Once There Was A War Part 8

The jeep moved through the blackout. The streets of the city were fined with military trucks and heavy equipment, all moving toward the harbor where the s.h.i.+ps were loading for Italy. The jeep, running counter to the traffic, climbed the hill and went over the ridge and into the valley on the other side, into a valley which had at one time been a place of vineyards and small country houses. But now it was a vast storage ground for sh.e.l.ls and trucks and tanks, lined and stacked and parked, waiting to get aboard the s.h.i.+ps for Italy. The moon lighted the ma.s.ses of material getting ready for war.

"Where are you taking us?" the lieutenant asked.

"You'll see. Just be patient."

The jeep pulled up to a very white wall that extended off into the distance and disappeared into the pearly in-definiteness of the moonlight. A high gate of iron bars and spikes opened in the wall. The lieutenant commander went to the gate and pulled a rope that hung there, and a small bell called softly. In a moment a white-robed figure appeared at the gate, a tall man with a long, dark beard.

"Yes?" he asked softly.

"May we come in?" the lieutenant commander asked. "May we come in for evensong?"

"Yes. of course," the brother said. He pulled at one side of the gate and the hinges cried a little.

Inside the wall was a lovely garden in the moonlight. No war material at all. Everything was cut out except flowers and the little sound of running water and the thick outline of a st.u.r.dy church against a luminous sky. The lieutenant (j.g.) said, "You speak very good English."

"I should," said the brother. "I was born in Ma.s.sachusetts."

"American?"

"We come from all over. We have Germans and French, and even a Chinese. Some Russians, too."

The party moved slowly up the path and came to the little fountain which made the dripping sound and put a cool emphasis on a hot night. "The song has already started," the brother said. "Walk quietly."

The way went among the walls of flowering shrubs and then up two outside steps, and then into a dark hallway, and finally through an entrance into a place that was familiar and strange. Over the rail and below was the body of the church, only you could not see it, for only one candle was burning, and it merely suggested the size and height. It picked out a corner and an arch and a point of gold, and your mind filled in the rest. Lined below, just visible, were the rows of the white brothers. And then their voices came softly and swelling, singing the ancient music, the disembodied and unimpa.s.sioned music, of which Mozart said he would rather have written one chant than all his own. The evensong rose higher and higher, and it was rather like the dimness of the arched roof overhead. The great, vague room swelled and pulsed with the sound, and then it died and one single voice took it up and the others joined in and the candle flame darted about on its wick.

The sound of the trucks and the half-tracks and the pound of the tanks came vaguely from the distance and the music rose to a high note and stopped. The lines of white figures filed slowly out and a hand came into the candlelight and pinched out the flame.

The jeep went back into the city, and this time it went very slowly because it was caught between a weapons carrier and a troop truck loaded with sleepy, upright soldiers who swayed when the truck struck a rough stretch of street.

The lieutenant (j.g.) was very quiet. Some paradox worried him. He said, "The change from one thing to another was too quick. There was no time to get used to it. You should have time to get used to things like that."

"There was actually no change," the lieutenant commander said. "I've always thought that naval warfare was composed like chamber music. There wasn't any change. You just saw two sides of the same thing. You can't make islands of experiences. They relate just exactly as the strings relate in a quartet. Maybe you'll see in a day or two when we get into action. You haven't been in action, have you?"

THE WORRIED BARTENDER.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October 20, 1943 October 20, 1943-When our small American force had captured the island of Capri with no resistance whatsoever on its part or on ours, it was only natural that sooner or later we should meet Luigi the bartender. Luigi had kept warm during the whole war a love of Americans based, he freely admitted, on a memory of tips in the nicer days when American tourists came to bathe in the Blue Grotto and the pink wine. When sailors and officers from the little force inspected the defenses of Luigi's bar and found them formidable. Luigi was cordial but sad. He spoke the English we know, the English of the banana pushcarts and the pizzerias, of the spaghetti joints and grind organs. Luigi's dialect sounded like home.

Luigi was gay but sad. His joy had a habit of falling off in the middle and dissipating. One afternoon, after each one of us had tried to remember a man named Giuseppe Marinari, of Gary, Indiana, who was Luigi's third cousin, we inquired into his sadness. And only then did his trouble come out with a rush.

It seemed that Luigi had a daughter and, more than that, he had an incipient grandchild. But this daughter and this expectation were across the little stretch of water in Castellammare. And what was worse, the Germans were moving up on Castellammare and we were not there in enough force either to repel or to intercept them. Consequently it seemed that Luigi's daughter was very likely to have her child in a sh.e.l.l hole, illuminated by star sh.e.l.ls and parachute flares and possibly speeded up by bomb bursts. Luigi was worried and upset because, he explained, it was not as though he had other daughters or grandchildren. This was his sole chick, due to some misfortune or deformity, the reason for which was known only to G.o.d. And as Luigi poured out his story he also poured out Scotch whisky that had been buried in the earth in back of his bar ever since the war started.

Going back to the s.h.i.+p, the little group could not lose the sadness that Luigi had planted in it. "How would you like it to happen to your family?" Lieutenant Blank said. "Why, you can look across to Castellammare."

On this basis the group visited the commodore in the wardroom of his flags.h.i.+p. They told their story and the commodore looked gravely over his coffee cup at them. And his very calm blue eyes got bright with amus.e.m.e.nt. "What do you want me to do," he asked, "attack Castellammare?"

"No, sir," said Lieutenant Blank. "But we have six captured Italian MS boats. How would it be if we took one of them and just went over and got her? It would only take an hour or less."

"And suppose you lost the boat and got yourself killed?"

"We wouldn't do that, sir. We would just run over and get her. We could do it in practically a few minutes."

The commodore said, "I can't permit it. The thing is out of the question. The thing is silly. We're trying to run a war, not a maternity hospital. And besides, I have work for you to do. You can't go running about like this."

"Yes, sir," said Lieutenant Blank.

"These are your orders," said the commodore. "You are to take one of the MS boats and patrol the coast of the mainland, particularly in the area about Castellammare. You will report the presence of any German s.h.i.+pping there and if you see any hostile craft you will report it and engage it. It may be necessary for you to go pretty far insh.o.r.e to carry out these orders. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Lieutenant Blank, "but I sure wish we could have got that girl off."

"This is no time for sentiment," the commodore said.

The thing was very quick. It required only to pull up to the little dock at the little town and to ask for Luigi's daughter. In ten minutes she was at the dock carrying a bundle of clothing and, in our estimation, she was a little closer than even Luigi suspected. And then the Isotta-Fraschini engines of the MS boat purred and the white wake spread away from the boat and she cut through the water back to Capri, for MS boats do not ride on top of the water, they knife through it.

The rest was very silly. Luigi was at the waterfront and he cried and his daughter cried and about a thousand Caprianos cried and the sound of kissing was deafening and a lot of sailors looked gruff and a kind of triumphant procession went up the hill on the funicular railway and there was something in the nature of a party at Luigi's bar. The child, no matter what its s.e.x, is going to have Lieutenant Blank's first name, and not only Luigi but all Luigi's relatives are going to remember all of us in their prayers for hundreds of years to come.

So much for the a.s.surances. But the next morning a party of five went up on the hill to get haircuts. We were sitting reading copies of The London Pictorial The London Pictorial for 1937 and waiting for the one barber chair to be vacant when in the doorway Luigi appeared. And Luigi carried a little tray and on the tray was a Scotch and soda for each of us. And later in the day we went shopping and wherever we stopped to look and to buy there Luigi appeared with his little tray. for 1937 and waiting for the one barber chair to be vacant when in the doorway Luigi appeared. And Luigi carried a little tray and on the tray was a Scotch and soda for each of us. And later in the day we went shopping and wherever we stopped to look and to buy there Luigi appeared with his little tray.

It was a pretty nice day.

THE CAMERA MAKES SOLDIERS.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October 21, 1943 October 21, 1943-I suppose that there is no weapon which so slyly and surely attacks the souls of men as a moving-picture camera does. Men who are disgusted or hurt or just plain ignorant react to a Bell & Howell Eyemo as a frog does to a hot rock. One of our best sports writers suggested one time that the best way to get touchdowns in football was to mount a newsreel camera between the goal posts. It is a secret weapon which dissects people and brings out the curious childish ego that everyone has and lays it spread out thick on the surface.

Recently in Africa and Sicily and Italy we (not editorial we, but a cameraman and I) were working on a technical picture for the Army and there we discovered that the same force that operates at Long Island garden parties and at tennis matches also works on a battle line. It worked everywhere. Weary troops straightened up and marched stiffly and some of them tried to hog the camera and some of them looked fierce and soldierly. All shoulders went back and steps quickened. The thinly covered actor in everyone came out. A line of Army stevedores on a dock in a North African port suddenly, on seeing the camera, began to pa.s.s boxes of C-rations with a speed and rhythm which has probably never been duplicated in Army history. Of course the moment the camera was moved they went back to a much more sensible, goldbricking pace, but for the few feet of film we have, the boxes shot by and piled up in a mountain out of camera range.

The impact of the camera is by no means limited to the Americans. Our picture had to do with all kinds of work and all kinds of men. One day we set up on a barge where a number of Arabs were employed to unload cargo and, incidentally, were doing the finest bit of sleepwalking I have ever seen. Each Arab regarded each box as a personality he didn't like, touched with reluctance, and got rid of with relief. His repugnance, however, did not make him carry it to its destination with any speed that required streamlining. With these people we did not find any speedup when the camera was produced. The moment it began to turn, every Arab stood up grandly and presented his profile and looked sternly toward Mecca. Time and time again we tried to catch them in what is called a natural pose, not of work, because that would be a contradiction in terms, but just relaxed and looking Arab. But either they had seen too many Hollywood films of Valentino as an Arab, or a Valentino had studied Arabs under the impact of the camera. We never caught them any other way except looking sternly offstage, always in profile and always n.o.ble. We had wanted to get them relaxed because I suppose Arabs have as few n.o.ble moments as anyone in the world. Bushmen may compete with them in this respect but I doubt it. And they could not be fooled. They knew when the camera was turning and when it wasn't. They were as highly trained in stealing scenes from each other as dress extras in Hollywood. Finally we gave up. They will continue n.o.ble as far as we are concerned. We will perpetuate this myth of the n.o.ble Arab. The moment we stopped shooting they collapsed into natural Arabs, but we never got it on film.

The camera works everywhere. There is no ferocity like that on the face of a quarterback who is running, not at an opponent but at newsreel coverage on a tripod. And this may all be egotism, but there was one example of something that seemed to be much more than this. One day we set up the camera to photograph the discharge of the cargo of a hospital s.h.i.+p which had been loaded in Sicily. The side doors of the s.h.i.+p were opened and the wooden platform was extended. The lines of ambulances were drawn up on the pier, and then the stretcher-bearers came down in a steady line with the wounded men sitting and lying and huddled and stretched out in positions indicated by the nature of their wounds. Some of them were sick with pain, were gray with pain, and some were only slightly hurt so that their eyes were clear. And not one single man as he pa.s.sed the camera failed to respond to it. Everyone gave it either a smile or a little nod. Some saluted it gravely. The rigid features changed and the eyes brightened, and if an arm could move it moved in greeting. I think this was not egotism. I think these men, each one of them, had a quick thought. "Someone at home will see this picture. I must appear less badly hurt than I am. Otherwise they might worry." I think those tired smiles were a great hunk of consideration and courage.

THE STORY OF AN ELF.

Monday, November 1, 1943-This story could not be written if there were not witnesses-not vague unknown men, but Quentin Reynolds and H. R. Knickerbocker and Clark Lee and Jack Belden, who was hurt at Salerno, and John Lardner and a number of others who will come clamoring forward if anyone doubts the facts here to be presented.

The thing began when a British consul met Quentin Reynolds in the hall of the Alletti Hotel in Algiers. The consul was a small, innocent, well-mannered man who liked to think of the British and Americans as allies and who was willing to make amicable gestures. In good faith he asked Reynolds where he was staying and in equal good faith Reynolds replied that he had not yet been billeted.

"There's an extra bed in my room," the consul said. "You're welcome to it if you like."

That was the beginning, and what happened was n.o.body's fault. It was just one of those accidents. The consul had a nice room with a balcony that overlooked the harbor and from which you could watch air raids. It wasn't Reynolds' fault. He accepted hospitality for himself, not for the nine other war correspondents who moved in with him. Nine is only a working number. Sometimes there were as many as eighteen. They slept on the floor, on the balcony, in the bathroom, and some even slept in the hall outside the door of Room 140, Alletti Hotel, Algiers.

It was generally agreed that the consul should have his own bed, that is, if he kept it. But let him get up to go to the bathroom and he returned to find Knickerbocker or Lee or Belden, or all three, in it. Another thing bothered the consul a little. Correspondents don't sleep much at night. They talked and argued and sang so that the poor consul didn't get much rest. There was too much going on in his room. He had to work in the daytime, and he got very little sleep at night. Toward the end of the week he took to creeping back in the middle of the afternoon for a nap. He couldn't get his bed then. Someone always had it. But at three in the afternoon it was usually quiet enough so that he could curl up on the floor and get a little rest.

The foregoing is not the unbelievable part-quite the contrary. It is what follows that will require witnesses. It was during one of the all-night discussions of things in general that someone, perhaps Clark Lee, perhaps Dour Jack Belden, suggested that we were getting very tired of Algerian wine and wouldn't it be nice if we had some Scotch. From that point on this is our story and we intend to stick to it.

Someone must have rubbed something, a ring or a lamp or perhaps the utterly exhausted British consul. At any rate, there was a puff of blue smoke and standing in the room was a small man with pointed ears and a very jolly stomach. He wore a suit of green leather and his cap and the toes of his shoes ended in sharp points and they were green too.

"Saints of Galway," said Reynolds. "Do you see what I see?"

"Yes," said Clark Lee, "Well, do you believe it?"

"No," said Lee, who is after all a realist and was at Corregidor.

Jack Belden has lived in China for many years and he knows about such things. "Who are you?" he asked sternly.

"I'm little Charley Lytle," the elf said.

"Well, what do you want, popping in on us?" Belden cried.

The British consul groaned and turned over and pulled the covers over his head. Knickerbocker has since admitted that his first impulse was to kill the elf and stuff him to go beside the sailfish in his den. In fact, he was creeping up when Charley Lytle held up his hand.

"When war broke out I tried to enlist," he said. "But I was rejected on political grounds. It isn't that I have any politics," he explained. "But the Army's position is that if I did have, heaven knows what they would be. There hasn't been a Republican leprechaun since Coolidge. So I was rejected pending the formation of an Elves-in-Exile Battalion. I decided then that I would just make people happy, soldiers and war correspondents and things like that."

Reynolds' eyes narrowed dangerously. He is very loyal. "Are you insinuating that we aren't happy?" he gritted. "That my friends aren't happy?"

"I'm not happy," said the British consul, but no one paid any attention to him.

Little Charley Lytle said, "I heard some mention made of Scotch whisky. Now it just happens that I have-"

"How much?" said Clark Lee, who is a realist.

"Why, all you want."

"I mean how much money?" Lee demanded.

"You don't understand," said little Charley. "There is no money involved. It is my contribution to the war-I believe you call it effort effort."

"I'm going to kill him," cried Knickerbocker. "n.o.body can sneer at my war and get away with it."

Reynolds said, "Could we get a case?"

"Surely," said little Charley.

"Three cases?"

"Certainly."

Lee broke in. "Now don't you strain him. You don't know what his breaking point is."

"When can you deliver?" Reynolds asked.

Instead of answering, little Charley Lytle made a dramatic and slightly ribald gesture. There was one puff of smoke and he had disappeared. There followed three small explosions, like a series of tiny depth charges, and on the floor of Room 140 of the Alletti Hotel in Algiers lay three cases of Haig and Haig Pinch Bottle, ringed with the hot and incredulous eyes of a platoon of thirsty correspondents.

Reynolds breathed heavily the way a man does when he has a stroke. "A miracle!" he whispered. "A miracle straight out of the middle ages or Mary Roberts Rinehart."

Dour Jack Belden has lived a long time in China. On top of a basic pessimism, he has seen everything and is difficult to impress. His eyes now wandered out the arched window to the sweltering streets and the steaming harbor below. "It's a medium good trick," he said. "But it's a cold-weather trick. I'd like to give him a real test." He ignored the growl of growing rage from his peers. "If this so-called Elf could produce a bottle of say La Batt's Pale India Ale on a day like this, I'd say he was a commer-" He was interrupted by a slight fall of snow from the hot and fly-specked ceiling. Our eyes followed the lazy white flakes to the floor, where they fell on a box of slim-necked bottles. The snow swirled and spelled out Courtesy of Canada Courtesy of Canada in the air. in the air.

I think Jack Belden went too far. He said lazily, "But is it cold?"

Reynolds flung himself forward and touched the neck of a bottle. "Colder than a (two words deleted by censor)," he said.

That night there was an air raid, and even the British consul enjoyed it. And anyone who doesn't believe this story can ask any of the people involved, even dour Jack Belden.

MAGIC PIECES.

November 3, 1943-A great many soldiers carry with them some small article, some touchstone or lucky piece or symbol which, if they are lucky in battle, takes on an ever-increasing importance. And being lucky in battle means simply not being hurt. The most obvious magic amulets, of course, are the rabbits' feet on sale in nearly all gift stores. St. Christopher medals are carried by Catholics and non-Catholics alike and in many cases are not considered as religious symbols at all, but as simple lucky pieces.

A novelty company in America has brought out a Testament bound in steel covers to be carried in the s.h.i.+rt pocket over the heart, a gruesome little piece of expediency which has faith in neither the metal nor the Testament but hopes that a combination may work. Many of these have been sold to parents of soldiers, but I have never seen one carried. That particular pocket is for cigarettes and those soldiers who carry Testaments, as many do, carry them in their pants pockets, and they are never considered as lucky pieces.

The magic articles are of all kinds. There will be a smooth stone, an odd-shaped piece of metal, small photographs encased in cellophane. Many soldiers consider pictures of their wives or parents to be almost protectors from danger. One soldier had removed the handles from his Colt .45 and had carved new ones out of Plexiglas from a wrecked airplane. Then he had installed photographs of his children under the Plexiglas so that his children looked out of the handles of his pistol.

Sometimes coins are considered lucky and rings and pins, usually articles which take their quality from some intimacy with people at home, a gift or the symbol of some old emotional experience. One man carries a locket his dead wife wore as a child and another a string of amber beads his mother once made him wear to ward off colds. The beads now ward off danger.

It is interesting that, as time in action goes on, these magics not only become more valuable and dear but become more secret also. And many men make up small rituals to cause their amulets to become active. A smooth stone may be rubbed when the tracers are cutting lines about a man's head. One sergeant holds an Indian-head penny in the palm of his left hand and against the stock of his rifle when he fires. He is just about convinced that he cannot miss if he does this. The employment of this kind of magic is much more widespread than is generally known.

As time goes on, and dangers multiply and perhaps there is a narrow escape or so, the amulet not only takes on an increasing importance but actually achieves a kind of personality. It becomes a thing to talk to and rely on. One such lucky piece is a small wooden pig only about an inch long. Its owner, after having tested it over a period of time and in one or two tight places, believes that this little wooden pig can accomplish remarkable things. Thus, in a bombing, he held the pig in his hand and said, "Pig, this one is not for us." And in a sh.e.l.ling, he said, "Pig, you know that the one that gets me, gets you."

But in addition to simply keeping its owner safe from harm, this pig has been known to raise a fog, smooth out a high sea, procure a beefsteak in a restaurant which had not had one for weeks. It is rumored further that this pig in the hands of a previous owner has commuted an execution, cured a.s.sorted cases of illness, and been the direct cause of at least one considerable fortune. This pig's owner would not part with him for anything.

The a.s.sociation between a man and his amulet becomes not only very strong but very private. This is partly a fear of being laughed at, but also a feeling grows that to tell about it is to rob it of some of its powers. Also there is the feeling that the magic must not be called on too often. The virtue of the piece is not inexhaustible. It can run down, therefore it is better to use it sparingly and only to call on it when the need is great.

Novelty companies have taken advantage of this almost universal urge toward magic. They turn out lucky rings by the thousands and coins and little figures, but these have never taken hold the way the a.s.sociational gadgets do.

Whatever the cause of this reliance on magic amulets, in wartime it is so. And the practice is by no means limited to ignorant or superst.i.tious men. It would seem that in times of great danger and great emotional tumult a man has to reach outside himself for help and comfort, and has to have some supra-personal symbol to hold to. It can be anything at all, an old umbrella handle or a religious symbol, but he has to have it. There are times in war when the sharpest emotion is not fear, but loneliness and littleness. And it is during these times that the smooth stone or the Indian-head penny or the wooden pig are not only desirable but essential. Whatever atavism may call them up, they appear and they seem to fill a need. The dark world is not far from us-from any of us.

SYMPTOMS.

November 5, 1943-During the years between the last war and this one, I was always puzzled by the reticence of ex-soldiers about their experiences in battle. If they had been reticent men it would have been different, but some of them were talkers and some were even boasters. They would discuss their experiences right up to the time of battle and then suddenly they wouldn't talk any more. This was considered heroic in them. It was thought that what they had seen or done was so horrible that they didn't want to bring it back to haunt them or their listeners. But many of these men had no such consideration in any other field.

Only recently have I found what seems to be a reasonable explanation, and the answer is simple. They did not and do not remember-and the worse the battle was, the less they remember.

In all kinds of combat the whole body is battered by emotion. The ductless glands pour their fluids into the system to make it able to stand up to the great demand on it. Fear and ferocity are products of the same fluid. Fatigue toxins poison the system. Hunger followed by wolfed food distorts the metabolic pattern already distorted by the adrenalin and fatigue. The body and the mind so disturbed are really ill and fevered. But in addition to these ills, which come from the inside of a man and are given him so that he can temporarily withstand pressures beyond his ordinary ability, there is the further stress of explosion.

Under extended bombardment or bombing the nerve ends are literally beaten. The ear drums are tortured by blast and the eyes ache from the constant hammering.

This is how you feel after a few days of constant firing. Your skin feels thick and insensitive. There is a salty taste in your mouth. A hard, painful knot is in your stomach where the food is undigested. Your eyes do not pick up much detail and the sharp outlines of objects are slightly blurred. Everything looks a little unreal. When you walk, your feet hardly seem to touch the ground and there is a floaty feeling all over your body. Even the time sense seems to be changed. Men who are really moving at a normal pace seem to take forever to pa.s.s a given point. And when you move it seems to you that you are very much slowed down, although actually you are probably moving more quickly than you normally do.

Under the blast your eyeb.a.l.l.s are so beaten that the earth and the air seems to shudder. At first your ears hurt, but then they become dull and all your other senses become dull, too. There are exceptions, of course. Some men cannot protect themselves this way and they break, and they are probably the ones we call sh.e.l.l-shocks cases.

In the dullness all kinds of emphases change. Even the instinct for self-preservation is dulled so that a man may do things which are called heroic when actually his whole fabric of reactions is changed. The whole world becomes unreal. You laugh at things which are not ordinarily funny and you become enraged at trifles. During this time a kind man is capable of great cruelties and a timid man of great bravery, and nearly all men have resistance to stresses beyond their ordinary ability.