by Irwin Shaw
Himmler had also heard the man on the radio say that the overall strategy was for them to break through to Alexandria and Jerusalem and finally to join up with the Japanese in India. It was true that this seemed a little grandoise and ambitious to men who had been sitting in the same place in the bitter sun for months, but there was a reassuring sound to the plan. At least it gave evidence that the General had a plan.
The night was very quiet. Occasionally there was a random small rattle of fire, or a flare, but that was all. There was a moon and the pale sky, crusted with the mild glitter of the stars, blended gently with the shadowy expanse of the desert.
Christian stood alone, loosely holding the machine pistol in the crook of his arm, looking out toward the anonymous shadows behind which lay the enemy. There was no sound from them in the sleeping night, and no sound from the thousands of men all about him.
Night had its advantages. You could move around quite freely without worrying that some Englishman had you in his glasses and was debating with himself whether or not you were worth a shell or two. Also, the smell died down. The smell was the salient fact about war in the desert. There was not enough water for anything but drinking, and not enough for that, and nobody bathed. You sweated all day, in the same clothes, week in and week out, and your clothes rotted with it, and became stiff on your back, and you had a steady rash of prickly heat that itched and burned, but your nose suffered worst of all The human race was only bearable when the obscene juices of living were being constantly washed away. You became dulled to your own smell, of course, otherwise you would kill yourself, but when you joined any group, the smell hit you, in a solid, jolting attack.
So the night was solace. There had been little enough solace since he had arrived in Africa. They had been winning, it was true, and he had marched from Bardia to this spot, some seventy miles from Alexandria. But somehow, while agreeable, victory did not have a personal quality to a soldier in the line. No doubt victory meant a great deal to the well-uniformed officers at the various headquarters and they probably celebrated over large dinners with wines and beer when towns were taken, but victories for you still meant that there was a good chance that you would die in the morning, and that you would still live in a shallow, gritty hole, and that the other men who lived by your side would stink just as unbearably in the hot wind of triumph as in defeat.
The only good time had been the two weeks in Cyrene, when he had been sent back with malaria. It had been cooler there, and green, and there was swimming in the Mediterranean.
When Himmler had reported that he had heard the expert on the radio announce that the plan of the German General Staff was to go through Alexandria and Cairo to join up in India with the Japanese, Knuhlen, who had come out with a recent draft of replacements, and who had taken over some of Himmler’s old position of comedian to the company, had said, “Anybody who wants can go join up with the Japs. Myself, if nobody minds, I’ll stop in Alexandria and join up with some of that Italian ass I hear they have running all over the streets there.”
Christian grinned in the darkness as he remembered Knuhlen’s rough witticism. There are probably few jokes, he thought, being told tonight on the other side of the minefield.
Then there was a flash for a hundred miles, and a second later, the sound. He fell to the sand, just as the shells exploded all around him.
He opened his eyes. It was dark, but he knew he was moving and he knew that he was not alone, because there was the smell. The smell was like untended pissoirs in Paris and clotted wounds and the winter clothes of the children of the poor. He remembered the sound of the shells over his head, and he closed his eyes again.
It was a truck. There was no doubt about that. And somewhere the war was still on, because there was the sound of artillery, going and coming, not very far off. And something bad had happened, because a voice in the darkness near him was weeping and saying between sobs, “My name is Richard Knuhlen, my name is Richard Knuhlen,” over and over again, as though the man were trying to prove to himself that he was a normal fellow who knew exactly who he was and what he was doing.
Christian stared up in the opaque darkness at the heavy-smelling canvas that swayed and jolted above him. The bones of his arms and legs felt as though they had been broken. His ears felt smashed against his head, and for awhile he lay on the board floor in the complete blackness contemplating the fact that he was going to die.
“My name is Richard Knuhlen,” the voice said, “and I live at Number 3, Carl Ludwig Strasse. My name is Richard Knuhlen and I live at …”
“Shut up,” Christian said, and immediately felt much better. He even tried to sit up, but that was too ambitious, and he lay back again, to watch the sky-rocketing waves of color under his eyelids.
The weeping stopped, and somebody said, “We are going to join up with the Japanese. And I know where.” And laughed wildly again and again. “In Rome!” the voice said, laughing. “On Benito’s balcony in Rome. I have to tell that expert that,” and then Christian realized that it was Himmler talking, and he remembered a great deal of what had happened in the last ten days.
The barrage had been bad the first night, but everyone was fairly well dug in, and only Meyer and Heiss had been hit. There had been flares and searchlights and the light of a tank burning between them, and small gasoline fires before them where the Tommies were trying to mark a path through the minefield for the tanks and infantry behind the barrage, small dark figures appearing in sudden flashes, busily jumping around so far away. Their own guns had started in behind them. Only one tank had got close. Every gun within a thousand meters of them had opened up on it. When the hatch was opened a minute later they saw with surprise that the man who tried to climb out was burning brightly.
The whole attack on their sector, after the barrage died down, had only lasted two hours, three waves with nothing more to show for it than seven immobile tanks, charred, with broken treads, at aggressive angles in the sand, and many bodies strewn peacefully around them. Everybody had been pleased. They had only lost five men in the company, and Hardenburg had grinned widely when he went back to battalion to report in the quiet of the morning.
But at noon, the guns had started on them again, and what looked like a whole company of tanks had appeared in the minefield, jiggling uncertainly in the swirling dust and sand. This time the line had been overrun, but the British infantry had been stopped before it reached them, and what was left to the tanks had pulled back, turning maliciously from time to time to rake them before rumbling out of range. And before they could take a deep breath, the British artillery had opened on them again. It had caught the medical parties out in the open, tending the wounded. They were all screaming and dying and no one could leave his hole to help them. That was probably when Knuhlen had begun to cry and Christian remembered thinking, dazedly and somehow surprised: They are very serious about this.
Then he had begun to shake. He had braced himself crazily with his hands rigid against the sides of the hole he was in. When he looked over the rim of the hole there seemed to be thousands of Tommies running at him and blowing up on mines, and those little bug-like gun carriers scurrying around among them in eccentric lines, their machine guns going, and he had felt like standing up and saying, “You are making a serious mistake. I am suffering from malaria and I am sure you would not like to be guilty of killing an invalid.”
It went on for many days and nights, with the fever coming and going, and the chills in the middle of the desert noon, and from time to time you thought with dull hostility: They never told you it could last so long and they never told you you would have malaria while it was happening.
Then, somehow, everything died down, and he thought: We are still here. Weren’t they foolish to try it? He fell asleep, kneeling in the hole. One second later Hardenburg was shaking him and peering down into his face, saying, “Goddamn you, are you still alive?” He tried to answer, but his teeth were shaking crazily in his jaws and his eyes wouldn’t
really open. So he smiled tenderly at Hardenburg who grabbed him by the collar and dragged him like a sack of potatoes along the ground as he nodded gravely at the bodies lying on both sides. He was surprised to see that it was quite dark and a truck was standing there, with its motor going, and he said, quite loudly, “Keep it quiet there.” The man beside him was sobbing and saying, “My name is Richard Knuhlen,” and much later, on the dark board floor under the smelly canvas, in all the heavy, bone-shaking jolting, he was still crying and still saying it over and over again, “My name is Richard Knuhlen and I live at Number 3 Carl Ludwig Strasse.” When he finally really woke up and saw that perhaps he was not going to die at the moment and realized that he was in full retreat and still had malaria, he thought, abstractedly: I would like to see the General now. I wonder if he is still confident.
Then the truck stopped and Hardenburg appeared at the back and said, “Everybody out. Everybody!”
Slowly the men moved toward the rear of the truck, heavily, as though they were walking in thick mud. Two or three of them fell when they jumped down over the tailboard and just lay there uncomplainingly as other men jumped and fell on them. Christian was the last one out of the truck. I am standing, he thought with deliberate triumph. I am standing.
Hardenburg looked at him queerly in the moonlight. Off to both sides there was a flash of guns and there was a general rumble in the air, but the small victory of having landed correctly made everything seem quite normal for the moment.
Christian looked keenly at the men struggling to their feet and standing in sleepwalking poses around him. He recognized very few of them, but perhaps their faces would come back to him in daylight. “Where’s the company?” he asked.
“This is the company,” Hardenburg said. His voice was unrecognizable. Christian had a sudden suspicion that someone was impersonating the Lieutenant. It looked like Hardenburg, but Christian resolved to go into the matter more deeply when things became more settled.
Hardenburg put out his hand and pushed roughly at Christian’s face with the heel of his palm. His hand smelled of grease and gunoil and the sweat of his cuff. Christian pulled back a little, blinking.
“Are you all right?” Hardenburg said.
“Yes, Sir,” he said. “Perfectly, Sir.” He would have to think about where the rest of the company was, but that would wait until later, too.
The truck started to slither into movement on the sandy track, and two of the men trotted heavily after it.
“Stand where you are!” Hardenburg said. The men stopped and stood there, staring at the truck, which gathered speed and wound loudly over the shining sand toward the west. They were at the bottom of a small rise. They stood in silence and watched the truck climb, with a clashing of bearings past Hardenburg’s motorcycle, up the rise. It shone along the top of it for a moment, huge, rolling, home-like, then disappeared on the other side.
“We dig in here,” Hardenburg said, with a stiff wave of his hand to the white glitter of the rise. The men stared stupidly at it.
“Right now,” Hardenburg said. “Diestl,” he said, “stay with me.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Christian, very smart. He went over to Hardenburg, elated with the fact that he could move.
Hardenburg started up the rise with what seemed to Christian superhuman briskness. Amazing, he thought dully, as he followed the Lieutenant, a thin, slight man like that, after the last ten days …
The men followed slowly. With rigid gestures of his arm, Hardenburg indicated to each of them where they should dig in. There were thirty-seven of them and Christian remembered again that he must inquire later what had happened to the rest of the company. Hardenburg stretched them out very thin, in a long, irregular line, one-third of the way up the rise. When he had finished he and Christian turned and looked back at the bent slow figures digging in. Christian suddenly realized that if they were attacked they would have to stand where they were, because there was no possibility of retreating up the exposed slope from the line where Hardenburg had set them. Then he began to realize what was happening.
“All right, Diestl,” Hardenburg said. “You come with me.”
Christian followed the Lieutenant back to the track. Without a word, he helped Hardenburg push the motorcycle up the track to the top of the rise. Occasionally a man would stop digging and turn and peer thoughtfully at the two men working the motorcycle slowly up to the crest of the slope behind them. Christian was panting heavily when they finally stopped pushing the machine. He turned, with Hardenburg, and looked at the sliver of a line of toiling men below him. The scene looked peaceful and unreal, with the moon and the empty desert and the doped movements of the shovelers, like a dream out of the Bible.
“They’ll never be able to fall back,” he said, almost unconsciously, “once they’re engaged.”
“That’s right,” Hardenburg said flatly.
“They’re going to die there,” said Christian.
“That’s right,” said Hardenburg. Then Christian remembered something Hardenburg had said to him as far back as El Agheila. “In a bad situation that must be held as long as possible, the intelligent officer will place his men so that they have no possibility of retreat. If they are placed so that they must either fight or die, the officer has done his job.”
“What happened?’ Christian asked.
Hardenburg shrugged. “They broke through on both sides of us.”
“Where are they now?”
Hardenburg looked wearily at the flash of gunfire to the south and the flicker farther off to the north. “You tell me,” he said. He bent and peered at the gas gauge on the motorcycle. “Enough for a hundred kilometers,” he said. “Are you well enough to hold on in back?”
Christian wrinkled his forehead, trying to puzzle this out, then slowly managed to do it. “Yes, Sir,” he said. He turned and looked at the stumbling, sinking line of figures down the hill, the men whom he was going to leave to die there. For a moment, he thought of saying to Hardenburg, “No, Sir, I will stay here.” But really, nothing would be gained by that.
A war had its own system of balances, and he knew that it was not cowardice on Hardenburg’s part, or self-seeking on his own, to pull back and save themselves for another day. These men would fight a small, pitiful action, perhaps delay a British company for an hour or so on the bare slope, and then vanish. If he and Hardenburg stayed, they would not be able, no matter what their efforts, to buy even ten minutes more than that hour. That was the way it was. Perhaps the next time it would be himself left on a hill without hope and another on the road back to problematical safety.
“Stay here,” Hardenburg said. “Sit down and rest I’ll go and tell them we’re going back to find a mortar platoon to support us.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Christian and sat down suddenly. He watched Hardenburg slide briskly down toward where Himmler was slowly digging. Then he fell sideways and was asleep before his shoulder touched the ground.
Hardenburg was shaking him roughly. He opened his eyes and looked up. He knew that it would be impossible to sit up, then stand up, then take one step after another. He wanted to say, “Please leave me alone,” drop off again to sleep. But Hardenburg grabbed him by his coat, at his neck, and pulled hard. Somehow Christian found himself standing. He walked automatically, his boots making a noise like his mother’s iron over stiff and frozen laundry at home, and helped Hardenburg move the motorcycle. Hardenburg swung his leg over the saddle with great agility and began kicking the starting pedal. The machine sputtered again and again, but it did not start.
Christian watched him working furiously with the machine in the waning, dry moonlight. It wasn’t until the figure was close to him that Christian looked up and realized that they were being watched. It was Knuhlen, the man who had been weeping in the truck, who had stopped shoveling and had followed the Lieutenant up the slope. Knuhlen didn’t say anything. He just stood there, watching blankly as Hardenburg kicked again and again at the pedal.
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nbsp; Hardenburg saw him. He took a slow deep breath, swung his leg back and stood next to the machine.
“Knuhlen,” he said, “get back to your post.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Knuhlen, but he didn’t move.
Hardenburg walked over to Knuhlen and hit him hard on the nose with the side of his fist. Knuhlen’s nose began to bleed. He made a wet, snuffling sound, but he did not move. His hands hung at his sides as though he had no further use for them. He had left his rifle and his entrenching tool at the hole he had been digging down the slope. Hardenburg stepped back and looked curiously and without malice at Knuhlen, as though he represented a small problem in engineering that would have to be solved in due time. Then Hardenburg stepped over to him again and hit him very hard twice. Knuhlen fell slowly to his knees. He kneeled there looking blankly up at Hardenburg.
“Stand up!” Hardenburg said.
Slowly Knuhlen stood up. He still did not say anything and his hands still hung limply at his hips.
Christian looked at him vaguely. Why don’t you stay down? he thought, hating the baggy, ugly soldier standing there in silent, longing reproach on the crest of the moonlit rise. Why don’t you die?
“Now,” Hardenburg said, “get back down that hill.”
But Knuhlen just stood there, as though words no longer entered the channels of his brain. Occasionally he sucked in some of the blood dripping into his mouth. The noise was surprising coming from that bent, silent figure. This was like some of the modern paintings Christian had seen in Paris. Three haggard, silent, dark figures on an empty hill under a dying moon, with sky and land cold and dark and almost of the same mysterious glistening, unearthly substance all around.
“All right,” Hardenburg said, “come with me.”
He took the motorcycle handlebars and trundled it down the other side of the rise away from the shovelers below. Christian took a last look at the thirty-six men scraping at the desert’s face in their doped, rhythmic movements. Then he followed Hardenburg and Knuhlen along the down-sloping path.