The Young Lions

He got out the map and opened it on his knees. Behind him he heard Keane snapping the safety-catch off his carbine. A cowboy, Michael thought, staring at the map, a brainless, bloodthirsty cowboy…

Stellevato, slouched in the front seat beside him, smoking a cigarette, his helmet tipped far back on his head, said, "Do you know what I could use now? One bottle of wine and one French dame." Stellevato was either too young, too brave, or too stupid to be affected by the autumnal, dangerous morning, and by the unusual, unliberated aspect of the buildings in front of them.

"This is the place, all right," Michael said, "but it certainly doesn't look good to me." Four days before, Pavone had sent him back to Twelfth Army Group with a bagful of reports on a dozen towns they had inspected, reports on the public-utility situations, the food reserves, the number of denunciations of the incumbent civil officials that had been made by the local people. After that, he had ordered Michael to report back to him at the Infantry Division's Headquarters, but the G3 there had told Michael that Pavone had left the day before, leaving instructions for Michael to meet him in this town the next morning. A combined armoured and mechanized task force was to have reached the town by ten hundred hours and Pavone was to be with them.

It was eleven o'clock now, and apart from a small sign that read WATER POINT in English, with an arrow, there was no hint that anyone speaking English had been there since 1919.

"Come on, Bo," Keane said. "What're we waiting for? I want to see Paris."

"We don't have Paris," Michael said, putting the map away, and trying to make some sense out of the empty streets before him.

"I heard over the BBC this morning," Keane said, "that the Germans've asked for an armistice in Paris."

"Well, they haven't asked me," Michael said, sorry that Pavone wasn't with him at this moment to take on the burden of responsibility. The last three days had been pleasant, riding round the festive French countryside as commander of his own movements, with no one to order him about. But there was no celebrating going on here this morning, that was certain, and he had an uneasy sensation that if he guessed wrong in the next fifteen minutes, they might all be dead by noon.

"The hell with it." Michael nudged Stellevato. "Let's see what's happening at the Water Point."

Stellevato started the jeep and they went slowly down a side street towards a bridge they could see in the distance, crossing a small stream. There was another sign there, and a big canvas tank and pumping apparatus. For a moment, Michael thought that the Water Point, together with the rest of the town, was deserted, but he saw a helmet sticking cautiously up from a foxhole covered with branches.

"We heard the motor," said the soldier under the helmet. He was pale and weary-eyed, young and, as far as Michael could tell, frightened. Another soldier stood up next to him and came over to the jeep.

"What's going on here?" Michael asked.

"You tell us," said the first soldier.

"Did a task force go through here at ten o'clock this morning?"

"Nothing's been through here," the second soldier volunteered. He was a pudgy little man, nearly forty, who needed a shave badly, and he spoke with a hint of a Swedish singsong in his voice. "Fourth Armoured Headquarters went through last night and dropped us off here and turned south. Since then it's been lonely. There was some shooting near dawn from the middle of the town…"

"What was it?" Michael asked.

"Don't ask me, Brother," said the pudgy man. "They put me here to pump water out of this creek, not to conduct private investigations. These woods're full of Krauts and they shoot the Frogs and the Frogs shoot them. Me, I'm waiting for reinforcements."

"Let's go into the middle of the town and look around," Keane said eagerly.

"Will you shut up?" Michael swung round and spoke as sharply as he could to Keane. Keane, behind his thick glasses, gri

"Me and my buddy here," the pudgy soldier said, "have been debating whether maybe we ought to pull out altogether. We ain't doing anybody any good sitting here like ducks on a pond. A Frog came by this morning, he spoke some English, and he said there was eight hundred Krauts with three tanks on the other side of town, and they was going to come in here and take the town some time this morning."

"Happy days," Michael said. That was why there had been no flags.

"Eight hundred Krauts," Stellevato said. "Let's go home."

"Do you think it's safe here?" the pale-faced young soldier asked Michael.

"Just like your own living-room," said Michael. "How the hell would I know?"

"I was just asking a question," the young soldier said reproachfully.

"I don't like it," said the man with the Swedish accent, peering down the street. "I don't like it one bit. They got no right leaving us like this, all by ourself, sitting next to this goddamn creek."

"Nikki," Michael said to Stellevato. "Turn the jeep round and leave it on the road, so we can get away from here fast if we have to."

"What's the matter?" Keane asked, leaning towards Michael.

"Got your wind up?"

"Listen, General Patton," Michael said, trying to keep the a

"I wish I was home," Stellevato said. But he got into the jeep and turned it round. He unhooked his tommy-gun from under the windshield and blew vaguely on it. It was coated with dust.

"What're we going to do, Bo?" Keane asked. His big blotched hands moved eagerly on his carbine. Michael looked at him with distaste. Is it possible, Michael thought, that his brother won the Congressional Medal of Honour out of sheer stupidity?

"We're going to sit down here for a while," Michael said, "and wait."

"For what?" Keane demanded.

"For Colonel Pavone."

"What if he doesn't show up?" Keane persisted.

"Then we'll make another decision. This is a lucky day for me," Michael said crisply. "I bet I'm good for three decisions before sunset."

"I think we ought to say the hell with Pavone," said Keane, "and move right in on Paris. The BBC says…"

"I know what the BBC says," Michael said, "and I know what you say, and I say we're going to sit here and wait." He walked away from Keane and sat down on the grass, leaning against a low stone wall that ran alongside the stream. The two Armoured Division soldiers looked at him doubtfully, then went back into their foxhole, pulling the branches cautiously over their heads. Stellevato leaned his tommy-gun against the wall and lay down and went to sleep. He lay straight out, with his hands over his eyes. He looked dead.

Keane sat on a stone and took out a pad of paper and a pencil and began writing a letter to his wife. He sent his wife a detailed account of everything he did, including the most horrible descriptions of the dead and wounded. "I want her to see what the world is going through," he had said soberly. "If she understands what we are going through, it may improve her outlook on life."

Michael stared past the helmeted head of the man who, at this distance, was attempting to improve the outlook on life of his frigid wife 3,000 miles away. On the other side of Keane, the unscarred old walls of the town, and the shuttered, unba

Michael closed his eyes. Someone ought to write me a letter, he thought, to make me understand what I am going through. The last month had been so crowded with experience, of such a wildly diversified kind, that he felt he would need years to sift it, classify it, search out its meaning. Somewhere, he felt, in the confusion of strafing and capturing and bumping in dusty convoys through the hot French summer, somewhere in the waving of hands and girls' kisses and sniping and burning, there was a significant and lasting meaning. Out of this month of jubilation, upheaval and death, a man, he felt, should have been able to emerge with a key, a key to wars and oppression, a key to unlock the meaning of Europe and America.