by Audie Murphy
Snuffy is different. His pale watery eyes view the scene placidly. Plopping to the ground, he hauls out a plug of tobacco, bites off a hunk, and chews. Thoughtlessly he spits into the wind. His face is spattered with tobacco juice. He wipes it off with the back of his hand. “Looks lak them three done drawed their rations,” he says.
Novak is ignoring the wounded. Jabbering fiercely, he frisks the four captives. “So you go hunting, hey? You kill us, we kill you. To turn about is fair play.” The Germans do not understand the language, but the attitude is obvious. They regard the angry little Polack with alarm.
“Don’t scare ’em any more, Mike,” says Horse-Face. “We’ll have a sanitation problem on our hands.”
A single German cannon opens up on Mount Lungo. The noise of the projectile grows to the roar of a freight train as the hills throw back the echo. The shell is not intended for us. It goes overhead and crashes on Rotondo.
“Reveille,” says Kerrigan.
“Sonsabeeches.”
The gray light washes about us, and mist is curling from the hill.
Horse-Face is assigned to escort the prisoners back to company headquarters and notify the medics of the wounded. Looking over the bushy terrain, he grins sardonically. “If them guys were only jerry WACs or nurses,” he suggests. “For just once why can’t we capture some women?”
“Women?” says Snuffy. “If I ever git married, gonna marry a cow. Somepin’ I can milk, love, and plow.”
Far down the slope mortars begin to cough, but their firing is not in rhythm. The gunners are perhaps not yet fully awake.
Horse-Face studies the terrain professionally. Suddenly he is all business. “I’ll see you joes in the graveyard,” he says. “Hell’s goin’ to hop on this hill.”
He arranges the Germans in a single file, and with the tip of his rifle gooses the rear one. The German wheels indignantly about. Horse-Face guffaws and waves him forward.
We turn our attention to the wounded. They are all still conscious. One has the embarrassed expression of a man suddenly exposed while answering a call of nature. He appears too old to be gadding about with a gun. His face is shriveled; and his uniform fits like a sack.
His lips peel back in a yellow grin. It is the forced smile of an unwilling loser. Or maybe he wishes to be friendly. He coughs. Red froth bubbles from his mouth. He ceases pretending. Fear and shame pass from his eyes. He must know now that he is dying and we can harm him no further.
The other two are not so sure. They are young, hardly over twenty; and from the freshness of their uniforms, we guess they are newcomers to the lines. They cringe and snarl defiantly, doubtless not knowing how badly they are wounded.
I glance at the sky. On the eastern horizon, a lone shaft of sunlight knifes through a mass of dark clouds. The enemy artillery on Mount Lungo is limbering up in earnest. We can now see the bursting of the shells. The direction of fire is steadily drifting our way.
The wounded must be got under cover. The peculiar ethics of war condone our riddling the bodies with lead. But then they were soldiers. Swope’s gun transformed them into human beings again; and the rules say that we cannot leave them unprotected against a barrage of their own artillery.
“Let’s get them into the quarry,” I say.
“They die and start stinking,” argues Little Mike. “Is no good living with dead men.”
“I’ll stay with them till the medics come,” offers Brandon. “It won’t be long.”
“Yeah?” snorts Kerrigan. “That Cherokee’s gun has probably telegraphed our position to every kraut in this neck of the woods.”
He may be right. The mortar fire has come so close that we can hear the whistling fragments.
“Grab the men and get going.”
“Is that an order, sir?” asks Kerrigan.
“It’s an order.”
“Please do me the courtesy of shoving it, sir.”
Grinning, he seizes the largest German by the shoulders, while Brandon takes the feet. The man whines fearfully.
“Do your bitching to the Chief,” says Kerrigan. “He handed you that lead, not me.”
The Irishman notices that Snuffy still remains seated, speculatively squirting tobacco juice. He lets go of the German, picks up a rock, and throws it at Jones.
“Okay, gourd-head. Get that cotton-picking butt off the ground and give us a hand.”
“Sich language,” Snuffy replies, as he creaks lazily to his feet. “‘Y god, are we supposed to kill ’em or cure ’em?”
Kerrigan reaches for another rock.
“Okay. Okay,” says Snuffy. “Don’t get your bowels in a uproar.”
He and Novak lift the old fellow frowningly. A pool of blood has collected in his pants. It now pours in a stream from his sagging posterior.
I remain with the third man until Brandon returns. The youngster stares at the sky, breathing laboriously. I loosen his collar, and he mutters, “Danke.” As we carry him up the slope, an enemy machine gunner spots us. He gives us a burst, but his distance is too great for accuracy. The bullets walk to our left, angrily kicking up gravel.
Swope, sitting stolidly behind that gun of his, has lit a cigarette. He does not take even a professional interest in his targets.
Kerrigan says, “Next time, Chief, shoot only the little ones. That one I had must’ve weighed a ton.”
The Indian shrugs. He has done his work without hatred, pride, or compassion. Now he relaxes.
The artillery fire grows into a heavy barrage, but in our rocky hole we feel secure enough. If the mortars do not get our range, we are relatively safe. The chance of a direct hit or an air burst by the big guns is small. However, twice 88-millimeter shells explode close enough to send showers of dirt and stone into the quarry.
The shock is passing from the Germans; and as the pain awakes in the flesh, their dignity and manhood as soldiers vanish. One of the youngsters is openly weeping.
We have broken open first-aid packets and started dressing their wounds. It is a habit. No more. We are all aware that a battalion of doctors could not undo the work of Swope’s gun. But through instinct and training we are compelled to act.
Kerrigan has unbuttoned the old fellow’s shirt, baring a bony, shrunken chest. One bullet has pierced the left lung. “Superman,” says the Irishman quietly, “you should have been home with your grandchildren.”
The German, seeing that Kerrigan is not angry, attempts a feeble smile. Then he closes his eyes, muttering, “Wasser.”
But three of the bullets have punctured his stomach. Blood clots around the ugly little holes. And a man with belly wounds must not drink water.
“Wasser.”
Kerrigan attempts to explain. He rubs his own stomach, shakes his head, and says, “No water. It’s bad for you.”
“Wasser.”
“Wasser verboten, goddammit.”
“Wasser.”
“Give him the water,” says Brandon.
“You give it to him. Or shoot him right through the head. It’s the same thing, only quicker.”
“Is thirsty?” asks Novak. “Give him coffee.”
“For chrisake, what’s the difference?”
“Aw, let him have a drink,” drawls Snuffy. “He’s gonna die anyhow.”
Kerrigan jerks a canteen from his belt and hurls it at Snuffy. “By god, there’s the water. Give him the drink yourself.”
“What you gettin’ sore about. All I said is that he’ll die anyhow.”
“No,” says Kerrigan. “He’s in good shape. All he needs is an oxygen tent, a new lung, eight quarts of blood plasma, and seventeen feet of unpunctured gut.”
“Aw, go jump in a lake and pull the water up over you.”
Says Kerrigan, “I wish to Christ I could.”
As the morning passes, the clouds move inland; and rain, that persistent plague of the foot soldier, sets in. I bend over the wounded Germans. The old fellow and one of the youngsters are unconscious. The third puckers his lips and fumbles with a coat p
ocket. It is a smoke that he is doubtless after. I search through his clothes and draw forth a package of American cigarettes. Anger flares inside me as I wonder whether he got them from a corpse or a prisoner.
He reads my thoughts, flinches, and starts vomiting. Suddenly I feel ashamed. I wipe off his mouth, thrust a cigarette between his lips, and strike him a light. He smiles gratefully and sucks weakly at the tobacco. I remove my own slicker and cover him against the rain.
In the late afternoon, we hear the sputter of automatic fire. Novak, who is manning our machine gun, yells, “Our man. Hurry!” Then he squeezes his trigger so long that I fear he will burn out the gun barrel.
We snatch our weapons and disperse among the rocks at the top of the quarry. Our man lies in spread-eagle fashion. The bullets rip the ground about him. I shout for him to start crawling.
He moves; and we lay a cover of fire overhead. That must give the kraut something to think about. His gun is silent as our man snakes his way up the slope.
We pull him into the hole. He is too weak to stand. Brandon hands him a canteen. He takes a slug of water and lies breathing like a terrified horse.
“Jeezus!” he finally says.
“You bring mail?” asks Novak.
“Jeezus!”
“What’s up?”
“Let me get my breath. You’re to stick here. The old man’s been hit.”
“Bad?”
“Nearly bled to death. Dillon finally got through for some plasma. It was all that saved the old man.”
“Is he out?”
“His mind comes and goes. But you don’t put his kind out unless you kill them. When he’s conscious, he’s yelling orders. And when he’s unconscious, he raves them. Between times he’s cussing the krauts.”
“What about the medics for these jerries here?”
“They won’t get up until morning. Maybe not then. They’re up to their elbows with our own men. And they couldn’t get through anyhow.”
“Dillon got through.”
“With his luck he could get through the Siegfried Line on skis. He wears horseshoes around his shoulders and shamrocks in his shoes.”
“No mail?” Novak asks again.
“Mail! Now, good god, man, do I look like a postman? The old man says to keep on the alert for a big counterattack. We’re expecting it. If it doesn’t come, we’ll attack ourselves.”
“Sounds just perfectly lovely,” says Kerrigan. “We got about as much future as Snuffy’s got sense.”
“You’ll probably get a lot of artillery.”
“What the hell we been getting? Birthday greetings?”
“The old man says if the krauts think they’re going to have to pull out, they’ll likely throw all their surplus at us first.”
“You got any good news?”
“Yeah. You won’t be eating C-rations much longer. If some supplies don’t soon get through, you won’t be eating any rations a-tall.”
The rain falls harder. The Germans mutter feverishly. Pools of water have gathered about their bodies, but there is nothing we can do about that. Brandon tucks the covers about them. “The poor bastards,” he says softly. “What is death waiting for?”
He understands the necessity of killing men when they advance upon him with arms, and in combat he is ferocious. But he does not comprehend the purpose of this drawn-out agony of dying. He does not approve of it. Yet he will do everything within his power to keep breath in these shattered bodies.
So would we others. But we are all realists. Since there is no hope for life, we wish these men would die quickly. If they go into deliriums, it will be bad for our nerves tonight. And the noise of their raving may attract another enemy patrol.
I sit down beside Kerrigan. My eyeballs burn; my bones ache; and my muscles twitch from exhaustion. Oh, to sleep and never awaken. The war is without beginning, without end. It goes on forever.
Snuffy is unconcerned. Stretched in the mud with his helmet pulled over his eyes, he snores loudly.
“That,” says Kerrigan, “is how the South lost the war. All the Confederate soldiers ate a big ’possum dinner and fell asleep. The Yankees found them and beat out their brains, such as they were, with stovewood.”
The blue eyes snap. The nostrils quiver. The loose grin spreads over his face.
“He told me once that he was born ‘tard,’ and never got rested. Said he comes from so far back in the hills that he had to swing into home on grapevines. Used to think there were just two kinds of people in the world: the whisky-making kind and the ‘revenooers.’ First letter he ever got was from the draft board. Sees ‘War Department’ on the envelope; and thinks right off it was from the ‘revenooers.’ They were the War Department as far as he was concerned, and he wanted ‘no part or passel’ of it. Damned near got chucked in jail for not reporting .”
“I’d liked to’ve seen him during his basic.”
“Got gigged every day, he said. Couldn’t get the hang of the spit and polish. He usually spit and ended up polishing.”
Scooping up a handful of gravel, Kerrigan hurls it at the sleeping man’s helmet. Snuffy pops up like a jack-in-the-box. Glaring wildly about, he grabs for his rifle.
“Damn you,” he says, seeing the Irishman’s broad smile; “cain’t a man have a little peace?”
“Peace, he says. And Patton wanting to see him. With a skull thick as his, the general thinks he can use him as a tank.”
Snuffy’s neck seems abnormally long. At its top is a knoblike head from which the large ears stick out like flaps. His thin lips stretch into a grin, revealing short, stained teeth and too much gum.
“Kerrigan,” he says, “I’s jest dreamin’ that you was eat up with crud and corruption and enjoyin’ myself no end. The buzzards was peckin’ out your eyeballs and talkin’ among themselves. One buzzard said, ‘Times is gettin’ mighty tough when we get low-down enough to eat an Arshman.’ Another buzzard pukes. ‘Don’t mention an Arshman while I’m eatin’,’ says he. ‘It makes me sick to my stomach.’”
He stretches again in the mud, pulls his helmet over his eyes, and resumes his nap.
For a while Kerrigan sits silently with his eyes roaming over the dismal prospects of our quarry. Finally he says, “You wouldn’t know where I could get a blonde, two gallons of whisky, and a six-months pass.”
“Write your congressman, Rumhead.”
Sergeant Emmet J. Kerrigan. He sits in his rain-soaked clothes, four thousand miles from his native New England. Three men are dying before us; and we ourselves may not last the night.
He runs a hand through his sandy hair; scratches an ear pensively. “Do you think,” asks he, “that there’ll be any beer left in America. I’m making my postwar plans.”
“You can limit those plans to one mattress cover and six feet of dirt in a military cemetery. I can see it now,” I reply. “The headlines: ‘Sergeant Emmet J. Kerrigan Gives Life For His Country.’ Fell down the steps of an Italian cellar and broke his blasted neck. All cat houses south of the firing lines will be closed for one day of mourning.”
“Murph,” he spits, “you get the gawdamndest ideas. When I was tapped for the draft, I was about to become a family man.”
“Some girl in trouble?”
“Why hellsfire, no. Nice girl. A proofreader in the printshop where I worked.”
“Sounds cozy.”
“It was, Scramble-brain.”
“Why didn’t you marry her then?”
“Duck under some woman’s skirts to get out of the service?”
“You’d been out of the draft all right, unless …”
“Don’t say it. We’re talking about Rachael. I didn’t know what the war was all about. I still don’t know.”
“Who does?”
“Novak, maybe. And he may be all cockeyed. Anyhow I felt it coming. And I didn’t want to be saddled by a dame on this long, long trail a-winding. And I didn’t want her to be stuck with me.”
“I can hardly stand it. You got
a conscience.”
“Conscience? Man, in my youth I was a choir boy.”
“So that’s what happened to religion?”
“And that’s not all. If somebody had given me a shove, I might have become a priest.”
Darkness closes in, the rain still falls, but a weird dull light remains in the quarry. Somewhere above the clouds, the moon shines. In our sodden clothes, we shiver like dogs. The runner has returned to headquarters. The artillery still pounds, but the mortar fire has let up.
The elder German is delirious. For periods, he lies quietly; then, as if seized by some sudden horror, he tries to get up, jabbering excitedly. We have lashed his arms together with a belt to prevent his clawing the bandages.
As the hours wear on, he is joined in his raving by one of the younger men. In the night, they seem to be carrying on some ghostly conversation.
“They kill us too. By gah, you wait,” says Novak, as if trying to salve our consciences. It is unnecessary. Remorse does not bother us. The men had to be shot. Swope should have aimed a bit higher.
When dawn breaks, two of the Germans are dead. Their eyes stare glassily. Their mouths are open, and the old man’s swollen tongue protrudes between his teeth.
“Looks like he left us a Bronx cheer,” says Kerrigan. “Who the hell is this joke on anyhow?”
“Is no joke if they stink,” says Novak.
“I’d rather smell them than Snuffy.”
“You go to hell.”
“Gladly. Just give me the address.”
The third German has a rattling sound in his throat. And the feverish red of his face is becoming mottled with white. I remove the slicker from the corpse and add it to his covering. The act is useless. The man would not know if he lay in ten feet of feathers.
We heat water for our coffee in canteen cups, using wax strips torn from K-ration packages for fuel. It is a trick that Novak taught us, a tedious, but smokeless process, handy when hiding from the enemy.
The clouds scatter, and the sun appears. Steam rises from our uniforms. We check our gear, cleanse our weapons of mud, and wait for orders.