Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  It would put the cork in the bottle.

  “Sir?”

  He started, smiled at Ryetower’s expression of cherubic inquiry: he must have spoken out loud. He gave his attention to the map again. Of course he could mount another amphibious landing farther up the coast—at Patnong, say. But it would take too long, and it would mean going back to the Navy to beg ships, and more air cover; and he didn’t want that. It would cause talk of the kind that was exceedingly dangerous. He could imagine the conversations at CINCPAC, at the Hawaiian Department, back in Washington. “Who is it—Massengale? My God, he’s got three divisions to play with, all the naval support in the theater, what more does he want? Can’t he wind it up with what he’s got?”

  It seemed to be even hotter in the long, white-walled room. His head ached dully, and his chest burned with this hellish rash. Stolidly he smoked, his eyes narrowed. No. He had chosen this operation with all the cunning three years with Operations had given him, and he had chosen well. It had suited all his requirements: an island in the Philippines campaign, large enough for maneuver, involving two vetted divisions and a third he could for various reasons control as if it were his own. He was not going to risk criticism now. It was simply a matter of staying firmly on top of the situation, maintaining a flexible posture, and seizing such opportunities as arose. This was going to be the operation that would establish his reputation as a brilliant tactician, throw him into prominence as the leading corps commander for the Japanese home islands assaults. With luck he might even secure an Army command. With a little more than luck he might even—

  “Radio from CUTLASS, General.” Mincher, standing at his desk, with the decoded slip. He took hold of it and read it.

  TIME: 1438 PYLON UNDERWAY AS ORDERED X LEADING ELEMENTS 2378 WEST FANEGAYAN X ASSAULT PLATOON STRENGTH REPULSED X CUTLASS

  He wanted to laugh out loud. He smiled at Ryetower and handed him the radio, said: “What did I tell you? Two-three-seven-eight—that’s more than half of the pivot, isn’t it? that’s almost two-thirds of the way …”

  “Yes sir, it is.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” he demanded happily.

  “Yes, you did, sir.” Both Ryetower and Fowler were beaming at him.

  “Damon’s got himself all exercised over nothing at all. It’ll run off like clockwork. The Orientals are too bewitched, bothered and bewildered to do anything about it.” Two forty. In another four hours they’d be virtually in position, and ready to start the assault on the airstrip tomorrow, bright and early. They’d have it by noon. He was flooded with certainty, with vigor; all his depression had vanished.

  He jumped to his feet. “Lyal,” he said. “Contact Bannerman and order him to execute ROTUNDA at once. Get hold of Preston and tell him to commit his armor above Apolete at sixteen thirty hours. Issue attack order for Reina Blanca on the axis Pandada-Aguinaldo Highway-Limpoc. Tell Preston he must expect that the enemy will attempt to outflank to the east, and impress on him that his primary mission is to block the highway to the south and the Sabag Valley to the east. Inform Bannerman that his cardinal mission is the capture of the city, intact—stress the fact that he will have the enemy both front and rear, and that the necessity for all-around defense is obvious. And advise him that I am moving the Five forty-first, less one battalion, to Noquete without delay. Now have you got all that?”

  Ryetower was staring at him, his mouth ajar, eyes darting nervously. “You mean—that is, right away, General?”

  “When did you think?” he snapped. “Easter morning?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  “Get on it, now. We’re going to wind it up with a flourish. I’m running over to MANGO to see about that bridge.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Their eyes followed him as he strode across the room—a comical mixture of apprehension and awe. It struck him that there are only two kinds of men—the worried and the certain; and that all human intercourse was dominated by this division. It might be an intriguing thought to explore in his journal that evening, after the dust settled. “Come along, Edward,” he said, and Prengle leaped to his feet and hurried over to him. Standing at the room’s entrance watching Ryetower and Fowler, he laughed softly. “To horse, gentlemen,” he said. “In war there is only one favorable moment; genius seizes it. Napoleon, Maxim XCV.”

  Still laughing softly he went down the steps to his waiting scout car.

  11

  It began subtly, like a spring rain: a distant popping, toylike and faint, the individual shots coming so fast they finally blended into a steady, crackling roar, punctuated by the sonorous thump of mortar shells. Damon raised his head, saw Feltner and Brand and the others listening too, spoons and canteens and ration tins frozen below their faces. A moment of waiting, paced by the groan of a weapons carrier coming up the trail from the beach and the tart Yankee intonations of Dickinson, who was inside the tent talking on the phone to Division Artillery.

  “Where’s that, Fotgon?” Spaulding, the G-3, said to nobody in particular.

  “No.” Brand tossed his head toward the north. “That’s up there. Fanegayan.”

  It was: there wasn’t the slightest doubt about it. A dry gust of breeze passed through the palms and they clattered fitfully and subsided. The headquarters area seemed all at once empty, without purpose.

  “God damn flies,” Pritchard said. He had his mess gear in his lap and was passing one hand rapidly over it and eating with the other. The flies were fierce: they came in blue-black swarms, weaving about heavy-bodied, as though already engorged, and settled on your food, crawling over it and one another until they looked like shreds of some furry, animate, glistening mat. And when you thought about where they’d probably been just before—

  “They bother you, do they, Harry?” Spaulding asked the aide amiably.

  “By God, they do, Colonel. I don’t mind their eating my chow, I can put up with that, they’re hungry right along with everybody else; it’s when they lie in it and spit in it and wipe their God damn feet in it that gets me riled …”

  Damon smiled at the low ritual laughter. He hated the flies more than almost anything else. Of all the trials and miseries of jungle warfare—rain and mosquitoes and malaria and jungle crud and heat—the flies with their black furry swarming were the worst. They seemed to presage some terrible day when man would have lost control, succumbed utterly to his propensity for violence and self-destruction; when all cities were razed, all farms in ruins, all fields gone back to swamp or scrub forest—and the insects alone, the multitudinous insects, had taken over.

  He felt the prefatory clutch in his bowels, set down his canteen cup and wiped his hands and mouth with his red cotton handkerchief. This had been bothering him ever since the start of the operation: a swollen, painful pressure low in his belly right after eating, followed by cramps. He was conscious of sweat popping out on his neck and forearms. Brand was watching him; he winked without expression, got to his feet and went down the trail behind the tents. The firing in the direction of Fanegayan had continued steady—it had increased, if anything. A regular fire fight; no platoon probe this time, that was for sure.

  He stepped inside the latrine. It was the one luxury of the headquarters bivouac he’d permitted, and it was modest enough: a green cheesecloth structure over a two-by-four frame and roofed with a tarpaulin. But the flies had got in here, too—they got in everywhere—and the air inside the cheesecloth was stifling. Captain Preveau of G-1 and Lieutenant McGovern from Operations were seated at the far end of one of the two planks. Their heads turned, they spoke in greeting.

  “Hello, boys.” He lowered his trousers and eased himself onto the rough two-inch plank—gasped softly as the hot streaming began. Runs again. Or was it something more than that? He’d have to go see Weintraub. The tart stench of chlorine stung his nostrils. Preveau and McGovern, who had been talking animatedly, had fallen silent with his entrance and he offered a few observations in an effort to put them at their ease. Preve
au answered with curt deference. Rank. Well, he was damned if he would waste the time and energy of good men putting up separate latrines or messes until operations were over and the situation warranted such foolishness.

  Rank. His bowels let go again with a burning rush that made him snort through his nose. What he needed was a good slug of paregoric. He thought of Lin Tso-han in the plain, worn blue tunic and cap, helping himself from the iron cauldron with the others. All men are brothers. Though he, Damon, had two stars and the power of life and death over fifteen thousand men, he was nonetheless constrained to crouch in the perennial simian squat, his buttocks whitely exposed and traversed by flies, and evacuate his bowels as readily as the meanest company messman or ammunition carrier. A vigorous incitement to humility—yet the rich and powerful never seemed to reflect on this fact unduly. What conclusions did Charles de Gaulle draw from his recurrent need to take a crap, as the saying went? or MacArthur, or Massengale?

  “It’s a snap,” McGovern was saying in his breezy Irish voice. “Hell, they’re all through, Sid. Campaign’ll be over in three days, four at the outside.”

  “I don’t know,” Preveau answered somberly. “There’s a million of ’em out there, and they’re all dug in …”

  “Oh, you sad-sack pessimist. I’m telling you, I’m going to be drinking Philippine beer and chasing quail through the streets of Reina Blanca a week from today.”

  Preveau chewed at his nails. “You remember you said the Germans were going to surrender by October first. Remember that?”

  “Oh, that’s different. The Krauts—they’re smart. Real pros, always figuring the angles, doping out ways to beat you while you’re sleeping. These dumb slopies don’t know the time of day … Aren’t we going to wrap it up quick, General? Three more days, right?”

  He grinned at them tightly, wanting to strain and trying not to. What did you say? that McGovern was an irrepressible optimist, that Preveau was a hopeless pessimist? The gunfire around Fanegayan had mounted now, into a stuttering, pulsing uproar of sound. Whatever you said—the merest aside—tore through the Division with the speed of light and came racing back, rearing, hydra-headed, distended beyond all recognition, mocking you before you’d got your trap shut. The perils of overconfidence could be almost as great as those of gloom. There was a day he would have said, “Sure—we’ll take ’em in a walk,” there was a day he’d have muttered, “Don’t make any mistake about it, we’re a long way from wrapping this one up.” Now he smiled with a confidence he did not feel, pulling up his trousers, and said: “To tell the truth, boys, I’m working under a handicap—I haven’t read my George Fielding Eliot for today. When I have I’ll know just how we’ll do.”

  They laughed together easily, watching him. As he stepped out into the blaze of light, the cooler air, he saw Pritchard hurrying down the path toward him, his face strained. “General—”

  Aware of the concern on his aide’s face, knowing that Preveau and McGovern could hear them, he shook his head once, sternly. Pritchard frowned but fell silent. Damon came up to him and said: “What is it?”

  “It’s General Krisler, sir. With the Four Seventy-seventh. They’ve been hit in force …”

  He nodded, walking rapidly, sweating, his guts still griping rudely, along the trail, across the little clearing and into the CP. Stinson handed him the phone and he said, “CUTLASS.”

  “Sam, it’s rough as a cob.” Ben’s voice, terse and flat over a background of dusty crackling, underlaid with hisses and booms. “Carefully planned assault preceded by mortar barrage. They’ve poured through Fletcher’s company already.”

  “What strength?”

  “Regiment at least, may be more.”

  “Regiment! Ben, are you sure of that?”

  “Christ Almighty yes, I’m sure …”

  “How’s Johnny taking it?”

  “He’s been hit, Sam. I’ve taken over. I thought I’d better—things are not in too good shape right now. Look, I’m falling back to the little ridge below the village, try to establish a line, L 86-32. Give me everything you can just beyond the ridge right away.”

  “—Have you got it in hand, Benjy?”

  “I don’t know. They’re all over the place, they just keep right on coming. They’re giving us a very rough time. You better—” There was a thump and then a wild crackling.

  “Ben?”

  “Yeah. You better plaster everything above Umatoc—that banana grove we talked about, the woods at the base of the hills. That’s where they’re staging.”

  “Right. Hold on. Hold on, now. I’ll get up there with a fire brigade.”

  He hung up and looked at his hand. Timed it perfectly: just past maximum swing of the arc. Of course. Why shouldn’t he? He said: “Dick, tell Fuglister to get his people up there without delay.”

  “Right, General.”

  “Vinnie,” he said to Sergeant De Luca.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get this off at once. Top priority. ‘From CUTLASS to SPANNER. Execute BACKSTOP THREE immediately. Acknowledge.’ End message. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now another one. Top priority. ‘CUTLASS to CONDOR. PYLON counterattacked in at least regimental strength. Situation critical. Am ordering SPANNER ashore at once. Request air strikes north Umatoc 600–1000 yards. Extremely urgent.’ End message.”

  For the next twenty minutes he busied himself with fire missions to artillery; he rushed the reserve battalion of the 484th to the bend in the Kalahe below Umatoc, alerted Frenchy Beaupré, who was on the 477th’s left, and talked with Dickinson and Spaulding about trail net and supply problems as soon as Bannerman’s people were ashore. There was another brief report from Jack Brozzi, the regiment’s exec, screaming for artillery. Damon tried to calm him down, but without much success. The Double Seven was falling back from L Ridge, apparently, under increasing pressure. Damon fiddled with his penknife, cursing this lunatic system of radio communications. Which was better—to go up front and buck up Ben and the Regiment, or run down to the beach? He decided on the latter: Ben was steady enough, and he could communicate a sense of urgency more forcibly to Porky if he met him in person; and there would be problems as to how to deploy the 49th.

  “Sir, message from SPANNER,” De Luca said. He took the slip of paper from the radioman and read it.

  CANNOT COMPLY X PREVIOUSLY ORDERED EXECUTE ROTUNDA X ADVANCE ELEMENTS DEBARKING DALOMO 1630 X SPANNER A fly had settled on De Luca’s sweaty cheek; its hind legs stroked briskly over its blued iridescent wings: left, then right, then both. Stroked grossly, over and over. The radioman’s eyes were staring wide.

  “—They’re my reserve,” he said savagely. “Mine …!” He put his lips together. Dickinson’s bony, professorial face was full of alarm. This God damned double-beachhead foolishness. He should be in direct telephonic contact with Massengale and Swanson both, not this antediluvian radio mummery. And Bannerman wandering around now, out at sea, heading for Dalomo—

  “Are they gone?” he heard himself saying importunately. “Really gone?”

  “Who, General?”

  “Mitch,” he said to the Signals Officer. “Send someone down to the beach at once to check out SPANNER, see if he can spot them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Vinnie …”

  “Yes, General?”

  He said bitterly, “Send one more. Just one. Top priority. ‘CUTLASS to CONDOR. Request immediate return of SPANNER to execute BACKSTOP as agreed—repeat—agreed. Blue Beachhead in jeopardy.’ End message.”

  He felt actively sick. The realization that fifteen thousand men at his back no longer existed, that they were miles and miles away and preparing even now to debark where they were not needed at all; that he had nothing but two battalions in reserve, both of them already past weariness, with which to oppose twenty thousand Japanese—all this was like a blade driven deep in his belly. He could go chasing Porky in a PT boat, but it wouldn’t do any good, it wouldn’t bring the
49th back. It would only waste time. The son of a bitch: the stupid, power-drunk, one-way son of a bitch! Desperately he struggled for balance, a semblance of calm, beating down panic. He had to think—

  When CROSSBOW came on again he picked up the phone with dread.

  “Sam? Benjy. We’ve caught it big. They’ve thrown in the kitchen stove too, now.” His voice was tense, high-pitched, almost incoherent. “The boys are wonderful. They’re—I can’t tell you all they’ve done. Jackson is—”

  “Ben—”

  “But we’re in a bad way, Sam. A very bad way. Four hundred effectives.”

  “—Four hundred …!”

  “Yes. If that. I’m out of communication with Fred. Can you lay everything on L 84. L 84.”

  “But—that’s where you are … ”

  “They pushed us off the ridge. We’re on the west side of the valley, those two little mounds we looked at, remember? Lay on every—” There was a commotion on the line, a ripping crackle and crash.

  “Ben!” he shouted.

  “Yeah. I’m here. Still. Sam, look, we can’t hold ’em. They’re coming in waves, any old way. It’s a division. A division at least. Can you get us a drop? Thirty-caliber ammo. They’re filtering, then rushing—flanking rushes. This is no banzai. Watch out for—” The crackling was so dense now Damon couldn’t get a word.

  “Ben,” he shouted, “—look, you pull back, now! Pull out of there while you can …”

  “No question of that, Dad. We’re in all-around defense now. It’s Little Big Horn time on Pala. You better get set, he’s shooting his wad on this. Full commitment. Tell Frenchy he better—”

  The line went dead. In place of the hisses and thumps and crackling, absolute stillness. Cut. They’d cut it. Or mortar fire had broken it, no way of knowing. He set the phone back in its jacket gently and got to his feet. The tent was quiet.