Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

Adamson listened for a moment or so then, nodding occasionally and glancing at Docker. Then he said, “George, I understand your concern. And I appreciate your opinion. But I don’t intend to pursue the matter. So we’ll consider it settled. Now there’s one other thing you can do for me. I’m going to write a supporting recommendation for young Baird’s decoration. But I’d like you to put it into good, clear English for me. Will you do that? Fine.”

The general replaced the receiver, walked to the fireplace and stood with his back to it. “You see, lieutenant, that was a real simple decision. Simpler for me than Colonel Rankin because General Baird is a friend of mine. We were classmates at the Point. Rankin’s like a guard dog. He wants to protect us. And maybe that kind of loyalty serves a useful function. But I believe General Baird would prefer the truth to anything else. He asked courage from his sons. He wouldn’t want us to ask anything less of him.”

Adamson’s mood changed now. “But we’re still soldiers, lieutenant, and there’s still a war on, so I think you’d better get started back to your outfit.”

“Yes, sir. And thank you, sir.”

Docker saluted and joined Major Karsh for the ride back through the snowy countryside to Liège.

They drove back to the city on roads flanked at intervals by First Army sentries. It was two o’clock in the morning and bitterly cold, winds from the stubbled fields and frozen ground twisting and gusting inside the jeep.

They didn’t speak until the dark outlines of Liège loomed ahead of them. “How come, major?” Docker said then. “Did we finally run out of gray areas?”

Karsh lit a cigarette and put the box of GI matches back in his pocket. Settling himself deeper in the hard canvas seats, he fastened the top button of his overcoat and looked out at the spray of ice frothing up from the wheels of the jeep. When he finally turned to speak to Docker, his faint smile was reflected in the slick icy windshield. “No, it wasn’t any shortage of gray areas, Docker. At any rate, I don’t think so. Maybe I realized I would have to live with myself as a civilian longer than I would as a soldier. Or maybe it’s what you said about Gelnick. Or a combination of things.” He sounded tired then. “But who knows, Docker? Not even my mother calls me Sid.”

Karsh flipped his cigarette from the jeep, and when it struck the ground, tiny sparks flared in the darkness behind them.

At five-fifteen the following morning. Docker came downstairs from his room in the Hotel Leopold. The lobby was cold and dimly lit and two old men in heavy sweaters were sweeping the marble floors.

Sergeant Trankic got up from a sofa and came to meet him. His helmet was pulled down over his forehead and a cigarette slanted up from his mouth. “I found a mess open. Bull. I got coffee and some fried eggs on bread. They’re in the jeep. Want to eat here or on the road?”

“Let’s hit it,” Docker said.

They drove through the city with Docker at the wheel, the jeep moving slowly in a column of heavy trucks. As they approached the river. Docker swung off the road and slowed near the courtyard of the Hotel Empire, where several ancient civilian cars were parked in the drive near the doorman’s empty kiosk.

Docker knew the look of this place would always be with him, like the fields and towns of the war, one more place where a piece of him would remain when he set out on the last road home. He felt like he had won some kind of victory for Jackson Baird here, and maybe for all of them, and now he could leave that young man in peace, linked with the memories of the other men whose lives, and deaths, had formed a brotherhood on the peaks of Mont Reynard.

“What are we stopping for?”

“We’re not,” Docker said.

He turned back into the traffic and soon they were winding through the foothills that led from the city into the forests of the Ardennes.

May 8, 1945. Near Ludendorff Bridge on the Rhine. Tuesday, 1300 Hours.

The war ended for Section Eight on the banks of the Rhine a dozen miles from the Ludendorff railroad bridge where it spanned the river at Remagen.

There were eight survivors from the original unit. Sergeant John Trankic, corporals Ed Solvis and Harlan (“Tex”) Farrel, privates Chet Dormund, Guido Linari and Shorty Kohler. Corporal Schmitzer had been transferred to an inactive unit in England to be processed for an honorable discharge. The eighth survivor, Buell Docker, was in command of Dog Battery’s second platoon since Lieutenant Whitter had been assigned to an administrative post at Battalion headquarters. The group was again at full strength with the addition of seven privates from a redeployment depot near Paris.

On the opposite side of the river lay the ruin of an industrial town, now a waist-high crust of twisted girders and powdered mortar and brick, flattened and compacted by months of aerial bombardment and artillery fire. Only one feature in that dismal landscape had escaped destruction from Allied bombardment; a tall, black smokestack remained standing, rising like a dark exclamation point above the heaps of rubble. It had not gone completely unscarred, however; a shell fragment had scored a hit near the top of the chimney, creating a narrow hole there like the eye of a needle.

Shorty Kohler called to tell Trankic the battery jeep was coming toward their position.

Docker parked on the roadside and walked to the revetment, the men gathering around him as he distributed mail and packages. Trankic put two canteen cups on the sandbags and splashed whiskey into them. Farrel unhooked the cup from his cartridge belt but Trankic said, “Tex, you’re too young for this stuff.”

“Goddamn it, I’m practically a married man.”

“When were you in Lepont?” Docker said to Farrel.

“Just last month. I stopped by Jocko’s place on the way to Bonnard’s. The damndest thing, sarge, I mean lieutenant, he found that big old dog of ours. It was lying by the stove like it owned the place, and I saw the schoolteacher. She was with her husband...”

Trankic sipped his whiskey and stared across the river. “That goddamn smokestack bothers me.”

“What bothers you about it?” Docker said.

“I don’t know, unfinished business maybe.”

“She told me to say hello to you, sarge,” Tex said.

Docker leaned against the revetment and looked at the river, the surface broken in delicate patterns by the hazy sunlight. There was a nice finality in thinking of her at ease in La Chance, her husband beside her, the bombs and enemy soldiers only a bitterness in the past, and Radar, taking a soldier’s rest in front of the big iron stove...

Kohler came down the riverbank from the jeep and joined the others standing around with Trankic and Docker. There was a strange look on his face.

“Hey, listen to this, you guys,” he said. “The fucking war is over.”

“Yeah, says who?” Trankic said.

“I just heard it on Docker’s radio. The guy on the radio says it’s all over.” Kohler looked at Docker. “I just heard it, on the radio in the fucking jeep.”

Chet Dormund let out a whoop of laughter and clapped his hands together, then subsided almost immediately, it being apparent even to him that no one else shared his mood.

Linari said, “Hey, Shorty, you sure you heard it right?”

“Go listen to it yourself,” Kohler said. “Why should he lie about it? Get it through your head, Guido. It’s over .”

Docker walked to the jeep and fine-tuned the radio. As the men joined him, a British announcer was describing the scene in London’s Piccadilly Circus, his voice broken up by static and lost completely at times in the sound of church bells.