The last weeks had been the worst of his life. ‘Missing In Action — Presumed Killed,’ the Army had said. First the shock.
The agony. The despair. Their only child. Their little boy. Tears flowed down Roger’s face. But the sadness had evolved into depression. His son’s death had become handling the details. The Army could produce no remains. No remains, no funeral — Gay had said. Graves Registration had only a blood-soaked parka. It had Harold’s name printed inside. Not ‘blood-stained, ’ Roger thought. The man had clearly said ‘blood-soaked.’
The electronic chirp of a telephone sent him running. His heart pounded as he slipped on the hardwoods in his stockinged feet. He snatched the phone from the cradle. The ringing continued. It was on television. A commercial selling voice mail to Nynex customers.
Roger hung up. The mail clapped onto the floor of the foyer. A flood of catalogs, junk mail and the occasional bill. Roger checked the answering machine once again. The red light was not lit
He picked up the mail. His head swam after having stooped to gather the pile from the floor. He trudged into the study to be near the trash can — the repository of at least half their mail. The television was on. Its sound muted. He could still hear the news report from the media room down the hall. Like most of the apartment’s TVs, the set was tuned to CNN around the clock.
Catalog. Catalog. Encyclopedia offer. Magazine subscription offer made to look like a check. Pre-approved credit card. Charitable donation solicitation. The trash can was quickly filled. As Roger lifted another catalog to toss it in the trash, a letter slipped out. It had the rare look of personal correspondence. He turned the envelope over.
It was in Harold’s handwriting. A tight grip pinched Roger’s throat and stomach. He sunk into the chair behind his desk. A prickly feeling spread across his skin. With trembling hands, he tore the top of the envelope off and yanked the letter out. It was dated less than a week earlier! The first paragraphs were about Harold’s unit being overrun. The trouble they had getting back on base. His slight wounds while fighting with the provisionals.
‘He’s alive!’ Roger shouted. He looked around the empty apartment. He was standing now — pacing as he read. Reading out loud. Running his hand through his unwashed hair and then over his bristly face. He sat to read the rest. He reveled in the relief it brought from his unrelenting grief. His joy subsided with Harold’s every word.
‘I know now what “biting” cold means. Your teeth chatter. Your body clenches up so hard that it’s exhausting. Your breath freezes into large sheets of ice outside the towel or strip of wool blanket that you wrap around your neck. When you don’t shave, tiny little droplets of ice cling to the tips of the hairs. It’s very painful to pull them off, especially with wind-burned cheeks. Tears freeze, and the droplets weld your eyelashes together in big clumps. I’ve seen guys grope their way back into the wanning hut from the trench with long, white mustaches of ice hanging from their eyebrows. When we come in from trench duty, our weapons steam for a long time when you put them near the fires. Every square inch of skin is chapped, especially your hands, face and lips. If you leave your nose or cheek exposed even for a few minutes, the skin will turn yellow. That’s when you know you’ve got trouble. Red is okay. Pale yellow means frostbite. The only way to get the color back from yellow is to rub snow as hard as you can on it. Two guys in our platoon who were supposed to be on sentry duty crawled behind a log to get some sleep and froze to death.
‘But it’s when the wind blows that things are the worst. It’s like a bath of cold water being poured onto you no matter how warmly you’re dressed. At least when it blows hard, you know the Chinese won’t attack. Then, everybody is just trying to survive. The wind feels like it cuts your skin when it hits your face. And when there’s snow, it hits you like little darts — like a handful of pebbles that someone throws at your face. Even inside the shelter, the wind whistles and howls through the cracks in the roofing timbers so loudly you can’t sleep no matter how exhausted you are. And it’s coldest at night, especially out in the open.
‘At night, the Chinese try to sneak between our positions. So we have to go out patrolling to find them. The guys in the next battalion down the line swear they patrol their front aggressively. But we always draw fire from their sector. Once we found bunkers the Chinese had lived in for several days, which is kind of impossible if they’re actively patrolling. But I understand. Patrols are spooky. In the distance all around the base they fire white phosphorus marker rounds for artillery spotters. The shadows are always moving. The snow squeaks under your boots. The sound carries so far in the cold, especially downwind, it gives your position away. And under the snow, the ice is as slippery as a skating rink. The sunshine at midday will melt the top layer, and it’ll freeze again at night You carry a heavy load in case you’re stuck outside the wire till morning. And you’re constantly at risk of falling, especially on the roads. They were muddy from the summer rains when they froze, and the deep ruts made by the vehicles are now sharp ridges. When the wind blows the snow off, they look like six-inch-high black marble knives. If you fall on them, you break bones because they’re as hard as iron. But we don’t use roads much. You can’t tell the road from the shoulder. Plus, the Chinese are sure to have ambushes prepared for us, just like we have for them. When we go outside the wire, you can see that they’ve been there. If you turn your ear to the wind you can hear all kinds of things. The woods are alive at night. They’re filled with tracks. Every step anyone has ever taken is recorded in the snow. Your tracks, theirs — they’re all mingled together.
‘I don’t want you two to get scared. Most of the time is spent in the trenches, where we’re relatively safe. Our stretch of the perimeter is fairly solid. The Chinese haven’t once made it within grenade range of the main trench. And they’re in terrible shape. They loot the dead and crawl through piles of our trash for food and clothing. They’re hungry and ragged and more frightened than we are. A lot of the corpses we police up are wearing U.S. uniforms. We even found some Christmas packages we think came from the convoys that got overrun on the road to Khabarovsk. I feel sort of sorry for them. One patrol came back after a blizzard and reported they’d found an entire regiment frozen to death. I don’t know how the Chinese do it. Especially the second and third waves, which have to pass mounds of the dead and dying.
‘Please don’t think everything here is horrible. We sometimes get fresh food from the French. It’s usually frozen by the time they bring it to the perimeter, but we reheat it and it tastes great. Everything freezes. Even in the warming huts or the bunkers where we sleep, you have to chop the food with a hatchet or an axe to cook it. We usually don’t cook in the bunkers, though, because of the smell. They’re also our bathrooms. And trench duty is fine when the weather is clear. The skies can be pure as crystal and a pale blue color I’ve never seen before. And the ground is like a winter wonderland, entirely covered in white. If you don’t police up the dead, they’re just covered up by the snow. At least until spring. And even the night, which almost always brings an attack if the weather permits, has a beauty of its own. The air is so dry that you can see every star. And when the fighting starts, the tracer rounds fly through the air like fireworks. When long, continuous bursts from each side intermingle, they look almost like bouquets of flowers. And when you’re caught in a flrefight out on patrol, the woods come alive with tracers like flaming arrows from some old western. Green ribbons of light from the Chinese. Yellow beads on long strings from the good guys.