War Letters

But, fuck, B, that was incredible. Yes, fuck, fuck, FUCK.

The only shadow hovering over the concept of their life being ideal—or as ideal as it could be considering that they were still in a war and marching across countries on their feet—was the continued hedging Collins voiced and wrote about concerning the future and the probability that they both would return to normal—more socially acceptable—lives after the war.

Ben continually worked to deflect this, though, and answered Collins with a letter making every effort to hang on to what they now were to each other. Whereas Collins fought to acknowledge reality, Ben grasped at the fantasy that had been woven around them.

I don't know why you lift me up and then push me down. Not when I'm on your cock, of course. You can lift me up and slam me down all you want then. You could have stopped at "score." You sure scored last night. You could write these letter on two sheets and just slip me the first page and burn the other one. But I'll take what I can get. I'm aching for you to slip me something right now, and we've just finished the evening mess. I have hours more to pant for your cock.

I'll take an L that comes with an F and an S or two and a P (Fuck, screw, spike, plow—but do it now. Isn't that the way it went? You'd think I chanted it enough while you were screwing me that I'd remember exactly how it goes). Your body doesn't lie to me, Henry. You are in paradise—far from this fucking slog to Berlin—when you are fucking, screwing, spiking, plowing me. And so am I.

You are right about having privacy and a bed most nights along the march through France. I didn't know you could come up with that many ways to fuck a man. Good thing we don't use rubbers. We'd be out of what few the Red Cross slips under the table to a soldier before we'd gotten out of the caves. Screw thinking about the other world. This is my whole world now. You are my whole world. Even if you can't say it, I can. Love, love, love.

And right now, I would love you to fuck me.

* * * *

By late July of 1944, the 157th, in separated small units spread across the line of advance, was approaching the Largue River in the Franche-Comté region, preparing to move into the Alsace region. When they cleared Alsace, they would be in Germany itself. They were hot on the tail of the retreating German army. There were few skirmishes between the U.S. and German forces, but the local populace was war weary and panicked and communication were such that they had little knowledge of what army was moving through their region. All they knew was that they had been used as pawns to exploit and ravish.

They were skittish and responding to any danger they saw to their villages and farms.

Major Collins' unit was approaching the small hamlet of Bonfol, which had been brutalized by German soldiers not more than two days previously. Walking in a tree-lined dirt-surfaced avenue between fields that had been churned up by German Panzer units, Collins' heard a rustling in a tree overhead. Looking up, he saw a young boy of no more than nine or ten, pointing an old rifle at him. The rifle wavered in the boy's hands and Collins' had time to see the fear, determination, and hatred in the boy's face before he turned to take cover. He also had time to shoot the boy out of the tree with his own at-the-ready rifle.

He didn't shoot, though, and because he didn't shoot, as he turned, the rifle in the tree discharged and a single bullets somehow struck Collins' in the muscle of a calf, traveled through that calf, and then through the other. As he fell, he remembered having looked back up to the face of the boy in the tree, whose eyes looked sad and weary. The boy was raising the rifle again.

But a shot rang out, from among the soldiers who were catching up to the major, and the boy fell out of the tree and lay, dead, on the ground just beside where Collins' had fallen. Before Collins' was lifted up by his orderly, Collins' was face to face with the boy on the ground for long enough for it to register than the boy's eyes retained their look of sadness.

Collins' was transported to the nearest U.S. Army field hospital near Basel. His orderly, Private Montgomery stayed with him, having been very useful in tending to Collins on the spot and keeping him as comfortable and stabilized as possible en route to the field hospital because Montgomery himself had been a medic in an ambulance unit.

At the field hospital, the orderly stuck by the bedside of the major, providing additional nursing care twenty-four hours a do to what the busy hospital could afford. The wound was painful and it would prevent Major Collins from preceding with his unit or meeting up with the 157th until they were approaching Heidelberg, in Germany, some ten weeks later. But his wounds were minor compared to others the hospital had to deal with under short-staffed conditions, so the presence of the orderly meant everything in the initial care of the patient.

When the major came out of the near coma, induced by painkilling drugs, though, he turned away from the orderly and refused to respond to him. At length, he asked to be transferred to another hospital and for his orderly to be sent on to catch up with the 157th, which is what transpired.

In the final known, and fullest and most revealing, exchange of letters between the two men who had become war-conditions lovers, Private Montgomery, who was the soldier who had shot the boy from the tree outside Bonfol, pleaded to the major not to turn away from him and the major sadly answered that it was time for both of them to start returning to reality—that their war would be over soon, they both would want to return to a life that didn't include men making love to men, and that this disruptive incident in France was, both of them needed to admit, the best possible circumstance to end their relationship.

August 5, 1944

Tell me that wasn't our last time. Tell me it wasn't because your wounds hampered you and I had to do the work. You didn't mind it with the promotion celebration. You seemed so distant tonight. But it wasn't because you couldn't come. I brought you off twice. But it was like you were holding back—and I know you when you aren't holding back in a fuck. Oh, god, do I know how wildly you can fuck when you're loosened up. I thought we were beyond the notes, that we could talk to each other in the daylight. I can control myself in front of the others. You should know that by now. I'm your orderly and also a medic. No one's questioned that I spend the night with you in this hospital room. If you won't speak to me, at least read this note. Don't turn away from me.

Is it because he was just a boy and I shot him? Or is it because you hesitated in shooting him yourself, and are embarrassed that I saw that? I don't judge you for that. Your ability to still be a human after all of this time in the war is part of why I love you. And no one else saw what happened. No one saw you freeze.

It was him or you. And he'd already shot you once—and even though he looked scared as hell, he was going to shoot you again . . . and again until you dropped dead. So, of course I dropped him. You have to understand. When it's you and anyone else, if I can do anything, I will. I know what you've said and written, where you've drawn the line. I understand your problem, how you are torn, how you feel you have to hold on to that other world if you can. But that's your line. I draw no such line. I have no other world to lose. I'm yours, all yours. I will do anything to keep you alive.

OK, you don't have to talk to me, but those wounds, even though they are flesh wounds, could easily be infected. Don't turn me away. I'm a medic, not just the young soldier you're fucking and can't fully accept that you are.

Don't turn me away.

Benjamin Montgomery

The private you are fucking and who loves you

August 7, 1944

Ben:

If you are reading this and we aren't both in a stockade, the colonel gave you this letter without reading it—as I requested that he do. You also will know that I have been moved to another hospital—at my request—and that you have received orders to catch up with the unit marching into Germany. Although I've learned we are going to Heidelberg to protect artwork the Jerries stored in the castle there rather than to Berlin. I don't know if you even care about that. But Heidelberg would have been a far better place for us to spend our last days together than what's left of Berlin.

And you must realize that we would have ended it there, in Heidelberg, which isn't that far away considering that we have tramped on foot from the boot of Italy to here in Alsace already.

I'll say it now. I have come to love you, and it isn't all about the sex, even though, you are right, it has been paradise to be able to balance the hell of war with the heaven of fucking you. And, yes, that scares me. I shouldn't have let it go there.

This isn't the real world. We both must return to the real world. I can't believe that you have nothing waiting for you back in Tennessee. You must return to normalcy, as I must. This war has stripped away everything civilized and acceptable in the soldiers who have been forced to clean up the failure of politicians and megalomaniacs like Hitler and Mussolini. To a certain degree, we've been reduced to being primitive animals too—just to fight them on their own level and to survive. It was natural, in a way, there being few women and many frightened men along the road that I let myself be reduced to a primitive animal in this way too. Men thrown in together in fear and uncertainty, need and tension. Testosterone like a bright flame. And being told over and over again that we weren't like the fascists—we didn't loot and rape. And if we did, we'd be summarily executed—in a climate where it was believable that this would be our fate.

It was natural to turn to each other for comfort and release. And you were so desirable—from the first time I laid eyes on you. And then, yes, you have to admit it, so willing and leading me. You accepted responsibility for that from the beginning. It's not that I'm saying you are a schemer. It just seemed so much more acceptable for you in the circumstance we were in. You were the one with the open mind and I was the prude.

That's not an excuse for me, of course. I was an officer and you were a private—not even a foot soldier. You were a medic working to save the wounded men assigned to my unit in the caves of Monte Cassino. I didn't even ask you how old you were. You looked so young that I should have. Thank god your being too young didn't get added to my sins. I should have shown restraint. But it was such a struggle on what to do there, and you were so comforting and supportive—and available and willing. And so damn sexy. I was an animal, a primitive animal. And you took it and did everything you could to have me and to hold me inside you.

I don't think I've ever told you. I never could bury it all with my wife or any of the other women I've had. But you took it all and made love to it. And I was such an animal. I was lost to you—days before I first fucked you. It was driving me crazy. It was what I wanted at the time. When you gave yourself to me, it got me through the lunacy of the war.

But enough of that. I promised myself to keep this formal—for the sake of both of us. No, this is not your fault. None of it is your fault, really. You were young—you still are in years, but certainly not in experience. I'm an officer. It was basically my weakness—my weakness in this so that I could be strong in other ways. You'll chastise me, I think, for mentioning "fault." All along you've taken what we've been doing as natural and right, under the circumstances, and I've been the one who was reserved and expressed the guilt. That said, I have loved your notes; the heat of them spurred me on to something I'll never regret (I hope), and they gave me release when, barring a release such as that, I might have killed Major Dunlap back in the caves of Monte Cassino, and then where would we have been?

A parting is inevitable. I ask you to come to accept that. But that it is now isn't because of anything you've done. You saved my life. I don't discount that in the least, and I forever will be in your debt for that. I was in your debt before that. You gave me everything. You gave me pleasure and release and a will to put one foot in the front of the other during our trek. And you did it all without asking for or demanding anything but the cock in private—which was the easiest thing I could give to you, because it brought so much pleasure to me. (Cock in private. I laughed when I reread that. I'm sure you did when you first read it. You always said I was too serious. I sure had my cock in a private, didn't I?)

I think it was the eyes—the sad eyes—that woke me up. Of course the bullet through the legs was a wake-up call in itself. That young boy in the tree. His eyes looked so sad. He didn't want to be there any more than we did. But he had a duty, just as we did, no matter how futile and irrelevant it was at that point. The Jerries were on the run—all the way back to Germany. His war was over. But the boy didn't realize it, and he did what duty told him he had to do—shoot the invaders. He was trembling so bad that I have no idea how he managed to hit me—even in through the thighs.

I can't help wondering what I would have done—what you would have done—if he'd missed with that first shot. But it was the eyes. I'd seen those sad eyes before. I saw them on your face when you first struggled up to the caves in Monte Cassino with your medical unit and saw the work that faced you—knowing that a good third of those boys would never be coming out of the caves alive no matter what we faced if we had to go back into the battle.

I think when I first saw those sad eyes of yours, I knew that I wanted to possess you. (The rest of the body was great too, I must say.) I had had those thoughts about other men before that. But there was something about you that told me that I needed to have you under me, pinned to the ground by my cock, fully mine. But when I saw the eyes of that young boy who died, needlessly, because I was invading his village and his village had suffered the savagery of all of the invaders who came before us, I knew I couldn't go on like that with you.

And I knew, despite what I've written, that it was all my fault, all responsibility for your life and well-being that I shouldn't have taken advantage of.

Don't write me again—please, Ben. It all has to stop at some time. Now is the time. You won't find me. The colonel has assured me that you will be safe where he assigns you—back in an ambulance unit, but now with the enemy pointed the other way and running. Remember me with fondness, if you can, and as your partner in surviving the hell of war. I know that I will remember you with . . . yes, Love.

HC

* * * *

"That's the last letter I have from your grandfather to mine," Bud Montgomery said. The light was growing dim in the small living room. The men had been sitting side by side, closely, piecing the letters together for a couple of hours.

"I see," Hal Collins answered. "That's sad, so sad."

"Yes, but what I story. I can understand how both of them felt. The sadness was that it had to end."

"As I read the letters, I can see the conflict in my grandfather's view of it—having to consider the social mores of the time—or thinking he had too. Your grandfather's position seemed the purer."

"But it also seems clear that my grandfather seduced yours into the relationship—a private seduced an officer."

"I don't think that would have been possible if the officer didn't basically want it to happen. They just lived at the wrong time."

"You think it would have been better in the present?"

"Well, homosexuality is more readily accepted now, I think. I certainly don't feel the stigma that my grandfather obviously did—probably for very good reason. I'm an Army officer and I've been able to declare, if only recently."

"You? You're gay?"

"Yes, I think that's why this responsibility for putting the letters together devolved on me. My father couldn't bring himself to do it. But in his letter to me, passing on the responsibility, he said that I should understand the need for it better than he did, because I was gay. In that, I think he was right."

"I see." Bud was looking away from Hal, his face turned toward the family photographs on the table across the room.

"I'm sorry if I have offended you." Hal was truly concerned. Since he had arrived here and while they had been piecing together the letters, he increasingly had become attracted to Bud Montgomery. He, of course, could never act on it, but he found the young man's understanding and acceptance of the contents of the letters and the sensuality he exuded arousing.

"How could you have offended me?" the young man, asked turning back to Hal. He placed a hand on Hal's forearm that Hal felt as a burning brand, so much did it arouse him.

"You have been so good about all of this—the revelations in these notes and letters. I'm gay, so it isn't difficult for me. But for you it should be—"

"I'm gay too."

"Excuse me? Those photographs on that table over there. Isn't that your wife? Aren't those your children?"

"Yes, but that doesn't mean that I'm not gay. It just means I didn't come to grips with that fact until after I married and had children. My family is resigned to the fact and we get along fine. They just don't live here. I live here alone, and when I'm feeling brave and am attracted to a man, I bring him back here, and I lie under him."

"You bring men back here, and you lie under them—when you are attracted to them?"

Bud had not removed his hand from Hal's arm.

"You lie under men?" Hal repeated.

"Yes, I'm sorry if I offend you now, but I'm openly gay, and I want to make the most of the rest of my life. That's what I find sad in the story of our grandfathers—that they so obviously loved each other and yet had to give each other up. I don't even need the love. If I'm am attracted to a man and aroused by him I am happy to let him fuck me."

"Men fuck you?"

"Yes, when I want them."

"And that's all it takes? You might, then be attracted to—"

"I have been attracted to you since I heard your voice on the telephone. I have been aroused by you since you walked through my front door. Haven't you felt the vibes too?"

"Yes, I've felt them. But I believed . . . I didn't know . . . I fought them."

"Like your grandfather fought them? To what good purpose? Was he happier for it? I can tell you my grandfather wasn't happier for it. He mourned the loss for the rest of his life. He's the one who forced me to acknowledge that I like men rather than women—and that I liked men to fuck me. He's the one who told me not to resist my impulses, to grab as much pleasure, of my own choosing. He gave me the notes letters he'd saved from your grandfather. That your grandfather saved the notes and letters he received as well screams of his own regret for what he lost. We don't need to relive our grandfathers' mistakes, though . . . Damned right I want you to fuck me."

Hal stopped further declarations by the younger Bud by pulling him closer, embracing him, and possessing his mouth with his. Bud pulled Hal down on top of him as they turned to stretch out on the sofa, and they rolled around, frantically pulling at each other's clothes until there was nothing else to pull off. Instinctively, Bud scooted down the length of the sofa as Hal worked his way in the opposite direction, raising up in a pushup position on his toes, with the heels of his hands dug into the sofa arm. His face now positioned under Hal's pelvis, he took Hal's half-engorged cock in his mouth, and Hal face fucked him, doing pushups above the younger man.