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| Matty, the first day we met (image property of Kenneth Morford, please ask permission before use) |
The
woman I had just spoken with, walked to
the end of the long corridor and stopped an elderly man coming from a side
door. She placed her arm around his shoulder leaned into his ear, and pointed
toward the entrance where I was standing. He smiled and nodded in my direction,
and I acknowledged with a wave, even though I later learned he could not have
seen me through the one way glass.
But I didn't know, and so I kept smiling and
waving like a nervous little boy. From where I stood, I
could easily see a pantomime of conversation; I saw the moment Matt mouthed the
question “Who?” to Carol’s motioning
toward me.
And there it was, the face that I
would draw and erase a hundred times before landing the perfect likeness, the
one I lost long ago in my transient life. There he was, the same man I had seen
speaking to Charles Karalt about
President Jimmy Carter’s emotional reaction to giving him the Medal of
Honor. There he was, Matt Urban.
I can
still see Matt stuffing his shirt
into his pants and straightening his narrow belt while making his way down
the hall toward me. His hand dove into
his back pocket and pulled out a small comb. He threaded the dark piece of plastic quickly through his long hair,
tucking the locks behind his ears with one hand while patting the side of his
head with the other; ensuring every aspect of his hair was in place and
"presentable" he would later confess.
No one ever combed their hair for
me. A habit from a time when men removed their hats inside a building, checked
the fold of the back of the collar and brushed a hand across the mustache to
make sure everything was in place. Feeling self-conscious I followed his role, and
straightened up myself, running my hand over the top of my head; forgetting
just for a moment I was bald.
"Mr.
Urban, so nice to finally meet you. I've been a fan for a while and discovered
we live in the same town."
"Nice to
meet you too, you 're Ken?"
“Yes.”
"Well Ken,
come into my office. Carol tells me you’re an artist. She mentioned you were
interested in doing my portrait.” I will
never forget how he grabbed my sweaty palm with both hands, and treated me like
an old pal he hadn't seen in years. And
so begins the first of many hundreds of memories I will finally share about my beloved
Matty.
I see the visage of my friend in one
meaningful experience after another, and I am moved with gratitude for the
decade I shared with him.
And now, this online sheet of paper begins to
bring him back to life. Slowly and clearly the memories return. And there he is, my dear and precious
friend. There he is, just as new and fresh as the first day I saw him coming
down the hallway of the Holland Civic Center in 1985.
Matt began
pulling out the drawers to his metal filing cabinet. They were filled with
different sized photographs, which he removed by the handfuls and placed on his desk. We pored over each and every one, and on the back of each and every one,
was a comment written in longhand from a noted celebrity or an anonymous
friend. There were plenty of photographs for me to use as material for a
good likeness, but I was overwhelmed by the casual appearance of famous people
congratulating Matt.
In one photograph, he is with the President
in the white House. In an older picture, a barbecue with General Westmorland.
Layered in between the pictures were hand signed letters from Gerald Ford, Ted
Turner, and the widow of Omar Bradley. I
began to feel embarrassed for thinking I was important enough to even approach him.
Feeling a
little ashamed, I confessed to Matt ,
the portrait idea was just a ruse. I confessed how really, I just wanted a way to get in the door; to meet Matt Urban
because he was famous. For the first time, he laughed aloud, shook his head and
said, “So, you just wanted to rub shoulders with the top brass?”
“Yeah,
well, I wouldn't mind a promotion,” I said looking down at the floor. With a
shared laugh, I realized this was the moment that kilned our friendship into
something solid. Matt made a confession
of his own, and said no one really asks about things anymore. He mentioned how
he had been offered money a few years
back to sell the rights to his story, but turned the offer down. He was
concerned about being portrayed as someone more important than the men who
fought beside him. Reaching into another cabinet drawer, Matty pulled out a
manuscript, cleared a space , and set the thin document in the middle of his
desk in front of me.
“I've been
working on a book.” He said.
“In this book, I want to mention everyone who
was there beside me. Sergeant Evans, Benny, Sebock, all my men. I especially
want to talk about my parents who went to church every night and prayed for me;
all the years in combat, each and every night-because they believed- I
believed- I would survive.”
As our
time together grew in length and texture, we maneuvered far away from the stacks
of photographs and impressive correspondence on official government
stationary. My newly found friend had
taken these images, one by one, and
pulled the threads from around the edges and allowed the very fabric of
their presentation to drift through an
open window out into the streets. I
watched this man carefully unravel the celebration of his much deserved award. With a thorough pull on the tightest bind around an unimaginable remorse, he ascribed the true ownership of
honor, “to every young man who died in my arms.”
“They
should be wearing this medal Ken, not me.”
As Matt Urban spoke in the softest of words I had ever heard, he held out a small slender box and opened
the hinged lid. Inside was the very Medal of Honor he received from President
Carter five years earlier. I didn't know whether to say something, or just keep
quiet. I couldn't believe it. I did not ask to hold the sacred award.
Quietly,
he leaned back in his chair and whispered the name of Billy Goodman. He turned
to me and smiled, then pointed with his
chin toward the window as if he had just seen someone looking back through the
thin layer of glass. Matt Urban began
telling me the story of his loss.
I held
my breath.
November 8th,
1942, Operation Torch, was his first exposure to the horrors of
combat. He remembered the first hour, of the first day, and seeing his beloved
friend decapitated. He described being
so overcome by an emotion he had never felt before; how he grabbed what was
left of Lt. Goodman’s head and attempted to put it back on a still warm body.
He tried to close off the escaping steam
rising from the neck on either side of his friend’s face. Seemed a sensible thing in the midst of
unquenchable fear- to bring him back to life, if there is yet life.
Long pauses
appeared in between the flow of
his conversation, like puddles forming beneath the seams of a broken eves trough.
Each moment added weight and measure to the silence. They appeared to me, like drops
of water, making those perfect circular ridges, radiating outward and forever
until there is no where left to go. This was my cue to respect his hesitation;
to fill this silence, with my own thoughts and wait for him to speak.
I no
longer cared about the pictures and neither did Matt. We left his office of the
Holland Civic center, and began running
side by side, M-1 in hand and vested grenades toward the Kasbah fortress. Gunfire
is heard in the distance, but the bullets strafe the ground near by, “Snipers.”
He warns, and we keep going. “They’re
Germans, right?” I ask.
“ No,
French Legionnaires,” Matt whispers.
“But I
thought…”
“I’ll
explain later.” he cautions, putting his finger to his lips. We are sprinting
now. Soon the bullets are just missing the ears. Matt is
swatting at them like mosquitoes, and I am scared to death. Skimming pass the
edge of my nose, a bullet finds its mark in the body of another man.
All these
men died years before I was even born.
I am feeling guilty for some strange reason.
Matt
glances over at me, removes his helmet.
With worried eyes he says he needs to rest for just a minute. Without a
word, he leaves me temporarily. He needs to help his men struggle through just
one more hour, just one more minute. I
turn away from him , to see Carol putting the vinyl cover over her typewriter,
and getting ready to leave for the day. I look back to see the gentle soldier
has fallen asleep in his chair.
I stare at him in wonder. He looks every bit
the part of the legend I had heard he was. He is not really here; he is
somewhere near Port Lyautey, getting the young men of the 9th division
settled into their bivouac following a costly mission.
I waited
beside him while he slept. I understood he was not taking anything away from
me, but sweeping up the remnants of a long day and putting them away. Matty is
leaning his head against the side of a canvas tent and listening to the
quiet benediction of a summer rain.
There is no such thing as a line in real life, but the eyes and brain accept the long thin roll of carbon as though it were a common thing.
