In today’s Impromptus, I mention something that Mark Helprin says about our pathfinders in World War II — something that might apply to men at war in many times and places. The full quotation, from In Sunlight and in Shadow, is, “If they feared anything, it was that they would become wed to safety and forget that to carry themselves properly in combat so as to stay alive they had to forgo hope of living.”
This reminded a reader of ours of a friend of his who served in Vietnam. “When he got there, he was scared out of his mind. But, he told me, a human being can’t live in continual fear. After about a week, he resigned himself to dying over there, and the fear subsided. Then came the day when they told him he’d be going home in a week. It occurred to him that he might actually live to return home — and, for that final week, the intense fear returned.”
Let me give you something lighter, too. In my column, I cite a typical Helprin pun — groan-making yet pleasing, like so many puns: Melancholy — a dog that likes fruit. Well, a reader has sent a photo he snapped long ago. The title, inevitably, is Melon Collie Baby. Behold.
