Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

The men stood rigidly, in silence. The Sergeant stopped his pacing. He smiled grimly at the ranks, his jaws creasing in razored lines under his soft garrison cap with the cellophane rain-covering over it, like an officer's.

"Thanks for listening, Boys," the Sergeant said. "Now we all know where we stand. Dis-miss!"

The Sergeant walked springily down the Company street as the lines dissolved into confusion.

"Whitacre…"

Michael turned around. A small, half-familiar figure, almost lost in a raincoat, was standing there. Michael moved closer. Through the dusk, he could make out a battered face, a split eyebrow, a full, wide mouth, now curved in a small smile.

"Ackerman!" Michael said. They shook hands.

"I didn't know whether you'd remember me or not," Noah said. His voice was low and even and sounded much older than Michael remembered. The face, in the half-light, was very thin and had a new, mature sense of repose.

"Lord," Michael said, delighted, in this strange mass of men, to come across a face that he knew, a man with whom once he had been friendly, feeling as though somehow, by great luck, in a sea of enemies he had found an ally. "Lord, I'm glad to see you."

"Going to chow?" Ackerman asked. He was carrying his mess kit.

"Yes." Michael took Ackerman's arm. It seemed surprisingly wasted and fragile under the slippery material of the raincoat.

"I just have to get my mess kit. Hang on to me."

"Sure," Noah said. He smiled gravely, and they walked side by side towards Michael's tent. "That was a real little dandy of a speech," Noah said, "wasn't it?"

"Great for the morale," said Michael. "I feel like wiping out a German machine-gun nest before chow."

Noah smiled softly. "The Army," he said. "They sure love to make speeches to you in the Army."

"It's an irresistible temptation," Michael said. "Five hundred men lined up, not allowed to leave or talk back… Under the circumstances, I think I'd be tempted myself."

"What would you say?" Noah asked.

Michael thought for a moment. "God help us," he said soberly. "I'd say, 'God help every man, woman and child alive today.'"

He ducked into his tent and came out with his mess kit. Then they walked slowly over to the long line outside the mess hall.

When Noah took off his raincoat in the mess hall, Michael saw the Silver Star over his breast pocket, and for a moment he felt the old twinge of guilt. He didn't get that by being hit by a taxi-cab, Michael thought. Little Noah Ackerman, who started out with me, who had so much reason to quit, but who obviously hadn't quit…

"General Montgomery pinned it on," Noah said, noticing Michael staring at the decoration. "On me and my friend Johnny Burnecker. In Normandy. They sent us to the supply dump to get brand-new uniforms. Patton was there and Eisenhower. There was a very nice G2 in Division Headquarters, and he pushed it through for us. It was on the Fourth of July. Some kind of British-American goodwill demonstration." Noah grinned. "General Montgomery demonstrated his goodwill to me, with the Silver Star. Five points towards discharge."

They sat at the crowded table, in the big hall, eating warmed-up C rations, vegetable hash and thin coffee.

Michael ate with pleasure, going back over the years with Noah, filling the gaps between Florida and the Replacement Depot. He looked gravely at the photograph of Noah's son ("Twelve points," Noah said. "He has seven teeth.") and heard about the deaths of Donnelly, Rickett, and the break-up of Captain Colclough. He felt a surprising family-like wave of nostalgia for the old Company which he had been so happy to leave in Florida.

Noah was very different. He didn't seem nervous. Although he was terribly frail now, and coughed considerably, he seemed to have found some inner balance, a thoughtful, quiet maturity which made Michael feel that Noah somehow was much older than he. Noah talked gently, without bitterness, with none of his old intense, scarcely controlled violence, and Michael felt that if Noah survived the war he would be immensely better equipped for the years that came after than he, Michael, would be.

They cleaned their mess kits and, luxuriously smoking nickel cigars from their rations, they strolled through the sharp, dark evening, towards Noah's tent, their mess kits jangling musically at their sides.

There was a movie in camp, a 16-mm version of Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl, and all the men who were billeted in the same tent with Noah were surrendering themselves to its technicolor delights. Michael and Noah sat on Noah's cot in the empty tent, puffing at their cigars, watching the blue smoke spiral softly up through the chilled air.

"I'm pulling out of here tomorrow," Noah said.

"Oh," Michael said, feeling suddenly bereaved, feeling that it was unjust for the Army to throw friends together like this, only to tear them apart twelve hours later. "Your name on the roster?"

"No," said Noah quietly. "I'm just pulling out." Michael puffed carefully at his cigar. "AWOL?" he asked.

"Yes."

God, Michael thought, remembering the time Noah had spent in prison, hasn't he had enough of that? "Paris?" he asked.

"No. I'm not interested in Paris." Noah bent over and took two packets of letters, carefully done up in string, from his kitbag. He put one packet, the envelopes scrawled unmistakably in a woman's handwriting, on the bed. "Those are from my wife," Noah said flatly. "She writes me every day. This pack…" He waved the other bunch of letters gently. "From Johnny Burnecker. He writes me every time he has a minute off. And every letter ends, 'You have to come back here.'"

"Oh," Michael said, trying to recall Johnny Burnecker, remembering an impression of a tall, raw-boned boy with a girlish complexion and blond hair.

"He's got a fixation, Johnny," Noah said. "He thinks if I come back and stay with him, we'll both come through the war all right. He's a wonderful man. He's the best man I ever met in my whole life. I've got to get back to him."

"Why do you have to go AWOL?" Michael asked. "Why don't you go into the orderly room and ask them to send you back to your old Company?"

"I did," Noah said. "That Sergeant. He told me to get the hell out of there, he was too busy, he wasn't any goddamn placement bureau, I'd go where they sent me." Noah played slowly with the packet of Burnecker's letters. They made a dry, rustling sound in his hands. "I shaved and pressed my uniform, and I made sure I was wearing my Silver Star. It didn't impress him. So I'm taking off after breakfast tomorrow."

"You'll get into a mess of trouble," Michael said.

"Nah." Noah shook his head. "People do it every day. Just yesterday a Captain in the Fourth did it. He couldn't bear hanging around any more. He just took a musette bag. The guys picked up all the other gear he left and sold it to the French. As long as you don't try to make Paris, the MPs don't bother you, if you're heading towards the front. And Lieutenant Green, I hear he's Captain now, is in command of C Company, and he's a wonderful fellow. He'll straighten it out for me. He'll be glad to see me."

"Do you know where they are?" Michael asked.

"I'll find out," Noah said. "That won't be hard."

"Aren't you afraid of getting into any more trouble?" Michael asked. "After all that stuff in the States?"

Noah grinned softly. "Brother," he said, "after Normandy, anything the United States Army might do to me couldn't look like trouble."

"You're sticking your neck out," Michael said.

Noah shrugged. "As soon as I found out in the hospital that I wasn't going to die," he said, "I wrote Johnny Burnecker I'd be back. He expects me." There was a note of quiet finality in Noah's voice that admitted no further questioning.

"Happy landing," Michael said. "Give my regards to the boys."