Once an Eagle (19 page)

The Germans in the center were deployed now, along the edge of the ditch. The rear contingent had gone to pieces, milling around and shouting. They were all in trouble, they were confused. But fire was coming from the trench: he could see the torch flashes from the rifle barrels winking here and there. They'd recovered quickly, doped it out. But they were pinned and they knew that, too: they had no place to go. His mind seemed to move along independent of his tensed, sweating body, analyzing, anticipating with a steady, hard objectivity. Then … then they would seek safety in attack—they would rush the farm as the least of three evils. An officer was kneeling at the near edge of the ditch, making long sweeping gestures with his arm—then suddenly his head dropped doll-like on his chest and he fell back out of sight. Raebyrne let out a whoop.

“Yaaaaa-hoo! That's for old Starkie …”

There was a shocking series of smashes right in front of him: the louvers shattered in a rain of chips and splinters, and light poured in on his face. He cringed, rose up again, his thumbs still jammed against the trips. Spandau, they had a Spandau. “Get—that—gun!” he roared, scarcely aware he was shouting at all. “Get him! …” Another burst ripped the shutters, there was the furious climbing whine of ricochets and someone behind him screamed. He ducked again, this time by design, was up again a second later to see Raebyrne still clinging to the right-hand corner of the shutter, blazing away, his slender body jerking with the recoil. The Spandau or whatever it was went silent, started, stopped again, and now he could hear Raebyrne talking steadily as he fired:

“—busted without a pack, you Borsch sons of bitches …
get
away from there! …”

They were all yelling now, hollering at the top of their lungs. The belt ran out: he and Brewster inserted a new one and raced on. Men were there, he reached them, they fell as if cuffed flat, or they leaped up, or spun away and down like faulty man-made toys. It was a deafening dream, a badly rehearsed tableau without rhyme or reason. He could feel nothing; his hands were numb, his eyes kept tearing from the jolting, jumping sight.

“Ya-hoo! there they go! Yaaaaa-hoo!”

They were breaking; they were running away across the field, back toward the woods, and now he could hear cries like children on some windy plain beside a river. He pursued them, the Springfields snapped and crackled. They were going to get away, some of them were going to make it, there were so many, so very many—

They were gone, had slipped off through the distant trees. They'd got away. He fired on and on, in a paroxysm of need, until the gun stopped firing, the belt had run out, and Brewster was screaming at him, his face pleading and wild:

“Stop it, Sarge! That's enough,
enough …
!”

He took his hands from the grips and wiped his face with his sleeve; it came away blued with dirt and grease and sweat. Out of it. They were out of it. They were all right. In the center of the ditch someone was waving a piece of white rag slowly, back and forth, back and forth …

He got up. Raebyrne, his face red as a beet, was capering with glee. “Did you see the sons of bitches! Did you see them run? A hundred to one! Old Sarge …” He grabbed Damon in an exultant rush and almost spun him around. “We could lick the world and ask for more! It's better than the Alamo …” Brewster was staring at them both, his face dead white, his mouth a thin, even, bloodless line.

Behind them someone was uttering short, broken screams. They all turned in surprise: Lujak, holding one knee with his good hand and rocking to and fro.

“What happened to him?” Raebyrne said.

“Ricochet,” Damon answered. “I thought he'd be out of the way, over there.” He leaped to the east side and leaned out. Devlin was sprawled wearily, with his arm hanging over the Maxim's breech.

“You all right?” he called.

“Yeah. We're all right … You?”

“Lujak. Hit again by a ricochet.”

“That Lujak is unlucky.”

“Isn't he?” He laughed, he couldn't help it, it was as necessary as breathing. Devlin watched him with a tired smile.

“Think we can stand 'em off again?”

“I don't see why not. How you fixed for ammo?”

“We're down pretty fine.” Devlin paused. “They'll be back, Sam.”

“I know. How many you think got away?”

“I don't know—ten or a dozen. What do you want to do about those people in the ditch?”

“Let's get them back here and tie 'em up.” He moved to the north face. The big white rag, now tied to a bayoneted rifle, was still swinging back and forth. He raised his glasses. There seemed to be about fifteen of them; some were bandaging the wounded. “All right,” he shouted. “Come on with your hands way up over your heads. Drop your belts and your weapons … Tim,” he turned to Brewster, “tell these people what I just said, will you?”

He sent Raebyrne out to ride herd on the prisoners, went back and sat down on a cartridge box; he had a splitting headache and his eyes hurt. Think. He had to think. They'd been lucky. The next time they wouldn't be—the next time the Germans would come in three carefully spaced assault waves. And there'd be artillery preparation; mortars at the very least. They would be shelled. What had he better do? Go down to the courtyard and dig in? and then run back upstairs when they assaulted? But suppose they called down a creeping barrage on the position? They were perfectly capable of it. There wouldn't be a man left to fire the guns. Would he even have time to dig in? All the quick assurance of the morning had fled him; he felt burdened and unsure, prey to a thousand and one fearsome conjectures. Brewster had just finished binding up Lujak, who was saying in a faint, petulant voice: “—why can't we get
out
of this horrible place, oh God, why can't we get
away
from here!—”

“Shut up, Lujak,” he ordered absently. Of course they could pull out now, abandon the place and take their chances. It was foolish to take a stand in a position you couldn't adequately defend; wasn't it?

But suppose they didn't attack for a while—suppose the word didn't get back to
their
regimental headquarters, and from there to division and corps and army; and then the conferences and recommendations, and finally the orders going back to division, to regiment, to division artillery … Both sides were terribly confused in war, he'd learned that much; and whoever acted with speed and resolution, made the correct response, got the advantage.

But what was the correct response?

He didn't know. He just plain didn't know. He'd better dig in outside. Dig in, and get Henderson and Schilz to go out and get that Spandau and as much Mauser ammunition as they could. He ought to send a runner, but who? With six effectives, who could he spare? Wouldn't he just be sacrificing a man, and needlessly? Everything seemed impossible, complicated beyond all unraveling—he felt himself adrift in the frailest of vessels, bobbing and sinking in a watery universe of menace.

He heard Raebyrne's voice in the courtyard below, high-pitched, peremptory, and the scrape and scuffle of boots. Wearily he got to his feet and went to the shutters, gazed out over the field, where hundreds of gray forms lay in windrows, in disordered clumps and splotches, as if flung down by the most powerful and careless of hands. A company of men. He had done that. He had wiped out a company of men. Like God. He had flung them down there like God sowing some noisome grain—

He began to tremble again: a stealthy tremor that began in his hands and then spread rapidly over the surface of his body in a hideous, demonic rash, until he was shaking like a whipped dog. He gripped the splintered wood with all his might, trying to force back the palsy as a man might shut a lid on a wild animal trapped. But he could not control it. He clapped his hands together tightly and peered down into the little courtyard, where Raebyrne and Henderson were carefully frisking the prisoners. Bareheaded, without belts or helmets, they looked frail and solemn and ashamed; they looked exactly the way Dev and Raebyrne and Poletti had a few hours before …

“Poor devils.” Brewster was staring out at the field, blinking, his fingers to his mouth. “We slaughtered them like sheep. The poor devils …”

Damon threw him a glance. “You think they wouldn't have done the same thing to you?” he demanded. “You forgotten last night so soon?”

“No, Sarge. I haven't forgotten last night.” Brewster's voice was surprisingly steady; it seemed incongruous, issuing from his swollen, misshapen face. “I know. It's war. But … ”

“But nothing. The object of war is to kill, right? Destroy the enemy—by the use of mass, economy of force, movement, surprise. That's the aim of the game. We used surprise, right?”

“Sure, Sarge.”

“All right.”

“But”—Brewster waved a slender hand toward the courtyard below them—“a lot of them are wounded. Badly. It seems to me we ought to—”

“So are Jason and Lujak and Burgess wounded. That's the chances we all take. They took them, too. War is not a God damned strawberry social.”

“Yes, I've learned that, all right.”

“All right, then …”

The tremor—buck fever, palsy, visitation, whatever it was—had passed; with the brief exchange with Brewster all his resolution had returned, and his obstinacy. He remembered the disgrace of the night's disaster, the consternation, the dishonor; and his heart hardened. They were here, at Brigny Farm; and they were going to stay here. He had succeeded in capturing what could quite easily have been converted into an enemy strongpoint, and from it had inflicted substantial losses on that enemy. If they didn't accomplish anything beyond this they'd done a good deal. But they weren't through yet, not by a long shot. They would stay here, and fire at targets of opportunity until they were killed or captured or reinforced. They owed that much to Starkie and Davis and all the others, come what may.

He plunged into a fever of activity. He got the prisoners assembled and seated on the big barn floor, with two German stretcher bearers tending the wounded and Burgess sitting on the platform guarding them. He sent Schilz and Henderson after the Spandau and the Mauser ammunition, and set up a roster on digging foxholes in the area between the two buildings so that two men were working all the time; he dug the first hole himself, using a German spade. And half an hour later, again in the tower sweeping the horizon with his glasses, he heard the brisk popping of small-arms fire, coming from the south and west. He alerted Devlin, they manned their posts, and a few minutes later saw little clumps of men hurrying toward them over the hill. Germans, withdrawing in not very good order. This part of the big Friedensturm, at least, was not panning out. He let two small groups get as close as he dared, and opened fire. They thought at first they were being fired on by their own people by mistake, and tried frantically to signal the farm; then they realized their error and fled, those that were left. By now the enemy was streaming fitfully northward through the woods, some of them running; Damon could see the glint of metal behind the green leaves. He and Brewster dragged the Maxim gun to the east face and began to set it up for harrassing fire, and then Raebyrne yelled, “Here comes the cavalry!” and raising his head he saw coming over the distant rise the long wavering lines of men in khaki, the dishpan helmets, long rifles aslant in the afternoon sun; and he sighed with relief.

“I never thought I'd see it,” Brewster was saying. “I never thought I'd see a sight so wonderful …”

“What the hell,” Raebyrne scoffed, “it's only that contrary Second Battalion, running up to swallow all the glory. Bunch of—”

A torrent of bullets spattered the wall beside their heads and the three of them ducked.

“Why, the clodderpolls!” Raebyrne cried, “—the zany, jobberknowling—”

Damon snatched up his rifle and flung himself at the shutters, drove the butt with all his might against the wood; it gave, splintered, sagged—then all at once the whole frame gave way and fell to the courtyard. He was flooded with sunlight; he had a glimpse of the wobbling khaki lines, now much nearer, and heard the stuttering cough of a Chauchat. Tracers burned orange wires through the still summer air.

“Cut that out!” he roared. “Stop that God damned firing! … ” They either couldn't see him or didn't care. Someone was pulling insistently at his shoulder. He whipped off his helmet and scaled it out of the window; it hung in the air, an inverted brown saucepan, bounced once in the wheat. Another burst smashed against the stone, just below him. He looked around in a fury of need, saw the blanket Lujak was lying on and yanked it out from under him. Lujak shrieked with pain. Brewster was clutching at him, calling, “Sarge, get
down
—!” He shook off Brewster's hands, lurched to the open rectangle of light again and flapped the dirty, bloodstained blanket up and down, shouting: “No, no,
no … !
”

The gun stopped; and now the Yanks were running down the long slope through the wheat, their weapons held high, their gear clinking, a strangely festive sound against the clatter of rifle fire off toward Brigny-le-Thiep. He stepped back from the window and rubbed his face, listening now to the hollow thunder of hobnailed boots on the cobbles, the clamor of voices. And Raebyrne, leaning far out of the shattered aperture, waved one arm and hollered:

“Come on, you coon-assed gladigators—all aboard for the frigging Alamo!”

Damon knelt beside Lujak, who was holding on to his knee and moaning. “It's all right,” he said. “They'll be up here for you in no time, now …”

“—Yes, but him!—what about
him?
” Lujak cried, pointing.

He looked. Jason was lying on his side, his body queerly twisted; one hand flopped back and forth on the floor. Damon reached over—recoiled with the slow rush of blood that had soaked the man's collar. Jason's eyes had rolled up under the lids. He was quivering all over, and his face was an awful bluish white. “What happened?” he muttered.