John Katzenbach - Hart’s War

His imagination was a fevered blank fire of pain.

Still he dragged himself ahead.

It was darker than any night he'd known and he was terribly alone.

Sand rivulets leaked onto his head. Dust clogged his nostrils.

It seemed that there was no air left inside the narrow tunnel confines.

The only sound he could make out was the creak of support boards seemingly ready to give way. He pulled himself along, using a swimming motion, thrusting aside dirt that clogged his route, fighting every centimeter of the way.

He held out no real hope of being able to crawl the entire seventy-five yards. And he certainly no longer held any belief that he could cover the distance before the Germans descended upon Hut 107. In an odd way, though, the exhaustion, coupled with pain, and the immense effort it took to work his way ahead, all conspired to prevent him from being crippled by fear. It was almost as if all the other competing agonies that screamed inside his body didn't leave enough room for the most obvious and the most dangerous. And so defeat in this final fight didn't really dare enter his thinking.

Tommy grabbed at each inch of darkness and hauled himself forward.

He did not stop. Nor did he even hesitate, despite his exhaustion.

Even when he found his way partially blocked, and the narrow space made even smaller, he still snaked ahead, his lanky form slithering through the tightest of gaps. His head spun dizzily with exertion. Each breath of air he squeezed from the blackness around him seemed thinner, more fetid, filled with evil.

How long he had traveled, or how far, was unknown to him.

In a way, it seemed to him as if he'd always been in the tunnel.

That there never was an outside, never was a clear sky filled with fresh air and a great expanse of stars above. For a moment, he almost laughed, thinking that everything else must have been a dream; his home, his school, his love, the war, his friends, the camp, the wire all of it. None of it really ever took place. He had died, right there in the Mediterranean Sea, right alongside the captain from Texas, and everything else was merely some odd fantasy of the future that he was carrying with him into oblivion. He gritted his teeth and dragged himself another yard forward, thinking perhaps nothing was real, and this tunnel was hell, and that he had always been there and would always remain inside. There was no exit.

There was no air. There was no light. Not ever.

And into this delirium that overcame him, he heard a voice.

It seemed familiar. He thought at first it was Phillip Pryce's, and then no, it was his old captain calling for him. He struggled forward a little more, and broke into a smile, because he realized it had to be Lydia summoning him. It was home in Vermont, and it was summer, and she wanted him to sneak from his house into the warm midnight and give her just a single, deep kiss goodnight. He whispered a reply, just like any delighted lover reaching across a bed late at night in response to the merest of suggestive touches, a beckoning.

"I'm here," he said.

The voice called out again, and he stretched forward.

"I'm here," he said, louder. He did not have the energy to speak any harder, and what he managed was really barely approaching a normal tone. Again, he pulled himself ahead, half-expecting to see Lydia's hand reaching for his, her voice coaxing him toward her.

But what he heard instead was a terrible crack.

He did not even have time to panic when the roof above him shattered, and he was abruptly enveloped in a cascade of sandy dirt.

"I heard him!" Lincoln Scott shouted.

"He's there!"

"Jesus!" Fenelli cried out, recoiling from the tunnel entrance as a blast of dirt like an explosion billowed through.

"Goddamn it!"

From above in the privy, Major Clark yelled down: "What is it? Where's Hart?"

"He's there!" Scott answered.

"I heard him!"

"It's a goddamn cave-in!" Fenelli screamed.

"Where's Hart?" the major yelled again.

"We have to close up! The Krauts are rousting everyone out of the huts. If we don't close this up now, they'll find it!"

"I heard him," Scott screamed.

"He's trapped!"

Both Scott and Fenelli looked up at Major Clark in that second. The major seemed to sway, like heat vapors above a black macadam highway on a hot August afternoon, before he made a decision.

"Get the buckets moving," he shouted, turning toward the other men in the corridor.

"No one leaves until we dig Hart out!" He bent toward the tunnel anteroom.

"Coming down," he yelled out. And then he grabbed a makeshift pickax and spade and launched them down into the hole in the earth.

They thudded to the ground. But Lincoln Scott had already thrust himself into the tunnel, burrowing forward, where he was tearing at the loose sand and dirt frantically, digging like some crazed subterranean beast. Scott ripped at the cave-in, kicking the dirt back behind him, where Fenelli shoveled it to the back of the anteroom.

Nothing Lincoln Scott had ever done in his life seemed as urgent. No moment of confrontation, no anger, no rage, nothing equaled his assault on the intractable loose sand. It was like trying to do battle with a ghost, with a vapor. He had no idea whether he had to dig through one foot or a hundred.

But distance made utterly no difference to him. He snatched at the dirt, throwing handfuls behind him, and he began to whisper a mantra, "You're not dying! You're not dying…" as he dug toward the spot where he believed he'd heard the last faint sound of Tommy Hart's voice.

A few feet behind him, Fenelli cried out, "Keep going!

Keep going! He's only got a few minutes before he chokes!

Dig, goddamn it! Dig!"

Major Clark remained poised on his hands and knees at the edge of the tunnel entrance, next to the privy, peering down.

"Hurry," he cried.

"Goddamn it! Get a move on!"

At the end of the central corridor of Hut 107, the officer keeping watch at the front door abruptly turned and shouted back toward the privy: "Krauts! Coming this way!"

Major Clark stood up. He turned to the bucket brigade standing in the corridor.

"Everybody out!" he ordered.

"Out to the assembly yard! Now!"

Somebody asked, "What about the tunnel?"

And Clark replied, "Ah, screw it!" But then he held up his right hand, as if holding the men back from following his first order. The major slid a wry, tension-riddled smile across his face. He looked at the gathered kriegies.

"Okay," he said briskly.

"We need a few more minutes! Delay, delay, that's what we need. This is what I want: I want you men to disrupt the goddamn squad of Krauts heading this way. Like fourth and goal on the one-foot line! Just barrel-ass right into them, give 'em a real shot or two. Knock their butts flying! But keep on going, don't stop to throw more than one punch or two!

Keep going straight out into the yard and get into formation.

You understand what I'm saying? The old flying wedge, right through the enemy! But keep on going! Nobody gets himself shot. Nobody gets arrested! Just delay them as long as you can. Got it?"

Men up and down the corridor nodded. A few smiles broke out.

"Then get going! Give 'em hell!" Major Clark shouted.

"And when you hit that door, let's hear your voices."

Some of the men grinned. A couple pounded fists into palms, stretched their knuckles. Muscles tensed. The officer watching at the door suddenly shouted, "Get ready!"

Then: "Go!"

"Go you kriegies!" Clark bellowed.

With three dozen furious banshee like shouts of angry defiance, the phalanx of American airmen poured down the corridor shoulder to shoulder, bursting through the front door.

"Go! Go! Go!" Major Clark cried out.

He could not see the entire impact of the assault, but he could hear a sudden tangle of voices as the men slammed into the approaching squad of Germans, instantly creating a melee in the dust of the assembly yard. He could hear cries of alarm and the thud of bodies coming together savagely. It was. Major Clark thought, a very satisfying sound.