by Oakley Hall
A thin sun was coming through the high fog, glistening on the cobblestones. Sometimes the helmet moved, looking to one side, but it never turned back toward us. The German helmet wasn’t all that different from the GI, but you immediately knew it.
“Better recon first,” Rosy Rosenquist said.
I’d just as soon somebody else did any shooting, and Pappy knew that. He was looking pissed off, with his eyes jerking toward the window and back to me.
“Go shoot him yourself if you want him shot so much,” I said. Tallboy had left the machine pistol on the table. Rosy and I had M-1s, Pappy a carbine. I drank some beer for my dry mouth.
“Take him prisoner,” Ned said.
“What the fuck are we going to do with a prisoner?” Pappy said.
“Geneva Convention.”
“Fuck the Geneva Convention!” Pappy leaned forward over the table, glowering and scratching his whiskered chin with a thumb. “Little moral dilemma, Pat? We don’t shoot the sonofabitch and he hides out and snipes one of us. Where’s your moral dilemma then?”
“Yeah,” Rosy said. “And you shoot him and there’s a fucking regiment just over the hill there and they come out and wipe us all out, where’s your dilemma then?”
We watched the helmet through the streaky panes of glass of the alcove window. Sometimes he would turn to look upstream, then downstream, but mostly he just looked straight ahead.
“I’ll do it,” Selden Orcutt said. He took his wire-frame glasses out of his breast pocket and fitted them onto his face.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
I checked the clip on the M-1 and went outside. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and there was a glare off the damp cobbles. I moved along the side of the buildings until I had a clear view of the Jerry’s helmet and back. I wasn’t going to shoot him in the back, and I’d probably only have a second or two before he put up his hands.
“Achtung!” I yelled, the cold metal of the rifle breech against my cheek, and the front sight fixed on him.
The helmet turned toward me, framing a slice of white face. He rose, a boy in a gray shirt with white knees showing between his long stockings and short pants, wearing a German helmet. He was holding a fishing pole. He dropped it and raised both hands above the helmet.
I lowered the rifle and waved a dismissing hand at him. He stared back at me, slowly lowering his hands. I turned to see the faces crowding the window of the little café-bar underneath the wooden sign. Off to the west I could hear the low approaching roar of the heavy machinery of the 11th Armored.
* * *
From that nameless burg we headed on east. It was a long time before any mail caught up with us, a month-old cool and cheery letter from Bonny, Barbara, with her Stanford PO Box address. She was in med school.
“The teaching docs are all Johnny Pierce fascists,” she complained. “and the male students treat Gloria and me like enemies.” Gloria Nixon was the only other girl in her class. “They insult us all the time! They say we get better grades because the teaching docs hope to seduce us, and after our education we’ll just quit medicine and have babies. I’d heard it was like this, but I didn’t believe it. The men students are jerks, some of them are just stupid. One of them called me a San Diego bitch! The teaching docs are letches. I see how they make the girl students drop out.
“Where are you now?” she asked. “Can you tell?”
3
Late in November, we came into a settlement in the forest where a barn was burning. There was a terrific din of bellowing cattle in that barn that must’ve been hit by phosphorous shells. Fred Eichorn and I hustled inside, and I didn’t think until we got into the shadows there that it might’ve been a trap. It wasn’t a trap. There were about thirty cattle stalled inside, and they were on fire, too, for flaming timbers and hay dropped down from the roof and the haylofts, and the cattle pitched and bellowed in their stalls with their backs on fire, and at the same time they jerked hay from the trough and munched away.
“Christ almighty!” Fred Eichorn said, who was a farm boy.
He and I went crazy in that barn, shooting the burning cows and fighting off the burning hay that pitched down on us, in a terrific hurry before the whole roof fell in. I tried to fire just one round into an animal’s head, but Fred went wild with his Kraut machine pistol. The bellowing got thinner but more hysterical, and chunks of wood and burning hay fell on us, with Fred hoarsely shouting. I had to reload and then jump at Fred to knock a big bunch of flaming hay off his back, switching and cutting around firing like western heroes gunning down bad guys in a hostile town, killing flaming cows. I remember that at the same time I was killing cattle I was trying to recall as if for some midterm exam who it was in mythology—was it Cuchulain?—who had gone mad killing cattle thinking he was killing his enemies.
The closest I came to cracking up in the war was killing flaming cows in a barn somewhere in Luxembourg.
4
It was the first clear November day for a week, sunny and cold, and already we could hear the planes out, bombers coming over high and once a P-51 whacking low across the clearing where we were, with that climax of sound like the sky falling in. There was a collection of stone buildings, chimneys with some smoke, pigstys and a cow in a yard, a cat sunning itself on a porch. Three of us gathered in the sun in a little yard enclosed by a fence of weathered palings, appreciating the warmth. A girl of about ten in a schoolgirl outfit came outside and shyly greeted us. She was delicately pretty with pale blue eyes and almost translucent skin, and fair hair in tight little braids on either side of her head. Tallboy gave her a Hershey bar, and I pulled at one of her braids while she grinned sunnily up at me showing pink gums, and there were dankes and bittes.
We drifted on up toward tree line on the ridge, Tallboy with the Schmeisser, Ned with the BAR, and me with my M-1. We were on a patrol to make contact with Jerries and maybe not as regimental as we should have been. There was always the chance of the “million-dollar wound” which would take you home or at least out of the line without too much damage done.
Halfway up the hillside we sprawled out behind a down timber for a break. Tallboy, the last one standing, gave a “Psst!” and ducked down with the rest of us. A patrol of Krauts was coming up the clearing, maybe twelve of them slouching along together, not in any kind of order but more like a mob. The sun glinted on their helmets like so many black toadstools.
We crouched behind the down timbers watching this bunch as they halted by the little yard which we had just left, and the schoolgirl came outside to be made over by Krauts, who could speak her language at least but who probably didn’t have any candy bars because things were getting very tough for Germans. It was an innocent scene of soldiers making over a pretty little girl in a sunny farmyard setting
There was flinching and ducking as another Mustang came over low with the disintegrating splintering of sound.
The schoolgirl looked up toward where we were, then she pointed, and we could see the faces of the Jerries like pale triangles under their helmets fixing on us.
I braced my M-1 over the log, whispered, “Shit!” and fired at the man who looked like the officer. Next to me Tallboy let loose with the Schmeisser like a deafening zipper punctuated by the timed whack-whack-whack of Ned’s BAR. The Krauts went down like blocked defensive backs in some crazy football game, with shouts and screams and a few shots coming back. We wiped them out.
The schoolgirl lay facedown with her jacket turned to a bloody rag. I was afraid Tallboy was going to say something about his Hershey bar, but he didn’t.
5
This was another farmhouse in an Ardennes clearing, stone like all of them, square, two-story, with a pig yard to one side and a stack of firewood on the other covered by a sheet of tar paper held down with stones. The firing off to the north sounded like the surf at Mission Beach, except that the individual sounds were more distinct: the cloth rip of a German machine gun, the flat whacks of artillery.
I st
ood in the shadow line of the pines, watching the house. A little smoke penciled up from the chimney. To my right Tallboy hunched on one knee behind a tree, the Schmeisser in his hands. Farther along was Rosy, his helmet like a brown potato. Ned was in the house. What was keeping him?
I knew what was keeping him. M-1 at the ready, I started down the slope. My boots crackled on a skim of ice. A trodden path picked up pretty soon, and I followed along six feet to one side of it. A big white pig watched between the bars of his pen. The door had an old-fashioned farm latch, and I thumbed it and threw the door open.
An old couple stood facing me, the woman with her hands in her apron, the man with his hands ready to rise if I said so. They both wore black clothing, muddy boots. Behind them was a green tile stove with a stovepipe.
“Where is he?” I said.
The man pointed to the stairs. I went on up, keeping my tread quiet. I could hear the bed. I pushed another door open. Ned’s helmet was on the floor; his BAR leaned against the bedstead.
His pants were pulled down to show his white buttocks. One of her legs stretched off the bed, shoe half off, her arm over her face. His white butt worked up and down. He screamed when I whacked his tailbone with the butt of the rifle.
He tumbled off the bed pulling at his pants, his mouth open all over his face. The woman scrambled into a fetal position. She was not young, skinny, gray streaks in her hair.
“You shit,” I said.
“Jesus, that hurt!”
“It’s going to hurt when they shoot you.”
“What the fuck’re you talking about?” He scrambled to his feet, pulling his pants up over his swollen dick. I pointed the M-1 at him.
“You raped that girl back at l’Haute,” I said.
“I didn’t rape her! I gave her three packs of cigs!”
“You fucking rapist,” I said. I could keep my voice level if I set my mind against it shaking.
The woman on the bed never moved, tucked into a bundle of black skirt and white blouse. One eye regarded me.
“Listen, Pat, for Christ sake—”
“Let’s go,” I said. I pushed the muzzle of the M-1 into his gut. His mouth ribboned all over his face again.
“Christ, Pat!”
“Put on your helmet.”
He bent to pick it up. I took his BAR.
“Well, gimme my BAR!”
“You’re under arrest.”
“You can’t arrest me!”
“We’re going to act like it, though. Get going.”
“Well, fuck you!” he said, and moved ahead faster than I liked. I cranked a round into the chamber, and he stopped. His whiskered, big-mouth face peered back at me.
“Just move along.”
He slammed his boots going down the stairs. The old couple stared at us, standing his shoulder against hers. The man said something, cleared his throat and spoke louder, thanks or recriminations.
I marched Ned outside.
“You read that directive,” I said. “They’re going to shoot your dick off. That girl in l’Haute wasn’t sixteen, and this—”
“These fuckers are Germans, for Christ sake, Pat!”
“What difference does that make? Anyway, they’re Luxembourgers. They just speak German.”
“You righteous bastard!”
I held the M-1 aimed at his crotch, wondering what I was going to do with him. We were supposed to be moving ahead to make contact all along this line.
Tallboy was loping down the slope toward us, with Rosy slanting over toward him and the two new guys, all of us whiskered and cold, all of us hating Germans.
“What’re you going to do with him, Pat?” Tallboy said. His breath smoked. One of the repos, Roper, lit a cigaret and squinted at Ned.
“At it again, Ned?” Rosy said.
“Fuck you!” Ned said.
“Rosy’s going to take him back to Battalion and they’re going to court-martial him and shoot him,” I said.
“Cut it out, now, Pat!”
The 88 rounds hit like the end of the world. Everybody ducked and shouted with that expulsion of breath from shock. The pig was screaming. Smoke drifted down the slope toward us.
Down on one knee with my shoulders hunched, I kept my M-1 pointed at Ned Macklin. He tried to stare me down with his red-rimmed eyes in his white face. Rosy and Tallboy got to their feet. The two repos had backed up against the wall of the house, rifles at port. The pig kept screaming.
“Take him back to Battalion,” I said to Rosy. “Shoot him if he tries to fuck with you.”
“Okay, Pat,” Rosy said. He showed Ned his M-1. “Git along li’l dogie,” he said.
Battalion HQ was about four miles back.
Ned and Rosy were halfway up the slope to the woods when another couple of rounds came in. I saw Ned’s helmet fly off, and he went down with his arms stretched out before him like he was diving into a pool. Rosy had flattened himself on the frozen ground.
I ran heavy-legged up the hill to them. “Okay?” I said to Rosy.
He raised himself in a push-up. “Guess so.”
The top of Ned’s head had come off with his helmet. His brains looked like the pink and gray halves of a walnut. I sat down beside his body. Rosy took one look and then went back down the hill to where the repos waited, in the sunny spot in front of the house. They stared up at me when I got up to take Ned’s dog tags off their cord around his neck.
6
“Tell me what happened, Sergeant,” Major Dickhead said. I stood at attention. He sat at a table with a scarred wooden top in a big room at the hôtel de ville. His jeep, with its white star, was in the room past him, like his horse stalled there. He had a big, pale face, MacArthur combover hair on a bald head, and fat hands lying on stacks of papers on the table. There was always that distant racket of firing up to the northeast.
I told him what had happened.
“So you took time out from your mission to arrest this soldier for rape.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you say the rape was more important than the mission?”
I didn’t answer.
He smoothed a hand back over his bald head. “I am asking, Sergeant, if you considered the rape more important than the mission to which your unit was assigned.”
“What do you want me to say, sir?”
I remembered Lois telling me that I would have been the best driver Perry’s had ever had if I had just put Perry’s business ahead of my own.
He showed me his lower teeth. “I want you to tell me, Sergeant, whether you considered—the—rape—more—important—”
Fuck this. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I guess you can say I did.”
He leaned back in his chair with a sigh, took a pack of Old Golds from his breast pocket, tapped it against a finger, withdrew a cigaret, and lit it with his Zippo. He didn’t offer me one.
“Very well, Sergeant, I consider you culpable in this situation. Your mission was your mission.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“Are you being impertinent, Sergeant?”
“I hope not, sir.”
“Rape is an unfortunate concomitant of war, Sergeant. So are many other tragedies. Our mission is to get the war over with.”
“Yes, sir, but it is this kind of thing I have assumed we are fighting against.”
“Ah, it is a philosophical sergeant. I don’t believe there is room in the TO for philosophical sergeants, soldier.” He grinned at me, showing bad teeth, and I had the first sense that I might be losing my stripes.
“There was a directive, sir—” I started.
“I do not wish to hear of directives, Sergeant.”
“Very good, sir.”
Major Dickhead blew smoke. “Sergeant, I feel I am encountering a degree of stubbornness. I am trying to impress you with your error. It was not the time to arrest Corporal Macklin. It might be said that you are responsible for his death. Could not the arrest have waited until after the action?”
�
��Well, sir, all I can say is I didn’t think so at the time.”
“Do you think so now?”
“No, sir. When I entered the room he was raping the woman. I believed I was doing the right thing.”
“And you still do?”
“Well, sir, I considered shooting him. I thought arresting him was the better course.”
“Jesus Christ, Sergeant, that would have been murder!”
“Yes, sir.” Many tragedies happen in war. At least I had the sense not to say it. It was as though I were coming off a drunk, suddenly sober and aware of screwing myself.
I said, “Sir, I came upon him raping her. He’d done the same thing to a young girl in l’Haute. I won’t mention the directive again, sir. But I disapprove of rape.”
He stared at me hard-faced. “I guess we are in a Mexican stand-off, Sergeant. And I have the rank to dissolve it. I want you to admit you made the wrong decision.”
“No, sir.”
“Very well, Sergeant, you give me no option. You are busted back to PFC. Now get out of here.”
I saluted and left. Outside I stood taking in deep gulps of cold air. A couple of halftracks rattled past. A trio of planes hurtled over. I remembered Errol Flynn, grinning, jaw-jutted, saying, “Fuck ’em all, I say!”
At Fort Jackass we had prepared for a parade for a visiting major general, all equipment and clothing cleaned, pressed, spotless; heavy doses of close order drill. The general, when he came, was in a hurry, so we were ordered to run past him.
It was a defining moment for me. I had assumed that, like my father before me, I would somehow be commissioned in the process of the war. After the parade at Fort Jackass I no longer wished to be an officer because I disliked the whole corps of them as carrying along a principle of bullying and abuse. I hated the process of the more powerful bending the less powerful to their will. It was what I had supposed the war to be against, Hitler being the ultimate example of this power over powerlessness. But Allied forces had seized upon the excuse of having to defeat Hitler as their own means to the power of the stronger over the weaker. It was the Allied enlisted man in Europe who was being abused in the process. The generals never went anywhere near the front, unless it was to have their photographs made for newspapers, in effect astride their white horses with sabers pointed at the foe. Major Dickhead kept a careful couple of miles between himself and any action, so he had no idea what the dogfaced boys were going through up on the line, and Captain Shitface was only about a mile better, and was drunk a good part of the time to boot. Lieutenant Smith had been a decent soldier-caring officer until he cracked up.
