Dad wrote so many stories that there are actually ones I hadn't really read previouly. This very short one was, until today, among them. It is dated October 11, 2004.
There are men for whom war is calamitous beyond destruction and death. Lieutenant Byrnes was one of these.
I knew him well. We were assigned together, after combat, to a support unit in a zone of the Interior. He was not the usual GI Joe.
As to the rest of us, it must be said that Sherman was not totally right. War is not always Hell. There was food and drink in our new digs and music and dance, a few American nurses and a surfeit of native girls. Often, there was a melange of all mentioned categories for those who would partake. This assignment was hardly burdensome.
Except perhaps for Lieutenant Byrnes. He eschewed all the available pleasures, save for one, whiskey. He preferred to remain alone in his room on the second floor of a former Italian Caserna, a soldier's barracks, while below, we were in gaiety, the tinkle of glasses toasting an occasion, then later, more intimate whispers of amity that despite their low volume, filtered through the flimsy walls.
Lt. Byrnes had his respite to solitude in his consumption of a sufficiency of cognac--the only alterntive to the merciful ministrations of an elusive Morpheus.
It is not that the rest of us were unaware of his legendary self-discipline. A kindly disposed soul would occasionally trot an extra signorina or two to his cell for his consideration, but his response was always the same, "My wife wouldn't like it."
Byrnes, in civilian life, was an associate professor of Antiquities at an Eastern American college, which he spoke of modestly in deference to his wife, who was a full professor of Ancient history, and we all surmised, the reason for his solitude and its contiguous chastity. In more visible testimony thereto, there was a plaque in cursive script enshrined on his wall, which he said his wife had given him as a parting gift. It read:
"Loose not the wine-skin foot, thou Chief of men, until to Athen thou art come again."
We all recognized the quotation to be of intellectual quality, but we had no glimmer of understanding. I was curious, but we did not intrude. My much later college education abstractedly elucidated its meaning.
Now I do not wish to suggest that the gods of Olympia might have intervened or cause and effect in any manner, but it seems to me that there is no greater aphrodisiac to many women than a man who refuses to partake of their particular essence.
Her name was Marissa and her form--truly sculpted by Divinity--adorned by long black tresses in the fashion of a then popular movie star, Veronica Lake. No one knows how they met. Some say she haunted the second floor. However they met, they did, cohabitated and soon Marissa was with child.
I was suddenly shipped home. He said something strange before I left, "Don't judge. I'll write you." He did not. I had not judged. I wondered about his need to tell me anything at all.
The rest of the story came to me from his wife in a surprising letter many years later.
"Brian is dead," she began. "Before he died he asked me to explain his violation of the oracular script that adorned his wall in your barracks. I realized after he confessed to me when he returned that he took my professorial joke too seriously, and struggled mightily in that your unit was a veritable oda."
"By the way," she added, "we adopted the child of his one adventure. He is nineteen, a veritable Theseus, an ancient hero who was similarly conceived when he also ignored the warning, '. . .loose not the wine-skin foot. . .".
I presented to Brian a beautiful daughter. Coincidentally, she is nineteen also."
