Once an Eagle (37 page)

“I can imagine,” Caldwell answered drily. He popped the piece of gooey brown stuff into his mouth and winked at Damon. “Does outclass beet sugar over hardtack fried in bacon grease, Sam. Pretty cushy.” He watched Miss Pomeroy's progress through the ward, licking his fingers. “Well, we're a grand and glorious nation, but it strikes me we're all a little naïve—we think if we pick the other fellow up and dust him off and shake hands, we can all wander into the corner saloon and tell one another what swell guys we are. A pleasant view of the world, but a touch sentimental. Now you take Wilson: he's an intelligent man, a cultured man—there aren't many of them left around these days—but look at these Fourteen Points. Does he really think the heirs of Talleyrand and Bismarck and Palmerston are going to turn overnight into a bunch of Tibetan lamas oozing mystic brotherhood at every pore? … ”

He brushed the front of his blouse with one hand and sighed. “
Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man … speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself … Without resource he meets nothing that must come; only against Death shall he call for aid in vain …
Beautiful isn't it? I used to know it all, once, the whole passage. God, it'll be nice to get back to some of the important things in this world, and stop worrying about the dark forebodings of G-2 and the whereabouts of ammunition dumps and misfiring on one's boundaries.” Rising, he shrugged into his overcoat and buttoned it clumsily, staring down into the courtyard, where three nurses were pushing patients in wheel chairs. “It's over … Now everybody wants to race back home and make a million dollars. And there'll be precious little talk of the war or the army until the big, hot holidays, when they'll suck in their bellies and get into their uniforms and strut down Main Street behind the band. And stand perspiring in front of the bandstand beside the town hall and listen to some red-faced fool rant on for three-quarters of an hour about that last full measure of devotion and valorous sacrifices on the field of honor. And that'll be all they'll remember. Until the next time …”

He turned away, turned back again. He seemed loath to go and yet ill at ease, uncertain; Damon had never seen him this way. Then he slapped his gloves against his thigh. “Well, I've got to head for Neuilly and try to track down that headstrong, tempestuous girl of mine.” He stepped forward and took Damon's hand in his left. “Good luck, Sam.”

“Thank you, sir. Good luck to you. And thank you for going to all the trouble of coming by.”

“Don't mention it.” Caldwell turned away, turned back again, caught in this strange indecision. He placed himself so that his body blocked Warrenton's view of them and said in a low voice: “Sam …”

“Yes, General?”

“Sam, our paths may diverge now, perhaps for good. I shall be sorry, if they do … I want you to know I'm proud of you. You're all I could have wanted in a son, if I'd been privileged to have one.”

“Thank you, sir. I wanted to say something a good deal like that, myself … I can't tell you how much it's meant to me to have served with you. To have known you.”

Caldwell cleared his throat. In a different voice he said, “Sam—think about it, will you? Don't do anything hasty. Think about what I said just now. You'll never make a banker, you know. Why go through life suspecting everybody's motives? That's what you'll be—a spider sitting in a web, accumulating capital: a prudent soul … Sam, you'll make a terrible banker.”

Damon grinned. “You're probably right.”

“Think about it, Sam. You were made for better things … There are far more ignoble ways to pass one's days than in the service, believe me. Promise me you'll give it some thought.”

“I will, sir.”

“Good.” The General moved off down the ward with his quick, vigorous stride, nodding now and then to a recumbent figure and finally to Miss Pomeroy, who gave him her most refulgent smile. Then he was gone.

From the facing bed Herberger said: “Who's the big brass, Damon?”

The Captain put out his cigarette. “The best officer in the entire Anus End Forward, that's all.”

“So
that's
how you picked up all those shiny medals.”

“That's how.”

“Some guys just can't resist playing drop-the-soap with the higher echelons …” Herberger gave a sleepy wink. “Say, how's about a nip from that bottle?”

“Damn it, Herberger, don't you ever miss anything?”

“Not when it comes to booze. When it comes to booze I'm a walking Marconi set. What do you say?”

Damon grinned at him. “Come and get it.”

“Aw, now don't be a dog in a manger.”

“What's this, what's this?” Warrenton said brightly, swiveling his head in the hard white plaster collar. “Unlawful possession of grain neutral spirits in the wards? Calls for an investigation.”

“All right, all right,” Damon said with resignation, scratching at his chest. “I'll get Breckner to peddle it around.”

Well, it was true: there were far more ignoble ways to pass your days than the way George T. Caldwell had. Down in the courtyard a boy sat in a wheelchair—a young, guileless face like Brewster's, or Morehead's or Dickey's; the winter light played along his throat, the curve of his cheek.

It was impossible it could come again!

But if it were to come again there would always be the Dickeys and Brewsters—fearful, trusting, uncertain, looking for the glance, listening for the calm, easy word of reassurance …

12

Cannes was another
world he could never have imagined. A clear cameo world with the great blue dream mountains of the Esterel across the water, and a liner lying at anchor in La Napoule like a pretty little vanilla-frosting decoration. The sun was bright, the air was cool and clear, like spun glass, and on La Croisette everyone was out strolling. There were Englishmen with round red faces and cloth caps, and Russian noblemen who had been gambling all night, with waxen faces and tight pearl-gray jackets and silk cravats; there were American aviators in wasp-waisted tailored uniforms, their overseas caps worn at perilous angles, there were British color sergeants limping ponderously, with cold, white eyes, there were one-armed French staff officers with monocles and the faces of overbred greyhounds … and everywhere, surrounded by the men, were women wearing fur pieces that hung luxuriantly from their arms and shoulders: women with complexions like marble and dark, mysterious eyes, and a golden assurance in their incomparable beauty that bore them along like mist. The world of dreams was strolling along La Croisette in 1919 …

Damon would walk one hundred paces and then stop and sit down on one of the settees facing the sea and rest the leg; wait ten minutes and then get up and go on again, fighting the twinges, the pins-and-needles burning and the thick, massive ache that sank into the hollow of his groin. He could walk almost all the first hundred yards without using the cane now; which was a distinct improvement. Farther along, on the little trampled stretch of beach some fishermen were playing boule and he paused, watching. An old man with heavy white mustaches made a beautiful soft throw: the stone ball, rolling leisurely, curled out around two others and came to rest four inches from the cochonet, and players and onlookers murmured in admiration as the grognard turned away. His big, dark fingers were curled as though they still held the ball. There was a brief consultation among the players and a young fellow with wild black hair and long sideburns ran forward several steps and threw—a hard throw that hit the old man's ball and drove it ten feet away. There was a burst of excitement and the young fisherman flung back his head and laughed, and spat on the sand. The old man's face was perfectly expressionless.

Damon walked on, along the Quai St. Pierre, resting more frankly on the cane now, riding up over it, his elbow locked. Out on the seawall two men in faded blue jackets were fishing with bamboo poles from the rocks, and a French sailor was strolling with his girl, their arms clasped around each other, their heads just touching. The pompom of his cap was like a bright red carnation. The girl laughed once, and turned, flinging her hair back—a slender face and large, mischievous eyes; and Damon, reminded of Michele, started and then looked away.

Michele.

At the end of the wall he sat down again and watched the water. It was fretted with a feathery, iridescent quality that ceaselessly shifted: now it was like metal, now like dust, now like a strangely pulsing oil. Below the surface seaweed swayed in long, dreamy scarves against the stone.

Michele … well, she had got her wish—part of it anyway: he'd had plenty of time to suffer, and think about it, and suffer some more. Lying in the long, still ward reading or staring upward, sleepless in the small hours, struggling against the need for morphine, watching the slow garnet arcs of cigarettes of fellow vigilants, he had reflected on all that had happened to him and to ten million others … and hadn't got very far; though he'd tried. Experience was valuable only if one imbued it with meaning, drew from it purposeful conclusions. The fact of the matter was he had never
thought
—he had acted, swiftly, intuitively; now he must school himself to think, think soberly and well. What conclusions, then, was he to draw?

War: war was not an oriflamme-adventure filled with noble deeds and tilts with destiny, as he had believed, but a vast, uncaring universe of butchery and attrition, in which the imaginative, the sensitive were crippled and corrupted, the vulgar and tough-fibered were augmented—and the lucky were lucky and survived, and they alone … And was that all? Was there no truth behind this—didn't the just cause triumph, the good deed resound to heaven?

He raised his eyes to the gay little forest of masts of the sloops and yawls in the marina, the dancing movement of blue and yellow figures on their white decks. No: there was no such truth. The mightiest battalions, the most lavish and efficient supply trains won the day, and Roland in the rocky wilderness of Roncevalles could wind his horn until his eyes popped out of his head …

The sailor and his girl passed behind him. “Non, non,” he heard her say, laughing, “c'était un malentendu, mon ange—je le prenait pour toi. C'est vrai!”

He did not turn around. What was the truth of things, then? Here he sat, on the warm, worn stone. He had been spared: had it been for a reason? A year ago he would have said
yes
without hesitation—but now, brushed by the descent of those uncaring wings, he no longer believed it. Dev, Krazewski, Crowder had died, and he had been spared—because he had been spared. They had not won because their cause was just, or because God was on their side. They had won because they had more men and more equipment, because they were valorous in their fresh, foolhardy ignorance, while the Germans were stunned and weary from four years of hell and losses. He would have been killed too, in four years of it; he knew that now beyond any doubt. He would have gone limping back to the line, and the next decoration would have gone to his mother. There was no celestial ordering of events that he could see. Men set them in motion; men failed or succeeded according to their abilities, their skill and fortitude and resources, and the luck of the draw. Ludendorff had almost won in the Chemin des Dames drive because he had planned it with meticulous care and his troops had executed it with skill and discipline; he had lost because his men, worn by hunger and privation, had stopped to loot and drink, because they were more weary than anyone—even Ludendorff—had thought, and because Americans like himself had been flung headlong into the crucial breaches, and had stemmed the rush. If there was a destiny that shaped our ends it was a very capricious one: the Allies had invoked God's aid, so had the Central Powers, each side had felt its cause was just and true, and had committed crimes innumerable for the greater, the all-important end. It was all part of the “sacrifices” required for victory. But for his own opposite number, the German Major limping arduously through the bitter, wintry streets of Kassel or Leipzig, all those sacrifices had been in vain, a mockery—and so, if a fair and lasting peace were not effected by the Big Four, would be his own “sacrifices” as well …

He sighed, got to his feet and walked back along the Quai, and on an impulse stopped at a café terrasse on the little park facing the Port. Dropping into a spidery iron chair he hooked his cane over the table's edge, ordered a vermouth cassis and let himself sink into the clop of horses' hoofs, the creak and jangle of produce wagons, the tin hoot of taxicabs. He saw an artillery officer from the 329th he recognized vaguely, his neck in a yellow leather brace, an aviator riding in an open fiacre with two Red Cross girls, their skirts fluttering in the light breeze. They were laughing at something the flier had said, bending forward, their pretty white throats extended. Celia had looked at him like that; a summer evening long ago. He'd had a letter from her during the Argonne offensive that even then had made him smile.

Everyone back home here is so thrilled about you, Sam. Your tremendous bravery, and all your medals. Father and Mr. Clausen want to name the plot in front of the town hall
Damon Square.
Think of that! You'll be immortal!!! Peg says Mr. Verney can't talk about anything but you, he keeps saying to everybody, “I knew that boy had the stuff of heroism in him, I knew it.” He has a map of Flanders on the wall of his room with colored pins in it, and he insists on reading the news aloud every day, word for word. Peg says he's driving them all crazy. Well, she doesn't mean it, of course, because they're all proud of you, too. It's wonderful, and I feel like saying to everyone, too: “I knew it all the time.” I keep remembering that time on the lawn at your mother's, when I ragged you so about your knowledge of your future destiny, and everything. But it was true, after all. How did you know!!! I guess I should have believed you then, shouldn't I? Everybody should have. Fred is at Camp Shelby, he says it won't be long before his unit is going overseas, too. I'm thrilled and at the same time I'm scared. I mean it seems so terrible this war has to go on like this. Those Huns are such horrible beasts. The old hometown is so deserted now, but it's nice being back here with Mummy and of course Father. I imagine now you're a Captain and a war hero you don't have much free time, but if you should have any I'd be thrilled to hear from you, I really would …

 

He smiled, sipping
his aperitif. A part of her had regretted not waiting for him; moping around the house, waiting for the baby to come. After all, a Medal of Honor winner was a more engaging asset than a lieutenant in the coast artillery. Damon Square. That rectangle of withered grass and mud where Walt Kearney and Jake Linstrom used to sit in the shade of the elms, straw hats down over their noses, half-asleep … General Pershing had personally decorated him, back at Debremont. He had felt the brief tug at his blouse as the pin was thrust through it—and then the Iron Commander had shaken hands with him and that stern face had given a grim, frosty smile. “Congratulations, Damon. I'd swap the stars on my shoulders for this medal. I mean it.” He probably would have, too. But now it was peacetime once again, the colors would fade, the armies shrink, Fred Shurtleff would go back into business in Chicago and his young, vivacious wife would bring up her babies and give lavish dinner parties in a town house fronting the Lake …

“Captain Damon?” a voice said. “Oh—Major, I'm sorry. Say—congratulations!”

He glanced up. A first lieutenant was standing beside him: a stocky man with a homely, bony face and a beaklike nose and quick, lively eyes. A face he remembered at once but couldn't place. Then he could. “Hello. Krisler, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir. Please don't get up. I just saw you sitting there—”

“Oh, yes. Russell's Battalion.” He got to his feet anyway, taking his weight on the good leg. “That lovely briefing on the way up to Malsainterre. I don't remember seeing you afterward—did you get it there?”

Krisler nodded, touched his chest with a quick little motion of his thumb. “Shell fragments. I was lucky, though. Just above the lung. What about you, sir?”

“Smote me hip and thigh. Mont Noir. Sit down, Krisler. It's on me.”

“If I'm not disturbing you any …”

“God, no. I've only been sitting here brooding. I'm sorry not to recognize you right away.”

“No reason you should, sir—I'm surprised you remember me at all.” Krisler gave a quick, warm grin. “I was in a very subdued mood that evening.”

“Yes. I was, myself. What's your first name, Krisler?”

“Ben, sir.”

“Good. Let's make it Ben and Sam.” He smiled at the Lieutenant. “As a matter of fact this leaf is sort of superfluous. I won it at Base Twenty-seven, Angers.”

They sipped the cool, tart wine and talked idly, watching the strollers. Krisler was from Menomonie, Wisconsin, where his father owned real estate and ran the town paper. He had gone to West Point, graduating in the class of 1919 a year early, and when Damon had seen him he'd been with the Regiment only two hours.

“I didn't have the faintest idea what was going on—all I knew was my assignment and that was it. To tell you the truth, I was scared. Nothing was at all the way I thought it would be.”

“It has a way of acting like that,” Damon murmured. “That's a tough way to start out with troops. How'd you make out?”

“I haven't any idea. I picked up the fastest wound stripe in history.” When Krisler grinned his homely face looked boyish and mischievous. “Morey and I got them all through the wire, and we took out the first two guns with grenades. We were going great in spite of the rain and mud and everything, and I thought, Hell, we'll be in Berlin by six
P.M.
And the next thing I knew I was lying flat on my back and my wish-bone felt as if a mule had kicked it. And my noble command roaring by me without so much as a glance.” He scrubbed his close-cropped black hair with his knuckles. “I wasn't planning to launch a six-year Peninsula Campaign, like old Dick Wellesley, but I sure as hell thought I'd last more than four hours … All that spit and polish on the Plain gone to waste. What class were you?”

Damon said: “I never had the advantages of West Point.”

Krisler glanced at him a moment—then grinned his gleeful, face-cracking grin. “Yeah! Isn't that the truth. But the worst part of the place was the stony-dungeon humorlessness. Not one West Pointer in fifty has a real sense of humor. Jesus, they all think a joke is a long story that has a dog in it with a man's name.”

Damon laughed; he decided he liked Krisler a good deal. “You must have had a bumpy time of it there.”

“The upperclassmen considered me unsound. Frivolous, they called it. ‘No plebe can afford to be frivolous here, Krisler. We are taking it upon ourselves to see that you rid yourself of that odious characteristic.' Why in hell do they always think they have to talk like Dr. Johnson? I made the mistake of telling one of them that, once.”

“You lasted four years up there with that attitude?”

“Three. Our academic careers were cut short so as to fit us into the grand conflict. I was just as happy, to tell you the truth.” His jet black eyes glinted, his jaw flexed; and Damon saw there was a lot of steel under the headlong bravura. “It became a game after a while—a grim, methodical kind of game. They threw it all at me—I eagled and dipped and braced and walked my punishment tours hour by lonely hour … but every evening I looked in the mirror at my ugly phiz and told myself: ‘You have not lost your sense of humor.' And it worked.” He watched a pretty French girl at a nearby table for a moment with eager interest. “Well—I take that back about all Pointers. Colonel Caldwell's got a sense of humor, all right. Nothing seemed to be happening that night, and I couldn't find anybody that knew anything, and when I saw Caldwell I ran up to him and said: ‘Colonel, my orders are to take command of the Third Platoon, C Company, First Battalion.' He gave me a really marvelous look and said, ‘Thank you, Lieutenant—I shall return to my duties with a lighter heart.'”