An Acceptable Warrior

by Earle Looker

  The thought then failed as if a signal wire had been out in the midst of a conversation. David found the palms of his hands were wet. He had not seen the significance before of that instant he had so aptly, so strangely though it was realistic enough, called “graciously given.” He was aware of no change in his identity but, whatever had happened, he felt his desire to once again meet this girl, Anne Janney, face to face. It was no longer merely from duty as Alan’s comrade but that it had become personal enough for him to think, ‘I’ll see her in Paris – soon!’ as if he looked forward long, anxiously and eagerly.

  “Branleur! I tell you to mount!” Gaspard was saying. He was fumbling with his bag, fussing to get it slung so it would not swing down to his side and interfere with steering.

  “Give me that musette,” David said.

  Gaspard grinned, took it off, handed it to David who slipped the strap across his right shoulder to balance the weight of his own musette upon the other side.

  “Mount!”

  They were off at a despatcher’s riding pace, bumping and swinging from side to side as Gaspard dodged the holes and hummocks made by heavy artillery traffic, sometimes churning through brown mud deep enough to throw a bow wave from the sidecar. David made no attempt to talk. He was consumed now with worry he had left his command to Donovan. The men would get justice as set forth in orders and regulations, a justice too severe at any time and particularly now. Now or never was the time to let Gaspard go on alone. But, David reflected, what if he returned now?

  Gaspard was concentrating upon steering. Presently, he swung the handlebars to the right, turning into a side road curving gently down through a dense part of the forest David had never seen.

  ‘That is the Forest of Argonne,’ David’s mind said unaccountably, ‘that long strip of rocky mountain and wild wood; forty miles long with but seven, or say even three, acceptable passes through it.’

  Where, he wondered, in the name of sanity, had he heard these phrases? Or had he read them, for even in his mind he had seen the Capitalization of Words? He had never heard of the Argonne until he had been ordered into its depths.

  ‘Of course you have,’ another part of his mind protested. ‘That’s Tom’s description in his ‘French Revolution’.

  ‘Never read it,’ his first part denied. ‘Always meant to. Thomas Carlyle; I wouldn’t call him Tom, not naturally.

  ‘Called him Tom, affectionately to yourself, for years. You know much of him by heart. That passage began: Voila! That is the Forest of Argonne. It goes on, how in September seventeen ninety-two General Doumouriez held his council of war here. Thus, he spreads out the map of this forlorn war district; Prussians here, Austrians there; triumphant both, with broad highway, and little hindrance all the way to Paris: “we shattered, helpless, here and here; what to advise?”

  ‘Campaign of seventeen ninety-two! This is nineteen eighteen!

  ‘Same forest. Same passes. Same strategy. Men firing at each other just the same. Men dying in the same woods. Same Prussians. Same Austrians with their same heavy artillery, their specialty even then. And Johann back there ten or twelve kilometers investigating the same cannon-fever.

  ‘Cannon-fever? Johann who?

  ‘Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

  ‘Not possible – the World Poet?

  ‘World Poet!’ Proves you remember Tom’s very words. You do remember what Tom said about him, “He is Herzog Weimar’s Minister … to do insignificant military service here, very unrecognizable to nearly all! He stands … on the height near Sainte-Menehould making an experiment on the ‘canon-fever’, having ridden thither against persuasion, into the dance and the firing of the cannon balls, with a scientific desire to understand … ‘The sound of them,’ says he, ‘is curious enough; as if it were compounded of the humming of tops, the gurgling of water and the whistling of birds. By degrees you get a very uncommon sensation … as if you were in some place extremely hot, and at the same time were completely penetrated by the heat of it; so that you feel as if you and this element you are in were completely on par. The eyesight loses nothing of its strength of distinctness, and yet it is as if all things had got a kind of brown-red color, which makes the situation and the objects still more impressive.” This is the cannon-fever as a World Poet felt it. 2

  ‘That’s it – exactly! Amazing … from Goethe, never under any real fire, a barrage, the arch of screaming steel over our heads … Cannon-fever! Did he say anything about the effect of it? What have the barrages done to us?’

  As in another dimension, David was aware of Gaspard again, slowing the cycle and regarding him with anxiety. “You have been hurt?” Gaspard asked.

  “No …”

  “You are as pale as death! Pain, mon vieux?”

  “No …”

  “Then what?”

  “Nothing …”

  “Zut alors! There is something!”

  “Wires crossed, perhaps – in my head.”

  “Tell me – how?”

  “Well, Gaspard. Remembering things I don’t see how I could have known.”

  Gaspard swung the cycle abruptly off the road, pivoted about behind the cover of a moldy mound from which saplings grew and halted. He lighted an American Camel with meticulous care, regarding David through the smoke. “You must tell me what you remember,” he said.

  “Makes no difference.”

  “Does it not?”

  “No.”

  “It does. We are going on an expedition in the nature of a raid, mon vieux. I will not have that raid fall apart because of some foolishness in your mind. You have perhaps seen some esprit, ame, ombre, revenant, fantome?” Gaspard asked as if it were a question entirely usual.

  “No,” David answered close to laughter, yet hearing an inflection of apprehension in his voice.

  “Tiens, tiens. Does not a soldier of the line know anything is possible? Well?”

  “It was almost a quotation,” David said, “about the forest here, from a book – I’m sure I’ve never read.” Such an admission, he realized, attracted a suspicion of madness to himself.

  “T’es débile?” Gaspard said suddenly. “If you did not read it, who did?”

  David was almost ready to admit it might have been Alan but thought better of it and remained silent.

  A light came into Gaspard’s eyes. “There was one American in your command,” he said, “who reads books, was there not?” He looked uneasy, said to the woods more than to David, “Is there nothing better than our ancient reasoning: a sleeping body awakes, that seems to show that a dead body will also awake? Tiens! You must forget about your friend, mon vieux. He is entirely and utterly dead. As dead as that Oberst, hein? It is only because you so wish he were alive that you have persuaded yourself he must be somewhere – in the air about us.” He halted, turning his cigarette slowly about in his stained fingers. He was also swaying his own imagination: not for a long time had he felt such a touch of the mysterious, if not the supernatural. It was like the gentle, unseen brushing of the wings of death, experienced when a bullet embedded in the mud at the exact spot where one’s head had rested an instant before. He mopped his face. “Perhaps you heard a voice,” he said, “though it did not actually speak? Yet are not such miracles explained by the science of the nervous system?”

  “Nuts!” David said.

  “Tiens! Tiens! There is an American phrase: “We are a couple o’ nuts, hein?” His voice became sharply matter-of-fact: “Therefore the best treatment is to consider, again, the immediate.” He gestured toward a thicket of saplings: “For the moment this concealment is perfect. We will now explain for the situation to ourselves and outline the first phase of our intended action.”

  He tossed his helmet into David’s lap and ran his fingers through his thick mane of hair. He pulled a map from his pocket, traced with his stubby forefinger the route they had followe
d.

  “We are here,” he said, “and there,” his finger moving, “at a considerable distance, are the railway lines serving our troops – the French. No Americans, what a relief. The road from this point, ici, of the Y is good; there are no troops moving along it. From the eleventh hour, there have been no troops moving at all, only the wounded to the rear and the food to the front. Now here: the French Army Railway. Bon! Since little is moving we will, ourselves, be able to move unusually fast, hein? Distances are altered for us today. Without exhausting our petrol, maybe we go as far as Vouziers?”

  “Les Islettes is nearer. Isn’t that the main Verdun – Chalons – Paris line?”

  “Abruti! What stupidity! We would be running right back into the arms of a guard ready to arrest us. That is to say, of course, if our orders are revoked. Attends! At Vouziers there we find a railway Chef de Bureau, a staff, a railway guard or two. So, with rapidity, we proceed to Vouziers. Now! It is the manner of our approach to this chef that is of the utmost importance. Together we enter the bureau, but you the first, I opening the door for you …”

  “As though I outranked you? Gaspard, you’re asking me to pretend with those eagles?”

  “Now you understand.”

  “These leaves stay on my shoulders. I’ll not use the eagles for …”

  “So, still you do not understand! Never mind. Forget that. Listen to me. I open the door for you. You walk directly in. I am but a step behind. To the officer, the chef, I say, ‘I am acting as interpreter for this American Commandant. He requires transportation to Paris by the most direct route: Vouziers – Rethel – Reims – Château Thierry – Meaux.’”

  “Crazy as a loon!”

  “Comment? Moi? Non! Neither crazy as crazy nor mad as mad. For then what happens? This officer looks at us just as you look now at me – with stupidity. ‘Ah!’ he says to himself, ‘here are two idiots out of the trenches! Since both are mad, I will speak to them but very diplomatically …’”

  David interrupted: “He says, ‘Arrest ‘em!’”

  “Do not argue. We have not the time. No matter what he says to himself. In that instant of his surprise I say, ‘Monsieur, you have heard correctly. May I ask the American Commandant to exhibit to you something he has in his pocket?’ He says ‘Oui, certainement.’ He can say no less, whatever he thinks. Then, mon ami, in one little instant you do all that I ask you to do. An action so simple. Yet so effective. You do not commit yourself at all. You do not speak. Merely you take out one of those Silver Eagles. Give me one. I show you. Give me one I say! … The Eagle must lie flat on his back in the palm of your hand – thus; you show him but momentarily so that the thing is seen to be in the shape of an eagle – and little else. Disclose it to him as though it were – obscene. You understand? Now, immediately. . .”

  Gaspard broke off at David’s expression, threw away his unfinished cigarette, cried, “Listen to the end! At that moment, you show him the Eagle, I say, ‘Ah! The Silver Eagle!’ I salute. Then, slowly, your fingers close about the Eagle, to hide him. You return him to your pocket. Do not forget to button the flap of your pocket with care. That is all. The rest will follow. All you do after that is to smile and perhaps to say, ‘Merci, Monsieur, merci infiniment!’ If the action does not go as I intend, then … but it will be in my hands. If that chef asks questions, I contrive to answer him. Do not attempt it yourself. You see?”

  “Wow, Gaspard, that’s really fucked up.”

  “Ta gueule! Imbécile! Va te faire foutre. J’en ai plus rien à foutre! I could care no less about what you maybe think is ‘fucked up’ about this plan!”

  Suddenly, Gaspard kicked down the starter-pedal; the motor roared. He bent his head down to David’s. “Talk,” he shouted, “wastes time when a plan is made. Every minute counts with us now. You know that. You know exactly what you are to do. Hold fast!”

  As they lurched back into the road David saw Gaspard’s lips moving in his bushy beard, knew he was cursing les Americains, the cycle, the road, the mud, the hill and the sharp turn rushing up to meet them – “Fais chier! – baise moi mor! – mange ma bite! – c’est des conneries! – oh, merde! …”. David needed both hands and all his strength just to hold himself in the sidecar; he could hardly argue.

  But Gaspard raised his voice over the explosions of the motor: “Have I not sufficiently impressed upon you the pride which this Chef must see in you? Do not forget we Frenchmen show our pride outside, in our manner. Now to show this French officer pride in your position you must be what you call – arrogant. You must swagger. Walk as if you have just been promoted to lieutenant-colonel, and your commanding general has given you a cigar.”

  David merely held tight and listened.

  “Keep this in your mind, repeat it to yourself, ‘I am important! I am of importance!’ Look upon me as if you were an English officer with bemused contempt for the foreigner. A good phrase to think would be: ‘Frenchman –eater of slugs – frog!’ Merely because of my rank you restrain yourself, saying to yourself, ‘He is a colonel in the Army of Frogs, therefore for a Frog, what a Frog!’” He gave David a quick glance as he swerved through a puddle and shouted, “Enfin! That is the expression – bemused tolerance!”

  2

  At Vouziers, even a crash against the temporary military buildings set at the edge of the railyards would have been a relief to David. The speed, so low to the ground, seemed frenzied. Without regard for an uneven stretch of cobble at the entrance to the yards, Gaspard twisted the gas control at his handlebar to shoot the cycle forward like a bullet the moment he glimpsed his target. At the last instant, when David thought a crash certain, Gaspard executed a turn that brought the wheel of the sidecar off the ground as if the machine were a horse pulled up on its haunches. “You,” Gaspard said to it, “did not need the spur.”

  Gaspard looked about him. “Vouziers!” he said. “Just a month ago, lacking a day, General Gouroud, lacking an arm, captured it. What was it they used to say of this place, in the ancient diction? ‘Les friandes d’Vouzy’, the epicures of Vouziers?”

  As Gaspard so ceremoniously opened the door of the bureau for David it was evident the whole staff had heard and seen the last burst of speed.

  The Chef de Bureau was standing to receive them, a little man with legs apart in order to snap them together for a decorated Colonel of the Line. His thin ferret face was dwarfed by the thickness and length of his extraordinary black moustache.

  Gaspard spoke exactly as he had planned.

  Following his instructions, for there seemed nothing else to do, David exposed the eagle to the gaze of the Chef, so carefully, so obscenely.

  “Ah! Monsieur, the Eagle! The Silver Eagle!” Gaspard cried in a voice of awe.

  The effect, upon all, was electrical.

  The Chef drew in his breath so sharply it seemed to whistle through his moustache. He stiffened to the most rigid attention. His outspread fingers, in the salute always strange to David, trembled at the side of his kepi. “Monsieur!” he cried hoarsely to David. “Monsieur l’Aigle! At your service! This bureau is yours to command. Section Twenty-Seven of the Railways will show you how it acts. We waste no time with ceremonies in times such as these.”

  The staff seemed to be waiting for the bursting of a shell, David thought. What followed was more like the opening of a canister of gas. Orders flowed from the Chef as if from a pent-up reservoir of experience. Evidently, one by one, he was assigning officers and men to duties, for one after the other saluted and vanished through the back door. A telegrapher bent to his key. A clerk clutched the blue form upon which he began to write with the swirling pen-strokes of French officialdom. A non-commissioned officer spun the crank of a telephone and spoke into it in that flat tone, the mark of Gallic excitement under control.

  Gaspard, with a slow, almost dramatic motion of calm assurance, tapped the end of the Camel against his broad thumbnail, but
he looked out the window, away from David.

  Men in the yards had sprung into activity. Close under the window a platoon of labor troops was forming, apparently being cursed into alertness. Gaspard permitted himself the lazy smile of an artist who sees his own creation taking form under his eyes.

  But now David was having difficulty concealing his amazement. Gaspard moved closer. “Is it necessary,” he whispered in English, “for you to assume an expression of imbecility, which would do credit to the best of our comedians, yes? Even to Max Linder of the cinema!”

  He raised his voice and spoke in French for the ears of the Chef: “Of course this is the usual thing for you, mon commandant.” (‘Look bored as if you had that said to you many times!’) “What a life you must lead! I could not imagine anything more interesting, nor, at times, more dangerous. Think of the men you must meet!” (‘Look as though the names I am about to mention are as commonplace to you as the street sweepers of Paris.’) “Monsieur le Marechal Foch! Le president Clemenceau! Le general Pershing! Hah! The immortals! Think of the places you go … New York, London, Rome … Monsieur l’Aigle, such duty is not given without reason. I should like to hear the story of that. Think of the secrets you could tell.” (‘Look wise, fou, look wise.’)

  “Messieurs,” the Chef said with deference, “will you be so pleased to step this way?”

  “Our orders?” Gaspard asked, reaching toward his breast pocket.

  The Chef waved the thought away. “I have orders enough, mes amis.” He opened the door at the back of the building.

  David missed a step, almost halted. A locomotive, tender, a first-class passenger coach and four boxcars comprised a train.

  “Those forty-and-eight,” the Chef said, gesturing to the boxcars, “are for weight and balance – to keep your train, in speed, upon the rails.”

  Drawn up beside the train, at attention, stood an engineer, foreman, conductor and four blue-helmeted infantrymen at present arms, bayonets gleaming.

  Gaspard half-wheeled, saluting them as well as David. David copied him. The detail broke ranks, took posts aboard the train. The conductor opened a center compartment door with a flourish. The Chef cried “En voiture!” and David found himself being shoved by a powerful thrust from behind. He almost fell through the closed glass door of a compartment within the coach. The outside door was slammed. A bar clicked. The conductor’s horn squawked. They were in motion. They thrust their heads out of corridor windows.