by Anton Myrer
But estimate their fighting capabilities— “They’re good men, Colonel,” he answered Weyburn in a level tone. “What’s left of them. I—Lieutenant Peters and I—have their full confidence.” He paused. “This is a very different outfit from four days ago. We have been under heavy and almost incessant shell fire from the Mountain. I’m worried about them if we should be attacked.” He paused, and glanced at Caldwell again. “I have participated in three major campaigns and seven engagements and I have never made this request before. The Colonel will bear me out.” He took a deep breath and said: “I think my company needs to be relieved.”
Colonel Weyburn grunted, and rubbed his hands back and forth along his thighs. Three shells struck in the ravine behind the Mill and the room shook slightly; the candle stuck in a salmon tin guttered, righted itself again. “It’s not a question of relief,” he said after a moment. “It’s a matter of going forward. Regaining momentum.”
Damon’s mouth fell open. “Attack?”
Weyburn nodded. “The Grizzlies jump off at fourteen hundred hours. We are to coordinate our attack with theirs, so as not to expose their left flank.”
Damon shut his eyes and clenched his hands to still their trembling. The idea that sixty-odd men, out of an original two hundred and fifty, after nine days in the line and four of interminable shelling, without rest or hot food, should be ordered to advance still again up a slope nearly destitute of cover and swept by machine-gun fire, seemed such madness that he could only roar with laughter. But no laughter came.
“May I see the orders,” he said.
Weyburn’s eyes dilated. “Now look here, Damon—”
“Let him see them, Archie,” Colonel Caldwell said quietly. “He’s going to be risking his neck carrying them out, isn’t he?”
The battalion commander drew a crumpled sheet of paper out of his trench-coat pocket and handed it to him. Yes, there it was, all right. All so nicely planned, chock full of those high-flown Latinate words staff members loved to use. The last paragraph read:
Every effort must be made to convince the enemy that he is being threatened by continuous attack, thus compelling him to commit his reserve elements to battle. It is essential that our forces preserve the offensive attitude which has been adopted since September 26th.
Preserve the offensive attitude. He stared out of the cellar entrance at a frieze of mud and splintered branches. Preserve the offensive attitude.
“—On whose authority?” he heard himself say. “Who ordered this?”
Weyburn frowned at him and wrenched his neck inside his collar. “Now, just a minute, Captain—”
“No! What sick, misguided son of a bitch dreamed up this piece of lunacy—?”
“Do you refuse to carry out these orders, Damon?” Weyburn demanded hotly.
“No—what do you take me for?”
“Gentlemen,” Caldwell murmured.
“Of course I’ll carry it out,” Damon went on, lowering his voice. “I’ve been ordered to attack and by God, I’ll attack. But right now, right at this particular moment, I would merely like to say what I think of a staff that would send men out into this muck, leave them for days on end in positions commanded by an enemy-held mountain—and then coolly expect the survivors to attack once more!”
His voice rang in the room. Lieutenant Peters stirred nervously; Weyburn was staring crossly at the candle, his lips pursed.
“Sam …” Colonel Caldwell looked haggard and worn. He had suffered from gas at the Bois des Lions, and his skin had a greenish pallor; but his eyes still held that balance of alertness and compassion. “Sam, we’ve been promised relief. The New Yorkers are going to pass through us at seventeen hundred this evening. We’ve been asked to make just this one more effort … I know you’ve had a bad time out here,” he went on quietly. “Very bad. The Thirty-ninth will be carrying the brunt of it. Divisional artillery has promised us a twenty-minute barrage of all calibers. Look, we’ll give you everybody we can scrape up—cooks, clerks, orderlies, everybody. That’s a solemn promise. We’ll beef you up all we can. Just one more effort, Sam. That’s all they’re asking.”
Damon handed the orders back to the battalion commander and nodded in silence. It was what he had said to the ten at Brigny, what he had said to Dev on the night march to Soissons: we’ve got to: we must do it anyway. Now it was only being said to him. Still again. Why did it always come down to this, why were they always faced with this draconian law of desperate choices, harsh alternatives that were no alternatives at all? Back at Chaumont men in spanking-fresh uniforms went smartly from room to room, passed their pencils over situation maps and scratched their clean, dry foreheads and toyed with alternatives; but here, in the mud and rain and thunderous hell of high explosive, there were no alternatives at all.
Colonel Caldwell was regarding him: that small, sad smile that understood so much, forgave so much, and went on hoping. This is the last time you’ll see him, the thought darted. You might have known.
“Yes, sir,” he said, and got to his feet. “We’ll do it. But I’d like to meet the gentleman who wrote that.” He indicated the orders Weyburn still held in his hand. “If I could have just five minutes with him it would make my day.”
“Sorry, Sam.” The Colonel’s eyes glinted once. “Rank Hath Its Privileges, you know. You may hold my blouse, however.” He turned with his most stern, attentive air to Weyburn, who was blinking at him in amazement. “It’s quite all right, Archie, you’ll get used to this sort of thing out here. What you don’t yet see is that you’re in a very strange land.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Weyburn said.
He crouched kneeling against a wall, panting, sick to death, half-dizzy with exhilaration, not knowing whether he was retching or coughing or laughing, or all three. Bright yellow leaves lay all around him like festive curly ornaments. He was so tired his thigh muscles jerked in spasms and his eyes would hardly focus—even now, here on the ridge, he was inclined to regard the whole thing as a wild hallucination.
He had no idea why they deserved such good fortune, after so many bitter tribulations. At 1410, right on the heels of the barrage, he had slung the Chauchat around his neck and blown his whistle and his sixty-some scarecrows, beefed up by all the woebegone culls of the regiment, had scrambled out of their holes and gone forward stiffly, waiting for the hail of steel. None came. They went on up the hill, past abandoned rifle pits and emplacements, empty ammunition boxes and rolls of wire, unable to believe their eyes. Then shells started falling around them from the Mont de Malsainterre and they faltered. Damon hollered at them, waving his arms, calling some of them by name and got them running, and they went the rest of the way in a rush, up and over the crest and into the fringe of woods beside the ruins of the Cavagnole Farm, whose shattered stone walls looked gaunt and forlorn against the beeches.
It was unbelievable. They were there. They had made it. He looked up gleefully, watching the line move up with him, taking cover smartly, fanning out along the ruins of some ancient trench. Then he heard the roar of small-arms fire on the ridge to his right, across the swamp, and he knew what had happened: the Grizzly Bears had broken through, and the Germans had got out while the getting was good. But it didn’t matter. They’d made it up to the line, the shelling had let up completely; the black stone of dread that had lain in his heart all day, that implacable premonition that he would not survive it, was false. He knew it now. They would dig in and sit tight, and the New Yorkers would come up and relieve them. And that, praise God and Allah and Thor and Zeus the Thunder Darter, would be that …
“What’d you do, Cap—get ’em on the party line and tell ’em the barn was on fire?” Raebyrne, with his helmet low over his eyes—a bright, solicitous hound’s gaze—was standing beside him.
“Why no—I told ’em I was calling in every mortgage in the county by sundown.” He jumped to his feet and threw his arm around the Carolina boy and hugged him. “God damn you, Reb, you old coon hunter—how’s that for
sheer generalship?”
“Plain frazzle-ass luck, you ask me.”
“Luck! Why, I knew we were home free all along …”
“Didn’t look much like it down the road a piece, Skipper.”
“Oh, that—that was just to keep you in line. Discipline, Reb—for Christ sake, discipline!” He was shaking so it was all he could do to keep from running in circles, wrestling Raebyrne to the ground. “All right,” he called, “we’ll use this piece of trench here and tie in with that clump of trees. Tsonka, take the gun over—”
He was pointing at the end of the trench when he heard the shot. The unmistakable report of a Mauser, thin as a plate of glass snapping. His head whipped around. Not twenty feet away Devlin had clutched his belly in both hands. He gazed at the Captain—a terribly bright, terribly intense gaze; then sank to his knees, still holding his belt. The rifle fired again and Damon screamed “Cover!” The company scattered, diving into the sections of trench, shell holes, behind piles of rubble. Devlin was on his face now, his hands under his body.
“Cover!” Lieutenant Peters was shouting. “Spread out—”
Damon found himself crouching against the wall. Oh, Dev. The Mauser cracked again, the bullet whined away in a shrill nasal ricochet. It came from the building beside him. Somewhere in the building, in the ruins. Oh Dev. He whirled around and ducked through a gap in the wall of the house. There was no upper story, only a piece of masonry that rose up to where the roof had been, near the peak, and had refused to fall. He swung the Chauchat on its sling so he had it on his hip ready to fire, and picked his way over the débris of fallen timbers and heaps of rubble. On the floor pulverized glass lay in white trails, like salt. An inner wall was intact. He eased up to the doorway—ducked in and away again, caught a glimpse of movement in a far corner behind a chest. He ran forward, firing from the hip. The gun got off one round and jammed. Still racing forward he clutched at his pistol, couldn’t get it free. The figure rose up: slight body, long rifle held high. He snatched at the Mauser, tore it out of the German’s hands in one savage wrench. The figure moved backward, crouching; Damon saw a round face, snub nose, dark blue eyes wide with fear, a wrinkled uniform buttoned to the collar, the sleeves hanging over his hands. A boy. A young boy. Not fifteen, he couldn’t be fifteen—
“Ah!” he gasped. He struck the boy on the side of the head, a backhanded blow. The absurdly large coal-scuttle helmet fell off the sniper’s head and crashed on the broken crockery and plaster; the boy tumbled backward and hit the wall. Wordless, Damon followed him, cuffed him as a harsh father might a rebellious child, once, again—whirled away. “Oh shit!” he cried with all his heart. He had never felt such anguish in his life. He gripped the Mauser by the barrel, raised it over his head and brought it down in a fury on the piles of stone and mortar, again and again, until the stock split and shattered and his hands stung.
Someone had hold of him, was shouting something at him over and over. Someone else was trying to pinion his arms to his sides. Why should they want to do that? The German boy was still facing him defiantly, but his lips were trembling; he was trying hard not to cry. Blood was running in a dark thread from the edge of his cheek.
“Captain!” Tsonka was shouting in his ear. “Captain, Captain—!”
He dropped the ruined rifle, wrenched out of Tsonka’s iron grip, pushed his way past Santos and Miller and went outside. Conger and Monteleone were bandaging Devlin; they had put him on his back with a blanket under him. His eyes opened and closed very slowly, as though he couldn’t manipulate them; one hand kept sliding back and forth in the mud.
“Hello, Sam.” A faint, weary voice that seemed to come from behind a mountain, kingdoms away. “I … thought … too good be true …”
“Dev, we’ll get you down right away, don’t you worry—” He said to Conger: “Pick anyone you want and take him down. Right now.”
Conger frowned. “Captain, I thought you said we—” “Do as I say!—”
He walked away, afraid to stay near Devlin any longer; he felt as if his entrails were on fire. “All right, you people,” he shouted at them. “Let’s get dug in, now! What are you waiting for, a God damn engraved dance card?” They hurried away from him, their eyes slanting back toward him fearfully. He went up to one of the Spandaus and wrestled it over to the far edge of the trench, set it up on its ungainly rocking-horse mount, cleaned it of mud and fed in a belt. Then he sat down on the fire step and went to work on the Chauchat stoppage. He dug out the shell casing and checked it; it was neither cracked nor sprung, which meant it was either the firing pin or the extractor. Probably the extractor. He had spares for both in his musette bag. He took off his trench coat and spread it on his knees and began to strip the weapon. Behind him he heard the murmur of voices as Conger and three others left with the stretcher, but he did not turn around.
“Captain?” Santos’ voice: melodious and tentative.
“What is it?”
“Captain, Sergeant Tsonka wants to know what you want done with the—with the prisoner …”
He looked up in a spasm of grief and rage. “Shoot him. Spank him. Give him an Iron Cross First Class and send him home—I don’t give a damn … only keep him the hell out of my sight!”
“Yes, Captain.”
The four figures were descending the hill now, joined by their burden; they made an animal, some sort of new, war-created animal with a low-slung, lumpy belly and eight legs …
The stretcher-bearers slipped into a tremulous bubble, and he shut his eyes, bent over the Chauchat again.
Oh Dev. I thought neither of us would ever be hit. I thought if we stuck together, right close together—
No more of that.
It was the extractor, as he’d thought. Broken cleanly right at the neck. He threw the defective pieces into the bottom of the trench, rummaged in his musette bag and found the replacement and oiled it heavily, then wiped it dry. He was conscious of the absence of talk around him; even Reb was silent. Very slowly and deliberately he began to reassemble the automatic rifle, inserting the sleeves and cylinders of metal, warm in the gray October air.
The café was jammed with khaki. Men crowded in shoulder to shoulder at the little bar, or milled aimlessly at the door, or wandered through the press, bending over tables and shouting greetings to one another. Two homely, perspiring girls hurried through the dim light serving drinks, and in the far corner of the room a soldier was pumping away furiously at the pedals of a player piano, while five or six others, arms wound one another’s shoulders, roared out the chorus:
“She can get herself malade from a lousy Home Guard,
She can Sam Browne all over Paree;
She can spread her dimpled knees for the hairy-assed MP’s—
But she’ll never make a sucker out of me—
(I’ve been taken!)
No, she’ll never make a sucker out of me …”
Damon emptied his drink again and set it carefully in front of him, staring at the ripples in the glass. A tall, redheaded corporal named Dalrymple was saying: “When I get back home I’m going to go into politics. I’m going to become mayor of San Francisco and I’m going to take every God damn bribe they hand me.”
“No—wireless is the coming thing,” Miller answered. He was short and fat, wore glasses, and his expression was genial and very attentive, as though he were talking to some rich, crotchety old aunt. “Think of it—a wireless set in every home in America! Do you realize what that will mean?”
“Won’t work,” Raebyrne declared.
“What? Of course it will—it does work. Just because you—”
“If I can’t see it and feel it and pick it up, it isn’t there. And if it isn’t there it won’t work. Don’t argue with a mountain man.” Raebyrne reached into a sack by his feet and pulled up a deep red, long-necked bottle. “Now this here is Leapfrogmilk, I believe. Compliments of the Eighty-’leventh Braveerian Infantry.” Someone jostled his arm and wine spilled on the zinc. �
�Damn. Give me room. How about a pull at the jug, Skipper?”
“No,” Damon muttered. “No more for me.”
“Aw, come on. It’s the pure quill. You can taste the feet of the Pee-roossian maidkins that stomped the grapes … ” One of the French girls came by, her hands full of empty glasses, and Raebyrne reached out with his free hand and called, “Hey now, cutie. Let’s us go spooning, all right? A little hoochy-kooching, all by our lonesome?” The girl gave a sharp, exasperated laugh and twisted away and he called, “What’s wrong—ain’t I upstanding enough?”
“With that?” Tsonka demanded. “Reb, you’re cock-eyed drunk.”
“I ain’t going to put her in the rotarygruel …”
Damon drank the sweet, thin German wine, rubbing his face with his knuckles. Drinking never made any difference: he only became steadily more clearheaded and cold, until his mind’s eye became a jeweler’s glass, burning down into a pinpoint of diamond light. What Uncle Bill called the German discipline. But his cheeks were numb. Somewhere a glass smashed, there were angry shouts and after a while gentler, more conciliatory voices prevailed. He thought of the bar back at the Grand Western, imagined it choked with foreign soldiery, Pop Ainslie serving them, his sister Peg carrying drinks, dodging the outstretched hands, trying to smile, trying not to hate these sweaty, drunken strangers … He sighed, and emptied his glass again. They profaned everything they touched, shattered and wasted, and the most pitiful part of it was they didn’t mean to, most of them: they only wanted to—Jesus Christ, they only wanted to shove certain things away out of sight, they only wanted to remind themselves that they were here, breathing, feeling …
“Look at that.” Raebyrne was pointing to a narrow space between their table and another where a body lay facedown, now and then twitching as some soldier bumped it or stepped on it. “You know, that Pulver’s pretty drunk.”