Point of No Return

by Gellhorn, Martha;

  “I just came from that train,” Leroy Backley said. “You ought to see those Russians.”

  They liked Leroy Backley allright; he was a good man though a terrible cook. But he wasn’t Royal Lommax, he didn’t have the authority and style of old Roy. They didn’t want to get stuck with Leroy Backley for the rest of their one free afternoon.

  “What Russians?” Bert Hammer asked.

  “The d.p.’s or the slave laborers or whatever they are. They’re down there collecting back pay. You ought to see them. There’s some nice stuff in that train. I got me a vanity case for my girl.”

  That sounded more like it.

  “What’s up that way?” Leroy Backley asked, pointing the way they had come.

  “Some pretty good houses,” Bert Hammer said, knowing Leroy would take the bait.

  “I better go and look them over,” Leroy Backley said. “See you later.”

  Jacob Levy and Bert Hammer considered the bombed wilderness and the miracle train.

  “Should we go down?” Jacob Levy asked.

  “I better get back, Jake. It’s near chow time. I got to bring it to the staff. I better not take a chance. If you see anything good, get me one.”

  The train was very long and the Russians swarmed like ants, in and out of the cars. There were Russian women too. They all looked thin, sick, and determined. They did not talk to each other. The way they were going about this, you could tell they really needed whatever they were after.

  Jacob Levy climbed through the door of a box car and saw that the Russians had been there before him. The Russians broke open everything, spilled everything, looking for what they wanted: food. After food, they wanted clothes. This car was full of pharmaceutical scales: thousands of boxes held little gilt metal trays and stands and the graduated kilogram weights. The Russians were not interested in these, but had kicked the place over on the chance there would be food in some of the boxes. Jacob Levy did not care about the scales either until he thought his father might like a set as a souvenir. He sat on the floor trying to find one untouched box. Then he heard the scream of an incoming shell and he jumped from the car and ducked down by its side.

  The shell was long. Now a fast little barrage started. What an ugly sound an 88 made, the coldest, fastest, dirtiest sound of all. The Russians went calmly on, picking over the train. They must be crazy; didn’t they know these things killed you? Or else, Jacob Levy thought, they don’t give a damn. Or else they think artillery is a nice change. With complete unconcern and in purposeful silence, men and women continued to climb in and out of the freight cars, looking for food.

  When the car behind the engine was hit, Jacob Levy decided it was time to leave. He had a wooden box with the scale and weights, for his father, and this was no place to linger in. The krauts knew what they were aiming at and pretty soon, unless these Russians learned some sense, there would be a lot of spattered Russians around this train.

  Jacob Levy crawled under a freight car, waited, listened, and ran fast across the tracks to get in the lee of the crushed railroad station. There he found another nonchalant group of Russians, treating this shower of steel as if it were no worse than a heavy rain. A young Russian, with a bony face, advanced to Jacob Levy. The Russian wore a red satin necktie though he had no shirt, and two suit jackets. He held a box of thin malevolent German cigars and these he offered with the greatest friendliness.

  “Ich komm’ aus Stalingrad,” he said and laughed and slapped Jacob Levy on the back. Then he shook hands formally.

  Two Russian women were trying on brassieres, which they had looted from the train, over their clothes. They did not seem to know what these articles of clothing were meant for. The brassieres looked formidably strong, as if they were made of tough pink canvas. They were bright and new and the Russian women seemed delighted with them. They’re all cracked, Jacob Levy thought, and who can blame them. He did not like 88 shells; the Russians could be brave for him too.

  That night lying side by side in their bedrolls, he told Bert Hammer about the Russians and the train. Bert Hammer said, “You’re making it up.”

  “No, honestly. They just don’t give a damn for 88’s.”

  “They must be funny people.”

  The floor of what had once been the ballroom appeared to be covered with large misshapen khaki sausages. The men slept noisily in their bedrolls, grunting and twisting, and one man snored like a teakettle. It took a while to get used to the air in this room which smelled as the men did. Jacob Levy lay in the dark and began to think about all the people who had been held and misused by the Germans, during these long years. They hated the krauts but they didn’t seem to take them seriously. Like the French who didn’t even see the Germans, they kind of walked through them, they wouldn’t bother to notice them. Like the way the Russians didn’t move for the German artillery. They acted as if the Germans were dirt, you couldn’t get excited about them, they weren’t people. But he had taken the Germans seriously; he had known they were dangerous; he had been painfully afraid of them. Maybe the Russians and the French and all were right: look how the Germans hung out big white sheets to surrender, and how they bowed and scraped now. Maybe they were just dirt. They’re all through pushing people around, Jacob Levy thought, and they are stupid-looking. They’re a stupid-looking race. It was a big change to look down on the Germans, and it felt fine.

  The cellar shook from blast. There was nothing small and chinchy about the bombs we were using. The airforce was running a regular bus service over Nürnberg; the noise of the planes was so constant you stopped hearing it. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers sat on the floor beside the field telephone and thought that Bill would have liked this show. It seemed that the entire Seventh Army had come together here and was now pounding Nürnberg with everything they had. Even in this cellar on the northern outskirts of the town, your ears rang and ached with the explosions. Bill would have got a big kick out of it. Something new had been added. They now fought all around the clock, with antiaircraft searchlights pouring thick blue-white shafts of light on to the vast rubbish heap that was ancient Nürnberg. If the Germans enjoyed going down in a blaze of glory they were getting the blaze anyhow. I’m bored, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers decided. It’s all stupid. There’s nothing different, even with searchlights.

  Jacob Levy and Bert Hammer huddled in the corner of a house which had retained, beside this excellent safe angle, one wall and a set of steps leading to nothing. Jacob Levy did not know what they were supposed to be doing, but Bert seemed to have a rough idea. Jacob Levy guessed they were defending this house as if there was anything to defend. He hoped that no one would come and tell them to move. He would just as soon keep these bricks against his back.

  “Seems they call this place their sacred city,” Bert Hammer explained. He was always one to pick up information. “Maybe they got a church here or Hitler was born here or something. Maybe it’s kind of like the White House to them. Anyhow that’s why the bastards are hanging on.”

  Sacred city, Jacob Levy thought, why did they have to put it here? Why not up north somewhere? In the dark, he took his calendar from his breast pocket. He did not dare make a light to look at it and he had already crossed out this day, because it was officially finished. He rubbed his hand over the greasy paper, for comfort. If ever they needed luck, it was now. It made you stiff and cold to think about your chances, when any day there would be peace: peace and the sunlit certain life by his stream, with Kathe.

  A rifle bullet ricochetted against the wall above their heads. Goddam them, Jacob Levy thought, and their sacred city.

  At dawn, F Company reported via the field telephone that they were held up six blocks away. There were krauts in a three storey house, with a good field of fire around them. F Company wanted mortars to blast the krauts out. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said he would be right over. He could no longer wait for an action to develop as he ordered; he had to hurry it along in person. And each day he understood Bill Gaylord better, and
what drove Bill. He told Major Hardcastle, who disapproved, to take charge; and he climbed out of the cellar and picked his way through the wrecked back yards, to F Company. Dave Penny with a walkie-talkie, and Corporal Schwarz of Milwaukee, an interpreter, followed him.

  The house full of krauts stood, as reported, among the stumps of other buildings; the krauts had clear observation on all four sides. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers crouched behind the broken window of a house diagonally across the street, and watched.

  “I’d like to kill them all,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers announced. “Men, women and children.”

  Captain Huebsch did not look at his commanding officer. The Colonel oughtn’t to talk like that, where the men could hear. His voice didn’t sound right, he didn’t act the way he used to. He blew up nowadays; he ran around more than he had to. The officers had noticed; pretty soon the men would too. The Colonel’s nerves were bad.

  I’m so bored I’m just about nuts, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, I got to watch what I say.

  This was the eighth fair-sized fight they’d had in this rotten country. He couldn’t even remember the names of the places they’d fought in. These krauts had now tried his patience as far as it would go. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers called for the interpreter and Corporal Schwarz advanced towards the window, on hands and knees.

  “Schwarz, tell those krauts they can give up or we’ll kill every last damn one of them.”

  Corporal Schwarz, keeping in a safe angle, shouted this news to the house across the street. A machine gun answered him.

  “If that’s how they want it,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said.

  He took a certain satisfaction in that house, finally. It looked like gang warfare in the movies. Everything was smashed and dead men lay in most of the rooms.

  “They only had to keep their noses clean,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers observed. “I got no sympathy for them.”

  And he thought: this is the last time. It has to be.

  He was sick and tired of the whole business. So was everyone else. Everyone walked lightly, looked in all directions, held his breath and hoped. It was so near the end. A man could honestly believe now that he had a fine chance of getting home.

  20

  It was nice, driving in the jeep. It reminded Lieutenant Colonel Smithers of when they were young and had roared across France. Not that they roared anywhere now; they were again wedged in the endless convoy. They crawled along and then the traffic would halt, for no reason you could see. The officers would get out of their jeeps and hurry up the long line of khaki vehicles, saying: what the hell’s holding us up, who’s responsible, look alive there, get a move on. The soldiers relaxed, for they were trained in patience and they did not care where they went nor when they got there. Usually an accident—a driver fallen asleep at the wheel, a truck crashing in from a side road, a side-swiping tank—or a balky, conked-out engine, had caused the delay. The halts were always short. They shoved the blocking vehicle off to the side of the road and the parade went on.

  Lieutenant Colonel Smithers was content with this pace. Whatever had harried and driven him before was worn out, as the war was worn out.

  And it was finally spring. The lovely tended land lay under a green mist. Above the exhaust fumes and the reek of gasoline, the air was sweet with the smell of this growing. The sun smoothed warmth over your shoulders, your face, your hands.

  Lieutenant Colonel Smithers looked at the distant snow mountains and knew that when they reached them the war would be over for that was the limit of Germany. From La Harpe, Georgia to the Bavarian Alps, he thought, the hard way. Hard it had been, nobody could deny it: hard in the hedgerows and hard at St. Lô; never easy except for one brief spell when all they did was burn up gasoline in France; hell hard both times in the forest, harder than anyone wanted to remember; plenty hard in Luxembourg in the snow; and hard enough at all these worthless German towns. It tired you, there was no question about that. And it made you old. He knew he had lines that weren’t there when he left La Harpe, in some other life, a smiling young man, everybody’s pal Johnny, who liked his job because it gave him a chance to drive the new models and show off to the girls. And he had grey hair too, alongside his temples and streaking the brown up from his forehead. This grey hair alarmed him, yet it seemed to belong to another man. You looked at it and wondered what had happened to the guy that would give him grey hair at twenty-eight. You weren’t ready for grey hair yourself. It was some other fellow, showing these signs of strain and anxiety.

  It had been hard allright and plenty of good men were dead. He had known many of them and gotten on with them all, but Bill Gaylord was the only one he cared about. He felt that no one would notice much that Bill was dead; he was also the only one Bill had, to do the remembering and the caring.

  Perhaps Bill had never been happy; the war didn’t explain it. Bill didn’t give a damn for his wife, or how could he lay anything he got his hands on. Looking back, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers decided Bill wasn’t hurt by the divorce, he was just sort of ashamed because divorce was a cheap business, something like being caught in a raid on a gambling joint. And Bill never talked about his parents, as if they didn’t hit it off or they weren’t his kind of people and meant nothing to him. Bill said that if anybody thought he was going back to the reception desk at the Lincoln Hotel in Harrisburg, Pa., they were crazy. He was a funny boy, Bill Gaylord, he always sounded cheerful enough but he seemed to be disgusted deep down into where he lived, war or peace.

  But after the war it might have been better. They’d have been together, it would be easier when there were two of them. It wouldn’t mean returning alone, a stranger where you came from, a new man that no one knew or wanted to know. Because nobody’s going back the same, after this, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought. Bill was dead. Bill was not going back anywhere.

  The past was safe territory, he felt at home in the war, so he began to think of the way Bill operated in combat. Bill’s bravery was peculiar too. He wasn’t brave like the people you read about who don’t feel fear, in case there really were any people like that. Bill acted fine, always cool, even joking, but his eyes said something else. Bill would have liked to see himself written up in the papers, though he sneered at that stuff. But he would have liked it. And so would I, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought. You know I would.

  If he, Johnny Smithers, had been written up in the papers and become famous in this war, as some men had, perhaps he’d be a different person when he got home. He was different but how would anybody in La Harpe know that? He could almost hear how it would be: “Why Johnny, hello boy, when did you get back? It’s been a long time. Well, happy to be home, I reckon? Back at your old job again?” He couldn’t tell them all that had happened to him and all that he had become. He could tell them nothing of the real war, they would never understand and he never wanted to speak of it. It was too serious to shoot the bull about with people who had not seen it and felt it. But he couldn’t tell them, either, about the trimmings, the excursions. He couldn’t even say that he had been invited twice for the weekend at an English house that was so old it was like a museum, and the people who owned it were a Lord and Lady and he had been the big shot because the Lady thought he was the stuff. But that didn’t mean he’d get asked to dinner at the Cotterells or the Merrills or the Rathbones in La Harpe. In La Harpe, he was Johnny Smithers and that was that.

  He couldn’t kid himself; his people were not the ones who owned and ran things; they weren’t even the second new batch that had money and was starting to horn in. Maybe if Lord and Lady Rayne could have seen beyond his uniform, with the silver oak leaves on the shoulders, to his family’s house on East Magnolia Street by the mills, they wouldn’t have been so wild for him. But he had the uniform, he earned it, he deserved it. And in it he had commanded nine hundred men from the English Channel to the Bavarian Alps and you couldn’t be a complete slob and do that. And in it also, he had seen London often, the best hotels,
the best night clubs, and several fine houses in the English countryside, and Paris once and Liège, Belgium, though it was shot up at the time and he had no social life there. And he was almost a resident of Luxembourg City. Anyhow, he had been a lot more places and seen a lot more people than anyone in La Harpe. But would they know? He could have married that crazy English girl, with her picture in the Tatler and all the rest, the Honorable Anne Northway. But Mary Jane Cotterell and Elise Rathbone wouldn’t think he was worth marrying.

  How would they know, in La Harpe, that an American officer, a Lieutenant Colonel, lived in a world where everyone called him sir, where he gave the orders, where he had special separate clubs and messes and billets, and was treated with respect as an officer and a gentleman? He was Johnny, was all, he had started as Johnny and if he came home wearing his uniform and his ribbons and anything else, they wouldn’t forget that his father was a retired post office clerk and his mother said Ma’am to people like Mrs. Cotterell and Mrs. Merrill and Mrs. Rathbone, and he didn’t go to college, he studied at a filling station. I’ll make money, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought. If I can command a Battalion all through this frigging war, I can goddam well make money and be somebody at home.

  He was as good as they were any day of the week. What did they do in this war? What did they have to show for it? But he knew that would not matter. The war’s almost over, he thought, and a war record isn’t going to mean a thing in La Harpe. I ought to bring home a wife that would show them I could have anyone I want. But what would the wife think? Take Dotty. Maybe Dotty would marry him; she seemed pretty stuck on him at the end. And he was the same man out of uniform, he wouldn’t be any less good because his clothes were different. But what Dotty knew was an officer, with the strength of his Battalion behind him. There wasn’t a combat officer in the army who wouldn’t hold his head up and be proud to anyone, including the President and the King of England and John D. Rockefeller. Dotty had perhaps, he hoped, a little, at the end, loved Lieutenant Colonel Smithers—not a salesman for the Meredith Agency in La Harpe. How would she feel when she took a look at his house and saw the town’s big shots being nice enough to him, but keeping their distance at the same time. Her old man was a rich lawyer; she was a society girl. Thinking this way, Dorothy Brock whom he had invented to warm his heart, whom he had longed for and trusted, became another girl and he lost her. He began to feel trapped, beating against an unseen destruction. It isn’t true, he protested to himself, Dotty’s not that way, Dotty’s one of us. He could not bear to lose Dotty, too.