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Point of No Return
A Novel
Martha Gellhorn
TO JAMES GAVIN
and to the men he commanded
in World War II
1
The farmhouse was quiet, the soggy patch of field and the near forest were quiet under the flannel sky. It had not stopped raining.
Lieutenant Colonel John Dawson Smithers looked at the wet mud on his boots and trouser legs, at the bacon can filled with cigarette butts, the broken horsehair armchair, the rusted kerosene stove, and thought: this war has gone to hell. Where is everybody? It doesn’t have to be so cold in here.
“Hammer!” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers shouted, and nothing happened. No orderly, no staff, no nothing; just a bunch of black mean-looking pine trees, and this rain out of a faucet, and time to wait in.
He decided he would read; the unlucky man who preceded him in this rathole had left behind a picture of Rita Hay-worth, all teeth and bosom, tacked to the wall, and a two-months-old copy of Life. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers began to study some handsome colored photographs of insect-eating tropical plants. It was hard to keep his mind on what these flowers were up to. If Bill Gaylord was around, they could talk over the situation; it relieved you even if the talk got nowhere.
Very bad business, Bill, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers remarked in silence. You ought to see them at Regiment. Sour. Sour and full of secrets. The 256th and 258th must be getting the stuff kicked out of them. You taken a good look at those trees? They’re amputated, is what. Tree bursts like hail. Nobody’s moving. Can’t move. I guess we’ll be going in tomorrow or maybe the day after. I don’t like it, Bill. I don’t like the way people look around here. I wish we were back on our little old front in Belgium. Why don’t they tell me something so I can get busy? Doc Weber says we’ll have more trench foot than we can count, let alone anything else. Nothing will push through that mud. I saw a tank up there at Regiment: when it turned it left a wake like a boat, I swear it was.
“Hammer!” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers shouted again. It was giving him the shakes to sit here and think about that forest, and do nothing and have nothing to do.
Pfc Hammer entered the room in haste and without knocking, as was his custom. Every day was Christmas for Hammer, as far as Lieutenant Colonel Smithers could see; the boy didn’t have enough brains to look on the dark side of things. That pink and white face, those always delighted blue eyes, turned to Lieutenant Colonel Smithers with an expression of joyful and intimate obedience.
“I called twice,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said.
“Yes sir. I was helping carry some radio equipment. I’m sorry, sir.”
Radio equipment, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, and imagined Pfc Hammer gently rolling a pair of red plastic PX dice.
“Is there any coffee?”
“Yes sir. I’ll take your raincoat to dry.”
Bert Hammer walked quietly down the hall to the farmhouse kitchen which was now the Battalion message center. When the old man was like this, worrying, he would blow up if you made one extra noise.
“Fellows,” Pfc Hammer said to the kneeling group in the message center, “I got to leave the door open a crack so I can hear the old man. Keep your voices down.”
Maybe the old man would make him jump around all afternoon just because he was in a bad humor. They had built a crackling fire in the kitchen stove, and Sergeant Follingsby invented a hot toddy, made from lemon crystals and some cognac the new switchboard operator kept in his canteen, and he was eight hundred francs ahead and everybody was having a fine time, if only the Colonel would take it easy and leave a guy in peace. Why can’t he have some fun like the rest of us when he gets a chance, Bert Hammer thought. We’re out of the line, aren’t we? That ought to make any sensible person happy.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers abandoned the insect-eating tropical plants. It was no use. Instead of savage plant mouths, snapping shut, he saw that road of sliding mud which disappeared into the black tunnel of the forest. He felt this waiting, like a cold uneasy sickness in his stomach; and anxiety like a closing weight over his eyes.
I got to put my mind on something else, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers decided. He listened to the steady rain and the distant noise of the guns and heard himself repeating, over and over, silently: this is bad, this is no good at all.
“It took a while, sir,” Pfc Hammer said. He held a canteen cup full of pale cool coffee. “The stove was out.”
“How about Crewe?”
“Yes sir. I forgot to tell you. A message came that he smashed his hip; he’s gone to the rear.”
“Allright, Hammer.”
The coffee was undrinkable. If you were going to lose your jeep and driver, in a road accident, it was better to lose them here and now; there wouldn’t be much use for jeeps in the Hürtgen forest. He was sorry about Crewe though. This reminded Lieutenant Colonel Smithers that they had reached Bittelheim at 0200 hours this morning and that Crewe had run into a truck at 0300 hours; and that he himself had had very little sleep. Crewe brought to mind the lost half of the baggage train which Crewe had been detailed to look for; Lieutenant Loring should have tracked that down by now. Which recalled the fact that, baggage train or not, they were short of warm clothing and overshoes and Lieutenant Hermann was away on a stealing mission, ordered to use his own discretion in the procurement of same. And Captain Martinelli had said that most of their radio equipment was drowned out on that lousy drive last night from Belgium, so he would be checking it now with Lieutenant Hooper. Waines ought to be back soon with the mail; they had to find that. Nothing was worse for the men than hanging around, wet and aimless, and no letters from home and no Stars and Stripes to gab about. The exec would be asleep, having been up all night and all morning. But where was Lieutenant William Gaylord, who might just as well be here to pass the time of day?
We need action, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, yet he did not believe that; his outfit was too experienced for heroes. But the fierce boredom of war drove you; anything was better than waiting; you had to move, you had to do something; and action was their job and you hoped that if you pushed and didn’t stop you could get this over, get out of it, get free, escape from waiting in all the worst places of the world for nothing except more fighting. Or a decent rest would be good; the whole Division out of the line, with days ahead, and mobile showers, clean clothes, sleep, hot food, liquor, mail, movies, girls … Anything at all would do, except this hour to hour hanging on, with time like a rock in your brain. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers put his hand up to his face; he had felt the nerve that started jumping just below his right eye. It did that, now, more and more often; it frightened him; a twitching man was suspect, he had a weakness.
There must be some place in Europe where you could pass the month of November without going bats. No matter how foul Europe was, and that was plenty, it couldn’t rain everywhere all the time. He had heard that Cannes France and Capri Italy were good, though it seemed the Airforce had taken them over. The Infantry, on the whole, went no place you would care to remember. Nobody would choose Bittelheim Germany as a winter resort. London would be nice now, for a short leave. Some people said Rome was allright, plenty to buy, willing women, no rain. When you got right down to it, November would be best at home.
Slowly, like floating in sunwarmed water, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers drifted into the old daydream. If I were home now, he thought: this was the way the dream always began.
There were never many ducks
on the Chattahoochie, a wide brown river flowing between untidy trees, but this year the great wedges, instead of flying farther south, descended with their soft roar of wings, and he was waiting. Hidden under the trees, in his boat, he raised his gun; they were braking in the air, swirling, and he fired twice, so fast that it sounded like one report; and two birds fell like stones. Then he reached into the big pocket of his khaki bush jacket (as pictured in Esquire for use on safaris) and pulled out more shells, loaded, and fired again; I bet I led them six feet, he thought; and two birds again splashed into the water. His dog, who in life was ugly, loving, and incompetent, leaped from the boat and swam for the birds, sure and sharp as a torpedo; returned; swam out again; returned to be hauled over the side and shake himself, and stand brown, gleaming and beautiful in the sun that sifted down through the trees.
It was time to go now, the smooth sunset hour, so he picked up the birds, whistled the dog to follow (and forgot the boat) and walked up the bank and across a field to the road. His sand-colored Buick convertible was waiting there with the top down: a sportsman’s car. This car was new; he had bought it in his mind when the Division was fighting near St. Lô. His family’s shapeless Dodge sedan was no car for a man who lived as he did. The soil of Georgia looked dark red in this light and the pine trees stood out triangular and almost black against the gold of the evening sky, and the air smelled of wood smoke and the water smell of rotting leaves, clean and delicious like a land at peace.
He stopped before his house and ignored it. He would leave the ducks in the kitchen and mix himself a bourbon highball to drink while taking his bath. Quickly, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought: Mom and Dad are visiting Suzanne and her 4-F husband in Chattanooga. Somehow, his parents were always away with his sister when he returned on these frequent visits to La Harpe. He did not see the bathroom but only smelled the soap which was like that shaving lotion he had bought in Paris. He did not consider who would cook his supper and he avoided thinking about the dining room; but he ate, with slow pleasure, a splendid meal: fried chicken and garden peas and new potatoes, biscuits with honey, and crunchy pecan pie.
Now he was dressed for the evening in his new double breasted pin stripe grey flannel suit, blue shirt and tie, brown suede brogues, and driving out Highway 29 to the Topple Inn. The girl beside him pretended she had to move closer because the wind was mussing her hair. Her hair was a floating mist of gold; her face was vague; around her throat she wore a delicate string of pearls. And he knew what she wanted: indulgently, triumphantly, he put his arm around her and drew her close. It’ll be much better on the way home, he thought, when we’re parked and I can use both hands. “Johnny,” she sighed, snuggling against him, “I belong to you.”
She was Mary Jane Cotterell who had replaced Elise Rathbone—for variety’s sake—sometime in Belgium. Elise was a brunette but equally available. He’d been going slow with Mary Jane in his mind, because in a way Elise had been too easy. Mary Jane was a small, fragile sort of girl; she’d have little breasts, she’d …
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers got up and went to the cracked window and looked out on the soupy rain. He had never had a date with Mary Jane Cotterell in his life, nor with Elise Rathbone either, and never would have. Mary Jane’s father was a millionaire; she lived in a house with white pillars two storeys high, behind a wide lawn covered in ivy. She went north to a finishing school and didn’t think anybody in La Harpe was good enough for her except the Beakes and the Rathbones of course, also millionaires, and good family too. Miss Cotterell wouldn’t settle for plain low-class millionaires, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought. And above all, she wouldn’t be caught dead going to the Topple Inn with Johnny Smithers who worked as a salesman for the Meredith agency, and lived over by the mills where no one lived who was anybody, and whose family went to the wrong church and didn’t keep servants. If I were home, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers told himself, I’d be coming in from work and I’d be listening to everything that went bad all day in the house and I’d be fixing some damn thing that was broke and eating as fast as I could and getting out. Bittelheim is what you’ve got; you’ll never be a Lieutenant Colonel in La Harpe. The room felt even colder now.
The knock on the door was very welcome and he was delighted to see Sergeant-Major Postalozzi, so he said, “Where’ve you been all afternoon, anyhow?”
“Down at the crossroads, sir. The replacements have got here.”
“Does Captain Waines know?”
“Yes sir. Him and Major Hardcastle are there now.”
“How do they look?”
“Pretty good, sir.” They looked like drowned rats, they looked like orphans, they looked dead on their feet. They were huddled under those ugly pine trees, wet and pooped, not belonging anywhere, not knowing what was going to happen to them or what kind of outfit they’d come to.
“Okay.” He could check them later, which would be an agreeable change from this room, but he had to give the Company commanders time to line things up.
“We picked out a new driver for you, sir.”
“What’s his name?”
“Levy, sir.”
“What?”
“Levy, sir.”
“Whose idea was that?”
Sergeant Postalozzi said nothing. His grey face, with the flapping bulldog cheeks, said nothing.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers could hear the rain, smearing and slurring against the window, and a scurry of mice or probably rats in the floorboards. This damned mudhole, he thought, I haven’t got a Jew in my Battalion.
“Where is he?”
“Outside, sir.”
“What’s he look like?” I know what he looks like, a greasy little kike with those eyes they’ve got.
“Pretty good, sir,” said Sergeant Postalozzi.
“Send him in.”
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers knew the Jew boy was standing inside the door, waiting. Let him wait, he thought, and turned a page slowly. Then the silence embarrassed him and he said, “Over here, soldier.”
“Yes sir.”
The man stood with his back to the window. His overcoat hung about him, mushy and smelling of wet wool and the nights it had been slept in. It looked short because the man was so tall. His helmet liner had flattened his hair in a band across his forehead. He had not shaved for several days and his eyes were heavy and sad with fatigue. His face was correctly expressionless. Except in the movies, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers had never seen such a handsome man. And in the movies, as everyone knew, they tricked it all; the guys didn’t really look like that. If Postalozzi was trying to be funny, he’d find out what happened to funny sergeants. Probably Postalozzi was just being dumb. Levy.
“What’s your name?”
“Levy, sir.”
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers had an angered feeling that someone was making a fool of him.
“New overseas?”
“No, sir.”
“When did you come?”
“October 1943, sir. Italy.”
“What Division?”
“Eighteenth Division, sir.”
Combat infantry, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers noted with amazement.
“Why aren’t you with the 18th now?”
“I got hit, sir. When I broke out of the hospital, they shipped me back to England.”
“Just arrived from England?”
“No, sir. I was a replacement in the 90th.”
“You certainly move around. What happened there?”
“I got hit again, sir.”
“Spent a lot of time in hospitals, haven’t you?” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said. It was bad luck having a man near you who got hit all the time. He had never been wounded. On the ship coming to England he told himself, “Johnny, you’re not going to get killed and you’re not going to get hit, hear?”
Jacob Levy held the sombre conviction that his third wound would be the last. In his experience, as long as an infantryman could walk, he was sent back to a combat Division. Unl
ess he went nuts and they sent him to the places for war-wearies.
“Ever been a jeep driver?”
“All the time, sir.”
“Okay,” said Lieutenant Colonel Smithers who was confused by this interview. “Sergeant Postalozzi’ll show you where the Motor Sergeant is.”
“Yes sir.” Pfc Levy saluted and left. The door did not bang, as it usually did, when he closed it.
Jacob Levy went down the narrow dark hall of the farmhouse and found the message center. In all the farmhouses he had known the officers parked in the front and the enlisted men at the back; the message center was their usual waiting and meeting place. The soldiers, kneeling in a circle on the floor, looked up, saw that this big man was a newcomer and not an officer, and went on with their game. Obviously this was no time for him to ask questions; they were busy. He had not been in any room as warm as this for two weeks. You didn’t have to go looking for a sergeant; a sergeant always came after you by himself. No hurry, Jacob Levy thought, and squatted on his heels, with his back against the damp grey wall. It seemed to him that he had been bumping around in that truck with those other sad characters, for days. If there weren’t so many people here, and all of them strangers, he’d make himself comfortable and try to get a little sleep. But if he stretched out, as if he owned the joint, they’d think he was horning in on their place. He would wait, which was what you did most of the time anyhow.
Aside from everything else about a wound, the changing around got you down. This was the third C.O., not counting all the majors, captains, lieutenants, sergeants. Always new ones and then he had to find out what they were like and then he had to figure out how to satisfy them. He did not want to be popular or promoted; he wanted to be left alone. This was the principal difference, to his mind, between being a Jew and being a Gentile. They left the Gentiles alone until the guy proved he was out of line but a Jew had to earn being left alone. There was nothing new in this and nothing to get sore about, but if you didn’t get hit and could stay in the same outfit it was less trouble.
Point of No Return Page 1
