The Young Lions Part 46

Colclough wheeled suddenly from his position at the bottom of the ramp, but none of the men was smiling. Then Colclough turned and stepped onto the soil of France, delicately, but with dignity, and one by one his Company followed him, through the cold sea water and the floating debris of the first day of the great battle for the continent of Europe.

The company did not fight at all the first day. They dug in and ate their supper K ration (veal loaf, biscuit, vitamin crowded chocolate, all of it with the taste and texture of the factory in it, denser and more slippery than natural food can be), and cleaned their rifles and watched the new companies coming into the beach with the amused superiority of veterans for their jitteriness at the occasional sh.e.l.ls and their exaggerated tenderness about mines. Colclough had gone off looking for Regiment, which was inland somewhere, although no one knew just where.

The night was dark, windy, wet and cold. The Germans sent over planes in the last twilight and the guns of the s.h.i.+ps lying offsh.o.r.e and the anti-aircraft guns on the beach crowded the sky with flaming steel lines. The shrapnel dropped with soft, deadly plunks into the sand beside Noah, while he stared up helplessly, wondering if there ever was going to be a time when he would not be in danger of his life.

They were awakened at dawn, at which time Colclough returned from Regiment. He had got lost during the night and had wandered up and down the beach looking for the Company, until he had been shot at by a nervous Signal Corps sentry. Then he had decided that it was too dangerous to keep moving about and had dug himself a hole and bedded himself down until it was light enough, so that he would not be shot by his own men. He looked haggard and weary, but he shouted orders in rapid-fire succession and led the way up the bluff, with the Company spread out behind him.

Noah had a cold by then, and was sneezing and blowing his nose wetly. He was wearing long woolen underwear, two pairs of wool socks, a suit of OD's, a field jacket, and over it all the chemically treated fatigues, which were stiff and wind-resistant, but even so he could feel his chilled bones grinding within his flesh as he made his way through the heavy sand past the smoke-blackened and ruptured German pillboxes and the dead gray uniforms, still unburied, and the torn German cannon, still maliciously pointed toward the beach.

Trucks and jeeps pulling trailers loaded with ammunition b.u.mped and skidded past the Company, and a newly arrived tank platoon clanked up the rise, looking dangerous and invincible. MP's were waving traffic on, Engineers were building roads, a bulldozer was sc.r.a.ping out a runway for an airfield, jeep ambulances, with wounded on stretchers across the top, were sliding down the rutted road between the taped off minefields to the clearing stations in the lee of the bluff. In a wide field, pocketed with sh.e.l.l holes, Graves Registration troops were burying American dead. There was an air of orderly, energetic confusion about the entire scene that reminded Noah of the time when he was a small boy in Chicago and had watched the circus throwing up its tents and arranging its cages and living quarters.

When he got to the top, of the bluff Noah turned around and looked at the beach, trying to fix it in his mind. Hope will want to know what it looked like, and her father, too, when I get back, Noah thought. Somehow, planning what he was going to tell them at some distant, beautiful, unwarlike day made it seem more uncertain to Noah that that day would arrive and he would be alive to celebrate it, dressed in soft flannels and a blue s.h.i.+rt, with a gla.s.s of beer in his hand, under a maple tree, perhaps, on a bright Sunday afternoon, boring his relatives, he thought with a grin, with the long-winded veterans' stories of the Great War.

The beach, strewn with the steel overflow of the factories of home, looked like a rummage bas.e.m.e.nt in some store for giants. Close offsh.o.r.e, just beyond the old tramp steamers they were sinking now for a breakwater, destroyers were standing, firing over their heads at strong-points inland.

"That's the way to fight a war," Burnecker said beside Noah. "Real beds, coffee is being served below, Sir, you may fire when ready, Gridley. We would have joined the Navy, Ackerman, if we had as much brains as a jackrabbit."

"Come on, move!" It was Rickett, calling from behind them, the same, snarling, Sergeant's voice, which no sea voyage, no amount of killing, would ever change.

"My choice," Burnecker said, "for the man I would like most to be left alone with on a desert island."

They turned and plodded inland, leaving the coast behind them.

They marched for a half hour and then it became evident that Colclough was lost again. He stopped the Company at a crossroad where two MP's were directing traffic from a deep hole they had dug to one side, with just their helmets and shoulders sticking out above ground level. Noah could see Colclough gesturing angrily and he could hear the violence in the Captain's voice as he yelled at the MP's, who were shaking their heads in ignorance. Then Colclough got out his map again and yelled at Lieutenant Green, who came up to help.

"Just our luck," Burnecker said wagging his head, "we got a Captain who couldn't find a plow in a ballroom."

"Get back," they heard Colclough shout at Green. "Get back where you belong. I know what I'm doing!"

He turned into a lane between high, gleaming green hedges, and the Company wound slowly after him. It was darker between the hedges, and somehow much quieter, although the guns were still going, and the men peered uneasily at the dense, intertwined leaves, made for ambush.

n.o.body said anything. They trudged on both sides of the damp road, trying to hear a rustle, the click of a rifle bolt, a whisper of German, over the everlasting infantry squash squash of their shoes, heavily scuffing in the thick clay of the lane.

Then the road opened up into a field and the sun broke through the clouds for awhile and they felt better. An old woman was grimly milking her cows in the middle of the field, attended by a young girl with bare feet. The old woman sat on a stool, next to her weathered farm wagon, between whose shafts stood a huge, s.h.a.ggy horse. The old woman pulled slowly and defiantly at the teats of the smooth-shouldered, clean-looking cow. Overhead the sh.e.l.ls came and went and occasionally, from what seemed like a very short distance, there was the excited rattle of machine guns, but the old woman never looked up. The girl with her was not more than sixteen years old, and was wearing a tattered green sweater. She had a red ribbon in her hair and she was interested in the soldiers.

"I think maybe I'll stop off right here," Burnecker said, "and help with the ch.o.r.es. Tell me how the war comes out, Ackerman."

"Keep moving, Soldier," said Noah. "Next war we'll all be in the Services of Supply."

"I love that girl," Burnecker said. "She reminds me of Iowa. Ackerman, do you know any French?"

"A votre sante," Noah said. "That's all I know."

"A votre sante," Burnecker shouted to the girl, grinning and waving his rifle, " votre sante, Baby, and the same to your old lady."

The girl waved back at him, smiling.

"She's crazy about me," Burnecker said. "What did I say to her?"

"To your health."

"h.e.l.l," said Burnecker, "that's too formal. I want to tell her something intimate."

"Je t'adore," said Noah, remembering it from some echo in his memory.

"What does that mean?"

"I adore you."

"That's more intimate," Burnecker said. He was near the end of the field now, and he turned and took off his helmet and bowed low, with a gallant sweep of the large metal pot. "Oh, Baby," he called thunderously, the helmet light and das.h.i.+ng in his huge, farmer's hand, his boyish, sunburned face grave and loving, "Oh, Baby, je t'adore, je t'adore ..."

The girl smiled and waved again. "Je t'adore, mon Americain," she called.

"This is the greatest country on the face of the earth," Burnecker said.

"Come on, Hot Pants," Rickett said, prodding him with a bony, sharp thumb.

"Wait for me," Burnecker howled across the green fields, across the backs of the cows so much like the cows in his native Iowa. "Wait for me, Baby, I don't know how to say it in French, wait for me, I'll be back ..."

The old lady on the stool, without looking up, brought back her hand and smacked the girl across her b.u.t.tocks, sharply. The stinging, mean sound carried to the end of the field. The girl looked down and began to cry. She ran around to the other side of the cart to hide her face.

Burnecker sighed. He put on his helmet and went through the break in the hedge to the next field.

Three hours later Colclough found Regiment and a half hour after that they were in contact with the German Army.

Six hours later, Colclough managed to get the Company surrounded.

The farmhouse, in which what was left of the Company defended itself, seemed almost to have been built for the purposes of siege. It had thick stone walls, narrow windows, a slate roof that would not catch fire, huge, rock-like timbers holding up the floors and ceilings, a pump in the kitchen, and a deep, safe cellar where the wounded could be put out of harm's way.

It could be depended upon to stand up for a long time even against artillery. So far the Germans had not used anything heavier than mortars on it, and the thirty-five men who had fallen back on the house felt, for the moment, fairly strong. They fired from the windows, in hurried bursts at the momentarily seen figures among the hedges and the outhouses surrounding the main building.

In the cellar, in the light of a candle, lay four wounded and one dead, among the cider barrels. The French family whose farm this was, and who had retired to the cellar at the first shot, sat on boxes, staring silently down at the stricken men who had come so far to die in their bas.e.m.e.nt. There was a man of fifty who limped from a wound he had received in the last war at the Marne, and his wife, a thin, lanky woman of his own age, and their two daughters, aged twelve and sixteen, both very ugly, and both numb with fear, who cowered between the doubtful protection of the barrels.

The Medics had all been lost earlier in the day and Lieutenant Green kept running down when he could find time to do what he could with first-aid dressings.

The farmer was not on good terms with his wife. "No," he said bitterly again and again. "Madame would not leave her boudoir, war or no war. Oh, no. Remain, she says, I will not leave my house to soldiers. Perhaps, Madame, you prefer this?"

Madame did not answer. She sat stolidly on her box, sipping at a cup of cider, looking down curiously at the faces of the wounded, beaded with cold sweat in the light of the candle.

When a machine gun that the Germans had trained on the living-room window on the first floor clattered away there was a sound of breaking gla.s.s and tumbling furniture above her head. She sipped her drink a little more quickly, but that was all.

"Women," said the farmer to the dead American at his feet. "Never listen to women. It is impossible to make them see that war is a serious matter."

On the ground floor the men had piled all the furniture against the windows, and were firing through loopholes and over cus.h.i.+ons. Lieutenant Green shouted instructions at them from time to time, but no one paid any attention. When there was some movement to be seen through the hedges or in the clump of trees two hundred yards away, everyone on that side of the building fired, then fell back to the floor for safety.

In the dining room, at the head of a heavy oak table, Captain Colclough was sitting, his helmeted head bowed over on his hands, his pearl-handled pistol in its bright leather holster at his side. He was pale and he seemed to be sleeping. No one talked to him, and he talked to no one. Only once, when Lieutenant Green came in to see if he was still alive, he spoke. "I will need you to make out a deposition," he said. "I told Lieutenant Sorenson to maintain contact on our flank with L Company at all times. You were there when I gave him the order, you were there, weren't you?"

"Yes, Sir," said Lieutenant Green, in his high voice. "I heard you."

"We must get it down on paper," Colclough said, staring down at the worn oak table, "as soon as possible."

"Captain," said Lieutenant Green, "it's going to be dark in another hour, and if we're ever going to get out of here that's the time to try ..."

But Captain Colclough had retired into his private dream at the farmer's dining-room table, and he did not speak, nor did he look up when Lieutenant Green spat on the carpet at his feet and walked back into the living room, where Corporal Fein had just been shot through the lungs.

Upstairs, in the bedroom of the master and mistress of the house, Rickett, Burnecker, and Noah covered a lane between the barn and the shed where a plow and a farm wagon were kept. There was a small wooden crucifix on the wall and a stiff photograph of the farmer and his wife, rigid with responsibility on their wedding day. On another wall hung a framed poster from the French Line showing the liner Normandie cutting through a calm, bright blue sea.

There was a white embroidered spread on the lumpy four-poster bed, and little lace doilies on the bureau, and a china cat on the hearth.

What a place, Noah thought, as he put another clip in his rifle, to fight my first battle.

There was a prolonged burst of firing from outside. Rickett, who was standing next to one of the two windows, holding a Browning Automatic Rifle, flattened himself against the flowered wallpaper. The gla.s.s covering the Normandie shattered into a thousand pieces. The picture s.h.i.+vered on the wall, with a large hole at the water line of the great s.h.i.+p, but it did not fall.

Noah looked at the large, neatly made bed. He had an almost uncontrollable impulse to crawl under it. He even took a step toward it, from where he was crouched near the window. He was s.h.i.+vering. When he tried to move his hands, they made wide senseless circles, knocking over a small blue vase on a shawl-covered table in the center of the room.

If only he could get under the bed he would be safe. He would not die then. He could hide, in the dust on the splintery wood floor. There was no sense to this. Standing up to be shot in a tiny wallpapered room, with half the German Army all around him. It wasn't his fault he was there. He had not taken the road between the hedges, he had not lost contact with L Company, he had not neglected to halt and dig in where he was supposed to, it could not be asked of him to stand at the window, next to Rickett and have his head blown in.

"Get over to that window!" Rickett was shouting, pointing wildly to the other window. "Get the h.e.l.l over! The bathtards're coming in ..."

Recklessly, Rickett was exposing himself at the window, firing in short, spraying bursts, from the hip, his arms and shoulders jerking with the recoil.

Now, thought Noah craftily, when he is not looking. I can crawl under the bed and n.o.body will know where I am.

Burnecker was at the other window, firing, shouting, "Noah! Noah!"

Noah took one last look at the bed. It was cool and neat and like home. The crucifix on the wall behind it suddenly leapt out from the wall, Christ in splinters, and tumbled on the bedspread.

Noah ran to the window and crouched beside Burnecker. He fired two shots blindly down into the lane. Then he looked. The gray figures were running with insane speed, crouched over, in a bunch, toward the house.

Oh, Noah thought, taking aim (the target in the center of the circle, remember, and resting on the top of the sight and even a blind man with rheumatism can't miss), oh, Noah thought, firing at the bunched figures, they shouldn't do that, they shouldn't come together like that. He fired again and again. Rickett was firing at the other window and Burnecker beside him, very deliberately, holding his breath, squeezing off. Noah heard a high, wailing scream and wondered where that was coming from. It was quite some time before he realized that it was coming from him. Then he stopped screaming.

There was a lot of firing from downstairs, too, and the gray figures kept falling and getting up and crawling and falling again. Three of the figures actually got close enough to throw hand grenades, but they missed the window and exploded harmlessly against the walls. Rickett got them all with the same burst of the gun.

The other gray figures seemed to glide to a stop. For a moment there was silence and the figures hung there, motionless, reflective, in the clayey barnyard. Then they turned and began running away.

Noah watched them with surprise. It had never occurred to him that they would not reach the house.

"Come on, come on!" Rickett was screaming. He was reloading feverishly. "Get the bathtards! Get 'em!"

Noah shook himself, then carefully aimed at a man who was running in a curious, clumsy, limping way, his gas-mask can banging on his hip and his rifle thrown away. Noah squinted, pulled the trigger gently, feeling the metal hot against the inside of his finger just as the man was turning behind the barn. The man fell in a long, sprawling slide. He did not move.

"That's it, Ackerman, that's it!" Rickett was at the window again, shouting hilariously. "That's the way to do it."

The lane was empty now, except for the gray figures that weren't moving any more.

"They've gone," Noah said stupidly. "They're not there now."

He felt a wet pressure on his cheek. Burnecker was kissing him. Burnecker was crying and laughing and kissing him.

"Get down," Rickett yelled, "get down from that window."

They ducked their heads. A second later they heard the whistle through the window. The bullets thudded into the wall below the Normandie.

Very nice of Rickett, Noah thought coolly, very surprising.

The door opened and Lieutenant Green came in. His eyes were granular and red and his jaw seemed to hang down with weariness. He sat on the bed, slowly, with a sigh, and put his hands between his legs. He wavered back and forth minutely, and, for a moment, Noah was afraid he was going to fall back onto the bed and go to sleep.

"We fixed 'em, Lieutenant," Rickett said, happily. "We gave 'em a good dose. Right up the old dog."

"Yes," said Lieutenant Green in his squeaky voice, "we did very well. Anybody hurt up here?"

"Not in thith room." Rickett grinned. "Thith is a rugged team up here."

"Morrison and Seeley got it in the other room," Green said wearily, "and Fein has one in the lungs downstairs."

Noah remembered Fein in the hospital ward in Florida, enormous, bullnecked, hard, saying, "After the war you can pick whatever company you please ..."

"However ..." Green said with sudden brightness, as though he were beginning a speech. "However ..." Then he looked vaguely about the room. "Isn't that the Normandie?" he asked.

"Yes," said Noah, "it's the Normandie."

Green smiled foolishly. "I think I will sign up for a cruise," he said.

The men did not laugh.

"However," Green said, pa.s.sing his hand across his eyes, "when it gets dark, we're going to make a break. We're almost out of ammunition downstairs, and if they try again, we're fried. French-fried with ketchup," he said vaguely. "You're on your own when it gets dark. Twos and threes, twos and threes." he chanted squeakily, "the Company will dissolve into twos and threes,"

"Lieutenant," Rickett said, from the window, where he was still peering out, with just a thin slice of his face exposed past the window-frame, "Lieutenant, is thith an order from Captain Colcough?"

"This is an order from Lieutenant Green," the Lieutenant said. He giggled. Then he caught himself and looked firm. "I have a.s.sumed command," he said formally. "Command."

"Is the Captain dead?" Rickett asked.

"Not exactly," said Green. He lay back suddenly on the white spread and closed his eyes. But he continued talking. "The Captain has retired for the season. He will be ready for next year's invasion." He giggled, lying, with his eyes closed, on the lumpy featherbed. Then, suddenly, he sprang up. "Did you hear anything?" he asked anxiously.

"No," said Rickett.

"Tanks," said Green. "If they bring up tanks before it gets dark, French-fried with ketchup."

"We have a bazooka and two sh.e.l.ls in here," Rickett said.

"Don't make me laugh." Green turned and stared at the Normandie. "A friend of mine once took that boat," he said. "An insurance man from New Orleans, Louisiana. Got laid by three different women between Cherbourg and Ambrose Light. By all means," he said gravely, "by all means use the bazooka. That's what it's for, isn't it?" He got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the window. Slowly he lifted his head and peered out. "I can see fourteen dead Krauts," he said. "What do you think the live ones are planning now?" He shook his head sadly, then crawled away from the window. He had to hold onto Noah's leg to pull himself up to his feet. "The whole Company," he said wonderingly, "the whole Company is fini. One day. One day of combat. It doesn't seem possible, does it? You'd think someone would have done something about it, wouldn't you? When it gets dark, remember, you're on your own, try to get back to our own lines. Good luck."

He went downstairs. The men in the room looked at one another. "All right," Rickett said sourly, "you ain't hurt yet. Get up to those windows."

In the dining room downstairs, Jamison was standing in front of Captain Colclough and yelling. Jamison had been next to Seeley when he was. .h.i.t in the eye. Jamison and Seeley were from the same town in Kentucky. They had been friends since they were boys, and had enlisted together.

"I'm not going to let you do it, you G.o.dd.a.m.n undertaker!" Jamison was yelling wildly to the Captain who still sat at the dark table with his head despairingly in his hands. Jamison had just heard that they were to leave Seeley in the cellar with the rest of the wounded, when they made the break at dark. "You got us in here, you get us out! All of us!"