A Midnight Clear: A Novel (29 page)

We pull Father Mundy from under the fifty caliber. Mother and I carry him up a slight hill to the edge of a wood overlooking the bridge. Miller and Gordon detach the fifty caliber, haul it up, too. The only thing I can see for us to do is dig in, wait for some light and try to find out what’s happening. We have enough rations for a few days.

After the fifty’s off, we swing back the mount and bend down that wire cutter on the bumper. We shove the jeep as best we can under the bridge. This is a low stone arch and we just clear. We push upstream till it’s tucked away. In the process, we get totally soaked in ice water. We’ve taken off both jerry cans of gasoline. One’s full, the other’s three-quarters empty from the flambeaux.

 

Up under the trees it isn’t snowing so hard. We take turns digging. First we scrape away the snow and leaves, then work our way through the first few inches of frozen ground with our entrenching tools locked at an angle. After that the digging’s easy, dark loamy soil with strings of small roots easily cut. We dig two holes, slit-type trenches, only deeper, with fire steps for sitting at each end. We string our shelter halfs as low lean-tos over the holes. Our fart sacks were in that first jeep down the ravine, so we’re going to be cold.

We use gas from the jerry cans to soak sticks and brush. That way we get small fires going in our helmets in the holes. Mother and I are together in one hole; Gordon and Miller in the other; Father Mundy is behind and between us. Wilkins and I take off our boots and socks, wring out the socks and try drying them over the fires. There’s nothing to be done with our boots. We have a shelter half tucked under us. The top shelter half is stretched so we have a six-inch slit looking down toward the bridge. The smoke goes out the slit but we begin to get warmer. I gnaw on a piece of K lunch cheese and try to forget where we are. Wilkins seems fine, better than I am. The snow’s settling on the shelter half, so, except for the smoke, gray against white, we’re practically invisible from the road.

At about seven-thirty, before it’s even light, but when you can just tell it’ll be light soon, I slip on my damp socks and frozen shoes. I slither out of our slit. Miller hears me and crawls out from the other hole. We have the same thing in mind and discuss how to do it. We’re being very warlike.

We go down to the jeep. Miller unhitches the fifty-caliber mount and together we carry it uphill. Then the two of us, taking turns, dig a hole outside Miller’s slit and set the mount into it, jamming rocks from the streambed around the sides. We haul up an ammo box, lock the fifty into its swivel and feed one end of an ammo belt into the chamber. We’ll probably be surrendering within the hour if things’re bad as we think, but at least we’ve carried through. If anyone can hold that damned gun down while it’s firing and still hit anything, it’s Miller. We go gather more sticks, dip them in the jerry can and scurry back to our holes. We’ve finished playing soldier. I don’t think we exchange more than thirty words through the entire operation, and most of those Father Mundy wouldn’t approve. While we’re down at the jeep, I also pull our 506 from the front seat. I lower it into the hole with Mother.

The sky’s beginning to lighten and it looks as if east is in exactly the opposite direction I thought it would be. From the light, it seems we were driving straight to Berlin before we were intercepted by an edgeless bridge. It’s one bridge game I wish I could replay; not duplicate, replay.

 

I warm up the radio and fool around with different frequencies. All I’m picking up is what sounds like German; there are background tank noises. I get two bands of this, surrounded by static; not very encouraging. I’m wishing Shutzer were here; he might have some idea. This kind of “off the cuff” war is his specialty.

Wilkins and I take turns every fifteen minutes keeping an eye on the road. While I’m sitting up, I try to figure out what day it is, the day of the week and the date. I’m completely confused. What’s the difference? I also try bearing down on what to do next. I know we can’t stay here, and there’s no way to get the jeep going. What do we do with Mundy? We could bury him in one of these slit trenches, like a roll of drawings, but I don’t want to.

It’s almost eight o’clock by Mundy’s watch when we begin hearing sounds. There’s no mistaking the noise of tanks; it’s clanking and metal rumbling, a loud diesel roar like heavy construction machinery. They seem to be coming along the road we’re on; only, according to the sun, they’re headed east. Maybe they’re retreating. Maybe a mob of GIs will come charging behind them, cavalry chasing the red-skins back to the reservation. Then we see the real thing!

These are Mark V panthers, with German infantry in black hanging on to the back and top! Automatically I count; eighteen tanks, nine weapons carriers. Our fifty caliber looks like a peashooter. I only hope to hell they don’t see the jeep, our tracks or the fifty. Thank God they’re going so fast. Please, Miller, don’t do it! When they’re past and the rattling, ear-pounding din dies down, I look over at Miller and Gordon in the other hole. Bud’s behind the fifty; Mel, closer to me, beside him, looks across.

“Did you see those uniforms, those markings. That was honest-to-shit SS!”

Wilkins’s face is’s white, drained as I know mine must be. God, they looked so hard, so professional, so unbeatable.

“What do you think we should do, Wont? What’ll we do?”

“One thing I know, Mother. We’ll stay’s far away as possible from that bunch; they’re
not
the ones we’re looking for.”

“There really were white skulls and crossbones painted on the sides of the tanks. Did you see that?”

“I saw it, Mother. I saw it. Maybe they’re only trying to scare us, but it worked. I’m scared! Anybody have any ideas?”

The silence is sure and deep as the snow in front of us. There’s nothing we can do but burrow deeper. I lower myself into the hole and drop enough gasoline-soaked sticks into my helmet to keep a fire going. It’s time to think. If there’s any wartime use for a creative-artistic-type imagination, this must be it.

 

Half an hour later I go down to the jeep again. It’s definitely light now. East is still in the wrong direction. I find the whitening. I drag up the camouflage suits. I wonder what the squad will think; maybe this will convince them I’m over the edge. We’ll have a mutiny. I’ll join it. But I can’t think of anything else. I signal Mother to come with me and we climb into Miller and Gordon’s hole. I explain my idea as best I can. There’s something of plotting a trick chess strategy about it: the “play dead” opening. I finish and wait.

“How about the radio?”

“Bury it.”

“And the fifty caliber?”

“Bury it.”

“Bury the rifles, too?”

“No other way.”

Gordon, as usual, asks the hard one.

“If we actually pull this off and get back, what’re we going to say?”

“We were captured. They took our weapons. We escaped. They’ll have to send us back and clear us then; a few days of luxury. But we stick to our story. I’m betting things are so confused nobody will ask anybody any questions anyway.”

Wilkins looks at me as if I’m past all understanding.

“Holy cow!”

“As I said, we do this together or nothing. There’s no other way. If anybody has any objections, any at all, you don’t have to explain; just speak up now.”

There’s a long silence. It takes some thinking. It’s so typically ASTPR it stinks even worse than the German capture deal. Miller’s first.

“I’m for it.”

Gordon looks at him, at me.

“Me too. The whole idea’s so wild I’d be sorry the rest of my life if we didn’t try it. Then again, the rest of my life might just be today.”

I turn to Wilkins. He’s in a terrible spot.

“Don’t let us pressure you, Mother. Make up your own mind.”

“Oh, I’ve already done that. I was only waiting for the other guys so I wouldn’t be putting pressure on them. This could be the deepest finesse in squad history.”

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.