Network Aztlan Latino Chicano Comunidades Transnacionales

Siquio's Last Thought

by Ralph F. Lopez-Urbina, a.k.a. Rafas. c/s

Requiem to a Native Son of Dog Town

Siquio didn't have death on his mind on the march south along the Rhine. He didn't have to think about it. Like every soldier around him, he could feel its chilling presence lurking everywhere. Time had never felt as compelling as it felt to him at that moment. The closer he got to the German front, the more acutely he became aware of its limits.

Siquio sensed that time was as precious as life itself. That he could not be frivolous about it. That every moment embraced a precious thought. Just then he happened to be thinking about his family, about his bride Socorro, about Francisco and Maria--his papa and mama, about the fate of his carnales--his brothers Moyo and Titi.

Siquio was proud to risk his life for his country. Even so, the cruel irony of his predicament did not escape him, for at the precise moment that he and his buddies were risking life and limb to rid the world of the scourge of Nazism, back home his brother Moyo was marking time in the L. A. County Jail. Jackbooted Los Angeles cops had arrested him on the bogus charge of assaulting a sailor. Shortly after Siquio had shipped overseas, he got a letter from his brother Titi, who had just completed boot camp at Camp Pendleton, informing him that his brother Moyo had been jailed for a fight he got into with a gang of sailors in downtown L. A. The incident took place on a weekend, while the sailors were on shore leave from the Long Beach Naval Station. The sailors flocked into L. A. on the weekends, looking for girls and action. They found both when they bumped into Moyo and his girlfriend Yolie inside the Penny Arcade, just south of Eighth Street. One of the sailors got carried away and blew a kiss to Yolie. Moyo got pissed off. He told the sailor that Yolie was his chick, to back off. The sailor looked at his buddies, smiled, and blew Yolie another kiss. Moyo felt the sailor was treating Yolie like a slut and he let fly a left hook that smashed into the sailor's jaw, knocking him on his ass.

The blow let all hell loose. The sailors swarmed Moyo like angry bees. They punched and kicked him from every imaginable angle, knocking him to the floor and beating him senseless. Then, heaping insult on injury, they ripped off his zoot suit and left him half-naked and bleeding on the floor. "That's what'll happen to all you stinking Mexicans if you get in our way!" a sailor snarled. The sailors grew silent when the police siren got close to the Arcade. They chuckled as they backed off from the scene of the violence.

The Arcade management had called the cops. Yolie was tending Moyo's injuries when the cops rolled up to the Arcade with sirens blaring. They scrambled inside the Arcade with nightsticks drawn. The Arcade manager told the chotas that the "Mexican" had picked the fight with the sailor. The cops brushed Yolie aside, then roughly pulled Moyo from the floor and cuffed him. They trumped up the charge that he had assaulted a patriot in uniform and hauled him off to jail, a bum rap. A judge later sentenced him to serve two years in the L. A. County Jail.

The way Siquio saw it, un-American bigots had once again mugged American Justice, blindfolding her with the Stars and Stripes, then raping her. They dragged her virtue across the muck of race prejudice and injustice. And they got away with it! Siquio thought, shaking his head.

Siquio had joined Patton's XII Corps in spring 1945, during the closing days of World War II. He was a rifleman assigned to 1st Platoon, King Company, 3rd Battalion. He was a proud member of the vanguard 5th Infantry. He was with Patton when the XII Corps pulled out from Coblenz and charged south along the western bank of the Rhine River.

On March 22, elements of the 5th Infantry got lucky when a reconnaissance patrol searching for a safe way to cross the river spotted a hidden riverside cove along the terraced vineyards of Oppenheim. Encountering no resistance, six battalions, including Siquio's 3rd, piled into rafts and assault boats and paddled across the Rhine, under the cover of darkness.

The six battalions swiftly established a line of defense to cover the risky maneuver. Siquio was one of several men posted on guard duty along this defensive perimeter, while the engineers busied themselves stringing pontoon bridges across the river.

Beneath his steel helmet, Siquio was still honeymooning with Socorro. He visualized himself clinging to her, probing the delicious mystery of love with her, sharing his strength--and, for the first time as a man, his vulnerability, penetrating the uncharted depths of her being, unconsciously hoping to find a haven for the fear and anxiety that threatened to overwhelm him.

His life and his future were balanced on this thought as he scanned the battleground in search of the enemy. Suddenly, a shot rang out, reverberating crisply in the calm of the cold dawn air, upsetting the stealth of the maneuver, and shattering Siquio's reverie. "Hit the dirt!" A voice called out in the dark. The ensuing silence intruded on the battleground like a glacier, freezing the moment for what seemed an eternity.

On Patton's order, 3rd Battalion countered with a heavily armed patrol from Fox company. The patrol clashed with a platoon of German infantry in a field that lay between the vineyards and the village of Oppenheim. Following a brief skirmish, during which several German soldiers were killed and wounded, the battered remnants of the German platoon surrendered to the Americans.

The Sergeant of the guard, meanwhile, rushed out to the perimeter to make a head count of the men posted on guard duty. He found Siquio slumped in a pool of blood. The sniper's bullet had smashed through his steel helmet, killing him instantly, punctuating his last thought.

Back home, Doña Maria, with Siquio's Purple Heart clutched against her broken heart, buried her beloved son at Calvary Cemetery in East L. A. Pobrecita Maria, Moyo in prison, Titi in the Marine's fighting chapos in the Pacific, and now Siquio's Purple Heart. The promise of Siquio's last thought didn't come easy. It summed up a lifetime of dreams and hard work, not the least of which was inspired by Doña Maria's great affection, moral example, and disciplined guidance. His papa, Don Francisco, literally worked himself to death to assure his family's survival and its opportunities for a better life. Maria buried all of it in her heart.

It was different with Socorro. The war took her love from her and returned him in a box. What Siquio bequeathed to his young bride was impossible to bury. Yet their love endured. In their brief honeymoon, Siquio planted his last thought on her lips, in her womb, and ultimately, in the heart of a daughter he would never know.

It was there, in the heart of his unborn child, that Doña Maria's agony, Don Francisco's sacrifice, Titi's distinguished service to his country, the injustice of Moyo's imprisonment, and Socorro's wounded love, all met in a love that promised to endure beyond Siquio's last thought.