Lucky Man

Lucky Man
By Lee Conrad

The fight between Privates Maguire and Turner erupted suddenly and without much cause. A crowd at a makeshift kitchen- with soldiers tired and bitter- was all the spark that was needed.

Private Maguire, of the American Expeditionary Force, had been on the front line for a year. Most of the soldiers sent to France in 1917 in a frenzy of war hysteria and enthusiasm thought the war would end as soon as they arrived. By the late summer of 1918 some feared they would never see home again. Many a youthful soldier didn’t and a select few were helped on the way to meet their maker by Maguire’s black book.

Now soldiers can be a superstitious lot, but what the men of Company D saw proved to them that death can be prodded to intervene by a willful and malicious mortal. The fight over nothing ended quickly but the aftermath held more danger to Turner than he realized.

“Ya bastard” snarled Maguire. “I ain’t riskin’ the stockade to put you down like you deserve. So I will tell ya what I am going to do. I am going to put your name in my book here, see?” Maguire said with a sly grin.

Turner, making his way through the mud and muck from the previous night’s rain, ambled up to Privates O’Brien and Lacey, all friends from New York City who went through boot camp together at Fort Dix and made the long voyage to Europe on the USS Agamemnon.

“What is wrong with that crazy Irishman?” Turner said to O’Brien, visibly shaken from the brief encounter with Maguire.

Lacey, clearing his throat after stuffing biscuits and bacon in his mouth said, “There are some strange stories about Maguire and his book. It seems he was transferred from another division because a couple of the boys that crossed him got killed quite readily after he wrote their name down in his book. Even the officers were scared of him and some of them even said…”

“Hey Lacey, let’s get some more rations while it’s still here,” O’Brien said as he gave Lacey a quick ‘don’t say anymore look.’

As Lacey and O’Brien got their food, Lacey asked why O’Brien stopped him from telling him more.

“It’s not your name in Maguire’s book is it? Keep your mouth shut! Maybe what you heard wasn’t true,” replied O’Brien.

Later that day, as the Company was sent back to the front, a sudden and violent barrage from the German side of the lines took place. The trenches, never completely safe or deep enough, even with “dugouts” carved into the sides, still offered some hope of surviving another day. But for Private Turner, his day was over. Most of the barrage overshot the trench, except for the one shell that found its mark and took Private Turner and no one else from this earth.

Lacey and O’Brien looked in horror as the Pioneer Infantry, under the command of the Division Sanitary Inspector, always close by and armed with pick and shovel, carried away what was left of the body.

“See I told you the stories were true”, said Lacey angrily.

“Let’s get out of here,” said O’Brien as tears welled up in his eyes.

Turning to go back down the trench they spot Maguire standing outside a circle of soldiers.

“Tough luck for the kid,” said Maguire, grinning with malevolence.

“I ought to kill you,” said Lacey, lunging at Maguire and grabbing him by the neck.

The other soldiers pulled Lacey away, taking great care not to come in contact with Maguire. O’Brien quickly grabbed Lacey and pushed him down the narrow confines of the trench, past soldiers silent and dead on their feet. Looking back, he saw Maguire pulling out his black book and penciling something in it.

Back off the line three days after a brutal bombardment and assault, O’Brien and Lacey were granted a respite from the trench. The stench from the trenches and the surrounding field, littered with dead horses and what was left of men, intermingled in a three-ring circus of flesh and gore that was overpowering. The flies and rats, in ever increasing numbers, attacked the living with their own special brand of torment.

The call of “over the top” and the assault on the German lines did not appreciably shorten the war but it did contribute greatly to the roll call in heaven for both sides. The lines remained in their static position as they had for the past two years and in between the lines “no-mans land” was fertilized with the newly dead.

“I’m going to find us some rations,” Lacey told his friend.

“Go ahead,” said O’Brien wearily. “I’m going to stay here and get a letter written, while I can.”

He wasn’t even half way through the first page when he heard a horse charging down the road – a shell-shocked runaway dragging a caisson behind it.

Why Lacey could not get out of the way was a mystery to all and talked about for some time. But the fact was the horse and its deadly cargo hit him full on and killed him instantly.

Off to the side of the road, leaning against a dead tree, a smirking Maguire surveyed the damage done.

In the weeks that followed, a dispirited O’Brien hunkered down on the front line surviving shellings, snipers and attacks. He kept his head down during assaults as he made his way through “no-man’s land” and back. Bullets flying by whispered in his ears “lucky man.”

Walking through an area that had been abandoned for months, O’Brien stumbled upon the rotted corpse of a French soldier. His sun-bleached skeletal arm and clenched fingers protruded straight through the muck, as if shaking it to the God that had abandoned him and his one million comrades joining him in death on the desolate and shattered fields of France.

Living, and staying away from Maguire, was foremost on O’Brien’s mind. Stories floated through the line of others whose names found their way into Maguire’s book and shortly met death. With so much death already around, many found the stories skeptical. But not O’Brien. He had lost two friends to Maguire’s little black book.

In October, while the fighting was in a lull, O’Brien was assigned to get the mail to his company. As he sorted it out by name he saw the letter addressed to Private Michael Maguire from Mercy Hospital in Philadelphia. With apprehension he took the letter to Maguire, who as usual was sitting by himself.

“Here, this is yours,” O’Brien said to Maguire as he turned to hand out letters to others on the opposite side of the trench.

As Maguire read his letter his face turned ashen. He dipped his head and wept uncontrollably. An amazed company of men looked on.

As Maguire crumpled the letter, he took out his black book and wrote in it. Throwing it down in the mud with the letter, he slowly and deliberately walked away down the trench.

It took a few minutes for one of the stunned soldiers to pick up the letter. It said simply that Katie Maguire, wife of Michael, had succumbed to the Spanish influenza while attending her duties as a nurse at Mercy hospital.

Hesitantly and with shaking hands O’Brien picked up Maguire’s book and looked at the list of names, including Lacey’s and Turner’s--all dead now.
O’Brien silently read the last name in the book as the group of soldiers heard the rifle crack.

Maguire’s body fell back into the trench, a bullet hole in the forehead from a German sniper, as O’Brien read aloud to the weary soldiers gathered in their home of blasted desolation the last and final name in the black book —Private Michael Maguire.

The end
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