by Leta Serafim
The Germans continued to shell the ledge.
Crying out, O’Malley curled up and covered his head with his hands. He was breaking apart, the pounding forcing his ribs loose, his skull from his spine. The sound was deafening, each blast penetrating deep within him.
Seeing they were in trouble, Fotis ran toward the LG42, a stick grenade in his hand. “Cover me!” he shouted.
O’Malley took a deep breath, raised his gun and fired off a round. “A knife in your eye, you bastards!”
Skittering down through the trees, Fotis hurled the grenade at the Germans. It exploded in a blast of fiery dirt, making a crater under them and taking them out. Within seconds, O’Malley was tearing down the cliff toward the LG42, intent on seizing the weapon.
The burning trucks had ignited the pine trees by the river and there were flames everywhere, sparks shooting high in the smoky gloom. The grenade had torn off the arm of one of the Germans and nearly decapitated the other. Blood darkened the sand beneath them and was slowly seeping into the river.
Grabbing the LG 42, O’Malley spun it around and fired at the soldiers in the river. His aim was off and the shell tore a great hole in the sand. He raised the gun higher and fired it again. This time the shot was true, blowing a column of water high in the air. The shrapnel from the blast caught two of the Germans, killing them instantly.
“Nein,” a man cried, raising his hands in the air. “Bitte nicht!”
Keeping his hands up, he stumbled out of the water. “Bitte nicht!” he cried again.
Hands in the air, the rest of the Germans quickly followed. The majority came from the river, eight or nine from behind the smoldering trucks. Like coal miners, they were covered with soot, their eyes red and inflamed. Eighty-one of them there were by O’Malley’s count, including four who were lying on the ground, badly wounded. The officer he’d seen earlier had survived the attack and now stepped forward. He gave his name, Wilhelm Reiss, and stated the group was part of the 177th Jäger Division.
The Greeks quickly lined the soldiers up at gunpoint and stripped them of their gear, piling their weapons up on the riverbank. They took their packs, everything they could pull off them. The officer watched them in a dispirited way. As before, his men ignored him.
O’Malley logged them in as best he could, interviewing each in turn and asking for his name, rank and serial number. It was a waste of time as he didn’t understand German, had neither a pencil nor a paper. Still he went on, asking them if they were married and how many children they had. All this in Greek. He’d never had men surrender to him before and wanted to do it properly, make the capture official. The questions about the Germans’ children and the rest, he’d added for the antartes’ benefit, hoping to make the captured soldiers seem more human and stave off a massacre.
It was one thing to kill in the heat of battle. Part of warring, it had to be done. Another thing entirely to shoot men who had their hands in the air, who were waving a white flag. It didn’t much matter to the dead how they died, he knew; still, it was a question of decency, fair play, and a sporting chance. Otherwise, it was all for naught, the soldiering, nothing but pure muck savagery.
They were young, the Germans, hadn’t seen much combat. Hitler had to be getting desperate, boys like these finding their way into the mountaineers, the almighty Jägers.
Fotis was kneeling alongside one of the trucks, counting the bodies.
“How many?” O’Malley asked.
Fotis kicked one of the dead Germans, cocked his gun, and shot him again. The bullet made a small black hole in the front of the man’s uniform, momentarily raised his body in a puff of air.
“Not enough,” he said.
* * *
Holding his machine gun on the prisoners, O’Malley stayed by the river. Although his eyes stung, he could see fine now. Whatever had happened to him up on the ledge had been minor, scrapes and cuts mostly.
He tried not to look at the Germans, to block out the animal sounds coming from the four wounded men by the water, the sad lot who’d been burned in the fire. He doubted they’d get medical attention in the camp, doubted they’d survive the night.
A corpse was spinning around in the river. The dead man had been badly burned, the side of his face nearly gone. O’Malley waded into the water, removed the man’s identification tag from around his neck and pocketed it. Another letter to write some day.
He drew back when Alexis showed up. The Greek had been against him since the day he arrived, calling him a “British whore” and inciting the others against him. He’d only stopped after O’Malley pulled a knife and threatened to disembowel him if he kept it up.
Alexis rarely addressed O’Malley now, and when he did, he patronized him, making fun of his red hair and freckles, calling him, vloyiokomenos behind his back. Pox.
For the most part, O’Malley was amused by the Greek’s antics. Alexis was noticeably younger than the rest of the men in the camp, barely had a beard. Still, he took care never to provoke him needlessly. From what he’d seen, it was soldiers like Alexis—the ones who had the most to prove—who were the most dangerous in wartime.
Stepping forward, Alexis ordered the captured Germans to turn their pockets inside out, then went through them, unbuttoning their tunics and inspecting them. When he finished with the living, he began to paw through the clothes of the dead.
O’Malley didn’t much care for what Alexis was doing, the way he was manhandling the dead soldiers, the blood on his hands.
“What’s he doing?” he asked Leonidas in a undertone.
“Searching for Iron Crosses, things he can sell.”
“Leave off,” O’Malley called loudly to Alexis, making a joke of it. “There’s not a medal to be had here. Bloody amateurs, the lot of them.”
Leonidas and Haralambos moved off to the side a moment later and began conferring in low voices. When they finished talking, Leonidas retrieved a length of rope and handed it to O’Malley, demonstrating how he wanted him to loop it around the Germans’ wrists, first one man, then the next, until they were all tied together in a long line.
After O’Malley finished stringing the Germans together, Leonidas marched them at gunpoint out of the gorge. O’Malley stayed well back. As he’d anticipated, the antartes left the dead to fester and the four wounded men lying where they’d fallen.
When they passed Mega Spileon, a handful of monks came out and watched them go by, holding their black hats with their hands against the wind.
Nodding respectfully, the majority of the antartes acknowledged the monks, a few even going to far as to cross themselves as they walked by the old monastery. Only Haralambos and Alexis turned away, pointedly ignoring the robed figures.
As if turning away would ever diminish the power of the church or make it disappear, O’Malley thought as he watched them. Good luck to those two if that’s what they were about. Church had its problems, but without it, there was nothing. Just pure muck savagery. They would find that out soon enough.
Reluctantly, he followed the antartes up the path. Leonidas was in the lead, moving at a furious pace.
Less than two feet wide in places, the path followed a natural break in the rock and wound steeply up the face of the cliff. Portions of it were clogged with gravel, and bound as they were, the prisoners were on their hands and knees, struggling not to fall.
Again, O’Malley held back, watching the long line of men crisscross the cliff. He could see the entire length of the gorge from where he stood, the burned trucks and dead bodies in the river. The trees were already thick with crows, black with them.
The birds reminded him of the legends Danae had told him about this place. How ‘styx’ meant ‘hate’ in ancient Greek and was a portal to hell. No one knew for sure if the gorge was the actual site of the Styx, but O’Malley, for one, was sure that it was. The smoldering trucks convinced him. Hell could only be that. It required nothing more.
When they reached the top of the cliff, Leonidas ordered the
Germans to kneel. As before, it was hard for them, and the Greeks were rough on them, hitting and kicking them. The Germans began to murmur, growing more and more agitated as they were forced to the ground.
Alexis drew a finger across his throat. “Sie sterben,” he shouted with a laugh.
“What’s that mean?” O’Malley asked.
“You die.” Alexis was pleased with himself, O’Malley saw, the position he found himself in.
“They’re POWs. You can’t be killing them. Geneva Convention’s very clear on that.”
“Fuck the Geneva Convention.”
Leonidas pulled O’Malley away. “Stay out of it. You don’t know him. He’ll kill them just to prove he can.”
Same as his ancestors had done the crippled babies, O’Malley thought. You wouldn’t have heard the babies, but the men—God Almighty, you’d hear them, all right. Sear your heart, that would. The pitiful cries of the men.
O’Malley knew if the situation had been reversed, von Le Suire would gladly have shot the prisoners, yelled ‘see you in hell’ as they died. But that was von Le Suire and von Le Suire was a Nazi.
“Your lot really going to kill ’em?”
Leonidas didn’t answer for few minutes. “I don’t know,” he said at last, his voice weary. “We haven’t decided.”
“You kill ’em, Germans will retaliate. They’ll destroy Kalavryta.”
Once more, Leonidas took his time. “I know.”
O’Malley continued to plead the Germans’ case, his fear for the village driving him. “Don’t do it, Leonidas. They’re soldiers same as us. POWs. Surrendered fair and square.”
“We can’t keep them here. There’s nothing to feed them.”
“Feed ’em grass.” O’Malley was shouting now.
Leonidas signaled for him to keep his voice down. “I don’t know if I can save them.” There was a pleading note in his voice, a cry almost. “Some of the men want revenge for that massacre near Corinth.”
O’Malley looked back at the seventy-seven trussed-up men, felt their fear coursing through him. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered.
* * *
“I’m taking the wounded Germans to Kalavryta,” O’Malley told Stefanos the next morning. “I’ll stop by your house on the way back. Bring you word of your family.”
The boy grabbed O’Malley and wouldn’t let him go.
“Meine edo.” he said in Greek. “As pethanoun oi Germanoi. As pethanoun oloi.” Stay here. Let the Germans die. Let them all die.
“It’d be best if you stayed in the barrel, Specky, same as before. Don’t get out until I get back and rap on the top, give you the all clear. We captured seventy-seven Germans yesterday, and they’re sitting outside the camp. You don’t want to run afoul of them.”
Without another word, the boy scampered back to the barrel, called out from inside that he’d wait there until O’Malley came back. O’Malley was sure the kid would keep his word. Wouldn’t stir from that place. No, not with Germans so close by.
Leonidas had given the order to save the wounded Germans, the four men in the gorge, saying the risk to Kalavryta was too great should they die. A group of farmers had been summoned to help with the transport and had brought canvas stretchers with them. The cloth was ripped and bloody, the wooden poles, worn with use. The farmers knew what they were doing and worked quickly, hoisting the poles onto their shoulders and carrying the Germans to Kalavryta, two men shouldering each of the stretchers. They were surprisingly gentle and spoke softly to the wounded men as they walked along, comforting them as best they could.
“Mi fovasai,” they kept saying. “Mi fovasai.” Don’t be afraid.
The Germans kept drifting in and out of consciousness, the awful pain of their burns reviving them as they knocked against the poles. O’Malley wished he had something to give them, a way to dampen down their suffering. They were about the same age he was. Too young to die.
The Greeks debated whether or not to bury the dead men in the gorge before moving out, but decided there wasn’t enough time. They had to get the wounded men to the hospital in Kalavryta before they died. “Later,” Leonidas said.
A young doctor met them at the entrance. He’d been trained in Athens, he told O’Malley, and been posted here at the start of the war. Dressed in a white coat and wearing wire-rimmed glasses, he seemed a careful man. Slowly peeling back their clothes, he examined the Germans and studied their wounds, then motioned to bring them inside. There was one ward in the hospital—a chilly room with two long rows of iron beds. It was largely deserted. Two of the beds were occupied by elderly women. The yellowish walls were pitted and stained, and the cement floor was cracked.
The place didn’t have much in the way of supplies, O’Malley saw. The cloth bandages laid out on a table looked to have been laundered repeatedly, and most of the pill bottles were empty. He doubted the doctor had anything for pain.
Tipping the stretcher, he helped roll the first German onto a bed. The man screamed, his seeping burns dirtying the white sheet beneath him.
The doctor quickly cut away the wounded man’s clothes and threw them to the floor.
O’Malley nodded to the prostrate man. “I’m a trained doctor myself, if you need help.”
“You have any experience with burns?”
“Some, in a military hospital in Egypt.”
“I’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll send for you.”
* * *
Self-conscious about his blood-stained clothes, the stench of battle still clinging to him, O’Malley knocked awkwardly on Danae’s door.
“You’ll be wanting word of your brother and I came to tell you the lad is fine,” he told her when she appeared. “Took to the military like a duck to water, he did. I see to him mostly. Leonidas, too, sometimes. One of the men, a school teacher named Haralambos, is teaching him to read in the afternoon. Grammata, grammata, and all that. He’s lacking for nothing, Stefanos. Having the time of his life.”
Danae smiled but said nothing. As usual, giving him no help.
“Your father about?” O’Malley asked.
“No,” Danae said. “He and my aunt went to Kalavryta to buy supplies.”
Taking his cap off, O’Malley stood there awkwardly. “We got into a firefight yesterday and I helped bring the wounded to the hospital. Told your brother I’d check on you. That’s the reason I’m here.”
She had just washed her hair and it hung loose on her shoulders and gave off a lemony scent. He had a trouble concentrating and had to look away.
Eyeing him, Danae shook her hair out a little to dry it, lifting it up and letting it fall. Flirting, she was. He was sure of it.
O’Malley took a deep breath. Might as well get down to it. “The men I was with already went back to the camp. I told them I’d be along presently, that I had to see my sweetheart.” He made a deep bow. “My filenada, Danae. The queen of my heart.”
“I’m not your filenada,” she said in that matter-of-fact way of hers. “I’m just a poor girl from Kalavryta.”
“To me you are, Danae. To me you are and always will be. I think about you all the time. Can’t live without you, seems. When all this is over, I plan to come back here. Hang my clothes on the line next to yours.”
O’Malley’s aunt had looked at his uncle in a funny way after he took up talking to himself, holding long, involved conversations with historic figures no one else could see—Jesus, for one—conversations that went round and round but never led anywhere, only to a bed in St. Patrick’s, the state lunatic asylum in Dublin. ‘Pickled his brains, he has,” his aunt had said of him. ‘Can’t be relied upon.’
It occurred to him that Danae was now looking at him in much the same way. Thinks I’m gone in the head, she does, same as my poor uncle.
Perhaps he’d been too hasty. Should have bided his time and led up to the thing.
Blushing furiously, he blundered on, “That’s how a man proposes where I come from. We’re a shy lot, the Irish, not good at sp
eaking what’s in our hearts, what goes on between a man and a woman.”
“And so you talk of laundry?”
“Aye. Seems that we do.”
Bending down, he gathered up a bit of clover, twisted it and wound it around her finger. “One day I’ll give you a gold one, Danae, with jewels encrusted upon it. Diamonds I’ll fetch from Africa. Pearls from beneath the sea.”
She played along, holding her hand up and pretending to admire the ring. She let him kiss her, too, even went so far as to put her arms around his neck and draw him to her, albeit cautiously. He could feel her heart beating through the cotton of her dress, racing it was. He was gentle with her, kissing her on the forehead and eyelids before finding her mouth again.
Like holding a wild bird in his hands, it was—a lark or a swallow. He didn’t want to crush it or cause it to fly away.
* * *
The men in the camp were exuberant that night. They urged the cook, Roumelis, to break out the raki to celebrate. “Seventy-seven Germans captured. Von Le Suire’s going to shit himself.”
“Shit you more likely,” O’Malley said under his breath. “Shit you and Kalavryta both.”
He walked over to the barrel and rapped on the top with his knuckles. “Specky? You in there?”
The child’s voice was muffled. “Angle?”
“None other. You can come out now.”
Stefanos crawled out on all fours, smelling nearly as rank as the barrel.
“I saw your sister. She sends you greetings.”
“Danae?”
“Aye, lad. Danae.”
She’d run back into the house not long after he’d kissed her and stood at the window, watching him through the glass. It occurred to him that she hadn’t said anything when he’d made his declaration, hadn’t indicated she felt the same way. It’ll come, the love, he told himself. A fine looking fellow such as himself. ’Course it would.
She’d kept the grass ring on her finger, he noticed. Waved hesitantly as he turned to go. Aye, it was on its way already, the love.
The boy told O’Malley that even though he’d been scared, he’d done what he was supposed to and hadn’t made a sound, not one. Nor had he ventured forth when he had to go to the toilet. Meaning O’Malley got to do laundry that night while the other men drank, the pants being the boy’s only pair. It was tedious work, boiling the water first and then the pants, scrubbing at the stains he’d rather not think about while the boy stood there trembling, wrapped in the flokati.