Kirby’s Angel By
Susan M. Ballard
“When I was justa little kid, we was still livin’ in Carolina, ma gave me an ornament to hang on the Christmas tree. My dad made us each one – each a us little kids. But mine was the best, least I thought so. Dad, he’d cut a angel outta some kinda sheet metal…polished it up so shiny I could see myself in it like it was a mirror or somethin’. Then he cut my name onto the bottom. ‘Billy’ it said, just like writin’. ‘Billy.’ Well my ma she told me that there was my guardian angel. My ma was Catholic, like you, Caje, ‘fore she married my dad and she believed in angels and such. She told me that nobody could ever hurt me cause that angel was always watchin’ out for me, but specially at Christmas. That was the most special time a year. And it is too, huh Caje? The most special?”
The Cajun, supporting Kirby on one side nodded, adding with quiet conviction, “Yeah, Kirby. Christmas is the best time.”
That made the PFC smile, a lopsided grin that brightened his otherwise wan, drawn face. Parrot-like he repeated the Cajun’s reassurance. “Christmas is the best time.”
Kirby drew up short causing Caje to stop and look with concern at his pal. Kirby’s smile was gone, replaced with confusion and worry.
“It’s gonna be Christmas in a coupla days, ain’t it, Caje? Ain’t it?”
Caje nodded. “Yes.”
“But it can’t be! Not so soon! We ain’t near back to our lines and my ma, she told me she was sendin’ that angel to me here, to protect me! Nothin’ bad’ll happen if I got the angel. Caje? We gotta make it back before then, before Christmas! We gotta!”
Near panic replaced the confusion. The Irishman’s dark eyes pleaded with his friend to understand, begged for confirmation. “We’ll make it back in time, Caje. Won’t we?” The voice had become a whisper.
The scout tried to hitch Kirby up higher, to get a better grip on him. Caje’s holler for Doc, up ahead conferring with the sergeant, came too late. Kirby collapsed onto the deeply crusted snow, his injured arm bound tightly against his chest in a makeshift sling. He collapsed with all the subtle grace he lacked in consciousness.
“Doc! Sarge!” Caje screamed hoarsely, forgetting or not caring that his voice carried in the stillness forever.“DOC!”
The medic and non-com came as quickly as the uneven snowy terrain would allow.
Doc bent to work over the fallen man, the soldier cradled tenderly in Caje’s arms. Saunders stood above them, warily on guard, but his eyes drawn to the scene at his feet. He became an objective observer and it wasn’t until much later that his detachment would break down and the unreality of the situation would reverse itself, becoming real and painful and almost unbearable.
Kirby was silent in the scout’s arms, his face white, as colorless as the surrounding snow, his breathing almost too light to be seen aside from tiny uneven puffs into the frigid air exhaled through parted lips. His jacket front was soaked through with blood from his mangled arm. The breaths came less and less frequently and then stopped altogether.
Doc sat back on his haunches and closed his eyes. Anguish was plainly visible on his face and Caje’s when the scout looked up at the sergeant. But no one spoke. No one implored God to do something…please do something! Not another death! Not Kirby! No one spoke the words aloud, but they were in each soldier’s heart.
It was up to Saunders to break the silence and he did so with reluctance, his voice softened with regret. “We have to go…now.”
There was no need to remind the men of something of which they were well aware, the Germans were close.
Littlejohn ran up, breathless, and came to a complete stop staring down at Doc, Caje and Kirby. He stammered, found no words and looked toward Saunders. Littlejohn made another attempt at speech and this time found his voice. “They’re comin’, Sarge. Not a quarter mile behind me. And they’re comin’ fast.”
Saunders nodded. They’d been a step ahead of half a German platoon all day, ever since Kirby had tripped a long forgotten wire-strung grenade. The grenade had shattered his arm and prematurely stolen his life.
Kirby had screamed just once. Cradling the shattered limb close against his chest he tried unsuccessfully to make it back to his feet unaided, boots slipping against the crusted snow, not enough strength in the wounded body to force the issue.
Doc had told Saunders how badly wounded Kirby was. “There’s no way he should be walkin’, Sarge. Hell, he shouldn’t be carried without a proper stretcher. Too much movement and one of those broken bones are sure to sever an artery.”
But even as Doc was speaking, pleading with Saunders for time, for help, for a miracle, Saunders and the medic already knew they were out of luck on all counts. They could already hear the Germans in the woods, their voices raised with the exhilaration of the chase, the words guttural and to the GIs, ugly and inhuman. They were hounds on the blood scent.
And now Kirby was dead, his body carefully placed beneath some bushes in a small thicket, covered hastily with Doc’s thin wool blanket. Saunders fingered the soldier’s dog tag in a gloved hand before dropping it into a deep pocket of his field jacket. It was not alone there. It rested with three others of the squad lost earlier in the mission.
The blonde sergeant squared his shoulders and with all the authority he could muster, moved the men out.
“Double time it!”
No grumbling answered his order. No sounds besides the crunch of booted feet against snow.
Through a combination of skill, bitter determination and just blind luck, the remainder of Saunders’ squad reached the safety of their own lines and eventually Company Headquarters.
The first thing Saunders did was report to Lieutenant Hanley and turn in the dog tags that weighed so heavily in his sodden jacket pocket. His voice a monotone, he recited every detail of the mission, every detail in the same emotionless monotone, even when recounting Kirby’s death.
While he talked Saunders paced the narrow room, a trail of smoke from the cigarette he’d lit following each step. Finished, he saluted the officer, turned sharply and headed for the door. He heard Hanley start to say something, but figured the Lieutenant had thought better of the idea and allowed Saunders to leave without comment. And then, like his men, Saunders sought out the comfort of a roof over his head and perhaps a bed up off the floor and a blanket and the welcome oblivion that only sleep might bring.
The small village looked decidedly unChristmaslike. The constricted streets had been trodden into a wet muddy morass. Only bits of snow clung to gabled rooftops and the relative nearness of German troops had kept most of the villagers, women and children, well hidden out of town.
Caje walked until he felt his legs would no longer hold his slender body, stopped in front of a tiny house and pushed in the door. It was as if it had just been left by its owner, dishes still on the table, a jacket draped across a chair, but the fire had long ago burned out in the pot-bellied stove and the house was alone.
Not bothering for a security check, the Cajun walked through the nearest door, judging it rightly to be a bedroom. The bedstead itself was plain, but the wood frame glowed from care and the quilt was clean and beautifully embroidered. Caje threw it back off the mattress and onto the chest at the foot of the bed. His helmet, belt and rifle were dropped to the floor and the PFC collapsed onto the bed nearly unconscious. But the relief of sleep wouldn’t come; blessed oblivion was out of reach. He thought of home, of home, family, Christmas, all pleasant things and still sleep eluded him.
He thought of the mission then and Kirby, one minute the BAR man’s wise-cracking (albeit whispered) observances alternated between driving everyone to distraction, the next daring the men not to laugh out loud, and finally Kirby lying pale and silent in the snow, Doc drawing the blanket up to cover the rifleman’s face. It was some time before Paul Lemay realized the pillow beneath his head was wet with tears and still longer before he was to wake and realize it was indeed Christmas and he’d slept the clock around.
On the rickety table next to the bed, someone had laid out his things neatly, and on his pack laid a shiny bit of something. Caje rubbed sleep from his eyes and reached out for it, holding it close, turning it over and over on his palm.
It was an angel cut from sheet metal, roughly done but to a child Lemay could see it would’ve been beautiful. Engraved on it, across the hem of the angel’s gown was ‘Billy’ in careful script.
No one would admit to being the one who’d left the angel there, though Caje thought it might have been Doc. Though he’d never admit to it publicly, the medic had a deeply spiritual side and the scout thought he had to have come from a religious family. His gentle nature and love of his fellow man just ran too deeply for his upbringing to have been otherwise.
Still and all no one would admit to the action and Caje never pressed it. For the longest time he kept Kirby’s angel in the breast pocket of his field shirt, close to his heart and whether it was circumstances, luck or something else altogether, Paul Lemay remained unharmed and safe.
It wasn’t until after V.E. Day that he felt any desire to part with the little token. Only then did he return it to Kirby’s mother in Chicago with apologies for it’s being returned so late…and with heartfelt thanks.