The man in the purple suit

 I don't remember exactly what his name was, but it began with a K.  Koraba possibly.   I did not have much contact with him because our assigned duties were in different sections of the guided missile base, and our work schedules rarely coincided.   He was a mild and naive soul who never adjusted to the crudities of Army life.  He did and said things that drew ridicule from the troops.  In Germany, we were often visited by a sales representative from a custom tailoring company who we called Hong Kong Charlie,  named for  where the clothes were sewn.  K. ordered a suit from him with an iridescent fabric that flashed from purple to maroon when the light struck it.  He thought it was nifty.  It was actually ugly. The troops shouted out warnings to put on sun glasses when K. wore it.  He often remonstrated with his fellow soldiers about their carousing and their pursuit of loose women.  He prayed before eating his food in the mess hall and before going to sleep.  He meekly protested when treated with unkindness or cruelty, which was often.  His meekness seemed to attract the attention of bullies.  The ridicule was constant, but some of the men sternly told the ridiculers to leave him alone.

One morning when we fell out for reveille, we were unable to wake K. up.  We reported this to the duty sergeant who tried to arouse him, then summoned the medics.  The last time I saw K. was on a stretcher as he was being carried to an ambulance.  We heard that he was taken to the Army hospital in Heidelberg, then to an Air Force hospital that had a psychiatric ward and staff trained to deal with mental issues.  Our post medic told us that K. had regressed into an infantile state in which he sought refuge from his problems through lapsing into  unconsciousness.  We never heard if he was ever awakened again.

For some of us, it was a hard experience.  It was like losing a fellow soldier in combat, except his own side inflicted the wounds.  We talked among ourselves about the insane depravity that a person could be drafted to serve his country and end up like K.  We talked about whether the military needed to be more attentive in dealing with cases like K.'s, and the irony of the fact that the Army which had liberated Germany from the concentration camps had created just such a place for K.  For many of us, it was a sad tragedy.  It still haunts me.

I didn't know him well enough to remember his exact name, but I never forgot him and the forlorn life he lived.  Some of us had tried to be kind and friendly to him, but he did not fit into the lives we lived as soldiers.  He wasn't the kind of guy who would join you for a friendly beer or go on pass with.  After he was gone from the barracks, one of the men asked if there was anyone in our outfit that K. could call a friend.  Another man asked if there was anyone in the world he could call a friend.  K. projected a desolate and pain-filled life.  No one knew his background or the kind of life he led as a civilian.  However, his departure left most of his fellow soldiers in a deeply saddened state.

This all happened more than 60 years ago, but the case of K. still comes to mind.  He was a peculiar sort of fellow, which made him the object of ridicule and cruelty by some people.  The man who bunked next to me suggested that a group of us pay a visit to K. at the hospital where he ended up to wish him well.  We thought that even if he had not regained consciousness, a visit from fellow soldiers would register on him.  But we learned that he had been moved again, presumably back to the U.S., and we were unable to get anymore information on his status.  

What happened to K. was a failure of our battery in basic humanity.  Its treatment of K. was a refutation of what our schools and churches try to teach us.  Most of the men realized this, and there was a very noticeable drop in morale.  One man expressed it:  we'll never forget the man in the purple suit.

He was right.