A.Z. Foreman

Bob’s Tale

I'm Bob. Just Bob from Bristol. At fifteen
I lied about my age to wear the green.
The sea was grey. The dawn was worse than grey.
They said the place was called Omaha Beach.
I pictured farms. It turned out sand and steel.
You learn to revise your metaphors in war.
The boat was metal. Filled with metal boys.
Some prayed. One vomited. A sergeant barked.
A chaplain whispered “grace”; It wasn’t graceful.
The ramp dropped like a jaw. That's when it starts.
We entered water. Hard to call it sea.
More like a mouth chewing the dead too slowly.
The surf went pink. Some men went down and stayed.
The tide was kind to float them back by noon.
I moved ahead, a child of green instruction
Holding a jammed-up gun like faith or fraud.
A medic caught a burst and curled. No drama.
His patient too. Just meat. It all was meat.
The pillbox sprayed. We fired back. A joke,
If you know jokes about machine-gunned mud.
Behind a wall I found my breath intact,
My coat in strips. My skin—by luck—still sealed.
Around me, what remained of A Company
Was guessing where to crawl and when to stop.
We built a gun from parts we didn’t own,
And tried to shoot the cliff to death. It lived.
Someone with radio lungs called in a strike.
A Navy ship obliged. The pillbox sang,
Then stuttered. Then went dark. One win, if that.
Later I walked the beach, tide tugging corpses,
As if the ocean wanted one more try.
The ships were almost pretty far offshore,
Like postcards that we couldn’t send from war.
The hedgerows came. Then Vire. A sniper's shot
Glanced off my helmet. Shrapnel kissed my gut.
I bled. A corporal told me not to die.
Somehow, I listened. Somehow, time went by.
They say war makes you grow. The dumb believe it.
What war makes is a long stare in the mirror,
A way of flinching at a slamming door,
A flare for drinking with an empty face.
Omaha gave me all of that and more
In tide that didn’t care about your name.
I have survived, which is not quite the same.

*/ Staff Sergeant John “Bob” Robert Slaughter served in Company D, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division. This poem is based on his own account in an interview from the Veterans History Project archives.

A. Z. Foreman is a literary translator and poet currently working on a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. His work has appeared in sundry publications including ANMLY, The Los Angeles Review, Mantis, Metamorphoses, Blue Unicorn, Lunch Ticket, the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, Asymptote, Ilanot Review, and elsewhere including two people’s tattoos. Most important, if you have a dog he’d love to pet it.