Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  “You’re not yourself, Samuel.”

  “No. I’m not. I’m certainly not. If I were half the man I should be—just half!—I’d climb off this sack and beat your teeth down your filthy lying throat …”

  Massengale got to his feet and began to walk back and forth at the foot of the cot, holding the sword close at his side. “You make it very difficult for me, Samuel. Very difficult indeed.”

  “That’s one consolation.”

  “I certainly hope we can avoid the rigors of litigation, now the hurly-burly’s done. I don’t believe in a public airing of grievances, particularly within the family.”

  “What family?”

  Massengale turned in sharp surprise. “The family of the Officer Corps. What did you think I was talking about? Of which you are a member, Samuel: an honored member. I had hoped you’d be a good soldier about this.” He resumed his pacing. “You’ve been out here a long time, Samuel. Twenty-eight months, isn’t it? That’s a long time away from home and family, the ties that keep a man from wavering out of the line of march. I know what loneliness can do to a man under strain, a lot of us do. It’s perfectly understandable. But they won’t understand back in Washington—and the dear, bovine, misguided, straitlaced American public won’t understand at all …”

  “—You bastard,” he breathed. “You’d haul that out too, wouldn’t you?” Massengale’s face remained perfectly expressionless. “Yes: you would. It wasn’t enough that you shipped her back to the States—you’d wreck her life right along with mine, if you could—you’d wreck anybody or anything that threatened the exalted career of Courtney Schuyler Massengale. Sure.” He clenched his first, fighting to steady his voice. “Well, stand by for a blast, mister. If it comes to that, then so be it. I’m not backing off.”

  “I see.” The Corps Commander nodded and resumed his pacing, his lips pursed. “This is regrettable. I wish I could bring you to see it. The larger issue.”

  “The larger issue.”

  “Yes. There’s so much still to do. Such a long, long road, and a rough one …”

  “Do tell.”

  “I wish you’d reconsider. Samuel, the Division needs you.”

  “… What Division?” he cried softly. He was perilously close to weeping now, and the fear of breaking down filled him with raging mortification. If only he were on his feet! “What Division is that? They’re all back at Fanegayan and Umatoc and Ilig, on the trail, under six feet of shit—and you put them there!… I’ve got some advice for you, Massengale. A few words. Don’t be found out there after dark without your retinue.” He felt weak with wrath. “They know, mister. Oh yes. Make no mistake. They know.”

  Massengale smiled his charming smile. “In point of fact I don’t care what they think of me as long as they fear me. That’s the driving gear that turns the wheels of war.”

  Damon felt a despair that sank into the marrow of his bones. “You poor son of a bitch,” he said slowly. “You don’t know anything, do you? Not anything at all.” He started to go on and stopped himself: there was nothing to say. Massengale’s sin—there was none greater—was that he had decided neither grace nor nobility nor love existed in this world. It was hateful to believe this in the wet, dark, desperate sewer’s end of 1944. Hateful and demeaning of that fellow at the sink …

  “Of course I’m sorry to hear that,” Massengale was saying crisply. “I have nothing but praise for the troops of the Fifty-fifth Division. In all truth, that was one of the cardinal reasons for my stopping by today. I’ve been thinking we might put them in for a Presidential Unit Citation. I’m fairly confident that under the circumstances we could get it.”

  Damon smiled sadly and lowered his eyes. Of course. Massengale had known better than to try to bribe him with a decoration. He had put it on the Division—but left it nicely in the conditional. Might, could. Of course.

  For the good of the service.

  He studied his free hand. Well: why shouldn’t they be cited? Who deserved it more than they did?—what was left of them … They were still the Double Five, the Scrofulous Salamanders. The ranks would be filled again, inexorably, in the replacement drafts from Pearl Harbor, Nouméa, Désespoir; the training schedule would crank itself up, range and assault problems and speed marches and scouting-and-patroling, the ammunition would be issued, the gear stenciled and strapped and sweated aboard the attack transports and LSTs. There was still Mindanao and then Formosa, and the Ryukyus; and then lay Dai Nippon herself, and the terrible Kwanto Plain. And who would protect the kids? Who would be left to show them how to file the stacking swivels off their M1s so they wouldn’t catch in the creepers, how to tape their dogtags so they wouldn’t jingle, how to wear their grenades on the sides of their belts so they wouldn’t get in their way while crawling? With him out of the way, Massengale would be ruthless: they’d be given the dirty end of every operation, every logistics detail. Who would fight for them? Dick would merely acquiesce, Winslow was too young and inexperienced, Frenchy would blow his top and slug Massengale in front of thirty correspondents and a three-star admiral …

  For the good of the service. He had done it over and over again. He had backed down with Hangfire Townsend at Hardee, he’d given way in the ruckus over a mixed regiment in ’42 on old Hosmer’s urging, he’d abandoned his campaign for the participation of enlisted men on courtsmartial, he had let that shattering, portentous China experience bleed away in two voluminous reports, now carefully deep-sixed in some abandoned office in the old Munitions Building. For the good of the service. Was he turning into a circumspect subaltern, loyal to the point of subservience, drowning moral principle in the common good, a perfect tool for the arrogant and conniving—was he becoming the kind of soldier he’d always hated and despised? Ben—Ben would tell Massengale to go and fornicate with himself, Ben would already have beaten him to jelly with one arm …

  But what would George Caldwell have done? What was wisdom here, in the face of such unscrupulous design? He didn’t know. Sick, weak, crushed with grief and worn beyond weariness, he honestly didn’t know.

  He raised his eyes. Massengale was still watching him with perfect impassivity, the high cheekbones smooth, the amber eyes implacable: waiting. There is no gulf so great as that between the injured and the able-bodied, Damon thought unhappily, chafing the edge of the cast with his thumbnail. Christ, was he condemned for half his life to face this man—and always on unequal terms? There Massengale stood, with his khaki pressed in razor creases and his three stars, his visored barracks hat with the brim crumpled like MacArthur’s—though without the golden filigree. So certain. So terribly certain in his seven-league strides toward high command. He was here to stay, now. MacArthur had recommended him for the DSM, he was scheduled to appear on the cover of Time magazine the following week, a feature story in Colliers was planned. Shifkin had come by two days ago, outraged and choleric, and told him: that, and other things.

  And Massengale would fight too, he knew: he would spare nothing to protect himself if he, Damon, asked to be relieved and requested a court-martial. A man who would break his word to a trusted subordinate and then lie to the press about it would not stop in the suppression or falsification of messages, the destruction of reputations or the disastrous involvement of the innocent. And he had great political power behind him in Washington—that uncle of his in the Senate; and a smashing victory under his belt. Damon could hear a very exalted personage in the soft, still rooms of the Pentagon: “What’s all this wrangle out there? A brilliant victory, brilliant, what’s this Damon after, anyway? Always been a stormy petrel anyway, hasn’t he? Maybe he’d better come on home and cool off for a while, get someone on that, will you, Harbison?”

  Slowly, watching Massengale, he nodded. Barely moving his lips he said: “I hope you will be able to secure a Distinguished Unit Citation for the Salamanders, General. They deserve every bit of it, and more.”

  The Corps Commander permitted himself the faintest of smiles. “They certainly do,
Samuel. They do indeed. I’m sure Washington will look favorably on a strong recommendation from this Headquarters.”

  He nodded again. “And now, with your permission, sir, I’ll try to get a little sleep.”

  “Of course, Samuel … We’ll put this behind us, then?”

  Damon stared at him hard. “I would certainly like to, General. If the Citation were to be approved I would be inclined to do so.”

  Massengale started to say something, checked himself. “Very well. We’ll consider this incident closed.” At the doorway he paused, and extended Murasse’s sword; the jeweled hilt glittered in the soft light. “You’re quite sure you won’t accept it?”

  “Quite sure, General. As you say, it’s a barbaric weapon. I want you to keep it.”

  “Just as you like.” The Corps Commander turned away. “Good afternoon, Samuel.”

  “Good afternoon, sir.”

  He closed his eyes, but he could not sleep. For a long time after Massengale had left he lay gazing out at the tossing feathery green canopy of the acacia trees.

  15

  “Oh, well—chance,” Bill Bowdoin called into the wind. “If you think it’s all just a matter of chance …”

  “Of course I do!” Tommy Damon laughed. “What else is there?” The wind blew chill and wild from the African shore, a darkened world away, and the waves swept looping chains of green foam along the beach; above their heads sea birds whirled and dipped and uttered their pinched slatterns’ cries.

  “You’re just cynical and rich,” she taunted him.

  “You bet. And I’m going to get richer.”

  “Well, I’m not—I believe in everything …” Smiling she broke away from him and ran along the beach. Sandpipers leaped into flight ahead of her, scattering like checkered fans. Glancing back she saw that Bill had decided not to pursue her but she ran harder anyway, the air cold and raw in her throat, her feet thudding on the damp, hard shore, until she was completely out of wind and threw herself down on a little shelf of sand. After a moment he approached and sat beside her.

  “Do you know what you are?” he demanded. “You’re a spiritual pirate.”

  “Pirates aren’t spiritual—!”

  “Spiritual as anybody else.” He watched her for a moment with his shrewd, gray-blue eyes. “American women are so docile, under all the armor and pretensions. So cozy-coy. That’s why you’re unique—do you know that? You’re willing to take risks.”

  She hugged her knees, watching the terns beating their way upwind, wheeling and diving. “I did the best I could with what I drew,” she said evenly.

  “You did better than that. You couldn’t help it if you were brought up in a medieval atmosphere.”

  “Everybody’s got to live by some kind of rules.”

  “Of course—it depends on what the rules are …” He smiled a sardonic smile. “You army brats. You’re such puritans under all the tough talk. You should have lived with a dozen men, a hundred. You’ve got something to give every one of them.”

  “Bushwah,” she retorted; but it was fun to hear on a Long Island beach, shivering in the sea wind, watching the breakers in their slow furling. The easy, calm assertion of his voice—the voice of the Eastern Seaboard, of inherited wealth and favored education and the steady generations of authority and power, redolent of summer homes on the water and annual voyages to St. Moritz or the Greek Islands and the car waiting outside the office in midtown at 4:30, chauffeur at the wheel—had plucked her out of the tight little vortex of the Army world. Until she’d met him at an OWI function three months before, she’d never really left it for an instant. Worlds might be crumbling and the heart wrung dry with anguish, but one dressed smartly, appeared poised, well groomed and in control, and feigned an interest in the topics of the day, cataclysmic or trivial. Even the news that Poppa had been wounded by shell fragments in the Huertgen Forest had not thrown her too badly off stride; it was merely one more boulder in an avalanche of calamity. He was shipped home some weeks later, limping badly and looking old and infirm—he promptly crept into bed and slept for hours and hours.

  From Butch Rieser she learned that he had been wounded—and one of his aides had been killed—by our own artillery; a revelation that thrust to the front of her mind that vicious disclosure of Irene Keller’s at Christmas. Marge had gone home to Wisconsin, and neither Tommy nor Emily had ever referred to it again; but it continued to torment her. If it were true, if Court had actually done something like that … Sam’s letters were infrequent now, and they were noncommittal and brief. The Salamander had taken a terrible mauling, its survivors had been awarded the Presidential Unit Citation in a ceremony at the old Spanish barracks in Reina Blanca; he himself was on his feet again, and beginning to regain the use of his left arm. The only reference to Ben’s death had been in one terse line.

  One evening, while she was serving her father his dinner in bed, she told him about the cocktail party, and asked him if he’d heard anything.

  He shook his head irritably. “War is the seat of confusion, ignorance and cross-purpose. If I were to tell you a tithe of the mix-ups and muddles—”

  “But this isn’t muddles, Poppa—this is hideous …”

  “I should be very surprised if anything remotely like that happened. Bart Keller’s wife is not celebrated for her veracity. Or some other conjugal qualities I could name.”

  “But she said Don Grayson heard it from—”

  “I don’t care who heard what from who. The Army’s got its gossips and troublemakers, just like anything else.”

  “Well, couldn’t you call up Ritchie Collis or someone like that?—find out if there’s anything to it?”

  “What good would it do? The Chief doesn’t want his people bothered with that kind of thing. They’re trying to get on with the war.”

  “But Poppa, if something like this could actually happen—”

  “It’s no good, Tommy.” His worn blue eyes flashed out at her with a querulous appeal. “No constructive purpose will be served by raking up dead ashes. Look—I’m a poor old man, as full of grief as age. And sick into the bargain. Old men shouldn’t get involved in such shenanigans. Old men lack the requisite ambition …”

  He would not say anything more; he pushed the pillows up behind him and busied himself translating the memoirs of General Marbot. She knew then, or thought she knew. She swallowed her womanly—and therefore incompetent—objections, and went on cooking and caring for him, working with disabled veterans out at Walter Reed, putting in her time at the USO; doing the things that somebody—the Army, the country, the world—expected of her.

  Bill Bowdoin had changed all that; his hard, indulgent cynicism laughed at her credulity. Shocked, fascinated, half-angry, she listened to his sardonic dissertations on the war—the chances missed, the duels of will, the conniving, the sly expropriation of supplies, even men. It was incredible: these men she’d known not long ago as happy-go-lucky, dutiful shavetails and captains were now squabbling like greedy little boys at a birthday party while the troops sweated and froze in the mud, the cold rain. Bill however seemed to regard it all as a kind of preposterous practical joke, all the more effective for its very outrageousness. Impatiently he would brush her consternation aside.

  “You’re so full of chivalry. The lot of you. Do you know there’s a three-star general in the ETO who rises every morning from the bed of a particularly notorious countess, downs three ounces of Bourbon neat—and then kneels for twenty minutes in fevered, ardent prayer?”

  She’d laughed weakly. “Yes, and I know who he is, too.”

  “Sure you do. You’ve all been stabbed to death by the twelfth century. You don’t see how things operate. Every war has to be a gleaming crusade, with a hovering Grail of Joseph of Arimathea for only the holiest eyes to behold. When the plain fact of the matter is the war resembles nothing so much as a big corporation going full blast, with its board of directors meetings and reports and prospectuses, its graphs and charts and shipp
ing sections, layout and advertising—right down to the final product.”

  His lips curving in the hard, disdainful smile he would sketch in the patterns and counterpatterns of intrigue and antipathy and long design. Churchill with his Balkan obsession, forever scheming for a Yugoslavian landing, invasion up the Danube to forestall the Russians—anything, anywhere to forestall the Russians; old Cord Hull gripped in his implacable hatred of De Gaulle, who on his part smoldered with an undying thirst for vengeance against Britain and America only an Alsatian could sustain; Chiang Kai-shek feuding with the British—and, rid of poor old Joe Stilwell at last, scheming to secure still more American aid to stuff the pockets of his favorites. And America? Now we were into Germany—and with perfect aplomb we were engaging Nazi officials to run things for us. We were no sword of the Lord and of Gideon, we were simply a great power—the dominant world power, now—emerging in a torrent of aggressiveness and expediency.

  “Wait’ll you see what’s in the cards for Japan. Oh, my. All four islands aflame from sea to shining sea. The Hamburg raids are going to look like the feeble sputterings of a cigarette lighter …”

  She supposed it was true. Bill sat in on some of the grand councils; he had gone to school with Hopkins, he’d been present at the Darlan negotiations in North Africa from start to finish. He had left his field of corporation law for the post of special assistant to the Secretary of War, and she knew he expected a federal judgeship or a seat on one of the war crimes commissions at the end of hostilities. He knew the world—and apparently the world was not what she’d thought it was.

  Not that she cared so terribly—the very texture of her life had altered with his appearance. He had been twice married and twice divorced, and to the expensive, assured women of the rotogravures; and he wanted her. He wanted her, and his urbane attentiveness, his tough-fibered certainty was formidable. They met at his apartment on K Street, or at the flat of a friend of his who ran the Bureau of Statistics; occasionally they went to the beach or up into the mountains, riding along the smoky, somnolent trails where the sunlight flowed in a copper skein over the horses’ flanks. She had found herself gliding toward his quick insistence like a native diver rising toward the surface of the sea, her lungs bursting with eagerness. She wanted to bask in his presence. On the far side of the moment was—she didn’t like to think about what was on the far side. On this side, where she was, there was flight, the bubble-surge of sensation, the dense chafe of flesh. Time continued to crumble away—past and present continued to melt like salt pillars and left only the present to swoop through, sink through, founder upon. Avidly she sought the lash of rain in her face, the spongy feel of moist earth, the thunderous roll and crash of big band swing, the yellow sway of leaves against the sun. At such times her body seemed to her as vast as the earth, bombarded by a million sights and nuances, flayed by them …