The incident I'm thinking of occurred in March 1945. I was a GI on the fighting front in Aachen, Germany. I had already experienced seven months of combat and, although I had felt myself a seasoned veteran, I still blanched and choked when I hit the ground after a close shell burst. Before I would get up I would tense my muscles and feel myself praying that I'd find no blood. Finally, that day in March, it came. We were standing by our vehicles awaiting orders when we heard the whine of eighty-eights over our heads. We stiffened and nervously looked at each other. Then, what we silently prayed against, happened. It was a shattering, smashing, binding series of roaring explosions around us and on us. I didn't have to throw myself on the ground. I was hurled to the ground, then picked up by concussion, smacked against a truck and rolled under it. As I had always done before, I tensed and felt myself. I was black with mud, but no pain, no blood. I crawled out from under the truck and, with those of us who could get around, took inventory. None dead, eleven injured, four badly injured, amputees out of the war. This wasn't as bad as expected.

Four days later, our outfit had moved a number of miles up the line. That morning, I awoke with a pain in my lower back. It felt like an infection. I was hot, feverish and. When I touched the spot, there was a lump as bog as an indoor baseball. I reported to the medics and waited to be examined. By the time I was seen, my mind had become fogged dull and my whole body shook and throbbed with each heartbeat. I was diagnosed as having a localized wound, imbedded shrapnel with acute gangrene infection. I was put on a stretcher, in an ambulance and driven to the nearby airstrip. There on the ground between other stretcher cases, I felt like a key on a huge piano. It was hours, it was hot, and the sun beat down and we waited. This I swore was the worst moment I had ever lived. My eats throbbed with my heart and yet through the throbbing I heard the moans, groans, pleadings, screams, and shrieks of those around me like the notes of the piano off key in a crazy macabre symphony. I heard men crying for morphine and saw the red grease that told me I was also awarded an M. I didn't remember when it was given to me. I looked at the tag which was tied to my stretcher and noted the scribbled word "penicillin". Both arms hurt so I supposed that I had been given penicillin shots also. Mingled with the screams and cries were the words of the medics, the C-54's were going to London and the C-47's to Paris. I wondered what was in it for me, Paris or London? I slept, I woke, I thought of London, I thought of Paris. I remembered that I screamed once and I passed out again.

I suddenly awoke feeling my stretcher being lifted and a voice saying "Take it easy GI, you're in the air corps now." I heard the hum of whirling propellers, talking men, shouts. I quivered, but my lip, and opened and shut my eyes. I was lifted into the body of the plane, my stretcher strapped above one stretcher and below another. The door was shut and the plane moved. I didn't remember when the plane left the ground. There were no windows no bumps; no indication of movement, yet I knew we were flying. In the air, my body felt like a nebulous jellylike mass waving around a nucleus of pain. I fell asleep but soon woke with a pressure on my ears that told me we were landing.

We were taken from the plane in groups of four and strapped in waiting ambulances. I was the first to be strapped in, as another stretcher was slid in next to mine. I looked to see what kind of case he was. There was no need for speculation. A bandage over his eyes and powder burns told me enough. As I turned to look at him, the ambulance started with a lurch and companion opened his mouth in a scream of silence. Finally it came and I was lad, the voiced scream came from the twisted mouth.

Both hands clutched his bandaged face as he screamed, "Oh God, driver take it easy, please driver please, my foot, my foot!" I glanced quickly along the olive drab blanket and saw the bandaged stump of his left leg, staining fresh with new blood over the old brown of dried blood. I looked back over my shoulder at the driver and saw a thin red neck, quivering with drops of perspiration standing out like sun flecks. "Sure kid, sure," he said. "I'll do the best I can for you, soldier." Then my eye caught the rear view mirror and I saw the driver's face. He was crying, I could see it. He was biting his lips and his face was white though his neck was red. I reached out and grabbed the blind boys' hand. "Take it easy, chum," I choked, "we'll be O.K." We rode for about ten minutes or so still holding hands. Finally, we stopped and the doors were opened. I felt my hand squeezed and the kid turned to me and said, "Don't let it getcha fella, don't let it getcha."