Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  “We’ll be going,” he said. He turned his back, took a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, counted one, two, then suddenly spun and threw it up the stairs. The grenade blew, sending plaster and wood flying, and a body thudded to the floor. In an instant, Alex was up the stairs, his rifle ready. The man who had been hiding was on the floor, in a heap. He was a big man in a field-gray officer’s uniform. Another officer was on his knees, holding his hands to his face. Alex saw the SS symbols on his collar. “Stand up!” Alex shouted. The man did stand, but when he took his hands from his eyes, Alex saw the blood streaming down his face from a gash across his forehead. “Take your pistol out. Drop it on the floor.”

  The man did so and then clamped his hand to his head again. Alex moved closer and picked the pistol up.

  “Can you get help for me?” the German asked.

  “Yes. But not immediately. Maybe the woman downstairs can do something.” The pain in his own shoulder was getting worse all the time, but he still couldn’t take the time to deal with it.

  “You speak excellent German,” the officer said.

  Alex stared at him for a few seconds, hardly taking in the meaning of his words. Then he felt a kind of fury inside himself. “Be quiet,” he screamed at the man. “Don’t say one more word to me.”

  Noville fell easily once the half-mile charge had been completed, but a lot of men had been hit coming down the road. As soon as Alex could find someone to hold his prisoner, he looked for his men, got them established in a house, and then walked up the road to a temporary aid station, back where he and Davis had dug in the night before. He was weak now, from the pain and the loss of blood, and he needed to get his shoulder bandaged, but he also needed to know about Duncan. And he feared the worst.

  He found Duncan in a tent, bandaged and drugged with morphine. His eyes were closed, but he opened them when Alex spoke to him.

  “Dunc, how are you doing?”

  Duncan’s head moved just a little—a sort of nod.

  There were three other men on cots in the tent. One of them said, “He can’t talk. Shrapnel tore up his throat.”

  Duncan took a long, raspy breath and then seemed to choke.

  “Don’t try to talk, Dunc. Just take it easy.”

  Duncan pointed at Alex’s shoulder. “I know. But it’s not bad. They won’t ship me out for this.” Alex took hold of Duncan’s hand. “You’ll be fine. They can fix you up. They’ll probably fly you over to England. You’ll be drinking beer in some London pub in a few days.”

  But Alex didn’t know what to think. Duncan didn’t look good. He was white—almost blue—and who knew what might be ripped up in his neck?

  “You’ll be home before long, and out of all this. I envy you, Dunc. I really do.”

  But Duncan looked scared, his eyes full of confusion.

  Alex didn’t know what else to say. He could hardly face the idea of going on through the war without Duncan next to him. He wanted to tell him that, wanted to tell him a lot of things, but he didn’t think he could get the words out, not without making a fool of himself. “When we get home, we’ll visit each other. We’ll talk about all this stuff. Okay?”

  Duncan nodded.

  “We’ll stay in touch. You’re the best guy I know, Dunc.”

  Duncan tightened his grip on Alex’s hand, and then Alex saw tears running from the corners of his eyes. Alex said nothing more, but he knelt next to Duncan’s cot, and he put his arms around him, gave him as much of a hug as he could. “I’m going to miss you,” he said. He stood, and he felt himself—almost an act of his muscles—try to pull himself together. He left the tent, and then he went looking for someone to fix his shoulder. But he felt overwhelmingly alone. He and Duncan had always made it through together. What was he supposed to do now?

  E Company spent only one day in Noville—one warm night—and then the battalion made a last push toward the little village of Rachamps. The town fell without too many casualties, and on January 17 the division was finally replaced. The 17th Airborne moved in, and the entire 101st boarded trucks. The word was that they were going to be transported to France. The men all hoped they were going to Mourmelon again for some R and R, but rumor had it they were heading to another front in the Alsace region, along the German border. The Germans had started another offensive, and once again the 101st would have to plug a hole. Whether that was true or not, things didn’t look good. Germany was pushed to the wall, and spring was not far away. The final drive across the Siegfried Line would start soon, and the 101st was being kept close. That meant more action.

  When the men of E Company climbed into the trucks, only six men were left in Alex’s squad. Gourley and Duncan had gone down in this last push, and now Alex and Curtis were the only two left from the original squad. But Pozernac had been with them since D-day, and Johnston and Davis and Ernst were not kids anymore. They had seen a good deal of action themselves.

  Alex sat next to Curtis, the two leaning against the cab of the deuce-and-a-half truck. Alex’s shoulder was giving him a lot of pain, and the swaying and bumping against the other men didn’t help.

  “You could have gotten yourself out of all this if you had complained just a little more about that shoulder,” Curtis told Alex.

  “Maybe. But I would have sat in some aid station for a couple of weeks, and then they would have shipped me back. I’d rather just stay with you guys.”

  “I don’t want to head into Germany without Duncan,” Curtis said.

  That’s what Alex had been thinking. He felt vulnerable, in greater danger. Duncan was big and strong, but he was also battle-smart. Alex had always conferred with him about important decisions.

  The truck passed through Bastogne later that day. The place was battered and damaged, with rubble and bombed-out buildings lining the long main street. But the town had never been occupied by Germans.

  “This is something we can tell our grandkids,” Pozernac said. He didn’t explain, but everyone knew what he meant. All of the men had enough perspective now to know that what they had done in Bastogne would be in history books, would be remembered by Americans forever. Alex knew that, and he wanted to feel some pride as he recalled that night the 101st had entered this town and taken over for the beaten troops on the run. All the same, he didn’t think he wanted to tell anyone about it, especially not his grandchildren. In his mind, this would always be the place where Howie had died—and so many others. He didn’t want to think about that, let alone talk about it.

  “Someone said our company is down to about sixty guys,” Curtis said. Alex knew that Curtis was thinking the same thing he was.

  “Less than half, and we’ve had a lot of replacements,” Johnston said.

  “It’s worse than that. Most of the guys still with us have been wounded a time or two,” Pozernac said.

  “We’ve all been wounded,” Curtis said.

  Chapter 2

  Wally Thomas had drifted for a time, had actually been close to sleep. The pain had not exactly abated, but if he stayed completely still he could avoid the excruciating stabs that any movement caused. But now something had brushed against his face and brought him back to consciousness. He didn’t want to turn his head, couldn’t really. Beyond the pain was the weakness that left him feeling paralyzed.

  He tried to think what had touched him, what was next to his face. He remembered the bread that the guard had set next to him on the floor by his mat—the bread he hadn’t been able to eat. And then he knew, recognized the little scratching noises. A rat was eating the bread, just inches from his cheek. He thought of reaching, of knocking it away, but he couldn’t move that forcefully; the pain would be more than he could stand. And he couldn’t bring himself to care that much. The rat could have the bread. Wally would defend himself only if it tried to chew on his face.

  When the rat scurried over him, across his chest, and then a few moments later returned across his face—the little feet stabbing at his cheeks, touching his lips—the thoug
ht of it was disgusting, even frightening, but such emotions didn’t register clearly now. To respond he would have to come back to life, return to the surface, and he was deep within himself, buried under the weight of pain and weariness. This rat had little meaning by comparison.

  Wally had lost track of time, but he thought he had been in the barracks for three days. He was in the building set aside for sick POWs—that is, the seriously ill. When a man simply could not make it to the mine—and the guards could see it—he was sent to this place, often to die. An Australian doctor tried to do what he could for the patients, but he had no medicine, not even anything to relieve pain.

  Wally had a fever of some kind—maybe rheumatic fever, the doctor said—but there wasn’t much to do but hold on and hope for the best. He had been working in a Japanese coal mine for the better part of a year, but before he had fallen ill, he had worked for about three weeks in a section of the mine that was ankle deep in cold water. He had managed to stay on the job for a few days after first noticing the fever and had assumed it was just one more illness like so many he had experienced during his nearly three years of imprisonment. But then one night the pain had become intolerable. Wally’s friends had pleaded with the guards and had finally received permission to carry him to the sick barracks.

  Chuck Adair, the closest of Wally’s friends, was already in the same barracks. He, too, had become sick after working in the polluted water. He had vomited until he was dehydrated and had been brought here a week before Wally, almost dead. The last Wally had known, Chuck had started to recover, but Wally didn’t know what was happening to him now. His thoughts were a tangle of realities, leaping from dreamlike impressions, in color, to gray-brown visions of free-floating pain.

  The rat didn’t matter. So many horrible things had happened to Wally, and this was only one more example of loathsomeness—not some new depth. How could he become fastidious now? He had eaten too much rice full of rat droppings, seen too many open sores, gone too many months without a chance to bathe in clean water.

  Wally drifted again, never exactly asleep or awake but aware that time was passing. When he resurfaced to a state closer to wakefulness, the room was lighter. The night was gone. He heard nothing next to him, felt no presence. Something else had roused him: he felt something moving down his forehead onto his temples, like the gentle touch of a finger. And the room seemed cooler, bearable.

  Doctor Woodburn was there. Wally opened his eyes and looked at the man—gaunt, like all the prisoners, but the doctor had tried to groom his mustache, to comb his hair somehow, to keep as clean as he could. “Wally, your fever is beginning to break,” he said. “You’re starting to sweat. You should get some relief now.”

  All that day the water poured from Wally, and Dr. Woodburn made certain that he drank enough water to keep up with the loss. With the sweat, the pain seemed to ooze away too, although very slowly. At least, before the day was over, he could raise his head enough to drink the water. He could also move his knees a little, and his elbows.

  And that night Wally slept, actually moved into that inviting emptiness he had been longing for since the fever first struck him. When he awoke, well into the following day, he was beginning to feel some sense of himself again, some returned reality that made him care about his needs. He ate a little rice and his ration of bread. Then, finally, he got up and walked to the latrine, supporting himself always with his hand against a wall or a bed.

  Another day later Wally found Chuck, and the two sat on the floor, on Chuck’s mat, while they talked. “I thought I was dying,” Wally said, finally articulating what had been only a general sense during his ordeal. “What about you?”

  “No. The doc told me, after, that I had been in really bad shape. But I always thought I would get better.”

  “Did you pray?”

  “Sure. Did you?”

  “No.” Wally thought about it. “I think I wanted to die. But I didn’t ask for that.”

  “You didn’t stop trying, Wally. That’s a kind of prayer.”

  But Wally didn’t remember it that way. He looked at Chuck, whose skin was like old paper, brittle and yellow and shaped to the bones of his face. Certainly Wally had to look at least as bad himself. They were like specters, the two of them, but brothers more than ever. Wally patted Chuck on the shoulder. “We made it, one more time,” he said.

  Chuck nodded. “Maybe. If they send us back to work too soon, we could have some hard times ahead.”

  Wally nodded. He knew from experience that their recovery time would be very limited.

  A week passed, but that was too long for the Japanese guards. Men could take their time dying if they needed to, but taking time to get well was unacceptable. So Wally and Chuck were put on “limited duty,” which meant they could be included in work details around the camp.

  Their first assignment, with some other men who were also recovering from illness, was to shovel dirt over a newly built concrete air-raid shelter. The prisoners on the detail were given picks and short-handled shovels and placed under the supervision of an American sergeant. Wally and Chuck worked together. Chuck would grub a little with his pick and loosen some dirt, and then Wally would scoop it up and drop it into the hole. The men were so weak that the work was draining, but the sergeant told the crew, “Look, you guys, just do what you can. I’ll keep my eye out for Japs. I’ll give you the high sign if I see someone coming.”

  By afternoon the men were hardly moving, all of them so depleted they could barely manage to stay on their feet. Chuck and Wally knew better than to sit down, but they were both leaning on their digging tools and looking toward the ground when they suddenly heard a loud voice: “Ki wo tsuke!”

  Chuck and Wally brought themselves straight, stood at attention. Wally wondered what had happened. Why hadn’t the sergeant warned them? He and Chuck were in big trouble.

  But it was worse than Wally had imagined. The man who stood before them, still at a distance, was the Japanese camp commander. Hisitake was his name. He was a short man who strutted about in his fancy officer’s uniform with a two-fisted sword strapped to his side. The sword was so long it actually dragged on the ground as he walked, but he seemed unaware of the humor that the prisoners saw in that. He was a serious, brutal man who had shown many times that he could take the life of a prisoner without a second thought.

  “Nan no?” he demanded.

  Wally knew the meaning of this: “What are you doing?” And so he tried to explain. With motions, and mostly with English words, he tried to say that he and Chuck had been sick, and that they were near collapse now.

  It was not hard to see that the little commander wasn’t satisfied. He stared at Wally, his eyes intense and hateful, then at Chuck. Finally, he ordered both of them to come to him.

  Wally took his shovel, not sure what Hisitake would ask of them. He and Chuck walked forward and stood at attention before the man. The commander reached out and grabbed the shovel away from Wally, and then, without warning, swung it directly at Wally’s head. Wally ducked away automatically. He escaped the edge of the blade that would have slashed his face, but the flat side of the shovel struck him across his head and sent a flash of pain through his skull.

  Wally went down, but he tried to get back up. As he did, he caught the back of the shovel over the top of his head. He dropped onto his face, and now Commander Hisitake used this chance to slam him again and again, hitting him on the shoulders and back. Wally rolled up as best he could and took the beating. Over and over, the shovel struck him, the blows sending jolts of pain through his body. But Wally fought to stay conscious even though his brain wanted the escape.

  Eventually the rain of blows slowed. The commander was breathing hard by then, grunting, and maybe it was that, his own weariness, that finally stopped him.

  Wally felt pain everywhere, but worst in the small of his back. He wondered whether his spine might be broken.

  But the commander was telling him to get up, so Wally struggl
ed to his feet. He stood as straight as he could, trembling, panting. He glanced at Chuck, who nodded, surely to say, “Hang on, Wally.”

  “Come with me,” Hisitake said in English, and he walked toward the guard house. Wally knew the commander’s talent for creative torture, and he knew that something horrible was coming. Sometimes the man had used electrical shock. Maybe that’s what was coming now.

  The commander called two guards outside. He told a rather involved story, in Japanese. Wally understood his claim that he and Chuck had refused to work. That was outrageous, of course, but Wally knew better than to say anything.

  The three Japanese men talked and Wally couldn’t follow what they were saying, but one of the guards finally walked away, and when he returned he was carrying two rough bamboo poles. Wally tried to think what those might be for.

  The guards placed the poles on the ground, parallel to each other, about a foot apart. “Get down!” one of the guards commanded, and now Wally got the picture. He and Chuck were forced to kneel on one of the poles, with the other one under their shins. Then the guards stood on Chuck and Wally’s feet to press their bones down hard onto the poles. Sweat broke out on Wally’s face immediately. The pain was intense in his knees and shins, and it was already shooting up his legs. It was hard not to resist, but he knew that would be an invitation for further beatings, and maybe his death.

  After a minute or two the guards stepped away, but there was no escaping the full weight of their own bodies, pressing their legs against the rough, hard bamboo. As each minute passed, the pain only increased, and Wally knew that the guards would push this torture to some limit of pain—and then beyond. And with that realization came the crucial question: How long could he hold out?