The Young Lions (64 page)

He looked up. There was the pale blur of Burnecker's face, peering down at him. Then Burnecker slid in beside him.

"Hold my shoulder," Noah said. He felt the savage, nervous grip of Burnecker's fingers through the wet wool of his shirt.

They started out across the canal. The bottom was slimy and Noah insanely worried about water snakes. There were mussels, too, and he had to hold himself back from crying out with pain when he stubbed his toe on the sharp edges. They walked steadily across, feeling with their feet for holes or a sudden deepening in the channel. The water was up to Noah's shoulders and he could feel the pull of the tide sweeping sluggishly in from the sea.

The machine-gun opened up and they stopped. But the bullets were far over their heads and to the right, the machine-gunner aiming nervously in the general direction of the German Army. Step by step, they made their way towards the other side. Noah hoped Cowley was watching them, seeing that it could be done, that he could do it, that he didn't have to swim… Then it got deeper. Noah was nearly under, but Burnecker who was a head taller than Noah, still had his mouth and nose out of the water, and he supported Noah, his arm and hand strong under Noah's armpits. The other bank got closer and closer. It smelled rankly of salt and rotting shellfish, like the smell of fishing wharves back home. Still moving cautiously through the water, feeling their way, holding each other up, they peered at the bank for a place where they could climb up quickly and silently. The bank was steep ahead of them, and slippery.

"Not here," Noah whispered, "not here."

They reached the bank and rested, leaning against it.

"That dumb son of a bitch Cowley," Burnecker said.

Noah nodded, but he wasn't thinking of Cowley. He looked up and down the bank. The pull of the tide was getting stronger, gurgling against their shoulders. Noah tapped Burnecker and they started cautiously along the bank, going with the tide. The spasms of shivering were coming more violently now. Noah tried to jam his teeth together to keep his jaw steady. June, he repeated foolishly and silently deep in his brain, bathing on the French coast in the June moonlight, in the moonlight in June…

He had never been so cold before in his life. The bank was steep and greasy with sea-moss and damp, and there was no sign that they would reach a place they could manage before it got light. Calmly, Noah thought of taking his hand from Burnecker's shoulder and floating into the middle of the canal and sinking quietly and peacefully there, once and for all…

"Here," Burnecker whispered.

Noah looked up. Part of the bank had crumbled away and there was a foothold there, rough and overgrown, with rounded rock edges jutting out of the dark clay.

Burnecker bent and put his hands under Noah's foot. There was a splashing, loud noise as he helped heave Noah up the bank. Noah lay for a second on the edge of the bank, panting and shivering, then he scrambled round and helped Burnecker up. An automatic weapon opened up close by and the bullets whistled past them. They ran, sliding and slipping on their bare feet, towards a rim of bushes thirty yards away. Other guns opened fire and Noah began to shout. "Stop it! Cut it out! Stop shooting! We're Americans. Company C!" he screamed.

"Charley Company!"

They reached the bushes and dived down into the shelter behind them. ›From across the canal, the Germans were firing now, too, and flash followed flash, and Noah and Burnecker seemed to have been forgotten in the small battle they had awakened. Five minutes later, abruptly, the firing stopped.

"I'm going to yell," Noah whispered. "Stay low."

"OK," Burnecker said quietly.

"Don't shoot," Noah called, not very loud, trying to keep his voice steady. "Don't shoot. There are two of us here. Americans. C Company. Company C. Don't shoot."

He stopped. They lay hugging the earth, shivering, listening.

Finally they heard the voice. "Get on up out o' theah," the voice called, thick with Georgia, "and keep yo' hands over yo' haid and fetch yo'selves over heah. Do it right quick, now, an' don't make any sudden moves…"

Noah tapped Burnecker. They both stood up and put their hands over their heads. Then they started walking towards the voice out of the depth of Georgia.

"Jesus Christ in the mawnin'!" the voice said. "They ain't got no more clothes on them than a plucked duck!"

Then Noah knew they were going to be all right.

A figure stood up from a gunpit, pointing a rifle at them.

"Over this way, soldier," the figure said.

Noah and Burnecker walked, their hands over their heads, towards the soldier looming up out of the ground. They stopped five feet away from him.

There was another man in the foxhole, still crouched down, with his rifle levelled at them.

"What the hell's goin' on out here?" he asked suspiciously.

"We got cut off," Noah said. "C Company. We've been three days getting back. Can we take our hands down now?"

"Look at their dogtags, Vernon," said the man in the hole.

The man with the Georgia accent, carefully put his rifle down.

"Stan' where you are and throw me yo' dogtags."

There was a familiar little jangle as first Noah, then Burnecker, threw their dogtags.

"Hand them down here, Vernon," said the man in the hole.

"I'll look at them."

"You can't see anything," said Vernon. "It's as black as a mule's arse down there."

"Let me have them," said the man in the hole, reaching up. A moment later, there was a little scratching sound as the man bent over and lit his cigarette lighter. He had it shielded and Noah could not see any light at all.

The wind was gaining in strength, and the wet shirt flapped around Noah's frozen body. He held himself tightly with his arms in an attempt to keep warm. The man in the foxhole took a maddening long time with the dogtags. Finally he looked up.

"Name?" he said, pointing to Noah.

Noah told him his name.

"Serial number?"

Noah rattled off his serial number, trying not to stutter, although his jaws were stiff and salty.

"What's this H here on the dogtag?" the man asked suspiciously.

"Hebrew," said Noah.

"Hebrew?" asked the man from Georgia. "What the hell's that?"

"Jew," said Noah.

"Why don't they say so then?" said the man from Georgia aggrievedly.

"Listen," said Noah, "are you going to keep us here for the rest of the war? We're freezing."

"Come on in," said the man in the foxhole. "Make yourself at home. It'll be light in fifteen minutes and I'll take you on back to the Company CP. There's a ditch here behind me you can take cover in."

Noah and Burnecker went past the man in the foxhole. He threw them their dogtags and looked at them curiously.

"How was it back there?" he asked.

"Great," said Noah.

"More fun than a strawberry social," said Burnecker.

"I bet," said the man from Georgia.

Half an hour later, dressed in a uniform three sizes too large for him that had been taken from a dead man outside the Company CP, Noah was standing in front of the Division G2. The G2 was a grey-haired, round, little Lieutenant-Colonel with purple dye all over his face, staining his skin and grizzled beard. The G2 had impetigo and was trying to cure it while doing everything else that was expected of him.

Division CP was in a sandbagged shed and there were men sleeping everywhere on the dirt floor. It still wasn't light enough to work by and the G2 had to peer at the map Noah had drawn by the light of a candle, because all the generators and electrical equipment of Headquarters had been sunk on the way in to the beach.

Burnecker was standing dreamily beside Noah, his eyes almost closed.

"Good," the G2 was saying, nodding his head again and again, back and forth, "good, very good." But Noah hardly remembered what the man was talking about. He only knew that he felt very sad, but it was hard to remember just why he felt that way.

"Very good, boys," the man with the purple face was saying kindly. He seemed to be smiling at them. "Above and beyond the… There'll be a medal in this for you boys. I'll get this right over to Corps Artillery. Come around this afternoon and I'll tell you how it came out."

Noah wondered dimly why he had a purple face and what he was talking about.

"I would like the photograph back," he said clearly. "My wife and my son."

"Yes, of course," the man smiled even more widely, yellow, old teeth surrounded by purple and grey beard. "This afternoon, when you come back. C Company is being re-formed. We've got back about forty men, counting you two. Evans," he called to a soldier who seemed to be sleeping standing up against the shed wall, "take these two men to C Company. Don't worry," he said, grinning at Noah, "you won't have to walk far. They're only in the next field." He bent over the map again, nodding and saying, "Good, very good." Evans came over and led Burnecker and Noah out of the shed and through the morning mist to the next field.

The first man they saw was Lieutenant Green, who took one look at them and said, "There are some blankets over there. Roll up and go to sleep. I'll ask you questions later."

On the way over to the blankets they passed Shields, the Company Clerk, who had already set up a small desk for himself, made out of two ration boxes, in a ditch under the trees along the edge of the field. "Hey," Shields said, "we got some mail for you. The first delivery. I nearly sent it back. I thought you guys were missing."

He dug into a barracks bag and brought out some envelopes. There was a brown Manila envelope for Noah, addressed in Hope's handwriting. Noah took it and put it inside the dead man's shirt he was wearing and picked up three blankets. He and Burnecker walked slowly to a spot under a tree and unrolled the blankets. They sat down heavily and took off the boots that had been given them. Noah opened the Manila envelope. A small magazine fell out. He blinked and started to read Hope's letter.

"Dearest," she wrote, "I suppose I ought to explain about the magazine right off. The poem you sent me, the one you wrote in England, seemed too nice to hold just for myself, and I took the liberty of sending it…"

Noah picked up the magazine. On the cover he saw his name. He opened the magazine and peered heavily through the pages. Then he saw his name again and the neat, small lines of verse.

"Beware the heart's sedition," he read. "It is not made for war…"

"Hey," he said, "hey, Burnecker."

"Yes?" Burnecker had tried to read his mail, but had given up, and was lying on his back under the blankets, staring up at the sky. "What do you want?"

"Hey, Burnecker," Noah said, "I got a poem in a magazine. Want to read it?"

There was a long pause, then Burnecker sat up.

"Of course," he said. "Hand it over."

Noah gave Burnecker the magazine, folded back to his poem. He watched Burnecker's face intently as his friend read the poem. Burnecker was a slow reader and moved his lips as he read. Once or twice he closed his eyes and his head rocked a little, but he finished the poem.

"It's great," Burnecker said. He handed the magazine to Noah, seated on the blanket beside him.

"Are you on the level?" Noah asked.

"It's a great poem," Burnecker said gravely. He nodded for emphasis. Then he lay back.

Noah looked at his name in print, but the other writing was too small for his eyes at the moment. He put the magazine inside the dead man's shirt again and lay back under the warm blankets.

Just before he closed his eyes he saw Rickett. Rickett was standing over him and Rickett was shaved clean and had on a fresh uniform. "Oh, Christ," Rickett said, off in the distance high above Noah, "oh, Christ, we still got the Jew."

Noah closed his eyes. He knew that later on what Rickett had said would make a great difference in his life, but at the moment all he wanted to do was sleep.

THERE was a sign on the side of the road that said YOU ARE UNDER OBSERVED SHELLFIRE FOR THE NEXT ONE THOUSAND YARDS. KEEP AN INTERVAL OF SEVENTY-FIVE YARDS.

Michael glanced sideways at Colonel Pavone. But Pavone, in the front seat of the jeep, was reading a paper-covered mystery story he had picked up in the staging area in England while they were waiting to cross the Channel. Pavone was the only man Michael had ever seen who could read in a moving jeep.

Michael stepped on the accelerator and the jeep spurted swiftly down the empty road. On the right there was a bombed-out aerodrome, with the skeletons of German planes lying about. There was a strip of smoke further off in front, lying in neat folds over the wheatfields in the bright summer afternoon air. The jeep bounced rapidly over the macadam road to the shelter of a clump of trees, and over a little rise, and the thousand observed yards were crossed.

Michael sighed a little to himself, and drove more slowly. There was a loud, erratic growling of big guns ahead of them, from the city of Caen, that the British had taken the day before. Just what Colonel Pavone wanted to do in Caen, Michael didn't know. In his job as a roving Civil Affairs officer, Pavone had orders which permitted him to wander from one end of the front to another, and with Michael driving him, he cruised all over Normandy, like a rather sleepy, good-humoured tourist, looking at everything, when he wasn't reading, nodding brightly to the men who were fighting at each particular spot, talking in rapid, Parisian French to the natives, occasionally jotting down notes on scraps of paper. At night Pavone would retire to the deep dugout in the field near Carentan, and type out reports by himself, and send them on somewhere, but Michael never saw them, and never knew exactly where they were going.

"This book stinks," Pavone said. He tossed it into the back of the jeep. "A man has to be an idiot to read mystery stories." He looked around him, with his perky, clown's grimace. "Are we close?" he asked.