FOXWHOLE

What of memories from the foxhole?

What about those days spent in the mire, muddied and manly, yet unmanned by the free flow of fear forming and foaming in your pants.  We happy few indeed, we branded brothers, with scars to prove it inside and out.

The only fully-formed memory I have is of that guy Marty.  He was colossally uninhibited.  Even when he didn't have to shit on a shovel like we did most days in the hole he would anyway, no matter where he was.  Even in the mess that time.  He took a mouthful of 'stew,' got up, pulled the spade out of the sergeants kit by the wall, dropped his pants and shat on the blade.  Huddled in the hole with your head down this was the easiest way to get rid of shit so it didn't pile up around you.  You just dumped on the shovel and heaved it like a hunk of dirt over the wall.  Preferably in the direction of the cock suckers trying to kill you.  There really wasn't any reason to do it in the mess hall with the latrine out back.  Marty never liked the latrine though anyway because it made him feel trapped he said.  I never felt trapped in the shitter though--it was the one time I could really let it all go so to speak.  Can't tell you how many times I cried in the john back then.  Now the tears just don't seem to come.  Anyone tells you they didn't cry in the war is a liar.  We all cried like babies.  Dying's some scary shit.

So Marty--he crapped and pissed in front of everyone like I said.  I mean none of us was shy about that kind of thing but Marty wouldn't even try to maybe angle himself even a little bit to avoid full-frontal.  And he'd moon anyone any chance he got, especially jerry (by which I mean the Germans) across the wire.  We saw his pud up close when he showed off the purple scar on his nuts.  His teeth, his toe nails - even all the stories about his father and the car dealership and the cabin in the Kentucky hills.  I think Marty never really had anyone in his life maybe so the war was like his one chance to have someone to really talk to.  We were a captive audience most of the time.  There was nothing else to do but be killed.

When Marty got it funny enough you couldn't even tell.  For someone who showed everything it was weird I thought later how when he died it looked like he was sleeping.  You would have thought someone like him would have died with his guts hanging all out--sharded bone and deli meat.  I'm still not sure where the bullet got him.  I only heard later he got shot after they took him off.

Oh and I remember Frankie Wolff--he was the fattest fuck you ever saw leave basic, like Paris Island went in one ear and out the other at least in terms of getting "battle ready."  That didn't stop the Corps from sending his ass to the line ASAP though.  War though, war straightened ole Frank right out.  Scared the fat right out of him.  He never looked better in his life right before he bled to death out on the field, the last of him just leaking away by the light of the flares.

What about that foxhole?  What's the difference now?  I talk to my dog about it from time to time.  She doesn't seem to mind.  She's a good girl.  I named her after that whore I spent the night with in France that first summer I was there.  I can't remember the whore's name but the dog's name I know.  I keep it secret though. No one needs to know about that stuff.