The Young Lions

Then he remembered the sudden dark shape roaring across the intersection… A traffic accident… He smiled remotely to himself. Beware French drivers, all his travelling friends had always said.

He couldn't move his legs and the light of the torch on Pavone's face made it seem very pale, as though he had been dead for ever, and there was an American voice saying, "Hey, look at this, an American, and he's dead. Hey, look, it's a Colonel. What do you know…? He looks just like a GI."

Michael started to say something clear and definitive about his friend, Colonel Pavone, but it never quite formed on his tongue. When they picked Michael up, although they did it very gently, considering the darkness and the confusion and the weeping women, he dropped steeply into unconsciousness…

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE replacement depot was on a sodden plain near Paris, a sprawling collection of tents and old German barracks, still with the highly coloured paintings of large German youths and smiling old men drinking out of steins, and bare-legged farm girls like Percheron horses on the walls, under the swastika and eagle. Many Americans, to show that they had passed through this hallowed spot, had written their names on the painted walls, and legends like "Sgt. Joe Zachary, Kansas City, Missouri" and "Meyer Greenberg, PFC, Brooklyn, USA" were everywhere in evidence.

There was a big new batch of replacements that had just come over from the States. The swollen, oversize, casual company stood in the drizzle, the mud thick on their boots, answering to their names, and the Sergeant said, "Sir, L Company all present and accounted for," and the Captain took the salute and walked away to supper.

The Sergeant did not dismiss the Company. He strolled back and forth in front of the first line, peering out at the dripping men standing in the mud. The rumour was that the Sergeant had been a chorus boy before the war. He was a slender, athletic-looking man, with a pale, sharp face. He wore the good-conduct ribbon and the American defence ribbon and the European Theatre ribbon, with no campaign stars.

"I have a couple of things to say to you guys," the Sergeant began, "before you go slop up your supper."

A slight, almost inaudible sigh rustled through the ranks. By this stage of the war everyone knew that there was nothing a Sergeant could say that could be listened to with pleasure.

"We had a little trouble here the last few days," the Sergeant said, nastily. "We are close to Paris and some of the boys got the notion it would be nice to slip off for a couple of nights and get laid. In case any of you boys're entertaining the same idea, let me tell you they never got to Paris, they never got laid, and they are already way up front in Germany and I will give any man here odds of five to one they never come back." The Sergeant walked meditatively, looking down at the ground, his hands in his pockets. He walks like a dancer, quite graceful, Michael thought, and he looks like a very good soldier, the neat, dashing way he wears his clothes… "For your information," the Sergeant began again in a low, mild voice, "Paris is out of bounds to all GIs from this camp, and there are MPs on every road and every entrance leading into it, and they are looking at everybody's papers, very careful. Very, very careful."

Michael remembered the two men with full packs pacing slowly back and forth in front of the orderly room at Dix, in payment for going to Trenton for a couple of beers. The long continuing struggle of the Army, the sullen attempts by the caged animals to get free for an hour, a day, for a beer, a girl, and the sullen punishments in return.

"The Army is very lenient over here," the Sergeant said.

"There are no courts-martial for being AWOL like in the States. Nothing is put on your record. Nothing to stop you from getting an honourable discharge, if you live that long. All we do is, we catch you and we look up the requests for replacements, and we see, 'Ah, the Twenty-ninth Division is having the heaviest casualties this month' and I personally make out your orders and send you there. You're replacements. And there's nothing lower in this Army than a replacement, unless it's another replacement. Every day they bury a thousand like you, and the guys like me go over the lists and send up a thousand more. That's how it is in this camp, Boys, and I'm telling it to you for your own good, so you know where you stand. There's a lot of new boys in camp tonight, with the beer from the Kilmer PX still wet on their lips, and I want to put things straight for them. So don't get any fancy ideas in your head about Paris, Boys, it won't work. Go back to your tents and clean your rifles nice and neat and write your final instructions home to the folks. So forget about Paris, Boys. Come back in 1950. Maybe it will not be out of bounds for GIs then."

The men stood rigidly, in silence. The Sergeant stopped his pacing. He smiled grimly at the ranks, his jaws creasing in razored lines under his soft garrison cap with the cellophane rain-covering over it, like an officer's.

"Thanks for listening, Boys," the Sergeant said. "Now we all know where we stand. Dis-miss!"

The Sergeant walked springily down the Company street as the lines dissolved into confusion.

"Whitacre…"

Michael turned around. A small, half-familiar figure, almost lost in a raincoat, was standing there. Michael moved closer. Through the dusk, he could make out a battered face, a split eyebrow, a full, wide mouth, now curved in a small smile.

"Ackerman!" Michael said. They shook hands.

"I didn't know whether you'd remember me or not," Noah said. His voice was low and even and sounded much older than Michael remembered. The face, in the half-light, was very thin and had a new, mature sense of repose.

"Lord," Michael said, delighted, in this strange mass of men, to come across a face that he knew, a man with whom once he had been friendly, feeling as though somehow, by great luck, in a sea of enemies he had found an ally. "Lord, I'm glad to see you."

"Going to chow?" Ackerman asked. He was carrying his mess kit.

"Yes." Michael took Ackerman's arm. It seemed surprisingly wasted and fragile under the slippery material of the raincoat.

"I just have to get my mess kit. Hang on to me."

"Sure," Noah said. He smiled gravely, and they walked side by side towards Michael's tent. "That was a real little dandy of a speech," Noah said, "wasn't it?"

"Great for the morale," said Michael. "I feel like wiping out a German machine-gun nest before chow."

Noah smiled softly. "The Army," he said. "They sure love to make speeches to you in the Army."

"It's an irresistible temptation," Michael said. "Five hundred men lined up, not allowed to leave or talk back… Under the circumstances, I think I'd be tempted myself."

"What would you say?" Noah asked.

Michael thought for a moment. "God help us," he said soberly. "I'd say, 'God help every man, woman and child alive today.'"

He ducked into his tent and came out with his mess kit. Then they walked slowly over to the long line outside the mess hall.

When Noah took off his raincoat in the mess hall, Michael saw the Silver Star over his breast pocket, and for a moment he felt the old twinge of guilt. He didn't get that by being hit by a taxi-cab, Michael thought. Little Noah Ackerman, who started out with me, who had so much reason to quit, but who obviously hadn't quit…

"General Montgomery pi