by Len Levinson
His head hurt, and his face was soaking wet. He tried to get up, lost his balance, tried again, and finally made it to a sitting position. Soldiers ran past him, and he realized he’d been hit. He touched his face, looked at his fingers, and they were covered with blood. Probing his face and scalp, his fingers felt a hole in his skull!
He was terrified and thought he’d faint, but then remembered something an old sergeant had told him once: If you get a head wound and it doesn’t kill you immediately, it probably isn’t too serious.
Mahoney tried to get up, and managed to take a few staggering steps. His helmet had been blown off, and his face and hair were drenched with blood. A soldier running by grabbed him by the arm. “You okay, Sarge?”
“I don’t know,” Mahoney replied, his voice feeling strangled and distant.
“I’ll help you, Sarge. Just put your arm around my shoulder like this.”
Mahoney did as he was told, and the soldier helped him take a few steps. Another GI ran up and took his other arm. Mahoney moved his legs erratically as the soldiers dragged him through the woods.
~*~
It was night in Luxembourg City, and General Patton sat behind his desk, reading battlefront reports by the light of a kerosene lamp.
It had been one of the worst days in the history of the Third Army, and the normally ebullient Patton was in despair. The Germans had attacked fiercely all across the Bastogne front and had changed the whole picture of battle in the Bulge.
Many entire American units had been cut off and wiped out. Others were fleeing wildly for their lives. The commander of the Sixth Armored Division didn’t even know where his men were, and the Hammerheads had taken a horrifying percentage of casualties. The Germans were threatening Bastogne once more.
Patton groaned and buried his face in his hands. We can still lose this war, he thought.
Chapter Fifteen
Mahoney wound up in the big army hospital in Luxembourg City, where the brain surgeons and skull specialists were stationed. They examined him and determined that his skull was chipped, but there was no serious damage. They’d bandage him up, let him heal for several days, and then ship him back to the front.
Mahoney spent the first few days in bed shot full of dope to alleviate his constant, excruciating headache. Then, as the wound healed, they weaned him off the drugs and let him out of bed. He wandered around his ward and played cards with the other GIs. Gradually, his strength returned, and he could go to the PX to drink coffee and buy cigarettes. One day his pay caught up with him, and he had nearly two hundred dollars to spend.
He went down to the PX to get some coffee and figure out a way to sneak out of the hospital so he could get into town and maybe find a whorehouse. He’d need a regular uniform and a pass of some kind; perhaps he could bribe an orderly.
He walked down a corridor with walls and ceiling painted white, puffing a cigarette and plotting strategies. A well built blonde nurse came toward him, and Mahoney thought there was something familiar about her. She looked at him kind of funny as if she knew him too.
They slowed down as they approached each other. “Aren’t you Mahoney?” she asked.
“That’s me, but who’re you?”
“You don’t remember me?”
“You look kind of familiar.”
She smiled. “We met a couple of weeks ago in the woods near Comblain. I’m Claire Sackett.”
It all came back to him. He grabbed her shoulders and grinned. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch!” he said. “I didn’t recognize you with your nurse outfit on! How the hell are you?”
“Just fine,” she said, looking at the bandage on his head. “How about you?”
He touched the bandage. “I’m okay. I think they’ll send me back to the front in a few days. My skull got chipped a little. Maybe it knocked some sense into me.”
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you enough for what you’ve done for me. You probably saved my life, whether you realize it or not.”
Mahoney didn’t think he’d saved her life, but if she was that grateful, she might be able to write him a pass. “Hey,” he said, “maybe you can do me a favor. I’d like to get into town for a little while—do you think you could give me a pass?”
She pinched her lips and shook her head. “That’s against the rules, Mahoney.”
“If we didn’t break the rules once in a while, nothing would get done in this fucking Army—excuse my French.”
“I could get in an awful lot of trouble if I signed my name on a phony pass for you.”
“Well,” Mahoney said, “I don’t want to get you in any trouble. Why don’t you give me a blank pass form, and I’ll fill it out myself.”
“If they catch you they’ll put you right in the stockade.”
“What do I care? The stockade might not be so bad after what I’ve been through lately.”
She touched her forefinger to her chin and thought for a few moments. He’d saved her life once and the least she could do was give him a little bit of fun in town. “Are you sure you’re well enough to go to town?” she asked.
“Sure. My head just hurts a little, that’s all.”
“I think I should satisfy my mind first that your wound is healed enough so that you won’t have any problems while you’re away.”
“Okay—suit yourself.”
“Follow me.”
She led him through the white corridor, and his eyes fell naturally on her rear end. He realized, now that he saw her in her white uniform, that she had an extremely voluptuous figure. No one could say that she didn’t have a pretty face, and her hair was golden. Wow, thought Mahoney, why should I go to a whorehouse when maybe I can fuck her for nothing?
They came to an examining room, and she told him to go inside and have a seat. He sat on a chair beside a desk and looked at a long, narrow table covered with a thin mattress and white sheet. If he could get her on that, he’d give her the fuck of her life.
She returned to the room and closed the door. Mahoney watched her like a hungry wolf as she went to the sink and washed her hands. She stood sideways to him, and he admired the outline of her breasts—two nice handfuls, and he knew the nipples would be red as rosebuds. They’d get hard and pointy when he kissed them, and then he’d touch between her legs.
She wiped her hands on a towel and walked toward him. “This shouldn’t hurt,” she said.
She stood beside him and unwrapped the bandage from the side of his head. His head had been shaved, and he looked like a convict. Gently she pulled the gauze away from the wound and saw the stitches in his scalp. The wound appeared to be healing nicely. “I don’t think you’ll have any problems if you go to town,” she said, applying a fresh bandage. “They’re probably just keeping you here so they can take the stitches out and so you can build up your strength a little.”
“I feel almost as good as I usually feel.”
“You’ll probably be normal in a few days.”
Her right breast was inches from his face, and the sweet, clean fragrance of her body made him dizzy. He reached up and cupped her breast in his hand.
She jumped back as if he’d touched her with a red-hot iron. She looked shocked and angry, and her reaction scared the hell out of him because he’d thought she’d fall into his arms like that newspaper reporter.
“Hey—I’m sorry,” he said. “I forgot where I was for a moment there.”
She sighed. “You’re not in town yet, Mahoney. Don’t do that again.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really I am.”
Standing a little farther away, she finished applying the fresh bandage, then stepped back and admired her work. She didn’t look very happy, however. Her complexion had become blotchy, and she evidently was very disturbed by what he’d done.
He stood up and held out his hands. “Hey, I’m really sorry,” he said. “I must’ve lost my mind for a moment, there. Please—it was nothing personal. Don’t
be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you,” she said in clipped words that indicated she really was mad at him. She turned her back to him and took something from her bosom, then faced him again with a blank pass sheet in her hand. Evidently she’d hidden it between her breasts. “I stole this from the pad of one of the doctors,” she said. “I hope you find what you’re looking for in town because I think you need it badly.”
Mahoney took the paper from her and folded it into the pocket of his bathrobe. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “I really appreciate it. And please don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you. You saved my life, so I couldn’t be mad at you. I just didn’t expect you to do anything like that to me, that’s all.”
Mahoney shuffled his feet and wished he could disappear. “I guess you think I don’t respect you because I did that, but it’s not true. I do respect you. It’s just that I must have gotten shell-shocked, or something like that.”
She smiled faintly. “You’re horny—that’s what your problem is. You’d better get into town before you rape some poor nurse.”
Mahoney saluted her with one finger. “Thanks a lot.”
“Have fun, and thank you for helping me that night in the woods.”
Mahoney made it to the door and escaped into the corridor. He took the blank pass out of his pocket, cupped it in his hand, and sniffed it clandestinely. Her fragrance came through to him, and he reflected on how strange women were. He’d grabbed that newspaper reporter the same way, and she’d nearly torn his clothes off, whereas Claire Sackett looked as though she was going to have a heart attack.
You just can’t figure the bitches out, Mahoney thought as he returned the blank pass to his pocket and headed for a quiet place where he could fill it out.
~*~
Claire sat behind her desk, puffing a cigarette. When Mahoney had squeezed her breast, she’d felt a hot flash go through her body. No man had touched her since Colonel Richter, and she’d sworn never to go to bed with a man again unless she was married to him because she thought that she was a half-crazed nymphomaniacal degenerate and that she needed to control herself.
She stood up and paced the floor, still puffing the cigarette. But it had felt nice when Mahoney had touched her. There was nothing like the hands of a man to make a woman forget who she was supposed to be. But whenever she had sexual feelings, she thought of that Nazi who’d killed the wounded GIs, and she was afraid she’d go insane. She couldn’t handle it. She ought to see a psychiatrist, but she was needed by the wounded men. She couldn’t take the time, and the psychiatrist might throw her out of the Army on a Section Eight. That would be a terrible disgrace and would mess up her whole life.
Well, she thought, pausing to light another cigarette, at least he’d been nice about it. At least he hadn’t put pressure on her because if he had she didn’t know what she might have done. She hadn’t been right since that Nazi had twisted her mind around. She might fall off the tightrope any day now.
No I won’t, she told herself. I can hold on until the war is over. Then I’ll see a head doctor and get myself straightened out. She took two more puffs from the cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray, and left her office. She was off duty and headed for the nurses’ residence across the street from the hospital.
Chapter Sixteen
It took a few hours for Mahoney to scrounge together a uniform, and by then it was getting dark. An orderly had told him there were a few good restaurants in Luxembourg City, so he thought he’d skip chow and get out of the hospital as soon as he could.
Shortly after six o’clock that evening, wearing a field jacket and carrying a wool cap in his hand, he approached the MP at the desk near the front door of the hospital and handed him the forged pass.
The MP looked at the pass, then at Mahoney, then at the pass again. As a rule, soldiers who were heavily bandaged like Mahoney didn’t get passes, so the MP decided to check the name of the doctor who’d signed the pass.
Mahoney saw the MP looking at the roster of doctors and knew something was wrong. MPs were guarding the front door, other MPs were guarding the corridor, and more MPs guarded the flight of stairs. He’d invented the name on the pass, and hadn’t dreamed an MP would stop him.
The MP looked up at him. “There’s no Doctor Harrington in this hospital,” he said in that solemn voice law enforcement people use just before they come down hard on you.
“Sure there is,” Mahoney replied, trying to bluff it out. “He’s the one who signed the goddamn pass.”
The MP shook his head. “He’s not in this hospital,” he repeated. “You were going AWOL.”
“Who me? Hey, wait a minute Sarge! Don’t do anything that...”
The MP raised his hand, and two of the guards marched toward the desk.
“Take this man to Captain O’Rourke,” the MP said.
“Aw come on Sarge,” Mahoney protested. “I’m gonna go back to the front in a few days. All I wanna do is have a little fun before I get killed.”
“Tell it to the chaplain,” the MP said. “Take him away.”
“Fall in,” said one of the other MPs.
Mahoney fell in and they marched him through a network of corridors until they came to the MP offices in the hospital. They told Mahoney to go inside, and one of them guarded him while the other reported to Captain O’Rourke. The MP came out of the office and walked up to Mahoney.
“Report to Captain O’Rourke, and you’d better fucking look sharp.”
Mahoney nodded, squared his shoulders, sucked in his stomach, and marched into the office, where he saw a florid-faced bulbous-nosed young officer sitting behind the desk.
Mahoney saluted as slickly as he could and shouted out his name, rank, and serial number. Captain O’Rourke looked him up and down, noting especially the bandage on his head.
“Have a seat, Sergeant,” he said, and Mahoney heard the streets of New York in his voice. Mahoney sat and the captain tapped the phony pass with his fingers. “Ordinarily, I’d lock a man right up for this, but I hate to lock up men who’ve been wounded in action.”
“You from New York?” Mahoney asked.
The Captain’s face brightened. “Yeah, are you?”
“Yeah. Fifty-third Street and Tenth Avenue.”
“No shit!” said O’Rourke. “I’m from Forty-ninth and Ninth.”
“Well I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch. You ever been in the Emerald Isle Bar and Grill on Eighth Avenue?”
“Sure!” said O’Rourke. “You know Deke the bartender?”
“I grew up with Deke for Chrisakes!”
They looked at each other and the hospital disappeared along with their difference in rank. They were two Irish guys from the old neighborhood in New York. They talked about the card games in a certain cellar on 55th Street, the whorehouse on Eighth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street above the liquor store, and the Saint Patrick’s day parade. They knew a few people in common, and they’d attended the same church sporadically. O’Rourke’s father had a good job on the docks and had put him through Fordham University, but he was still one of the boys. Finally O’Rourke picked up the phony pass. “Well, what am I gonna do about this now?” he asked.
“Why don’t you tear the fucking thing up?” Mahoney replied.
“Because that sergeant out there already has put the information in his log.”
“Can’t you say you let me go because I said I won’t do it again?”
O’Rourke shook his head sadly. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Mahoney groaned. “It doesn’t seem right to me that a man can get the Silver Star and go to the stockade all in the same week.”
O’Rourke scratched his chin. “I could release you in the custody of a hospital official, I guess. Do you know any hospital officials?”
“Is a nurse considered a hospital official?” Mahoney asked.
“Sure is.”
Mahoney told him Claire’s name. O’Rourke looked at the hospital roster, found out
what ward she worked on, and put a call through. The person who answered said she was off duty. O’Rourke had her paged at the hospital mess and at the Nurses’ Quarters in a building across the street from the hospital. She was in her room and finally came to the phone.
“I’ve got a soldier here named Mahoney,” O’Rourke said, “and we just caught him going AWOL with a forged pass. Since he’s a combat veteran and all, we’d rather not lock him up. He says you know him. We could release him in your custody if you’d take him.”
O’Rourke listened to her reply, thanked her, and hung up the phone.
“What’d she say?” Mahoney asked.
“She said she’d come right over.”
Mahoney smiled and took out a cigarette. He’d figured she was the kind of woman who’d go to bat for you if you needed her.
~*~
Buttoning her wool overcoat, Claire hurried across the street to the hospital. She was annoyed with herself for giving Mahoney the blank pass because she should have known he’d never get away with it. He looked like he was doing something wrong even when he wasn’t doing anything wrong, so how could he get past an MP when he was going AWOL?
She didn’t go directly to the MP office. Instead she went upstairs to her ward, tore a blank pass off a pad, and looked for Captain Ashton, the doctor on duty. She found him in a ward, looking at the chart of one of the soldiers. “Captain Ashton?” she said.
“What is it Claire?” he replied, still studying the chart.
“Would you sign this for me please?”
“Sure.”
She held out the pass on a clipboard and he signed where she pointed her finger. He returned to the chart, and she rushed to her office, typing up the pass around the doctor’s signature. Then she went down to the MP office and found Mahoney in the office with Captain O’Rourke. They were smoking cigarettes and appeared to be having a wonderful time.
“Are you Nurse Sackett?” O’Rourke asked.
“Yes, sir, I am.” She turned to Mahoney.
He smiled sheepishly.
“Well, he’s all yours,” Captain O’Rourke said. “You can take him away now.”