The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1

by Daniel Kraus

  Theirs not to make reply,

  Theirs not to reason why,

  Theirs but to do and die.

  Susannah was there to see me off. She was wrapped in a shawl for it was dewy and cold, and she reached from beneath it to straighten my shirt as if spiffing the military dress I had yet to acquire. She was nearly seventy by then, an old maid if ever there was one, but even in that bleary morning mist she saw more clearly than any other woman I’d ever known. In other words, Susannah Hazard had a good idea what might happen to me on that battlefield.

  She kissed my cold cheek.

  “Be careful, Archangel Zebulon Finch. My brave young Yankee.”

  I gave her the Zebby grin that used to work wonders with women and, so help me, I lied.

  “Careful—that’s the idea!”

  III.

  WELL, WHAT I HEARD IS they make greenhorns serve on firing squads right when they show up, cuz don’t nobody like shooting their own soldiers, and greenhorns generally ain’t got the balls to refuse. Just, you know, a friendly warning, Private. You want to prepare yourself mentally.”

  His name I never learned, for he did not stop talking long enough to give it. He was my driver, assigned with taking me from Orléans, a city south of Paris, to the Marine Corps troops gathered near Château-Theirry. He reveled in calling me “Private” even though his rank was no higher. He was a “doughboy,” one of the army recruits that made up the bulk of the American Expeditionary Forces. His uniform was several sizes too large, but oh, was the rosy-cheeked kid ever proud of it, taking any excuse to steer our truck toward an officer so that he could stand up, display his drab-colored service coat, breeches, leg wraps, cap, and dogtags, and fire off a crisp salute. Miserably, I had to follow this routine every time.

  It became easier to ignore him the closer we came to the field of battle. The French countryside looked as if a giant had tromped through, swinging a sequoia bat. Churches were reduced to pagan circles of brick. Green grass festered with ruptured clay. A shredded British overcoat flapped from a treetop. I shuddered, for the war was Dr. Leather, the mortar shells his scalpels, and the land but more cheap flesh hauled in from the garden.

  The horizon boomed with thunder. Rain—the one thing my dead body hated above all else.

  “First day here,” muttered I, “and I’ll be soaked to the bone.”

  The driver laughed as we swerved past a truckload of chickens destined for soldier bellies.

  Our final destination was Bois de Belleau—Belleau Wood—a mile-and-a-half seahorse-shaped forest reserve, a right pleasant place, or so claimed the driver, where well-to-do Frogs (his affectionate word for the French) vacationed to shoot deer and wild boar for taxidermic reward. Unfortunately for the aristocracy, and the wildlife too, Belleau Wood was all that stood between German forces and Paris, a city that the Huns had been trying to breach for four years. In this, the Kaiserschlacht offensive, the 461st Regiment of the German 237th Division had taken the woods a day ago and were closer than they’d ever been to the City of Lights. The French alone could not hold them off.

  More thunder in the distance.

  “If there is one thing I despise,” said I, “it’s rain.”

  The driver laughed again. I did not see what was so funny.

  He eased up on the gas as we passed through an Allied bivouac camp. Hundreds of neat little tents had been set up in orderly rows, and along the byways I saw men slapping one another on the back and drinking what looked to be beer. I say! This did not look so bad! I felt a surge of confidence that the rain would stay away. Then, indeed, I could count my first day as a part of the U.S. Marine Corps a rousing success.

  The driver, however, continued past the camp and into hillier areas. The storm in the distance grew louder. Thunder cracked and I gripped the French Chauchat rifle I’d been issued so that I did not jump and embarrass myself. Inside I felt a twinge of—could it be?—nervousness. I had come here to be destroyed in fine fashion; what on Earth was there to be afraid of?

  The driver let the truck roll gently off the road and jerked it to a halt upon trampled grass.

  “Belleau Wood, ladies and gents. Grab yer guns and grab yer nuts.”

  We were met on all sides by golden fields of wheat, rolling green hills, and charming stone-built barns. I stepped from the truck and slung over opposite shoulders my rifle and haversack. The latter I arranged carefully to hide the old grappling hook wound before checking that my personal .45 was snapped into its holder. Near the edge of the wheat, marching to and fro in their brigades and regiments, were over one hundred Americans of every size, shape, and hue. It was possible, even likely, thought I, that there was diversity enough among such rabble to offer a place for even a being like myself.

  The driver wheeled the truck into a three-point turn, then idled beside me before heading back up the country road.

  “Look, Private, the leathernecks are gonna be tough on you. You ain’t gonna know who to trust, who to avoid, when to say something, when to shut up, none of that shit. Just obey your officers, listen to your noncoms, keep your socks dry and your bayonet sharp, and you’ll be fine. And Jesus, ditch that Frog piece-a-shit rifle for a better one soon as you can. They flash real bright in the dark—you want the whole German Army converging on you?”

  I nodded at this dervish of nonsense, then squinted up at the black, churning clouds.

  “Suppose I’ll not be lucky with the rain after all.”

  The driver laughed so hard that he had to pound his fist against the truck door. He wiped at his eyes and grinned at me as he put the machine back into gear.

  “That ain’t a raincloud, Private. And that bang-bang sure as hell ain’t thunder.”

  IV.

  IT WAS LIKE THIS: THE U.S. Second Division was being moved to plug the hole Germany had punched through the French line. The alliance included the Twenty-Third Infantry Regiment, the First Battalion, part of the Sixth Machine Gun Battalion, and the whole damned Fifth and Seventh Marine Regiments. This final group was the one to which Colonel Luckman had assigned me. But there was neither time nor daylight enough for me to work upon these men my charms. Our boots were on the Paris-Metz road. It was night and we were on the march.

  My fellow Marines, the whole polyglot lot of them, made no secret of their suspicion. I was an intruder into a brotherhood. As we moved through a bug-sung darkness, I gleaned from the nervous chatter that these Polacks, Dagos, Jewboys, Micks, and Crackers (their words, Reader!) had trained together at the bases in Quantico, Virginia, and Parris Island, South Carolina, before shipping over to here and drilling some more. Together they’d bayonetted many a scarecrow, pretended to shoot with broomsticks when real guns became scarce, and taken leaves into French villages where shapely mamselles were eager to learn “Americaine.”

  So unified were these men that they’d taken pains to weigh down their helmets, caps, and tunics with the globe-eagle-anchor emblem of the Marines, so as not to be confused for common doughboys. These were no GIs; rather, they called themselves GI-Marines, or “gyrenes,” though even fonder were they of the term “leatherneck.” I ran a hand under the strap of my haversack. My lifeless neck, too, had a leathery feel—was that not enough to earn entry into their club?

  It could not have been two miles into our hike that I began to fall behind. Soon my only marching partners were the dead animals strewn across the countryside: gut-shot horses, cows blown to pieces, dogs assassinated for reasons one could not guess. I began to panic. In my rush to war, I had forgotten the demonstrable fact of my limited physical strength.

  The terrain was treacherous and the gear I carried was over one hundred pounds. In addition to two firearms, I carried ammo, a rolled-up blanket, and a number of bags containing, in part, a periscope, gas mask, set of tools, shovel, first-aid pouch, tin of foot powder, aluminum mess kit, ration bags, collapsible wash basin, sewing kit, spare undercloth
es, mittens, and, buckled across my back, a folding trench lantern the size of an eight-year-old.

  The full canteen I had managed to empty and the useless shaving kit I’d managed to drop into the elbow-high wheat. These subtractions made little difference. I staggered; I tripped; I fell to a knee and then fought gravity until I was wobbling about on bended leg. To my relief, a hand snared the gray wool of my coat and steadied me. I would have thanked the fellow had he not planted his big, flushed face in front of mine and screamed. Let me clarify, for our march was a clandestine one: his was a whispered scream.

  “What is your name, Private?”

  Honestly, he should have known, for I’d been introduced to him not three hours earlier. His name was Major Hugh Horstmeier, and he was a lean, tobacco-spitting hyena of a man, fifty years old if a day, though if his energy level was any indication, he’d been waiting all his life for this war.

  “PFC Zebulon Finch. From Xenion, Georgia? You remember me, Skipper, we just met.”

  The men referred to him as “the Skipper.” I thought it might help to adopt the informality.

  Horstmeier kneaded his haversack as if it were the only thing keeping him from strangling me.

  “Good Lord, son! I don’t know where to begin! Number one, you call me Major until you figure out your place in this regiment! Number two, you end your sentences with sir! Number three, if you’re from Georgia, I’m a goddamned elephant in a tutu!”

  “Georgia by way of Chicago,” said I. “Sir.”

  “Did I ask which rock you crawled out from under? Now get those boots moving!”

  “I would prefer not to just this second,” said I. “Sir.”

  “Jesus on his throne, what?” He spat tobacco at my feet and head-butted his helmet against my own. It made quite a clatter in the old skull. “Private Prefer-Not-To, fall in! That means march, soldier! That-a-way, on the double, before I raise my voice and the Krauts light up the whole sky! Move, move, move!”

  I spent the remainder of that six-mile march feeling quite sorry for myself. Even here among a tribe fighting for a single cause, I was once more alone, and worse, being threatened with a court martial by a red-faced fool, who matched every slow step I took with a furious tongue-lashing about how I had apparently learned nothing at boot camp, how I had no respect for rank, how I had all the mettle of a four-year-old girl, how the gyrenes had their own way of dealing with men like me who put the rest of them in danger.

  The ground shook with explosions as we closed in on the village of Lucy-le-Bocage, where we were to regroup before morning. By then the rain I had feared had arrived and when my foot landed in a gully and I fell into several inches of muddy rainwater, I knew I would not be getting up. No, this was not exactly the glorious death I had pictured, but it would have to do. I waited for the point of a bayonet against my neck, the muzzle of a .45 to my temple, however it was the gyrenes “dealt with” flunkies like me.

  Hands dug into my back. I braced. I felt fingers moving quickly about my torso until the folding trench lantern was unstrapped. Two arms wrapped around my body and pulled. My face disengaged from the mud with a sucking sound.

  “Get up.” It was a whisper.

  I put my hands flat to the ground but they sunk into the mud.

  With a grunt, the man lifted me from the ditch and planted me feet-first upon firmer ground. I blinked some mud from my eyes to get a look at him. He was an Adonis, broad-shouldered and tall, his handsome blue-eyed face capped with white-blond hair and grounded by the kind of cleft chin that exists only in comic books. In his right hand he held the trench lantern as if it were nothing. He hissed between perfect white teeth.

  “You gotta walk. Can you? We’re nearly there.”

  Walk? Could I? It was an exemplary question.

  He grimaced at our phalanx, which had all but disappeared into the timber. Without further discussion, he threw my left arm over his shoulder, gripped my wrist with his hand, and began dragging me in the right direction. Halfway there, I found my footing but my measly pace could not keep up with that of the Adonis, who carried me through the woods and back in line with the others before Major Horstmeier realized that we were gone. There was a barn at Lucy-le-Bocage, by some miracle intact, and inside it we troops knelt in a semicircle while the officers stood shoulder-to-shoulder in debate.

  Cigarettes had been banned during the march for their telltale glows, but now everyone dug into their sacks for their Luckies. The rustling lifted chicken feathers from the hay; they twirled in the moonlight as if they had all night to dance. You could hear the tobacco burn, that’s how many butts were lit. The exhaled smoke sailed upon sighs of relief; we had made it without a single man being picked off by sniper.

  I felt safer as well and in possession of the majority of my wits. I slopped mud from my face with my sleeve and turned toward the Adonis. Here, at last, was somebody possessed with an open heart.

  “My deepest gratitude, chap. If there is anything I can do—”

  “You don’t belong here.”

  He hissed this from a clenched jaw unencumbered by cigarette.

  “Stay out of my way,” said he. “Out of everyone’s way. You’ll get us all killed, you stupid bastard.”

  V.

  FROM THE BLASÉ TO THE petrified, the logical to the scatological, no soldier in any condition spurned the improvised morning service of Sunday, June 2, 1918, not even I, Gød’s sworn rival. We pressed our bodies against a slender knoll, clutching our helmets with every detonation. Here at last was the famous Western Front and here, unexpected, was a chaplain, what they called a “devil dodger,” looking the same as us but collared in white. We tried not to compare the whistles and booms of mechanized death with this reedy recitation from the pages of a pocket Bible. We all, by the way, had been issued pocket Bibles.

  “Amen,” said he.

  “Amen.” It was a dispirited murmur. These men, for all their bluster, had yet to witness a single minute of war. One soldier was throwing up in the wheat; another squatted over a pile of diarrhea. The colonel had assured us that we would have adequate cover and a safe distance to establish our position, but no one believed it. How could you believe anything on a day when birds were falling out of the sky fully cooked?

  The chaplain closed his Bible in defeat. The men looked at the forlorn mud. It was a moment of pure despondence until the Adonis changed everything. He stood, all six-foot-five-inches of him, with his handsome head above the edge of the knoll where, we imagined, invisible bullets went whizzing. Then he did his brave gesture one better, sweeping off his helmet and flashing a rakish grin while his blond hair whipped in the wind.

  “You call that an amen? Now, boys, that just won’t do, not for the Seventh Regiment it won’t. What say we give the good padre here an amen he can write to his flock about?”

  The soldiers blinked up at him. One nodded, then another.

  “Okay then,” the Adonis said. “Let’s hear it!”

  “Amen!”

  Stronger? Yes. But not strong enough for this blond idol.

  “These Squareheads are dealing with the United States Marine Corps now! When we say amen it’s like scoring a touchdown! Let’s hear it!”

  More nodding, a few lionhearted grins.

  “AMEN!”

  “Let’s send ’em to hell where they belong!”

  “AMEN!”

  Major Horstmeier knew when to grab a moment. He scrambled atop the knoll, blew the raid whistle he wore about his neck, and waved his arms at the field beyond.

  “Dig in, men! Dig in!”

  The Seventh Regiment erupted in hurrahs as they bounded to their feet and vaulted over the knoll. Without that damned trench lantern I could move as well as any of them and in seconds I was lost in a funnel of gray uniforms so thick I could make out only slivers of nature: golden wheat, a perimeter of trees still reeling from som
e recent assault, and skies as blue and infinite as the water off the Salem coast—only here the cloudless azure bore the black scalds of artillery smoke.

  We had been briefed that the Huns of Belleau Wood were driving back the French in droves, and by the time we dropped to our knees and withdrew our shovels, that truth was underlined by the distant whoosh of German flamethrowers, the bone-jarring blast of the dreaded “Big Bertha” howitzers, the insatiable TAC-TAC-TAC of the Maxim machine guns—weapons our boys had speculated upon for days, I knew, and years, I suspected. Punctuating the blasts were the isolated screams of injured Frogs.

  I dug. We all dug.

  Raw remnants of a French trench provided a base from which over half of our soldiers began to excavate their own workable system. The Third Battalion, to which I belonged, was directed by sergeants to dig two-man foxholes facing the edge of the Wood, and fast, and, goddammit, quit bunching up, we don’t want a single shell taking out the whole mess of you. No further encouragement was necessary. Dirt and clay shot into the air from our shovels.

  I was paired with a disfavored twenty-four-year-old Irishman from New York named J.T. O’Hannigan, though everyone who had endured his tedious Roman Catholicism and the kissing of the cross round his neck called him “Piano,” for he was strung tight as piano wire. He certainly attacked the ground with a maestro’s fervor, slicing through green grass without wondering, as I did, what sort of unfortunate fertilizer had made it so green, and sawing through roots without wondering, as I did, if sawing through a man’s ankle with my bayonet would feel the same.

  For the next few hours we dug. The Third Battalion was spread to my left and right, and courtesy of the back-and-forth of vulgar ribbing I was introduced to the closest contingent.

  Corporal Frankie “Peanut” Capella was a thirty-something Italian chef from the Florida Panhandle, whose nickname, one can only assume, came not from a favorite recipe but from some incident at basic training starring his pecker. Peanut was the size and furriness of a black bear but gregarious as a puppy, given to laughing so loud it made everyone on the battlefront duck. Nothing bothered Peanut except the word “wop.” Some poor private who knew no better told Peanut, “You greasy wop, quit laughing before you attract every Jerry Squarehead in a ten-mile radius.” It ended in an interlude of blood and bruisings, the world at war be damned.