Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  A two-man stretcher team staggered by; their patient, whose arm and shoulder were clothed in a scarlet sponge of rags and gauze, cried: “Jesus, oh Jesus, can’t you put me down for a minute, let me rest?—just for a minute …” and the medics both sank to one knee, gasping for breath. One of his crowd; Damon recognized the rear bearer—a thin, beak-nosed man whose eyes shot out to his with quick murderous intensity, slid away. Damon knew that look: it was the look of a man so crazed with exhaustion and despair he no longer cared what he did, or why. Now there was a boy staggering badly, trembling and shaking his head, shouting now and then in a shrill, clear voice. Then another stretcher case with cratered head wounds from which Damon averted his eyes. Jesus. In the head. He dreaded that more than any other, more than belly or face or testicles. To stop one in your brain … Standing there at the junction of the two trails, weary and harassed, listening to Dickinson, watching this procession of boundless agony, hearing the groans, the pleas and imprecations, he thought: I shouldn’t be here; I’ve got no business here. But still they came on, ragged or feverish or comatose, each of them dominated by one thought. He could feel the alarm grow inside him. Half the rifle companies were down to sixty, seventy, eighty effectives now. What would be left?

  Dickinson was saying: “I’ve just had word from Pryce-Sealey at Timobele. He says they’ve got hold of a coastal transport.”

  “What size?” he asked absently.

  “Eleven tons. We should be able to load several companies, a full battalion perhaps.”

  Damon watched the narrow, lined face, the cautious gray eyes. Eleven tons. One day to load, two more—or would it be three?—to creep up the coast at night under the Japanese bombers … and here, right here, was a prize package of disaster staring them full in the face. Eleven tons.

  It began to rain again, the flat, washing roar advancing like surf through the forest—sweeping over them, drenching and pervasive, walling each man off in his own shabby world of fear and misery and anger. And still the wounded came past, lurching, falling to their knees and getting up again, their faces white against their beards; drifting, beaten shadows. Dickinson, whose back was to the procession, was still talking on in that brassy Maine accent about ammunition levels and tonnage tables and the possibility of the loan of two Bren gun carriers from the Aussies.

  “Ah, there he is,” the Chief of Staff said with sudden relief. They stepped across to the north trail, where weeks ago some wag from Chicago had placed a sign that read: 47TH AND STATE. The rain faded, then let up abruptly, and the jeep came out of the jungle gloom, rocking and sliding. General Westerfeldt got out, followed by Haley, his raunchy garrison cap cocked back on his head, and Hodl, who was staring dully at the ground. As Damon and Dickinson came up Haley was saying, “If the Gap opens up tomorrow we can run everything we’ve got. Angels can’t do more.”

  Westerfeldt turned to Hodl. “How do we stand right now?”

  The G-4 said tonelessly, “My inventories show two days’ supplies.”

  “Two days …” Westy stared at him as if the Major had struck him in the face. “Hal,” he turned to Haley, “you’ve got to get through tomorrow—you’ve got to …”

  “If it can be done, we’ll be there. With cap and bells.” He threw them all his glittering Air Force smile, tossed out one hand. “What the hell, fellers—things are never as rough as they seem. Love’ll find a way.”

  How the hell would you know, you slaphappy fly-boy? Damon wanted to shout at him. He hated Haley with all his heart: too much rank too fast, coupled with that delightful insouciance only flying above the blood and mud and swamp stink at nine thousand feet can give you … But the General said nothing. His eyes rolled white at Haley, his mouth worked once, but no sound came. Then Haley was in the jeep and skidding and swooping along past the stretchers, the wavering, pitiful processional.

  Damon said quickly: “General, I’d like to outline a plan for your consideration.”

  “What? All right—come on back with me. Dick, what have you heard from Koch?—how’s he going?”

  “The situation’s relatively unchanged since fourteen hundred, sir.—I just got word from TOPGALLANT,” he went on earnestly. “They say they definitely can give us those two carriers. If we could use them conjointly with the Third Battalion of the Four sixty-eighth at the east end of the strip …”

  Westerfeldt nodded absently. His eyes had encountered the column of wounded; watching them he rubbed his lips with his hand. His shoulders sagged, his forty-five hung halfway down his trouser leg; the barrel end of the holster was filthy with mud. “Yes, yes, I guess so. We’ll have to see…”

  It began to rain again, less heavily. Near them a blond boy was sitting on a log, his hands wrapped around his knees; at every cannon or mortar explosion he flinched; his eyes were closed, his mouth was drawn down in anguish and he was weeping, rocking back and forth and weeping. “Ah, no,” he moaned softly, rocking, “no, no, no—it’s not my fault, ah they can’t, they can’t …”

  Westerfeldt stopped, his eyes transfixed on the boy. “What’s the matter with him?” he demanded suddenly. He went up to the log. “Now look here, soldier …”

  The blond boy’s eyes opened, full of fear. “Ah, no, no, no,” he repeated, wagging his head. “I tried, I swear to God—but it wasn’t my fault …”

  Westerfeldt shouted: “Look, soldier: you stand up when an officer speaks to you!”

  The boy sprang to his feet with astonishing alacrity. “—Shut up!” he screamed all at once. “Shut your face, you rotten bloody butcher. Kill us all—what you care … nobody! And I tried and tried … ” Tears were running crookedly through the mud and stubble on his face; pale, clownish streaks. There were deep blue hollows under his eyes. “You hear me?” he cried wildly. “Fuck you to hell!…” He tensed, as though to make a lunge at the General, then before either Damon or the Chief of Staff could intervene he collapsed on the log again, sobbing. “Ah I couldn’t help it, ah God, it wasn’t—my—fault! …”

  Westerfeldt was staring down at him, his face white and sweating, his eyes vacant. “Now, son,” he muttered. “Now, son—”

  Dickinson had bent over and seized the boy by the arm. “Soldier, you return to your unit. You hear me? You go back to your unit!”

  “Never mind, Dick …” The General had started off again. Damon caught up with him near the operations tent, and Westerfeldt turned to him with a tense, distraught expression. “What was it—what was I—”

  “General,” Damon repeated, “I’ve a plan I’d like to outline for you, if I may. A plan for crossing the Watubu.”

  Westerfeldt stared at him, mopping at his face. “Can’t be forded.”

  “I know that, sir—”

  “There are no boats, no boats anywhere, Sam, I tried to get some from Corps, I’ve been trying the Aussies—”

  “We’ve found four native canoes, in good condition,” Damon broke in on him. He developed the idea as rapidly and clearly as he could, watching Westerfeldt’s face. The General was still staring slackly down the trail. “Their defenses are weaker there, just because the stream is so deep. We’ve scouted it thoroughly. They’re not looking for us to hit them there …” He took a breath and said: “We could do it tonight.”

  Westy’s eyes came back to him in alarm. “A night crossing? Sam, that’s the toughest operation in the book—”

  “I know, but—”

  “—you can’t ask boys as—as weary as these, to try anything like that …”

  —They’d one hell of a lot rather try that than go up against the airstrip bunkers frontally, time after time, Damon almost said—bit it off. “They’ll do it,” he said urgently. “If we get across there we can cave in the position—go through to the beach and come in behind the Mission and the strip defenses. We can crack the whole front wide open.”

  Westerfeldt was still gazing at the trail; his face looked like old candle wax; all the blood had drained out of it. His cheeks and throat were slick wi
th sweat. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Sam. It’s risky. Awfully risky. Four native boats—”

  “General, I know we can do it. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”

  Westy closed his eyes, made a brusque little gesture with his hand. “All right, all right, Sam,” he answered testily. “Let me think about it. Let me think about it a bit … ” He turned and called to Dickinson, who was still talking with Hodl: “Dick—contact Bart Koch, will you?—and see what he says about Ostrow’s people … Christ, I don’t know,” he remarked to no one in particular; he pulled off his helmet and mopped his face. “This miserable, stinking country—”

  His voice was drowned out in a series of shrieks; they both turned. Down on the trail a stretcher-borne soldier was screaming terribly—a series of yelping, animal cries, his hands clutching at his head.

  “You—you people there!” Westerfeldt shouted. “Can’t you give that man something, quiet him down …?”

  The medics looked back at them, and one of them cried, “Christ, Mac, I’ve given him two syrettes already …”

  Damon looked down at his feet, listening to the General, who was running on about the report of a counterattack on Frenchy Beaupré’s battalion from the Grove, his eyes darting here and there. He wasn’t going to agree to it, Sam knew; he would wait and wait until it was too late. He was taking longer and longer to make up his mind—which was now following this slow parade of the sick and mangled streaming toward the long green tents in the grove beyond the clearing. Damon hooked his thumbs in his belt, thinking. He had to convince the General of this, he had to, even if he got sore at him. Another day like today—

  “—telling me he wouldn’t accept the responsibility!” Westy was saying angrily, wagging his head. “Where does he get off with that—I’ve known Frenchy since he was a hell-raising shavetail at Bailey. How much does he think a man will take? I’m telling you, one more word and he’s on his way to Australia …”

  A man was walking toward them from the field hospital: a slight figure, bareheaded, stoop-shouldered with weariness, wearing red scarves on his forearms—scarves that turned out to be layers on layers of blood; his khaki shirt, his trousers were spattered and smeared with it. Major Weintraub, his beard blue in the hot light, looking like a brilliant scholar who has just been unfairly graded by a pack of academic incompetents.

  “General—”

  Westerfeldt faced him. “Yes? What’s on your mind, Nate?”

  “General, would you come across the road and talk to the badly wounded? Just for a few minutes?”

  “What’s that?” Westy’s eyes darted at the doctor and away again. He looked cornered.

  “Just for a moment, sir. It would buck them up. They need it badly, most of them. They’re pretty low …”

  “I … Well, I—no.” The big man shook his head doggedly. “No.”

  Weintraub’s eyes flashed at him. “But General, they need some—”

  “Did you hear me—I told you no!” Westerfeldt shouted. His hands were clenched in tight white balls. In a lower tone he added, “The answer is no, Major. I can’t spare the time … ” He threw a desperate, fearful gaze at the somber tents, the rain clouds boiling on themselves like a deadly gray broth, the barbaric wall of jungle. “Sam,” he said in a tremulous mixture of mandate and supplication, “go over and see them, will you? Talk to them?”

  “All right, General.” He watched Westy walk away unsteadily toward the headquarters tent.

  “The bastard,” Weintraub was saying in a cold fury. “The one-way, cold-blooded bastard.”

  “He’s not cold-blooded,” Damon answered, walking toward the long tents.

  “No? What is he, then?”

  “He’s—he’s sick.” But he knew that was not the reason.

  Weintraub grinned mirthlessly. “Well, isn’t that just too fucking bad,” he said in a savage voice. “How unique. I’ll tell you something. I took the temperature of every man in one company two days ago. What was left of them. For my own edification and amusement. Every single man was running a temperature. Every—single—man. You can’t expect sick men to fight …”

  “We have no choice.”

  “Is that right.” Weintraub threw him a look white with hate. “That’s easy for you to say. You can smash up the crockery; we have to try to paste it back together again.”

  Damon made no answer. It’s not my detail, he thought resentfully, it’s not up to me, most of the troops don’t know me anyway. I don’t mean anything to them. Walking in step with Weintraub, now stiff with anger, into the olive gloom of the tent, along the rows of field cots where medical corpsmen bent over bottles of plasma hung from mosquito racks like stained garnet wine bottles. Wine of life. The men, drugged with morphine, stirred like blind puppies or lay as still as death, in a stench of alcohol and ether and blood and vomit and excrement. The return on the investment. Oh Jesus—to have Bert MacConnadin here in this cave of agony, for twenty minutes! for just five. Or Ed Downing. All the merchants and the kings …

  “Don’t let me keep you, Doctor,” he said quietly. “I know how busy you are.” Weintraub walked quickly off through the ward.

  The faces turned to Damon—angry, indifferent, smiling dreamily. A medic was just drawing a mustard-colored pad cover over the head of one patient, exposing the blue tubes of ankles. Three cots down Damon saw a face he recognized.

  “Millis,” he said, approaching the painfully thin face with its over-large, suppliant eyes, the bandaged legs. “How you doing, son? Anything I can bring you?”

  It was several seconds before he realized Millis couldn’t understand anything he had said.

  In the thick, velvet darkness the opposite shore looked far away. On the surface of the river there was not a flicker or a ripple; it might have been a void, an impassable gulf that sank to the center of the earth. Lying flat on his belly Damon swung his head to the right, passed his eyes over the dulled mounds of helmets, like clay bowls under the spikes and palps and scrolls of vegetation. The moist, rich earth beneath him seemed to be shifting, tilting him over on his back, the helmets shifted subtly. Dizzy. He was dizzy, and sick, his head felt as if it were about to burst into flame. He had the bug: some bug. Beside him Captain Bowcher brought his arm up in front of his face, as though to read his watch. Damon stared at him dully. In a few minutes some of them would be dead, perhaps all of them. In three hours it would all be over: he himself would be dead or wounded, he would be successful, he would be a failure—incompetent, insubordinate, to be court-martialed, sent home in disgrace. What right did he have to do this?

  They’d made elaborate preparations for the crossing that afternoon; and at dusk he had gone back to Brigade, leaving Ben in charge. Westy was sitting on the edge of his cot, a sheaf of reports in one hand. Sweat was pouring into his eyes; he looked ready to collapse.

  “Hello, Sam.” His eyes were watery and wide. “How are your boys? Tell me the truth.”

  “Why, they’re all right, General. They’re—”

  “I just heard from Dick, he’s over at BADGER.” His lower lip trembled and he put his hand to his mouth. “Dutch says his people are incapable of advance …”

  Damon took a deep breath. “General, if I could explain this crossing once more. I’m convinced we can bring it off.” He launched into the plan again, going into more detail—broke off when Westerfeldt swayed backward, gripped the mosquito bar to steady himself.

  “General—you all right?”

  Westerfeldt kneaded his belly slowly with one hand. “I feel pretty rocky. Little fever. I’ll be all right in a while. Go ahead.” He peered out under the tent flap, furtively. “I don’t know, Sam. I still don’t like it.”

  “General, it’s our only hope.” He leaned forward, gesturing. “If you can just give me enough mortar shells to get us over there, we can swing it.”

  “We can’t stand any more losses. We just can’t stand it, Sam…”

  “We’ve got to try it. We can’t go along like
this—we have no reserves, the companies are down to sixty and seventy, most of the men are ill. We’ve got to take a few risks now.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know …”

  Damon rose to his feet. “It’ll go—we’ll make it go. You’ve got to let me do this!”

  “I—”

  All at once Westy broke down, rocking back and forth, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking. “Oh God, I can’t look at them. My boys. I can’t look at them anymore! Ah God help me, I don’t know …”

  Damon paused there above him, glanced around wildly. There was no one else in the tent or within earshot. He reached down and gripped the General by the shoulder. “Let me do it, Westy. Now. Give me the word!”

  The phone rang. Westy lurched to his feet; his face looked green. “That’ll be Dick.” Damon stepped back. The General leaned over his field desk, swaying, hanging on to the side of it with one hand. “I’ll contact you later, Sam. Better wait on it. I’ll see—I want to talk to Dick …”