Back in the World

While rummaging in the attic for I forgot what exactly, I found a shelf of trophies draped in cobwebs, a chest of knick knacks and what Soccer Mom calls “curios,” lawn bags filled with discarded or threadbare clothing tagged for Goodwill, boxes of dusty memories, some framed, some in faded black and white, some in color…

Doctor my eyes have seen the years,
And the slow parade of fears without crying,
Now I want to understand.

…so there they were, freshly graduated, the first medics not to be sent to Viet Nam, transported instead to Germany, to a M.A.S.H. unit, to fight the Cold War, finding themselves in an olive-drab convoy racing, as fast as M-725 cracker box ambulances can race, headlong down the Autobahn into the oblivion of the future, careening sideways off the sturdy present, looking back at not much of anything but the green of spring slipping past into the summer of ’72…

…and there were the forsaken fields, the vast mud flats of Grafenwöhr, where they erected a tent city to house soldiers and supplies while the people who were intent on the business of war participated in exercises involving infantry and artillery; where Egg and Mongoose and Freitas and Stork and Dox (Satowsky, really, but he was Orthodox, hence “Dox”) and Brown, who was cherry colored, and Cherry, who was browner than Brown, both with ‘Fros stuffed under their caps, hats so high off their heads they resembled erasers, were killing time waiting for their shifts, stoned to the max except Dox; yes, beaucoup fine dope in Europe, readily available, (although pot was in short supply, and favored, because it reminded of goings on Back in the World), reading on cots or playing cards around folding tables while music banged from a portable 8-track player; and Brown, from Connecticut, listening to what was going on Back in the World through an earphone plugged into a transistor radio, Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, cheering, willing the Boston Bruins over the New York Rangers on Armed Forces Network radio, and shouting “Goal!” and “Yes!” and startling the stoned card players once too often and one of them, Cherry, walking over and ripping the radio from Brown and stomping it into the mud, Brown staring disbelievingly, then saying it doesn’t matter, Boston’s up three in the final game, dancing around now, mock nix!, the Cup belongs to the Bruins! the Cup belongs to the Bruins!, and Cherry stomping the radio one more time for emphasis, walking away muttering “Brothers ain’t supposed to be hockey fans, man, damn….”

I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding;
You must help me if you can.

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong.
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?

…and there were Freitas and Kish and the others, back-packing and hitch-hiking and hopping trains from Aschaffenburg to München for the Olympic Games, unafraid of the Baader-Meinhof Gang (Baader and Meinhof currently snug in jail) or of the Red Army Faction or of other urban guerilla outfits, any of which would have been delighted to kidnap or kill them (“but it wasn’t just about killing Americans, and killing pigs, at least not at first. It was about attacking the illegitimate state that these pawns served. It was about scraping the bucolic soil and exposing the fascist, Nazi-tainted bedrock that the modern West German state was propped upon.”), building a camp fire in a salvage yard and eyeing München, “the world city with a heart,” at night in bright lights…

I have wandered through this world,
And as each moment has unfurled
I’ve been waiting to awaken from these dreams.

People go just where there will;
I never noticed them until I got this feeling
That it’s later than it seems.

…and them hoofing down the strasse toward Olympia Park in the morning, breathing in the breakfast air of quiet sidewalk cafes and wurst vendors (Ich möchte ein grosses Bier und Bratwurst, bitte.), brats on a hard roll with mustard for brunch, and beer, trucks delivering cases of beer to construction sites; Freitas removing his boots to walk barefoot until finding sandals on a table outside a shop, placing his boots on the table and walking on; Mongoose, Army brat, fluent in Deutsche, sensing something, stepping behind a crowd watching a storefront TV; Mongoose still as stone, all stopping now, waiting, then the words being forced out, as if his mouth were full of sand…

Terrorists.

Dead Israeli athletes… hostages… Black September… demands: release jailed Palestinians and Baader and Meinhof…

DOUBLE TIME to the train station in case of alert…

…the train back to Aschaffenburg, bristling Bavarian outrage, counter plans, news of plans gone awry, and later, at the barracks, on Armed Forces Network TV, news from the German government spokesman at the Munich Press Center, Conrad Ahlers, that all the hostages had been rescued, and relief and joy…
…Misinformation replaced, in the dark of the pre-dawn German morning, by the voice of Jim McKay:

“Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They’ve now said that there were eleven hostages; two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.”

Doctor, my eyes…
Tell me what you see;
I hear their cries;
Just say if it’s too late for me.

Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the sky;
Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry?

…and other photos of other times, tucked neatly in boxes. Soccer Mom yelled up at me. I remembered the soccer equipment I was supposed to have been locating and, looking out the window, noted the clusters of sedge and the dandelions. I made my way down the stairs, to life back in the world.