Once an Eagle (11 page)

And at the same moment, watching these faces animate with hope, with grief and despair and terrible pride, it was as if he'd been given a vision of France: the gold-and-iron days of Charlemagne, the grim Dark Ages and Charles Martel, the steady consolidation of the kingdom with its intrigues and violence; the arrogant days of the Louis and then the Revolution and the Terror, the tumbrils shuddering through the narrow streets, and the Conqueror and all of Europe at their feet—and in so short a time the disasters of the Berezina and Leipzig and Waterloo, and Uhlans quartering their horses in the Tuileries—and again in 1871; all this bloody, tumultuous pageant long before there had ever been a town of Walt Whitman on the Platte River, before there was any sovereign state of Nebraska at all … and here they were, the inheritors of all this pageantry, weeping and laughing at a bunch of gangling, sloppy Americans; their backs to the wall. Lafayette, we were here …

His lips quivered in spite of himself. He was making history, standing in the cool shade of Picpus Cemetery; he was launched upon his destiny. It was a fierce and heady feeling. He had to bite his lips to suppress the smile.

 

“Mail-o!” Damon called
. “All right now, mail-o!” Standing inside the doorway he began pulling envelopes out of the bag. He knew Captain Crowder would accuse him of spoiling the platoon if he should find out about this; but it was cold outside with a bone-chilling rain, and Damon didn't see that anything would be solved by falling them out in the company street just for a mail call.

“Turner!” he said.

The little West Virginian leaped off his sack and bounced up to him. “Yippee!” he crowed. “It's from my mama …”

“Raebyrne!”

“Yee-ho!” Raebyrne answered, and waved an arm.

“I'll take it to him, Sarge,” Turner offered.

“No, you won't.—If you people can't come up here to get your own mail, you won't get it at all. Connolly! Davis! Hoffenstedt! I won't tell you twice …”

They came on the run, took their letters and drifted back to the straw pallets that served for beds. The room was huge and bare, a barnlike affair that had been converted into a barracks for French infantry three years before. Cold sank through its walls, welled up from the stone floor.

“Read 'em and weep,” Damon said when he'd emptied the sack. “You will fall out in field gear in half an hour.”

Ferguson gave an exclamation. “In all that rain, Sarge?”

“In all that rain. Advance by skirmish lines. Just think how soft that ground will be when you flop on it.—At least you'll be running around. Would you rather have close-order drill?”

“Drill, drill, drill,” Raebyrne moaned. “I joined this man's army to fight Pee-roossians, I didn't sign up to stomp around holding a rifle a whole lot of fancy ways.”

“First you drill, then you fight,” Corporal Devlin told him. “That's how it is in the army. Don't be an agitator, now.”

“None for me, Sarge?” Brewster said to Damon. He was a slender, delicate boy with sharp girlish features and a lock of hair that was continually falling over his forehead. “Are you certain?”

Damon nodded. “I'm certain.”

“I can't for the life of me understand it.” Brewster came from a wealthy New York family. Damon remembered his parents at the pier at Hoboken. His father had been wearing a Homburg and pince-nez and was talking earnestly to Captain Crowder, who was pleasant enough but wildly eager to get away from him; Mrs. Brewster was a frail woman in a blue satin dress and a large hat, who kept gazing up at the ship's side out of large, watery eyes. “Three months now and not a word from them …”

“Cheer up, kid,” Devlin consoled him. “Maybe your mail was all on that transport that got torpedoed.”

“What transport?”

“The old
Brahmaputra,
there. The
Eldorado.
”

Brewster flushed, and flung his lock of hair back. “You're ragging me, Dev.”

“How'd you guess?”

Brewster sank down on his sacking. “It's so cold in here.” He pointed to the enormous hearth, now swept clear of ashes and andirons, and immaculately clean. “I don't see why we can't have a fire, with the fireplace right there. Why can't we have a fire, Sarge?”

Damon looked up from his letter, which was from his sister Peg and was bristling with gossip about the impending nuptials between Fred Shurtleff and Celia Harrodsen, and had already irritated him severely. “Because Captain Crowder, Major Caldwell, Colonel Stainforth and General Pershing all say we can't. That's why.”

“Well, it seems ridiculous to me.” Brewster pulled his blanket up over his head and shoulders and rubbed his shins, looking frail and mournful. “I'm not accustomed to living this way …”

This sentiment provoked a hoot from Raebyrne, who had finished his letter and taken his rifle across his knees, and now was cleaning it with a pair of blue flannel bloomers he'd lifted from a window ledge in the town. “Why, this is nothing, nothing 't all. Why, back home you don't think of lighting a fire till your water freezes in a gold column just three inches from your nozzle.”

Brewster stared at him. “Is that the truth, Reb?”

“Flaming gospel. Why, my Uncle Alpha froze so solid one night we had to lay him between two boar hogs—that's for body heat—and stick his feet in a tub of sour mash.”

“Why was that?”

“Why, to get the cirkew-lee-ation going again! You could hear his brains snapping as they thawed out.”

Brewster sighed, and blew his nose. “You're ragging me.”

“Wouldn't call it that. Just conversation.—This is a good weapon,” Raebyrne proclaimed to the room, and hefted the rifle. “It ain't as light as a Ballard, it ain't as handy as my Daddy's Sharps. But it'll do.”

“It's the best infantry rifle in the world,” Damon told him. “You take good care of it and it'll take good care of you.”

“I aim to take good care of it. Only trouble is, it's got too danged many tricky parts.”

“Is it true you fired a possible at a thousand yards, Sarge?” Ferguson asked.

“That's right.”

“Thought I was stringing you, did you?” Devlin laughed at Ferguson. “I was lying right alongside him when he did it, too. You better learn to believe what your old NCOs tell you.”

“Lot of good marksmanship is going to do us,” Poletti said. He was a nervous, somber boy from Newark, left-handed and a poor shot. “Sneaking up and down in trenches, can't see a blessed thing fifty feet away anyhow.”

“Remember that Frog officer they had over there to show us how to cut wire?” Turner asked them. “He just about laughed his head off watching us playing at skirmishers. ‘Zees ees not zee bockskeen backwoods,'” he mimicked, holding his nose. “‘Zees is our war … '”

Damon, who had been listening to this exchange, said: “Well, we're not going to be in trenches all the time.”

“How come? That's what these poor jokers been doing for years, isn't it?”

“We're going to go through those German trenches and break out into the open. We're going to force them to fight our way.”

“Hot damn! When we going to do that, Sarge?” Raebyrne crowed, and Damon noticed that now everybody in the room was watching him.

“Sooner than you think,” he said meaningfully, although he hadn't the faintest idea what that meant. “Major Caldwell said that's what the strategy is. And if you haven't learned what you need to when we break out, you're the ones that'll pay.”

“Then what do we have to learn all the trench warfare for?” Ferguson pursued.

“Because you've got to learn both. Trench warfare until we break out, and extended order afterward. Flanking tactics, what you've been doing. Can't you follow that?”

“Sure, I can follow that, Sarge.”

“What I don't understand is why we have to do that close-order drill all the time,” Brewster began earnestly. With the blanket over his head and shoulders he looked like a troubled young acolyte. “I can understand having to learn how to shoot and throw grenades, the bayonet practice. But why should we have to spend hours and hours learning right-front-into-line and on-right-by-squads and all that? and the manual of arms?”

Damon sighed, and laced his fingers together. Three beds down, Devlin was watching him and grinning. He remembered Major Caldwell smiling indulgently at First Sergeant Hassolt's angry chronicle of incessant rookie questions. “The American soldier has always wanted to know
why,
Sergeant. Baron von Steuben remarked on it at Valley Forge. Don't discourage it—it's a good thing. It's what distinguishes him from any other private soldier the world over—this feeling that it's his
right
to know why he's doing something. And why shouldn't he know? It's his life he's risking, isn't it?”

“Because that's what being a soldier is,” he replied patiently now.

“But I don't see the
reason
for it.”

“The
reason
is to learn to obey commands, to move quickly in unison.”

“But if the object—”

“Let me finish. It's all part and parcel of being a good soldier. Because there's going to come a time—and it's not too far away, either—when you're going to be where all hell's breaking loose. Where you won't be able to hear yourself think, and where the temptation will be to do nothing and care less … and if you've learned to obey commands, to move without having to think about it, it'll make all the difference in the world.”

There was a little pause. Brewster had dropped his eyes and was looking down at his slender white hands. Now somebody'll ask you how do you know what combat is like, and then what'll you say? Damon thought. You don't know any more about it than they do … He'd heard Jumbo and Hassolt and some of the older men talking about battle—the confusion and fear and the mounting desire to cower, hide, lie still; but that was all he knew himself.

“Well, sure, Sarge, I can take a holt of that,” Raebyrne said after a moment. He made a violent grimace and scratched the top of his head. “Only thing, it leads me to a little ponder.”

“Go ahead,” Damon said wearily.

“Well now, supposing—I mean just supposing now, this here's what old Brewster would call one of them hypothical questions—supposing the hoosier giving the commands is giving the wrong ones?”

The barracks room was completely quiet now. Rain dripped flatly from the eaves, and in the next building somebody sneezed and broke into a fit of coughing. Even Devlin had stopped smiling and was watching Sam somberly, like the others.

“Well, that's one thing you don't have to worry about,” he said slowly. “You don't even need to give it a thought. We've got the best there is in the whole U.S. Army, right here. Black Jack Pershing said so himself, if you need proof. Don't you worry, when we go over there's going to be no mistakes made by anybody.”

“But, Sarge … just
supposing
all hell's broke loose, as you say, and the officer forgets the command, or he goes loose in the lid?”

Damon let his eyes rove slowly around the room. Very solemnly and distinctly he said: “Why, then obviously the thing to do is tell that officer he's a God damn incompetent fool and that you want to go back and do it all over again.”

The long room broke into laughter.

“Old Sarge!” Raebyrne cackled, and slapped his skinny thigh. “That's a good one, damn if it isn't. You ever think of going into vaudee-ville?”

“I'd rather entertain you boys all day.”

“I'm still not entirely convinced,” Brewster observed. “Your original argument, I mean, not Reb's.”

Damon got to his feet. “Well,” he said, “you wait and see.” That was the phrase that checked them every time:
you wait and see.
Yes, and he would have to wait and see, too. They all would.

A whistle shrilled out in the street; again.

“All right,” he said in a different tone, and buckled on his pistol belt. “Let's go, you deep thinkers: rifles, belts, helmets, combat packs. Fall out. On the double …”

2

“Ugly frigging thing,”
Krazewski said. Crouching over the Chauchat automatic rifle, he yanked at the stock, twisting it on its bipod. “Look at it.”

It
was
ugly. The bolt recoil section thrust back over the stock awkwardly, the left-hand grip looked as if it had been stripped from an eggbeater, the pistol grip felt angular and unpleasant to the hand. The whole contrivance might have been put together by a very imaginative and warlike nine-year-old boy. After the Springfield's clean, efficient lines it was ridiculous.

Raebyrne whistled. “What did the Froggies make it out of—salmon tins and baling wire?”

“It's ugly,” Krazewski repeated sullenly.

“What do you care?” Damon said to him. “You going to enter a beauty contest with it?” He tapped the half-moon magazine. “That carries fifteen rounds. Your Springfield carries five. It's got a screen to hide muzzle flash and you can reload in less time than it takes to tell.” He paused. “Anyway, we're wasting time. This is the automatic weapon they've given us and this is what we're going to use.”

Krazewski rocked back on his heels and picked it up. “It's heavy.”

Damon looked at the big private carefully. “It weighs eighteen pounds. The Lewis gun the Limeys use weighs twenty-six. Would you rather carry that instead?”

Krazewski swung it back and forth against his hip. “Ain't worth a frig,” he rumbled. “Let somebody else take the damn thing.” He stared at Damon in sullen defiance.

“For Christ sake, Kraz,” Ferguson said, and Devlin began: “Now look here, Krazewski—” but Damon stopped him with a gesture. There was a silence in the two squads. He studied Krazewski a moment, his tongue in his cheek. This had been coming for some time, and now it was right here in front of him. Krazewski had been all right when they first got over. He was a huge man, not tall but mountainous in his bulk, with the slow humor of the Slav. He had been conscientious and steady, and Damon had thought of him as good NCO material; but the confinement and monotony of the training schedule, the long, chill months of drill and guard duty and police details had turned him morose and rebellious. He had been up for drunkenness twice, once for a fight with an engineer from the 17th, a man he'd beaten senseless and robbed into the bargain. Damon had read him off twice in the past week for slovenly appearance. It was too bad: if they'd gone right into combat he'd have probably done all right—but if they'd gone right into combat the battalion would have been slaughtered; and the battalion was a good deal more important than Private Stephen Krazewski of Gary, Indiana.

The Pole was still staring at Damon, his little eyes holding just a trace of crafty amusement. He was waiting to see what the Sergeant would do. Well. You stopped this kind of thing at once, or you didn't stop it at all.

“Look, Krazewski,” he said. “You're the biggest man in the platoon, and you've got the makings of a reasonably fair marksman, and that's why I picked you. I still think I'm right. Now you're the Chauchat gunner for the second squad and that's all there is to it.”

For answer Krazewski put the gun down and slapped his big hands against his breeches. His breath came quickly on the dry, cold air. “And suppose I say the hell with it.”

The others were rigid, watching the antagonists with amazement and alarm. Sergeant Thomas' voice came clearly from another group near them on the parade ground.

Very quietly Damon said: “Krazewski,
pick up that gun.
”

Krazewski gazed back at him, motionless. Just when Sam was about to leap at him he bent slowly down and picked up the Chauchat, the very casualness of the gesture an insult. “You got the stripes on your arm, Damon.”

“That's right. I do.” He paused. “What's the matter—aren't you man enough to carry it?”

Krazewski's eyes narrowed to points of light. “I'm man enough to do more than that, Damon.”

“All right,” Sam snapped, “I'll see
you
behind the latrines after we secure. And I won't have the stripes on my arm.” The Pole's eyes widened again: he hadn't foreseen this. He had sought the battle, Damon saw, but when it came in this manner it surprised him. That was good. He went on: “For now, you'll do as I say, and when I say it. Now give me that,” and he deftly plucked the automatic rifle out of Krazewski's hands and turned to the others.

“All right. Now, I'm going to strip this weapon once, then you'll all do it; and then I'll do it once more.” His voice was perfectly even. Raebyrne was wearing his broad grin, Devlin looked worried, Ferguson and Brewster were gazing at him in astonishment. “It is carried on the hip, for assault fire. It is most effective fired semiautomatically. The loader will keep close to the gunner at all times: it is his duty to reload—insert the clip, like this—and to take over the gun if the gunner is hit.

“Now: this is a long-recoil weapon, which means that the barrel-mount movement is over four inches. This necessitates a tube around the barrel mount—this sleeve—which retains heat excessively.” They were crowded around him closely now, listening, watching him with something like awe. “Two springs are necessary for a brake system for this long barrel movement: the barrel recoil spring”—his hands were moving very quickly now, sliding and turning, setting the plates and coils and cylinders of metal deftly on a piece of tarpaulin—“and the bolt recoil spring. This one. Now, your key pieces are these: the extractor and extractor pin and spring—here—and the ejector—here—the firing pin, and bolt stem pin. Now, they've had a little trouble with the extractor, and the instructors' advice is for the gunner to carry a spare with him at all times.” He paused. “This gun that Krazewski thinks is so ugly is what is going to give you the volume of fire on your flanks, to enable you to get in close to enemy positions.” He had not once glanced at Krazewski—he knew instinctively that to ignore him completely would unsettle him more than anything else, now that the issue was joined.

“Tsonka,” he said to a solidly built towheaded boy from Wyoming, “you're his loader. You will position yourself on Krazewski's right side, and feed the clips from this musette bag, as needed—like this.” He paused again. “All right. Krazewski as gunner will strip the weapon first. Then Tsonka, then Raebyrne, then Turner.” The silence was still impressive. He turned and looked at Brewster's thin, white, anxious face. “And the reason all of you are going to learn how to fire and operate the Chauchat automatic rifle is because if everybody in the squad gets killed but one man, I want that one man to be firing a Chauchat.”

He handed the reassembled gun to Krazewski. “Okay. Go ahead.” The Gary man glanced at him uncertainly, looked down. Damon shoved his hands in his pockets and watched Krazewski begin to field-strip the weapon.

 

“What are you
going to do with him, Sam? Call in a barrage of seventy-fives on him, hit him with a log when he isn't looking?” Damon made no reply and Devlin went on, “Hell, you should have run him up. Let Crowder iron him out.”

They walked quickly across the drill field toward barracks. The wind was icy cold, snow still lay on the ground in faint, powdery trails, like strewn salt; the ground crackled under their boots.

“Would you?” Sam said after a moment.

Devlin grinned and shook his head. “I don't know what the hell I'd have done.”

“Well, I do.” They entered the long cold room which was already empty. The Sergeant took off his overcoat, web belt and pistol and hung them up on one of the pegs at the head of his straw mattress. “Company punishment will ruin him, Dev. It'll just feed his gripe—he'll become a stockade rebel and be fit for nothing. This is between him and me: let's keep it that way. If I can't take care of him I'm not fit to wear three stripes.”

Devlin watched him a moment. “You set yourself too many rules.”

“Maybe.”

“What if it was Jess Willard?”

Damon grinned. “Then I'd challenge him to a grenade-throwing match.”

“With live grenades, I suppose. Sam, you can't always make everyone behave the way you want.”

“Think so?” He handed Devlin his watch and his wallet and jackknife. “Let's go.”

“For Christ sake, keep away from him, now.”

“I will.”

“Don't let him get hold of you. They say he can twist horseshoes.”

The latrines were set up in a muddy little field behind the stables for the officers' mounts and the remains of some old building, whose solitary wall was pocked and mossy with age. The word had spread fast; half the company was milling around the large enclosure, laughing and joking and slapping their arms against their sides to keep warm. Krazewski was standing with a blanket around his shoulders, surrounded by three or four others, among them Tukela, who also came from Gary, and who was talking to him earnestly, making short, quick little feints with his hands. Krazewski was paying no attention to the advice. Surrounded by all these well-wishers, he'd got his assurance back; catching sight of Damon he gave a thick, rumbling laugh, and called:

“Well … I thought for a minute there you weren't going to show up.”

“When I say I'm going to do something, Krazewski, you can bet three months' pay on it.”

“I thought you said there weren't going to be no stripes on your arms.”

“Hold your water,” Damon answered shortly. He took off his tunic and handed it to Devlin. The cold wind stung his shoulders and back. Well: he'd be warm enough in a minute or two. “All right, now,” he said, raising his voice. “Give us a little room.”

The chatter of talk fell away and the crowd gave back, Devlin pushing them into a rough oval in front of the wall. Krazewski snapped the blanket from his shoulders and Tukela folded it over his arm. Damon set himself, studying the barrel chest and massive biceps. Someone called something but he was conscious only of the voice, not the words. Krazewski was strong as a bull, but he was not quick. He was holding his hands low, more like a wrestler than a boxer, and he was circling cautiously, his eyes barely visible in the thick slab of his face. You must make him lead, Damon thought. Make him come to you.

“What you waiting for, Polack?” he taunted suddenly. “More help?”

Krazewski swore and rushed at him then, his right hand drawn back like a club. Damon danced to the right and snapped a left into his face, felt the cartilage give. He ducked the right hand, drove his own right into the face again and moved away quickly. There were muttered exclamations from the crowd. Krazewski's nose was bleeding now, running red into his mouth, and his eyes were wide with surprise and rage. He came on again in a still wilder rush, swinging both hands. Damon caught the right on his arm and hit him in the eye, once more in the face, and ducked away—leaped in and belted him three more times as fast as he could move his hands. The body was no good, it was like trying to hurt a tree trunk; he would have to blind him, stun him, make him vulnerable.

Moving away from Krazewski's next rush he slipped in the mud, fell forward on his hands, thrust himself up again. The Gunner's knee caught him full in the chest. Straightening he caught a glimpse of Krazewski's face streaming blood, immensely close—and then felt a blow on the side of his head which spun him almost completely around. He moved to the left instinctively. His head was ringing. He slipped again—the ground was like wet glass now—took another blow on the cheek, and his neck cracked like a snapped stick. He got his feet under him, caught the Pole in the eye and full on the jaw. Then Krazewski was on him and had him around the body with both arms, his hands locked, and was bending him backward. He heard Devlin shout, “Let go, you stupid Polack son of a bitch!” and other voices calling: “No! No! Leave 'em alone …”

His lungs were burning, his head felt as though it were detached and floating in a foggy painful haze somewhere above his body. The man was strong. Terribly strong. Above him the scaly yellow wall wobbled and wavered, and Raebyrne was saying in a clear, calm voice: “I don't care if he
is
a sergeant, that's a low-down Yankee trick …”

He had to do something, and quickly. He drove his fists into the man's sides and it was like hitting a washboard. They swayed back and forth in the mud. He kept fighting for leverage, now gripping, now spreading his feet, wrenching and writhing against the massive arms that doubled and redoubled their viselike power. Everyone was shouting now. He heard Tukela yell, “Now, Steve!” Krazewski brought his head up sharply, and Damon felt his cheek open. Someone said, “Butting—
that's
rough enough”—a high, thin voice. The son of a bitch! All right. Anything goes, then. Anything goes. He hooked a leg behind one of Krazewski's and cocking his elbows drove his fingers into the strong man's eyes. Krazewski gave a roar of pain and bent away. Damon kicked his heel in behind Krazewski's leg and wrenched sidewise with all his might. They fell bouncing on the slick ground. He felt Krazewski's arms let go and rolled away, was up in a flash, saw the Pole scrambling to his feet, his face a comic mask of blood and yellow mud. But he was faster, he knew; he darted in, hit him once, twice, then swung his right like a ball bat. Krazewski, leaning into the blow, went down on his hands and knees, blood spattering on his powerful arms. He was shaking his head, slowly and doggedly, trying to clear it. He was dazed, Damon knew; he was halfway out. He had him.

“All right,” he gasped through the bedlam of voices. “You—had enough, Krazewski?”

The Pole looked up at him, swaying like a stunned animal on all fours, slack-jawed; his eyes were filmy. Tukela was shouting, “Get up, Steve!” but Krazewski didn't hear him.

“You had enough?” Damon repeated in as calm a tone as he could manage.