World in Flames

demolition teams, reasserted, however, the American determination to go on the attack even though they had been retreating in the South. The American public made heroes of young David Brentwood and the others who deserved it, and some who didn’t but who had been in the right place at the right time.

For most of the men, the reputation of having been in on the Pyongyang raid proved as much a burden as a blessing. Later, in Europe, during a night drop when Brentwood’s battalion had bailed out over the Dortmund- Bielefeld pocket as part of the American airborne’s drop to relieve pressure from the trapped British Army of the Rhine, four American brigades, and a German division, David, like most in Charlie company, had been blown into enemy territory by crosswinds.

He had lain against a fetid, disemboweled corpse in a shell-pocked field under enemy artillery barrage, too paralyzed to move. At dawn, when he did go forward and found himself looking through the foresight of a Russian AK-47, he was secretly relieved. That was, until he saw the Russian SPETS commandos herding American and British prisoners, making them take off their uniforms and dog tags and issuing the shivering NATO POWs only one coarse blanket apiece.

The Russians were preparing to infiltrate the NATO lines and blow up the Allied “prepo” supply depots. Subsequently, Brentwood, after seeing a British officer and Americans murdered in cold blood on a forced march through deep snow, had been jolted out of his funk. Escaping from the column, using two of the enemy’s stick, male-female connector grenades, he’d single-handedly set a huge Soviet oil dump near Stadthagen afire, robbing Marshal Kirov’s armored columns of their critical fuel supply during the assault by over five thousand Russian T-90 and T-84 tanks against the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket.

For that, David Brentwood had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to add to the Silver Star earned at Pyongyang.

Now, recuperating in a Belgian NATO hospital outside Brussels, the exhilaration of having found his courage at Stadthagen was quelled by the burden of his memory — of those hours alone before dawn in the shell-cratered field outside the DB pocket when only he and God knew he’d been immobilized with fear. The wounds caused by flying shrapnel from the stick grenades he’d used at Stadthagen to blow up the dump were superficial but extremely painful. Yet he bore the pain without any ill will, his stoicism born of the gnawing guilt that festered out of those two hours — for him, two hours of cowardice.

To make matters worse, everyone he spoke to, from the pretty, young admitting receptionist at Lille to reporters from the Stars and Stripes, kept admiring his courage, and the more reticent he became to give yet another interview, the more he was celebrated as the modest hero, and the more the guilt of those two hours mounted.

Finally David felt literally weighed down, longing for the Dutch harbors to be cleared of the Soviet air-drop mines and Allied wrecks so that he could be shipped back to a convalescent hospital in England. There, hopefully, he could bury himself among the anonymity of the half million Allied soldiers in the vast encampments of southern England and East Anglia who, fed and resupplied by the convoys now getting through from the States, would be far too busy to worry about any one individual.

As the personnel officer aboard the USS Salt Lake City waited to get confirmation that it was Frank Shirer whom Washington was requesting, David Brentwood on the other side of the world sought solitude along the banks of one of the narrow, olive-drab canals. But the denuded winter poplars and the flat, lush green of Flanders Fields beyond only nurtured his gloomy mood. He wondered how much of his attack on the Soviet fuel dump had been due to having seen other prisoners shot at the whim of a Soviet guard and how much of his desperate run through the blizzard that night with the grenades had been motivated by nothing else than fear of meeting the other prisoners’ fate — instead of by any conscious plan to strike back at the Russians. One-half of him told him that the reason he did it wasn’t important. Who cares? as his marine buddy, Thelman, would say. “What matters, babe, is you did it.” Yet the other half of David Brentwood, his father the admiral’s side, was unmoved. For Adm. John Brentwood, the reason for doing something was almost as important as the deed itself.

A phantom breeze ruffled the canal water, its leaden surface shivering like a living thing apprehensive of the gunmetal skies gathering ominously overhead. David turned around to head back to the hospital, smelling rain in the air, wondering whether this tug-of-war within him afflicted others who, like him, had been singled out for public celebration—”Best of Show” propaganda! — at a time when Allied commanders well knew the war could easily go either way despite Freeman’s breakout from the DB pocket.

Or was his condition peculiar to himself? Was he in some way abnormal? He had tried to visualize confiding in his brothers to find the answer, but he felt too far away in years from Robert. And his older brother wasn’t given to opening up about himself. Like all submariners, cocooned in a world of secrecy, he had a natural reticence to discuss personal matters or, for that matter, anything else, outside the sub. He’d only told David of his impending marriage to Rosemary Spence a month before it took place. In any case, like their father, Robert probably wouldn’t want to discuss personal matters, perceiving such self-absorption as a sign of weakness, an inability on David’s part to handle his own problems. Perhaps it was?

David heard the high thunder of bombers, probably B-1s— the so-called Stealth B-2 a disaster, easily picked up by the enemy’s low, long-wave radar despite the Pentagon’s claims and assurances otherwise. Looking up, seeing nothing but thick overcast, David felt more depressed than ever. Someone said that coming off the painkillers helped induce depression. Or was he just feeling downright sorry for himself? — a thing neither of his two brothers or father would abide, especially not after Ray’s burn trauma.

He had thought of writing Lana — sure she’d understand his doubts and fears about having so much expected of him. Once you’d been a winner, you were supposed to go on winning, distinguishing yourself. What had old George Patton said? “Americans love to win and will not tolerate a loser.” But the problem with trying to talk about any problem in a letter, to Lana or anyone else, was the damned censor. Oh, the censor would keep it to himself, all right — wouldn’t go about blabbing a Medal of Honor winner’s doubts about himself — but the thought of anyone, especially another marine, seeing his innermost doubts revealed was too humiliating to contemplate. No — he’d just have to “bear up,” as his DI had bellowed at him and “Thelma” at Parris Island. “Flush all the shit out!” and “Go forward.” Or, as Adm. John Brentwood had said ad nauseum, “When the going gets tough…”

“Yes, I know,” David could hear his mother saying. “But we’re not all as tough as you, John.”

David smiled at the memory despite his dark mood. He longed to see his mom, remembering how, as a small child, he could go to her in the mornings and cuddle up, the warm, soft smell of her enfolding him. Safe from the world. And he thought of Melissa Lange, his last day with her, a rushed lovemaking torn by anxiety about his posting to Korea and by the memory of Rick Stacy, a political science major. Stacy, the weasel — bow tie and forced preppy charm, except he was from Oregon, having no doubt waited for David to move out so he could try a move on Melissa. The thought of her with Stacy, even though she’d said her relationship with the weasel was “strictly platonic,” was damn near unbearable.

In her most recent letter, Melissa had said Stacy was applying for an M.B.A. program scholarship, his tuition to graduate school being paid by an air force scholarship, providing he would serve four years as a crewman in one of the air force’s two-man, or was it “two-person,” missile silos. “It’s a very popular program,” Melissa had written David. Sure it was— sixty feet underground, wanking yourself off while everyone else was overseas with the crap coming from every direction. David could see Stacy now, waltzing about in his missile crewman’s blue jumpsuit, cravat and missile shoulder patch for everyone to see. The thought of Stacy with his finger on the button—

David could imagine him strutting across campus, writing A-plus papers on the “nuclear threat”—and how taking out a whole city wouldn’t worry him one little bit. Trouble was, after seeing the way the Russians had shot Americans out of hand, David knew he wouldn’t have much trouble pushing the button either if it came to that.

“Brentwood!” It was like being woken up from a sleep, the British sergeant’s bullish voice rolling down the embankment of the canal. “Brentwood?”

“Yo,” answered David.

“You’re to report to Brussels, lad.”

“There are no hospital ships in Brussels,” he told the sergeant, who was one of the military policy detachments assigned to Liege.

“Nothing about hospital ships, lad — HQ wants you. Something about prisoners. They suspect there might be a few of those bloody fancy-dress artistes.” Sometimes David didn’t know what the British were talking about. Churchill was right: the English and Americans were two races divided by a common language.

“You know!” said the sergeant, taking off his beret, bowing and slapping it hard