Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"What the hell," Keane said, grinning, "he was croaking anyway. Might as well please the lady." Keane slung the carbine over his shoulder.

"Good," said Mrs Dumoulin flatly. "Good. Thank you very much." She turned, and the little group behind her parted so that she could walk through it. Michael watched her, a small, plump, almost comic figure, marked by childbearing and laundering and endless hours in the kitchen, rolling solidly from side to side, as she crossed the grey square to the place where the ugly farm girl lay, her skirts up, now once and for all relieved of her ugliness and her labours.

One by one, the Frenchmen wandered off, leaving the two American soldiers alone over the body of the dead boy. Michael watched them carry the man with the bullet in his lungs into the hotel. Then he turned back to Keane. Keane was bent over the dead boy, going through his pockets. Keane came up with a wallet. He opened the wallet and took out a folded card.

"His paybook," Keane said. "His name is Joachim Ritter. He's nineteen years old. He hasn't been paid for three months." Keane grinned at Michael. "Just like the American Army." He groped inside the wallet and brought out a photograph. "Joachim and his girl." Keane extended the photograph. "Take a look. Juicy little piece."

Dumbly, Michael looked at the photograph. A thin, living boy in an amusement park peered out at him, and next to him a plump blonde girl with her young man's military cap perched saucily on her short blonde hair. There was something scrawled in ink across the face of the photograph. It was in German.

"For ever in your arms, Elsa," Keane said. "That's what it says. In German. I'm going to send it back to my wife to hold for me. It will make an interesting souvenir."

Michael's hands trembled on the glossy bit of amusement-park paper. He nearly tore it up. He hated Keane, hated the thought of the long-faced, yellow-toothed man fingering happily over the picture later in the century, back in the United States, remembering this morning with pleasure. But he knew he had no right to tear up the photograph. Much as he hated the man, Keane had earned his souvenir. When Michael had faltered and fumbled, Keane had behaved like a soldier. Without hesitation or fear, he had mastered the emergency, brought the enemy down when everyone else around him had been frozen and surprised. As for the killing of the wounded boy, Michael thought wearily, Keane had probably done the correct thing. There was nothing much they could have done with the German, and they'd have had to leave him, and the townspeople would have brained him as soon as Michael left. Keane, in his sour, sadistic way, had acted out the will of the people whom they had, after all, come to Europe to serve. By the single shot, Keane had given the bereaved and threatened inhabitants of the town a sense that justice had been done, a sense that, on this morning at least, the injuries they had suffered for so long had been paid for in a fitting coin. I should be pleased, Michael thought bitterly, that Keane was with us. I could never have done it, and it probably had to be done…

Michael started back towards where Stellevato was standing by the jeep. He felt sick and weary. This is what we're here for, he thought heavily, this is what it's all been for, to kill Germans. I should be light-hearted, triumphant…

He did not feel triumphant. Inadequate, he thought bruisedly, Michael Whitacre, the inadequate man, the doubtful civilian, the non-killing soldier. The girls' kisses on the road, the roses in the hedge, the free brandy had not been for him, because he could not earn it… Keane, who could grin as he put a bullet through a dying boy's head at his feet, carefully folding away a foreign photograph in his wallet for a souvenir, was the man these Europeans had feted on the sunny march from the coast.

… Keane was the victorious, adequate, liberating American, fit for this month of vengeance…

The man with the Red Cross armband came roaring past on his motor-cycle. He waved gaily, because he had two new guns and a hundred rounds of ammunition to take to his friends behind the improvised barricades of Paris. Michael did not turn to watch him as the bare legs, the absurd shorts, the stained bandage, bumped swiftly past the overturned car and disappeared in the direction of the eight hundred Germans, the mined crossroads, the capital of France.

"Holy man," Stellevato said, his soft Italian voice still husky, "what a morning. You all right?"

"Fine," Michael said flatly. "Fine."

"Nikki," Keane said, "don't you want to go over and take a look at the Krauts?"

"No," Stellevato said. "Leave them to the undertakers."

"You might pick up a nice souvenir," Keane said, "to send home to your folks from France."

"My folks don't want any souvenirs," Stellevato said. "The only souvenir they want from France is me."

"Look at this." Keane took out the photograph again and shoved it in front of Stellevato's nose. "His name was Joachim Ritter."

Stellevato slowly took the photograph and stared at it. "Poor girl," Stellevato said softly. "Poor little blonde girl."

Michael wanted to take Stellevato in his arms and embrace him.

Stellevato gave the photograph back to Keane. "I think we ought to go back to the Water Point," Stellevato said, "and tell the boys there what happened. They must've heard the shooting and they're probably scared out of their boots."

Michael started to climb into the jeep. He stopped. There was a jeep coming slowly down the main street. He heard Keane throw a cartridge into the chamber of his carbine.

"Cut it out," Michael said sharply. "It's one of ours."

The jeep drew slowly up beside them and Michael saw that it was Kramer and Morrison, who had been with Pavone three days before. The townspeople who were grouped on the steps of the hotel stared down at the new arrivals stonily.

"Hiya, Boys," Morrison said. "Enjoying yourself?"

"It's been great, Bo," Keane said heartily.

"What happened there?" Kramer gestured incredulously towards the dead Germans and the overturned car. "A traffic accident?"

"I shot them," Keane said loudly, grinning. "Perfect score for the day."

"Is he kidding?" Kramer asked Michael.

"He's not kidding," Michael said. "They're all his."

"Jee-sus!" Kramer said, looking with new respect at Keane, who had been the butt of the unit ever since its arrival in Normandy. "Old big-mouth Keane… What do you know?"

"Civil Affairs," Morrison said. "This is a hell of a thing for a Civil Affairs outfit to get mixed up in."

"Where's Pavone?" Michael asked. "Is he coming here this morning?"

Morrison and Kramer kept staring at the dead Germans. Like most of the outfit, they had seen no fighting in all the time they had been in France, and they were frankly impressed. "The plans've been changed," Kramer said. "The task force ain't coming through here. Pavone sent us to get you. He's at a town called Rambouillet. It's only an hour from here. Everybody's waiting for a Frog Division to lead the parade into Paris. We know the roads. Nikki, you follow us."

Stellevato looked inquiringly at Michael. Michael felt numb, relieved a little that the necessity for making decisions was now out of his hands. "OK, Nikki," Michael said, "let's get started."

"This looks like a pretty hot little town," Kramer said. "You think those Frogs'd knock up a meal for us?"

"I'm dying for a steak," Morrison said. "With French fried potatoes."

Suddenly the thought of remaining any longer in the town, under the cold measuring eyes of the townspeople, with the German dead sprawled in front of the epicerie, was intolerable to Michael. "Let's get back to Pavone," he said. "He may need us."

"If there's one thing that gets on my nerves it's PFCs," Morrison said. "Whitacre, your rank is too big for you." But he turned the jeep round.