Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"Your what?" Michael asked dully.

"My diaper service," O'Brien said shyly, smiling a little. "My brother and I have a dandy little business, two trucks. My brother's taking care of it, only he writes that it's getting impossible to get hold of cotton materials of any kind. The last five letters I wrote before the drop, I was writing to cotton mills in the States to see if they had any material they could spare…" The heroes, Michael thought humbly, as they entered the outskirts of Rheims, come in all sizes.

There were MPs on the corners and a whole batch of official cars near the Cathedral. Michael could see Noah tensing in the front seat at the prospect of being dumped out in the middle of this rear-echelon bustle. Still, Michael couldn't help staring with interest at the sandbagged Cathedral, with its stained glass removed for safe-keeping. Dimly he remembered, when he was a little boy in grade school in Ohio, he had donated ten cents to rebuilding this Cathedral, so piteously damaged in the last war. Staring at the soaring pile now from the Chaplain's jeep, he was pleased to find that his investment hadn't been wasted. The jeep stopped in front of Communications Zone Headquarters. "Now you get out here, Lieutenant," the Chaplain said, "and go in there and demand transportation back to your Group, no matter where they are. Raise your voice nice and loud. And if they won't give you any satisfaction, you wait for me here. I'll be back in fifteen minutes and I'll go in and threaten to write to Washington if they don't treat you well."

O'Brien got out. He stood, looking, puzzled and frightened, at the shabby row of buildings, obviously lost and doubtful of Army channels.

"I have an even better idea," the Chaplain said. "We passed a cafe two blocks back. You're wet and cold. Go in and get yourself a double cognac and fortify your nerves. I'll meet you there. I remember the name… Aux Boris Amis."

"Thanks," O'Brien said uncertainly. "But if it's all the same to you, I'll meet you here."

The Chaplain peered across Noah at the Lieutenant. Then he stuck his hand in his pocket and came up with a five-hundred-franc note. "Here," he said, giving it to O'Brien. "I forgot you weren't paid."

O'Brien's face broke into an embarrassed smile as he took the money. "Thanks," he said. "Thanks." He waved and started back to the cafe, two blocks away.

"Now," said the Chaplain briskly, starting the jeep, "we'll get you two jailbirds away from these MPs."

"What?" Michael asked stupidly.

"AWOL," the Chaplain said. "Plain as the noses on your face. Come on, lad, wipe that windshield."

Grinning, Noah and Michael drove through the grim old town. They passed six MPs on the way, one of whom saluted the jeep as it slithered along the wet streets. Gravely, Michael returned the salute.

THE closer they got to the front, Michael noticed, the nicer people got. When they began to hear the enduring rumble of the guns, disputing over the autumnal German fields, everyone seemed to speak in a low, considerate voice, everyone was glad to feed you, put you up for the night, share his liquor with you, show you his wife's picture and politely ask to see the pictures of your own family. It was as though, in moving into the zone of thunder, you had moved out of the selfishness, the nervous mistrust, the twentieth-century bad manners in which, until that time, you had always lived, believing that the human race had for ever behaved that way.

They were given rides by everyone… a Graves Registration Lieutenant who explained professionally how his team went through the pockets of the dead men, making two piles of the belongings they found there. One pile, consisting of letters from home, and pocket Bibles, and decorations, to be sent to the grieving family, the other pile consisting of such standard soldier's gear as dice, playing cards, and frank letters from girls in England with references to delightful nights in the hayfields near Salisbury or in London, which might serve to impair the memory of the deceased heroes, to be destroyed. Also, the Graves Registration Lieutenant, who had been a clerk in the ladies' shoe department of Magnin's, in San Francisco, before the war, discussed the difficulties his unit had in collecting and identifying the scraps of men who had met with the disintegrating fury of modern war. "Let me give you a tip," said the Graves Registration Lieutenant, "carry one of your dogtags in your watch pocket. In an explosion your neck is liable to be blown right away, and your identification chain right along with it. But nine times out of ten, your pants will stay on, and we'll find your tag and we'll make a correct notification."

"Thanks," said Michael. When he and Noah got out of the jeep, they were picked up by an MP Captain, who saw immediately that they were AWOL and offered to take them into his Company making all the proper arrangements through channels, because he was understaffed.

They even got a ride in a General's command car, a two-star General whose Division was resting for five days behind the lines. The General, who was a fatherly-looking man with a comfortable paunch, and the kind of complexion you see in the blood-temperature rooms in which modern hospitals keep newly born children, asked his questions kindly but shrewdly. "Where you from, Boys? What outfit you heading for?"

Michael, who had an old distrust of rank, frantically searched in his mind for an innocent answer, but Noah answered promptly. "We're deserters, Sir, we're deserting from a repple depple to our old outfit. We have to get back to our old Company."

The General had nodded, understandingly, and had glanced approvingly at Noah's decoration. "Tell you what, Boys," he said, in the tone of a furniture salesman softly advertising a bargain in bridge lamps, "we're a little depleted ourselves, in my Division. Why don't you just stop off and see how you like it? I'll do the necessary paper work personally."

Michael had grinned at this vision of a new, more flexible, accommodating Army. "No, thank you, Sir," Noah said firmly.

"I've made a solemn promise to the boys to come back there." The General had nodded again. "I know how you feel," he said. "I was in the old Rainbow in 1918, and I raised heaven and hell to get back after I was hurt. Anyway, you can stop off for dinner. This is Sunday and I do believe we're having chicken for dinner at the Headquarters mess."

Captain Green's CP was in a small farmhouse, with a steeply slanting room, that looked like the medieval homes in coloured cartoons in fairy stories in the movies. It had been hit only once, and the hole had been boarded up with a door torn off from a bedroom entrance inside the house. There were two jeeps parked close against the wall, on the side away from the enemy, and two soldiers with matted beards were sleeping in the jeeps, wrapped in blankets, their helmets tipped down over their noses. The rumble of the guns was much stronger here, most of it going out, with a high, diminishing whistle. The wind was raw, the trees bare, the roads and fields muddy, and apart from the two sleeping men in the jeeps there was no one else to be seen. It looked, Michael thought, like any farm in November, with the land given over to the elements, and the farmer taking long naps inside, dreaming about the spring to come.

It was amazing to think that they had defied the Army, crossed half of France, making their way arrow-like and dedicated through the complex traffic of guns and troops and supply trucks on the roads, to arrive at this quiet, run-down, undangerous-looking place. Army Headquarters, Corps Headquarters, Division, Regiment, Battalion, CP Company C, called Cornwall forward, the chain of command. They had gone down the chain of command like sailors down a knotted rope, and now that they were finally there, Michael hesitated, looking at the door, wondering if perhaps they hadn't been foolish, perhaps they were going to get into more trouble than it was worth… In that most formal of all institutions, the Army, they had behaved, Michael realized uneasily, with alarming informality, and the penalties for such things were undoubtedly clearly specified in the Articles of War.