A few feet behind him, Fenelli cried out, “Keep going! Keep going! He’s only got a few minutes before he chokes! Dig, goddamn it! Dig!”
Major Clark remained poised on his hands and knees at the edge of the tunnel entrance, next to the privy, peering down. “Hurry,” he cried. “Goddamn it! Get a move on!”
At the end of the central corridor of Hut 107, the officer keeping watch at the front door abruptly turned and shouted back toward the privy: “Krauts! Coming this way!”
Major Clark stood up. He turned to the bucket brigade standing in the corridor. “Everybody out!” he ordered. “Out to the assembly yard! Now!”
Somebody asked, “What about the tunnel?”
And Clark replied, “Ah, screw it!” But then he held up his right hand, as if holding the men back from following his first order. The major slid a wry, tension-riddled smile across his face. He looked at the gathered kriegies. “Okay,” he said briskly. “We need a few more minutes! Delay, delay, that’s what we need. This is what I want: I want you men to disrupt the goddamn squad of Krauts heading this way. Like fourth and goal on the one-foot line! Just barrel-ass right into them, give ’em a real shot or two. Knock their butts flying! But keep on going, don’t stop to throw more than one punch or two! Keep going straight out into the yard and get into formation. You understand what I’m saying? The old flying wedge, right through the enemy! But keep on going! Nobody gets himself shot. Nobody gets arrested! Just delay them as long as you can. Got it?”
Men up and down the corridor nodded. A few smiles broke out.
“Then get going! Give ’em hell!” Major Clark shouted. “And when you hit that door, let’s hear your voices.”
Some of the men grinned. A couple pounded fists into palms, stretched their knuckles. Muscles tensed. The officer watching at the door suddenly shouted, “Get ready!”
Then: “Go!”
“Go you kriegies!” Clark bellowed.
With three dozen furious bansheelike shouts of angry defiance, the phalanx of American airmen poured down the corridor shoulder to shoulder, bursting through the front door.
“Go! Go! Go!” Major Clark cried out.
He could not see the entire impact of the assault, but he could hear a sudden tangle of voices as the men slammed into the approaching squad of Germans, instantly creating a melee in the dust of the assembly yard. He could hear cries of alarm and the thud of bodies coming together savagely. It was, Major Clark thought, a very satisfying sound.
Then he turned and yelled down into the tunnel. “Germans! Any minute now! Keep digging!”
Lincoln Scott heard the major’s words, but they no longer meant much to him. It seemed the threat created by the cave-in was far greater than the squad of goons racing toward Hut 107. He battled against the darkness that threatened to envelop him, as well. He savaged the dirt in front of him with a fury born of years of unremitting rage.
Tommy Hart was surprised. Death seemed to be coming softly for him.
He had managed to curl up slightly as the cave-in dropped onto his head, giving him the smallest of air pockets, one with only a few precious breaths of stale and used air. He had not thought that the world could be any darker than it had been, but it was now.
For the first time that night, perhaps even in days and weeks, he felt calm. Completely relaxed. All the tension in every fiber of his body seemed to suddenly dissipate, sliding swiftly away from him. He smiled inwardly, realizing that even the great pain in his hand, which had managed to enflame his entire body, seemed to be extinguished in that moment, as surely as if it had been doused with water. He thought this was an odd, but welcome, gift that death brought to his last moments.
Tommy took a deep breath. He almost laughed out loud. It was the most curious thing, he wondered to himself. One takes breathing so much for granted. Each pull of air, tens of thousands of times every day. It is only when one has only a few breaths left, he thought, that one realizes how special each was, how sweet and delicious they each tasted.
He took another breath and coughed. The cave-in had pinned his head and shoulders, but not his feet, and he pushed a little, almost involuntarily struggling forward, still fighting in those last seconds. He thought of all the people in his life, seeing each as if they stood directly in front of him, and was saddened that he was about to slip into memory for each of them. He wondered if that was what death truly was, simply passing from flesh to memory.
And in this last reverie, Tommy was surprised again, this time by an unmistakable scratching noise. He was perplexed. He thought he was completely alone, and he didn’t understand how any ghost could make this particular earthly noise. It was a noise born of life, not death, and this confused him and astonished him greatly.
But it was not a ghost that suddenly seized his torn hand.
In the utter blackness of the tunnel, he was suddenly aware that a space had opened up in front of him. In that hole before him he heard words, grunted, spoken between teeth gritted in the totality of exertion. “Hart? Damn it! Talk to me! You are not going to die! I will not allow you to die!”
He could feel a great strength pulling him forward, sliding him through the dirt that he’d thought would form his grave.
In the same moment, all the hurts and agonies that had fled, returned, almost blinding him as pain surged once again through his body. But curiously, he welcomed this, for he thought that it meant that Death had decided to loosen its grip upon him.
He heard again, “You’re not going to die, damn it! I will not permit it!”
And so he whispered back, hoarsely, “Thank you.” It was all he had the energy to say.
Lincoln Scott put both hands on Tommy’s shoulders, dug his powerful fingers deep into shirt and flesh, and with a great and violent grunt, tugged him from the cave-in. Then, without hesitation, Scott pulled Tommy ahead, dragging him down the tunnel. Tommy tried to help by crawling, but he could not. He had no more strength. Not even a child’s. Instead, he let Scott swim him forward with jerks and twitches, hauling him toward the questionable safety of the tunnel entrance.
At the privy entrance, Major Clark stood, arms folded in front of his chest, blocking the approach of a German lieutenant and a squad of helmeted goons carrying rifles.
“Raus!” the German officer cried. “Get out of the way!” he added in acceptable but accented English. The officer’s uniform was torn at the knee and frayed at the shoulder, and a thin trickle of blood marred his jaw, dripping from the corner of his mouth. The men in the squad had many similar injuries and their uniforms were also ripped and dirtied from the mix-up with the kriegies that had come charging out of Hut 107.
“Not a chance,” Major Clark said briskly. “Not until my men are out.”
The German officer fumed. “Out of the way! To escape is verboten!”
“To escape is our duty!” Clark blustered. “And anyway, no one’s escaping, you damn idiot,” Major Clark sneered, still not budging. “Not any more! They’re coming back. And when they come out, you can have the damn tunnel. For what it’s worth.”
The German officer reached into his holster and removed his Luger semiautomatic pistol.
“Out of the way, Herr major, or I will shoot you here!”
To emphasize his words, he chambered a round in the weapon.
Clark shook his head. “Not moving. Shoot me here, and you will face a hangman’s noose, lieutenant. It’s your own damn stupid choice.”
The German officer hesitated, then raised his weapon to Clark’s face. Clark eyed him with unrelenting hatred.
“Halt!”
The officer hesitated, then turned. The men in the squad all came abruptly to attention as Commandant Von Reiter strode down the corridor. Von Reiter’s face was flushed. His own fury was evident, as prominent as the red silk lining of his dress coat. He stamped his feet hard against the wooden floor.
“Major Clark,” he demanded sharply. “What is the meaning of this? You are to take your place in the form
ations immediately!”
Major Clark shook his head again. “There are men down below. When they come up, I’ll accompany them to the Appell.”
Von Reiter seemed to hesitate, only to have whatever his next command was to be interrupted by Fenelli’s excited voice, rising from the tunnel pit entrance. “He’s got ’im! Goddamn it, major! Scott dug him loose! They’re coming out!”
Clark turned to the medic.
“Is he okay?”
“Still alive!”
Then Fenelli turned and reached back into the tunnel, helping Lincoln Scott pull Tommy Hart the final few feet. The two men tumbled into the anteroom, falling exhausted to the litter of dirt. Fenelli dropped down beside Tommy, cradling his head, while Lincoln Scott, breathing hard, tearing gasps of air from the tunnel shaft, slumped to the side. Fenelli produced a canteen with water, which he dripped onto Tommy’s face.
“Jesus, Hart,” Fenelli whispered. “You must be the luckiest son of a bitch I know.”
Then he looked down at Tommy’s mangled hand and gasped.
“Or maybe the unluckiest. Jesus, that’s a mess. How the hell did that happen?”
“A dog bit me,” Tommy answered weakly.
“Some dog,” Fenelli said. Then he whispered another question. “What the hell happened out there?”
Tommy shook his head and replied softly, “I got out. Not for long. But I got out.”
“Well,” the medic from Cleveland replied, through his wide, dirt-smeared grin, “you made it farther than I did, and at least that’s something.”
He reached down, passed an arm under Tommy’s shoulder, and helped Tommy rise to his feet. Scott grunted, and scrambled up as well. It took a minute or two for the two of them to lift Tommy through the pit, to the surface, where German hands seized him and angrily thrust him to the floor of the corridor. Tommy had no idea what was next, only that he felt drunk with the heady taste of air. He did not think he had the strength to rise on his own, nor was he at all sure he could walk, if the Germans demanded it. All he could feel was immense pain and a similar store of gratitude, as if the two conflicting sensations were more than happy to share space deep within him.
He was aware that Lincoln Scott stood nearby, at Major Clark’s side, as if standing guard. Fenelli, however, bent toward him again, lifting Tommy’s hand up.
“This is a mess,” the medic said again. Fenelli turned toward Commandant Von Reiter. “He needs medical attention for these wounds immediately.”
Von Reiter bent down, inspecting the hand. He staggered back slightly, as if shocked at the sight. The German seemed to hesitate, but then he reached forward and slowly and gingerly unwrapped the handkerchief from around the torn flesh. Von Reiter took the handkerchief and placed it in his tunic pocket, ignoring the deep wet crimson blood that stained the white silk. He frowned at the extent of Tommy’s injury. He could see that the index finger was almost entirely severed and deep gouges and gashes marred the palm and the other fingers. Then he looked up and abruptly turned to the German lieutenant.
“A field dressing, lieutenant! Immediately.”
The German officer saluted, and gestured toward one of the goons, still standing nearby at attention. The German soldier pulled a paper-covered pad of gauze impregnated with sulfa from a leather compartment on his campaign belt and handed it to Commandant Von Reiter, who, in turn, passed it to Fenelli.
“Do what you are able, lieutenant,” Von Reiter said gruffly.
“This won’t be adequate, commandant,” Fenelli replied. “He’ll need real medicines and a real doctor.”
Von Reiter shrugged. “Bind it tightly,” he said.
Then the German commandant rose stiffly and turned to Major Clark.
“These men,” he said, gesturing toward Fenelli, Scott, and Hart. “Cooler.”
“Hart needs prompt medical attention, commandant,” Major Clark objected.
But Von Reiter merely shook his head and said, “I can see that, major. I am sorry. Cooler.” This time he repeated the order to the German officer standing nearby. “Cooler! Schnell!” he said loudly. And then, without another word, or even a glance toward the Americans or their tunnel, Von Reiter abruptly turned on his heel and marched quickly from the hut.
Tommy tried to stand, but fell back dizzily.
The German lieutenant prodded him with a boot. “Raus!” he said.
“Don’t worry, Tommy, I’ve got you,” Lincoln Scott said, pushing the German to the side with a shoulder. He reached down and helped Tommy to his feet. Tommy rocked unsteadily. “Can you walk?” Scott asked beneath his breath.
“I will damn well try,” Tommy replied, gritting his teeth together.
“I’ll help you,” Scott said. “Put your weight on me.” He kept his arm under Tommy’s shoulder, snaking around his back, holding him steady. The black airman grinned. “You remember what I told you, Tommy?” he said quietly. “No white boy’s gonna die when a Tuskegee flier’s watching over you.”
They took a tentative step forward, then a second. Fenelli slid ahead of them and held open the front door to Hut 107.
Surrounded by helmeted, unsmiling German guards, watched by every man in the entire compound, Lincoln Scott slowly supported Tommy Hart across the width of the exercise yard. Without saying a word, not even when prodded by the occasional shove from a goon’s rifle, the two men traveled arm in arm directly through the gathered formations of American airmen, who silently moved aside to let them pass.
They marched out of the barbed-wire enclosure, the front gate swinging shut behind them with a crash, moving steadily toward the cooler block. It was only when they finally walked through the door to the punishment cells that they heard a great swelling sound of cheers suddenly rising up from the rows and rows of assembled men behind them. The cheers soared, filling the sunlit morning air, following them into the dank cement world of the cooler, penetrating the thick concrete building, tumbling through the open barred windows, resounding and echoing throughout the small space, overwhelming the sound of the doors locking behind them, making a wondrous music not unlike that of ancient Joshua’s great horn when he stood defiant before the mighty walls of Jericho.
Chapter Twenty-one
EIGHTY-FOUR HATS
Tommy Hart shivered alone in the barren cement cooler cell for nearly a fortnight, the wounds in his hand worsening with every hour. His fingers swelled sausagelike with a fierce infection. The skin of his forearm was streaked with yellow-green marks, and he spent most of his hours leaning beside the cold wooden door, clutching his clublike hand to his chest. Searing pain was nearly constant and he weakened with every passing minute, frequently tumbling into a near-delirium that seemed to come and go as it pleased. The other men, in the adjacent cells, could hear him deep in the nighttime talking erratically to people long dead or far distant, and they would shout out, trying to seize Tommy’s attention, drag him back to some sort of reality, as if stealing him away from hallucination was medicinal.
He was only vaguely aware that every day the other men screamed imprecations at any German guard who ventured into the cooler building, carrying black kriegsbrot and water for the prisoners, demanding that Tommy be taken to a hospital. The Germans who were in charge of delivering the meager rations, or emptying the waste buckets from the cells, ignored these demands, wearing only stoic refusals to comprehend on their faces.
Only one of their captors, in the midst of the second week, showed any concern. That, of course, was Fritz Number One, who showed up shortly after the morning Appell, took a single look at Tommy’s horrendous fist, and had Fenelli brought over from his nearby cell.
The medic from Cleveland had pulled back Tommy’s fingers gently, shaking his head. He cleaned Tommy’s face and wounds as best he could with a dry rag and clear water.
“It will be gangrenous within days,” he told Fritz Number One, whispering furiously, when they returned to the hallway beyond Tommy’s earshot. “Sulfonamide. Penicillin. And surgery, to clean
out the infected tissue. For Christ’s sake, Fritz, tell the commandant that Tommy will die without help. And soon.”
“I will speak with the commandant,” the ferret had promised.
“It’s on your head,” Fenelli had said. “And on Von Reiter’s too, and trust me, there are folks here who won’t forget what happens to Tommy Hart!”
“I will tell the commandant,” Fritz Number One had repeated.
“Tell him! Don’t wait. Tell him right now,” Fenelli had half-demanded, half-begged.
But nothing happened for several more days.
Trapped in pain, fantasy, delirium, and cold, Tommy seemed to be entering some sort of odd netherworld. Sometimes he dreamed that he was still in the tunnel, and then he would awaken, crying out in fear. Other times, the pain grew so great that it seemed to rocket him to a different plane of existence, where all he could see and feel were the memories of home that had served him so well in the months he’d been a prisoner in Stalag Luft Thirteen. It was this state that Tommy longed for, because as he envisioned the sky above the Green Mountains beyond the door to his Vermont home, the pain fled, if only briefly, and he was able to rest.
On the sixteenth day in the cooler, he could no longer eat. His throat was too dry. Almost the entirety of his strength had evaporated. He was able to manage a few sips of water, but that was all.
The others called to him, tried to get him to join them in song, or conversation, anything to keep him alert, but he was unable. Whatever resources he had left, he used to battle the hurt emanating in red-hot surges up into his body. He was filthy, sweat and dirt covered him, and he was afraid he was going to lose control over his bowels. He thought, in one of the few rational moments that managed to overcome the delirium threatening to surround him completely, that it seemed a particularly stupid and silly way to finally die, bitten by a Gestapo officer, when he’d been through so much, and already been saved so many times.
Into this reverie came voices, which he ignored, because by this time he was forever hearing voices, and most of these belonged to people long dead. Even Visser had spoken to him angrily once, but Tommy had arrogantly sneered at this ghost.
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