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Scott Turow

Ordinary Heroes

© 2005

Part I

Dearest Grace-

My sickness is over, and I love you and miss you more than ever! Yesterday I got up feeling fine and ran to breakfast and I have been well ever since. I am beginning to know the routine aboard this commandeered cruise ship, where much of the civilian staff remains on duty-including Indian wallahs who serve the officers in our staterooms. We also have a wonderful band that three or four times a day strikes up sentimental classical numbers in the old first-class dining room, which is still turned out with baubled chandeliers and red velvet drapes. The enlisted men below enjoy many fewer luxuries, but even they know-their accommodations are a marked improvement over what they'd get on most of the Navy's old buckets.

With Tchaikovsky on the air, I sometimes forget we are in a war zone and distinctly treacherous waters. Yet with time on my hands, I suppose it's natural that thoughts of what may lie ahead occasionally preoccupy me. During the four days of sickness after we sailed from Boston, I naturally spent long periods on deck. For all the sophistication I like to think I acquired at Easton College and in law school, I am still a Midwestern hick. Until now, I have never been on a body of water broader than the Kindle River, and there have been moments when I've found the vastness of the Atlantic terrifying. Gazing out, I realize how far I have gone from home, how alone I am now, and how immaterial my life is to the oceans, or to most of the people around me.

Of course, with my transfer to the Judge Advocate General's Department, I have much less to fear than when I was training as an infantry officer. The closest I am likely to get to a German is to give advice about his treatment as a POW. I know you and my parents are relieved, as I am, too, but at other moments I feel at sea. (Ho ho!)

I'm not sure why God sets men against each other in war-in fact, I'm no surer than ever that I believe in God. But I know I must do my part.

We all mus do our parts, you at home and us here. Everything our parents taught us-my parents and your parents, different though they may be-is at stake. I know this war is right. And that is what men-and Americans, especially-do. They fight for what is right in the world, even lay down their lives if that's required. I still feel as I did when I enlisted, that if I did not take up this fight, I would not be a man, as men are. As I must be. There are instants when I am actually jealous of the soldiers I am traveling with, even when I see them overcome by a sudden vacancy that I know is fear. They are imagining the bullets sizzling at them in their holes, the earthquake and lightning of bombs and artillery. But I envy who they will become in the forge of battle.

I promise you that such insanity passes fleetly and that I'll happily remain a lawyer, not a foot soldier. It is late now and they say there are heavy seas ahead. I should sleep while I can.