Articles of War, page 5
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.
A shot, loud, from somewhere nearby, was followed immediately by the noise of it striking the wall beside Heck. He spun away from the noise and fell over backward, his pack pulling him that way, and he landed on it, his spine arching uncomfortably. Another GI stepped on Heck’s hand and disappeared. The first shot was followed by several more that moved along the wall over Heck, then suddenly dropped and began to ping and whistle askance off the street, throwing sparks where they skipped off the cobbles. Heck struggled to right himself, his thoughts flashing in erratic and incoherent panic. Another soldier tripped on him, fell, cursed, got up, and ran ahead. Heck had to roll sideways to get off his back before he could leverage himself upright again. Shots continued to ring out at confusing, arrhythmic intervals, whining hideously off the street and buildings. Ahead one of the GIs was returning fire and someone was shouting, but Heck couldn’t understand the words.
He ran forward, blind in the night. He tripped, got up, ran on. A bullet skipped, sparking just before his feet. Suddenly something had Heck around the chest and he was pulled sideways; he nearly fell again. He brought his arms up in a violent attempt to free himself. “Jesus Christ, calm down,” said the corporal’s voice in his ear. He held on to Heck’s shoulders until Heck slumped in acquiescence. “Keep moving forward,” said the corporal, “and keep to cover, but stay calm, maintain distance to the man ahead. That sniper can’t see us any better than we can see him. So don’t fucking panic.” The corporal let go and Heck, although still electric with adrenaline and occupied with jumpy, fearful thoughts, had himself under better control. Dimly ahead along the street he could discern a figure moving away; he followed it.
They moved cautiously between looming, three-story buildings with boarded windows, keeping to cover where they could and cowering every time the sniper fired again. The sniper was following them, or there was more than one sniper, or the same sniper had the supernatural ability to be in several positions at once. Heck could not understand how the sniper continued to fail to hit anyone, and as he crept ahead his thoughts ranged over the places he might at any moment be hit—arm, hand, leg, foot, hip, rib, neck, face, ear, elbow, shoulder, belly, spine, eye. There were so many possibilities. He presented a huge target. His entire body ached in an anticipatory tension. Traversing half a block in this way—with a horribly heightened sense of expectation and every movement and every sensible element of the surroundings given fearful, vicious attention—seemed to require a period of time longer than Heck’s entire preceding life. Yet as he continued ahead, he also began to feel also a certain dim pride.
Then a new noise: a fluttering whistling with a rapid crescendo ended by a massive detonation. The building beside Heck lit and shook, dropping a cascade of bricks that broke into skittering fragments at his feet. Reflexively he fled in the opposite direction, but he had gone no more than a couple of paces before the building there erupted with an explosion. He stood in the middle of the street, gripping his useless rifle. The sniper was firing again. Several people were shouting. Another explosion illuminated a form that might have been the corporal, waving his hands in the air, and Heck ran toward him. Another shell crashed into the first building, and the entire wall along the street collapsed with a noise like the pounding of an enormous wave. A great foaming of dust welled up and Heck could see nothing—his eyes burned and filled with tears when he tried to open them. But he could understand the corporal’s shouting now: “Dig in over there! Over there! Get off the Goddamn street!” Heck stumbled into someone. His elbow was seized and he was turned and shoved. “That way!” Heck fell three times, and the third time his hands landed in soft, turned soil. He got up and moved ahead a little farther, then collapsed, fumbled the entrenching tool from his web belt, and began to dig blindly. The explosions continued but were at least behind him now, among the buildings. The noise was horrendous. He dug into the earth but hardly knew what he was doing. It was as if his conscious mind had crawled away into some corner from which it could cast out an occasional, fearful glance while his body operated under the command of instincts that Heck had not known existed.
Finally he had gouged a shallow hole into the earth and curled himself inside it. He wiped at the dirt and dust on his face and tugged at his helmet strap, elated by the fact of his survival. He had come under combat fire and he was still alive here in this wonderful dirt hole. He’d been frightened, but now he was okay. He was alive; it was a shocking and fabulous thing, to be alive.
But then the enemy artillery shells began to locate the field and land around him. The first blast threw a blanket of dirt over him and knocked him violently against the side of his shallow hole. Fear returned and consumed all other thoughts. Further blasts hurled him back and forth. The noise was like nothing he had ever experienced before, a noise such as might be used to herald the beginning of a terrible new world, and now, as he was bodily shaken and thrown by this wracking of the earth, there was no time, no memory, no future, no self, no control or sense beyond fear. He was reduced to the purest sensation of that single, awful fear.
Time passed; the artillery attack continued. Consciousness came again in the faint thought that he should have dug his hole deeper. He became aware that he was crying, in great sobs. He made no effort to control them. He could not move his legs. He discovered they were buried in thrown earth. He heard someone howling, a noise of pain. He clung fitfully to a tenuous understanding that he was still alive. He could determine this because he was afraid, and because he was afraid he was still alive and his body could not be completely shredded. Quickly, however, these notions became confused and he believed that only the dead could be afraid or that only the alive could exist in parts, and his panic and fear, though he would not have believed it possible, mounted higher. He screamed with his mouth full of earth and he squirmed, seeking reflexively to burrow and press himself somehow lower. He wanted utterly not to die and would have offered anything at all for the promise of life.
When the attack stopped, and Heck had lain without moving for some immeasurably long period, he carefully lifted his head. The howling he had heard earlier had ceased, and Heck was unsure now if he had imagined it or if it had even been himself he had heard. He examined minutely each of several barely visible piles of thrown earth and stone around him; then he began to slowly shift one of his hands free. But there was another explosion, and once again the shells were crashing. It was as if the respite had never occurred, and this convulsing earth and terror was all he had known or would know and there was no hope of an ending just as there had never been a beginning for this elemental, anguished noise and burning of the mind was all that had ever been.
The barrage paused again and eventually Heck could hear his own sobbing—it was now the loudest noise to be heard. Gradually he gained control over it. He lay still a while longer, then looked cautiously around, once again scrutinizing everything for signs of life or animosity. He spit the dirt from his mouth. The belt of fear around his chest began to loosen. Suddenly something heavy landed beside him, tumbling halfway into his hole, and Heck nearly screamed but restrained himself enough to reduce the noise to a terrified moan.
A face lay just beside his. It was Anthony’s face, Anthony with the white-rimmed, startled eyes. Anthony was shouting. He did not seem to recognize Heck. “—move out. That way.” Anthony pointed with his chin. “Follow about thirty seconds behind me. Corporal thinks the snipers will be on us again.” Then Anthony heaved himself out of the hole and vanished.
Heck felt around for his gun. He could not locate it on either side or beneath himself, but then he kicked something and was able to pull it up from where it lay under his feet and hug it to his chest. Holding the weapon provided a short surge of relief and he pressed the gun more tightly. Something smelled bad, and he realized that sometime during the bombardment he had loosed his bowels. He now had no idea at all how much time had passed since Anthony had said thirty seconds. He began to count down from fifteen.
He had reached six when the sniper’s rifle cracked and Heck heard the bullet bite into the earth, though how near or far away he could not tell. It seemed near. Now he had lost his count. He took his breathing under control again and wiped with his dirty hands at his dirty face and began counting downward from ten. He kept to the count and did his best to ignore the further shots of the sniper. He counted slowly, metering his breath, tense in the shoulders and thighs: “Two—one—” Then: “Go.”
But he did not go. He curled and uncurled his toes but lay as before. Involuntarily he groaned. The sporadic sniper fire continued, the bullets beating into the earth with a sound like a fist into flesh, and Heck dared not even raise his head to look around. He breathed, breathed again, and still he had not moved.
In a condition of despair he began to count downward once again from ten. A brief hissing noise of descent and a brutal explosion announced a renewal of the artillery attack, and Heck felt again terror but also a tiny lilt of relief as he pressed himself to the earth and allowed himself to forget any idea of moving out of this hole.
The shells came down in a furious series, then continued in a desultory fashion for, it seemed, a very long time. Then came another of those deceptive respites, but this one went on until even the ringing in Heck’s ears had dimmed to almost nothing. Still he waited with his face pressed to the ground. After some number of hours had passed he began to feel a warmth on him, which, he thought, could only be the heat of the newly risen sun.
He raised his head. There was no sun, but a wash of blue glowed in one quadrant of the sky. All around him the earth lay ripped, blasted, and savaged. It would be better, he thought, to move now in this half-light than to wait for full daylight, when the snipers could see him clearly.
He rose and moved in a crouch, proceeding from one hole to the next, trying always to keep low and covered, never feeling himself low enough or sufficiently covered. All of the holes he ducked into were empty, which surprised him. He had assumed that the others were still here, and he was confused. He risked very briefly standing erect and looking around. He could not see anyone.
He sprinted ahead to the next hole, and the next. Sliding into a particularly large excavation Heck saw, happily, that here, after all, was another GI, cowering in the bottom of the hole. The soldier was so huddled and afraid that Heck felt a repugnance. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “Did the others go? Do you know? Did they leave us?” The other GI did not answer, catatonic perhaps, with his arms pulled tightly around his face like a child. Heck moved down next to him and when he reached out to nudge him, his fingers sank through the man’s ribs into a moist hole. Heck flinched away and looked at his hand in the pallid light: his fingers were covered in a dark substance. “Are you all right?” he said and reached to shake the man again, but stopped short, his bloodied fingers hovering over the man’s shoulder. The man in his cowering position had not yet moved and the touch of his flesh had been cool. Heck turned away and rubbed his fingers violently against the earth and got out of the hole and ran.
That man was dead, he thought. That man was dead. And the feeling of his fingers sinking into the flesh came back to him. He wiped and beat his hand against his trousers as he ran.
He came to the end of the field. There was a ditch and, shortly beyond, a brick wall eight or ten feet high. Sitting at the muddy bottom of the ditch he felt well hidden. He discovered he had lost his helmet. He felt no desire to go looking for it.
He began to rub his eye with his fist, but stopped suddenly and examined his hand. Traces of dried blood remained between the fingers. He scrubbed his fingers with some of the mud from the bottom of the ditch and rinsed them in a standing pool of brown water and wiped them against his shirt. With a clump of dead grass he did his best to clean out his pants where he had soiled them.
While the sun emerged and ascended he remained hunkered in the mud. He felt relatively sheltered, and any other alternative seemed less safe. Eventually even from his position within the ditch he could see the sun burning above him.
He heard, faintly, noises of growling and clanking. The sounds slowly grew louder, until they were unmistakably the diesel engine and clomping treads of a tank. As the noise approached, however, its origin seemed to shift, echoing off different buildings, causing him confusion as to which direction he should flee toward. He decided he would do best to stay hidden and hope they would pass by. After the disorder of the previous night and the pounding the Germans had given the town, he assumed that the enemy had retaken the territory—if it had ever been in American possession in any realistic sense at all—and not until the tank came into sight at the far end of the field with a large white star upon its turret did it occur to Heck that this might be friendly armor. He remained hidden, watching, bothered by the idea that this might be a trick or that if these were Americans they might mistake him for the enemy but held primarily by an inchoate uncertainty that he did not question. Behind the lead tank moved a squad of infantry, in American uniforms, and behind these followed two more tanks. He didn’t see any of them look his way. The column passed by and out of sight, and he felt relieved when he seemed to be alone again.
The odors of phosphorous and cordite still hung in the air. He took a C-ration from his pack and ate quietly. It tasted horrible, but he ate it. Gnats swarmed in vague patterns over the field before him. Shots and occasional artillery exchanges could still be heard in the distance, but they sounded very far away and had nothing to do with him. In his mind he was still trying to assimilate the events of the night before. The sensation and the echo of his terror would not leave him, kept returning him to the darkness, the explosions and wrath, the sound of howling, Anthony shouting at him to move out.
He took the music box from his pocket and opened it and closed it, thinking vaguely of Claire. He smoked a series of cigarettes. Slowly an understanding of his actions came to him. Evidently he had waited too long after Anthony told him to move out. Probably he should have gone to talk to the Americans who went by with the tanks. Still, not until midafternoon did he feel sufficiently calmed to consider stepping into the open. Even the distant sound of artillery had stopped, although there still erupted, at unpredictable intervals, crackles of gunfire in town. It occurred to Heck, suddenly, that if he did not make an effort to find his unit he might be considered a deserter. This was an appalling thought and it startled him into motion. He closed his pack and settled it on his shoulders and, gripping his rifle tightly, ventured onto the field where the gnats moved.
He did not look carefully into every hole, but it appeared that the only casualty was the man he had stumbled on earlier. Heck maneuvered around him and avoided looking at the body. He could still feel his fingers going into the dead man’s side, and he glanced at his hand to be sure it was not wet with blood. He wondered if the screaming he had heard had come from that man. Maybe another man had been wounded and the others had helped him escape. Heck’s sense of the events of the preceding night was vague, uneven. Only the memory of fear ran continuously through it, like a thread connecting otherwise discrete beads.
When he stepped out into the cobblestoned streets he found a town that had seemed much larger in the night. The blocks had been longer, the buildings taller. Much of the town was in fact destroyed, reduced to skeletons or simple rubble. Littered along the cobblestones were packs, gas masks, shell casings, a boot, a grenade—evidently a dud, although Heck did not go near enough to examine it. The smell of burning and char was in the air. Wisps of unenthusiastic smoke rose from smoldering buildings.
He progressed vaguely, moving in oblique directions, tacking like a ship into the wind. It was strange to see how a house could stand pristine, even its windows intact, immediately beside a house that had exploded, burned, and collapsed into its own foundation. He passed two burn-scarred tanks, one just behind the other, a naked blackened corpse extending from the turret hatch of the second, locked in a position of dragging itself away. It had a terrible quality of suppressed life, as if it might yet make a last inhuman effort. He left these behind and turned a corner and moved down a street where the houses were close-set and all of them had taken damage. He came to another building that had fallen into its cellar and across the rubble glimpsed someone moving in the next street. He stepped behind a corner. But he thought it might have been an American uniform he had seen. And now he heard American voices. Tears came to his eyes—he was surprised by the intensity of his relief. “Hello,” he called, stepping forward, waving his arms, then more loudly, “Hello!” There were two men, he saw now. They turned to look at him, one leveling a rifle. Heck started gingerly forward across the ruins of the collapsed building between them. “Hi,” he said.
“Who the hell are you?” called the one without the rifle. He had sergeant’s stripes. His helmet was scorched black.
“I got lost,” Heck said. “I don’t know where the others have gone.”
The one with the rifle muttered something. He lowered his gun but watched Heck skeptically. “All right, come on over,” called the sergeant. “Maybe we can help you find your mama duck.” Heck followed a long, thick wooden beam out across the fallen building, then stepped off the end of it, onto the frame of a fallen doorway, but under his weight the frame turned and there was nothing below. He fell, striking a sequence of hard, unseen objects, and landed on his knees in an ungainly way, twisted to one side. He felt like he had scratched his leg. “Oh, good Christ,” said a voice above, not the sergeant’s. Heck gasped to regain his breath. Dislodged debris rattled around him for several seconds. The sun penetrated the rubble in slivers and needles of light that swirled with dust. Heck slumped against the bricks and wood behind him.
