Authors: Richard Matheson
“Where do you think we’re going?” he asked to end the thoughts.
“Gee, I don’t know,” John said, “I think the captain said something about Metz.”
“We already went
through
Metz,” Erick said irritably.
“Oh,” John said, “I guess… that’s what he meant then.”
“I guess.”
Erick turned on his side, away from John, and tried to sleep. It was hard though. He couldn’t understand that because he was absolutely exhausted. Yet he couldn’t sleep. He kept hearing footsteps slogging past in the night and all the other sounds.
Finally, he rolled irritably onto his back again. “Jesus, who can sleep?” he said in disgust.
John could.
* * * *
It was morning and John sat cross-legged and helmetless on the ground, cleaning his glasses.
Erick rested on one elbow watching him. He noticed the light curling fuzz on John’s cheeks and his sandy hair stuck in flat clumps to his scalp and forehead. He watched him breathe the lenses cloudy and rub them carefully with a clean khaki-colored handkerchief. Then he watched John slip the glasses over his ears. He and John looked at each other. John half smiled. After a second Erick smiled back.
“I have to go,” John said.
“Yeah,” Erick said, yawning, “Give my worst to the captain.”
“Okay,” John said. John liked the captain. He got up and put on his helmet, slung the rifle and machine pistol over his shoulders and looked around.
“Did I forget anything?” He asked.
“You forgot to lock the front door.”
John grinned a little. Then they looked at each other and, in the silence, they suddenly felt the wordless terror that clung to each of them because they were going into their first combat. Erick’s throat moved.
“Take it easy, John,” he said.
John’s mouth twitched and his brown eyes were warm behind his glasses.
“You too Erick,” he said. Then, “You’re my best friend.”
Then John turned away and Erick felt tears in his eyes before he could stop them. He wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or enraged. Happy that he was John’s best friend. Enraged that John’s words should bring tears.
He closed his eyes a moment and let the feeling pass. Then he opened them and watched John walking slowly over the plain and, finally, disappearing behind a dip in the ground.
In the cold stillness he lay staring at the mud-flecked canvas and listening to himself breathe, very slowly, and very carefully, as though he wanted to remember how it went.
* * * *
It was oddly warm for December.
The sun was bright and the sky light blue and cloudless. The air was clear and crisp. All around the scattered troops were bare, deserted woods. The countryside seemed to be waiting patiently. As thought it knew what was coming and was rubbing its topographical hands together in anticipation.
Men were throwing their equipment away.
Gas masks were the first to go. Some of the men had thrown away their gas masks long before that day. Then, after the masks, blankets went and overcoats and shelter halves, tent pegs, rope, raincoats, parts of mess kits. Some men hacked off the bottom parts of their overcoats with their bayonet blades and made short jackets for themselves.
Erick threw away his overcoat entirely because it was so warm. In the back of his mind he knew it wasn’t going to stay warm. But the sense of live for the present was still strong on him. What happened hours later seemed of no interest to him. And, admitted or not, he knew that he might never see what went on hours later.
He kept on his combat jacket and put his folded raincoat into his thinned out pack. He kept half of his mess kit and his canteen cup.
Men sat all over the plain checking everything. Some of them were cleaning their rusty, mud-caked rifles. Erick didn’t even look at his. He gazed over the plain that was strewn with discarded equipment. It looked like a thinly-spread junk yard.
Then he took out his wallet and looked at the photographs. At his mother smiling lovingly at him. At Grace holding her new-born daughter proudly and smiling at him. At her husband George standing beside her, smiling at his baby. At his cousin Richard smirking at him. At the photograph of his father holding Erick in his arms.
He stared at each photograph, trying to imagine the family as they were when the photographs were taken, what they had said and what kind of day it was. What the rest of the world was doing as they posed and someone clicked a shutter and set them down on paper.
The escape didn’t last long. He couldn’t hold on to the past. It was too vague, too far from him. The present had fingers of steel and it kept on turning him around and crying—
Now! Look me in the face!
He could not hold on to memories. He kept on being thrown back to the long plain, a billion miles from home and life, sitting on a muddy patch of ground and waiting. And these pictures were only scraps of paper held in the hands. Scraps to be slid in between stitched pieces of black leather and shoved back into his pocket, alien and uncomforting. God, he thought.
And tried the concept on for size.
* * * *
They were in enfilade position, ready to move out.
He had his rifle over his arm in hunter fashion. Ahead of him he saw the squad leader and Old Bill and the man with the thick glasses who always kept his rifle and his clothes clean through everything and the rest of the squad all eighteen years old and afraid.
Someone blew a whistle.
They began to walk slowly, a vast staggered group of men that stretched over the plain as far as Erick could see. They walked and walked over the uneven terrain as though they were stalking someone, some animal.
After a while they moved down a gradual slope and through a shallow, rushing stream. The cold, sparkling water swept up over his shoes and up the sides of his legs, soaking his feet. When he started up the hill on the other side of the stream, he felt the water squishing inside his shoes as he walked.
The men moved quietly and slowly up the hill, into a shattered town.
There was nothing in it but rubble. The only building left standing was a skeleton church that seemed ready to collapse. There were no people in the town. It was silent and deserted. The only sound came from boots crunching over the rubble-thick streets and the jiggling of weapons on the troops shoulders.
Erick kept looking at the church, his heart beating quickly, thinking in training film alertness that snipers hung in batlike clusters from its walls.
His throat became clogged and he coughed. It sounded unnaturally loud, he felt. As though he were giving away the position of the United States army by his carelessness. His heart began to beat quickly and he held ready the cloak of divine protection he had forced himself to believe was just about slung over his shoulder.
As he kept walking, past the silent church ruins, he wondered how long it would be before the Germans decided they had gone far enough. He lost the feeling of his body and seemed to drift effortlessly through the town like some vaporous entity. Or else, he felt, he was not moving at all and the shattered town was rolling past him like broken stage flats. He wasn’t sure which way it was. He only kept his eyes shifting suspiciously from side to side, ready to throw up his rifle and fire at the slightest promise of a target. He thought, if the man in front of me knew how jumpy I am, he’d walk backwards to keep an eye on me and take his chances on the Germans.
The squad passed the town and started down a rocky hill. His feet were becoming uncomfortable now. It was unpleasant walking with water in his heavy shoes.
They crossed a depression, then up and over into another long deserted plain. Since he hadn’t noticed landmarks on the other plain, Erick thought maybe they were walking in circles. “Shit,” he muttered, almost believing it. Then he was sorry he’d said it, feeling that any recourse to profanity at this moment was slightly perilous when he might be calling on God at any moment.
We walked slowly, his heart beating quickly. He kept looking for trees or bushes to hide behind but there was nothing. Well, that’s a stupid thing, he told himself, you don’t hide behind a prominent landmark; you were taught better than that.
And, suddenly, as in a dream, he began to believe that he had forgotten everything; how to load the rifle, how to fire it, how to adjust the bayonet, how to parry and thrust with it. Even, how to walk.
He trembled and his teeth clenched as he tried to go over everything in his mind. Mentally he loaded and unloaded his rifle, his head dipping in sudden jerks as he nodded when he remembered correctly. His face was tense and expectant as he kept walking without looking where he was going, trying desperately to recall how one sidestepped when he wanted to drive a bayonet into a man’s stomach or how to parry so you can smash a man’s face with the butt of your rifle.
Once, he whirled and looked behind himself suddenly as though he thought he was being stalked by a division of hand-picked German troopers.
They were a quarter of the way to the crest of the next downward slope. He was shifting the bazooka to his left shoulder.
Then you pull back the… the thing and the clip flies out and then you… you
…
Rushing sounds in the air.
Way over their heads. Sounding like a giant blowing on his soup.
Then, ear-splitting explosions behind and ahead of him. Someone yelled,
“Hit the ground!”
He wondered for an instant how he had possibly managed to get down on his stomach so fast with all the equipment he was carrying. It seemed as though the cry of “Hit the ground!” was still ringing in the air when he was groveling on the earth his face pushed hard into the hollow of his arms, eyes tightly shut.
Stop being such a fool—his other mind said casually, sitting cross-legged and relaxed above it all—do you think you’re hiding yourself by closing your eyes?
He fought it off. It did help. It was as though by shutting out the world he was putting himself in darkness too.
Then he began to pray.
Without form, just words, spoken automatically, over and over like an entreaty, a command, a mathematical formula. Something taught in Sunday School and tutored endlessly by his mother.
God is my protection. God is myprotection. Godismyprotection. Over and over and over until the words became a glued-together jumble of sounds that lost all meaning.
Yet, meaningless or not, they filled his mind with their presence and kept fear from entering. He didn’t feel afraid. Suddenly he
knew
he was safe. There was no reason for feeling that way, he certainly was not safe.
But he wasn’t afraid. He knew, even taking a moment off to sympathize, that others were going to be killed. He felt sorry for them. But, as for himself, he was charmed. He couldn’t possibly be killed. It didn’t occur to him that all the other men might feel the same way. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had thought of the possibility. They could feel any way they wanted. But some of them were going to die. And he couldn’t die. It was impossible.
The shelling was brief. Silence swept over the open ground.
“Move out!” cried the same voice. It was the first sergeant, Erick recognized. He struggled up and joined the slow, uneven movement of troops across the plain.
For some reason, he felt confident now, almost cocky. In a minor way he had come through his first brush with death and hadn’t even received a scratch. Hang on boy, said the irritator in his mind, it’s only the beginning,
only
the beginning.
Thank
you, Captain Andy! the same portion of his mind bowed grandly to itself.
As they reached the crest of the hill, the shelling began again.
He had to fling himself down again, heart drumming fiercely, fingers clutching at the earth. Overhead the shells whistled and the sound of their exploding was like that of the giant, now pounding his huge fists into the ground, first one at a time, then both together, crashing them down in a brainless rage, trying to crush them all.
All over the plain, men dove forward with a clatter of equipment and hugged themselves to earth. The ground was dotted with their stretched-out immobile bodies.
Erick’s mind was filled with the magic phrase again. It repeated itself over and over now. Once, when the shelling slackened for a moment, he whispered— “Is
our
protection.”— in a sudden impulsive gesture of loving kindness.
But then the shells began to flutter over in great clusters and the air was torn with explosions. Great dirt clouds were flung up into the air and, abruptly, he drew in the folds of his protection and held it over himself alone, muttering the endless cant faster and faster, smelling the reek of the dead winter earth in his nostrils, feeling its chill wetness, hearing the scream of war all around him.
* * * *
After a while the shelling slowed down.
“Dig in!” yelled another voice.
He needed no encouragement. Tearing off his pack, he assembled the small pickaxe. Anxiously, he began to tear at the hard dirt, suddenly back to a practical plane and not wishing to stretch God’s protection any farther than he had.
It seemed the earth was mostly rock. He pulled out big stones with his fingers. They were all wet and muddy and, as the sun disappeared behind grey clouds, the air grew colder and the wet mud froze and caked on the backs of his hands. His wet feet began to get colder.
Time fell away. It was as though he had devoted his life to digging a hole for himself. He kept going deeper and deeper, widening the hole, putting clumps of wet dirt and rock around the edge like a rampart.
It was only after he was about two feet down that he noticed he was digging right behind the slit trench being dug by Old Bill and the squad leader. He would have to shoot them down first before he could aim at any Germans. He kept digging anyway, trembling with fear that some officer or the squad leader himself would see him, yell at him and make him go dig another hole right on the crest of the hill.
Now exhaustion returned. He had used up what little energy a brief night’s sleep had restored to his body. It felt as though all his muscles had stretched beyond shape and now were incapable of returning to their original state.