Better There Had Been No Story at All

Homecoming G.I. (1945) by Norman Rockwell

War is an ugly thing

A brutal thing

But, by God,

A needful thing.

It will take a man

A boy

Strip him to the skin

Throw him naked

Trembling and flaccid

To the very brink

To that place where the earth,

That closest of friends,

Claws at him viciously

With blood soaked talons

Of gravel and bone and metal,

Filling his nostrils 

With the decay of his own pale flesh.

It will turn the vast expanse

Of humanity,

The cradle of love and hope,

Into the twin ideas

Of friend and foe

Only to kill his few friends

In his very arms

And bend his soul 

Into the shape of a crude weapon

With which he gores 

and bludgeons the foe,

Realizing far too late that the foe

Was only himself 

dressed in different colors.

This excoriation of mind and heart

It forces down his throat

As a tonic

A ghastly elixir

That numbs the pain

And quells the spasms of conscience

Which rack his every waking moment,

Yet the medicine is utterly unable 

To dam these things from

Spilling over into his dreams

Where demons wait for him,

Their manacles and whips at the ready.

War rips him from home

From life itself,

Blotting out all that fills his past

And recreating his world anew,

Rebuilding the landscape of his existence

Out of smoke and fire and great clots of torn dirt.

In this confusion he wanders

With a curious ache in his stomach

For something touched by his mother’s ladle

And is fed instead cigarettes

Half stale bread

A slap on the back.

He knows not if the war is just

And hardly does he care

For there it is all the same.

He fights not for God

Or for the Good

Or for his country

Or even for his family.

He fights for the poor devil beside him.

Even this he doubts.

For in that critical space of several heartbeats

Where all that is heard is the whine

Of an incoming shell,

He knows in his bones that

The impossible force which puts one boot

In front of the other

Is nothing save the sheer reflex

The animal impulse

Toward self-preservation.

He feels he is more rodent than man,

And yet what rodent was ever

So repulsed by itself?

No war is forever.

He understands this despite himself

And despite the fact 

That the war was indeed forever for

Barry

James

Harold

Douglas.

Miraculously, absurdly, he survives.

He watches the flag wave

In the stupidly warm and soft breeze

Of his hometown.

Alone he spends his days,

Avoiding even his closest companions

For fear—

No, for the certainty—

That they will either talk of the war

Or worse, silently remind him of it.

He is to the them a walking souvenir

​​From that wasteland,

A trinket to be trotted out

At parties and in barrooms. 

He takes no bride.

He lusts after married life,

But the terror of issuing a son,

a toy soldier,

Is too much to bear,

And he could never corrode

Something so beautiful as a woman

By shackling her to his sterility.

But that is all beside the point

For he knows not how to speak with a woman.

At the station of life

In which a boy learns how to

Flatter

Tease

Kiss

He learned how to dig a trench

And a grave

And shrapnel from a groin.

What he really craves is not a wife

But a comrade.

It is too bad.

They are all rotting a thousand miles away.

He is fortunate, however.

In the dust, the world begins

To tell a story.

Oh how they love to tell a story,

These people in their leather chairs

With their cats and books and orange juice.

They decide his country was on the right side.

The good guys have won.

Freedom reigns.

He is a hero.

He cares not.

Better there had been no story at all.

Better there had been no story at all.