Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"I can't do it," Christian said.

"Put me down," Behr said. "Oh, please. Oh God, put me down."

As gently as possible, Christian slid the wounded man back to the sand. Behr sat there, his legs stretched out, his hands back at the red leak in his middle, making his curious, bubbling, piston-like sound.

"I'll get help," Christian said. "Somebody to carry you."

Behr tried to say something, but no words came from his mouth. He nodded. He still looked calm, relaxed, healthy, with his sturdy blond hair in a clean mat over his sunburned face. Christian sat down carefully and tried to put his boots on, but he could not manage it with his left hand. Finally he gave it up. After patting Behr's shoulder with a false reassuring gesture, he started, at a heavy, slow, barefooted trot, towards the road.

When he was still about fifty metres from the road, he saw the two Frenchmen on bicycles. They were going at a good pace, in their regular, tireless pumping rhythm, casting long, fantastic shadows across the marshy fields.

Christian stopped and shouted at them, waving his good hand. "Mes amis! Camarades! Arretez!" The two bicycles slowed down and Christian could see the two men peer doubtfully at him from under their caps. "Blesse! Blesse!" Christian shouted, waving towards Behr, a small, collapsed package now, near the edge of the gleaming sea. "Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi!"

The bicycles nearly stopped and Christian could see the two men turning inquiringly towards each other. Then they hunched lower over their handle-bars and quickly gained speed. They passed quite close to Christian, twenty-five or thirty metres away. He got a good look at them, worn, brown, cold faces, expressionless and hard under their dark blue caps. Then they were gone. They made a turn behind a high dune, which obscured the road for almost two kilometres on the other side of it, and then the road and the countryside all around Christian was empty, falling swiftly into the rich blue of twilight, with only the rim of the ocean still violent clear red.

Christian raised his arm, as though to wave at the two men, as though he could not believe that they were not still there, as though it were only a trick of his wound that had made him think they had merely pedalled away. He shook his head. Then he started to trot towards the cluster of houses he could barely see in the distance.

He had to stop after a minute, because he was panting heavily, and his arm had begun to bleed again. Then he heard the scream. He wheeled round and stared through the gathering darkness at the place where he had left Behr. There was a man crouching over Behr, and Behr was trying to crawl away in the sand, with a slow, dying movement. Then Behr screamed again, and the man who had been crouched over him took one long step and grabbed Behr by the collar and turned him over. Christian saw the gleam of a knife in the man's hand, a bright, sharp slice of light against the dull shining silver of the sea. Behr started to scream again, but never finished it.

Christian tore at the holster on his belt with his left hand, but it was a long time before he could get the pistol out. He saw the man put his knife away, and fumble at Behr's belt for the pistol. He got the pistol and stuck it in a pocket, then picked up Christian's boots, which were lying near-by. Christian took his pistol out and laboriously and clumsily got the safety-catch off with his left hand. Then he began firing. He had never fired a pistol with his left hand before and the shots were very wild. But the Frenchman started to run towards the high dune. Christian lumbered down the beach towards Behr's quiet form, stopping from time to time to fire at the swiftly running Frenchman.

By the time Christian reached the spot where Behr was lying stretched out, face up, arms spread wide, the man Christian had been chasing was on his bicycle, and, with the other man, was spurting out from behind the protection of the dune, down the black, bumpy road. Christian fired a last shot at them. It must have been close, because he saw the pair of boots drop from the handle-bars of the second bicycle, as though the man had been frightened by the whistle of the bullet. The Frenchmen did not stop. They bent low over the handle-bars of their bicycles and swept away into the lavender haze that was beginning to obscure the road, the pale sand of the beach, the rows of barbed wire, the small yellow signs with the skulls that said: ATTENTION, MINES.

Then Christian looked down at his friend.

Behr was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, with the last crooked expression of terror on his face, the blood a sticky marsh under his chin, where the Frenchman had made the long, unnecessary slash with his knife. Christian gazed down at Behr stupidly, thinking: No, it is impossible, just five minutes ago he was sitting there, putting on his boots, discussing the future of Germany like a professor of political science… The Englishman gliding down spitefully in the fighter plane, and the French farmer on his bicycle, carrying the hidden knife, had had their own notions of political science.

Christian looked up. The beach was pale and empty, the sea murmured into the sand in a small froth of quiet waves; the footprints on the sand were clearly marked. For a moment, Christian had a wild idea that there was something to be done, that if he did the single correct thing, the five minutes would vanish, the plane would not have swooped down, the two men on bicycles would not have passed by, Behr would even now be rising from the sand, healthy, reflective, whole, asking Christian to make a decision…

Christian shook his head. Ridiculous, he thought, the five minutes had existed, had passed; the careless, meaningless accidents had happened; the bright-eyed boy, going out in the evening to his pint of beer in a Devon pub after an afternoon of cruising over France, had spotted the two tiny figures on the sand; the sun-wrinkled farmer had irrevocably used the knife; the future of Germany would be decided with no further comment by Anton Behr, widower, late of Germany, late of Rostov, late coast-walker and philosopher.

Christian bent down. Slowly, panting heavily, he pulled first one boot then another from the feet of his friend. The curs, he thought as he worked, at least they're not going to get these boots.

Then, carrying the boots, he scuffed heavily through the sand towards the road. He picked up his own boots, which the Frenchman had dropped. Then, carrying all four boots against his chest in the crook of his wounded arm, he plodded, barefoot, the road feeling smooth and cool under his soles, towards Battalion Headquarters five kilometres away.

With his arm in a sling, not hurting too much, Christian watched them bury Behr the next day. The whole Company was on parade, very solemn, with their boots polished and their rifles oiled. The Captain took the occasion to make a speech.

"I promise you men," the Captain said, standing erect, holding his belly in, ignoring the thick north-coast rain that was falling around him, "that this soldier will be avenged." The Captain had a high, scratchy voice, and spent most of his time in the farmhouse where he was billeted with a thick-legged Frenchwoman whom he had brought to Normandy with him from Dijon, where he had been stationed before. The Frenchwoman was pregnant now and made that an excuse to eat enormously five times a day.

"Avenged," the Captain repeated. "Avenged." The rain dripped down his visor and on to his nose. "The people of this area will learn that we are strong friends and terrible enemies, that the lives of you men are precious to me and to our Fuehrer. We are at this moment at the point of apprehending the murderer…"

Christian thought dully of the English pilot, probably sitting this moment, because it was a wet day, unapprehended, in a snug corner of a tavern, with a girl, warming his beer between his hands, laughing in that infuriating, superior English way, as he described the crafty, profitable slide down the Norman sky the day before, to catch two barefooted Huns, out for their constitutional at sunset.