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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > September > 01 > Entry
Mr. D and the island whisperer
This is part two of three posts on my most inspiring teacher.
In darkness and mud, the young Marine, face dripping in the humidity, brushed back branches and leaves and hurried to keep up with the rest of the men. Under a green helmet bringing up the rear of the patrol, he knew better than to fall behind on one of these islands.
So with skin rubbed raw by the crease of his worn boots and a cotton tongue yearning for a canteen swig, Gene Doherty slogged on.
Chugging along quietly through the black and green of the midnight brush, there was a sound. A whisper, he thought it was, but then again maybe just the wind through the trees. He listened and heard it again calling softly.
“Eugene!”
Gene slowed his pace and turned to the bushes and trees. The Japanese could be anywhere. Stories the other guys told were terrifying. The enemy, they said, would hide along the trails and whisper American names. “Johnny!” they’d call out, in hushed tones from the dark, or “Bobby!”
An unsuspecting soldier at the back of the line might hesitate, take a step off the trail. It’s just what the enemy wanted. Those guys were never heard from again.
So Gene kept going. But then again that voice.
“Eugene!”
He stopped, for just a second. There was something familiar about the voice. A buddy? Lost, perhaps injured?
Or was it the enemy? Calling out an American name, trying to lure him, like the Johnnys and Bobbys before.
But Eugene?
It hardly seemed like a name they’d choose. Gene, maybe. Everyone called him Gene, except his mother and father.
The Marine in front had gotten a few steps ahead. Gene turned away from the bush, and quick-stepped back into line. He kept listening, but the voice was gone.
A week later, on a different Pacific island, the word reached him. His father had died. Gene took the cable from his sergeant to his pack and retrieved his journal and looked for the date for the entry he had written about the voice from the darkness. He checked the date and time of his father’s death and counted the time zones.
Same night, same time as when he heard the whisper in the darkness:
“Eugene!”
The story continues here.
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