Through the Looking Glass

I awoke the fol­low­ing morn­ing only to find myself rush­ing around to get to my bat­tle sta­tion on time when, after a leisurely break­fast, the call went out over the loud­speaker for all hands to report to gen­eral quar­ters for my first real taste of war games since com­ing onboard the ship. No sooner had I plopped myself down inside the five-​​inch gun mount to which I’d been assigned for GQ, than I suc­cumbed to a fright­fully dis­so­cia­tive mood. Ren­dered barely func­tional by the feel­ing side of my per­son­al­ity as she dis­so­ci­ated her­self from me, I could hardly hear what the oth­ers were say­ing to each other in the result­ing void.

At that point, I was abruptly pulled back from the void and tem­porar­ily reunited with what I was painfully feel­ing when a third class gunner’s mate ques­tioned me. “You don’t like the Navy, do ya Drury?“

“No, I don’t,“ I replied rather fee­bly as the sights and sounds of the present moment came crash­ing back into my awareness.

Sud­denly, the gun mount began to swivel about, jerk­ing back and forth with a whin­ing sound, before it set­tled upon a par­tic­u­lar posi­tion. The can­non too, was raised, then low­ered into posi­tion for fir­ing. And with that, sev­eral rounds were fired off in quick suc­ces­sion at a small island called Kahoolawe, the Navy’s fir­ing range.

While the gun mount recoiled around the deaf­en­ing sound of each round, I found myself get­ting sick from the com­bi­na­tion of the smell of gun­pow­der, the gyra­tions of the gun mount and the ship’s bob­bing up ’n’ down, like a cork, as it stood dead in the water. How eas­ily did I slip back into my stu­por to escape the intol­er­a­ble­ness of the moment—the inten­sity of the scream­ing in my head and pain in my chest. How long I remained men­tally and emo­tion­ally blacked out, I do not know since I didn’t come to, until some­time later, down in the com­part­ment. What had tran­spired in the interim, I could not recall at the time.

Only now do I rec­ol­lect hav­ing had a fan­tasy in which I was washed up onto the shore of some strange island as the sole sur­vivor of a ship­wreck. How long I lay there passed out upon the beach, I do not know. At some point, I vaguely remem­ber feel­ing the soft hand of a woman caress­ing my face. But I could not see her, for I was unable to open my eyes, which had swollen shut as a result of their hav­ing been overly exposed to salt water. When I did finally man­age to open my eyes, I found myself stand­ing down in the com­part­ment, look­ing into the mir­ror that hung there. And at first, I could’ve sworn I saw no reflec­tion of my self in the mir­ror. In fact, I was shocked when I actu­ally felt an urge to walk back into the mir­ror, or through the look­ing glass, so to speak. At that point, I saw my reflec­tion and began to hear the sounds of other peo­ple milling about me.