Plays  

by Earl Wettstein

(The play takes place in the suburbs of a Mid-Western city.).

NELSON
You are one lucky son of a gun, Karl.

KARL
Lucky? You talk about luck. Let me show you something about luck. Louise, before you go to work, can you get me my Bible? The little one in my top drawer?

LOUISE EXITS TO THE BEDROOMS

KARL
Wait ‘til you see this. A souvenir of World War One.

NELSON
The War To End All Wars.

KARL
Who said that? Roosevelt, I think.

NELSON
Were there any good things come out of that?

KARL
Not for me. Not good things. A good memory or two.

NELSON
Yeah?

KARL
There was this time when we landed in England and we’re marching through London…on our way to another ship to take us to France. Ya know we came in the war late, and the Brits weren’t too happy with us, but we were marching through Piccadilly Square and there was a huge crowd, oh, it was something to hear. They had a dozen bands there to see us off, and we’re marchin’, and they’re playing and the people all start singing (SINGS)“Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word to beware, For the yanks are coming, the yanks are coming, and it won’t be over 'til it’s over over there. Over there, over there…”

LOUISE RE-ENTERS WITH A SMALL BIBLE.
HANDS IT TO KARL
KARL (hands biblE
TO NELSON)
There she is. My pocket bible. I carried it right here in my breast pocket. Look. See that puncture through the cover? German Bayonet did that. Follow it, see where it stops.

NELSON OPENS THE BIBLE, SORTS
THROUGH IT
NELSON
So?
KARL (points)
Read it….there! Judges 10.

NELSON
This’ll be a first.(PREACHER LIKE) “And Abimelech chased him, and fell before him, and many were overthrown and wounded…
Lessee…and he took the people , and rose up against them, and
smote them…….hummm
Lessee…and set the hold of fire upon them so that all the men of the tower of Shechem died also, about a thousand men and women!
Geeeez, Karl, what’s the point?

KARL
The point is they were at war, too. Like I was when that Hun tried to stick his bayonet into me.
That Bible saved my life in a bayonet fight in France.

NELSON
You mean to tell me you had to use your bayonet?

KARL
You do what you have to do.

NELSON
Did you kill someone?

KARL
Some.

NELSON
Germans?

KARL
That’s who we were fighting.

NELSON
But you’re German. Was that a problem?

KARL
No. They were Germans. I’m an American.

NELSON
So you speared them…

KARL
About 20.

NELSON
No shit.

KARL
Hand-to-hand combat is very invigorating.

NELSON
I didn’t know…

SFX: BOMBS GOING OFF UP AND
SUSTAIN TO END OF KARL’S SPEECH.

KARL
You’re in those trenches, twelve feet deep or more. Fertile French soil. It’s damned near winter. Bitter cold, been raining for weeks. The mud is almost up to your hips. Day and night.
Artillery shells are blowing all around you. Your hearing is gone. You haven’t had a bath in a month. Enemy snipers are picking off your buddies from high points at the end of the trench. You feel like an animal. It’s kill or be killed. I did what I had to do.

NELSON
But bayonetting? Really? You have to be close to stick someone.

KARL
You damned draft-dodger, I know everything about bayoneting!

NELSON
Draft-dodger? God damn it Karl, just because I sat in an office out here at Ft. Snelling processing you dogfaces, doesn’t mean I wasn’t willing…

KARL
Listen, Nelson, bayoneting isn’t just sticking someone. It’s an art. Yeah, I was an artist in France myself. An artiste. Ya’ know the blade on an American bayonet is only about 9 inches long. So we’d get the French bayonets and put ‘em on our rifles instead. The French know how to kill a man at long distance. Their pig-stickers were 18 inches long. Long enough to do your dirty work at a distance, and still go right through the thickest part of a man’s body. We’d sharpen that blade so it glistened. Spent hours on ‘em. So sharp you could cut a hair with ‘em.
Sliced salami with ‘em! Sssssuttttt! We slept with ‘em. In combat, your bayonet is your buddy, your life. There’s more to bayoneting than you think, Nelson. Most guys, untrained, would just automatically stick their bayonet right through the enemy. Gut him. Run him through! But that’s where the skill comes in, because just piercing your enemy leaves your bayonet stickin' out his back, and it creates a vacuum that won’t let go! There you are, your rifle stuck in the belly of a 200 pound screaming kraut, and dozens more are coming into the trench after you. “Excuse me, sir, could you wait a fucking minute while I get this god-damned bayonet out of your buddy here?”
No, that’s not the way an artiste does it. A well-trained bayonet artiste will only penetrate about six inches – a short, stabbing thrust followed by a half-twist to break that bond when the enemy’s guts and blood become one with the blade, sucking onto it, not releasing it. Do it wrong and you have to put one foot on the kraut’s
chest, and then pull that unwilling bayonet out of his carcass. Do it right, and you create an air tunnel down into the bloody, gaping wound…the weapon withdraws, suuutt, and you’re ready for the next dead German. Come and get it, you fuckin’ Heinie!!!

(LONG PAUSE)

NELSON
Jesus.

KARL
Yeah. (Pause) Your deal.

LIGHTS FADE TO BLACK

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