In War Times (31 page)

“You’re Perler’s daughter?”

She said nothing.

“He’s been working with us on the telephone system.”

She nodded, seemed to relax a bit.

“Have you seen him?”

She shook her head. “Gone,” she said.

“Where?”

“My English—”

“Cut the crap!”

She lifted her eyebrows and raised both hands. “Would you like to buy an aspirin, sir?”

“Would you like to meet my commander?”

The bluff worked. A brief look of fright crossed her face.

“Tell me. Now!”

She gestured. “East. His…brother. Berlin.”

Beyond their grasp. There was no way to find one person in the morass of Germany, where everything was shattered. The little store seemed airless, and Sam’s feeling of loss was odd, profound. The colors of the things on the shelves became intense, and he was drawn into their brightness, the glittering bit of evening sunlight on the bottle of alcohol…

“Sir!
Ami
!” The sting of ammonia cut like a knife through his skull.

He coughed, pushed away her hand, and returned from wherever he had been. The small, dark store enclosed him, except that the low evening sun that came through the open doorway now illuminated the stolid face of Perler’s daughter. On the wooden counter between them lay a broken ammonia capsule.

“Okay?” she asked, her voice anxious.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “How much?”

She looked puzzled.

“For the smelling salts.” He gestured.

She shook her head. “
Nien
.”

He got out a pack of Pall Malls, set them on her counter, and left.

Near the end of July, their German idyll was drawing to a close.

The
biergarten
was by now a true garden, suffused with blossoms. Blue-flowering vines covered the back wall, illuminated by colored lights swaying in the night breeze.

Lise and Karl had grown especially attached to Sam. Lise haunted the
biergarten
, sitting in the shadows in the evenings. Occasionally, when Rafferty played a German song on his accordion, she broke out in a smile and forgot herself, danced, or sang along. But her world was gone, and so far there was little to take its place. There were thousands of children like her in Europe. Most were not lucky enough to know who their parents were, and most of the parents were dead, anyway. The children were settled in displaced persons’ camps. Lise, at least, lived with her cousin, near the house in which she’d grown up. The GI’s became her new family; they were her pals; she was their adopted child.

When their orders came to leave, Sam was most concerned for Lise. He left her a huge stock of cigarettes—money was of little use—and his parents’ address. He took her photo, standing straight in the street in front of the town house, and took pictures of all the children, of the
biergarten
, of the strange and golden time between when war was over and they need no longer fight and the time when the stark numbers prefiguring starvation became overwhelming and the work of rebuilding Europe began.

But the 610th was not out of the war. They were just moving to the Pacific. They were to load up all of their equipment, head back to Camp Lucky Strike, and wait for a boat at Le Havre. Once back in the United States, they were each entitled to two weeks’ leave, after which they were to set up ordnance shops on LST’s—Landing Ships, Tank—in San Francisco and sail west to supply the troops fighting Japan.

It was an emotional time. Most of the men had girlfriends, to whom they bade farewell. They had a huge party with all of the Germans.

On the morning of their departure, Sam stood in the vacant
biergarten
. It felt like a crossroad, a place where the past and future had come together, where something good had been created from ruins.

It was the place where Bette had appeared, in her red dress, and asked for a drink.

He heard a rustle behind him and turned. It was Lise. She stood at one corner of the bar.

“Goodbye, Lise,” he said. He took a step toward her, but still shy, she turned and ran.

He went to a rose bush he had carefully rejuvenated, got his knife from his pocket, and cut a long stem for her. Glossy, dark green leaves framed the perfect rose. He wrapped the thorny stem in his handkerchief and set it on the bar. “This is for you, Lise,” he said.

When their caravan was finally ready, the townsfolk turned out, crying and waving. As they drove off, he finally saw Lise, running alongside, holding her rose up. “
Auf Wiedersehen
, Mr. Sam,” she shouted. “
Auf Wiedersehen
!”

“Goodbye, Lise,” he yelled in return. “
Auf Wiedersehen
.”

We will meet again.

The caravan turned, and they were on the road to France.

The following day, it rained. The heavy trucks slid down slick hills, and the soldiers were drenched and chilled.

Around two in the afternoon, when they had stopped for a brief rest, a colonel drove up in a command car, driven by a private. “Winklemeyer and Dance?”

Dirty and tired, Sam asked with some apprehension, “What?”

“Orders. I’m to take you to the nearest base and get you on the first plane to the States.”

“Guess this shoots our leave,” said Sam, after he and Wink read their orders. “Look. What’s that at the bottom. Isn’t it Hadntz’s writing?” They had seen enough of it.

T
AKE IT WITH YOU
, the familiar scribble read.

S
EEMS LIKE THIS
is building up to something,” remarked Wink as they stood on the tarmac in Le Havre. It was around midnight, and supposedly a plane that would take them to the States was due to land any moment.

“No kidding,” said Sam. “I wish I didn’t have to carry everything I own on my back while it happens.” His own duffel was perhaps overly full of books. They had shipped anything worth shipping home from Germany, keeping with them only what they needed. “Where do you think we’re going?”

“To a nice warm interrogation booth in Washington.”

Once on the plane, they zipped up their jackets, pushed their duffels against the skin of the plane, and slept on the floor all the way to Washington, D.C.

Upon arrival they were handed new orders by a bored sergeant and transferred almost immediately to an outgoing plane.

“The Pacific,” said Wink, as they read their papers. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“We’re the advance guard for Company C, maybe. While they get to party for two weeks and see their girls, we’ve got to get the setup plans ready. Think that’s it?”

“Maybe,” said Wink. “But then, why the message from Hadntz on the first orders?”

None of the planes they boarded were designed for comfort. Sam and Wink slept on lumpy mail sacks, rope hammocks, and cold steel floors, and were gradually transported to Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu.

They had flown all night from San Francisco. Sam asked permission to crouch next to the pilot’s seat so that he could watch dawn tinge the horizon and grow into day. His heart felt too large for his body as he looked down on a series of intensely green islands set in an intensely blue sea. “That’s Oahu,” said the copilot. “There’s Pearl.”

“Where’s Kaena Point?”

The copilot pointed to a spit of land pointing northward. Keenan had driven out there, one day shortly before he had died.

Sam didn’t have to be told where Pearl Harbor was. It was a blue bite taken from lush green land, filled with toy-sized ships, crowded with roads and buildings, the place where Keenan had died. Where Keenan still was, trapped on the
Arizona
. The water was so clear that he could see the sunken battleships—long, gray ghosts. For a moment before the plane turned and the rising sun seared his eyes, Sam thought he could see shattered parts of the ships scattered across the floor of the bay. He bowed his head, and held on tight as they landed smoothly and braked hard.

They were instructed to wait in a large, open hangar on wooden chairs near the desk of a bored private whose main function was to guard them. He read a comic book while tilted back in his chair with his feet on the desk.

“Is it possible for me to go over to Pearl Harbor for just a short time?” asked Sam.

“Hell, no,” said the private, without looking up.

Rage and frustration boiled up in Sam.

“What kind of a deal is this?” Wink demanded. They were, somewhat oddly, rather tired, considering that their only responsibilities for the past two days in the air had been to sleep, read, and survive the drone of the propellers. Wink gestured toward the hangar’s opening. “Isn’t that the Aloha Tower?”

“It’s out there somewhere.”

“Well, it couldn’t take more than a few minutes to run us down there. I hear they’ve got great bars in Honolulu.”

“Look, you wanna beer, go down the hall to the canteen. They got beer.”

“No, I want a bar, a genuine Pacific island bar, full of rowdy sailors throwing chairs around. I want a Polynesian beauty on my knee. I want to hear ukuleles playing in the moonlight as surf sighs softly on the sand and beer bottles crash into the garbage can.”

The private finally looked up. “Hey, I can use that when I go downtown tonight. Those Polynesian babes just love poetry. I’m gonna have a whisky and chase it with…you know, one of those exotic South Pacific beers from all the
fine
breweries we got here in the Islands. I’m gonna get drunker than nine hundred dollars. I’ll pick a fight and get my nose broke and get thrown out on the street and go to jail. I do that just about every night. It’s fun here in Honolulu.”

“Sadist,” said Wink.

They sat down. “Guess that didn’t work,” said Wink.

Sam got up again. “I need to speak to your CO.”

The private sighed, but got up and left the room. In about ten minutes he returned with a tall, heavy officer who had a stern, tanned face.

They stood and saluted.

“At ease. I’m Captain Harris. Hawkins says you’re disturbing his cultural activities.”

“Sir, my brother was on the
Arizona
, and I was wondering—”

“Ah. I see.” He was silent for a moment. “You would have had the best view of the harbor from the plane. I’m afraid there’s nothing to see at the site. There’s no memorial. We’re still at war here. Your orders are short and sweet and don’t give me any leeway. You absolutely must be on the next plane out of here, without delay. I’d like to help you son, but—”

“If I could just—stand on the dock—” Stand there and look out, out, over the blue water, with the mechanical din of the military base at his back. Just to know what it felt like for Keenan, to stand where he might have stood…

“It is just not possible. I am sorry.” He shook Sam’s hand. “Damned sorry.”

After the captain left, the private said, “I’ll be right back.” Soon he returned with a cold bottle of beer from the canteen for each of them. “Least I could do,” he said, his eyes averted.

“Thank you,” said Sam.

He drank his beer in the open doorway, breathing deeply of fresh Pacific air mingled with the smell of diesel fuel, watching the most beautiful clouds he’d ever seen blanket the peaks of steep green mountains, and promised that he would someday return.

It took them another two days of flying to reach what looked like a speck in the ocean. “What’s this?” asked Sam, leaning over the pilot’s chair.

“Tinian.”

“Looks pretty small. Lots going on, though.”

“Largest airfield in the world,” said the pilot.

“Maybe we’re getting off here?”

“How the hell would I know? I’m just the driver. You’ve got some kind of special clearance.”

And indeed, their orders had elicited confusion at every juncture, but they were checked and rechecked and always found to be genuine.

They were given cots in a storeroom. “It’s nice to be special,” observed Wink. They were roused at midnight. “Dance and Winklemeyer?”

“Yeah, we’re that well-known crack combat team.” Wink turned over and pulled the blankets up over his head. “I want mine over easy; bacon crisp.”

The bare bulb overhead glared in their faces. “You’re to report to hangar D immediately.”

“Hurry up and wait,” said Sam. He paused to splash water on his face from a water fountain they passed.

Security was tight at the hangar. A sergeant came by and gave them each two white pills.

“What are these?” asked Wink.

“Cyanide pills. Don’t allow yourselves to be captured.”

They were silent for a few beats. Then Wink said, “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

At two
A.M.
they took off into a Pacific night spangled with stars, having been told that they were “observers.”

Their plane was a flying instrument bank. “Is there anything you guys haven’t got?” Sam asked of one guy calibrating an oscilloscope.

He glanced at Sam. “They’re trying to get it from every angle.”

“What?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m trying to find out.”

“That plane up ahead is carrying an atomic bomb. They’re going to drop it on Hiroshima, a city in Japan. If the weather’s right.”

Of one accord, they moved to a place where they wouldn’t be heard. “I just don’t understand,” Wink said. “How did we get here?”

“I have a theory.”

“I do too.” They were both silent for a few moments.

“How the hell does she do it?”

“A better question in my estimation is ‘why.’”

“‘Why’ is all right. ‘Why’ has a nice ruminative texture. We could kick ‘why’ around for quite a while.”

“Hey, you guys know anything about radar? This screen seems to be on the blink.”

Wink said, “Sure! You know, competent repairmen are very hard to find. We’ve been imported from halfway around the world to fix this very thing, sonny.”

As the three planes flew, they got the heads-up that targeted Hiroshima. Chatter and tension increased.

Jake, the radar man, seemed calm and serious, but Sam detected some nervousness. Jake said, “I guess this will work. They’ve done tests, I gather. I think that one of the main problems for us is that there’s going to be a huge shock wave that we have to outrace.” He looked around at the plethora of photographic and other recording material that filled the plane. Oh.” He got up and came back a moment later with dark goggles. “You can’t look at it without wearing these.”