Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

Segal chuckled drily. By this time he was feeling exhilarated by the beer he had drunk, and the ride, and the sense of danger and victory that came with talking to the major in a town full of German troops.

“Perhaps,” said the major, “even if we hadn’t lost we would be guilty. Honestly, Mr. Segal, for the last two years I have thought that. In the beginning, a man is swept up. You have no idea of the pressure that is applied when a country like Germany goes to war, to make a man join in with a whole heart, to try to succeed in the profession of soldiering. But even so, it wasn’t the older ones like me … It was the young ones, the fanatics, they were like a flood, and the rest of us were carried along. You’ve seen for yourself.…”

“I’ve seen the young ones myself,” said Segal. “But also the older ones, sitting at the best restaurants, eating butter and steaks and white bread for four years, filling the theatres, wearing the pretty uniforms, signing orders to kill ten Frenchmen a day, twenty …”

“Weakness,” said the major. “Self-indulgence. The human race is not composed of saints. Somewhere, forgiveness has to begin.”

Segal leaned over and touched the driver on the shoulder. “Stop here, please,” he said in German. “I have to get off.”

“Do you live here?” the major asked.

“No. Five streets from here,” said Segal. “But with all due respect, major, I prefer not showing a German, any German, where I live.”

The major shrugged. “Stop here,” he told the driver.

The car pulled over to the curb and stopped. Segal opened the door and got out.

The major held his hand. “Don’t you think we’ve paid?” he asked harshly. “Have you seen Berlin, have you seen Hamburg, were you at Stalingrad, have you any idea what the battlefield looked like at Saint Lô, at Mortain, at Falaise? Have you any notion of what it’s like to be on the road with the American air force over you all the time and Germans trying to get away in wagons, on foot, on bicycles, living in holes like animals, like cattle in slaughter pens in an abattoir? Isn’t that paying, too?” His face worked convulsively under the dust and it seemed to Segal as though he might break into tears in a moment. “Yes,” he said, “yes, we’re guilty. Granted, we’re guilty. Some of us are more guilty than the rest. What are we to do now? What can I do to wash my hands?”

Segal pulled his arm away. For a moment, helplessly, he felt like comforting this aging, wornout, decent-looking man, this automobile salesman, father of three children, this weary, frightened, retreating soldier, this wavering, hopeless target on the straight, long roads of France. Then he looked at the rigid face of the driver, sitting at attention in the front of the car, with his machine pistol, small, and clever, well-oiled and ready for death in the sling under the windshield.

“What can I do?” the major cried again, “to wash my hands?”

Segal sighed wearily, spoke without exultation or joy or bitterness, speaking not for himself, but for the first Jew brained on a Munich street long ago and the last American brought to earth that afternoon by a sniper’s bullet outside Char-tres, and for all the years and all the dead and all the agony in between. “You can cut your throat,” he said, “and see if the blood will take the stain out.”

The major sat up stiffly and his eyes were dangerous, cold with anger and defeat, and for a moment Segal felt he had gone too far, that after the four years’ successful survival, he was going to die now, a week before the liberation of the city, and for the same moment, looking at the set, angry, beaten face, he did not care. He turned his back and walked deliberately toward his home, the space between his shoulder blades electric and attendant, waiting tightly for the bullet. He had walked ten steps, slowly, when he heard the major say something in German. He walked even more slowly, staring, stiff and dry-eyed, down the broad reaches of the Boulevard Raspail. He heard the motor of the car start up, and the slight wail of the tires as it wheeled around sharply, and he did not look back as the car started back toward the Seine and the Madeleine and the waiting troops sleeping like so many dead by their armored cars before the Madeleine, back along the open, unforgiven road to Germany.

“ P resent it in a pitiful light,” Olson was saying, as they picked their way through the mud toward the orderly room tent. “Three combat-scarred veterans, who fought their way from Omaha Beach to—what was the name of the town we fought our way to?”

“Konigstein,” Seeger said.

“Konigstein.” Olson lifted his right foot heavily out of a puddle and stared admiringly at the three pounds of mud clinging to his overshoe. “The backbone of the army. The noncommissioned officer. We deserve better of our country. Mention our decorations in passing.”

“What decorations should I mention?” Seeger asked. “The marksman’s medal?”

“Never quite made it,” Olson said. “I had a cross-eyed scorer at the butts. Mention the bronze star, the silver star, the Croix de Guerre, with palms, the unit citation, the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

“I’ll mention them all.” Seeger grinned. “You don’t think the CO’ll notice that we haven’t won most of them, do you?”

“Gad, sir,” Olson said with dignity, “do you think that one Southern military gentleman will dare doubt the word of another Southern military gentleman in the hour of victory?”

“I come from Ohio,” Seeger said.

“Welch comes from Kansas,” Olson said, coolly staring down a second lieutenant who was passing. The lieutenant made a nervous little jerk with his hand as though he expected a salute, then kept it rigid, as a slight superior smile of scorn twisted at the corner of Olson’s mouth. The lieutenant dropped his eyes and splashed on through the mud. “You’ve heard of Kansas,” Olson said. “Magnolia-scented Kansas.”

“Of course,” said Seeger. “I’m no fool.”

“Do your duty by your men, Sergeant.” Olson stopped to wipe the rain off his face and lectured him. “Highest ranking noncom present took the initiative and saved his comrades, at great personal risk, above and beyond the call of you-know-what, in the best traditions of the American army.”

“I will throw myself in the breach,” Seeger said.

“Welch and I can’t ask more,” said Olson, approvingly.

They walked heavily through the mud on the streets between the rows of tents. The camp stretched drearily over the Rheims plain, with the rain beating on the sagging tents. The division had been there over three weeks by now, waiting to be shipped home, and all the meager diversions of the neighborhood had been sampled and exhausted, and there was an air of watchful suspicion and impatience with the military life hanging over the camp now, and there was even reputed to be a staff sergeant in C Company who was laying odds they would not get back to America before July Fourth.

“I’m redeployable,” Olson sang. “It’s so enjoyable …” It was a jingle he had composed to no recognizable melody in the early days after the victory in Europe, when he had added up his points and found they only came to 63. “Tokyo, wait for me …”

They were going to be discharged as soon as they got back to the States, but Olson persisted in singing the song, occasionally adding a mournful stanza about dengue fever and brown girls with venereal disease. He was a short, round boy who had been flunked out of air cadets’ school and transferred to the infantry, but whose spirits had not been damaged in the process. He had a high, childish voice and a pretty baby face. He was very good-natured, and had a girl waiting for him at the University of California, where he intended to finish his course at government expense when he got out of the army, and he was just the type who is killed off early and predictably and sadly in motion pictures about the war, but he had gone through four campaigns and six major battles without a scratch.