Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  “You better go in, Sam,” Pulleyne was saying. “Go get hold of Dutch, see what’s the matter there—and then get over and check on Krisler. Find out what’s holding him up like that. We’ve got to get in there, grab that airstrip …”

  Damon had come to his feet quickly. “Right away, Duke.” He turned to Chase and Brand. “All right, boys. Let’s get moving.”

  Pulleyne followed them outside onto the deck, still talking to the Old Man. “Don’t take any fool chances, now. They’re throwing a lot of crap around in there …”

  “I won’t, General.”

  They went quickly over the side, hand over hand. The LCVP looked boxlike and trivial far below, the upturned faces like bland white flowers. Then they were aboard, the boat swung out and away—and the world changed again. The morning sun slid a diamond shawl over the water, and dead ahead lay the beach, a faint dun patch hazy under the smoke. Gripping the warm iron of the gunwale, swaying with the boat’s motion, he watched the Old Man talking to Lieutenant Chase. There was something fantastic about the three of them going ashore for the purpose of bringing order to a battle. He was conscious of that thick swelling high in his chest, right under his windpipe, that he remembered from Sendaiadere. The shore was clearer now; the ragged fringe of jungle was apparent here and there through the smoke, and the cliff on the peninsula was like a mesa, high and brooding in the sunlight. Their craft picked up speed, and the swaying grew worse. There was a towering white column of water near them that seethed and swayed and then subsided; the boat slewed left. Lieutenant Chase’s face was slick with sweat, but he grinned and nodded when Damon said: “Miss as good as a mile … ”

  Life was a matter of luck. Luck and fate and chances—and reading the signs with wisdom, quickly. Anybody who said it wasn’t was a dummy or a liar. There was that afternoon on old Sendai he’d been chopping with a machete at the jungle around his shelterhalf and thinking distantly of Estelle when Tompkins had cried, “Ten-hut!” and he’d swung around to see Damon standing there grinning at him. He was in khaki and there was a small neat star on his utility cap.

  “Well—” he started, caught himself. He was a regular and the rest of his squad were staring at them. He came to attention and saluted and said impassively: “Good evening, sir.”

  “Hello, Brand.” Damon had returned the salute and then shaken hands and asked him how he was feeling. “What you doing—clearing the west forty?”

  “Yes.” He gestured casually with the machete, which he’d transferred to his left hand. “Stuff grows while you look at it.” Tompkins and the others were still gaping at him. Kids.

  “Come along with me a minute,” Damon was saying. “I want to talk to you.” They moved slowly toward the end of the clearing. “How’s it going?”

  “Can’t complain, sir.” He felt a heady rush of excitement; General Damon was walking along with him, asking his opinion! “They’re shaking down. Draftees, city and town kids, most of them. They think if you lie down on your belly and look at each other it’s scouting and patroling.” Behind him he heard Tompkins whisper in awe and incredulity, “—a frigging general! … ” He turned and glowered at them to shut them up, though he felt a deep, fugitive pride. “They’ve all been through high school, though. Every last one of them.”

  The General was smiling faintly. “Well: it takes all kinds.”

  “… Congratulations, sir,” he said awkwardly. “I heard you’d got a star. Are we going to be assigned to your command?”

  “No. I came over to see you.” He looked up; Damon was facing him, his hands sunk in his hip pockets. “I remember you once said you’d like to serve with me. Well, I need an orderly and I wonder if you’d be interested. It’ll mean a lot of late hours, running around, a lot of headaches. And I’ll be the biggest one of all. It’ll mean another stripe for you, though not right away. But Captain Orr tells me he’s pleased with your work; and maybe you could go farther if you stayed with your outfit. You’ll have to decide about that yourself. Anyway, think it over and let me know tomorrow.”

  “I don’t need to think it over, sir. Hell, I’d go right now. Only thing, I’ll need to get cleared …”

  Damon smiled. “That shouldn’t be too difficult. If you’re sure you want to do it.”

  “I’m sure, General.” He was, beyond all doubt. It was a sign such as he’d never had before. “Whenever you say.”

  “No time like the present. I’ve got a jeep at the battalion office. Go ahead and pack your gear. I’ll see about getting some orders cut for you.”

  It had been like that. One moment, and his whole life was changed again. Chance. Like the night long ago when he’d waked from a nightmare and smelled the smoke, dense and foul, clinging to his throat. Fire. Without a sound he had jumped to his feet and run into the main room through churning clouds of smoke, to the hearth, the old rug whose edge was alive with crawling maggots of glowing coals. Coughing he’d snatched up the rug and made for the door. The rug had burst into flame all at once, searing his face; in a paroxysm he’d dropped it, caught it up again and plunged outside and flung it on the hard clay where it burned furiously, the flames torn low to the earth by the plains wind. His forearm was burned, and his foot. And behind him then he heard a stirring and a cry. He would always remember that moment. Chance. But you had to seize it by the throat, as the Old Man said, or it was nothing—it would drift past you like a still river. And it was more than that, too: standing there in the clearing with the machete in his hand, watching those steady, sober eyes he knew he wanted nothing more than to follow this man who had taken such risks for him and given him back his dignity, his place among the white men—that he would willingly follow him as long as breath was in his lungs …

  A man came running from the left, from the direction of First Battalion. Captain Lund, looking like a wild-eyed scarecrow, bathed in dust. He slid down into the hole. “Colonel—everybody’s down! We’ve lost everybody …”

  Krisler grinned at him brightly. “You’ve still got me, Swede.”

  “Hear it?” Travis was saying to Chase. “Do you?”

  “Yes.” Chase doubled down in the pit and grabbed the arm of Damon, who was on the radio to CLAYMORE. “General—”

  And then, peering forward over the shattered, embedded logs and débris he heard it, under the groan and crash of mortars and the popping of rifle and machinegun fire—a brash, dusty clatter, like a tractor working in a distant field; then another. Oh no, he thought, watching Damon and Krisler scramble up to the leading edge of the pit, their faces rigid with tension; remembering Sendai all over again, that same coughing clatter and everyone running through the tangle of roots and vines, oh no, no: constrained to watch with the others now, all his senses alert and quaking—seeing then at the far end of the draw, bristling with fronds and branches, the squat black form.

  “Tanks!” someone shouted. “They’ve got tanks—”

  The machine gun on their right opened up, the gunner half-reclining on one hip, his helmet tipped back. From all points tracers curved in toward the tank and caromed away like sparks from an acetylene torch. It paused a moment, turned and came on again. Brand looked back. Damon was back on the radio again, talking rapidly now. “CARBINE to CUTLASS. CARBINE to CUTLASS … Duke? This is Sam. Look, I’m with CROSSBOW, we’ve got troubles … What? Let me talk to Pulleyne. Who is this? … He’s what? You say he’s what?” Damon’s face was strained with the effort to hear. “Gone ashore—but what’s the sense in that? How in Christ’s name can I reach him?… All right, all right. Dick, look, we’re under attack by tanks. Five or six, maybe more, I can’t tell yet. Now what about Bailey’s tank company: have they got ashore yet? … Recalled them! Then where in hell are they—just milling around out there somewhere? All right, never mind. What about artillery?… No no naval fire—they’re into us now. Get on Harkavy and tell him to divert any and all armor to Red Two. Yes, Red Two. When Pulleyne contacts you, tell him we’re in serious trouble over here. To send Bailey
in as soon as possible. And tell him CROSSBOW will hold. Out.” He handed the headset to De Luca and called, “Hank! Joe!” Brand crept back through the pit.

  Colonel Krisler was staring at Damon, his head close to the Assistant Division Commander’s. “We stuck with the lease?”

  “Looks like it.”

  The tanks were nearer. There were four that Brand could see now, coming through the grass, beetling up and down in the rubbish heap of underbrush and cascao, their guns wavering like antennae.

  “—we’ve got to do it the hard way,” Krisler shouted. “All I’ve got are rifle grenades, Sam. Thirties won’t stop the bastards …”

  Damon had seized him by the arm. “Hang on here, Benjy. There’s no place to go—”

  “Do tell.”

  “I’ll get you something. I will!” The General waved to Brand and Chase and they left the pit in a rush, jogging in and out of holes, crashing through the dense growth, the open spaces. Tracers passed over their heads; then they were over a rise and the jungle lightened toward the bay. Shells were falling in the shallow water inside the reef. Brand, hurrying after the General, felt an almost tearful relief at being out of sight of the tanks.

  The beach was a maze of wreckage and confusion. There were no tanks ashore, or none that Brand could see. Two amphtracks lay out among the concrete obstacles, half submerged, LCVPs bobbed far out or drifted idly with the current; men were frantically passing ammunition cases and ration boxes from hand to hand. Off to their right, away from the ridge, men were still wading ashore, their rifles held high. Immersed to their thighs they seemed motionless, trapped in the oily water; then all at once they reached the shallows and broke into a nervous run, scampering up the beach toward the palms. Everywhere men were digging in, gesticulating, straining under loads—an incessant, haphazard parade of desperation and stealth under the shells, which flung up plumes of white water or black bile.

  “MacRae,” Damon was saying calmly. “Keep your eyes peeled for him …”

  Lieutenant Chase said, “Right, General,” and Brand nodded dumbly, threading his way through a swarm of shell craters, crouching or frantically working figures, smashed crates, twisted sheets of corrugated tin, logs, crushed water cans, abandoned packs and rifles and the frayed stumps of trees. How were they going to find anybody in this—let alone the Beachmaster? A corpsman was bent over a massive, torn body: the big knife moved once, twice, jerkily and came away running red. Brand turned away his eyes. Two planes swept in toward the cliff, their engines howling; their rockets sent cloudy, smoking fingers against the cliff face, which erupted in fountains of smoke and flame. Three wounded lay in a row, one man with an arm across his eyes. Beside him a bottle of plasma hung from a rifle butt, its tube gently swaying. The thin, burdensome shriek swept near and Brand threw himself into a hole, felt the concussion slam against his body. His head, his eyes and all his teeth ached in one vast throb of sensation. Another shell crashed savagely near, and fragments rained grossly against the cascao. Sendai was bad, the worst he could imagine, but this was terrible—there wasn’t any end to it. That lousy cliff—!

  He looked up to see Damon walking swiftly along the edge of the water, and Chase hurrying to catch up with him. Angry with himself, feeling shaky and harassed, he clambered to his feet and ran along the hard sand. The General was talking to a worried-looking young lieutenant with a freckled face who was standing beside a jeep filled with bedding rolls and cases of rations.

  “—orders of the chief of staff,” the boy was saying. “Colonel Bowsma. He gave me—”

  “I’m taking it,” Damon answered. “Right now.”

  The lieutenant looked frightened. “No—you can’t—”

  “Oh, yes I can. You’re on the wrong beach anyway. You should be on Green One.” The General motioned to Brand and Chase. “Come on, boys, climb aboard.”

  “No, but I’m not to surrender this vehicle to anybody—”

  “I’ll give you a receipt, Doc,” Damon shouted at him over the motor. “Ask me tomorrow …”

  They were creeping along through the wreckage, moving toward the cliff, which was still raining shells on them in spite of the planes. The young lieutenant was gazing after them, shouting something. Turning back again, Brand spotted a figure he recognized, tapped Damon’s shoulder and called, “Down there! MacRae …”

  The General stopped the jeep with a lurch and swung out of it. Major MacRae, the Beachmaster, was sitting propped up against an expeditionary can. He was stripped to the waist, streaming sweat, and there were two bloody compresses on his chest and one on his upper arm. He was wearing a bright blue baseball cap, and his great square face was red and angry.

  “Mac!” Damon called. “You seen Pulleyne?”

  “No. He ashore? I thought he—”

  “How about tanks?”

  “No got, General.”

  “What’s for artillery?”

  “Nothing yet—at least not before I got hit … No, there were some thirty-sevens, I think a couple of thirty-sevens down by the old pier, before those Zeroes came over. That raid shook everything up …”

  “All right.” They went bucking and snorting along, now in the water, now in behind the trees, past an aid station in a shattered pillbox, past stretcher parties hurrying down with their burdens to a waiting amphtrack at the water’s edge. The Old Man spun the wheel and they swung around a wrecked Japanese landing barge, dipped into a hole and rocked crazily up out of it. Behind them came a high, snarling hammer, swelling unbearably, and twisting in the back seat Brand saw the plane coming low, hanging fifty feet above them, the kicking pattern of bullets ripping their path down the beach. At the water’s edge a soldier was standing, firing at it offhand, the spent shells spinning past his helmet like tiny bright yellow toys—and a heart-beat after that the plane was past them, rolling up and out over the ridge, the orange-red balls on its dun wings looking garish and absurd.

  “Bastard,” he muttered. His teeth were chattering. He crouched in the back of the vehicle among the bedding rolls and tentage. “I hope you burn …”

  The jeep stopped so sharply he was flung into Chase. Damon was yelling, “Come on, come on,” was already out and running, and he followed closely this time, in a spasm of relief. At the sea’s edge, near a smashed LCVP, half-sunk, he saw the rubber wheel, the shiny, slender barrel. Thirty-seven. Lying on its side, the dirty brown water washing against the perforated plate of the shoulder guard.

  “Come on, boys. Give me a hand …”

  They crouched in the water, straining, rocked the gun upright. Damon worked the firing lever, daubed at the recoil cylinder with his big red pocket handkerchief. “Plenty of oil. Sight mount’s okay. Breech block’s okay. She’ll serve.”

  Brand said, “Yeah, but Chief—”

  “Don’t worry, we’re going to demount it.” Reaching down he pulled the trail pin. “All right, come on. We’re going to set her on the hood.”

  “On the hood of the jeep—?”

  “That’s the pitch. Come on.”

  Brand took the barrel, the other two the breech end; they lifted it clear of the mount, carried it laboriously over to the vehicle and manhandled it up on the hood, the folded-down windshield frame. The windshield itself shattered, and the glass slithered around on the metal. The barrel stuck out over the radiator like a wild snout.

  Jesus H. Christ, Brand thought. Now I’ve seen everything. How in hell’s he going to see to drive? Chase’s expression was a study.

  “Come on, come on,” Damon was shouting over the roar of explosions and rifle fire. “Let’s get ammo—”

  They waded into the landing craft, whose deck plates were warped like barrel staves. A body was floating in the water, facedown, hands extended, rocking gently in the waves formed by their movement; close to the body the water was stained rust red. Brand stepped around it and picked up a box with a black stripe through the center that said SHOT, FIXED, AP, M51 WITH TRACER.

  “Make sure it’s AP,�
� the General shouted at him, and he nodded. Chase had begun to throw some of the bedrolls out of the back of the jeep and Damon said, “No, forget it—there isn’t time! Get in, get in! …”

  He already had the vehicle in gear. Brand flung himself into the front seat and grabbed the breech of the gun. Pieces of the glass from the windshield kept sliding down onto the fenders. They were bucking their way back along the beach, Damon hanging far out in order to see around the gun shield.

  “Hank!” the General roared. “Break out that ammo!”

  Chase pulled out his fighting knife and began to pry at a corner of one of the crates. Brand remembered then and reached back and pulled the ax out of its bracket over the rear wheel.

  A hand struck him on the shoulder. “No!” Damon was shouting at him. “Let him do that! Not you! Stand up and clear the track for me …”

  He pulled himself to his feet, almost fell out of the jeep as it dropped forward into a gully and out of it again, bouncing crazily. “Make way!” he roared, waving his carbine back and forth, glaring at the maze of hurrying, laboring figures who ducked out of the way. Faces turned toward them in fear, in fury, in blank amazement: a master sergeant with a luxuriant black mustache pointed at them and roared with laughter.

  “Will you dig the fucking tank destroyer—!”

  Brand grinned; hanging onto the gun shield for dear life, waving his rifle and roaring, listening to the rending crash of wood as Chase smashed open the ammunition cases, he was taken all at once with a fit of mirth.