Once there was a war

Then sleep can come without warning and like a drug. Gradually your whole body seems to be packed in cotton. All the main nerve trunks are deadened, and out of the battered cortex curious dreamlike thoughts emerge. It is at this time that many men see visions. The eyes fasten on a cloud and the tired brain makes a face of it, or an angel or a demon. And out of the hammered brain strange memories are jolted loose, scenes and words and people forgotten, but stored in the back of the brain. These may not be important things, but they come back with startling clarity into the awareness that is turning away from reality. And these memories are almost visions.

And then it is over. You can’t hear, but there is a rushing sound in your ears. And you want sleep more than anything, but when you do sleep you are dream-ridden, your mind is uneasy and crowded with figures. The anesthesia your body has given you to protect you is beginning to wear off, and, as with most anesthesia, it is a little painful.

And when you wake up and think back to the things that happened they are already becoming dreamlike. Then it is not unusual that you are frightened and ill. You try to remember what it was like, and you can’t quite manage it. The outlines in your memory are vague. The next day the memory slips farther, until very little is left at all. A woman is said to feel the same way when she tries to remember what childbirth was like. And fever leaves this same kind of vagueness on the mind. Perhaps all experience which is beyond bearing is that way. The system provides the shield and then removes the memory, so that a woman can have another child and a man can go into combat again.

It slips away so fast. Unless you made notes on the spot you could not remember how you felt or the way things looked. Men in prolonged battle are not normal men. And when afterward they seem to be reticent—perhaps they don’t remember very well.

THE PLYWOOD NAVY

November 15, 1943—The orders were simple. The naval task force was to destroy or drive German shipping out of the sea in the whole area north of Rome. German convoys were moving out of various ports, possibly evacuating heavy equipment from Italy to the south of France. The task force was ordered to break up this traffic.

It is not permitted to say what units comprised the force but a part of it at least was a group of torpedo boats, some British MTBs and some American PTs. The British were not quite so fast as the Americans but they were more heavily armed.

The afternoon before the attack was spent in putting the boats ready. The gunners had their guns apart, oiling and scrubbing the salt spray from the working parts. The guns on the little boats must be worked on all the time. Even the cartridge cases turn green from the constant splashing with salt water. The American PTs are wet devils. Any speed of any kind of sea bring green water over the bow. The men dress in rubber clothes and rubber hoods and even then they do not stay dry.

In the afternoon the torpedoes were inspected and the fuel tanks filled to the limit. The sea was very blue and very calm. During the whole first two weeks of the attack against Italy the sea was calm as a lake, and that particular sea can be very bad.

The British officers and men were bearded with fine great brushes which projected forward from constant brushing outward with the hands. This gives a pugnacious look to a man’s face. A few American faces were bearded too, but the tradition is not set with our men.

From the little island harbor, the coast of Italy was visible in the afternoon—the steep hills terraced for vines and lemon trees and the mountains rising to bare rocky ridges behind. Vesuvius was smoking in the background, a high feather of smoke.

On the quay, surrendered Italian carabinieri stood looking at the “Plywood Navy,” which is what the crews call the torpedo boats.

As the sun went down the work was finished and dinner was started in the tiny galleys of the Plywood Navy. The force was to sail at dark. Long before dark the moon was up. It would set after two in the morning and it was planned to be on the ground and ready for attack as soon as the moon had set. This was a deadly swarm that prepared to go. In its combined torpedo tubes it carried the force to sink a navy. The little ships can dodge in close and, when the going is rough, they can scatter and run like quail. And they can turn and twist so fast and travel at such speed that they are impossible to catch and very hard to hit.

Just at dusk the motors burst into roars one at a time and then settled down to their throbbing beat. These motors can be quieted so that they make very little noise, but in ordinary running they sound like airplanes.