Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"In front of me," Noah whispered. "A stiff."

"What? I can't hear you."

"A stiff. A dead man," whispered Noah.

"Who is he?"

"Goddammit," Noah whispered, furious with Burnecker for being so dull. "How the hell do I know?" Then he nearly laughed at the idiocy of the conversation carried on this way.

"Pass the word back," Noah whispered.

"What?"

Noah hated Burnecker deeply, bitterly. "Pass the word back," Noah said more loudly. "So they won't do anything foolish."

"OK," said Burnecker, "OK"

Noah could hear the dry rattle of the whispers going back and forth behind him.

"All right," Burnecker said finally. "They all got it."

He came to the end of the field. The ditch and the hedge made a right-angle and ran along the edge of the field. Cautiously Noah pushed his hand out ahead of him. There was a small break in the hedge, and a narrow road on the other side of it. They would have to cross the road eventually; they might as well do it now.

Noah turned back to Burnecker. "Listen," he whispered, "I'm going through the hedge here."

"OK," Burnecker whispered.

"There's a road on the other side."

"OK."

Then there was the sound of men walking softly on the road, and the metallic jangling of equipment. Noah put his hand across Burnecker's mouth. They listened. It sounded like three or four men on the road and they were talking to one another as they walked slowly past. They were talking German. Noah listened, cocking his head tensely, as though, despite the fact that he could not understand a word of German, anything he could overhear would be of great value to him.

The Germans went past in a steady, easy pace, like sentries who would come back again very shortly. Their voices faded in the rustling night, but Noah could hear the sound of their boots for a long time.

Riker, Demuth and Cowley crawled up to where Noah was leaning against the side of the ditch.

"Let's get across the road," Noah whispered.

"The hell with it." Noah recognized Demuth's voice, hoarse now and trembling. "You want to go, go ahead. I'm staying here. Right in this here ditch."

"They'll pick you up in the morning. As soon as it gets light…" Noah said urgently, feeling illogically responsible for getting Demuth and the others across the road, because he had been leading them so far. "You can't stay here."

"No?" said Demuth. "Watch me. Anybody wants to get his arse shot off out there, go do it. Without me."

Then Noah understood that when Demuth had heard the German voices, confident and open, on the other side of the hedge, he had given up. Demuth was out of the war. The despair or courage that had carried him the two hundred yards from the farmhouse had given out. Perhaps he's right, Noah thought, perhaps it is the sensible thing to do…

"Noah…" It was Burnecker's voice, controlled, anxious.

"What're you going to do?"

"Me?" said Noah. Then, because he knew Burnecker was depending upon him, "I'm going through the hedge," he whispered. "I don't think Demuth ought to stay here." He waited for one of the other men to whisper something to Demuth. Nobody whispered anything.

"OK," Noah said. He started through the hedge. He got through it quietly, with the wet branches flicking drops of water on his face. The road suddenly seemed very wide. It was badly rutted, too, and the rubber soles of his shoes slipped in the middle and he nearly fell. There was a soft jangle of metal as he lurched to right himself, but there was nothing else to do but go forward. He could see a break in the hedge where a tank had gone through and broken down the wiry boughs. The break was fifteen yards or so down the road, and he walked crouched over, near the edge of the road, feeling naked and exposed. He could hear the other men crunching behind him. He thought of Demuth, lying alone on the other side of the road, and he wondered how Demuth was feeling at that moment, solitary and full of surrender, waiting for the first light of dawn and the first German who looked as though he had heard of the Geneva Convention.

Far behind him he heard the clatter of the BAR. Rickett, who never surrendered anything, cursing and firing from the upstairs bedroom window.

Then a tommy-gun opened up. It sounded as though it was no more than twenty yards away, and the flashes in front of them were plain and savage. There were shouts in German, and other guns opened fire. Noah could hear the nervous whining of the bullets around his head as he ran, noisily and swiftly, to the opening in the hedge and hurled himself through it. He could hear the other men running behind him, their feet drumming wildly on the clay, and thrashing heavily through the stubborn barrier of the hedge. The firing grew in volume, and there were tracers from a hundred yards down the road, but the tracers were far over their heads. Somehow it gave Noah a sense of comfort and security, to see the wasted ammunition flaming past through the branches of the trees.

He was out in a field now. He ran straight across the field, with the others after him. Tracers were criss-crossing in front of him aimlessly, and there were loud surprised shouts in German off to the left, but there didn't seem to be any really aimed fire anywhere near them. Noah could feel his breath soggy and burning in his lungs, and he seemed to be running with painful slowness. Mines, he remembered hazily, there are mines all over Normandy. Then he saw some moving figures loom in the darkness ahead of him and he nearly fired, on the run. But the figures made a low animal sound and he got a glimpse of horns rearing up to the sky. Then he was running among four or five cows, away from the firing, being jostled by the wet flanks, smelling the heavy milky odour. Then a cow was hit and went down. He stumbled over it and lay on the other side of it. The cow kicked convulsively and tried to get up, but couldn't and rolled over again. The other men fled past Noah, and Noah got up again and ran after them.

His lungs were sobbing again and it didn't seem possible that he could take another step. But he ran, standing straight up now, regardless of the bullets, because the biting, driving pain across his middle did not permit him to bend over any more.

He passed first one racing figure, then another and another. He could hear the other men's breath sawing in their nostrils. Even as he ran he was surprised that he could move so fast, outdistance the others.

The thing was to get across the field to the other line of hedges, the other ditch, before the Germans turned a light on them…

But the Germans were not in any mood to light up any part of the country that night, and their fire diminished vaguely and sporadically. Noah trotted the last twenty yards to the line of hedge rising blackly against the sky, with trees rearing up at spaced intervals from the thick foliage. He threw himself to the ground. He lay there, panting, the air whistling into his lungs. One by one the other men threw themselves down beside him. They all lay there, face down, gripping the wet earth, fighting for breath, unable to speak. Above their heads there was a whining arch of tracers. Then the tracers suddenly veered and came down in the other corner of the field. There was a frantic bellowing and thumping of hooves from that end of the field and a shout in German, distant and angry, and the machine-gunner stopped killing the cows.

Then there was silence, broken only by the dry gasping of the four men.

After a long while, Noah sat up. There, registered some distant, untouched, calculating part of his brain, I'm the first one again. Riker, Cowley, he thought with a remote childishness that had nothing to do with the sweaty, heaving man sitting bent over on the dark ground, Riker, Cowley, Demuth, Rickett, they'll have to apologize to me for the things they did in Florida…