All the Smiles that Haunt Me

The boat stopped moving. Icy spray hit his face as a particularly violent wave collided with the now stationary vessel. It was as if even nature herself didn’t want them here. The atmosphere changed among the men. The quiet whispers stopped, but the noise seemed to James to increase tenfold. He couldn’t focus on any of it, just noise all around him. He hadn’t truly believed what his senses had been telling him. Now it was real. He was here and there would be no going back. He studied the faces around him. For many, there would be no going home.


“News travels fast, especially bad news; it entertains those who have done nothing noteworthy of their own in this life.” His grandmother told him that once. His grandmother was never wrong. And, as always, on December 7th, 1941, her words proved true yet again.

The breeze off the frozen lake was bitterly cold. He watched it through the window, watched his daughter and her friends build a snowman and attack each other with snowballs as the news coming through the tiny speakers of the radio chilled his heart to the same state as the crystal coated branches. His heart ached and his breathe caught in his throat, not for the men who had lost their lives in Pearl Harbor, though their families certainly had his sympathy, but for the thousands more who effectively died that day but just didn’t know it yet.

He was not an idiot. He knew the president couldn’t possibly take an attack like that and do nothing about it. America would have to join the war that was ripping the world apart. The radio clicked off behind him and silence flooded the room. He could feel her presence, without looking he could tell exactly what she was doing. She stood over the radio, a patient frown no doubt lining her beautiful face.

He shivered slightly, his gaze still focused straight ahead, out the window, watching the violent winter wind abuse the fragile landscape. But it was not the cold that sent chills down his spine. There is no winter wind in Hawaii, he thought. Hawaii seemed so far away. So irrelevant. Pearl Harbor. Nobody in his small quiet home town had ever heard of the place until now. Funny that an attack thousands of miles away would bring his own small world crashing down.

He felt her directly behind him, then a blanket was placed lightly on his shoulders. Its warmth did nothing to comfort his frozen heart. She stayed behind him, her hands winding their way around his neck, her cheek finding rest against his back. Her steady breathing was comforting. Whatever came next, right now she was here and she was his. He leaned back into her embrace.

“James, what are you thinking?” she whispered in his ear.

He sighed. “The world is falling apart, Anna. And we have to keep right on living in it.”


The water was cold. Unbelievably, unbearably cold. He didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything. Vaguely he heard the orders shouted around him. He saw, but did not process, the flurry of activity. The men beside him leaving the relative safety and calm of the boats in favor of icy water and honor and duty and death. He focused on his destination. The shore was a wall of fire. Why did life have to be such extremes? Was there no common ground? Another explosion ripped through the air as the shoreline erupted in flames once again.


The line outside the army recruitment office had grown almost as quickly as the news of the attack had spread. He looked around him. An entire generation of men was here, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to sign their futures away to Uncle Sam. He couldn’t fault them though. He knew why they did it. He knew the stories of honor and glory and revenge. He knew that Pearl Harbor had sorely wounded American pride. Pride could bring ruin to even the soundest course of action. He would know.

He felt a hand tap his shoulder and turned slowly to the source. He found himself face to face with a short boy younger than him. “Yes?” he asked, still lost in his thoughts.

“Sorry. The…uh…the line…” the boy was awkward and nervous. He gestured towards the line and James turned to see that it had made considerable progress forward without him while he had been thinking.

“Right, sorry,” he muttered to the boy and moved to catch up with the line. He nearly lost himself in his thoughts again when he heard the boy speaking. It took him a few moments to realize the boy had stopped and seemed to be expecting an answer.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, what?”

The boy looked at him funny. “You alright man?”

James nodded. The boy continued, “If you say so.” He offered his hand and the man slowly took it. “Samuel Connors,” the boy went on. “I was just saying how my uncle was an army man his whole life. Fought in the Great War. Said it was the best thing a man could do to serve his country. Never regretted a second of it. That’s why first chance I got I came down here to enlist. I’m not technically old enough, but my uncle knows a guy who knows a guy who was able to pull some strings and you know how the rest goes. My old man was right set against it. Says I’m too young and all. Since when is it possible to be too young to fight for something you believe in, you tell me that.”

James listened to Sam drone for a while before he felt a tap on his shoulder yet again. “Huh?”

“You sure you’re alright man? I said, why’d you decide to join up?”

James forced himself to concentrate, to focus on the boy talking to him. “I have anger issues.”

Sam laughed, breaking the awkward tension that had begun to grow between them. “You know, you’re ok man. A little odd, but you’re ok.”

James smiled. Inside all he could think was, is ok enough?


He stopped just a few feet from the boat. For a moment he couldn’t think of any fathomable reason to keep going. Honestly, all that lay ahead was death. If he survived the beach, there would be other battles. Even if his body made it through the war more or less intact, the man he used to be would be dead. The man Anna fell in love with was not coming home, instead there would be an imposter. If anyone went home to her at all. He turned and looked back at the boat. What a mess life had turned out to be. Then he stopped thinking, fell back on his three months of military training. Don’t think, don’t feel, just act. You are a machine. 


He opened the door as quietly as he could manage. She was sitting at the table in the kitchen. Her back was to him but he could tell she knew he was there.

“It’s late, what are you still doing up?” he asked gently. She stood and looked at him. Her eyes were wild, panicked, desperate.

“Tell me you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t do it!” Her voice started as a whisper, quickly gaining in volume until it was a heart-breaking cry. He moved to take her in his arms but she swatted him away.

“How could you? I can’t believe you did would do that without telling me! How could you do that to me?”

“Anna,” he reached out to touch her arm. She jerked back violently.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed.

“Why can’t you understand? I did this for us…”

“For us?! How does this possibly help us?”

“You don’t understand. Why won’t you understand? I thought you of all people would understand! This is something I have to do.”

They were both screaming, but at his final words she became silent.

“Something you have to do?” she asked, her voice deadly quiet. “What about this, huh?” she gestured around her. “What about your home, huh? Your wife, your family? What about Grace? What am I supposed to tell her? How can I explain to her that her father “had” to leave her? And what if you don’t come home, James? You would just leave us like that? I would have thought that being a husband and father was something you had to do. Are you telling me I’d be wrong?”

He could think of nothing appropriate to say, so he let his silence be his answer.

She nodded. “I don’t think you should stay here tonight.”


He broke his eyes away from the boat and began to search the faces of the soldiers around him. After a moment he found the face he was looking for. Sam stood, looking shell-shocked, a few dozen feet to his right. As quickly as he could, James made his way over to Sam. He reached the younger man and stopped. The look in Sam’s eyes terrified him. The expected fear and confusion was missing. Everything was missing. For a brief moment James had the impression he was looking at a corpse.


He finished packing the last of his things and straightened up, surveying the small room. Satisfied, he picked up his bag and moved toward the door to join his family and wait for his ride to basic. He caught sight of himself in the bureau mirror. The handsome unformed man staring back at him looked strong, confident. Well, nice to know he could fake it if he needed to.

He took a deep breath and left the small room. Entering the lounge he saw his whole family waiting for him and felt tears well up. Grace was the first to notice him and she leapt off her mother’s lap to run to him. He crouched down and wrapped her in a hug.

“Daddy, do you really have to go?” she asked.

“Yeah Gracie, doll, but just for a bit. I’ll be home before you know it.” He pulled back and held her at arms length, looking deep into her sweet innocent eyes, memorizing her perfect face. “You’ll be good for mommy right?”

She smiled. “The best. I promise.”

He smiled back. “Good.” He ruffled her hair and stood.

Anna stood a few feet away, anger still there but sorrow taking its place. He took a step, and she ran into his arms. He held her safe and tight. They didn’t speak but they didn’t need to. After a long time she pulled back and he saw the tears she quickly hid. He kissed her cheek.

Outside a car horn blared. James turned to his parents and little brother. Hugs and murmurs of encouragement were exchanged all around. “You’re going to be alright,” Mikey insisted, and James just nodded. All too soon he was in the army vehicle, driving away from everything he loved.



James grabbed Sam’s arm, and immediately the boy snapped out of his daze. The panic returned.

“Come on! Move!” James yelled, pushing him toward the shore before his panic could get him killed.

Sam hesitated, but slowly nodded and remembered his training. Reach the shore, find cover, hide. Sam nodded again, with more conviction and the two quickly made the shore. James dragged Sam to the nearest battlement. The bullets flew in all directions as the two men sat frozen, trapped in the middle of it.



James groaned as he finished his last set of drills. He definitely felt more fit, but he failed to see how anything they made him do was going to help them when they reached the war. Sam however was ecstatic. The boy’s enthusiasm seemed to have no end. He drove James mad with his endless excitement about the war. The way Sam told it, the two of them were going to end it singlehandedly.

The two had grown close during basic. Sam needed someone to look up to, and the boy kept James’s spirits up. They were unlikely, but somehow perfect friends.


“We have to keep moving!” James shouted.

Sam sat there, frozen.

James grabbed him by the collar, “Come on, we have to go!”

He turned and moved up the beach to the next row of blockades, but realized quickly that Sam was not behind him. He watched as the boy panicked at being left behind. He looked at James, then stepped out from the trench to follow. But he timed in all wrong.

An incoming mortar blew just ten feet from Sam. James watched in horror as the boy’s body flew through the air.


“Sam?” James called. The bunk room was dark, but the boy hadn’t been at mess. James hadn’t seen him all day. There was no reply. He was just about to leave when he heard a choked breath from the back of the room.

“Sam?” he called again, walking further into the room.

He found the boy hunched over the toilet retching. James grabbed a rag and wet it, then held it to the younger man’s face to cool him down.

“There,” he tried to be nurturing. “You’re alright.”

Sam retched again.

James gave him the rag to wipe his face then helped the boy over to a cot.

“It was awful,” Sam muttered. James just nodded. They’d seen combat for the first time that day and he knew Sam’s idealism of the war was shattered.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Sam continued. “They said we’d be serving our country. They never said it would be like this.”

James just nodded, there was nothing to say.


James saw Sam moving, relief flooded him as he realized the boy was still alive, following by panic. He knew Sam had to be badly hurt by that blast. The shells were still dropping, he couldn’t get to Sam just yet.



The music played lightly, the dresses twirled, the laughter rang. None of it could last, but for one night things were going to be happy, no matter what it took. Anna stood anxiously with the other wives and girlfriends and mothers waiting for the army busses to unload and bring their men back to them, even if only for a few days.

The doors at the far end opened and uniformed men began making their way into the grand, lavishly decorated ballroom. Slowly the pack of women broke apart as they found the men they were looking for. The room erupted in gleeful cries and tears.

Anna watched as James entered the room, hand on the shoulder of a short boy. This must be Sam, from James’s letters. Anna watched from a distance for a moment. James was more slight than when he’d left, but he looked strong and healthy.

From the other side of the room a middle aged woman ran to them and pulled Sam into her arms. His mother no doubt, though she barely looked older than Anna herself. She wondered briefly how young this boy was, but she blocked such thoughts before her rage at the war could consume her again.

With Sam otherwise cared for James looked around for his wife. When his eyes landed on her he smiled. Then his gaze dropped to her stomach and he gawked. He made his way over to her and they embraced warmly.

“You’re pregnant?” he whispered.

She nodded. “I wanted to tell you, but it just never felt right in a letter. I needed to see you,” she said. He smiled.

“I love you so much.”

“I love you too, James. You have to come home safe.”

They were interrupted by Sam and his mother. Sam was bouncing lightly on his feet, muttering excitedly about introducing James as “the best fucking friend a guy could have in the shit.” The women laughed politely.

Mrs. Connors’s face lit up when she saw Anna’s protruding stomach. “Oh dearie! Congratulations! It must be hard with James gone right now, but I trust you’re being taken care of plenty. What a joyous thing for you both in these hard times.”

Anna smiled at the woman’s warmth. “Actually it’s just me and my daughter right now. My parents aren’t around and James’s family doesn’t live close, but we manage just fine.”

The older woman tut tutted her disaproval. “Oh my child, that just won’t do,” she cooed. “Your James’s been so kind to my Sammy” Sam squirmed at the pet name “The least you can do is let me help out a bit.”

Anna smiled at the older woman, grateful for the kindness. The rest of the night was filled with dancing and laughter and love as the two women bonded and all four tried to forget that in the morning hell would start all over.



He watched as a medic reached Sam and began working. James closed his eyes a forced himself to breathe. It’s going to be ok. He’s just a kid, he’s going to be ok.


The letters were the only solace in the next months. Anna grew larger and was infinitely grateful for Mrs. Connors’s help with Grace and keeping up the house. While the two men got each other through the war half way around the world, the two women helped each other with the war of holding down the home front.

As time went on two things became clear. The war was coming to a head, something big was going to happen. And James was about to become a father of two.




His body stopped moving. It was more than that though, he didn’t just stop moving, he deflated. He suck right down into the beach at unnatural angles. His head rolled to the side and James could see the empty eyes. Sam was gone. He watched the medic slump back in defeat.

“No!” he shouted, getting up to rush to Sam. Another soldier held him back. His screams carried across the beach to Sam’s unhearing ears.


Anna’s screams filled the house.

“You have to push,” Mrs. Connors urged, ignoring the string of profanities pouring from the younger woman. Six hours of labor and they were close. “I can see a head, Anna darling, you’ve just got to push.”

She screamed again and pushed as hard as she could. Slowly she could feel the pressure easing. She pushed again and again until finally the baby slipped out into Mrs. Connors’s caring hands and Anna slumped back against the pillows.

“It’s a boy.”

Anna grinned and held her arms out, cradling her new son as he was handed to her. The doorbell rang. Surprised, both women looked up.

“You rest darling, I’ll get it,” Mrs. Connors offered. Anna smiled at her baby boy. She hadn’t considered a name, she had hoped James would be home with her to help pick one. He was perfect, with James’s tiny nose and brilliant eyes.

Mrs. Connors returned and stood in the doorway, tears in her eyes. Anna was startled but the sudden change in demeanor, until she saw the letter in her hand. The letter every wife and mother feared. Terror gripped her chest.

“Is it James?” she whispered

Mrs. Connors shook her head. “My Sammy’s dead.”



James sat in the army hospital reading and rereading the letter in his hands. He was about to ship home. A minor injury got him a medal and a ticket out of the war, but Sam was coming home in a box.

He lost himself in Anna’s words, to keep from losing himself in the memory of Sam’s empty eyes. Only fragments of the letter got through to him.

…we got the letter…

…can’t believe he’s gone, he was so young…

…his mother is devastated…

…a baby boy….

I named him Sam.