The Young Lions (58 page)

He had written to Colonel Pavone soon after he was put on the lumber pile, asking to be transferred, but there had been no answer from the Colonel, and Michael was too tired all the time now to bother to write again or to try any other avenues of escape.

"The best time I had in the Army," Fahnstock drawled, "was in Jefferson Barracks in St Louis. I found three sisters in a bar. They worked in a brewery in St Louis on different shifts. One was sixteen, one was fifteen and one was fourteen. Hillbillies fresh out of the Ozark Mountains. They never owned a pair of stockings till they worked in the brewery for three months. I sure did regret it the day my orders came through for overseas."

"Listen," Michael said, pounding slowly on a nail, "will you please talk about something else?"

"I'm just trying to pass the time," Fahnstock said, aggrieved.

"Pass the time some other way," Michael said, feeling the gin gripping the lining of his stomach.

They hammered at the splintery boards in silence.

A guard with a rifle came by behind two prisoners who were rolling wheelbarrows full of lumber ends. The prisoners dumped the lumber onto the pile. They all moved with a dragging, deliberate slowness, as though there was nothing ahead of them in their whole lives that was important to do.

"Shake your arse," the guard said languidly, leaning on the rifle. The prisoners paid no attention to him.

"Whitacre," said the guard, "whip out the bottle." Michael looked glumly at him. The police, he thought, everywhere the same, collecting their blackmail for overlooking the breaking of the law. He took out the bottle and wiped the neck of it before handing it to the guard. He watched jealously as the guard took a deep swig.

"I only drink on holidays." The guard grinned as he handed back the bottle.

Michael put the bottle away. "What's this?" he asked. "Christmas?"

"Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"We hit the beach this morning. This is D-Day, Brother, ain't you glad you're here?"

"How do you know?" Michael asked suspiciously.

"Eisenhower made a speech on the radio. I heard it," the guard said, "We're liberating the Frogs, he said."

"I knew somethin' was up yesterday," said one of the prisoners, a small, thoughtful-looking man who was in for thirty years because he had knocked out his Lieutenant in the orderly room. "They came to me and they offered to pardon me and give me an honourable discharge if I would go back into the infantry."

"What did you say?" Fahnstock asked, interestedly.

"Screw, I said," said the prisoner. "An honourable discharge right into a military cemetery."

"Shut your mouth," said the guard languidly, "and pick up that wheelbarrow. Whitacre, one more drink, to celebrate Dday."

"I have nothing to celebrate," Michael said, trying to save his gin.

"Don't be ungrateful," said the guard. "You're here nice and dry and safe and you ain't laying on any beach with a hunk of shrapnel up your arse. You got plenty to celebrate." He held out his hand. Michael gave him the bottle.

"That gin," Michael said, "cost me two pounds a fifth."

The guard grinned. "You was gypped," he said. He drank deeply. The two prisoners looked at him thirstily and longingly. The guard gave Michael the bottle. Michael drank, because it was D-Day. He felt the sweet wave of self-pity sweep alcoholically over him. He glared at the prisoners coldly as he put the bottle away.

"Well," said Fahnstock, "I guess old Roosevelt is finally satisfied today. He's gone and got himself a mess of Americans killed."

"I'll bet he jumped up out of his wheelchair," the guard said, "and is dancin' up and down on the White House floor."

"I heard," said Fahnstock, "the day he declared war on Germany, he had a big banquet in the White House with turkey and French wine, and after it they was all laying each other on the tables and desks."

Michael took a deep breath. "Germany declared war on the United States," he said. "I don't give a damn, but that's the way it happened."

"Whitacre is a Communist from New York," said Fahnstock to the guard. "He's crazy about Roosevelt."

"I'm not crazy about anybody," Michael said. "Only Germany declared war on us and so did Italy. Two days after Pearl Harbour."

"I'll leave it up to the boys," said Fahnstock. He turned to the guard and the prisoners. "Straighten out my friend," Fahnstock said.

"We started it," said the guard. "We declared war. I remember it as clear as day."

"Boys," Fahnstock appealed to the two prisoners.

They both nodded. "We declared war on them," said the man who had been offered an honourable discharge if he would join the infantry.

"Roger," said the other prisoner, who had been in the Air Force before they caught him forging cheques in Wales.

"There you are," said Fahnstock. "Four to one, Whitacre. The majority rules."

Michael glared drunkenly at Fahnstock. Suddenly it became intolerable to bear the pimply, leering, complacent face. Not today, Michael thought heavily, not on a day like this. "You ignorant, garbage-brained son of a bitch," Michael said clearly and wildly, "if you open your mouth once more I'll kill you."

Fahnstock moved his lips gently. Then he spat, a long, brownish, filthy spurt. The tobacco juice splashed on Michael's face. Michael leapt at Fahnstock and hit him in the jaw, twice. Fahnstock went down, but he was up in a moment, holding a heavy piece of two-by-four with three large nails sticking out of one end. He swung at Michael and Michael started to run. The guard and the prisoners stepped back to give the men room. They watched interestedly.

Fahnstock was very fast, despite his fat, and he got close enough to hit Michael's shoulder. Michael felt the sharp bite of the nails in his shoulder and wrenched away. He stopped and bent down and picked up a plank. Before he could straighten up, Fahnstock hit him on the side of the head. Michael felt the scraping, tearing passage of the nails across his cheekbone. Then he swung. He hit Fahnstock on the head and Fahnstock began to walk strangely, sideways, in a small half-circle around Michael. Fahnstock swung again, but weakly, and Michael leapt out of the way easily, although it was getting difficult to judge distances correctly, because of the blood in his eye. He waited coldly, and just as Fahnstock raised his board again, Michael stepped in, swinging his plank sideways, like a baseball bat. The plank caught Fahnstock across the neck and jaw and he went down on his hands and knees. He stayed that way, peering dully at the thin dust on the bare ground around the lumber pile.

"All right," said the guard. "That was a nice little fight. You," he said to the prisoners, "sit the bastard up."

Both prisoners went over to Fahnstock and sat him up against a box. Fahnstock looked dully out across the sunny bare ground, his legs straight out in front of him. He was breathing heavily, but that was all.

Michael threw away his plank and got out his handkerchief. He put it up to his face and looked curiously at the large red stain on it when he took it away from his face.

Wounded, he thought, grinning, wounded on D-Day.

The guard saw an officer turn a corner of a barracks a hundred yards away and said hurriedly to the prisoners, "Come on, get moving." Then to Michael and Fahnstock, "Better get back to work. Here comes Smiling Jack."

The guard and the prisoners went off briskly, and Michael stared at the approaching officer, who was called Smiling Jack because he never smiled at all.

Michael grabbed Fahnstock and pulled him to his feet. He put the hammer in Fahnstock's hand and automatically Fahnstock began to tap at the boards. Michael picked up some boards and ostentatiously carried them to the other end of the pile, where he put them down neatly.

He went back to Fahnstock and picked up his own hammer. Both men were making a busy noise when Smiling Jack came up to them. Court-martial, Michael was thinking, court-martial, five years, drunk on duty, fighting, insubordination, etc.

"What's going on here?" asked Smiling Jack.

Michael stopped hammering, and Fahnstock too. They turned and faced the Lieutenant.

"Nothing, Sir," Michael said, keeping his lips as tight as possible so that the Lieutenant couldn't smell his breath.

"Have you men been fighting?"

"No, Sir," said Fahnstock, united against the common enemy.

"How did you get that wound?" The Lieutenant gestured towards the three raw, bleeding lines across Michael's cheekbone.

"I slipped, Sir," said Michael blandly.

Smiling Jack's Up curled angrily and Michael knew he was thinking. They're all the same, they're all out to make fools of you, there isn't a word of truth in a single enlisted man in the whole damn Army.

"Fahnstock!" Smiling Jack said.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Is this man telling the truth?"

"Yes, Sir. He slipped."

Smiling Jack looked around helplessly and furiously. "If I find out you're lying…" He left the sentence threateningly in the air. "All right, Whitacre, finish up here. There're travel orders for you in the orderly room. You're being transferred. Go on and pick them up."

He glared once more at the two men and turned and stalked away, after exacting a salute.

Michael watched the retreating, frustrated back.

"You son of a bitch," said Fahnstock, "if I catch you again I'll razor-cut you."

"Nice to have known you," Michael said lightly. "Clean those pots nice and bright now."

He tossed away his hammer and strode lightly towards the orderly room, tapping his rear pocket to make sure the bottle wasn't showing.

With his orders in his pocket, later on, and a neat bandage on his cheek, Michael packed his kit. Colonel Pavone had come through, and Michael was to report to him in London immediately. As he packed, Michael sipped at his bottle, and planned, craftily, to take no chances, volunteer for nothing, take nothing seriously. Survive, he thought, survive; it is the only lesson I have learned so far.

He drove down to London in an Army truck the next morning. The people of the villages along the road cheered and made the V sign with their fingers because they thought every truck now was on its way to France, and Michael and the other soldiers in the truck waved back cynically, grinning and laughing.

They passed a British convoy near London, loaded with armed infantrymen. On the rear truck, there was a dourly chalked legend. "DON'T CHEER, GIRLS, WE'RE BRITISH."

The British infantrymen did not even look up when the American truck sped by them.

THE Landing Craft Infantry wallowed in the water until four o'clock in the afternoon. At noon a barge took off their wounded, all properly bandaged and transfused. Noah watched the swathed, blanketed men being swung over the side on stretchers, thinking, with a helpless touch of envy: They are going back, they are going back, in ten hours they will be in England, in ten days they may be in the United States, what luck, they never had to fight at all.

But then, when the barge was only a hundred feet away, it was hit. There was a splash beside it, and nothing seemed to be happening for a moment. But then it slowly rolled over and the blankets and the bandages and the stretchers whirled in the choppy green water for a minute or two, and that was all. Donnelly had been one of the wounded, with a piece of shrapnel in his skull, and Noah looked for Donnelly in the froth and heavy cloudy water, but there was no sign of him. He never got a chance to use that flame-thrower, Noah thought dully. After all that practice.

Colclough was not to be seen. He was down below all day and Lieutenant Green and Lieutenant Sorenson were the only officers of the Company on deck. Lieutenant Green was a frail, girlish-looking man, and everybody made fun of him all through training, because of his mincing walk and high voice. But he walked around on deck, among the wounded and the sick and the men who were sure they were going to die, and he was cheerful and competent and helped with the bandages and the blood transfusions, and kept telling everyone the boat was not going to sink, the Navy was working on the engines, they would be in on the beach in fifteen minutes. He still walked in that silly, mincing way, and his voice was no lower and no more manly than usual, but Noah had the feeling that if Lieutenant Green, who had run a dry-goods store in South Carolina before the war, had not been on board, half the Company would have jumped over the side by two in the afternoon.

It was impossible to tell how things were going on the beach. Burnecker even made a joke about it. All the long morning he had kept saying, in a strange, rasping voice, holding violently on to Noah's arms when the shells hit the water close to them, "We're going to get it today. We're going to get it today." But about midday he got hold of himself. He stopped vomiting and ate a K ration, complaining about the dryness of the cheese, and then he seemed to have either resigned himself or become more optimistic. When Noah peered out at the beach, on which shells were falling and men running and mines going up, and asked Burnecker, "How is it going?" Burnecker said, "I don't know. The boy hasn't delivered my copy of the New York Times yet." It wasn't much of a joke, but Noah laughed wildly at it and Burnecker grinned, pleased with the effect, and from then on, in the Company, long after they were deep in Germany, when anybody asked how things were going, he was liable to be told, "The boy hasn't delivered the New York Times yet."

The hours passed in a long, cold, grey haze for Noah, and much later, when he tried to remember how he had felt, while the boat was rolling helplessly, its decks slimy with blood and sea water, and the shells hitting at random around him from time to time, he could only recall isolated, insignificant impressions – Burnecker's joke; Lieutenant Green bent over, holding his helmet with weird fastidiousness for a wounded man to vomit in; the face of the Naval Lieutenant in command of the landing craft, when he hung over the side to inspect the damage, red, angry, baffled, like a baseball player who has been victimized by a nearsighted umpire; Donnelly's face, after his head had been bandaged, its usual coarse, brutal lines all gone, now composed and serene in its unconsciousness, like a nun in the movies – Noah remembered these things and remembered looking a dozen times an hour to see if his satchel charges were still dry, and looking again and again to see if the safety-catch was on his rifle and forgetting two minutes later and looking again…