Once an Eagle (22 page)

He nodded sympathetically. “Triste,” he said. “Very triste.”

She heaved a sigh and gazed out at the river, now barely discernible through the filigree of branches. “La vie—ne se déroule point comme on l'espère—quand on est jeune,” she said with a kind of hard, sad finality.

He struggled with that, apprehending more from her face and intonation than from this elusive, liquid language; he reasoned it out—and was filled with consternation. “But
you're
young—and pretty—you've got your whole life ahead of you,” he cried softly.

She gave him a slow sad smile. “All the same,” she said; and repeated, “All the same …”

He was amazed; he could hardly bear the look in her steady blue eyes. It was crazy—she wasn't twenty, with everything right there ahead of her, on a platter … He reached out and took her small white hand in his; she smiled at him nervously, but that grave shadow lay in her gaze. I ought to comfort her, he thought. Earlier, he had wanted her as a woman; now he felt confused. There was something here he didn't understand. The waltz—Michele had put another record on the Gramophone—swooped in his head, flooding it. Drowsy with wine and sun, near sleep, he had nonetheless an awesome sense of alien, venerable worlds far beyond his grasp. He had rushed at life with boundless confidence and open hands; but this was another world entirely—and perhaps a much wiser one. Maybe there was more to life than energy and simple valor—more to it all than could be embraced by a willing heart and a sense of destiny—

The record had ended. He looked at Michele and Dev. They had stopped dancing and were talking now, holding each other. Michele's face was animate, impassioned; her eyes clung to the Sergeant's with a fiercely importunate intensity—she looked frail and wild and rather beautiful. Damon lowered his eyes. Denise was singing a plaintive little melody he'd never heard before and he joined in, humming along, not knowing the words and not caring, while the night breeze soughed in the open casements and somewhere nearby, perhaps from the belfry of the slate-dark church steeple, a bell tolled like the most delicate of chimes. Night. The world had relented for a time, had turned soft and pliant and full of deeps. What the hell, he thought. Let everyone catch at what little part of it he could, before the shriek and slam and dry-mouthed fear began again …

There was the click of a latch and he looked up. The wine in the bottom of his glass was black as ink; the empty soup plates on the table loomed like dazed faces. The room was empty except for Denise, who was sitting perfectly still, her tiny hand still resting in his.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Excusez moi, Denise. I was nodding off, I guess. We haven't had all the sleep in the world the past few days …” He leaned forward; in the sinking dusk he thought she was smiling in reply—then to his great surprise he saw that tears were running down her face. He touched her cheek.

“What is it?” he asked softly. “Don't be afraid. What is the matter?”

She shook her head, still mute, still motionless: a lovely little round-faced Dresden china doll. She had not made a sound. Very gently he got to his feet and came around the table to her. As his hand reached her head she rose and threw herself against him and clung to him, trembling; and he felt her tears on his throat. But still she hadn't made a sound.

6

The camion swayed
and jolted and jarred, roaring in the darkness, and around them the dust rose in clouds. There was a moon that looked immensely flat and old, riding along above the treetops; below it the far horizon glowed now, quaking like ruddy, malignant northern lights. Damon, sitting in the cab with the Annamese driver, asked him their destination in French, and drew a torrent of utterly indecipherable sounds. He grinned. The Annamese, hunched over the wheel like a squat, round-faced idol, returned an inscrutable oriental gaze.

“Okay,” Damon said in English. “Suit yourself, buster, and go to hell.”

The Annamese shook his head, his teeth flashed once. “No—you,” he said, and pointed ahead to the quaking hearth of the horizon. “
You
…”

“I get it. Cheerful little monster, aren't you?”

They were running north now, almost due north. They were swinging out around the rim of the salient, toward the left-hand corner of the great sack the Germans held from Soissons to Reims. They were going to Soissons. Caldwell—now promoted to lieutenant colonel—had been talking to several of them about it the night before last, after mess.

“Mr. Ludendorff has made a fatal mistake. You do not abandon a sound strategical concept for minor tactical gains. It's like pawn-grabbing in chess: the results are usually disastrous. Ludendorff has allowed Von Boehn's initial success in the Marne Salient to cause him to give up his crucial plan for driving the British into the sea—the Flanders plan.” The Colonel's eyes had twinkled in the lamplight. “The old squarehead doesn't know it yet, but he's lost his chance to win the war. More than that, their advance has destroyed the big stalemate once and for all: they have turned it into a war of movement, which is the way it began and the way it should have been waged. Now the doors are all open. We can thrust and envelop and thrust again, until we have Metz and Thionville, and the road into Germany.”

There had been a little pause, and Damon had asked: “But Colonel, what if the Germans simply withdraw to prepared positions, the way they did in '17? Won't we be committed to trench warfare then?”

Caldwell nodded. “We would, that's true. But they won't be able to give up all that real estate this time. This isn't '17. And furthermore”—and he smiled his quick, alert smile—“they won't be able to because we won't give them time.”

Captain MacDowell of A Company said: “Where are we going to attack, Colonel?”

“That's up to Grand Quartier Général. Foch and his people.” Caldwell permitted himself a wry little grimace. “But, if I were going to hazard a guess—I'd say: Soissons … ”

The truck dropped into a pothole with a bone-jarring jolt, careened on, swaying and rocking; and behind him Damon could hear Turner's voice, metallic with anger: “Jesus! That little Chink can hit
every
hole in the highway. He's a bleeding genius!”

“If they'd just file the corners off the frigging wheels, I'd settle.”

A replacement named Mecklar moaned, “Night before last they shell the bejesus out of us, last night we get standby, and now penned in like a bunch of stockyard cattle…”

“Sing 'em, laddy-boy.”

“… what I want to know is, when are we going to get some shut-eye?”

“Sleep,” Devlin answered him, “he's worried about sleep. You want to worry about where the next meal is coming from, if you want to worry …”

“Ah, don't bring that up, Sarge.”

“Maybe we're going to Paris after all.” This sad hope from another replacement, a scrawny kid from San Mateo named Dickey, brought forth an avalanche of hoots and curses.

“In full combat gear? You Simple Simon. Who let you out?”

“Don't be any stupider than you can help …”

“When I get home,” Mecklar persevered, “I'm going to sleep for seven days running.”

“When you get home!” Damon heard Krazewski's booming laugh. “Don't you know you'll be dead tomorrow night? Starched like a shirt. That's what we want you draftees for—machine-gun fodder and nothing else …”

There was another silence while the replacements digested this fragment of comfort. Damon resisted the temptation to lean out of the cab and roar at Kraz to keep his mouth shut for a while. Then in the next instant he was glad he had, for Raebyrne was saying, “Don't you worry, son. Just keep your head down, and your tin hat over your ass. And stick close to the Loot and do what he does.”

“Every time
I'm
close to the Lieutenant he gives me something to do,” Dickey retorted, and the older men laughed.

“No sirree,” Raebyrne proclaimed, “this is different, Frisco.”

“Don't call me Frisco.”

“We got the best platoon leader in the whole Ass End First. Shoot, you drop him into a turpentine vat of wildcats and he'll clamber out with a fine fur coat for that little old froggy gal he's laying out with …”

“That's enough of that,” Devlin ordered him. “Why, no offense meant, Sarge. This Tarheel's full of nothing but admee-o-ration. You know that. Old Sam's going to get him another bunch of medals, and craw dee guerries for the lot of us, like last time, and he's going to run right on up to seven-star general. And I'm going to stick right along with him.”

“What the hell is he?” asked Clay, one of the replacements from the cannibalized 41st Division; he was a round-faced, handsome boy with ash blond hair, who had rapidly gained a reputation for being a wise guy. “He's just a lousy officer, like all the rest of them.”

“I'll remember that,” Devlin snarled. “If there was any room here, I'd lay you out right now …”

“You'll find out,” Raebyrne taunted Clay. “You ain't run against the elephant yet. You weren't down at Briny Deep, standing off a Borsch regiment—six of us, mind you!” His voice rang over the muffled roar of the engine. “Hell's fire, we'd have won the cotton-picking war right then and there if they'd sent the rest of their army at us, and could have all gone home. And old Loot, he did everything just perfect … It's the hand of the Almighty, it's resting on his shoulders. He is going to prosper in all he undertempts, and triumph over his enemies. And he is going to be saved.”

“You hadn't ought to say that,” Devlin muttered.

“I cain't help that none, Dev. It's the word of God, and you cain't tamper with that. And I ain't going to.” There was a pause while he apparently reached around in the crowded, jostling mass of bodies. “Now I want you to cover him, Tim. Stick right behind him and give him cover. That's what I'm going to do—”

“Thought you said God was looking out for him, Rebel,” Clay broke in mockingly.

“Well, that's all right. Even the Almighty can use a little help where we're going. Just you wait and see …”

“Where
are
we going?” Dickey asked plaintively.

“I'll tell you, Frisco.” And Raebyrne changed his tone again. “We're going near about all the way, this time. I got the smoking-hot gospel, straight from Chaumont. We're going to tool all the way to Switzerland—”

“For Christ sake, Switzerland's
neutral
—”

“Don't waylay me. And sail down the Rhine and ambush the lot of them, taking possession of the Yungfrowze and drinking Rhine wine as we go, till we run against the English Channel.”

“Then what, Raebyrne?”

“Why, then we're going to have us a big celee-o-bration on the beach, and sail around to the Danderdells and whip the tar out of the Turks and civilize 'em with the bastaraydo …”

“Give 'em hell, Reb!”

“Don't you hatless Harrys realize Turkish women wear
pants?
”

Damon smiled somberly in the dark, listening to the laughter. He was a symbol, then: a talisman. Of course that had its good points—if they believed that as his platoon they were invincible, or destined to win, or just plain lucky, they would be better soldiers. Successful armies were built on esprit, on conviction in the face of those clouds of great uncertainty in which Clausewitz said three-quarters of all military endeavor was hidden—

Impulsively he slipped his hand in his breeches pocket, felt for and found the one-franc piece, ran his thumbnail around the broad ridge at the rim, chafed the lettering, the twinned cornucopias. He had seen it lying between two of the great scarred paving stones just outside Picpus Cemetery and picked it up with a curious sense of excitement. It seemed like such a propitious omen …

Luck. He rubbed his forehead with his hand, and sighed. He missed bunking with the platoon, living with them, more than he would have believed. But that was what change meant—there was no sense regretting it: you moved on to something else, and relationships changed. They liked him enough, though—and more importantly they respected him utterly: he could tell from the way they responded to his orders, joked with him off duty, asked his advice on personal matters or his opinion on things he knew nothing whatever about, and hung on his answers.

The officers were a different story. Some of them accepted him readily enough: he was a regular, one of the old men, and he was known. His exploit at Brigny Farm had gone through the division like the wind—he was known as “Night Clerk” in the messes; Caldwell had put him up for the Medal of Honor and General Hemley had concurred, and personally congratulated him. But there were others who were less enthusiastic: they resented his suddenly being on equal terms with them, or they felt he was too familiar with his recent associates. His commanding officer, Captain Crowder, was cool toward him, and Traprock Merrick, the old Baker Company sergeant from the days at Early, now a first lieutenant in the expanding line, had made some remarks about Sears Roebuck officers who weren't even dry behind the ears; but Sam continued to go his own way. Let them talk if they wanted to talk. He intended to field the best platoon in the AEF, and he would do it the way he wanted.

French villages slid by, their stone houses ghostly and remote in the moonlight; the fields ran off into the mist like some pale snow. The trucks swung out, overhauling French infantry in column of march, the moon glinting on their pretty casques of helmets. The Annamese driver was humming some fantastic tune that soared off into creepy nasal whines and dissonances. Behind him, the men had fallen silent. They were going up again, up to meet Raebyrne's elephant. Damon ran through the platoon in his mind, ticking off names, remembering aptitudes, weaknesses, worrying about some of the new men. After a time he stopped thinking, closed his eyes and dozed off—snapped awake, his head bouncing on his shoulder, to find it was dawn; and in the fields on both sides of the road were clumps of French, huddled around fires with blankets over their shoulders, like medieval men-at-arms camping in some desolate march of empire …

The camions rolled off into a field already trampled flat, and stopped; the platoon got down like old men, groaning and flexing their legs.

“All right,” the cry came down the line, “fall in, fall in! …”

“Where are we, Sam?” Devlin was asking him.

“Beats me.”

They formed up rapidly and were marching before they were fully awake, uphill and down. Up ahead the Colonel was setting a terrific pace. He can't hold this, Damon thought, nobody can, the whole outfit is going to be flopping around like catfish out of water.
How far have we got to go? How far?
He could see the question in the faces of the platoon, none of whom were joking or skylarking now. The road was hard and smooth, its great paving stones worn smooth as glass. One hill, and then another. The sun rose higher and bent its weight on them like bars of hot iron. Damon could hear the snapping of the metal catches on the canteen covers, the scrape of tops being unscrewed, and called:

“All right, now put those canteens away! You'll drink water when I tell you to, and not before …”

Someone cursed him in protest and he let it ride; better to have them mad than panicky. There was no end to this march. They plodded into a forest, out of it and on toward still another rise, and another; a shower passed overhead and drenched them, and then again the pitiless sun, and their shirts steamed. When the whistle finally blew they practically fell into the ditches beside the wheatfields.

“Five-minute break,” the word came down the column. “Five minutes …”

“
Five
minutes!” Krazewski muttered. “Not even ten. Lousy forced march.”

“You want to get there, don't you, Kraz?” Turner said.

“It can wait.”

From far up the road the whistles blew again, shrill and insistent. Damon got to his feet and called, “All right. Let's go, let's go …”

The heat was worse now. His feet burned with every step and he could feel on the inside of his left heel the exquisite needle laceration of a blister starting. Dust coated their faces with its fine white powder and the sweat ran through it in little rivulets, giving them all a clownish, drunken look. They began to straggle; stumbling, falling back.

“Close it up,” he shouted, “close it up, now …”

By noon they had reached a broad paved highway, gutted with men and matériel, all heading north by east. The world was moving north by east, big guns and poilus and carts of ammunition. Under a grove of trees a detail of MPs were sprawled, eating out of cans.

“Why, you look hungry, boys,” a big, black-haired man called to them, waving his arm with its black brassard. “You look as though you ain't getting your three hots per. How about a nice bite of chow?”

Little Turner cursed him savagely, but Raebyrne threw them his broadest grin and hollered, “Couldn't chamber a morsel, Blackie, I'm full to here …”

“You look it, Slim!”

“Why, we been eating so heavy it keeps us skinny just carrying it around …”