The Normandy Ward
The U.S. Army Hospital, Plant 4178, was pleasantly situated in the beautiful countryside of southwest England. The newly finished hospital had been empty, waiting for the first flood of casualties that would pour across the English Channel after our forces had landed somewhere on the continent of Europe.
But now D-Day had come and gone, and the Allied Armies had landed on the beaches of Normandy. In the weeks that followed, Army ambulances would make their endless circuits between the docks of south England and the hospital, to unload their mutilated cargo. As soon as the airstrip was completed on top of Omaha Beach, airfields in south England were added to the collection points for the casualties that were flown to England and brought to the hospital by ambulance. It was by the route of the Omaha Beach airstrip that I found myself in this hospital. I had suffered a gunshot wound of the abdomen and some shrapnel wounds on July 10 in Normandy.
The weeks that I spent in the hospital were a tranquil interlude after the tumultuous preceding weeks of rapid movement and intense action. The large, freshly painted ward was already filled to capacity and was always alive with the banter of unquenchable G I humor and ongoing teasing with the nurses. If there seemed to be an air of unwarranted exuberance, sometimes punctuated with bursts of exaggerated laughter, even among the more seriously wounded, it was simply the outpouring of sheer joy, the exhilaration of just being alive. After all, these men were the survivors of that still perilously clung-to Normandy Beach-head. There were men from the 1st, the 4th, and the 29th Divisions, who had made the assault on Omaha and Utah Beaches. There was a Ranger or two who had participated in taking the German position on the precipitous Point du Hoc. There were glidermen and paratroops from the vaunted 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, who had fought in isolation, exploiting enemy weaknesses to gain their vital objectives. There were men from other units, such as the 3rd Armored Division, who joined the battle later, and who had had their baptism of fire in the fierce battle of the hedgerows, where every field was transformed into an enemy fortress and the murderous crossfire took an unconscionable toll of lives.
In the bed beside me was a young soldier who still trembled with fear. After being seriously wounded, he had lain in his foxhole beneath the dead body of a fellow soldier for two days. In another bed, close by, was a gliderman with an extremely heavy accent, from the 82nd Airborne. He told us how he had paraded before Mussolini as a young soldier in the Italian Army, until his mother was able to smuggle him out of Italy to the U.S. He told us about his glorious entry into France, how, when his glider hit the ground, it broke up on impact and he was hurled through the air, only to come to a sliding halt with his face buried in the manure of a Norman cow. There was another man across the aisle from me who filled only half his bed. He had been run over by a tank and had his legs amputated below the hips. He stared stoically at the ceiling for hours on end to avoid the painful downward glance at the flat, taut blanket where his legs and feet should have been.
A special bond quickly developed among the men in the ward. Strong friendships were quickly forged. The ambulatory patients would move among those who were bedfast, encouraging them, asking about their units, hoping to find mutual acquaintances within their ranks. They would light cigarettes for those who were helpless and run small, necessary errands.
There were men in all manner of casts, some in body casts, others in leg casts that were elevated in traction, and still others in arm casts, with the arms locked forward of the body in crooked positions, appearing like mimes frozen in mid-performance.
There was always a significant change of mood among the men in the ward as night approached. It was a puzzling phenomenon. Was it the fear of the isolation that quiet and darkness bring? Was it the apprehension of each man receding into his own private arena of hell, where in sleep, the subconscious mind would resurrect a thousand different scenarios of torment that he had already endured?
During the night there were infrequent periods of unusual quiet when I would suppress sleep and in an almost childlike manner, surrender myself to the marvelous security of the ward. I would try to fasten my mind on enjoying the soft, clean comfort of the hospital bed. Lying in the silence, I would listen to the gentle rhythm of my own breathing, the most elementary and gratifying reminder of being alive. For me, to be awake was the dream; to sleep was the nightmare.
Often my reverie was intruded upon by the audible torment of those who slept. There would be a sudden outburst as someone in a nightmare gave out a pathetic cry for help. Another would curse loudly in a frenzy of helplessness over a weapon that would not fire; someone else screamed orders to a squad that did not exist. To hear, welling out of the darkness, the pleading, plaintive cry of a man calling for a friend who would not answer, was almost heartbreaking.
Meanwhile, up and down the long, darkened ward, deep into the night, there would be sporadic clicks and flashes of cigarette lighters, as trembling hands tried to light unsteady cigarettes held between the quivering lips of men who had become hostages to that felt clutch of sleeplessness. For the sleepless, as well as the sleeping, fell victim to the torments of the night. Unrepentant darkness, which knows neither truce nor armistice, would relentlessly do its demon work, constantly awakening the fear-laden memories of battlefield terror. Unforgetting, unforgiving darkness, with a sly viciousness, would again and again lacerate those tender, unsutured inner wounds and would not let them heal. And those nights would be the cruel harbinger of decades of similar night to come, when time and distance would neither diminish nor assuage the unremitting pain.
During the night there was always the sound of the nurses on constant patrol, quietly and efficiently moving among the beds with their flashlights, checking on each man. At some beds, there were extended pauses as they whispered consolingly to those who could not sleep. To others, with the same comforting tenderness, they administered medication when the pain was no longer bearable.
The flick of the light switch in the morning, accompanied by the cheery voices of the day nurses, signaled the distinct change of mood that would restore the easy light-heartedness that made the days so different and almost pleasant.
One day the daily routine of the ward was interrupted with a great stir of excitement. A full Colonel and his party had come to the hospital. When the Colonel and his entourage entered our ward, we found out that he had come to present the Purple Heart to each of us. What made this a particularly auspicious occasion was that it was the first time the awards had been made in that hospital since the Normandy invasion.
Those of us who were ambulatory were ordered to stand in front of our beds, while the Colonel�s aide read the names and serial numbers, and then the Colonel made the presentation. What a motley and unmilitary-looking group we must have been, standing in front of our beds, dressed in our pajamas, bathrobes and canvas hospital slippers.
When the Colonel, followed by his splendidly attired entourage, took his position in front of me, he paused and looked at me. He then asked, "how old are you, son?" "Eighteen years old, Sir," I replied. "What the devil are you doing over here?" he bellowed out across the ward! I replied that I was just very proud to be there.
Some weeks later, I underwent another operation. In Normandy, in the field hospital, when the projectile had been removed from my abdomen, the wound was stuffed with Vaseline gauze to ensure proper healing. Now that the wound had healed properly, a second operation was needed to close the wound.
Following the operation, I was placed alone in a room. One day, the door suddenly opened, and several nurses burst into my room singing, "Happy Birthday." One of the nurses had seen on my records that that day, August 7, was my nineteenth birthday, so they had brought me a small gift. Such thoughtfulness and personal concern in the midst of their uniquely busy and demanding schedules was a most moving experience. It showed what a special breed of people they really were.
For my period of rehabilitation, I was transferred to a hospital near Hereford, England. It was there that I received some saddening news. During my stay in Glastonbury, Somerset, at Abbey Camp prior to the invasion, I had been befriended by the Mapstone family, a wonderful, solid, English family. The warmth of their home had been a comforting refuge from the austerity of camp life. Having learned of my injury and subsequent hospitalization, this kind family had hired a car at great expense and, in gas-starved England, had traveled many miles to visit me in the hospital. Unfortunately, they had arrived at the hospital the day after I had left to begin my rehabilitation program. It was with a heavy heart that within a short time I began my journey across the Channel without having seen my friends. The balancing consolation was that I was eager to rejoin the men of "D" Co., the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Armored Division.
