Kane & Abel (1979) (60 page)

As the captain was wheeled slowly away he opened his unbandaged eye, which focused on Abel. He tried to raise an arm. Abel could have leapt with joy at the sight of the open eye and the moving hand. He saluted, and prayed the man would live.

He limped out of the hospital, eager to return to the forest, but was stopped by the duty officer.

‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. There are over three hundred men who need feeding. Christ, man, where have you been?’

‘Doing something worthwhile for a change.’

Abel thought about the young captain as he slowly headed back to the field kitchen.

For both of them the war was over.

T
HE CAPTAIN
was taken into the tent and laid gently on an operating table.

William could see a nurse looking down at him, but was unable to hear what she was saying. He wasn’t sure if it was because his head was swathed in bandages, or because he’d lost his hearing. He shut his eye, and thought. He thought a lot about the past; he thought a little about the future; he thought quickly in case he died. If he lived, there would be plenty of time for thinking. His mind turned to Kate. The nurse saw a tear trickling out of the corner of his one eye.

Kate hadn’t understood his determination to enlist. He had accepted that she would never understand, and that he would not be able to justify his reasons to her, so he had stopped trying. The memory of her desperate face when they parted still haunted him. He had never really thought about death - no young man ever does - but now he wanted desperately to live and return to his family.

William had left Lester’s under the joint control of Ted Leach and Tony Simmons until he returned. Until he returned … He had given no instructions for them in case he did not return. Both of them had begged him not to go. Two others who didn’t understand. When he had finally signed up, he couldn’t face the children. Richard, aged nine, had held back the tears until his father told him that he could not come with him to fight the Germans. Virginia and Lucy, thank God, were too young to understand.

They sent William first to Officers’ Candidate School in Vermont. The last time he had visited Vermont was to go skiing with Matthew, slowly up the hills and quickly down; Matthew always in front of him both on the way up and on the way down. One thing was certain. Had Matthew lived, he would surely have signed up. The course lasted for three months, and made him fitter than he’d been since he left Harvard.

His first assignment was in a London full of Yanks, where he acted as a liaison officer between the Americans and the British. He was billeted at the Dorchester, which the British War Office had seconded for use by the American High Command. William read somewhere that Abel Rosnovski had offered the Baron in New York for the same purpose, and silently applauded his magnanimity. The blackouts, the doodlebugs and the air raid sirens all made him realize that he was involved in a war, but he felt strangely detached from what was going on only a hundred miles south-east of Hyde Park Corner. Throughout his life he had always taken the initiative; never been an onlooker. Moving between Eisenhower’s staff headquarters in St James’s and Churchill’s War Operations room in Storey’s Gate wasn’t William’s idea of initiative. It didn’t look as if he was going to meet a German face-to-face for the entire duration of the war, unless Hitler marched down Whitehall and into Trafalgar Square, when surely even Nelson would climb down from his column and join in the fighting.

When a division of the US First Army was posted to Scotland for training exercises with the Black Watch, William was sent along as an observer. During the long, slow rail journey north he began to realize that he was no more than a glorified messenger boy, and wondered why he’d ever signed up. But once he was in Scotland, everything changed. There the air was filled with the noise of battle, as soldiers prepared themselves to face the enemy. When he returned to London he put in a request for an immediate transfer to the First Army. His commanding officer, who never believed in keeping a man who wanted to see action behind a desk, released him.

Once they considered William Kane was fit enough to die, he returned to Scotland and joined his new regiment at Inveraray, preparing for the invasion they all knew had to come soon. Training was hard and intense. Nights spent in the Scottish hills fighting mock battles with the Black Watch were a marked contrast to evenings at the Dorchester writing reports, scurrying down to the safety of the basement whenever an air raid siren was heard.

Three months later Captain William Kane was parachuted into northern France to join General Bradley’s army as it advanced across Europe. The scent of victory was in the air, and William wanted to be the first Allied soldier in Berlin.

The First Army advanced towards the Rhine, determined to cross any bridge they could find. Captain Kane received orders that morning, that his division was to cross the Ludendorff Bridge and engage the enemy a mile north-east of Remagen, in a forest on the far side of the river. From the crest of a hill he watched the Ninth Armored cross the bridge, expecting it to be blown sky high at any moment.

Captain Kane followed with 120 men under his command, most of them, like himself, going into action for the first time. No more exercises with wily Scots pretending to kill each other with blank cartridges - followed by a meal together in the mess. These were real Germans, with real bullets, real death - and certainly few would be dining together afterwards.

When William reached the edge of the forest, he and his men met with no resistance, so they decided to press on. He was beginning to think the Ninth must have done such a thorough job that his platoon would only have to follow them through, when from nowhere there was a sudden hail of bullets and mortars. Everything seemed to be coming at them at once. The men went down, trying to find a tree to protect them, but over half the platoon was lost in a matter of seconds. The battle, if that’s how it could be described, had lasted for less than a minute, and William hadn’t even seen a German. As he crouched behind a tree in the wet undergrowth he saw, to his horror, the next wave of the Ninth Division coming through the forest. Without a thought, he ran from his shelter out into the open to warn them of the ambush.

The first bullet hit him in the side of the head, and as he sank to his knees he continued to wave and to shout a frantic warning to his advancing comrades. The second bullet hit him in the neck, and a third in the chest. He lay still in the German mud and waited to die, never having even seen the enemy - a dirty, unheroic death.

The next thing William remembered was being carried on a stretcher, but he couldn’t hear or see anything, and wondered whether it was night, or he was blind. It seemed a long journey, and then his eye opened and focused on a colonel who saluted before limping out of the tent. There was something familiar about the man, but he couldn’t think what. The medical orderlies took him into the tent and placed him on an operating table. He tried to fight off sleep, for fear it might be death.

He was conscious that two people were trying to move him. They turned him over as gently as they could, and then one of them stuck a needle into him. He sank into a deep sleep, and dreamed of Kate, his mother, and then of Matthew playing football with his son Richard. He slept.

He woke. They must have moved him to another bed; a glimmer of hope replaced the thought of inevitable death. He lay motionless, his one eye fixed on the canvas roof of the tent, unable to move his head. A nurse came over to study a chart, and then him. He slept.

He woke. How much time had passed? Another nurse. This time he could see a little more, and he could now move his head, if only with great pain. He lay awake as long as he possibly could; he wanted to live. He slept.

He woke. Four doctors were studying him. Deciding what? He could not hear them speak, so he learned nothing. He was moved once again, this time to an ambulance. The doors closed behind him, the engine started up and the ambulance began to move over rough ground while a new nurse sat by his side holding him steady. The journey felt like an hour, but he could no longer be certain of time. The ambulance reached smoother ground, and finally came to a halt. Once again he was moved, this time across a flat surface and then up a slope into a dark room. After another wait the room began to move, another ambulance perhaps. The room took off. A nurse stuck another needle into him, and he remembered nothing until he felt the plane landing and taxiing to a halt. They moved him once again. Another ambulance, another nurse, another smell, another city. New York. There’s no smell like New York. The latest ambulance drove him over a smoother surface, continually stopping and starting until it finally arrived at its destination.

They carried him out once again, up some more steps and into a small, white-walled room, where they placed him in a comfortable bed. He felt his head touch a soft pillow, and when he next woke he thought he was alone. But then his eye focused and he saw Kate standing beside him. He tried to lift his hand and touch her, to speak, but no words came. She smiled, but he knew she could not see his smile, and when he woke again she was still there, but wearing a different dress. How many times had she come and gone? She smiled again. He tried to move his head a little, and saw his son Richard. He had grown so tall, so good-looking. He wanted to see his daughters, but couldn’t turn his head any further. They moved into his line of vision. Virginia - she couldn’t be that old, surely? And Lucy - it wasn’t possible. Where had the years gone? He slept.

He woke. He could now move his head from side to side; some bandages had been removed, and he could see more clearly. He tried to say something, but no words came. Kate was watching him, her fair hair shorter now, no longer falling to her shoulders, her soft brown eyes and unforgettable smile, looking beautiful, so beautiful. He said her name. She smiled. He slept.

He woke. Fewer bandages than before. This time his son spoke.

‘Hello, Daddy.’ His voice had broken.

He heard him and replied, ‘Hello, Richard,’ but didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice. A nurse helped him to sit up. He thanked her. A doctor touched his shoulder.

‘The worst is over, Mr Kane. It won’t be long now before you’re able to go home.’

He smiled as Kate came into the room, followed by Virginia and Lucy. So many questions to ask them. Where should he begin? There were gaps in his memory that demanded filling. Kate told him he had nearly died. He knew that, but had not realized that over a year had passed since his division had been ambushed in the forest at Remagen.

Where had the months of unawareness gone, life lost, resembling death? Richard was now twelve, already preparing for St Paul’s. Virginia was nine and Lucy nearly seven. He would have to get to know them all over again.

Kate was somehow even more beautiful than he remembered her. She told him how she had never accepted the possibility that he would die, how well Richard was doing at school, and how Virginia and Lucy were quite a handful. She braced herself to tell him about the scars on his face and chest; they would take time to heal. She thanked God that the doctors were confident there was nothing wrong with his mind, and that, given time, his sight would be fully restored. All she wanted to do was to assist that recovery. When he could finally speak, his first question was, Who won the war?’

Each member of the family played a part in the recovery process. Richard helped his father to walk until he no longer needed crutches. Lucy helped him with his food until he could once again hold a knife and fork. Virginia read Mark Twain to him - William wasn’t sure if the reading was for her benefit or his, they both enjoyed it so much. Kate stayed awake at night when he could not sleep. And then, at last, the doctors allowed him to return home for Christmas.

Once William was back in East Sixty-Eighth Street, his recovery accelerated, and the doctors were predicting that he would be able to return to work within six months. A little scarred, but very much alive, he was finally allowed to see visitors.

The first was Ted Leach, somewhat taken aback by William’s appearance - something he hadn’t been prepared for. William learned from him that Lester’s had flourished in his absence, and that his colleagues looked forward to welcoming him back to work. He also told him that Rupert Cork-Smith had passed away. His next visitor, Tony Simmons, also had sad news: Alan Lloyd too was dead. William would miss their prudent wisdom. Thomas Cohen called by to say how glad he was to learn of William’s recovery, and to confirm, as if it were necessary, that time had marched on by informing him that he was now semi-retired, and had turned over most of his clients to his son Thaddeus, who had opened an office in New York. William remarked on both the Cohens being named after apostles.