Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  “Cut that out!” he roared. “Stop that God damned firing! … ” They either couldn’t see him or didn’t care. Someone was pulling insistently at his shoulder. He whipped off his helmet and scaled it out of the window; it hung in the air, an inverted brown saucepan, bounced once in the wheat. Another burst smashed against the stone, just below him. He looked around in a fury of need, saw the blanket Lujak was lying on and yanked it out from under him. Lujak shrieked with pain. Brewster was clutching at him, calling, “Sarge, get down—!” He shook off Brewster’s hands, lurched to the open rectangle of light again and flapped the dirty, bloodstained blanket up and down, shouting: “No, no, no … !”

  The gun stopped; and now the Yanks were running down the long slope through the wheat, their weapons held high, their gear clinking, a strangely festive sound against the clatter of rifle fire off toward Brigny-le-Thiep. He stepped back from the window and rubbed his face, listening now to the hollow thunder of hobnailed boots on the cobbles, the clamor of voices. And Raebyrne, leaning far out of the shattered aperture, waved one arm and hollered:

  “Come on, you coon-assed gladigators—all aboard for the frigging Alamo!”

  Damon knelt beside Lujak, who was holding on to his knee and moaning. “It’s all right,” he said. “They’ll be up here for you in no time, now …”

  “—Yes, but him!—what about him?” Lujak cried, pointing.

  He looked. Jason was lying on his side, his body queerly twisted; one hand flopped back and forth on the floor. Damon reached over—recoiled with the slow rush of blood that had soaked the man’s collar. Jason’s eyes had rolled up under the lids. He was quivering all over, and his face was an awful bluish white. “What happened?” he muttered.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know!” Lujak stammered. “It was when you were at the window, after you’d grabbed my blanket … You butcher!” Lujak shrieked all at once, “you filthy bastard butcher—you’ll kill us all! You don’t care …”

  He got up. “All right,” he said quietly, and the wounded man subsided in moans and shivers. “Take it easy, Lujak.”

  There were voices down below, the thump and rumble of steps on the oak stairs, and there was Major Caldwell, followed by the battalion adjutant, a lieutenant Damon didn’t know, and two enlisted men. The Major’s thin, almost fragile face was lined and tense; the front of his uniform was covered with dirt, and he had a rifle in his hand.

  Damon rose to his feet and saluted and said: “Sir, B Company, Second Platoon reporting for duty with six effectives.”

  “Good morning, Damon.” The Major returned the salute. “So this is where you’ve been keeping yourself.” He pointed to the Maxim gun. “How’d you get that?”

  “Took it, sir.”

  “I see. With these six effectives of yours?”

  “Hell’s fire, Major, he took it all by himself,” Raebyrne broke in, “—busted in here all by his lonesome and shot it out with a whole passel of Pee-roossians, just like a hangtown draw fighter …”

  “Be quiet, Reb,” Damon told him.

  The officers laughed and Major Caldwell smiled and said, “No, let him go on. What happened then, Raebyrne?”

  “Why, then he spotted the other gun on that roof over yonder, so he touched off that crowd, just for good measure.”

  The Major’s eyes gleamed. “Is that a fact?”

  “I’ll be dogged if it ain’t, Major. You ask Tim here, or Corporal Devlin or any of the others. We come larruping up the stairs and there he was, inspecting the south forty with the Borsch officer’s biraculors, standing up there proud as a frog eating fire. With his back to ’em! A tolerable hollowcast … ”

  “All right, Reb,” Damon said. “All right.—Who got back, Major? who got back from the second platoon?”

  “Well, some of them. Krazewski, Wallis, Tsonka, Turner—about a dozen others. They’re still drifting in.”

  “Did Lieutenant Harris get back?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” The Major was standing at the eastern shutter, scratching his chin. “Well, well … Who’s that over there?”

  “Devlin, sir. Corporal of the second squad. And two men from C Company we picked up this morning in the woods.”

  Caldwell turned and glanced at him quickly. “You sent them over there to man that gun after you killed its crew?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “—And that ain’t all, either, Major,” Raebyrne broke in again. “Old Sarge seen ’em coming out of the woods yonder, half the tear-ass Pee-roossian army stomping in lockstep over to Briny-Deep, and he made us hold our fire till you could smell their feet inside their boots—and then we stood ’em off like Antietam Creek. I want to tell you, they was a might fitified! That old Fritzie officer looked like a coon hound shitting Bowie knives … ”

  “Thank you, Raebyrne,” the Major said. “That’s wonderfully graphic.” He turned to Damon with his crisp, alert manner. “Now let me hear it from you, Damon.” He listened intently as Sam gave him a short résumé, now and then nodding. When the Sergeant concluded he said: “Why did you decide to stay here? in this room up here?”

  “I don’t know, Major. It just—felt right. The height and everything.” He paused, and for the first time he smiled. “I used to be a night clerk in a hotel back home.”

  The Major burst into laughter. “Did you? A night clerk …” He shook his head, still laughing. “I must confess I can’t see you as a night clerk, Damon.”

  “I was, though, sir. A good one.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt it at all.” Caldwell seemed to find the whole idea infinitely amusing. “Night clerk,” he murmured, and stroked his mustache with his forefinger. “Well, well … Why did you hold your fire for so long on the support group?”

  “I was certain they didn’t know we were in here, Major. I wanted the main body in that ditch—I figured they’d take cover there instead of rushing the farm. And then it was such a long way back to the woods—I was hoping for a clean sweep.”

  “And I’d just as soon or a little never go through that again,” Raebyrne declared fervently. “Major, it was worse than being tied to a tobacco rack hand and foot, with a nest of white-faced hornets crawling all over your ass …”

  The Adjutant said, “How long were you planning to keep the hotel open, Damon?”

  “Just as long as we had any transients, sir.”

  “Weren’t you worried about being shelled?” Caldwell asked him. “It seems a little—exposed, up here …”

  “We were digging trenches out there in relays. The only thing I was worried about was a rolling barrage—if they were planning an assault in force behind a rolling barrage, I didn’t see how we could get back up here in time.”

  “Yes, that is a problem, isn’t it? But what about food and ammunition—how’d you plan to cope with all that?”

  Damon grinned faintly. “There’s plenty of water in the well. We were going to eat their food and fire their ammunition as long as they’d keep giving it to us.” That sounded rather puffy; he shrugged his shoulders and said: “Hell, Major, we were lucky—bull lucky. I guess I was hoping to press my luck a little more.”

  Caldwell thrust out his lower lip. “Yes, well, you’ve got to have a little luck in this business. It’s like any other.” He gazed out at the long north field with its windrows and heaps of mutilated figures in field gray, and nodded grimly. “Very impressive, Damon. Very impressive indeed.” He put his knuckles on the sill. “There are a lot of doughboys down there right now who would be dead and dying if you hadn’t pulled off this astonishing little exploit of yours.” He turned and faced Sam with a boyish grin. “Maybe I’m one of them.” Then his expression changed to the alert, expectant one. “You gambled on our coming back through here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why here?”

  “I remembered from the map yesterday. I figured you would avoid the woods east of Brigny and drive back to the embankment, trying to envelop them; and
this was the way you’d do it—following the curve of the field.”

  “I see.” Caldwell nodded again. “You’re a lieutenant, Damon. As of this moment.”

  “Yes, sir … Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me. We’re indebted to you. Devlin is promoted to sergeant. You can give him your stripes.” The Major grinned. “I want General Hemley to hear about this.” Several more soldiers had crowded into the room, among them Devlin and Henderson, looking resolute and dirty. Caldwell turned to them. “Boys, I’m downright proud of you. Now we took a beating yesterday. But we’re back, and we’re going to keep right on going. The next time we do this the troop dispositions will be better, and you will be equipped with grenades. Among other things. I can promise you that.” He looked at the roomful of weary men, his eyes darting quickly. “They’ve been making mistakes in this war since the fourth day of August, 1914, and they’re going to keep on making them from time to time. And we must take what we get and make the most of it. That’s what you boys have done here. It’ll be an inspiration to us all.” He paused. “Well, let’s get going. Staff tells us the Germans are planning to counterattack in force, using elements of the Ninth Prussian Guards.”

  “They’re going to regret it, Major,” Raebyrne said.

  “You bet they are.” Caldwell thrust out his lower lip again. “A whole lot of people are going to change their minds about the AEF before the next week is out.” He shook Damon’s hand. “Good work, Lieutenant. Report to me at fifteen hundred hours. We’ll be reforming B Company.”

  “Yes, sir. Do you have—any immediate orders for me?”

  The Major stared at him, and then laughed. “Why, stay right here, by all means. It’s your hotel.” He vanished quickly down the stairs.

  Damon sat down on a German helmet and leaned against the cool stone wall. Devlin was standing by the open shutter and the two men stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Well, Sam,” Devlin said after a pause.

  “Well, Dev.” He handed Devlin one of the cigarettes the Adjutant had given him. “We’re promoted.”

  Downstairs he heard the clink of shovels, and someone laughed hoarsely and cleared his throat. He dropped his hands in his lap. The elation he had dreamed of would not come. He thought of the German boy he’d bayoneted downstairs, the terrified scampering of the gunner on the other roof, the shrill, faint cries in the long field; and a cold remorse sifted through him like the breath of death itself. He had done what he’d promised himself—what he’d known in all wild ignorance he would; and yet none of it was what he had known it would be. It was not like it at all.

  5

  They left their clothes in sodden little dun piles and ran leaping and yelping into the river, and the water washed over them gently, silken cool against their naked bodies. The sky was clear and high, like summer skies back home, and swallows dipped and danced above the trees. The air was full of the smell of fresh-cut hay, and poppies, and little blue-and-yellow flowers they didn’t know; but it didn’t matter, the world was here under their hands, quivering with wonder and release. They hooted and hollered and splashed water on one another, they scraped mud from their necks and forearms and feet, they swam savagely for a few yards, whipping their arms back and forth, and then raced along the shore flapping rags of underwear. They chased one another up the bank and in again, pelted each other with apples or floated dreamily, their arms extended, gazing up at that achingly pure blue summer sky. They were free.

  Turner stood on his hands underwater, his feet straight and white and thin, his genitals hanging absurdly from a forest of blond hair—collapsed sidewise to reappear red-faced and panting. Damon was lying beside Devlin on the bank and Raebyrne lobbed an apple at him and hit him on the belly and cried: “Got you, Sarge …”

  Sam cocked an eye at him. “You’re pretty salty, Reb.”

  “Pure quill fact. I do believe I’ll light out for little old Paree.”

  “I don’t advise it.”

  “Just for a spell. I won’t disadvantage you none. Sign up for one of them sinful rooms with a Louise Cans bedstead and lots of purple hangings over the windows and a nice frisky little gin-feel and a demijohn of that handy-brandy, and I’ll be tolerable satisfied.”

  “You would?”

  “Shoot, yes. My wants are simple.” There was a rope dangling from the branch of a massive plane tree; Raebyrne took a running leap, gripped the rope and swung out over the river; letting go he clutched his nose in a gesture of mock terror and landed with a thunderous splash, inundating the others near him, and reappeared, shouting: “Be damned to the lot of you—who got the jug?” He promptly got into a water fight with three of the others and raced away up the bank again.

  Tsonka, winding a puttee with care, squinted up at him. “You’re pretty cranked up, Rebel.”

  Raebyrne danced about on one foot, batting at the water in his head. “Well, I don’t rightly know, Mike. But if I had feather in hand I’d call it flying.” He began to dry himself with his underwear. “Yep. I been most everywhere God got land, and Paree is where I want to be.”

  “I wouldn’t try it,” Krazewski said, coming up out of the water. “Muleskinner told me that town is crawling with MPs. Said they got a hoosegow there so deep you’ll never see the light of day again.”

  “Can’t help that. What I need is, I need to get my ashes hauled, and that’s the red-hot gospel. How about you, Tim?” he said with a wink at Brewster. “Ain’t you on the incline for some of this Froggy round-the-world loving?”

  Brewster blushed a fiery red to his collar bones. “Well, I’m not sure, Orville …”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure? How can you even be in doubt?”

  Brewster drew a deep breath and put his hands on his naked hips. “Well, the fact is—I’ve never been with a girl. That way, I mean.”

  “Oh, my battered tintype,” Tsonka groaned.

  “Well, I’m fair downcast to hear that,” Raebyrne went on. “Hell’s fire, son, don’t you know that’s what makes the world go round?”

  “I think,” Brewster said, a trifle self-consciously, “a person ought to save himself for the girl he’s going to marry.”

  This sentiment was greeted by hoots and roars from the platoon.

  “You think that’s going to matter to her, Brewster?”

  “What you think she’s been doing while you’re gone?”

  “Hell, what she don’t know won’t hurt her none at all.”

  “Get wise to yourself! …”

  “I can’t believe you fellows mean that,” Brewster protested, troubled. Damon raised his head and watched the boy, who looked white and fragile, standing half-naked against the dense green of the bushes. The swelling had gone down during the past two days, but his nose still had a high, thick ridge at the base. Damon remembered the look in his eyes over the glittering, shuttling cartridge belt up in the tower.

  “Don’t you know you’ll get sick without your poontang?” Raebyrne said.

  “Go on …”

  “Just a question of time. You know when a horse gets the heaves?”

  “No.”

  “Well, same thing. Pandication of the gonads. Ain’t you never had that?”

  Brewster tossed his head and turned away to finish dressing. “Aw. You’re ragging me.”

  “Smoking hot gospel.”

  They milled around on the bank, trying to decide what to do.

  “Well, I’ll tell you boys. I’m going to latch on to a little of that tickly vang-rougee,” Raebyrne announced. “Just for a starter. Now who’s going to help this Tarheel to shoulder the load?”

  “You guys keep out of trouble, now,” Damon said, his eyes closed.

  They gave him vigorous assurances and moved away along the river path, their voices growing fainter. Lying naked in the hot sun with Devlin, Damon knew he should have given them the word, put the fear of God and the MPs into them, but he couldn’t stir a finger. He felt inundated by a complete lassit
ude that lapped out into his eyelids, his fingertips, the roots of his hair. The sun lay on him like the warm breath of a goddess, birds called in the shrubs behind his head; and he didn’t care—not for a single thing in all the world. Let them get drunk if they had a mind to, he’d get them out of it. God knew they’d earned it. They’d taken over Cherseulles from the Second Battalion; had dug in there and withstood two savage counterattacks and eighteen hours of nearly incessant shelling. Yesterday, famished and dizzy with lack of sleep, they had marched back to billets in the town of Charmevillers and slept the sleep of the exhausted. Moving along the column wearing Lieutenant Harris’ gold bars, Damon had felt a slow, deep pride. His men. They were his now, to care for—the indomitable remnants of B Company who had avoided death and captivity. Tramping in the evening dust they had talked very little. They were subdued, but steady. They knew what they had done …

  “Remember that parade in Paris?” Devlin murmured indolently; his voice seemed to hover in the still air above them. “I keep thinking of that girl that kissed me. The first one. She was a strawberry roan and she had great, deep, round eyes.”

  “It was quite a parade.”

  “It seems a long way back now, you know?”

  “By God, I’m going to learn French,” Damon said suddenly.

  “Why bother? What the hell, Sam, there’s only one language in wartime …”

  “Sure.”

  They fell silent again, drugged with sun and languor. Damon thought all at once, with a slow throb of loss, of home. His sister Peg’s last letter had been full of news. Ted Barlow had got a job with the MacCormack people in Lincoln; Uncle Bill had joined up again and was raging away in Georgia, instructing recruits in the manual of arms and close-order drill; he had been infuriated at learning Sam had been made a sergeant. Mr. Verney had again been down with pneumonia. And Celia—Peg had saved her bombshell for last—had got married to Fred Shurtleff in the biggest, grandest wedding Walt Whitman had ever seen, with formal clothes and a reception on the lawn under a pink-and-white striped tent, with champagne and a five-piece orchestra that played waltzes and fox-trots, and after that a parade of limousines all the way down to the Union Pacific station. Peg had spared him none of the details. He smiled ruefully. Dear, lively, willful Celia. Well: he missed her, he missed them all—but the savageries and affections of the past week had turned them all to shadows. That part of his life was over; and now, lying on the dense mat of grass, he knew in one sense it always had been. But it was fun remembering …