II

Here is a typewritten letter written on paper showing signs of having been torn across the top with a straight-edge, as if to remove a letterhead. The letters O-R over the date are in ink, printed by hand, large and clear.

Base Hospital HQ,

Portland Ore. : otherwise known as--

Office of the Understaff O-R

Freudsville, Oregon. 12 Jan.

Dear Phil:

First and foremost notice the O-R notation above. That means off the record, and I mean altogether. If and when you see it in future you don't need explanations. Anything which can be gotten across by abbreviation and in code is a blessing to me, especially since they gave me this nut factory to administer without relieving me of that bedlam of yours. You'll excuse the layman's vulgarisins, dear doctor; believe me, they do me good.

Under separate and highly official cover, and through channels, you'll find orders from me to you relative to a file AX544. I'm the colonel and you're the sergeant. I'm the administrator and you're just staff. Hence the orders. On the other hand we are old friends and you are senior to me in your specialty six times umpteen squared. The fact--not mentioned in the orders--is that we've pulled the kind of blooper you don't excuse by saying oops, sorry. This soldier was yanked out of a staging area overseas and shipped back here with a "psychosis, unclassified" label and a "dangerous, violent" stencil, by a meat-headed MedCorps major. It could only have been sheer vindictiveness, deriving from the fact that the GI punched him in the nose. Criminal he may be--according to the distinctions now current--but insane he is not. Seems to me he did the right thing; but to the major's dim appreciation it appeared insane to strike an officer and so he was sent to your laughing academy instead of to a stockade.

What complicates things is that we lost this guy. What with understaffing and turnover and all-around snafu, this GI has been stuck in padded solitary for three months now without diagnosis or treatment, and if he didn't qualify as one of your charges when he got there, he sure as hell should now.

However it happened, it comes out looking like the worst kind of carelessness, to say nothing of injustice. So what "diagnose and treat" means in the official order is, please, Phil, on bended knee, get that man out of there and out of the Army in such a way that there will be no kickbacks, lawsuits or headlines. And aside from the merits of the case itself, we have to slough off these trivial cases. We need the bed. I need the bed, or will soon if this kind of thing happens again.

I trust you to sew it up tidily, Philip. Not only a sound diagnosis, but a sound-sounding one. And then a medical discharge. His remuneration, whether or not he ever appreciates it, can be that his fisticuffs on the person of that moo-minded major are on the house.

your absentee landlord,Al

P. S. : To enrich the jest, I just got word that above-mentioned major, by name Manson, got himself deceased in line of duty, in a C-119 crash. This I learned in answer to my request for any additional files he may have on subject patient. There ain't any files.

A. W.

Here is the carbon copy of a letter.

Field Hospital #2

Smithton Township, Cal. : also called-- O-R

Bedpan Bureau 14 Jan.

Reik's Ranch, Cal.

Dear Al:

You diagnose right handily by mail. You must have been studying that technique where the quack sends you a ten-dollar Kleenex and you wipe it over your face and send it back and he tells you you've got housemaid's knee. I spent a half-hour with the guy today--honest to God, Al, all the time I could split off--and I found him up on the top floor all alone in a secure cell. Very polite, very quiet. Although he offers nothing, he responds well. I had no hesitation in holding out some hope to him--all he wants is out, and I handed him the idea that if he cooperates with me he ought to make it. He was pathetically eager to please. For once and probably the only time, I'm glad I'm not an officer. He doesn't like officers. And as you said, if we put in solitary every GI who feels that way we'd have to evacuate the entire state of California for housing.

Not having anything with me on that first visit to do any tests--including time, damn you--I sent Gus for a composition book and some ball-points and told the patient to write the story of his life any way it came to him, suggesting that third person might help. That'll give him something to do until I can get back to him, which will be soon--even sooner if you'll okay a requisition for a thirty-hour day and a sleep-eliminator for me.

yours wearily,Phil

The third or fourth carbon of a typed transcription.

George's Account:

The first that anybody heard about George was at this big staging area outside Tokyo and they were so busy they threw a lot of work to people who usually didn't do it. Which is the usual Army thing, thousands of guys sitting around waiting and a few dozen knocking themselves out. One of the things was the mail. The mail had to be censored but for military stuff and in this particular war, only certain special military stuff. Anything else was nobody's business but whoever wrote the letter.

All the same some lieutenant who should have known better, well, he did know better but he did it anyway, he got very puzzled at one of the letters he was supposed to censor. He took it to a friend of his who happened to be a major in the Medical Corps, but this major was not just a doctor, he was a psychiatrist. He looked at the letter and told the lieutenant he had no business worrying himself about, it, it was not military, which the lieutenant already knew. And that did not do any good because the major had the letter now and it bothered him just as much, so he sent for the soldier who wrote the letter.

The next day the major cleared up his desk and went and opened the door to the little room outside where this soldier was waiting. The major had a file in his hand turned around back to back with a lot of papers. He said "Come in uh," and looked at the papers, "uh Smith."

The soldier came in and the major closed the door. The soldier was at attention but he looked around when he heard the door close. The major did not look at him yet but walked past him looking at the papers and he said "It's all right, soldier. At ease." And he didn't seem to be so tough. He sat down and put the papers on the desk and squared them away and finally he leaned back in his shiny brown swivel chair and took a good look at the soldier.

What he saw was a big fellow with yellow hair and a pink kind of skin and the shoulders and chest that make the shirt look like it grew on him, it was so snug. He had thick arms and thick legs and he kept his face closed.

Up to now the major did not tell the soldier he had the letter. So the soldier did not know why he was there.

The major said, "The company clerk tells me you're something of a loner, Smith. Don't run with a crowd much."

The soldier just said, Yes sir. He always liked to let the other guy do the talking as much as he could.

"What do you do for amusement?"

"I like to walk around. At home I fish some. Hunt." The major did not say anything to this so the soldier had to say, "There isn't much of that here. Coons and chucks, I mean. Rabbits."

The major looked down at his papers and said, "Miss that a lot?"

"Well, yes sir, I reckon."

"Got a girl at home, George?" The Major called him George this time.

"Sure do, yes sir."

"Go in town once in a while, do you?"

George knew just what he meant and he just shook his head no.

The major picked up a paper and looked to see if it had anything written on the other side, which it had not. It was blue paper and had two lines written on it. It was only then that George began staring at it. He stared at it as much as the major did for the rest of the time he was there but from farther off. The major seemed to be going to say something about the paper but he did not. He said, "What do you hunt for, George? I mean, just what do you get out of it?"

He waited, looking down at the paper, and when he did not get an answer he looked up to the soldier's face. Then he said, real soft and long, "Hey-y-y..." and got on his feet. He went to the far corner of the room quickly but sort of sidling, watching the soldier's face the whole time, took down a glass, filled it from a cooler, came back and passed it to the soldier. The major said, "Here, you better drink this."

The soldier's face was bone-white and little drops of sweat were all over it and he was shaking and his eyes were half-way closed and what they call glazed. He took the glass but he did not seem to know he was taking it. He did not drink out of it but just held it out in front of him. He was staring down at the paper. The major looked down there too and that was when there was the explosion.

The glass, it seemed to explode but that was really because the soldier squeezed it. The next thing would be to jump the major and the major knew that because he turned just as white as the soldier. But what saved the major's life was the hand still out. First it was dripping water and then it was dripping blood. The blood dripping was what saved the major, because when George Smith saw it he like forgot there was anyone or anything else there. Slowly he brought his hand up to his face. The fingers opened and pieces of bloody glass fell out. He closed the fist and brought it close and began to smell it. He opened it and along the outside edge of the hand under the little finger, blood was pulsing where a little artery was cut. George put his mouth on that part.

The major must have pushed a button under his desk or something because the door banged open without knocking and two MP's ran in and grabbed George. After a while the major had to come and help, and then two more MP's came and that did it. The major had a bloody nose and one of the MP's just lay there on the floor without moving. George got his hand back to his mouth and stood breathing like a bull through his nostrils and watching the blood on the major's face.

"Wait a minute," the major said when the MP's started hustling the soldier out, and they stopped. He looked George Smith straight in the eye and spoke to him kindly. He was breathing hard and bleeding but he really was kindly. He said, "What was it, soldier? What did I say?"

George looked at the file folder on the desk and then he looked at the major bleeding and he sucked at his bleeding hand, and he did not say anything. For three months he did not say anything because he figured he had said much too much already.

They packed up the file folder and the soldier and sent both back Stateside.