by Irwin Shaw
Heims belched again. “My stomach,” he said aggrievedly to Richter. Richter nodded, staring down at the magazine on the gun, as though he had heard about Heims’s stomach for years.
Hardenburg, Christian thought, would have done this better. He wouldn’t have gambled like this. He would have made more certain, one way or another. If the dynamite didn’t go off, and the bridge wasn’t blown, and they heard about it back at Division, and they questioned that miserable Sergeant in the Pioneers and he told them about Christian … Please, Christian prayed under his breath to the Americans, come on, come on, come on …
Christian kept the glasses trained on the approach to the bridge. The glasses shook, and he knew that the chills were coming, although he did not feel them at that moment. There was a rushing, tiny noise, near him, and, involuntarily, he put the glasses down. A squirrel scurried up to the top of a rock ten feet away, then sat up and stared with beady, forest eyes at the three men. Another time, another place, Christian remembered, the bird strutting on the road through the woods outside Paris, before the French road block, the overturned farm cart and the mattresses. The animal kingdom, curious for a moment about the war, then returning to its more important business.
Christian blinked and put the glasses to his eyes again. The Americans were out on the road now, walking slowly, crouched over, their rifles ready, every tense line shouting that their flesh inside their vulnerable clothing understood that they were targets.
The Americans were unbearably slow. They were taking infinitely small steps, stopping every five paces. The dashing, reckless young men of the New World. Christian had seen captured newsreels of them in training, leaping boldly through rolling surf from landing barges, flooding onto a beach like so many sprinters. They were not sprinting now. “Faster, faster,” he found himself whispering, “faster …” What lies the American people must believe about their soldiers!
Heims belched. It was a rasping, ugly, old man’s noise. Each man reacted to a war in his own way, and Heims’s reaction was from the stomach. What lies the people at home believed about Heims and his comrades, What were you doing when you won the Iron Cross? Mother, I was belching. Only Heims and he and Richter knew what the truth was, only they and the forty-three men tenderly approaching the old stone of the bridge that had been put up by slow Italian laborers in the sunlight of 1840. They knew the truth, the machine gunners and himself, and the forty-three men shuffling through the dust across the gunsights eight hundred meters away, and they were more connected by that truth than to anyone else who wasn’t there that morning. They knew of each other that their stomachs were contracting in sour spasms, and that all bridges are approached with timidity and a sense of doom …
Christian licked his lips. The last man was out from behind the bend now, and the officer in command, the inevitable childish Lieutenant, was waving to a man with the mine detector, who was moving regretfully up toward the head of the column. Slowly, foolishly, they were bunching, feeling a little safer closer together now, feeling that if they hadn’t been shot yet they were going to get through this all right.
The man with the mine detector began to sweep the road twenty meters in front of the bridge. He worked slowly and very carefully, and as he worked, Christian could see the Lieutenant, standing in the middle of the road, put his binoculars to his eyes and begin to sweep the country all around him. Zeiss binoculars, no doubt, Christian’s mind registered automatically, made in Germany. He could see the binoculars come up and almost fix on their boulders, as though some nervous, latent military sense in the young Lieutenant recognized instinctively that if there were any danger ahead of him, this would be the focus of it. Christian crouched a little lower, although he was certain that they were securely hidden. The binoculars passed over them, then wavered back.
“Fire,” Christian whispered. “Behind them. Behind them.”
The machine gun opened up. It made an insane shocking noise as it broke the mountain stillness, and Christian couldn’t help blinking again and again. Down on the road two of the men had fallen. The others were still standing there stupidly, looking down in surprise at the men on the ground. Three more men fell on the road. Then the Americans began to run down the slope toward the ravine and the protection of the bridge. They are sprinting now, Christian thought, where is the cameraman? Some of the Americans were carrying and dragging the men who had been hit. They stumbled and rolled down the slope, their rifles thrown away, their arms and legs waving grotesquely. It was remote and disconnected, and Christian watched almost disinterestedly, as though he were watching the struggle of a beetle dragged down into a hole by ants.
Then the first mine went off. A helmet hurtled end over end, twenty meters straight up in the air, glinting dully in the sunlight, its straps whipping in its flight.
Heims stopped firing. Then the explosions came one on top of another, echoing and re-echoing along the walls of the hills. A large dirty cloud of dust and smoke bloomed from the bridge.
The noise of the explosions died slowly, as though the sound was moving heavily through the draws and along the ridges to collect in other places. The silence, when it came, seemed unnatural, dangerous. The two sparrows wheeled erratically, disturbed and scolding, across the gun. Down below, from beneath the arch of the bridge, a single figure came walking out, very slowly and gravely, like a doctor from a deathbed. The figure walked five or six meters, then just as slowly sat down on a rock. Christian looked at the American through his glasses. The man’s shirt had been blown off him, and his skin was pale and milky. He still had his rifle. While Christian watched, the American lifted his rifle, still with that lunatic deliberation and gravity. Why, thought Christian with surprise, he’s aiming at us!
The sound of the rifle was empty and flat and the whistle of the bullets was surprisingly close over their heads. Christian grinned. “Finish him,” he said.
Heims pressed the trigger of the machine gun. Through his glasses, Christian could see the darting spurts of dust, flickering along a savage, swift line in an arc around the American. The American did not move. Slowly, with the unhurried care of a carpenter at his workbench, he was putting a new clip in his rifle. Heims swung the machine gun, and the arc of dust splashes moved closer to the American, who still refused to notice them. The American got the clip in his rifle and lifted it once more to his naked shoulder. There was something insane, disturbing, about the shirtless, white-skinned man, an ivory blob against the green and brown of the ravine, sitting comfortably on the stone with all his comrades dead around him, firing in the leisurely and deliberate way at the machine gun he could not quite make out with his naked eye, paying no attention to the continuous, snapping bursts of bullets that would, in a moment or two, finally kill him.
“Hit him,” Christian murmured irritably. “Come on, hit him.”
Heims stopped firing for a moment. He squinted carefully and jiggled the gun. It made a sharp, piercing squeak. The sound of the rifle came from the valley below, meaningless and undangerous, although again and again there was the whine of a bullet over Christian’s head, or the plunk as it hit the hard-packed dirt below him.
Then Heims got the range and fired one short burst. The American put down his gun drunkenly. He stood up slowly and took two or three sober steps in the direction of the bridge. Then he lay down as though he were tired.
At that moment, the bridge went up. Chunks of stone spattered against the trees along the road, slicing white gashes in them and knocking branches off. It took a long time for the dust to settle, and when it did, Christian saw the lumpy, broken mud-colored uniforms sticking out here and there, at odd angles, from the debris. The half-naked American had disappeared under a small avalanche of earth and stones.
Christian sighed and put down his glasses. Amateurs, he thought, what are they doing in a war?
Heims sat up and twisted around. “Can we smoke now?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Christian, “you can smoke.”
He w
atched Heims take out a pack of cigarettes. Heims offered one to Richter, who took it silently. The machine gunner did not offer a cigarette to Christian. The miserly bastard, thought Christian bitterly, and reached in and took out one of his two remaining cigarettes.
He held the cigarette in his mouth, tasting it, feeling its roundness, for a long time before he lit it. Then, with a sigh, feeling, well, I’ve earned it, he lit the cigarette. He took a deep puff and held the smoke in his lungs as long as he could. It made him feel a little dizzy, but relaxed. I must write about this to Hardenburg, Christian thought, taking another pull at the cigarette, he’ll be pleased, he wouldn’t have been able to do better himself. He leaned back comfortably, taking a deep breath, smiling at the bright blue sky and the pretty little clouds racing overhead in the mountain wind, knowing that he would have at least ten minutes to rest before Dehn got there. What a pretty morning, he thought.
Then he felt the long quivering shiver sliding down his body. Ah, he thought deliciously, the malaria, and this is going to be a real attack, they’re bound to send me back. A perfect morning. He shivered again, then took another pull at his cigarette. Then he leaned back happily against the boulder at his back, waiting for Dehn to arrive, hoping Dehn would take his time climbing the slope.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“ON YOUR FEET, Private Whitacre,” the Sergeant said, and Michael rose and followed him. They went in to a large room, with high, dark-paneled doors. The room was lit by tall candles that reflected back a thousand times in yellow buds from the pale green mirrors with which the room was lined.
There was the long, polished table, with the one chair drawn up in the middle, just as Michael had always known it would be. He sat down on the chair, with the Sergeant standing behind him. There was an inkwell before him and a plain wooden pen.
Another door opened and the two Germans came in. They were full Generals and they had on magnificent uniforms. Their decorations, their boots, their spurs, their monocles gleamed softly in the candlelight. They marched up to the table, in perfect formation, stopped, with a memorable clicking of heels, and saluted.
Michael saluted gravely, from his chair. One of the Generals unbuttoned his tunic and slowly drew out a stiff piece of rolled parchment. He gave it to the Sergeant. The Sergeant unrolled it. It made a dry noise in the still room. The Sergeant laid it on the table in front of Michael.
“The surrender papers,” the Sergeant said. “You have been chosen to accept the surrender for the Allies.”
Michael nodded gravely. Offhandedly he glanced over the documents. They seemed to be in order. He picked up the pen and dipped it in the inkwell. “Michael Whitacre, 32403008, Private First Class, U.S.A.” he wrote in a bold, sprawling signature, at the bottom of the page, under the two German signatures. The pen scratched unmusically in the silence. Michael put the pen down. He stood up.
“That will be all, gentlemen,” he said flatly.
The two Generals saluted. They quivered when they saluted. Michael did not return the salute. He stared a little over their heads at the sea-green mirrors behind them.
The Generals about-faced precisely. They marched out. There was a defeated Prussian rhythm of boots on the bare, shining floor, and an ironic tinkle of spurs. The heavy door opened and they went out. The door closed. The Sergeant vanished. Michael was left alone in the candlelit room, with the single chair, the long, gleaming table, the inkwell, the stiff, yellowish square of parchment with his signature on it.
“Drop your——’s and grab your socks,” the heavy voice shouted. “Rise and shine! Rise and shine!”
There was the shrill, cutting sound of whistles, all through the old house and from the other houses along the street, and the groaning, despairing moans of soldiers awaking in the darkness.
Michael opened his eyes. He was in a lower bunk and he stared up at the slats and straw mattress of the bunk above him. The man in the upper bunk was a nervous sleeper and a slow cascade of dust and straw splinters came down on Michael every night.
Michael swung his feet out of the bunk. He sat heavily on the edge, feeling his tongue sour behind his teeth, smelling the dreadful, unwashed, cold sweat and wool smell of the twenty men in the room. It was five-thirty in the morning and the blackout blinds were still drawn tightly across the never-opened windows.
Shivering, Michael dressed, his mind numb to the groans and swearing and obscene noises of the Army all around him preparing itself to face the day.
Blinking, he put on his overcoat and stumbled down the rickety stairs of the old house that had been taken over for enlisted men’s billets. He stepped out into the bone-seeking chill of the London morning. All along the street other men were soddenly grouping for the reveille roll call. Not far from where Michael stood there was a house with a bronze plaque on it that announced that William Blake had lived and worked there in the nineteenth century. What would William Blake’s reactions have been to reveille? What would William Blake have thought if he had looked out his window at the huddled, swearing, beersick men from the other side of the ocean, who were standing there, shivering, under the barrage balloons, still invisible in the high, thin, dark fog? What would William Blake have said to the Sergeant who called, greeting the fresh morning of a new day in the long progress of humanity toward grace, “Drop your——’s and grab your socks?”
“Galiani.”
“Here.”
“Abernathy.”
“Here.”
“Tatnall.”
“Here.”
“Kammergaard.”
“Here.”
“Whitacre.”
“Here.”
William Blake, I am here, John Keats, I am here. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I am here. King George, I am here. General Wellington, I am here. Lady Hamilton, I am here. Oh, to be in England now that Whitacre’s there. Lawrence Sterne, I am here. Prince Hal, I am here. Oscar Wilde, I am here. Here with helmet, gasmask, and PX ration card, here, injected for tetanus, typhus, typhoid, and smallpox, here, instructed how to behave in an English home (food is low and second helpings must be refused), here, warned against the syphilis of the Saxon nymphs of Piccadilly, here, with brass buttons burned of varnish and polished bright to compete with the British Army. Here, Paddy Finucane, dead in the Channel in the crashed Spitfire, here Montgomery, here Eisenhower, here Rommel, ready at my typewriter, armed with carbon copies, here, here, here, England, here by way of Washington and Local Board 17, here by way of Miami and Puerto Rico and Trinidad and the Guianas and Brazil and Ascension Island, here by way of the ocean in which the submarines surface at night to fire, like sharks in a dream, at the planes flying without lights in the streaming darkness ten thousand feet above, here history, here my past, here among the ruins and the Midwestern voices shouting “Taxi, taxi” in the blacked-out midnights. Here, Neighbor William Blake, here is an American, God help us all.
“Dismiss!”
Michael went into the house and made up his bunk. He shaved and mopped the latrine and picked up his messkit and went slowly, in an aluminum jangling, through the awakening, gray streets in the first sober light of the London morning, to breakfast in a large red house that in other times had been inhabited by the family of an earl. Overhead there was the steady drone of a thousand engines, as the Lancasters crossed the Thames on the way home from Berlin. There was grapefruit juice for breakfast, oatmeal, powdered eggs and bacon, thick, underdone, swimming in its own grease. Why, thought Michael, as he ate, why can’t they teach an Army cook how to make coffee? How can we live on coffee like this?
“The ——th Fighter Group wants a comedian and some dancers,” Michael said to Captain Mincey, his superior officer, sitting at the desk in the room that was lined with pictures of all the famous people who had passed through London for the USO. “And they don’t want any more drunks. Johnny Sutter was potted up there last month, and he insulted a pilot in the ready room and was knocked out twice.”
“Send them Flanner,” Mincey sai
d, weakly. Mincey had asthma and he drank too much, and the combination of Scotch and the climate of London always left him a little forlorn in the morning.
“Flanner has dysentery and he refuses to leave the Dorchester.”
Mincey sighed. “Send them that lady accordionist,” Mincey said, “what’s her name, with the blue hair.”
“They want a comedian.”
“Tell them we only have accordionists.” Mincey sniffed, pushing a tube full of medicine up his nose.
“Yes, Sir,” said Michael. “Miss Roberta Finch cannot continue up into Scotland. She had a nervous breakdown in Salisbury. She keeps taking her clothes off in the enlisted men’s mess and tries to commit suicide.”
“Send that crooner to Scotland,” Mincey sighed, “and make out a full report on Finch and send it back to Headquarters in New York, so we’ll be covered.”
“The MacLean troupe is in Liverpool Harbor,” Michael said, “but their ship is quarantined. A seaman came down with meningitis and they can’t come ashore for ten days.”
“I can’t bear it,” said Captain Mincey.
“There is a confidential report,” Michael said, “from the ——nd Heavy Bombardment Group. Larry Crosett’s band played there last Saturday and got into a poker game Sunday night. They took eleven thousand dollars from the Group and Colonel Coker says he has evidence they used marked cards. He wants the money back or he is going to prefer charges.”
Mincey sighed weakly, poking the glass tube into his other nostril. He had run a night club in Cincinnati before the war and he often wished he was back in Ohio among the comedians and specialty dancers. “Tell Colonel Coker I am investigating the entire matter,” he said.
“A Chaplain at the Troop Carrier Command,” Michael said, “objects to the profanity used in our production of Folly of Youth. He says the leading man says damn seven times and the ingenue calls one of the characters a son of a bitch in the second act”