The Last Day of the War

I've been making my way through Erik Barnouw's collection of radio plays titled Radio Drama in Action (1945). The latest one that I've read is "The Last Day of the War" by Sergeant Arthur Laurents. Like many of the plays in this collection, it reads like wartime propaganda, although aside from one or two complaints about fascists who want to ruin the American way of life, this one is short on pro-war content, limiting itself to an informative analysis of the challenges facing soldiers who are returning home.

The play focuses on one soldier named Mickey Ryan who has been seriously wounded by shrapnel from a shell that exploded near him. The play's title refers, in one sense to the day on which Mickey's second leg is amputated, but in another to the paradoxical fact that Mickey's real battle is only beginning once the war is over. To make this paradox clear, the play is bracketed by two different but equally vivid sounds, the first representing battlefield combat
(Mickey's injury is signaled by "The long shrill scream of a shell [which] explodes violently on mike"). The play ends with a different sound, that of Mickey slowly mounting three steps with the aid of crutches and his new wooden legs. The end seems very moving and highly effective--clearly this is among the higher quality pieces of wartime propaganda.

One way in which the play clearly takes advantage of its medium is through a representation of Mickey's body that creates a distinct sense of its presence and size. Mickey is described as large: "big, lazy shoulders, strong thighs" (93), and this rough sketch of his bulk is soon expressed far more precisely: "He's 5 feet 11. He weighs 178 pounds and that ain't hay to the pill rollers who carry him on a litter 650 yards to the batallion aid station" (94). This sketch, with its numerically exact "178 pounds," presents an interesting combination of abstract measurement and palpable weight, as we sympathize with the burden of these "pill rollers." The measurements and descriptions of his size, of course, set up the later description of his diminishment upon double amputation. After the first leg is amputated, the narrator refers to Mickey's remaining leg as "that limb which still makes Mickey Ryan 5 feet 11" (97). The remaining leg contracts gangrene, however, and "Mickey Ryan didn't stand 5 feet 11 any more" (102).

As the play moves toward its concluding message of the importance of Mickey's inner transformation, it deemphasizes physical change in favor of a psychological focus. And in this focus the play takes advantage of its medium's ability to alter our perception of reality through speech. Immediately after the narrator's announcement that Mickey is not "5 feet 11 any more," Mickey's wife enters the hospital for her first visit since his injury. Following the narrator's physical description of her--"A little blonde kid dressed in woman's clothes, nervously twisting the very thin gold band on her third finger, left hand"--the woman introduces herself to a major, providing a concise drama of the inner turmoil surrounding her identity and her relationship to Mickey: "I'm Margie Ryan . . . Mrs. Ryan . . . Mickey Ryan's wife" (102). In radio, speech must indicate identity (in the absence of visual clues that would help the audience of a stage play or film). Early in the play, the narrator, like the God of Genesis, hands off the task of naming to one of his creations:

Voice. [. . .] two company aidmen from the medics belly out over the screaming ground to the bloody, floppy body of --what's his name?
Aidman. Hey, it's Ryan! Mickey Ryan! (93)

Now, however, Mrs. Ryan names herself, an important development toward the characters' autonomy as Mickey moves toward life outside of the military hospital.

The drama's end play's with the notion of manipulating the meaning of physical reality through words. As he tries to coax Mickey to walk up the three stairs on his wooden legs, the Major turns the challenge into a metaphor for the new, psychological battle that will replace Mickey's earlier physical combat:

Major. There aren't any buts! You're still a man. You can live. You can work. You can fight.
Mickey. Fight?
Major. Yes! Do you think you must have a gun? There are ways of fighting for everything you want. Do you want your wife?
Mickey. Yes.
Major. Well, get up and walk to her.

But when Mrs. Ryan suddenly appears at the top of the stairs, Mickey loses heart, taking a more cynical view of the Major's analogy as "Just a big spiel to get me to walk up three steps" (110). In the end, however, Mickey makes the three steps up, with the last sound we hear from him being the sound of his prosthetic foot on the top stair. And Mrs. Ryan's reaction--"Mickey . . . Oh, Mickey!" (110) tells us that he has accepted the challenge of this new struggle. It is a dramatic ending, even when read and not heard in its intended medium.