“This is going to be the real thing, for a change,” Loomis said. “We’ll be making contact with the enemy in force this time.” He was doing his best to instill a sense of emergency, but his own red-rimmed eyes and dust-caked lips showed that he was as tired as anyone else. For once it must have seemed to him, as it did to others, that his words were something out of a movie.
“Now, we’re going to get plenty of artillery support before we go up there, but they’re dug in good and solid and you can be damn sure the worst part of the job’ll be up to us. When we hit that hill it’ll be every man for himself. I don’t want to see anybody laying back and chickening out and afraid to use their weapons. All right, that’s it. Any questions?”
And they continued to make their laborious way up the steep, white-flag-hung streets of the town, looking ahead to where the hill rose bald and brown in the afternoon sunshine. Nothing seemed real.
At the top of the town they were allowed to rest. The artillery barrage was scheduled to start in thirty minutes, and in the meantime there was nothing to do but wait. Finn’s squad sat in a sullen, exhausted row with their backs against a stucco house, looking down over the streets they’d climbed, and there was no talk among them until Sam Rand produced a sleek Luger pistol that he’d taken from the belt of a German prisoner in the previous village.
“Hey-y,” said Walker. “Nice, Sam. Mind if I take a look?” And he leaned forward to reach across the laps of Krupka, Brownlee, and Prentice. Sam leaned forward to hand it over, and it was then, at the instant of the pistol’s changing hands, that all the world stopped dead.
It was an American artillery shell, half an hour too early and five hundred yards too short, and it plowed into the house six feet above their heads. Later some said it had skip-bombed off the sloping street at their feet before hitting the house; others said it hadn’t. At the time all they knew was the overwhelming shock of it, the scorched eyes and stopped eardrums, and the panic that had them instantly up and spinning, colliding with each other, losing their helmets, leaping away in all directions with a blind and breathless urgency.
Prentice ran head on into Walker, caromed away, and made it around the side of the house only to go slamming into a high chicken-wire fence. He spun away from the fence and took off in a sprint down the street after the frantic figure of Krupka, with someone else pounding at his heels. The second shell sent him sprawling on his belly, and he lay wriggling on the pavement as
if to burrow down inside it. When he looked up, Krupka was no longer there. Ten yards from where Krupka had been lay a loose heap of green and brown cloth, and only later would he understand that this was all there was left of Krupka. Then the third explosion came, and the fourth. The brief interval of silence that followed was filled with a sobbing falsetto scream that he was now aware of having heard for some seconds, and he raised his head just enough to see who was screaming. It was Lieutenant Coverly, running down the street and waving his arms. Loomis was close behind him, running in a crouch and calling: “Get
down
, Covey, get
down
!” Then there was another explosion, and another, and Prentice hid his face in his arm and embraced the gutter for all he was worth, thinking, At least we won’t have to take the hill now; at least we won’t have to take the hill. He lay there grinding his teeth and hiding his face in his arm as the earth was rocked again and again.
For “A” Company, the end of the war came on the last day of April, when they were taken off the line and sent to spend several meaningless days in foxholes in the rain. Then they were taken in trucks to an undamaged town and billeted in dry, windproof, excellent houses; and it was while they were there that the news of the German surrender broke over Europe. There were several nights of drunken celebration and consorting with German girls in open defiance of the regulation against “fraternizing,” and then they were removed to an even better place – a small, sunny town called Kierspe-Bahnhof, where all they had to do was stand guard over a thousand newly liberated Russian D.P.’s. The Allied Military Government had moved the Russians into what must have been the best residential section of the town, a colony of neat two-story houses on a hill well away from the partially bombed-out plastics factory that had been the town’s only industry. One squad at a time, in shifts around the clock, the men of the Second Platoon would stroll up and down the pleasant streets to be greeted by happy smiles and waves from all the houses, to be surrounded at times by handshaking men and affectionate women, to be pressed into accepting glasses of home-made vodka, and to join in singing Russian songs to the accompaniment of harmonicas. And each night, if they dared to
slip away from their rounds and risk being found absent by sergeants in patrolling jeeps, there was every promise of girls to be had for the asking.
Several of the younger divisions in Europe were being processed for shipment halfway around the world to what everyone called the C.B.I., to help finish the war against Japan, but the 57th was not among them: it would remain here. In accordance with the Point System, the older men in the outfit would soon be removed and sent home for discharge; the younger, low-point men could expect to stay in Europe for six months to a year.
In the meantime, everything was nice in Kierspe-Bahnhof. The Company kitchen had been set up in the undamaged part of the plastics factory, and the food became better and more plentiful. Each man received a shot of schnapps before lunch and dinner and a choice of red or white wine with the meal. There were hot showers every day, and to top everything off they were issued fresh uniforms – not new, but clean and sweet-smelling, faded and shrunken from the Quartermaster laundry. Instead of steel helmets they wore only clean helmet-liners now, each emblazoned on one side with the Divisional insignia in enamel paint.
There were irritants in the new life too – “chickenshit” things like Reveille and Retreat formations, like formal inspections and formal five- and ten-mile hikes – but in general the days were slow and rich and lazy.
Everyone seemed happy except Prentice, who felt a nagging sense of unfulfillment. The war had ended too soon. Whatever chance he might have had to atone for Quint’s death had been denied him, and there would be no more chances. The purpose had gone out of his life. There was nothing for him to do now but exist from day to day, enjoying the peace and the luxury that
he felt he didn’t deserve. And he was bored and irritated with the tireless, rambling, gossiping reminiscences that had come to form the Company’s major pastime.
“… ’member the day Underwood and Gardinella got killed? The day we had to cross that field? …”
“… ’member the night we crossed that canal? And the eighty-eights were zeroed right the hell
in
on us? …”
The worst time of all, it was generally agreed, was the day their own artillery had fired short rounds – the day Krupka had been killed and Lieutenant Coverly had been evacuated. It was Klein who told, several times, about what had happened to the lieutenant. “He just went to pieces” – a snap of Klein’s fingers – “like that. When the first of those shells came in, we all hit the street and kind of got around the side of this house; then the second one comes in, and the third one – only it was a dud. The damnedest thing: we’re waiting for this explosion and all we hear is this ‘Clunk, a-wunk, wunk, wunk’ – like that, and here’s this God damn shell bouncing around in the street. It looked so
small
, you know? A one-oh-five’s really kind of a small, skinny shell – and it comes rolling down the street to where we’re at, and it stops about a foot from Covey. He reaches out and touches it, and he says, ‘It’s
hot!’
I thought he was laughing. Then he sticks his fingers in his mouth and he says, ‘It’s
hot
! It’s
hot
! It’s
hot!’ –
and then he went to pieces. Just like that.”
Soon a number of Bulge veterans came back to the company, men who’d been hospitalized with wounds or frozen feet. New replacements arrived too – shy boys fresh from the States, or from England – and they made an excellent audience for the reminiscences. But the stories of the Bulge were always so much the best, so much richer and more frightening – “ ’member the night the Jerries came at us in
waves?
The night Cap’n Summers was killed?” – that the post-Bulge men found
it hard to compete. They tended to fall into the same respectful silence as the new replacements, as if they too had missed the war.
And this seemed to have an especially depressing effect on Walker. He would sit through the discussions with a glum, petulant look, clearly resentful that he hadn’t seen enough of the war to talk about and that his performance in it had been inept. That at least was what Prentice saw in his face, and it was so much like the way he felt himself that several times he had to turn away from Walker’s eyes in embarrassment.
Then, before the first week in the new town was over, Walker did something that made him a laughing stock. The company clerk broke the news, and within an hour it had become general knowledge, setting off little bursts of incredulous laughter wherever it was told.
“You’re kidding!”
“No! I swear to God! That’s what he did!”
Walker had gone to Captain Agate and made a formal request that he be allowed to volunteer for service in the C.B.I. The rest of the story was that the captain hadn’t taken him seriously – “Old Agate just looks at him, says, ‘What’s
your
problem, soldier?’ ” – and that the interview had collapsed in the derisive laughter of everyone in the C.P., from which Walker had stolen away with a crimson face.
Prentice laughed with the others when he heard about it, but he knew he was laughing in relief that it had been Walker, instead of himself, who had made such a foolish mistake.
If he’d taken little part in the storytelling before, Walker stayed away from it altogether in the day or two following his disgrace. And it wasn’t more than two days later, just before noon, when the conversation took an unexpected, pleasurable turn for Prentice. The talk, for once, was about the Ruhr:
“ ’member the day they turned the anti-aircraft gun on us? On the railroad tracks, where old Drake caught it in the leg?”
Finn and Rand and Mueller and Bernstein were all there, and Prentice felt his stomach tighten in fear that the account of that day might soon lead to his own disastrous performance that night – a fear that was intensified when Sam Rand took up the story.
“Jesus, I remember old Prentice that time,” he began, already starting to laugh through his words so that the listening faces smiled in readiness. “We was about halfway acrost the tracks when the gun opened up, remember? And we each of us had to get behind one of them brick pillars? Damn things weren’t but about an inch wider than your shoulders? I remember old Prentice standin’ there like this—” and getting to his feet, Sam stood stiffly at attention, holding an invisible rifle at order arms. “He’s standin’ there like this with the damn anti-aircraft shells comin’ in, and Cap’n Agate yells out, ‘Hey
Prentice
! Par-rade –
rest!’
”
A thunderclap of laughter broke around him – even Finn was laughing; even Bernstein – and it seemed to Prentice that never in his life had he heard a sweeter sound. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and the pleasure of it carried him out of the house and down to the factory mess hall with a buoyancy he hadn’t known in a long time. He lingered over his schnapps, which sent a fine warmth through his veins, and then he moved along into the savory smells of the serving counter. They were having fried chicken, a special meal, and he carried his heaped and steaming mess kit over to a place at one of the tables beside Owens, the little headquarters man he’d known last winter, and with whom he’d been evacuated that day in Horbourg.
“Hi. How you doing, Prentice?”
“Pretty good. This place free?”
“Sure. Sit down.”
He’d had only a few very brief talks with Owens since coming back to the company, but now, in the liquor- and wine-flavored leisure of this excellent lunch, they sat chatting as amiably as buddies. They even stayed to talk over coffee and cigarettes, after they’d finished eating, and they took their time about getting up, slinging their rifles, and strolling over to join the line of men waiting to wash their mess kits.
“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” Owens was saying, “I’m not too happy about all this chickenshit we’ve been getting lately.”
And Prentice agreed. “Matter of fact,” he said, “if they keep this up I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more than
one
guy volunteering for the C.B.I.”
And he would have thought nobody but Owens was listening until, from the corner of his eye, he saw a figure detach itself from the crowd moving past on the right. Even before he could turn and see who it was, the man had taken him roughly by the arm. It was Walker.
“How’s that, Prentice?” he said, “What’s all this shit about the C.B.I.?”
It was such a surprise that Prentice could only smile like a fool. “Huh?”
“You heard me.” Walker was stiff and trembling. “Whadda
you
got to say about the C.B.I.?”
Prentice pulled his arm free, which jogged his mess kit and sent the chicken bones dancing in the greasy pan. He felt a warm flush in his face, and it seemed to his startled ears that all the reverberating noise of the high, wide mess hall had stopped. “Look, Walker. This is none of your business.”
The silence around him was no illusion now – everybody
had
stopped talking – and Walker couldn’t have asked for a quieter stage on which to enact the passion of his next words: “How
come
you
don’t volunteer for the C.B.I.? Huh? You know why? Because you’re
yella
, that’s why!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Walk—” But he got no further than that before everything went red and spun around in his vision. Walker had taken his face in one hand and shoved it; with the other hand he had grabbed his arm and swung him around, so that Prentice went reeling across the factory floor and hit the wall in a whirl of flying chicken bones, his rifle flailing at his elbow and his helmet liner bouncing away. It took him only an instant to get free of his rifle sling, to gather himself in a crouch against the wall and spring forward with both fists cocked in what he hoped was an approximation of fighting stance, but before he could take a swing he felt his arms being clamped from behind, and Walker was being pulled back by two other men. Instead of silence now there was pandemonium ringing from the walls: