Sergeant Black had stumbled his way in the darkness from the Battalion CP, to pay a visit. He hated this forest for many reasons, but above all he hated the way you never walked through it, you fell through it. He had cracked his knee on a tree stump, sprawled over a blown-down branch (and been challenged by a sentry who was only a voice), and he was wet from the snow and winded and in need of advice.
“I don’t see how I can go and rat on the guy,” Sergeant Black told Sergeant Follingsby. “And the Colonel would probably throw me out if I came around snitching on my own officer. But you see my position, Mart.”
“You can’t do a thing,” Sergeant Follingsby said, “except make damn sure you’re not along. Where did he get such an idea?”
“He says any fool can see we’re not getting anywhere. We pound Griesling flat about four times a day and the krauts are still there and they relieve their units when they feel like it and we’ll be here till next year the way it is now. What the artillery needs is specific targets, he says, not just a whole damn town.”
“He’s crazy,” Sergeant Follingsby said.
“He’s the best officer in this outfit.”
“Okay. Sure. But he’s crazy.”
“What do you think then, Mart?”
“I think it’s none of your business, Louie. Don’t act like a screwball, now. You stay away from that little party.”
“Oh hell, he won’t take me. If he goes anywhere, I’m the one stays behind to look after things.”
“Well, what do you want? A medal, for Christ’s sake?”
Four nights later Sergeant Black returned to the message center and said, “You can’t see your nose on your own face. I must of fallen flat on my butt ten times in ten yards. It’s going to rain. He’s gone, Mart. I feel sick, honest to God. I should of squealed on him.”
“Who’s working it with him?”
“The artillery observer. He’s down at G Company now.”
“Whereabouts?”
“In an outpost by the river. I can’t sit still from thinking about that guy.”
“There’s nothing you can do, Louie. What could you do anyhow?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s done crazy things before now.”
“I guess I’ll go on down to G Company. I can’t just sit around up here, waiting.”
The forest seemed, to Sergeant Black, a huge gruesome practical joke. It was planned so it hit you in the face, caught you behind the knees, or yanked your feet from under you. He could see nothing except different shades of darkness. He walked with one hand before him, trying to hurry, and trying to lift his feet above the gripping flotsam of the forest floor. The forest was still dangerous with old mines, for it could never be properly swept; and he did not think of this. It was useless to run. If you ran, the practical joke only worked better. You would probably get around faster, at night, by crawling.
There were, everywhere, the low threatening voices of sentries.
“Allright,” Sergeant Black kept saying in answer to the whispered challenges, “banana split.” It was the silliest password for a month. It enraged Sergeant Black. This was no night for jokes of any kind. “Banana split, for Christ’s sake. It’s me. Black. Take it easy.”
Suddenly, overhead, there was the whirling, incredibly fast, loud, round wind of outgoing shells. Through the forest, men became silent to listen.
The officers in the dugout CP had raised their heads as if you could see the passing shells through the mud roof, the mangled tree tops and the smoky night.
“What goes on?” Captain Martinelli asked. “I didn’t know we planned anything for tonight.”
“Those Div Arty boys are probably too cold to sleep,” Lieutenant Hermann said.
“It’s a good idea,” Major Hardcastle remarked, “to shake up the krauts at night. We ought to do more of it.”
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said nothing. Without reason he began to know and to get ready. He listened to the shells as if they were falling here. Eleven, he counted, twelve, thirteen.… After the twenty-second salvo, there was silence.
“Nice little barrage,” Captain Martinelli said. “Must be Griesling. It sounds like they all landed in one place.”
When the first shells passed over him, Sergeant Black started to run. He ran and fell and ran, knowing this was insane, and cursing the forest. He had torn a long strip loose on one trouser leg and scraped his hand raw on the bark of a tree. He almost plunged through the hanging blanket that was the door of G Company’s CP. Sergeant Mullins, on duty by the field telephone, raised his head from the comic book he was reading and said, “Did you have a fight with a bear, Louie?”
“Where did Gaylord go through?”
Sergeant Mullins could tell at once that this was no time to make bright conversation with Sergeant Black.
“You’ll never find it. I’ll send a runner to show you.”
Then Sergeant Black was following the runner, who had owl or cat blood for he moved with such assurance through this trap of a forest. You could not see the bluff, nor know that here the land fell steeply away, but the air felt different—freer, more open. The runner said, “Sam? It’s me.” And from an invisible place in the ground another voice answered, “Nice to see you.”
“From Battalion,” the runner said, in explanation of Sergeant Black’s body, and Sergeant Black, just in time, noticed the open short rectangular trench before him.
Sam was standing at one end of this outpost position, staring down the bluff towards the river and Griesling. At the other end, a man wearing earphones sat hunched over a radio. Sergeant Black knelt beside this man and touched his shoulder.
“Lieutenant Bayer?”
“Black?”
“Yes sir.”
“I can’t raise him.”
“Did he say he was coming back?” Sergeant Black asked.
“No. He called in a position. That’s the last I got. We laid on five more rounds to cover for them. We sent them wide, on the south edge of the town.”
“Was it the Lieutenant talking all the time?”
“Yeh,” Lieutenant Bayer said. “It worked, Black! We must of put those shells in on street numbers.”
They’re all crazy, Sergeant Black thought. He’ll never get back. It’s a fluke he even got down there. Sergeant Black stood up so he could look over the edge of the hole. The darkness of the sky was thinner than the darkness of the land. Below them the river gleamed like wet tar. Griesling could not be seen, even as a silhouette or a shadow. Let them get back, Sergeant Black thought. Give them one break and I’ll squeal on him afterwards.
At the base of the cliffs across the river, Sergeant Black saw short flashes of light. They heard the cracking of rifles, very personal and man-made noises after the locomotive roar of the big shells.
“They must of run into a kraut patrol,” Sergeant Black said. His lips trembled so that he sounded as if he were talking with his mouth full. “Should we go on down?”
“No,” Lieutenant Bayer said. “Gaylord left men on both sides of the river. We’d get in their way.”
The river banks were again dark and absolutely silent. It started to rain and they could hear nothing but the slur of water against the trees.
A head, which was only a big solid ball of shadow, appeared behind them at the edge of the trench.
“Bayer?” it said.
“Come on in.”
A man jumped into the trench; the mud slapped as he landed.
“What goes on down there?” It was Captain Latham, now commanding G Company. He was the third new commanding officer in a month. You hardly learned their names before they got hit.
“Gaylord’s patrol,” Lieutenant Bayer said.
“What was all the artillery?”
“Gaylord.”
“What’s he doing? Running a private war?”
“Just about,” Lieutenant Bayer said.
Let him come back, Sergeant Black thought, I’ll tell the Colonel he’s crazy
; I’ll get him locked up where he’ll be safe.
Now they heard movement on the down slope beneath them. The patrol would have scattered, on the near bank of the river, to make their way back through the line of friendly outposts. Still, you never knew: Sergeant Black and Sam had grenades ready.
A voice called softly, “Banana split,” and Captain Latham said, “Okay, okay,” and the blurs crept nearer.
Then two men were rolling over the side of the trench; they all had to stand packed upright against each other. Sergeant Black could feel the wetness of the newcomers’ clothes. They must have waded chest deep in the river.
“That you, Mike?” Sergeant Black asked.
“Louie?” a voice answered. “Christ, I’m sweating.”
“What happened?” Lieutenant Bayer said. “Did we get them in where you wanted them?”
“Some,” Mike said, “not too many.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said, that’s what I mean. About eight, I figure. The rest must of killed a lot of cows outside the town.”
“Those bastards at Fire Direction!” Lieutenant Bayer shouted. “Can’t they do one thing right?”
“I guess not,” Mike answered. “It was a pretty big sweat for eight rounds. They’d probably of done that much, by accident.”
“Mike,” Sergeant Black said, “where’s the Lieutenant?”
“He got it right through the neck, Louie. We couldn’t bring him back. There wasn’t a thing we could do.”
“Louie?”
“That you, Hank?”
“Yeh. Louie, we got in allright. It was the damndest thing you ever saw. They were holed in so you’d never hit them if you didn’t know where they were. We’d of made it out too, if we didn’t run into that kraut patrol. I guess they use the same ford.”
Sergeant Black did not speak.
“The Lieutenant was just behind me, Louie.” The voice was tired, almost toneless. But something had to be explained now. There was something Louie had to understand. “We were coming out along the river and I swear I could hear him laughing. Then we were lying right down there, you must of seen it when they jumped us; we were waiting to see if it was okay to cross and he said to me, ‘That’s the most fun I had in this war.’ If we hadn’t hit that goddam patrol we’d of made it, Louie.”
“Let’s get going,” Lieutenant Bayer said. “No use hashing it out, here. Thanks for the office space, Captain.”
Sergeant Black was the last to climb out of the trench. I should have stopped him, he thought, they should have carried him back anyhow. You worked with a man from the beginning and you got so you loved him and then they just left his body, out in the open on some river, for the krauts to find. Sergeant Black walked slowly through the rain and the close trees, feeling his grief tight in his throat, heavy in his chest, hot in his eyes.
Major Hardcastle took the message over the field telephone. He tripped on Captain Martinelli’s sleeping body and picked his way to the corner where Lieutenant Colonel Smithers was lying.
Major Hardcastle kneeled on the damp mud floor so that he could whisper more easily. He was nervous. This was the worst news he could give the Colonel and he wanted to break it gently.
“The patrol’s in, Colonel.”
“Allright.”
“They took an SCR 610 with them. They got into Griesling and cased it and then they called in the artillery.”
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said nothing. He had guessed this, when he heard the first shells going over.
“Called the artillery in on top of themselves,” Major Hardcastle said with enthusiasm. Then he remembered what he still had to say and his enthusiasm faltered. “The patrol reports we could take Griesling right now, they’re so disorganized.”
The patrol had reported that the krauts in Griesling must be a pretty low-grade outfit, they scared easy. They were running around hollering as if Div Arty had laid all the shells in, as directed, where they were supposed to.
“Except we’re not meant to take Griesling,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said. “We can take Griesling any time this front is ordered to move.”
Major Hardcastle scratched the stubble on his chin; then he took off his glasses and began to clean them. Maybe he could skip it and wait for the Colonel to find out by himself in the morning. Maybe he could say Div Arty was pleased with the job; which they claimed they were because they didn’t like to admit they’d boxed it. Any sort of stall might be the best way out.
A man at the other end of the dugout moved in his sleep and knocked over a canteen which rolled, clinking, and stopped. Captain Martinelli coughed or groaned and then took a deep snoring breath. The dugout was quiet again.
“Is that all?” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers asked. He had started to hope.
“Bill didn’t get back, Colonel.” Did I say that, Major Hardcastle thought, like I was spitting it up and couldn’t stop? Now what’ll I do? He watched Lieutenant Colonel Smithers’ hands, creasing a fold in the cover of his bedroll.
“Wounded?”
“No sir. Killed instantly. They had to leave him. Fording the river.…”
“Allright.”
“It’s tough luck,” Major Hardcastle began.
“I’d have courtmartialled him if he got back. He had no orders to risk his men that way.”
“Yes sir,” Major Hardcastle said and waited and could not think what to say or do. Then he stepped across the crowded floor and took up his place again by the field telephone. He thought Gaylord deserved the D.S.C. for trying, though you could never get very worked up about posthumous awards. You couldn’t kid yourself the poor guy gave a damn one way or the other.
Later, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers stopped at the door of the dugout and said, “I’m going out to check the Companies. You take over, Hardcastle.”
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers replied to the challenge of a sentry and walked farther on, into the forest. He felt his way around a solid mass of underbrush, fallen trees and splintered telegraph poles; he skirted a burned armored car and an open latrine ditch. He was not thinking, merely moving in search of what he wanted. The forest was enormous but it did not offer what every other forest always provided: a place to rest in. Then he came to a widening between the trees, fairly clear of underbrush, and found a pine tree whose branches curved down close to the ground and crawled in under this shelter. The snow lay thicker here. He sat with his back against the tree trunk and his legs stretched out before him. Rain fell steadily, seeping down through the pine needles. The shoulders of his overcoat were sodden with water. He felt nothing and sat without moving.
He was arguing with Bill. He blamed Bill, as for a suicide. He explained to Bill that what he had done was wrong and stupid. You had to have patience, you had to wait. The war wouldn’t last forever; afterwards they could go into business together, some kind of business, how did Bill know, maybe everything would be fine after the war.
He could talk himself blind now, for all the good it would do. Bill was lying out there across the river, looking the way the dead look. You never even stopped to notice the dead; they weren’t men any more. They lay along the roads, in the fields, in the streets of villages, under the trees, like old dirty laundry sacks, nothing, just dead. You never knew how much of nothing dying was until you saw the shapeless, nameless, meaningless dead.
You should have waited, Bill, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said in silence.
He thought he knew everything about war but he had not known this. You read the letters that came in to the chaplain because you had to, you were supposed to answer them personally; you read the desperate confused letters from parents or wives asking where their men died, how did it happen, what did they say at the end. And you thought, truly, that the civilians were horning in where they didn’t belong and making a lot more noise than was decent. You watched the people in the destroyed villages following a cheap funeral through the streets or fixing up a new, poor grave. You saw them crying behind a wood
en coffin or beside a wooden cross and you thought: they ought to take it as it is, they ought to get used to it. It was easy enough to be cold about dying, if you only considered your own death. It was easy enough because, being your own, you didn’t believe it. He had not imagined what dying meant when you had a share in it; when you went on living, with the hopeless regret and the long loneliness. He had believed that dying was each man’s own affair, and concerned no one else.
We could have gone into business together, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, we’d have had a fine time if you’d only given it a chance.
Daylight seemed to come up like grey mist smoking from the ground. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers saw his legs, black as tree trunks, heavy and scarcely part of him, and his boots like black stumps rising from the snow. His body was fixed in its numbness and its pains. He tried to think clearly about the daylight and having to move.
After a while he stood up, holding the wiry branches of the tree for support. He rubbed his arms and his hands and his back that was iron stiff. Slowly and wearily, he beat and stamped and shook himself alive. Then he walked back to the CP. He still had a Battalion to command whether his heart was in it or not.
18
Belgium was all brown. The sky was brown above the stringy brown trees that lined the mud road. The stone houses, rain-streaked, mud-spattered, rose in square pale brown blocks against the sky. Khaki trucks, mud-caked, parked almost bumper to bumper on the road and the soldiers climbed into them slowly, as if their bones hurt. At the open rear end of each truck the soldiers stood, staring at nothing, and did not speak. These were the young men, returning from battle. This was how they looked when no one took their pictures; old before their time, going from one place to another, indifferent, in the trucks. The rain of March was no less cold than the rain of November. It always rained in Belgium. Belgium was where you got in and out of the trucks.
Major Hardcastle held a map board on his knees and Lieutenant Colonel Smithers leaned against the side of the jeep, tracing the route of the convoy on the map.
Point of No Return Page 17
