Chapter 2

Creature and Others

I awoke in the dark solitude of night just before dawn, clutching my ears to make the endless sound go away. My head was buzzing, my ears were ringing. Each noise joined in frightful harmony which screamed its chorus down through to my very soul. My mind pleaded for silence or at least some distance from the advancing enemy fire. The sounds of war had never left for a moment. One somehow slept through it only to awake when the rumble of outgoing artillery and the incoming whine and blast of return fire got closer and closer together or the small arms fire became louder and clearer. It had been six weeks since my close call on June 7th. My wounds had since healed, but my soul was still bruised, my nerves still frayed and my mind still tired. I am not sure if I was the same man I was before June 7th. Somehow the 45 automatic pistol attached to my webbed belt, the carbine slung over my shoulder and the security of my flack jacket gave me comfort. I was again at ease with my lot as a combat marine doctor. It was time to get up off my ass and start the day.

The early morning sun was hovering over the rolling hills as we made our way from the 11th to the 5th battalion in our cracker box ambulance. My two sidekicks, my personal corpsmen HM1 Beauchamp and HM2 Rector were in the rear of the truck poking their heads through the opening between the cab and the back. Corp. Wagner was next to me in the front, driving. The air smelled clean and fresh. The signs were promising that the day was going to get hotter, but there was a gentle breeze. We were all in good spirits. Our conversation changed quickly from one topic to the next. The questions most prevalent in all of our minds was when was the next push going to be, how were the peace talks going, what was going on back in the States?

Suddenly all conversation stopped as if a part of us knew something was going to happen. A short piercing whine preceded the deafening blast. An incoming shell had landed near us on the side of the road. I reacted rather violently and hit my head on the roof of the vehicle. Shrapnel fragments whined by, some hitting the sides of the already dented ambulance, but none of us had been hit. None of the shell fragments had penetrated the steel of the ambulance. Then a second shell exploded and we all reflexively dove from the vehicle into the roadside ditch facedown in the dirt.

I remember thinking, "Should I crawl under the ambulance?"

"Bad idea," a part of me answered. "The gas tank could explode."

I was really scared, for this was just too soon after having licked my wounds. I was "shook". I don't have any real good definition of shook. Shook is probably a temporary decompensation. I began to shake terribly. I was scared, for sure, really shook, a pure feeling of complete fear which was something I had never felt before, and that terrified me even more. Somehow I had to get control of myself and not be a disgrace in front of my corpsmen and driver. I knew deep down that if I let my emotions fly now I might not ever be able to control them again. I pleaded to an unknown force.

The noise around me became louder, but strangely enough, my brain started to quiet. My more logical side started to take over. Suddenly, I was able to turn off my left brain and put my mind in a blank state. Despite the chaos around me a peaceful calm washed over me and bathed me in tranquil serenity. I knew that I would come through the war. I would survive.

My mind calmed, letting itself wander away from this place. My mind concentrated on another time, another place where I knew all was right with the world. My mind too me away to a place where I had always felt safe. I floated back to my childhood, back to when I was 9 years old, back to my grandfather's side listening to the gentle plodding of our horse drawn buggy slowly making its way down a dirt covered road with a strip of spring green grass growing in the middle. The muffled clip-clop sound was soothing. The sounds of the nearby shelling slowly faded into a welcoming fog of indifference.

I was there sitting next to Grandfather Potter. He was just as I remembered him, smiling down at me, making me feel like I was the most important person in the world. He had to have been about 70. His fringe of white hair blew gently i the wind as we headed farther away from town. I felt the cool breeze upon my skin and sighed. Potter, as I always called him, was speaking softly about his days as a professional baseball player. I don't know how many times I had heard this story, but at this moment I knew I didn't want the tale to end. I wanted him to keep talking forever. Potter obliged and I closed my eyes and listened, soaking up everything he was saying. Peace was all around me. Tom, the horse, neighed quietly. I could hear the trees rustle in the wind, smell the fresh country air and feel its gentle breeze upon my skin. I could hear the robin's songs calling for rain mixed with the sound of a cricket's aria drifting by from a nearby meadow. Even the distant small of horse manure, so different from a cow's, was a welcomed experience for my senses.

The buggy pitched as the horse jumped and twitched. My eyes suddenly flew open. There was an automobile coming at us from down the road. Tom had always been afraid of cars. He soon settled down, but the spell had been broken.

Things were fading and my vision was becoming blurred around the edges. The beautiful sounds of the birds were mixing with the harsh sounds of artillery fire. I looked at my grandfather. I wanted to memorize him, everything about him, the way he laughed, the way he smiled, everything. I never wanted to forget anything about him.

The sounds of the shells became louder. I could no longer hear what my grandfather was saying. I didn't want to come back to reality. It was too dark and unpleasant out here in the big world. I reached out to him. He turned and smiled his great, big grin. My mouth opened and I tried to speak, but he couldn't hear me. A shell passed overhead, he was fading. I could barely see his face. I didn't want him to go - not yet. "Grandfather!" He was completely gone in a flash of light as an enemy shell exploded nearby.

As I laid there, my forehead pressed into the ground underneath me, I tried to recapture my dream, my youth, but it all eluded me, just beyond my grasp. Its solace slipped through my fingers. My mind raced as the shells kept roaring around me and the icy fear began to return, it cold apprehension creeping into me. I had to stop it. I had to force my mind to think of something else.

Soon my thoughts were back to my childhood and in the town of West Rutland, Vermont, back to someone I thought I had forgotten but who came to my rescue now and pulled me into the past, "Creature" Lamphere, and the day he blew out all the windows in all the houses of his neighborhood. Now that was a blast to remember.

I always looked up to him for his genius and keen, albeit slightly strange, or perhaps deranged mind. It must have been his weird brain and bizarre activities that earned him his nickname and made him a legend at only 17. Although big for his age, he was quite normal looking, but oddly quiet and expressionless. You always knew he was thinking, but you could never tell what. He left a tantalizing trail of excitement for a youngster's imagination to follow.

At the time Creature's father was one of the only people in town with any money to throw around, which probably accounts for the reason Creature never ended up in the County House of Correction, for some of his escapades were truly wicked. His genius was demonstrated through electronics at which he was an expert. Of course, his car was electrified, but not in the usual sense. There was a button on the dashboard which he could push to deliver a 12 volt shock to anyone who touched the car. Well, this must not have been quite enough to thrill him so his next endeavor was to build a 1:1 scale model of an electric chair. It took some time to perfect. This time period mysteriously coincided with the strange disappearance of all the cats in the neighborhood.

One day he was ready to try it out on a larger species so he went in search of the perfect victim, who ended up being a kid named, "Fat Fish". The first part of his name came from his appearance and the second from his intelligence, or lack thereof. I can't remember his real name. I guess Creature figured this was the only guy in town dumb enough to let himself be strapped into the chair. After a few jolts of electricity "Fat" was jumping around in the electric chair like his namesake in a skillet. He managed to break loose, finally, and ran sizzling up Clarendon Avenue to tell his mother.

Things didn't go so well for Creature for some time after that. The news made the front page of our local paper, the Rutland Herald, and Creature's mother was pretty rough on him. As a matter of fact, she carried out the punishment a little too long and he became quite upset with her and started scheming again.

Mrs. Lamphere had the only Franklin Coupe around, a beautiful 1927 model. She kept it well polished and when she wasn't driving, she parked it safely in the barn away from the damaging elements. Creature got himself a saw and must have spent a considerable amount of time sawing the beams under the floor of the garage about halfway through. When she drove in the next day, her beautiful Franklin coupe went crashing down through to the next level. She didn't get hurt, but she was some mad!

He was grounded again, but I'm sure he used the time to plan his next venture, which was to rig mirrors up on top of his house facing the long causeway which led form the outskirts of town. As soon as a car came around the bend on this stretch of Route 4 in the afternoon, Creature's mirrors would reflect the rays of the sun directly into their windshields. Fortunately no one had a serious accident. Creature had to appear in Court for that one though, and remained real quiet for a long while.

One day Creature's parents decided to cut down a very large elm tree in their front yard. They left a stump which was too high for a seat and too low for a lawn table. This bothered Creature. He spent endless hours working on that stump. Chain saws had not been invented. He used axes, wedges, saws and the like, but made no headway. Elm is a very hard wood and the grain is interlocked so that splitting it is nearly impossible.

Finally, Creature began drilling holes in the stump with a one inch diameter drill bit which was about a foot long. This went on for at least a week. One Saturday morning, Creature got up at 5 AM when no one was around and set to work on his project. Creature had stolen some dynamite from the Marble Company. Evidently he had read up on dynamite in one of his books. He put the sticks down in the holes he had drilled and attached dynamite caps and wiring. He then covered the stump with a foot of mud which he had prepared the night before. At 5:51 AM, the stump was blown away along with every window in the neighborhood that faced it. No one was hurt except Creature's rear end. He nearly went off to the County House of Correction for that one.

Even though Creature was bout 7 years older than I and in high school we became fast friends soon after we first met, almost certainly because he found out that I was good at building things. He needed an assistant. I couldn't resist the excitement. I felt like I was the apprentice to Dr. Frankenstein.

Our first project together was a full scale glider with two cockpits that we were going to fly at the first sign of spring. Creature already had the kit, we just had to put it together. After many cold winter months building the glider in the upstairs part of Creature's barn, the day had come to fly our wonderful "bird". His father agreed to tow the glider to the top of the town skipper slide which the CCC and the WPA had built for the children of the town.

This was a very unique area and I am sorry that it isn't here today for they constructed a highway across it. In order to explain all this, I have to tell you that the town of West Rutland is surrounded by mountains except for a pass on the east and west sides. The skipper slide was probably at least 100 feet wide and more than 1/2 mile long. Skippers were particular to West Rutland. They are made by attaching and fixing barrel staves under the rear end of a large plank, 1-1/2 by 4 feet, and a row of barrel staves on a swivel under the front. A rope attached to each side of the front barrel staves was used for steering. The rope was placed under a cross piece of wood in the front. That piece of wood extended out on each side to support the boots. The skipper was somewhat like a mini-bobsled and the steering mechanism was fairly effective, at least sufficiently so that you could travel down the length of this slide more than half the time without skidding sideways and taking a rather nasty tumble n the snow which resulted each winter in a few broken arms and legs.

As we approached the top of the slide, Creature told his Dad he could leave, then he and I prepared the "flying machine" for its maiden flight. The excitement was unforgettable. All my insides were jumping up and own in eager anticipation. We finally got the glider turned around on the top of the skipper slide, after what seemed like endless attempts. Creature got in the front cockpit, then I climbed into the back cockpit and we were ready to go. With a lurch we were headed down the steep slide. Halfway down we were off, airborne. I never had felt so alive just gliding through the air, flying. I always had dreams of flying, but dreams didn't compare with the real thing. We drifted down slowly into the valley below and on to the high school football field. I soon realized, as the earth came rising up to greet us, that neither Creature nor I knew how to land this thing. We had known a little about how to fly the glider, just what we had learned in library books, but we never read on how to land it. My joyous feeling of flying turned quickly into an overwhelming fear of crashing as we collided with the earth. No pain, no feeling, just stillness.

Nothing was broken I was sure. I just sat there and let the stillness envelope me. Time went by as I laid there, not wanting to move. There was no sound, not a bird, not a voice, not even a breeze through the trees. The silence ruptured instantaneously into a pulsating explosion of chaos and confusion. I looked up into the sky above the high school and saw two saber jets flying overhead towards the north.

I had returned to the present. The jets hadn't been flying over Vermont, they were here, where I was, in Korea baking under the hot sun. They were there to lend support to the Marines ahead of us by either strafing or dropping napalm bombs on the enemy. I said a remorseful goodbye to Creature and my home town and returned, reluctantly, to the painful present, smiling.

Corpsman Rector jostled me and I turned to him, smiling. He looked at me as if I had gone completely mad. Maybe I had, but what a welcome insanity it was even for the short time it lasted. I was no longer shook. I suddenly realized that it's the ability to turn off your left brain and turn on your right, just taking yourself mentally out of one unpleasant environment and putting your mind at ease in another. It's bringing back pleasant thoughts of the past or hopes for the future that can make all the difference in combat, or any stressful situation. This sometimes is your only option for survival, the only way to save your mind, your heart and your soul.

Copyright © 1994 by William W. Montgomery

The Mustache That Walks Like a Man

Marshall Jones Company