The Mark

by Howard Lachtman

There were some tales Holtz liked to tell, especially if they earned a smile or provoked a laugh from his listener.

Such as the tale of the “very pleasant woman” he met on an economy cruise to Mexico who joined him for a ride into San Sebastian. It was a ride to remember, but not because it was a cherished memory. 

The cab they hailed for a round trip of sightseeing came with an overly talkative driver/guide and a bumpy, bumpy ride over cobblestone roads and streets. The driver’s monotonous ramblings tempted the couple to request “Silencio, por favor!” but they didn’t want to risk ejection so far from the ship. As it was, they fled the cab as soon as the ship was in sight, refused the overpayment the driver demanded, and made it back onboard despite severe saddle-soreness from all the bumping. 

The more he got to know another friendly woman, the more she wanted to tell him about her job in a brewery and all the challenges of something she called zymurgy (the art and science of producing beer through fermentation). Her work as a brewer transformed her personally and professionally, she said, given its precise yet creative discipline.    

“Long before she stopped talking, if she ever did, I lost my taste for her and for beer,” Holtz confessed.  “Even today, the very thought of grabbing a Corona makes me cringe.”

On the other hand, there was his war story, which he shared only with other vets, and sometimes not even then.

“I stopped a bullet, but they never gave me a Washington,” was his complaint.

“Not everyone who deserves a Purple Heart gets one,” I sympathized.

“The guy in the hospital bed next to mine acquired three of them, all for very minor wounds, hid them under his pillow and pulled them out whenever he wanted to impress a nurse and get her cozy with the idea of hero worship.”  

“Did the nurses treat you any differently?”

“Mine wasn’t an ordinary wound, but it sure left its mark,” he said, patting the remains of a large welt on his forehead. 

He acquired the wound when he was strengthening barbed wire on the defensive perimeter of a base camp in one of those volatile provinces in which our forces were sent to suppress insurgents and promote peace, justice and democracy.

“One of those noble efforts,” as he put it, “that ended by our being withdrawn abruptly and chaotically, leaving behind nothing you could call a legacy except the memory of our lost buddies.”

Those efforts were hampered, in this case, by a sniper who went about his business proficiently and methodically, striking at various times of the day or night, and resuming attacks after periods of silence when he was presumed to have retreated or been shot. These silences tended to make some of us a little less vigilant and some of us a little more careless, giving the sniper easier opportunities for targets such as myself. 

“I was hanging the wire when I heard a crack and felt a thud. Something hit my helmet with a hard blow that took me down. They dragged me to cover and a medic said a bullet must have ricocheted from somewhere into the front of my helmet, punched into the shell, but didn’t penetrate all the way. Talk about luck! It left a big bloody welt, but that was a bargain, considering what could have happened. The welt never healed, as you can see.”    

“The mark of a survivor,” I nodded.  “And that was it?”

“No, we had a sniper on our hands and he was no amateur, given his accuracy and the ability to vanish from sight after he fired. He caught another guy in the shoulder later that day and took out the lance corporal the following day. That’s when I made up my mind. That night, despite my wound, or rather because of it, I went out with a small patrol to track the sniper and put him out of business, if we could find where he concealed himself. It took more than a few hunts to do that. I led the team because I wanted revenge.”

“Did you get it?”

“When we got too close, the guy made the mistake of resisting and showing us the flash of his rifle’s muzzle. I think I was the first to fire, and if I was, I was the one who took him down because one bullet had done the job.”

“Nice shot.”

“You’d think they could have given me something for that. If I hadn’t earned  a Washington for a wound, I deserved a Franklin for taking out the guy who gave it to me.” 

“Wait a minute. A Franklin? Is there such a thing as a Franklin medal?”

“There ought to be. I like the idea of a medal with a colonial father who looks like he knows a thing or two–like issuing a medal to a guy who deserves it twice over.”

“He’s also on the hundred dollar bill. Never mind the medal. The way I see it, Old Ben should award you a vault of freshly–minted Franklins for your wound and your sniper. Unless General Washington has any objection.”

This time, it was Holtz’s turn to smile.  “Makes you wonder why George never made it past a dollar,” he said.

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