Beckoning War Page 5

  “What was hit?” Jim asks.

  “Dunno yet,” Witchewski answers. Lieutenant Doyle of No. 7 Platoon rushes into the church from a brief inspection of defensive positions around the church and says, “Hit the outskirts of the village. Shook our forward-most positions but did no real damage. They’re stonking us.”

  “The usual,” grumbles Jim. “Hold onto your tin hats, gentlemen.” There is a whoosh akin to a freight train racing overhead, followed by another jarring bang. He hears another whoosh, heading the opposite way. The German guns are being answered by the Canadian and British guns in the rear.

  “This is our castle and to hell with anyone that gets in our way!” Jim shouts, boosting the men in his ramshackle headquarters. There is a loud, fists-in-the-air cheer. From further behind the lines arrive two artillery spotters with their scopes and their radio, looking to set up in the steeple of the church. For the love of God, thinks Jim. Not there! Now we’re toast! He runs up to one of them, the Forward Observation Officer, a lean young man with a long and sharp nose and sandy curls of hair protruding from below his skewed beret, and addresses him with a smart salute.

  “Captain McFarlane, ‘A’ Company, 1st Irish.”

  The FOO returns his salute, his binocular telescope clanking against his shoulders as he does so. The other, a stout signalman with black hair, a large flat nose and wide football shoulders, is encumbered with a radio set and headphones. “Lieutenant Blake, 18th Field Artillery. At your service, Captain.” He flashes a cocky grin. “This is Private Cole. We were sent ahead to set up an observation post. We were just about to check out the steeple here.”

  Before Jim can further address Blake, Witchewski blusters his way into the conversation: “You must be brand-spanking new around here if you think you can camp out in what’s left of that steeple. Much of it’s been blown away already, and you may notice the bell is on the floor. A hell of a clang that must’ve made. Pardon my French, sir, but to occupy a steeple in a church on a patch of high ground in front of a battle-hardened enemy holding the higher ground is a wet-behind-the-ears dumb shit kinda thing to do.” A medium-sized shell hits the roof and they duck instinctively at this unintended exclamation mark to Witchewski’s tirade. They all lift their heads after a moment.

  Jim interjects before Witchewski can continue. “Meet Warrant Officer Witchewski, my CSM,” he introduces in a genial tone, gesturing to Witchewski. “Don’t mind him,

  he’s an old grouch. Anyway, if Jerry sees your scope, and your German counterpart is trying to do just that, they’ll flatten this church and destroy my company. Comprenez-vous?”

  “Yes, sir.” Blake is slightly crestfallen, put in his place and embarrassed to be so rebuked in front of his signalman by a leathery non-commissioned officer. An NCO, for crying out loud! Jim imagines him thinking in undermined incredulity.

  “Sorry son, this old Polack’s seen many things, and among them many greenies getting hurt or killed doing something stupid in their first days on the line,” adds Witchewski in a manner of fatherly advice. “Mind the veterans around you; watch and learn, and you’ll find your way fast around here.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant Major,” says Jim in an attempt to reassert the observance of the chain of command. “You are dismissed.” They exchange salutes, and Witchewski withdraws into the jumbled Guernican shadows from which he emerged. Jim takes Blake and Cole aside to a corner as the church palsies under yet another impact. Dust rains from the ceiling. He produces his map and spreads it on the dusty floor. “Your best vantage point may be just ahead in one of these houses with one of my forward platoons. I have two fanned out in front here.” He points to an area on the precisely lined and arrowed topographical map with his index finger. “Go to Lieutenant Therrien here, about a hundred yards southwest of here, and he’ll set you up in a room with a view. Or a one-star slit trench. I can get you a field telephone wired up once the rest of the battalion’s in place. Tell him Captain McFarlane sent you.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you.” Blake seems quietly grateful for Jim’s gentlemanly consultation.

  “First day up front?”

  “I’ve been in Italy for two months, but I didn’t get moved up until last week when another officer got it. I’ve taken artillery fire but this is my first actual mission. Say, where’re you from, sir?”

  “I’m from Canada, just like you.” A 150-millimetre shell quakes the church in its reverberations as it gouges a crater into the rubble-strewn street outside and renders the existing debris into deadly missiles. Bricks and splinters and dirt and glass pelt and ring and crunch against the walls of the church. Jim and Blake both find themselves lying instinctively prostrate. They pick themselves up. “And meet—” head ringing, thoughts scattered, “And meet our neighbours from Germany. Now you’d best get moving.” Jim shouts into the interior of the church, to shadow soldiers in corners and under pews. “Cooley!”

  “Yes, sir!” Cooley’s voice is curiously muffled.

  “Escort these two gentlemen to Therrien’s positions, will you?” He can’t help but notice a slight waver in his voice, the seismic upheaval of the shell still vibrating through the strained fibres of his nerves.

  “Yes, sir!” Cooley crawls out from under a pew, pulling his helmet up back on top of his head from its position on his face.

  “Lieutenant Blake and Private Cole, meet my batman, Corporal Cooley.” There is the customary exchange of salutes.

  “A pleasure to meet you both,” Cooley says in disarming salutation, sold with a smile. “Now follow me, if you will.” He leads them out the door into the man-made storm outside and they dash through the moan, crash and flicker of San Matteo.

  Following this, the colonel appears with his entourage from Battalion HQ. When Lieutenant Colonel Hobson appears at the door, Jim jumps up from a pew on which he sits and stomps his right foot at attention, salutes and lowers his arms rigidly at his side.

  “Sir!” Jim barks.

  “At ease, Captain,” responds Colonel Hobson, returning the salute. “This is quite the setup you have here. I’m impressed. This is a nice church you’ve found for yourself. A good vantage point from which to pray for victory, is it not?” Lieutenant Colonel Hobson is a tall man of about forty, with broad shoulders and a smart, British-style officer’s moustache. Hobson, his green-plumed cobeen (a hat ridiculed in other regiments as being just a backwards beret) propped jauntily upon his head, is the emblem of the regiment, in terms of both leadership and attitude. He is both proud and droll in his bearing, unshakeable under fire, with an offensive attitude on the field that Jim has tried to copy. He’s the man. I’d follow him anywhere, Jim thinks. I’ve followed him to hell more than once. And I think I’m about to again.

  “Sitrep?” asks the colonel in military shorthand.

  “FUBAR,” responds Jim. He shrugs: there is laughter from the soldiers listening. Colonel Hobson breaks into an amused grin.

  “All fucked up indeed, I could not agree more. Did the arty reps come by?”

  “Yes, sir. I sent them out to a better vantage point. Didn’t want their telescope to catch the view of Jerry. The officer was as green as the grass, and was heading up to assess the steeple. After what we did to that steeple in Pesaro, I thought better of allowing it.”

  “Good choice. Well, you seem to be well set up in here. I’m going to move to my new HQ. Gordon has it up. Jerry may think this is our HQ, and they’ll send you more parcels than they send me. Much to your discomfort. It’ll give me some time to concentrate on our next attack.” He winks a grey eye at Jim.

  “It would be an honour sir, a real honour.”

  “Anyway, carry on as you were, Captain.”

  “Yessir.” Into the shadows Hobson moves, addressing men, sharing compliments, jokes, words of encouragement, before making his way to his own headquarters down the road where he will enjoy a clear northward view of the river valley thro
ugh which the battalion is soon expected to advance.

  6

  News from the patrols sent out is not good—resistance is stiff, and men from the patrols are wounded in firefights with German infantry dug into valley positions and by artillery called in from the looming heights. For the rest of the night the men are kept awake much against their wills by the sporadic scream and thunder of the barrage. A few clutch rosaries, some crouch and play cards, some try to sleep but are constantly jolted awake from their semi-conscious reveries by the noise of the bombardment, some chat and joke quietly as if nothing was going on, and some, like Jim, skulk quietly in corners and under pews to themselves, smoking silently away, sitting still or rocking themselves into makeshift comfort. Every now and then someone makes a joke out loud to all in the church, and everyone erupts into laughter, taut nerves slackened suddenly in a momentary release of comic catharsis. Inside the darkened church, it smells of smoke and sweat and cigarettes. Outside, the shells burst. No less than five hit the church itself. One explodes in a confession booth after whistling through a ragged hole in the roof made earlier by Allied shells when the Canadians took the village, daggering the air with wood splinters. Three of Doyle’s boys are wounded and are carried out by stretcher-bearers. The church is choked with smoke and dust, and the stunned men cough and sneeze. Another explosion tears the main door off its hinges and wounds another one of Doyle’s soldiers. The other platoons take casualties as well in their slit trenches, windows and cellars. Stretcher-bearers scurry about and around the ruins and the slopes in the haphazard hailstorm of shrapnel and splinters, to and fro, conveying the wounded to the rear where they will be patched up in the nearby aid post and the clearing stations on their way to the field hospitals much further away.

  Jim observes, with slight relief, that the Germans don’t quite seem to know where specific Canadian positions are yet, only that there are Canadians on the hill and in the village. Thank God they haven’t utterly bullseyed this church yet. They get a bead on me and they’ll level this place like a wrecking ball. For us this is a natural fortress. To them it’s a natural target. A perfect equation in the mathematics of conflict. The highest reason, the most precise measurements, applied to the most savage of aims. As the church shudders under another blast, Jim hits the ground and scuttles back under the pew from which he was awoken hours ago as though he were a panicked cockroach. Others shimmy under the cover of the pews, leaving no one in the open expanse of the room. He lies on his back and puts his helmet over his face, heart thudding and fists balled, and sweats to the howling of the shells. His mouth is a desert. A soft undertone of chatter whispers from corners and under pews and accompanies the barrage, audible only between shrieks and blasts.

  Lying, sweating, shaking. Oh, fuck. Please not now. Hold it. Don’t come apart, you’ve been through this before. Play a game. Guess the calibres. Those were 105s. That was a 100. A line of dull thuds, less sharp and thunderous than the

  big guns—mortars. A reminder of how close the Germans really are. Another volley of 105s. This is like standing on the highway and guessing what kind of vehicle is going to run you over. Marianne. Marianne, I miss you, I love you. Nostrils tickle to a remembered redolence of perfume and potpourri. A powdery, flowery smell, reminiscent of rose. Nowhere to run but the past, nowhere to run but into the arms of the woman he loves, to a warm flicker of home carried within.

  Potpourri, papery in the hand. Scented with the spirit of dead flowers haunting their own desiccated remains. Pheromones, pleasure, olfactory enchantment in the crumple of leaf and petal, scenting his fingers as he reaches around her and rubs his finger in a dish of potpourri on the windowsill. A release of the spirit. He runs his hand gently along her upper lip, under her nostrils, trailing the perfume of dried flowers. With a sniff she ingests its essence. Into her blood goes the spirit of the flower, and now the flower is she, and she is the flower in the rubbing of skin on stem, dermal residue on rose. An exchange of smells. His briefcase on the floor, hands soft and warm and now wrapped about her waist as she stands over the sink, her welcoming sigh soft on his ears, a tickle in his loins, the waft of breeze-blown potpourri on the windowsill beside the silky efflorescence of African violets in a green flowerpot, and rubbed onto his fingers. Hands moving upward, cupping her breasts, bra-held and ripe in his hands; another sigh, a moan, a turn of the head and a placid smile below eyes half closed in domestic calm, the eye of the storm, the centre of tranquility. Hands moving upward, up the soft nape of her neck and over her button chin, his fingers over her lips, a soft kiss puckering underneath them and tickling him as they move up and tease her nose with the essence of flowers. She turns around and fills his embrace, presses her lips to his … To have that again, to have that again, oh to have that again.

  “I love you, I love you so much,” he says into the soft warmth of her shoulder as she combs her fingers through the oily tendrils of his unwashed hair.

  “You look so tired and dirty. Come, let’s get you cleaned up,” and she leads him by the hand.

  “Okay, dear.” He can’t think of anything better to say amid the distraction of destruction and he can’t imagine a response. This cursory retreat home fades as the flicker of sanctuary is snuffed out in the displacement of passing shells. He surrenders to the moment, trapped upon the pinnacle of the present, where the lightning strikes again and again and again with a calculated coldness, trying to hit him. The fatalism of the veteran soldier overtakes him, and he waits for his, the one you don’t hear coming as they say, as they said to him when he arrived, the 1st Division vets, as he imagines everyone else under their pews is doing, each trying to keep from going mad from musing on mortality as mortality asserts itself with each concussive crash. Mortality—began thinking of that in church, didn’t I? When Mom would take us on Sunday mornings. Dad preferring a lie-in. The dreary sermons, endless in a child’s perception of time; the mysterious rituals, the Latin prayers, the sombre hymns, the Halleluiah refrains.

  Curled up with Ma in church, huddled up to the floral prints on her Sunday dress, up against the warm musky leather of her purse, clasped onto her arm as Father Russo ruminated on mortality and eternity, which stretched his boyhood mind to its very limits. Forever. Forever and ever. Forever and ever, forever and ever ringing in eternal reverberations. Foreverandeverring. Forever: the ring of eternity in that word, R’s curving inward into a loop which offers no escape, a vortex. Turning forever in his mind, forever turning his mind. How can you live forever? The thought made him dizzy. He couldn’t think. The word forever surpassed his powers of definition, he couldn’t stretch its words and syllables over such an expanse of time. Even time eluded him in this context. Eternal life? How could time go on forever? Trapped in a world framed by beginnings and ends, looped in cycles, circles. He thought of seeing his grandparents again after their deaths, bathed in an ethereal light, in a flowered meadow scented by the wave of daisies in the breeze, among thousands of other people, all with an angelic glow about them, clad in white robes, milling about, smiling kindly at one another, meeting again, talking together, walking together, holding hands, arm in arm in eternal picnic, eternally strolling, forever and ever. He nestled into his mother’s arm deeper and she ruffled his hair with her fingers as he listened and daydreamed in a childhood depiction of eternity which offset his fidgeting boredom at the length of the Mass, the prayers, the hymns, the sermons, the invocations, the standing, the sitting, the kneeling on the hard wooden retractable kneeling bench.

  Crying later that night in his bed, thinking of his grandparents—they will die, won’t they? Death. The monosyllabic certainty of that word. Finality. The door creaking open, the baleful glow of the hall light trickling in, the twin pillars of shadowy legs on the floor, the elongated torso and head preceding on the floor and walls the figure of his mother standing at the door. Mother coming to him, sitting down on the edge of his bed, soothing him, caressing him softly with hands and words: “Don’t worry
, Jimmy, they’re going to heaven when they die.”

  “But how long will they live?” he sobbed.

  “Oh, a while yet. For years. Don’t you worry so much.” She smiled at him, reassuring him in maternal warmth of voice and gesture. “Don’t you worry so much sweetheart, you little sweetie pie, if you worry too much you won’t ever enjoy the here and now, what’s happening in front of you.” She continued stroking his hair as he fell into a contemplative mood.

  “Will they live forever after they die?” He looked up at her from his contemplation as he asked this. She chuckled, taken aback at his precocious earnestness. “The priest said that we’ll all live forever in heaven after we die. Is that true?”

  “Yes honey, it’s true.”

  “Okay. Goodnight Mum.”

  “Good night to you too. I love you, my little worry wart.” A soft kiss on the cheek.

  “I love you too.” They hugged and he returned her kiss. She got up off his bed and the springs groaned in relief as she floated up to the door in her nightgown in the midnight-shadowed semi-dark, and said, “So no more worrying, okay? I want to see you wake up with a smile. You have something to look forward to. You’re going tobogganing tomorrow with the Fitzsimmons, remember? Sleep tight, and don’t let those nasty little bedbugs bite!”

  “Okay.” With that, she shut the door, closing off the nightlight glow from the hall in which his bedroom had bathed, and left him to his thoughts of eternity, forever and ever and evering their way into his mind, stumping it, challenging it, teasing it.

  Forever and ever. From here in the here and now he is taunted by that phrase, perched upon a precipice overlooking the very vortex that phrase attempts to define. The here and now. His mother’s phrase turns in his mind, the loops, curves and masts of letters glinting off the light of sleepy contemplation like a mobile as he settled into the cozy nest of his covers, a crisp sheet and puffy quilt topped by the soft fuzzy weave of a mohair blanket. The here and now, impeded by the eternal advance of forever and ever, always making its way.