Lieutenant Colonel Smithers stretched and stacked the papers he had been signing. He looked around this comfortable room and wondered, briefly, what had happened to Mr. Haas, the notary, who once owned it. Probably came to a bad end, poor fellow, and it would be harder on a man who had such a good place to live. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers admired once more a fringed lamp shade, the figured rug on the floor, an oil painting of two cows and an oil painting of a sailing ship. This was what everyone wanted: a fine home of your own, settling down, knowing today what you would be doing tomorrow.
The letters to the families of the dead were written; the recommendations for citations and promotions were signed; the after action report was in; the poop about heroes, for use by Division P.R.O. who would try to peddle the stuff to home town papers, was collected and handed over. All the sweeping-up was finished. And the Battalion was fat again. The men were rested, fed, re-fitted; the new ones were getting some idea of the score; and in fact, he had a ready Battalion. This time now, with all pressures off, was pure gravy: too good to last for that reason. But for this little time, he could feel easy in his mind and stretch and be grateful.
“Women are funny,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said.
“Sure are,” Lieutenant Gaylord agreed. He was reading the sports’ page of the Stars and Stripes. He did not mind talking as long as he was doing something else too. What he did not like was just to talk.
“They change around.”
“Sure do.” Now who would have believed that Northwestern could lick Purdue? He’d have taken a bet.
“One time they’re one way. Then you figure it out: okay, the girl is a simple straightforward bitch. Then they’re another way. You say to yourself, I got this babe all wrong, she’s really a good kid. Then they’re something in between. Nothing you can put your finger on.”
“Yep,” said Lieutenant Gaylord.
“How’s Lucille?”
“Oh Lucille. You know something, Johnny? They ought to take action against those WACs. I’ve heard more damn gossip about this headquarters. What her Colonel said to Mabel’s Colonel. What Mabel’s Colonel said to Gladys’ Colonel. If I was a spy, I’d know every last thing that goes on in this place.”
“There’s too many women hanging around this war.”
“You ought to hear those girls talk, Johnny. They talk about operations like it was something that happened at a ladies’ bridge club.”
“Bill, I got a hunch we’ll be moving soon.”
“I wish you’d get a hunch we were going to Cannes.”
“Cannes, France?”
“That’s the one.”
“Why not New York, New York while you’re about it?”
Lieutenant Gaylord picked up “The Poisoned Orchid Case.”
“Do you know anything, Johnny?”
“No.”
“Just got a hunch?”
“Yeh.”
“I wish this war would get over. I need to make some money. Seems my wife’s starving to death.”
“The minute you turn your back, they make a balls of everything. My old man’s fixing to sell our chicken farm.”
“I saw Paul Willcox today. He seems kind of upset.”
“I know. I’d hate to see him lose his company.”
“Johnny, I’d like to use bazookas on combat patrols.”
“Bulky.”
“I think they’d be worth it. And there ought to be more B.A.R.’s; the proportion’s wrong. You get in a little fight, coming back, and you’d have a big advantage.”
“Could be.”
“Sergeant Black picked me a new man from the replacements, name of Wedemeyer. He talks kraut better than they do. I’ve got ideas for that boy.”
“Pretty good job Luke Hermann’s done scrounging us warm clothing, isn’t it, Bill? He’s one of the best S-4’s in the business.”
“He’s a good man. You know that kid in F Company, Lieutenant Heller?”
“What about him?”
“Nothing. But he’s smart. He’s somebody to keep your eye on. Do you think we’ll be going up to the Roer, Johnny?”
“Maybe. That’s mean country. I wish we could have got boats for the men to practice on.”
“Fixing those mock-ups for them helped some.”
They were back in their work, their only work, that wiped out and made unreal the past, that limited all plans and endangered hope and changed the present from life into waiting; the final urgent work of managing nine hundred men whose function was to avoid death or damage as much as possible, while inflicting both on others.
Jacob Levy worried in silence until he could no longer bear this wordless discussion with himself. He had to talk to someone. The conversation began in the middle, assuming that whatever needed to be taken on faith and forgiven between him and Kathe was already accepted and even forgotten. You could not talk to a person unless you were friends. Nothing interrupted Jacob Levy’s monologue with Kathe, and in the simplicity and beauty of dreams she now understood English as well as he did. Driving on the roads that were covered with a thin mustard slush, waiting for the Colonel in the hall of their Headquarters, or in the message center at Regiment, cleaning his jeep, oiling his gun, sweeping his room, eating, lying in bed at night, Jacob Levy spoke to Kathe. He had never done so much talking in his life. It amazed him that he had all this to say.
I love my old man and my mother, Jacob Levy explained to Kathe, they’ve always been wonderful to me. They gave me everything they could. We never wanted for anything at home. My old man would of sent me to college only the war came. He said I could go anywhere I liked; he said if I wanted to go to one of the big colleges in the East, he had plenty of money saved up. I never did care about college much; I’m not too smart with books. It was hard work in highschool getting good enough grades so I could play football. Then the highschool was in our neighborhood and I had a lot of friends. Fellows, you know; we had our own crowd since I was a kid. We’d fool around, all the stuff you do, after school and Saturdays and Sundays. A bunch of us dated girls together; I never went with one special girl like some of them. I liked the girls allright but I couldn’t see getting stuck with any one. I didn’t have to worry about parties and going out and who’d be my friends and everything; you live in a place a long time and you don’t have to think about those things. But I’d go away to one of these big eastern colleges and the first thing there’d be fraternities. A fraternity is a sort of club, Kathe, which the boys run themselves and they ask new boys in every year. It’s just a social club where the fellows have fun together and eat and maybe live in the same house and give dances. You don’t have to belong to a fraternity to go to college, you understand, but that’s where they have their fun and get to know each other. So you wouldn’t be all alone in one of those big schools, with nobody to talk to at meals and things. Well, you see, I wouldn’t get asked for one of those fraternities from what I hear because of being a Jew and it isn’t that I mind so much only you get the idea you’re different from other people. See what I mean, Kathe, it’s as if you were born in Luxembourg and you didn’t know any other place but they told you you were French maybe or Italian. You’d feel funny and out of things and as if people were watching for you to make a wrong move.
I never did talk to my old man about this, because I figure he’s the same as I am. It don’t make no difference to him being a Jew; there’s nothing to do about it and there’s no sense getting sore if people are snotty, and I guess my old man said to himself when he was a kid, like I did, the best thing is to get along and not have any trouble.…
“Here’s your plate, Jake,” Royal Lommax said.
Jacob Levy was bewildered to find that he was in the kitchen at the Weilerburg CP. In his mind, he had been sitting in Kathe’s restaurant, talking to her alone, with the black-out curtains pulled and the other customers gone for the night.
“Thanks, Roy.”
They could hear the staff eating in the dining room; the officers were t
alking and laughing as if this was a party or they’d just met each other at a reunion or something. This is as classy as a hotel, Royal Lommax thought. A lady in the village gave him a bunch of flowers for the Colonel and though it seemed pretty funny giving flowers to a man, he stuck them in a jar and put them on the dining room table and suddenly he felt very pleased. It was high living, with flowers on the table. And even in the kitchen the men got washed before they came in and didn’t slop around the way they usually did, and he had it all clean and good in here. Maybe I’ll run a nice classy restaurant when I get home, Royal Lommax thought.
Jacob Levy poured catsup over the stew and the floury hunks of potato, spread marmalade on a slab of army white bread, and ate. He might have been eating straw.
Bert Hammer and Royal Lommax were now talking about how much money movie stars earned. Jacob Levy, who had only paused to chew and swallow, returned to Kathe.
“Damn cold,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said, and swung into the jeep as on to a saddle. “Go to Regiment, Levy.”
“Yes sir.”
They sat, side by side, hunched into their coats, their faces scraped by the painful wind, and Lieutenant Colonel Smithers wondered what dirty job his Battalion would have to do next, and Jacob Levy said to Kathe:
I wish you could see my father, Kathe, he’s really a handsome man. He’s about forty-four and he’s got a little grey hair at the sides but the rest of his hair is black with a nice wave in it. He’s shorter than I am but he’s got a fine build and he’s a sharp dresser but not the flashy kind. He wears mostly dark blue suits and ties with a little stripe in them and I swear he looks like a million dollars. He’s smart too. I guess I must of taken after my mother more, because Momma’s the sweetest woman you ever saw and as pretty as a girl but she’s not smart like my old man.
My old man could of built up his business and bought some other drug stores and maybe had a chain of stores in the west end. But he didn’t want to. He told me once our store was a good family property, and it didn’t kill a man to run it, and he knew he could always make a steady eight or nine grand a year, and we didn’t need more for the three of us. He said he could take two weeks off in the summer, and we own our house and we’ve got the car, and Momma can buy all the little things she wants, and the best thing is to have a good plain life with no worries.
They got their own friends in the neighborhood, the Grulichs and the Johnsons and Mr. and Mrs. Kraus and the Weinbergs and the Isaacs. They play cards with them or go to a show or have a little supper party sometimes. My old man don’t belong to organizations or clubs and he don’t see any other Jews but the Weinbergs and the Isaacs because he says if you get in with a lot of Jews the first thing you know everybody’s got trouble, and their families have trouble all over the world, and you can’t help anyway and there you are, choked up with problems. He thinks if Jews would stay quiet and not get together and make a squawk and mind their own business and pay their taxes, pretty soon people would stop picking on them. Like he says, he’s had his store for twenty-four years and no arguments with anybody.
Anyhow I think he and Momma are the happiest when they’re together. They been married twenty-three years, Kathe, that’s a lot of time. And they’re just as crazy about each other as they ever were. He takes Momma out driving in our car, we got a maroon Pontiac four door sedan, a 1940 model, and they look like a young couple that’s just met and making a big play for each other. I guess they feel comfortable together, Kathe; everybody else, even friends, is always a stranger. You really only got your wife and your kids that you can count on.…
“Levy! What’s the matter with you, man? You’ve been over this way fifty times,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said.
Jacob Levy looked at a perfectly strange road. He had been on another road, in another country, with Kathe, whose face was flushed by the wind, listening. My God, Jacob Levy thought, I’m sure getting things jammed-up here. He’d have to cut Kathe out, before he got in a worse fix. Where was he now, anyhow? Where was the brown barn that marked the turn to Regiment? He’d never seen that church steeple sticking up by the next hill; it might be Germany for all he knew. It wasn’t even safe to get lost in this two by four country, you’d run over the edge without knowing it. Where was that barn; it couldn’t walk off by itself.
“I must of missed the side road, sir.”
“Well, go back and make it snappy. I have to be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes sir.” Now that’s serious, Jacob Levy thought, I must be talking too much. He’d have to watch himself. Better think about something practical now, and keep his mind on his work. Besides Kathe, there was only one other subject which interested him.
“Sir,” Jacob Levy said, because he wanted to know and also to distract the Colonel’s attention from his mistake, “are we going anywheres soon?”
“What do you think?” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers did not mean to jump on Levy, but Levy was acting too dumb these days. He ought to know better than to ask questions like that; and miss the turn for the Regimental CP. Maybe Levy had bad news from home; men went haywire if their letters upset them. Why couldn’t those silly civilians at home keep their bellyacheing to themselves?
“I’m sorry I asked you, sir,” Jacob Levy mumbled.
“Forget it.”
Forget it, Jacob Levy thought, forget it. We’ve got days is all, nothing more than days. And then what’s to happen to Kathe and me?
It was a pleasure to be rid of the Colonel and to know that he had at least an hour, when no one would ask him anything or tell him anything. The afternoon was cold, with a pointed wind, and the sun looked like a lemon hanging in the pale sky. Still, if he went indoors to the kitchen or the message center, he would have to talk to the other fellows and keep a lookout for the Colonel to be ready when the Colonel wanted to leave. It was better to stay out here, where he could be alone with Kathe. Jacob Levy slumped down on the seat and pulled his helmet forward to shield his eyes, so that it would appear he was sleeping.
So anyhow, Kathe, as I was saying, I enlisted right after Pearl Harbor and that was that about college. Momma cried like she was going to die and my old man lectured her and said all the young men in America had to fight for their country and she shouldn’t cry as if her son was the only one going away. I wouldn’t tell anybody but you this, Kathe, but that first night after I enlisted I came home and when I went up to my room I cried too. I don’t know why either. I guess I was excited. I thought the Japs were going to land in California next week and I was scared for America and for everybody and I thought I had to hurry out there and fight so they wouldn’t get to St. Louis. I don’t know what I didn’t think. Then of course nothing happened and about six months later I began to kick myself for enlisting like a dumb cluck because anybody could see St. Louis wasn’t in danger of any kind, or America either for that matter. But once you get in, you’re in.
Then I was crazy to come overseas, which just goes to show how crazy a guy can be. I don’t know why either except that camp in Louisiana was so godawful and I was so sick of the army and I guess I thought it would be interesting to see foreign countries. That’s really funny.
You know, Kathe, I never could see what we’re in this war for. I understand Hitler’s got to be kicked out but I should think the people he was causing trouble to ought to kick him out. He couldn’t ever get to America; he couldn’t even get across that little English Channel. I know it was rough on everybody in Europe having the krauts in their countries; but they live here and if they don’t like these wars why don’t they move someplace where they don’t have wars or else cut out fighting among themselves all the time. Well, anyhow, I can’t figure that out but I certainly don’t see what Americans have to do with it. Naturally after you’ve seen some action, you hate the sons of bitches. Your friends get killed or guys you know and believe me I been hit twice and I hate those krauts like nothing on earth. That’s only natural but I still don’t see what we came here for in the fir
st place.
Of course I’ve heard what they been doing to Jews, putting them in ghettos and killing them and so maybe I ought to take more interest in this war than the other fellows. But Kathe, it don’t stand to reason that the American government and the whole army and navy and airforce would go to war with Hitler because of the Jews. I mean, take a nice fellow like my Colonel, and a fine soldier too, now that guy’s not going through the crap we have to go through because Hitler wants to rub out the Jews. I know that isn’t why we’re here. I’m sympathetic to these poor Jews over here and if I wasn’t American I’d probably be exterminated myself by now, but honestly Kathe, why didn’t the Jews get out of Europe a long time ago? What did they want to hang around here for, if there’s nothing but trouble and misery for them? My grandfather had the sense to move and he was a poor man.
You read a lot of stories about what the krauts do to people, not only Jews you understand, in the Stars and Stripes, and we even heard some lectures at camp in Louisiana, and there was stuff in the papers in St. Louis too. I don’t read the papers much but there were a lot of horrible stories. And I don’t doubt it’s probably true but two things I don’t see: what are Americans doing here, and why didn’t the Jews clear out of this stinking Europe long ago?
“You want some coffee, Levy?” Joe Henckel asked. He was cook at Third Battalion H.Q. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers had gone to pay a combined professional and social call on his friend, Lieutenant Colonel Gallagher. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers had said, “You better wait in the kitchen, Levy. It’s pretty wet out here.” So he had to thank the Colonel and go in whether he wanted to or not. This Joe Henckel seemed a nice fellow and the kitchen was empty because probably everybody else was sleeping now, or maybe on a pass to Luxembourg, or maybe they had something to do. But it looked to Jacob Levy as if most of the work was already done, and that was the worst sign of all.
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