The Young Lions Part 60

They got into the jeep again and the Chaplain drove carefully along the narrow, high-backed, slippery road with the marks of tank treads and a million heavy army wheels on it.

"Vermont," the Chaplain said pleasantly to Noah, "that's a pretty quiet section of the country for a young feller, isn't it?"

"I'm not going to live there," Noah said, "after the war. I'm going to move to Iowa."

"Why don't you come to Texas?" the Chaplain said hospitably. "Room for a man to breathe there. You got folks in Iowa?"

"You might say that," Noah nodded. "A buddy of mine. Boy by the name of Johnny Burnecker. His mother's found a house we can have for forty dollars a month, and his uncle owns a newspaper and he's going to take me on when I get back. It's all arranged."

"Newspaperman, eh?" the Chaplain nodded sagely. "That's the lively life. Rolling in money, too."

"Not this newspaper," Noah said. "It comes out once a week. It has a circulation of 8,200."

"Well, it's a start," said the Chaplain agreeably. "A springboard to bigger things in the city."

"I don't want a springboard," said Noah quietly. "I don't want to live in a city. I haven't got any ambition. I just want to sit in a small town in Iowa for the rest of my life, with my wife and my son, and my friend, Johnny Burnecker. When I get the itch to travel, I'll walk down to the post office."

"Oh, you'll get tired of it," the Chaplain said. "Now that you've seen the world, a small town will seem pretty dull."

"No, I won't," said Noah, very firmly, working the manual wiper with a decisive flick of his arm. "I won't ever get tired of it."

"Well, you're different from me, then." The Chaplain chuckled. "I come from a small town and I'm tired in advance. Though, to tell the truth, I don't think I'll have anybody much waiting for me at home." He clucked sympathetically to himself. "I have no children, and my wife said, when the war began, and I felt I had the call to join up, 'Ashton,' she said, 'you have got to make your choice, it is either the Corps of Chaplains or your wife. I am not going to sit home by myself for five years, thinking of you traveling around the world, loose as a hummingbird, picking up with G.o.d knows what kind of women. Ashton,' she said, 'you don't fool me, not for a minute.' I told her she was unreasonable, but she's a stubborn woman. The day I come home I bet she starts proceedings for a divorce. I had quite a decision to make, I can tell you that. Oh, well," he sighed philosophically, "it hasn't been so bad. There's a very nice little nurse in the 12th General, and I have managed to a.s.suage my sorrows." He grinned. "Between my nurse and my photography, I find I hardly think of my wife at all. As long as I have a woman to soothe me in my hours of despair, and enough film to take my pictures, I can face whatever comes ..."

"Where do you get all that film?" Michael asked, thinking of the thousand pictures for the alb.u.m, and knowing how difficult it was to get even one roll a month out of any PX.

The Chaplain made a sly face and put his finger along his nose. "I had some trouble for awhile, but I have it taped now, as our English friends say. Oh, yes, it's taped now. It's the best film in the world. When the boys come in from their missions, I get the Engineering Officer of the Group to let me clip off the unexposed ends in the gun cameras. You'd be surprised how much film you can acc.u.mulate that way. The last Engineering Officer was beginning to get very stuffy about it, and he was on the verge of complaining to the Colonel that I was stealing government property, and I couldn't make him see the light ..." The Chaplain smiled reflectively. "But I have no trouble any more," he said.

"How did it work out?" Michael asked.

"The Engineering Officer went on a mission. He was a good flier, oh, he was a crackerjack flier," the Chaplain said enthusiastically, "and he shot down a Messerschmitt, and when he came back to the field he buzzed the radio tower to celebrate. Well, the poor boy miscalculated by two feet, and we had to sweep him together from all four quarters of the field. I tell you, I gave that boy one of the best funerals anybody has ever had from the Corps of Chaplains in the Army of the United States. A real, full-sized, eloquent funeral ..." The Chaplain grinned slyly. "Now I get all the film I want," he said.

Michael blinked, wondering if the Chaplain had been drinking, but he drove the jeep with easy competence, as sober as a judge. The Army, Michael thought dazedly, everybody makes his own arrangements with it ...

A figure stepped out from under the protection of a tree and waved to them, and the Chaplain slowed to a halt. An Air Forces Lieutenant was standing there, wet, dressed in a Navy jacket, carrying one of those machine pistols with a collapsible stock. "Going to Reims?" the Lieutenant asked.

"Hop in, Boy," said the Chaplain heartily, "get right on in there in the back. The Chaplain's jeep stops for everybody on all roads."

The Lieutenant climbed in beside Michael and the jeep rolled on through the thick rain. Michael looked sidelong at the Lieutenant. He was very young, and he moved slowly and wearily, and his clothes didn't fit him. The Lieutenant noticed that Michael was staring at him.

"I bet you wonder what I'm doing here," the Lieutenant said.

"Oh, no," said Michael hastily, not wis.h.i.+ng to get into that conversational department. "Not at all."

"I'm having a h.e.l.l of a time," the Lieutenant said, "trying to locate my glider group."

Michael wondered how you could lose a whole group of gliders, especially on the ground, but he didn't inquire further.

"I was on the Arnhem thing," the Lieutenant said, "and I was shot down inside the German lines in Holland."

"The British," said the Chaplain crisply, "screwed the whole thing, as usual."

"Did they?" the Lieutenant said wearily. "I haven't read the papers."

"What happened?" Michael asked. Somehow it was hard to imagine this pale, gentle-faced boy being shot down out of a glider behind the enemy lines.

"It's the third mission I've been on," the Lieutenant said. "The Sicily drop, the Normandy drop, and this one. They promised us it would be our last one." He grinned weakly. "As far as I'm concerned, they were d.a.m.n near right." He shrugged. "Though I don't believe them. They'll have us dropping into j.a.pan before it's over." He s.h.i.+vered in his wet, outsize clothes. "I'm not eager," he said, "I'm far from eager. I used to think I was one h.e.l.l of a brave, hundred-mission pilot, but I'm not The first time I saw flak off my wing, I couldn't bear to watch. I turned my head away and flew by touch, and I told myself, 'Francis...o...b..ien, you are not a fighting man.'"

"Francis...o...b..ien," said the Chaplain. "Are you a Roman Catholic?"

"I am, Sir," said the glider pilot.

"I would like your opinion on this," the Chaplain said, hunched over the wheel. "I found a little foot-pedal organ in a church in Normandy that our artillery had beat up quite a bit, and I had it transferred to the field for my Sunday services, and I advertised for an organist. The only organist in the Group turned out to be a Tech Sergeant who was an armorer. He was an Italian, a Roman Catholic, but he played the organ like Horowitz plays the piano. I got a colored boy to pump the organ for him and the first Sunday we had the most satisfactory service I ever conducted. Even the Colonel came and sang the hymns like a bullfrog in spring, and everybody was real pleased with the innovation. Well, Sir, the next Sunday, the Italian didn't show up, and when I searched him out that afternoon and asked him what was the matter, he said he'd questioned his conscience and he couldn't see his way clear to playing songs for the religious rituals of heathen. Now, Francis...o...b..ien, you're a Roman Catholic and an officer, do you think that Tech Sergeant was displaying a proper Christian spirit?"

The glider pilot sighed gently. It was obvious that he did not think that he was in the proper condition to make considered judgments on grave matters of doctrine at the moment. "Well, Sir," he said, "it is up to the individual conscience ..."

"Would you have played the organ for me?" the Chaplain asked accusingly.

"I would, Sir," said the glider pilot.

"Do you play the organ?"

"No, Sir," said the glider pilot.

"There you are," said the Chaplain darkly. "That Wop was the only one in the Group who could. I've conducted my services ever since without music."

They drove in silence for a long time between the vineyards and the signs of old wars in the gray rain.

"Lieutenant O'Brien," Michael said, fascinated by the pale, gentle boy, "you don't have to tell me if you don't want, but how did you get out of Holland?"

"I don't mind telling," said O'Brien. "The right wing was tearing away and I signaled the tow plane I was breaking off. I came down in a field, pretty hard, and by the time I got out of the glider all the men I was carrying had scattered, because there was machinegun fire coming in at us from a bunch of farmhouses about a thousand yards away. I ran as far as I could and I took off my wings and threw them away, because people're liable to get very mad at the Air Force when they catch them. You know, all the bombing, all the mistakes, all the civilians that get killed by accident, it doesn't do any good to be caught with wings. I laid in a ditch for three days, and then a farmer came up and gave me something to eat. That night he led me through the lines to a British reconnaissance outfit. They sent me back and I hitched a ride on an American destroyer. That's where I got this jacket. The destroyer mooched around all over the Channel for two weeks. Lord, I've never been so sick in my life. Finally they landed me at Southampton, and I hitched a ride to where I'd left my Group. But they'd pulled out a week before, they'd come to France. They'd reported me missing, and G.o.d knows what my mother was going through, and all my things'd been sent back to the States. n.o.body was much interested in giving me orders. A glider pilot seems to be a big nuisance to everybody when there's no drop scheduled, and n.o.body seemed to have the authority to pay me or issue me orders or. anything, and n.o.body gave a d.a.m.n." O'Brien chuckled softly, without malice. "I heard the Group was over here, near Reims, so I hitched a ride back to Cherbourg in a Liberty s.h.i.+p that was carrying ammunition and ten-in-one rations. I took two days off in Paris, on my own, except that a Second Lieutenant who hasn't been paid in a couple of months might as well be dead as be in Paris, and here I am ..."

"A war," the Chaplain said officially, "is a very complex problem."

"I'm not complaining, Sir," O'Brien said hastily, "honest, I'm not. As long as I don't have to make any more drops, I'm as happy as can be. As long as I know I'm finally going back to my diaper service in Green Bay, they can push me around all they want."

"Your what?" Michael asked dully.

"My diaper service," O'Brien said shyly, smiling a little. "My brother and I have a dandy little business, two trucks. My brother's taking care of it, only he writes it's getting impossible to get hold of cotton materials of any kind. The last five letters I wrote before the drop, I was writing to cotton mills in the States to see if they had any material they could spare ..."

The heroes, Michael thought humbly, as they entered the outskirts of Reims, come in all sizes.

There were MP's on the corners and a whole batch of official cars near the Cathedral. Michael could see Noah tensing in the front seat at the prospect of being dumped out in the middle of this rear-echelon bustle. Still, Michael couldn't help staring with interest at the sandbagged Cathedral, with its stained gla.s.s removed for safekeeping. Dimly he remembered, when he was a little boy in grade school in Ohio, he had donated ten cents to rebuilding this Cathedral, so piteously damaged in the last war. Staring at the soaring pile now from the Chaplain's jeep, he was pleased to find that his investment hadn't been wasted.

The jeep stopped in front of Communications Zone Headquarters. "Now you get out here, Lieutenant," the Chaplain said, "and go in there and demand transportation back to your Group, no matter where they are. Raise your voice nice and loud. And if they won't give you any satisfaction, you wait for me right here. I'll be back in fifteen minutes and I'll go in and threaten to write Was.h.i.+ngton if they don't treat you good."

O'Brien got out. He stood, looking, puzzled and frightened, at the shabby row of buildings, obviously lost and doubtful of Army channels.

"I have an even better idea," the Chaplain said. "We pa.s.sed a cafe two blocks back. You're wet and cold. Go in and get yourself a double cognac and fortify your nerves. I'll meet you there. I remember the name ... Aux Bons Amis."

"Thanks," O'Brien said uncertainly. "But if it's all the same to you, I'll meet you here."

The Chaplain peered across Noah at the Lieutenant. Then he stuck his hand in his pocket and came up with a five-hundred-franc note. "Here," he said, giving it to O'Brien. "I forgot you weren't paid."

O'Brien's face broke into an embarra.s.sed smile as he took the money. "Thanks," he said. "Thanks." He waved and started back to the cafe, two blocks away.

"Now," said the Chaplain briskly, starting the jeep, "we'll get you two jailbirds away from these MP's."

"What?" Michael asked stupidly.

"AWOL," the Chaplain said. "Plain as the noses on your face. Come on, lad, wipe that winds.h.i.+eld."

Grinning, Noah and Michael drove through the grim old town. They pa.s.sed six MP's on the way, one of whom saluted the jeep as it slithered along the wet streets. Gravely, Michael returned the salute.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

THE CLOSER THEY GOT to the front, Michael noticed, the nicer people got. When they finally began to hear the enduring rumble of the guns, disputing over the autumnal German fields, everyone seemed to speak in a low, considerate voice, everyone was glad to feed you, put you up for the night, share his liquor with you, show you his wife's picture and politely ask to see the pictures of your own family. It was as though, in moving into the zone of thunder, you had moved out of the selfishness, the nervous mistrust, the twentieth-century bad manners in which, until that time, you had always lived, believing that the human race had forever behaved that way.

They were given rides by everyone ... a Graves Registration Lieutenant who explained professionally how his team went through the pockets of the dead men, making two piles of the belongings they found there. One pile, consisting of letters from home, and pocket Bibles, and decorations, to be sent to the grieving family, the other pile consisting of such standard soldiers' gear as dice, playing cards, condoms, pictures of nude women, and frank letters from girls in England with references to delightful nights in the hayfields near Salisbury or on Clarges Street, which might serve to impair the memory of the deceased heroes, to be destroyed. Also, the Graves Registration Lieutenant, who had been a clerk in the ladies' shoe department of Magnin's, in San Francisco, before the war, discussed the difficulties his unit had in collecting and identifying the sc.r.a.ps of men who had met with the disintegrating fury of modern war. "Let me give you a tip," said the Graves Registration Lieutenant, "carry one of your dogtags in your watch pocket. In an explosion your neck is liable to be blown right away, and your identification chain right along with it. But nine times out of ten, your pants will stay on, and we'll find your tag and we'll make a correct notification."

"Thanks," said Michael. When he and Noah got out of the jeep, they were picked up by an MP Captain, who saw immediately that they were AWOL and offered to take them into his Company, making all the proper arrangements through channels, because he was understaffed.

They even got a ride in a General's command car, a two-star General whose Division was resting for five days behind the lines. The General, who was a fatherly-looking man with a crew haircut and a comfortable paunch, and the kind of complexion you see in the blood-temperature rooms in which modern hospitals keep newly born children, asked his questions kindly but shrewdly. "Where you from, Boys? What outfit you heading for?"

Michael, who had an old distrust of rank, frantically searched in his mind for an innocent answer, but Noah answered promptly. "We're deserters, Sir, we're deserting from a repple depple to our old outfit. We have to get back to our old Company."

The General had nodded understandingly, and had glanced approvingly at Noah's decoration. "Tell you what, Boys," he said, in the tone of a furniture salesman softly advertising a bargain in bridge lamps, "we're a little depleted ourselves, in my Division. Why don't you just stop off and see how you like it? I'll do the necessary paper work personally."

Michael had grinned at this vision of a new, more flexible, accommodating Army. "No, thank you, Sir," Noah said firmly. 'I've made a solemn promise to the boys to come back there."

The General had nodded again. "I know how you feel," he said. "I was in the old Rainbow in 1918, and I raised heaven and h.e.l.l to get back after I was hurt. Anyway, you can stop off for dinner. This is Sunday and I do believe we're having chicken for dinner at the Headquarters mess."

As the noise of the guns among the distant ridges grew nearer and nearer, Michael had the feeling that now, finally, he was going to find that gentle citizens.h.i.+p; that openness of heart, that million-throated, inarticulate yea-saying of which he had dreamed before he went into the Army and which, so far, had eluded him. Somewhere just ahead of him, he felt, under the constant trembling of the artillery among the hills, he was going to find that America he had never known on its own continent, a tortured and dying America, but an America of friends and neighbors, an America in which a man could finally put away his over-civilized doubts, his book-soured cynicism, his realistic despair, and humbly and gratefully lose himself ... Noah, going back to his friend Johnny Burnecker, had already found that country, and it was plain in the quiet, a.s.sured way he spoke to Sergeants and to Generals alike. The exiles, living in mud and fear of death, had, in one way at least, found a better home than those from which they had been driven, a blood-spattered Utopia, now on the fringe of German soil, where no man was rich and none poor, a sh.e.l.l-burst democracy where all living was a community enterprise, where all food was distributed according to need and not according to pocket, where light, heat, lodging, transportation, medical attention, and funeral benefits were at the cost of the government and available with absolute impartiality to white and black, Jew and Gentile, worker and owner, where the means of production, in this case M1s, 30 caliber machine guns, 90s, 105s, 204s, mortars, bazookas, were in the hands of the ma.s.ses; that ultimate Christian socialism in which all worked for the common good and the only leisure cla.s.s were the dead.

Captain Green's CP was in a small farmhouse, with a steeply slanting roof, that looked like the medieval homes in colored cartoons in fairy stories in the movies. It had been hit only once, and the hole had been boarded up with a door torn off from a bedroom entrance inside the house. There were two jeeps parked close against the wall, on the side from the enemy, and two soldiers with matted beards were sleeping in the jeeps, wrapped in blankets, their helmets tipped down over their noses. The rumble of the guns was much stronger here, most of it going out, with a high, diminis.h.i.+ng whistle. The wind was raw, the trees bare, the roads and fields muddy, and aside from the two sleeping men in the jeeps there was no one else to be seen. It looked, Michael thought, like any farm in November, with the land given over to the elements, and the farmer taking long naps inside, dreaming about the spring to come.

It was amazing to think that they had defied the Army, crossed half of France, making their way arrow-like and dedicated through the complex traffic of guns and troops and supply trucks on the roads, to arrive at this quiet, rundown, undangerous-looking place. Army Headquarters, Corps Headquarters, Division, Regiment, Battalion, CP Company C, called Cornwall forward, the chain of command. They had gone down the chain of command like sailors down a knotted rope, and now that they were finally there, Michael hesitated, looking at the door, wondering if perhaps they hadn't been foolish, perhaps they were going to get into more trouble than it was worth ... In that most formal of all inst.i.tutions, the Army, they had behaved, Michael realized uneasily, with alarming informality, and the penalises for such things were undoubtedly clearly specified in the Articles of War.

But Noah did not seem to be bothered by any such reflections. He had walked the last three miles at a blistering, eager pace, through all the mud. There was a tense, trembling smile on his lips as he threw the door open and went in. Slowly, Michael followed him.

Captain Green was talking over the handset, his back to the door. "My Company front is a joke, Sir," he was saying. "You could drive a milk wagon any place through us, we're stretched so thin. We need at least forty replacements right away. Over." Michael could hear the thin voice of Battalion, over the wire, angry and abrupt. Green flipped the lever on the handset and said, "Yes, Sir, I understand we will get the replacements when the G.o.dd.a.m.n Corps sees fit to send them down. Meanwhile," he said, "if the Krauts attack, they can go through us like Epsom salts through an eel. What should I do if they put in an attack? Over." He listened again, Michael heard two crisp sounds over the wire. "Yes, Sir," said Green, "I understand. That is all, Sir." He hung up the phone and turned to a Corporal who was sitting at an improvised desk. "Do you know what the Major told me?" he asked aggrievedly. "He said if we were attacked, I should notify him. A humorist! We're a new branch of the Army, notification troops!" He turned wearily to Noah and Michael. "Yes?"

Noah didn't say anything. Green peered at him, then smiled wearily and put out his hand. "Ackerman," he said, as they shook hands, "I thought you'd be a civilian by now."

"No, Sir," said Noah. "I'm not a civilian. You remember Whitacre, don't you?"

Green peered at Michael. "Indeed I do," he said in his almost effeminate, high, pleasant voice. "From Florida. What sins have you committed to be returned to C Company?"

He shook Michael's hand, too.

"We haven't been returned, Sir," Noah said. "We're AWOL from a replacement center."

"Excellent," said Green, grinning. "Don't give it another thought Very good of you, very good of you indeed. I'll straighten it out in no time. Though why anyone should be anxious to come back to this miserable Company, I won't inquire. You boys now const.i.tute my reinforcements for the week ..." It was plain that he was touched and pleased. He kept patting Noah's arm in a warm, almost motherly gesture.

"Sir," Noah said, "is Johnny Burnecker around?" Noah was trying to keep his voice level and casual, but he was not having much success with it.

Green turned away and the Corporal at the table drummed slowly with his fingertips on the wood. It's going to be awful, Michael realized, the next ten minutes are going to be very bad.

"I forgot for the moment," Green said flatly, "how close you and Burnecker were."

"Yes, Sir," said Noah.

"He made Sergeant, you know," Green said. "Staff Sergeant. Platoon leader, way back in September. He is a h.e.l.l of a fine soldier, Johnny Burnecker."

"Yes, Sir," Noah said.

"He was. .h.i.t last night, Noah," Green said. "One freak sh.e.l.l. He was the only casualty we've had in the Company in five days."

"Is he dead, Sir?" Noah asked.

"No."

Michael saw Noah's hands, which had been clenched into fists along his trousers seams, slowly relax.

"No," Green said, "he isn't dead. We sent him back right after it happened."

"Sir," Noah asked eagerly, "could I ask you a favor, a big favor?"

"What is it?"

"Could you give me a pa.s.s to go back and see if I can talk to him?"

"He might have been sent back to a field hospital by now," Green said gently.

"I have to see him, Captain," Noah said, speaking very quickly. "It's terribly important. You don't know how important it is. The field hospital's only fifteen miles back. We saw it. We pa.s.sed it on the way up. It won't take more than a couple of hours. I won't hang around long. Honest, I won't I'll come right back. I'll be back by tonight. I just want to talk to him for fifteen minutes. It might make a big difference to him, Captain ..."

"All right," Green said. He sat down and scribbled on a sheet of paper. "Here's a pa.s.s. Go outside and tell Berenson I said he was to drive you."

"Thanks," Noah said, his voice almost inaudible in the bare room. "Thanks, Captain."

"No side expeditions," Green said, staring at the cellophane-covered sector map, symboled in crayon on the wall. "We need that jeep tonight."

"No side expeditions," Noah said. "I promise." He started toward the door, then stopped. "Captain," he said.