Of Irish Blood (56 page)

“Look,” Captain Williams says, interupting Floyd. “I’m not even sure what I said.”

“I am,” the corporal says. “The French were leaving and yelled at us to join their retreat. Said the Germans had us outnumbered. Captain Williams hollered back, ‘Retreat hell. We just got here.’”

Floyd writes in his notebook. Turns to me, smiles, and says, “Take the captain’s photograph.”

I can only get a quick candid. The captain won’t pose.

“Were there many casualties?” I ask as the corporal leads us back to our car.

Floyd says, “No one knows. We won’t get the names until this thing’s over. But plenty dead and wounded. I think somebody screwed up. Weren’t supposed to be all those German machine-gun nests in that wood.”

Floyd goes off, very excited when he comes back.

“Army Intelligence intercepted a German message. The Huns are asking for reinforcements. Said the Americans fighting them here are
‘Teufel Hunden,’
Devil Dogs. How’s that for a Marine nickname? But a bit of bad news. The Marines don’t want a woman too close to combat,” Floyd says.

I’m to go to a village called Bézu-le-Guéry, about five miles away, where a first-aid station’s been set up in a church.

But he says there might be a silver lining.

“The doc in charge is Richard Derby. His wife is the nurse. Guess who she is? Edith Roosevelt, Teddy’s daughter. Get some shots of her tending the wounded. My editors will love it. And get this. Her brother, Quentin Roosevelt, is flying missions right above us. With any luck, he’ll get in a dogfight up there, crash-land, and be taken to her. She’ll save his life. What a story.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Floyd. Listen to yourself,” I say.

Already a number of casualties from the previous days of fighting when I arrive at the church. Pallets on the floor of the small stone building. Cool inside. Plain, low ceiling. I see a nurse standing over a young marine. She hears me, looks up.

“I’m Nora Kelly,” I say.

“Good,” she says. “I’m Edith Derby. That doctor over there is my husband Richard.”

I suppose Floyd would like me to pose the two of them bandaging a wound. He’s such a jerk sometimes.

“Are you trained?” Edith asks me.

“I worked at the American hospital for two years,” I say.

“Fine,” she says. “We’re trying to stabilize the patients here until the ambulances can take them to Paris. But there is fighting all along the highway and the Germans don’t always respect the Red Cross on our trucks. So we’re doing our best for them here—lucky to get this place.”

“Lovely church,” I say.

“Thirteenth century,” she tells me. “Named for St. Rufin and St. Valere, whoever they are.”

“Bet they’re from Ireland,” I say. According to Barry most early French saints were really Irish missionaries.

“I don’t know about that, but the church was a stop for pilgrims on El Camino de Santiago to Compostela, Spain.”

And still a refuge I think, as we spend the night applying tourniquets and giving tetanus shots. Infection sets in so quickly. Gangrene means amputation. A shipment of serum comes from Paris by taxi. I think of Louis DuBois, and the Miracle of the Marne. It seems a long time ago.

It’s dawn before I fall asleep, and I wake up three hours later. The 6th of June now. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Dr. Derby calls Edith and me over to him. “I just heard that the marines will step off at five, heading into the wood. I am afraid there’s going to be a lot of casualties. I’d like to station an ambulance near the village of Belleau. Can you drive, Nora?” Dr. Derby asks me.

“I can,” I say.

Hadn’t Tim McShane taught me during that first year when I’d thought I loved him?

“I want you to park near the observation post at the edge of the wood. Take Moriarty with you. I set his arm, he can help. They’ll wait until darkness falls to bring in the wounded. Don’t take any chances,” Dr. Derby says.

Would it be wrong to bring the Seneca, I wonder, get some pictures? What had I said to Carolyn Wilson? Important to tell the truth. Besides, Floyd will kill me if I don’t.

Moriarty and I start at about 4:30. His arm’s in a sling. But otherwise he seems in pretty good shape.

“The artillery should have hit the Germans in the wood pretty hard,” he says. “Our fellows will be going in on a mopping-up operation.”

We park on a rise in the road, on the other side of the wood. I see the Marines lined up, a thousand of them it seems, bunched together at the edge of a wheat field that’s very different from the amber waves of grain on our prairies. Only a few acres of wheat grow right up to the edge of Belleau Wood, dense with the green leaves of June. Red and blue wildflowers are scattered across the field. I hear the Celtic war cry, “hoo-rah,” and the Marines step off. They’re halfway across the field, wading through wheat up to their waists, when the first booms come from the wood.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Moriarty says. “German artillery and a lot of it. They don’t have a chance.”

“Run away,” I shout at the Marines. “Run away.”

“They won’t,” Moriarty says to me. “They’re Marines.”

I close my eyes, put my head in my hands. Moriarty says to me, “You should look. They’re so fucking brave.” But I can’t and I forget about the Seneca completely.

We get our first casualties about ten o’clock. Medics carry three young Marines to the car.

“Water, water,” one says. “I’m so thirsty.”

“There’s a fountain in the village. After all,
‘Belleau’
means ‘beautiful water,’” Moriarty says to me. “It’s near German headquarters in the château.”

“But what about the Germans?” I ask.

“They’re busy,” he says.

We pull up to the yard of the château. The Germans are gone. The building is in ruins. Shelled. Moriarty gets out, runs over, and fills up the canteens. He comes back laughing. “I got the water from the mouth of a Devil Dog.” He points at the stone head carved on the fountain. He hands the canteen to the young Marine. “Drink this, pal, it’ll cure you.”

I help him fill the canteens and all that night, as I clean blood away from one face after another, I whisper, “Water from the Devil Dog fountain.” We treat nearly one hundred men but no John Noll or John Kelly or Dan Daly, thank God.

“Nora, Nora.” The fellow’s being carried into the church.

Floyd. Shot through the eye. “Now I know what it’s like to be wounded. This is a front-page story for sure,” he says.

So. The Battle of Belleau Wood becomes famous partially thanks to Floyd Gibbons and to Dan Daly. Floyd gets very literary comparing Dan to a grizzled old sergeant in a Victor Hugo novel. The Chicago
Tribune
gives him five columns on the front page.

A small platoon line of Marines lay on their faces and bellies under the trees at the edge of a wheat field. Two hundred yards across that flat field the enemy was located in trees. I peered into the trees but could see nothing, yet I knew that every leaf in the foliage screened scores of German machine guns that swept the field with lead. The bullets nipped the tops of the young wheat and ripped the bark from the trunks of the trees three feet from the ground on which the Marines lay. The minute for the Marine advance was approaching. An old gunnery sergeant commanded the platoon in the absence of the lieutenant who had been shot and was out of the fight. This old sergeant was a Marine veteran. His cheeks were bronzed by the wind and the sun of the seven seas. As the minute for the advance arrived, he rose from the trees first and jumped out onto the exposed edge of that field that ran with lead, across which he and his men were to charge. Then he turned to give the charge order to the men of his platoon—his mates—the men he loved. He said:

“COME ON YOU SONS-O’BITCHES! DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?”

Gunny Daly’s words. He survives. So does John Kelly. But they find Johnny Noll’s body in the wheat field the next morning.

A month later, Quentin Roosevelt will be shot down not far from his sister’s small hospital, but she doesn’t tend him. Only finds out he’s dead when the Germans publish pictures of the ceremonial burial they gave him as the former president’s son.

I ride with Floyd in the back of the ambulance to Paris. He leans on me as we walk into the American hospital. A big welcome for the hero journalist. Mrs. Vanderbilt herself is there to shake his hand.

“Hello, Nora,” she says to me as if nothing at all had happened. I go to find Margaret Kirk.

Come on, you sons o’bitches. Do you want to live forever?

Stirring, I guess glorious too, I suppose. But, dear God, as I prepare to tell Margaret that her little brother is dead I wish with all my heart they’d heeded my cry,
“Run away, run away.”

NOVEMBER 11, 1918

Margaret and I are standing together in front of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame when all the church bells in Paris begin ringing at eleven minutes after eleven. Over. The war is over.

“Too late for Johnny,” Margaret says.

“And millions more,” I say.

But over, thank God. Over.

22

NOVEMBER 27, 1918

“Nora, Nora!” A clatter of voices yelling below my window. Still dark and me sure I’m dreaming. I open up the casement windows and look down onto the cobblestones of the place des Vosges.

“Quiet!” I shout down at the cluster of soldiers waving up at me from under the streetlamp. Fellows released from the hospital and on a tear, I suppose.

But then who do I see right in the middle of them only Margaret Kirk, laughing and calling out, “Nora! Nora, can we come up? We’re desperate! Please!” she shouts.

The soldiers take up the chant. “Please, please!”

“I’ve nowhere to take them!” she says.

The tallest of the soldiers shouts, “Up, up, up!”

The others join in until the oldest of them, a short fellow in glasses, quiets them. “Cut it out, fellows,” I hear him say.

“All right, all right,” I say, “come up, but be quiet!”

“Only place I could think to take them,” Margaret says as the five men find places for themselves in my room.

“They’re all boys from home, friends of Johnny’s,” she says. “They came to me at the hospital an hour ago. The cafés are all closed and well, Nora, they’ve all been at the Front. Just arrived.”

Months since Margaret laughed. Steeped in grief for Johnny Noll. “Such a good kid,” she’s told me over and over. Good to see her smiling.

“These boys are heroes, Nora,” she says.

“Don’t know about that but we did fire one of the last volleys of the war,” the small man with glasses says. “Battery D of the Second Battalion, 129th Field Artillery, ‘The Dizzy Ds.’”

“The best battery in the U.S. Army,” a tall boy says.

“Or any other army,” another soldier says.

“They grew up with my brother Johnny and me,” Margaret says. “All from Kansas City. Meet Jimmy Pendergast, and their captain…” She pauses.

“Harry Truman, miss,” the man with glasses says. “Sorry to disturb you but we’ve had a tough few weeks and just got in. Johnny had told the boys Peggy was in Paris, well, they wanted to have a drink or two in his honor. I didn’t have the heart to stop them from storming the hospital, as late as it was.”

“Fought our way through the mountains, miss, and that’s no small feat for a bunch of prairie boys,” the one called Jim Pendergast says.

I pull out three bottles of wine and hand them to Captain Truman. “Here, start on these while I get dressed,” I say.

Margaret follows me into the bedroom. “Thanks, Nora. I couldn’t send them away. For one thing they wouldn’t leave. And they want to toast my brother. At least no more fellows will die. It’s over, Nora. Really over. For the first time I believe it.”

Later Captain Truman sends one of the fellows out at dawn to buy baguettes and when that fresh-baked smell fills my room, I think, Yes, yes, the war is over. Life is starting again. Oh Peter, where are you?

I watch Margaret joshing with the soldiers, trying to explain to me who is related to whom.

“We’re all up from the Bottoms,” one of the soldiers tells me.

“Aren’t we all,” I said. “My family comes from a place that was called Hardscrabble.”

“Yes, but our neighborhood really is ‘the Bottoms’ because it’s stuck into the bank of the Missouri River, buried in mud half the time. But a swell place to grow up.”

“I knew Jim in St. Joe even before Kansas City,” Margaret says. “Jim’s family and mine have been friends since my mother worked as a laundress at the World Hotel.”

“Where Jesse James lived,” Jim says.

He laughs.

“Peggy’s mother, Lizzie Burke, was the prettiest girl in St. Joe, according to my father. A sad day when a German fellow picked her off.”

“Poor Papa,” Margaret says. “Didn’t live to see thirty.”

“Should have married a strong Irishman,” Jim says.

“A great singing voice, your mother,” Jim says. “Give us a song, Peggy.”

“I didn’t get her talent. You’ve a voice, Jim. Let’s have one,” Margaret says.

“No, no, too many cigarettes. Captain Harry’s the real musician except he needs a piano,” Jim says.

I turn to the captain. “We’ll find you a piano.”

“Not sure if Chopin and Hayden’s the kind of stuff to keep the party going,” he says.

“You learned classical piano in the Bottoms?” I ask him.

“I’m from Independence, a little town outside of Kansas City. The Santa Fe Trail starts there. I only fell in with this Irish bunch recently. Just lucky, I guess.”

One of the soldiers hears this. “Not what you thought at first, Captain. My name’s Bill O’Hara. We were the battalion bad boys,” he says to me. “Went through three captains. But this fellow is tougher than he looks.”

“Yeah,” a tall fellow says. “We laughed at him. This pipsqueak four-eyes giving us orders.”

Captain Truman looks at me. “Those early days were interesting,” he says.

“Gave us hell, Harry did, but in a quiet way. He took no guff,” Jim Pendergast says. “No speeches. Just said he was determined to get us all home to Kansas City alive and in one piece. But if we acted like damn fools we’d be signing our own death warrants. He made all that army bull about cleaning the big gun over and over seem important for our own survival. Didn’t care about kissing ass. Everything he did was for Battery D.”