Michael Martone - Four for a Quarter - Fictions

519 NORTHWESTERN

There is a porch across the full front of the house. The door is to the left. Inside is a sitting room I used as an office. The stairs, halfway back, rise from the center to a landing on the left where there is a door that is locked. The house is a two-flat ordered from Sears and shipped here by rail. The living room is through a doorway on the right. The dining room and kitchen are on the back left, and the single bedroom is on the right behind the living room. There we had a futon on the floor. Plaster dust sifted down from the ceiling when the upstairs neighbors made love.

348 FELLOWS

There is a porch across the full front of the house. The door is to the right. The living room is the front half of the ground floor. The dining room, to the back on the left. The kitchen in back on the right. The staircases are tucked behind the wall separating the living room from the kitchen. The landing on the right turns back left. Two bedrooms in front with the closets between. A sunporch in the back we used as an office painted pencil yellow and a bathroom in front of that. Across the hall, above the dining room, another bedroom where I fall asleep counting all the rooms in which I have fallen asleep.

AUDIE MURPHY AT THE CHINESE THEATER WATCHES THE MOVIE CALLED To Hell and Back 1

The searchlights out front are surplus WWII, painted silver. The four blue beams of light slid along the underbelly of the low clouds. It had rained and the streets were still wet, the marquee lights reflected in the puddles in the gutters. The acetylene torches hissed in the lamps, pitched above the steady rumble of the diesel engines that sounded like the diesel engines of Sherman tanks, rotating the lights. Finding nothing in the sky overhead. The movie is to the part where I call for friendly artillery to fire on my own position. The battalion wants to know how close the krauts are. “Just hold the phone and I'll let you talk to one of the bastards,“ I say in the movie. I wrote that in the book. The shells fall from the sky. The sky is blue. The German tanks are wrong. They are new American Pattons painted gray. The extras are too old, their uniforms too neat and out of season. They are carrying nothing more than their rifles. And, look there, they have their helmet straps cinched under their chins. The sky is too blue. This isn't southern France but somewhere in Washington State. It is the summer and not the winter. Now here's the part where I hop on up to the rear deck of the burning tank destroyer. The fire looks right. There isn't enough smoke. The machine gun I am firing sounds the same. I sweep it back and forth like the lights outside. And the Germans walking toward me fall effortlessly, hardly acting. They simply fall down like they have run out of gas. Now here's the part where I take some shrapnel in the back. I had to act because I don't remember how I acted when it happened. So this is what I did. The shells falling from the blue sky. No, the shells falling from the sky. No the shells falling. No the shells. Now the real fire is too thin and watery. But I like the way the battle looks. It looks like a battle in a movie because the battle I was in looked like a battle in a movie staged and choreographed the same way. The krauts walking in the rain of shells and the howitzers walking the shells with them and both of them walking, walking toward me over the field. I am watching myself be myself. That seems real. I was watching myself as I killed with the machine gun the walking soldiers walking through the falling shells. I am watching myself watch myself. The camera, me, we all are looking always over my left shoulder as the advance comes on, neither the extras nor the real soldiers knowing what to do, walking until they get their cue to fall down and then fall down.

AUDIE MURPHY SHOOTS A SCENE OF THE MOVIE To Hell and Back 2

“Just hold the phone and I'll let you talk to one of the bastards.“ I hold up the phone and an explosion goes off nearby. The clods of dirt it kicks up rain down on my helmet. “Just hold the phone and I'll let you talk to one of the bastards.“ This time the cameraman is kneeling right in front of me, aiming the camera on its tripod inches from my face. I can see myself reflected in the lens, holding out the phone for them to hear how close I am to the action. “Action,“ the director says. “Just hold the phone and I'll let you talk to one of the bastards,“ I say again. The crew is a stone's throw away in the line of the advancing enemy. The director waves and the grip on the ladder drops the bucket of dirt on my head. They will add the sound later. “Just hold the phone and I'll let you talk to one of the bastards,“ I shout into the phone. No one is on the other end. The phone is dead. Dirt from an explosion nearby rains down on me. A stone's throw away I see the advancing enemy. This time I actually see the advancing enemy advancing. Explosions erupt within their ranks. The sound has been added. And several soldiers are launched into the air along with the dirt from the explosion close enough to rain clods of earth down on me. The “Cut!“ comes from behind me this time and the shrill whistle to signal everybody to stop, and then everything stops and then everything starts again in reverse as the advancing enemy retreats to their starting places to start over. I understand we are to try each time to get it exactly right and to get it exactly the same as the time before.

AUDIE MURPHY WRITES CHAPTER 19 OF THE MEMOIR To Hell and Back 3

2ND LT. AUDIE MURPHY NEAR HOLTZWIHR, FRANCE, 26 JANUARY 1945

I must remember to remember everything. The way the snow is falling. The white of the snow. The white of the sky. The white of the map I unfold. I look out at the white field. I look at the white map. There for a second or two I was lost. I was trying not to forget and didn't pay attention to where I was. There is the white snow and the white field and the white map of the field. Hell, I say to myself, hell, and I reach for the telephone.

1 To Hell and Back (1955) 106m. *** D: Jesse Hibbs. Audie Murphy, Marshall Thompson, Charles Drake, Jack Kelly, Paul Pecerni, Gregg Palmer, Brett Halsey, David Jansen, Art Aragon, Rand Brooks, Denver Pyle, Susan Kohner. Murphy (the most decorated soldier of WW2) stars in a very good war film based on his autobiography, with excellent battle sequences depicting Murphy's own breathtaking heroic exploits. Cliches in script are overcome by Murphy and cast's easy-going delivery. CinemaScope. From Leonard Maltin's 2007 Movie Guide (Plume).

2Near Holtzwihr, France, 26 January 1945…. Second Lieutenant Murphy commanded Company B, 15th Regiment, Third Division, which was attacked by six tanks and waves of infantry. He ordered his men to withdraw while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him, to his right, one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn…. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, Lieutenant Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its.50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused the attack to waiver. For an hour, the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate Lieutenant Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as ten yards, only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound, but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw….