The Young Lions

Then, without warning, the machine-guns started. There were the high screams of thousands of bullets around him, and men falling, before he heard the distant mechanical rattling sound of the guns themselves.

The line hesitated for a moment, the men staring bewilderedly at the enigmatic hedge from which the fire came.

"Come on! Come on!" Rickett's voice yelled crazily over the noise of the guns. "Keep moving!"

But half the men were down by now. Noah grabbed Burnecker's arm, and they turned and raced, crouching low, the few yards back to the edge of the embankment. They flung themselves down, sobbing for breath, into the green safety of the ditch. One by one the other men came tumbling back over the edge to crash, sobbing and exhausted, into the ditch. Rickett appeared on the brink, swaying crazily, waving his arms around, shouting something thickly through an arching spurt of blood that seemed to come from his throat. He was hit again and slid face-down on top of Noah. Noah could feel the hot wetness of the Sergeant's blood on his face. He pulled back, although Rickett was clinging to him, his hands around Noah's shoulders, gripping into the pack-harness on his back.

"Oh, you bathtards!" Rickett said distinctly, "oh, you bathtards!" Then he relaxed and slithered into the ditch at Noah's feet.

"Dead," Burnecker said. "The son of a bitch is finally dead."

Burnecker pulled Rickett's body to one side while Noah slowly tried to wipe the blood off his face.

The firing stopped and it was quiet again, except for shouts from the wounded out in the field. When a man raised his head carefully to look over the embankment to see what could be done, the guns started again, and the grass on the edge of the embankment snapped and slashed through the air as the bullets cut through it. The remnants of the Company lay exhausted, then, along the ditch.

"The Air Force," Burnecker said coldly. "All opposition was going to be wiped out. Destroyed or demoralized. They're pretty demoralized, aren't they? The next soldier I see with wings, I swear to God…"

The men lay silently, breathing more normally now, waiting for someone else to do something with the war.

After a while Lieutenant Green showed up. Noah could hear the high, girlish voice as Lieutenant Green came hurrying along the ditch, imploring the men to move. "… impossible," Lieutenant Green was screaming. "Get up there. You've got to keep moving. Keep moving. You can't stay here. The second platoon is sending a party out on the left to get those machine-guns, but we have to keep them pi

There was a shrill, hopeless note in Lieutenant Green's voice, and the men didn't even look at him. They turned their faces into the soft grass of the slope, ignoring the Lieutenant.

Suddenly, Lieutenant Green clambered up the side of the embankment himself. He stood on top, calling out, imploring, but none of the men moved. Noah watched Lieutenant Green with interest, waiting for him to die. The machine-guns started up again, but Green kept jumping around wildly, like a maniac, shouting incoherently, "It's easy. There's nothing to it. Come on…"

Green jumped down again and walked away from the ditch, back across the open field. The guns died down again and everybody was pleased the Lieutenant had left.

This is the system, Noah thought craftily, I'll live for ever. Just do whatever everybody else is doing. What can they do to me if I just stay here?

On both sides of them there were the heavy sounds of battle, but they couldn't see anything, and there was no way of telling how things were going. But the ditch remained safe and quiet. The Germans couldn't reach them in the ditch, and the men had no desire to do any harm to the Germans from the ditch. There was a pleasant, warming sense of secure permanence about the arrangement. At some future time, the Germans might withdraw or be encircled from somewhere else, and then there would be time to think about getting up and moving on. Not before.

Burnecker took out his K ration and opened it up. "Veal loaf," Burnecker said flatly, eating slabs of it off his knife. "Who the hell ever invented veal loaf?" He threw the little bag of synthetic lemonade powder away. "Not if I was dying of thirst," he said.

Noah didn't feel like eating. From time to time he stared at Rickett, lying dead five feet away from him. Rickett's eyes were wide open and there was a bloody grimace of anger and command on his face. His throat was badly torn open under the raw mouth. Noah tried to convince himself that he was pleased with the sight of his dead enemy, but he found it was impossible. Rickett, by the act of dying, had changed from the brutal sergeant, the vicious bully, the foul-mouthed killer, and had become another dead American, a lost friend, a vanished ally… Noah shook his head and turned away from staring at Rickett.

Lieutenant Green was coming along the ditch again, and with him was a tall man, who walked slowly, peering thoughtfully at the resting, stubborn men in the ditch. When Green and the other man got closer, Burnecker said, "Holy God, two stars."

Noah sat up and stared. He had never been this close to a Major-General in all his months in the Army.

"General Emerson," Burnecker whispered nervously. "What the hell is he doing here? Why doesn't he go home?"

Suddenly, with sharp agility, the General leaped up the side of the embankment and stood at the top, in full view of the Germans. He walked slowly along the edge, talking down at the men in the ditch, who stared up at him numbly. He had a pistol in a holster, and he carried a short swagger-stick under one arm.

Impossible, Noah thought, it must be somebody dressed up like a General. Green is playing a trick on us.

The machine-guns were going again, but the General did not change the tempo of his movements. He walked smoothly and easily, like a trained athlete, talking down into the ditch as he crossed in front of the men.

"All right, Boys," Noah heard him say as he approached, and the voice was calm, friendly, not loud. "Up we go now, Boys. We can't stay here all day. Up we go. We're holding up the whole line here and we've got to move now. Just up to the next row of hedges, Boys; that's all I'm asking of you. Come on, Son, you can't stay down there…"

As he watched, Noah saw the General's left hand jerk, and blood begin to drop down from the wrist. There was just the slightest twist of the General's mouth, and then he continued talking in the same quiet but somehow piercing tone, grasping the swagger-stick more tightly. He stopped in front of Noah and Burnecker. "All right, Boys," he was saying kindly, "just walk on up here…"

Noah stared at him. The General's face was long and sad and handsome, the kind of face you might expect to see on a scientist or a doctor, thin, intellectual, quiet. Looking at his face confused Noah, made him feel as though the Army had fooled him all along. Looking at the sorrowful, courageous face, he suddenly felt that it was intolerable that he, Noah, could refuse a man like that anything.

He moved and, at the same moment, he felt Burnecker move beside him. A little, dry, appreciative smile momentarily wrinkled the General's mouth. "That's it, Boys," he said. He patted Noah's shoulder. Noah and Burnecker ran forward fifteen yards and dropped into a hole for cover.

Noah looked back. The General was still standing on the brink of the ditch, although the fire was very heavy now, and men all along the line were leaping up and advancing in short bursts across the field.

Generals, he thought hazily, as he turned back towards the enemy, he had never known what Generals were for, before this…

He and Burnecker leaped out of their hole, just as two more men dived into it. The Company, or the half Company that was left, was moving at last.