Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

By now everybody in the room was in the line, spiralling in a roaring silk and uniformed line, over the dance floor, in front of the blaring band, among the tables. "We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line," they sang. "Have you any dirty washing, Mother dear?"

Michael sang with the loudest of them, his voice hoarse and happy in his ears, holding tight to the desirable slim waist of the girl who had sought him out of all the victorious young men in the celebrating city. Lost on a clangorous tide of music, shouting the crude, triumphant words, remembering with what savage irony the Germans had thrown those words back in the teeth of the British who had first sung them in 1939, Michael felt that on this night all men were his friends, all women his lovers, all cities his own, all victories deserved, all life imperishable…

"We'll hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line," the blended voices sang among the candles, "if the Siegfried Line's still there," and Michael knew that he had lived for this moment, had crossed the ocean for it, carried a rifle for it, escaped death for it.

The song ended. The girl in the flowered dress turned and kissed him, melting into him, clutching him, making him dizzy with the smell of wine and heliotrope perfume, as the other people around him sang, like all the gay, jubilating ghosts at every New Year's party that had ever been held, the sentimental and haunting words of "Auld Lang Syne".

The middle-aged French pilot from Park Avenue, who had given the ingenious parties in 1928, and who had gone to Harlem late at night, and who had flown three complete tours in the Lorraine Squadron, and whose friends had all died through the years, and who now was finally back in Paris, was weeping as he sang, the tears unashamedly and openly streaming down his handsome, worn face… "Should old acquaintance be forgot," he sang, his arm around Pavone's shoulders, already hungry and nostalgic for this great and fleeting night of hope and joy, "and never brought to mind…?"

The girl kissed Michael ever more fiercely. He closed his eyes and rocked gently with her, the nameless gift of the free city, locked in his arms…

Fifteen minutes later, as Michael, carrying his carbine, and the girl in the flowered dress and Pavone and his bleached lady were walking along the dark Champs Elysees, in the direction of the Arch, near where Michael's girl lived, the Germans came over, bombing the city. There was a truck parked under a tree, and Michael and Pavone decided to wait there, sitting on the bumper, under the moral protection of the summer foliage above their heads.

Two minutes later, Pavone was dead, and Michael was lying on the tarry-smelling pavement, very conscious, but curiously unable to move his legs below the hips.

Voices came from far away and Michael wondered what had happened to the girl in the silk dress, and tried to puzzle out how it had happened, because all the firing had seemed to be on the other side of the river, and he hadn't heard any bombs dropping…

Then he remembered the sudden dark shape roaring across the intersection… A traffic accident… He smiled remotely to himself. Beware French drivers, all his travelling friends had always said.

He couldn't move his legs and the light of the torch on Pavone's face made it seem very pale, as though he had been dead for ever, and there was an American voice saying, "Hey, look at this, an American, and he's dead. Hey, look, it's a Colonel. What do you know…? He looks just like a GI."

Michael started to say something clear and definitive about his friend, Colonel Pavone, but it never quite formed on his tongue. When they picked Michael up, although they did it very gently, considering the darkness and the confusion and the weeping women, he dropped steeply into unconsciousness…

THE replacement depot was on a sodden plain near Paris, a sprawling collection of tents and old German barracks, still with the highly coloured paintings of large German youths and smiling old men drinking out of steins, and bare-legged farm girls like Percheron horses on the walls, under the swastika and eagle. Many Americans, to show that they had passed through this hallowed spot, had written their names on the painted walls, and legends like "Sgt. Joe Zachary, Kansas City, Missouri" and "Meyer Greenberg, PFC, Brooklyn, USA" were everywhere in evidence.

There was a big new batch of replacements that had just come over from the States. The swollen, oversize, casual company stood in the drizzle, the mud thick on their boots, answering to their names, and the Sergeant said, "Sir, L Company all present and accounted for," and the Captain took the salute and walked away to supper.

The Sergeant did not dismiss the Company. He strolled back and forth in front of the first line, peering out at the dripping men standing in the mud. The rumour was that the Sergeant had been a chorus boy before the war. He was a slender, athletic-looking man, with a pale, sharp face. He wore the good-conduct ribbon and the American defence ribbon and the European Theatre ribbon, with no campaign stars.

"I have a couple of things to say to you guys," the Sergeant began, "before you go slop up your supper."

A slight, almost inaudible sigh rustled through the ranks. By this stage of the war everyone knew that there was nothing a Sergeant could say that could be listened to with pleasure.

"We had a little trouble here the last few days," the Sergeant said, nastily. "We are close to Paris and some of the boys got the notion it would be nice to slip off for a couple of nights and get laid. In case any of you boys're entertaining the same idea, let me tell you they never got to Paris, they never got laid, and they are already way up front in Germany and I will give any man here odds of five to one they never come back." The Sergeant walked meditatively, looking down at the ground, his hands in his pockets. He walks like a dancer, quite graceful, Michael thought, and he looks like a very good soldier, the neat, dashing way he wears his clothes… "For your information," the Sergeant began again in a low, mild voice, "Paris is out of bounds to all GIs from this camp, and there are MPs on every road and every entrance leading into it, and they are looking at everybody's papers, very careful. Very, very careful."

Michael remembered the two men with full packs pacing slowly back and forth in front of the orderly room at Dix, in payment for going to Trenton for a couple of beers. The long continuing struggle of the Army, the sullen attempts by the caged animals to get free for an hour, a day, for a beer, a girl, and the sullen punishments in return.

"The Army is very lenient over here," the Sergeant said.

"There are no courts-martial for being AWOL like in the States. Nothing is put on your record. Nothing to stop you from getting an honourable discharge, if you live that long. All we do is, we catch you and we look up the requests for replacements, and we see, 'Ah, the Twenty-ninth Division is having the heaviest casualties this month' and I personally make out your orders and send you there. You're replacements. And there's nothing lower in this Army than a replacement, unless it's another replacement. Every day they bury a thousand like you, and the guys like me go over the lists and send up a thousand more. That's how it is in this camp, Boys, and I'm telling it to you for your own good, so you know where you stand. There's a lot of new boys in camp tonight, with the beer from the Kilmer PX still wet on their lips, and I want to put things straight for them. So don't get any fancy ideas in your head about Paris, Boys, it won't work. Go back to your tents and clean your rifles nice and neat and write your final instructions home to the folks. So forget about Paris, Boys. Come back in 1950. Maybe it will not be out of bounds for GIs then."