Once an Eagle (136 page)

The firing had stopped: there was a great commotion that made no sense. His guts slipped and slithered wetly through his fingers; all of him sliding away. Got a general, he thought numbly; got themselves a three-star general. Big deal.

“Sam.
Sam—!
”

Joey's voice, Joey bending down; his cap was gone, he had a towel around his neck, splotched with red. The too-bright globe had lowered itself around him, set him afire, bubbling. This was serious. Quite serious. Without warning.

“Joey,” he said. “You've got to do it now. By yourself. What I told you.”

It's all right, Chief. Take it easy.
He could see Joey's lips moving. Chief. What Joe Brand had called him, the other Joe. Reb had called him Skipper, or sometimes Cap. Ben had called him Chief, too. Or Sam. What Dev had called him. Old Dev. Took it where you did, in the gut.

“No, Joey, I mean it—you've got to go up there …”

The boy had turned away, was looking past him somewhere. Why wouldn't he
listen
to him! God damn it, this was important. The huge globe was fading, in its place black rings began coiling out from the center of his forehead and the pain swelled higher; it came on wires, in darts, in flaring windblown torches and seared him.

“Joey,” he said. “Joey, they say we're only robots and yes-men. Stupid, no minds of our own. It isn't so. Give the lie to it—go on up there and block those bastards. What does one man's career matter if he can stop the black drift of things for a while, even the shortest while …?” Jesus, it was hard to talk. To keep his mind on things. It kept slithering away from him, hooking and sliding. “Joey, the only thing I've learned in sixty-five years, only one: the romantic, spendthrift moral act is ultimately the practical one—the practical, expendient, cozy-dog move is the one that comes to grief. Yes. Remember that. Joey, if it comes to a choice between being a good soldier and a good human being—try to be a good human being …”

Had he said that? any of it? Joey had looked away again. He wasn't going to do it; he could tell from the look in his eyes. Didn't he see what this meant? For the whole yearning, waking world, for the fellow at the sink? The most important thing that had ever happened to them, and he couldn't make the boy see it. “You drive right on,” Dev had murmured, watching him with fearful, desolate eyes. “You're that kind of guy, you see a thing and that's the only way it can be. Nobody can say no to you …” Now it was the only really important time: and he had failed.

The voices went on above him, but they had changed subtly: instead of angry, urgent cries they were cold and terse, shuttling back and forth. Things incredibly sharp, incredibly jagged tugged at him, stabbed at him: it wasn't possible to suffer this much and still be here to suffer. The rings were much blacker, coiling. Joey was nowhere to be seen. He made another effort and twisted his head, and again saw the Hai Minh guerrilla, the blood-soaked head and chest, the fiercely outstretched arm whose fingers twitched and quivered.

He looked away. The rings had melted into a great murky circle; a swollen, chaotic whirling that frightened him more than the pain. Luck had run out. All run out. The one-franc piece was still there. On the table. Somewhere here. Like Lin he hadn't survived his war.
Tommy,
he thought with a start of pure agony, you knew. Funny Cassandra girl. He felt weaker suddenly, really sick: his head kept falling back and back through greasy, hollow spheres.

“Joey!” he cried at the top of his voice—knew he'd made no sound. He had to make him understand this! The pain was worse again, screeching in on its wires, fanning the flames, and the great dirty circle kept wheeling. “I want to see Joey. Lieutenant Colonel Krisler.” Why didn't they obey him! He had to talk to him; he had to get up. But his footing was so unstable. He was sliding in water, sliding down through the murky water.
No.
He gathered himself together in one great, convulsive effort to rise over it. It wasn't good enough, he knew: he was emptied out, he was going, slipping under—

 

“There wasn't anything
we could have done anyway, Colonel,” Major Schultz said. He tapped the notations on the clipboard briskly. “He didn't have anything left to work with. And with that liver perforation …”

“Yes,” Colonel Krisler answered. He was standing at the foot of the bed, staring at the General's body. His arm and neck were bandaged and his solid, snub-nosed face was expressionless. “I see.”

“He had the constitution of a horse,” Captain Delaney offered.

Schultz scowled at him. Of all the tactless comments! To cover it he asked, “How old was he?”

“Sixty-five,” Krisler said. He seemed unable to take his eyes from Damon's face. “He was a great combat commander,” he said in a hard, suddenly ominous tone.

“Yes, sir,” Schultz replied. “He certainly was. It's most regrettable.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Delaney sighed, “chalk up another scalp to the Hai Minh.”

Schultz threw his assistant another warning glance at this, but Krisler only nodded.

“They'll pay for this.” The Colonel's voice was low but there was an edge in it that made Schultz's scalp prickle. “They're going to pay, and pay …” Slowly he walked up to the edge of the bed and stared hard at the worn, bloodless face. “He was the greatest combat commander the fucking U.S. Army ever saw. They can say anything they like.”

He turned quickly and went out of the room. The two doctors exchanged a glance. Schultz blew out his cheeks. “Boy,
now
watch the end product hit the fan.” Pulling back the sheet, he shook his head in wonder. “Look at him, Dan. Look at that thigh—looks as though the lateralis was nearly severed. Look at his shoulder and chest …” He leaned down, his eyes narrowing critically. “Good job. Wonder who did that.”

“Weintraub was out there then. So was Terwilliger.”

“That old windbag? I wouldn't let him touch me with a butterknife.” Bending still closer he followed the grooves and stars of lacerated flesh. “It's a wonder that lowest round didn't nick the lung. He was lucky.”

“That's the trouble with these old war-horses,” Delaney said. “After a while they get to feel they're immortal. Like Achilles or somebody. And then they push their luck too far.”

“Yeah, he was too old for this kind of fun-and-games.” Whistling between his teeth Schultz drew the sheet up over the General's head, and they left the room.

About the Author

A native of New England,
ANTON MYRER
grew up in the Berkshires, Cape Cod, and Boston and went to Harvard University in the early forties. Right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Myrer enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served for three years in the Pacific. Wounded in Guam, he returned to Harvard, graduated, and began a distinguished literary career, during which he wrote
Once An Eagle
,
The Last Convertible
, and
A Green Desire
, among others.

 

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ALSO BY ANTON MYRER

A Green Desire

The Last Convertible

The Tiger Waits

The Intruder

The Violent Shore

The Big War

Evil Under the Sun

Credits

Cover design by Jarrod Taylor

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2000 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ONCE AN EAGLE
. Copyright © 1968 by Anton Myrer. Copyright renewed 1996. Introduction © 1997 by the Army War College Foundation. Foreword © 2012 by Carlo D'Este. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

First Harper Perennial edition published 2002.

First Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition published 2013.

The Library of Congress has catalogued a previous edition as follows:

Myrer, Anton.

         Once an eagle: a novel / Anton Myrer.

                  p. cm.

         Includes bibliographical references.

         ISBN 0-06-0098435-9

         1. United States—History, Military—20th century—Fiction. 2. Soldiers—Fiction. I. Title

PS3563.Y74 O5   2002

813'.54—dc21

2001058082

ISBN 978-0-06-222162-9 (pbk.)

EPUB Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN 9780062039095

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