Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"Colonel," Michael said, emboldened by the darkness. "I'd like to talk to you for a minute. That is, if you're not going back to bed."

"I can't sleep," said Pavone. "Sure. Come on, let's take a walk."

"I wanted to ask a favour." Michael hesitated. Here, again, he thought irritably, the endless necessity of decision. "I want you to have me transferred to a combat unit."

Pavone walked quietly for a moment. "What is it?" he asked.

"Brooding?"

"Maybe," said Michael, "maybe. The church today, the Canadians… I don't know. I began to remember what I was in the war for."

"What egotism," Pavone said, and Michael was surprised by the loathing in his voice. "Christ, I hate intellectual soldiers! You think all the Army has to do these days is make sure you can make the proper sacrifice to satisfy your jerky little consciences! Not happy in the service?" he inquired harshly. "You don't think driving a jeep is dignified enough for a college graduate? You won't be content until you get a bullet in your guts. The Army isn't interested in your problems, Mr Whitacre. The Army'll use you when it needs you, don't you worry. Maybe for only one minute in four years, but it'll use you. And perhaps you'll have to die in that minute, but meanwhile don't come around with your cocktail-party conscience, asking me to give you a cross to climb on. I'm busy running an outfit and I can't take the time or the effort to put up crosses for half-baked PFCs from Harvard."

"I didn't go to Harvard," Michael said absurdly.

"Never mention that transfer to me again, soldier," Pavone said. "Good night."

"Yes, Sir," Michael said. "Thank you, Sir."

Pavone turned and strode off in the darkness towards his tent, his shoes making a sliding wet sound on the grass.

AT nine o'clock the planes started to come over. B-17s, B-24s, Mitchells, Marauders. Noah had never seen so many planes in his whole life. It was like the Air Force in the recruiting posters, deliberate, orderly, shining in a bright-blue summer sky, aluminium tribute to the inexhaustible energy and cunning of the factories of America. Noah stood up in the hole he had been living in for the past week with Burnecker and watched the smooth formations with interest.

"It's about time," Burnecker said sourly. "The stinking Air Force. They should've been here three days ago."

Noah watched without saying anything, as flak from the German guns began to bloom in black puffs among the glistening shapes so high above the lines. Here and there a plane was hit and wavered out of formation. Some of the stricken planes turned and glided down the sky, trailing smoke, making for friendly fields behind them, but others exploded in silent bursts of fire, pale against the bright sky, and hurtled down the many thousands of feet in disintegrating balls of smoke and flame. Parachutes gleamed here and there and swung deliberately over the battlefield, white silk parasols for a sunny, summer, French morning.

Burnecker was right. The attack was to have started three days before. But the weather had been bad. Yesterday the Air Force had sent some planes over, but the clouds had closed in, and after an opening bombardment the planes had gone back and the infantry had clung to its holes. But this morning, there was no doubt about it.

"It's sunny enough today," Burnecker said, "to kill the whole German Army from thirty thousand feet."

At eleven o'clock, after the Air Force had theoretically destroyed or demoralized all opposition in front of the massed troops on the ground, the infantry was to move, open a hole in the armour, and keep it open for the rolling fresh divisions which would pierce deep into the German rear. Lieutenant Green, who was now in command of the Company, had explained it all very clearly to them. While the men had on the surface kept a cool scepticism about this neat arrangement, it was impossible now, watching the terrible precision of the huge aircraft above them, not to feel that this was going to be easy.

Good, Noah thought, it is going to be a parade. Ever since his return from the days behind the enemy lines, he had kept to himself as much as he could, remaining reticent, trying, in the days of rest which had been permitted him, and the more or less uneventful hours in the line, to develop a new attitude, a philosophy of aloof detachment, to protect him once and for all from the hatred of Rickett and any other men in the Company who felt as Rickett did about him. In a way, as he watched the planes roar above him, and heard the thunder of their bombs out in front of him, he was grateful to Rickett. Rickett had absolved him from the necessity of proving himself, because he had demonstrated that no matter what Noah did, if he took Paris single-handed, if he killed an SS brigade in a day, Rickett would not accept him.

He watched the planes with interest.

Abstractedly, squinting out in front of him through the hedge towards the enemy's lines, shaking his head to clear his ears of the shock of the percussion of the bombs, he felt sorry for the Germans behind the imaginary fall line of the Air Force. On the ground himself, armed with a weapon that carried a two-ounce projectile a pitiful thousand yards, he felt a common hatred for the impersonal killers above him, a double self-pity for those helpless men cowering in holes, blasted and sought out by the machine age with thousand-pound explosives. He looked at Burnecker beside him and he could tell from the pained grimace on the thin young face that something of the same thoughts were passing through his friend's brain.

"God," Burnecker whispered, "why don't they stop? That's enough, that's enough. What do they want to do, make mince-pie?"

By now, the German anti-aircraft guns had been silenced and the planes wheeled calmly overhead, as safely as though they were engaged in manoeuvres.

Then there was a whistling around him, a roaring and upheaval of the green earth. Burnecker grabbed him and dragged him down into the hole. They crouched together as far down as they could get, their legs jumbled together, their helmets touching, as bomb after bomb hit around them, deafening them, covering them with a pelting shower of earth, stones and broken twigs.

"Oh, the bastards," Burnecker was saying, "oh, the murdering Air Force bastards."

They heard screams on all sides of them and the cries of the wounded. But it was impossible to get out of the hole while the bombs poured down in a rattling, closely spaced barrage. Overhead, Noah could hear the steady, droning, business-like roar of the planes, untouched, untouchable, going calmly about their business, the men in them confident of their skill, pleased, no doubt, for the time being, with the results they imagined they were achieving.

"Oh, the miserable, easy-living, extra-pay murderers," Burnecker was saying. "They won't leave one of us alive."

This will be the final thing the Army will do to me, Noah thought, it will kill me itself. It won't trust the Germans to do the job. They mustn't tell Hope how it happened. She mustn't ever know the Americans did it to me…

Then, miraculously, the bombing stopped. The noise of engines still continued above them, but somehow, a correction had been made, and the planes were moving on to other targets.

Burnecker slowly stood up and looked out. "Oh, God," he said brokenly, at what he saw.

Trembling, feeling his knees weak beneath him, Noah began to stand, too. But Burnecker pushed him down.

"Stay down," Burnecker said harshly. "Let the Medics clean ' em up. They're mostly replacements anyway. Stay where you are." He pushed Noah forcibly back and down. "I bet those bloody idiots'll come back and start dropping things on us again. Don't get caught out in the open. Noah…" He bent beside Noah and gripped Noah's arms passionately with fierce hands. "Noah, we've got to stay together. You and me. All the time. We're lucky for each other. We'll take care of each other. Nothing'll ever happen to either of us if we hang on to each other. The whole damn Company'll die, but you and me, we'll come out… we'll come out…"