The memories. Barrett, I miss you, I can’t talk to many of these people anymore and I think I’m shellshocked. After stopping back at his room to drop off his bottle of liquor, he goes toward the quartermasters’ stores, held in and around several large cinderblock houses and a large yard down the street, surrounded by army trucks, the front yards lined with the manicured cones of cypress trees. Inside the houses are piled stacks of kitbags in rumpled pyramids; as well, a small pavilion tent in the yard contains more. Private Breen, a doughy young man given to fits of temper and sweating, is sitting at a table sipping tea and smoking a pungent, cheap cigar as soldiers come and go on their various errands.
“Good morning, sir,” is his greeting, as he stands up, stamps his right foot and salutes.
“Good morning, Private. As you were. Big plans for the day?”
“Oh, gonna head up to the mess to play some craps and poker with some of the boys there after weapons inspection. Got a new stash of stuff to sweeten the pot, sir.” He leans into Jim as he says this, lifting his brows and creasing his forehead in emphasis.
“Huh?” Jim doesn’t understand. Breen looks at him for a moment, expecting him to pick up on his innuendo. “Oh. Oh, my God, yes.”
“Hey, sir, it all gets wasted if we don’t do something with this stuff. They’d want it this way, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes, I suppose they would. I suppose they would.” Jim feels slightly nauseous. He would’ve found this exchange funny months ago, but he finds it funny no longer, he is no longer desensitized to the violence of the war in which he has opted to play a part. He plays along. “What do you have now?”
“Well, two cartons of cigarettes bound for Lance Corporal Fitzpatrick by way of his brother, a bottle of scotch bound for Lieutenant Briscoe from his uncle, a lemon cake all wrapped up really nice sent by Private Kelly’s wife, a pair of German boots taken by Private Redding at Pesaro. They’re no good for him now, either, unfortunately. That’s the tally for San Matteo, sir.”
“So Fitzpatrick never made it after all.” A thoughtful pause. Fitzpatrick’s feverish pallor and afflicted wince as the stretcher-bearers whisked him out by the church, mortality ascertained in the fleeting meeting of their eyes. He can smell the charred odour of ruin, hear the shriek of falling shells. Vertigo. He feels his stomach lurch. A new addition to his hyper-real flashbacks of his experience.
“And these cigars here, one of which I’m enjoying now. From an arty guy stationed up front.”
A lightheaded chill courses through him, a shiver of nervous expectance. “An arty guy? What was his name?”
“Lieutenant Blake, I think. His radioman’s pretty badly wounded, too. Cole, I think I heard his name is. Are you okay, sir? You look pale. Did you know him?”
“Blake … Blake … ah, fuck, Blake.” He scarcely realizes he is speaking aloud until the end of the sentence. He is overtaken by remorse. “So, he’s dead, then, is he?” Jim looks at Breen, who speaks his death through silence. “How the fuck did I not know he was killed? He was stationed with us, for Christ’s sake. I kicked him out of the church because he wanted to use the steeple and then he gets it where I sent him! Jesus Christ.” He is assailed by pointed, panicky thoughts. How could that escape my notice? Where was I? Did I black out? How could I not know, not remember this? Breen looks very awkward, ill-at-ease with Jim’s emoting. “And why didn’t anyone tell me?” There is a moment of silence. Jim’s heart is thumping, his breathing is rapid, his fists are balled. How did I miss this? I must be losing it. Losing it. He inhales deeply, exhales slowly, and calms down somewhat. “You know, Breen, you might want to consider just putting some of that stuff for sale in the canteen rather than just putting it in circulation for gambling. Equal up the opportunities.” On the other hand, he thinks, this is more of a mirror of real life, isn’t it? At least for what we’re doing here. Wager your life, lose, and your possessions become fair game, circulating about the table. His cigarette case, liberated from the body of a German major, reminds him of this. Should he die, it will likely be picked from his body.
“Well, that happens sometimes too, sir.”
“You and Riordan run one hell of a racket here, let me tell you.”
“Sir?”
“Trading in dead men’s belongings—that’s a bit sick, don’t you think? Don’t you?” Jim has a flash of grabbing him by the throat, of pinning him to the wall as his chair falls out from underneath him and clatters to the floor, of punching him in the face till his nose explodes and blood pours down his chin. He exhales, easing out the pressure.
“It’s just—” Breen can’t quite find the words. He looks at Jim in defensive astonishment, aware he’s getting a tongue-lashing from an officer, but incredulous that it should be for something generally accepted among the men. “It’s just that this is the case in every battalion, sir. We make do. This stuff comes anyway; we might as well let some people enjoy the benefits. You know what I mean, sir?”
“You guys are sick. This whole fucking place is sick.” The last sentence attenuates into a grumbly whisper, directed in impotent frustration to the world at large. “Never mind, Breen, just never mind for Christ’s sake. I’m sorry I’ve bothered you. I’m just going to my kitbag, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, sir ... ” Breen’s eyes follow him as he goes to his kitbag, and an uncomfortable and loaded silence falls over the place. Jim finds his among his company’s kit, a large green rough cloth bag stuffed with supplies, letters, souvenirs, clothing. Jim grabs it, stuffed and lumpy with a heavy bulk. He takes it outside in the stone-fenced backyard and plunks it beside a weeping willow tree. He unties the opening, pulls it open and is greeted by a jumbled, rumpled plethora of odds and ends. The mixed smells of dust and coffee and musty paper meet his nostrils. He rummages through the bag, and various items come to light. Care package foods—Lipton soup, Spam, malted milk tablets, pouches of powdered hot chocolate, coffee, chocolate bars, pouches full of teabags. Books: Dante’s Inferno, Homer’s Iliad as translated by Alexander Pope. Neither of which he’s read in a bid to improve himself while on down time. Magazines: The Maple Leaf Italy Dispatches, Life, Macleans, Time. Bundles of letters. Pictures. His duty roster, his officer’s field manual. Spare underwear, spare socks, spare undershirts. A tin of boot polish, and a soft cloth bunched up and blotched with deep black polish stains. Wrinkled dress uniforms for different occasions, wrapped in shaped and wrinkled garment bags. A yellow and black kilt, wrinkled and pleated. A sweater. His cobeen. A beret. An iron. A box of paper tissues. A half-used metal tin of Brylcreem. A bottle of Benzedrine pills, given to all soldiers. A brass picture frame, taken from a blasted house in the ruins of Pesaro not two weeks ago. A shoulder patch torn off a sullen German hauptmann in the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division, one of a hundred and twenty prisoners taken from the heights of Montecchio. Another German officer’s Luger, taken during a nighttime patrol back at Cassino. A silver goblet, liberated from a shelled-out farmhouse in Ceprano in the spring offensive, the Road to Rome as the newsreels and newspapers pegged it. The evening program from Christmas dinner in Aldershot, England, 1942. Two bottles of Canadian Club whiskey. All these things and more beckon for attention. You are what you collect, he thinks. The contents of your pockets are the accoutrements of who you are. I am a packrat and a scrounging thief, he muses with a twinkle of glee. He adds to the pile the letters from Barrett and his father, as well as most of the packets of cigarettes from his carton. With some minutes to spare, he leafs through his pictures and his letters from home. The first item he looks at is a picture of himself and Marianne smiling in front of her family furniture store, smiling the day of their engagement in celebration of the life on which they were embarking, in front of the store that they would perhaps own and manage. He usually does not carry such pictures save for the thumbworn one of Marianne in his wallet, not wanting them to fall into the hands of the enemy and be scoffed at and belittled, should
he be killed and his pockets picked.
He thumbs across an opened envelope stamped with ‘SALVAGED FROM AIR CRASH’ that triggers a vertiginous feeling of sadness, a letter from the mother of the first soldier killed under his command, felled by a sniper during a patrol on the Arielli Line last winter:
To Lt. James McFarlane, C.O. No. 8 Pltn, ‘A’ Coy, 1CIR.
Dear Jim,
Thank you for taking the time to write me about my son, Ryan. You are very thoughtful. Telegrams are so impersonal—it was nice to have someone who knew him send a personal letter. I will miss him and there is nothing I can do to bring him back, but at least I know he died doing his duty under the command of a fine officer such as yourself.
There are some things that I was compiling to send Ryan—cigarettes, socks, snacks, etc. They will go to waste if I don’t send them. So, I have sent them for you. You take these things; he doesn’t need them anymore. I have included for you four pairs of wool socks, ten packets of Lipton’s onion soup mix, two tins of Klik, ten Hershey chocolate bars, a carton of Players’ cigarettes and a box of Red Rose orange pekoe tea.
Again, thank you very much for the letter. I continue to pray for you and the men of your battalion and I pray that this war will end sometime soon. Take care and come home to your loved ones safely—
Take care,
Mrs. Doreen Harrigan
The padre, Father Maitland, told Jim when he received a reply from her to his own next-of-kin letter that Harrigan was her only child. Jim had lifted some of what he’d written to her from a sermon from church parade with the padre about a hundred yards from the front line, behind the cover of a blasted pile of stones that was once an ancient farmhouse, a sermon wherein Father Maitland quoted Ecclesiastes: “To everything there is a season.” A nearby storm of combat, mortar shells plopping in the mud in the valley not a hundred yards away. The rocks on which he had stood vibrated faintly traces of artillery in a faint wireless dispatch from the front, as though in Morse Code. To everything there is a season. Jim had turned the words over in his mind as the padre continued: “There is a time for war, a time for peace.” To everything there is a season. If not a reason. I was in charge of your son, and he died. Many people have died in units under my command, and I remember every one, will always remember every single one of them, oh God, I never forget a face … and I wish I could.
16
After lunch, and after a film viewing during which he fell almost instantly asleep, Jim shuffles papers and handles mundane clerical tasks at a desk in a room in a house serving as his company headquarters. Soldiers come and go with questions as he pores halfheartedly over rosters and orders and reports: Sir, could I apply for a leave-pass? Sir, we need a kit inspection. What time would be suitable? Sir, could you help me with a letter to my girlfriend back in England? Never much good at writing, sir, left school when I was nine.
As he puts out a cigarette in an old wine bottle standing on his desk, he hears a flurry of activity outside. Reinforcements arrive in a rumble of trucks outside his window and are dispersed into various platoons and companies. They are pep talked and drilled by their new sergeants and corporals, and they are paraded through the serpentine streets and lanes and along the castle walls to skirl of pipes and beat of drum, along the rows of townhouses, by the churches, by the farmhouses and alongside the rows of vines in the late afternoon sunshine, the mature late summer sun, the last days of summer in its glory, the light pouring down from between the puff-white clouds and between the branches of roadside trees and sun-speckling the heads and shoulders and faces of marching soldiers. As they march they hear incongruous thunder, to the west, to the south, to the north, as at the front mere miles away men fight and die; and they are inspected by the RSM standing on the street side, swagger stick in hand, and as they march by, their shadows lengthen and sharpen into spearpoints in the late afternoon sun, the advance guard of the coming of the night. As the march concludes back in the main piazza where Jim stands after his office duties, many are dismissed and sent to their mess for dinner. Those who are NCOs are sent into the officers’ mess, now crowding with officers and sergeants and warrant officers, to receive the colonel’s orders.
Jim joins the tide of sergeants and warrant officers dismissed from the parade, and he enters the crowded mess for the third time today, accompanied by Witchewski, and by Warrant Officer Albert, Regimental Sergeant Major and senior NCO of the entire battalion. The floor trembles from the concussion of a German shell. Lieutenant Colonel Hobson sits at a dining room table with other officers, including Major Gordon and Battalion Adjutant Major Reynolds, Major Wyler and Captain Van Der Hecke of Dog Company, Captain McCambridge, Major Rowlands and Captain Alward of Charlie Company, and Lieutenant Sachs of the mortar platoon.
“Hello, McFarlane,” says Hobson, shooting a grey-eyed wink at Jim, looking up from his map as Jim steps into the dining room. Mr. and Mrs. Ceci are nowhere to be seen.
“Good evening, Colonel,” Jim answers with a salute, returned by Hobson.
“Grab yourself a seat and help yourself to a cup of tea.” Hobson stuffs a straight-backed pipe with tobacco from a pouch in his pocket, and lights it, puffing sweet, moist roils of smoke into the room like unwinding strands of scented cotton. He moves the portable chalkboard and stand, where would normally be written the daily special, closer to him, and he picks up a well-used piece of white chalk.
“Thank you.” Jim helps himself to a tin cup full of tea from one of several large thermoses set up on the serving table, grabs a broken-backed wooden chair and pulls up to a crowded table. He stirs his tea with the butt-end of a dirty fork as others make their way into the room and take their seats.
Hobson scans the room a moment and says, “I think everyone’s here who needs to be here. Good.” His face becomes serious and he addresses the officers and NCOs gathered in the mess: “Gentlemen: orders. We’re planning our next moves, as you can probably determine.” Jim takes a huge gulp of tea and it kindles a welcome fire within. Hobson continues, drawing on his pipe, its ember glowing with the promise of victory: “This is the moment we have been waiting for. The offensive in this section, as I am sure you are all aware, will continue.” He scans the gaze of his audience with his eyes, intense and steely with confidence and a studied ruthlessness. “That damned ridge that has held up this advance is going to fall. That damned ridge that held us up and shelled us for several days straight while we waited for it to fall, that held off a major British attack, has been assigned to us to take. And take it we will.”
There is a cheer, a loud fists-in-the air “Aye aye!” After the cheering abates, Hobson scans the collected soldiers again, and continues in the ensuing silence. “We will march out and form up once again behind the San Matteo ridge tomorrow night. Not to worry; we will not be sticking around long enough for Jerry to shell the wits out of us this time.” There is a rueful, knowing laugh from some of the men. “The artillery’s going to hammer the hell out of Jerry all night. The gift exchange will start at precisely 2100 hours,” he says, chug-chug-chugging away on his pipe as if he were a locomotive, and he continues: “There will also be massive, and I mean massive, airstrikes on and behind the Jerry lines, carrying on throughout the entire operation. When the guns go off, company and support platoon commanders in battle rotation will meet me at TAC, the location of which is yet to be determined, for any last orders or possible changes. Starting at 1100 hours, the British 1st Armoured is moving in far to our left to secure the southern end of the ridge. At 0100, our brigade goes into action to secure the village of Coriano itself. The Sydney Highlanders will move into the valley and up the ridge to cut the town off from the north. The Stratford Regiment will move across and cut it off from the south.” He draws a map of the battleground, complete with the arrows of the battalions’ movements. The stony scrape and squeak of chalk grates against the silence. “We will move up into the Sydneys’ positions once they have dep
arted.”
There is an expectant silence as the men await the revelation of their role, however unpleasant it may be. “As for us,” eyes darting right to left, left to right, “we’ve been assigned the role of janitors. We pass through afterward to mop up and clear whatever resistance is left in the village itself.” There is some murmuring, both excited and nervous.
“It’ll be a little Ortona,” says Lieutenant Muller. “Won’t it?”
“Silence, please. Dog Company—” He glances at Captain Van Der Hecke, young and baby-faced with a wide Dutch farmer’s face and a protuberant nose, who stiffens up in expected pride in expectation of success, and at Major Wyler, equally young, though tempered with a cool confidence exemplified by his Errol Flynn moustache. “You will be in reserve and protect sappers from the 11th Field Squadron as they bridge the Besanigo River. The Besanigo Creek, more like, but it will likely seem an imposing crossing at the time. This will allow tanks from the Lucky Sevens to cross the river and support us in our endeavour. You will move before dawn, at 0500. Beware German fire from here.” With his swagger stick Hobson points out a map feature. “From this hill on the southwest corner of the village, the Castella, the Germans enjoy an exceptionally fine view. Able, Baker and Charlie companies will move in once the bridging gets underway.” He glances at Jim, and at McCambridge, Rowlands and Alward, to emphasize the responsibility inherent in his order. “Able will move up first and enter the town from the north, followed later by Baker. Charlie will cover the flank from the west and engage with the Castella. After the bridging, Dog must be ready to exploit any successes, and Support Company will be ready to dispatch any possible reinforcements by vehicle as needed. Each company will be supported by representatives from both the mortar platoon and the AT platoon.”
Beckoning War Page 13