by Irwin Shaw
“That’s a hell of a funny story,” Michael said.
“I thought you’d like it,” Pfeiffer said with satisfaction, wiping up the last thick juice of the meat balls, spaghetti and peach syrup. “What the hell, you have to laugh every once in a while.”
Pfeiffer industriously scrubbed his mess kit with a stone and a piece of the toilet paper he always carried in his pocket. He got up and wandered over to the crap game that was going on behind a blackened chimney that was all that was left of a farmhouse that had survived three wars before this. There were three soldiers, a Lieutenant and two Sergeants, from a Communications Zone Signal Corps message center, who had somehow arrived here in a jeep on a tourist visit. They were shooting craps, and they seemed to have a lot of money which would do more good in the pockets of the infantry.
Michael lit a cigarette, relaxing. He wiggled his toes automatically, to make certain he could still feel them, and enjoyed the sense of having eaten well, and being out of danger for an hour. “When we get back to the States,” Michael said to Noah, “I will take you and your wife out for a steak dinner. I know a place on Third Avenue, on the second floor. You eat your meal and watch the L pass by at dish level. The steaks are as thick as your fist, we’ll have it very rare …”
“Hope doesn’t like it very rare,” Noah said, seriously.
“She will have it any way she wants it,” Michael said. “Antipasto first, then these steaks, charred on the outside and they sigh when you touch a butter knife to them, and you get spaghetti and green salad and red California wine, and after that, cake soaked in rum and café espresso, that’s very black, with lemon peel. The first night we get home. On me. You can bring your son, too if you want, we’ll put him in a high chair.”
Noah smiled, “We’ll leave him home that night,” he said.
Michael was gratified at the smile. Noah had smiled very seldom in the three months since they had returned to the Company. He had spoken little, smiled little. In his taciturn way, he had attached himself to Michael, watched out for him with critical, veteran eyes, protected him by word and example, even when it had been a full-time job trying to keep himself alive, even in December, when it had been so bad, when the Company had been loaded on trucks and had been thrown in hurriedly against the German tanks that had suddenly materialized out of the supposedly exhausted Army in front of them. The Battle of the Bulge, it was now called, and it was in the past, and the one thing Michael really would remember from it for the rest of his life was crouching in a hole, which Noah had made him dig two feet deeper, although Michael had been weary and annoyed at what he considered Noah’s finickiness … The German tank looming up on the bare field, coming at them, and all the bazooka ammunition gone, and the anti-tank gun on the half-track behind them burning, and nothing to do but duck down deep … The driver of the tank had seen Michael ducking in and had driven up and tried to run him over, because they couldn’t reach him with their guns. The interminable minute, with the roaring seventy-ton machine over his head, and the tread spinning, sending a heavy shower of dirt and stones down on his helmet and his back, and his own voice screaming soundlessly in the thundering darkness … As you looked back on it, it seemed like the sort of thing men bucking for Section Eights reported as nightmares to the psychoanalysts in the Medical Corps. It did not seem possible that it ever could really happen to you, a man over thirty who had had his own well-ordered apartment in New York City, who had eaten in so many good restaurants, who had five good soft tweed suits hanging in the closet, who had driven slowly up Fifth Avenue in a convertible car, with the top down, and the sun shining on his face … And, having happened, it did not seem possible that you could live through it, that the churning, spiked steel tread one foot above your head could let you survive, that the man to whom this final, hellish thing had happened, could ever come back to a moment in which he could even think about such things as steaks and wine and Fifth Avenue. The tank, impersonally seeking his life in the hole that he had been forced by his friend to dig deep enough to protect him, had seemed to cut the bridge back to civilian existence. There was a gap there now, a dark ravine spanned only by hallucinations. Looking back on it now, remembering the lumbering withdrawal of the machine across the field, with shellbursts tossing up spouts of dirt around it, he realized that that was the moment he had finally become a soldier. Until then, he had merely been a man in uniform, on temporary duty from another life …
The Battle of the Bulge, they now called it in Stars and Stripes, and many men had been killed in it, and Liége and Antwerp had been threatened, and there were accounts of how magnificently the Army had reacted, and some unpleasantness about Montgomery, who was not now as full of British-American good will as he had been on July Fourth, when he had pinned the Silver Star on Noah … The Battle of the Bulge, another bronze campaign star, five points toward discharge. All he remembered was Noah standing over him, saying crisply and unpleasantly, “I don’t care how tired you are, dig two feet deeper,” and the whirling, roaring tread over his muddy helmet.
Michael looked over at Noah. Noah was sleeping now, sitting up, leaning against the stone wall. Only when he slept did his face look young. He had a very light beard, blondish and sparse, as compared with Michael’s thick black mat, which made Michael look like a hobo who had been riding the rods from Vancouver to Miami. Noah’s eyes, which, when he was awake, stared out with a dark, elderly tenacity, were closed now. Michael noticed for the first time that his friend had soft, upcurling eyelashes, full and blond at the tips, giving the upper part of his face a gentle appearance. Michael felt a wave of gratitude and pity for the sleeping boy, muffled now in his heavy, stained overcoat, his wool-gloved fingertips just touching the barrel of his rifle.… Looking at him now, this way, Michael realized at what cost this frail boy maintained his attitude of grave competence, made his intelligent, dangerous, soldierly decisions, fought tenaciously and cautiously, with a manual-like correctness, to remain alive in this country and this time when death came so casually to so many of the men around him. The blond lash-tips fluttered softly on the fist-broken face, and Michael thought of the times Noah’s wife must have stared, with sorrowful tenderness and amusement, at the incongruous, girlish ornament. How old was he? Twenty-two, twenty-four? Husband, father, military man … Two friends, and both lost … Needing friends as other men needed air and, out of that need, worrying desperately, in the middle of his own agony, how to keep the clumsy, aging soldier called Whitacre alive, who, left to his own blundering, ill-trained devices would most certainly have walked over a mine by now, or silhouetted himself against a ridge to a sniper, or out of laziness and inexperience, been mangled by a tank in a too-shallow hole … Steaks and red California wine across the gap spanned only by hallucinations, the first night home, on me … It was impossible, and it must happen. Michael closed his eyes, feeling an immense, sorrowing responsibility.
From the crap game the voices floated over. “I’ll fade a thousand francs. The point is nine …”
Michael opened his eyes and stood up quietly and, carrying his rifle, went over to watch.
Pfeiffer was shooting and he was doing well. He had a pile of paper crushed in his hand. The Services of Supply Lieutenant wasn’t playing, but the two Sergeants were. The Lieutenant was wearing a beautiful officer’s coat, brindle-colored and full. The last time he had been in New York, Michael had seen such a coat in the window of Abercrombie and Fitch. All three men were wearing parachute boots, although it was plain that they had never jumped from anything higher than a barstool. They were all large, tall men, clean shaven, well dressed, and fresh looking, and the bearded infantrymen with whom they were playing looked like neglected and rickety specimens of an inferior race.
The visitors talked loudly and confidently, and moved with energy, in contrast to the weary, mumbling, laconic behavior of the men who had dropped out of the line to have their first warm meal in three days. If you were going to pick soldiers for a crack regiment, a regiment
to seize towns and hold bridgeheads and engage armor, you certainly would not hesitate to choose these three handsome, lively fellows, Michael thought. The Army, of course, had worked things out somewhat differently. These bluff-voiced, well-muscled men worked in a snug office fifty miles back, typing out forms, and shoveling coal into the rosy iron stove in the middle of the room to keep out the wintry chill. Michael remembered the little speech Sergeant Houlihan, of the second platoon, always made when he greeted the replacements …“Ah,” Houlihan would say, “why is it the infantry always gets the 4F’s? Why is it the Quartermasters always get the weight-lifters, the shot-putters, and the All-American fullbacks? Tell me, Boys, is there anybody here who weighs more than a hundred and thirty pounds?” It was a fantasy of course, and Houlihan made the speech shrewdly, because he knew it made the replacements laugh and like him, but there was a foolish element of fact in it, too.
As he was watching, Michael saw the Lieutenant take a bottle out of his pocket and drink from it. Pfeiffer watched the Lieutenant narrowly, rolling the dice slowly in his mud-caked hand. “Lieutenant,” he said, “what do I see in your pocket?”
The Lieutenant laughed. “Cognac,” he said. “That’s brandy.”
“I know it’s brandy,” Pfeiffer said. “How much do you want for it?”
The Lieutenant looked at the notes in Pfeiffer’s hand. “How much you got there?”
Pfeiffer counted. “2000 francs,” he said. “Forty bucks. I sure would like a nice bottle of cognac to warm up my old bones.”
“4000 francs,” the Lieutenant said calmly. “You can have the bottle for 4000.”
Pfeiffer looked narrowly at the Services of Supply Lieutenant. He spat slowly. Then he talked to the dice. “Dice,” he said, “Papa needs a drink. Papa needs a drink very bad.”
He put his 2000 francs down. The two Sergeants with the bright stars in the circles on their shoulders faded him.
“Dice,” Pfeiffer said, “it’s a cold day and Papa’s thirsty.” He rolled the dice gently, relinquishing them like flower petals. “Read them,” he said, without smiling. “Seven.” He spat again. “Pick up the money, Lieutenant, I’ll take the bottle.” He put out his hand.
“Delighted,” the Lieutenant said. He gave Pfeiffer the bottle and scooped up the money. “I’m glad we came.”
Pfeiffer took a long drink out of the bottle. All the men watched him silently, half-pleased, half-annoyed at his extravagance. Pfeiffer corked the bottle carefully and put it in his overcoat pocket. “There’s going to be an attack tonight,” he said pugnaciously. “What the hell good would it do me to cross that goddamn river with 4000 francs in my pocket? If the Krauts knock me off tonight, they are going to knock off a GI with his belly full of good liquor.” Self-righteously, slinging his rifle, he walked away.
“Service of Supply,” said one of the infantrymen who had been watching the game. “Now I know why they call it that.”
The Lieutenant laughed easily. He was a man beyond the reach of criticism. Michael had forgotten that people laughed like that any more, good-humoredly, without much cause, from a full reservoir of good spirits. He guessed that you could only find people who laughed like that fifty miles back of the lines. None of the men joined in the Lieutenant’s laughter.
“I’ll tell you why we’re here, Boys,” the Lieutenant said.
“Let me guess,” said Crane, who was in Michael’s platoon. “You’re from Information and Education and you brought up a questionnaire. Are we happy in the Service? Do we like our work? Have we had clap more than three times in the last year?”
The Lieutenant laughed again. He is a great little laugher, that Lieutenant, Michael thought, staring at him somberly.
“No,” said the Lieutenant, “we’re here on business. We heard we could pick up some pretty good souvenirs in this neck of the woods. I get into Paris twice a month, and there’s a good market for Luegers and cameras and binoculars, stuff like that. We’re prepared to pay a fair price. How about it? You fellows got anything you want to sell?”
The men around the Lieutenant looked at one another silently. “I got a nice Garand rifle,” Crane said, “I’d be willing to part with for 5000 francs. Or, how about a nice combat jacket,” Crane went on innocently, “a little worn, but with sentimental value?”
The Lieutenant chuckled. He was obviously having a good time on his day off up at the front. He would write about it to his girl back in Wisconsin, Michael was sure, the comedians of the infantry, rough boys, but comic. “O.K.,” he said, “I’ll look around for myself. I hear there was some action here last week, there should be plenty of stuff lying around.”
The infantrymen stared coldly at one another. “Plenty,” said Crane gently. “Jeep loads. You’ll be the richest man in Paris.”
“Which way is the front?” the Lieutenant asked briskly. “We’ll take a peek.”
There was the cold, slightly bubbling silence again. “The front,” Crane said innocently, “you want to peek at the front?”
“Yes, Soldier.” The Lieutenant was not very good-natured now.
“That way, Lieutenant,” Crane pointed. “Isn’t it that way, boys?”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the boys said.
“You can’t miss it,” said Crane.
The Lieutenant had caught on by now. He turned to Michael, who had not said anything, “You,” the Lieutenant said, “can you tell us how to get there?”
“Well …” Michael began.
“You just go up this road, Lieutenant,” Crane broke in. “A mile and a half or so. You will find yourself climbing a little, in some woods. You get to the top of the ridge, and you will look down and see a river. That’s the front, Lieutenant.”
“Is he telling the truth?” the Lieutenant asked, accusingly.
“Yes, Sir,” Michael said.
“Good!” The Lieutenant turned to one of his Sergeants. “Louis,” he said, “we’ll leave the jeep here. We’ll walk. Immobilize it.”
“Yes, Sir,” Louis said. He went over to the jeep, lifted the hood, took the rotor out of the distributor and tore out some wires. The Lieutenant walked over to the jeep and took out an empty musette bag from it and slung it over his shoulder.
“Mike.” It was Noah’s voice. He was waving to Michael. “Come on, we have to get back …”
Michael nodded. He nearly went over and told the Lieutenant to get away from there, to go back to his nice snug office and warm stove, but he decided against it. He walked slowly over and caught up with Noah, who was trudging in the mud on the side of the road toward the Company line a mile and a half away.
Michael’s platoon was planted just under the saddle of the ridge which looked down on the river. The ridge was thick with underbrush, bushes, saplings, that even now, with all the leaves off, gave good cover, so that you could move around quite freely. From the top of the ridge you could look down the soggy, brush-dotted slope and across the narrow field at the bottom, to the river, and the matching ridge on the other side, behind which lay the Germans. There was a hush over the wintry landscape. The river ran thick and black between icy banks. Here and there a tree trunk lay rotting in the water, which curved around it in oil-like eddies. There was a hush over the drab patches of snow and the silent, facing slopes. At night there were sometimes little spurts of vicious firing, but during the day it was too exposed for patrols, and a kind of sullen truce prevailed. The lines, as far as anybody knew, lay about 1200 yards apart, and were so marked back on the map in that distant, fabulous, safe place, Division.
Michael’s platoon had been there two weeks, and aside from the occasional fire at night (and the last burst had been three nights ago) there was no real evidence that the enemy was there at all. For all Michael knew, the Germans might have packed up and gone home.
But Houlihan didn’t think so. Houlihan had a nose for Germans. Some men could sniff out authentic masterpieces of the Dutch school of painting, some men could taste a wine and tell you that it came from an obscur
e vineyard outside Dijon, vintage 1937, but Houlihan’s specialty was Germans. Houlihan had a narrow, intelligent, high-browed Irish scholar’s face, the kind you thought of when you imagined Joyce’s roommates at Dublin University, and he kept looking out through the brush on top of the ridge, and saying, doubtfully and wearily, “There’s a nest there, some place. They’ve got a machine gun set up there, and they’re just laying on it, waiting for us.”
Until now it hadn’t made much difference. The platoon hadn’t been going any place, the river presented too large an obstacle for patrols, and the machine gun, if it was there, couldn’t reach them behind the safety of the ridge. If the Germans had mortars back in the woods, they were conserving them. But at dusk, the word was, a company of Engineers was to come up and try to throw a pontoon bridge across the fifty-yard river, and Michael’s Company was to cross the bridge, and make contact with whatever Germans were holding the opposing ridge. After that, the next morning, a fresh company was to go through them and keep moving … It undoubtedly looked like a fine scheme back at Division. But it didn’t look good to Houlihan, peering out through his glasses at the icy black river and the silent, brush-covered, snow-patched slope before him.