by Audie Murphy
“Mason!”
He does not answer.
“Mason!”
I squirm up to him. A glance tells me he is dead. His head is twisted unnaturally; thin trickles of blood come from the mouth and nose. His brown eyes stare glazedly. I place my ear to his chest. The heart is still. No piece of metal touched him The concussion alone was sufficient.
I remove the helmet and straighten his head. His eyes are as empty as an unused grave. Briefly a picture trembles in my mind. It is that of a white-haired woman who stands before a cottage on a shady street in Savannah.
“I am his mother,” she says. “What were his last words?”
“Said, ‘Think I’ll walk over and twist his goddamned ears of.’”
“Whose ears?”
“Those of a German who was trying to kill us.”
“My boy went to his God with a curse on his lips?”
“His God will understand.”
I tap my forehead with my fist. Am I going batty? I shake the picture from my mind. For a moment, I consider covering the body with the raincoat I carry in my belt. But Mason will not need it, and I may. I attach a strip of white bandage to his bayonet, which I drive into the bank above. The marker will help the burial squad to find the corpse at night.
I crawl over the body and advance up the ditch, which grows more shallow by the yard. I can go no farther without exposing myself; so I twist myself around and retrace my path.
The German sniper is strangely silent. Through parted weeds, I study the log behind which I suspected him of hiding. But I see no indication of him. Perhaps, he thought the big shell got both of us and moved on in search of other game.
Or did Mason fire? I cannot remember. He could have. The crack of his rifle would have been lost in the shriek of the huge projectile. But surely he did not stand there like a fool and deliberately give his life to take that of the sniper’s. Yet he might have.
Near the roadway up which we marched, I find Kerrigan and Thompson. They are sprawled behind a small mound, which is covered with scraggly, bullet-chewed shrubs.
“Where have you been?” asks the Irishman.
“Out for a walk. I got restless.”
“What’s wrong with your nose? It’s bleeding.”
“Concussion, I guess. A big shell landed near me. It killed Mason.”
“Good god!”
Two of our tanks have moved up beside a farmhouse. They lower their cannon barrels and commence firing. The vicious explosion of their shells is like a sweet melody. Now the krauts are getting a dose of their own medicine.
In a few minutes, a German clambers out of a ditch and starts running at a half-stoop up the road. I draw a bead on him, but Thompson’s rifle pops first. The German falls, tries to get up; and Thompson shoots again. The body sinks quiveringly to the dirt.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned!” exclaims Kerrigan admiringly. “The boy has talent.”
Thompson gazes at his handiwork in silence. When he turns to us, his eyes are bright with awe. He purses his lips and looks incredulously at his rifle. “I got him,” he finally announces in a half whisper. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“He’s dead,” replies Kerrigan. “You are now a full-fledged member of the Brotherhood of International Killers. Let me be the first to congratulate you.”
The tanks have evidently terrorized a pocket of Germans. In their fright, they forget caution. One starts up the road; and I pick him off. Then Kerrigan gets another; and Thompson, two more. It is like knocking off ducks in a shooting gallery. Before we are done, nine gray-clad bodies are sprawled in the road.
“There’s a lesson for you, Thompson,” says the Irishman. “That’s what happens when you lose your head under fire. A hog should have known better than to take off up that road; but not men, when they blow their toppers.”
But our shots have revealed our hiding place. A machine gun is trained upon the knoll. Bullets buzz about us like mad hornets. It is time to check out. The krauts will likely start lobbing over mortar shells any moment.
Flattened to the earth and keeping the mound between us and the enemy, we crawl to a gutter in our rear. But we have scarcely settled down before we are ordered to advance with the aid of the tanks. Again we try the tactic of mass fire. The rattle of gunfire grows into a continuous ribbon of noise. We move forward for a hundred yards and are stopped cold. The Germans remain firm and throw back as much as we give them. In fact, more.
Their artillery fire is pulled up from the rear. And once more the earth is a seething hell of flame and whining metal; of screaming cursing men. The ground erupts in thunderous explosions; and in the ghastly rain of debris are the limbs and flesh of men.
In the furor, I catch sight of Brandon. He lies at the edge of a burning haystack, firing methodically, coolly with a Garand. Behind the stack, Snuffy sits with his helmet off, frantically jerking the bolt of his rifle.
The gun evidently has a jammed cartridge; and he refuses to consider the problem of extricating it logically. Finally he hands the weapon to Brandon, whose skillful fingers quickly remove the shell. Snuffy moves to the opposite side of the stack; fires two fast clips; then he begins jerking the rifle bolt again.
The enemy locates our tanks and fires at them pointblank. For a few minutes they stand their ground with cannons churning. A German shell hits the house. A section of the roof lifts; collapses. The tanks clank to the rear of the building. They are through.
Before dusk we give up. My platoon is left to cover the withdrawal of the remainder of the company. We scatter and continue firing furiously to confuse and distract the enemy. Then we pull out ourselves.
Artillery shells follow us down the road, but once out of range of the small arms, we breathe more easily. Twelve men are missing from the platoon.
On the roadside a body lies near a snarled spool of wire. About the neck is the green kerchief. At some moment during the artillery barrage, Dillon’s luck ran out.
There is little sleep that night. The artillery thunders for hours; our foxholes are wet and cold. Cheerless rumors have spread. Our men have been beaten back over the entire front. The day has but served to deplete our forces. We are to attack again tomorrow.
Tired and irritated beyond measure, we awake in a savage mood. The madness of battle grows within us. So does our indifference to life and death. We clean our weapons and wait for the dreaded order. By noon it comes. Attack.
Like robots driven by coiled springs, we again move forward. This time the German artillery meets us. We spread out in the open fields and plunge directly into the fire. Our ears are delicately tuned to the sound of the oncoming projectiles. Instinctively we calculate their probable points of landing.
The holes that they blast offer cover. We dive into them, sometimes before the smoke has cleared, get our breath and bearings, flounder out and move on.
Thompson is near me. He has changed vastly since yesterday. In a single afternoon he has acquired the cautious eye, the up-cocked ear, the wary assurance of an experienced combat man.
The whistle of an 88 shell has a threatening note.
“Get down!” I yell to Thompson. I brace myself on the earth; close my eyes; open my mouth. Wham! Rocks rattle against my helmet.
I raise my head. The shell struck about twenty yards away. When the smoke clears, I see the upper part of a body with a rifle still clutched in the hand. Somebody got a direct hit.
Who? Names dance fearfully through my brain. Brandon? Kerrigan? Johnson? Ward? That is who it was. Ward. He returned to the company last night after three months of schooling in mountain warfare.
I turn to Thompson. His face is white with horror.
“I saw it happen,” he quavers.
“Saw what happen?”
“He was lying there flat.”
I struggle for a grip on my own nerves.
“Forget it. Come on.”
“He was just lying there flat.”
“Come on.”
“I ca
n’t.”
“Goddammit, you’ve got to. You can’t stay here.”
“Who was it?”
“Fellow named Ward. Come on.”
“He was just lying there.”
“I know, I know. Let’s move now. We’ve got to get to some cover.”
“Is he dead?”
“Half of his body is missing. Can’t you see?”
“I don’t want to look. I got a headache. I got a bad headache.”
I crawl over to examine him. He suffers only from an acute case of panic. His teeth chatter; and his lips twitch in rising hysteria. I seize him by the shirt front and slap his face hard.
“Now come on. If we stay here, we’ll both get hit.”
He picks up his rifle and moves toward the battle line. In a little while he becomes calm.
“You’ve got to learn to forget what you see,” I say. “You remember those Germans yesterday. They lost their heads; so they lost their lives. Remember?”
“I’ll be all right. Don’t tell the other guys.”
“I’ll say nothing. It was just the shock. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“But I can’t forget it.”
The Germans have evidently been reinforced overnight. The lash of their small arms has grown more terrible. Our artillery bores into their lines. Our tanks slam steel into every obvious strongpoint. We kill men by the score. But always when we come into range, a cyclone of automatic fire sweeps through our ranks.
Repeatedly we get the signal to advance. We snake forward. A quick call on a German telephone sends their shells directly on top of us. The big guns have us zeroed in. Living now becomes a matter of destiny, or pure luck.
The medics are bloody as butchers. Unarmed and with plainly marked helmets, they are supposed to be spared by the Germans. But the projectiles have no eyes. And I see one medic fall dead on a man whose wounds he was dressing. A scrap of metal severed his backbone.
Horse-Face duels with a sniper. The German is behind a chimney on a roof top; and Johnson deliberately moves into the open to draw his fire. I set my sights on one side of the chimney. A gun barrel appears. I begin the squeeze on my trigger. But the German changes his mind and disappears behind the masonry. His gun cracks; and the bullet hits within a yard of Horse-Face, who now raises his Garand.
Tensely I aim again. But the jerry is partial to Horse-Face. Their two guns seem to fire simultaneously. The German tumbles to the roof, rolls, and stops just short of the eaves. Horse-Face crawls over to me grinning pleasantly.
“Seen a man knock a guy off a roof like that in a picture show once. Trick is to take it easy. Makes the other man nervous. Figured I’d get that guy’s goat when I crawled out into the open. Did. Seen a man bluff a bull one time. Out in Indiana. Bull charged. Man picked up a rock and hit him smack in the eye. Bullseye. Son, that was a bull’s eye, wasn’t it?”
The indestructible Horse-Face Johnson. His humor is as imperishable as his body. Under a hail of fire, he talks constantly of things as remote as the moon.
All afternoon we throw ourselves against the enemy. If the suffering of men could do the job, the German lines would be split wide open. But not one real dent do we make.
Again we are forced to withdraw.
We straggle to the rear, exhausted. It is an orderly retreat, not a rout. We still have spirit, but the company strength has dwindled drastically. Replacements cannot begin to keep pace with the slaughter.
On the third morning, a chaplain visits our company. In a tired voice, he prays for the strength of our arms and for the souls of the men who are to die. We do not consider his denomination. Helmets come off. Catholics, Jews, and Protestants bow their heads and finger their weapons. It is front-line religion: God and the Garand.
Staggering with weariness and snarling like wolves, we meet the Germans again. Doubtless they know our condition. Today they are more arrogant than ever. We slip to within two hundred yards of their lines before they turn the full force of their weapons upon us. Obviously they intend our complete annihilation.
Under the furious punishment, a man a few yards from me cracks up. He begin with a weeping jag; then yelling insanely he rises to his feet and charges straight toward the German lines. A sniper drills him through the head; and a burp gun slashes his body as he falls.
By night we fall back to our original lines with orders to hold at all cost. Some of the companies have been reduced to twenty men. Not a yard of ground has been gained by the murderous three days of assault.
9
NOW time becomes a dreary succession of light and darkness. Neither the day of the week nor the date of the month is remembered. We snatch food and sleep whenever we can as the endless cycle of hours ticks its way into eternity.
A doomlike quality hangs over the beachhead. Just what it is I cannot say, but it is everywhere. I feel it in the howling of the wind; the falling of the rain; and the mud that sucks at our feet. It is in the yellow rays of the sun and the blue rot of trench-foot. And, above all, it is in the eyes of the men.
Beltsky is gone. A shell fragment sheared off part of a leg; his combat days are over. I am in charge of the platoon.
There is no thrill in the promotion. Already we old men feel like fugitives from the law of averages. Loosely we cluster together, bound by a common memory and loneliness. The need for reinforcements is desperate. But we are suspicious and resentful of the new men that join us. As the days pass, if they prove their worth, they gradually grow into our clique and share the privilege of riding other replacements.
Jackoby does not yet understand this. He has just come into the lines; and he has a chip on his shoulder. He wears his rig like a rookie. There is no excuse for such sloppiness of dress on the part of one from the rear area. His speech is sullen; his eyes, bitter. His attitude must be straightened out immediately.
A detail is being sent out to bury three cows whose bloated carcasses have been causing a stench in our section of the front. Kerrigan and Brandon are in charge of the job. They curse me cordially and profusely for the assignment as they await their helpers’ arrival. We stand in a blacked-out room of a partially demolished house which we have made into a forward command post.
To Jackoby I say, “Shed your gear, and go with these men.”
“What for?”
“To bury some cows.”
“I ain’t no gravedigger for a bunch of cows. What’ve they got to do with winning the war?”
“Plenty. Get your shovel.”
“I come up here to fight.”
“You’ll get plenty of fighting.”
“I ain’t eat.”
“You’ll eat later on. Cut out the argument.”
“I’m tired. I been walking all evening.”
“Get your shovel.”
“I ain’t gonna be ordered around.”
Brandon growls. Kerrigan steps forward. “Murph,” says he, “it’s my turn. You got to beat hell out of the last one.”
“Stand back. This is my job. For the last time, soldier, I’m telling you to get your shovel.”
“Goddammit, I said–”
I drive my fist into his stomach. He buckles; and I follow with a clip to the jaw that sends him sprawling. Then I jump astride his body, seize him by the throat, and batter his head against the floor.
Brandon peels me off the prostrate man; and Kerrigan pulls him to his feet.
He glares at me, but evidently he has decided he has had enough. “I’ll report you,” he snarls. “So help me, I’ll turn you in tomorrow. A noncom hitting–”
“Oh, go to hell. Are you ready to get that shovel?”
“You’ll report nobody,” says Kerrigan in a voice trembling with rage. “Up here we don’t run to headquarters with our problems.”
“I know regulations. A noncom–”
“We left regulations in the rear. They were too goddamned heavy to carry.”
The muttering replacement slips off his pack, removes his shovel, and follows the men into the
night.
In a little while I join them. Enemy artillery fires intermittently, but it is not trained on our sector. I hear the murmur of the laboring men; smell the cows; and wonder how it would seem to have the odor of death out of my nostrils once more.
Jackoby is silent. He works willingly enough. Perhaps, he imagines he is digging the grave for me. I do not mind, because I understand how he feels, and it is one way of getting the soil heaved. I ignore him. To betray softness would be to undo the lesson in not questioning orders in the lines. When he pauses in his labor, his eyes turn toward the flash of the German guns.
We dig for several hours. It is a fine feeling to get out of the cramped and muddy foxholes for a change. Our bodies sweat; muscles stretch freely. Brandon hums. Kerrigan swears softly.
“If anybody hands me a shovel after the war,” says he, “I’ll brain him with it. An idiot’s spoon, that’s what it is. Dig. Dig. Get a good hole made, up you move. I’ve been fighting the whole war with this idiot’s spoon.”
“It’s in the proper hands; an idiot’s tool for an idiot.”
“Go to hell.”
“Reminds me of an old girl,” remarks Horse-Face.
“Something always reminds you of an old girl,” says Brandon. “Did this one have a face like a shovel?”
“Hell, no. She was a beaut. But she was an idiot if I ever saw one. Comes up to me in a USO club in Nashville, Tennessee. Says, ‘Soldier, you’re lonesome lookin’ as a duck in a henhouse. What’s wrong?’ Figure she’s the sentimental type. Try appealin’ to her sympathies. Say, ‘Lady, I got a lot on my mind. Just standin’ here thinkin’ about my dear old mother out in Idaho. Raises potatoes. Writes me the crop this year is a total ruin. Bugs got everything on top of the ground; moles got everything under.’