Free To the End of the War by James Jones

anything about these ribbons?”
    “No,” she smiled seriously. “I really know nothing at all about them, but I’ve always wanted to learn what they meant; it makes one feel stupid not to know the various ribbons when all the boys are wearing them. Will you explain them to me?”
    “Of course,” Johnny assented magnanimously, “of course. Now this one is the Distinguished Service Cross; I got that for saving the poor wounded major. I would have gotten the Congressional Medal of Honor, but I lost my nerve. I didn’t get killed and I don’t know how to write songs. After the dum-dum broke my leg, I let them carry me back to the hospital when I really should have stayed and fought some more. I’m really a coward at heart.”
    The woman laughed softly. “That’s queer,” she said innocently. “I thought that purple one with the two white bands at the ends was the Purple Heart.”
    Johnny looked at her for a moment and then grinned.
    “Aha,” he cried. “Sabotage rears its ugly head. Are you going to believe me, a returned hero, or are you going to believe what you read in some silly propagandist magazine?”
    The woman’s smile spread. “Why of course I believe you, ” she protested. “How could you ever doubt that? But didn’t you get the Purple Heart for being wounded?”
    “Sure,” he said. “I got it, but us real soldiers never like to wear a ribbon so many people have got. The Purple Heart’s a dime a dozen.”
    “What does it look like?” she persisted.
    “What, the Purple Heart? It’s green, a green ribbon with a little red heart printed in the center of the ribbon. That’s why they call it the Purple Heart, because it’s green. . . . I tried to hock my Purple Heart in Memphis, and you know what the guy in the hockshop offered me? Six bits. He took me in the back room and showed me a whole drawer full of medals from the last war. All kinds of medals, and Purple Hearts galore.”
    A tall staff sergeant who was standing near the seat laughed out loud. Johnny looked up at him and grinned. “That really happened,” he said.
    “I don’t doubt it a bit,” retorted the staff sergeant.
    “Seventy-five cents?” The woman was shocked. “You’re kidding me. Surely they’re worth more than that.”
    “Well, I don’t know,” Johnny said. “The general who pinned it on me at the hospital told me they cost twenty-seven-fifty apiece, but I’m inclined to think he was quoting inflation prices. Supply and demand, you know.” The tall dark staff sergeant laughed explosively.
    “Here, Mack,” Johnny said, pulling the bottle out of his topcoat, “have a drink.”
    The staff sergeant took the bottle and examined it, grinning.
    “To the end of the war,” Johnny said softly as the staff sergeant uncorked the bottle. The staff sergeant stopped in the act of raising the bottle to his lips and gazed at Johnny for a second. Then he dipped the bottle. “By God, I’ll drink to that,” he said.
    After he drank, he handed back the bottle. Johnny took it and stared at it, thinking he needed one, too. His record was beginning to run down. If he was to keep the gay boyish grin from drooping, he’d need several. The wit was being drilled against the rock of sobriety, and the gay boyish humor was wilting: His smiling muscles were getting tired. He took a deep drink from the bottle.
    “That’s a nice toast,” the woman Carroll said to him, “I’ve never heard that before. It’s so simple, you’d think I would have.”
    “No,” said Johnny. “I guess it’s too simple for most people. They like high-sounding oratory with their liquor. We used to toast each other in the New Zealand hospital with that one; there was a bunch of guys from my outfit there together. All of us expected to go back up to the ’Canal.” He paused. Christ only knew where the rest were now; only two of them had come back to the States. What the hell was he crying on her shoulder for? “I never drink to anything else