War
Another summer at home passed surrounded by his children and grandchildren. They all lingered outside and enjoyed the morning with the temperature at its coolest. The man stayed inside, finding it difficult to move about in his old age. He opted instead to stay seated in his comfortable chair, watching as the grandchildren ran inside and out with the toys that used to belong to his own, now adult, children. One of the little girls belonged to his youngest daughter. She had dark and curly like her father’s, with his eyes as well, but the old man loved her dearly. He called her “Miss America.” She’d wander inside by herself sometimes to stand in front of the fan, not used to the Michigan heat as the rest of the grandchildren were. Then she’d notice her grandpa sitting alone in his chair and would give him company.
As she crawled onto his lap, the old man gave a sweet smile and tousled the girl’s curly locks. He thought about the hardships he had suffered in the past to ensure a peaceful life for his family. Some of his own sons had experienced the same, but they eventually returned home with the past becoming nothing more than a memory. They sat on the porch steps at that moment, talking about a hummingbird that decided to stop by the feeder for a snack. Miss America was missing it. Where she came from, most hummingbirds didn’t survive the seasons. But there would be more opportunities to view the shiny green and blue feathers of the little birds—she was still young, after all. She had many more years to live. The old man, however, was at the last trickle of his existence. He knew he would soon be buried beneath the ground in the graveyard of his hometown. Unlike those who perished in the war, he’d die safe at home.
Darkness shrouded that morning of April 23rd in the year 1951. The Korean War had barely started, and that day the U.S. army waited, on the verge of attack. All around lay rolling hills, their intimidating silhouettes surrounding the field where the men crouched, hiding. Across the field the Korean soldiers hid in the tall grasses just the same. The night carried on, silent, except for crickets playing their rhythmic tunes in the few trees that dotted the area and the far-off brush. Neither side made a move; everyone waited for something to happen.
Roman Switalski stared straight ahead with a rifle in hand. He wore clonking combat boots, a smooth and round helmet, and a green uniform that itched, but he dared not move. He tuned his ears to every sound made, whether by nature or by the enemy.
A cry rung out. The air exploded with gunfire that brightened the battlefield. Roman and his division surged forward with rapidly beating hearts, blasting away with their rifles at the shadows of their enemies. As the shadows grew closer, Roman saw they conducted rocket launchers, mortars, and heavy artillery. Each device caused a deafening roar upon contact with either the U.S. soldiers or the ground. The young man swallowed back his fear, raising his rifle again to shoot in the direction of the offending weaponry.
A tree next to him burst into flames and sprayed splinters and metal as a rocket destroyed it. Pushed over from the impact, his ears ringing, Roman felt something wet drip down his face. He had multiple wounds spread across his chin, cheeks, and forehead, as well as shrapnel that penetrated his helmet. Groaning as his nerves screamed in pain, the young man’s sight dimmed, and he blacked out. When he awoke, still in the midst of battle with its brightly flashing lights and shrieks of rage and terror, Roman heard his partner calling for a medic. He had forgotten about his partner. The battlefield had sucked every thought from his mind as he reacted automatically to the gunfire laying waste to the young men he had trained with.
His fellow soldiers carried Roman away from the battle on a stretcher, toward a large Jeep. Two others already lay in the back on their own stretchers, with Roman placed beside them. The vehicle drove off, bouncing along a trail that caused the injured men to wince at the pain it brought to their cuts and bruises and burns. They had a clear view of the carnage. Three U.S. tanks flanked the Jeep to protect it from enemy fire, as the Koreans had witnessed their hasty escape. Roman saw that atop one of the tanks a soldier quickly devoured a sandwich. A mortar blasted their way from the direction of the enemy, flying between the hungry soldier’s legs and straight into the tank. From many yards away, Roman felt the heat of the flames lick at his face, and he watched with wide eyes as the body of his comrade flew six feet into the air and landed twenty feet away from the tank. Smoke rose from the blackened remains of the armored vehicle. Coughing as it entered his lungs, Roman and the other injured men sat with their backs against the Jeep, praying for those who had lost their lives to protect them.
The smell of smoke reminded the old man of cigarettes. He leaned back into his tan recliner and turned on the TV. Summer was over, and the children and grandchildren had left, some to different states across the country. Only he and his wife remained, and Polly had gone to bed an hour ago. He flicked through the channels on the TV, finding that the interesting shows and films played later. Preparing to wait, the old man turned off the screen and set the remote on the desk beside him. He stared blankly at the blackened screen and listened to the sounds of nature outside the opened window. The world always felt louder at night to him, the voices of frogs and birds and the chirp of crickets going unimpeded by human activities. Among those sounds was that of the whirring oxygen machine next to the recliner, making its best attempt to drown out the beautiful voices of nature beyond his window.
The war hadn’t done this to him—filled his lungs with black tar—no, he had done this to himself. Years he had spent smoking after coming home from the Korean War, ignoring the warnings his family gave of how detrimental it was to his health. He only stopped once his lungs failed to hold in oxygen, forcing him to be hooked up to a tank. The tank didn’t move, and so the old man didn’t either. He spent his time sitting in his favorite chair, watching as the days and months and years flew by without his involvement. Much happened in the world around him while he stayed tied to home, his condition making it difficult to attend birthdays, weddings, and funerals. But his family would always remember him. They never forgot his stories of the war.
For six weeks Roman recovered from his injuries in a hospital in Tokyo, Japan. All too soon, the doctors had him sent back on a boat to Korea, still very weak but able to hold a gun. He was in the throng of battle once again.
Men marched one after another, each carrying heavy packs filled with weapons, ammunition, and food supplies. They prepared, to take over one of the many hills in the area, a good fighting strategy that would leave the enemy sitting like ducks without much cover. Roman gasped in pain as he carried his own pack, still weakened by the weeks spent lying immobile in the hospital. The army reached the base of the hill and stopped to rest, but a few stronger soldiers kept on. Shaking, Roman collapsed to the ground and found himself unable to stand up again, nor could he feel his legs at all. He sighed and rolled his pack off his shoulders, relieving himself of the weight. Many of the others did the same. They in the dry and dusty grass, absently ripping up the blades with their fingers while they waited for their strength to return.
A roaring filled Roman’s ears. He tilted his head up with a frown at seeing a U.S. jet soaring toward the hill he and the soldiers were about to take over. The men around him voiced their concerns, wondering if the jet thought the Koreans had already made it up. Those soldiers who had carried on after the majority stopped had to be near the top.
The men cried out in anguish when something large and metal detached itself from the jet. Roman pulled to the ground a young man who gaped at the sky. Moments later, the bomb hit the hill and exploded, killing seven U.S. soldiers at the top. Their jet’s own soldiers. After that, the leader of the squad shook his head and directed the men away. They would not pursue control of this hill. The soldiers grew solemn, anger in their hearts. Over the course of the war they grew more agitated, kindling their hate for the Koreans and taking risks to wipe out as many as they could. The pilot of that jet had either been uninformed or blinded in his rage.
A blast of gunshots ricocheted from wall to wall, ending when a smoldering revolver lowered to reveal the hate-stricken gaze of a man surrounded by his enemies. An old western film played on TV. In films like these, the hero was one against many, with the skill of a thousand men combined in the way he pulled his gun from its holster and spouted off shots, each hitting its target dead-on. It differed from real combat, where entire armies faced against each other but could hardly see through the clouds of dust floating above the tall-grassed fields. Shots might hit the enemy, but they also might hit allies. To the old man, westerns were fairytales compared to the struggles of war. He still liked to watch them, though, and his favorite part of the films were when the hero gets to go home.
Dusk fell, the sky clearer than usual, when Roman sat with his fellow soldiers in a temporary camp, resting up for the next day. He had been out in the battlefield for months, with home but a distant memory. All his thoughts revolved around how to survive the next day and how long it would be for the Koreans to submit defeat. He knew his army had taken the lives of so many of them, yet they continued to hold on.
Chattering between the young men paused when the Sergeant stepped up to Roman and told him he had served his time in the war. The time had come for him to go home. With shock in his blue-grey eyes, Roman turned to the men and said his goodbyes, especially giving a hug and slap on the back to his friends Jim and Bill. The three of them had been in the fight since the beginning. They had seen so much and suffered in the same ways. Roman hoped those two men would be sent home soon.
Gathering what few belongings he had, Roman jumped onto the back of a pack horse steered by a South Korean man, an ally. Some other soldiers did the same, going home as well. Roman met their eyes and nodded to each one. They might have been leaving the battle, but their struggle was not yet over.
A boat waited at the shoreline of North Korea. Roman and the homeward bound soldiers of the U.S. army boarded with their packs and quickly sped on their way to Japan. Before they were sent home, the soldiers stayed in what used to be a prison during World War II. Though cold and dim, the shelter did little to dampen the moods of the young men.
At long last, Roman returned to the United States. With inadequate education and little opportunity to work after serving in the Korean War, he went to a trade school to learn plastering, eventually becoming a well-known carpenter in his area. Roman moved his family to Johannesburg, Michigan, gaining a large plot of farmland surrounded by thick forest. He raised a family of eight children, which quickly expanded with the arrival of grandchildren. Then his quality of life, although happy, began its slow decline after years of puffing smoke.
The old man opened his eyes. He looked around in the dark, seeing the shadows of framed photographs and the large mirror above the wooden dresser. On the left wall hung a timeline of photos taken of each of his children—four boys and four girls. The timeline began when the children started Kindergarten and it ended at their high school graduations. He loved those photos. He would miss them all, and his wife, who still lay asleep underneath the covers. Her warm figure rose and fell with each breath. The old man sighed, saddened at the thought of leaving his family, but he knew his time had come. He had felt it approaching for a while.
Gently lifting the comforter off himself, his muscles strained as he rolled over and out of bed. The wood planks beneath the carpet creaked with each step leading to the living room. With one last look at his wife, the man pushed the half-closed door aside and lumbered toward the kitchen. He passed by his favorite tan recliner with his oxygen machine standing nearby. The device stayed quiet, turned off. Noisy nature made its way in through the windows and calmed his erratically-beating heart.
As he passed under the arch dividing living room from kitchen, the old man caught a glimpse of the time. It was just after 3:00 a.m. He pulled out a chair at the smooth polished table placed in the middle of the kitchen and rested his forearms on it, thinking back on a memory of when his children and grandchildren gathered around it, eating heartily from a crockpot filled with Polish sausage and sauerkraut. The smell of the meal wafted through the old man’s nostrils, relaxing him even as his heart and lungs swelled. Finding his head had become too heavy to hold up, he leaned forward and rested it on his arms.
Fifty-four years after serving in the Korean War, Roman Switalski closed his eyes for the last time.
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Victoria Russo is a junior pursuing a Baccalaureate of Arts in English with a concentration in Literature and a minor in Creative Writing and Literary Arts. Victoria hopes to become an author of fiction novels.