“You going with us on the train, sir?”
“No, I think I’ll be in the truck here. Give you boys some more room.”
“Kind of you, sir.”
The officer moved away, one last glance toward the truck’s new cargo.
Benson watched him with relief, hadn’t liked the man since the lieutenant had come to the platoon. He said in a low voice, “Wonderful little game they play. No looting, unless you can keep from getting caught. Anybody like us figures out you’re stealing half the crown jewels, toss a bribe our way.”
Mitchell slapped Benson on the back.
“Yeah, he’s a jerk for sure. But I don’t see MP on your helmet. He said steak. Let’s get some steak.”
The meat was cold, the bread thick and hard, and Benson had never enjoyed a meal more. The officers who guarded what was left of the unfortunate cow seemed to resent their fellow lieutenant revealing the secret, but Benson and Mitchell had shown just enough knowledge of the beast’s demise to be included among the select few.
They sat in a corner, on the floor, Benson stuffed with the agonizing pleasure of real meat. The large house was a communications center for the entire regiment, but the two GIs were ignored by the men who swarmed past them, and no one seemed to care that they occupied an unused corner of the front room. The house was alive with activity, mostly officers, the rooms on all sides humming with telephone conversations and the steady clack of Teletype machines. Benson could see up a long stairway, men in clean uniforms passing one another with that look of the Important.
Beside him, Mitchell said, “What do you think was in that trunk?”
“Stuff. Who cares?”
“Heavy stuff. Probably silverware. That looey was too jumpy, so it musta been pretty hot. I bet he gets nailed somewhere along the line. He’s gotta get on the same ship we do, sooner or later.”
Benson felt a sudden itch on the back of his neck, scratched.
Mitchell said, “You forget that lice powder? Dammit, don’t you scatter those little turds on me. Here.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small tin, handed it to Benson, who shook some into his hands. The powder was gray and stinking, ruining the happy glow from the meal. He rubbed it on his neck, opened his shirt, spread it on his chest, the smell turning his stomach. He coughed, said, “Damn, I hate this stuff.”
Mitchell slid a few feet away from him.
“Yeah, but I hate cooties worse. You took a shower, you’re supposed to use that stuff afterward. Every damn time.”
Benson closed his shirt, muffling the stink, handed the tin back to Mitchell.
“Showers. I never thought I’d see that. Big damn tents, pitched right down the street. I guess they figure the Czechs don’t care about modesty.”
“As dirty as I was, I didn’t care who saw my bare ass. That cold water was just fine. I still had crud on me from December. You too. Flies were making a home in your boots. They didn’t get those showers up here soon enough. Only thing smelled worse than us were those prisoners.”
Benson laughed, was relieved that Mitchell’s griping had changed, the dangerous edge dulled by the end of the fighting. He thought of the prisoners, a long column that had marched through the town on foot. They wore German uniforms, but they weren’t German at all. The men were ragged and happy, and Benson had learned they were Armenian. No one was certain if they had volunteered to fight for Hitler, or if they had been grabbed up and stuffed into German uniforms. For the prisoners, it didn’t seem to matter. They were marching away from the Russians.
“Hey, you two! Just who I’m looking for!”
Benson searched for the voice, saw the man coming out of a side room, a civilian, a camera hanging from his waist. The man knelt down in front of them, held out a hand, his face curling slightly from the stink of the lice powder.
“Uh … hi. I’m Jack Burgess, United Press. I’m here talking to GIs, guys in the field. Are you fellows combat soldiers? Did you see any action?”
Mitchell had the look Benson knew well, a hard scowl, the reporter utterly oblivious. Benson said, “Yes, sir. We’ve been in action since the fight in the Ardennes. We were in the One Oh Sixth.”
The reporter’s enthusiasm poured out in a gush.
“Veterans! Combat veterans! Excellent! I understand you boys are heading home. That’s what I want to write about. You’ve gotta be looking forward to a whole lot, right? I want to hear about it. You got gals waiting for you? Families? I bet you can’t wait to chow down on a good old American hot dog. Where you from?”
The man’s energy was crushing him, all the enjoyment Benson felt from the meal wiped away. He said, “I’m from Missouri. I’m hoping to find a gal, I guess. Nobody waiting for me …”
The man forced a counterfeit laugh, scribbled on a piece of paper.
“Cardinals fan then? Or maybe the Cubs? Bet you can’t wait to see a ball game. This’ll probably get into your newspaper before you get home. You could end up a hometown hero! What you think of that? Maybe a parade, right? You sent old Fritz running for home, you boys did. That had to be great, blasting holes in Hitler’s Heinies. So, when you get home, what’s the first thing you’re gonna do?” He reached out, slapped Benson’s arm. “Or do I know the answer to that already? Right? Better stay away from these foreign girls, though. I’ve heard some of those stories.” More laughter, the man winking, and Benson wanted to crawl straight under the floor. “So, tell me some of your adventures. Don’t leave anything out. I want to hear how great it felt to knock hell out of old Fritzie—”
Mitchell was up suddenly, grabbed the man by the front of his shirt. The reporter fell back, held up only by Mitchell’s grip.
“Hey! What gives?”
“Listen, you son of a bitch, you go somewhere else and talk to guys who think this was great.”
Benson reached out, but Mitchell was immovable, and he pulled the terrified reporter up close to him, their faces inches apart.
“Have you seen what these Kraut bastards did to people? Have you smelled it? That’s your story, you stupid asshole. There’s millions of us over here, and nothing we say matters one damn bit. Go to Ohrdruf or one of those other camps and take a deep breath, run your hands through the dirt, take some pictures of the bones. Or go find the grave where we buried our lieutenant, take your pictures there. Then you can write a story. But don’t you dare tell anybody that this was great.”
Mitchell shoved the man away, the reporter rolling back onto his rear. He scrambled quickly to his feet, backed away, his eyes locked on Mitchell.
“Whatever you say, soldier. You don’t want to talk, I’ve got no problem. You boys have a good trip home.”
The man was gone quickly, a mad escape out the door of the house. Mitchell sat back against the wall, the hum of activity around them resuming, no one paying them any attention at all. Benson felt the familiar fear again, that Mitchell was very close to doing something supremely stupid, that glimmer of madness Benson had seen too often. But Mitchell closed his eyes, no words between them, and after a long moment, Mitchell said, “You think they got any of that steak left?”
MAY 25, 1945
They rode in the railcars that had carried thousands before them, the strange boxes made by the French, the faded signs hanging beside the wide-open doorway, Hommes 40 Chevaux 8. The translation was old hat to the men who had ridden these before: forty men or eight horses. Many of the men around Benson had ridden in these same cars only weeks before, the most efficient transportation available to carry them from the port cities eastward to the front lines. They had been replacements fresh from the training centers and troopships, had come well after the vicious fighting in the Ardennes was over. By the time many of these men had come to the war, the rail lines were completely safe, no danger from German air strikes. As they rode on the undulating rhythm of the rails, some were sharing their complaints, stories about their first ride in these cars, the oh-so-miserable experience. Mitchell had withdrawn inside
himself, ignored them all. Benson tried to do the same, but he couldn’t escape, suffered through their bragging, the competition over whose train ride had been tougher. They spoke of sardine cans, how tightly packed they had been, with no room to lie down, men sleeping only while sitting against one another in rows like so many dominoes. Benson kept his own stories quiet, couldn’t help feeling annoyed that most of these men had never suffered through the brutal ride over snow and mud. They had never been cramped in the back of a deuce-and-a-half while shellfire bounced through the dark woods around them. They had never fought in a frozen foxhole or slept in mud. If they had been in the trucks at all, it was mostly on the flat serenity of the autobahn.
No matter the ridiculous griping from the others, Benson appreciated the luxury of a thick straw matting that had been shoveled into each car. He knew Mitchell would feel the same way, though Mitchell was still silent, lost in some place that Benson knew was best left alone. Benson laid back, adjusted himself, wiggled his toes inside clean boots and dry socks, thought, this’ll do just fine, no matter how long we gotta ride. The lack of crowding was another luxury, enough space for each man to lie flat. For the first several hours, not even the talkers could keep Benson from the nap, made more comfortable by the rhythmic rocking of the train.
Twice a day, the trains had stopped somewhere in open nowhere, the men disembarking for fifteen minutes or more. The stop was a courtesy, allowing the men some personal relief, and Benson had joined the lines of men standing along the tracks, offering their own kind of salute to the German countryside. The rations came regularly as well, the trains pulling into stations, surrounded by towns or villages that barely existed now. But the army was there, kitchens and hot food and fresh water. The engineers had repaired the rails, but Benson assumed that any repair of the villages would come from the hands of those who might one day return to reclaim a home.
In some of the stations, other trains appeared, moving the opposite direction on parallel tracks. Most were filled with refugees, civilians being relocated, either homeward or to some new place. When the trains were stopped, they sat only a few feet apart, and Benson would join the troops around him in a strange staring match, soldiers looking into the eyes of people who stared back with what seemed to be a desperate aching, men and women who seemed utterly lost. The smells rolled out of the railcars, no luxury there, no clean straw, no room for sleeping. But they were always curious, staring back at the Americans, searching them with hollow eyes and thin faces. Benson couldn’t help thinking of the camps, though these people wore actual clothing, and not the obscene striped pajamas. The trains didn’t stay alongside long enough for anyone to talk, the MPs and guards on the platforms offering no word about who these people were. But their faces brought him back to the memories he had tried to hold away, the camps, and he searched their eyes, wondered if they were survivors. Now, he thought, they’re going back home, to whatever home they might still have. He marveled at the variety of their clothes, some of the men in ragged suits, women in thick fluffy dresses, fancy embroidery, most with some kind of hat. If there were smiles, they came mostly from the children, and Benson felt a hard pain staring into their faces. The word had passed that many of the people on the trains were Russians, or eastern Europeans who had not been in camps at all. They were simply refugees who had fled westward to escape the fighting that had torn across their land. Now they were going home, to places that seemed as exotic as Benson could imagine, ancient cities like Budapest and Prague, or their small farms, where animals did the work and a man made his own tools. But Benson’s imagination didn’t seem to match the faces he saw. There was no joy, no sense of celebration, just the dead stares. Benson tried to understand that, tried to guess what these people had seen and endured, and how many just like them had not survived. He watched the children, their smiles innocent and curious, some of the soldiers tossing chocolate bars over, candy that the adults grabbed first. At least, he thought, they have the children. But how many do not?
The railcar was moving again across open countryside, its wide door kept open, the weather warm, high sunshine, the movement of the train its own breeze. They rolled past deep forests, over bridges crossing narrow streams, mountains in the distance, mountains that Benson suspected he had seen before. The farms they passed were mostly intact, neat squares of geometric perfection, stone fences and livestock, old men and women and sometimes their daughters standing in the doorways of rugged little houses, watching the trains go by. Not all the rail stations were surrounded by the debris of war, and in the towns that had survived, the young women were there, waiting. The soldiers knew it was no accident that the German women seemed to know when the next train would arrive. At each stop, there was a flurry of bright dresses, cheerful greetings, the MPs keeping the women back across the tracks. Benson had watched them with virtuous curiosity, but there was no virtue in some of the men around him. The MPs would allow no fraternization, the train not stopping long enough for any kind of social mixing. But for the brief moments until the train moved again, the MPs allowed the women to offer whatever barter they could, the women speaking broken English, the few words that mattered, tossing over garters and other bits of clothing for cigarettes and chocolate. The soldiers accepted that the show was exactly that, the women parading legs and a shifting bottom, sometimes too much leg and more shift than Benson could ignore. The talk was loud and boisterous, the catcalls and shouts, soldiers bragging to anyone who would listen what would happen if they had just one night in that town.
They passed other trains as well, filled with men in rags of uniforms, prisoners of war, many of them Russian, returning to their army in the east. When the trains parked close together, an active marketplace would spring to life, brisk trade in American cigarettes and wristwatches for Russian weapons or anything else that seemed exotic to the GIs. Benson saw a man holding up an officer’s sword, spitting out his sales pitch in manic Russian, trying to make his deal before the trains parted. Benson had been tempted, but another GI had jumped in, offering the Russian an American .45. The Russian had grabbed the pistol with the careless lust of a man who knows he has gotten the better of the deal, but the GI climbed back into the railcar, holding his trophy aloft, a hearty cheer from the men around him.
As the trip lengthened into long hours, the men in the railcars created their own sport, card games breaking out, word passing among the most avid poker players which car had the better game. With each hour, they knew they were closer to the seaports, and with the change in scenery came a change of conversation, the inevitability of rumors. Benson had the orders that told him he was going home, and he had already written his mother, a letter that might be somewhere in the cargo car of this very train. He had already begun to think of school, if he would try to go to college, study something meaningful, exciting. He always admired the engineers, the most difficult of jobs that so many soldiers took for granted. His alternative was to stay in the small town, Sullivan, but he had already decided that the future was in the cities, St. Louis or maybe Kansas City. The thought of college, of big cities, had always been frightening to him. But he ignored that now, knew that no matter what choices he made, he would never be frightened again.
The impatience of some in the railcar brought out the loudest mouths, and Benson stayed close to Mitchell, tried to mimic the man’s grim silence, avoiding the absurd talk from those who seemed to have nothing else in their brains. The loudest mouths began to embrace the rumors that the army had lied to them all, that no matter what the officers or the papers said, they would end up in Le Havre or Antwerp only to board ships sailing straight for the Pacific. Benson could not fathom that the army had simply lied, not to the men who had already done their job. The big talkers kept it up, some men absolute in their claims that rather than face the Japanese, they would desert, slip out through the French countryside, or, if they made it to the States, hauled to a new training camp, they would disappear from there as well. The talk was dangerous and nasty,
but Benson saw through the anger to the fear, that same fear that had caused so many self-inflicted wounds. He knew that some of the biggest talk came from the men who might never have seen a German soldier, but there were others, and Benson could see it in their faces, the blank stares, the quiet resolution that surprised him. It was the veterans who absorbed the talk of desertion and acknowledged it with a subtle nod. Benson tried to erase that from his mind, would not believe any of these men would run away from a fight. He had never thought of the Japanese as anything but a name, strange people that the Marines were confronting, the navy, small islands and beach landings that seemed no more real to him than some Hollywood movie. But he also knew that some of the men who rode beside him had seen the worst side of man, and some carried memories of things they could never tell anyone back home. As the skies grew darker, he could not help thinking of Mitchell and the sergeant, Higgins, marching off with the German prisoners, that boy who had tried to kill them. Benson had swept that away, tried to convince himself that he didn’t really know what happened to them. He hadn’t actually witnessed anything. But he knew Mitchell carried that somewhere inside him, a memory of that young boy and what he had done to him, a memory that he would never escape.
On the second morning, the men awoke to a breakfast waiting in a row of kitchen trucks parked alongside a broken concrete platform. There had been pancakes and oatmeal and toast, and gallons of coffee, and Benson knew that with the dawn, they were that much closer to the end of the trip. When the train moved again, he was energized by a new thought, a sudden need to see it all, every sight. The men around him were doing what they had been doing all along, some talking among themselves, one card game in a corner. Benson ignored all of that, began to realize that he was actually leaving this place, that for the next few hours, or maybe days, he was still in Europe. This is a different place, he thought, different from Missouri, different from any other place I’ll ever be. I won’t come back here, probably. Why would I? Why would any of us? He had seen magazines about Europe when he was a boy, fantasies of the very rich who could ride the vast ocean liners, vacationing in the glorious cities, cities that now might be great fields of debris, stinking of fire and death. Who would come to see that?