The Outer Beach by Robert Finch

Author:Robert Finch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Behold, all flesh is as the grass,

and all the goodliness of man

is as the flower of grass;

for lo, the grass with’reth,

and the flower thereof decayeth.

I had been rehearsing the Requiem with a local choral group for several weeks, and I realized that the rhythms of this chorus, stately and insistent, were those of the sea beating endlessly against the shore.

At one point I saw what appeared to be some green fabric and black wire emerging out of the top of the dune. The fabric was quite rotten, and tore easily as I tried to extricate some, but one swatch I pulled free was unmistakably the right front section of an army fatigue jacket. There were still four metal buttons, heavily rusted, down the front, and another button held shut a flap pocket. Above the pocket, on a sewn white canvas strip, were the faint but legible block letters: SOUSA.

This unexpected artifact brought to mind an aspect of this place’s past I had temporarily forgotten, an era not as old as Goody Hallett’s legend, or even the Marconi site, but one that had more of an effect on the local populace than either. During World War II this featureless plain was part of Camp Wellfleet, an antiaircraft emplacement, and, after the war, an offshore firing range. Sousa is a common local name at this end of the Cape, and most likely this jacket belonged to one of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of local boys who spent all or part of the war here. It was tempting to think that this was some old bivouac site or gun emplacement, but more likely it was just one of the numerous small dumps that pocked the area.

Now, half a century later, nearly all the visible signs of Camp Wellfleet—the watchtowers, bunkers, gun emplacements, and barbed-wire fences—have vanished. Instead, a huge benign blue water tower looms over the beach, and to the west the outlines of the faux-colonial buildings of the Cape Cod National Seashore headquarters. The few remaining corrugated-metal barracks, now used for storage, are hidden from view.

It is curious that, while the Marconi site and its remaining artifacts have been carefully preserved, labeled, and memorialized, there is nothing to point the casual visitor to the more recent and less benign uses to which this place was once put. One needs a certain knowledge of local history and a willingness to weave the past out of such tattered threads: a patch of stained fabric, some corroded buttons, a faded name strip. But they stand for a life lived here, or perhaps one put on hold, depending on how its owner viewed war and his part in it. A child of luck and timing, I have no personal knowledge of war, but like this anonymous soldier, I too have stood in desert places, waiting for something to jump-start my life again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.