“Sorry for what?” she asked.
“For swearing. It’s just, it’s gotten to be such a habit, you know.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me, Private. I’ve heard it all before. Believe me.”
“I guess I probably swore some when I first came to, huh? I was pretty groggy then, though. Don’t remember too much about anything.”
“You were fine.”
“You’re pretty swell, Lieutenant,” Kafak told her. “I’m going to ask the brass to give you a promotion.”
She laughed. “Good luck with that,” she said.
“Sure,” Kafak said. “Sure thing.”
“You probably went a long time without sleep when you were at the front, eh?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kafak said. “We all did. You just sort of got used to it.” He paused, looking at her. Feeling suddenly stupid. “You know all this, though,” he said to her. “I figure you’ve heard this stuff a million times from the guys here.”
“Every soldier tells it a little different, even though it’s always the same for all of them. I find it interesting. Every time.”
“Sure. I guess so.”
“Why is it you can’t sleep now, soldier?”
“I think I’ve caught up on all the lost stuff.”
“Then you ought to get ahead for when you go back into combat. You’ll be sorry you didn’t sleep more then, won’t you?”
Kafak laughed.
“Probably,” he said.
“Is that what’s got you thinking?” she asked then. “Going back into combat?”
“Naw,” Kafak said. “That don’t bother me. I mean, not in the way you’re thinking. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not aching to get back, but I don’t want to spend the war here while all my buddies are fighting, either. I need to go back and help, sure.”
“So what is keeping you awake then?”
“Just thinking. That’s all.”
She paused, staring into his eyes. He could tell she wanted him to talk. Kafak didn’t want to talk, though. Not about that. He’d been thinking about Marshak. About how Marshak had caught it. And about how Marshak had been there the whole time on Anzio until that day. It didn’t seem right. That Marshak should catch one after all that time. It got so, after a while, when you didn’t get your ass killed, you actually started thinking you wouldn’t. That somehow you had figured it out. You knew how to survive this shit. You weren’t going to get shot. It was always going to be the guy next to you, or somebody else, anyway. And then something like Marshak happened. And you understood that you didn’t have anything, nothing at all, figured out because there was nothing to figure out, it was all just a matter of chance, bad luck, a random throw of the dice. Kafak wondered why Marshak, climbing out of that trench almost directly next to him, to Kafak, why that 20 had hit Marshak. And why not him? Why not Kafak? How did something like that happen? Who made those decisions? Why did Kafak have that luck, and not Marshak? Kafak had done nothing to deserve that luck. And Marshak had done nothing to deserve getting his head shot apart. Still, that’s what had happened.
You couldn’t figure it out, was the thing.
You only could accept it. Forget it. Move on.
Kafak tried to do that. He figured it didn’t do anybody any good to spend too much time thinking about things like that. Not now, anyway. Maybe later. Sometime later. Only he couldn’t see when.
He missed Marshak, and knew he would miss him for the rest of his life. But he wouldn’t think about that either. He wouldn’t allow himself to think about that.
“Well,” Nurse Sullivan said after waiting Kafak out and finally realizing he wasn’t going to say anything more, “if you ever want to talk about anything, Bobby, anything at all, you just give me a holler. OK?”
Kafak smiled at her.
“You’re just swell,” he told her. “I’ll remember that.”
A few days later, Sullivan asked him, “Why are you in this war, Bobby?”
Kafak knew she asked because of their earlier conversation. He grinned at her and said, “Don’t ask me questions like that, Lieutenant, when I’m trying to sleep here.”
She laughed, but she asked him again.
“Why are you in this war, Bob?”
“I got drafted,” he said. He shrugged. “Why else?”
“You didn’t try to get out of it? When you got drafted, I mean? I’ve seen your records, you know. I noticed a few things that might have gotten you out. Or at least stuck you to a desk somewhere.”
Kafak frowned at her. He felt almost angry. But this was Nurse Sullivan. He couldn’t really be angry at her.
He told her, “A guy doesn’t do that.”
“Plenty of guys did.”
“That’s for cowards. I ain’t no coward.”
“No, I can tell that.”
He frowned again and shook his head, hard.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he told her. “I’m no hero. I keep my ass down. I turn down promotions on account of they get you killed. I’m not here to win any medals or win this fucking war single-handed. Pardon my French, ma’am.”
“OK.”
“But I ain’t gonna shirk, neither. If some other guys wanna do that, let ’em. But I’m here to do my part, and I’m gonna do it. When they order me to, anyhow.” He finished that with a smile.
Sullivan smiled back.
“You’ve got a few medals, though,” she said. “So you must be more of a hero than you say.”
“Aw, that’s baloney,” he told her. “Around Anzio, they give you medals if you survive. You outlive the other guys and you get medals and stripes. That ain’t right. They shouldn’t ought to do that, you know? It’s all just dumb luck. That ain’t nothing else.”
“I think you’re just being modest.”
“Not me, ma’am. Got nothing to be modest about.” Kafak paused, then he said, “There is one medal I’m proud of, though. Well, not really a medal. It’s just a badge. The rifleman’s badge.” Kafak nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. That one makes me pretty proud, all right.”
Once, at three in the morning, when they had nothing left to really talk about, the guy in the next bed whispered across to Kafak.
“Can I ask you a question, pal?” he said.
Kafak looked over to him. They’d spoken about baseball and music and movie actresses and the progress of the war in general. And where they had served and a little of what they had seen. The guy had earlier told Kafak that he had been wounded at Cassino after only four days on the front line, and that straight out of the States. He said he was two months away from his nineteenth birthday. He looked like a kid, though. Then Kafak remembered that he was only nineteen himself. He felt sure he didn’t look it, though. Not anymore. He often forgot entirely about it.
“Sure,” Kafak said. “What’s that, Billy?”
“How many guys you kill, Bob?”
Kafak was silent for a long moment. Long enough that Billy repeated the question.
Kafak said, “I don’t know,” finally, because Billy was insisting on an answer. “Maybe none,” he said.
“Come on, Bobby,” Billy said. “You were on Anzio for more than two months. You went on patrols, you fought in major battles, you were there, buddy, in the shit. You had to have killed a few Krauts. More than a few. So how many d’you think you killed?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wished I’d’ve killed a few Krauts before I got hit. They got me, but I don’t think I got any of them. I wasn’t around long enough. Never actually even seen a German. Just the bullets, you know?” Billy laughed. Then he stopped laughing. Then he said, “So, come on, Bobby, how many you kill?”
“I ain’t killed nobody,” Kafak said. The answer came firm and final and shut Billy up. After nearly a minute of silence between them, Kafak said, “But I know for a fact, I saved two guys’ lives.”
Kafak received his discharge. He was all healed up. There was a dent in his back where not all the flesh grew bac
k. But he felt strong enough, the muscle having regenerated well. They told him he’d always have the pit in his back.
“You can prove you were in the shit,” Billy told him.
“Don’t need to prove something I already know,” Kafak said.
He packed up. He carried his barracks bag and went looking to say good-bye. He found Nurse Sullivan first, and he told her so long, that he would miss her.
She said, “Just make sure we don’t see you back here again, soldier.”
Kafak grinned.
“Don’t you like me?” he said.
“I like you fine. That’s why I never want to see you again.”
He wanted to hug her, but he didn’t figure that was right. She was a lieutenant, after all.
Dr. Gibbs told him, “I spent a lot of hard work on you, Private. So make sure you don’t waste it all by getting yourself killed.”
“I’ll do my best for you, Doc,” Kafak said.
He went once more to the Bagnoli Repo Depo and got himself fixed up with new equipment, new uniforms. He was all set to go back. He told the officer there, “I won’t go back unless you put me with the Fifteenth Regiment, Love Company. Sir.”
Kafak was determined. One way or another, he was going back to his pals. And only there. He’d go to the brig otherwise, if he had to.
“You got buddies there, Private?” the officer asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Those boys are in the shit up there, you know. About to run up into the Siegfried Line.”
“That’s just it,” Kafak said. “Those jokers probably need my help by now.”
Kafak smiled, and the captain laughed and shook his head.
“Careful what you ask for, Private, cuz you’re liable to get it. The Fifteenth it is.”
He stamped the papers and handed them over to Kafak.
Kafak felt good, pleased. Damned near happy.
Then he figured himself an idiot for feeling happy about something like this, and he stopped doing it. He still felt pleased, though.
Kafak was packed on board an LCI for the trip from Naples to Marseilles, France. It started out all right, but they ran into a storm, and the craft started tossing wildly in the sea. Everyone aboard got sicker than hell. Everything the soldiers could fill up with their vomit was filled up, then heaved over the side, then filled up all over again. The storm finally ended, then the sea ended, and then they were on land. They weren’t in Marseilles long. The army moved them up by truck and rail to join the troops at the front. On the train, Kafak found a guy he’d been on Anzio with. Lester Carter from Alabama. Kafak liked him. He liked to hear Carter’s stories about the farm he grew up on and hunting in the woods down south. Carter always used to tell him, “You oughtta come on down and see us after this shit, Dash.”
And Kafak would always say, “Sure. Why not?” And nothing more.
Now Carter asked, “Where you comin’ from, Dash?”
“Been in Naples, recuperating, Bama.”
“Oh my shit. Me too.”
Carter sounded surprised that they had been in Naples, both wounded, both recuperating, at the same time and hadn’t run into one another until now, now that they were back heading for more fighting. Kafak didn’t think it so odd. After all, there had been thousands of casualties during the Breakout, both the Anzio and Cassino sides. No surprise you couldn’t find anyone in those crowds. The two traded information about their wounds, joking about them. They made the rest of the trip together. A third guy from Anzio hooked up with them as well, a guy named Bill Hastings. Kafak didn’t know him as well, but he seemed all right and they got along pretty well the rest of the trip. Kafak knew he used to be a sergeant, though, and now he was a private, so Kafak wondered how he’d fucked up.
“Where you been, Coo?” Carter asked Hastings.
They called Hastings “Coo” as in “bill and coo,” because he was a known womanizer, any chance he got.
“I been at the hospital,” Hastings said.
“Us too,” Carter said.
“When you get hit?” Kafak asked him.
“While I was in Naples,” Hastings said. He smiled, sort of sheepish, Kafak thought. “I caught the VD from a whore there, even before I shipped to Anzio the first time.”
No wonder he wasn’t a sergeant anymore, Kafak thought.
“You fuckin’ asshole,” Carter said, laughing.
Hastings laughed, too.
“Fuckin-A right,” he said, agreeing. “After we took Rome, I couldn’t stand it no more, and they shipped me back to get fixed up. They took good care of me there, though. I’m good to go now.”
“So they sent you back?” Kafak said.
“Sure, after they busted me. Probably woulda put me in the hoosegow except they’d rather have the fucking Krauts kill me off than have to feed me for doing nothing for a couple of years.”
“Sure,” Kafak said. “The Krauts take care of a lot of the army’s problems, don’t they, the fuckers.”
“Fuckin’ Krauts,” Carter said, shaking his head.
“Fucking army,” Hastings said.
They kept together as much as they could after that.
They passed by Montélimar, France, where the German army, retreating from southern France, had been caught nearly bumper-to-bumper on Route 7, the one main highway that led north from the Riviera. That had happened only a few days earlier, near the end of August. There were still bodies being removed. They hadn’t even gotten to the equipment yet, the trucks and carriers and tanks and the rest that had been obliterated by the Third along with the Air Corps. There were supplies blown everywhere. Kafak saw more than a few dead horses, lying in the sun, bloating and stinking. The stench of burned human flesh still hung in the air, a choking miasma that overpowered even the cordite smell. Kafak gagged.
“That’s the worst smell in the entire fucking world,” he told Carter. “I don’t think I’ll ever get it out of my head, if I live to be a hundred.”
“All them poor horses,” Carter said. “Poor farmers coulda used them animals.”
That came from living on a farm, Kafak thought. He hadn’t really thought about the horses himself. Then he did, and he felt bad for them. At least the people killing each other had thought about it, had come here with varying degrees of willingness. The horses, they just got dragged into it. It wasn’t their fault. They had nothing to do with it. Only they were just as dead. That didn’t seem right to Kafak. Then he forgot about the horses; there was nothing he could do about the goddamn horses.
Most of the French towns they passed through greeted them with cheers and waves. The French were thrilled to have the Allied troops there, liberating them from the German yoke they had been under for four long years. When they were marching through some of the places, a few of the girls would run up and kiss the GIs. Usually on the cheek. Hastings would always try to French them. “Well, we’re in fucking France, ain’t we?” he’d say. One really pretty girl had approached Kafak in one village, and he had kissed her pretty good. She reminded him a little of Nurse Sullivan, and that was why he really let himself go to town with the girl. She seemed to like it. An older man from the village had had to pull her away from Kafak. He was laughing about it, though. The girl made Kafak think more about Nurse Sullivan. He wished now he had hugged her. If he ever saw her again, he swore to himself he would hug her for sure that time. Except he didn’t much expect there would be that next time. What were the chances, after all? In the middle of a fucking war? It was a nice thing to think about, though. One village they passed through didn’t cheer for them. The officer leading them back to the front told them that a lot of people had been killed there by a bombing that shouldn’t have happened. An American bombing. The people held it against all Americans now. The villagers slammed their doors, barred their windows. Those that did remain on the streets as the American troops marched by either showered them with sullen looks or spit on the cobblestones. Kafak figured he understood it well enough. He’d be pret
ty upset just like these folks if someone had bombed his friends and neighbors. Still, it rankled a little, too. Because he knew they would never have been allowed to look at the Germans that way, act that way toward the Krauts. The Germans would have killed them for shit like that. We just let it go. They ought to realize at least that much is different, Kafak figured. The new guys marching and riding in the trucks with them had a lot of questions. About combat. About the Germans. About what to do and what not to do. Some of the veterans had plenty to say. Lots of advice. Kafak thought some of it was even good. He didn’t offer much himself. He wondered how you advised a guy to be lucky. Because that was the thing of it, he’d concluded. Since he didn’t know how to do that, he pretty much kept his mouth shut. One guy who wouldn’t let up, though, he did tell him, “Keep your ass down and you’ll be a goddamned veteran before you fucking know it.”
That was the extent of what he had to offer.
They finally reached the Third near Lyon. They made silk there. They were famous for it, apparently. It was like that, though. Half the time you never knew where the fuck you were. You just followed the guy in front of you. Kafak didn’t know the names of half these villages and towns, and he pretty much forgot the names of half the rest. Only occasionally did a name or a place stick in his mind. Like Montélimar. Because of all those dead Germans. And that overpowering odor of burned human flesh. That one he would always remember, he knew.
He and Carter reported to L Company together. Captain Cole was there to take their papers. He grinned when he saw them.
“You guys finally decided to stop goldbricking in Naples and join back up with the fighting men, huh?” he said.
“I tried to stay, but the nurses kicked me out,” Kafak said.
Cole laughed, and Carter said, “I couldn’t wait to get on outta there, Cap. The food was so good I was gettin’ fat.”
“And he didn’t want to get too fat on account of he knew he couldn’t run fast enough when the Germans started shooting at him again.”
“That comin’ from you, Dash,” Carter said.
“That’s why I didn’t get fat,” Kafak said.
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