by Irwin Shaw
“It works, Ah reckon,” Rickett said. “Ah think we have shot ourselves a tank.” He took the bazooka off Noah’s shoulder and put it against the wall.
Noah continued to stare out at the lane. It was as though nothing had happened, as though the tank were a permanent part of the landscape that had been there for years.
“For Christ’s sake, Noah,” Burnecker was yelling, and then Noah realized that Burnecker had been shouting his name again and again, “get away from that window.”
Suddenly, feeling in terrible danger, Noah jumped away from the window.
Rickett took his place at the window, holding his BAR again. “Nuts,” Rickett was saying angrily, “we shouldn’t ought to leave this here farm. We could stay here till Christmas. That fairy diaper salesman Green ain’t got the guts of a turd-bug.” He fired from the hip out into the lane. “Get back there,” he muttered to himself. “Stay away from my tank.”
Lieutenant Green came into the room. “Come on downstairs,” he said. “It’s getting dark. We’re going to start out in a couple of minutes.”
“I’ll stay heah for a spell,” Rickett said disdainfully, “jest to see that the Krauts keep a proper dithtance.” He waved to Noah and Burnecker. “You-all go on ahead now and take off like a big-assed bird if they spot you.”
Noah and Burnecker looked at each other. They wanted to say something to Rickett, standing scornfully at the window, the BAR loose in his big hands, but they didn’t know what to say. Rickett didn’t look at them as they went through the door and followed Lieutenant Green downstairs to the living room.
The living room smelled of sweat and gunpowder and there were hundreds of spent cartridges lying on the floor, crushed out of shape by the feet of the defenders. The living room looked more like a war than the bedroom upstairs. The furniture was piled on end against the windows and the wooden chairs were broken and splintered and the men were kneeling on the floor against the walls. In the twilit gloom Noah saw Colclough lying on the floor in the dining room. He was lying on his back, his arms rigid at his sides, his eyes staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. His nose was running, and from time to time he sniffed sharply, but that was the only sound from him. His sniffing made Noah remember that he had a cold, too, and he blew his nose on the sweaty khaki handkerchief he fished out of his back pocket.
It was very quiet in the living room. A single fly buzzed irritably around the room, and Riker swiped at it savagely twice with his helmet, but missed each time.
Noah sat down on the floor and took off his right legging and shoe. Very carefully he smoothed out his sock. It was very satisfactory to rub his foot gently with his fingers and pull the sock straight. The other men in the room watched him soberly as though he were performing an intricate and immensely interesting act. Noah put his shoe on. Then he put the legging back and laced it meticulously, Housing the trouser leg carefully over the top. He sneezed twice, loudly, and he saw Riker jump a little at the noise.
“God bless you,” Burnecker said. He grinned at Noah and Noah grinned back. What a wonderful man, Noah thought.
“I can’t tell you people what to do,” Lieutenant Green said suddenly. He was crouching near the entrance to the dining room, and he spoke as though he had been preparing a speech in the silence, but then had been surprised at hearing his own voice coming out so abruptly. “I cannot tell you which is the best way to try to get back. Your guess is as good as mine. You’ll see the flashes of the guns at night, and you’ll hear them during the day, so you should have a good general idea of where our own people are. But maps won’t do you any good, and you’d better keep off the roads as much as possible. The smaller the groups the better chance you’ll have of getting back. I’m sorry it’s worked out this way, but I’m afraid if we just sat here and waited, we’d all end up in the bag. This way, some of us are bound to get through.” He sighed. “Maybe a lot of us,” he said with transparent cheerfulness, “maybe most of us. The wounded’re as comfortable as we can make them, and the French people downstairs are trying to take care of them. If anybody has any doubts,” he said defensively, “he can go down and look for himself.”
Nobody moved. From upstairs came the ripping, hurried sound of a BAR. Rickett, thought Noah, standing there at the window.
“However …” Lieutenant Green said vaguely …“However … It’s too bad. But you have to expect things like this. Things like this are bound to happen from time to time. I will try to take the Captain back with me. With me,” he repeated, in his weary, thin voice. “If anybody wants to say something, let him say it now …”
Nobody wanted to say anything. Noah suddenly felt very sad.
“Well,” said Lieutenant Green, “it’s dark.” He got up and went to the window, and looked out. “Yes,” he said, “it’s dark.” He turned back to the men in the room. By now many of them were sitting on the floor, their backs against the walls, their heads drooped between their shoulders. They reminded Noah of a football team between halves, in a losing game.
“Well,” said Lieutenant Green, “there’s no sense in putting it off. Who wants to go first?”
Nobody moved. Nobody looked around.
“Be careful,” Lieutenant Green said, “when you reach our own lines. Don’t expose yourselves before you’re absolutely sure they know you’re Americans. You don’t want to get shot by your own men. Who wants to go first?”
Nobody moved.
“My advice,” said Lieutenant Green, “is to leave through the kitchen door. There’s a shed back there that’ll give you some cover and the hedge isn’t more than thirty yards away. Understand, I am not giving any orders any more. It’s entirely up to you. Somebody had better go now …”
Nobody moved. Intolerable, thought Noah, sitting on the floor, intolerable. He stood up. “All right,” he said, because somebody had to say it. “Me.” He sneezed.
Burnecker stood up. “I’m going,” he said.
Riker stood up. “What the hell,” he said.
Cowley and Demuth got up. Their shoes made a sliding sound on the stone floor. “Where’s the goddamn kitchen?” Cow-ley said.
Riker, Cowley, Demuth, Noah thought. There was something about those names. Oh, he thought, we can fight all over again now.
“Enough,” Green said. “Enough for the first batch.”
The five men went into the kitchen. None of the other men looked up at them and nobody spoke. The trap door to the cellar was open in the kitchen floor. The light of the candle came up dimly through the dusty air, and the bubbling, groaning sound of Fein dying. Noah did not look down into the cellar. Lieutenant Green opened the kitchen door very carefully. It made a harsh, grating sound. The men held still for a moment. From above there came the sound of the BAR. Rickett, Noah thought, fighting the war on his own hook.
The night air smelled damp and farmlike, with the sweet heavy smell of cows coming through the crack of the open door.
Noah muffled a sneeze in his hand. He looked around apologetically.
“Good luck,” Lieutenant Green said. “Who’s going?”
The men, bunched in the kitchen among the copper pans and the big milk containers, looked at the slight pale edge of night that showed between the door and the frame. Intolerable. Noah thought again, intolerable, we can’t stand here like this. He pushed his way past Riker to the door.
He took a deep breath, thinking, I must not sneeze, I must not sneeze. Then he bent over and slid through the opening.
He made for the shed. He placed his feet very carefully and held his rifle in both his hands so that it wouldn’t bang against anything. He kept his finger off the trigger because he could not remember whether the safety was off or not. He hoped the men behind him had the safeties on their rifles, so that if they stumbled they wouldn’t shoot him.
His shoes made a sucking sound in the barnyard earth and he could, feel his helmet straps slapping against his cheeks. The sound was flat and seemed very loud so close to his ears. When he got to the shadow
of the shed in the deeper shadow of the night, he leaned against the cow-smelling wood and hooked the catch under his chin. One by one the thick shadows moved across the yard from the kitchen door. The breathing of the men all around him seemed immensely loud and labored. From inside the house, from the cellar, there was a long, high scream. Noah tensed against the shed wall as the scream echoed through the windless evening air, but nothing else happened.
Then he got down on his belly and started to crawl toward the hedge, which was outlined faintly against the sky. In the distance, far behind it, there was the small flicker of artillery.
There was a ditch alongside the hedge and Noah slid down into it and waited, trying to breathe lightly and regularly. The noise of the men coming after him seemed dangerously loud, but there was no way of signaling them to keep more quiet. One by one they slid in beside him. Grouped together like this, in the wet grass of the ditch, their combined breathing seemed to make a whistling announcement of their presence there. They didn’t move. They lay in the ditch, piled against one another. Noah realized that each one was waiting for someone else to lead them on.
They want me to do it, Noah thought, resenting them. Why should it have to be me?
But he roused himself and peered through the hedge toward the artillery flashes. There was an open field on the other side. Dimly in the darkness, Noah could see shapes moving around, but he couldn’t tell whether they were cattle or men. Anyway, it was impossible to get through the hedge here without making a racket. Noah touched the leg of the man nearest him, to indicate that he was moving, and wriggled down the ditch, alongside the hedge, away from the farmhouse. One by one, the men crawled after him.
Noah crawled slowly, stopping and listening every five yards, feeling the sweat soaking his body. The hedge was solid, murmuring slightly in an uneasy rustle of wind above him, and there was an occasional small scurry as a tiny animal flickered past in fright, and once there was the hollow drumming of wings from a tree as a disturbed bird rocketed up from the branches. Still there was no sign of the Germans.
Maybe, Noah was thinking as he crawled, smelling the loamy, decayed odor from the wet ditch, maybe we’re going to make it.
Then he put his hand out and touched something hard. He remained rigid, motionless, except for his right hand, with which he made a slow, exploratory movement. It’s round, he thought, it’s made out of metal, it’s … Then his hand felt something wet and sticky and Noah realized that it was a dead man in the ditch in front of him, and he had been feeling the man’s helmet, then his face, and that the man had been hit in the face.
He backed up a little and turned his head.
“Burnecker,” he whispered.
“What?” Burnecker’s voice seemed to come from far away, and from a throat near strangling.
“In front of me,” Noah whispered. “A stiff.”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“A stiff. A dead man,” whispered Noah.
“Who is he?”
“Goddammit,” Noah whispered, furious with Burnecker for being so dull. “How the hell do I know?” Then he nearly laughed, at the idiocy of the conversation carried on this way. “Pass the word back,” Noah whispered.
“What?”
Noah hated Burnecker, deeply, bitterly. “Pass the word back,” Noah said more loudly. “So they won’t do anything foolish.”
“O.K.” said Burnecker, “O.K.”
Noah could hear the dry rattle of the whispers going back and forth behind him.
“All right,” Burnecker said finally. “They all got it.”
Noah slowly crawled over the dead body. His hands rested on the man’s boots, and Noah realized suddenly that it was a German, because Americans didn’t wear boots. He nearly stopped to tell the others what he had learned. He felt much better about it, knowing that the corpse was not one of theirs. Then he remembered that paratroopers wore boots, too, and it might be a paratrooper. Still crawling, he puzzled it out, and the mental effort kept him from being too tired or frightened. No, he decided, paratroopers have lace boots and these were not laced. A Kraut. One dead Kraut lying in a ditch. He should have realized by the shape of the helmet. Except that helmets were very much alike, and he’d never touched a German helmet before.
He came to the end of the field. The ditch and the hedge made a right angle and ran along the edge of the field. Cautiously Noah pushed his hand out ahead of him. There was a small break in the hedge, and a narrow road on the other side of it. They would have to cross the road eventually; they might as well do it now.
Noah turned back to Burnecker. “Listen,” he whispered, “I’m going through the hedge here.”
“O.K.,” Burnecker whispered.
“There’s a road on the other side.”
“O.K.”
Then there was the sound of men walking softly on the road, and the metallic jangling of equipment. Noah put his hand across Burnecker’s mouth. They listened. It sounded like three or four men on the road and they were talking to one another as they walked slowly past. They were talking German. Noah listened, cocking his head tensely, as though, despite the fact that he could not understand a word of German, anything he could overhear would be of great value to him.
The Germans went past in a steady, easy pace, like sentries who would come back again very shortly. Their voices faded in the rustling night, but Noah could hear the sound of their boots for a long time.
Riker, Demuth and Cowley crawled up to where Noah was leaning against the side of the ditch.
“Let’s get across the road,” Noah whispered.
“The hell with it.” Noah recognized Demuth’s voice, hoarse now and trembling. “You want to go, go ahead. I’m staying here. Right in this here ditch.”
“They’ll pick you up in the morning. As soon as it gets light …” Noah said urgently, feeling illogically responsible for getting Demuth and the others across the road, because he had been leading them so far. “You can’t stay here.”
“No?” said Demuth. “Watch me. Anybody wants to get his ass shot off out there, go do it. Without me.”
Then Noah understood that when Demuth had heard the German voices, confident and open, on the other side of the hedge, he had given up. Demuth was out of the war. The despair or courage that had carried him the two hundred yards from the farmhouse had given out. Maybe he’s right, Noah thought, maybe it is the sensible thing to do …
“Noah …” It was Burnecker’s voice, controlled, anxious. “What’re you going to do?”
“Me?” said Noah. Then, because he knew Burnecker was depending on him …“I’m going through the hedge,” he whispered. “I don’t think Demuth ought to stay here.” He waited for one of the other men to whisper something to Demuth. Nobody whispered anything.
“O.K.,” Noah said. He started through the hedge. He got through it quietly, with the wet branches flicking drops of water on his face. The road suddenly seemed very wide. It was badly rutted, too, and the rubber soles of his shoes slipped in the middle and he nearly fell. There was a soft jangle of metal as he lurched to right himself, but there was nothing else to do but go forward. He could see a break in the hedge where a tank had gone through and broken down the wiry boughs and sharp green leaves. The break was fifteen yards or so down the road, and he walked crouched over, near the edge of the road, feeling naked and exposed. He could hear the other men crouching behind him. He thought of Demuth, lying alone on the other side of the road, and he wondered how Demuth was feeling at that moment, solitary and full of surrender, waiting for the first light of dawn and the first German who looked as though he had heard of the Geneva Convention.
Far behind him he heard the clatter of the BAR. Rickett, who never surrendered anything, cursing and killing at the up stairs bedroom window.
Then a tommygun opened up. It sounded as though it was no more than twenty yards away, and the flashes were plain and savage in front of them. There were shouts in German, and other guns opened fire. Noa
h could hear the nervous whining of the bullets around his head as he ran, noisily and swiftly, to the opening in the hedge and hurled himself through it. He could hear the other men running behind him, their feet drumming wildly on the clay, and thrashing heavily through the stubborn barrier of the hedge. The firing grew in volume, and there were tracers from a hundred yards down the road, but the tracers were far over their heads. Somehow it gave Noah a sense of comfort and security, to see the wasted ammunition flaming through the branches of the trees.
He was out in a field now. He ran straight across the field, with the others after him. Tracers were crisscrossing in front of him aimlessly, and there were loud surprised shouts in German off to the left, but there didn’t seem to be any really aimed fire anywhere near them. Noah could feel his breath soggy and burning in his lungs, and he seemed to be running with painful slowness. Mines, he remembered hazily, there are mines all over Normandy. Then he saw some moving figures loom in the darkness ahead of him and he nearly fired, on the run. But the figures made a low animal sound and he got a glimpse of horns rearing up to the sky. Then he was running among four or five cows, away from the firing, being jostled by the wet flanks, smelling the heavy milky odor. Then a cow was hit and went down. He stumbled over it and lay on the other side of it. The cow kicked convulsively and tried to get up, but couldn’t manage it, and rolled over again. The other men fled past Noah, and Noah got up again and ran after them.
His lungs were sobbing again and it didn’t seem possible that he could take another step. But he ran, standing straight up now, regardless of the bullets, because the biting, driving pain across his middle did not permit him to bend over any more.
He passed first one racing figure, then another and another. He could hear the other men’s breath, sawing in their nostrils. Even as he ran he was surprised that he could move so fast, out-distance the others.
The thing was to get across the field to the other line of hedges, the other ditch, before the Germans turned a light on them …
But the Germans were not in any mood to light up any part of the country that night, and their fire diminished vaguely and sporadically. Noah trotted the last twenty yards to the line of hedge rising blackly against the sky, with trees rearing up at spaced intervals from the thick foliage. He threw himself to the ground. He lay there, panting, the air whistling crookedly into his lungs. One by one the other men threw themselves down beside him. They all lay there, face down, gripping the wet earth, fighting for breath, unable to speak. Above their heads there was a whining arch of tracers. Then the tracers suddenly veered and came down in the other corner of the field. There was a frantic bellowing and thumping of hooves from that end of the field and a shout in German, distant and angry, and the machine gunner stopped killing the cows.