Lovely War(85)

On the table beside his bed sat a stack of letters. He opened them, saving Hazel’s for last, though whether postponing pleasure or pain, he couldn’t say.

The first was from, of all people, Private Billy Nutley.

April 12, 1918, it read. Dear James, Our new sergeant gave me your address. We’ve been reassigned to the Third Army under the command of General Byng. We’re not much farther up the line than before, but things have quieted down. Jerry gave us a terrible beating, but he ran out of steam, and we’re holding. It was a good bit of work, but what a price. I’ve heard from Chad Browning’s family. He’s back in Wales and seems like he’s mending all right. He’ll be scarred. His folks wanted to write to you. I gave them your address. I told the new sergeant what you did, holding off the storm troopers and getting Browning to safety. We all told him to write you up for a medal. Gilchrist died, as I think you know, and Selkirk. Mason’s gone missing. The rest of us, what’s left of us, are all still here. Get better soon and come back and rejoin the regiment. Meanwhile, think of us while you’re putting your feet up. Cheerio, Bill.

The letter shook in his hand. He quickly opened another.

April 20, 1918. Dear Mr. Alderidge, I write to express my wife’s and my utmost gratitude for heroically assisting our poor son, Chad, with his burns, and transporting him to safety. He’s still recovering in hospital and has had several skin grafts. We remain hopeful for his recovery. He’s still our Chad underneath all the bandages. We don’t know how to thank you, but we hope that if there’s ever a way that we might assist you, you will not hesitate to ask. Sincerely, Mr. and Mrs. Bowen Browning, Tenby, Wales.

Next was a letter from the army. He’d been awarded a Distinguished Service Medal. Enclosed was a check for twenty pounds and a notice of when the actual medal would arrive.

The next letter bore a woman’s handwriting, and a YMCA insignia in the corner. He read the note from Mrs. Davies, accusing Hazel of immoral carryings-on with soldiers.

Paris whirled before his eyes. Poplar. The trains. The Royal Albert Hall.

It was impossible to believe that his piano girl could be anything like what this woman had said. It had to be a lie. But why would this woman bother to send such a letter, then?

He had no more heart left to break, but in some hidden corner, buried beneath the war, he wept. If Hazel Windicott hadn’t been what she appeared to be, then there was nothing left in this world to believe in at all. Honor, Right, Justice—they were already out on the dust heap.

He read the letter one more time.

Some kind Fate made the secretary send it, he thought. To ease his pain of saying goodbye. If his lack of correspondence hadn’t already killed whatever affection she once had for him, he must kill it now. He was no more eligible for the love of any girl, good or bad. He was only a shell of a man. A shell of a boy, cringing in the small bed in his childhood bedroom in his parents’ home. Utterly unfit to be what any girl might want now.

He tried to imagine Hazel here, now. Walking into this room.

His skin grew cold.

Not because the sight of her wouldn’t be his dearest desire. Because it would be.

There might come a day when he could look back at his life, at the mauve-tinted memory of Hazel, and be glad he’d known her. That once, he’d meant something to a girl like her. That once, he’d kissed her and heard her say she loved him.

The letter from Hazel, forwarded from the Fifth Army’s HQ, sat unopened. A large, stiff envelope was all that remained. He opened it and pulled out a black cardboard folio. In the photograph inside, he, Cupid, and Hazel, in the new coat he’d bought her, smiled at the camera.

For the rest of the day, when his family knocked, he didn’t answer.





ARES


     Spelling the Word “American”—May 14, 1918





THREE AMERICAN REPORTERS searching for stories of doughboys abroad and visiting regiments of General Pershing’s American Expeditionary Forces throughout France arrived in the Champagne sector on May 14, 1918. Their names were Thomas M. Johnson (New York Evening Sun), Martin Green (New York Evening World) and, most famous of all, Irvin S. Cobb, a popular writer for the Saturday Evening Post.

They knew colored soldiers were serving in the war, but believed them to be working as stevedores. They’d heard rumors of a black regiment in action, but had seen no official reports.

Finally word reached their ears of a 369th US Army division, attached to French command, serving in the Champagne sector, so there they hurried to scoop the story. As Fate would have it, they arrived the morning after two privates, Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, fought off some twenty-four Germans in a raiding party.

Irvin Cobb, a Southerner from Kentucky, was famous for depicting black people as lazy, ignorant “darkies,” trading in stereotypes and watermelon jokes. Many black soldiers refused to greet him. But Cobb, learning of Henry Johnson’s and Needham Roberts’s heroics, and seeing the spot where the battle occurred strewn with German weapons, and a puddle of congealing blood the size of a washtub, knew a story when he saw one.

All three reporters dispatched articles home. “Young Black Joe,” they called both Johnson and Roberts. Later features dubbed it “The Battle of Henry Johnson.” The story was a national sensation. They described the battle in vivid detail—how Roberts, shot in numerous places, lay on the ground and hurled grenades at the foe, while Johnson, also shot many times, still fought off the Germans and defended Roberts, first with his rifle, then with the butt of the rifle, then with a bolo knife. The bolo knife would make him a star from coast to coast.