Once an Eagle (29 page)

“I'm afraid not, Dev.” He watched the Sergeant swing away, and a pang went through him. “Dev—” he began.

“Yeah?”

“If anything should—” but he couldn't say it: “happen to me”; he refused to say it aloud “—go wrong today, send Reb back to Battalion: he's got the best chance of getting through. You know what I mean?”

“Sure, Sam …” Devlin's face was shaded with concern. He started to say something, then his lips came together and he crawled off toward Lieutenant Peters' foxhole. And with his departure came the high-arching shriek of a flight of 77s. They struck far in their rear, behind the Mill.

“Why in God's name don't we get out of this place … !”

The tenor of the voice alerted him. He turned. Brewster, bareheaded, his hands fluttering in front of his face, was climbing out of his hole.

“Tim!” he shouted. “You stay put, now …”

“—ridiculous! I tell you—stay here in this wretched place until we're all killed, every last—”

“Brewster—!”

The New York boy was on his feet now, walking quickly toward the rear, gesticulating. He had left his rifle. Damon leaped out of his pit. Brewster crouched, and drew his bayonet with startling dexterity. “No!” he cried. “I'm going home, you hear?—I'm going
home!
—”

“Tim, look—”

“Don't you try and stop me, Damon! I know you! Just don't come near me, that's all …”

There was a quick, low whistle in the air near them and then the crack of the sniper's rifle. And then Brewster was running—stumbling and sliding in the mud, his eyes wild. Damon made a sudden rush and dove at him, pinioning his arms; they fell into a shell hole in a clumsy tangle. Brewster had lost the bayonet but he was wrestling with surprising strength; he squirmed and flailed like a netted fish, struck Damon on the side of the head and in the throat.

“Let me go, you monster!” he screamed. “Let—me—
go!
” Just when the Captain didn't think he could hold him any longer, all the strength went out of him; he stopped struggling and lay panting on his side, his hair in his eyes.

“All right, Tim,” Sam said quietly. “Take it easy, now.”

“—ridiculous—mice in their holes until the cat stamps on them, yes!—until every one of us is crushed to pudding … Don't you
see—!
” His face, gray as old ash, was convulsed, his mouth slack. He began to weep, then; great dry sobs that were nearly like laughter.

Damon held him gently, felt the boy shivering. “Take it easy, Tim,” he murmured. “Try and hold on, now. You don't want the new men to see you—”

“—I can't help it, Captain, I've done everything you've told me, everything they've wanted for months and months, but I
can't stay here any more—!
” He coughed thickly, and tried to break away again. Damon gripped him in a bear hug and he subsided.

“—leave us here day after day and nobody cares … it's all right for
you,
you haven't any nerves at all, you don't know—but I won't stand for it!—no more of this, ah God, no more, no more …!” And again he dissolved in shuddering, gasping sobs, his hands over his face.

“… It's all right, Timmy.” Holding the frail, slender body in his big arms he rocked him to and fro, speaking in a low, even, crooning voice. “It's all right, now. You won't have to do any more, Timmy. You'll be all right, now …”

The sniper fired again, and he heard the low drone of the bullet overhead. Holding Brewster, comforting him with a soft, meaningless litany, he felt a fearful anguish sweep over his soul. Was that how they really saw him? under the web of griping and jocosity, the awe? as a flint-hearted, blood-drinking killer with twin silver bars on his shoulders who lashed them on from hell to ever lowering hell, laughing at their torments? A Traprock Merrick?… He didn't believe it.

But he could not raise his eyes to the others at that moment.

 

“How do you
stand, Captain?” Lieutenant Colonel Weyburn said.

“Sixty-three effectives, sir.”

“I see. How would you estimate their fighting capabilities?”

Damon paused and looked down. They were sitting in piles of rubble in the cellar of the Chabert Mill, a gloomy vault damp with seepage from the incessant rain. Over the lintel hung a large, beautifully lettered sign, now split, that read
Kommandoposten Dambacher XLVII,
under which some wag had scrawled in chalk:
Welcome to Valley Forge. Bring your own monkey meat.
But that had been four days ago …

Colonel Weyburn was staring at him expectantly. He was a broad-shouldered man with a quiet voice and clear brown eyes; he'd been sent out from a stateside garrison post to take command of the battalion after Major Williams had been killed. He was a good officer, a good administrator—but now, watching the solid, ruddy face, the small mouth pinched with just a touch of annoyance, Damon felt beleaguered and resentful. What the hell did Weyburn know about it? He hadn't been up here … He shot a glance at Caldwell, but the Colonel was scraping mud off his boots with a piece of shingle.

But
estimate their fighting capabilities—
“They're good men, Colonel,” he answered Weyburn in a level tone. “What's left of them. I—Lieutenant Peters and I—have their full confidence.” He paused. “This is a very different outfit from four days ago. We have been under heavy and almost incessant shell fire from the Mountain. I'm worried about them if we should be attacked.” He paused, and glanced at Caldwell again. “I have participated in three major campaigns and seven engagements and I have never made this request before. The Colonel will bear me out.” He took a deep breath and said: “I think my company needs to be relieved.”

Colonel Weyburn grunted, and rubbed his hands back and forth along his thighs. Three shells struck in the ravine behind the Mill and the room shook slightly; the candle stuck in a salmon tin guttered, righted itself again. “It's not a question of relief,” he said after a moment. “It's a matter of going forward. Regaining momentum.”

Damon's mouth fell open.
“Attack?”

Weyburn nodded. “The Grizzlies jump off at fourteen hundred hours. We are to coordinate our attack with theirs, so as not to expose their left flank.”

Damon shut his eyes and clenched his hands to still their trembling. The idea that sixty-odd men, out of an original two hundred and fifty, after nine days in the line and four of interminable shelling, without rest or hot food, should be ordered to advance still again up a slope nearly destitute of cover and swept by machine-gun fire, seemed such madness that he could only roar with laughter. But no laughter came.

“May I see the orders,” he said.

Weyburn's eyes dilated. “Now look here, Damon—”

“Let him see them, Archie,” Colonel Caldwell said quietly. “He's going to be risking his neck carrying them out, isn't he?”

The battalion commander drew a crumpled sheet of paper out of his trench-coat pocket and handed it to him. Yes, there it was, all right. All so nicely planned, chock full of those high-flown Latinate words staff members loved to use. The last paragraph read:

 

Every effort must be made to convince the enemy that he is being threatened by continuous attack, thus compelling him to commit his reserve elements to battle. It is essential that our forces preserve the offensive attitude which has been adopted since September 26th.

 

Preserve the offensive attitude. He stared out of the cellar entrance at a frieze of mud and splintered branches. Preserve the offensive attitude.

“—On whose authority?” he heard himself say. “Who ordered this?”

Weyburn frowned at him and wrenched his neck inside his collar. “Now, just a minute, Captain—”

“No! What sick, misguided son of a bitch dreamed up this piece of lunacy—?”

“Do you refuse to carry out these orders, Damon?” Weyburn demanded hotly.

“No—what do you take me for?”

“Gentlemen,” Caldwell murmured.

“Of course I'll carry it out,” Damon went on, lowering his voice. “I've been ordered to attack and by God, I'll attack. But right now, right at this particular moment, I would merely like to say what I think of a staff that would send men out into this muck, leave them for days on end in positions commanded by an enemy-held mountain—and then coolly expect the survivors to attack once more!”

His voice rang in the room. Lieutenant Peters stirred nervously; Weyburn was staring crossly at the candle, his lips pursed.

“Sam …” Colonel Caldwell looked haggard and worn. He had suffered from gas at the Bois des Lions, and his skin had a greenish pallor; but his eyes still held that balance of alertness and compassion. “Sam, we've been promised relief. The New Yorkers are going to pass through us at seventeen hundred this evening. We've been asked to make just this one more effort … I know you've had a bad time out here,” he went on quietly. “Very bad. The Thirty-ninth will be carrying the brunt of it. Divisional artillery has promised us a twenty-minute barrage of all calibers. Look, we'll give you everybody we can scrape up—cooks, clerks, orderlies, everybody. That's a solemn promise. We'll beef you up all we can. Just one more effort, Sam. That's all they're asking.”

Damon handed the orders back to the battalion commander and nodded in silence. It was what he had said to the ten at Brigny, what he had said to Dev on the night march to Soissons: we've got to: we must do it anyway. Now it was only being said to him. Still again. Why did it always come down to this, why were they always faced with this draconian law of desperate choices, harsh alternatives that were no alternatives at all? Back at Chaumont men in spanking-fresh uniforms went smartly from room to room, passed their pencils over situation maps and scratched their clean, dry foreheads and toyed with alternatives; but here, in the mud and rain and thunderous hell of high explosive, there were no alternatives at all.

Colonel Caldwell was regarding him: that small, sad smile that understood so much, forgave so much, and went on hoping. This is the last time you'll see him, the thought darted. You might have known.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and got to his feet. “We'll do it. But I'd like to meet the gentleman who wrote that.” He indicated the orders Weyburn still held in his hand. “If I could have just five
minutes
with him it would make my day.”

“Sorry, Sam.” The Colonel's eyes glinted once. “Rank Hath Its Privileges, you know. You may hold my blouse, however.” He turned with his most stern, attentive air to Weyburn, who was blinking at him in amazement. “It's quite all right, Archie, you'll get used to this sort of thing out here. What you don't yet see is that you're in a very strange land.”

“Yes, Colonel,” Weyburn said.

 

He crouched kneeling
against a wall, panting, sick to death, half-dizzy with exhilaration, not knowing whether he was retching or coughing or laughing, or all three. Bright yellow leaves lay all around him like festive curly ornaments. He was so tired his thigh muscles jerked in spasms and his eyes would hardly focus—even now, here on the ridge, he was inclined to regard the whole thing as a wild hallucination.

He had no idea why they deserved such good fortune, after so many bitter tribulations. At 1410, right on the heels of the barrage, he had slung the Chauchat around his neck and blown his whistle and his sixty-some scarecrows, beefed up by all the woebegone culls of the regiment, had scrambled out of their holes and gone forward stiffly, waiting for the hail of steel. None came. They went on up the hill, past abandoned rifle pits and emplacements, empty ammunition boxes and rolls of wire, unable to believe their eyes. Then shells started falling around them from the Mont de Malsainterre and they faltered. Damon hollered at them, waving his arms, calling some of them by name and got them running, and they went the rest of the way in a rush, up and over the crest and into the fringe of woods beside the ruins of the Cavagnole Farm, whose shattered stone walls looked gaunt and forlorn against the beeches.

It was unbelievable. They were there. They had made it. He looked up gleefully, watching the line move up with him, taking cover smartly, fanning out along the ruins of some ancient trench. Then he heard the roar of small-arms fire on the ridge to his right, across the swamp, and he knew what had happened: the Grizzly Bears had broken through, and the Germans had got out while the getting was good. But it didn't matter. They'd made it up to the line, the shelling had let up completely; the black stone of dread that had lain in his heart all day, that implacable premonition that he would not survive it, was false. He knew it now. They would dig in and sit tight, and the New Yorkers would come up and relieve them. And that, praise God and Allah and Thor and Zeus the Thunder Darter, would be that …

“What'd you do, Cap—get 'em on the party line and tell 'em the barn was on fire?” Raebyrne, with his helmet low over his eyes—a bright, solicitous hound's gaze—was standing beside him.

“Why no—I told 'em I was calling in every mortgage in the county by sundown.” He jumped to his feet and threw his arm around the Carolina boy and hugged him. “God damn you, Reb, you old coon hunter—how's that for sheer generalship?”

“Plain frazzle-ass luck, you ask me.”

“
Luck!
Why, I knew we were home free all along …”

“Didn't look much like it down the road a piece, Skipper.”

“Oh, that—that was just to keep you in line. Discipline, Reb—for Christ sake, discipline!” He was shaking so it was all he could do to keep from running in circles, wrestling Raebyrne to the ground. “All right,” he called, “we'll use this piece of trench here and tie in with that clump of trees. Tsonka, take the gun over—”