The Long November

by James Benson Nablo

  © Phocion Publishing 2019, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  THE LONG NOVEMBER

  JAMES BENSON NABLO

  The Long November was originally published in 1946 by P. Dutton & Co., New York.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

  DEDICATION 5

  CHAPTER 1 6

  CHAPTER 2 11

  CHAPTER 3 21

  CHAPTER 4 30

  CHAPTER 5 41

  CHAPTER 6 52

  CHAPTER 7 62

  CHAPTER 8 72

  CHAPTER 9 82

  CHAPTER 10 93

  CHAPTER 11 103

  CHAPTER 12 112

  CHAPTER 13 122

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 123

  DEDICATION

  FOR

  BERTA KASLOW

  CHAPTER 1

  I guess the first sensation I felt was not pain, but dismay. The slug went through the meaty part of my left shoulder and went right on through. It bled for a while but on the whole did very little damage. It did prove, though, that our Joe could be hit and it blew my bomb-proof theory all to hell. After Sicily and the long push up the coast I’d come to feel the one for me had never been made and never would be. I blubbered a little, I guess, but not from pain; and I don’t think it was fear...just dismay. Then, too, I was alone. I was keeping an intersection covered from a front upstairs window because that jerk Sanderson, the platoon sergeant, said the Jerry might come either way.

  I don’t know the names of the streets any more than I know the name of the town. These Dago names are all alike. I was upset by that slug, though—and I guess I still am. I’d begun to feel that if I’d been able to survive in this world from ‘13 to ‘44, I’d come through the rest of the war wearing a carnation. I’d figured the most serious threat to my well-being was not the lead the Heinie could shoot, nor the occasional slug from our loyal Italian friends, but the dose I might pick up from some Italian babe. I guess all Italian women aren’t whores, but those that aren’t can thank the fact that neither the Germans nor the Allies passed their way. From the woman’s standpoint it’s just a question of reichsmarks, shillings, or dollars, Canadian or American. The rest of it is the same. My shoulder felt numb.

  This was good; this was perfect. A nice clean hole in my shoulder and to hell with the war. Back to the base—and maybe, even back to Canada. Just the base would seem swell. There are Canadian girls back there. Preston claimed he had one but Bill’s apt to stretch it a little. If he’d said a CWAC I might have strung along with him, but Bill had to make it a nurse, and they’re commissioned and not supposed to mess around with anything but officers. Still, it could be...Bill’s very handy with the babes. Some of them feel their rank pretty strongly, but some will give a guy a tumble. Anyway, what the hell do I care about nurses or the CWAC...I’ve got a ticket in my shoulder and it’ll take me home, or to England...a nice safe ticket. The Heinie that made that shot was really working.

  It must have been a German, the Dago never lived who could make a shot like that. I’d just glanced out the window and the shot came from across the street and was made at a damned tough angle. I dug it out of the wall to show Bill and the boys, and maybe I could have a watch fob made of it when I got home. Home? When will that day be, Joe? Soon, damned soon...a guy can get himself killed around here, and it might have been right then if I’d left a little more of our Joe draped out of that window. Killed...deader than a mackerel, stiffer than a Limey brass-hat, colder than a whore’s heart. Gone to a hero’s grave. I felt cold all over and I sat on that stinking floor and shook it out for a few minutes. Dead in Italy.

  “What did your boy do in the war, Mrs. Mack?” they’d ask my mother. “Did he die in combat?”

  “Yes, he died in Stink Hole, Italy, bravely holding back the German Army.”

  Nuts! Mrs. Mack...I’ll be God-damned if I’ll die in this war or any war. Your bright-eyed boy will come marching home, but soon. There’s too much lead in the air here for our Joe. Private Joseph Mack, A-4443, Royal Canadian Infantry, 1st Canadian Division, 1st Canadian Army, will make no ant heap in Italy. If I’m killed here, Mother dear, it’ll be because the Italian girls haven’t learned about feminine hygiene...from here out your little Joe is strictly through with shot and shell and the hell someone said is war.

  I’d like to be at Queen and Yonge streets, all decked out in an Ed Provan suit, a good-looking Glen plaid in a modest drape. I’d like an evening at the Oak Room, dancing with Steffie. I’d like a white girl...oh, yes, the Italians are white, aren’t they? How many layers down? Will it be a bottle of Seagram’s ‘83 or Canadian Club, Mr. Mack? A table for two, Mr. Mack? Will you die here of hot lead, Mr. Mack, or in Toronto of coronary thrombosis?

  I still sat on the filthy floor and shook. Yesterday the Jerry had used the room for the same purpose I was using it. Then we pushed them back. I guess they couldn’t go out to the boys’ room, so it became a boys’ room, and now it smelled like most CNR stations. Yep, Joe, while it isn’t much, I call it home. I looked around. It was comforting to have actual evidence on the floor with me that the Germans are human. There’s been some doubt about it. And some doubt, too, about how much of that substance we’ve scared out of them. Judging by their shooting, they aren’t so scared. But I am, by Jesus! Or am I? Or am I smart? In any case the time has come for our Joe to haul his ass out of here, for whatever reason. Out of here and on to a white ship and back to the green land of the maple leaf. To the land of God and the Royal Bank.

  The Jerry started messing around the street and I could hear them shouting back and forth, trying to draw some fire from me. But I was dead and staying that way. I hoped to Christ no Kraut would be curious enough to toss a grenade through the window just to be very sure. I knew our boys must have fallen back and I seemed to be caught behind the lines. This didn’t upset me too much. It was becoming pretty evident that the Jerry figured me dead. If he weren’t he’d be making damned sure I was. And our gallant boys would be shoving up soon anyway, as soon as Sanderson worked his way back to them. They fell back only because they were tired, or maybe to get Sanderson’s goat. We all know Sanderson’s working for a commission and he rides us a little too much at times, but he’s a good soldier.

  I could hear the Jerry building something in the street, but I couldn’t shove my head up to get a look. I worked my way across the floor and down the stairs as carefully as I could. The Dagos always piled their furniture in the center-most room on the lowest floor before they got out. I had to have a mirror to see what the squareheads were building in the street. Not that I really gave a damn. My end of this war was over. But I did want to see what was going on outside without sticking my neck out again. I found the room with the furniture and kicked the door open. I tore a mirror off a tired-looking sideboard. It was longer than I needed so I broke it up and started back, just as all hell blew out of the upstairs. I guess the Jerry decided to be sure, damned sure.

  The house was filled with plaster dust, and I lay there and shook it out again. I tried no
t to cough. Christ! If I hadn’t wanted the mirror small particles of our Joe would be floating around in that dust. I figured the machine gun would be all blown to hell, and being stuck here with no weapon made me feel naked. But I had to be sure about the Bren so I worked my way slowly up the wrecked stairs and into what was left of the room. The upper part of the front wall was gone and just a few inches of cover was left for me. I wiggled across the mess on the floor and placed the mirror in a pile of debris. Then I started to shake again. Mrs. Mack, your curly-headed boy is a craven coward—yeah man! The Bren looked like a machine gun trying to be a pretzel, and it seemed like our Joe was pretty well caught. The reflection in the mirror showed the Heinies building a tank-block barricade across the intersection, carefully leaving a gap for a big antitank gun they’d parked off to one side. There were about twenty of them and they had their backs to me. If the lousy Bren hadn’t been wrecked I could have clipped them off like trimming a hedge.

  Well, Joe, there was bugger-all you could do about it; no weapon and three hours to darkness. Three hours before I could get out and then I’d have to work nearly half a mile across roofs to get to our own lines. Sanderson had said he’d be back but there wasn’t much chance of that. He probably figured me dead when he heard that shot and then the grenade. Just like the Heinie figured me dead. It’s a hell of a funny feeling when twenty guys not a hundred feet from you got you marked stiff and cooling. Maybe I was dead? Maybe this is what it’s like...they say you never feel the one that really gets you. Nuts, Joe, you’re alive and proposing to stay that way. Better a live coward, I always say. I’d never expected to be hit and the two close shaves in less than an hour had caught me with my psychosis down. I didn’t have one of those nice, shiny “attitudes toward death”—I just didn’t want to die and damned well didn’t intend to.

  The Jerry wheeled the big A/T into the breach in their barricade. It looks like a darkish day for our side, Joe. No one back here but you and you are not a willing boy. What the hell, I didn’t even have a rifle. It would have been different if the lousy Bren hadn’t been blown all to hell, or if I had a Tommy gun, although a Tommy wouldn’t be much good at that range. Anyway, I was fast losing interest in this war. I didn’t give a damn what happened to Italy. What was Italy to Joe Mack? If Mussolini wants the stinking hole let him have it. Enough good Canadian lads were rapidly becoming part of the topsoil. What about Germany, Joe? Okay. What about Germany, or the Nazis, or any of the rest of it? The life of Joe Mack is a very near and dear thing to Joe Mack and no one else has a claim on it. If it’s to be pee-ed away, let our Joe do it in his own way and in his own time. This isn’t my war; it might be Britain’s, or the States’. There might even be some Canadians who feel they’d be willing to do or die for dear old Canada, but what has dear old Canada done for dear old Joe? I just wanted to get out and the faster the better. If only Buck Rogers would lend me one of those handy streamlined jobs he uses to flip from planet to planet.

  “Which planet will you take, Mr. Mack?”

  “Just make it Venus, Bucksy-boy, and find out if she’s busy later—I got a new suit and an urge.”

  “But what about the war, you-great-big-hero-you?”

  “Never mind about the war, Buck, or shove it up your Royal American keister...just leave our downy-cheeked Joe get back to Toronto, back to the depression, back to the soup-kitchens or even the garbage pails. Back to anywhere Joe Mack belongs.”

  “You didn’t raise your boy to be a soldier, did you, Mrs. Mack? Nuts, Rupert Brooke, there isn’t some corner of a foreign field that is forever Joe Mack...

  I crawled back after one last look. The squareheads were still messing with their barricade. At this distance, and if there’d been snow, they’d have looked like a bunch of kids building a snow fort. All I could do was wait for darkness when I really intended to fan my ass out of here. I’d have to go damned easy when I got to my own lines. The boys might be a little trigger-happy.

  I worked my way back over the pile of plaster and down the stairs. I had to find a place where I could be fairly safe for three hours, and the room with the furniture seemed the best bet. I could hide, lying between the boxes on the bed, and the Jerry would have to look the room over pretty carefully to find me. That’s why I’m here on this bed, hiding, and waiting...not just to get out of this house, but out of this war. I could feel my shoulder when I lay down. A dull pain like the pain that’s left when an aching tooth is gone. I feel reasonably safe even with the Krauts just outside, and I know I can’t sleep. My nerves are still jumping from those two narrow squeaks, and my interest in this war is gone. It never was very terrific, eh Joe? Why the hell should it be? Nuts...I’ll just keep doing what I did in those happy depression years...keep alive, somehow, keep alive.

  I can smell November and it always tears great big holes in me. At home people burned leaves then and the smells in the air of November can take me back with the sharpness of a bayonet to about any year I wish to remember. Not that I wish to remember, but I will because I’m lying here with three hours to kill. That’s the trouble with soldiering...if only a guy didn’t remember. Through the room came November smells. Not just like the November smells back home but enough like them to slip me back. I didn’t like Italy and I didn’t want Italian November smells because all I’ll ever remember of Italy are smells. Smells of rotting bodies, rotting horses, rotten women, unbathed women, stinking children. Jesus Christ! What a stink hole! Listen to it, you can hear it rot. It’s taken them thousands of years to rot this far, but like all evil processes it moves faster in its last stages. November smells, woody and clean, shouldn’t be in this air...but they were and they slipped through the room.

  At home people would be raking the elm and maple leaves into piles at the curb and burning them. The bluish smoke would drift through the neighborhood for hours. Where was home? Home must be where people burn leaves that smell like November. I could look out the window from our kitchen and Charley Brittan would be raking the leaves. Mrs. Smith would start down the hill and stop long enough to make the inevitable remarks about Indian summer. Then she would walk on and worry about whether Charley knew she was on her way over to the American side to shop. Charley was a Canadian customs officer and worked the night shift on the bridge. As soon as you get those leaves raked, Charley, you can back the car out and rub it down. Then drive it back into the garage. The car was almost a year old and only had a few hundred miles on it.

  Mother would say something about Charley Brittan having his leaves raked and I’d know what she meant. After a little verbal tussle, which she’d always win, I’d go out and rake our leaves. I didn’t mind doing it because of the smell they made when I burned them. Charley Brittan would have the pregnant Buick backed out and be rubbing it with a soft cloth. He was a short man and couldn’t see how the squirrels had messed up the roof of the car, but its fat sides shone like velvet.

  “Hello, Joe.”

  “Hello, Charley, the old boat looks pretty good. I’ll have to take it out and dirty it up for you one of these days.” Charley would smile and go on rubbing. Everyone remembers the pregnant Buick, and the calls...“Save me a pup,” or more daringly, “Why don’t you marry the girl?” That was ‘29. And this is ‘44. That was Cataract City, Ontario, and this is Stink Hole, Italy. That was a kid of sixteen, about 155 pounds. This is a man of thirty-one, around 185. Fifteen years and 30 pounds later. But it is still November and it smells like November. Home must be where the nice smells are.

  The walls are falling down in Italy. The walls are down in a lot of places. Great men are gone and great men are going. Little men are coming and going, but mostly going. Women are whores and only smells are facts. What kind of a smell are you, Private Mack? Who, me?...oh I’m a dark brown smell. What were you in ‘29, Private Mack? I was a green kid, and I believed there was time to be good or bad. Time for such luxuries as right or wrong, clean or dirty. Forgive me, I was very young...but the years taught me. I learned then, and I’m still
learning, that no such luxury as time exists. Just to survive in this world, in peace or war, leaves no time for anything else. Oh, sure, there have been sweet things. Wonderful things. Clean things. Things like Steffen Gibson. Oh, God, she was sweet...but there weren’t many things like Steffie...not many things sweet and wonderful and clean.

  Where was I in ‘29? I told you. I was a green kid and on the same continent there were millions of green kids. Kids like Steffie. Well, Steffie, my darling, you aren’t in this stinking hole but we might have fun if you were. We had fun, didn’t we, Steffie, lots of it. And now, for all I know, you might be married to some jerk and I’ll never see you again. You smelled so nice, Steffie, so damned nice. But that was ‘29 and everyone smelled nice because everyone could take a bath now and then. Oh God, I’m fed up...stop these smells, God. Knock November out of the calendar...put an end to leaves, and just lower Italy into the sea...it needs it, God.

  CHAPTER 2

  November had its way and flooded the room. I lay there trying to keep it out of my thoughts but it wouldn’t go. A long procession of Novembers stretched back as far as I could see. Back to 1929 and beyond. 1929 stands out, though, doesn’t it, Joe? It was somewhere about then that the world was no longer a masculine place filled with Tom Swift, Frank Merriwell, and the Rover Boys, but there were women, too. Slim girls with a downy, half-hatched look about them. Girls who smelled like my sister Betty. Betty, who left the bathroom a hot, steaming place with a dampish perfume, filling me with strange, disturbing thoughts. Where in the Rover Boys could I find the explanation? Why suddenly did I know the curve of the beginning of a breast line on Steffie Gibson’s dress better than I knew the blueness of her eyes, or the almost white blondness of her lovely head? These became great facts somewhere around 1929. Why did it have to be Steffie Gibson who started and ended all my dreams in those days? In those days, Joe? She always has, and even here in this room she is as much a part of you as the smell of November.