Beckoning War Read online

  “Drinkin’ on the job, sir?” asks Blake with a wry hint of a grin.

  “If you don’t drink on the job here, you’re mad. Things work backwards here.”

  “Yessir, true enough.”

  Don’t wanna patrol. Don’t want to fight. Want to go home. Take a walk. Smell the roses. Fuck my wife. Make looooooooove. Change my underwear (for a change). Ha! Eat some real food and—

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Blake?”

  “Division artillery’s going to start really nailing Jerry gun positions beyond. We got a fix on some big, fat targets earlier. Jerry’s on the run.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s inching backward bit by bloody little bit, and booby-trapping every step of the way. Comprenez-vous? I’d like to meet Field Marshal Kesselring, shake his hand and punch him in the face. Besides,” he looks Blake in the eye, “Haven’t all you gunners had enough fun already?” He laughs uncontrollably for no real reason. Blake and Cole exchange puzzled glances suggesting Jim is mad.

  With some effort he recovers his composure. Twitches and snorts of laughter convulse within him and threaten to dissolve his stern demeanor once more. Breathe in, breathe out. “You’ll pardon me, gentlemen, but I’m very tired from a night and a day of being shelled shitless. Maybe I should’ve given the order for everyone inside to kneel in prayer—maybe then we would’ve lowered casualties.” He bites his cheeks as he feels his stomach muscles tense and his face muscles attempt to draw the corners of his mouth upward into a smile. He is aware that he is on the verge of slurring due to nervous exhaustion.

  “Anyway, carry on, gentlemen, carry on.” They salute one another and Jim leaves the house. He makes the rest of his rounds, from platoon to platoon in a delirious daze of details—machine-gun positions, daily standing orders, passwords, sentries, casualties, digging, whatnot. Over open ground along the slit trenches of soldiers he makes his way, over broken brick and beam, over shards of glass like pieces fallen from a fractured sky. The water in a rain-filled shellhole shines in a silvery red refraction in the light of a nearby flare. Moments later a volley of mortars bursts somewhere behind, out of sight if not out of mind. Chicken Little was right. The sky is falling down. And no one listened until too late.

  9

  For another whole day they sit, both nervous and bored, holding the line, waiting for orders that may come at any time. The Germans resume shelling the ridge and with it, San Matteo and the men dug in and around its ruins. Charlie Company is forced to abandon its headquarters beyond the village along the ridgeline as it collapses into ruin under a weight of exploding ordnance, and the men are forced to retreat into slit trenches behind. There are more casualties in Jim’s company, and in the others as well. In the early afternoon, one of Olczyk’s boys, Private Kelly, is killed by a direct mortar hit on his slit trench. His helmet and head are found yards away, as if it were a soccer ball kicked by a wanton child. His trench is reduced to a hole full of guts and spilled sand from the torn sandbags abutting the rim. Olczyk himself is lightly wounded by flying splinters when a volley of 150s pummels his position, and he is treated at his post. Three in Doyle’s platoon are wounded, one severely—Lance Corporal Fitzpatrick, in the stomach. Jim sees the stretcher-bearers scurry away out of the church with him writhing in a sweaty pallor, a scarlet bloom of blood efflorescing through the bandages and sheet in which he is swaddled—might as well be his burial shroud, or a sheet of butcher’s paper. They load him into an awaiting unseen jeep. From out of view comes the rattle of an engine and the hurried squeal of departing tires as it races down the opposite side of the ridge to Major Henderson’s regimental aid post, a few hundred metres away in a cinderblock farmhouse. He is unlikely to survive the day—from the RAP to RIP, as the medics say. Dog Company is ravaged when a large German shell explodes on one of its platoons, killing one and wounding another seven. Dead is Lieutenant Briscoe, in since the Liri Valley, and whom Jim never bothered to get to know. Another statistic. Since the Liri Valley, Jim hasn’t bothered to get to know new people for reasons of continued sanity and in the interest of keeping a cool head.

  Radio waves bring reports of woe. Shells hit troops and vehicles behind, and the Canadian and British guns attempt to target and destroy the German ones by range-finding via the vibrations of gun blasts. The battle at Gemmano Ridge to the south proves to be a dirty hand-to-hand affair, and staticky reports of vicious, confused street-fighting crackle in on the company wireless between screeching episodes of German frequency jamming. Jim monitors these reports, does more rounds, naps under the pew, frets over his charges, daydreams about home, muses on the battle he knows is coming.

  After a bland supper of compo rations, runners being unable to bring hot meals up front on account of the heavy shelling, he decides to write a letter. He pulls out his pen and produces another piece of paper from his pocket, and begins to write. Words scrawl across the top of the page, shaky and canted to the right:

  —Somewhere in Italy—

  Who should I write to this time? Dad. It shall be Dad, my dear old Dad, pater familias and dispenser of advice. Shellfire rumbles underfoot in a wave of molecular protest. Sounds like they’re hitting ‘B’ Company now. Spreading their joy around to all of us in equal measure. Another display of Teutonic thoroughness. He slurps a scour of whiskey from his flask, warms his veins, and puts pen to paper:

  Dear Dad,

  I am suffering from the throes of dipsomania and what those in the trenches the first time around wisely called shellshock. I am currently under fire. I spent last night under a church pew while being shelled incessantly—the Germans have poor bedtime manners and are wont to make a racket at the worst possible times. I believe I’ve smoked 30 cigarettes already. I am also a little tipsy, but that’s how you stay sane. I wrote Mom and Marianne recently, and now it’s your turn to put up with me. Yesterday I had a laughing fit while doing my rounds to my various platoons, and the two artillery guys stationed with us looked at me like I was a grinning monkey. I had an ‘O’ Group assembly a couple nights ago, where I relayed orders from above to my lieutenants, and I drew a blank. I am losing it. I must now appeal to the doctor in you, if I may: I haven’t had an erection in over two weeks—is this normal? Is it the fear, the lack of sleep, the guilt I feel surviving others, the booze, the saltpeter in my food, or some combination of all of the above? My penis lies limp in my unchanged undershorts, undershorts that itch and burn as the drawstring braids its pattern into the skin of my waist. I long for Marianne, but I cannot become hard. C’est la vie. Maybe my energy is employed elsewhere, in a constant state of anxiety. I suppose this is battle exhaustion. That’s what they call shellshock this time around, by the way. If I tell this to the army doctors, I will be effectively removed from combat status. And what the hell will I amount to then? This is the path I chose, and I have to see it through. So, our little secret. How is life in Sudbury? How has fishing on the lake been this summer? Catch many pickerel? Are all the citizens still griping about rationing? Can everyone get on with a little cut in their sugar intake? Tell everyone that we on the front lines in this great struggle against tyranny shed tears in mind of the privation of the citizens at home, who must get by with less sugar for their tea, less butter for their bread and less meat for Sunday night roast beef dinner. Luxury goods—the most regrettable casualties of war. We at the front are on guard—En garde!—to rectify any and all such injustices. Can you read this? I doubt it; I’m a trembling wreck. My hand is like one of those seismographs that measure earthquakes and it’s registering what’s happening within me. Am I crazy or am I sane? I’m clearly one or the other.

  He surveys what he has written and snickers in response. I can’t possibly mail this home. Therapeutic, but not something I want the old man to read. He crumples the sheet up into a tight wad of paper and it crepitates, crackle crackle, squeezes it in his fist, wrings it tightly into a ball in his sweaty palms, squeezes it again in a compulsi
ve attack of nerves, drops it on the wet and rubble-strewn floor, steps on it with his boot, smears it into the ground with his heal in search of some kind of catharsis. He is aware that he has rocked himself back and forth, back and forth through this nervous episode. He takes several deep breaths and looks about him. Men are napping under pews, or are clustered here and there at what amounts to their posts. The breeze moans through holes and windows, punctuated by the sporadic exclamations of shellfire. My morale is done. It’s finished. I can’t lead. And here I am awaiting orders to continue advancing once the way is opened. Dear God. And here I am doing what I wanted to be doing: showing my mettle as an infanteer. Sure as hell got what I asked for.

  His mind harkens back to a propaganda poster back in Canada. A wild-eyed soldier-boy brandishing his bayonet-fixed rifle against a backdrop swirl of wind-flapped Union Jack bars and colours. Red, white and blue: the symbolic spectrum of freedom. Floppy blonde schoolboy hair sticking up in the breeze. Looking every bit like a member of the Hitler Youth. C’mon Canada! Lick ‘Em Over There! Freedom unfurled, snapping in a bluster of patriotic rhetoric. Propaganda slogans from posters and newsreels shout for attention: Let’s put the drip on the three droops! Loose lips sink ships! We caught hell out there—someone must have talked! Buy Victory Bonds Now! Save scrap iron for our men in the struggle against the fascists!

  Cue jerky newsreel footage of convulsing cannons, speeding tanks covered in straw under the sun, men dashing forward under fire, hunched low, rifles clutched. With bayonets fixed, they mop up whatever resistance is left in this ruined Italian village after a merciless barrage, and escort columns of exhausted, bedraggled German prisoners, sullen and exhausted expressions on their faces, hands on their heads.

  ANNOUNCER:

  Canadian forces are on the move! These are OUR boys! Captain Jim McFarlane of the Canadian infantry tells us what it’s like to fight the Germans on the broken back of their fallen ally, Italy—

  Cut to scene of tired and dirty Canadian infantry captain facing the camera.

  CAPTAIN MCFARLANE:

  They are better at set-piece fighting, mass discipline and what have you, but we’re much better in close quarters. I like to get my men in as close as I can! (Turning, facing the men.) Don’t shoot ‘till you see the whites of their eyes!

  ANNOUNCER:

  The spine of Italy is not broken. The vertebraic Apennines are a defender’s paradise. But nothing the combined Allied air forces and artillery cannot reduce to rubble, along with every church, cathedral, abbey, palace, castle, villa, village, farmhouse, barn, henhouse, toolshed, vineyard and orchard along the way. You can’t make an omelette, they say, without breaking a few eggs. What eggs! What omelettes!

  “Hey Captain, you’re looking under the weather.” He looks up to see his trusty batman, Corporal Cooley, looking at him, concern in his eyes.

  “You’re damn right I’m under the weather. It’s raining lead outside, didn’t you notice? The roof’s leaky, too.” He nods to a stain of blood on the floor from where a soldier wounded by a shell was whisked out of the church by stretcher-bearers, covered partly by sand from a slit sandbag, black like an oil stain, pattered by the rain that sprinkles in through the holes in the roof and the walls. Cooley flinches a little. Jim adjusts his tone in response to Cooley’s unease. “Sorry Corporal, I’m just a little tired is all. Neither side lets us sleep with all that gunder.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything you need done?” Cooley looks earnest and concerned, as a batman ought to. Jim does not want to deny him his useful intentions. “Sure, some tea would be great. Brew up a pot for all of us, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, sir. I’ll get right on it.” Cooley ventures off on his task. Now where was I? Jim wonders to himself, the sardonic mock newsreels of his mind vanished in a puff of dream smoke from Cooley’s disturbance. You shouldn’t idle so much, damnit, he scolds himself. He sits down to rest a moment just as the church shudders violently under a sudden pounding of artillery. He scurries under his pew, this time resting on a thin straw-filled mattress procured by Nichols on one of his supply runs. Above him the dull slate of varnished wood gleams along its edge from the pale light cast by an oil lantern that has been hung low along the wall between two of the shattered windows. The soft light wavers in lucent response to the stone-muffled crunch of shells, like circles of water rippling outward when a thrown stone breaks the surface of a lake. He reaches to his right and takes his flask from his webgear and pack, rumpled in front of the pew, unscrews it and takes a corrosive, warming pull of whiskey. It numbs its way down his throat, and as it does so, spreads a giddy warmth within his veins. With a tremendous crash, masonry and stones rain from the hollow of the steeple as it is bullseyed. The sound ravages his ears. Air is displaced, and this disturbance brings with it a tide of dust under his pew. His mouth is dried by this chalky infusion. He coughs and sneezes and spits a gob of dirty saliva, purging the taste of musty dirt and its caustic effects on his mouth and nostrils. The taste of the earth, kicked up, like the dust kicked up by soldiers’ boots and military vehicles on winding summer roads. Spitting in church! Mom would not be pleased.

  “Hell’s Bells!” he hears someone holler from under another pew.

  “Are there any casualties?” he shouts, sticking his head out into the dusty nave of the besieged church. “Anyone hurt?”

  “Nah, everyone’s fine!” someone answers in the dark. Thank God, he thinks, and he takes another sip of whiskey. Thank God I didn’t let Blake and Cole set up shop in there.

  As he waits out the shelling, there is an itch in the left arch of his foot, and it is impossible to scratch. His feet feel hot and sodden stuffed as they are into his boots. He decides to air them out. He unbuckles and unlaces his left boot, loosening it, feeling the quickened flow of blood and the liberation of compressed nerves in his ankle and foot as he does so. A moist waft of rot hazes outward from the maw of his boot as he pulls it off. The boot reluctantly releases its sodden grip with a faint sucking sound. Good God All Muddy. He pulls his wool sock off afterward, a soaked moldy rag enveloping his foot in the peaty bog of his foot’s own laboured sogginess. The cool, sharp fresh air pins and needles against his newly naked foot. He scratches away the itch with the fingernails of his hand, sighing as he does so. He removes his other boot and sock to match. What relief. Perhaps not so for all the others in here with me.

  “How ‘bout a song?” he hears in the dark from under another pew. “Keep the old spirits up, what do you think about that?” It sounds like Lieutenant Doyle, though he can’t be sure. “How about the 1st Canadian Cuckoldry?”

  Jim suddenly gathers himself, having been usurped by a subordinate in attempting to raise morale. I should be keeping up morale here, for Christ’s sake! Don’t be upstaged by your callow young lieutenant! Get up, get with it!

  “Sounds good,” Jim pipes in from under his pew. “Though how it can bring anyone comfort is beyond me. For all who feel cheated up here, on the count of four—Let’s go, one, two, three, four!”

  From under pews and from covered corners comes a ragged chorus of men, some in tune, others not, the rusty voices of men accustomed to singing when drunk or on the march:

  Dear John, Dear Joe,

  There is something here that you should know,

  Here’s a reason for your pride to show!

  Here is the transfer that you’ve craved,

  In return for all that you have braved!

  For your service to the king,

  I have here a reason for all to sing!

  For your efforts overseas,

  Welcome to the Cuckoldry,

  The 1st Canadian Cuckoldry,

  The 1st Canadian Cuckoldry—

  Dear John, Dear Joe,

  My how you have sunk so low!

  You really have been struck a blow!

  Take off your trusty old tin hat,

&nb
sp; As now you won’t be needing that!

  Take it off and put on these horns

  And stand ashamed and cheated and forlorn!

  For your efforts overseas,

  Welcome to the Cuckoldry,

  The 1st Canadian Cuckoldry,

  The 1st Canadian Cuckoldry—

  Dear John, Dear Joe,

  Let not your emotions show

  As you take up your quarrel with your foe!

  Let’s march together on parade,

  And watch behind your marriage fade,

  Listen to the rumours spread,

  As you charge into the storm of lead!

  For your efforts overseas,

  Welcome to the Cuckoldry,

  The 1st Canadian Cuckoldry,

  The 1st Canadian Cuckoldry, Hooray!

  Rueful laugher follows the final chorus, and for a few this laughter is likely tinged with a rueful knowingness. Other songs follow—a rousing version of “Fuck ‘em all,” a longing one of “White Cliffs of Dover,” sung in swaying verses, in unison of shared experience if not always entirely of tone.

  After the sing-song, he replaces his socks with another pair from his pack, dons his boots and once again he closes his eyes and drifts in and out of sleep and semi-conscious whimsy as the rest of the evening passes in a succession of tick-tock eternities.

  10

  Once again, he was out walking after a fight with Marianne. As if last week’s argument had not been bad enough, this time they had descended to yelling at one another. He passed the lines of shopfronts, seeing himself passing in the windows, walking under striped cloth awnings on the sidewalk alongside the honk and bustle of traffic, boxy cars and trucks stopped bumper to bumper as a policeman blew his whistle to allow the cross traffic to go. He walked amid the snort of vehicles and the squeal of metal streetcar wheels, and under the sky strung above with streetcar lines and telephone wires, the telephone lines suspended and sagging slightly between the wooden cross-framed telephone poles, buzzing and humming with all manners of communication urgent and not so urgent—how many secret codes, how many new war initiatives, how many encrypted messages from spies now vibrated through those conduits?