by Irwin Shaw
“You ask him,” Himmler said. “Maybe for Rommel to come down and watch this personally and give him a medal after breakfast.”
The Lieutenant slid down from the top of the ridge and waved impatiently for Christian. Christian crept slowly up toward him, with Himmler following.
“Had to set the mortar himself,” Himmler grumbled. “Couldn’t trust me. I’m not scientific enough for him. He’s been crawling over and playing with the elevation all night. I swear to God, if they examined him for lunacy, they’d have him in a strait-jacket in two minutes.”
“Come on, come on,” Hardenburg whispered harshly. As Christian came up to him, he could see that Hardenburg’s eyes were glowing with what could only be happiness. He needed a shave and his cap was sandy, but he looked as though he had slept at least ten refreshing hours.
“I want everyone in position,” Hardenburg said, “in one minute. No one will make a move until I tell them. The first shots will be from the mortar and I will give a hand signal from up-here.”
Christian, on his hands and knees, nodded.
“On the signal, the two machine guns will be raised to the top of the ridge and will begin firing, and continuous fire will be kept up by the riflemen until I give the command to stop. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Sir,” Christian whispered.
“When I want corrections on the mortar I will call them myself. The crew will keep their eyes open and watch me at all times. Understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Christian. “When will we go into action, Sir?”
“When I am good and ready,” Hardenburg said. “Make your rounds, see that everything is in order and come back to me.”
“Yes, Sir.” Christian and Himmler turned and crawled over to where the mortar was set up, with the shells piled behind it and the men crouched beside it.
“If only,” Himmler whispered, “that bastard gets a slug up his ass I will die happy today.”
“Keep quiet,” Christian said. Himmler’s nervousness was unsettling. “You do your job, and let the Lieutenant take care of himself.”
“Nobody has to worry about me,” Himmler said. “Nobody can say I don’t do my job.”
“Nobody said it.”
“You were about to say it,” Himmler said pugnaciously, glad to have this intimate enemy to argue with for the moment—to take his mind off the eighty Englishmen three hundred meters away.
“Keep your mouth shut,” Christian said. He looked at the mortar crew. They were cold and shivering. The new one, Schoener, kept opening and closing his mouth in an ugly, trembling yawn, but they seemed ready. Christian repeated the Lieutenant’s instructions and crawled on. Making certain to raise no dust, he approached the machine-gun crew of three on the right end of the ridge.
The men were ready. The waiting, through the night, with the eighty Englishmen, just over the scanty ridge, had told on everyone. The vehicles, the two scout cars and the tracked carrier, were just barely hidden by the small rise. If an RAF plane on an early patrol appeared in the sky, and came down to investigate, they would all be lost. The men kept peering nervously, as they had done all the previous day, too, into the clear, limitless sky, lit now by the growing light of dawn. Luckily, the sun was behind them, low and blinding. For another hour the British on the ground would have a difficult time locating them against its glare.
This was the third patrol through the British lines that Hardenburg had taken them on in five weeks, and Christian was sure that the Lieutenant was volunteering again and again at Battalion Headquarters for the job. The line here, far over on the right of the shifting front, among the waterless, roadless sand and scrub, was lightly manned. It was a succession of small posts and wandering, mingled patrols, more than anything else, not like the densely packed ground near the coast, with its precious road and water points, where there were full-dress artillery and aerial sweeps all day and night.
Here, there was a sensation of uneasy stillness, a premonition of disaster hanging over the landscape.
In a way, Christian thought, it was better in the last war. The slaughter was horrible in the trenches, but everything was organized. You got your food regularly, you had a feeling that matters were arranged in some comprehensible order, the dangers came through regular and recognizable channels. In a trench, Christian thought, as he slowly approached Hardenburg, lying once more just under the crest of the ridge, peering over it through his glasses, you were not so much at the mercy of a wild glory-seeker like this one. Finally, Christian thought, in 1960 this maniac will be in command of the German General Staff. God help the German soldier then.
Christian dropped carefully to the sand beside the Lieutenant, keeping his head down under the sky-line. There was a slight, sour smell from the leaves of the desiccated brush that clung to the sharp soil of the ridge.
“Everything is ready, Lieutenant,” Christian said.
“Good,” said Hardenburg, without moving.
Christian took off his cap. Slowly, very slowly, he raised his head until his eyes were over the line of the ridge.
The British were brewing tea. They had a dozen fires going in small tins that had been half-filled with sand, and then soaked with gasoline. The fires flared palely. The men grouped around them and waited with their enamel dixies. The white of the enamel picked up little glitters of sunshine and gave a curious impression of restless movement to the groups. They looked very small, three hundred meters away. Their trucks and cars in their desert paint looked like battered toys.
There was a man on duty at the machine gun mounted on a circular bar above the cab of each truck. But aside from that, the entire scene had a kind of picnic quality, city people who had left their women at home on a Sunday to rough it for a morning. The blankets on which the men had slept still lay about the vehicles and here and there Christian could see men shaving out of half cups of water. They must have a lot of water, Christian thought automatically, to waste it like that.
There were six trucks, five open and laden with boxes of rations, and one covered. Ammunition in that one, probably. The sentries had drifted in toward the fires, still holding their rifles. How safe they must feel, Christian thought, thirty miles behind their own lines, on a routine run to the posts to the south. They had dug no holes for themselves and there was no cover anywhere, except behind the trucks. It was incredible that eighty men could move about so long and so unconcernedly under the guns of an enemy who was only waiting the move of a hand to kill them. And it was grotesque that they were shaving and making tea. Well, if it was going to be done, now was the time to do it.
Christian looked at the Lieutenant. There was a slight, fixed smile on his face, and he was humming, as Himmler had said. The smile was almost a fond one, like the smile of a grown-up watching the touching, clumsy movements of an infant in a play-pen. But Hardenburg made no sign. Christian settled himself in the sand, squinting to keep the men below in focus, and waited.
The water boiled below and little gusts of steam spurted up into the wind. Christian saw the Tommies domestically meassuring out the tea into the water, and sugar from sacks, and tinned milk. They would make a richer tea, he thought, if they knew they wouldn’t need the rest for lunch, or dinner.
He saw a man from each of the groups around the fires carry back the cans and sacks and carefully stow them away in the trucks. One by one, the Tommies dipped into the steaming brew and came up with their cups full. Occasionally, a twist of the wind would bring the faint sound of talk or laughter, as the men sat on the ground taking their breakfast. Christian ran his tongue over his lips, watching them, envying them. He hadn’t had anything to eat for twelve hours and he hadn’t had a hot drink since he left their own command post. He could almost smell the rich, heavy savor of the steam, almost taste the thick, cloudy drink.
Hardenburg didn’t stir. Still the smile, still the tuneless humming. What in the name of God was he waiting for? To be discovered? To have to fight, instead of merely killing at leisure? To be c
aught by a plane? Christian looked around him. The other men were crouched in stiff, unnatural positions, staring with worried eyes at the Lieutenant. The man on Christian’s right swallowed dryly. The sound was foolishly loud and metallic.
He’s enjoying it, Christian thought, looking back once more to Hardenburg. The Army has no right to put a man like that in command of its soldiers. It’s bad enough without that.
Here and there among the British around the trucks men began to fill pipes and light cigarettes. It gave an added air of contentment and security to the small tableau, and at the same time made Christian’s palate ache for a cigarette. Of course, it was difficult at this distance to observe the men very closely, but they seemed like the ordinary, run-of-the-mill type of English soldier, rather scrawny and small in their overcoats, moving about in their phlegmatic, deliberate way.
Some of them finished their breakfasts and industriously scrubbed their kits with sand before moving over to the trucks and starting to roll their blankets. The men at the machine guns on the trucks swung down to get their breakfast. There were two or three minutes when the guns on all the vehicles were left unattended. Now, Christian thought, this is what he was waiting for. Quickly he glanced around to see that everything was in readiness. The men had not moved. They were still crouched painfully in the same positions they had taken before.
Christian looked at Hardenburg. If he had noticed that the British guns were not manned he did nothing to show it. Still the same small smile, still the humming.
His teeth, Christian noted, are the ugliest thing about him. Big, wide, crooked, with spaces between them, you could be sure that when he drank anything he made a lot of noise about it. And he was so pleased with himself. It stuck out all over him, as he lay there smiling behind the binoculars, knowing that every man’s eyes were straining on him, waiting for the signal that would release them from the torture of delay, knowing they hated him, were afraid of him, could not understand him.
Christian blinked and looked once more, hazily now, at the British, trying to erase the image of Hardenburg’s thin, ironic face from his eyeballs. By now new sentries had slowly swung up to their positions behind the guns. One of them was bareheaded. He had blond hair and he was smoking a cigarette. He had opened his collar, warming himself in the heightening sun. He looked very comfortable, lounging with the small of his back against the iron bar, his cigarette dangling from his lips, his hands lightly resting on the gun, which was pointing directly toward Christian.
Well, now, Christian thought heavily, he’s missed that chance. Now what is he waiting for? I should have inquired about him. Christian thought, when I had the chance. From Gretchen. What’s driving him? What is he after? What turned him so sour? What is the best way to deal with him? Come on, come on, Christian pleaded within him, as two British soldiers, both of them officers, started out from the convoy with shovels and toilet paper in their hands. Come on, give the signal …
But Hardenburg didn’t move.
Christian felt himself swallowing dryly. He was cold, colder than when he had awakened and he felt his shoulders shaking in little spasms and there was nothing to do about it. His tongue filled his mouth in a puffy lump, and he could taste the sand inside his lip. He looked down at his hand, lying on the breech of his machine pistol, and he tried to move his fingers. They moved slowly and weirdly, as though they were under someone else’s control. I won’t be able to do it, he thought crazily. He’ll give the signal and I’ll try to lift the gun and I won’t be able to. His eyes burned and he blinked again and again until tears came, and the eighty men below, and the trucks and the fires, all blurred into a wavering mass.
This was too much. Too much. Lying here so long, watching men you were going to kill wake up, cook their breakfast, light cigarettes, go to relieve their bowels. There were fifteen or twenty men now, spread out, away from the trucks, with their trousers down … The soldier’s regime, in any army … If you didn’t do it in ten minutes after breakfast you probably wouldn’t find time during the rest of the day … When you marched off to war, to the drums and the bugles and the fluttering of banners, down the clean, scrubbed streets, you never realized that what it would mean was lying in wait for ten hours in the cold, cutting sand of a desert that not even the Arabs had ever crossed before, watching twenty Englishmen with their trousers down, squatting over sanitary little holes in the Cyrenaican desert. Let Brandt take this picture for the Frankfurter Zeitung.
He heard a curious, lilting sound next to him. He turned slowly. It was Hardenburg chuckling.
Christian turned back, but he closed his eyes. It has to end, he thought, it has to end. The chuckling had to end, the British at their morning labors had to end, Lieutenant Hardenburg had to end, Africa, the sun, the wind, the war …
Then there was the noise behind him. He opened his eyes and a moment later he saw the explosion of the mortar shell. He knew that Hardenburg had given the signal. The shell hit right on the blond boy who had been smoking and he disappeared.
The truck started to burn. Shell after shell exploded among the other trucks. The machine guns were pushed over the ridge and opened up, raking the convoy. The little figures seemed to stagger stupidly in all directions. The men who had been squatting at their toilets were pulling at their trousers and running clumsily, tripping and falling, with their buttocks gleaming whitely against the sandy glitter of the desert. One man ran straight at the ridge, as though he didn’t know where the firing was coming from. Suddenly he saw the machine guns, when he was no more than a hundred meters away. After a moment of complete, stunned immobility, he turned, holding his trousers up with one hand and tried to get away. Someone casually, as a kind of afterthought, cut him down.
Hardenburg chuckled again and again, between calling out corrections for the mortar. Two shells hit the ammunition truck and it blew up in a wide ball of smoke. Pieces of steel whistled over their heads for a whole minute. Men were lying strewn all over the ground in front of the trucks. A Sergeant seemed to have got about a dozen men together and they started to lumber through the sand toward the ridge, firing wildly from the hip. Someone shot the Sergeant. He fell down and kept shooting from a sitting position until someone else shot him again. He rolled over, his head in the sand.
The squad the Sergeant had led broke and started to run back, but they were all cut down before they got anywhere near the trucks. Two minutes later there was not a single shot coming from the Tommies. The smoke from the burning trucks poured back, away from the ridge, in the stiff wind. Here and there a man moved brokenly, like a squashed bug.
Hardenburg stood up and held up his hand. The firing stopped. “Diestl,” he ordered, staring out at the burning trucks and the dead Englishmen, “the machine guns will continue firing.”
Christian stood beside him. “What was that, Sir?” he asked dully.
“The machine guns will continue firing.”
Christian looked down at the wrecked convoy. By now, except for the flames coming from the trucks, there was no movement visible. “Yes, Sir,” Christian said.
“Rake the entire area,” Hardenburg said. “We’re going down there in two minutes. I don’t want anything left alive there. Understood?”
“Yes, Sir,” Christian said. He went over first to the machine gun on the right, and then to the other one and said, “Keep firing, until you are ordered to stop.”
The men at the guns gave him a strange, sidelong glance, then shrugged and went to work. In the silence, with not a word being spoken and no shouts or other gunfire to blend with it, the noise of the guns, nervous and irritable, seemed disturbing and out of place. One by one the men who were not handling the guns stood up on the crest of the ridge, watching the bullets skip along the ground, tear at the already dead and the wounded near the trucks, making them jump with eccentric spasms on the windswept sand.
A British soldier lying near one of the breakfast fires was hit. He sat up and threw his head back and screamed. The sound floated
up to the ridge, surprising and personal in the methodical rhythm of the guns. The men at the guns stopped firing as the Tommy screamed, his head back, his hands waving blindly in front of him.
“Continue firing!” Hardenburg-said sharply.
The guns took up again and the Tommy was hit by both of them. He fell back, his last scream sliced in half by a spurt of bullets in his throat.
The men watched silently, the same look of fascination and horror on all the faces.
Only Hardenburg didn’t look like that. His lips were curled, his teeth showing, his breath came in rather hurried, uneven gasps, his eyes were half-closed. Christian tried to remember where he had seen that look before … abandoned, lost in pleassure. Then he remembered. Gretchen. When he had made love to her … They must be cousins, Christian thought, they really look tremendously alike …
The guns went on and on, the even, chattering noise by now almost like the everyday sound of a factory in the next block. Two of the men on the ridge took out cigarettes and lit them, very matter-of-factly, already a little bored with the monotony of the scene.
The life of the soldier, Christian thought, looking at the twitching bodies below. If they had stayed home in England it wouldn’t have happened to them. Tomorrow it might be himself lying on the sand and some Cockney from the East Side of London putting a pound of lead into him. He felt a sudden wave of superiority. You felt superior to the Poles and the Czechs and the Russians and the Italians, but most of all you felt superior to the dead. He remembered the handsome, languid young Englishmen who used to come to Austria for the skiing, talking in the cafés in that flat, loud tone that drowned out all other speech in self-assured clamor. He hoped that those young lords were represented today among the officers lying face down in the bloody sand with belly torn and buttocks showing.
Hardenburg waved his hand. “Cease firing,” he said.
The guns stopped. The gunner nearest Christian was sweating. He sighed loudly and wiped his face and leaned wearily on the barrel in the quiet.