As Martin lit a cigarette in a replacement depot somewhere in western Pennsylvania, he wondered why the devil he’d joined up again. He’d known he could get hurt. Get hurt, hell-he could get killed. He’d done it anyhow. After a while, you forgot how bad it had been. That was the only thing he could think of. Women said the same thing happened when they had babies. If they’d truly remembered how bad labor was, none of them would have had more than one.
He couldn’t imagine a lonelier place than this depot. He was still part of the Army, of course, but he wasn’t exactly in it. He wasn’t part of a unit. A soldier by himself was hardly a soldier at all. Whatever outfit he joined now, he’d be the new guy for a while-till enough other men got killed and maimed and enough other replacements took over for them to make him an old-timer again.
The way things were going these days, it wouldn’t take long.
Men ranging in rank from private up to major sat on benches and folding chairs. Some of them smoked, some read newspapers or paperback adventures or mysteries, some just stared into space. Chester recognized that stare, because he’d worn it: the look of a man who’d seen too much of hell. You could help a buddy out when things got bad, or he could help you. Nobody here had a buddy. That was part of being in limbo, a bad part. You were stuck with yourself.
A fat technical sergeant who would never get any closer to the front than this called out three names, following each with a serial number. Two privates and a corporal shouldered the packs they’d had between their feet. They went up to the tech sergeant, signed some papers, and went out the door by which Chester had come in. They were fully part of the military machinery again.
Off in the distance, antiaircraft guns barked. Confederate dive bombers and strafing fighters were tearing up U.S. positions in these parts, softening them so C.S. barrels and foot soldiers could cut through them more easily. The boys in butternut had the bit between their teeth again, and they were running like hell.
Chester ground out the cigarette under his heel and lit another one. He didn’t have the wind he’d had the last time around, but who did? Smoking gave him something to do. It was as much fun as he was allowed to have here.
Out popped that tech sergeant again. Half a dozen privates got up and trudged off to whatever awaited them. Chester went on chain-smoking. Second lieutenants got killed in droves. First sergeants were a tougher, smarter-or at least more experienced-breed. Till one went down, he’d sit here twiddling his thumbs.
“Martin, Chester A.!” the tech sergeant yelled, and his pay number after it. The man also shouted several other names.
Speak of the devil, Martin thought. He rose, slung on his pack-which didn’t make his sore leg rejoice-and went over to the other noncom. The men with him were all kids-a PFC and five or six newly minted privates. The technical sergeant paid more attention to him than to the rest of them put together. Chester signed off on his paperwork, then went outside.
He’d wondered if his new outfit would have sent another senior sergeant to collect men from the repple-depple. Instead, a shavetail second lieutenant awaited him. That was good news and bad: good because it showed his new CO had enough sense to pick somebody who wasn’t needed in the field, bad because the youngster here was liable to know that and resent it.
By the sour expression on the lieutenant’s rather rabbity features, he knew it too well. “Hello, Sergeant. I’m Jack Husak,” he said. “You’re my new nursemaid, aren’t you?”
Yes, Chester thought as he saluted and gave his own name. But dealing with a superior with a chip on his shoulder was the last thing he wanted, so he said, “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, sir.”
“So am I,” Husak said. “I’ve been in charge of my platoon for a good six weeks now, and I’ve got it running solid-solid, all right.”
“I’m glad to hear it, sir.” Chester wondered what the youngster’s notions of solid were. He hadn’t got shot in six weeks, but what did that prove? Not much, as Chester knew too well.
Second Lieutenant Husak didn’t want to leave it alone. “Commanding a platoon is an important responsibility,” he said, which only proved he didn’t understand his place in the world. Lieutenants in charge of platoons had the company CO above them and a senior noncom below to fix things if they screwed up too badly. Doing all right meant you were training for a real role. Not doing all right probably meant getting wounded or killed, and certainly meant you’d never see another promotion. Husak went on, “What’s the biggest command you ever had, Sergeant?”
All right, sonny boy. You asked for it. “Sir, I led a company for a while in the last war, over in northern Virginia.”
“What?” Husak’s voice went high and shrill. By the way he jerked, he might have sat on a tack. “How could you do that?”
“Usual way, sir: all the officers were killed or wounded,” Martin answered stolidly. “This was 1917, sir, and we were almost as beaten down and beat up as the Confederates were. Eventually they got around to putting a lieutenant in the slot, so I got bumped back down again, but I had it for a month or so.”
“Oh.” Husak looked as if he wanted to call him a liar, but he didn’t have the nerve. Chester’s matter-of-fact account was impossible to contradict, especially for someone who’d been making messes in his drawers in 1917. The young lieutenant also looked as if he hated Chester and as if he was scared to death of him, both at once. He jerked a thumb towards a waiting truck. “Hop in. We’ll see how you do in the war we’ve got now.”
“Yes, sir.” As Chester did, he called himself seventeen different kinds of idiot. For this sour little punk he’d walked away from his wife, his son, and a pretty damn good slot in the construction business? What had those bastards at the recruiting station put in his coffee? Whatever it was, they should have used it against the Confederates instead. It would have made them quit without a fight.
The other replacements got in after him. Husak did, too. He spent a lot less time on them than he had on Chester. The PFC–Chester thought his name was Fitzpatrick, though he looked more Italian than Irish-sent him a sympathetic look, but with the lieutenant in the truck with them that was all he could do.
“Move out,” Husak called to the driver.
“Yes, sir.” The man fired up the engine, put the truck in gear, and started west. Chester sighed softly. Back to the war, dammit, he thought.
Instead, the war came to him, and within ten minutes. The truck, which had been rumbling along at a good clip, slowed and then stopped. The driver leaned on his horn. Lieutenant Husak went up to the little window that separated the rear compartment from the driver’s and shouted, “What the hell?”
“Refugees.” The driver’s answer was equally laconic.
“Jesus Christ!” Husak clapped a hand to his forehead.
A few seconds later, Martin, who could only see where he’d been, not where he was going, got a look out the back of the truck at the detritus of war. By the time he’d got to Virginia, all the civilians who’d wanted to leave the combat zone were long gone. Here, a woman stared at him out of eyes as empty and exhausted as those of an overworked draft animal. Sweat plastered her hair to her head; her freckled skin was badly sunburned. She had a knapsack on her back and a crude harness rigged from bed sheets on her chest that let her carry a howling toddler there. A little girl of four or five clung to one hand, a boy a year or two older to the other.
Beside her stood a man in a battered straw hat pushing a wheelbarrow that held whatever he’d been able to distill of his life. He hadn’t shaved for a week or so. His checked shirt was filthy, his dungarees were out at the knees, and his shoes out at the toes. He looked as weary and as beaten as the woman.