The End

Return to Ithaca

“A new day dawns, for you Ulysses, I must remain. You return to your wife, your fields, your children. I will make do with this war. I hope to perish in that way. My son has been placed in his grave. My wife mourns us both as dead, to disappoint her would be a tragic mistake. You however must leave today. Do not think on me, your men, or others who passed before your rifle sights. Think only of home and a long peaceful life. Your hair will grow back, and your hands still work. You seem strong, and worthy of being spared. Walk to your north a short ways. Over there is the station, now make haste.”

The German turned the cart around and Ulysses watched it return to the wasteland they had crossed before. He marched across a short hill and spied a train making it rounds. Just ahead of him there was the station, and Ulysses arrived in the nick of time.

In the hands of a conductor he pressed his tickets and pass. They were stamped and returned, so Ulysses walked down the passenger car to a seat, he reclined and turned to the window as the train steamed along the rails.

He saw fields,
He saw farms,
He saw his wife and children again.

Setting Sail for Ithaca

Ulysses found his voice, “ I am Ulysses Brown. I fought for my country, but now I am tired. They said you were all Huns, vicious and cruel. You seem not so. Why do you suppose we fight? I saw my men broken, and bruised; I led them in charges against you. Probably against your boy, as well, and that wood, Belleau, is where I suffered these wounds.”

Ulysses pulled from his pocket the Silver Star, “ They gave me this, while I was half dead in a hospital bed. They told me it was for valiant courage, but like you I was the last one alive. I do not feel daring, or bold. I only feel sick for home. I was given papers because of my wounds. The ambulance wrecked out in No-Man’s-Land, and here I crawled to find some respite. But now, as fate would rule my life again, I am your prisoner, my journey is at its end.”

The Prussian’s eyes watered, and he grasped Ulysses’ clubbed hands, “Worry not friend.”

The German walked to a field telephone in the propped in the corner, as he picked up the receiver a hiss and boom, a cacophony of thunder shook the air. The Old Prussian tapped the phone again and shrugged.

“It seems those shells have cut the lines, no prisoner of mine will you be. I think you need to get to the rails, to find home.”

The German led Ulysses outside, where he hoisted him up into a wagon. He covered the broken soldier with a tarp, “We will be near the rail station anon, my friend Ulysses Brown. Rest easy while I drive us around.”

He heard the German, who never mentioned his name, slap the horse team with the reigns. The cart bumped across the rutted land. Ulysses smelled sulfur, cordite, and heard crack of rifle fire. It seemed to take hours to make their way, but when they did stop it was daybreak.

A Calypso... of sorts

He peered into the night, and saw barbed wire to his right. He mused, “Into a minefield we have driven. I must stay clear of enemy soldiers near this position.”

He skirted between rocks and shrubs, careful to not attract any attention. He scanned the ground for signs that underneath explosives were hidden. It took him hours to make a mile, but when he did he fell on his faceless head in exhaustion. Too tired to move any further, he saw a barn standing lonely on the plain. He lifted himself, and struggled to walk.

Careful he treaded between the enemy and the mines, to reach the shelter offered closer to friendly lines. As he neared the barn door he saw firelight flicker, he pushed open the door and as it creaked he found he had startled a Prussian soldier.

The Teutonic man scrambled for a rifle, he aimed at Ulysses and started to shout, but before he could utter a word, he glimpsed at the bandaged and battered figure before him. He almost laughed at the rifle it held which seemed to be useless. He motioned for Ulysses to sit beside the fire.

The German was dressed in a uniform stitched in blue with an iron cross around his neck. Ulysses pondered it for a time, and the German soldier noticed his stare.

“This?” he asked as he lifted the medal. “This is a gift from the Kaiser and my people.”
“For bravery, and gallant actions in war. I do not hold it much esteem, you see all of my men died, there was nobody left to echo the value of war but me. So the generals pulled me from my hospital bed and hung this worthless tin on my neck.”
“I was a soldier before Archduke Franz was shot, it has been my occupation for some time. I have a wife, and a son. I was hoping to grow old before a war was called. Now I grow old, and I have outlived my son. He fought in a battle near the Marne. A forest called Belleau, which is where he was shot. I fear my wife will end her days grieving for him, and soon me.”

Cyclops

Into an ambulance he climbed. Ulysses the man from North Carolina was to take a journey from the field to the station. From the station to a ship. Across the sea he would be tussled, until he landed in an American harbor.

As the ambulance bounced across the French land Ulysses heard again that horrible din. An explosion ripped through the air, and the lorry was tossed upon its side. Ulysses pulled himself out of the chamber, and saw no man left alive.

“I have been sent home, but still fate attempts to stop me.” He picked up a broken rifle in his bandaged, clubbed, hands and used it as a cane to help him slog his way to the rail station.

Lotus Eater

Many weeks later Sergeant Ulysses awakened from his slumber, he saw his hands wrapped in cumbersome bandages, his face he could no longer feel. His hair was shorn from his crown, he no longer wished for glory or fame. His only thoughts were to return to his home in the hills of North Carolina again.

An officer dressed in a uniform of gold, red, and blue, came to his bed. He placed a medal of glistening silver on his blanket,
“Sergeant Ulysses, for action that was gallant, your countrymen wish to present you with this token, and from this war you will depart. You will return home, a hero with courage unmatched.”

Ulysses, the man, did not speak. He was only the one who did not perish, the brave heroes fell in the woods, and Ulysses the man was weak. He continued his stay in the bed, his body wrapped in morphine’s care, his will to leave almost sapped.

A letter from home was delivered to his side one afternoon.
“We are all waiting for you.” His wife wrote of love, children, crops, and home. Ulysses the man remembered why he strove. To live to see my family once more. I must leave France, this hospital, and this dread. He dressed himself and readied his pack. He received his papers, and his pass. Through the doors of the hospital he passed, limping away, he had found peace at last.

Shipwrecked

On the last day of battle, in the wee hours, Sergeant Ulysses walked out in front of his men. He pointed out mines, and barbed fence. He told them, “Comfort to you all, for this is the last, we will not stay much longer, this battle we will cast.”

As his words bellowed from his mouth, the din and hiss of explosions rang out. Fire! Lava! And heat. It washed over the men, and sounded their defeat.

“Corpsman! Corpsman! Hurry over here!” Along the glade were littered the men, scorched earth and corpses mingled together, Sergeant Ulysses was felled beneath a still standing patch of heather. His face was blank, burned from his skull, and his hands were mangled with only the thumbs. The hospital men lifted his frame, and plopped onto a stretcher. From those woods they carried Ulysses, to a tent where masked faces floated in the odor of ether.

Ismarus

As evening fell on one June date, a new Captain relayed
“Your men are needed across the field, in the dark wood, there waits the gruesome horde of Valhalla, Germans sent from the Kaiser who wish to have France for a meal.”

Sergeant Ulysses marched to his trench and gathered his flock. He made light of the events, and told them all
“We shall be heroes, even if we fall.”
He knew some would not make it across the pastures alive, and fewer still would be able to fight in the dark wood of Belleau.

Keeping themselves cocooned at the bottom of the trench
Waiting for the word,
The Shout!
“Over the top boys!” and then a whistle would sound shrill in the air to signal them to clamber out.

Waiting became harsh as dawn drew nigh.
“Patience,” whispered Sergeant Ulysses, “Not until the last star vanishes from the sky.”
He checked each man,
Rifle and kit,
For across No-Man’s-Land they would sprint.

Beyond the ditch Ulysses gazed and saw the first signs of morning’s rays.
“Up! Up! All of you now! Huns are waiting across the fields we must plow!”

They rose en masse, and heaved over the side of the dank, deep trench, and began to trot towards the Prussian stench.

As they ran bullets whizzed by, but Sergeant Ulysses encouraged the try,
“Make for the trees, to the guns pay no mind.”
Many fell, but others took heed, and soon they were enshrouded within the gloom of oaks, and hemlocks, and so began the Battle of Belleau Wood.

Germans fired from behind machine guns nested safely within mounds of dirt and wire, Sergeant Ulysses mustered his men and soon more joined the fray.
They toiled under a constant barrage, but never did they shirk or fall away, for each one wished to go home a hero one day.

The fight continued, more bloody with each passing moon. The officers decided the conflict must end soon; they would make one last assault to expel the German army and to sound their death knell.

Troy

He proved himself a model infantryman. He could run, and shoot, and muscle through trenches while shells burst down,
To rain molten metal and dirt upon all men.

Soon the martial struggle took its toll,
First the Captain
The Lieutenant
And finally the Sergeant, who could rally them all.

Ulysses Brown rose to the task, the officers placed upon him stripes and pins fashioned of brass. He had been a part of many dangerous actions, had taken machine gun positions, and crept through fields littered with mines,
Cowardice he had never shown at any time.

Sergeant Ulysses Brown held fast to his charge, to lead his men, and to help rout the scourge of the Huns from Teutonic lands. Each morning he checked them, from head to toe. He inspected rifles, bayonets, and boots. He posted watches, and made sure they received their mail, but he was fretful about how he would ever live to tell the tale of the horrid war.

March to Troy

That brilliant year, the one that stood as a moment to remember for eternity
One to be marked by man and beast as the time when men stood up against tyranny
It came to called on the calendar 1918.

Some time before a man of renown in North Carolina propped himself up outside the door of a Gunnery Sergeant of the United States Marine Corps. He signed his papers, slashing his name, just as he had done his crops the season before, then he hurried home.

His wife held him tight, his children clung to his legs, and he shouldered his bags and marched back to town.

“I will not be long, France has called, and this war is nothing that will stand in the way of Ulysses Brown.” He left them standing on the platform as he boarded the train, agony bore down upon him and his kin, he did not look for he wanted them to believe he was brave, bold, and would return home again.