Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  “You told me why. Oh, not about this business, but I still think it’s the why. When you told me about Italy. You have children to account to, Harry. And you’d never want it said to them you did nothing.”

  “All my life, from the time I was a kid, I always thought given a choice, there’d be the right thing to do…and the wrong. That’s what they teach you, right? There isn’t. At least not here. No right thing to do.” For a man interested in being a good man, who looked to do no needless harm to anyone, it was an idea that tore at him. In his quiet, solemn way, I knew he was bleeding.

  I rested a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I suppose the best one can hope is to do the least wrong.”

  “Is that supposed to be a comfort?”

  “No. Explanatory footnote.”

  We heard a jeep heading in our direction from Ste. Marc’s Bridge.

  A small, sighing moan from Harry. With a grunt he pulled himself by the banister to his feet. “Aw hell…”

  I would have dearly loved to have known what went through Dominick Sisto’s head when he stepped into the lobby of the inn and saw us lined up like a jury tribunal awaiting his appearance before the bar: Harry, Peter Ricks, myself, Andy Thom, and Van Damm. He stood in the doorway for a moment. Someone behind him sneezed, I had a glimpse past Sisto’s shoulder of Juan Bonilla spitting into the snow.

  There was just the smallest bit of a smile from Sisto, not in amusement or welcome, but an empty, perfunctory hullo. Then he stepped past Harry and Ricks to Andy Thom and the rest of us might just as well not have been there.

  “Where’s security, Andy?”

  “I’ve got two lookouts upstairs, Lootenant, either end of the house. It was too cold to put them out– ”

  A nod toward the sleeping Makris. “Any messages?”

  “No, Sir. Where’ve you been?”

  “I went up to Velôt for a while. Third Platoon had a night patrol going out, I wanted to be sure they got off ok. Then, I went back to Ste. Marc; I thought of a better site for the Weapons mortars, they can cover all three towns from the new position. I wanted to make sure they dug ‘em in right.” He turned toward the lounge, smelled at the air. “Goddamn, that smells good! Any left?” To Bonilla: “Hey, Ja–wan, why don’t you go upstairs, make sure those sentries haven’t nodded off, then see about getting a fire goin’ for us?”

  Bonilla stood a moment, sniffling, wiping at his runny nose with a kerchief. This was not the robust sergeant I remembered from our interview in Wiltz. It was more than illness and fatigue that drained him. Something else was taking a toll as well; something about Sisto, for it was to the lieutenant that his nervous eyes kept turning, concerned, wary. Then, almost as if reluctant to leave Sisto unchaperoned, the sergeant pulled himself away, caught my eye, shook his head in dismay, and trudged heavily upstairs as the lieutenant headed into the lounge.

  “You know,” Van Damm said to us quietly, “I have a feeling mine should wait. Until the smoke clears.” With that, he withdrew into the dining room.

  Sisto was ladling some of the stew into a bowl. Among the prostrate bodies, one soul sat up, his hair tousled with sleep, yawning and rubbing at unfocused eyes. I recognized him as the lad who’d been penning a letter. If his comrades were young, he was positively childlike, his moon–eyed, freckled face still round with baby fat, his uniform billowing about his small–boned body like a clipper’s sails.

  “What’s the matter, Chicken?” Sisto asked. “Can’t sleep?”

  The lad looked to us standing in the lobby doorway, then back to his commanding officer. “Everything awright, Sir?”

  “Just fine. You should go back to sleep.”

  “Can’t just now, Sir.” The lad shook his head, found his V–mail pouch among his things and took a seat at the bar.

  “You write and tell ‘em how high you been living?” Sisto asked, setting his soup bowl alongside the boy. “Venison every night?” He turned toward me. “That’s what they call it, right, Mr. O? You’re the guy with all the words. Deer meat? That’s venison, right?”

  “Aye.”

  He went to a Lyster bag on its tripod by the fireplace, drew a canteen cup of water, and set it on an oven grate the men had propped over the burning logs. “You’d love this guy, Mr. O,” Sisto said, indicating “Chicken.” “I’ll bet he writes more than you. Every day, right, Chicken? Sometimes twice? To his mom. That’s who you write to, right, Chicken? Your mom?”

  The lad smiled bashfully. “She made me promise.”

  “He tells her we’ve been taking real good care of her boy. He left home without smoking, drinking, or swearing, and he still doesn’t, right, Chicken?” Sisto took the heated canteen cup from the fire, hurriedly set it on the bar next to his stew so as not to singe his fingers. He tore open a Nescafe packet and stirred it into the cup. “He doesn’t even drink coffee, isn’t that right, Chicken?”

  Another bashful smile: “Gee, Lieutenant.”

  “You’re a good kid, Chicken.” He said it with a certain solemnity, patting the boy on the back. You stay that way.” He picked up his bowl and his tin cup by the brim, and without a word to us passed by and headed for the stairs. We turned and followed. “That kid writes more than I don’t know what, Mr. O. If he ever has to go into action, he won’t be able to pull the trigger because of his writer’s cramp.” Upstairs, despite his instructions to Bonilla, he felt compelled to check on the sentries himself, then we followed him into the large bedroom above the lounge. Bonilla had, by then, stoked a good–sized blaze in the fireplace. “That’s good, Ja–wan, thanks. I saved you some stew. You should go downstairs and get something to eat. Those two guys up here, I think you should shift them; I don’t know they got the best spots to cover the road. I thought they were ok, but now that I think about it…”

  Bonilla left without a word. Ricks closed the door behind him.

  It was a comfortable room, still spacious despite the large, four–poster featherbed, a few deep cushioned chairs, some furniture of heavy wood. Sisto tossed his helmet on the bed, sat by the night table where he set his cup, his bowl resting on his knees as he slurped up the soup. “You guys had any of this? Good, isn’t it? I wish we had some bread for dunking, that would’ve made it just right. Hey, Andy, you tell them about the kid that brought that deer down? What’s that kid’s name, huh, Andy? Where’s he from? Kentucky or something, right? One of those hillbilly shitholes?”

  “McQuill,” Andy Thom said. “Name’s McQuill. From Tennessee.”

  Sisto nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. I knew it was from one of those hillbilly – ”

  “You didn’t just trip and fall through Philip Meyer’s skylight,” Harry interrupted curtly.

  Sisto turned to Harry with a knowing smile, his spoon making an irritating, grating noise as he circled it about the bottom of the bowl. “You came all this way to talk to me about ol’ man Meyer’s skylight?”

  “This is a little worse than old man Meyer’s skylight.”

  Sisto shrugged, as if that wasn’t necessarily true, and turned back to his soup.

  “I know why you didn’t want the Irishman to bring me up from Italy.” I don’t remember seeing the helmet in Harry’s hands up to that moment, have no idea of when he’d stepped out to the jeep to retrieve it, but that’s when he tossed Conrad Porter’s bullet–holed headgear onto the bed.

  Sisto’s spoon paused in mid–air for just a beat, then went to his mouth, he sipped his soup, then carefully set the utensil down in the bowl. But he did not turn to look at the helmet. “You’ve been getting around, Signor.”

  “Look at it. Look inside.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “Porter never ordered a withdrawal.”

  A rueful grin as Sisto set his bowl down on the floor. “Hell, he was about to order Tully’s men up the hill! You’ve been there; you saw how it was up there, how it was laid out. I saw the krauts filling in their positions on the high ground. I figured in a couple of minutes we were gonna be the l
ast scene from They Died with Their Boots On. He wouldn’t hear it.” He thought back on it, his brow knitting in recollection and puzzlement. “Of all people, I never would’ve put money on him being the guy to want to stick up there. Maybe because we were already on top…Maybe he thought this was his one chance to…” He shook his head. “Aw, who the fuck knows what he thought?” He turned to Harry, his face…he wasn’t pleading his case; he knew what he knew and he hoped it would be as clear to us. “We were all gonna be dead, Signor. You believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  He touched gingerly at his mouth with his fingertips, wiping a few traces of the stew clear. “I didn’t even think twice about it. I was down in the bottom of the hole trying to keep from catching a bullet. He was up there at the top, Christ knows what he was looking at. All the kraut lead flying around up there, why that stupid ass didn’t catch one…” He shook his head, amazed. “I didn’t argue with him. I told him once, he told me to shuddup and make the call for Tully, I pulled my .45. Didn’t even think about it. It was just the thing to do. Even right when I pulled the trigger… But you know what’s funny? The second my pistol jumped in my hand…I wanted to take it back.”

  Ricks stepped forward. “Take it back? Why?”

  He looked at Ricks, then shook his head, not quite understanding himself. He turned back to Harry. “Who else knows?”

  “Just us.”

  “What happens now?”

  “I imagine we’re all a little curious in that regard,” I said, directing it at Harry.

  Harry paced about the room, tiredly rubbing his face. “I can’t judge it, Dominick. I can’t judge you. I’m not…I just…can’t.” He stood by the bed, near Sisto. “It’s up to you. You say so, I’ll forget it. Peter, Eddie and me, we’ll head back to Liege, I’ll see you in Newark when we all get home. But…If you want to turn yourself in…I’ll go in with you.”

  The rueful grin, again. “You won’t forget it.” A tired sigh. “There some kinda deadline here?”

  “By now, Ryan must be wondering where we’ve disappeared to,” Ricks said. “It’s not going to take him long to track us down. It’d probably be best if we had something to tell him when he does.”

  Sisto swung his legs onto the bed and stretched out. “Man, I’m tired.” He closed his eyes. “Can we talk about this in the morning? Ask Juan if he minds bunking downstairs tonight.” As we turned and started for the door, “Signor…you stay. Ok?”

  “I’ll see you all in the morning,” Harry said to us.

  As I followed Andy Thom and Peter Ricks out the door, as it was closing I could hear Harry sadly ask, “Jesus, Dominick, why couldn’t you have just hit the guy over the head?”

  “Because they don’t give us clubs, Signor. They give us guns.”

  *

  In the lounge, Bonilla was at the bar listlessly spooning his way through soup he couldn’t taste, holding his hot canteen cup of coffee under his nose hoping the vapors would clear his congestion. Chicken the Scrivener was still at work with pen and paper a few seats down.

  “C’mon,” Bonilla urged the soldier, “Finish up! You need some rest. Buenos noches, niño!”

  “Ok, ok, Sarge, I’m finishin’.”

  Andy Thom and Peter Ricks tried to find some open floor space to spread their bedrolls. I was tired, but not sleepy. I drew some water from the Lyster bag and set it on the fire to heat.

  “You gonna take the l’tenan’ out?” Bonilla asked me.

  I shrugged.

  “Even if is for somethin’ bad, I don’ thin’ ita be a bad thin’ if you did.”

  I turned to him, curious.

  Bonilla tapped his temple. “He’s had it. Too much, tu sabe?”

  “Hey!” Chicken called, “what’s today’s date? Anybody know today’s date?”

  “If you’re gonna send it out with the mornin’ mail pickup, maybe you should date it tomorrow,” Andy Thom said.

  “Ok, fine, tomorrow. What’s tomorrow’s date?”

  Thom looked up, amused by his own befuddlement. “Damned if I know!”

  “Sarge?” Chicken turned to Bonilla.

  The sergeant was massaging his painful sinuses. “Is Saturday is all I know.”

  “It’s the 16th, laddie,” I said, mixing coffee powder into my cup. “The 16th of December.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Gehenna

  A NIGHTMARE? A million million golden–haired children…beseeching faces – lovely, innocent, almost iridescent pink–cheeked ovals – turned to the sky…slim, little upheld arms imploring mercy from Heaven…

  Heaven answers by splitting apart and releasing a fire that pours down like rain, a scorching, consuming rain…the children, arms still extended, their white – pure, achingly brilliant white – skin charring like paper at a match, sloughing away from the exposed, blackening bones...

  The noise…

  The rending of that Godless sky, the fire searing the very air, melding with those million million anguished voices in one, mind–splittingly shrill clarion call of agony…from pain; from forsakenness.

  *

  I awoke abruptly, gasping, nearly in tears at the after–image fading in my mind. Then, almost immediately again in tears of gratitude that the vision was false, just some little compendium of Pandorian horrors tucked in a far corner of my psyche that had managed to trip its lock and run amok for a moment.

  Against the dim light of the lowering flames in the lounge hearth, a tangle of legs, bodies thumping against each other –

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, ever’body getcher shit ‘n’ le’s go!”

  – young voices, frightened, children’s voices…

  The noise…

  Not a nightmare, not a vision or dream, but real, horrifying, deafening shrieks arcing across the sky, the gasthaus trembling under the barrage of sound…

  This is how angels die, I thought at the sound, they tumble from the sky and the world quakes at their cries of pain…

  That brief second of relief that it had all been just a bad dream crumbled under a wave of fear and soul–sickness that the vision had not been completely a lie, that the nightmare was partly true.

  A hand grabbed me by the shoulder, shook me to sentience: “Vamanos, señor! Getcher boo’s on ‘n’ onna feet! Ever’body, movemovemove!

  “Eddie!” It was Harry, helping me upright.

  “What’s all this, then?”

  “I don’t know!” He was frightened. They all were. We all were.

  Fainter than the overhead shrieking, a rumbling – like thunder but not thunder, more percussive. I took some grim comfort from the familiarity of artillery: the distant bass detonations of firing batteries far east of us, the crash of the falling shells at some position behind us, not so far I couldn’t feel a shudder through the floorboards with each impact.

  Andy Thom and Lyle Bott moved through the milling soldiers, trying hard to maintain their own composure as they saw to it the men drew on their gear, tried to set a tone that dampened the novitiates’ instinctive panic.

  “Whaddaya thin’, jefe?” Bonilla’s voice, out in the dark lobby. “Get ‘em down inna cellar?”

  “I don’t want them stuck down there if this place takes a hit,” I heard Sisto say, voice even but strained. “Get ‘em outside, Juan, along the creek, half on either side of the road.”

  Sisto’s precautionary note was enough for me to see to it that I not end up tottering about on two prostheses – providing I ended up alive at all. Harry and I let the rush of men through the door carry us outside.

  And there, on the icy flagstone walk, I stumbled to a halt as we nearly all did.

  There was neither the impenetrable Ardennes night, nor the oppressive gray of the winter’s day. Instead, the world was bathed in an odd, bluish–white glow, like the brightest of moons, but without that vivid crystalline edge of moonlight. This was something unnatural, that gave everything the sense of artifice, like an enormous cine production. The source was not the moon. There was
no break in the overcast, nor were the clouds illumined from a single source behind. It was the very surface of the cloud curtain that seemed to emit the dull, sickly glow.

  There was, now, enough light that I could, for the first time, see the situation of the gasthaus set just a few yards from the narrow road, midway across a meadow–like firebreak between two endless palisades of tall, interlocked firs. The inn itself was a stout place with a first floor of stone blocks and a second story of heavy lumber beneath a steep–sided, snow–covered roof. But all this was a vague image, diffused by an eddying fog laying low across the break and on into the forest on either side. It heaved and rolled in the clearing like an ocean, caught that macabre light which made it seem to be of the same luminous stuff as the clouds above, gave everything the glowy, gauzy look of delirium.

  There were dashes of true, vibrant color from beyond either horizon: to the east, where the clouds reflected the bright muzzle flashes of the artillery sending its shells lofting overhead; and to the west, where we could see the staccato bursts of their impact, and, in places, the slow, pulsing red of something afire.

  And then there was the shrieking; those marrow–jarring howls from above. I looked up and saw fiery plumes streaking by, the soft luminosity of the screen of clouds momentarily broken by brilliant white and yellow lances arcing above the firebreak to disappear somewhere beyond the trees west of us with earth–shuddering thunderclaps.

  I think it was too much for most of us, and only Bonilla’s barking and shoving snapped the untried soldiers as well as Harry and myself out of our entranced poses toward shelter.

  Bonilla directed us toward a cut in the ground just a few yards from the inn; had it not been for the top sergeant’s guiding hands Harry and I would no doubt have painfully tumbled into it in the fog. The meter–deep cut was a muddy–banked creek or drainage ditch that, from what I could see, wavered down the length of the firebreak, passing close by the inn and through a culvert under the road.

  Harry and I joined the fire team huddled in the ditch on our side of the road, our faces hugging the abrasive frozen mud of the bank.