by Len Levinson
She fell in beside him and they walked toward the path. Several enlisted men in the vicinity watched them and thought officers were lucky because they were the ones who got all the pretty nurses.
He hesitated and let her go first on the path, because it was very narrow. He hobbled behind her for several paces, wondering what her ass looked like underneath those baggy fatigue pants, imagining her wearing black lace underwear, forgetting all about his platoon, but a pretty woman can cause a man to forget even his own name.
The path widened and he caught up with her. They walked together side by side, bumping shoulders, rubbing against each other accidently, or maybe not so accidently, but the path really wasn’t very wide.
“It’s good to get away from the war once in a while,” she said, stepping along sprightly like a lean long-limbed gazelle.
“How can you get away from the war when it’s going on all around you?”
“Like this,” she replied, glancing at him, a ray of sun sparkling on her teeth as she smiled. “I just walk in the woods and sit down someplace where nobody’s around and pretend I’m back in the States.”
“What about the gunfire and explosions that you can hear?”
“I make believe they’re not there. Where I come from, storms in the distance sound the same way. I pretend it’s raining in the next county.”
“You must have a very vivid imagination.”
“I do.”
“What else do you have?” he asked playfully.
She pretended that she didn’t know what he was referring to. “Well, I’m a pretty fair nurse.”
“What else?”
“Not much else.”
“You’re selling yourself short, Lieutenant McCaffrey.”
She looked into his eyes. “In what way, Lieutenant Breckenridge?”
“You’re a beautiful girl and you know it.”
“It doesn’t mean a damn thing,” she said.
“Your life would probably be lonelier if you weren’t so pretty.”
“Maybe I’d be better off. I like to be alone. Sometimes when I spend a lot of time with other people I can’t think straight.”
“That’s a bad sign.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what makes you think it’s a bad sign?”
“It seems to me that a person should be able to think straight no matter what’s going on.”
“You always think straight?” she asked.
“I try.”
“Well I try too.”
Up ahead two enlisted men came into view on the path, and they did a double-take when they saw Lieutenant Breckenridge and Lieutenant McCaffrey. They raised their arms and saluted, and the two young officers saluted back. The enlisted men stood to the side to let Lieutenant Breckenridge and Lieutenant McCaffrey pass. The two officers walked around the bend in the trail, and Lieutenant McCaffrey smiled, shaking her head.
“I’ll never get used to men saluting me,” she said. “It’s all so strange.”
“I imagine it is for a woman.”
“I’m just a lil’ ol’ nurse,” she said. “People shouldn’t be saluting me.”
He turned his head to the side and looked her up and down. “You don’t look so little to me.”
“I’m a lot littler than you.”
“Everybody’s littler than me except a few men in my platoon.”
“They must be gigantic.”
“Some of them are, and they’re awfully hard to handle, let me tell you.”
A solitary officer appeared in front of them on the trail. He had black hair and wore the insignia of a captain on his collar. Lieutenant Breckenridge and Lieutenant McCaffrey raised their arms and saluted him, and he saluted back.
“Good morning Captain Epstein,” she said.
“Good morning Lieutenant McCaffrey,” he replied with a grin on his face that looked almost lewd, as if Captain Epstein thought they were going to jump behind a bush and fuck like wild animals, which in fact was the case.
His grin made Lieutenant McCaffrey self-conscious. When Captain Epstein was out of sight, she turned to Lieutenant Breckenridge.
“Let’s get off this trail,” she said.
“Okay,” he replied.
He looked at the jungle around him with the practiced, seasoned eyes of the combat infantry officer. It was all impenetrable jungle to Lieutenant McCaffrey, but Lieutenant Breckenridge saw the possible openings where a squad of men could move through and take cover.
“This way,” he said.
He glanced to his left and right to see if anybody was watching, and nobody was, so he took her hand and led her between two flourishing bushes. He angled his body sideways and made a path for her, holding away branches so they wouldn’t scratch her. She raised her hands to protect her eyes, and followed him. Leaves licked her body, and the rich, pungent odor of the jungle arose to her nostrils. She looked at Lieutenant Breckenridge shuffling through the jungle, his knees slightly bent, his shoulders hunched over, and she could imagine him leading a patrol, his carbine in his hands and his helmet on his head. Her heart filled with compassion when she thought of all the danger to which he’d been exposed, and all the wounds he’d suffered. As far as she was concerned, any GI who fought for his country was a hero whether he won a medal or not.
“Look—there’s a trail back here,” he said.
He pointed and she followed the direction of his finger with her eyes. Sure enough, she could see a meandering trail through the jungle. It was narrow and overgrown, and appeared as though no one had used it for a long time.
“It’s probably an old native trail,” he said, dropping down on all fours like a dog and examining the trail closely. “Only animals use it now. The natives have been gone for a long time.” He rose to his feet and brushed off his hands. “I wonder where it goes.”
“Let’s find out,” she said.
He looked up toward the sun. “I wish I had my compass with me.”
“We’re not going that far are we?”
“I’m really curious to see where it goes.”
“This is New Guinea, Dale. There are Japs around. We can’t go too far.”
“I know where the Japs are, and they’re not around here.”
“Infiltrators are caught far behind our lines from time to time. You know that.”
“Yes, it’s true,” he admitted. “Well, we can follow it a little way.”
“After you,” she said.
He stepped off down the trail, holding his arms out to keep the branches away. She followed behind him, and the going was much easier than the thick jungle they’d just passed through. She couldn’t help looking at him as they moved along the trail, admiring his wide shoulders, his long, thick legs. He’d told her once that he’d played fullback on the University of Virginia football squad, and she imagined that he must have looked stunning in his football uniform. His body seemed to radiate a powerful, masculine energy, and there also was something decent about him that she found affecting.
The trail wound its way through the jungle. Birds sang their morning songs in the trees, and the sun rose high in the sky. The vegetation around them glowed an opalescent green, and they even saw weird, brightly colored flowers here and there.
The only problem was the mosquitoes that buzzed around their heads, diving close and getting brushed away. The jungle would have been a paradise that morning if it weren’t for the mosquitoes.
The trail began a moderate upward incline. Lieutenant Breckenridge took it slowly, feeling a joy he hadn’t known since he’d first arrived on New Guinea. It was as though he’d left the war far behind him, and he was with a beautiful long-limbed blonde who could have been a showgirl if she hadn’t become a nurse. He got a half–hard-on just thinking about her walking behind him, and she had a sweet disposition that was so unlike those of many bitchy, cranky women he’d met in his life.
The trail leveled off and they turned a bend to see a little clearing covere
d with leaves beside the trail. A pile of rocks was at one end of the clearing, and it didn’t appear that nature had put it there.
“Is that an altar?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was,” he replied.
They walked into the clearing, their feet shuffling through the leaves, and approached the stones, stopping and kneeling to get a better look.
“I believe it is an altar,” he said.
“Yes, it certainly looks like one.”
He looked around and raised his arms. “The natives probably held religious ceremonies here in the days before the war.”
“Must have been pretty wild.”
“Must have been.”
They glanced around the clearing and imagined natives dancing and beating drums.
He reached for his package of cigarettes. “The natives probably had a very nice life here before the war.”
“Everybody had a very nice life before the war.”
“Cigarette?”
“Thanks.”
He lit both their cigarettes with his Zippo. They puffed and looked at each other.
“What did you do before the war?” he asked.
“I was in nursing school. I joined the Army as soon as I graduated.”
“Where are you from again?”
“Missouri. A little town called Lebanon. It’s not far from Fort Leonard Wood, where they train the combat engineers.”
Lieutenant Breckenridge chuckled. “You know what the men say about Fort Leonard Wood, don’t you?”
“I’ve heard the men say a lot of things about Fort Leonard Wood. Which one do you mean?”
“The one where they say they’d rather have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother at Fort Leonard Wood.”
She smiled. “Yes, I’ve heard that one. I was inducted at Fort Leonard Wood, and I didn’t think it was such a bad place, but of course I didn’t go through combat engineer training there. Where did you live in Virginia?”
“Richmond.”
“That’s a big city, isn’t it?”
“Not like New York is a big city, but a lot of beautiful country is near Richmond. I used to go hunting in the Shenandoah Valley with my father and my younger brother.”
“My father was a hunter too,” she said. “He hunted in the Ozark Mountains, which are quite beautiful also.”
He nodded. “Yes, there are a lot of beautiful places in the world. This goddamned war has screwed everything up, though.”
“It’s hard to be happy,” she said. “The war is always there and people are always dying.”
“And nobody knows when it’s going to end. It seems like it’ll go on forever.”
She shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“There’s nothing anybody can do about it. It just has to run its course, I suppose.”
She looked at him and felt a twinge of sadness. He was a young man in the prime of his life, and she knew that the casualty rate for young infantry lieutenants was extremely high. She thought it would be terrible if such a guy would be killed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“You looked so sad all of a sudden there.”
She forced a smile. “It’s gone now.”
“You’re so pretty when you smile.”
She didn’t have to force the smile that now spread on her face. “Thank you.”
Their eyes met, and electronic vibrations passed between them. He glanced at the proud uplift of her breasts and her narrow waist as she knelt on the ground. She looked at his massive shoulders and muscular arms, the hair on his chest and the twinkle in his eyes.
“Dale,” she said, “what are we waiting for?”
“Damned if I know,” he replied.
They tossed their cigarettes away and grabbed each other as drowning persons grab floating logs. They fell sideways to the carpet of leaves on the jungle floor. He felt her breasts against his chest as they squirmed against each other, and couldn’t prevent himself from grabbing her shapely ass in his right hand, feeling that marvelous curvaceous muscle and the legband of her underpants.
Their lips touched softly and she kissed him tenderly one, two, three times, then opened her mouth and engaged his tongue with hers. The feelings were new to both of them, and they explored each other curiously and happily, with rising passion. Their hearts beat faster and their throats became constricted. He developed a raging hard-on, and she felt a mad insane longing deep in her soul.
He rolled her over onto her back and unbuttoned her shirt with trembling hands while she kissed his left ear. Bending over, he touched his lips to her left nipple, which was firm as a fresh blueberry and just as sweet. He touched his tongue to the nipple while she quivered all over, and then he took her breast into his mouth.
It was a firm breast, not a flabby breast, and it was the color of cream. He closed his eyes and got dizzy, because it had such a wonderful softness. Reaching out with his right hand, he cupped it around her free breast. Her chest heaved underneath his face and she ran her fingers through his hair. Her breath came in gasps and she rubbed her legs together, because the longing inside her was becoming unbearable.
This wasn’t an old married couple who’d been fucking for forty years and now were just going through the motions. Neither were they two drunks who’d met in a bar and decided to fuck because there was nothing better to do.
These were two healthy young people who were attractive and turned each other on. They were starved for love and sex because of the war, the suffering, the anxiety of not knowing whether you’d be alive tomorrow, and the incredible odds against people of the opposite sex ever getting together in combat zones.
They clawed at each other’s clothes, and a monkey sitting on a branch high above them might have thought they were fighting as they thrashed about on the jungle floor, removing each other’s garments, biting and scratching each other, really getting crazy.
Finally they were naked and the mosquitoes ate them up, but they didn’t even feel it. He rolled her onto her back and held her steady, both of them panting like animals as he entered her and she enveloped him. They nearly fainted from the gradual onrushing ecstasy.
Finally they were conjoined, breathing heavily, groping and squeezing each other, kissing madly and drooling like babies. They performed the squirming thrusting dance of love beside the altar to the jungle gods. Their bodies became coated with perspiration and they felt as if they were on fire.
They embraced each other tightly and floated across the universe. They passed the Elysian Fields and saw the sun shining on Mount Olympus. Their bodies were racked with pleasure and thrills so intense they thought they might die, but they were young and healthy and death couldn’t touch them.
Usually she held a little something back from men, but this time she gave everything she had. She surrendered up her body, heart and soul, feeling freer than she’d ever felt before, and the more she gave the more she got, because that’s the way love is.
Lieutenant Breckenridge didn’t know where he was. He felt as though he were living inside the most fabulous dream of his life. He pushed and angled his hips, holding her tightly and struggling against her, feeling the tremendous incredible pressure building inside him. It magnified and spread out into every cell of his body. His motions became convulsive and almost violent, and he was afraid he would explode like a hand grenade.
They exploded together, but not at all like hand grenades. The fabulous detonations knocked down no trees and blew up no earth. It killed no soldiers and destroyed no property. All it did was make two people feel better than they’d ever felt since the last time they got laid.
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