Hidden Wounds
Dan French
“Ten-hut.”
Eight brothers. Bob, Thomas, Tom, John, Greg, Dan, Steve, and David, ages thirteen down to seven, lined up stiff and tall by age in the living room. Dad’s puffy red face, alcohol smell, and seething anger filled the room. We stood at attention as if in a military barracks, waiting for inspection. Maybe he thought we were his new squad, like the one he led on the front lines through northeastern France, Germany, and Italy during World War II. World War II. Sometimes the reason for our gathering was a misdeed by one of us, other times he was just mad at the world. Today was the second reason.
Often, we heard a roar. In this case, I hadn’t been at the scene, so Greg had muttered as he went by me, “Dad wants us all in the living room.” That was not a good sign. I had seen a trickle of other brothers heading toward the same location, some from outside, others from inside. Once the call had been sounded, we all knew the routine.
The wide black belt hung in the living room closet, alongside his volunteer fireman’s uniform, ready to strike fear in our minds and hurt in our behinds. Glaring straight at us, almost growling, he opened the closet door and eased the belt off the hook. I knew not to flinch nor smile. Any snicker, false move, or slouch fed his fury. Silence permeated the room, except for Dad’s heavy panting and occasional snarl. We waited for the next instructions.
“Touch your toes.”
I took in a breath, leaned over, and touched my toes. I couldn’t see where he was nor whom he chose as his first victim. I braced myself and waited to hear or feel the first crack of the belt.
“You good-for-nothings.” His voice was right next to me, so it must have been Steve who got the belt first. I held my breath, knowing I must be next. Sure enough, a sharp pain hit my backside. I wanted to jump up and scream, but held my tongue and body in check. The first hit was the worst, because of the surprise factor. And then, the whacks became methodical, down the line, oldest to youngest and back up again. Smack, crack, whap, whop. I wanted to look to my right at Greg or to the left at Steve, but I only did it once and learned my lesson. A kick in the pants. “Look down at your toes, no twirling your head all around. This ain’t no game.”
*
One time, as we all gathered and began to line up, David reported to the living room with a puffed-out backside. He grinned from ear to ear. Dad had yet to come into the room.
Steve whispered, “What are you doing? What do you have in your pants?”
David laughed. “A pillow. It won’t hurt now!”
“You know he’ll be able to see it.”
“No, he won’t, he’s too drunk. And don’t tell!”
Dad lumbered in. His words slurred, his gait uneven. He grabbed the black belt from the closet.
“Ten-hut! Touch your toes.” Dad started in, going up and down the line. Sure enough, he was too bleary-eyed to notice David’s bulging rear end. He laid the belt on David several times. He slowed down, clearly near the end, when David started to giggle.
I couldn’t look while staring at my ankles, but I didn’t need to. I could feel the heat rising.
“This isn’t something to be laughing at.”
I tried to telepathically communicate to David to shut up. My butt was sore; I didn’t need Dad to get even more riled up and continue whipping all of us. But, my magical powers did not come through. David kept giggling. Damn, he could never keep a secret.
Dad lumbered over and gave David a hard kick. Whether he felt the pillow with his boot or his eyes cleared enough to see what was obvious to the rest of us, he realized that David’s backside was stuffed with a pillow.
“What’s in there, David? What’s in your pants?”
David finally understood the gravity of his giggles. “Uh, a pillow, Sir.”
“A pillow? You aim to make a fool out of me? A pillow?” Just when things were calming down, you could see code red in Dad’s eyes. “Get that damn thing out of there, and then we’ll see if you laugh.”
David unbuckled his pants, slid them down, and outburst a small, fluffy pillow. I wanted to chuckle and scream at the same time.
Dad didn’t wait for David to pull his pants back up. He laid it on him good. David was like that. He coped with being the youngest boy and with facing more than his fair share of teasing and torment by always being the jokester, keeping a cheery demeanor, not anticipating the consequences of his pranks, quickly throwing off frustrations. At least externally.
*
We never knew how long it would take for Dad to expend his fury and put the belt down. Having eight boys in the line helped, as it took him a while to spread the blows amongst us. I learned to wait it out by fantasizing about things like baseball or my favorite rock and roll bands. I made up situations and played them out in my head until the commotion on the outside settled down.
And then, as in a flash hailstorm, the sounds of the whacks stopped. “Ok, boys, that’s it. Did you learn your lesson?” We all stood up and nodded. I had no idea what the lesson was, since I didn’t know what had gotten him mad, but I was smart enough to nod. I watched his face, shoulders, and bulging biceps relax. Dad laughed, and clapped Bob, who was nearest, on the back as if nothing had happened. He wanted to clear the air, crack a joke, as if we had gone to the beach and had a swell time. “Just don’t do it again.”
He ordered us to clear out until dinnertime and finish our farm chores. We piled out through the front door.
I got to know the pattern. We all did. I watched the anger rise, like a kettle building up steam and pressure. The boiling water released little bubbles and a low rising sound, and then exploded with a shrieking whistle. He entered another time, another place, one we had no access to. Sometimes the kicks or belt straps were not as hard as they were at other times. Maybe he was far away in that other zone, or maybe I had a chance to steel myself for the blows, or maybe he just didn’t want to hurt us as badly as he knew he could.
I never wondered why he was so angry at these times, nor why he whipped all of us for no apparent reason or when only one brother had angered him. I didn’t wonder about the injustice of it all. I never connected Dad’s impulsive anger and violence, his incessant drinking, nor his wild and spontaneous mood swings to his being on the front line in World War II. I accepted whatever came my way. There were so many things we weren’t told, it just seemed the way life was. Or maybe that resignation was my defense mechanism, as I couldn’t do anything about it anyway.
*
Edward French took leave from Harvard University after completing his freshman year to enlist in the Army, eighteen months after the United States declared war on Germany. He officially entered into active service on July 6, 1942 at the age of nineteen. He spent 26 months in training before his division shipped out to join the fight in Europe. He left the States as Staff Sergeant of the Anti-Tank Platoon, 411th Infantry Regiment of the 103rd Division.
The 103rd Division sailed into Marseilles, France in October 1944, the first Allied troops to arrive in southern France. The division swept north, virtually unimpeded, to join the rest of the Seventh Army on the outskirts of the Vosges Mountains, a rugged, rough-hewn mountain range filled with dense forest and undergrowth where the German forces had set up their defenses, a natural barrier which separated the Seventh Army from German soil.
In mid-November 1944, orders came down for the 411th Infantry to seize and hold the high ground above St. Die to enable the 410th Infantry to storm into town unheeded by enemy artillery. We learned about the site of Dad’s first battle many decades later from my mother’s written description of their 1947 trip to France. Soon after my parents married and graduated college, Dad took Mom to France. While in Paris, he wanted to take a day trip to St. Die. He mumbled about visiting a town where he was in combat. She didn’t ask for details.
Once disembarked in St. Die, Dad was a man with a purpose. They walked out of town for a couple miles until they came to a house on the right-hand side of the road in a tiny village, Rougeville. The house still bore the scars of war. Part of the front side was blown out, revealing the inner sanctum of the living room, kitchen, a set of stairs leading to the second floor, and two bedrooms. Mom could see blue wallpaper in the closest bedroom.
Dad nodded at Mom, a sign that this was the place he was looking for, and walked out back. The bucolic scene revealed a field, a rough-hewn stone wall bordering one side and a brook gurgling on the far side, with a wooded hill beyond. The high ground.
He surveyed the field, his feet stuck to the ground, immobile, entranced and seemingly transported back in time. Eventually, he turned, his face grey and ashen.
“I took my men and charged across this field, through the brook, and up the other side in order to take out a German machine gun nest controlling the road.”
“Why did you do it?”
“We had no choice.”
He didn’t say a word more to Mom. He wasn’t able to share the emotions that drove him to make a long day’s trip to Rougeville, to this backyard of a country home that now looked like a broken doll house, where he first engaged in the horrors of war.
After liberating St. Die, the 103rd Division fought its way through the Vosges Mountains. The rocky terrain, dense forest, and undergrowth made the fierce fighting more difficult. Each one hundred yards gained was a victory. Throughout the Vosges campaign, a steady, chilly rain drizzled in the late fall and well into December, day after day after day. Trench foot, dysentery, and exhaustion set in. The constant rain wore down the souls already stretched by vigilance for an enemy that could not always be located, as the woods were too thick to track the Nazis’ exact movements. Night operations were useless; due to the dense forest and overcast skies, you couldn’t see anything and soldiers quickly got lost. Tree bursts, projectiles that exploded upon impact on top of trees, sent showers of shrapnel and large fragments raining down on those below; soldiers learned to “hug a tree” when the bombs exploded above rather than lie down on the ground and be maimed or killed by falling shrapnel. Come mid-December, the weather turned to snow and temperatures plummeted to below zero, leading to frostbite for many soldiers. Tanks and artillery bogged down in the steep, rain-soaked, and as winter set in, icy slopes. Easy prey for the Nazis.
Eventually, the 103rd Division forced the Germans out of the Vosges Mountains and down into the towns of the Alsace region. It had been a hard-fought battle of six weeks and fifteen miles.
Over the next four and a half months, the 103rd Division fought their way into Germany and then south into Austria and finally Italy. During that time, they liberated a series of concentration camps in the town of Landsberg, Germany, subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp. By the time the Division met up with the 5th Army at Brenner Pass in Italy in early May 1945, they had traveled five hundred miles in six months through France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. Germany surrendered. The war was over.
Starting out with 14,253 soldiers, during those six months of combat, including replacement troops, the 103rd Division suffered 6,762 casualties, with 848 deaths and the remainder wounded, missing in action, or prisoners of war.
Dad sailed home from Southampton, England in the fall of 1945, 13 months after he had left the States, with a full complement of medals. In November 1945, three years and five months after he enlisted, he was honorably discharged at age twenty-two. As he left Fort Devens, Massachusetts with his cache of medals, the war raged on inside him.
*
“Ollie Ollie Infree,” Dad’s voice bellowed out. That Appalachian call for everyone to come out from hiding always carried with it a sense of foreboding, something about to happen that was usually not to our liking. I shrunk back into the shadows. I wanted to be unseen and forgotten. A minute later, the voice came out loud and clear again. “Ollie, Ollie, Infree.” No use to pretend I didn’t hear it. Not responding bore worse consequences than showing up. I trudged out from chopping wood behind the barn toward the front lawn where he waited for us.
I could see the other boys creep their way around corners and bushes as they made baby steps toward a dreaded ordeal. Nobody wanted to be first nor last. We shuffled onto the front lawn, not talking nor looking at each other. I stared at my sneakers and waited for orders.
Dad had spread bars of soap on the lawn and hung white towels over the side fence. He held a hose in one hand and grinned, as if he knew he was getting one over on us. We pretended we didn’t know what we were doing, and waited for a reprieve that never came.
“Ok, you know the routine. Off with them.” Dad smirked. I wanted to turn the green hose on him and force him to dance, with us leering at him. See how he felt. Instead, I tugged at my sneaker laces and pretended they were double-knotted and tough to undo. Everyone else did similar things with seeming difficulty—picking at shirt buttons, tugging at belts—as if our clothes and footwear were somehow glued on.
“Let’s get going, you sissies. Off with them.”
I sighed. No point in delaying the inevitable. I started taking off my clothes. So did the others.
“All the way now. Don’t be shy.”
I tried not to look to the left or right, and especially in front of me. I hoped no driver had stopped to gawk at us. Mostly shaded from the street, there was about ten yards in which passing cars had a clear view of the lawn.
A minute later, all eight brothers stood buck naked on the front lawn. We held our clothes, shielded ourselves, and waited for our next orders.
“Put your clothes on the fence so they don’t get soaked and force your mother to do another round of laundry.”
I wanted to jump over the low-slung fence and dash through the field toward the woods. I dumped my clothes at the fence and walked back to the center of the yard, exposed to the world, like I was in an ancient Roman coliseum filled with spectators watching my every move. They pointed and howled with delight to see us standing there naked. I had nowhere to hide.
I snuck another glance backwards. Sure enough, a car had stopped by the side of the road. A man and woman peered out the passenger window in seeming disbelief at the sight of eight naked boys standing, shuffling their feet on the lawn. “Great, I’m in a zoo for others to look in on and wonder,” I thought to myself. “Where’s the popcorn?”
“Don’t pay them no mind,” Dad said.
I closed my eyes and willed myself to be invisible. I wished I could melt away.
Satisfied that not a shred of clothes remained, Dad turned on the hose. Before I opened my eyes, a cold stream of water slapped against me and transformed my entire body to full alert. Even on a hot sultry day, the water felt like a numbing blast. I held my feet firmly to the ground to avoid falling backward and becoming subject to further ridicule. A few seconds later, the hose was onto the next brother in line.
“Soap up,” came the call. “Let’s not waste the water.”
I was mindful to avoid stepping on the piles of sheep dung that lay in patches throughout the lawn. To save on gas and labor, we used our ram, Buster, to mow the lawn. Leashed by a chain attached to a metal stake, he roamed the lawn, free to eat all the grass within reach. A couple of days later, with the grass nibbled close to the ground, we’d move him back to the fenced-in field with the rest of the sheep. Left behind were patches of sheep shit. Whenever Buster’s poop slid up between my bare toes, my stomach got queasy.
I lathered up my wet body. Dad looked over and shouted, “The hair, too. Get it squeaky clean.” I rubbed the soap bar into my hair. Dad saw I was ready, and turned the jet spray onto me, while I tried to shield myself from the full blast of the oncoming water.
Dad yelled, “Oh, come on. Stop dancing around like a girl. Make sure you rinse, all of it.” I put my head down to take on the full power of the water. It pounded away at my skull. I turned so my backside got the remainder of the spray.
The car idled on the street. The two spectators watched eight nude boys in various stages of soap suds, while their father manned the hose much like I imagined he manned a fire hose. This was our weekly shower. During summer, no indoor showers were allowed.
He sprayed us down to cleanse us of the accumulation of dirt, sweat, sawdust, and manure. All the while, he smiled and chuckled. He enjoyed our discomfort being on display. The passersby peered at us, curious to see this surreal, movie-like spectacle. If only I were a plastic model that felt nothing, that could just stand there and take it. I just wanted to get it over with and be left alone.
Years later, I wondered what was behind this ritual. Why did he humiliate his eight boys, in various stages of puberty, by forcing us to stand naked in the front yard, soaped up and hosed down? Why do it so publicly? How did this connect to his wartime experience? Whatever the reason, each time the experience left me feeling powerless, self-conscious, and insecure—traits I carried and struggled with into and through my teens and adulthood. Maybe the powerlessness is what he intended, matching his own.
Fifteen minutes in, although it felt much longer, Dad turned the hose off. His mind had switched to other things, so he growled, “Get those clothes on, it’s chore time,” and walked off.
We avoided looking at one another as we dressed. No one said a word until David broke the silence. “Anyone want to go for a swim?”
Tom’s death stare quickly told David to shut up. I distracted myself by thinking about collecting the eggs and watering the cows—which would I prefer to do first?
I glanced over my shoulder out at the road. The Chevy with the voyeurs had left.
*
“What are you all doing in here?” he said to us Little Boys. It was late afternoon, we had finished our farm jobs for the day, and were playing cards in the living room. Dad clearly had had one too many too early. “It’s a beautiful day outside, and I find boys inside the house with nothing to do? Get outside where you belong, before I assign you more work,” he growled.
My first mistake was that as everyone else headed out, I went to the bathroom. My second mistake was that I chose to head out through the living room front door instead of through the kitchen.
My three-year old sister Liz crawled around on the couch. Dad rocked back and forth, as if he were a thin reed at the mercy of a breeze. My eyes on the front door, I wondered, “What am I doing here? How dumb can I be coming this way?” Like a cornered cat, my eyes flitted this way and that. Dad seemed unaware I was in the room. I pretended I was the Invisible Man. I slid along the wall to remain inconspicuous, and hoped for a clean getaway to the outdoors. I was five or six feet from freedom when Liz cried out, “Daddy, what are you doing?”
Like a boxer coming to his senses with a whiff of smelling salts, Dad lurched upright and snapped to attention. He caught me squarely in his sight. Dulled eyes looked me over, a vague recognition registered. He lumbered over to the couch and collapsed onto it. He patted both pillows on either side of him and gestured, “Comeere, both of you. I want you to come sit down.”
My mind whirred. If Liz hadn’t cried out, I would have been outta here. Now what? Sit down?
Dad motioned again. I knew not to keep him waiting, so I sat down next to him. I didn’t want to upset him to the point where I snapped his reverie. I studied the messy knots in my sneakers and the dirt caked on either side.
Liz sat on the other side of him, likely thinking, “This is fun, all three of us on the couch; what are we going to play?” My only solace was that what came next could only be half bad because Liz was here. Dad never did anything real bad with her around.
Dad’s eyes were glassy, his breath stale, his movements clumsy. He reached over to a photo album and opened it on his lap.
“What’s that, Daddy?” Liz asked.
“Pictures of you, my princess, and your brothers.”
We looked at the first one, Liz on her first birthday. She sat at our dining room table—a long, old-fashioned maple table that fit eight boys, Dad, Phee, my stepmom and Liz’s mom, and Liz, with multiple dogs and cats under the table. The dogs and cats were especially helpful when Phee served food we didn’t want to eat. We fed them lima beans and other undesirable food under the table, quietly and carefully so Dad nor Phee could see.
Liz was a princess in her high chair. Phee placed a birthday cake in front of her—one candle on a sponge cake with white frosting. We all sang Happy Birthday. Liz, frenzied with the excitement and attention, thrust both of her hands into the cake. We all ate a piece of her hand-flavored cake.
“That was your first birthday party, honey. You were one year old.”
“That’s me, Daddy, that’s me in the picture.”
“That’s right, my sweets, that’s you in the picture.” He sounded wistful.
Liz squealed in delight. I stayed silent. Dad didn’t look too good. All of a sudden, I felt his arm go around my shoulders. I flinched, as I anticipated a bear vise-grip or a death squeeze of the neck or some other form of torture.
His arm held me tight, and he enfolded Liz with his other arm. I thought, “What is going on here? Are we on another planet?” This affection was beyond my realm. It felt like an out-of-body experience. I struggled to imagine what might happen next.
Dad’s head hung forward. At first I thought he had nodded off. I calculated, “Good, this will be my chance to ease out of his hold and sneak out the front door.” He lifted his head, and I saw something foreign, something I had never seen and never did again. Tears dribbled down his cheeks. He made no attempt to stop them nor hide them. His face was puffy red. I blinked and looked twice to make sure I wasn’t imagining it.
Who would have thought that my father, a soldier, could cry? The one who snapped at you, called you sissy, taunted you until you stopped your tears?
I knew what to do when he was silly drunk, or mean drunk, or loud drunk, or at least I knew the various possibilities. But I had no experience with sad drunk. Dad crying? And how in hell was it me that got stuck in this situation, with no idea of what to do? This wasn’t going to come to any good, I knew it. I wanted him to scream at me, do anything familiar.
He gave us each another squeeze, a hard hug. I worried about Liz getting the breath wrung out of her, but he always handled her with a dose of tenderness, regardless of what state he was in.
“Daddy, what’s wrong? Daddy, you have tears on your face. Are you sad?” Liz asked.
My brain did cartwheels to figure this out—it didn’t fit into what I knew. I wanted some dictionary I could flip through to find out what was going on and why. He kept crying, hugging the two of us, and saying, over and over again, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
When he looked at me, I cast my eyes downward, embarrassed for both of us. The panic rose in my chest. I thought, “Will you please stop it? I mean, stop it right now, right this second. Come back to reality, will you? You don’t know what you’re saying.” I was in uncharted territory, more ill at ease than I had ever been. I didn’t know what to make of this blubbering father with his arm wrapped around me. He seemed to be hanging on for dear life. I just wanted to get away, run out of the house and into the woods, find my brothers and play ball or anything, so I could think about something else. I wanted him to tell me to snap to or get the other boys and line up—ten hut, ready to go up and down the line with his belt whippings, yell at me for being in the house during daylight, or scream about not finishing my chores, make fun of me for bending a nail as I hammered in a wooden fence for the cow pasture. I just didn’t want him to sit there crying and chanting, “I’m sorry.”
I mumbled, “That’s all right, Sir.”
It felt like hours, but probably lasted five minutes. I had a close-up view of his hidden side. Every second seemed like an hour as Dad apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m just so sorry,” again and again.
Liz crawled all over him. She said, “It’s okay, Daddy, I’m sorry, too!”
He became silent. He snuffled and coughed. The tension was too much. I imagined my heart was bursting wide open, causing massive internal bleeding and death.
I worked up the courage to ask, “Sir, can I go outside now? I need to go finish my chores.”
Dad nodded, but I couldn’t tell if he had fallen asleep or given his assent.
“Sir, I should go finish my chores.”
“Oh yes, Danny, you go ahead. You’re a good boy.”
“I’ll stay with you, Daddy,” squealed Liz, happy to have him all to herself.
I eased my way out from Dad’s embrace and stood up. My legs carried me toward the door and without looking back, I headed outside.
I heaved a great exhale of relief, breathed in what tasted like wonderfully hot summer air, and trotted out toward the chickens to collect the late afternoon eggs.
Dan French began writing creative nonfiction after a career in public education. He has had personal essays published in Potato Soup Journal, Bloodletters Literary Magazine, and Academy of Heart & Mind, and has forthcoming essays to be published in Ink & Sword Magazine and Down in the Dirt. He is currently working on a memoir that explores the intergenerational collateral impact of a returning war veteran, undiagnosed and untreated for PTSD, on his family.