For God’s Sake!

Just then, the Corps­man popped back into sick bay. “I want ya to come with me,“ he com­manded. “Your divi­sion offi­cer, Lt. Smith, would like to see ya in his stateroom.“

Ner­vous as hell, I sprang to my feet and fol­lowed him down the pas­sage­way, to a lad­der that led up to officer’s coun­try. While the Corps­man and my Divi­sion Offi­cer con­ferred briefly, I stood out­side his stateroom.

Sud­denly the door popped open.

“Come in, Mr. Drury,“ com­manded the Corps­man. As I entered, he intro­duced me to the Lieutenant.

“You may go now,“ said the Lieu­tenant to the Corps­man, as he dis­ap­peared out the door.

“Have a seat, Mr. Drury,“ said the Lieu­tenant, after a brief inter­lude in which he sat behind his desk, look­ing me over, while I stood there at atten­tion with my eyes trans­fixed on a spot over his head on the bulk­head behind him.

As I sat down, I was imme­di­ately struck by how much he resem­bled a tele­vi­sion char­ac­ter from my youth—a pup­pet named Howdy Doody. That the Lieu­tenant had a smaller head and wore glasses were about the only dif­fer­ences I saw between him and his caricature.

“The Corps­man tells me you don’t want to eat any­more. Is that true, Mr. Drury?“ he finally asked.

Look­ing him straight in the eye, I smiled ner­vously. “The Corps­man has told you the truth. I don’t wanna eat any­more,“ I replied.

Com­pletely taken aback by my can­dor, he broke into a mono­logue, in an attempt to regain con­trol of the situation.

“Now, Mr. Drury,“ he began, “you and I both know that we must eat in order to sur­vive. Isn’t that correct?“

In a tremen­dous strug­gle within myself to gain con­trol over my fear of speak­ing from the heart, I regur­gi­tated a bib­li­cal quote in response, “Man does not live by bread alone, Sir, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.“

Now I was just as sur­prised by my response as he was. Though the words had flown way over his head, I was struck by how instinc­tively they had gushed forth from my mouth. As we both strug­gled, dur­ing this very brief inter­lude, to com­pre­hend what the hell I was try­ing to say, I expe­ri­enced some vague notion that man does not live by images alone, like an ani­mal, but on the mean­ing of those images instead.

Ignor­ing the quote, again he asked me, “Can you tell me, Mr. Drury, in your own words, this time, why you no longer wish to eat?“

Because I hadn’t given much thought to what I’d tell them when they found out about my fast, I didn’t know what to say. How could I tell him I just wanted out of the Navy?

To buy myself more time in which to col­lect my thoughts, I sim­ply repeated my ini­tial state­ment, “Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.“

“Come now, Mr. Drury,“ he replied, “I find it hard to believe that you have quit eat­ing for God’s sake. There must be some rea­son why you have cho­sen to hurt your­self in this man­ner. Now what is it?“