Dog's Collar (eBook)

Chapter five:
The Christmas Tank

Winter snow

Seasonal water

“Get out of the way, old man.” So I moved on over. No sense in keeping an intemperate man from his fate. But then he pushed me. He shouldn’t have done that. I pushed back. “I’m not Jesus.” I didn’t say that out loud, but the man got the message. Gunny used to say, “I’m not Jesus.” I learned that from him. A man doesn’t need to look for trouble - trouble will find him wherever he goes and in every season.

“I’m a soldier. I’m not Jesus.” If I heard that once, I heard it a thousand times over the years. And his three ex-wives certainly agreed. “He’s not Jesus.” The youngest X would say, “The only thing we ever agreed on was he wasn’t Jesus.” The middle one was more colorfully opinionated. The first X said the same: triple X’s, and for sure none of them coming to the funeral. So I’m burying a man who wasn’t Jesus. No surprise here: most men aren’t. The only thing men share for sure is dying. And the only differences really are where and when.

It was snowing to beat the band. Gunny used to say that too. I often wondered about that way of saying heavy snow falling. I asked him about that ‘once.’ Gunny said, “A man’s entitled to ask a stupid question.” The way he said it made it once and done. I figured it out on my own. A man finds his own answers. That’s what makes him a man. Gunny didn’t have to say that. That came free of charge. After knowing Gunny for a while, there wasn’t much need for conversation. I just filled in the silence with ‘the man.’ Anybody talking to him could carry on both halves of the conversation after knowing him a bit. When he was alive, I’d say to him, “I don’t even have to see you to know your opinion.” So you can imagine most of us who knew him didn’t need to get together much for visits, and it didn’t surprise me that the day I buried him, it was snowing to beat the band.

Gunny was a master sergeant: he drove a tank for a living. During a worship service, I once flubbed up saying, “Let us give tanks to God.” I had been thinking about Gunny at the time. That’s the way Gunny worked. He didn’t have to be around to be present. “There’s good and evil. And then there are tanks.” Gunny said that too. And the way he said it implied something special about all that heavy metal. Tanks are from God. And it’s the men and women who drive them that make them a curse or a blessing. “A gun doesn’t shoot itself.” Another ‘gunnyism’ and obvious: it takes a man to pull a trigger. The size of the gun doesn’t count, or even in which direction the barrel is pointed. Heaven and hell are just places on a compass. Most soldiers don’t get to decide.

“If I wanted you to think, I’d give you an opinion.” Gunny’s opinion, “Tanks: angels with treads.” God’s own battalion coming to rescue, and nothing going to get in their way. If Gunny had been driving by Golgotha that Good Friday, Jesus would have been saved. “GI – God issued.” Armour – rolling steel, ablating to protect fragile flesh; bringing the fight to the enemy’s front door, and a big gun doing the knocking for sure. “Thank you, Jesus” is a soldier’s prayer. If you’re ‘Armour,’ it’s “Tanks God.”

Tanks, X wives, life, death, and taxes, “The only one that counts keeps you from dying today.” Every man has to die sometime. It doesn’t have to be today if you’re in a tank. Drive a tank long enough, and it’s no surprise you develop an appreciation of layers of protection. After enough time elapses, a man and his own invention tend to look the same. By the time Gunny died, he had hardened up so much that even the surgeon who took off his legs commented that the man had no feelings. “I told him we’d need to amputate. He just said, “Do your job.” What the surgeon didn’t understand at the time was that Gunny was doing his. A tanker fights. And a tanker endures, and even when all is lost, a tanker keeps rolling. A tanker takes ground. He doesn’t give it away for free. And when a tanker dies, his eyes are dry. Tankers go to Hades when they die, and when they arrive, they blow the hell out of it. A tanker doesn’t walk anywhere. A tanker rides.

Even now, when I think of Gunny, I see mighty Hesperus at his forge. Each hammer blow strikes many possibilities, but sparks fall where they will, and maybe not where we want. Men are made. God made Gunny soft - time and fortune made him tough. Three wives later, he was hard to like at times. “Liking is optional.” He said that like he really meant it too: some folks did, most didn’t. He was a hard man to like but easy to love. Three X wives and a girlfriend were sure about that. It’s hard to be an ‘old tanker’ - harder to just be an old vet slowly dying over in Coatesville, PA. Dying when death is by the inches, and each loss coming after the other barely healed over. Gunny died as he lived. He died hard. And he didn’t shed a tear. “Jesus wept. I ain’t Jesus.”

The only time I saw that hard man cry was Christmas day years and years ago. A little boy dressed in black ran over to where Gunny was standing ten feet above the snow-covered macadam. He reached his small hand up high on Lucy’s treads, patting her with love, saying to both man and machine alike, “I love you.” Said ‘Dutch’ style and heart on sleeve. Little Jake Stolzfus said, “Tank’s.” I do believe those four words, three in German and one in Pennsylvania Dutch English were the only things that ever broke through that tough man’s defenses. Innocence almost broke a heart of steel that day. The innocent heart of a child brought tears to Gunny’s eyes, and when he wiped them away, he stood tall and proud. But that day was long ago and many miles driven since then.

I was burying Gunny today. He had died on Tuesday. More death by VA and the accumulation of a thousand cuts and insults over the last few years. Gunny just rusted out finally and stopped moving. All the armor in the world can’t protect a man from dying. I thought I’d be burying Gunny at Arlington or over at Fort Indiantown Gap. But that was not to be the case: Gunny’s being buried at Mellinger’s Mennonite Cemetery, five miles down the road from the hospital, just off Route 30 Lancaster, PA.

“I’m sharing death, not a bed.” Said after I questioned his choice in internment. I had said, “You understand it’s a Mennonite Cemetery. You’re gonna spend all eternity with a bunch of pacifists and draft dodgers?” We were talking about his death. He had just been admitted to Community Hospital via the ER, telling the doctor on duty, “The last time I was here was in a tank.” He told the nurse, “As pretty as you are, I’m already feeling better.” He told the ward clerk when she asked about next of kin, “Lucy, and Sam.”

I’m Sam: the hospital chaplain. And it says on the admission sheet that an Abrams battle tank and I are a man’s family, and for once, the record reflects the truth. I had asked the admissions person who called me, “Did they send his legs?” She said, “Well, he didn’t just walk on in. I’ll have to check.” I could hear him laughing in the background, putting on a show, “Sergeant Jackson, did your legs come with you, or will Sam need to go get them?” Then, Gunny being Gunny, turning things from light to dark, and faster than a frown, “Honey, I don’t need legs to die: only need legs to run away.”

Later that day, when I went over to the Coatesville VA to get Gunny’s legs, they had already misplaced one. And that’s why Gunny, when he died, is getting buried civilian. “Can’t stand on one leg if you’re missing two.” Or more the truth, “Dying is a war.” If the army isn’t there when you’re fighting your last battle, then ‘shame on them.’ A soldier fights for his country. An old, wounded soldier shouldn’t have to face the enemy alone and crippled. Death comes to old soldiers and young soldiers alike. Soldier, civilian, child, and elder, that final battle is always lost. It’s a blessing to die attended. Courage comes and goes. A steady hand and prayerful touch ease many fears and calm the heart. It’s always hard to die alone, only your memories left to guide your way. It’s a hard thing to die in a hospital bed and family far away.

We talked a lot while he was further declining. Memories are dear at this time. “Sam, I will be dead by Christmas.” I smiled at that. “That would be a fine thing. It’d be even better if it were snowing to beat the band.” So the day before Christmas, when it started to snow, looking like it’d continue for a thousand years, I rummaged around in my office desk, finding a story I had written many years before. I had written it the day after it ‘all’ occurred and when the snow was still so deep that even the sleigh I was in had to turn around and admit defeat. Nature turned me around that night, but one day earlier Gunny, and Lucy had brought the meaning of Christmas to Lancaster County. It’s a true story and no tall tale. I read what I had written to Gunny that night, and he smiled with joy. By morning he was dead.

Sadie Stolzfus lay dying in one of our hospital beds. A small Amish woman took a turn for the worse during the ‘Storm of the Century.’ Her family was twelve miles down Route 30, far off the main highway, and almost to Ronks, and it might as well have been located over in China for all the chance of her family being with her when she ‘passed.’ The roads were impossible. They would stay that way for almost two days. She was going to die on Christmas. “Ach now Samuel, the...