by
Susan Balnek-Ballard
Oppressive heat,
the buzzing of flies, the thick cloying odor of blood, the combined stench
of death pressed him
down into the earth. He could barely draw a breath of the fetid air
into his
lungs and when he
did, the taste of it in his mouth made him gag.
In the field
where he lay, all around were the dead - not the dead and dying - only
the
dead. There was no
breeze to carry sound. If there had been, it would’ve brought to
him no
sounds of life - no
moans, no cries of distress, no pleadings for mother. He was completely
and
utterly alone.
That was more frightening than battle, more terrifying than a sleeping
nightmare.
Being alone had always
been Paul Lemay’s greatest dread. It was now his reality.
Memories of
the aloneness flooded the Cajun. Smells returned, bringing the strongest
memories, the thick
honeyed scent of wisteria, the reek of rotting vegetation mingled with
the
scent of the air itself,
damp and wet, all served to heighten the process of remembering the terror
of a child, a small
thin boy of 5 with dark straight hair and eyes the color of transparent
amber.
Sound memories
followed; the mournful calling of doves, the deep resonant croaking of
the bull frogs; the
cacophony of the spring peepers; and the most frightening of all to a child,
the
mysterious hooing
of the owls readying for their nightly forage deep into the bayou.
In the Cajun
mix of religion and
superstition, the owl was the harbinger of death. To a child left
alone in the
night-time shadowy
realm of the swamp by older boys playing hide and seek - “You hide, Paulie,
and we’ll find you!”
(Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, snicker), then running off and forgetting the
lonesome little boy,
not remembering him until well after dark when Paul’s anxious parents went
door to door searching
for the child.
By dawn, Paul
was shivering in damp clammy clothes; hunger pangs cramping his empty
belly; the horror
of what lay hidden in the gloom of cypress and mangrove trees with their
wigs of
hanging Spanish moss
looking all the world like huge witches, with tangled black hair in manic
disarray, arms outstretched
to grab and squeeze the life from one small child. Ultimate horror
went beyond what imagination
could bring, the knowledge that there WERE things in the bayou
that could rend or
kill - cougars, alligators, cotton mouth water moccasins. By the
time Paul was
found, he was in a
frenzy of terror. He didn’t speak for two days. When he did
finally talk again,
he never once mentioned
the experience in the swamp. He blotted it from his mind...until
now.
Now he was alone
again and this terror returned fully and Caje was again a lonely,
frightened child in
a world full of horrors - this time horrors he HAD seen and needed no help
to
imagine.
A wail of terror
so profound, so heartwrenchingly eerie it brought tears to the woman’s
eyes, caught her and
her companions totally unaware. They exchanged surprised looks.
This
small group of maquis
had just criss-crossed the battlefield, checking for survivors. Germans
they
put out of their misery.
Americans they did their best to help. Many GI lives had been saved
this
way, men secreted
away by the underground, given medical attention and returned to the allies.
The maquis listened,
intent on locating the soldier whose despondent cry had brought
goosebumps to even
these hardened veterans.
It was no easy
task. Going through the bodies had been difficult the first time.
The
woman thought maybe
she had been so anxious to get the job finished she had not checked each
man carefully enough.
But there was only so much you could take - so much you could see.
Too
many torn bloody young
men - too much agony on frozen lifeless faces. She had been negligent,
thinking only of hurrying
through so she could be spared even one more moment of emotional
carnage. To
be honest, she hurt deeply, way down beneath blood and bone and heart.
She hurt
to her soul.
When the terrified wail came again, it was all she could do not to join
in because the
grief she felt was
such kindred grief.
The effort of
releasing his pent up despair exhausted Caje. He closed his eyes
against the
gloom of the advancing
twilight and to block out the sight of his dead comrades. What he
couldn’t see, perhaps
he could imagine, the men alive, moving about, coming to his aid.
He so
desperately wanted
that, so terribly needed it, that his mind began playing tricks.
Behind the
closed eyelids, in
his secret place, he thought he felt the presence of someone nearby - someone
living, breathing,
moving. He was gladdened by it, even if it was only his imagination.
He reveled
in it and dared not
open his eyes. The illusion would be spoiled! He refused to
open them even
when he heard the
sounds of movement, even when the negligible weight of a hand lay against
his
chest, then moved
to lift the dog tags at his throat. Only when the soft voice called
him by name,
did he dare open his
eyes. He saw more an outline of a person than any definite features.
The
twilight had deepened
considerably but the figure was small, the voice female and heavily French
accented. Other
outlines appeared and Caje was lifted and carried away from the field.
Relief
and physical pain
mingled and he passed out.
He came to consciousness
slowly and wished he hadn’t. Someone was working over him,
checking for wounds
and injuries, going for speed and not delicacy. The pain was indescribable.
His jacket,
wool shirt and undershirt had been cut off. One bullet wound was
plainly
visible in the right
upper side of his chest. It still bled, hours after it had been inflicted.
It was
carefully examined
and Caje was rolled onto his side and checked for an exit wound.
There was
none. The bullet
remained inside.
There was much
muted conversation, some of it Caje understood, the rest was gibberish,
confused and run together
by a brain fogged by exhaustion and pain.
The bullet wound
was quickly bandaged. A face came down close to the Pfc.’s.
It
wavered, seemed to
disappear behind a misty haze only to re-appear. It took all of Caje’s
concentration to focus
on it. The voice coming from the mist was the same voice he remembered
from the battlefield,
the woman’s voice, soft and very very French.
“The bullet...we
can’t remove...but the doctor, he comes later. You must sleep.
You are
safe here.”
Lemay reached
a hand up towards the voice. It shook from weakness, was dirty and
blood streaked.
The woman took it in hers, squeezing the shaking fingers, pressing them
together. Slowly
they closed around hers. The trembling lessened.
“Don’t leave
me alone,” the Pfc. pleaded, his amber eyes ringed with fatigue, bloodshot
from exhaustion, the
face pinched from pain. Beneath the dirt and sweat and blood, the
woman
noticed the soldier
was probably much younger than he looked. She was more surprised
however, that his
first words to her had been in French.
She was used
to seeing beneath the outer surfaces. She’d been with the maquis
three
years now. It
was all she could remember. Before that...there was nothing.
For Caje it
was nearly the same. He’d only been on the front lines for three
months, but it
seemed all there was
now consisted of living day to day, fatigue so great you would’ve sold
your
soul for a few hours
of sleep, hunger, pain, loss and death. But his purgatory was that
he did
remember life before
war. He remembered peace, quiet evenings on a porch swing, Benny
Goodman’s band, the
scent of a woman. He remembered and at times like this, it tore him
to
pieces because he
thought, he truly believed he wouldn’t live to experience it all again.
Tears
came to his eyes,
welled over, streaked down his cheeks. Silent tears.
Tenderly, the
woman wiped at them with what was left of a once delicate handkerchief
she
pulled from inside
her jacket pocket. The once exquisitely handmade lace was ragged,
a shred of
gossamer memories
of a vanished life.
“Don’t leave
me,” Lemay whispered again. “Please.”
She shook her
head in the negative. “I won’t leave,” she promised.
Caje was being
kept in the cellar of a convent. More precisely, it was a sub-cellar.
The
entire place was catacombed
with hallways, tiny rooms known as cells and beneath those, tunnels
and more tunnels -
a labyrinth. And although he wasn’t aware of it, Caje was not alone.
There
were four other allied
soldiers in the room with him, all wounded. In the night, one died,
calling
not for his mother,
but for God. The other three had been in the care of the maquis for
several
days.
Towards morning,
the doctor came, delayed by heavy kraut activity in the area. Caje
wasn’t asleep when
the tiny bearded man knelt at the pallet upon which he lay. He’d
been
plagued by thirst,
the beginnings of a fever and the restlessness that accompanied the rise
in
temperature.
A kerosene lamp
was held close and the doctor removed bandaging over the Pfc.’s
wound. The pain
was intense and so far all that had been done was a cursory examination.
Paul
bit his lip and tried
to be still, but try as he might, his body twisted away from the physician’s
touch. Strong
hands held him down and still and the faces of the men who held him were
not
without great pity.
There was no
morphine and at the first touch of the cold probe into the wound, Caje
fainted. It
was the best thing that could’ve happened to all concerned.
“He’s gone,
you say? Just not there?” Lieutenant Hanley was not happy with
the news.
Saunders and Kirby
had gone back to the scene of battle for one purpose only - to locate the
missing scout.
They fully expected to find his body among all the others. Instead
they found only
his beret.
“Yes, Sir, gone...and
Lieutenant...”Saunders paused uncomfortably. “There was a lot of
blood, but Caje never
walked out of there. All that blood...he couldn’t have.”
The lieutenant
didn’t know what he felt - relief, worry, despair? Caje wasn’t dead.
At
least he wasn’t only
hours ago...worry, most certainly that. Blood, a lot of it, Saunders
had said.
Was Caje a captive
of the Germans or wounded but safe in some French farm house?
There wasn’t
time to pursue the question further. Orders were to rendezvous with
Company by 0800 tomorrow
at St. Onge. Hanley ground out the butt of his cigarette beneath
his
boot. His heart
was heavy. His spirit was as low as it had ever been. The officer
leaned back in
the broken down chair
and closed his eyes. Images flashed past, like moving pictures on
a screen,
faces of the men he’d
lost. God how it hurt to lose each and every one of them. It
was worse,
much worse when you
lost one who had become a friend.
Hanley shook
off the feelings of melancholy with superhuman effort. There was
so much
work to be done still
and there was hope. Caje could still very well be alive. Yes,
there was hope
- at least and always
that.
“The water pipes
are broken from heavy shelling. We have to carry in the water in
buckets. It’s
hard sneaking past the Bosch!” The young maquis’ attempts at explaining
why the
water supply to the
convent had been cut off meant little to her. All that was important
was that
the wounded men in
her care suffered as little as possible and in the past 36 hours, they
had
suffered terribly.
The French speaking PFC suffered the most. His fever had continued
to rise as
his body fought to
heal itself. He cried for water, begged for it. When he had
a lucid moment and
she explained to him
why there was no none, the hurt expression in his feverish eyes broke down
her determination
to remain strong and stoic. She began to cry. She turned her
face from him, to
hide the tears.
But she didn’t leave his side.
When Caje next
asked for a drink, he was given water, one sip at a time and as much as
he
needed. He drifted
off into a feverish sleep, his hot face cooled by a bit of cloth dipped
in the
precious fluid.
His dreams were filled with visions of home, the first such vivid images
in a long
time. Hours
later, his fever began to break.
Artillery rocked
the aged building to its foundations, sending masonry dust and dirt sifting
down to blanket those
hiding in the lowest levels.
The maquis moved
the wounded back to the farthest, darkest cover of the room, closest to
the protection of
the imposing stone foundations. Caje stood on unsteady legs, nearly
falling to
his knees as the vertigo
and weakness gripped him. He propped himself up against her, not
truly
seeing her in the
dimness.
“Give me a gun...give
me your .45.” He tried to lend authority to his voice, be a soldier
again. The woman
was not one to obey simply because he ordered it so. She was not
a man, but
was more a soldier
than many the Cajun had served with. As much as he might try to disguise
the
facts, they were facts
nevertheless. He was weak and sick and in no condition to even be
on his
feet, let alone handle
a weapon.
The Germans
were in rapid retreat, the Americans snarling and snapping at their heels.
It
was American artillery
they’d been feeling and hearing, but the Germans were running right over
this bit of France
and right over its people. Nothing and no one would stand in their
way.
Already machine guns
and small arms fire could be heard, though muffled in the subterranean
sanctuary.
“Give me your
.45,” Lemay pressed again. The small arms fire seemed nearer - clearer.
Finally, she nodded
in the near darkness, a gesture he couldn’t see, before she passed the
loaded
automatic into his
hand. She helped him maneuver over to where the other wounded GIs
waited.
With difficulty,
Caje pulled the weapon’s slide back and jacked a round into the chamber.
His eyes never left
the doorway with its soft glow of distant light. Alone at the open
door stood
the woman. It
was only at this moment that Caje realized he’d never even asked for her
name.
From St. Onge,
King Two was assigned to escort a pair of ambulances to a convent 10
miles away where a
small group of wounded GIs would be turned over to them via the French
underground.
The mood of the men remained somber and tempers were short. Caje
was listed as
MIA and the men were
certain, nearly to a man, that classification would soon be changed to
KIA, all the men except
Littlejohn, who remained an optimist. As much as the others all wished
it, prayed it to be
so, they thought the big man was wrong. Naturally it was Kirby, BAR
man
without equal and
big mouth to the extreme, who made the mistake of calling the huge private
“a
dumb ass farm boy
without the sense he was born with! Caje is dead, goddamn it!
Dead and no
use you makin’ it
worse by keepin’ some fairytale alive!”
For his hot-headed
outburst, the slender rifleman was lifted bodily up by his jacket and
slammed repeatedly
into a crumbling stone wall.
Sergeant Saunders
broke up the one sided fight before Littlejohn had a chance to actually
do too much physical
harm to the mouthy Irishman. All Saunders said was “Saddle up, we’ve
got
a job to do.”
Within the hour,
they were riding shotgun on the ambulances and bringing up the rear in
a
jeep.
The closer the
small caravan got to its destination, the more destruction there seemed
to
be. Artillery
had flattened buildings and trees indiscriminately. None of the men
gave much
thought to the destruction.
It had been friendly fire after all.
There appeared
to be a mop up in progress - lots of dead krauts and many prisoners.
The convent
itself was intact for the most part, but seemed deserted as the squad and
the
medics pulled up in
front and parked their vehicles. Hanley sent the squad out for a
recon while
the medics began to
unload their equipment.
A sweep of the
building itself revealed a goodly number of dead Germans, 10 to 12 nuns,
also dead, and a small
number of French civilians - most likely the maquis the squad had been
sent
to rendezvous with.
It was Saunders
who discovered the sub-basement. What he’d already seen in this house
of God had angered,
saddened and disgusted the battle weary sergeant. Saunders hadn’t
been
raised religiously,
like say Caje had been. He only remembered going to church before
his father
had died; to services
and even to Sunday school. But after his father’s death, his mother
lost
interest in church
altogether and his trips there had been infrequent at best. He still
believed in
God; but it was days
like this one that sorely tested that belief.
To add to Saunders
anger and disgust this place gave him the creeps. The hairs on the
back of his neck stood
on end. It was dark, damp and musty and his flashlight’s meager light
did
little to dispel the
gloom. Finding a lantern hanging on a wall hook, Saunders lit it
and pocketed
his flashlight; better,
but not by much.
The krauts had
obviously found this place. Two of them lay dead in the long narrow
corridor, another
in one room along with a French civilian. Stepping over the bodies
in the
corridor, Saunders
continued on, with the knowledge that anyone could be hiding in this dismal
place.
More bodies,
stored supplies and after what seemed an eternity, Saunders came to the
last
room. He wanted
to breathe a sigh of relief, but the feelings he had encountered when he
first
entered the sub-basement
hadn’t left him. If anything, they made him more careful, more aware
of the danger of his
situation.
Outside the
final room, Saunders set aside the bulky lantern and retrieved the flashlight
from his jacket.
He clicked it on and with his body hidden from sight extended only his
arm
partially into the
room, panning the flash around, peering in cautiously, Thompson ready.
He heard something!
A scraping sound, the sound of a breath taken, a faint click. If
it
hadn’t been for the
fact that he’d seen the presence of civilians, Saunders would’ve lobbed
in a
grenade and been done
with it, but he wouldn’t take the chance.
“Come out with
your hands up,” Saunders commanded, knowing he sounded like an actor
in some old western
movie. “Come out now!” he demanded, discarding the flashlight and
bringing up the Thompson.
“We can’t.
We’re all wounded,” replied a voice the sergeant never believed he’d hear
again. Seconds
slipped by, then “Sarge?”
Paul Lemay was
beyond shock. He hadn’t expected the voice of the person outside
the
door to be an American
let alone Sergeant Saunders’. The Cajun fully expected them all to
die
here as the woman
had done. He had fully expected to die in defense of the wounded
who
couldn’t protect themselves.
Wasn’t it only moments earlier that several German soldiers had
peppered the room
with gunfire? Only moments since she had killed the kraut who in
turn had
caused her own death?
Moments or hours?
Caje slumped
over, his pistol empty, his heart equally so. The woman’s head and
shoulders rested across
his legs. She had failed to keep her promise to him. She had
left him, but
it took death to make
her.
Copyright May 1999,
Susan Balnek-Ballard. All rights reserved.