Once a Warrior

by Fran Baker

  She must have realized she’d upset him because she adopted a placating tone. “What I’m saying is, I don’t think it’s good for a pregnant woman to be exposed to all that bad news.”

  Charlie tried to picture Daisy sitting in her parents’ cozy pink-and-white kitchen.

  But all he could see was her mother, always looking down her nose at him as if the son of a trashman wasn’t good enough for her daughter. The bitterness he felt surprised him, though it shouldn’t have. He’d already learned that his wife wasn’t above belittling those she considered beneath her, either.

  “I also think it’s wrong to put an expectant father in harm’s way,” she added belatedly.

  “The Red Cross will notify me when the baby’s born,” he reassured her.

  “I know, but it’s not the same as your being here.”

  “Even if I was stateside, the Army wouldn’t let me come home.”

  She sighed fretfully. “Well, what I don’t understand is why they won’t give you a furlough before you leave.”

  “Because they need replacements, and they need ’em now.”

  “Replacements?”

  All sorts of dismal thoughts chased each other across Charlie’s mind as he tried to come up with a gentle way to phrase it. He finally gave up and just said it flat out. “For the men who’ve already been wounded or killed.”

  “Don’t say things like that, Charlie.”

  “I’m sorry, Daisy, but it’s the truth.”

  “Oh, God.” Her voice trembled, as if she were on the verge of tears. “I can’t stand the thought of getting one of those Western Union telegrams like Kitty Brown did.”

  Charlie couldn’t even think about John Brown, much less talk about him, without getting all choked up. He felt that familiar sting in the back of his throat as the face of his lifelong friend swam before his eyes. Jesus! He still couldn’t believe it. John Brown . . . dead.

  He swallowed hard, trying to drown a sorrow that refused to die, then changed the subject. “Did you see the doctor today?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  She snorted. “According to him, I’m healthy as a horse.”

  Sensing an unspoken “but,” he waited for her to continue.

  And continue she did. In addition to the same old complaints about her expanding waistline and falling arches, Daisy had a new one. No matter that her obstetrician kept saying that everything was fine, she claimed that she was carrying too high. That the baby’s head was growing right in the middle of her ribcage and giving her heartburn so bad she was forced to sleep sitting up in a chair every night.

  Charlie had listened to her, biting his tongue until he could get a word in edgewise. Then, before she could say anything else, he’d told he loved her, promised to write and hung up the phone.

  “My Buddy” was playing on someone’s radio when he got back to the barracks, reviving memories of all the good times that John and Mike Scanlon and he used to have. His assistant cook, seeing how low he was, had offered to buy him a drink. They’d closed down the noncoms’ club that night, and he’d had a bad case of the whiskey jitters the next morning when he’d boarded—

  Now, a sound like a twig snapping jarred him out of the past, reminding him of the Germans’ well-entrenched presence not more than eight hundred yards away.

  Charlie spun in the direction the sound had come from and aimed his M-1 rifle toward the snow-covered trees that marked the perimeter of his company’s defensive position. Visibility was poor enough because of the pitch-blackness and the fog, but the thin layer of ice that glazed his glasses made it even harder for him to see. He wiped the lenses with the heel of one gloved hand, which did more to smear them than to clear them, and started to challenge with the standard “Halt!”

  Then barely made out a familiar red glow some twenty yards away.

  His shoulders wilted and his breath rushed out on a cloud of relief at the realization that the sound he’d heard was just one of the other GIs standing guard down the line flicking his Zippo to light his cigarette.

  The cold cut at Charlie’s face like a rusty saw-blade as he relaxed his grip on the rifle and reshouldered it. God, what he wouldn’t give for a drink right now! Something to warm his insides and take the edge off his nerves. Something to help him forget that this was the miserable end to a long, miserable journey that had begun in late October, when his division had sailed from the States for England.

  Twelve days crossing the North Atlantic had caused his stomach to revolt. Not that the sea had been unusually rough, but there’d been something about the ordinary pitch and toss of the swells that had left him clinging desperately to the rail. Every time the ship heaved, it seemed, so had he. Adding insult to injury, the briny wind had spit it all back in his face.

  England, with its cloudy skies and constant drizzle, was an equally wretched experience. After another three weeks of combat training, with no time off to see the sights of London, his division embarked for France. The weather in the English Channel was so bad that they couldn’t land, so he’d spent four more sea-sick days aboard the Landing Craft, Infantry, wondering if this was how Mike had felt before the invasion and wishing God would just go ahead and strike him dead.

  When they finally landed, his division was broken up and the separate companies sat around in the muddy staging camp for twenty-four hours, waiting for the next snafu. It came in the form of open trucks—normally used for transporting supplies, not men. Which meant another two days spent in soaked, numbed misery as the convoy crawled across the bombarded countryside of northern France and up and down the roller-coaster terrain of Belgium.

  The trucks carrying Charlie’s company finally halted at the foot of an ice-slicked hill, giving the green troops that clambered out their first glimpse of their “new home.”

  Home sweet home, it wasn’t. Their sector of the front was an isolated ridge shrouded by low-hanging clouds and covered with snow-laden pine trees. A shell-pocked farmhouse, its front door hanging ajar on its hinges and its windows shattered, had apparently been abandoned by its owners. No chickens clucked in the side yard, no cows mooed in the surrounding fields. Even the birds were silent in the trees.

  Charlie had been inundated with war news for three years, ever since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. And he’d read the stories in both Stars and Stripes and Yank about the American tankers who’d charged across the Siegfried Line in mid-September, only to be driven back into Belgium a week later by a remobilized German army. But nothing he’d heard or seen could have prepared him for the carcass of a charred Sherman tank on the side of the road or those makeshift crosses sticking out of the snow, marking the graves of its crew.

  Or for the big signboard with the large block letters that greeted him with the warning, YOU ARE ENTERING GERMANY. BE ON YOUR GUARD.

  He’d gotten an even bigger shock when, at the end of a two-mile hike to their forward combat positions, he’d seen the condition of the men they were replacing. Their faces were unshaven and black with smoke from their cooking fires and their uniforms were stiff with mud from their foxholes. Those who hadn’t been supplied with winter overshoes had wrapped their feet in rags and newspapers to ward off frostbite.

  The accommodations were rougher yet—freezing cold trenches in the forest floor, a pit crosshatched with logs for a latrine, and a timber-roofed dugout that served as the command post.

  What had spooked him the worst, though, had been the transfer reports indicating that they were little more than a snowball’s throw from the Germans, who’d established their positions on the very next ridge.

  “Sergeant Miller?” A nasally voice from behind punctured the graveyard silence now, snapping Charlie out of his morbid memories.

  He whirled, almost tripping over his own feet, and saw a fog-blurred figure plowing toward him through the snow. At the same time, it occurred to him that he’d stupidly forgotten the night’s password. A bubble of panic rose in his throat as he l
eveled the rifle and demanded hoarsely, “Who goes there?”

  “Private George Aylmer.” The soldier who’d come to relieve him stopped and saluted crisply. “Reporting for guard duty, sir.”

  “Jeez,” Charlie said peevishly, shivering partly because of the cold and partly in delayed reaction. “Scare the hell out of me, why don’t you”

  The young GI’s grin flashed whitely in the night shadows. “Getting’ nervous in the service, sir?”

  “Try freezing and starving,” he fired back.

  “Well, there’s hot coffee back at the CP. And rumor has it that the kitchen trucks will be here in time for breakfast.”

  “Christ, I hope so.” All Charlie had had to eat in the last forty-eight hours were a couple of D bars—“Hitler’s Secret Weapon,” as someone on the way to the latrine had called the sickly chocolate concentrate.

  “And Captain Quinn says we’re going to have turkey and dumplings for Christmas dinner.”

  “I’ll believe it when I taste it.” Charlie made a scoffing sound, but at the mention of the upcoming holiday he felt a wave of homesickness so powerful that it brought tears to his eyes. Regret followed in its wake as he remembered how curt he’d been with Daisy the night before he sailed. He promised himself he would write to her later today. Tell her how much he missed her and how sorry he was that they were spending their first—

  “My mama always cooks a big, fat goose on Christmas Day,” the private continued in a faraway voice. “And sausage stuffing that’s brown and crispy on top and all—”

  “No offense, kid,” Charlie interrupted, salivating at the memory of the roast chicken and cornbread dressing that were his own mother’s specialties. “But I’ve been standing here for so long that my feet feel like blocks of ice.”

  The private blinked as if he’d been slapped and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Any changes to report, sir?”

  Charlie shook his head, then took off at as fast a clip as his winter boots and wool overcoat would allow. Numb from exposure and frozen to the marrow, he concentrated on that hot coffee the private had mentioned. It would probably be as thick as sludge and taste like sh—

  It hit him about halfway across the compound that he was wrong. That there had been a change. A minor change, true, but one he’d failed to report.

  The Germans hadn’t sung “Lili Marlene” even once on his watch!

  Charlie stopped, his breath coming so hard it hurt his chest as he recalled the comments that the guide from the company they’d replaced had made when he’d met them at the foot of the hill almost three days ago.

  “You guys sure struck it lucky,” he’d said.

  “How so?” one of the new men had asked.

  “Well, for one thing, the only casualties we’ve had lately have been head colds and trench foot.”

  “And for another?”

  The guide had rolled his eyes. “Except for the Germans singing ‘Lili Marlene’ at the top of their lungs when they go to the latrine, it’s been so quiet up here that we’ve taken to calling it the ‘Ghost Front’.”

  “Here’s hopin’ they don’t get diarrhea in the middle of the night!” one of the other replacements had exclaimed to a round of nervous laughter.

  Now, Charlie didn’t know which way to turn. Should he retrace his steps and warn the private to stay on his toes? Just in case the Germans’ silence meant something besides a major case of constipation. Or should he keep going? Let the kid figure it out on his own.

  To hell with it, he finally decided, hotfooting it toward the warmth and temporary shelter of the command post. He was off duty, dammit. And besides, he reasoned as he entered the reinforced dugout, the private would have to be stone-deaf not to notice that they’d quit singing that damn beer-hall ditty.

  But when he finished his coffee and stepped out into the silent night to head for his foxhole, Charlie could only hope that this wasn’t the quiet before the storm.

  * * * *

  Rolling thunder jolted him out of a restless sleep.

  Charlie jackknifed into a sitting position, shearing off his helmet when he bumped his head against the heavy pine boughs he’d used to cover his foxhole.

  Still wearing his coat and his gloves, with his wool blanket wrapped around him and his M-1 cradled like a baby in his arms, he’d been dreaming about the Christmas that John and Mike and he had all gotten BB guns. And the trouble they’d been in when Mary Frances Walker’s father had caught them using their outhouse down in the hollow for target practice. He’d taken his punishment as manfully as the other two, but to his ever-lasting embarrassment, he was the only one who’d missed the mark.

  In a nightmare of bewilderment now, Charlie checked the luminous hands of his watch, saw that it was only 5:30 A.M. and wondered if all that noise meant the kitchen trucks were finally here.

  “The Germans have broken through!” someone shouted.

  “Counterattack!”

  Enemy artillery started falling like rain then, one explosive drop after another descending in a savage barrage upon the slumbering compound.

  His skull rattling from the concussion of the salvos and his hands shaking with fear, Charlie groped around in the darkness for his helmet. He finally found it, lying behind him, then somehow managed to knock his glasses askew when he plunked it back on his head.

  “Get up!” someone hollered.

  “Everybody up!”

  Charlie was trying to get up, dammit, but he was all tangled up in his blanket. He suddenly realized that he was sitting on the edge of it and, in a fit of frustration, yanked it out from under him. Free at last, he pulled on the boots he’d taken off to let dry, but didn’t bother tying the laces. Then he grabbed his rifle with his right hand and shoved the sheltering tree branches away with his left.

  Just as he stood to leap out of his foxhole, a lightning-bright flash of shellfire flowered in front of him and threw him backwards.

  He lay in the trench, dazed and confused and winded, until there was a slight break in the barrage. Then he raised his head ever so cautiously to peer out over the top. A red drapery of blood ran down over his glasses, blocking out his sight, and he realized he’d been hit.

  Oh Jesus, oh God, oh no, was he blind?!?

  His heart hammering frantically in his ears, Charlie ripped off his glasses, breaking an earpiece in the process. As he bent his head to wipe the lenses on the front of his coat, more blood dribbled onto the bridge of his nose. Tentatively, he touched his forehead and felt a sting over his eyebrow but below his helmet brim. A sting that told him that a stray fragment had probably nicked him.

  But that was the least of his worries.

  Praying like he’d never prayed before, he stuffed the broken earpiece in his coat pocket and carefully slid his glasses back on . . . and went limp with relief when he found he could see again.

  What he saw was the sky falling in.

  Searchlights played off the low-hanging clouds, creating a kind of artificial moonlight that reflected onto the forest floor and bathed the Germans’ targets with an eerie glow.

  Those targets were the American soldiers, still befuddled from sleep, now pouring out of the trenches and the command post to man the company’s emplaced machine guns and mortars.

  A chill raced up Charlie’s spine when a tree burst scythed the top off a pine, showering fragments of red-hot metal downward and dropping three GIs in their tracks.

  “Medic!” a fourth screamed in agony.

  A corpsman wearing the big Red Cross on a white background that was supposed to give him immunity rushed out to pull the wounded soldier to safety, only to disappear himself amidst the flame and smoke and fire of an exploding shell.

  “You dirty bastards!” Another dough stood and shook a furious fist in the direction that the enemy artillery was coming from.

  As if to answer his epithet, a piece of shrapnel severed the arm attached to that fist as neatly as if it had been a surgeon’s scalpel.

  His face holl
ow with shock and surprise, the maimed man fell to the ground.

  Sickened by the sight of that shoulder bone gleaming whitely through the bloody gore, Charlie retched, the remains of the coffee he’d had a couple of hours ago boiling up into the back of his throat.

  “Move up and man those guns!” Captain Quinn roared.

  Charlie forced himself to swallow the bitter, burning bile, then staggered to his feet to follow the company commander’s order.

  “Hit the dirt!” someone else bellowed over the stomach-churning howl of incoming “screaming meemies.”

  Diving back down into his frozen hole, Charlie hugged the ground, nearly paralyzed with terror under the lethal barrage. He could feel the earth heaving from the force of the mortar bursts and hear stricken men crying out for a medic who was no longer there. The stench of fresh blood filled his nostrils. His eyes burned from the cordite, and the smoke was so thick he could hardly breathe.

  “Help!” a vaguely familiar voice shrieked in the chaos of explosions.

  Charlie looked up, past a grisly array of corpses, rifle clips and combat boots, and saw the private who’d relieved him as sentry come charging out of the trees and into a hail of splinters and metal that sent him sprawling, face down, into the snow.

  “Fuck this shit!” A terror-stricken GI burst from his ditch and ran a broken field pattern toward the captain’s jeep, which was parked in front of the CP. “I’m bugging out!”

  “Hey, wait for me!”

  Charlie watched, horrified, as a mortar scored a direct hit on the jeep’s hood and the two men who’d just jumped into it went flying through the air when its engine exploded.

  The German shelling continued unabated for what seemed like hours, knocking out most of the company’s guns and keeping the American defenders who might have used them to repel the attack bogged down in their trenches.

  And then, almost as abruptly as it had started, the terrible bombardment stopped.

  That wasn’t the end of the horror, though, as Charlie discovered when he gathered enough courage to lever up and look out into the gloomy half-light of dawn.