Weeks go by without
a letter.
While patrolling in
the tank through the fields outside of St. Lo, France, Johnny looked up to see
a bright orange ball, like a setting sun, heading straight for his tank. A
German mortar shell hit the tank and blew it to bits and set it ablaze. Two of the men in the tank were killed, and
Johnny and the fourth man were blown completely out of the tank and critically
injured. The two soldiers who died were
both married with children. Johnny
always felt guilty that he survived, when he was single, and those men with
families died.
Johnny landed yards
away from the tank, riddled with shrapnel through the neck and chest, and his
left thigh split open from hip to knee.
He felt his spirit
leaving his body, rising up and leaving it behind. He said he could look down and
see his body lying there in the green field in France, wounded, bleeding, dying.
Then the German
soldiers came, looking for survivors. Two
of them picked up Johnny to carry him away, and the toe of his injured leg
caught in the dirt. The pain snapped him
back into his body, to endure the pain of his injuries. He was taken to a German-run hospital in Paris and became a German Prisoner of War.
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