Souvenir (3 page)

“Yessir,” said Miller, the newest replacement.

“Shut the fuck up, asshole,” said Hank Tucker. He had been in the line three weeks now, and considered himself a veteran, since Marty had told him he’d be a combat vet if he lasted three days. “What if some goddamn Kraut heard you call Red that? Jesus!”

“OK, Tuck, simmer down. You and Shorty take Miller here and set up just above Big Ned and Little Ned. Jake, get Clay back up to the tree line and watch our left flank. No surprises, OK? When I fire, we open up on that position, find out what they’ve got out there. Smoke is the signal for you guys to clear out, plenty of covering fire. Got it?”

“Sure, Red, OK,” said Tuck. “C’mon, Shorty.” Shorty was six foot barefoot, and walked with a permanent stoop, the result of his intense desire not to get shot in the head simply because he was the tallest guy in the squad. It might happen anyway, but he hated the idea of some Kraut seeing his helmet bobbing along over a hedge or stonewall somewhere and sending a slug through it, while the other guys, who had it easy at five foot eight and less, walked on without a scratch. Miller followed, miserable. Everyone else was paired up, he was odd man out. All he could do is hope for another replacement to come along, so he could call him a dumb sonovabitch, and take him under his wing, dig foxholes together, complain about the chow and the Army like the other guys. Give each other nicknames, too. Failing that, maybe one of these guys would get killed. Or maybe he would. He was so cold, and lonely, he didn’t even care that much. If it were quick, anyway.

Jake made sure he kept Red in sight as he chose his position at the tree line. He didn’t want him opening up too soon, leaving Clay hanging out there. Clay was prone, a bit of his head to the side of the rock, scanning slowly with the binoculars. Jake moved in the snow, just enough for Clay to hear. He looked up, shook his head. Nothing else out there, nothing he could see. Jake motioned him to come back up to the tree line, and Clay slithered back the way he had come. When he got close enough, Jake reached out and pulled him in, the darkness of the pine forest a welcome contrast to the stark white of the field below.

“OK, see that dead pine?” Jake whispered. “BAR down there, the other guys above them. Red fires, we all open up. We watch the left flank. Smoke is the signal for Big Ned and Little Ned to pull out, once we know what’s up.”

“Sounds easy,” said Clay, trying to catch his breath. It did. Plans always sounded good. They were soothing, giving you the illusion of something to count on. Red was good at that. He trusted Red, trusted him with his life, he knew. Red, and the guys in the squad, the ones that had been around, at least. It was the rest of the world, the world across the field, he wasn’t so sure of.

Clay settled in, resting his M1 in the snow, twisting the sling around his forearm to steady his aim. At this distance, aimed fire didn’t mean much, but it was how Clay did things. The right way, even when it didn’t matter, the way he was taught, whether it made much sense at all. He was as much behind the pine tree as he could be and still see the target. Like deer hunting, the way his big brother taught him. If you can see them and they can’t see you, why then, you got the drop on them and its venison steaks on the griddle tonight.

Jake was above him, up on one knee. He gave the high sign to Red. All set. He’d watch the flank in case any fire came from that way, or even worse, Krauts in these woods. But right now they both watched Big Ned and Little Ned snake their way down the slope from the tree line towards the fallen pine.

Jake had his M1 up, elbow on his knee. He knew Clay was drawing a bead, working his rear sight and filling the front with the target. It was just a smudge in the woods from here, but once you saw it you knew. Jake’s frosted breath blew out his nose, obscured his view, and he dropped the rifle to his knee. At this distance, he didn’t have a rat’s ass chance of hitting anything he aimed at. When Red fired, he’d empty his clip at the clump in the woods and then turn, reload, and watch the flanks. You never know, he might hit something if a Kraut was dumb enough to stick his head up and run into one of his rounds. The geometry of death. He suddenly couldn’t get Miss Peabody out of his mind, her white lace collar burned into his memory. High school math. Intersecting lines and angles. It wasn’t too hard, once you worked it out. The path of the bullet was one line, the path of a Kraut, or G.I., was another. Intersecting lines. You could draw a straight line from where the bullet started, and where the poor slob who got it began, and you’d have a nice triangle. Somewhere, maybe from deep inside a factory in Germany, a bullet was moving towards him, in a shipping crate, on a train to the front. Could he draw a line from Minersville to that factory?

Big Ned moved easily for such a large guy. He dragged the BAR by the barrel, too big to cradle in your arms like a rifle. Big Ned was strong and heavy, and he moved over the snow like a plow, flattening it as he went. Little Ned was to his right. He scuttled like a crab, too light to weigh down the snow. He didn’t have the best technique, too much elbow and butt above his head. But he’d stop often, freeze himself motionless so if his movement caught a Kraut’s eye, maybe he’d blink and look again before he shot, and think, damn, I’m too jumpy out here, it’s nothing.

Little Ned moved from one of his frozen positions and crawled forward. He glanced at Big Ned, who had stopped behind a small pine tree to wait for him. They had about twelve yards to go. He got to the pine, the last bit of cover before the fallen tree. He looked at the path Big Ned had made crawling down and decided at the first sign of smoke, he’d run his ass up that path into the woods. It’d be easier than running through the soft snow. Good plan.

Big Ned saw him and nodded. Damn right that’s the way home.

Big Ned and Little Ned didn’t really like each other. Big Ned was an outdoorsman, a backwoods boy. Little Ned had a few years on him, and at twenty-five thought he knew all there was to know about the world. He had worked in Philadelphia, D.C., Richmond, and Baltimore, seen more people from up on those beams than they had in all of Michigan. Some guys, with different backgrounds like that, would pepper each other with questions about their home, eager to learn about a part of the country they had never seen, never would have known about, except for the war. Then they’d write their Mom and Dad about this swell fellow from Idaho, or a great pal from Georgia, and little stories about distant states would be scattered around the nation like fireflies on a summer night.

But Big Ned and Little Ned’s parents would not read much of their son’s foxhole partner, except maybe the names, the names were funny, the kind of thing you could write your folks about and distract them for a minute from the constant worry and dread that hung over the homes of G.I. parents in the cold winter of 1945. You won’t believe it, Mom, but my ammo carrier is named Ned, and they call him Little Ned. Funny, huh?

They tolerated each other, didn’t hate each other or get into fights, except for that time in Paris and that had been the liquor talking, they both knew that. They never took a liking to each other, that was all. Each knew the other guy pretty damn well, and could count on him. But they grated on each other in a way that let them know, if they lived through this, they’d shake hands at the end, turn away, and that’d be enough.

But this wasn’t about being pals. This was serious, a job to be done like so many others done before. They both moved to the side, to skirt the small pine on the final approach to the fallen tree. Big Ned moved off, going wide to be sure his trailing BAR didn’t snag on a half-buried branch.

Jake could see Little Ned move right, and stop, like he always did. Big Ned was almost to the tree now, and Little Ned scurried forward, flailing his arms too much like he always did, then stopped again. Jake could feel his heart begin to thump louder in his chest. Jesus Christ, Big Ned is about ready, he’s got the BAR under the tree. Sweat broke out on his forehead, feeling like it might freeze before it dripped off. He shivered, trying to still himself. He looked at Red, saw him aiming, waiting for Little Ned to get in position. Any second now.

Little Ned moved. He stuck his elbow in the snow and pushed off with his left leg, aching to get behind that big pine tree, aching even more to be running up that packed snowpath with clouds of smoke between them and the Kraut gunners. His foot hit something.

Clump.

Jake saw it, a tremor at first, then the achingly slow slide as heavy snow slid down a thick pine branch. He saw Little Ned turn his head as the snow hit him and buried his feet.

Whoosh.

The green fir arced up in the air, freed of its snowy burden. The tip of the branch had been buried, but Little Ned had pushed off on it, dislodged it, kicked off the terrible chain of events that left a clear signal, green against white and G.I. brown half buried in snow.

Jake knew light traveled faster than sound. But he didn’t think it possible ever to see it, or some of the things he saw in combat. It didn’t happen often, but at a time like this, when everything slowed down, and you had a clear view of the Krauts firing at you, it was true. Waiting those last seconds, with the green fir flying up, Little Ned twisting in the snow, Jake couldn’t feel anything, not the cold, not the weight of his M1 as he raised it, couldn’t hear either, not even Red’s first shots, then his. Everything in sight was crystal clear, intense, as if it were suddenly blue skies and sun, all color and clarity. In that moment he saw the twinkling, before he heard it. Bright exploding whiteness from machine-guns, but also sparkling lights all along the woods, hundreds of them. They were everywhere, silent, incandescent, and it was beautiful.

Clay heard the snow fall from the branches. He didn’t wait for Red to fire, he squeezed off his first shot, then the second, breathing in and out, not wanting to be some trigger-happy fool firing into the air. Take aim, fire at the enemy. He knew it was useless.

“Jesus Christ,” Red said as he fired, over and over. He pulled the first smoke grenade and threw it. “Jesus Christ.”

Big Ned turned in time to see Little Ned try to pull himself out from under the snow. The MG-42 chopped up the top of the dead pine, and he had to duck and cover his head. He knew. He didn’t look back, he fired the BAR and tried not to think about it.

The German machine-gunner aimed his bursts at Little Ned and so did every other German dug in under camouflaged trenches and foxholes along the MLR. Little Ned and the tree were the only things moving, and they drew fire. Little Ned was hit, hit, hit and hit again, killed twenty times over as swarms of bullets chopped the branches and brush all around him. He never had a chance to say a thing, to curse the branch, think about home, never even took in exactly what was happening, or saw the bright bursts of gunfire that Jake saw as a strange thing of distant beauty.

Red pulled the pin on the second smoke grenade and flung it out in front of Big Ned as a round caught his left arm, passing through it, spraying blood on the snow. He saw the blood, didn’t feel a thing, but couldn’t get his arm to work.

“Pull back!” he yelled to Big Ned.

Tuck and Shorty were blasting away at the machine-gun, each on their third clip. Bullets made a
thrumming
sound around them, steel wasps buzzing their ears. Snow flew up in clumps and pine bark rained on their heads. Miller fired a few shots, then dove behind a tree when the return fire grew ferocious.

“Pull back,” said Miller, first to himself. It was like an incantation, magic words that would save his life. “Pull back!”

“Not you, shithead!” Tuck yelled, “that’s for Big Ned.”

“No, pull back, the lieutenant ordered it!” Miller ran.

After Big Ned saw the first smoke grenade hit the ground in front of him, he rammed a fresh clip into the BAR and figured he’d wait until the second one, then go. More smoke, more cover, good plan. He fired, amazed at still being alive, wondering how many of those fuckers they had over there.

The second smoke grenade hit, bouncing and rolling as smoke spewed out. He let the BAR hang from his neck and ran over to Little Ned, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up the slope into the tree line, not even thinking about the path. A trail of glistening red marked their leaving.

They finally grouped together about five hundred yards back, deep in the darkening woods. They had found Miller, sitting on a tree stump, shivering. They ignored him. Jake was bandaging Red’s arm, Tuck was pulling wood splinters out of Shorty’s hand where a bullet had shattered his M1.

Clay watched their rear. Big Ned had dragged Little Ned through the woods, and was frantically looking for branches to make a litter.

“I ain’t leaving him here,” said Big Ned, to himself as much as the others.

“He’s dead, buddy,” said Red, as if that settled everything.

“I know he’s dead, I ain’t leaving him here. You guys go on if you want.”

It wasn’t easy. They found pine branches to make a sled, instead of a litter. Clay had a length of rope and cut it into pieces to tie the branches together. Little Ned was shot up bad, and if it wasn’t for his clothing and web belt cinched tight, it would have been a lot harder. Miller looked away for most of it, then threw up. When they were done, Big Ned handed him the rope.

“You pull.”

“I can’t—”

Red looked away as three M1s rose up, pointing at Miller’s gut and motioning him to move. He took the rope.

“Tuck, take point,” said Red.

They set off, trudging through the woods, hoping to get back to their lines before dark. Clay took the rear, and Jake followed Big Ned behind Little Ned. After an hour, Jake heard Big Ned talking to himself, whispering, the words rising and falling on currents of quiet anger. Straining to hear, he realized Big Ned wasn’t talking to himself, he was talking to Little Ned.