“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
13 14 15 16 17 [QRK/RRD] 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Anton Myrer, Once an Eagle
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