Wilkins smiles, chalk-faced, but I don’t remember if I’ve ever seen a better smile. It’s the smile I needed to make myself do what we’re going to do.
First we paint white circles on our helmets with the whitener. We slip on the snowsuits. Then I draw a stencil of a cross on one of my K ration boxes. I cut it out with a bayonet. Next comes the hardest part. We turn Mundy over. When we press down on him, blood comes out of his mouth from his lungs. I soak some of it up on a pad from Wilkins’s aid kit, the last one we have, and I use it to stipple red crosses on the helmets and on the sleeves of the snowsuits. The blood is thick, viscous, dark, but mixed with whitening it comes out red. I almost vomit twice in the process but convince myself Father wouldn’t mind. Maybe we’re violating the temple of the Holy Ghost but it’s in a good cause, us. With the white circles and the blood, there’s almost something of a mass going on, too.
We also paint huge white circles on the shelter halfs. I dab red crosses, two inches wide and a foot high, in the middles of these circles. We fold the shelter half corner to corner and stick the double corner between our helmets and helmet liners. It makes a kind of cape. When we’re finished, we look like a strange mixture of bridesmaids and extras for The Three Musketeers.
It’s midmorning when we bury the hardware. We put the 506, the fifty caliber, the rifles, the fifty-caliber ammo boxes and ammo, all the grenades in the trench Wilkins and I dug. We cover it all with a shelter half pressed down around, then start kicking dirt over the whole pile. We kick until there’s a mound like a grave. Then we stomp it down and spread snow over it. When we finish, we’re all panting. Mundy’s on the ground beside us. I look around.
“Well, if any of us wants to start a private war someday after this one’s over, we know where to come. This is a burial place I’m not even going to mark.”
We muscle Father up and onto our shoulders. We have him covered with our last shelter half, Shutzer’s. I’ve painted a white circle and a red cross on that, too, for airplanes. We’re two on a side and the weight isn’t impossible but it’s heavy. We walk straight down the center of the road.
We’ve decided the tanks are just as confused as we are, so we walk in the direction they’ve come from, what looks to us, from the light of dawn at our back, like the west. It doesn’t matter all that much.
The walk becomes automatic. We change sides every ten minutes, lowering Mundy to the ground between us and walking around him. There’s not much talking. Each stop, we take just enough time to stretch our cramped muscles or take a piss. None of us moves more than a step from Mundy; he’s our passport out of this hell.
We walk for hours. We walk past other overturned jeeps, wrecked tanks, bodies. We hardly look. Finally, we walk straight into the outpost of an American engineering company. They’ve got a bridge all set to blow. We tell them about the tanks we saw going the wrong way. The sergeant on post take us to a lieutenant. We carry Mundy with us.
“What outfit you soldiers with?”
I tell him our regimental number and how we’re an I and R observation post that got overrun. He can’t keep his eyes off our weird getups.
“What the hell’s with the costumes; you guys medics?”
I tell him something of how we got here.
“You soldiers are taking one hell of a chance, you know. Some cute buck ass brass’s liable to pull a Geneva Convention on this one.”
Then he laughs.
“I’ll be damned. The whole fucking war’s gone to hell.”
“Yes, sir.”
“OK, get on with it. Have my men at the other post lead you past our mines. We have anti-tank mines in the road back there. You probably couldn’t trigger one just stepping on it, but no sense taking chances.”
“Yes, sir.”
The GIs on the other post give us cigarettes and breakfast K rations. We eat the rations before we set out again. Nothing matters much except not getting killed. These guys are sure they’re surrounded, so we aren’t home free by a long shot.
It’s about five, almost dark, when we’re challenged again. They yell out the first part of a password.
“We don’t know the counter. We’re coming from another sector.”
“Stay just where you are.”
“We’re Americans.”
“Says you!”
A sergeant comes walking out to us in a crouch with his carbine at the ready. When he sees us, he puts it down.
“All right. I believe you. My God, where’d you get those crazy outfits? Is that blood?”
As we go back, we give him our “escape” story. This is a division I never even heard of. They’ve come up from the Saar, part of Patton’s army. He advises us to wipe the crosses off before we go any farther. We leave the shelter halfs.
He has a PFC lead us back to battalion headquarters where we jump in a truck that’ll take us to our own outfit. They’re a bit pissed when we insist on hauling Father with us.
We get driven all the way to division headquarters. When we get there, we tell them we were captured and escaped. After that, Wilkins and I take Mundy over to the grave registrar. There’s a tent filled with bodies. The T4 who’s in charge says none of these are from our division; they’re all strays.
“Some of them have been on the ground since before the snow.”
I wonder if anyone’s found the bodies back by our château yet, both the ones from before we came and the ones we left.
We watch while the T4 snips off Mundy’s dog tags. He forces one between Father’s teeth and puts the other in a dark green string sack. He asks me Mundy’s outfit. I tell him. He pulls out a wired tag and prints Mundy’s name out on it, serial number and C for Catholic, reading from the dog tag between Mundy’s teeth. He opens the mummy bag and wires it around Father’s wrist. He stares at the golden satin quilt we wrapped Mundy in, then spreads a GI blanket over his whole body, covering his face. Mundy’s so tall his bare feet stick out. We walk away before the T4 can ask any questions.
Two days later, we’re taken in jeeps about ten miles forward to our regimental headquarters. I’m called straight in to Ware. I tell our “escape” story again. He buys it. I want to get away. Inside I seem to be melting; the shakes are grabbing me. But Ware can keep me there talking as long as he wants. I’m trying not to cry in front of him.
“Did the rest of the squad get out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How about the jeeps and the radio?”
“We had to abandon them, sir.”
“Even the fifty caliber, your rifles?”
“Germans took the rifles, sir.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“We got Mundy out, sir.”
I don’t know why I tell him. It’s none of his business; he doesn’t care. But it seems important.
“You escaped and you took Mundy?”
“Yes, sir. We went back and got him. We carried him out as if we were medics.”
“Shit! Don’t tell Love that!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You let me report this. Don’t say anything about bringing Mundy out. My God, how the hell far did you carry him?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
“God damn!”
“Any news about the first squad, sir?”
“Nothing.
“By the way, I did my best to leave you a radio and jeep when we pulled out, but every vehicle was needed for regimental supplies. There was nothing I could do.”
I want to ask right then about Shutzer but my throat’s stuck. If I open my mouth, I’ll cry, scream or attack a commissioned officer. I just salute, turn around and walk away as if he’s dismissed me.
I wander into the kitchen tent and crawl behind big pots full of hot water for washing mess kits. I’m between them and the wall of the tent. I don’t know where Wilkins, Miller and Gordon are. I hope they’ve found shelter halfs and fart sacks; I’m too tired, too washed out to check. I curl up there on a shelter half where it’s warm. I’m to a place where only s
leep will do.
I wake. Ware is standing over me kicking my feet. I have a hard time struggling up, groggy, like a drunk.
“You don’t have to get up, Knott. I only wanted to tell you I got it all worked out.”
I steady myself onto my feet, brushing my knees.
“I saw Major Love. It’s all settled. He says since you weren’t in a POW compound you won’t need to go through the whole shitload of clearance.”
He pauses.
“We’re going to fill out the I and R platoon with the old anti-tank group they broke up. Who do you suggest for noncoms?”
I can’t think. Nothing makes sense.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“I thought Gordon for sergeant of the other squad and Miller as your assistant. There’s one pissass corporal coming in; he can work with Gordon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve put in a Bronze Star for Wilkins. Love’s signed the citation but he’s not happy. I also got Wilkins reassigned to the security squad.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I’m ready to try it.
“Sir, how’s Shutzer doing?”
“Real TS. Dead before we even got back. There wasn’t much we could do on the trip out. That Kraut was dead, too; no chance to interrogate him.”
I don’t say anything. I only want Ware to go away. I want to be alone on the ground again.
“I almost forgot, Sergeant. You’ll need to make out Statements of Charges for the jeeps, the radio and phones. I don’t know about the rifles and fifty caliber. Since you were captured, I don’t think there’ll be any trouble.”
He reaches into his breast pocket and hands the forms to me. I’m beginning to feel cool, not cold, only cool, not part of things.
“We lost a twenty-power scope, too, sir.”
“Don’t worry about it; just take your time and rest up. We’ll be pulling out of here soon; going to push those fucking Krauts all the way back to Berlin.”
He smiles and we salute. I can see so clearly. Everything’s in very clear focus but I don’t have clear vision.
I see the edge around the insignia on Ware’s helmet liner where it used to be gold before he made first. I see bits of yellow sleep in the corners of his eyes.
I look down and see the dark green of winter grass on the floor of the kitchen tent where it’s been smashed into the mud.
I see the steaming and hear the sizzling of dirty, galvanized fifty-gallon cans of water being heated to wash mess kits.
I smell grease in the hot water.
I hear drippings from snow melting off the top of this warm tent.
About the Author
William Wharton is the pseudonym for the author of eight novels: Birdy, Dad, A Midnight Clear, Scumbler, Pride, Tidings, Franky Furbo, and Last Lovers. He has also written two memoirs, Ever After: A Father’s True Story and Houseboat on the Seine. Birdy won the American Book Award for best first novel when it was published in 1978, became a national bestseller, and was made into an award-winning film starring Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine. Dad was a National Book Award nominee and was made into a feature film with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson; the movie version of A Midnight Clear starred Ethan Hawke, Kevin Dillon, and Gary Sinise. A native of Philadelphia, Wharton fought in World War II, where he was part of the Army Specialized Training Program. In 1960, he received a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA and moved to France. There Wharton made his living as a painter while raising his two daughters and two sons; the tragic death of his daughter Kate, her husband, and two infant daughters was the subject of Ever After. He now lives with his wife, Rosemary, outside of Paris on a houseboat on the Seine. Wharton’s works have been acclaimed worldwide and have been translated into over fifteen languages.
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