The Young Lions

"Come on, move!" It was Rickett, calling from behind them, the same, snarling, Sergeant's voice, which no sea voyage, no amount of killing, would ever change.

"My choice," Burnecker said, "for the man I would like most to be alone with on a desert island."

They turned and plodded inland, leaving the coast behind them.

They marched for half an hour and then it became evident that Colclough was lost again. He stopped the Company at a crossroad where two MPs were directing traffic from a deep hole they had dug to one side, with just their helmets and shoulders sticking out above ground level. Noah could see Colclough gesturing angrily and he could hear the violence in the Captain's voice as he yelled at the MPs who were shaking their heads in ignorance. Then Colclough got out his map again and yelled at Lieutenant Green, who came up to help.

"Just our luck," Burnecker said, wagging his head, "we got a Captain who couldn't find a plough in a ballroom."

"Get back," they heard Colclough shout at Green. "Get back where you belong. I know what I'm doing!"

He turned into a lane between high, gleaming green hedges, and the Company wound slowly after him. It was darker between the hedges, and somehow much quieter, although the guns were still going, and the men peered uneasily at the dense, intertwined leaves, made for ambush.

Nobody said anything. They trudged on both sides of the damp road, trying to hear a rustle, the click of a rifle-bolt, a whisper of German, over the everlasting infantry squash-squash of their shoes, heavily scuffing in the thick clay of the lane.

Then the road opened up into a field and the sun broke through the clouds for a while and they felt better. An old woman was grimly milking her cows in the middle of the field, attended by a young girl with bare feet. The old woman sat on a stool, next to her weathered farm wagon, between whose shafts stood a huge, shaggy horse. The old woman pulled slowly and defiantly at the teats of the smooth-shouldered, clean-looking cow. Overhead the shells came and went and occasionally, from what seemed like a very short distance, there was the excited rattle of machine-guns, but the old woman never looked up. The girl with her was not more than sixteen years old, and was wearing a tattered green sweater. She had a red ribbon in her hair and she was interested in the soldiers.

"I think maybe I'll stop right here," Burnecker said, "and help with the chores. Tell me how the war comes out, Ackerman."

"Keep moving, soldier," said Noah. "Next war we'll all be in the Services of Supply."

"I love that girl," Burnecker said. "She reminds me of Iowa. Ackerman, do you know any French?"

"A voire sante," Noah said. "That's all I know."

"A votre sante," Burnecker shouted to the girl, gri

The girl waved back at him, smiling.

"She's crazy about me," Burnecker said. "What did I say to her?"

"To your health."

"Hell," said Burnecker, "that's too formal. I want to tell her something intimate."

"Je t'adore," said Noah, remembering it from some echo in his memory.

"What does that mean?"

"I adore you."

"That's more intimate," Burnecker said. He was near the end of the field now, and he turned and took off his helmet and bowed low, with a gallant sweep of the large metal pot. "Oh, Baby," he called thunderously, the helmet light and dashing in his huge, farmer's hand, his boyish, sunburned face grave and loving, "Oh, Baby, je t'adore, je t'adore…"

The girl smiled and waved again. "Je t'adore, mon Americain," she called.

"This is the greatest country on the face of the earth," Burnecker said.

"Come on, Hot Pants," Rickett said, prodding him with a bony, sharp thumb.

"Wait for me," Burnecker howled across the green fields, across the backs of the cows so much like the cows in his native Iowa. "Wait for me, Baby, I don't know how to say it in French, wait for me, I'll be back…"

The old lady on the stool, without looking up, brought back her hand and smacked the girl across her buttocks, sharply. The stinging, mean sound carried to the end of the field. The girl looked down and began to cry. She ran around to the other side of the cart to hide her face.

Burnecker sighed. He put on his helmet and went through the break in the hedge to the next field.

Three hours later Colclough found Regiment and half an hour after that they were in contact with the German Army. Six hours later Colclough managed to get the Company surrounded.

The farmhouse, in which what was left of the Company defended itself, seemed almost to have been built for the purposes of siege. It had thick stone walls, narrow windows, a slate roof that would not catch fire, huge, rock-like timbers holding up the floors and ceilings, a pump in the kitchen, and a deep, safe cellar where the wounded could be put out of harm's way.

It could be depended upon to stand up for a long time even against artillery. So far the Germans had not used anything heavier than mortars on it, and the thirty-five men who had fallen back on the house felt, for the moment, fairly strong. They fired from the windows in hurried bursts at the momentarily seen figures among the hedges and the outhouses surrounding the main building.

In the cellar, in the light of a candle, lay four wounded and one dead, among the cider barrels. The French family whose farm this was, and who had retired to the cellar at the first shot, sat on boxes, staring silently down at the stricken men who had come so far to die in their basement. There was a man of fifty who limped from a wound he had received in the last war at the Marne, and his wife, a thin, lanky woman of his own age, and their two daughters, aged twelve and sixteen, both very ugly, and both numb with fear, who cowered between the doubtful protection of the barrels.

The Medics had all been lost earlier in the day and Lieutenant Green kept ru

The farmer was not on good terms with his wife. "No," he said bitterly again and again. "Madame would not leave her boudoir, war or no war. Oh, no. Remain, she says, I will not leave my house to soldiers. Perhaps, Madame, you prefer this?"

Madame did not answer. She sat stolidly on her box, sipping at a cup of cider, looking down curiously at the faces of the wounded, beaded with cold sweat in the light of the candle.

When a machine-gun that the Germans had trained on the living-room window on the first floor clattered away there was a sound of breaking glass and tumbling furniture above her head. She sipped her drink a little more quickly, but that was all.

"Women," said the farmer to the dead American at his feet.

"Never listen to women. It is impossible to make them see that war is a serious matter."

On the ground floor the men had piled all the furniture against the windows, and were firing through loopholes and over cushions. Lieutenant Green shouted instructions at them from time to time, but no one paid any attention. When there was some movements to be seen through the hedges or in the clump of trees two hundred yards away, everyone on that side of the building fired, then fell back to the floor for safety.

In the dining-room, at the head of a heavy oak table, Captain Colclough was sitting, his helmeted head bowed over on his hands, his pearl-handled pistol in its bright leather holster at his side. He was pale and he seemed to be sleeping. No one talked to him, and he talked to no one. Only once, when Lieutenant Green came in to see if he was still alive, he spoke. "I will need you to make out a deposition," he said. "I told Lieutenant Sorenson to maintain contact on our flank with L Company at all times. You were there when I gave him the order, you were there, weren't you?"