by Anton Myrer
Then he heard the sound he wanted—the rolling cough of a Chauchat over on the left. Without a second’s pause he flung himself up and ran. His feet seemed to churn through waves of hot, gelatinous resistance, an air heavy as water that turned his progress into some silly parody of speed. Jesus! It was so far …The trees, the boulders nevertheless swam nearer. The air around his head grew dark and burdensome with the rush and flutter of deadly birds: something plucked at his pack, something gave a shrill, short whistle behind his head. Then he was there, was lying behind a stone, gripping its hard, warm face with all his might, sobbing with exhaustion, while bullets seeking his very heart sang off the rock with catlike howls and shrieks. Sam—old Sam—was facing him with a look of calmest inquiry, as though they’d just finished a meal in a restaurant. He looked at the tree. It was like gazing up, crippled, at a church steeple. He thought, This is ridiculous, completely ridiculous. But now Sam was on his feet, calm as a diver at the edge of a carnival tower, the Springfield kicking with each round. The gun stopped. He rose up behind his tree just as Sam stopped to reload, and leaned out. He saw the freshly thrown-up earth, the gleaming stovepipe jacket of the gun, two helmets in a tight little cluster. He fired; the lead helmet sank down and away; he fired again, there was a series of smashing shocks right beside his head, and bits of bark and splinters flew past his eye and rained on his helmet. Another gun. He cringed, trying to draw his head and shoulders in under his helmet’s rim. The Chauchat started again, its comical hiccuping rattling burst, and the gun swung away. He leaned out with wild urgency, heard a cry as the Chauchat went silent. Kraz. That meant Kraz. He found the other emplacement, better concealed than the first in some low brush, and emptied the rest of his clip into it. Sam was firing beside him now. He popped another clip home, leaned out, saw a German lunging forward at the grips and at the same moment several figures running through the wheat toward the gun pit. Now he felt nothing but the rifle’s recoil, a harsh security that held him there, while another slug smashed into the tree. He felt no fear at all. In the right-hand gun—the gun that had nearly got him—a burly man leaped up with a grenade. He shot him, and the grenade fell in front of the emplacement. Four men rose out of the wheat and rushed forward; he saw the sun glitter on their bayonets—a swift and terrible dance of raised rifles and grotesque dartings and gesticulations, like the antics of marionettes. The gun chattered again, and one of the figures dropped his rifle and clutched at his belly; screaming in high animal cries—“ah-ha, ah-ha, aaaah-aaah”—he began running about in little staggering circles. Devlin fired at the gunner, fired again and again, saw a puff of dust as the slug went into the man’s chest, another as Sam hit him, and still the gunner continued to fire, massive, indestructible, his teeth bared. Then Sam hit him in the head and the gun stopped; and a moment later a slender figure—was it Raebyrne? Johansen?—was standing in the nest, waggling his rifle over his head.
“That did it,” Sam was saying. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
“Some cat,” he murmured. He put his hand on the smooth, chalky bark, felt the rasp of splinters, peered at the shocked and shredded places where sap was already oozing darkly down. He felt weak as water again, and the men in the field up ahead wobbled and wavered, half out of focus. Enough, enough …
“Let’s go, Dev,” Sam was saying. “Let’s get on up there.”
He shook his head, as if to clear it of fear and revulsion and dread—of all the treasonous things that pulled at his heart—and followed his lieutenant up through the field.
7
They reached Frossy Ravine by eleven o’clock and stormed the ridge. A lonely place of chalky earth and stunted trees, made more lonely by the dead and dying. There were no flanks that Damon could see. There was no anything.
“According to the map we’re on it. Second objective line.” He stared at the handful of men straggling up to him; they sprawled on the ground here and there, filthy, sweat-soaked, their uniforms torn by wire. He counted them. Twenty-one.
“Is this all?” he said wildly. “All of us?” No one answered him. Tsonka was carrying Kraz’s Chauchat, Morrissey was carrying his clips. Turner was there, Raebyrne, Brewster, Dev. “Where’s Sergeant Hassolt?” he demanded.
“Legs got half shot off,” Tsonka said.
“You know that?”
“I was lying there beside him when he got it, Lieutenant.”
He saw two faces he didn’t recognize. “Who are you?”
“Tyndall, sir, fourth platoon.”
“And you?”
“Korettke—Company C. First platoon.”
That meant—nineteen. He felt a raging despair that sank through him like stone. “All right,” he said, “let’s dig in, now. Along this line, running to there …” They stared at him apathetically, too benumbed by exertion and slaughter to move. They were near the end of things, he could see it in their faces. They were slack-jawed, their eyes were glazed with exhaustion. “All right,” he repeated, more gently. “They’ll be along in support soon. We’ll hold here. Come on, boys. We’ve got to dig in …”
Three of them got to their feet and started to dig feebly at the hard, chalky ground. He turned away, nagged by worry. Company A should be on that line, over there, between that clump of trees and the crest of the ridge. And the Moroccans: where in the hell were the Moroccans?
“Guillette,” he said. He pulled a pad out of his pocket and started writing in it. Second objective reached at 1123. Losses very heavy. Will hold but must be reinforced. Damon. “Here,” he said to Guillette, who had come up to him, “take this back to battalion. Do you think you can—no. Wait a minute.”
A line of men were coming out of the woods from their right rear, walking rapidly. They watched them approach in silence. Colonel Caldwell, his trench coat gone, his handsome uniform dirty and sweat-soaked, carrying a knobbly black walking stick, at the head of what looked like the better part of a platoon.
“Hello, Sam.” His voice was crisp and cheerful.
“Good morning, sir.” Damon waved the piece of paper. “I was just going to send this off to you. We’re on second objective.”
“So I see.” He extended his free hand. “I’ll read it right now.” He ran his eyes over the message. “Very succinct. Very expressive.” He folded the paper and slipped it in a pocket of his blouse. “I’m mighty glad to see you. I’ve just made contact with the Senegalese. I believe.” He smiled faintly; the left side of his face was smeared with dirt and grease, and there was a long, bloody scratch—probably made by wire—running along his neck just below his ear.
“Sir, where is A Company, do you know?”
The Colonel raised his stick and pointed it casually over his shoulder. “This is A Company.”
“That’s all?” he muttered, aghast. “All that’s left?”
“That’s all, Sam.”
“—But you came from down there …”
“Yes. Well, they were a bit off the track. We’ve just got things straightened out. Sam, we’ll have to sideslip right as we go forward.”
Damon stared at him. “Sir, I have only twenty-one effectives …”
“So I see. Well. We must keep pegging along. We can’t quit now.” He pointed toward a little patch of red-tiled roofs, a road, an apple orchard leading up to the skyline, hazy in the dense July sunlight. “Chauzy Ravine, Saubricourt, Saubricourt Ridge. And right over that ridge is dear old Augusta Suessionum, known to the uninitiates as Soissons.” He raised his voice. “And we’re going to take it. Right now. Let’s go, boys …”
“You leading platoon assaults, Colonel?”
“Faute de mieux.” Again that calm, steady smile. Damon was filled with consternation. Jesus! How could he be so calm?
Aloud he said: “Isn’t Major Williams assault battalion commander?”
“Major Williams is dead. Captains Crowder and Hirschfeld are dead. Major Brill is down and so is Captain Pierce. No one knows anything about Captain Merrick. Colonel St
ainforth is leading what is left of C Company.”
“Jesus,” Devlin muttered. “Oh—my—Jesus …”
“Well, how do we stand, Colonel?” Raebyrne asked him. “Are they whipping us or are we whipping them?”
“I can answer that one, Raebyrne,” Caldwell answered; he raised his voice again. “We are whipping them. For a fare-thee-well. We’ve busted them wide open. Right over that hill”—he pointed the stick—“is Soissons. All their supplies and reinforcements must come through that town. We’re going to take that town, and bag all those Germans out there, you hear me? Now let’s go, let’s go get ’em …”
They got up and went on, to a heavily wooded ravine where more enemy guns were hidden, and they lost Korettke and Farrell. In the apple orchard a French tank was stalled and German infantry were swarming over it like gray leeches. They shot them all off its iron sides, but the driver and gunner were both dead in a pool of oil and gas. Saubricourt was a mass of rubble, and for the first time Damon couldn’t get them going; but some detachments of Moroccans came up, and the Germans in the mairie and two of the main buildings had had enough. Twenty-seven of them surrendered en masse, and Raebyrne and Tsonka found sausage and honey and bread and half a bottle of Cognac. Then Colonel Caldwell was calling to him, urging them on again, waving that crazy crab-apple walking stick and his pistol, and they were running, all of them that were left were running through bushes and the stumps of felled trees, up, up and over the ridge; and there they were at last on the forward slope, lying on their bellies, and Caldwell was saying: “Do you see it? Do you?” and looking through the glasses he’d taken from the German lieutenant at Brigny Farm, Damon saw the towers and roofs of Soissons, wreathed in smoke and dust. He made out the staccato plume of a locomotive getting up steam, and as he watched it, dirty black puff balls began sprouting on the tracks, the switchyards, in tight little configurations.
“—They’ll do it, Sam,” the Colonel was shouting in his ear. “CQC. They won’t miss a chance like this. Two divisions, three divisions will do it. Press right on, leapfrog us, on over to Bazoches, to Mont Notre Dame, to Fismes, and cut the road up from Fère-en-Tardenois … Do you realize the whole damn German Seventh Army is there?—half a million Germans in that bag at the Marne!” He clutched at the younger man’s arm, his eyes shining; Damon had never seen him so excited. “Do you see it? The chance we’ve been praying for—the classic pattern: attack from here, from Reims, and pinch off both flanks. It could cripple them beyond recovery. With a little luck it could end the war …”
“Do you mean it?” Damon murmured. The tempest of confusion and carnage and losses he’d been tossed in all day bore no relation he could see to anything so majestic as the end of a war.
“Sure, I mean it. Sam, those wires are hot from Fère all the way back to Coblenz! Old Ludendorff is telling Von Boehn to pull out, right this minute … But Boehn can’t pull out that easily, you see—he’s committed at the Marne, and the Bois de Condé, and Coullonges. Time …” Abruptly he said: “We’ve done a great day’s work, Sam.”
Damon slowly lowered his glasses. “I hope so, sir,” he said. “We haven’t got much of any battalion left.”
The Colonel turned toward him, his face all at once resolute and grim. “They ordered us to do it. And we did what they ordered. It will be worth it—if Foch sends the power in now. Right now …Victory is a matter of opportunities clearly seen and swiftly exploited.” He tapped his lieutenant smartly on the wrist with two fingers. “You mark my words, Sam. The German will never again take a step forward anywhere in France. And he could be beaten to his knees in two weeks, three at most. The war is over, if Foch and Pétain and Benoît play the end game correctly.”
Damon ran his eyes down the line. Tsonka, black with grease and dirt, was cleaning Krazewski’s Chauchat—but it was his now, Kraz was dead or dying in the long field—his hands moving with sure dexterity; Turner lay sound asleep, his thin, ratlike face washed of all vindictive rage and looking rather cherubic now, pressed against his rifle stock; Clay too was asleep—for all Damon’s misgivings he had remembered his training and had fought creditably on several occasions—his helmet gone, the breeze ruffling his handsome blond hair; Brewster—fragile Timmy Brewster who doubted so deeply his valor in the world of men, but who nonetheless sat here, at the end of this terrible day, his head in his hands; Raebyrne was chewing at a leathery chunk of Kriegsbrot, his Adam’s apple jumping outrageously; Dev—old Dev—was gazing with wild despair at the shrouded towers of Soissons, his hands gripping his knees.
… Oh God in heaven, let them exploit this, he found himself praying; and his eyes all at once stung with tears. He reached for his canteen, remembered it was empty, and shrugged irritably. They had done what they had been told to do: two days without food, three nights without sleep, after twenty hours of the most punishing forced march of all forced marches, they had thrown themselves with eager hearts at the wire, the enemy rifle pits, the murderous, clattering Maxims, the grenades. A green desire … Sitting there watching the festive little pinpricks of shell bursts in Soissons he felt elation, sorrow, rage, a tenuous hope; he did not know what he felt.
The Colonel was writing in his notebook now—that swift, concise hand he secretly admired; he looked like the school valedictorian who had somehow got lured into a playground roughhouse. Damon followed the pencil across the page, then looked down the line. He had survived again, as he had known he would; but there was no consolation whatever in the thought.
He started. Raebyrne, biting hugely into what looked like a glazed black football, had just given him a slow, ponderous wink.
They plodded on, and the shells followed them in their lazy, baleful, whispering course and swooped down in smoke and flame and terrors unimaginable. They walked erratically, stumbling and sinking in the spongy, lacerated earth, bent over, with slung rifles. In a nearby field two trucks were burned-out wrecks, still smoking, and several bodies lay sprawled near the cab of one. It was like a treadmill again, but a slow-motion treadmill this time; the route was the old one of their advance, but this was like a retreat. A junkyard world: waste and desolation had proliferated until there was nothing left on every side but things broken or disintegrated or abandoned. There were packs and helmets, field pieces overturned and smashed, shattered machine guns and sheets of filthy tarpaulin and corrugated iron and rusted rolls of wire on great spiked spindles; there were bodies whole or rent or eviscerated, swollen or shrunken, and the stench of death was like an unspeakably sweet, foul mantle bound over one’s nose and mouth. With the traverse of every shell Sorenson gave a short, quavering cry that trailed off into a series of moans.
“Cut that out!” Devlin shouted at him. “Jesus, Reb, can’t you make him keep quiet?”
“He won’t pay me no mind,” Raebyrne replied. “He’s come down with the grand megrims.”
“—I’m sorry, Sergeant—I just can’t help it, I can’t …” Sorenson said pleadingly. The shell that had killed Morrissey the night before had landed five feet from his hole. He had lost his helmet and his rifle and was walking with a jerky, lurching stride. One of his puttees had become unwound and trailed after him in the mud, and mucus was running out of his nostrils into his mouth. Another shell came over and he cried out again, went off into a confused, muted sobbing. “You don’t know, Sergeant, you just don’t know what I’ve been through …”
“Don’t you bloody think so—!” Devlin said wrathfully. “—Christ, no, I’ve been in a big feather bed in Chicopee Falls the past five days …”
Dropping back beside him Damon murmured, “Take it easy, Dev,” but the Sergeant only threw him a quick, wild glance and made no reply.
They went on, past a shattered tank, its gaudy camouflage designs charred and blistered by fire; past French Colonials huddled around cooking fires, past remnants of smashed wagons and heaps of empty shells. Damon plodded on, aware that he was setting too smart a pace but incapable of walking any more slowly. This random shel
ling was utterly unendurable now, leaving the line, going back. “Kill the lot of us,” he muttered fretfully—flinched at a ripping detonation in the woods to their right. “Filthy, murdering bastards … ” He felt furious and fearful and utterly discouraged. The French high brass had not exploited the Soissons attack, they had not even attempted a drive on Bazoches to pinch off the salient. The scarecrow platoons had been held on the ridge for two days, while Brüchmuller’s artillery had worked them over with a disc harrow; and later Colonel Caldwell had told him glumly that no reserve divisions had been sent to the Forêt de Retz to exploit it, that the decision was apparently to push back the salient frontally; simply to push the Germans ahead of them, back to Ronchères, to Fère-en-Tardenois, to Mareuil …
Damon had stared at his commanding officer in wrathful incredulity. “Frontally … but that’s—there’s no point in it! That’s pure and simple butchery—they’ll get away, all of them …”
“I’m afraid that’s true. Every bit of it.” The Colonel’s lips came together very firmly, his eyes were like flakes of jade. “Opportunity once forsaken is opportunity lost forever.” He slapped the walking stick angrily against his breeches. “We will not have a chance like that again.”
Another shell landed in the woods off to their right. There was an outcry, and then a series of unearthly, mounting screams that made Damon’s blood run cold. He had halted without realizing it—saw all at once the horse burst out of the grove, trailing traces and a piece of the side rail of a caisson and an odd tangle of sacking. It fell, rose scrambling again, uttering its terrible, hoarse neighs—and Damon saw it was not sacking but intestines flailing in lumpy blue chains as the animal careened wildly about, its head swinging, blood pouring from its nostrils in a spray of foam. He stared at it in slow horror. There was a shot then, directly behind him, and the horse plunged forward into the field and lay still, quivering, its long head extended.