The Medic

by Leo Litwak

  Maybe he had continued marching because spirit or consciousness no longer guided him. Or maybe up till the last second he hoped Jones would relent.

  I came to know Roy Jones when he later joined our platoon. What he’d done made him more than he otherwise seemed: a mere country boy with parochial judgments, a fool, no one you’d listen to but for his terrible possibilities.

  I told Lucca I didn’t want to be part of what Roy Jones had done and considered asking for a transfer from the company.

  Lucca said death was everywhere. Where would I go to avoid it?

  I asked if we were no better than the Germans.

  Lucca was tired of his obligations, tired of the war, tired of his men, tired of me. “Let’s just get it over with,” he said.

  SOMETIMES OUR OBJECTIVE was the high ground. The German village was picture-postcard lovely from the vista of the high ground. You could see it in its entirety, centered around a church, homes tightly gathered about a town square, plowed fields spreading from the edges, the whole ringed with forest, tidy and compact. Before battle you might hear the distant medley of cattle lowing, dogs barking, church bells chiming. Later, in the spring, you smelled the newly turned soil and manured fields. It was the sound and smell of a world you might find in your best dreams.

  Despite the great view, the high ground was not a place to be. Enemy artillery concentrated on the high ground.

  At first I tried being casual about artillery fire. Shells would hit in the distance then move in, and it seemed humiliating to rush for cover, so I took my time getting out of the way, waiting almost for the warmth of the blast before jumping into my slit trench. It didn’t take long to find out what shrapnel could do and then I hit the ground sooner rather than later, not worried about looking foolish.

  A shell fragment could act as bullet, knife, cleaver, bludgeon. It could punch, shear, slice, crush. It could be surgical in its precision or make sadistic excess seem unimaginative.

  The more experienced I was, the edgier I became. By the time the war ended, any loud noise could bring me down.

  IT WAS ON HIGH ground that the war reached its climax for me.

  We dug in above a Mosel valley village. Billy and I did most of the digging. Lucca was busy checking positions. We dug fast and, once safe underground, ignored the occasional shell. We dozed till late afternoon when the sound of battle stopped. We watched B Company enter the village without resistance. It was a lovely sight from the high ground, the tidy village in the late afternoon of a crisp, sunny day, the troops of B Company sauntering down both sides of a country lane into town. Lucca told us to buckle up, we were joining B Company. “Hot chow tonight. Let’s go,” almost the last words he spoke. We left our trenches, strapped on our gear. Maurice pointed into the distance. He shouted, “Rockets!” I don’t know what he saw, perhaps rockets coming off the launcher a mile away. We called the rockets “screaming meemies,” didn’t take them as seriously as cannon fire. They hadn’t proved as accurate. Instead of the whistling sound of artillery shells passing overhead, the rockets shrieked by in bundles. Once you learned the sound there wasn’t much to fear. The rockets had never come close and it was only because I was spooked by shell fire that I dived for the slit trench as soon as Maurice called out, “Rockets!” I was still in the air when the rocket hit and the shock turned me in midair and I landed on my back inside the trench. Lucca flopped on top of me. I started laughing at the close call. Lucca cried, “Help me, Leo.” Billy lay at the edge of the trench. He cried, “Morphine.” I wiggled out from under Lucca. He said, “My stomach.” I opened his jacket. His belly was slit open, rolls of intestine exposed. Billy’s leg was gone at the upper calf, the stump bleeding. I yelled for help, grabbed a belly compress from my kit and pressed Lucca’s gut back in. A lieutenant from the Second Platoon came over, looked at Billy, said, “I can’t.” I jumped out, tied a tourniquet above the knee, stuck Billy with morphine, climbed back into the trench. The rockets screamed in, salvo after salvo. They kept coming. The company got out of there fast. Lieutenant Klamm yelled at me to stay until they could send help. A second platoon rifleman jumped in with us. He squeezed himself into a ball to take up as little room as possible in the crammed trench. I suppose he was there to protect us. Lucca whispered, “My leg.” His ankle was loose. The foot wobbled when I touched it. I used his bayonet and scabbard to splint the foot and ankle. I covered Billy with a raincoat, loosened the tourniquet. He said nothing more after he called for morphine. The night sky was lit by rockets. The Germans seemed to be coughing up everything they had left. The rockets screamed in for hours. Lucca moaned once, “Mama, Mama,” but didn’t answer when I asked how he was doing. The rifleman never said a word.

  It was deep night before the barrage ended. A jeep came up the hill with Lieutenant Klamm and two litter bearers. I told Lucca he was going to the hospital but he didn’t respond. I thought I felt Billy’s breath but couldn’t catch his pulse. We placed them on litters across the cab of the jeep and it took off.

  Lieutenant Klamm led us to the village. Our platoon was in the kitchen of the company billet. There were men under the table, on top of the table, on the sink, under the sink, crouched against the tile oven, on top of the oven. I told them about Billy and Lucca. Lucca was still alive. I wasn’t sure about Billy.

  The next day we learned that the ambulance carrying them to the division hospital was caught in a jam of military traffic and that they died en route.

  Maurice gave me brandy in a canteen cup. I told him exactly what I saw, the neat coils of intestine bulging from Lucca’s slit belly, his ankle so loose it must only have been attached by skin and ligaments. Lucca’s last word was “Mama.” Billy’s last word was “morphine.” I drank the brandy and lay down but didn’t sleep.

  I felt no fatigue or grief. I was intensely awake. I felt I understood the last moment of the tall German whom Roy Jones killed. I could be in the shoes of the man about to die and march ahead and feel death coming and be calm and resigned.

  In the morning Lieutenant Klamm told me I was wanted at company headquarters and to bring my gear.

  “What for?”

  “Can’t say.”

  Captain Dillon met me at the company jeep. He said, “Congratulations,” and shook my hand. I was among a handful selected from the regiment to inaugurate a new program of battlefield leaves to begin immediately. The jeep would take me to regiment and I’d be on my way to Paris.

  Sergeant Lucca was mistaken when he said there were no rewards. He just didn’t know how to go about getting them.

  CHAPTER 6

  < PARIS LEAVE, 1945 >

  Blustery weather, rain flung in my face, the sky moving fast, brief moments of clearing, then black clouds again and rain.

  The muddy jeep took me to regimental headquarters. I joined eleven others in the carriage of a three-quarter-ton truck and we were driven to division headquarters. There we transferred to a two-and-a-half-ton uncovered truck, and thirty more GIs climbed aboard. It started raining again; we broke out ponchos and huddled together for the two-hour drive to a supply depot, a vast tent city outside Esch in Luxembourg. We were led to a storeroom where we received new outfits, everything from long johns to boots and hip-length field jackets. I surrendered my own bloody jacket with the last traces of Lucca and Billy Baker on the sleeves.

  We carried our new clothes and filed naked down a maze of canvas corridors that ended in overhead showers. We left clothes and boots in an adjoining dressing tent, stood on duckboards over mud, and showered amid squalls of rain. We dried, shaved, dressed, were shepherded to a great tent set up with plank tables and benches. Hundreds of us moved down a chow line, mess kits extended for turkey and stuffing, cornmeal biscuits, apple pie. Afterward we marched to paymasters who doled out three months’ back pay in francs and dollars. At midnight we climbed aboard a hissing train and entered dimly lit compartments, blackout shades covering the windows. We sat four to a bench, facing each other. The train, steaming and re
ady to go when we climbed aboard, didn’t budge for two hours. Then it lurched, picked up pace, and began to travel at a good clip only to grind to a halt just beyond Esch. We were dragged backward and shunted to a siding. We waited another hour while priority traffic passed.

  From the beginning I had an acute sense of time slipping away. I wanted to get far enough from the front to be beyond recall by some clerk who might discover that the leave was a mistake. The redheaded corporal seated next to me said, “Fuck this waiting. The leave begins as of now.” He pulled out an unlabeled pint bottle, drank, and passed it to me. “So long, Sobriety. Drink and pass it on.” He introduced himself. “For some goddamn reason they call me Red.”

  Red was short and solid with a sharp face and receding chin. He spoke with a rural twang spiked with inappropriate giggles. “I promised my buddies, no sleep and no waking minute sober.” He was here, he said, because his outfit was caught by artillery in the forest outside of Metz. Tree bursts sprayed shrapnel straight down. They tried digging in but the ground was dense with roots so they axed trees and laid down two courses of midsized logs under a log roof. His entire squad crawled under the shelter, the roof so low they couldn’t rise to their knees. They lay inside on their bellies, coming out only to piss and shit and get rations and serve guard duty. They were blasted continuously for a week. “Loudest show on earth,” he said, and giggled. Most of the casualties happened during the brief periods they were outside their log pens.

  He showed me his net-covered steel helmet, one side gashed open. He intended to keep the helmet as a memento of the forest. Eight dead, twelve wounded in his platoon. He was one of three survivors in his squad. Surviving was his ticket to this special train. He shouted, “I earned this fucking leave,” as if someone had challenged his being here, then giggled. He considered himself a representative of everyone in his platoon and meant to use his leave for their pleasure as well as his. He repeated his vow against sleep and sobriety. His destination was Pig Alley and around-the-clock whoring.

  We all told stories to justify being on leave from the front. When my turn came I told how Lucca dived for the trench a fraction of a second behind me, his belly slit open. I told how Billy Baker hung over the edge of the trench, his leg blown off at midcalf. I embellished what happened and made it false, Lucca larger than life, Billy distorted by maudlin sympathy. An invisible, alien country passed on the other side of opaque train windows, and yearning to be located, I betrayed an as yet unfathomed experience to win the sympathy of strangers.

  We reached the Gare St. Lazare in early morning and descended into a huge shed, a skeleton of iron beams and struts supporting an acre of glass roof. Trucks carried us through a gray drizzle to the Grand Hotel, its grandness reduced to barracks, the lobby transformed into a mess hall. The rooms were all doubles, and Red and I teamed up. We entered an almost bare room furnished with cots. I flopped onto my bed and Red said, “Uh, uh. No lying down. Keep moving, Buddy. We sleep on the way back.”

  I told him to go ahead. I’d use the john and meet him in the mess. He left and I lay down and tried to go under but after a few minutes forced myself to join the others for breakfast.

  They had decided Pig Alley was our destination. It was still early but the plan was to stop at bars en route.

  Paris was the first undamaged city I’d seen in months. It was cold and gray and beautiful, ancient stone façades intact. It was the first week of March and the grand boulevards were lined with leafless trees. Though military traffic owned the avenues, and uniforms were everywhere, you could already see the shape of a world at peace.

  The city had been liberated for a few months but we were still welcomed at the bars—Bravo, les Américains—and the good feeling earned us some free drinks.

  Red took it on himself to be our spokesman. I translated but couldn’t do justice to his lingo.

  “We come from war and we seen everything—‘toot’ like you say—and you got a beautiful city and there is no woman as beautiful as the mademoiselle. If she was mine I’d keep her under lock and key and I’m grateful to you garçons for turning the ladies out in the streets where they can be had for a couple bucks.”

  I didn’t try to translate the last.

  Red had his eye on the clock, and about noon, he said, “Time for Pig Alley.”

  I said, “I’ll take a raincheck. See you for dinner.”

  “You’re pooping out on us, Buddy.”

  I told him I’d rather sleep than get laid.

  “Your funeral. Fifty-four hours from now you won’t have that choice.”

  I took off for the hotel, entered our room, hoped to sleep as long as it took to stop feeling stunned, but woke up two hours later, still numb and displaced. The day had cleared. It was sunny and warm. I walked on the Champs-Elysées behind elegant women, in arm’s reach but as distant as stars. I stopped at a barber shop, couldn’t think of the vocabulary for haircuts and let the barber do what he wanted. I found a photographer near the hotel and had my photo taken.

  I walked past the Arc de Triomphe and the Opéra, stopped at Napoléon’s Tomb, which was closed, took the metro to the Ile St. Louis, went to Notre Dame, vaguely noted the massive buttresses and arches, the stained glass, the statues, the gargoyles, too dazed to focus on anything.

  In late afternoon I returned to pick up my photo, a glum, unsmiling twenty-year-old with a fresh haircut, sideburns almost erased, new olive drab wool shirt open at the throat. It was a disappointment. I had hoped to find a face transformed by war. I wrote on the back, “March 3, taken on leave, two days after the death of Sgt. Edward Lucca, Your son, Leo,” and mailed it from the hotel. I walked to the Musée de l’Homme, stood on the balcony, looked down the concourse to the Eiffel Tower, and watched the day darken.

  I returned to the hotel with forty-eight hours left.

  Back for dinner, Red told me to forget the Eiffel Tower and all the tourist crap. The best sight in town was Pig Alley. He and the other six emerged from the Pigalle metro stop and it was zigzag all the way to the Moulin Rouge. Their goal was the Moulin Rouge but it wasn’t yet open. Anyway they didn’t make it past the gauntlet of whores. They were taken to hotels, then released to walk the gauntlet again.

  Their destination after dinner was again the Moulin Rouge and I joined them. We came out of the metro, passed the long line of women calling their offers, entered the darkened vestibule of the Moulin Rouge. Red pulled aside the blackout curtain and exposed a vast, turbulent room. There were Russians, French, British, Norwegians, Poles, Moroccans, turbaned Indians. Officers sat at tables next to enlisted men. Waiters squeezed between jammed tables carrying trays of drinks overhead. A band played at the front of the room. The singer, a bare-shouldered, middle-aged blond woman, stood at the mike on the lip of the bandstand singing a throaty, all-out rendering of “J’attendrai.”

  “J’attendrai.…” I shall wait, day and night I shall wait for your return.…

  A girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, sat in a straight-backed chair, just inside the entrance, apparently waiting for someone. She wore a wide-brimmed hat and a suede jacket and a short flowered dress, legs clamped together, stiffly smiling, eyes distant. I said, “Bonjour.” She smiled but didn’t answer. I asked if she spoke English. She said, non. I said she was très belle and invited her to join us. She smiled and shrugged, peut-être, maybe, and remained where she was

  We wiggled through a crowd, found a table, ordered champagne. Women came flocking, wearing short dresses, bare-shouldered, black-stockinged, heavily made up, sharply scented. They sat on our laps, hoisted their dresses, showed us garters and bare thighs and florid panties. It wasn’t elaborate dealing. Combien? Francs, dollars, cigarettes, quicky rates, the cost for the full night. A woman my mother’s age sat on my lap and exposed her legs and thighs. She asked my name. I told her and she said, “Zig zig, Léo?” I said, no thank you. She was replaced by another. “Zig zig? Suck suck?” I said, “No, thank you,” got up and went back to the girl at th
e door.

  “Je m’appelle Léo,” I said, “un soldat Américain.” She smiled. Her name was Marishka.

  “C’est un nom Russe?”

  “Oui.”

  I said it would please me if she would come to our table and sit with me.

  Again, she said maybe.

  I said I’d wait for her at our table.

  We ordered more champagne, the men trying to get even higher before leaving with the women they’d chosen. Red summoned passing women to solicit me.

  “Take care of my Buddy, he’s shy, compris?”

  I said, “Non, merci.”

  Red asked, “What’s the problem, Buddy? We got three days, not three years.”

  Marishka came to our table and I grabbed a chair from another table and squeezed her in alongside me.

  Red said, “Now this one is worth holding out for.”

  She was still wearing her hat and jacket. She didn’t want a drink. I asked if she would like to show me the city.

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  She seemed too young to be in this place. She claimed she was eighteen, a student at the Sorbonne.

  “The Sorbonne? Really?”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you. What is it you study?”

  “Political science,” she said.

  I told her I had been a student but my university wasn’t so grand as the Sorbonne. It was a university near Detroit. Did she know Detroit?

  She shrugged, then abruptly changed the subject. “You would like me to be with you?”

  Yes, I would like that.

  “Est ce que tu veux zig zig?”

  She pulled up her dress, miming her elders. She was beautiful there, too, smooth thighs, a wisp of light pubic hair curling from black panties.

  “Combien?”

  “Vingt dollars pour la nuit.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  She was in a hurry, perhaps forbidden to be in the room, perhaps under age, not licensed.