by John Dalmas
One of the Germans was coming directly toward them, scanning from side to side. Unless he changed course, he'd walk right into them. Macurdy stared as the man approached, to 20 feet, 10, 5. As he passed, the German's toe struck Macurdy's booted foot, and he stumbled. "Verdammter Felsen!" he muttered, cursing the outcrop he imagined had tripped him, and continued walking, peering about.
You could have cut the tension with a knife; Macurdy wondered the German hadn't sensed it. No one spoke or got up until, supported by an elbow, Macurdy could no longer see the Germans. "All right," he murmured, "sit up if you want, but stay quiet."
"Jesus Christ, sarge!" Williams murmured, "that was the goddamnedest thing I ever heard of. Scared me out of five years growth! I don't know which was the spookiest, you or the damned krauts. And fallschirmjäger, for chrissake! That would have been a fight!"
"Thank your ass it wasn't," Macurdy growled.
Luoma chuckled. "With you around, sarge," he said quietly, "I don't worry too much."
Macurdy grunted. If the Germans had spotted them, all the magic he'd ever seen or heard of wouldn't have meant a thing when the Schmeissers started spewing 9mm slugs at seven or eight per second each.
* * *
With the pale light of dawn, Macurdy led them into a side draw, where there was cover—coarse brush and some small trees. There they ate a K ration each, then most lit up cigarettes, Macurdy lighting Von Lutzow's with a finger. After that they made themselves as comfortable as they could, and settled down for a few hours of restless sleep. Only Macurdy slept warm. He awoke once to the sound of a plane, flying fast and fairly low, to pass without showing itself, hidden by a ridge. One of Cochran's P40s, he decided. Not a Messerschmitt or the twin-engined P38s, or the Junkers they saw and heard from time to time. He could hear the difference.
Toward noon, with so little air activity, he led them down to the road. They could travel faster, and there was intermittent tree cover along its edge. Several more times during the day they heard fighters, and once a P40 streaked overhead. An overcast developed, then thickened. Toward evening it began to drizzle, and they paused to put on their ponchos. Macurdy offered his to Von Lutzow, who refused it.
"Take it," Macurdy ordered. "It's my fault I didn't bring an extra, and anyway, I don't get cold."
Von Lutzow peered at him with interest. "What do you mean, you don't get cold?"
"Remember how I warmed you before we left the plane last night? I stay as warm as I want. My Aunt Varia's a witch; she taught me."
Von Lutzow half grinned, uncertain whether he was being put on, and accepted the poncho.
Dusk was thickening when the road reached a larger ravine, this one with trees numerous along the roadsides. Macurdy turned left and they kept hiking. The drizzle had changed to a light but steady rain. With no poncho, he was wet to the skin, and water trickled down the ponchos of the others. Von Lutzow had held up well—his conditioning was obviously excellent— but they were due for more than a ten-minute rest At the next break, he told himself, they'd stop for a couple of hours.
It didn't happen, because half an hour later they heard a vehicle coming ahead. Macurdy sent the others off the road to cover, M1s ready, while he crouched beside a tree, pen light in one hand, .45 in the other. A minute later the vehicle came into sight, headlamps hooded—a jeep! As it approached, he stood up and waved the pen light. "Hey!" he shouted. "Going my way?"
The driver braked, tires grabbing wet dirt. "Macurdy!"
The voice was Cavalieri's. His party had met a patrol of French infantry in jeeps with machine guns. The French had radioed Gafsa for him, and the 26th Infantry sent a truck, along with an ambulance for the injured. Morrill was alive, but hadn't regained consciousness. When Cavalieri got to Gafsa, he'd reported to battalion by phone, then grabbed a jeep and come looking for his buddies.
He picked up his mike and radioed Gafsa. Then, at Macurdy's urging, Von Lutzow got in the jeep and headed for Gafsa with Cavalieri. Macurdy and his four troopers took an hour's break in the rain, until a weapons carrier arrived to pick them up.
He never expected to see Von Lutzow again. Their very different paths had crossed, then diverged. It was so common in wartime, he never gave it a thought. Wouldn't for months.
18
A Very Strange AWOL
Under heavy pressure by the British 8th Army, Rommel pulled his Afrika Korps entirely out of Libya that winter, but it was a strategic retreat. The Desert Fox saw possibilities in the west: Drive through Tunisia into Algeria, take the city of Algiers, and the situation would become much more favorable.
Thus in mid-February 1943, the Afrika Korps brushed aside the small American and French units and rumbled through Cafsa toward Tebessa, which Rommel considered strategically vital. Between Gafsa and Tebessa lay the Kasserine Pass, which the Allied Command raced to defend. There the Afrika Korps savaged the green U.S. 1st and 34th Divisions. But it never quite reached Tebessa, because the fighting had taken a toll of Nazi men and armor, and Allied air forces had established dominance.
The 509th Parachute Infantry (nee 2nd Battalion, 503rd) played no part in any of this. The whole battalion was quartered in Boufarik. The Allied Command had decided that employing lighdy armed parachute units in regular ground operations was to misuse a special tool.
Then, in early March, the battalion was put on trains and moved 380 miles west to Oujda, in French Morocco, where it was bivouacked outside the city. There it received replacements, and returned to intensive training.
But even in French Morocco, battles were fought. In early May, the new, highly trained but unblooded 82nd Airborne Division arrived, eager to prove itself, and was bivouacked near the 509th. Whose men took umbrage at the newcomers' cockiness, particularly when, in early June, the Allied command attached the previously independent 509th to the green 82nd as just another constituent battalion.
It might not have been so bad, had living conditions not been so lousy, both for the old hands and the newcomers. The training was brutal and unrelenting, humping equipment up and down the rugged hills, running, and especially training at night: They were to become the masters of darkness.
Which meant sleep time was not only short, but often came during the day. And they slept in pup tents—crawl-in shelters that by day were like ovens.
Nor were there mess-halls, or even mess tents. They took their mess tins to the kitchen, got their food (which was poor and monotonous), and sat on the ground to fight for it with swarms of flies. They soon gave up trying to shoo them away, or even brush them off effectively. They simply cursed, chewed, and swallowed.
On the occasional day off, there was little to do except go into Oujda, where keepers of cheap bars dispensed bad whiskey. And arriving in a less than Christian mood, the troopers were inclined to truculence. In fact, the battles of French Morocco were fought in the bars of Oujda, notably between troopers of the 509th and those of the 82nd. In these, any reluctance to trade blows tended to be lost.
Not all troopers took part, of course. Bar brawls are not vital experience for young warriors, but for many at that stage they were inevitable, indeed for many a joy.
Macurdy, however, preferred to avoid brawls, and found quieter, more out-of-the-way bars, frequented by those who preferred friendliness to fist fights. He'd learned to drink in Phenix City, Alabama, and did it more gracefully than most. Having a rare ability to control his physiological processes, and being neither obsessive nor addictive, he didn't get drunk. Largely he drank wine—he hadn't learned to like hard liquor— allowing himself at most a certain mellowness. Of course, he'd recently had his 39th birthday, but he'd have handled his trips to Oujda more or less similarly had he been ten years younger.
In fact, he would probably have come through his Oujda months unscathed, except for a two-and-a-half-ton truck.
He was with Cavalieri and Luoma, headed back to camp, not drunk or even tight. Over-relaxed perhaps, and less alert than might be. The truck was heavily laden, hauling ordnan
ce from the docks at Mellilla. The driver said he never saw them, that a donkey cart had turned in front of him, and he'd swerved. Also, he'd been continuously on duty for seventeen hours. At any rate he knocked down a G.I. and ran over him.
MPs appeared as if by magic, filling out forms, taking names, ranks, serial numbers, units.... The driver they hauled off in an MP jeep. The victim, who was taken away in an ambulance, was Staff Sergeant Curtis E. Macurdy, serial number 36 928 450.
* * *
Macurdy awoke in the base hospital, remembering nothing of the day. The heavy truck had run over his right leg, doing extreme soft tissue damage, breaking the femur, patella, tibia and fibula, but somehow missing foot, hip, and left leg. He didn't know this, of course. All he knew, vaguely, was that his right leg was in a cast and elevated, its shrunken aura a chaotic mess, and that he was doped to the gills.
He thought of doing something about it, but it seemed like too much trouble, so he fell asleep again, drifting in and out for an indeterminate period that seemed quite long.
* * *
The next day he awoke more or less alert. The ward was less than half full, but he had a neighbor in the bed on his left, his right leg also elevated and in a cast. The man was reading a paperback.
Macurdy lay quiet for a while, searching his mind for what had happened, and finding nothing. So he interrupted the reader. "Where am I?" he asked.
The man looked at him. "The base hospital in Oujda."
"What happened to me?"
"Damned if I know. A medic can probably tell you. How's your leg feel?"
Macurdy gathered focus and looked again at the aura around it, more clearly than before. It was still shrunken, but a little less chaotic. "Busier" now; the leg was trying to heal. It was also dark with pain, more pain than the hard-edged ache he felt. He was still doped up, he decided, but not nearly as much as he had been.
"Not too bad. I'd like to know what happened though. What happened to you?"
"I'm in the 505th Parachute Infantry. We jumped on an exercise in the hills east of Jerada, five days ago. It was pretty windy, and I came down in a ravine full of rocks." He paused. "What outfit are you with?"
"The 509th."
"Ah! One of those! See any combat, did you?"
"Not much. We took some shelling at Tafaraoui, and swapped shots on a night patrol I was on out of Gafsa, but the only real fighting I saw was when we drove the Germans off Faid Pass."
He paused. "Not all that much—some companies got more—but enough to get the feel of things. We had almost as many casualties jumping and training as we did fighting." He chuckled. "And barroom casualties here in Oujda. I stay clear of those. I'm basically a peaceful man."
The 505er laughed. "Me too. I'm thirty years old; I leave those bullshit brawls to the kids. My name's Keith. Staff Sergeant Fred Keith, from Gwynn, Michigan."
"Mine's Curtis Macurdy, from Washington County, Indiana by way of Nehtaka, Oregon. I'm a staff sergeant too."
They were interrupted by a nurse. "How are we doing, Sergeant Macurdy?"
"Could be better. What happened to me?"
"You were run over by a loaded truck. The surgeons spent several hours putting your bones back together. You have enough pins in your leg to make a magnet spin."
"Huh! How long do they figure I'll be in here?"
"Two months if you're lucky—if healing progresses the way we hope. Then another month or two in rehab."
Her aura told him she was withholding from him. "Then what?" he asked.
"You should be able to walk normally."
"What about jumping? Parachuting."
Her eyes evaded his. "The doctor can tell you more about that than I can." She sensed his awareness, and added: "I expect you'll get a non-combat assignment."
Inwardly Macurdy smiled. I'll give them something to think about, he told himself as she left, and decided that complete recovery in ten days would be about right.
Meanwhile his neighbor stared at him. Two months! Keith thought. He didn't commiserate though; didn't know how Macurdy felt about it. At any rate, his neighbor from the 509th seemed to have his attention elsewhere.
Actually, Macurdy was examining the aura around his good leg, imaging it mentally as a basis for working on the damaged one. If need be, he could heal by the feel, but he preferred having a base line. He couldn't get at it very well with his hands, but he could do a good enough job using his eyes and mind. And this project, he told himself, would improve that skill.
* * *
The next day, when a visitor arrived to see Keith, Macurdy was reading, and paid no attention till the man spoke. "How you doing, sarge? The guys said to tell you they want you back before we get shipped somewhere." It was the voice that grabbed Macurdy's attention, jerking his gaze from the page.
"Any rumors?" Keith asked.
"Nothing different than usual: Greece, Italy, Sicily, southern France... But one thing is real: Division sent a team of officers somewhere to set things up. Probably the place we'll invade from."
Macurdy stared. The man's broad back was to him, but it was a back he knew, and the bull neck was familiar. Both went with the voice.
"Anybody else hurt since I left?" Keith asked.
"Not bad. What does the doc say about getting out of here?"
"Four more weeks, then rehab. I'll be as good as new."
Macurdy interrupted. "Damn it, Keith! I wish you'd get a pretty girl visitor, instead of a big mean Indian logger from Oregon."
Roy Klaplanahoo spun and stared. "Macurdy!" he said. "What are you doing here?"
The next twenty minutes was a three-way conversation that ended with Keith and Macurdy knowing one another much better than they might have without Klaplanahoo's presence. All three had been loggers, Keith mainly a pulper and tie hack from Upper Michigan; it added a bond between the two patients.
"Macurdy is a healer," Klaplanahoo told him. "I seen him heal a bad cut a guy got in a knife fight. In a hobo jungle outside Miles City, Montana. And a couple guys that got snot in a logging camp. He does it like a shaman, except he don't use a drum." He turned to Macurdy. "I'll bet you been working on that leg."
Macurdy grinned, and lowered his voice for privacy. "They told me I'd be here at least two months. I gave myself ten days at most."
Keith looked intensely at him, and lowered his voice too. "They'll never believe it. They'll keep you two months regardless."
"Maybe I'll get a little help from my friends. Maybe a hacksaw."
"There's no bars on the windows here."
"To get this cast off. A saw will go through it like nothing. Then I can break it off."
Keith's gaze went out of focus; he was thinking. "You serious?" he asked.
"Damn right."
"I could get a hacksaw," Klaplanahoo murmured.
And that just about finished the conversation. All three men had something to think about. Macurdy decided to give more time to his leg. Ten days had been a guess. Maybe he could shorten that a few days.
* * *
Later that day Keith murmured to him: "Macurdy, I'm worried my outfit will leave me behind. Can you really heal people? Broken legs?"
"I guarantee it."
"Guarantee is a pretty strong word."
Macurdy nodded.
"How about healing me?"
"As long as you're willing."
"How do you go about it?"
"If I can't reach it with my hands, I do it with my eyes."
Keith looked doubtfully at him. "Show me."
Macurdy put his attention on the aura around the elevated leg, then the good one, then the broken one again, and began to manipulate the thread-like energy lines, working on them for several minutes with eyes and intention. The lines tended to slip back the way they'd been, but when they did, he simply readjusted them. After ten minutes they were behaving pretty well, and he could sense Keith's body cooperating.
It's as if, he told himself, the energy threads make a kind of template, a
n energy skeleton for the body—flesh, bones, guts and all. Fix the template, and the rest of it goes along. At least it acted that way. He wasn't going to ask the doctors what they thought of the idea though.
"That's enough for now," he said. "I'll work more on it after a while."
Keith regarded the leg uncertainly. It seemed to him he could feel a difference. By God, he told himself hopefully, maybe this'll work. It just might.
* * *
A number of times on each of the next several days, Macurdy worked both on his own leg and Keith's for about ten minutes each. Already on the second day, Keith felt enthused, certain he could feel it working. At the end of a week, Macurdy felt sure that either of them could get up and walk, but he knew the medics wouldn't hear of it.