When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again

By Gregory G. Sarno

When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again tells the stories of three soldiers in three wars.

Three soldiers. Each someone's Johnny. Father, son. Brother, cousin. Husband, lover. Just plain buddy.

Three conflicts. The Civil War, pitting North against South, Yank against Johnny Reb, brother against brother. The Vietnam War, North-South strife with Orwellian overtones. The War on Terror, Afghanistan theater.

Three stories in screenplay format:

"Owl Creek Bridge," based on the Civil War stories of Ambrose Bierce.

"Sleeping With Charlie," adapted from the author's novel Solomon's Bluff.

"Dawn's Early Light," inspired by a Leo Tolstoy story and a cinematic rendition by Sergei Bodrov Senior.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 7, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595785667

Gregory G. Sarno

Gregory G. Sarno holds a J.D. degree from U.C. Berkeley. He has written several articles for London-based film journal www.ScriptWriterMagazine.com. Nonfiction books include Contemporizing the Classics: Poe, Shakespeare, Doyle; Threshold: Scripting a Coming-of-Age; Lights! Camera! Action!: Crafting an Action Script; When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again: Three Soldiers, Three Wars .

Book preview

WHENJOHNNY COMES

MARCHING HOME AGAIN

Gregory G. Sarno

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME AGAIN

Copyright © 2005 by Littlebear Productions

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

ISBN: 0-595-33775-9 (Pbk)

ISBN: 0-595-67005-9 (Cloth)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

PREFACE

OWL CREEK BRIDGE

SLEEPING WITH CHARLIE

DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT

APPENDIX

DEAR JOHNNY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

When Johnny comes marching home again,

Hurrah! hurrah! We’ll give him a hearty welcome then,

Hurrah! hurrah! The men will cheer, the boys will shout, The ladies, they will all turn out, And we’ll all feel gay When Johnny comes marching home.

The old church bell will peal with joy,

Hurrah! hurrah! To welcome home our darling boy,

Hurrah! hurrah! The village lads and lassies say, With roses they will strew the way, And we’ll all feel gay When Johnny comes marching home.

Get ready for the Jubilee,

Hurrah! hurrah! We’ll give the hero three times three,

Hurrah! hurrah! The laurel wreath is ready now To place upon his loyal brow And we’ll all feel gay When Johnny comes marching home.

Let love and friendship on that day,

Hurrah! hurrah! Their choicest treasures then display,

Hurrah! hurrah! And let each one perform some part, To fill with joy the warrior’s heart, And we’ll all feel gay When Johnny comes marching home.

—Patrick S. Gilmore (1863)

PREFACE

Herein the stories of three soldiers in three wars.

Three soldiers. Each someone’s Johnny. Father, son. Brother, cousin. Husband, lover. Just plain buddy.

Three arenas. The Civil War, pitting North against South, Yank against Johnny Reb. The Vietnam War, North-South strife with Orwellian overtones. The War on Terror, Afghanistan theater.

Three stories in script format:

• Owl Creek Bridge.

• Sleeping With Charlie.

• Dawn’s Early Light.

The Civil War drama Owl Creek Bridge draws its lifeblood from Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Veteran of Shiloh, Bierce wastes precious little ink setting the stage for the action.

Aman stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners.

Robert Enrico’s La Riviere du Hibou AKA An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge won an Academy Award in 1963 for best live-action short. The present script, aspiring to feature length, blends elements from the siege of Vicksburg, as well as other testimonials by Bierce, notably The Coup de Grace and The Affair at Coulter’s Notch.

Sleeping With Charlie covers the aftermath of a Vietnam Vet’s service with the First Cav and Tropic Lightning—and the horrific event that caused his apparent soullessness. The script issues from two chapters of the author’s novel Solomon’s Bluff. The narrative opens:

Set your sights on survival, mere survival, and you were a goner. To survive down under, you had to thrive. You needed the brass balls of a trooper who, knowing he’s going to bite it, plunges into battle with nothing to lose. If it wasn’t the bats and rats, bamboo vipers and boa constrictors…if it wasn’t the fire ants and leeches, scorpions and cen- tipedes…stagnant water, decaying body parts, urine and feces…cam- ouflaged mines and booby-trapped grenades made of Coca-Cola cans and U.S. combat detritus…trapdoors and ninety-degree bends and false walls which concealed Charlie, short for Victor Charlie, military slang for Viet Cong…if these weren’t deterrent enough, it was the clay tunnel itself, dark, dank, desolate, a tunnel so low and narrow you had to slither on your belly like a serpent, so still and silent you could hear Charlie blink.

Dawn’s Early Light was inspired by Sergei Bodrov Senior’s Kavkazskij Plennik AKA Prisoner of the Mountains and its uncredited source, Leo Tolstoy’s A Prisoner in the Caucasus. In the prose original, Abdul Murat commutes a debt by taking custody of two captured Russian soldiers, whom he plans to ran- som for lucre; Murat’s daughter Dina helps one soldier to flee, while the second soldier buys his freedom by arranging payment of the ransom.

Set in Chechnya, Bodrov’s film embraces a host of plot changes. Murat ambushes two soldiers, whom he seeks to exchange for his captive son. One soldier’s throat is slit after short-lived flight, as reprisal for slaying a shepherd. P.O.W. swap implodes when Murat’s son dies trying to bolt. Dina offers means of escape to the second soldier, Vanya (played by the late Sergei Bodrov Junior). Vanya refuses to leave, fearful of the repercussions to Dina. Seemingly intent on vengeance, Murat ushers Vanya past a graveyard, firing wide and thereby granting reprieve. Vanya tries, to no avail, to flag down Russian helicopters and prevent them from rocketing the village as payback.

Galvanized by the Tolstoy/Bodrov gems, Dawn’s Early Light resets the P.O.W. drama in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley. Wholesale changes ensue. American soldiers replace Russians; Tajik Mujahideen supplant Chechens. The cast expands to nourish several subplots, and Dina transmutes from Murat’s 13-year-old daughter into an adult Afghan American niece, Laili.

The appendix excerpts Birthmarks, contemporary thriller with lengthy flashback to one Marine’s stint in the Vietnam War (American War in Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh City). The excerpt intimates the ripple effects of a Dear John sent to a combat zone.

The title of this volume comes from a Civil War-era song by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore (composed, according to some sources, under the pseudonym Louis Lambert). Born on Christmas Day 1829 in Ireland, Gilmore emigrated to the U.S.A. two decades later. He performed as regimental bandleader for the 24th Massachusetts Infantry. Reportedly, Gilmore and his wards served as stretcher-bearers at Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, and other bloodbaths.

More than one title pays homage to the lyrics of Gilmore’s anthem. Take Dixon Wecter’s When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1944), which consi- ders the status of returning vets when the guns fall silent. Professor Wecter observes:

Generations of Americans, under the ambivalence of war-and-peace, have treated the soldier with fickleness—hailing him as a hero and then as a nuisance, a suspicious rather seedy character like a broken-down jockey or prizefighter.

Witness, too, Mildred Aldrich’s When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1919), epistolary reportage from France during the Great War. Writes Aldrich:

Johnny and his family tangoed, and fox-trotted, and turkey-trotted, and gambled, and strutted, each after his own self-centered interests, or tried, in his undisciplined way, to get on, or was leisurely happy according to his class, until the flag was unfurled, and all Americans, equal in service under the colours, became brothers of one family. I am wondering…if Johnny, who is the son of the nation, in his uniform under the flag for which he is ready to die, will be—if he lives—still the beloved son of the nation when he strips that uniform off?

What awaits Johnny back home? asks Aldrich.

Will he tango and loaf and once more think only of himself? I doubt it. Even if, in the first joy of his discharge and of his getting that uniform off—it is so unbecoming—he may for a moment seem unchanged; if for a brief space he longs to roll like a dog just unchained, and to rush about madly in pure delight of liberty, I have a conviction that he will carry home with him something beside the kit he brought over-seas, and I believe that these boys who, in the next decade, are to rule the country will soon be heard from and felt. It will take a bit of time for him to shake down, but if, When Johnny comes marching home again, he does not carry with him the soul he has found, in so many cases, over here, it will be so much the worse for all the world and fatal for the States.

Prescient words in 1919. Prescient words now.

A parting thought. That the three stories told here involve male protago- nists entails no slight to womankind, who have served honorably as nurse, spy, comrade in arms. Women’s heroics on the battlefield are well documented. See, for instance, DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002); Maj. Gen. Jeanne Holm, USAF (Ret.), Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution (Novato: Presidio Press, 1982); Keith Walker, A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of Twenty-Six American Women Who Served in Vietnam (Novato: Presidio Press, 1985); Richard Worth, Women in Combat: The Battle for Equality (Springfield: Enslow Publishers, 1999); Karen Zeinert, Those Courageous Women of the Civil War (Brookfield: Millbrook Press, 1998).

OWL CREEK BRIDGE

FADE IN:

EXT. OWL CREEK BRIDGE-NIGHT A flame flares, flickers, dies. A SENTRY in Union Blue lights a hand-roll. O.S. SOUND of owl HOOTING.

EXT. OWL CREEK BRIDGE-DAWN

PEYTON FARQUHAR, late 3 0s, strides toward the span.

Bootless, Peyton features a mustache, goatee, and kepi.

Shaggy hair drapes a greasy frock coat.

Tattered trousers match the coat’s color: butternut.

Twine binds wrists behind back.

A SERGEANT in Union Blue marches ahead.

TWO PRIVATES in Union Blue flank Peyton.

1st Private lugs a plank; 2nd Private, a hefty rope coil. CAPTAIN RANSOME pulls up the rear.

TWO SENTRIES stand watch at opposite ends of the bridge. They shoulder muzzle-loading rifles.

The span bears rail tracks and overhead cross-timbers. Twenty feet below, water swirls between steep banks. Forest cloaks the land west of the north-south flow. Rail tracks slice through forest.

A log stockade stands east of the bridge. The muzzle of a 12-pound Napoleon smoothbore, peeping from an embrasure, targets the bridge and beyond.

An INFANTRY COMPANY on the eastern bank monitors Peyton’s progress. LIEUTENANT PRICE commands the infantrymen. Nearby stands a TEEN DRUMMER, drumsticks poised.

The Sergeant leading Peyton passes the eastern sentry, stiff as a statue.

As Peyton strides past, a stone lacerates his foot.

He bites his lip, keeps striding apace.

He and his escorts gain midpoint of the bridge.

1st Private mounts an overhead cross-timber.

2nd Private tosses up the rope coil.

The coil, thrown short, eludes an outflung hand.

Tumbling, the coil nearly drops through a gap in the cross-ties before 2nd Private snags it.

Again, 2nd Private heaves the coil; again, it tumbles.

2nd Private gives a shrug. He loops coil over shoulder, clambers onto rail, mounts cross-timber.

The two privates wrap the rope round the cross-timber. 1st Private fastens a hangman’s noose.

2nd Private backtracks, descending with the free end and securing it to a side rail.

1st Private lets the noose fall, shimmies down the rope.

He lays the plank onto two cross-ties. The front end nearly reaches a third cross-tie, falling just short.

1st Private straddles the center of the plank.

2nd Private prods Peyton onto the front end, facing west toward the for- est.

Peyton stands tall as the Sergeant wreathes his neck. The Sergeant offers a hood, eliciting a curt shake.

He steps behind Peyton to anchor the rear of the plank. He gives a sig- nal, cueing 1st Private to step off.

CAPTAIN RANSOME Peyton Farquhar, you have been condemned to die as a spy and assassin. Your sentence will be executed at oh-six-hundred. Have you any last words?

PEYTON Live free or die.

The Captain digs out a GOLD POCKETWATCH.

CAPTAIN RANSOME Five fifty-eight.

Peyton shuts his eyes.

With inner eye, he sees:

MONTAGE-HOME SWEET HOME

A) Palatial white manor.

B) Plantation with plum orchard and cornfields.

C) SOUTHERN BELLE, early 3 0s, with suckling INFANT.

D) GIRL, 15, modeling bridal gown.

E) BOY, 13, crossing modest bridge astride steed. O.S. SOUND fades in.

END MONTAGE-BACK TO SCENE Peyton opens his eyes.

He pans the area, seeking source of O.S. SOUND. O.S. SOUND grows louder, more ominous. Its tempo quickens.

The Captain grips the gold pocketwatch.

The SOUND registers as TICKING of the watch.

CAPTAIN RANSOME Five fifty-nine.

The ticking subsides. Momentarily, it yields to:

O.S. SOUND of owl HOOTING.

Peyton peers past the Captain, as if seeking the owl. With mind’s eye, he sees:

EXT. FOREST-DAWN (FANTASY)

A WISPY SHARPSHOOTER in Rebel Gray cups hands to mouth and mimes an owl HOOTING.

The sharpshooter stops hooting. He steadies a WHITWORTH sniper rifle on a branch. With telescopic sight, he homes in on the rope strung from the cross-timber.

The wispy imagery zaps at O.S. SOUND of DRUM ROLL.

EXT. OWL CREEK BRIDGE-DAWN

Teen Drummer executes a DRUM ROLL.

The Captain grips the gold pocketwatch.

CAPTAIN RANSOME Five. Four. Three. Prepare to meet your Maker.

He signals.

The Sergeant steps off the plank, leaving it anchorless. Rear end of plank flies up a la seesaw. O.S. SOUND of GUNSHOT. Bullet severs rope.

Peyton plunges between cross-ties, splashes into river. EXT. UNDERWATER-DAWN

Peyton plummets, eyes shut, bubbles seeping.

He opens his eyes, shows surprise as plank sinks past.

He glances up at the ever-receding surface.

He struggles to free the cord binding his wrists.

He kicks with both feet to halt descent.

Frantic kicks catapult him upward.

The final pocket of air explodes from his lungs.

Legs lash in a last-gasp bid to surface.

EXT. EASTERN BANK-DAWN

The Lieutenant trains a sword at the brass cannon.

LT. PRICE Adderson! Order the artillery to fire downstream.

CORPORAL ADDERSON, 18, bolts toward the stockade.

The Lieutenant trains his sword at the bridge.

LT. PRICE Company. Forward. Charge.

EXT. RIVER-DAWN

Peyton bursts to the surface facing downstream, chest heaving. He sucks in a lungful, expels it with a SHRIEK. The current whips him round in a half circle. Facing upstream, Peyton sees:

His executioners loom on Owl Creek Bridge in silhouette against the dawning sky.

The Captain waves a pistol. The Sergeant SHOUTS and gesticulates, his movements grotesque, slo-mo.

One sentry raises rifle to shoulder.

Peyton sees the muzzle FLASH.

A bullet strikes the water, spraying his face. He hears a second REPORT. A bullet splashes, closer.

A counter-swirl catches Peyton and propels him half round, facing down- stream anew.

To his rear, infantrymen fan out on the bridge, the Lieutenant dashing with sword aloft.

Peyton perks his ears as a voice rings out, preternaturally clear:

LT. PRICE Company. Shoulder arms. Fire.

EXT. UNDERWATER-DAWN Peyton dives.

Water dulls the THUNDER of O.S. volley.

Bullets penetrate the surface. One slug lodges in the knot of the noose, yet looped round Peyton’s neck.

EXT. RIVER-DAWN

Peyton resurfaces, gasping.

Over his shoulder, he sees the infantrymen reload.

Metal ramrods glint as they are drawn from the barrels and thrust into their sockets.

Peyton kicks furiously, his bound arms dead weight. O.S. SOUND of cannon BLAST. A cannonball geysers nearby.

A vortex snares Peyton, spinning him round and round.

The river, the banks, the forest, the ever-receding bridge-all jumble and blur.

Objects degrade to color alone: horizontal streaks.

Peyton sweeps past a bend-and thence out of line of sight of the Union Blues.

The vortex catapults him onto a boulder-strewn sandbar at the foot of the western embankment.

The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one arm on a jagged rock, recall him to his senses.

Peyton glances upstream. He sees:

No sign of bridge, stockade, Union Blues.

He rubs his bound wrists on the jagged rock. He severs the bindings, lac- erating both wrists.

He WEEPS from joy on hands and knees.

He digs fingers in sand, showers himself with granules.

Weeping leaves him gasping for breath.

He grasps the culprit: noose yet looping his neck.

He claws at damp hemp. The bullet lodged in the knot works free, bounces off stone, rolls onto sand.

Peyton peers at the slug, utterly in the dark.

Realization dawns.

He explodes in raucous LAUGHTER.

Laughter turns to choking: the noose again.

He claws anew, breaking nails, bloodying fingertips.

Resistance by the water-sodden twine spawns a frantic groping and goug- ing.

Strand by strand, Peyton rips asunder his choker. Free at last! he flops onto sand.

Greenery on the bank assumes a Garden of Eden hue.

Peyton seems content to bask here forever.

O.S. SOUND of cannon BLAST shatters his reveries.

A whiz and rattle of GRAPESHOT among the branches high overhead rouse him.

Peyton springs to his feet, vaults up the sloping bank, plunges into the forest.

SERIES OF SHOTS-HOMEWARD BOUND

A) Peyton, heading southerly, zigzags from tree to tree as Union Blues give chase in blind pursuit.

B) He crosses river easterly at narrow stretch, courtesy of lightning- struck tree trunk.

C) He doubles back northeasterly on eastern bank.

D) He plucks handful of plums, then hurdles orchard fence, losing his plunder as two YELPING hounds nip.

E) He slinks toward UNION PICKET, dozing on perimeter of regiment’s worth of canvas tents.

F) Peyton strips muzzle-loading rifle from picket, bound and gagged.

G) Clad in picket’s boots and Union Blues, Peyton borrows regimental mule.

H) Astride mule, he spooks HOG foraging on severed limb.

EXT. COULTER’S NOTCH (WESTERN SLOPE)-DAY A notch cuts a crevice in the crest of a hill.

A narrow turnpike mounts a sinuous ascent through lush greenery on the hillside. The turnpike, broad enough to hold one set of caisson wheels, runs through the notch and then (one imagines) begins descent on O.S. eastern slope.

Peyton gains the base of the hill well below the notch. He dismounts and discards his borrowed Union Blues. He dispatches the mule rearward via slap to rump. He sprints up the turnpike.

EXT. COULTER’S NOTCH (CREST)-DAY

Peyton pans the expanse to the east. He sees:

The turnpike leads to the modest bridge seen earlier. Beyond lies the palatial white manor and, some distance hence, tumbledown slaves’ quar- ters. A plum orchard flanks the manor to one side; cornfields, to the other.

Tiny HUMAN FIGURES cavort on the plantation grounds: Southern Belle with infant AD LIBBING to 15-year-old girl; 13-year-old boy astride steed; TWO DOZEN SLAVES, toiling in orchard and cornfields.

Peyton WHOOPS for joy, dashes down the eastern slope.

EXT. FLORENCE-DAY

Lazy spring afternoon.

SUPER-FLORENCE, ALABAMA

FOURTEEN MONTHS EARLIER MAY 1862

EXT. GRADE SCHOOL-DAY

A one-horse-drawn carriage camps out front. INT. CLASSROOM-DAY

Four columns of linked desks, six per column, hold a DOZEN PUPILS, rang- ing in age from 12 to 16.

Two youths strike a memory chord: 15-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy. Peyton faces a blackboard: clean shaven, trim haircut.

He chalks verse from memory: Henry Constables’s classic IF THIS BE LOVE.

He consults a poetry book, changes comma to semi-colon.

PEYTON

Who amongst you brims with the lyric urge?

Peyton pans blank faces. Momentarily:

PEYTON

Adrian.

ADRIAN BRISCOE FARQUHAR, 13, rises. He RECITES the poem with scant sem- blance of lyric urge.

ADRIAN To live in hell, and heaven to behold; To welcome life, and die a living death.

PEYTON

Put some life into it.

Adrian resumes, as lifeless as ever.

ADRIAN To sweat with heat, and yet be freezing cold.

PEYTON

No, sir. You