Beneath Gray Skies (9 page)

When he had opened them again, Brian had left the car. His rifle was still there, but the bayonet was no longer fixed to it. He reached out to touch the rifle, but heard footsteps approaching, and shrank back into his corner. The footsteps had entered the car and come closer, and he had felt a hand shaking his shoulder.

“I’ve brought you some corn bread,” Brian had said, smiling. “Best thing in that godforsaken hole that I could find to bring back for you, old man.”

David had looked carefully through the gloom for blood on Brian’s hands, but saw nothing. He had smelled the sharp smell of Army carbolic soap, though.

He was just about to ask Brian what the heck had been going on—it seemed to David that Brian had been acting kind of strange for some time now, and he wasn’t sure quite what he had been up to, even before they started out on their train journey—when the rest of the platoon clattered their way into the truck and stopped any possible chance of a quiet conversation.

-o-

D
avid’s attention returned to the
Lee
, pitching and corkscrewing her way through the Atlantic. He’d asked one of the sailors how much longer they’d have to suffer, and the man, seemingly unaffected by the storm, had grinned “a few more weeks” back at him.

Brian had said that was “rubbish”, and at worst, there’d only be a few more days of it. After all, they’d been at sea for nearly two weeks now. As he thought about how pleasant it would be to be able to keep something in his stomach for more than a few minutes, Tom entered the stateroom. Tom was another of the lucky few, along with Brian, who didn’t seem to be affected by seasickness.

“Talked to one of them sailors. He reckons things are going to get a bit easier some time soon,” Tom announced to the room of groaning soldiers. “We’re going to get into something called the ‘English Channel’ and then it’s only a day or so till we get to dry land.”

There was a weak cheer from the bunks. Brian came in, grinning. “If the rain lets up, there’s a chance I might get a look at jolly old Blighty tomorrow, what?” The others gazed at him in bewilderment. “Oh, never mind, chaps.” He threw himself on his bunk and soon started to snore.

Despite the motion of the ship and his nausea, David dozed off. He was awakened by the sound of the bugle calling them to evening prayer. Clutching his complaining stomach with one hand, David grasped the railing beside his bunk with the other to brace himself as he swung down. To his amazement, the ship seemed to have stopped rolling and pitching.

Tom noticed his look of surprise. “Stopped about an hour back. I went up on deck, and it’s as purty a sight as you could wish. Sun going down over the sea and all. Never seen anything like it. Come on, prayers.”

David could hardly concentrate on the prayers, as he was starting to realize how hungry he was, having kept nothing in his stomach for what seemed like months. Once or twice his stomach let out loud complaints, but luckily these occurred during the hymns, and only Tom, who grinned broadly at the sound, seemed to notice. At last, they sang the final verse of “Dixie” and Reverend Pollock (“and he really is one of them queers”, Tom had said, having long since disposed of any such thoughts he might have had about Brian. “You don’t want to find yourself alone in a room with that one, Davy. I’ve heard tales.”) droned the last “Amen.”

“Time to get something inside you,” said Tom, as the black slave mess-boys set out the tables. “But take it easy, now.”

The fried pork chops still didn’t hold much appeal for David, but he ate several spoonfuls of hoppin’ john, and drank a lot of cold sweet tea.

“Feel better?” asked Tom. “Let’s go up on deck.”

Most of the troops on board seemed to have had the same idea now that the rough weather seemed to be over, and the companionways leading to the deck were crowded with excited soldiers.

“Smells good,” said David, sniffing appreciatively. And it did, after two weeks of a cabin shared with a dozen other seasick, tobacco-chewing men. “Smells like home,” he said. “Like goin’ down to Goose Creek Bay and the oyster flats.”

“I kind of forgot you was brought up near the sea,” remarked Tom. He was from North Texas (“little place you never heard tell of, called Claude, just outside of Amarillo”).

“Sounds like home, too,” said David, listening to the seagulls.

“Certainly does,” agreed Brian’s voice behind them.

“Why, are your folks on the coast, too?”

“Not this coast, worse luck,” said Brian, joining them. “My people live on the East coast, near Hunstanton, if you’ve ever heard of it. Didn’t think you would have done, somehow.” He pointed into the darkness, where a faint light flashed at intervals on the horizon. “I asked one of the ship’s officers where we were, and he told me that was the Eddystone lighthouse. Nearly home for me. So near and yet so far.”

-o-

T
wo days later, the
Robert E. Lee
made her way up the River Weser, and tied up to the quay in
Olslebshausen
, one of the dock areas in Bremen. David had been busily copying orders and messages since they had entered the Channel, so it came as no big surprise to him, or to his companions, whom he’d forewarned, when a large bundle of somewhat smelly old clothes was thrown through the door of each stateroom, together with the shouted order to “Take off your uniforms, find some clothes for yourselves and put them on.”

Wrinkling their noses, the soldiers of David’s stateroom hunted through the mass of clothing to find something that fitted tolerably and didn’t smell too bad.

Brian, by far the tallest of them, came off worst. His pants stopped short a few inches above his shoes, and his shirt sleeves seemed to barely cover his elbows. It had proved impossible to find any kind of coat that fitted him at all properly, but he wore an overcoat that served as a kind of jacket. The sergeant inspecting them took one look and burst out laughing.

“Reckon we’ll have to find you something better when we step ashore. That’ll have to do you for now, I guess.”

Next, they packed their uniforms into their Army knapsacks, and tied their rifles to the knapsacks, with their names and units written on labels, also attached to the knapsacks. Two soldiers from each stateroom were assigned to take the bundles of each group to the mess-room.

“And now?” asked Tom, returning. He’d been one of the bundle-carriers.

“We wait,” explained David. “Far as I can remember from what it said on them orders.”

“Armies the world over, what?” said Brian. “Hurry up and wait. Always the way.”

And so they waited. When they were finally told to get out of the stateroom and go down the gangplank, the sun had set. David noticed that the Stars and Bars was no longer flying from the mast of the ship, and another flag he didn’t recognize was flapping in the breeze. They were ordered to walk, not march, across the quay into an enormous warehouse.

“How long do we stay here?” whispered Tom to David.

“Don’t know. Never saw anything what talked about after this.”

“C Company orderly, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Alabama, over here at the double,” came the call.

“That’s me,” said David, and slipped away to join the Captain.

-o-

M
uch to everyone’s surprise, everything was well-organized inside the warehouse, contrasting with the usual Confederate army muddle. “You have to hand it to Jerry, he knows how to keep things clean and tidy,” were Brian’s words when he returned from the row of field latrines that took up a goodly portion of one end of the warehouse. And the food, when it arrived, although the potato soup seemed to consist mainly of water, and the portion of sausage was tiny, was served in unnaturally clean mess tins, and the portions exactly matched the number of men. Usually in the Army of the Confederacy, it seemed that the last thirty or so men in the mess line were fighting for three portions between them.

“Wonder where they’re getting this stuff from,” remarked Brian. “I know chaps in London who thought the Huns were down to their last horse,” picking shreds of sausage from his teeth. “Never thought I’d see the day when I’d be eating Jerry’s food as his guest.”

David was kept busy during the next day. Once, when he took papers from the Captain to the Colonel, a good-looking stranger in a helmet and leather coat, with an red armband bearing a strange black hooked cross on a white circle, rose to greet him.

“Congratulations,” he said, in a strange accent that reminded somewhat David of Mr. Jacobs, his hometown barber. “You are the boy who writes his words so wonderfully.” Like Mr. Jacobs, his “w”s had a tendency to become “v”s.

“Yes, Major Gurring,” (at least, that’s how the stranger’s name sounded to David), replied the Colonel, “this is the boy who writes so well.”

“Would you please make your best writing to copy these words onto this card? It is a present to my new wife,” asked the German. He handed a piece of paper to David, who looked at it. He could read the letters, but it made no sense to him at all.

“Sir, I don’t rightly understand what it says?” David half-questioned the man.

“Of course you don’t,” explained the German Major. “I did not expect you to be able to read these words of a great German poet. But I will read them to you. Then I will tell you their meaning in English. And when you understand their meaning in English, you can write them in German, yes?”

David nodded, and the German began his recitation,

“
Über allen Gipfeln

Ist Ruh,

In allen Wipfeln

Spürest du

Kaum einen
H
auch;

Die
V
ögelein schweigen im
W
alde.

Warte nur, balde

Ruhest du auch.

Now I tell you what it means: ‘There is peace over the hilltops, and you can hear scarcely any breath over the trees. The birds in the woods are silent. Just wait a little and you too will have peace.’” He sighed. “Beautiful, no? Written by Gurter, a great German poet.”

“Sir,” asked David. “Would you please say the German again for me?”

The Major smiled and did so. “Now write on this card, please,” handing it to David. “With this pen,” handing over an expensive fountain pen.

“Beautiful!” he exclaimed, after seeing David’s finished handiwork and retrieving his pen. “That will form the centerpiece for the bouquet I will be giving to my wife at her birthday. My congratulations, young man, and my thanks to you, Herr Colonel, for your happy and fortunate suggestion.” He drew himself up to attention, bowed, clicking his heels together, and left them.

“Reckon the Major likes you, Corporal,” remarked the Colonel. “Guess you’ve helped the Confederacy a lot just now. That Major’s going to be a very important man some day, I figure, and you’ve helped us get on his good side.”

“Sir?” asked David. “May I take the German poem that he left behind back with me?”

“Sure. You thinking of learning German?” chuckled the Colonel.

David showed the paper to Brian when he went back to the company.

Brian seemed to recognize it, “Goethe,” he said, and read it in German, even better than the German Major, David thought. He told Brian so.

“What did you say the chap’s name was?”

“Gurring, I think.”

“Good-looking chap? Eyes that look straight at you? Big cross thing here?” pointing to his collar.

“Yes, yes, and yes.”

“I think your Colonel’s right about this Hermann Goering chappie, David. He’s quite famous and going to be more so. Took over the Red Baron’s squadron, even though he started as an observer, but the other blokes weren’t all that happy about that. He’s not a real Major, you know. He’s promoted himself from Oberleutnant. Oh, and who says crime doesn’t pay?” He chuckled.

David was startled by this stream of information, most of which seemed to refer to things he had never heard of. What was a Red Baron, for instance, and why would he have a squadron? “Do you know him, then?” he asked Brian.

“Let’s say I know quite a lot about him, old boy. I hope I know more about him than he knows about me, that’s all.” And with that, he would say no more.