Free Departure by Howard Fast Page A

there was another behind it, and that the Nazi was not someone who threw away his gun and surrendered after the first round of artillery; and for these men, Sidney Greenspan was something out of another world and another struggle. He had an answer that no one else could give them, and a faith in men compounded from different stuff than the Nash-Kelvinator ads. It would be said, more and more often, and by more people, “I met a guy called Greenspan, a medic who was in Spain—I guess he’s a red, but he knows from where—”
    One of them, who had looked up Janie when he came back to the States, said, “You’d be afraid, you’d be so goddamn afraid, and then you’d talk to Sidney, and it would be all right.”
    VII
    He was killed at the beginning of ’44. The United States Army, considering it above and beyond the call of duty, wrote in its citation:
    Private First Class Sidney Greenspan, Medical Department.
    Near Carano, Italy, January 24, 1944, he crawled sixty yards under enemy machine gun fire to administer first aid to a wounded infantryman and then continued forward another fifty yards to care for two more wounded infantrymen. He administered first aid to one of the men and dragged him into a covered position. He then returned to the other man and treated him. While so doing his right hip was shattered by machine gun fire and a second burst splintered his left forearm. Nevertheless, and in spite of severe bleeding which he could not quench, he finished administering aid to the wounded man and dragged him to a place of cover. He then crawled 60 yards in an effort to regain contact with his unit, but was forced to discontinue from weakness caused by loss of blood. Death resulted from shock and loss of blood.
    I guess the best way to tell such a thing is the way the Army tells it, as a routine job by the T-4 who writes citations as the casualties come in. They are not bothered with reasons or subjective factors, and having a war against fascism to win, they could be more objective about a man like Sidney than certain people who write about such things today. Sidney’s name was brought up for the Congressional Medal of Honor, but that was a big-time operation, and they went into his past, and the matter was dropped.
    And that could be left out of an epitaph for Sidney. There will be other awards some day, other citations, and when that time comes the stones and the fields and the broken cities will give tongue and speak of all the nameless. They buried Sidney Greenspan in Italian soil, good soil; and the soil of Spain is good, too, and the soil of America, and the soil of the Soviet Union, and of China—and if he had his choice, I don’t think there is any place he wouldn’t have been at home, fully and completely at home.
    Some of us who knew him, when we heard of his death, thought that we would write down an epitaph for him. Then, in the personal columns of the paper he read and loved, there were many boxes with heavy black lines to bind them in, and whatever the name, there was a reference to the struggle against fascism. That was how we came to put together what we knew and remembered of Sidney; but nothing we could tell and nothing we could compile and no reasons we could give were enough to explain the fabric of him. So we gathered it into a word and wrote: “To the memory of Sidney Greenspan, antifascist, who fell in the people’s struggle—from his comrades.”

Where Are Your Guns?
    I N THE LAND of the goyim, my father traded with the Indians. We traded for beaver, and my father’s word was as good as his bond, and we never carried a weapon except for our knives. From the lakes in the north to the canebrake in the south and as far west as the great river—there we traded and we never carried a weapon, never a musket or a rifle or a pistol, for these are weapons of death; and if you deal with death, what else can you expect in return? Is