battle of the bulge

Posted by Yuka as Famous

“I was utterly exhausted. Iwas a Graves Registration,Noncommissioned officer
for the 94th Infantry Division.My work was to help set up and maintain records
of all men killed in action,missing in action, and hospitalised.I also had to
help disinter the bodies of both Allied and enemy soldiers who had been killed
and hastily buried in shallow graves during the pitch of battle.I had to gather
up the personal effects of these men and see that they were sent back to parents
or closest relatives who would prize these personal effects so much.I was
constantly worried for fear we might be making embarrassing and serious mistakes.
L was worried about whether or not Iwould come through all this.I was worried about whether Lwould live to hold my only child in my arms-a son of sixteen
months,whom Ihad never seen.I was so worried and exhausted that Ilost thirty-
four pounds.I was so frantic that I was almost out of my mind. I looked at my
hands.They were hardly more than skin and bones. I was terrified at the thought
of going home a physical wreck.I broke down and sobbed like a child.Iwas so shaken that tears welled up every time I was alone.There was one period soon after the Battle of the Bulge started that Iwept so often that Ialmost gave up hope of ever
being a normal human being again.

“I ended up in an Army dispensary.An Army doctor gave me some advice which
has completely changed my life.After giving me a thorough physical examination,
he informed me that my troubles were mental.‘ted’,he said,‘I want you to think
of your life as an hourglass. you know there are thousands of grains of sand in
the top of the houralass;and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow
neck in the middle.Nothing you or Icould do would make more than one grain of
sand pass through this narrow neck without impaining the hourglass.You and I and
everyone else are like this hourglass.When we start in the morning, there are hundereds of tasks which we feel that we must accomplish that day,but if we do
not take them one at a time and let them pass through the day slowly and evenly,
as do the grains of sand passing through the narrow neck of the hourglss,then
we are bound to break our own physical or mental structure.’