The Young Lions

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE landing barge went round in a monotonous circle. The spray heaved in over the side, puddling on the slippery deck. The men crouched over their weapons, trying to keep them dry. The barges had been rolling a mile off the beach since three o'clock in the morning. It was seven-thirty now, and all conversation had long ago ceased. The preliminary barrage from the ships was almost over, and the simulated air attack. The smoke screen thrown across the cove by a low-flying Cub was even now settling on the water's edge. Everybody was wet, everybody was cold, everybody, except for the men who felt like throwing up, was hungry.

Noah was enjoying it.

Crouched in the bow of the barge, tenderly keeping dry the charges of TNT that were his special care, feeling the salt spray of the North Sea batter against his helmet, breathing the sharp, wild, morning air, Noah was enjoying himself.

It was the final exercise for his regiment in their assault training. It was a full-dress rehearsal, complete with naval and air support and live ammunition, for the coast of Europe. For three weeks they had practised in thirty-man teams, each team to a pillbox, riflemen, bazooka men, flame-throwers, detonation men. This was the last time before the real thing. And there was a three-day pass, waiting like a promise of Heaven, in the orderly room for Noah.

Burnecker was pale green from seasickness, his large farmer's hands gripping his rifle convulsively, as though there, at least, might be found something steady, something secure in a heaving world. He gri

"Holy jumping mule," he said, "I am not a healthy man."

Noah smiled at him. He had grown to know Burnecker well in the last three weeks of working together. "It won't be long now," Noah said.

"How do you feel?" Burnecker asked.

"O.K.," said Noah.

"I'd trade you the mortgage on my father's eighty acres," Burnecker said, "for your stomach."

There was a confusion of amplified voices across the sliding water. The barge veered sharply and picked up speed as it headed for the beach. Noah crouched against the damp steel side, ready to jump when the ramp went down. Maybe, he thought, as the waves slapped with increasing force against the speeding hull, maybe there will be a cable from Hope when I get back to camp, saying it is all over. Then, later, he thought, I will sit back and tell my son, "The day you were born, I was landing on the coast of England with twenty pounds of dynamite." Noah gri

The barge grated against the smooth beach and a second later the ramp went down. Noah leaped out, feeling his equipment banging heavily against his back and sides, feeling the cold water pouring in over his leggings. He raced for a small dune and flung himself down behind it. The other men lumbered out, spreading rapidly, ducking into holes and behind clumps of scrub grass. The riflemen opened up on the pillbox eighty yards away, on a small bluff overlooking the beach. The bangalore-torpedo men crept carefully up to the barbed wire and set their fuses, then ran back. The bangalores exploded, adding the sharp smell of their explosion to the soft, thick smell of the smoke that the plane had laid down.

Noah picked himself up, with Burnecker protecting him, and ran forward to a hole that lay near the wire. Burnecker fell in on top of him.

Burnecker was panting heavily. "Goodness," Burnecker said, "isn't dry land wonderful?"

They laughed at each other, then slowly poked their heads out of the hole. The men were working precisely, like a football team ru

The bazooka went off again and again, in its rushing, noisy explosion, and large chunks of concrete flew up in the air from the pillbox.

"At times like this," Burnecker said, "I ask myself only one question. 'What are the Germans supposed to be doing while we go through all this?'"

Noah leaped out of the hole and dashed, crouching, holding his charges, through the opening in the wire. The bazooka spoke again and Noah threw himself to the sand, in case any of the concrete flew out towards him. Burnecker was lying beside him, panting heavily.

"And I used to think ploughing was hard," Burnecker said.

"Come on, Farmboy," said Noah, "we're on our way." He stood up. Burnecker got off the ground, groaning.

They ran to the right and threw themselves behind a six-foot-high dune. The grass on top of the dune was snapping in the wet wind.

They watched the man with the flame-thrower carefully crawl towards the pillbox. The fire from the riflemen supporting them still whistled over their heads and ricocheted off the concrete.

If Hope could only see me now, thought Noah.

The man with the flame-thrower was in position now, and the other man with him turned the cock on the cylinders on his back. It was Do

"All right, Noah," said Burnecker. "Do your act."

Noah leaped up and ran lightly and swiftly to windward of Do

The Lieutenant who had been in charge of their training at the camp, and who had come along as an observer, was walking towards him.

"Roger," said the Lieutenant. "Good job."

Noah waved at Burnecker and Burnecker, standing now, leaning on his rifle, waved back.

There was a letter from Hope at Mail Call. Noah opened it solemnly, with slow hands.

"Darling," the letter read: "Nothing yet. I am ENORMOUS. There is a feeling here that the child will weigh a hundred and fifty pounds at birth. I eat all the time. I love you."

Noah read the letter three times, feeling adult and paternal. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket, and went back to his tent to get ready for his three-day pass.

As he dug down in his barracks bag for a clean shirt, he felt secretly for the box he had hidden there. It was still there, wrapped in long Johns. It was a box of twenty-five cigars. He had bought it in the United States and carried it across the ocean with him, for the day that was now almost upon him. He had lived so much of his life without ritual or ceremony that the simple, rather foolish notion of signalizing the birth of an heir by handing out cigars had assumed solemn proportions in his mind. He had paid a great deal for the cigars in Newport News, Virginia, eight dollars and seventy-five cents, and the box had taken up precious room in his kit, but he had never begrudged either the cost or the space. Somehow, more felt than thought, Noah dimly realized that the act of giving, the plain, clumsy symbol of celebration, would make him feel the real living presence of the child, three thousand miles away, would place the child and himself, in his own mind and the minds of the men around him, in the proper normal relationship of father and son or father and daughter. Otherwise, in the ever-flowing stream of khaki, it would be so easy to make that day like every other day, that soldier like every other soldier… While the smoke still rose from the propitiatory offering, he would be more than a soldier, more than one of ten millions, more than an exile, more than a rifle and a salute, more than a helmet… he would be a father, love's creative particularized link among the generations of men.