The Young Lions

"Good luck," Pavone said, in the simple, not over-loud, well-modulated tone of the man who is going back from the fighting and can now control his voice, "good luck to you all, Captain." The Captain waved his stick again, in a jerky, friendly gesture, and the jeep slowly rolled past the rest of the Company, brought up at the rear by the MO, with the red crosses on his helmet, and a young, listening, thoughtful look on his face, and the first-aid kits in his hands.

The music of the bagpipes died down into fragile, gull-like echoes as the Company turned off into the wheatfield and wound deeper and deeper into it, like armed men marching purposefully and regretfully into a rustling, golden sea.

Michael woke up, listening to the growing mutter of the guns. He was depressed. He smelled the damp, loamy odour of the foxhole in which he slept, and the acid, dusty smell of the bivouac dark over his head. He lay rigid, in the complete darkness, too tired to move, warm under the blankets, listening to the sound of guns that was coming closer each moment. The usual air raid, he thought, hating the Germans, every goddamn night.

The sound of the guns was very close now and there was the soft deadly hiss of shrapnel falling near-by and the plump, solid sounds as the steel fragments hit the earth. Michael reached in behind him and got his helmet and put it over his groin. He pulled his barracks bag, which was lying next to him in the hole, stuffed with extra pants, vests and shirts, and rolled it on top of him, on his belly and chest. Then he crossed his arms over his head, covering his face with the warm smell of his flesh and the sweaty smell of the long sleeves of the woollen underwear. Now, he thought, as this nightly routine which he had worked out in the weeks in Normandy was completed, now they can hit me. He had figured out the various parts of himself which were most vulnerable and most precious, and they were protected. If he got hit in the legs or arms it would not be so serious.

He lay there, in the complete darkness, listening to the roaring and whistling above his head. He began to feel cosy and protected in the deep hole in which he slept. The inside of the hole was lined with stiff canvas cut from a crashed glider, and he had put down as a ground cloth a luminescent silk signalling panel that gave an air of Oriental luxury to the neat underground establishment.

Michael wondered what time it was, but he was too tired to try to find his flashlight and look at his watch. From three to five in the morning he was to be on guard duty and he wondered dully whether it was worth while to try to go to sleep again.

The raid went on. The planes must be very low, he thought, they're firing machine-guns at them. He listened to the machineguns and to the patient roar of the planes above. How many air raids had he been in? Twenty? Thirty? The Luftwaffe had tried to kill him thirty times, in a general, impersonal way, and had failed.

He played with the idea of being hit. A nice, eight-inch gash in the fleshy part of the leg. With a nice little fracture of the thigh-bone thrown in. Michael thought of himself hobbling bravely up the ramp of Grand Central Station in New York, fully equipped with Purple Heart, crutches and discharge papers.

The guns stopped outside and the planes droned back towards the German lines. Michael slipped the barracks bag off his chest and rolled the helmet away from his groin. Ah, God, he thought, ah, God, how long it this going to last?

Then the guard he was to relieve poked his head into the tent and pulled Michael's toe under the blankets.

"On your feet, Whitacre," said the guard. "You're going for a walk."

"OK, OK," Michael said, pushing back the blankets. He shivered and hurriedly put on his shoes. He put on his field jacket and picked up his carbine, and, shivering badly, stepped out into the night. It had clouded over and a fine drizzle was falling. Michael reached into the tent and got out his raincoat and put it on. Then he went over to the guard, who was leaning against a jeep, talking to another sentry, and said, "All right, go on back to sleep."

He stood leaning against the jeep, next to the other guard, shivering, feeling the drizzle filtering in under his collar and rolling down his face, peering out into the cold wet darkness, remembering all the women he had thought about during the raid, remembering Margaret, and trying to compose a letter, a letter so moving, so tender and heartbreaking and true and loving, that she would see how much they needed each other and would be waiting for him when he got back to the sorrowful, chaotic world of America after the war.

"Hey, Whitacre," it was the other sentry, Private Leroy Keane, who had already been on duty for an hour, "do you have anything to drink?"

"No," said Michael. He was not fond of Keane, who was garrulous and a scrounger, and who had, to boot, the reputation of being an unlucky man to be with, because the first time he had left camp in Normandy his jeep had been strafed and two of the men in it had been wounded, and one killed, although Keane had not been touched. "Sorry." Michael moved away a little.

"Have you got any aspirin?" Keane asked. "I got a terrible headache."

"Wait a minute." Michael went back to his bivouac and brought back a small tin of aspirin. He gave the tin to Keane. Keane took six of them and tossed them into his mouth. Michael watched, feeling his own mouth curl in distaste.

"Don't you use water?" Michael asked.

"What for?" asked Keane. He was a large, bony man of about thirty, whose older brother had won the Congressional Medal of Honour in the last war, and Keane, trying to live up to the glory of the family, put on a very tough front.

Keane gave Michael the aspirin box. "What a headache," Keane said. "From constipation. I haven't been able to move my bowels for five days."

I haven't heard anybody use that expression, Michael thought, since Fort Dix. He walked slowly beside the line of bivouacs along the edge of the field, hoping Keane wouldn't follow him. But there was the clumsy scuffle of Keane's boots in the grass beside him and Michael knew there was no escaping the man.

"I used to have a perfect digestion," Keane said mournfully.

"But then I got married."

They walked in silence to the end of the row of tents and the officers' latrine. Then they turned and started back.

"My wife stifled me," said Keane. "Also she insisted on having three children, right away. You wouldn't believe it, that a woman who wanted children like that was frigid, but my wife is frigid. She can't bear to have me touch her. I got constipated six weeks after the wedding day and I haven't had a healthy day since then. Are you married, Whitacre?"

"Divorced."

"If I could afford it," Keane said, "I would get divorced. She's ruined my life. I wanted to be a writer. Do you know many writers?"

"A few."

"Not with three children, though, that's a cinch." Keane's voice was bitter in the darkness. "She trapped me from the begi

"Yes," said Michael.

"Killed eleven Germans in one morning. Eleven Germans," Keane said, his voice musical with regret and wonder. "I wanted to join the paratroopers, and my wife threw a fit of hysterics. It all goes together, frigidity, lack of respect, fear, hysteria. Now look what I'm doing. Pavone hates me. He never takes me out with him on his trips. You were at the front today, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"You know what I was doing?" asked the brother of the Medal-of-Honour wi