Prince of Peace (8 page)

"Maguire."

"I mean your first name, son."

"Michael."

"The Archangel. The leader of God's army against Lucifer." Maguire laughed.

"Monsignor Riordan christened you with that name? He'll be damn proud when I tell him what you did. And when he tells your folks, imagine how they'll feel."

Michael didn't say that his father was dead. The thought of that unknown ghost filled him, for a change, with calm. He'd scored every basket and lined every outside pitch and caught every buttonhook of his life with one eye on the man who wasn't there, and in our own small world where the legend of his hero father loomed we all knew it. "Go, Michael! Go!" we would cry from the stands as he led our teams to victory, but everyone knew that Michael drove so hard not because of our support but because of his father's absence. How could he earn that long-gone love? That was the void into which O'Shea stepped with his simple affirmation. For the first time in his life, Michael felt his father's presence.

When the priest stood up Maguire asked, "Hey, did you just give me absolution or something?"

"Maybe I did, Michael." The priest muttered a quick blessing and waved his hand over him. And then he reached inside his field jacket and pulled out what Maguire assumed was a pack of cigarettes. Weren't chaplains always giving out cigarettes to people? But it was a book with blue covers, small enough to close inside one hand. The chaplain handed it to him. "Here," he said. "This was my brother's. He was killed at the Battle of the Bulge. I'd like you to have it."

Instinctively Michael removed his gloves. It was the New Testament. He looked up at the priest. Years later, in describing this moment he would take refuge from its emotion in a Woody Allen line: I always carry a bullet in my shirt pocket in case someone throws a Bible at me. But at the time he was too moved to speak. The relief he felt came as a shock because he'd had no explicit idea how distressed he'd been. The priest had soothed the orphan-pain in him that was far older than a day. What had happened on the bridge had only uncovered it, and now, with this gift evoking so much—the New Testament, a dead brother, the Battle of the Bulge—he experienced a sense of embrace he'd never felt before. And at last he understood—how he needed this!—why we call them "Father."

 

That midnight an artillery bombardment began that veterans said was as bad as anything the Germans had ever thrown at the Allies in France. The Americans were pinned by the fire and even the patrols had to stay in their ditches. The frozen earth had resisted their efforts to dig out proper foxholes, but now the men wished they'd stayed with it. The ground on which they flattened themselves reverberated continually as it registered every shell that exploded on those hills. Some soldiers made fists of themselves in their shallow holes. Chunks of dirt and stone-chippings bounced off them endlessly. The noise of the heavy-caliber explosions coming after the piercing approach-whistles was so loud that their ears hurt, and they took to blocking them with the heels of their hands while their fingers pressed the cold metal rims of their helmets. Periodically, even through their gloves, they had to warm their hands, though, by stuffing them into their armpits. But quickly the noise of the bombardment was a worse pain again than frozen fingers. Now and then even that din was surpassed by the shrieking of a man who was hit. It was dangerous to look, for the popping of debris and shrapnel was constant.

It didn't take an Omar Bradley to deduce that the Chinese were advancing across the river valley during the barrage. Every man in the regiment knew that. But the bombardment went on so long—nonstop, all night—that they began to understand its purpose was not merely to cover that advance or even to neutralize their ability through shock, fear and disorientation to resist it when it reached them. The purpose of the aimed fire was to kill them.

The 27th Regiment was under orders to hold its ground, but only long enough to delay the onslaught. The American stand wasn't going to be made in the hills around Suwon, but at Osan. The regiment therefore was to withdraw before actually engaging the Chinese, and it was to link up with the main body of forces twenty miles to the south. But an orderly withdrawal was out of the question until the artillery fire stopped. Even panicked flight would have been impossible. And the artillery fire wasn't going to stop until the Chinese were ready to attack. By then what would anyone be able to do but run?

The terror of that night unhinged more than one man. Lennie Pace was crouched next to Maguire in the same ditch, and when a round landed close enough to singe their clothing, he tried to get out. Maguire and another GI grabbed him just as he was scrambling over the lip of the hole. "Let me go, you fuckers! Let me go!" Because of his size and toughness Pace threw the second soldier aside effortlessly. Maguire slugged him, but the punch seemed only to quicken his belligerence. Pace began to pummel Maguire, but Maguire clung to him. Pace tried to get away and he dragged Maguire with him. "You fucker!" he screamed. "I'll kill you!" Maguire held on until Pace fell into the fresh crater of a 175. It was still warm, but it was deeper and more secure than the ditches the men had dug, which were like shallow graves.

Even in the crater the hysterical soldier continued to slug away. Maguire covered his face and let Pace hit him. Most of the blows were lost in his heavy clothing or against his helmet. Eventually the Italian kid collapsed on top of Maguire. He was weeping. Maguire made no effort to get out from under him, but only closed his arms around Pace and held him. At first he envied him the catharsis, but then he realized that he'd shared it. They both felt purged. The terror of that night, Maguire saw, would be a bond forever.

In the release, the evaporation of tension that followed Pace's outburst, both men settled into a kind of sleep. One hears it said that such a drifting off is not uncommon during prolonged sieges. The psyche has its ways of escape even when the body doesn't. Some Londoners never slept well again after the Blitz ended, but during it, even in the rank discomfort of sewer tunnels, they slept like children. Neither the noise nor the cold, extreme as both were, penetrated the consciousness of either soldier for several hours.

Maguire woke first and he was amazed to realize he had slept. He actually felt a kind of refreshment. The artillery fire was still on, merciless as ever, but he wasn't cold. Pace was still on him, like a blanket. He was snoring lightly.

Maguire didn't move. Beyond Pace's collar, like a dream, he saw the morning star, Venus, hanging in the east above the notch in the hills where the sun would rise soon. Automatically Maguire's hand went to his breast pocket, to touch Father O'Shea's New Testament, as if it was going to save him or already had.

On the roof of his apartment house on Cooper Street, Michael and I had slept out through countless summer nights, though not in each other's arms. Imagine the cries resounding through Inwood of "Fairies! You fucking fairies!" It would have been disgrace enough to have it known that we called the roof our "lone prairie" and pretended that the straining barrel-staved water tank was our Conestoga wagon. When Venus appeared—it was the last star to fade because of course it wasn't really a star but a planet which reflected the coming sun's light instead of getting washed out by it—he always woke up and nudged me. We New York City boys did not take our heavenly bodies for granted. In our pale night sky only the luminaries shone because the dispersed light of the city screened all the ordinary stars and planets out. New York was that way with people too, although we didn't know it yet. Shining in that firmament meant, fortunately, as we would learn much later and separately, either burning to extinction or reflecting the light of some other star.

Venus seemed closer than ever that morning in Korea, and even though the barrage was still on, it seemed to Michael he had already survived it. His lucky star. The night was almost over. And what better omen for the day than the worn little book in his pocket.

The good book. The Bible. The glad tidings of Jesus Christ. Michael was no more religious than any of us, but like us he'd gone to religion class, however automatically, every day of his school life for twelve years. He'd heard the Scriptures read every Sunday and most first Fridays for eighteen. Surely he could remember some proverb, some parable, some saying of Jesus that would help him now.

He squinted at the morning star and a line popped open in his mind like the "Bang" on the flag out of a fake pistol. "He was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower." He had read those words a million times while the priest recited them in Latin; they were from the Last Gospel with which every Mass ended. "A man came, sent by God."

Michael told me over Scotch whiskey many years later that at that moment, half frozen, paralyzed under the weight of a shellshocked soldier in a bomb crater on a desolate hilltop in Korea, he discovered for the first time that he did believe in God. He believed in the Resurrection. "What can I say? I saw His glory." He shrugged and drained his Scotch. "With Him on my side, who can be against me?" In other words, while fifteen thousand Chinese were steadily creeping toward him and his one thousand terrified frozen comrades, Michael Maguire accepted in advance whatever was going to happen to him, not only, as pious assholes were always doing, during the remainder of his life, but—much more difficult—during that very day. It was as if he knew how decisive it would be. I would wish many years later that he'd been killed.

The withdrawal began at dawn. Because artillery shells were still falling, though intermittently now, it was a retreat through a nightmare landscape, but the men of the 27th Infantry Regiment were so relieved to have their dreamless terror over that they pushed out energetically. Who wanted to wait for the Chinese charge?

It was impossible to assemble a proper convoy. The regiment's vehicles, marshaled along the main road, had been sitting ducks all night and the artillery had knocked most of them out. That meant forced march, which posed a heart-wrenching problem for the colonel in command: the wounded would have to be left behind. As of dawn, counting the casualties of the night shelling and those from the incident at the bridge two days before, there were fourteen of them. Two Medevac choppers had been promised the day before, but they couldn't come in during the heaviest bombardment. Though now it had eased, there was still no sign of them. It made no sense to leave behind a unit of healthy soldiers to defend the wounded until the helicopters arrived, because each aircraft could carry out only seven men. The fourteen, plus the medic, was stretching it already, and when the chaplain volunteered to stay behind, the colonel could not refuse. He said, "Take off your insignia, Father, and make sure Lieutenant Barrett isn't wearing his bars either."

Father O'Shea wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to fall into Chinese hands with gold leafs on his lapels. But he kept his crosses, on his helmet and his breast.

Word passed through the regiment quickly both that the wounded were being left behind and that the chaplain was staying with them. When Maguire heard it, he was just tying the flaps of the radio case that he and Pace had been assigned to carry. He looked up at the GI who'd told him, but he was gone already, scurrying down the side of the hill. He looked at Pace. "We can't just leave them here!"

"What the fuck, Maguire! What can we do?"

Maguire snatched up his M-i and climbed quickly to the top of the hill. The wounded men were huddled on a level spot near the top of the next hill. Even without binoculars he could see Father O'Shea holding a man in his arms. They knew what was happening. Maguire searched the sky above the windswept hills, looking for the choppers. No sign of them. In the distance of the valley below, the figures of men jammed the roads, but these were not refugees. It was the massing army of the Chinese peasant-riflemen. He scanned the spiny terrain of the nearby slopes, but there was no sign of the enemy there yet.

A round landed in the gully between the hill on which he stood and the one where the wounded lay. Maguire didn't flinch. After the night, the occasional shell now seemed benign. He squinted, trying to make out Lieutenant Barrett.

Pace was at his elbow. "Sarge says to move it, Mac!"

Maguire looked at Pace. "How can we just leave them?"

"Fast! That's how! Come on, Goddamnit!" Pace's agitation was intense. He'd survived the night, but it had left him manic and insecure. He'd clung to Maguire's side since they crawled out of the crater. He was terrified of being alone, but he was also terrified of being left behind. Their company had been detailed to take up the rear, but most of it had moved out already. He and Maguire were the last ones left except for the lieutenant, the sergeant and the radio operator. Their job was to get the radio gear down to the jeep waiting on the road. It was one of the few vehicles still running, and Pace hoped to get on it. "Come on, you shit!" His voice cracked with panic.

But Maguire said suddenly, "What's that moving? Do you see that? Is something moving there?" He pointed to the lower slope of the opposite hill.

The urgency in his voice cut through Pace's agitation and he too fixed his stare on the brush and boulders across the way. Bushes were moving and he saw it too. Both men stared, motionless, not breathing. Bushes were moving up the hill, toward the party of wounded.

"Fuck!" Pace said, "It's them!"

The Chinese had brush fixed to their helmets and their backs, and they were steadily creeping up the hillside.

Pace whispered, "I thought they charged, whistling, screaming, banging cymbals and throwing grenades."

"Maybe they're just the advance patrol. I don't think there are that many of them." Maguire threw the bolt on his rifle.

"Hey, man, come on! Let's go!" Pace started to back off. He was eyeing Maguire as if he'd lost his mind.

Maguire raised his arm and pointed to a spot in the sky above the farthest ridge. "Look, Whirlybird!" He felt a rush of happiness, as if the helicopter was coming for him. But the rescue wasn't going to succeed, he saw suddenly. The Chinese patrol was closing on the hilltop. They'd drive the chopper off or down it. Locks snapped open in Maguire's mind, and he saw what had to happen. There was no experience of decision, only of insight; his response seemed no more the product of choice than a sunrise is. The second helicopter appeared as a dot moving behind but in sync with the first. "Lennie!" Pace was already fifty yards down the hill, clambering backward. "Lennie!" Maguire went after him. He caught up to him easily and grabbed him. "Lennie, we've got to slow them down! We've got to give our guys some time!"