The word friendship describing the two men was inaccurate: they had written back and forth a few times just after the war, and had even met again once, in 1964, when Marson traveled to Naples after the two decades. Eugene Schmidt spoke a fairly rudimentary English—his mother had lived in Leeds for several years as a girl—so they could talk without much difficulty. They drank a bottle of Barolo together, and Schmidt had several snifters of grappa. Alcohol was a problem for Eugene Schmidt at the time, and there was tension as the evening wore on. They parted with frosty politeness, and for some span after that there were widely spaced postcards—birth announcements, holiday wishes, even a wedding invitation. But this had lapsed until Hans had gotten in touch with them.
The original incident had been reported in the Post just after it happened, in 1944. “Sgt. Robert Marson, 27, Unlikely Rescue.”
A strong human-interest story even then: an American soldier, on recon patrol, wounded by a mortar round that killed the two men he was with. He saw them die and then got himself out of the ditch they had been in and walked a slow lurching mile in full sight of anyone on either side, bleeding, half blind, seeking some friendly ground, trying to go anywhere but where the mortar rounds were falling, too dazed and numb with shock to take cover. He had collapsed and was only half conscious when he saw the German soldier moving toward him, rifle in hand, all stealth. The American believed that this was his death—this that turned out to be his luckiest chance: a savior from the other side. Because the German, weary, sick of the war, and beginning to see that he did not even want his own country to win, put down his rifle, took the other’s wrist, pulling him to his feet, and, with the arm held over his neck, got him out of the line of fire, to the American lines, and surrendered. Apparently neither man spoke during this. It was only when the German surrendered that Marson heard his voice, repeating as if it were a chant, in heavily accented English, “I hef hed enough.”
Marson had survived Palermo, Salerno, and Anzio, and the savage attrition around Monte Cassino, and the Liri and Rapido Valleys. He thought his prayers had failed at last, that it was God’s will and this was his last wound.
In the years just after his return home, telling others the story, he spoke of the enormous sense of peace that came over him when, opening his eyes briefly out of the swoon, he saw the enemy coming near and understood that this would be his death. In the following ten or twelve years, whenever he had dreams about that day, even knowing the happy outcome, he still woke shaking, in a sweat.
It was all so long ago, now. And it was still, in its way, confusing.
His wife, Helen, had saved the clipping for their children: two daughters—the elder was gone, in a terrible car crash in 1974, when he was fifty-seven—and three sons. Helen was gone, too. Patrick, the eldest of his grown sons, was the only one who lived near enough to see once in a while. The other offspring were in Oregon and Kyoto, Japan. The remaining daughter, Noreen, taught English in an American school in Japan. The two younger sons ran a bike–and–Jet Ski–rental shop in Cannon Beach, Oregon, where they lived together in a kind of boathouse on the water.
He visited the boys once, on his ninetieth birthday. He took a first-class flight to Portland, where they met him. He wanted to show them that he could still get around on his own. And if he could do it, take the trouble to visit, so could they. But they stayed where they were. They did not get along with him well enough to visit. He had grown cantankerous. You tended to, over time. You had aches and trouble sleeping and memories that hurt, even when they were good memories—maybe especially when the memories were good. It was not for sissies, this life. He had said it many times. You did not get old being any kind of sissy. He had seen and been through very many awful things, and grief was the weather all the time, even as you were happy to see the sun rise in the morning.
He had talked about this some with Schmidt’s grandson, and what a surprise that Schmidt was still living. All the years. He told the boy, “I have outgrown my own life.” He meant it as a joke. He could joke. Helen was gone thirty-one years—thirty-one years this August. Barbara, the eldest child, forty-two years ago. The little girl in the picture he carried in the cigarette tin, in Italy. Seventy years, seventy years. And she only got to be thirty-one. There were her two children. His second daughter, Noreen, had five. They had, every one of them, gone off in all directions with time. Though Noreen had called to say she was flying home from Japan for a visit with her daughter Monica, in Atlantic City, and the two of them would make their way south to D.C. for the event.
“I don’t know how much of an event it’s gonna be,” Marson said.
“Well, Monica wants to see whatever it’ll be, and so do I.”
“The fireworks on the Fourth of July don’t upset me anymore,” he surprised himself by telling her. “You know, I used to plug my ears with cotton around that holiday.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Your mother kept all that stuff from you guys.”