Day of the Dead Horses
((A Day in the battle for Verdun, WWI, 1916) (A Shannon O’Day story))
The War and the Machine Gun Nest
(It is 1964; Shannon O’Day’s daughter Cantina is twelve-years old. She is with him for the weekend. They are out at Como Park, sitting along the banks of Como Lake. He often talks about the Great War with her, the one he was in as a young lad, and she always listens, but it is often a repeat, but nonetheless she listens to him, and today, Saturday, he is talking to her about it again, they have cool-aid and hotdogs, sitting on an Indian type blanket in the grass:)
Says Shannon to his daughter, Cantina (whose real name is Catherine O’Day, but he has called, a nickname), “I came, I saw, and I concurred, in the Great War…” then paused to look deep into her eyes, to see if she was really attentive, listening, “I was a man alone, like an island in the middle of the sea, entire of itself, like a continent, or part of one, that is how I felt in the war, especially in this one day of battle I had, and I had two days that were special in that 300-day battle—oh, perhaps more, but two that haunt me, one of victory, one of tragedy, both during the Battle for Verdun, in 1916, let me tell you about the first one, I call it ‘The Day of the ‘Dead Horses.’” She nods her head yes, up and down slowly, she’s heard it before, each time though she gets something new out of it, something he was fearful before of releasing, so she has learned to not show discontent for him bringing it up for the umpteenth time, she knows when his dead, gone forever, these will be her private stockpile photos of his trying days war and battle, ones he only shared with her, and only her.
Cantina knew—ever since he had come back from his war—some forty years ago, as Shannon called it, World War One, there was a since of duty that remained in him. As if he should have died, but survived for some reason.
She knows, but she can’t put it in words, verbal words that echo, she knows: He sees no hope for triumph in the long run for mankind, but finds he can live a full life in the hours God has left him, as those before him have, and those after him will—he even told her once: “When will all this useless suffering stop, suffering for the sake of suffering, suffering nothing just to show mankind what it looks like, feels like, and start suffering for a cause—the war I went to, there wasn’t a crisis over here in America, that’s called a cause, or a reason. We had to go across the Atlantic Ocean where they created a crisis, telling everyone, the cause or the reason, it was to stop the suffering of our friends, so we could suffer with them, because Germany couldn’t make us suffer over here, in America; so how do like those apples.”
She also knows—and, has told herself this in so many words (talking to herself, thinking but not saying thoughts to her second self), saying only those things that are pleasing to him, because, she knows, he doesn’t fear death or solitude, never has and he finds love is possible, but everything for him is so loosely netted—and it wouldn’t do no good to argue the point—why create hurdles. And those horse, those damn horses, and dead damned horses, he remembers them well—all to well, and all too often. And these are some of her thoughts as she is sitting on that Indian blanket out at Como Lake.
“What are you thinking?” asks Shannon to his daughter.
“The way you might be thinking.” She says back to her father, and it actually makes him smile, what daughter would try to understand a man like him, a good and fine daughter, that is who, he confirms this to his second self, ‘She doesn’t judge him,’ he tells himself, ‘How funny, everyone else does.’
And so on this day, in 1964, in the park, sitting on the Indian blanket, here is the story he tells Cantina, I shall tell it in my own words, as he tried to tell her in his, and so Shannon O’ Day started his story like this:
I was making my stand in a trench. I did not like this trench and when I saw it I thought it had a shape of a woman’s womb. But I had no choice this was the trench, and I selected it because it was as far away as a battlefield would allow it to be, away from the German artillery shells. But not as far away as the sound of automatic machine gun bullets could reach, banging away night and day, halting and then starting back up again, firing: our reactions at first were hesitant, uncertain, and then they’d fire again and again, to give my platoon of eleven men—me being number twelve, a nervous case of the jitters, and a light case of being shell-shocked.
There still was snow on the ground, frost for the most part, it had ruined the ground, made it muddy, chilled and hardened at night, when the sun sank, and when the horses came pulling wagons of supplies, jerking, and climbing, and staggering their way through the mud, and snow, hauling equipment, men pulling their bridles, and the rains pouring over their heads and shoulders, holding the horses by the mane, many had to be shot, and many got shot in the line of battle, and there they lay dead, where they fell, for the flies and the worms and the rats to feast on—hot guts pouring out of their stomach regions, warm blood burning and seeping into the soil.
The horses sometimes were used for barricades, if the battle took place within the timeframe allowed—and if the carcass were still plump, and not gutted by animals, and at times my men, as well as I, we shot over their bodies on occasions, their burnt hides, laying their with our hot muzzles on their dead flesh and firing at the enemy instead of within the trench, allowing at times for us to advance, knowing all that was behind us were empty trenches, in particular this one empty trench this day of battle, and so we used these dead horses, fifty shot in one day to advance from one point to another, giving, and this one day I had an idea, one that could take out that nest of machine-gunners, and give us some peace and quiet for awhile. Incidentally, did you know there were eight-million horses killed in World War One? (Catherine nods her head no.) I’ll bet you also didn’t know Germany and Great Britain each had a Calvary force of 100,000. (Catherine nods her head no, again.) Well in any case, this was the war to end all wars, but that was all bull, as we all know now. I mean we had WWII, and the Korean War, and now there’s something starting up in South East Asia again. Well before I get back into the story, I’ll just say, when we went over the top, we’d first chow down, go over the top and hit the deck and we never really expected to come back alive we figured the Germans would nail our coffin right there, we all figured we’d end up kicking the bucket, if you know what I mean? (And Catherine knew what he meant, by using all that war slang, especial, WWI slang, he used it so often in his war stories, she knew it by heart. Well, said Catherine “You’re not pushing up the daisies, correct?” trying to talk the same slang her pa was and he replied, “I’m not dead—right?” and then continued with his story :)
This day, this one early spring day—a humdinger of a day too, one of 300-days in the Battle for Verdun, in France, but a humdinger of a day nonetheless—an unusual day to say the least, once my eleven men had reached the enemy’s perimeter, now within pistol distance, there were several more horses laying dead thereabouts, we had succeeded in stealing foot by foot, to get to the edge of the enemy’s nest, and now behind those several horses we waited until night fall—I was so nervous I was almost a basket case—you know what I mean (“Almost going crazy” said Catherine.) yes, that’s it, and not knowing when the next shooting would start between them and us, and the enemy not knowing how close we really were, and how many had perished in the previous battle, which none had, we had ourselves a slight advantage, for the advance we were planning.
Of the twelve men, I included, we had reached the outer rim of the boarder where the enemy had their machineguns, two of my men were wounded—that ticked me off, Henry Sanchez and Elmer Boswell. Henry was from New Mexico a young lad of eighteen, and Elmer, was a man from Wisconsin, a son of a baker, he also was eighteen.
Henry had a leg wound, shot twice, in two places. And Elmer had an arm wound. All the men were very thirsty, and the wounds of the men were starting to stiffen, yet I, the only Corporal, and in charge was too close to victory to halt the operation—in the pink, as they say—it must go forward I told my men, wounds or not. Henry had told me his wound was very painful. And this brought on a severe annoyance to me—again it ticked me off, and I told the soldier, plainly told him, “You’ll have to endure the pain, or kick the bucket, because we’re not gong to stop now, and if you don’t shut up, I’ll put a sock in your mouth to boot, or if you have an aspirin, that might help, whatever you chose, make it quick, and if you can’t fight anymore, stay put, and if you can, continue to do as you were doing, but this is no longer debatable.”
It was no joke, reality, it was the mission first, not the men in particular, at this stage of the battle to be, and if nausea became deeper and deeper throughout the night for the two soldiers, they were considered no longer usable in battle and therefore, second in priority. That’s the way the Army thinks, the way we are taught, the only way to win a battle—what I didn’t want was a washout—I mean, I didn’t want to lose the advantage by retreating, giving up the ground we so dearly fought for.
I, along with the other nine capable men was spread out likened to the Little Dipper. Using the horses for cover, we simply waited; the horses were big like mounds linking the soldiers together like baseball bases, from one point to another, and we were ready and eager for the fight, to continue at our pace, we felt it was better than living night and day in those long trenches, cold and wet—rat infested trenches. I moved on my belly from one horse to the other checking my men to make sure they kept their steel helmets on, a few had bullet holes through them, a few had hammered them out, yet some of the edges were still unsmoothed.
When the shooting started at, 3:00 a.m., and all the helmets had been clapped, you could hear a few of those bullets banging against the helmets, and the heads inside of them swaying, the sounds were death sounds: mouth-draying sounds, spiting sounds, cracking sounds, mechanical sounds, machine-like sounds, desperation sounds, and then a final sounds—throaty voices saying, “No more, there are no more sounds from the nest!” Then when I looked inside the nest, they were all dead: all the Germans.
The dryness and fear I had in my mouth, and the agony in my gut, were on hold, as I looked in the nest among the bodies of the enemy, I had thrown in three grenades, men were laying flat on their faces, arms torn off, looking as if they were reaching—but reaching while unconnected to their bodies somehow, for more machinegun rounds I would expect.
I walked among the dead, I wondered, said to my second self my mind’s eye, or maybe my subconscious was talking to my awaken eye, who’s to say—maybe my subconscious was fed up, and just said—and I thought it when it said it: give it to him straight: ‘What were their last words inside their heads, their last thoughts, was it to one another, to the comrade next to them; to God, or their mothers or wives or perhaps children? Why am I not one of those dead?’
I said to Henry, as now he had taken and endured the pain, and simply held it at bay; he had ended up being part of the onslaught, now standing by my side I said, “It is better to die on your feet isn’t it, than on your belly? Rise and shine, we won the skirmish.”
Another man said in back of me, “Why should they die and not us?” He must have been reading my mind.
And of course, in days to come, that voice would die, in a trench, but I had no wisdom, or witty words for the older man, older than I by far, so I said not a word. But I was thinking—nonetheless, thinking, none of us kicked the bucket, none of us were pushing up daises, none of us got knocked off today, and in war you just live day to day: it’s early now, and soon would be first light, and I could take my men back to the General and tell him, if he didn’t already know, the machinegun nest was silenced, and we did it, and to give us all a three to seven day pass to Paris or someplace safe, and a good breakfast; and for Henry, the war was over, he’d go home, with or without the General’s blessings, and so was it for Elmer. And I’d get two replacements in a week or so.’
I looked around carefully, looked in back of me at the dead horses, in front of me at the machineguns, I looked at the mud where I had crawled, at the bodies I had killed, not one of my men died today, just two wounded, but this was a good day— so I felt, I knew there would be bad days also.
Note: Chapter one of four chapters (a Chapter Story); No: 412 (6-9-2009); reedited and revised slightly, 7-10-2010.
Originally named “Day of the Damned Horses” with all four chapters intact; as a single and revised story “Day of the Dead Horses”
Interesting post - where can I download the podcast?
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