The Young Lions

Fahnstock moved his lips gently. Then he spat, a long, brownish, filthy spurt. The tobacco juice splashed on Michael's face. Michael leapt at Fahnstock and hit him in the jaw, twice. Fahnstock went down, but he was up in a moment, holding a heavy piece of two-by-four with three large nails sticking out of one end. He swung at Michael and Michael started to run. The guard and the prisoners stepped back to give the men room. They watched interestedly.

Fahnstock was very fast, despite his fat, and he got close enough to hit Michael's shoulder. Michael felt the sharp bite of the nails in his shoulder and wrenched away. He stopped and bent down and picked up a plank. Before he could straighten up, Fahnstock hit him on the side of the head. Michael felt the scraping, tearing passage of the nails across his cheekbone. Then he swung. He hit Fahnstock on the head and Fahnstock began to walk strangely, sideways, in a small half-circle around Michael. Fahnstock swung again, but weakly, and Michael leapt out of the way easily, although it was getting difficult to judge distances correctly, because of the blood in his eye. He waited coldly, and just as Fahnstock raised his board again, Michael stepped in, swinging his plank sideways, like a baseball bat. The plank caught Fahnstock across the neck and jaw and he went down on his hands and knees. He stayed that way, peering dully at the thin dust on the bare ground around the lumber pile.

"All right," said the guard. "That was a nice little fight. You," he said to the prisoners, "sit the bastard up."

Both prisoners went over to Fahnstock and sat him up against a box. Fahnstock looked dully out across the su

Michael threw away his plank and got out his handkerchief. He put it up to his face and looked curiously at the large red stain on it when he took it away from his face.

Wounded, he thought, gri

The guard saw an officer turn a corner of a barracks a hundred yards away and said hurriedly to the prisoners, "Come on, get moving." Then to Michael and Fahnstock, "Better get back to work. Here comes Smiling Jack."

The guard and the prisoners went off briskly, and Michael stared at the approaching officer, who was called Smiling Jack because he never smiled at all.

Michael grabbed Fahnstock and pulled him to his feet. He put the hammer in Fahnstock's hand and automatically Fahnstock began to tap at the boards. Michael picked up some boards and ostentatiously carried them to the other end of the pile, where he put them down neatly.

He went back to Fahnstock and picked up his own hammer. Both men were making a busy noise when Smiling Jack came up to them. Court-martial, Michael was thinking, court-martial, five years, drunk on duty, fighting, insubordination, etc.

"What's going on here?" asked Smiling Jack.

Michael stopped hammering, and Fahnstock too. They turned and faced the Lieutenant.

"Nothing, Sir," Michael said, keeping his lips as tight as possible so that the Lieutenant couldn't smell his breath.

"Have you men been fighting?"

"No, Sir," said Fahnstock, united against the common enemy.

"How did you get that wound?" The Lieutenant gestured towards the three raw, bleeding lines across Michael's cheekbone.

"I slipped, Sir," said Michael blandly.

Smiling Jack's Up curled angrily and Michael knew he was thinking. They're all the same, they're all out to make fools of you, there isn't a word of truth in a single enlisted man in the whole damn Army.

"Fahnstock!" Smiling Jack said.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Is this man telling the truth?"

"Yes, Sir. He slipped."

Smiling Jack looked around helplessly and furiously. "If I find out you're lying…" He left the sentence threateningly in the air. "All right, Whitacre, finish up here. There're travel orders for you in the orderly room. You're being transferred. Go on and pick them up."

He glared once more at the two men and turned and stalked away, after exacting a salute.

Michael watched the retreating, frustrated back.

"You son of a bitch," said Fahnstock, "if I catch you again I'll razor-cut you."

"Nice to have known you," Michael said lightly. "Clean those pots nice and bright now."

He tossed away his hammer and strode lightly towards the orderly room, tapping his rear pocket to make sure the bottle wasn't showing.

With his orders in his pocket, later on, and a neat bandage on his cheek, Michael packed his kit. Colonel Pavone had come through, and Michael was to report to him in London immediately. As he packed, Michael sipped at his bottle, and pla

He drove down to London in an Army truck the next morning. The people of the villages along the road cheered and made the V sign with their fingers because they thought every truck now was on its way to France, and Michael and the other soldiers in the truck waved back cynically, gri

They passed a British convoy near London, loaded with armed infantrymen. On the rear truck, there was a dourly chalked legend. "DON'T CHEER, GIRLS, WE'RE BRITISH."

The British infantrymen did not even look up when the American truck sped by them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE Landing Craft Infantry wallowed in the water until four o'clock in the afternoon. At noon a barge took off their wounded, all properly bandaged and transfused. Noah watched the swathed, blanketed men being swung over the side on stretchers, thinking, with a helpless touch of envy: They are going back, they are going back, in ten hours they will be in England, in ten days they may be in the United States, what luck, they never had to fight at all.

But then, when the barge was only a hundred feet away, it was hit. There was a splash beside it, and nothing seemed to be happening for a moment. But then it slowly rolled over and the blankets and the bandages and the stretchers whirled in the choppy green water for a minute or two, and that was all. Do

Colclough was not to be seen. He was down below all day and Lieutenant Green and Lieutenant Sorenson were the only officers of the Company on deck. Lieutenant Green was a frail, girlish-looking man, and everybody made fun of him all through training, because of his mincing walk and high voice. But he walked around on deck, among the wounded and the sick and the men who were sure they were going to die, and he was cheerful and competent and helped with the bandages and the blood transfusions, and kept telling everyone the boat was not going to sink, the Navy was working on the engines, they would be in on the beach in fifteen minutes. He still walked in that silly, mincing way, and his voice was no lower and no more manly than usual, but Noah had the feeling that if Lieutenant Green, who had run a dry-goods store in South Carolina before the war, had not been on board, half the Company would have jumped over the side by two in the afternoon.

It was impossible to tell how things were going on the beach. Burnecker even made a joke about it. All the long morning he had kept saying, in a strange, rasping voice, holding violently on to Noah's arms when the shells hit the water close to them, "We're going to get it today. We're going to get it today." But about midday he got hold of himself. He stopped vomiting and ate a K ration, complaining about the dryness of the cheese, and then he seemed to have either resigned himself or become more optimistic. When Noah peered out at the beach, on which shells were falling and men ru