Articles of War (5 page)

But by the time he had arrived back among the other replacements encamped and waiting at Omaha, any sense of joy had faded. Thinking back, he swelled again with lust and he did not understand anymore his fear. He felt he at least should have waited to be sure the girl made it safely across the rain-slick rock. He should have gone back to check on her.

Trying to distract himself, he got out a piece of paper and tried to think of a letter to write to his father, but his thoughts spun in a manner that made the task impossible, and finally he put the blank page away. He smoked several cigarettes. It began to seem to him that he might be without bravery in any category. He went outside and sat on a crate and watched some of the others playing spades. He gazed at the game but hardly saw or heard a thing, until they began to discuss women. Then he got up and moved away.

The rain picked up again. For a long time he stood above the beach, wearing a plastic poncho, watching the activity and wondering at himself. He took the music box from his pocket and wound it and let it play and slow and stop, then returned it to his pocket. He resolved he would go back to the château the next day and in some way apologize to the girl.

The next morning, however, he and several other men were pulled from the roll call lineup and assigned to the 28th Division. A corporal led them to a pair of waiting trucks, and as Heck sat on the hard benches with the other silent and stinking men he tried to think about where he was going. But the future was obscured by an enormous darkness, and his meager imagination felt like a pathetically small stick to poke into it. He sensed before himself a distinct fate, though he could not see it. He longed to see it. He thought any fate would be easier to accept if only he could know it.

2.

NO ONE IN THE TRUCK SEEMED TO KNOW ANYONE ELSE. THEY
rode in silence for a mile or so; then one man asked for a light, another wondered aloud if anyone had heard any recent baseball scores, and soon several conversations had sprung up.

Heck watched the surroundings. He had taken a position near the tailgate, where he could, he figured, escape most quickly if the need arose. He also had a vague notion that he might be a sort of a hero if he sighted some unexpected danger. But mostly he was afraid and his fear made his thoughts jumpy. He seemed possessed of an excess of energy and first one leg then the other trembled uncontrollably, causing his heel to tap rapidly on the steel floor. Amid all the truck's jolting, none of the others appeared to notice.

They passed between hedgerows, then long wheat fields often densely pocked with craters and foxholes and the blackened, twisted, unnatural corpses of tanks and light artillery, half-tracks and jeeps. In one hedgerow, an American Sherman tank hung precariously in a gap it had created only to meet there its demise. Looking at the disabled German panzer tanks lying about, Heck thought unhappily that they appeared considerably larger and more fearsome than the American Shermans. In training he had been assured that the American tanks were faster and more agile, but when it came down to it, he thought, wouldn't anyone rather have more steel and a bigger gun?

Trees had been blasted and splintered and denuded, barns burned to the ground. Grossly blackened cattle lay swelling. They moved through a village visited by the war, and the devastation made the GIs in the truck silent. Heck had seen destroyed towns in newsreels and in the papers, but he had not understood the scale until now. The destruction was vast, the things and homes of many lives reduced to a great acreage of rubble, none of it reaching higher than eye level. And soon the same firepower that had done this would be aimed at himself. The native French were moving the rubble by hand, sifting through the remains of their homes. They turned long, blank stares on the passing Americans. As the truck exited the far side of the village, a group of boys hurled small, rock-hard apples at them. The fruit made sharp pinging noises off the side of the truck and one soldier was struck on the neck and yelped loudly. No one laughed and no one made any gesture or threat toward the boys, although the GI who had been hit muttered curses implicating the boys' mothers. One towheaded boy seemed to stare directly at Heck and to aim for him particularly, but his apples fell short, and soon the boys had receded from sight.

The road had been torn up by the treads of tanks and the convoys of supply trucks feeding the front, as well as by the shell craters, which the engineers had hastily filled. The driver of Heck's truck seemed to make wholly arbitrary decisions about which holes to plow through and which to avoid by violent swerving. Heck shifted continually in his seat, but it did little good—already, in every position his flesh felt bruised and raw. He closed his eyes awhile, but the battering caused vivid, malevolent geometries to spiral and throb on the black of his eyelids, and soon he could watch these no longer. He felt ill, and he thought it would be absurd to go across the entire Atlantic without getting sick, only to be hit with it here on a road in France. He tried to follow the advice he had overheard a sailor offer as they crossed the Atlantic: watch the horizon or the sky. The depth of the sky, however, did nothing to console him, and on the horizon bloomed dark clouds of smoke. His eyes had the sensation of being loose in their sockets, as though they would fall out if he tilted his head forward. Inside his gut burned a small hot flame. He held his M-1 between his legs and his fingers on it were moist. Repeatedly he wiped them on his pants.

Then, despite all the distractions, his thoughts turned back to Claire. The night before he had thought of nothing but her. Now, without warning, he felt again her ribs under his hands, heard her breath in his ear. In his pocket was the music box.

He felt like a coward for leaving and abandoning her, but he saw no other choices. I'll have to return and look for her when I can, he told himself. Although, in truth, the idea of seeing her again filled him with profound embarrassment. She would be justified in scorning him after the way he had fled her. But then he seemed to touch again the smooth knuckles of her spine. The presence of her music box in his pocket was comforting. It gave him a secret distinction, separating him from these others, all in the same uniform.

The man across from him began saying, intermittently, “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.” He gazed down at the barrel of the gun between his legs as a man might gaze at a hole from which he expected a snake to erupt. The man's evident fear irritated Heck, even though he also felt it, and it caused him for some miles to be able to look around with a spirit of contempt. A soldier stood and shuffled unsteadily down the length of the pitching truck, and when he reached the tailgate he urinated onto the passing road. Then he shuffled back to his seat, stepping high over duffel bags and packs, putting his hands on the heads of the seated men. He looked drunk, which Heck attributed to the movement of the truck, but later he noticed this same man tipping a small flask to his lips.

Heck decided that his own fear definitely annoyed him. It felt now like an object, exactly as if someone had cut him open, stuffed this thing inside, and sewn the flesh closed again.

The Germans were using horses to haul their equipment, and soon the animals lay dead and unburied along the road in numbers shocking to Heck. He had been bracing himself for months for the sight of dead men but was unprepared for dead horses. He experienced his first real sentiment of animosity toward the Germans—a horse had even less volition than a soldier, and to send so many of the beautiful animals to a futile destruction was abhorrent. Their bodies were mauled, disemboweled, torn into pieces, they were rotting and swelling hideously. In one place the horses had been piled and were burning, creating streamers of black smoke and a rancid, choking stench worse than any smell Heck had known. As they passed by, one of the bloating horses in the fire exploded with a loud, moist noise.

But the war leaped over the landscape with random and spasmodic wrath, touching earth in one place or another just long enough to crush everything, then vaulting far ahead, and they passed through wide swaths of countryside where no evidence of destruction was to be seen, and there were entire towns where people moved about their daily business quite as if they had never heard of the war. For a time it seemed to Heck that his senses had drifted somewhat away from the sickening discomfort of the ride. The greens of undamaged trees appeared particularly vivid, as if throbbing within. Time slowed and accelerated unpredictably.

In the cover of an old, umbrous wood the truck stopped briefly to let the men stretch their jarred muscles and bones. Heck opened a C-ration—a can of compressed cold, greasy, unrecognizable meat and filler—but he could hardly swallow the first mouthful. He threw away what remained and ate instead a chemical-flavored D-bar.

They started again with a lurch. As they came nearer the front they began to see horses that had not been dead long enough to swell. And beside the horses now lay men. A smashed panzer was still smoldering and leaking smoke. A naked, blood-encrusted, unlimbed torso hung in midair, tangled in the temporary telephone lines strung alongside the road. Two American soldiers stood beneath, and one of them held a wooden staff that had been perhaps the handle of a shovel or broom. It was too short, however, to dislodge the torso, and as these two men receded into the distance, one was climbing onto the shoulders of the other.

Shortly after, a lone Sherman stood beside the road with several men gathered around. Steam rose in fast unfurling billows from the open engine compartment while one man repeatedly swung a helmet overhead and down into the steam. Shadows grew rapidly across the fields and soon the sunset on the towering clouds behind them looked like Armageddon and it was as if they were fleeing the end of the world. Darkness settled in. Artillery now rumbled like a continuous thunder. Flashes of light appeared on the horizon. No one spoke. Heck took off his helmet and turned it in his hands and put it back on. The man beside him checked the action of his M-1. They passed several buildings that were burning hot enough to be felt inside the passing truck. A fat woman sat beside the road with her legs straight out, like a doll's, wailing.

At a crossroads amid open fields the truck stopped. They sat unmoving for what seemed a very long time, then started ahead at an agonizing, crawling pace. They stopped again, and once more, for no apparent reason. It seemed—in the darkness—this might go on forever. The truck accelerated, stopped, turned, at one point reversed—perhaps they were going in circles. Heck took the music box from his pocket and sat holding it in his lap, running his fingers along the edges.

“What's that?” said the man beside him. Heck looked down and saw that the metal of the box glimmered with faint blue edges in the dark. “A music box?”

In the dark Heck nodded. He moved to return it to his pocket.

“Play it, why don't you?” said his neighbor. “Go ahead.”

Heck wound it and opened the lid. The notes moved within the random noise of the wind, the artillery, and the truck's creaking and shuddering so that sometimes the music was submerged and sometimes several notes could be heard quite clearly. It sounded extraordinarily beautiful to Heck. When the music stopped, the soldier beside him took the box from him, wound it again, and held it to his ear. When he handed it back, Heck allowed the last, slowing notes to play out, then closed the box and returned it to his pocket.

A minute later the man beside him asked, “Are you afraid?” He spoke with a sympathetic tone, but also rapidly—an easterner, Heck guessed.

Heck failed to respond. Pockets of orange light flickered on the horizon, and the corresponding percussion arrived several seconds after. An elbow nudged him and the question was repeated, “Are you afraid?”

The voice spoke softly, but even so Heck was not certain that others in the truck could not hear. He said, “No, I'm not.”

“I am,” said the voice, rising slightly in pitch. The truck shuddered through a rapid series of potholes. “I'm glad I am. As long as I'm afraid, I'm still alive.” The body beside Heck shifted slightly. “How come you're not afraid?”

Heck felt irritated and at first he was not going to answer, but suddenly he conceded, in a rush, “I guess I am a little.”

“Yeah?”

“I guess.”

“Good. That means you're still alive too. I hope I stay afraid through this entire war, then go home afraid. I want many long years of fear after that, afraid for a wife, afraid for children—as long as I'm afraid for them, that means they're still alive too, because you don't feel afraid for someone who's already died, you just feel sad and sorry. Then at a ripe old age, still fearing death, I'll die. That makes sense, doesn't it?”

“Sure.”

In truth, though, Heck was so clenched up with nervousness he could hardly follow his neighbor's line of thought. He glanced over at the man. All he could see were the eyes, which were large and protuberant, and the whites were a faint blue glowing all around the irises. They gave an impression of permanent startlement. “What's your name?” the voice asked.

“George Tilson. But people have been calling me Heck.”

“Heck? That's a funny name.”

“I guess.”

“Don't be offended. My name is Anthony.”

The truck made a sharp turn that evoked curses and forced everyone to clutch at their rifles and sent packs sliding over the floor. Gradually things and people were restored to their places. The truck's up and down and side to side had surpassed the point of causing simple soreness and had become a kind of torture. Heck accepted each new jolt with hatred. On top of this he might die tonight.

Anthony said, “You're still a little afraid?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. I figure as long as we keep this up, we'll be fine.”

Now, suddenly, artillery shells were landing not far away, and in their flickering light the silhouettes of a town could be seen, buildings dimly visible on either side of the road. The truck slowed to a crawling pace but did not stop, and the corporal jumped out of the cab and came to the back of the truck, saying like a rapid chant, “Out! Out! Out!” The men stood, heaving up their packs. Heck was pushed out by the man behind him, and he flailed briefly in open space before hitting cobblestones with his knee, hip, and shoulder. He scrambled to get away before another soldier landed atop him. The truck never fully stopped, was in fact accelerating before the last pair of men had jumped out. Heck saw the others gathering and started toward them, but the corporal bellowed, “Spread out! Spread out! For God's sake, don't clump together!”

Heck ran into the dark, realized then that he could no longer see anyone else, and reversed himself several paces. The truck was gone. The corporal had a map in his hand and was moving a cigarette lighter over it and muttering incomprehensibly. Heck crouched and pointed his M-1 into the night. Close-set houses lined the street on either side, illuminated in flashes by the impacts of artillery shells landing several blocks over. The explosions were disorientingly loud, and he could feel the shuddering of the earth. There was also, from somewhere across town, the noise of sporadic rifle shots and the rattling of machine guns firing and sometimes overlapping in a kind of chorus.

The corporal stood and called out orders and they moved off in single file, into the city, a string of cumbersome, laden figures hunched over their guns. “Spread out, spread out, damn it,” the corporal hissed, and they did, but a couple of minutes later, Heck noticed, they were bunching up again. He didn't say anything; it
felt
better to have someone nearby.

They moved through several blocks in this manner. The corporal stopped at the corners and sometimes referred to a map, then waved them on, with further cursing about their spacing. “A single shell will wipe out every one of you useless shits.” Often in the darkness Heck could not see the man in front of him and he trooped forward blindly, his heart hammering.