There Should Have Been Castles Page 19

  So it was shanks’ mare through the gook, the slop coming up and spilling over the edges of our boots no matter how well we bloused and rubber-banded our fatigue cuffs. Five steps out of the company area and we could just as well have been barefoot. The only difference between the mud inside our boots and the mud outside our boots was that the mud inside was warmer—and was laced up.

  The sun was incongruously shining, heightening the insanity of what we were doing by playing a spotlight on our fretfulness. From our waists up the mud had dried and caked like cow dung, allowing us all the freedom of movement of a plaster of paris cast. From our waists down the mud ran and oozed like unset pudding. We slid, slipped, fell, cursed and continued—and got there feeling no sense of achievement in the arrival.

  The only vehicle to make it to the infiltration course was the ambulance. Without the “meat wagon” there could be no exercise. It was regulations. It parked off to the side, staffed by three men—a bald captain and two bored medics.

  None of our officers came that day because they suddenly had thousands of things to do; therefore, it was Sergeant Luther Holdoffer himself who had gotten us to the course. A lesser man could not have done it. A better man would never have attempted it. Only a Holdoffer would have enjoyed it, haranguing us, cursing us, moving up and down the line like a demon, dominating us with his will, destroying us with our own accomplishment.

  It was so degrading, so invalidating to be squishing around in all that primordial slime that we were past complaining. Standing about in lumpy groups of three and four, it was as though we were about to be executed, right there, and it all seemed fitting, for, like fools, we deserved to die, if only as payment for the folly of having followed.

  Before us was the infiltration course. It was about forty yards wide and a hundred yards long, like a football field. Only no Bronko Nagurski could have made it across. There was barbed wire everywhere, haphazardly strung out, no pattern to its many directions, no thought to its configurations, just barbed wire, a menacing crisscrossing of steel designed to passively rip flesh if attacked head on.

  And there were rocks. And holes. And dips and gulleys—all of it filled with a glutinous mud. The ungodly field looked as though the battle of Verdun had been fought in it five times, as though the French and the Germans had hacked away at each other in it, jumping from trench to tree stump, following the command of some fool of an officer with a whistle and a pistol. I felt as though I had stepped back into 1917 and that it would never be 1918.

  Facing it all, as if set up smack on the middle of the nearest goal line, was a thirty-calibre machine gun, its ability to traverse the field clearly restricted by the rectangular wooden brace through which it protruded. The machine gun could move laterally rather freely. It could spray most of the field from side to side, but two vertical stanchions, one left and one right, prevented it from moving further sideways and thus firing off the course. The machine gun could not move vertically at all. Two horizontal guardrails, one above the barrel and one below, both running parallel with the imaginary goal line, allowed the machine gun not an inch of vertical play. The bullets would pepper over the course at the precise level of the machine gun’s barrel, thirty-six inches above the ground. Anything below thirty-six inches would not be hit; anything above it would have its ass blown off.

  The machine-gunner was an experienced man (judging from the hash marks on his sleeve) who wore corporal’s stripes and a troubled skin. He sat behind the weapon, looking so much a part of it that, had he been painted black, one would have been unable to see where gun ended and man began. He was not in battle garb but rather was incongruously decked out in his dress khakis, obviously having been called as suddenly away from his office work as we had been. And he seemed more interested in not muddying his uniform than in readying his weapon for its scheduled task.

  The range officer, a captain, also seemed a bit teed off at having to be there that day. He, too, was in his Sunday finest and it disturbed me that he was so shamelessly lackadaisical about what he was there to do for on his ability to instruct us depended all of our lives. Never had an officer such undivided attention. Never were the troops more restive.

  Sergeant Luther Holdoffer, who himself had never gone through the infiltration course, called for our attention. “Okay, you men, look at me. This here is the range officer, Cap’n Mackie. He will explain everything to you so give him your attention so’s he can explain. Cap’n Mackie…”

  A couple idiots in the rear applauded. It did nothing to contribute to Captain Mackie’s happiness. A stolid man, graven and paunchy, he placed his hands on his hips and addressed us in a dialect so “suthin” that it came at us as if out of a cotton gin. “Maybe yawl won’t think it so funneh bah the tahm this day is out.”

  “Settle down,” quacked Holdoffer. “This is for your own good so give him your attention, you muthahs. Sorry, Cap’n.”

  Mackie droned on, talking dully and by the book, as if reading last year’s minutes. We had to strain to hear what he said and it went, give or take the English language, something like this:

  “This heah manoovah will have two beats. Fust, yawl do the course without any fah. It will be a drah run to innerduce you to the turine an’ the obstacles thereon. Second, yawl do it again without it’s bein’ a drah run. Yawl do it under fah, under combat conditions. The ideah bein’ ta do it raht the fust tahm so that the second time yawl do it even rahter.”

  He turned his back to us, facing the course, so that his voice became totally garbled. “This heah is the machine gun witches loaded with bullis, among witcher traysa bullis witch’ll come out wunnin evra fahv rowns. Yawl see ’em inna ayer buvyo haids. Keep yo butts down an’ yawl be air rot. Astoe the barbra wyer—one man lyzon his back an’ hols the barbra wyer wahl thuthah man slits through the space, an so on an so fawth. A haht of thutta-sex inches, blow witch yo oh rot, but above witch, man, yawl stan up too hah an you ass gonna flah toe Bawstun town an’ beyon. Carra yo weppin, keepin it clara mud. Get mud in you weppin an’ yo gonna have to do it again. Axes to the fah enna this course is gain via slit trench awf to the raht. Yawl will go ten men atta tahm, lannin’ up inna slit trench dreckly oppsit wheyah ah am now lookin’. Spread out proxly three-fo yahds tween each man. When yawl heah the whistle, yawl come ovah the top of the slit trench an’ head back heah. Raht in frunna this gun izza nothah slit trench. Yawl reach it an’ yawl okay. Yawl jess ploppin an’ crawl out. Thenna nex groupa ten men move out.”

  Caesar having thus addressed the Roman Forum, Captain Mackie strode gingerly over to the mud where his jeep and driver were parked. He climbed in, wiped the mud from his trouser cuffs, gave Holdoffer some kind of high sign, and then sat in the back seat of the jeep as if he wasn’t there.

  “Okay,” Holdoffer shouted, “you heard what the man said. Single file into the trench on the right and move down to the far end. Move it. Move it.”

  We obeyed like barge slaves on the Nile, walking knee-deep in the slop-marsh, through the side trench toward the back trench.

  “It’s hot shit. That’s what we’re walkin’ in,” grieved Tony who was in front of me. “We’re clamming in hot shit.” And he shouted to the others. “Don’t eat the clams, men.”

  Johnny was for laying back and he restrained me. “Go last.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. “The last ones to go will be over their heads in this shit. It’ll all be loosened up. We’ll drown.”

  “No,” said Johnny, also pulling Tony back. “In the dry run, I wanna see which wires are the easiest to get under, which ones guys get stuck on. And on the second run, I wanna see where the charges go off.”

  “What charges?” I asked.

  “They’re spotted all around,” said Johnny. “Stuck in the middle of rocks, strung around with barbed wire. You can’t touch ’em and they can’t hurt you. But if they go off when you’re near ’em, they’re gonna knock your teeth loose and you won’t hear for a week.”

  “Where are they?�
�� I asked. “I don’t see them.”

  “They’re supposed to be marked with whitewash but there’s no whitewash out there today,” said Johnny.

  I cautioned him. “Johnny, if you’re standing and looking when they blow—”

  “No. The tracers’ll show which direction the machine gun is moving in. When they’re goin’ over the far side, I can pop up and take a look. Listen, dummy, do as I say.”

  One thing about Johnny, if he said he knew something, then he knew it and wasn’t to be questioned by mortals. Tony and I dropped back with him. We’d be the last to go, which was fine with the others because they, like me, figured it was best to go first.

  The first ten men made the left turn into the back trench and took up their positions as instructed. Johnny then leaned against the wall of the trench we were in and poked his head up to reconnoiter. A whistle blew and the first ten men went up and over. I wanted to see, too, so I poked my head up alongside Johnny’s, and Tony stuck his head up alongside mine.

  “Fuckin’ rifles are fulla mud,” said Tony, trying to wipe his rifle barrel clean.

  “They’re all full of mud,” said Johnny. “Forget ’em.”

  “We’ll have to do it again,” said Tony.

  “Everybody’ll have to do it again. Don’t worry about your rifle, just your ass. And shut up. Just watch.”

  We watched the first ten men suffer their way over the course, some of them with their tails so high that, if the machine gun had been blasting at the time, the very least that would have been shot off would have been their canteens. We could hear them grunting and talking to each other, instructing each other where to go, who was to hold the wire, did anybody see an extra rifle? Some of the idiots were even giggling.

  “When we go,” said Johnny, “no talking. Just gestures and hand signals.”

  “Why?” asked Tony before I could.

  “Because on the second run the gun’ll be going and you won’t be able to hear anything. Look at where Pollar is. That’s where the wire is easiest. Look at that, even fat Morgan got under that one.” Johnny kept up a running commentary, pointing out things that would be useful when our turn came. The only noise that interrupted us was the noise of the guys bitchin’ in the mud, calling to each other, and, of course, Holdoffer at the far end, bellowing out his own expert observations.

  “Stovall, Morelli, Kirkpatrick—your asses are up! Get ’em down! Ransom, you moron—hold the wire for the next guy! Move it! Move it! That shit hardens, you’ll never get out!”

  “Best place for us is the far side, about ten yards in. The ground is lower. We can get under the wire easier.” That was Johnny.

  Holdoffer was going strong. “Who is that? That you, Fusco? You ain’t that old! Move it! Newland, Aronson, Lightman—that ain’t no beauty bath! Stop layin’ in it! Get out of it! Move it! Move it!”

  “Okay,” said Johnny. “I got a fix on it. Just let’s stay together, the three of us. It’s better than two.”

  The first group of mudders completed the course. It took them about four minutes. They plopped into the front trench beneath the stoical machine gun, some of them head first, their legs waving so high in the air that, had they been under fire, their legs would have been shot off at the knees.

  “Don’t do it that way,” said Johnny. “When you get to the front trench, roll into it—sideways. Drop into it. Don’t dive.”

  I peeked up to see what was going on back at Captain Mackie’s jeep. Nothing was going on. The man had his hat off and his face to the sky. He was sunbathing. At the ambulance, the bald captain and his two henchmen were having a difficult time not laughing. I began to feel as though I were in the Roman Colosseum. The citizens were enjoying the spectacle but the Christians weren’t too thrilled.

  Holdoffer blew his whistle and the next group of ten went over the top. By then the course was considerably more muddy and, in no time, faces became as obliterated as uniforms. Everyone looked like wounded alligators, slithying in the tothe. Even Holdoffer couldn’t make them out, and when he chewed them out he couldn’t do it by name. It was just “You there! Get your fuckin’ head down! That man on the left—congratulations! You just loss your ass! Move, you niggers! Move, you fuckin’ black samboes!”

  Johnny had a few more observations, which Tony and I listened to very carefully, as did a few other men in our vicinity. There wasn’t much laughter anymore. The comedy had waned. The realization that we could get killed had finally gotten through to us. The second group made it in five or six minutes. Basically, they made the same mistakes that the first group had made, it was the mud that added to their time. Too bad there was no officer to point out their errors.

  The whistle blew and the next group flew over the top and damned near drowned in the glop, which was more liquid than earth, going more readily down the windpipe.

  Our group’s turn came. We slid ourselves over the top and looked over the lip-high muck. “Don’t shout, you’ll make waves,” gurgled Tony, quoting the punch line of a very old joke. We could barely discern the barbed wire. Pulled at, torn at, coated with mud, it so perfectly blended with the brown-drown that we couldn’t really see a strand of it until we were practically stuck on it. But Johnny had marked our course well in his head. He went first, then me, then Tony. And we were good. We were flat and we were fast, working as a team, slipping between the wire, sliding over the mud, communicating with each other without a word. We reached the front trench and rolled in. I had put no clock on it but it was fast, well ahead of the rest of our group. Even Holdoffer was impressed as he watched the three of us pull ourselves out like seasoned retrievers.

  “Who’s that?” Holdoffer said. “Ah, the Polack, the spic, and the kike.” (He winked at me as if to say, “I’m calling you kike so as not to blow your cover.”) “Pretty good. Pretty good.” He shouted to the rest of the group that was still mudding in, “You assholes—you let these three scumbags beat you to the goal line! What the fuck is the world coming to?”

  We got to our feet and scraped the mud off ourselves as though our hands were windshield wipers. I noticed Johnny looking at something and Tony and I looked, too. One of the stanchions supporting the machine gun brace had settled slightly into the viscous earth—enough so that, if the machine gun were to be firing to the left (the side we would be on), the bullets would travel at a slightly lower elevation than the prescribed thirty-six inches. By the same token, if firing to the right, the ground clearance would be slightly more than thirty-six inches. If the stanchion were to settle into the mud no further, the differential would be no more than an inch on either side. But it could be an important inch. Johnny nudged me and said “Signals off. We go to the high side.” Tony and I nodded.

  The dry run completed (it was hardly dry), Captain Mackie deigned to come down from his perch. He tippy-toed as though through tulips so as not to get unnecessarily soiled, picking his way over to us assembled mudcakes and addressing us anew.

  “That was fahn. But ah do not believe theyah is one clean raffle among yo, so ah guess yawl jess gonna have ta do it again.”

  And we did. All over again. Another “dry” run. Not that any of us cared a fuck by then. It was just that the sun was beginning to set and the bog was beginning to chill, and if men could get arthritis and lumbago from just one such exposure, we’d be bent into pretzels by moonrise.

  When we picked ourselves out of the mud following our second dry run, Johnny, Tony, and I took notice of the machine gun stanchion. It did not seem to have settled any further.

  “Seems to be okay,” I said to Johnny.

  “Wait’ll the fucking gun is being fired,” said Johnny.

  “Shouldn’t we point it out to them?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You want me to do it?”

  “Holdoffer’s your friend, not mine.”

  “Okay.”

  Captain Mackie, in his jeep throughout the second dry run just as he had been through the first, was again tippy-toeing tow
ard us as I drew Holdoffer aside. “Listen, Luther,” I said, “that machine gun is gonna hook to the left when fired. Maybe you ought to point it out to Mackie.”

  “You’re imagining it, Hollywood.”

  “Look at the stanchion. It’s already sunk an inch.”

  “You chicken, Hollywood?”

  “No, I’m not chicken, death-breath, I’m just observant.” The slob was pissing me off with his superior stupidity, and, cold and miserable as I was, I simply blew my cool. The old hair-trigger Webber temper.

  Holdoffer looked at me, wincing in annoyance. “What’d you say Webber?”

  “I said you were a shit-faced fuck-up and, to support that statement, you’ll get my letter in the morning.”

  He shoved me. “Get your ass back with the others, kike.” And he shoved me again.

  “What’s this?” asked Captain Mackie, by then standing alongside us.

  Holdoffer wasted no time. “This man don’t want to do it anymore, Captain. He’s a little yellow Jew and—”

  “Now, now, Sergeant,” said Mackie, suddenly the voice of tolerance. “No need for rayshill sluhs.” And then he looked at me and he was not so tolerant. “Yawl do it, soljah—else yawl do two and a half yairs on the rock pahl, ah do bleeve.”

  “The machine gun stanchion’s sinking in the mud, Captain—”

  Holdoffer broke in. “It isn’t, sir. He tried that on me. I measured it and it is not sinking. He just plain don’t wanna do it.”