Once an Eagle

  He moved quickly along the line of foxholes. More shells swept overhead and crashed thunderously in the rear of the woods. He heard voices, came upon two figures fussing with a third, which was inert. “Who is it?” he said crisply.

  “It’s Van Gelder,” came a voice which Damon recognized as Brewster’s. “He’s been hurt …”

  Van Gelder, a stout, pleasant boy from Michigan, was lying perfectly still, breathing in short, swift pants. Damon put his hands on him.

  “It’s his back,” Brewster said.

  “How do you know?” This was Poletti.

  “I heard it. It hit him in the back. It sounded as if someone had slapped him. I could hear it.”

  “All right,” Damon said. He passed his hands down Van Gelder’s back—his fingers plunged all at once into a deep, slick groove in the boy’s shirt. There was an instant’s hot repugnance, then an icy calm flooded with the need for action.

  “One minute he was all right,” Brewster was going on rapidly, “he was just starting to say something to me—and the next there was this slap and he let out a cry—”

  “All right,” Damon cut him off. “Take it easy, now.” He faced rear and shouted, “Stretcher-bearer!”—his voice nearly drowned in the roar of shelling. Several shadows rose out of the gloom. “Over here,” Damon called.

  The medics gathered around Van Gelder. “He hurt bad?” one of them asked.

  “No,” Damon said, although he wasn’t at all sure of this; he knew Brewster and Poletti were listening intently, and he felt that Van Gelder was still conscious, in spite of his silence. “But he’d better go back, all right.”

  They lifted Van Gelder on to the stretcher, which went taut with his weight. He gave a sharp cry, and then the thick panting began again.

  “It’s all right,” Damon said, bending down. “They’ll take care of you. Just relax, now.”

  “—I was looking right at him,” Brewster was saying hurriedly. “He was just starting to dig his hole a little deeper, he was bent over—”

  Damon looked up. Several of them were milling around, talking, listening to Brewster, asking questions. “Get back in your holes,” he said roughly. “What’s the matter with you people—you want to get peppered? Get back in your holes and check your weapons …”

  He watched the medics move off toward the black screen of the woods. First casualty, he thought; first man down. Who’ll be the last?

  His watch said 11:42; the hands, the numerals, looked green and ghostly. Twelve o’clock, midnight—the barrage would open at midnight, and the attack would follow at 12:30 or so. It would be just like the Germans to open up on the dot of twelve. He crept from hole to hole, checking his squads. Ferguson, rat-faced and debonaire; Poletti, nervous and very silent; little Turner, irate with impatience.

  “Well, are the bastards coming or aren’t they?”

  “They’re coming all right. Hold your water.”

  Krazewski, his big face flat and solid, fixing a clip to that ugly, long-snouted beast of a Chauchat. “Keep that thing firing, now,” Sam said.

  “Damon.”

  “Yes?”

  Krazewski snorted wetly through his nose. Since that afternoon behind the latrines he had consistently displayed the cleanest weapon and become a marvel at field-stripping. Damon had praised him twice, briefly, but the big man had made no response. Now he was grinning, his face like a flat, sweaty moon. “I—just wanted to tell you. You’re all right.”

  Damon slapped the gunner on the shoulder for answer, crept on to Tsonka, who had the stump of an unlighted cigar sticking straight out between his teeth. He would gradually chew it up entire; he was rarely known to spit. “Stick with him now, Tsonka. If Kraz is hit, it’s your gun.”

  “Right, Sarge.”

  Raebyrne’s skinny profile, the broad grin. “Sarge!” This uttered in a heavy stage whisper. “What am I going to do with these?” He held up what looked like a cloth sack.

  “What’s that?”

  “Four honest-to-God hen’s eggs, Sarge. Scrowged them out of that farm down the road a piece. I got time to cook ’em up a little?”

  “Cook ’em! I told you no fires—” Damon had an urge to roar with laughter. “What the hell do you think this is, a church supper?”

  “Jesus, Sarge, I can’t eat ’em raw!…”

  “Well, you can’t eat them any other way, I’ll tell you that. Knock the tops off with your knife and suck ’em clean. That’s what the rich do,” he added.

  “The rich?”

  “Sure—rich folks in town houses in Chicago. Boat-club swells.” He had a swift vision of his Uncle Bill sitting by the table on the screen porch, his face flushed with beer, one arm gesticulating. “It’s all the rage.” He moved along to Brewster and said: “All set?”

  The boy nodded, then shook his head. “Cold,” he murmured.

  “Cold!” Damon exclaimed. His own face and neck were slick with sweat.

  Brewster nodded rapidly; he made a sharp little sound low in his throat, and licked his lips.

  The Sergeant reached out and gripped Brewster’s arm. “You’ll do all right … Don’t think so much! Just do what you have to do …” And with a final shake: “Be hard!”

  And then Devlin, looking Irish and tough, his chin jutting out against the helmet’s tight leather strap. “All set, Dev?”

  “All set, Sam.”

  “Keep your eye on the Chauchat teams, won’t you.”

  “Right you are.”

  He paused; Devlin was still watching him, he knew. “Good luck, Dev.”

  “Good luck, Sam.”

  The night was terrible. There were these tremulous sighs that mounted to a shriek, swooped in awful descent like some enormous blade scoring the vast black vault of the sky, and struck in mountainous crashes that lifted Brewster in all his frailty and flung him to and fro in his hole. At first he had wanted to get up and run, to flee into the woods from this place of darkness and terrors—once he’d started to climb out of his hole and Devlin had roared at him: “Get—down!” and he’d obeyed. Now the very thought of leaving this little place of safety was as unendurable as staying in it had been before. Shriek mounted upon arching shriek—and then vast jarring concussions that battered and buffeted him, turned him into a gasping, cringing rag doll. Where was he? Where was anybody? at all? A huge weight drove straight down upon him, smashed all his senses awry and fluttering. There, he thought, there, all right—but there was no end to the squeals and hammer blows. He could hear nothing, see nothing. He crouched lower and lower, clawing at the damp earth with his fingers in an agony of need, while the old soft world spat and heaved in an orgy of shattering, and trainloads of iron were hurled into factories of glass. No more, he thought, please no more, now—finally became aware that he was screaming the words like a child: “No—more—please please—no more!”

  There was a little lull then; and his ears ringing, his sight marred by brilliant, darting rings and blotches, he remembered a football game back at St. Andrew’s, a scrimmage with the varsity—he had been too small even to dream of playing on the varsity—a moment of feverish apprehension and then bodies far bigger and harder than his had come at him weaving and diving, had struck him down and rolled over him, leaving him trampled, ignominious, and thundered on; the torn earth of the football field had smelled and tasted like this earth. His nose had bled. Now they were doing it again. All over again. He discovered he was biting hard on the back of his hand. Never should have got into this, he moaned, or thought he moaned. Never should have come here. To this place …

  There was a flat crash near him, another. He looked up, and around him the world burst into light—but light like some kingdom of the mad: an eerie, blue-white field struck with dark shadow, day without depth. An evil dream of light in which nothing looked the way it should, nothing at all. There was the embankment, the screen of trees to the left, but smashed and stripped now like mammoth cornstalks rent and dangling … He was facing backward. Was he
? Jesus! He turned and saw in the crazy, subterranean shimmer a low black lump like an animal crawling, or rolling—a furry mass that split apart in clumps and piles, in figures swelling, jostling up and down. He saw the swept-down helmets glinting under the flare’s evil glow, and was filled with dread so great it choked him. Those were—those were Germans. And they were coming to kill him. Thousands of them. To kill him—

  The flare went out and darkness swooped in over him and blinded him. He heard firing close by, a Chauchat’s dry, hiccuping rhythm, and someone was shouting in a clear, hard voice; but he could not understand one word. The tone reached him though, its threatful urgency, and he pushed his rifle out ahead of him and began to fire into the sparks and chains of light that hurt his eyes—kept firing, flinching with the recoil each time, heard nothing, realized his rifle was empty. He gazed around him in a panic, could make out nothing in the awful, flashshot din. Someone was screaming in a high, shrill voice, like a dog yelping. In pain. Someone in terrible pain. He clawed a clip out of his cartridge belt, a reflex action, hearing the thump and clatter of running men, their onrushing proximity; dropped the clip and ducked down and scrabbled for it in the dark, could not find it anywhere, conscious now of screams and hoarse cries, the dense roar of explosions all around him. Something slammed against the top of his helmet and his face struck the earth with an impact that momentarily stunned him. I’m dying, he thought with quaking awful protest, oh dear God, I’m dying now, God help me, it’s all over, all the things I—

  Something drove down on his back, dirt showered over his neck and arms. A boot, a man’s boot. He cried out in pain. It was gone. Explosions swept him, drove him lower. Stop this, he was crying frankly now, oh stop this awful, awful thing! He had no sight, no sense, no functions—lay crushed like a potato sack and wanted only for it all to be over, just be over, forever and for good …

  When he stirred again he was amazed at the stillness. He was here. In this hole. He was alive. He started to move, felt the pain in his back, stopped and reached around gingerly; there was nothing. His other hand encountered an object, a hard, round object. He pushed at it, picked it up and hefted it curiously. It was a German grenade. Potato masher. He let it drop in a slow wave of fear. That had been lying there. Beside him. For how long? With tremendous revulsion he reached out and picked it up again and tossed it out of his hole, heard it hit with a soft thud a few feet away. Then he felt consternation: suppose it should still go off—it could hurt someone else nearby. He raised his head. Far behind him he could hear the snare drum rattle of small-arms fire.

  “Starkie?” he called softly. “Starkie? Corporal Devlin?” There was no answer. He was alone. He was here all alone, they had all run off and left him here in the open, to face everything all by himself. He felt a longing for the close presence of someone, anyone, so great he could have wept. He glared about wildly, but could see nothing but blobs and chains of gray streaming on blackness. This was terrible: if he could only see—!

  He rose to his feet. Over to his left he heard voices. He had opened his mouth to call when one of them said: “Nein, nein, ist nicht schwer. Fleischwunde …”

  Brewster sank back into his hole. All the fear he’d felt before was nothing to the boundless dread that gripped him now. Surrounded. He was alone, and surrounded by the enemy. In the dark.

  “Wo ist Schroeder?” the wounded man asked. Firing to the south swelled up again, and Brewster couldn’t hear the answer. The two men talked in low voices for a moment.

  “Dieser Stacheldraht—er ist bösartig …”

  “Kannst du weiterziehen?”

  “Ja, sicher—bin erschöpft, weiter nichts … Halts fern von der Walde, he? Rechts, immer rechts, durch die Wiesen … Du sollst drängen.”

  “Richtig. Hals und Bein bruch.”

  “Hals und Bein bruch …”

  Their voices faded, were lost in the distant roar of gunfire. Brewster strained to hear the rest of what they said. He was too afraid even to call out to them to surrender. Off to the right he heard horses, and the faint jingle of harness, the thin squeak of axles. Away. He had to get away from here. But where in God’s name could he go?

  Time went by. It seemed darker than ever, if anything. I’ll wait till daylight and then give myself up, he told himself flatly, struggling to maintain a semblance of calm. There’s no hope for me anymore—stuck out here like this. That grenade didn’t go off and that’s why I’m alive. They can’t expect any more from me. I’ll wait till daybreak and then surrender. That’s the thing to do.

  He heard movement close by, and froze. A man crawling, very near. Now he had stopped. Behind him and to the left. He lifted his rifle from the bottom of the hole, remembered it was empty and crouched there holding it, put it down again. “—Don’t shoot,” he started to say, but no words came out. Slowly he raised his hands above his head.

  The figure moved again, a voice said, very softly: “B Company? First platoon?” A tone perfectly calm. “Starkie? Turner?” All at once Brewster recognized the voice—Sergeant Damon—and shivered with relief.

  “No,” he murmured, and lowered his arms. “Brewster.”

  “You all right?”

  “I think—yes. I am.” He was trembling violently and clenched his hands together. “Where is everybody?” He heard Damon off to his right and whispered loudly, “Sarge—wait … ”

  “Shut up,” Damon murmured. Brewster could hear him pulling at something.

  “What’s the matter?”

  There was a little pause. Then Damon muttered, “It’s Starkie.”

  “Right over there?”

  “Yes. He’s dead.”

  Starkie was dead. Starkie, who had slept in the cot right next to his at Drouamont, who had that way of opening his mouth in silent laughter—Starkie who was collecting picture postcards of all the bridges in the world, was dead. Had been there in that hole, dead, all this time …

  “Why didn’t you pull out?” Damon had crawled near him again.

  “What?” he stammered.

  “If you’re all right, why didn’t you pull back?”

  “I—couldn’t …” He heard the tight, dry chink of metal on metal. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking Starkie’s clips. I was almost out of ammunition … ”

  Ammunition. How in the name of God could he think of ammunition—

  “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.” Brewster was silent, shivering. Damon crept up to him, resting with his face so close Brewster could feel the Sergeant’s breath against his eyelids. “Come on, now. We’ve got to make a break for it.”

  “Wait,” Brewster whispered. The thought of leaving his hole was unbearable. “To go where?”

  “Where the hell do you think? Back to our lines.”

  “Oh.” He said suddenly: “There are Germans. Over there.”

  “I know. I heard them.”

  “They said to keep clear of the woods.”

  “They said that?”

  “Yes. One told the other. To keep to the right and go through the meadow.”

  Damon paused. “Good. That’s all right, Brewster. Good going. Come on, now.”

  “Wait—”

  “You got your rifle?”

  “Yes.” He nodded dumbly. “But—it’s not loaded.”

  “Load it, then …”

  Damon was irritated with him, he could tell from his voice. He got a clip out of his belt and inserted it, wincing at the noise it made. The firing had died away to a sporadic rattle and pop, and still farther off the short stammer of a machine gun.

  “We’re going to crawl over that way,” the Sergeant was saying. “Toward those woods.”

  Brewster said: “Where is everybody?”

  “I don’t know. Come on. Keep close to me. To my right leg.”

  “You mean we’re all there is?” The thought of their being just the two of them was frightening, in spite of Damon’s presence; a part of his mind was still clinging to the idea that the res
t of the platoon was somewhere nearby, right behind the embankment or in the woods.

  “Come on, now,” Damon ordered him.

  “—Don’t you think we’d better wait?” Brewster whispered suddenly.

  “What for?” The Sergeant had thrust his face close again. “Now listen here, Brewster. You’re hauling your ass out of that hole and coming with me and that’s all there is to it. Now, come on!”

  He heard Damon start crawling away. He nearly screamed out, “Wait!” wriggled out of his hole then and began to creep along behind the Sergeant. The wheat was trampled now in long swatches, as if enormous animals had wrestled and rolled in it; the broken stalks pricked his cheeks and hands. Ahead of him Damon paused, shifted to the left. Moving on, Brewster felt cloth, an outflung hand: rough fabric, slick leather, a stench of body odor so strong it was sickening—and then the sweet, dense smell of blood. A German. Dead German. He wiped his hand on his shirtfront and clenched his teeth. He could see things better now, a little better: shadows of woods, of packs and bodies in the lighter gray shadows of the wheat. Firing rose, a swift, rattling crescendo far beyond them. His heart was thumping in an even rhythm; he felt helpless and exposed, crawling through this murderous, open field. He had to cough, he had to sneeze even more, he made a thick, gulping sound trying to suppress them. The noise they were making—the steady rustle and scrape—moving through the field was horrifying. When he heard voices again, ahead of them and to their right, he knew even before he’d made out a single word that they were German. It sounded like several men; their talk grew louder and more distinct with each second.

  Damon’s hand was on his neck. “We’ve got to run for it. Now. Get up and run for the woods.”

  “Run?” he echoed weakly. “Stand up and run?”

  “Yes. It’s the only way. Come on. Get set.”

  “I—can’t, Sarge …”

  “You can,” Damon hissed at him. “You’ve got to!” The hand gripped him with fierce insistence. “Brewster. Come on.”

  “Don’t leave me, Sarge. Don’t leave me here—”