J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [62]
Salinger’s choice of visiting companion was perhaps an expression of gratitude. Among his commanders in the Hürtgen Forest was an officer Kleeman described as having been “a heavy drinker” and cruel to his troops. This officer ordered Salinger to remain in a frozen foxhole overnight, knowing that Salinger was without proper supplies. When the temperature dropped to dangerous levels, Kleeman became fearful for his friend’s life. After sneaking over to find Salinger shivering in the now snow-covered hole, Kleeman secretly delivered two items from Salinger’s belongings that helped him survive: a blanket liberated from a hotel after the Battle of Cherbourg and a pair of his mother’s ubiquitous woolen socks.
Hürtgen changed Salinger profoundly, but it changed everyone who experienced it in a similar way. Even Hemingway found it difficult to write for years after his experience there. Hemingway openly blamed the forest, but most survivors never spoke of Hürtgen again. Silence was the overwhelming reaction. Yet a recognition of the conditions at Hürtgen and the sufferings that Salinger endured are essential to understanding the depth of his later works. Within the Hürtgen Forest lie the origin of Babe’s mournful lament for the 12th Regiment in “The Stranger” and the nightmares suffered by Sergeant X in “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor.”
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While Salinger was enduring Hürtgen, “Once a Week Won’t Kill You” was published in the November–December issue of Story. The appearance of this piece, its plot trivial in comparison to his present circumstances, was tinged with irony. It must have been difficult for Salinger to recall the motivation behind the piece or even the persona who had penned it. Whit Burnett, still delighted about Salinger’s $200 contribution to Story’s writing contest, wanted to exploit Salinger’s donation as well as his presence on the battlefield by including a short biography of the author in the issue. Deep within the Hürtgen Forest, Salinger composed a short autobiographical profile and sent it off to New York.
Initially this sketch appears unremarkable, especially considering when it was written. A placid, humorous self-account, it is still recalled to draw a correlation between Salinger and the character of Holden Caulfield. Salinger speaks of bouncing from one school to another and dropping his marbles in the American Indian Room of the Museum of Natural History. There is perceptible wartime numbness beneath the surface of this piece. In it Salinger admits to an inability, since being in the army, to recall the people and places of home, as if his prewar life were slipping away, with normality becoming increasingly distant and obscure. There is a definite hint of frayed nerves as he explains his life by reciting one dismal event after another. Even at Hürtgen, Salinger assures his readers that he is “still writing whenever [he] can find the time” and whenever he can find “an unoccupied foxhole.”30
From Hürtgen, Salinger also wrote to Elizabeth Murray. In a letter containing mood shifts between his happy recollections of Paris and the depressing experiences of the forest, he tells Murray that as well as meeting Hemingway, he has been writing as much as possible. He claims to have completed five stories since January and to be in the process of finishing another three. Years later, Salinger’s counterintelligence colleagues would remember him as constantly stealing away to write. One recalled a time when they came under heavy fire. Everyone began ducking for cover. Glancing over, the soldiers caught sight of Salinger typing away under a table, his concentration apparently undisturbed by the explosions around him.31 Such examples demonstrate Salinger’s need to write. At Hürtgen, with the memory of his former life slipping away, Salinger used the familiar act of writing to carry him through—as a way to survive.
By the first week of December, all three regiments of the 4th Infantry Division were exhausted. If the 12th Infantry Regiment were ever to be effective in combat