ I saw that bird. He opened his beak and all. The Germans were shelling the living crap out of us at the time. I’m scared like everybody else. If it wasn’t for Mike I would have charged the light brigade or something. But he calmed me down.

After that I was fine—actually, I wasn’t fine, I carried that with me for many years. I got to a point after the war where I started drinking a lot. When you drink you forget your nightmares. But then you wake up and you have to go worship Mother Hopper and you’ve got a damn headache and you still remember it. So it took me a long time to get out of that.

I’m telling you—in Bastogne I got so calloused I could sit on a frozen corpse and eat a K ration. But after the war I used to have these dreams—I was afraid I’d roll over in bed and strangle my wife. The dream I remember most is of the bayonet attacks. Running headway at the enemy, rifles out, and they’re running at you. I can see their faces. I remember the blade going into a man. I had nightmares about the concentration camps we saw in Germany, too. There was the stench of it, the skeletons walking around—they come up to you and hug you, I’ll never forget the reality of those experiences as long as I live.

~ Clancy Lyall