Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [108]
Bobby was touched and put it on. “Thanks, Jimmy, I’ll take good care of it.”
“Well, I won’t get a chance to see you in the morning, so good luck to you over there, buddy.”
“He’s just going to training camp,” said Doc to Dorothy, trying not to make a big deal out of it, but the next day when he looked up and saw the 10:45 bus drive by the drugstore with his son on it, he wondered if he would ever see him again.
As soon as he finished dispensing Mrs. Whatley’s thyroid pills, he stepped out in the back alley for a moment and leaned against the building. The sun was shining and he could hear the high school band practicing over at the football field just as if it were another ordinary fall day.
Winter Wonderland, March 1953
FROM THE TIME Bobby had arrived in Korea he’d felt as if he were trapped inside of the big display he used to see in the window at the Morgan Brothers department store every Christmas. Only in this winter wonderland the things moving around were ugly, brown, grinding tanks, men with machine guns, and medics carrying stretchers full of wounded, dead, or dying soldiers. Bloodstains littered the white snow, as did an arm or blown-off leg, as well as bodies that lay twenty feet away. Trees that had been shot into nothing except shattered sticks were lying on the ground. He vowed that if he ever got out of there alive he never wanted to see snow again.
But with each hour that passed the chances of him getting out of there alive grew less likely. His company was surrounded on all sides.
It had happened overnight. They heard the North Korean tanks to the south and more moving in from the north. As it was, there were only fourteen men left. They had lost all communications a few days ago and were huddled together in a round ditch that they had dug last night. They were supposed to have been relieved a week ago by another company but they had been pushed back so far behind the lines, they couldn’t be sure they would be found. In the frantic scramble they had lost most of their K rations and had no idea where they were or how far away the other Americans were.
Everything was cold and white. They couldn’t see more than a foot in front of them. When it wasn’t snowing, a white misty ground fog came in. It was such a strange, surreal war, as if it were being fought in cotton. The sound of machine-gun fire was all around them, soft and muffled, but still they knew it was deadly. So strange to be so terrified with the whole world gone soft and white or to be covered with sweat in the middle of a snowstorm. They could occasionally hear voices calling out in the distance, to them or to one another, they didn’t know. Most of these men, including Bobby, had grown up in movie theaters watching World War II movies, and the shrill, high-pitched, Oriental language that sounded just like Japanese struck a twelve-year-old’s fear in their hearts. But this was no movie. And their sergeant was not John Wayne. He was a twenty-two-year-old kid from Akron, Ohio, who had just gotten married a year ago. Soon they had run out of everything, food, ammunition, and any options. They could not signal where they were or they would be ambushed. They were trapped. Dead if they moved, dead if they didn’t.
Then, at about one o’clock that afternoon, Bobby suddenly said to the man beside him, “The hell with this. I’m going to go and find them.” He handed the man his gun and crawled over the top of the ditch and disappeared. He knew he could not stand up without getting his head shot off, so he crawled. As he slowly inched forward in the snow he suddenly remembered something Jimmy had told him at the Trolley Car Diner years ago, right before the bubble gum contest: “Don’t look to