As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he
Proverbs 23:7 Bible
I.
Listening to him talk,
I feel like a kid again —
Playing soldier,
Dying to pretend bullets,
Creating heroes.
But his life is not pretend —
It is as real as his bullet-scarred body.
II.
He never felt the Japanese .32 caliber slugs
Rip through his body —
felt only a force like the hand of God
Knocking him down.
He lay under the blistering Okinawa sun —
Listened to the cries of the other wounded
As they prayed to the miracle of faith,
Or yelled for the corpsmen
Hoping for the miracle of medicine.
When the corpsmen reached him,
Herbie couldn't see.
His left arm was shattered.
He bled from seven different holes in his upper torso.
They lifted his bloody body onto a Jeep
And rushed him to a Navy hospital.
Herbie didn't hear the discussion,
Which ultimately decided his life.
The Navy doctor wanted to shoot him full of morphine.
Send him into a painless death.
Herbie's corpsman friend refused to give up.
Drove a confiscated Jeep across the Okinawa beaches
To an Army hospital.
He convinced a young captain
That Herbie deserved a chance.
The doctor sawed off Herbie's arm,
Patched up the holes in his chest,
And waited.
III.
Herbie only remembers that the nurse was fat and mean —
Would not let him die.
She spoon-fed him.
She changed his clothes.
She made his bed.
She scolded him when he pitied his fate.
She forced him to pick up what was left
Of his shattered body.
IV.
Herbie lived through four beachheads.
Received three Purple Hearts,
One Bronze Star,
And one Silver Star.
Soldiers rarely live to bask in such glory.
V.
Herbie believes that life is a blueprint.
He was merely following the pale blue lines
Toward his death.
VI.
In 1963 Herbie was struck with a kidney malfunction.
He contracted staph pneumonia.
His priest gave him the Last Rites,
But it wasn't in Herbie's plans to die.
VII.
Herbie likes to pretend
For small gullible minds
That he lost his arm
In the revolving door at a USO
While chasing after a nurse.
It is hard not to believe him.
VIII.
Herbie went to work as a government employee.
He was willing to give his life for his country —
Why not his time?
IX.
Herbie never considered himself a hero.
He points to a framed picture on his desk.
In faded black-and-white is portrayed
A tough old nurse,
A determined friend,
And an optimistic doctor
Standing over his hospital bunk. "You want heroes?" Herbie says, "They deserve all the credit.
All I did was live."
X.
Listening to him talk,
I feel like a kid again —
Playing soldier,
Dying to pretend bullets,
Creating heroes.
by Jude Roy
... who is a U.S. Navy veteran and former Veterans Administration
employee, now teaching college in Madisonville, Kentucky; with
works previously published in The Southern
Review, Prism International, National
Public Radio's The Sound of Writing, and
elsewhere. This poem is based upon a colleague with whom Dr Roy
worked at their VA office in Boston.