Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “I’ll watch it,” Willie said, feeling light headed.

  The lieutenant led him out to the company street. Willie looked about in awe. This wasn’t a GI company street. There was a wide expanse of bright green grass that looked cool and fresh. Flanking this wide avenue were barracks, but they weren’t GI either. The barracks were made of glass brick that caught the soft sun in thousands of sparkling lights.

  Outside the orderly room door a lanky, wide-shouldered sergeant was lying in the sun. He had an arm flung over his face and was snoring peacefully.

  “Hey, Mac!” the lieutenant called. “Wake up a minute.”

  The sergeant woke slowly; he took his arm away from his face and blinked his eyes and then rolled on his side.

  “What’s up, Pete?” he asked lazily.

  The lieutenant nodded at Willie. “This guy got sent to us by mistake. How about taking care of him until I get it straightened out?”

  Mac got to his feet and grinned at Willie. “Sure,” he said. He stuck out a big hard hand. “Glad to know you. My name’s Mac.”

  “I’m Willie Weston,” Willie said.

  He swallowed hard when he saw the decorations Mac was wearing on the left breast of his khaki shirt. There was an ETO ribbon with seven battle stars; a Purple Heart; the bright red and white of a Silver Star; a DSC with an Oak Leaf cluster. Above these was a blue ribbon with seven small stars arranged in a double triangle formation. The Medal of Honor!

  Mac was homely. He had a red, angular face and twinkling gray eyes. His hair was black and rumpled and he needed a shave. He didn’t stand the way a soldier should, Willie thought. His shoulders slumped, one leg was bent at the knee and there were two buttons off his shirt. But there was something relaxed and quiet about him that gave the impression that he could move in a hurry if he cared to.

  “I’ll take you over to the barracks, Willie,” Mac said. “You can meet some of the guys and get in a little sacktime if you want to.”

  Pete, the lieutenant, smiled at Willie, then slapped him on the shoulder.

  “I’ll get you straightened out on orders,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Willie said. He hesitated awkwardly, then said; “I couldn’t just stay here, I suppose?”

  “I’m afraid not, soldier,” Pete said in a kind voice. “You see this is a combat outfit.”

  “I—I see,” Willie said.

  HE SMILED uncertainly at Pete, then followed Mac across the company street to the first barracks.

  “How’d you happen to get here, anyway?” Mac said.

  “Well, it was sort of a mistake,” Willie explained. “They made a mistake on the orders in my outfit. But I got—well I got it before the orders could be changed.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” Mac said. “You’ll get assigned to a training company. That’s a snap up here. No hikes, no inspections, two or three day passes every week. Quite a deal.”

  Willie stole a sidelong glance at Mac’s decorations. “These training outfits are made up of guys like me aren’t they?”

  “How’d you mean?”

  “Well, guys who never were in combat.”

  “That’s right.”

  Willie sighed and his heart felt heavy. He shot another look at Mac’s ribbons. He wanted to know about how those had been earned; but he had enough sense not to ask.

  Mac led him into a large barracks where a dozen men were sprawled about on comfortable cots. Mac put his hand on Willie’s shoulder and said, “This here is a new arrival, men. He’s just come over from that new army.” There was a good natured laugh from the men.

  “But he’s going to be with us for a while until he gets assigned to his regular outfit. His name is Willie Weston.” The men said hello and some of them came over and shook Willie’s hand. He saw more Silver Stars; more DSC’s; and two more Medals of Honor. Also some of the men wore shoulder loops from Belgium, Holland and France.

  Mac took him then to a bunk at the end of the barracks. “You can use this today,” he said. “Mine’s right next to it. So if you want anything I’ll be handy.”

  He looked Willie over carefully and then shook his head.

  “One thing. We’re having an inspection in about ten minutes. So you better get fixed up.”

  “Gosh,” Willie said. He didn’t need a shave, he knew; he never did. But he knew he wasn’t in shape for an inspection. He looked down the barracks and saw that most of the men needed shaves and were wearing uniforms that were clean, but wrinkled and frayed. There were cigarette butts on the floor and magazines scattered around carelessly.

  “What should I do?” he asked Mac.

  “First, better take off that tie,” Mac said. “Then pull your trousers out of them boots and let ’em sort of hang around your ankles. You could muss your hair up a little but that ain’t strictly necessary.”

  Willie stared hard at Mac to see if he was kidding; but Mac’s long angular face was quite earnest.

  “What kind of an inspection is it?” Willie said, flabbergasted.

  “Regular Saturday morning inspection.” He smiled then at Willie’s expression. “But it’s a little different, you see.”

  “I guess it is,” Willie said weakly.

  He took off his tie and pulled his neatly creased trousers free from the top of his boots. Then he unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirts and the buttons on his shirt pockets.

  “That’s a lot better,” Mac said approvingly.

  A few minutes later Pete, the lieutenant Willie had met in the orderly room, came into the barracks. He talked to a few men and then came down to Willie.

  “I’ll have you straightened out by tonight,” he said. “Everything going okay?”

  “Yes, everything’s going fine,” Willie said.

  Pete chatted with him for a while and then left the barracks, after promising to get in touch as soon as anything definite developed on the orders.

  “You can put your tie back on,” Mac grinned. “That is if it makes you more comfortable.”

  “Was that the inspection?” Willie cried.

  “Well, it’s not really an inspection,” Mac said. “We just like to clown around that way. Sort of remind us how lucky we are now. Some of the guys go for days without shaving just to look like hell for the Saturday morning inspection. Makes ’em feel real good, I guess.”

  Chow call sounded a little later. Mac took him to the mess hall which was unlike anything Willie had seen in the army. There was no standing in line, no waiting. They went into a comfortable room with small tables and sat down to eat. Music came from somewhere and the tunes were things like the Artillery Song and the Beer Barrel Polka.

  After eating they went back to the barracks and stretched out on their cots.

  Mac lit a cigarette and blew smoke toward the ceiling.

  “This is really the nice time of day here,” he said.

  Through the windows Willie saw it was getting darker. From somewhere came the faint music of To The Colors; and a cannon boomed far away. Willie noticed that the men in the barracks were quiet now. They smoked cigarettes and listened to the retreat music with little smiles on their lips.

  When the echoes of the cannon faded into the swiftly darkening night Mac grinned sideways at him. “This is how we stand retreat,” he said. “It’s just as respectful I guess as any other way and it seems more peaceful.”

  When it was dark the men strolled out to the back of the barracks.

  Mac looked at Willie. “Want to go outside? It’s nice out there now.”

  WILLIE went out with Mac into the moon-lighted area behind the barracks. Someone had built a small fire. Men squatted about the fire talking; an occasional cigarette flared in the darkness. Above the moon was peaceful in a black sky. Beyond was a fringe of trees silhouetted vaguely against the shadowy horizon. A soft cool wind was blowing and it was just enough to make the fire comfortable.

  Mac sat down at the edge of the group and Willie squatted beside him. The men were talking now, their
voices a quiet murmuring against the crackle of the fire.

  Willie looked around at their faces highlighted in pale relief by the leaping flames. The faces were wistful; the conversation was running to battles that had been fought long ago. They were old soldiers now, squatting about an immemorial campfire, reliving campaigns that existed only in their memories.

  The talk swung to Kasserine Pass. A man who had seen his regiment’s colors captured by Germans told the story, half in bitterness, half in amusement. There was a quiet chuckle from a boyish looking soldier on his right. The young soldier wore decorations that many three star Generals would envy. He looked about nineteen.

  He mentioned Anzio.

  “We dug in, remember?” he said.

  There was a general murmur of remembrance, that had in it a note of weary scorn.

  “We took three days to dig in,” the youngster said, smiling a little now. “Nobody knew Jerry was sitting up on the hills watching us, had every square foot of the beach zeroed in with eighty-eight’s. When we got set nice and snug, with latrines dug, fox holes all set and supply troops coming in to look for souvenirs, then Jerry let go. Those gunners didn’t have much of a job. All they had to do was pull the lanyards and re-load.” He chuckled a little. “Some time.”

  There was a footnote to Salerno. Another to Omaha Beach, the code name for the Yank beach at Cherbourg.

  “How about that Colonel?” somebody laughed. “He said, ‘Don’t stand around here on the beach and die. Go in a few miles—then die’.”

  Willie listened to their stories and he felt something stirring in him. He felt sad, but it was such a big sadness that it just didn’t get absorbed. But it hung around him, coming from tired, mocking voices, from sudden grins, from the crackling fire and the moon above in the black sky.

  He heard the story of the breakthrough at St. Lo. There was a commentary on Avranches; another on Paris—before Paris became a rest center. These stories weren’t like the ones he’d read in the states. There was no glamor, no romance, no thrilling, pulse-quickening lift in these stories of war told in hard tired voices.

  These weren’t the stories the war correspondents wrote; or the people at home read.

  GI Joe was a hero in those stories. He was a funny little guy who was fighting for hot dogs and baseball. He didn’t mind the cold and the danger as long as there was a hot dog waiting for him when he got home. He was a hero who wasn’t afraid of Nazi artillery.

  “That rotten eighty-eight,” somebody said with a bitter laugh. “I ran into a battery of them during the Bulge. I remember asking my platoon commander what we were supposed to be doing out on a road where we couldn’t turn around while those eighty-eights picked us off. He said, ‘Don’t you want to be a hero?’ I said, ‘Hell no,’ and he said, ‘Neither do I and the reason we’re here getting our heads shot off is that I can’t think of anything better to do’.”

  “I remember,” another voice said, “when our captain told us we were going to get von Rundstedt. He said we were trying to find him so we could offer him a raise and get him on our side.”

  Mac said, unexpectedly, “Hell, it wasn’t that bad and you guys know it.”

  “Maybe not,” the boyish looking soldier said, grinning. “Anyway it doesn’t look so bad now. I guess the thing to do is forget it. It’s over and nobody knows what all the shouting was about.”

  “You’re wrong there, soldier,” a curiously mild voice beside Willie said. The voice was soft but it carried a ring in it that sent a little chill down Willie’s spine. He looked at the speaker but he was squatting in the shadow; he could see only a long tired face and thinning gray hair.

  “THE thing is not to forget it,” the speaker said, and his voice was firm; and the men about the fire looked at him in silence. “It’s over, it’s true, and some people claim it was a waste. They claim we fought the wrong people, that it wasn’t our business, anyway. When a man talks that way I wonder what theatre he served in during the war. Peculiarly enough, it generally develops that he hasn’t served at all. The shouting you mention, soldier, started and got loud because somebody was getting pushed around. They didn’t do the hollering. They weren’t in a position to. We did the hollering because we’re funny people that way. We just don’t like to see people pushed around. So we went to war and because we like to do things right we did a helluva lot of pushing around ourselves. Now it’s over. The thing to remember is that we did a necessary job and we did it damn well. And we’re ready to do it again if we have to.”

  The man stopped talking then and there was silence. He smiled then, and said, “I didn’t mean to monopolize your bull session.”

  Someone said, “That’s all right,” in a quiet voice.

  The man stood up and the firelight flickered over his face and uniform. “I’m going to turn in,” he said, smiling. “Good night, boys.”

  Willie looked at him, revealed in the firelight, and there was a lump in his throat as big as a billiard ball.

  The man was tall and strong looking. There were four rows of ribbons above the left breast pocket of his Ike Jacket; and when he put on his burnished helmet Willie saw four silver stars gleaming across its front.

  He nodded to the men and walked away into the night, and Willie saw the firelight flick across his polished boots and on the handles of pearl handled revolvers which hung at his waist.

  “That’s the boss,” Mac said to Willie. “Pretty good guy.”

  “Why that’s—”

  “Sure it is,” Mac grinned. “He runs the whole show. He can still raise a little hell, too,” he said, thoughtfully.

  Willie felt a tug at his sleeve. It was Pete, the lieutenant from the orderly room. “I got you all set,” he said. “Come on along.”

  Mac looked at him and said, “I’ll come along with you, Willie.”

  They walked across the company street in silence. Willie’s sadness was getting little enough now to feel. He didn’t want to leave here. This wasn’t what he thought the old soldiers were like; but it was what he wanted. He knew he had no right in this company and he tried to straighten his shoulders and swallow the lump in his throat.

  Inside the orderly room a light was burning. Pete picked up a mimeographed order from his desk. “You’re all set now. You report from here to the thirtieth basic training battalion.” Willie nodded and looked miserably at Mac. “T—thanks a lot for showing me around,” he said.

  Mac was leaning against the door. His long angular face was thoughtful. He pushed a strand of black hair from his eyes and said, “You like it here with us, don’t you, kid?”

  “Gosh, yes,” Willie cried.

  Mac looked at Pete. “Couldn’t we do something about that? Seems like we need a recruit. What’s an outfit without a recruit?”

  Pete shook his head. “The orders are pretty definite Mac. There’s just no way around it.”

  “Well,” Mac said stubbornly, “couldn’t we have an Inquiry or something? Maybe we could get the orders changed. The kid likes it here. I don’t see why he can’t stay.”

  “I’ll do anything you want,” Willie said desperately.

  Pete said, “That’s not the point. You’re not a combat man. That’s nothing against you, but this just isn’t your place.”

  “How’d you get it?” Mac demanded of Willie.

  “A grenade got me. It was at a lecture,” Willie said.

  “You see?” Pete said. “At a lecture. There might be some technicality we could use, but getting killed at a lecture is like being run over by a truck on the way to a draft board.”

  “Well, it was a grenade,” Mac said, defensively. “That’s how you got it yourself.”

  “Mine was mortar shrapnel,” Pete said. “Anyway it happened at Salerno which makes a little difference.”

  WILLIE felt grateful to Mac; but he knew there was no chance. The sadness in him was deeper. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, and he tried to smile. “I know I don’t belong here. I guess I wouldn’t have be
en killed at all if I hadn’t been day-dreaming during the lecture. The grenade just rolled over in front of me and was too surprised to do anything. I thought about grabbing the handle and throwing it away, but there wasn’t time. I got excited and jumped on top of it. It was all my fault,” he concluded honestly.

  “You see?” Pete said again. “There’s just no hope.”

  But Mac snapped his fingers. “Listen, kid, you say you were going to pick up the grenade by the handle. What the hell kind of a grenade was it?”

  “I don’t know,” Willie said. “But it was like a tin can with a handle on it.”

  “A potato masher,” Mac said.

  “No, it was a real grenade. I know because it went off.”

  “A potato masher is what we called German grenades,” Mac said patiently. He looked at Pete. “How about that? He got it from a German grenade. That’s the way a lot of guys here got it. And he was trying to save his buddies. Hell, there’s a good case.”

  Pete looked at Willie’s orders again and frowned. “Maybe you got something. I’ll have to send these back. Headquarters here is so snafued that it’ll take months to get ’em straightened out again. Probably it’ll turn out all right.” He grinned suddenly at Willie. “We’ll give it a whirl.”

  Mac grabbed Willie by the arm. “Well what do you say now?” he laughed.

  Willie was too delirious to say anything. He just gulped and he felt the sadness leaving him. Finally he laughed and then Mac slapped him on the shoulder and dragged him out of the orderly room.

  They walked back toward the group at the campfire. Ahead the moon was rising against a black sky; the wind was sharper now and the fire looked warm and inviting.

  From somewhere a long way off a clear bugle sounded Taps mournfully.

  It was always a sad thing for Willie to hear, but now as he walked beside Mac to the soldiers at the fire he felt different about it. It didn’t sound sad at all.

  DOUBLE CROSS IN DOUBLE TIME

  First published in the February 1948 issue of Fantastic Adventures.