Once an Eagle (95 page)

Perfect speech: kind I could never make. Cornball and tough and raggedy-ass. Pulling the replacements and the veterans all together—or rather, formalizing it, they've been pulled together by the hikes and battle courses.

Ben lives direct: chow, drink, fistfight, girl. No shrinking, no doubts. The way I ought to be. I can't, ever. Those faces—so young, so eager and so trusting—if I got up there to joke with them like that I'd more than likely break down. I let things go too deep. I tell MacArthur I'd have stayed with my people on Bataan, and then I kiss Joyce T., and then I raise hell with Haley because of his lousy lack of participation in the assault plan—and then I worry about all three. Should not be like this. A good commander is like a man in a barroom brawl: belting one joker in the chin, picking up a chair in time to drop some hoodlum with a knife, throwing another one into the mirror behind the bar—and all the while maintaining a nice surface numbness, with one eye cocked on his two sidekicks, and the other open for every possible contingency. Ben is better with troops than I am.

Coming up to me later, full of eagerness under the trees. “How do you like 'em, Sam? Think they're ready to go?” Big square ITC stenciled on his helmet, all over the jeeps and trucks. I said: “ITC—what the hell's that?” “
In The Clutch,
Sam. What they needed was a visual motto. Gap between the newcomers and the old crowd was too great.” “It also stands for
Idiot Trucking Company,
” I retorted. Grinning at me. “Sam, they can say it stands for
I Take Cucumbers
if they want to—it's what they need.” Pulleyne hit the ridgepole when he spotted this happy colophon. “Doesn't he know Hildebrandt's got a Corps order out about special markings? What the hell's he think he is, anyway—a privileged character? some kind of colorful five-alarm hot-shot?” “That's right, Duke,” I said, “—just like you.” He glared at me. “Jesus, you're salty.” “General, he's done wonders with this regiment, you'll admit that.” “But the Japs'll know just what outfit's facing them.” “Duke, the Japs know when you took your atabrine last night.” Finally talked him into letting it ride.

Worried about Tommy. Can't seem to reach her anymore. Her letter strange and disturbing—veering from drab, factual observations to wild emotional outbursts; as though her mind has been maimed. All her old hatred of service boiling out now, because of Donny. She needs a villain so
badly
—and here I am. Is that fair? Probably not.

 

23 Mar 43.
On the water. Plan is to loop north as if we're intending to hit New Hanover—then break off west for the Guinea coast again. Damn ruseful. Japs probably taken in about as badly as a Reno pit man. Something
final
about being at sea, moving through the dark, throbbing. Standing at the rail with Ben, watching the wake churning astern in slow, molten chains. Three nights to battle. Worry. The certainty—the cold, oppressive certainty that so many of those kids below us, all around us, will be dead. The dirty, diseased hand of waste. Waste of time and lives and hope and innocence.

“Sam.” “Yes?” “Sam … I got the Joe Blakes.” “I won't tell on you.” Silence. “Sam—I've got a bad feeling about this beachhead. I don't know … the kids are all right. I mean, most of them took after me, they'll land on their feet. But Marge—she's sort of … well, you know. She can't take care of herself …” Silence. The thump and seethe of water against the cool iron. “If anything goes wrong, would you keep an eye on her? look out for her?” “Sure I will. That's a promise.” “I know I haven't got any right to ask it.” “If you haven't I don't know who has.” “Yeah. Well. Thanks, Sam.”

He's gone. The nights are so
long
at sea. The stars come and go behind invisible black snatches of cloud. So long and lonely. Waste again, waste and remorse now, flooding blackly. Why did I go to China? Did I need to quarrel with Tommy that time after the dance at Beyliss? Should I have refused to give the boy permission to enlist? I've been headstrong when I could have been wise, craven when I should have been bold. I haven't understood very much. Why did I go and get Dev and drag him back? Who in God's sweet name am I to judge
anybody
on this earth? Here we are in our thousands, rushing in gray shells toward the unknown. What is the end of all our fear and sacrifice?

Ah God. God, help me. Help me to be wise and full of courage and sound judgment. Harden my heart to the sights that I must see so soon again, grant me only the power to think clearly, boldly, resolutely, no matter how unnerving the peril.

Let me not fail them.

5

There was a
draw, where a trail wandered beneath the palms, and beyond that a low hillock laced with branches and smashed fronds and bits of débris, the sunlight falling trickily across its face. And somewhere out beyond that was the airstrip. But where? Two figures, looking ridiculously clumsy and bedraggled, scuttled to the right of the hillock in a shambling run, dropped out of sight. A tiny yellow star deep in the crushed mat of vegetation winked merrily, and splinters and chips spurted from the loose earth above the pit. Cringing against the dry, dusty cascao, Joe Brand thought, I'm glad I'm not up there having to do that right now.

At the far edge of the pit Colonel Krisler was sawing one arm back and forth and shouting, “Keep it up, now!
Give
it to the sons of bitches—!” His face blackened with sweat and grease, he looked like a gnome from some bewitched mine. The bright yellow scarf he always wore around his neck in combat was wringing wet. A figure loomed up at the edge of the pit, tripped and tumbled into the hole, spraying coral dust over them all.

“Colonel,” he panted, “—we can't—hang on … we got to have help over there—”

“Who's we?”

“Charley—Captain March …”

“—Look out!—”

There came that soft, sighing shriek, thin as parting silk, and the whole world flung up like surf; black smoke billowed down around them, and shell fragments whined and hummed. A pillar of flame rose up to the right, again. The earth tilted like a rough sandy table tipped by giants. Brand found he had clamped both hands to the back of his neck. The dead Japanese soldier who had been lying just beyond his leg was gone, buried all but for one arm. The runner was lying on his face in the bottom of the pit, his fatigue blouse blown off and blood running in fine streaks from a long gouged curve in his back; his arms kept moving as though he were trying to swim, little looping motions. At the back of the smashed-in bunker Damon was huddled up in a tight crouch with his head pressed to the radio, and Brand could see his lips moving. Above the General, far above and beyond his helmeted head, was the cliff face, a shadowed gray wall from which quicksilver flashes came and went, and the puffs of exploding shells. Sitting ducks, Brand thought savagely. Dirty yellow bastards will kill us all yet. His hands, when he brought them away from his neck, were shaking slightly, and his head ached from the pressure waves.

Lieutenant Chase, Damon's aide, was grinning at him and he winked back without changing expression. Inscrutable redskin on the warpath. Yeah, sure. Where did they all get the idea that the Indian was such a fire-eating warrior?

A medic was in the bottom of the pit now, working on the runner. Two more shells swooped down and crashed to the left, and the ground under his belly shook in protest. A machine-gun team went by in a heavy, labored run: Rodriguez, one hand wrapped in a bloody rag, carrying the tripod. Damon had handed the headset back to De Luca, the radioman, and he and Krisler were bent over a map and talking intently.

“Well, where is he now?” he heard the General say. “Is he—” The awful sighing came again, like the flutter of threatful wings. The blast tore the very sky apart, turned it black and savage, a wall of fiery water crashing over him, beating against his flesh. He found he was groaning, gasping for air; he felt old, and feeble, and filled with tearful rage. Nobody can live through this, nobody anywhere—oh-you-stupid Navy hit that
cliff—!
Something slammed into his helmet and drove his face against the bolt of his carbine. With great care he reached up and felt the metal: a shallow groove, that was all. Damon was still talking to Krisler, who was nodding in agreement. Jesus, how could they sit there like that, calmly talking? … It was easier in the line. You had things you had to do, the whole bunch of you were involved in the deal—you didn't have to sit on your ass like this, waiting for the Old Man to call to you and take off for some place else. They can call it a cushy job if they want, he thought crossly, Higgins and Goethals and the rest of them: it isn't so God damn cushy right about now …

Back in the operations room on board the
Sirius,
that morning, it had been cool under the moan of the blowers. Maps and charts lined the walls, sailors came and went with chits of paper, the radios crackled and hummed. Admiral Endicott, looking like a bony, irritated schoolteacher, kept picking up his white coffee mug and sipping at it and setting it down again. General Pulleyne kept passing his hand through his smooth, silvery hair and glaring at the situation map as though he could change the shape of the bay, the contours of the ridge. Damon was sitting very quietly, bent forward, his hands hanging limply between his knees.

A swabby passed a slip to Pulleyne, who glanced at it and handed it to Damon. Brand could read it from where he was standing, inside and to the right of the weather door. CROSSBOW TO CUTLASS X REQUEST ALL OUT NAVY 753513 X ALSO AIR MISSION URGENT

“What have they got—the whole God damned cliff fortified?” Pulleyne demanded.

“Must be pretty rough,” Damon answered, “for Ben to send something like that.”

Brand stood easy, listening to the short, terse arguments, the orders. It wasn't very reassuring. In the line, in combat, struggling to maintain contact with a dozen, two dozen men, sunk deep in the rank jungle gloom, you could comfort yourself sourly with the thought that back at Battalion, back at Regiment and Division, they could see what was going on—where everyone was, the threats and enemy dispositions, and take countermeasures. Now he could see that they didn't know much more than the squad leader—that in some ways it was worse, because there wasn't even the hot, raging satisfaction of trying to kill, of going forward, or the healing presence of one's friends: here in this cool, dry, magnificently equipped room they didn't know either—and they had to sit here and wonder, and worry, and pray they wouldn't guess wrong. CROSSBOW—Krisler's regiment—was clearly in trouble, and CLAYMORE hadn't come up with a report in half an hour or more. There on the wall was the map, with the beach designations and phase lines neatly stroked on the overlay in grease crayon, the probable enemy concentrations and the airstrip and the slender threads of trails—and it didn't mean anything: there was no correlation between this room and the beach a thousand yards away.

“You better go in, Sam,” Pulleyne was saying. “Go get hold of Dutch, see what's the matter there—and then get over and check on Krisler. Find out what's holding him up like that. We've got to get in there, grab that airstrip …”

Damon had come to his feet quickly. “Right away, Duke.” He turned to Chase and Brand. “All right, boys. Let's get moving.”

Pulleyne followed them outside onto the deck, still talking to the Old Man. “Don't take any fool chances, now. They're throwing a lot of crap around in there …”

“I won't, General.”

They went quickly over the side, hand over hand. The LCVP looked boxlike and trivial far below, the upturned faces like bland white flowers. Then they were aboard, the boat swung out and away—and the world changed again. The morning sun slid a diamond shawl over the water, and dead ahead lay the beach, a faint dun patch hazy under the smoke. Gripping the warm iron of the gunwale, swaying with the boat's motion, he watched the Old Man talking to Lieutenant Chase. There was something fantastic about the three of them going ashore for the purpose of bringing order to a battle. He was conscious of that thick swelling high in his chest, right under his windpipe, that he remembered from Sendaiadere. The shore was clearer now; the ragged fringe of jungle was apparent here and there through the smoke, and the cliff on the peninsula was like a mesa, high and brooding in the sunlight. Their craft picked up speed, and the swaying grew worse. There was a towering white column of water near them that seethed and swayed and then subsided; the boat slewed left. Lieutenant Chase's face was slick with sweat, but he grinned and nodded when Damon said: “Miss as good as a mile … ”

Life was a matter of luck. Luck and fate and chances—and reading the signs with wisdom, quickly. Anybody who said it wasn't was a dummy or a liar. There was that afternoon on old Sendai he'd been chopping with a machete at the jungle around his shelterhalf and thinking distantly of Estelle when Tompkins had cried, “Ten-
hut!
” and he'd swung around to see Damon standing there grinning at him. He was in khaki and there was a small neat star on his utility cap.

“Well—” he started, caught himself. He was a regular and the rest of his squad were staring at them. He came to attention and saluted and said impassively: “Good evening, sir.”

“Hello, Brand.” Damon had returned the salute and then shaken hands and asked him how he was feeling. “What you doing—clearing the west forty?”

“Yes.” He gestured casually with the machete, which he'd transferred to his left hand. “Stuff grows while you look at it.” Tompkins and the others were still gaping at him. Kids.

“Come along with me a minute,” Damon was saying. “I want to talk to you.” They moved slowly toward the end of the clearing. “How's it going?”

“Can't complain, sir.” He felt a heady rush of excitement;
General
Damon was walking along with him, asking his opinion! “They're shaking down. Draftees, city and town kids, most of them. They think if you lie down on your belly and look at each other it's scouting and patroling.” Behind him he heard Tompkins whisper in awe and incredulity, “—a frigging
general! …
” He turned and glowered at them to shut them up, though he felt a deep, fugitive pride. “They've all been through high school, though. Every last one of them.”

The General was smiling faintly. “Well: it takes all kinds.”

“… Congratulations, sir,” he said awkwardly. “I heard you'd got a star. Are we going to be assigned to your command?”

“No. I came over to see you.” He looked up; Damon was facing him, his hands sunk in his hip pockets. “I remember you once said you'd like to serve with me. Well, I need an orderly and I wonder if you'd be interested. It'll mean a lot of late hours, running around, a lot of headaches. And I'll be the biggest one of all. It'll mean another stripe for you, though not right away. But Captain Orr tells me he's pleased with your work; and maybe you could go farther if you stayed with your outfit. You'll have to decide about that yourself. Anyway, think it over and let me know tomorrow.”

“I don't need to think it over, sir. Hell, I'd go right now. Only thing, I'll need to get cleared …”

Damon smiled. “That shouldn't be too difficult. If you're sure you want to do it.”

“I'm sure, General.” He was, beyond all doubt. It was a sign such as he'd never had before. “Whenever you say.”

“No time like the present. I've got a jeep at the battalion office. Go ahead and pack your gear. I'll see about getting some orders cut for you.”

It had been like that. One moment, and his whole life was changed again. Chance. Like the night long ago when he'd waked from a nightmare and smelled the smoke, dense and foul, clinging to his throat. Fire. Without a sound he had jumped to his feet and run into the main room through churning clouds of smoke, to the hearth, the old rug whose edge was alive with crawling maggots of glowing coals. Coughing he'd snatched up the rug and made for the door. The rug had burst into flame all at once, searing his face; in a paroxysm he'd dropped it, caught it up again and plunged outside and flung it on the hard clay where it burned furiously, the flames torn low to the earth by the plains wind. His forearm was burned, and his foot. And behind him then he heard a stirring and a cry. He would always remember that moment. Chance. But you had to seize it by the throat, as the Old Man said, or it was nothing—it would drift past you like a still river. And it was more than that, too: standing there in the clearing with the machete in his hand, watching those steady, sober eyes he knew he wanted nothing more than to follow this man who had taken such risks for him and given him back his dignity, his place among the white men—that he would willingly follow him as long as breath was in his lungs …

A man came running from the left, from the direction of First Battalion. Captain Lund, looking like a wild-eyed scarecrow, bathed in dust. He slid down into the hole. “Colonel—everybody's down! We've lost everybody …”

Krisler grinned at him brightly. “You've still got me, Swede.”

“Hear it?” Travis was saying to Chase. “Do you?”

“Yes.” Chase doubled down in the pit and grabbed the arm of Damon, who was on the radio to CLAYMORE.
“General—”

And then, peering forward over the shattered, embedded logs and débris he heard it, under the groan and crash of mortars and the popping of rifle and machinegun fire—a brash, dusty clatter, like a tractor working in a distant field; then another. Oh no, he thought, watching Damon and Krisler scramble up to the leading edge of the pit, their faces rigid with tension; remembering Sendai all over again, that same coughing clatter and everyone running through the tangle of roots and vines, oh no,
no:
constrained to watch with the others now, all his senses alert and quaking—seeing then at the far end of the draw, bristling with fronds and branches, the squat black form.

“Tanks!” someone shouted. “They've got
tanks
—”

The machine gun on their right opened up, the gunner half-reclining on one hip, his helmet tipped back. From all points tracers curved in toward the tank and caromed away like sparks from an acetylene torch. It paused a moment, turned and came on again. Brand looked back. Damon was back on the radio again, talking rapidly now. “CARBINE to CUTLASS. CARBINE to CUTLASS … Duke? This is Sam. Look, I'm with CROSSBOW, we've got troubles … What? Let me talk to Pulleyne. Who is this? … He's what? You say he's what?” Damon's face was strained with the effort to hear. “
Gone ashore
—but what's the sense in that? How in Christ's name can I reach him?… All right, all right. Dick, look, we're under attack by tanks. Five or six, maybe more, I can't tell yet. Now what about Bailey's tank company: have they got ashore yet? …
Recalled
them! Then where in hell are they—just milling around out there somewhere? All right, never mind. What about artillery?… No no naval fire—they're into us
now.
Get on Harkavy and tell him to divert any and all armor to Red Two. Yes, Red Two. When Pulleyne contacts you, tell him we're in serious trouble over here. To send Bailey in as soon as possible. And tell him CROSSBOW will hold. Out.” He handed the headset to De Luca and called, “Hank! Joe!” Brand crept back through the pit.