The Young Lions

The Lieutenant smiled more broadly. "You're an intelligent man," he said lightly. "The effect is the same. It proves to them that we are serious." He patted Christian on the shoulder. "Go round to the kitchen and tell Renee I told you she was to feed you well, the same breakfast she brings me. You speak French well enough for that, don't you?"

"Yes, Sir," Christian said.

"Good." The Lieutenant gave Christian's shoulder a final pat and went in through the large solid door in the grey house with the geranium pots at the windows and in the garden in front. Christian went round to the back door. He had a large breakfast, with eggs and sausage and coffee with real cream.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"BACK in Tulsa, when I was in high school," Fahnstock was saying, between slow strokes of the hammer, "they called me Stud. From the time I was thirteen years old my prevailing interest in life was girls. If I could find me an English broad in town here, I wouldn't even mind this place." Reflectively he hammered out a nail from the weathered piece of timber he was working on and threw the nail into the tin next to him. Then he spat, a long dark spurt of tobacco juice, from the wad that seemed to be permanently attached to the inside of his jaw.

Michael took out the pint bottle of gin from the back pocket of his fatigues and took a long gulp. He put the bottle away without offering Fahnstock a drink. Fahnstock, who got drunk every Saturday night, did not drink on week-days before Retreat, and it was only ten o'clock in the morning now. Besides, Michael was tired of Fahnstock. They had been together for over two months now in the Replacement Centre Casual Company. One day they worked on the lumber pile, taking nails out and straightening them, and the next day they worked on KP. The Mess Sergeant didn't like either of them, and for the last fifteen times he had put them on the dirtiest job in the kitchen, scrubbing the big greasy pots and cleaning the stoves after the day's cooking was over.

As far as Michael could tell, both he and Fahnstock, who was too stupid to do anything else, were going to spend the rest of the war and perhaps the rest of their lives alternating between the lumber pile and the kitchen. When this realization had sunk in, Michael had thought of desertion, but had compromised with gin. It was very dangerous, because the camp was run like a penal colony and men were constantly being sentenced to years in jail for smaller offences than drunke

He had written to Colonel Pavone soon after he was put on the lumber pile, asking to be transferred, but there had been no answer from the Colonel, and Michael was too tired all the time now to bother to write again or to try any other avenues of escape.

"The best time I had in the Army," Fahnstock drawled, "was in Jefferson Barracks in St Louis. I found three sisters in a bar. They worked in a brewery in St Louis on different shifts. One was sixteen, one was fifteen and one was fourteen. Hillbillies fresh out of the Ozark Mountains. They never owned a pair of stockings till they worked in the brewery for three months. I sure did regret it the day my orders came through for overseas."

"Listen," Michael said, pounding slowly on a nail, "will you please talk about something else?"

"I'm just trying to pass the time," Fahnstock said, aggrieved.

"Pass the time some other way," Michael said, feeling the gin gripping the lining of his stomach.

They hammered at the splintery boards in silence.

A guard with a rifle came by behind two prisoners who were rolling wheelbarrows full of lumber ends. The prisoners dumped the lumber onto the pile. They all moved with a dragging, deliberate slowness, as though there was nothing ahead of them in their whole lives that was important to do.

"Shake your arse," the guard said languidly, leaning on the rifle. The prisoners paid no attention to him.

"Whitacre," said the guard, "whip out the bottle." Michael looked glumly at him. The police, he thought, everywhere the same, collecting their blackmail for overlooking the breaking of the law. He took out the bottle and wiped the neck of it before handing it to the guard. He watched jealously as the guard took a deep swig.

"I only drink on holidays." The guard gri

Michael put the bottle away. "What's this?" he asked. "Christmas?"

"Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"We hit the beach this morning. This is D-Day, Brother, ain't you glad you're here?"

"How do you know?" Michael asked suspiciously.

"Eisenhower made a speech on the radio. I heard it," the guard said, "We're liberating the Frogs, he said."

"I knew somethin' was up yesterday," said one of the prisoners, a small, thoughtful-looking man who was in for thirty years because he had knocked out his Lieutenant in the orderly room. "They came to me and they offered to pardon me and give me an honourable discharge if I would go back into the infantry."

"What did you say?" Fahnstock asked, interestedly.

"Screw, I said," said the prisoner. "An honourable discharge right into a military cemetery."

"Shut your mouth," said the guard languidly, "and pick up that wheelbarrow. Whitacre, one more drink, to celebrate Dday."

"I have nothing to celebrate," Michael said, trying to save his gin.

"Don't be ungrateful," said the guard. "You're here nice and dry and safe and you ain't laying on any beach with a hunk of shrapnel up your arse. You got plenty to celebrate." He held out his hand. Michael gave him the bottle.

"That gin," Michael said, "cost me two pounds a fifth."

The guard gri

"Well," said Fahnstock, "I guess old Roosevelt is finally satisfied today. He's gone and got himself a mess of Americans killed."

"I'll bet he jumped up out of his wheelchair," the guard said, "and is dancin' up and down on the White House floor."

"I heard," said Fahnstock, "the day he declared war on Germany, he had a big banquet in the White House with turkey and French wine, and after it they was all laying each other on the tables and desks."

Michael took a deep breath. "Germany declared war on the United States," he said. "I don't give a damn, but that's the way it happened."

"Whitacre is a Communist from New York," said Fahnstock to the guard. "He's crazy about Roosevelt."

"I'm not crazy about anybody," Michael said. "Only Germany declared war on us and so did Italy. Two days after Pearl Harbour."

"I'll leave it up to the boys," said Fahnstock. He turned to the guard and the prisoners. "Straighten out my friend," Fahnstock said.

"We started it," said the guard. "We declared war. I remember it as clear as day."

"Boys," Fahnstock appealed to the two prisoners.

They both nodded. "We declared war on them," said the man who had been offered an honourable discharge if he would join the infantry.

"Roger," said the other prisoner, who had been in the Air Force before they caught him forging cheques in Wales.

"There you are," said Fahnstock. "Four to one, Whitacre. The majority rules."

Michael glared drunkenly at Fahnstock. Suddenly it became intolerable to bear the pimply, leering, complacent face. Not today, Michael thought heavily, not on a day like this. "You ignorant, garbage-brained son of a bitch," Michael said clearly and wildly, "if you open your mouth once more I'll kill you."