World in Flames wi-3

by Ian Slater

  Belgium

  David Brentwood had never dreamed that he would get fan mail as a soldier, and yet here it was: over two hundred letters from admirers waiting to touch, however indirectly, one of the few who had won what General Freeman, in the manner of congratulating an Olympian, had called the “gold and silver”—the Congressional Medal of Honor for David’s single-handed destruction of the Russian fuel dump at Stadthagen, the silver for “conspicuous bravery above and beyond the call of duty” during the assault on Pyongyang.

  The letters depressed him. Their writers trusted him so much. They didn’t know, unless they’d been in combat themselves, how thin the line could be between cowardice and bravery, between “thumbs up” and “screw up.” David had seen men, officers like Freeman, who, though they could understand fear, were able to disdain it. For them the adulation of the public was fuel for their fire. For David, adulation only did what high marks did for him in college — drove him on not because he wanted to but because it was expected — had been expected by generations of Brentwoods in the armed services. Personal achievements were nothing for a Brentwood if they weren’t surpassed the next time around. The pressure was enormous. Dutifully he opened the next letter without having taken any notice of whom it was from. Only when he unfolded it did he recognize the handwriting — Melissa Lange’s.

  “Hey, Yank!”

  David turned around and saw it was the mad British sergeant, perched high in the back of a lizard-camouflaged Humvee, using its swivel-mounted.50-millimeter machine gun as an armrest. “Got you a seat on the hospital train to Brussels. Ten minutes. Better get a move on.”

  “Right,” answered David, quickly folding the letter, slipping it into his top breast pocket as he headed toward the Humvee.

  “ ‘Ere, ‘ere!” bellowed the sergeant, albeit good-naturedly. “Where’s your gear?”

  David stopped, feeling as foolish as he had in the first terrible hours at Parris Island. He’d forgotten his kit bag in the excitement of receiving Melissa’s letter. As he climbed aboard the Humvee, he saw the sergeant pointing toward the administration building. “Hear about your little sweetie?” The sergeant was talking again about the young admitting clerk, Lili, who had flirted with David when he’d first arrived at the Belgian hospital on convalescent leave after Stadthagen. “She’s coming along, too,” the British sergeant informed him. “Which reminds me. You ever see that old cartoon — barrack room full of birds all stripped down to their waists. Tits sticking out all over the place. Sar’ major comes in, beet red. ‘Good God!’ he says. ‘I said kit inspection!’ “

  “That’s terrible,” said David.

  “Never mind, lad. I’ll ‘ave another one for you when you get back.”

  David never liked people saying things like “when you get back.” Always made him nervous.

  Lili was helping some of the nurses load the last of the abdominal cases that were being transferred to Brussels on the train. She waved, smiling at him.

  “ ‘Ello, ‘ello,” the sergeant teased David. “Bit of the old in-out for you, Jack. Eh?”

  Before David could answer, the Humvee jerked to a stop at the gate, throwing them both against the driver’s cabin. The guards were demanding ID. “This man’s got a train to catch,” the sergeant informed the corporal of the guard.

  “We must check all passes,” said the Belgian sentry in impeccably stilted English.

  “We much check all passes,” said the sergeant, mimicking him to David.

  “What for?” the sergeant asked the corporal. “Think I’m a bloody spy?” He dug David in the ribs, sending shooting pains down to the scar tissue.

  “No, I do not think so,” replied the Belgian corporal, un-fazed. “You are too fat, I think.”

  “What? You cheeky bastard!” said the sergeant, passing his and David’s ID down. “Don’t give me any of your lip. I’m responsible for this hero, see. And if we don’t catch that train—”

  “You will catch the train.”

  “We’d better,” the sergeant retorted, snatching back the ID, and, indicating the younger guard, asked David, “You fancy the young one? — bit of lance corporal on the side?” He roared laughing, David leaning against the machine gun, shaking his head as the truck moved out.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As the Red Cross hospital train headed for Brussels from Liege, diverted south because of a rocket-torn section of track on the more direct westward line, David fell under the slow, hypnotic sway of the carriage, the train restricted for a time to no more than forty kilometers an hour because of the danger of air-sewn mines that might still be in the area, hidden by snow.

  The clickety clack of the wheels passing over the ties took David back to his childhood of going up from New York to Albany, the River Meuse, effortlessly slipping by him now, a stand-in for the narrower reaches of the Hudson River. But he knew the analogy was a strained one, more a pining for home than an accurate remembrance of things past. America was not only a long way off in his mind, it was another time, so remote, so unlike the war-filled continent that he was part of, that it might as well be on another planet. It wasn’t simply that the snow-dusted flat country around the Meuse didn’t approximate the heavily wooded banks along the upper reaches of the Hudson, but the smells were so unfamiliar.

  Europe always smelled different — an older, colder brick smell, and especially in winter, with all the fumes of coal-burning furnaces that had come back into use as North Sea gasoline supplies that came from England via the Channel’s “subfloat” pipeline were jealously coveted by the armed forces. The brownish haze from the coal fires created at once the most polluted and beautiful sunsets Europe had seen in the last hundred years.

  David saw a Red Cross nurse coming through from the carriage loaded with badly wounded abdominal cases into the walking-wounded carriage, where David and the British sergeant were sitting with a number of other American, British, and Belgian troops. The nurse’s experienced eye was looking for repatriation cases, which, if they were up to it, would be sent on from Brussels to the Channel ports, when these were cleared of debris, and sent back to England. The sergeant dug David in the ribs. “Look at the knockers on that, Davey boy. Imagine those dangling—”

  “All right,” said David, thwarting more detailed description. The sergeant, he decided, was one of those who took a perverse pleasure in getting the sexually deprived soldiers worked up about “dipping your wick.” David turned his attention to the scenery, the train picking up speed, as he heard an American in front of him, in a neck brace, telling his buddy the train’s engineer had told him they would pass through Waterloo on their way up from Namur to Brussels. Right now David didn’t care about Waterloo — last thing he needed was to see another battlefield, no matter how historic it was. What he wanted was privacy, longing to read Melissa’s letter, to hear her voice. But he wasn’t going to spoil it like a dessert you’re so hungry for that it’s gone before you’ve time to savor the taste. Letters from home, like everything else in this war, had to be rationed carefully. He glanced back at the toilet lineup, but there were too many.

  Soon his eyes were tearing because of the cigarette smoke in the carriage. The war, he mused, had been a monumental setback for the antismoking lobby. His older brother, Robert, or so his mother had told him, had mentioned it in his letters home, too, opining that sometimes he felt that, along with looking to escape unhappy situations back home, half the sub crews had joined the silent service because on a sub, you could smoke all you wanted.

  “You are enjoying the scenery, yes?”

  David looked up and saw the pretty young admitting clerk, Lili, the British sergeant already unabashedly leering at her, his cockney tone taking on a decidedly vulgar edge. “ ‘Ello, luv!” he said, patting the inside of his thigh. “Want to sit on Daddy’s knee then?”

  “No, thank you, Daddy.” She smiled.

  David burst out laughing, sending a burning pain down his arm, but he didn’t care. Momentarily he
forgot everything unpleasant in his life — the heart-thumping run he’d made on the Stadthagen dump, the raid on Pyongyang, and the churning doubt inside him about whether or not he could withstand the strain of any more combat, wondering how close he was — his body was — to simply throwing in the towel, his will exhausted by the combination of physical and mental fatigue.

  The sergeant wasn’t amused by Lili’s repartee, a burning resentment in his eyes against the young girl, a resentment that David felt partly responsible for because of having laughed at him. “Ah—” said David in an effort to change the subject. “Someone was saying we’ll be going through Waterloo?”

  “Yes,” said Lili. “It is very famous. You know about this?”

  “He doesn’t know anything, luv,” cut in the sergeant. “ ‘E’s just a boy. What you need, luv—”

  “My name is Lili.” She said it without rancor but evenly.

  “All right, Lili luv — listen. You know where we can get a snort?”

  She looked blankly at him.

  “You know,” said the sergeant as he motioned, knocking back a drink. “Booze? Ah—le vin, eh?”

  “No,” she said, “I—” The train lurched, approaching the bend near Auvelais, and Lili bumped into the sergeant, quickly righting herself, blushing. “I am sorry, I—”

  “Sorry!” said the sergeant. “Don’t you apologize, Lili. Just what we need on this—”

  “Lay off,” said David.

  “My, my,” the sergeant snorted at David. “I think he’s jealous, Lili. And ‘im wiv all those lovely letters. ‘Please, Davey, my hero — I want to marry you.’ Eh?” The sergeant was digging his elbow further into David. “Eh — that’s what they want, isn’t it, Brentwood? A bit of the old stick?”

  David turned on him, but the sergeant, his face having lost all trace of humor, wasn’t to be interrupted, his grin the same expression he’d worn when whacking the heads off the brambles by the canal. “Can’t you take a fucking joke, matey? Eh?” Lili moved off.

  “She’s gone now, Sarge,” said David icily. “You don’t have to—”

  “Sergeant to you, Dick!”

  “All right, sergeant,” said David quietly. “She’s gone.”

  The sergeant sneered. “You fucking heros are all the same. Get a bit of fucking tin on your chest and you think you’ve got it on tap, right?” David turned away, refusing to be drawn further into argument, fixing his gaze back on the white-snow-dusted blur of the hills to the southeast, where the low country of Wallonia gave way to the formidable barrier of the Ardennes. His great-grandfather had been there — when Hitler’s panzers had broken through to make their last great counterattack of the Second World War, bringing the U.S. Allied advance to a bloody halt, inflicting over fifty-five thousand casualties on First Army’s Eighth Corps, and destroying more than seven hundred American tanks.

  Soon David heard a noise like someone farting in a bathtub — it was the sergeant asleep, David marveling at yet another example of Murphy’s Law run rampant. If the army, concerned that David’s injuries might give him some trouble en route to Brussels, had wanted to choose a more unsuitable candidate for escorting him to identify the SPETS at the in-camera trials in Brussels, it couldn’t have chosen anyone as unsuitable as the British sergeant.

  The sergeant’s mouth was agape, revealing a row of tobacco-and tea-stained teeth. The English, David had discovered, drank enormous quantities of tea. Now and then at the front he’d seen British Centurion tanks in revetment areas, the drivers jerry-rigging a small can of water by the exhaust, the water quickly coming to a roiling boil, and they’d let the tea stew until it was the color of Coca-Cola.

  * * *

  The sergeant mumbled something and closed his mouth, issuing a nasal whistle that immediately caused a stir farther down the aisle, a British naval rating, head bandaged, shouting, “Shut his cake hole!” The man across the aisle calmed the seaman down. Later the American sitting directly in front of David said the Limey sailor was probably freaking out because the whistle sounded just like the Russian RU-six thousands. “Depth charge rockets,” the American explained. “Russkis fire ‘em in horseshoe pattern — twelve at once. Only, they’ve put whistles on ‘em. Like the Stukas in World War Two. Frightens the piss out of you, the sub boys say.”

  “You couldn’t hear ‘em under the water, though, could you?” proffered a sapper across the aisle who looked as if there was nothing wrong with him until David saw the man had no left hand.

  “Like hell you can’t,” answered the man in front of David.

  “One of my buddies is on one of those pigboats — says underwater, you can hear sound four times easier.”

  “Faster,” commented David. “Four times faster.”

  “You been in subs? A marine?”

  “No,” answered David. “One of my brothers.”

  “No way, man,” said the sapper across the aisle. “I want something I can get out of. In a hurry.”

  “Like what?” challenged someone else.

  “Yankee Stadium,” came the answer, the man who said it turning self-congratulatingly to David. But David was no longer there, having seen the line for the John was no more, easing his way out past the sergeant. Outside, canals flashed by under a leaden sky, the train picking up more speed, its sound louder now there wasn’t so much snow to muffle it, the train heading away from Wallonia, where Lili came from, and toward Waterloo, where Wellington had stopped Bonaparte.

  * * *

  Sitting in the relative peace of the washroom, David took out Melissa’s letter. A salvo of Russian rockets couldn’t have stunned him more than the first sentence:

  Richard and I are engaged. I know this might be quite a shock, but I wanted to tell you straightaway. You always told me, Davey, that we should be honest with one another— that’s what I’m trying to do now. I hope you understand. It just sort of happened between Rick and me. I thought we were “just good friends”—I know you’ll think that sounds awfully corny, but honestly, we were — I mean we are. I mean we are friends, you know, but, well, Rick has really become quite a different person since you left. Oh, I know I’m not saying this right but — gee, I guess that makes it sound like your going overseas had something to do with it. Not really. It was actually sort of accidental and—

  The train took a corner at speed, its rails squealing, throwing David hard against the hold bar. His stomach tightened. Christ! The thought of the wimp in bed with her made him want to throw up. While others were fighting and dying thousands of miles from home, the bow-tied weasel had got into her. Mr. Bland, cost-benefit analysis Stacy would no doubt have meticulously planned his moves. First, exemption from the draft in return for a four-year stint as an SAC missile silo jockey, sitting sixty feet under the ground in his protected, superhardened shelter, wearing his fucking cravat. It was true — women went for the uniform. Hell, what were a grunt’s fatigues next to sharp air force blue?

  “Rick feels bad about it,” Melissa explained. “He hadn’t planned it that way.”

  “No!” said David. “What other way did he plan it, the fucking—”

  There was a thump on the door. “Hey, you all right in there?”

  “What—?” shouted Brentwood. “Yeah. I’m having a crap. You mind?”

  “Enjoy, man! Enjoy!”

  “Damn!” said David, skimming over the rest of the letter, one phrase leaping out at him. “Richard—” Funny how women always used the guy’s full name when they were going to shaft you. Made it sound more civilized, David guessed.

  … Richard has gotten me interested in the SAC program, too. I didn’t want to write you until I’d qualified. It’s a very intensive course, as you probably know. Didn’t want to talk about it too much for fear it mightn’t happen. Well — I passed! Not only that, but with “outstanding” commendation. So there, Davey! Who said women couldn’t man the silos? Of course, they’ve been doing it for years, I know, so I’m hardly breaking new ground. But — and this is so r
idiculous — SAC won’t permit mixed teams — both operators have to be of the same sex. Can you imagine? TV cameras all over the place.

  The next word was blocked out by the censor. Jesus, thought David, even the censor knew he, Brentwood, D., Medal of Honor and Silver Star, was being dumped. “… As if,” the letter went on,

  anyone would try any hanky panky down there! Even if you wanted to, there are too many drills to keep you busy the whole shift. Anyway, I really like it, Davey. And it’s kind of nice, I think, that you’re over there doing your thing for the war and I’m here. Sort of keeps us closer. At least we can write, I hope. Some of the girls who have steadies on the subs say they don’t get replies for months on end. Hope you can write me more often than that! I called your mom the other day. She seems fine but is worried, of course, about your brother Ray, well, all of you, of course. But at least she more or less knows how things are with you and Robert and Lana. I mean you do write, but Ray, she says, has just stopped writing altogether. He’s had more laser plastic surgery apparently and it’s amazing what they can do nowadays. But apparently he’s been really depressed lately. He’s asked his wife (sorry — I can’t remember her name) to stop bringing down their two kids because he doesn’t want them to see him that way. Or so your mom says. Your dad’s taking it hardest, I think, though of course he would never admit it!!! Your mom says he keeps telling Ray, you know, “When the going gets tough,” etc., etc., etc.

  “Oh Jesus,” David sighed, “no, no—”

  He also told Ray the doctors told him that despite the severity of the burns, Ray’s physical condition isn’t too bad really and that he could get another command in time. Of course, your dad means something like a minesweeper. Important, I guess, like trash collectors, but hardly a command — at least not for someone who used to run a guided missile frigate off Korea. Talking of Korea, I guess you’ve heard as much as we have. Aren’t you glad you’re not there now! It really is scary. Rick says that we should’ve nuked them soon as they came across the Yalu. He says that what we should do now is—