Soldiers of ’44

Chapter Fifteen

December 20, 1944. Le Pont, Belgium. Wednesday, 0600 Hours.

Section Eight had been dug in for three days on the crest of Mont Reynard. From that height they had a view of the Salm valley and the village far below them on the curve of the river. Opposite their gun positions, a thousand yards away, were the gatehouse of the Bonnards and the dark castle (which they had learned was called Castle, or Château, Rêve).

The top of Mont Reynard was the size of a football field, an expanse of slate and rock broken only by sparse clusters of spruce and oak and rime-whitened growths of bracken and wild berry bushes.

The men worked two days and nights using dynamite and shovels to blast and shape protective revetments for their weapons and ammunition. The M-51 machine-gun mount (with quadruple fifties) was emplaced at the fork of the narrow road that led up to the gatehouse. On the other side of the hill, rising above the Salm Valley, the cannon was secure in a deep enclosure of frozen rocks. Under the frost line they had found a gritty soil, laced with splintered shale, and with it had filled dozens of sandbags to line the top of the low barricades.

In smaller revetments behind the cannon were the section’s power motor and fire-control apparatus, a metal-encased unit supported by a tripod and fitted with a range wheel and telescopic sights. These fed electronic data directly to the cannon and automatically controlled its tracking patterns. When linked to the director, the cannon could fire one hundred and twenty rounds per minute, each point-detonating projectile containing sixteen ounces of trinitrocellulose. The synchronized machine guns were capable of firing bursts of three thousand rounds per minute and these weapons, plus rifles, carbines, bazookas and grenades, gave the section lethal firepower.

Near the cannon revetment, the men had widened an opening in an escarpment of rock, clearing away loose shale and underbrush, and covering the narrow entrance with a tarp to make a shelter from snow and winds. When the position was secure, with frozen tree limbs and bushes camouflaging the circular outlines of the revetments. Docker split the section into two units, assigning one to the guns and sending Larkin and four of the younger soldiers across the hill to the Bonnards’ to get some sleep. He then walked to the edge of the precipice and studied the valley through his binoculars. Only the faintest dawn light touched the village and the spires of the squat little church. Nothing was moving except a fox or a dog digging among the weeds at the river’s edge.

As long as they could hold the hill, Docker planned to relieve the men in shifts, giving each a chance to scrub and change into dry clothes, the only way to prevent rashes and the crippling effect of trench foot in this wet, freezing weather. There was plenty of windfallen firewood on the hill and food for at least ten days — canned turkey, salt pork, powdered milk and eggs, flour and K-rations. In the trench they’d dug for ammo were two hundred and eight 40-millimeter projectiles and several thousand rounds of .50-caliber shells. Secure in a smaller revetment, topped by fresh-cut logs, were two insulated boxes of dynamite, firing plungers, detonating caps and loops of fusing wire obtained by Trankic from a British sappers’ unit on their hot and dusty march to Avranches; with Docker’s permission, the corporal had traded-off five gallons of black whiskey for these extra explosives and hardware.

Docker had known for the last two days that his section was cut off behind the German lines, isolated on this mountain under a low bowl of sky. As the light spread, the wind died. In this vacuum, the cold and silence were intensified to a harrowing pitch; every sound trembled on the frozen winds, the scurrying of small animals in the trees, the distant rumble of artillery on the horizons.

Trankic walked across the hill from the jeep and joined Docker. “I just picked up something kind of funny.” The big corporal’s cheeks were so swollen with the winds and sleet that his eyes looked like pinpoints of light under his helmet. Docker knew he hadn’t slept more than a few hours since they’d brought the trucks up the twisting road to Mont Reynard. “It was a transmitter in a town called La Roach-something-or-other, but the guy sending was an American. Claimed he was in a truck that got blown up on a bridge there with a lot of other GIs. He says the guys who blew the bridge were American soldiers. And he wasn’t off the air more than a minute before I got another signal, this time from our own network in Brussels saying there’re all sorts of Germans behind the lines in our uniforms. So you know what I’m thinking.”

Docker nodded. “Frigging A.”

“He certainly looks like an all-American kid.”

“Let’s be certain.”

“But him not having ID is kind of in his favor.”

“Sure. If he were a German, he’d damned well be fixed up with dog tags and snapshots of his girl back in the States.”

“I’ll go get him,” Trankic said.

Samuel Gelnick stamped through the snow with an armload of firewood and went into the gatehouse. Trude Bonnard stood at the kitchen stove adding vegetables to a thick turkey stew, potatoes and green winter cabbage. Chet Dormund sat at a table cutting up a slab of salt pork with a heavy knife. Madame Bonnard talked incessantly as she worked, telling them how difficult life had been with Germans living at the castle and rocket bombs smashing around their heads, but since her complaints were delivered in rapid-fire French Dormund had only the vaguest idea of what she was saying. His confusion was deepened by the fact that she called him Richard — she assumed that was his name since every other word he used — “wretched” — sounded like “Richard” to her ears.

“How come the old lady calls me Richard?” Dormund asked Gelnick.

“Maybe it’s because she thinks you’ve got a big dick,” Gelnick said. “Like a fungo bat.”

Dormund said nervously, “You shouldn’t talk like that, not in a place like this.”

The sight of the castle against the sky with its suggestion of privilege had made Gelnick feel small and vulnerable. He said now, “Look, instead of Trankic making you a new head, Richard, how about if he makes you a new joy- stick. You never use the one you got for anything but to piss with, so maybe there’s something wrong with it.”

“I ain’t no Richard,” Dormund said. “And you better cut out that wretched dirty talk in here.”

Outside, the change from night to day had been almost imperceptible. Grayness spread slowly above the eastern hills revealing at intervals the white lawns between the gatehouse and Castle Rêve, bringing details into slow relief, marble statuary of nymphs and archers and mythical deities, the classic figures emerging like frozen specters from darker backgrounds of formal gardens bordered with tall clusters of topiary figures overgrown and misshapen from wartime neglect... the giant rabbit had gained a paunch over seasons of inattention, and a hedge of rearing ponies now looked like draft horses with tendrils of shaggy vines hanging from their hooves.

Castle Rêve’s leaded front windows and terraces commanded serene views of the Salm Valley. The castle’s twin towers were ornamental; rising only a dozen feet above an arched roof, the pinnacles had been constructed without windows and perched for effect on slate tilings like a pair of large stone spools.

Tex Farrel and Jackson Baird stood outside the gatehouse waiting to help Dormund and Gelnick haul hot food up to the men on the guns.

Sonny Laurel sat on a wrought-iron bench a dozen yards from them, watching Monsieur Bonnard walking up the road toward the castle, a stout figure in black clothes, smoke trailing from his pipe.

Later Sonny saw Larkin heading in the same direction, but Laurel wasn’t thinking about Larkin or Felice’s father, he was thinking about what had happened to him last night, still barely able to believe it, even with the memory of her blond hair against his face...

Monsieur Bonnard had made sleeping arrangements for the Americans, sending Laurel up to a loft on the second floor of the gatehouse, a room with low, beamed ceilings and walls partially enclosed by the chimney stones connected to the fireplaces downstairs. He had crawled into the bed, scrubbed clean for the first time in weeks, and so dog-tired his muscles were trembling with fatigue. He knew that Tex Farrel and Dormund were outside on guard, he could hear Larkin and Bonnard downstairs in the parlor drinking and talking, and he had been thinking sleepily of his home on the north side of Chicago and of Tom and Betsy Blacker, who lived close to them in a big white house that belonged to Tom’s parents... When Tom Blacker was killed in the Solomons and the Purple Heart and personal effects were shipped back to that big house on the tree-lined Saturday Evening Post street, something seemed to die in the tall, leggy girl-wife who made lemonade for the neighborhood boys and read them parts of her husband’s letters about aerial warfare over straits and islands whose names she could hardly pronounce. Sonny Laurel had just wanted badly to go off and fight what had killed the light in Betsy Blacker’s eyes...

His thoughts had become so langorous that when the door creaked open and Felice Bonnard sat on the side of the mattress he felt he was dreaming. She wore a white flannel nightgown with red and blue flowers hemstitched along the collar, and her eyes were big and solemn in her still face.

Laurel heard a door close softly below, and realized that Monsieur Bonnard knew his daughter was upstairs, and that dry and final dick of the door latch had been a ritual sound of approval.

Felice slipped beneath the eiderdown and he felt her body cold and shivering, and he still couldn’t believe it, not until there was a dawn light in the room and a sound of branches against the window and she was sleeping close to him, her pale face gleaming on the pillow beside him.

Tex Farrel held his rifle in the crook of his arm and studied the ground and trees with a hunter’s eyes. At early dawn he’d seen tracks of fox and deer in the snow and scrambles of rabbit prints under wild berry bushes.

He glanced at Jackson Baird, noting that they were about the same age and wondering why it was he felt so much older than this boy with the blinking eyes and face screwed tight. The men in the section had given the stranger clean clothes but everything was about two sizes too large, and the baggy fatigues and overcoat gave him the look of an orphan.

“Listen to me, Baird,” Farrel said. “You’re worried, I can tell. But if there were any Germans right around here, I’d probably of heard or seen them. So if that’s what you’re worried about, forget it.”

“That’s not what’s bothering me.”

“Then what is? You worried about Docker?”

“That’s part of it. I don’t think he likes me.”

“That’s bullshit. Docker don’t waste time liking or disliking guys. You want my advice, try looking more like a soldier. Snap shit when he tells you to.”

Baird nodded and said, “I’ll try.” Then, as if sensing this wasn’t emphatic enough, he added, “I’ll try like hell.”

They turned at the sound of a motor and saw the jeep with Trankic at the wheel coming up the road toward the gatehouse.

Larkin stood on the terrace of the castle sweeping the meadows with his binoculars. He focused them on Trankic beckoning to Jackson Baird, watching as the youngster climbed in beside the corporal, who then turned the jeep and drove back up the hill toward Mont Reynard.

Larkin began to cough, trying to swallow the brackish bile in his throat and breathing through his gloved hands to warm the air searing his lungs. His cheeks felt raw and peeled. He had shaved at the Bonnards’, a damn fool mistake, and now the wind and sleet were like rough salt on his skin. He uncapped his canteen and took a swallow of black whiskey, and though it almost gagged him the corporal was grateful for the heat moving like sluggish fire through his body.

Larkin turned and went into the castle and walked through several big cold rooms and down a flight of stairs. Paul Bonnard was waiting in the cellar, and Larkin followed him into a kitchen that smelled of mold and stale food. In an adjoining storeroom, Bonnard lit a kerosene lamp and played the light across shelves and bins stocked with food and wine and spirits.

Larkin inspected various jars, casks and crates, knowing then that what Bonnard had told him last night was literally true, that this liquor and food was damn near worth its weight in gold. There were cans of boned ham from Holland and Westphalia, tins of pate, bottles of herring, stacks of fruitcake in waxed linen wrappers, jars of brandied fruits, rabbits packed in lard, French mustards, and wines from France, Italy and Germany, liqueurs from Holland, Denmark, and even a half-dozen cases of Cutty Sark whiskey. On the floor stood several casks of olive oil, sacks of charcoal, massive wheels of cheese and three canisters of Swiss chocolate.

Bonnard watched him with an appraising smile. “Well? Satisfied?”

“Why didn’t the Germans take this loot with them?”

“The trucks coming from Brussels were hit by one of their own rocket bombs. They were like chickens with their heads off. Major Hunsicker’s staff took what they could in the single car that was left.”

At the end of the storeroom Larkin saw two chairs and a table with a stump of candle on it. He picked up a bottle of Cutty Sark and opened it. “Get some glasses,” he said.

Bonnard’s confident smile slipped. “I’ll have to bicycle a dozen kilometers to take word to Gervais. There’s no time.”

“We better make time,” Larkin said.

Bonnard hesitated, but there was something sullen and obstinate in the corporal’s expression, so he shrugged and turned into the kitchen. Larkin sat down and lit the candle.

He realized bitterly that he was intimidated by these elegant delicacies, potted meats and vintage wines and labeled names he couldn’t even pronounce, like Slivovitz and Kirschwasser and Armagnac. Jars of truffles and fish paste and goose liver pate were as off-limits to him as an officers’ hotel in Paris, or for that matter, the St. Regis or the Stork Club in New York.

The bottle of Cutty Sark paradoxically brought back a pair of sustaining memories, a night when he and Agnes had gone to the Richelieu on Fifty-second Street and had a good time drinking scotch and dancing and listening to a comedian, and another time at Christmas when he’d been working Penn Station and a group of Hollywood people traveling with the actor Lee Bowman had lost their luggage waiting to board the Broadway Limited for Chicago. Larkin found the suitcases, six of them in matched pigskin, and some guy in the party gave him a double sawbuck and a bottle of Cutty Sark for his trouble. And that night in the Railway Express baggage rooms, Larkin and his pals got a nice buzz on drinking and listening to the Christmas carols pouring in from the loudspeakers in the main waiting room. Their boss, old “Killjoy” Kranston, had tried to put a stop to it, but they were in no mood for his bitching and they laughed at him and told him where to ram it. That was some night, he thought, as Bonnard came back from the kitchen and set down a pair of wine glasses. Larkin poured drinks, and sipped slowly, a weariness settling over him.

It had seemed so easy last night, sitting by the fire and drinking the familiar black whiskey with Bonnard. Just borrow a truck, haul this food and booze over to Liège, a few hours from here. Bonnard knew a black market dealer, a Belgian named Gervais, who would sell the loot and they’d split the money three ways. Now Larkin was having second thoughts. Common sense told him he should take maybe a case of whiskey and a few cans of ham for the section and tell Bonnard to fuck off. It was too rich a deal for an Irisher from the lower East Side who, as his uncles had frequently told him, would be scratching a poor man’s ass all his life.

“There’s no danger, no risk for you or me,” Bonnard was saying.

“And that’s the way you like it,” Larkin said. “No chance of getting your ass caught in the wringer. Let somebody else take the flak.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your daughter, Bonnard.”

Bonnard looked startled. “What has Felice got to do with this?”

“Look, don’t shit me. I was there when you set it up.”

“Wait. You don’t understand—”

“I understand the whole deal, Bonnard. You put her on the block like a pig at a farm sale. Sure, your ass is never in the wringer. But while you’re standing on the sidelines, your daughter’s screwing Sonny Laurel and I’m driving a truck through country crawling with Germans.”

Bonnard sipped his drink and sighed, then said, “What I did was best for Felice.”

“That’s bullshit. You should of shot anybody trying to get to her.”

Actually the anger he heard in his voice disgusted him, as hypocritical as righteous old biddies gossiping at clotheslines behind East Side tenements, speculating with relish and indignation about who was drinking himself to death, who was waiting for pawnshops to open, and who had up and got married with no notice at all. Larkin found it difficult to find anyone to feel superior to. And his tirade at Bonnard, he realized, was only an attempt to convince himself that a father pimping for his daughter had to be a few shitty rungs below a thief working the black market.

Bonnard sighed again, but when he spoke his voice was brisk, a businessman explaining the details of his shop to an apprentice. “Look. When the Germans came here, Felice was ten years old. Major Hunsicker treated her like a pet. He liked her to bring his breakfast coffee. Our family is hated by the village, but we survived the Germans. We’ll be here when they are gone and you are gone. What’s the good of fighting when you have nothing to fight with?”

The Belgian put an imaginary pistol to his forehead and closed his index finger with a decisive gesture. “Edmond Francoeur, the brother of the schoolteacher, recruited some idiots and blew up the baggage train from Liège. Francoeur and nine hostages were shot in front of the church in Lepont. Did that teach the stupid patriots a lesson? No. Jocko Berthier, who walks like a broken crab, placed a radio transmitter in the church. And the schoolteacher—”

“Hold it,” Larkin said. “Is the transmitter working?”

“No, not for months.”

“What about the schoolteacher?”

“Her brother married a Jewish girl in Germany. There was a child, Margret. And the schoolteacher is keeping the child in her home. How many hostages will die if the Germans come back and find that Jew? How many lives is that useless transmitter worth?” Bonnard shook his head emphatically. “Staying alive, that’s what matters.” He drew a handkerchief from an inside pocket of his overcoat and blew his nose. His eyes had become moist and red. “So, in my place, corporal, what man would you choose?” He tapped his forehead. “... the childish one, your cook? The one who is so frightened? Who would you choose, corporal? I know the sort of man your Laurel is. He won’t hurt Felice. And she’ll forget him before the snows run down to the river in the spring.”

Larkin smiled bitterly. “You picked Sonny Laurel for lover-boy. And me for the thief. Is that what I look like?”

Bonnard shrugged, and Larkin thought maybe this one time his uncles might be wrong, maybe he wouldn’t have to scratch a poor man’s ass the rest of his life.

“Anybody else know about this loot?”

“No. Not even the priest, not even Trude.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” Larkin put the bottle of Cutty Sark in his pocket and went up the stairs and out the front doors of the castle. His chest felt better, the whiskey had eased the pain, but the winds stung his raw cheeks and the change in temperature made him feel almost drunk. He knew he’d better work that off before he talked to Docker.

The sergeant and Trankic and Jackson Baird stood together at the edge of the hill, the bulk of the cannon revetment behind them, their figures blurred and indistinct in the mists.

“I worked on a construction job one summer in Peeks-kill,” Trankic said. “Where’d you live, kid?”

“Near First and South Division Street.”

“What’s the name of the big public park?”

“It’s Depew Park, named after Chauncey Depew.”

“On the north side, right?”

“No, the south side.”

“You know where the old hospital is?”

“On the bluff just above the railroad.”

Docker: “You ever visit West Point?”

“Yes, our scoutmaster took us there a couple of times.”

“How’d he get permission?”

Baird told him that the troop secretary wrote to the provost marshal’s office listing the date they preferred and an alternate choice. They received pass cards by mail usually within about a week... Baird was able to smile tentatively now as some of his confidence seemed to return and touches of color showed on his sharp white cheekbones. He went on to mention other features of the Point, parades in the Central Area and snapshots he’d taken of changing colors in the trees along Lee and Jefferson Roads, talking with increasing assurance until Docker held up a hand. “Okay, that’s fine. Let’s talk about your rifle and dog tags. Your rifle first. How’d you lose it?”

“Just like I told you, sergeant.”

“Tell me again, Baird.”

The abrupt switch in subjects obviously jarred the young soldier; an expression of remembered panic pinched his wind-raw face.

“I... I got knocked down by a shell that exploded near me and when I got up I couldn’t find my rifle.”

“You sure you looked for it?”

“Yes, I crawled around but I couldn’t find it.”

“And your dog tags?”

“It’s just like I said. I tripped and rolled down the side of a hill. That’s when I lost them, they must have got hooked on a branch or something...”

Trankic studied him. “You have your overcoat and shirt open?”

“I’m not sure, I don’t remember.”

“Well, unless you were running around bare-ass like Tarzan, there’s no way a tree branch could rip off your dog tags.”

“That’s what Shorty Kohler thinks,” Baird said flatly. “He thinks I’m a deserter.”

“You’re the only one knows the truth,” Docker said.

“It’s not that simple. It’s possible I could be a deserter and not even know it.”

“How do you figure that?”

Baird wet his chapped lips. “Well, I read about a witchcraft trial in New England once. They were trying an old lady. Some kids said she gave them stomachaches, nightmares, things like that. And a farmer said the old lady had put a hex on his cow and made her lose a calf. So the judge decided she was a witch and sentenced her to be burned to death. He asked her if she had anything to say... and this is what I mean, sergeant... the old woman didn’t disagree with him, just asked him if it was possible that she could be a witch and not even know about it.”

“So what did the judge tell her?” Docker said.

“He told her sure, and that’s why they were going to burn her at the stake.”

Docker took out his canteen and uncapped it. “You want a drink, Baird?”

“No, no thanks.”

Docker drank and tucked the canteen back into the pouch on his cartridge belt.

“Baird, my guess is that thousands of GIs got cut off from their outfits the last few days. A lot of them may have dumped their weapons. If they’re Jews, they got rid of their dog tags too. They’d be idiots to risk being captured with that H for Hebrew ’round their necks. I think you’re smart enough to know all this. So what’s bothering you?”

“It’s just...” Baird looked down at the river and its cover of fog, and Docker saw that his lips were trembling. “It’s just that my family is strict about things. I mean if there was any talk about my being a deserter, they couldn’t live with it.”

“Listen to me,” Docker said. “Forget about that old lady they burned for a witch, and forget about being a deserter and not knowing it. Just don’t fuck up around here and you’ll be all right.”

When Baird had trudged off through the snow to the cannon, Trankic shook his head and said, “He’s still not leveling with us. Bull. Is that something we got to worry about?”

“Well, we’re worrying about everything else,” Docker said. “Why make any exceptions?”

“Merry Christmas,” Larkin said, and took the bottle of Cutty Sark from his overcoat pocket and handed it to Docker.

Docker opened it and sniffed it. “Goddamn it. Matt, it’s scotch.”

They were seated in the cave near the cannon revetment, the tarpaulin tight across the entrance. The canvas had iced over and occasionally the winds made it crack like pistol shots. The blasts stirred the fire and started shadows running like quicksilver across the walls.

“Your professor pal, Hamlin, fascinates me,” Larkin said. “Remember the letter he wrote about therapy sessions for returning GIs?”

In the firelight. Docker saw that Larkin’s eyes were hot with more than whiskey, and his resentment was obviously deep because that letter from Hamlin had arrived at least three months ago.

Dave had written: “With the usual disclaimers, consider the source and all that crap, I think we need something like a decompression chamber for GIs honorably home from the wars. It’s a pragmatic thing... it’s not their fault, and it’s not ours. They’ve seen the ugliness, we haven’t. That’s all there is to it. It would be reasonable to expect more forbearance on our part, but in all honesty we don’t know what exactly we should be forbearing about.

“Here’s an example: Tim Ryan was invalided home from the Pacific. The following sequence is arguably not entirely his fault, but please consider the details and specifications of the charges: 1) Tim got in two brawls with guys in bars. The first was a 4-F like your humble servant, deferred for a perforated testicle, I imagine. The other chap happened to be a Marine with a pair of Purple Hearts. 2) Tim’s account of a strafing raid on Guadalcanal caused three young children (remember the Hansens?) to go screaming for cover under the dining room table. 3) He has had a total breakdown in communications with his parents and also with the man he used to work for, a branch manager at Sears, Roebuck...”

Dave Hamlin had an idea that returning combat veterans should be put through a process roughly the opposite of basic training. Instead of close order drill and the manual of arms, they would be given counsel by psychiatrists and clergymen and business leaders to help them to merge smoothly into the flow of life in their communities.

“They could have a great course for amputees,” Larkin said. “How to handle a teacup with hooks on your wrist. But maybe your pal Hamlin should turn his idea around. A training camp for civilians is what we need, for 4-Fs and football and baseball players who haven’t missed a game the last four years. For a lot of guys with doctors who gave them a wink past the draft board.”

“All right, let’s have it,” Docker said.

Larkin sipped whiskey, and said quietly, “There’s millions of guys who paid no more attention to this fucking war than if it was a Rotary parade going by in the next county. I’m twenty-nine. I got drafted when I was twenty-six. I spent seven years before that at Railway Express, and nineteen months before that looking for a job. I’ve got an apartment at Thirty-second Street and Third Avenue that costs sixty-five a month, living room, a bedroom, a kitchen. And I got Agnes and a three-year-old daughter. Those years at Railway Express are just seven times Christmas and seven times Thanksgiving for me. I worked those holidays, every fucking one of them at the Grand or the Penn watching college boys come home and whooping it up waiting for their parents or whoever the shit was meeting them. And you know something, Bull? I wrote my boss at Railway Express six months ago to see about my job and he took about four months to answer me, and I got his letter the same day that prick, Hamlin, wrote to you about decompression chambers for GIs. My boss told me some neighborhood news and he told me who Connie Mack had picked for his all-time all-star baseball team, and then he got to the point of saying they’d hired some older guys and some deferred guys and they were cutting the mustard real good, and while he wanted to be fair to everybody he couldn’t promise me I could go back to work.”

“You’ve got me hooked, Larkin,” Docker said.

“What the fuck you mean?”

“Who the hell did Connie Mack pick?”

“Shit. Let’s see. George Sisler at first, Eddie Collins at second, Honus Wagner at shortstop, Tris Speaker in center field, the Babe in right—”

“Okay, okay, get to the point.”

“Up at the castle, there’s thousands of dollars worth of food and liquor. Bull, which is where I got this Cutty Sark.” The words were coming faster and the leaping fire highlighted the strain in Larkin’s eyes. “Bonnard knows where we can unload it. Bull. All he wants is for me to use a truck for a few hours. All I need is that truck. That stuffs got to be worth eight or nine thousand dollars.”

“Forget it,” Docker said. “You’re not going into the black market, Matt, and neither is anybody else in this section.”

“What the hell good is that food and booze doing anybody in that castle?”

“That’s not the point, so forget it.”

“You want to turn it over to the brass? So it will wind up in some officers’ mess in Paris or London?” Larkin took another sip of whiskey. “Bull, I don’t think you heard a goddamn word I said. It’s a three-way split between me and Bonnard and this character, Gervais. I’ll cut you in for half of mine, and if I can clear around two thousand it means I got ten or twelve months’ breathing space to find a job when I get out.” His voice rose angrily. “Don’t you understand, for Christ’s sake? I’m talking about the rest of my whole fucking life.”

“Goddamn it, no,” Docker said.

Larkin lit a cigarette and flipped the match into the fire. He admired Docker, but distrusted him because he always expected too much of people. Which was another way of saying he wanted them to disappoint him. If you insisted everybody had to be perfect, like the priests did, naturally you’d have a world full of sinners to forgive. Larkin shrugged and was pouring himself another drink when the tarpaulin was pulled back by Solvis, who stuck his head and shoulders into the cave.

“You better come quick, sarge. Shorty Kohler just pissed all over the new kid’s chow.”

Docker could hear Kohler’s angry voice, clear on the frozen air, as he and Larkin ran toward the men who formed a tableau against the snow and fog streaming through the valley.

“Fucking-A, I’ll tell you why I did it. I did it because you’re a mother-fucking deserter. Is that straight enough for you, Baird?”

Gelnick, Farrel and Dormund stood by the wheelbarrow they had used to bring up the hot food from the Bonnards’. They were all staring solemnly at Baird’s mess kit, which was tipped on the ground, the turkey stew and vegetables soaking in a yellow urine that had soaked the snow around them.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” Baird’s lips were trembling; he looked close to tears.

“Okay, I shouldn’t have done it,” Shorty Kohler said. “So what the fuck you gonna do about it?”

“Shorty, knock it off,” Docker said in a tone he seldom needed to use. He took Baird’s arm and pulled the boy around to face him. “Now listen to me, goddamn it. You don’t have to take this kind of crap from anybody. You understand? From anybody.”

“I don’t want to fight him—”

From the revetment Trankic shouted, “Bull, for Christ’s sake, get over here!” Docker turned and saw the big corporal waving urgently to him from the loading platform of the cannon.

“I’ll settle this later, Kohler,” he said, and ran across the crest of the hill to Trankic. “What the hell is it?”

“I ain’t sure. Bull. Some kind of crazy light behind those mountains, something like we saw at Werpen.”

Docker unslung his binoculars and walked to the edge of the cliff, listening to the winds sweeping around him as he scanned the valley.

Tex Farrel stared down at the congealed lumps of food in Baird’s mess kit. “You know something?” he said conversationally. “We shouldn’t wait for Docker to settle every little thing that goes on around here. Seems to me the sarge’s got enough on his mind...”

“What the fuck you mean?” Kohler said.

“What I guess I really mean. Shorty, is that you are full of shit,” Farrel said, spacing the last few words slowly and deliberately.

Kohler looked around at the other men and then back at Farrel, his smile puzzled, tentative. “What the fuck is this, Tex?”

“I just told you. You’re so dumb you can’t figure it out? Baird’s part of this section now. Besides, you’re a professional, at least that’s what you tell people, and he’s just a kid.”

“Hey, wait a minute. I got no beef with you.”

Tex Farrel took off his helmet and put it on the ground. He removed his field jacket and handed it to Solvis. “Shorty, where I come from no white man would be low enough to piss on a hungry man’s food.”

“You better watch that loud mouth of yours, Tex.”

“Just put your hands up, short pants, and start worrying about your own mouth.”

“All right, you Texas meathead.” Kohler moved in fast and slugged Farrel with a left hook to the body that sounded as if he had swung his fist against a taut drum.

Farrel grunted and backed away, but when his boots were planted firmly he said, “Shit, I thought you did this for a living,” and snapped a hard left into Kohler’s face.

Shorty pulled his jaw down under his shoulder and crowded Farrel, stinging him with a flurry of blows, rocking him with hooks to the body and trying to measure him for straight rights. But the frozen ground hampered him, he couldn’t hook off his jabs, and most of his punches lacked precision and power.

Watching, Gelnick thought that they were just as rotten to one another as they were to everybody else, pissing on good food like that. He filled his own mess kit with food from the wheelbarrow and took it to Baird, but the dumb nebbish didn’t want it, staring at Tex Farrel fighting, not believing anybody could stick up for him, which Gelnick could understand, like he understood all those goyim wanted to be Christ on a cross, naked in the wind with everybody feeling sorry for them. So screw them all, he thought, and hunkered down with his mess kit to watch the fight.

Kohler was breathing hard now, feinting with his head and shoulders to set Farrel up for combination shots. Farrel slipped his left lead and threw a punch over it, a powerful right that caught Kohler on the jaw and put him flat on his back.

At the edge of the hill the big dog had begun barking. Inside the revetment, Trankic suddenly called to Docker. “Goddamn it. Bull! Look. We got mail coming in!”

Docker turned and saw twin globes of what looked like fire materializing dully from behind the curtain of snow and fog above the river.

“On the guns!” he shouted, and ran to the revetment wall and climbed onto the loading platform of the cannon. Within a few seconds the other men were at their posts, Larkin behind the director, Sonny Laurel and Farrel on the tracking scopes.

Trankic engaged the lever connecting the cannon to the fire-control system, and when Laurel and Farrel found the target, the barrel elevated and swung hard right to track the lights glittering in the fog.

Docker noted that Gelnick was missing and that Baird was still standing outside the walls of the revetment. “Get your ass in here,” he said. “Give Dormund and Kohler a hand. Grab a clip of ammo and be ready if I yell for it. Don’t make me turn to look for it.”

Docker checked the foot-long cartridges visible above the breech, the brass casings wet with the falling snow. From the opposite side of the hill, Schmitzer, on the machine guns, waved to him and Docker knew he had spotted the blazing spheres coming through the valley.

Everyone watched the lights, and when a series of thermals tore the fog apart, they saw an aircraft with a steel-ribbed bubble over the cockpit and a triangular tail with black swastikas painted above the tapered ailerons. Under the plane’s single wing a pair of slim nacelles were mounted tight against the fuselage, and from them flames streamed behind the tail assembly, crimson against the spuming snow. A low whine trembled through the air as the plane streaked by their position.

The barrel of the cannon swung so rapidly that Docker nearly lost his balance. Steadying himself against the curved columns of the loading chute, he slammed his foot down on the firing pedal. Three tracer shells exploded from the gun barrel, arching toward the plane and cutting parabolic slashes of white light in the sky.

The projectiles trailed far behind their target, curving futilely in the wake of the aircraft, which banked and disappeared into the mists. After the staccato firing, the silence was so complete they could hear the hiss of snow-flakes on the hot barrel of the gun.

“Ammo,” Docker said, and without turning reached behind and felt the cold shells against his bare hands. “And where the hell is Gelnick?”

“He ducked into the wretched cave,” Dormund said. “Can’t get on me for that, sarge.”

“Christ!” Docker said, realizing that the tarpaulin wouldn’t provide any protection against machine-gun fire or shrapnel, that the only safe place in a strafing attack was inside the revetment. “Go get the dumb bastard,” he told Solvis. “On the double.”

Solvis squeezed through the narrow opening in the revetment wall and ran for the cave, bending down into the winds.

Docker felt cold drops of sweat gathering on his ribs and running down his side. Their tracer fire had pinpointed the gun position; the German pilot could now choose the time and direction of the next attack.

Radar began to circle the floor of the revetment, whining with excitement. Stiff fur stood up on his neck as he began to bark in the direction of the castle.

Docker waved to Gelnick and Solvis, who were coming over the crest of the hill. “Move it, you guys!”

The men on the cannon heard humming tremors rising over the valley, but it was impossible to determine their exact source; the damp air was moving in gentle vibrations and the low, rhythmic sounds trembled all around them.

Docker hoped they’d get a few precious seconds to zero in on the German plane, time enough to establish the pattern of their tracers.

But they didn’t get those precious seconds, they got no warning at all. One instant they were straining to pick up the source of the singing vibrations, the next the plane was flashing at them from behind the castle, its ammo blazing and clawing at the slopes of the mountain.

The barrel of the cannon swung hard right, and Docker pounded his foot on the firing pedal.

The rockets from the attacking aircraft ripped open the frozen earth and sent splinters of rock over the revetment like grenade fragments.

Solvis ran clumsily through the slush and snow, arms and legs churning, throwing himself down against the wall of sandbags, but Gelnick, crying out in surprise, dropped to the open ground, jerking his knees up to his chin and covering his helmet with his arms.

Docker screamed at him to get up, a pointless warning because no voice could have made itself heard above the whistling boom of the plane’s passage and the explosion of its rockets against the frozen mountain.

The cannon was off target but so was the aircraft, its ammo gouging tracks twenty yards from the revetment before it vanished into the fogs.

The impact of the explosions had knocked Gelnick’s body a dozen feet down the slope of the mountain. His arms and legs were bent at distorted angles, his blood stained the snow, and he looked just like the other casualties Docker had seen in this war, suddenly and touchingly small in clothes that always seemed too large after the first bullets destroyed the quickness of life.

“He was running right beside me,” Solvis was chattering. “He could have made it. He was right with me. Why should he do a thing like that?” Solvis walked toward Gelnick’s body but continued to look over his shoulder at the men on the cannon. “Can you tell me why he did that?” he said, in a loud, oddly querulous voice. “I made it all right. Why didn’t he have the brains to follow me?”

“Solvis, get back in here!” Docker said.

Solvis made no move to return. His face was white, eyes out of focus. “I don’t understand.” He wasn’t shouting now, his voice was like a worried child’s, soft and anxious. “You guys understand it? Any of you guys?”

Jackson Baird squeezed through the narrow corridor of sandbags and ran through the snow. Taking Solvis by the arm, Baird led him back to the revetment, hurrying the stunned soldier along with awkward, stumbling strides.

Within minutes they heard again the delicate, trembling vibrations of the plane. When it emerged from the hills behind the castle it was aimed at their revetment like a powerfully thrown dart. They saw muzzle flashes from the rockets, then tracks of projectiles striking the mountain and climbing toward their position like a ladder pounded into the hillside by invisible hammers.

Docker hit the firing pedal and the cannon bucked beneath him, the massive breech slamming back under almost twenty tons of recoil, and he saw that their tracers were directly on target, flight patterns transformed into an optical illusion by the plane’s speed. From where Docker stood above the smoking breech, the line of glowing projectiles seemed to bend like a stream of water from a hose as it curved smoothly into the tapered nose of the aircraft.

There were two explosions then, flashes of searing light followed instantly by eruptions of black smoke, and the front of the plane’s fuselage was thrust up and back as if it had flown into a mountainside.

Docker realized the pilot was trying for altitude in the last seconds of his life. The aircraft soared up and over their revetment, twisting and buckling, and the men below ducked instinctively from the heat of the flames rushing down from the wings and cockpit.

But it was a directionless mass of iron by then, its graceful union with the air forever destroyed, hurtling into the mountains hundreds of yards above and behind them and taking down dozens of giant firs before it finally exploded in bursts of rupturing metals and leaping orange fires.

The echoes of the crash returned like distant thunder through the reaches of the valley, the reverberations replaced at last by the sounds of winds and the snap of delicate ice in the trees, and then there was nothing left of the plane and its passage but a black scar in the frozen mountainside and flames reflected in sullen colors against the stormbound skies.