The Long November

by James Benson Nablo

  I didn’t enjoy it the way Stanowski did, though. He liked to shoot them, then kick them as they died, or spit on them as they croaked out a last rattling breath. And sometimes he just stepped on their faces and regretted that he wasn’t a heavier man so they’d feel it more. I think he’d have torn the hides off them in long razor strips if he’d ever been alone...God, how that Pole hated them. His hate made the Love of God or the Fear of Hell fade into girlish emotions. The Krauts had come one night to his home near Stolp, not long after Poland fell. They needed girls, and they took a look at Stanowski’s kid sister, a big girl of thirteen. I guess the Germans figure if they’re big enough they’re old enough. Stanowski’s folks never saw her again. He got out through the under-ground, and eventually wound up in Canada, where he joined the army. He didn’t want the Air Force, he wanted to be where he could watch them die.

  The crazy bastard shouldn’t have been allowed in the army...it wasn’t safe for anybody. But Mullins looked after him pretty well. That is, until we ran into the mess of SS prisoners. After it was over, Phil, Mullins, and I sneaked into a farmhouse and drank a couple of bottles of Dago red the Heinies had overlooked. Mullins cried in his wine.

  “Don’t take it too big, Mullins,” Phil said, “he’s happier now.”

  Mullins lifted his thin, pale, schoolteacher’s face, and took his glasses off. They were steamed from crying, and under them his eyes seemed as pale as his face.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I was pretty fond of Stanowski. I admired him more than any man I’ve ever known. I think he would have carried the war on alone if every nation and every man had quit. Stanowski wasn’t part of the Canadian Army, he wasn’t a Pole. He was an enemy of Germany and that’s the only identity he wanted.”

  I felt sorry about Stanowski, like every guy in the outfit, but we could see why Captain Bowens had had to shoot him, and we admired the Captain for it.

  “It’s tough, Mullins, damned tough...but Stanowski shouldn’t have blown his top that way. Nobody likes these squareheaded bastards, but you can’t let a soldier turn loose with a Tommy-gun on prisoners-of-war whenever he feels like it. German soldiers...”

  Mullins flared, “Nuts, Joe, they weren’t soldiers. They were SS men and even the Jerries shoot them when they get a chance. It was SS men that took Stanowski’s sister away. He just couldn’t take it when that Nazi jerk sneered and spat at him...and Christ, can you imagine Captain Bowens ordering me...ME...Stanowski’s pal, to shoot him?”

  Phil said, “Bowens had no choice, Mullins. You were the nearest man and when Stanowski wouldn’t drop the Tommy what else could the Captain do?”

  We knew how Mullins felt, but we also knew he didn’t feel any worse than Bowens. Bowens was just a kid but a hell of a good soldier and a fine officer. He ran over to Stanowski and ordered him to drop the Tommy, but Stanowski never heard him. To Stanowski it was just a noise somewhere behind him, and in front was a line of SS men to be shot...and he’d got ten of them when the slug from Bowens’ .38 tore into his brain. Mullins started to cry again and Phil filled up the mugs. I looked at the shoulder flashes on Mullins’ tunic and saw the letters “U.S.A.” embroidered under “CANADA.”

  “Don’t worry, kid,” I said, “you can go on killing them for Stanowski, but for Christ’s sake don’t start shooting PW’s.”

  He looked up again. “You know, Joe, Stanowski liked you. He cost you your stripes, and he never forgot what you did for him that night...”

  “He didn’t cost me my stripes, Mullins. Colonel McTaggart offered them back but I decided to stay with you and Bill and the boys...I was sick as hell of being a sergeant.”

  It wasn’t long after Sicily was mopped up, and it was dark as a mouse’s ear that night. The street was as deserted as a collaborationist’s grave, and Stanowski didn’t want to talk. I guess we were the only two guys in the outfit who weren’t out with Italian broads. Stanowski wouldn’t, and I didn’t feel like it. We just got drunk. Stanowski stopped sharply and I heard his breath catch in his throat. There’d been a sound...a faint whimper from a dark doorway...just a quiet sound, but it rang a bell in Stanowski’s head all the way from 1939 in Poland, when a terrified girl was dragged out of her home and away into the night. Stanowski touched my arm and whispered, “Wait, Sarge...” Then we heard it again...the whimper of a hurt thing, and Stanowski turned back to the doorway. I went along and dimly outlined we could see a big man pressing a small girl against the wall. Stanowski jumped the man but the big guy brushed him off easily. He couldn’t brush me off so easily, and we were still tangling when the MP’s arrived. The girl had muttered “Multo Gracio” and slipped away. The next morning I was up before the Colonel for slugging an enlisted man. He had a twinkle in his eye and a week later he offered the stripes back, but I liked being a private again so I refused. Sanderson became the platoon sergeant.

  Stanowski is sleeping, and the hates that tore at his guts aren’t tormenting him now. Yes, Private Stanowski, you declared war on Germany, and you fought it to the end...and you fought it the way they fight a war. The rest of us couldn’t hate that much. Our sisters hadn’t been dragged off into the night; their dresses hadn’t been torn from them while dirty fingernails scratched at half-formed breasts; brute hands hadn’t pried their legs apart. No, Stanowski, our sisters hadn’t been taken to a house and left for an endless procession of moronic brutes to use. But what if it had been our sisters, eh, Private Stanowski? There’d have been no prisoners at all...no lines of stupid-looking oafs with their hands clasped on top of their dull heads, marching back out of the war to good food and security. Well, Stanowski, there are ten of them who didn’t march back...not all the way. That’ll teach the Master Race not to sneer and spit.

  I liked catching them in the “v” of the sights. I liked it for a long time, because I thought of Togger Benton, of an old woman in a shelter, of thousands of burned-out homes, of a little girl with a frightened look. But I grew tired of killing. It was like lifting the scab off a boil...there’s pus below the scab and a core somewhere below the pus...I could only reach the scab. The core stayed far beyond rifle range, and I began to feel that only hate was being served. I was helping to fill the countryside with little white crosses laid out in unending geometry. Geometry with no solution, design with no meaning, problems with no answers. We hop a narrow channel and Sicily becomes an old battlefield. We push, in fits and starts, up the long northing march. A line bisects the narrow land and it moves slowly, ever north.

  Behind us stood silent people. People with satiny skins and great, sad eyes. Proud and ancient people. After we’d gone, the forces of the decent things we try to be started the fantastic job of undoing the filth of twenty-odd years. Trying to bring order to a place where everything had gone. No, Joe...not everything. Remember? Everything but Hope. They’d seen their babies starve, their daughters quickly converted to whores, their sons shot, their homes and farms torn to bits. They’d known what it was to eat only if there was a daughter in the family over fourteen years of age. If these girls worked hard enough they could get food not only for themselves, but maybe for the whole family. These girls who hardly knew how babies came learned that their barely formed bodies could get food. They’d stand and force a smile, force it to unwilling lips hung below terror-ridden eyes—eyes like the Mother of Christ must have had. And yet, Joe, Hope remained, and the Earth was there. These people turn their great eyes to the sky, pause and straighten their fine shoulders, then bend again to the soil. Hope was there, Joe...Hope, the feast for the starving, the bed for the weary, the cleansing water for those girls.

  Mullins went on crying silently in his wine, and as I drank mine I thought of him; of that night on the boat to Sicily, when he told me how he happened to be in the Canadian Army. He’d lived in Detroit and he crossed the river one day and tried to join the Canadian Army in Windsor. They looked at his pale eyes and shoved a chart in front of him. He blinked a couple of times and could only read the top letter. They rej
ected him, but before Mullins left the recruiting station, he’d memorized that chart and the page number at the bottom. He went on to London and tried again, but this time he bought a couple of beers for the sergeant in the Medical Corps and got him to turn that chart to the right page. That’s how he happened to be in the army, but I still didn’t know why...and eventually he got to it.

  It wasn’t just the wife he couldn’t stand sleeping with, nor the job at the advertising agency where he wasted his education writing eulogies about some goo that would keep armpits from stinking. It wasn’t even the mess he got into with one of his students in the night school where he taught. She helped, of course. She had a well-turned ass and she started hanging around after the class was over...asking foolish questions. She stayed one night too many...and then a lot of nights after that. There had to be a scandal...and there was. But it was more than that...it was a desire to be part of something big that brought Mullins across the border...part of something big, if only a very small part. Part of something that helped mankind...and I thought as I watched the tears falling out of those colorless eyes—eyesight or not, he’s a damned good soldier. Bill came in and finished the wine. The Captain was getting ready to push on and we had to scram.

  And the line pushes northward. Sometimes we slid back a little but mostly we went forward. Off to the east we often saw the Adriatic, rising and falling like a great blue cradle. And as I watched its motion, I thought: one distant day some of that water may wash on a Canadian shore. But it isn’t good to look too long at clean things when you’re in a war. Better keep your mind on sounds and smells, the sluggish swish of her dress and the crawling smell of mold. Keep your eye on the important sight of war—that “v” along the back end of the blue steel barrel, and keep a Kraut in that “v.” It isn’t the fighting...it’s the waiting, the pauses in between. Nerve-sapping, gut-eating pauses filled with a nameless and shapeless terror. Then suddenly, you know what this terror is...know it by sight and name. It’s a dark pit somewhere ahead. A pit no member of your kin may ever stand above...a pit where even your dust will be lonely. And you want to cry out, “Oh God, not here...not alone. Why can’t it be in the blue sea? Why can’t I know its soft motion forever? Why can’t I he washed shining and clean and ever nearer home? Closer, God, closer to a Canadian shore....” But you don’t cry out, Private Mack, you don’t because you can’t. Because it isn’t soldierly; it isn’t British. To hell with that guff, bub. I’m not soldierly and I’m not British. I’m Canadian and I’m homesick...I want to live with my people and I want to die with them. I don’t want to die here...I’m not Phil Rutledge.

  So many are dead now. So many who lived and laughed and cried. So many who were young in body and heart...who became a little older in their bodies and a lot older in their hearts...then they died in their souls. They’re dead now, so many are dead now. The guys you lived with, drank with, laughed with, and fought with...They’re dead, gone as if they’d never been. They were here once, but they’re dead, and all that’s here now is a browned-off soldier, an old whore, and a yellow-gray smell of mold...

  And he threw back his fine blond head. His grin was like a boy of ten. He pushed Bill Preston aside, and said, “Get back, Preston...I want you alive...you’ve got a pub in England. That’s an order.”

  Bill said, “Yessir.”

  Phil took a long pull on the bottle of Dago red, and crawled out of the ditch on his belly. He almost reached the Jerry’s machine gun when they saw him and cut loose, but his arm arced up and he laid the grenade in there. He died with a nice, warm smile on his face, and he died the way angels must want a man to die...

  I went back later to bury him. Bill offered to help me but I wanted to do it alone, and I stayed there a long time. I carried him to a sheltered spot that looked off toward the sea, and I dug the grave pretty deep. We weren’t likely to hold our advance and I didn’t want the squareheads disturbing Phil. I wrapped him in his blanket and as I laid him on the bed of soft earth, I wondered at the smile still on his face...and I guess I cried a little when it was done. The sky was cold and blue and it hardly changed color where it met the water...but it was a November sky and I knew the water would be warmer. I wish I’d joined the Air Force. I wish I’d been up in a clean sky through this. I wish...No you don’t, Joe. You’ve seen it here...you’ve seen it at eye-level, not as a bird sees it. You haven’t smelled it after it’s filtered through thousands of feet of air, but just the way it hits your nose...just the way it is. The sky just looks blue, Joe...it isn’t. There’s Death up there, too. There’s an old whore in the corner and she’s been here before; there, before; everywhere, before...

  And I sat by Phil Rutledge’s grave and wrote a letter to Steffie. I didn’t say much, but I knew too many were falling too close and I’d better write it, whatever it was to be, and I’d better do it then. I had a tough time getting it started. I tried “My dearest,” and “My darling”; then:

  Dear Steffie,

  By the time you get this you’ll have learned about Phil, and I don’t want to go any further until I write. I’ve wanted to write ever since I left Canada, and I’ve tried awfully hard, but I couldn’t seem to put anything down that made sense. Maybe this won’t either, but I want you to know how sorry I am for the mess I’ve made of things...I love you, Steffie, and I always will. Won’t you wait for me, and won’t you please wear the ring again?

  Your Joe

  It wasn’t much, was it, darling? It’s so much easier to talk to you here, and it doesn’t seem so silly to me when I know you can’t hear me. You can’t, can you, Steffie? That’s foolish, I guess...but you’ve been so close today. Was the letter all right, Steffie? Did it sound the way it should sound...however that is? I don’t know about these things but I hope it told you how much I love you. And when you see me, Steffie, you’ll see how changed I am. I’ve seen a lot of things, my darling, things I never knew were in the world. I’ve seen viciousness beyond understanding and greatness beyond belief. I’ve come to know things about people, about money, about you and about me. And Steffie, I’ve come to know things about God. I know something about living...and I don’t want to know anything more about dying.

  I talk a lot about death and dying, don’t I, Steffie? But there’s so much of it around here...there isn’t anything else. Each day it’s some guy you’ve learned to know and like, and then when he’s gone you know you loved him. Each day I wonder if it’s my day...or if there’ll be another sunrise or another sunset. It’s been like that for a year and a half, Steffie; it was like that this morning. The hell it was, Joe...you had a bombproof feeling this morning, remember? Did I? Or was I kidding myself? What was I thinking about this morning...that was a thousand years ago...I can’t even remember where I was? Funny...I can remember things that happened ages ago but I can’t remember this morning. The moldy old bitch could tell me...her moldy old smell could tell me...

  We were all huddled behind a ruined barn like a lot of sheep. I tried to sleep but the Jerry just lobbed a shell over often enough to keep me awake, and I could hear Bill telling Mullins of his pub as they played rummy.

  “...so when Mame tells me she’s knocked up an’ will I marry her, I says I gotta give this some thought, Mame. An’ it sure was swell after that. Of course Mame had been setting up free beers for me for months without her old man getting hep. But I figured all hell’d break loose when he got a good side view of Mame’s belly an’ how it was swelling. D’you know...the old bastard was so nice to me I like tuh died...but it was all a low Limey trick to get me to marry Mame. Once he got me in the family he cut the free beer off...can yuh tie it? ME! His own son-in-law, an’ I couldn’t even get a free beer in my wife’s old man’s pub. Rummy!”

  A shell came over and while we were huddling, Mullins wiped his glasses and Bill slid three aces out of the discard. “...it was like that till Joe bought a half-interest in the pub for me...then I could draw a glass a half-an’-half’ now and again. I’ll be all set when the old ba
stard kicks off; he’s got lotsa dough and there’s only Mame, and she named the kid for him...Whaddya mean, where did I get those aces?’...I drew them, that’s where...okay, okay...I’ll put them back. Jeez, some days yuh can’t get away with nothin’...but the old guy’s liver is pretty well shot...too much gin-an’-tonic.”

  Sanderson took a map from his front pants pocket and looked at it. Then he looked at his watch, then at me.

  “Joe...”

  “Yeah, Sarge?”

  “I want a volunteer...a ‘oneman’ Bren crew. A nice, cozy spot, too—it says here...”

  “Can’t Bill or Mullins come along?”

  “I can’t spare anybody...you know how we’re fixed. Come on...”

  He stood up, swung a bag of grenades over his shoulder, and picked up his Tommy. I hoisted the Bren and grabbed some clips. Bill looked up.

  “See yuh later, chum...” And Mullins nodded.

  We worked our way across to the edge of town, and along behind the buildings to the main intersection. The Jerry was over on the far side, still lazily lobbing shells at us. Sanderson stopped at the back door of a house and looked at the map again.

  “This is it, Joe...” and we went inside. He slid the grenade bag off his shoulder and eased the Tommy up in his arms. We went through the dark house to the stairway. In the front upstairs room I set up the Bren.

  “Keep the intersection covered, Joe. I gotta see Captain Bowens, then I’ll be back or I’ll send Bill. So long, kid...”

  “So long, Sarge, and I could use some food if you find any.”

  He left and for a little while I was alone. After a bit I could hear the Jerry beginning to mess around in the street. They were moving back up again. I listened as long as I could, then like a God-damned fool I stood up, and that Kraut nailed me in my left shoulder. Or maybe I wasn’t such a fool—it’s a nice, clean hole and a ticket home if I use it right. Yes...I remember this morning...I can remember a lot of things in a moldy smell...