The Young Lions

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

"So they asked this GI, what would you do if they sent you home?" Pfeiffer was saying. He and Noah and Michael were squatting on a half-submerged log against a low stone wall, their meat balls, spaghetti and canned peaches in rich combination on their mess kits. It was the first warm food they'd had for three days, and everyone was very pleased with the cooks who had got the field kitchen so close up. The line of men, spaced ten yards apart so that if a shell came in it would only hit a few of them at one time, wound through a copse of bare, artillery-marked beeches. The line moved swiftly as the cooks hurriedly dished out the food. "What would you do if they sent you home?" Pfeiffer repeated, through the thick mash in his mouth. "The GI thought for a minute… Have you heard this one?" Pfeiffer asked.

"No," Michael said politely to Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer nodded, pleased. "First, the GI said, I'd take off my shoes. Second, I'd lay my wife. Third, I'd take off my pack." Pfeiffer roared at his joke. He stopped suddenly. "You sure you haven't heard it before?"

"Honest," said Michael. "That's a hell of a funny story."

"I thought you'd like it," Pfeiffer said with satisfaction, wiping up the last thick juice of the meat balls, spaghetti and peach syrup. "What the hell, you have to laugh every once in a while."

Pfeiffer industriously scrubbed his mess kit with a stone and a piece of toilet paper he always carried in his pocket. He got up and wandered over to the dice game that was going on behind a blackened chimney that was all that was left of a farmhouse that had survived three wars before this. There were three soldiers, a Lieutenant, and two Sergeants from a Communications Zone Signal Corps message centre, who had somehow arrived here in a jeep on a tourist visit. They were playing dice, and they seemed to have a lot of money which would do more good in the pockets of the infantry.

Michael lit a cigarette, relaxing. He wiggled his toes automatically, to make certain he could still feel them, and enjoyed the sense of having eaten well, and being out of danger for an hour. "When we get back to the States," Michael said to Noah, "I will take you and your wife out to a steak dinner. I know a place on Third Avenue, on the second floor. You eat your meal and watch the L pass by at dish level. The steaks are as thick as your fist, we'll have it very rare…"

"Hope doesn't like it very rare," Noah said, seriously.

"She will have it any way she wants it," Michael said. "Antipasto first, then these steaks, charred on the outside and they sigh when you touch a butter knife to them, and you get spaghetti and green salad and red California wine, and after that, cake soaked in rum and cafe expresso, that's very black, with lemon peel. The first night we get home. On me. You can bring your son, too, if you want, we'll put him in a high chair." Noah smiled. "We'll leave him at home that night," he said.

Michael was gratified at the smile. Noah had smiled very seldom in the three months since they had returned to the Company. He had spoken little, smiled little. In his taciturn way, he had attached himself to Michael, watched out for him with critical, veteran eyes, protected him by word and example, even when it had been a full-time job trying to keep himself alive, even in December, when it had been very bad, when the Company had been loaded on trucks and had been thrown in hurriedly against the German tanks that had suddenly materialized out of the supposedly exhausted Army in front of them. The Battle of the Bulge, it was now called, and it was in the past, and the one thing Michael really would remember from it for the rest of his life was crouching in a hole, which Noah had made him dig two feet deeper, although Michael had been weary and annoyed at what he considered Noah's finickiness… Michael looked over at Noah. Noah was sleeping now, sitting up, leaning against the stone wall. Only when he slept did his face look young. He had a very light beard, blondish and sparse, as compared with Michael's thick black mat, which made Michael look like a hobo who had been riding the rods from Vancouver to Miami. Noah's eyes, which, when he was awake, stared out with a dark, elderly tenacity, were closed now. Michael noticed for the first time that his friend had soft, upcurling eyelashes, full and blond at the tips, giving the upper part of his face a gentle appearance. Michael felt a wave of gratitude and pity for the sleeping boy, muffled now in his heavy stained overcoat, his wool-gloved fingertips just touching the barrel of his rifle… Looking at him now, this way, Michael realized at what cost this frail boy maintained his attitude of grave competence, made his intelligent, dangerous, soldierly decisions, fought tenaciously and cautiously, with a manual-like correctness, to remain alive in this country and this time when death came so casually to so many of the men around him. The blond lash-tips fluttered softly on the fist-broken face, and Michael thought of the times Noah's wife must have stared, with sorrowful tenderness and amusement, at the incongruous, girlish ornament. How old was he? Twenty-two, twenty-four? Husband, father, military man… Two friends, and both lost… Needing friends as other men needed air and, out of that need, worrying desperately, in the middle of his own agony, how to keep the clumsy, ageing soldier called Whitacre alive, who, left to his own blundering, ill-trained devices, would most certainly have walked over a mine by now, or silhouetted himself against a ridge to a sniper, or out of laziness and inexperience been mangled by a tank in a too-shallow hole… Steaks and red California wine across the gap spanned only by hallucinations, the first night home, on me… It was impossible, and it must happen. Michael closed his eyes, feeling an immense, sorrowing responsibility.

From the dice game, the voices floated over. "I'll fade 1,000 francs. The point is nine…"

Michael opened his eyes and stood up quietly and, carrying his rifle, went over to watch.

Pfeiffer was shooting and he was doing well. He had a pile of paper crushed in his hand. The Services of Supply Lieutenant wasn't playing, but the two Sergeants were. The Lieutenant was wearing a beautiful officer's coat, brindle-coloured and full. The last time he had been in New York, Michael had seen such a coat in the window of Abercrombie and Fitch. All three men were wearing parachute boots, although it was plain that they had never jumped from anything higher than a bar-stool. They were all large, tall men, clean-shaven, well dressed, and fresh-looking, and the bearded infantrymen with whom they were playing looked like neglected and rickety specimens of an inferior race.

The visitors talked loudly and confidently, and moved with energy, in contrast to the weary, mumbling, laconic behaviour of the men who had dropped out of the line to have their first warm meal for three days. If you were going to pick soldiers for a crack regiment, a regiment to seize towns and hold bridgeheads and engage armour, you certainly would not hesitate to choose these three handsome, lively fellows, Michael thought. The Army, of course, had worked things out somewhat differently. These bluff-voiced, well-muscled men worked in a snug office fifty miles back, typing out forms, and shovelling coal into the rosy iron stove in the middle of the room to keep out the wintry chill. Michael remembered the little speech Sergeant Houlihan, of the second platoon, always made when he greeted the replacements… "Ah," Houlihan would say, "why is it the infantry always get the 4Fs? Why is it the Quartermasters always get the weight-lifters, the shot-putters, and the All-American fullbacks? Tell me, Boys, is there anybody here who weighs more than a hundred and thirty pounds?" It was a fantasy, of course, and Houlihan made the speech shrewdly, because he knew it made the replacements laugh and like him, but there was a foolish element of fact in it, too.

As he was watching, Michael saw the Lieutenant take a bottle out of his pocket and drink from it. Pfeiffer watched the Lieutenant narrowly, rolling the dice slowly in his mud-caked hand.

"Lieutenant," he said, "what do I see in your pocket?" The Lieutenant laughed. "Cognac," he said. "That's brandy."

"I know it's brandy," Pfeiffer said. "How much do you want for it?"

The Lieutenant looked at the notes in Pfeiffer's hand. "How much you got there?"

Pfeiffer counted. "2,000 francs," he said. "Forty bucks. I sure would like a nice bottle of cognac to warm up my old bones."

"Four thousand francs, " the Lieutenant said calmly. "You can have the bottle for 4,000."

Pfeiffer looked narrowly at the Services of Supply Lieutenant. He spat slowly. Then he talked to the dice. "Dice," he said, "Papa needs a drink. Papa needs a drink very bad."

He put his 2,000 francs down. The two Sergeants with the bright stars in the circles on their shoulders faded him.

"Dice," Pfeiffer said, "it's a cold day and Papa's thirsty." He rolled the dice gently, relinquishing them like flower petals.

"Read them," he said, without smiling. "Seven." He spat again.

"Pick up the money, Lieutenant, I'll take the bottle." He put out his hand.

"Delighted," the Lieutenant said. He gave Pfeiffer the bottle and scooped up the money. "I'm glad we came."

Pfeiffer took a long drink out of the bottle. All the men watched him silently, half-pleased, half-annoyed at his extravagance. Pfeiffer corked the bottle carefully and put it in his overcoat pocket. "There's going to be an attack tonight, " he said pugnaciously. "What the hell good would it do me to cross that damn river with 4,000 francs in my pocket? If the Krauts knock me off tonight, they are going to knock off a GI with his belly full of good liquor." Self-righteously, slinging his rifle, he walked away.

"Services of Supply," said one of the infantrymen who had been watching the game. "Now I know why they call it that."

The Lieutenant laughed easily. He was a man beyond the reach of criticism. Michael had forgotten that people laughed like that any more, good-humouredly, without much cause, from a full reservoir of good spirits. He guessed that you could only find people who laughed like that fifty miles behind the lines. None of the men joined in the Lieutenant's laughter.

"I'll tell you why we're here, Boys," the Lieutenant said.

"Let me guess," said Crane, who was in Michael's platoon.

"You're from Information and Education and you brought up a questionnaire. Are we happy in the Service? Do we like our work?"

The Lieutenant laughed again. He is a great little laugher, that Lieutenant, Michael thought, staring at him sombrely.

"No," said the Lieutenant, "we're here on business. We heard we could pick up some pretty good souvenirs in this neck of the woods. I get into Paris twice a month, and there's a good market for Luegers and cameras and binoculars, stuff like that. We're prepared to pay a fair price. How about it? You fellows got anything you want to sell?"

The men around the Lieutenant looked at one another silently.

"I got a nice Garand rifle, " Crane said, "I'd be willing to part with for 5,000 francs. Or, how about a nice combat jacket," Crane went on innocently, "a little worn, but with sentimental value?"

The Lieutenant chuckled. He was obviously having a good time on his day off up at the front. He would write about it to his girl in Wisconsin, Michael was sure, the comedians of the infantry, rough boys, but comic. "O.K.," he said, "I'll look around for myself. I hear there was some action here last week, there should be plenty of stuff lying around."

The infantrymen stared coldly at one another. "Plenty," said Crane gently. "Jeep-loads. You'll be the richest man in Paris."

"Which way is the front?" the Lieutenant asked briskly.

"We'll take a peek."

There was the cold, slightly bubbling silence again. "The front," Crane said innocently, "you want to peek at the front?"

"Yes, soldier." The Lieutenant was not very good-natured now.

"That way, Lieutenant," Crane pointed. "Isn't it that way, boys?"

"Yes, Lieutenant," the boys said.

"You can't miss it," said Crane.

The Lieutenant had caught on by now. He turned to Michael, who had not said anything. "You," the Lieutenant said, "can you tell us how to get there?"

"Well…" Michael began.

"You just go up this road, Lieutenant," Crane broke in. "A mile and a half or so. You will find yourself climbing a little, in some woods. You get to the top of the ridge, and you will look down and see a river. That's the front, Lieutenant."

"Is he telling the truth?" the Lieutenant asked, accusingly.

"Yes, Sir," Michael said.

"Good!" The Lieutenant turned to one of his Sergeants.

"Louis," he said, "we'll leave the jeep here. We'll walk. Immobilize it."

"Yes, Sir," Louis said. He went over to the jeep, lifted the hood, took the rotor out of the distributor and tore out some wires. The Lieutenant walked over to the jeep and took an empty musette bag from it and slung it over his shoulder.

"Mike." It was Noah's voice. He was waving to Michael.

"Come on, we have to get back…"

Michael nodded. He nearly went over and told the Lieutenant to get away from there, to go back to his nice snug office and warm stove, but he decided not to. He walked slowly over and caught up with Noah, who was trudging in the mud on the side of the road towards the Company line a mile and a half away.

Michael's platoon was planted just under the saddle of the ridge which looked down on the river. The ridge was thick with undergrowth bushes, saplings, that even now, with all the leaves off, gave good cover, so that you could move around quite freely. From the top of the ridge you could look down the soggy, brush-dotted slope and across the narrow field at the bottom, to the river, and the matching ridge on the other side, behind which lay the Germans. There was a hush over the wintry landscape. The river ran thick and black between icy banks. Here and there a tree trunk lay rotting in the water, which curved around it in oil-like eddies. There was a hush over the drab patches of snow and the silent, facing slopes. At night there were sometimes little spurts of vicious firing, but during the day it was too exposed for patrols, and a kind of sullen truce prevailed. The lines, as far as anybody knew, lay about twelve hundred yards apart, and were so marked back on the map in that distant, fabulous, safe place, Division.

Michael's platoon had been there two weeks, and apart from the occasional fire at night (and the last burst had been three nights ago) there was no real evidence that the enemy was there at all. For all Michael knew, the Germans might have packed up and gone home.

But Houlihan didn't think so. Houlihan had a nose for Germans. Some men could sniff out authentic masterpieces of the Dutch school of painting, some men could taste a wine and tell you that it came from an obscure vineyard outside Dijon, vintage 1937, but Houlihan's speciality was Germans. Houlihan had a narrow, intelligent, high-browed Irish scholar's face, the kind you thought of when you imagined Joyce's room-mates at Dublin University, and he kept looking out through the brush on top of the ridge, and saying, doubtfully and wearily, "There's a nest there, somewhere. They've set up a machine-gun, and they're just laying on it, waiting for us."

Until now it hadn't made much difference. The platoon hadn't been going anywhere, the river presented too large an obstacle for patrols, and the machine-gun, if it was there, couldn't reach them behind the safety of the ridge. If the Germans had mortars back in their woods, they were conserving them. But at dusk, the word was, a company of Engineers was to come up and try to throw a pontoon bridge across the fifty-yard river, and Michael's Company was to cross the bridge and make contact with whatever Germans were holding the opposing ridge. After that, the next morning, a fresh company was to go through them and keep moving… It undoubtedly looked like a fine scheme at Division. But it didn't look good to Houlihan, peering out through his glasses at the icy black river and the silent, brush-covered, snow-patched slope before him.

Houlihan was talking to Green over a field telephone strapped to a tree when Noah, Michael, Pfeiffer and Crane reached him.

"Captain," he said, "I don't like it. They've been too quiet. There's a machine-gun concealed somewhere along that ridge. I just know it. They'll send up flares tonight when they get good and ready. They'll have 500 yards of cleared land and the bridge to lay it on to us. Over."

He listened. The Captain's voice scratched faintly in the receiver. "Yes, Sir," Houlihan said, "I'll call you when I find out." He sighed and hung up the receiver. He peered out across the river, sucking in his cheeks thoughtfully, looking pained and scholarly. "The Captain says for us to send out a patrol this afternoon," Houlihan said. "Keep going, in plain view, down to the river, if necessary, to draw fire. Then we can spot the place where the fire originates from, and he will get mortars working on it and wipe it out." Houlihan brought his binoculars up and squinted through the grey afternoon at the innocent-looking ridge across the river. "Any volunteers?" he asked offhandedly.

Michael looked around. There were seven men who had heard Houlihan. They squatted in shallow rifle pits just under the line of the ridge and they took a great interest in their rifles, in the texture of the ground in front of them, in the pattern of the brush before their faces. Three months ago, Michael realized, he probably would have volunteered, proving something foolish, expiating something profound. By now, Noah had taught him better. He examined his nails minutely in the silence.

Houlihan sighed softly. A minute passed, with everybody thinking earnestly and almost solidly of the moment when the leading man of that patrol would draw the fire of the German machine-gun.

"Sergeant," a polite voice said. "Do you mind if we join you?"

Michael looked up. The Services of Supply Lieutenant and his two travelling companions were making their way clumsily up the slippery hill. The Lieutenant's request hung in the air, over the men in the rifle-pits, insanely debonair, like a line from a duchess in a Hungarian comedy.

Houlihan turned round in surprise, his eyes narrowing.

"Sergeant," Crane said, "the Lieutenant is here to hunt souvenirs to take back to Paris."

A fleeting and unfathomable expression crossed Houlihan's thin, long-jawed face, blue-black with beard. "By all means, Lieutenant," Houlihan said heartily, and at the same time with an unusual note of obsequiousness. "We're honoured to have you, we are indeed."

The Lieutenant was panting heavily from the climb. He is not in as good condition as he looks, Michael thought. He is not getting his polo these days back in the Communications Zone.

"I heard this was the Front," the Lieutenant said, capitalizing it, taking Houlihan's helping hand. "Is it?"

"In a manner of speaking, Sir," said Houlihan. Nobody else said anything.

"It's awfully quiet," the Lieutenant said, looking around him puzzledly. "I haven't heard a shot in two hours. Are you sure?"

Houlihan laughed politely. "I'll tell you something, Sir," he said, in a confidential whisper. "I do believe the Germans pulled out a week ago. If you ask me, you could conduct a walking tour from here to the Rhine."

Michael stared at Houlihan. The Sergeant's face was open and child-like. Houlihan had been a conductor on a Fifth Avenue bus before the war, but, Michael thought, he could not have learned this on the run up from Washington Square.

"Good," the Lieutenant said, smiling. "I must say, it's a lot more peaceful here than it is back in our message centre. Isn't it, Louis?"

"Yes, Sir," said Louis.

"No Colonels running in and out, bothering you," the Lieutenant said heartily, "and you don't have to shave every day."

"No, Sir," said Houlihan, "we don't have to shave every day."

"I hear," the Lieutenant said confidentially, looking down the slope towards the river, "that a man could pick up some German souvenirs down there."

"Oh, yes, Sir," said Houlihan, "a man certainly could. That field is covered with helmets and Luegers and rare cameras."

He's gone too far, Michael thought, now he's gone too far. He looked up to see how the Lieutenant was taking it, but there was only an expression of eager greed on the healthy, ruddy face. God, Michael thought disgustedly, who gave you your commission?

"Louis, Steve," the Lieutenant said, "let's go down and take a look."

"Wait a minute, Lieutenant," Louis said doubtfully. "Ask him if there are mines?"

"Oh, no," said Houlihan. "I guarantee there are no mines." The seven men of the platoon squatted in their rifle-pits, looking at the ground, motionless.

"Do you mind, Sergeant," the Lieutenant said, "if we go down and browse around for a while?"

"Make yourself absolutely at home, Sir," Houlihan boomed.

Now, Michael thought, now he is going to tell them it's a joke, show them what fools they are, and send them home… But Houlihan was standing motionless.

"You'll keep an eye on us, won't you, Sergeant?" the Lieutenant asked.

"I certainly will," said Houlihan.

"Good. Come on, Boys." The Lieutenant pushed clumsily through the brush and started down the other side of the ridge, with the two men following.

Michael turned and looked at Noah. Noah was watching him, his elderly, dark eyes steady and threatening. Michael knew that Noah was fiercely signalling him, in his silent gaze, to keep still. Well, Michael thought defensively, it's his platoon, he's known these men longer than I have…

He turned back and looked down the slope. The Lieutenant, in his bright trench coat, and the two Sergeants were sliding heavily down the cold, muddy incline, hanging on here and there to bushes and the trunks of trees. No, Michael thought, I don't care what they think about me, I can't let this happen…

"Houlihan!" He sprang up beside the Sergeant, who was peering, with a steady, fierce expression, across the river to the other ridge. "Houlihan, you can't do that! You can't let them go out there like that! Houlihan!"

"Shut up!" Houlihan whispered ferociously. "Don't tell me what to do. I'm running this platoon."

"They'll be killed," Michael said urgently, staring down at the three men sliding on the dirty snow.

"Well, now," Houlihan said, and Michael was frightened by the look of loathing and hatred on his fine, thin-mouthed, scholarly face, "which would you prefer, man? Why shouldn't some of those bastards get killed once in a while? They're in the Army, aren't they? Souvenirs!"

"You've got to stop them!" Michael said hoarsely. "If you don't stop them, I'll put in a report, I swear to God I will…"

"Shut up, Whitacre," Noah said.

"Put in a report, eh?" Houlihan never took his eyes off the opposite ridge. "You want to go yourself, is that it? You want to get killed this afternoon yourself out there, you want Ackerman to get killed, Crane, Pfeiffer, you'd rather have your friends get it than three fat pigs from the Services of Supply. They're too good to be killed, is that it?" His voice which had been trembling with malice suddenly became smooth and professional as he addressed the other men. "Don't watch them down on the field," he said. "Keep your eyes on the ridge. There'll only be two, three short bursts, you'll have to look sharp. And keep your eyes on the spot and call it out… Still want me to call them back, Whitacre?"

"I…" Michael began. Then he heard the firing and he knew it was too late.

Down on the field along the river, the brindle coat was slowly going down, deflating on to the ground. Louis and the other man started to run, but they did not get far.

"Sergeant," it was Noah's voice, very calm and level, "I see where it's coming from. To the right of that big tree, twenty yards, just in front of those two bushes that stick up just a little higher than the others… See it?"

"I see it," Houlihan said.

"Right there. Two or three yards from the first bush."

"You sure?" Houlihan said. "I missed it."

"I'm sure," Noah said.

God, Michael thought wearily, admiring and hating Noah, how much that boy had learned since Florida.

"Well," Houlihan finally turned to Michael, "do you want to send in your report now?"

"No," Michael said. "I'm not going to report anything."

"Of course not." Houlihan patted his elbow warmly. "I knew you wouldn't." He went over to the field telephone and called the Company CP. Michael listened to him, giving the exact location of the German gun for the mortars.

Now, again, the afternoon was totally silent. It was hard to remember that, just one minute ago, the machine-gun had torn the quiet, and that three men had died.

Michael turned and looked at Noah. Noah was kneeling on one knee, holding his rifle with its butt in the mud, the barrel resting against his cheek, looking like old pictures of frontiersmen in the Indian wars far away in Kentucky and New Mexico. Noah was staring at Michael, his eyes wild and burning and without shame.

Michael slowly sat down, averting his eyes from Noah's, realizing finally the full implications of what Noah had tried to tell him in the replacement depot about going, in the Army, only to places where you had friends.