War Ready, and: Ode to the G.R.S. (Graves Registration Service)

War Ready

for above the shrieks and groans, could be heard a sound . . . similar to hail upon a tin roof—the extracted teeth being thrown into tin buckets at the sides of the chairs.

—Chester D. Heywood, Negro Combat Troops in the World War

Splinters of jawbone, blue gums, pus-swollen roots, tarry stumps that usedtabe teeth, Lord have mercy and Lord, Jesus! Molars, canines, eyeteeth wrenched, pried, yanked like bent nails from hard lumber.

Teeth dropping like hail on a tin roof.

Men from m’lasses and ribbon cane, from snuff, from suga’ teats to soothe teething gums, from knuckle-busted teeth and buck teeth. Teeth that yassah-smiled and bit off what they had to chew, took what they just had to swalla. Men who knew root doctors and home medicine, who used whiskey or turpentine, saltwater swishes. Men who softened aspirins beneath their tongues or learned to “Jus’ grab a holt of it and twist.”

Black men marching, marching. Soldier bound, they thought. Black men digging, toting, hammering, hauling. Black men the army signed into Supply and Service. The 371st infantry heading over there, over there, black backs and black muscle.

Two dentists for the entire regiment, no fillings, no drills, no crowns, the army chose the cheaper route. Black mouths moanin’, spittin’ blood, blood-tainted pus from swollen tongues, half-dead roots rooted out or torn free, splintered bones and bruised gums. Damn, God damn. Black recruits from a far older war, steady fighting, steady dying, not their first battle, and sho not their last. Teeth fell like hail. Grown men screamed and cried out. Hell, no. Nothing given for the pain.

Ode to the G.R.S. (Graves Registration Service)

Ferrying bones. Rags of meat. Stench. A hidden flask to still a mind that has seen and seen too much. Grave mud. Maggot mud. They pulled from those fetid muds bodies and parts of bodies, pulled from no man’s land ribs tangled in tatters of wool, char still clutching a rifle stock, what was once this weight, somebody’s son, somebody’s father.

When they found him what did they think, unearthing the black hood still covering his head, the rope binding legs and wrists, the muddied rope around his dark neck? What did they think?

Digging, digging, searching for gurneys of dead, for corpses to pry up, gather, move. Learning that skulls still grin and that trench rats will eat anything. Did they slip rags over their mouths to ward the smell? Did they gag, or try to? Did they lift their flasks to rinse away what left them choked? Did they try to? Returning weary, sore, and soiled to lay on rough cots, trying not to see, they hated the day with its skull-white skies, but they hated night even more, the bloated moon, the maggot stars. The reports say they sang in their camps at night, anything with joy in it, and maybe that’s so, maybe so.

But still the one they found who looked as they looked, when they found him there, half-rotted and tied— did they lift him tenderly? Cut the noose? Uncover his face and socket eyes? Did they think of home then? Had they removed such rope before?

The photos never show their faces clearly, the men of the G.R.S., dark bodies bearing ill-shaped burdens on canvas stretchers, black men chucking shovels into grey earth, swinging mattocks, lowering a body, something like a body, into a waiting box, and then their hammers, and then their shovels. Black backs bent and slick with sweat. They stabbed their shovels down like bayonets.