Doom Platoon

by Levinson, Len

  Mazursky got up and spit in the palms of his hands. “You are, huh?”

  “That’s right!”

  Albright charged Mazursky, flailing at him with both fists. Mazursky merely took a step back, measured his shot, and brought his fist down on the top of Albright’s head. Albright slumped to the floor. Mazursky looked down at him, grinning like an ape.

  “I’m just liable to turn this little fucker into a soldier some day,” he said. “But meanwhile, he owes me a can of fruit cocktail, right?” He looked at the other men in the cave.

  “Sure, Sarge,” said Private Fischer of the anti-tank crew.

  “I’m glad you agree.”

  Mazursky went to Albright’s pack, opened it, found a can of fruit cocktail, and took it out. Sitting, he opened the can with his pocket can opener and drank the contents without benefit of utensils.

  Sergeant Mazursky would do just about anything to get an extra can of fruit cocktail.

  In the cave where the second anti-tank crew had established their position, Corporal Banes was lunching with Private Robinson of New York City. Robinson, a graduate of Columbia University and the son of a rich stockbroker, had dropped out of Officers Candidate School because he couldn’t put up with the happy horseshit, and now was an ordinary rifleman. He was a rather elegant young man with good manners that were slowly deteriorating. He tended to shave more than the others. He had a thin aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and a supercilious mouth.

  “This food tastes ghastly,” he said, grimacing as he ate.

  “If you don’t like it, give it to me,” said Banes, who liked to associate with Robinson because he thought Robinson had class and some might rub off on him.

  “What are you eating?”

  “Sausage patties.”

  “Good grief. Sausage patties. I bet they’re made out of horsemeat.”

  “Horsemeat is much better than sausage patties, take my word for it.”

  “You’ve eaten horsemeat?”

  “Sure. Back where I come from we eat horsemeat all the time. It’s as good as beefsteak.”

  Robinson shook his head. “Oh Banes, you’re such a fucking hillbilly.” Like many New Yorkers, Robinson thought that anybody who didn’t live in the Big Apple was a hillbilly.

  Banes was from Lubbock, Texas, and had never seen a hillbilly before he enlisted in the Army. “I ain’t no fucking hillbilly.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Robinson, you wouldn’t know a bull’s ass from a banjo, you know that? There’s a difference between a cowboy, which is what I was, and a hillbilly, which is something that lives in certain southern states and don’t generally wear shoes.”

  “Did you carry a six-gun?”

  “Naw, for chrissakes. Texas ain’t like you see it in the movies. But I used to carry a rifle in my scabbard whenever I was out on my horse. Use to get a lot of varmints that way.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you did.”

  “Are you trying to say that you don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you,” Robinson said, looking down his exquisite nose at Banes. “You couldn’t tell a decent lie if your life depended on it.”

  “Now what in hell’s that supposed to mean? You know, Robinson, sometimes I cain’t figger out what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s because you’re a hillbilly.”

  “I ain’t no hillbilly!”

  “After this war’s over I want you to come to New York with me, Banes. You can stay with me and my family and I’ll show you the city. It’ll frazzle your so-called mind. I’ll take you up to the top of the Empire State Building and you won’t believe what you’ll see. And I know some girls who’d be just absolutely crazy about you.”

  Banes looked up from his cold franks and beans. “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  “What part of New York do you live in?”

  “Manhattan, of course.”

  “That a nice place?”

  “Part of it is.”

  “You must live in a good part, huh Robinson?”

  “I live on Park Avenue,” Robinson said drily.

  “It nice there?”

  “Very nice.”

  “Since they call it Park Avenue, there must be a park nearby, right?” Banes smiled broadly at his clever conclusion.

  “Wrong.”

  Banes was crestfallen. “It ain’t next to no park?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Then how come they call it Park Avenue?”

  “I don’t know. For the same reason they call Germany Germany, even though there aren’t any germs there.”

  “Oh yes there are germs in Germany. There’s germs everywheres.”

  “But that’s not why they call it Germany.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can’t prove it.”

  Banes looked triumphant. “Then keep your fucking mouth shut about things you don’t know anything about.” He was overjoyed to have beaten a college graduate in argument.

  Robinson speared a piece of frankfurter with his fork. Sometimes he wished he didn’t drop out of Officers Candidate School.

  Down on the ridge, Private Nowicki, the BAR man, was re-reading the letter from his girlfriend Shirley, as he ate a can of cold corned beef hash. He still couldn’t get it through his head that she had fallen in love with a 4-F welder who earned a hundred dollars a week after she had let him, Nowicki, kiss her bare nipples and stick his fingers into her coozie.

  Seated next to Nowicki was Private Deesing from San Francisco. A broad-shouldered broad-hipped man with thick thighs, a blond mustache, and eyes that looked enormous behind his glasses, Deesing had been a white-collar worker before getting drafted. He was eating a cold can of meatballs, as he watched Nowicki reading the letter.

  “Get another letter from your girlfriend?” Deesing asked. He was an affable guy who liked to engage in conversation with his fellow man.

  “No.”

  “Oh, your mother wrote?”

  “My mother doesn’t know how to write.”

  “Then who’s the letter from?”

  “Shirley.”

  “Isn’t that your girl friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t get another letter from her.”

  “I didn’t,” Nowicki said sadly.

  “You mean you’re still reading the same old fucking letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gee, you must really be in love with her.”

  “I really m.”

  “You poor son of a bitch.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “She’s in love with some 4-F?”

  “Yes. He’s a welder and he makes a hundred dollars a week.”

  “And you’re still in love with her anyway?”

  “Yup.”

  “She must be some babe.”

  “Oh, she is,” Nowicki replied, chewing a mouthful of beans. “Pretty as an angel.”

  “She must be a real hot piece of ass too.”

  Nowicki nearly choked on his beans. “Don’t talk about Shirley that way!”

  “You mean she isn’t a real hot piece of ass?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “You never plunked her?”

  Nowicki shook his head in embarrassment. “No.”

  “How come?”

  “She wouldn’t let me.”

  “None of them let you, stupid. You have to make them.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t make Shirley do a thing like that before we were married.”

  “That was your mistake. If you’d plunked her good, she would never have run off.”

  “But she kept saying no.”

  “When women say no, they mean yes. They don’t even realize this themselves, but it’s true.” Deesing considered himself a great expert on women and love. “You just should have taken off her pants and stuck it in.”

  Nowi
cki shook his head. “Shirley’s a nice girl. You don’t do things like that to nice girls.”

  “Who doesn’t? I do all the time. And they love it. Nice girls like it more than anybody else. And they’re more depraved than other girls, once you reach them. You should have chained her to the radiator and fucked her brains out.”

  “Chained her to the radiator!”

  “She would have loved it. She’d be praying for your safe return right now if you had. And you should have eaten her, too.”

  “What do you mean, eaten her?”

  “I mean putting your face between her legs and chewing on her snatcherino.”

  Nowicki stuck his tongue out. “What!”

  “You haven’t done that?”

  “No!”

  “I hate to say it, Nowicki, but that was your big mistake. Girls love to get eaten. When you didn’t plunk her or eat her she probably figured you were no fun and started thinking about finding someone else.”

  Nowicki had been torturing himself over the loss of Shirley for the past month, but this was a new angle on the problem. “You think that’s what did it?”

  “No question about it,” Deesing said definitively.

  “What does it taste like?”

  “Just like ham and eggs.”

  “But isn’t it dirty down there0”

  “No dirtier than that corned beef hash you’re eating. And it tastes a whole lot better, believe me.”

  “Are you sure you’re not shitting me, Deesing?”

  “Of course I’m not shitting you. I mean, you’re the BAR man around here. My life depends on you, so I wouldn’t shit you. Not ever. I’ll tell you what to do with Shirley. When you get home, go to a store and buy some black lace ladies underwear and some black mesh ladies stockings. Then go see Shirley and ask her to put them on. Next you tie her to the bed and start plunking her. After you finish plunking her you should eat her. Then make her eat you. Then roll her over onto her stomach and put it up her dirt road. After that, I guarantee it, she’ll be in love with you for the rest of your life.”

  Nowicki shook his head. “Gee, I don’t know, Deesing.”

  “I know. Do what I say and you’ll be all right. None of my girl friends ever wrote me and said she had fallen in love with a 4-F welder. And I get letters every mail call from girls. I don’t even have time to answer them, and they keep writing me anyway. Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. Next time you get the chance, write her a letter and tell her that you don’t care how many boyfriends she’s got, and when you get home you’re going to do all the things to her that you should have done before you left for the Army. Describe all the details. I guarantee that she’ll start writing nice letters to you again.”

  “Gee, I don’t know, Deesing.”

  “What have you got to lose?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “Then do it, first chance you get. Okay, buddy?”

  “I guess so,” Nowicki said weakly.

  Pfc. MacDoodle sat behind a boulder on the ridge and sharpened his bayonet on a special Arkansas washita stone he’d bought at a hardware store before embarking for Europe. MacDoodle hailed from Chicago and had been in trouble with the police since early youth. He’d already spend a few years in the can for beating up on people, and when he got arrested again the judge gave him the choice of either joining the Army or going back to jail. MacDoodle joined the Army.

  He was a thickset redheaded Irishman and right now he had doubts about his choice. If he’d gone to jail he’d get out in a few years, but it didn’t look like he was going to get out of the Army alive. He figured that very night he’d be food for the buzzards. The second platoon might have a lot of tough guys, but they weren’t tougher than a panzer division. Well, if he was going to die, he’d take a lot of krauts with .him.

  Private Winfield sat down next to MacDoodle. “Can I borrow the stone when you’re finished?”

  “Sure, if you let me use your file.”

  “I was going to use it right now. Maybe when I’m finished with it you’ll be finished with your stone and we can swap.”

  “Good idea. You’re always thinking, Winfield.”

  Winfield was a big rawboned farm boy from Iowa. He spread his poncho on the ground and then emptied bullets from his clips onto it. Taking out his little file, he grated down the points of the bullets, putting an X across them. That way if the bullet hit a German, it’d do more damage. For instance, if you hit a German in the arm with an ordinary bullet, it might just pass through leaving behind a superficial wound. If you hit him in the arm with a filed bullet, which were known as dum-dums, you’d take his whole fucking arm off. Dum-dums were outlawed by the Geneva Convention, but Winfield didn’t give a fuck about that.

  “You hear about what happened between Mazursky and Albright?” Winfield asked, filing down a bullet.

  “No.”

  “Mazursky just beat up Albright and stole some of his food.”

  “Oh that Mazursky’s sure a pisser. He’s the meanest man I ever met, and I’ve met some mean ones. In civilian life they put guys like that in jail or in looney bins.”

  “Mazursky couldn’t make it in civilian life. He’s just a fucking killer.”

  “So in civilian life he could be a gangster. He’d be a very good gangster. His blood’s colder than that piece of ice sitting over there. I met some gangsters in my life and I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You have?” Winfield asked. Winfield was a little in awe of MacDoodle, because MacDoodle was from Chicago.

  “Sure. I even saw Al Capone once.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure. He used to come into my neighborhood all the time. Lots of Italians lived in my neighborhood. They used to make whisky in their bathtubs during the Prohibition and Capone used to buy it from them.”

  “How do you think Mazursky would stack up to Capone.”

  “On a straight man to man basis, Mazursky would chew up Capone and spit out the pieces.’’

  “No shit?”

  “Listen,” MacDoodle said in a knowing way. “You just joined this company before we left for Europe, but I was with this company for a year of training at Fort Benning. I know Mazursky a lot better than you do. I remember one night some of us were in a bar in some shit-kicking little town, don’t remember the name right now. Anyway, Mazursky got into a beef with some paratrooper and hit him over the head with a bottle of whisky. The bottle broke and then Mazursky took the jagged edge and twisted it into the poor bastard’s face. It was awful. I mean, I been in some gory situations in my day, but it was one of the most worst things I’ve ever seen. Mazursky almost killed the guy. In fact, he might’ve killed him for all I know. I never saw the guy again.”

  “What he do that made Mazursky so mad?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? He almost killed him for nothing?”

  “Mazursky don’t like paratroopers.”

  “You mean he did it just because the other guy was a paratrooper?”

  “That’s right. Whatever you do, don’t ever say the word paratrooper in front of Mazursky. It makes him go crazy.”

  “How come?”

  “I heard it has something to do with a woman. Mazursky was married once, and his wife left him for a paratrooper. He beat the fuck out of the guy, and was busted down to private. And he’d been the first sergeant of a company at the time.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. So don’t ever say nothing about paratroopers around him.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m not that crazy.”

  “You know, I feel sorry for any German who goes up against Mazursky. Them Germans are civilized people, you know. They got culture. But Mazursky is just basically a sadist. All he wants to do is fuck over people. He’ s a killer. He loves the sight of blood.”

  “I’m glad he’s on our side and not theirs.”

  “Me too.”

  Farther down the skirmish line, Private Braithwaite of Detroit was e
njoying an after dinner smoke with Private Hartman of Dillwyn, a small town in the great state of Kansas. They didn’t know each other very well but had been deployed next to each other and thought they might as well talk.

  Hartman had big ears, a big nose, and big teeth. His nickname was Jayhawker, which was what people from Kansas were sometimes called. “You know what I’m gonna do after the war, Braithwaite?” he asked dreamily, trying not to dwell on the fact that the odds were against his surviving the day, never mind the war.

  “What?’’ asked Braithwaite, who also was anxious not to think about depressing things.

  “I’m gonna get me about five hundred acres of good bottom land and raise me some corn.”

  “What the hell is bottom land?” interrupted Braithwaite.

  Hartman squinted his eyes at Braithwaite. “You don’t know what bottom land is?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked you if I knew what it was.”

  “Damn, I can’t imagine a grown man not knowing what bottom land is.”

  “Well what the fuck is it?”

  “Bottom land is the land around water. It’s very good land for growing things.”

  “Oh, I get it.”

  “And anyways, I’m gonna have some pigs too. I’ll feed the corn to the pigs, and then sell the pigs to the meat company. And I’ll put the pig shit back into the bottomland. Nothing will get wasted, you see. There’s money in raising pigs, you know. What do you think those sausage patties are made out of?”

  “Pig shit.”

  “That’s what they taste like, but that ain’t what they’re made out of. They’re made out of pig meat.”

  “You could fool me.”

  “Oh, they weren’t that bad.”

  “Oh yes they were.”

  “Oh no they weren’t. And I’ll have me a nice little garden where I’ll raise corn and strawberries for my own use, and a chicken coop for fresh eggs. The good thing about farming, you see, is that you’ll never have to worry about going without food.”

  Braithwaite looked him in the eye. “You ever fuck a pig, Jayhawker?”

  “Fuck a pig!”

  “Sure, fuck a pig. You farm boys are fucking animals all the time, aren’t you?”

  “Hell, no!”