Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  The sailor and his girl passed behind him. “Non, non,” he heard her say, laughing, “c’était un malentendu, mon ange—je le prenait pour toi. C’est vrai!”

  He did not turn around. What was the truth of things, then? Here he sat, on the warm, worn stone. He had been spared: had it been for a reason? A year ago he would have said yes without hesitation—but now, brushed by the descent of those uncaring wings, he no longer believed it. Dev, Krazewski, Crowder had died, and he had been spared—because he had been spared. They had not won because their cause was just, or because God was on their side. They had won because they had more men and more equipment, because they were valorous in their fresh, foolhardy ignorance, while the Germans were stunned and weary from four years of hell and losses. He would have been killed too, in four years of it; he knew that now beyond any doubt. He would have gone limping back to the line, and the next decoration would have gone to his mother. There was no celestial ordering of events that he could see. Men set them in motion; men failed or succeeded according to their abilities, their skill and fortitude and resources, and the luck of the draw. Ludendorff had almost won in the Chemin des Dames drive because he had planned it with meticulous care and his troops had executed it with skill and discipline; he had lost because his men, worn by hunger and privation, had stopped to loot and drink, because they were more weary than anyone—even Ludendorff—had thought, and because Americans like himself had been flung headlong into the crucial breaches, and had stemmed the rush. If there was a destiny that shaped our ends it was a very capricious one: the Allies had invoked God’s aid, so had the Central Powers, each side had felt its cause was just and true, and had committed crimes innumerable for the greater, the all-important end. It was all part of the “sacrifices” required for victory. But for his own opposite number, the German Major limping arduously through the bitter, wintry streets of Kassel or Leipzig, all those sacrifices had been in vain, a mockery—and so, if a fair and lasting peace were not effected by the Big Four, would be his own “sacrifices” as well …

  He sighed, got to his feet and walked back along the Quai, and on an impulse stopped at a café terrasse on the little park facing the Port. Dropping into a spidery iron chair he hooked his cane over the table’s edge, ordered a vermouth cassis and let himself sink into the clop of horses’ hoofs, the creak and jangle of produce wagons, the tin hoot of taxicabs. He saw an artillery officer from the 329th he recognized vaguely, his neck in a yellow leather brace, an aviator riding in an open fiacre with two Red Cross girls, their skirts fluttering in the light breeze. They were laughing at something the flier had said, bending forward, their pretty white throats extended. Celia had looked at him like that; a summer evening long ago. He’d had a letter from her during the Argonne offensive that even then had made him smile.

  Everyone back home here is so thrilled about you, Sam. Your tremendous bravery, and all your medals. Father and Mr. Clausen want to name the plot in front of the town hall Damon Square. Think of that! You’ll be immortal!!! Peg says Mr. Verney can’t talk about anything but you, he keeps saying to everybody, “I knew that boy had the stuff of heroism in him, I knew it.” He has a map of Flanders on the wall of his room with colored pins in it, and he insists on reading the news aloud every day, word for word. Peg says he’s driving them all crazy. Well, she doesn’t mean it, of course, because they’re all proud of you, too. It’s wonderful, and I feel like saying to everyone, too: “I knew it all the time.” I keep remembering that time on the lawn at your mother’s, when I ragged you so about your knowledge of your future destiny, and everything. But it was true, after all. How did you know!!! I guess I should have believed you then, shouldn’t I? Everybody should have. Fred is at Camp Shelby, he says it won’t be long before his unit is going overseas, too. I’m thrilled and at the same time I’m scared. I mean it seems so terrible this war has to go on like this. Those Huns are such horrible beasts. The old hometown is so deserted now, but it’s nice being back here with Mummy and of course Father. I imagine now you’re a Captain and a war hero you don’t have much free time, but if you should have any I’d be thrilled to hear from you, I really would …

  He smiled, sipping his aperitif. A part of her had regretted not waiting for him; moping around the house, waiting for the baby to come. After all, a Medal of Honor winner was a more engaging asset than a lieutenant in the coast artillery. Damon Square. That rectangle of withered grass and mud where Walt Kearney and Jake Linstrom used to sit in the shade of the elms, straw hats down over their noses, half-asleep … General Pershing had personally decorated him, back at Debremont. He had felt the brief tug at his blouse as the pin was thrust through it—and then the Iron Commander had shaken hands with him and that stern face had given a grim, frosty smile. “Congratulations, Damon. I’d swap the stars on my shoulders for this medal. I mean it.” He probably would have, too. But now it was peacetime once again, the colors would fade, the armies shrink, Fred Shurtleff would go back into business in Chicago and his young, vivacious wife would bring up her babies and give lavish dinner parties in a town house fronting the Lake …

  “Captain Damon?” a voice said. “Oh—Major, I’m sorry. Say—congratulations!”

  He glanced up. A first lieutenant was standing beside him: a stocky man with a homely, bony face and a beaklike nose and quick, lively eyes. A face he remembered at once but couldn’t place. Then he could. “Hello. Krisler, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. Please don’t get up. I just saw you sitting there—”

  “Oh, yes. Russell’s Battalion.” He got to his feet anyway, taking his weight on the good leg. “That lovely briefing on the way up to Malsainterre. I don’t remember seeing you afterward—did you get it there?”

  Krisler nodded, touched his chest with a quick little motion of his thumb. “Shell fragments. I was lucky, though. Just above the lung. What about you, sir?”

  “Smote me hip and thigh. Mont Noir. Sit down, Krisler. It’s on me.”

  “If I’m not disturbing you any …”

  “God, no. I’ve only been sitting here brooding. I’m sorry not to recognize you right away.”

  “No reason you should, sir—I’m surprised you remember me at all.” Krisler gave a quick, warm grin. “I was in a very subdued mood that evening.”

  “Yes. I was, myself. What’s your first name, Krisler?”

  “Ben, sir.”

  “Good. Let’s make it Ben and Sam.” He smiled at the Lieutenant. “As a matter of fact this leaf is sort of superfluous. I won it at Base Twenty-seven, Angers.”

  They sipped the cool, tart wine and talked idly, watching the strollers. Krisler was from Menomonie, Wisconsin, where his father owned real estate and ran the town paper. He had gone to West Point, graduating in the class of 1919 a year early, and when Damon had seen him he’d been with the Regiment only two hours.

  “I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on—all I knew was my assignment and that was it. To tell you the truth, I was scared. Nothing was at all the way I thought it would be.”

  “It has a way of acting like that,” Damon murmured. “That’s a tough way to start out with troops. How’d you make out?”

  “I haven’t any idea. I picked up the fastest wound stripe in history.” When Krisler grinned his homely face looked boyish and mischievous. “Morey and I got them all through the wire, and we took out the first two guns with grenades. We were going great in spite of the rain and mud and everything, and I thought, Hell, we’ll be in Berlin by six P.M. And the next thing I knew I was lying flat on my back and my wish-bone felt as if a mule had kicked it. And my noble command roaring by me without so much as a glance.” He scrubbed his close-cropped black hair with his knuckles. “I wasn’t planning to launch a six-year Peninsula Campaign, like old Dick Wellesley, but I sure as hell thought I’d last more than four hours … All that spit and polish on the Plain gone to waste. What class were you?”

  Damon said: “I never had the advantages of West Point.”
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  Krisler glanced at him a moment—then grinned his gleeful, face-cracking grin. “Yeah! Isn’t that the truth. But the worst part of the place was the stony-dungeon humorlessness. Not one West Pointer in fifty has a real sense of humor. Jesus, they all think a joke is a long story that has a dog in it with a man’s name.”

  Damon laughed; he decided he liked Krisler a good deal. “You must have had a bumpy time of it there.”

  “The upperclassmen considered me unsound. Frivolous, they called it. ‘No plebe can afford to be frivolous here, Krisler. We are taking it upon ourselves to see that you rid yourself of that odious characteristic.’ Why in hell do they always think they have to talk like Dr. Johnson? I made the mistake of telling one of them that, once.”

  “You lasted four years up there with that attitude?”

  “Three. Our academic careers were cut short so as to fit us into the grand conflict. I was just as happy, to tell you the truth.” His jet black eyes glinted, his jaw flexed; and Damon saw there was a lot of steel under the headlong bravura. “It became a game after a while—a grim, methodical kind of game. They threw it all at me—I eagled and dipped and braced and walked my punishment tours hour by lonely hour … but every evening I looked in the mirror at my ugly phiz and told myself: ‘You have not lost your sense of humor.’ And it worked.” He watched a pretty French girl at a nearby table for a moment with eager interest. “Well—I take that back about all Pointers. Colonel Caldwell’s got a sense of humor, all right. Nothing seemed to be happening that night, and I couldn’t find anybody that knew anything, and when I saw Caldwell I ran up to him and said: ‘Colonel, my orders are to take command of the Third Platoon, C Company, First Battalion.’ He gave me a really marvelous look and said, ‘Thank you, Lieutenant—I shall return to my duties with a lighter heart.’”

  Laughing, Sam said, “He’s a BG now, you know. He’s coming down here himself—I’ll be seeing him in a day or so.”

  “Are you going to rejoin the Regiment at Hexenkirche?”

  Damon stopped smiling. “I don’t know. Are you?”

  “Absolutely. I already know German: why waste it?—Come on over to the Casino,” he urged. “Let’s watch the world at play.”

  “You’re pretty fired up for an invalid, Ben.”

  “You’re looking at the most frivolous man in the Anal Enema Flatulent. Come on …”

  They finished their drinks and walked through the little park. The leg felt better again—whether it was the relentless exercise or the vermouth cassis Damon wasn’t sure. He could tell Krisler was having his own troubles; his breath came unevenly and his face was blotched and strained.

  In silence they climbed the steps and entered the cool, hard light of the foyer, stood for a few moments at the edge of the salon where groups of people sat drinking and laughing; the long room was all aquiver with the bright, powdery chatter of French. Refracted light from the Port played across the ceiling in shimmering scales; the women’s dresses glowed.

  “Damn, I wish I knew the langue du pays,” Krisler observed. “Not just classroom garble, but enough to really function. Do you?”

  “A little.”

  “A sleeping dictionary’s the best way, I’m told. A feel for the patois.”

  “What? Oh, sure.” Damon was watching a man with straight dark hair and a fine mustache who was standing in front of a small group—they looked English, though perhaps they weren’t—regaling them with some hunting exploit: there was a rapid pantomime of consternation with the beast charging, all horns and hoofs and malice, followed by panic and a heroism born of desperation; the principal fired, a perfect shot, and stood with his foot on the jungle monster, heroically, posing for congratulatory pictures. The group around him—the men were all in civilian clothes—rocked with laughter and begged for more; and Damon felt a swift tremor of resentment, and then bleak indifference. This was one of the playgrounds of the rich: the world was going back to normal and the rich were back here, playing. It was all natural enough. For all he knew the man was Boy Bradford, V.C., D.S.O., M.C., and a brigadier in the BEF at twenty-four … Beyond the group he could hear the spidery, running click of the roulette balls and the bored monotone of the croupiers: “Faites vos jeux, sieurs-et-dames, faites vos jeux …”

  “Let’s go in and watch the play,” he said.

  Krisler shook his head. “I think I’ll sit me down for a spell. All this big-time excitement. The proximity of beautiful women leaves me breathless.” Damon noticed he was perspiring lightly; he looked still paler, the skin drawn tight over his beaked nose. It might be better if he left him by himself for a bit.

  “All right. I’ll make a lightning tour of the premises and tell you which games are rigged.”

  He started toward the gaming room, then on a sudden impulse veered right and moved out along the colonnade, gripping his cane tightly, glancing at the couples standing here and there. Meeting Krisler had thrust the problem of his future into the forefront of his mind again; he lighted a cigarette and stood beside one of the columns, gazing out at the yacht basin, the graceful sweep of the blue and white and mahogany hulls, the glitter of their brass appointments. The stern of one vessel said L’Aiglette, Cannes. Two men were stowing crates of provisions in her hold. They were free now, free to sail to Halmahera, Timor, Palamangao: the exotic isles …

  He had done all right, in a certain sense. He had carried in his pack, if not a field marshal’s baton, at least a battalion executive officer’s walking stick. He could lead men, inspire their confidence and respect, he had that tactical feel the Old Man talked about—that seventh sense that had nothing to do with book learning or map reading or training manuals or educated guesses, either. He had found his niche. Had he? Or was this all a delusion, won at the expense of other talents the iron demands of battle had stifled? No man knew what was in him, deeply and irrevocably his: we were all of us strange creatures under our skins—poets and seers, captains and pioneers—what man could say what was finally his destiny? Resting one arm against the cool ivory plaster he arched his back and frowned. Farewell the—how did it go? Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars that make ambition virtue! Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the something something something; and oh you mortal engines—that was good, mortal engines—whose rude throats the something Jove’s dread clamors counterfeit, farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone! Was that at the heart of his confusion after all?

  He sighed, shifted his weight again and glanced around him, almost guiltily; there, framed between two pillars like some classical embodiment of woman, a girl was standing, talking to a French cavalry captain and an older man, a civilian wearing a rosette. She was facing the sea, her face aglow in the afternoon sun. She was stunning; beneath her copper-colored hair her face displayed an exciting balance of fragility and force, like some exquisitely tempered steel. Damon was certain she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. The two men were telling her something amusing and her lips broke into laughter, her eyes danced, she stirred and shifted like a pretty little sailboat moored to some ponderous barge, longing for the open water … He found that he was simply standing there staring at her, his cigarette burning his knuckles, content just to watch this lovely creature, bask in her exuberance and charm. The somber fury of the Argonne, its losses and terrors and foul redolence, slid from his soul like evil scales.

  The girl was speaking French rapidly; he could hear an occasional phrase. “Oh!—mais c’est trop drôle, ça!” she exclaimed once. “Il fait la bête …” What did that mean? Her laughter was deep and rich, a delightful change from the strident soprano clatter of most Frenchwomen. He knew he was being rude, unpardonably rude, staring like that, but he could not bring himself to stop: it was like a medal—the rarest sort of medal, rarer even by far than the baby-blue ribbon with its five white stars he’d won at Brigny Farm—bestowed on him for the dangers he had passed. Why shouldn’t he feast his eyes on beauty? A cat could look at a ki
ng, as his mother said. Besides, there was something else: he had seen her before somewhere—or no, she reminded him of someone, someone he’d known well …

  The trio was joined by two others, a French lieutenant of artillery, a handsome, slender man, and a voluptuous, full-faced girl in a flaming orange dress; and the group burst into animated greetings and explosive little bursts of laughter. The girl with the copper-colored hair now appeared a bit constrained: her face seemed graver, more intent; she didn’t like the newcomers. Her eyes flashed out toward Damon once, irritably, returned to the group. Abruptly he turned away, went off to the far end of the colonnade and smoked another cigarette. As had happened several times before in his life he had the sensation that everything was arrested, held in sweet stasis—waiting for some episode, some event thunderous or trivial, to tilt it and impel it forward again. He was caught in a time bubble, as he’d been that afternoon with Celia on the lawn, or lying on the bank of the Marne with Dev—

  Near him at the end of the promenade an old man in a wheelchair, a proud old man with a monocle and a jade cigarette holder, a count or baron from his manner, was arguing with a fat young man in tweeds, pointing one trembling finger at him as he talked. The baron was furious; his swollen dark jowls were quivering with rage.

  “—No pride!” he barked in impeccably enunciated English, “you have simply and horribly not one particle of pride!” The angrier he got the more amused and indifferent the fat young man became.

  “But Uncle Alexis—” he began.

  “You are heading for perdition—that special perdition of indolent, of uncaring souls!” The nephew laughed and shook his head indulgently, disbelieving, intent on dissipation, on folly, and turned away. “You mark what I say, you young devil!” the old man called after him hoarsely, pointing the shaking white finger. The young man turned and made a series of vague, propitiary gestures with his plump hands, then went off with alacrity toward the grand salon. Damon’s eyes, returning, encountered the baron’s; the old man glared at him and nodded—as if Sam were the author of all this brainless perversity—gave a swift, wild gesture of exasperation, whipped out a handkerchief and spinning his wheelchair around began to cough into it rackingly, his shoulders hunched … Damon started. The girl was walking toward him, alone, in another few seconds she would pass by the column where he stood; she was moving with a firm, easy stride, her slim little figure very erect; feminine yet assertive. He felt his heart leap. Before he had thought he took a step toward her and said: “Pardon me, Miss …”