Stempel steeled himself for his exit into the open. He and the others slept in two layers: briefs and T-shirt underneath, thermal underwear on top. They also wore sock liners, socks and boots, plus glove liners and a knit cap. The only time Stempel took off his boots was to wash his white and wrinkled feet. Twice a week, like clockwork. He unzipped the bag. A freezing gush of cold air followed. Stempel rushed to climb out of the bag. He worked quickly to don his cold-weather gear. He quickly lost the accumulated body heat from four precious hours of sleep.
At the door men lined up with their injuries. Each requested excused duty from the sergeant. First in line was a man showing off his hand. Stempel remembered him from the night before. He’d suffered a terrible ‘cold burn’ when he’d touched the barrel of a rifle with bare hands. He’d mistakenly thought it was his. But the cold-soaked weapon had just been brought inside after a night in the open trenches. He’d screamed. The burn looked just like the burn from a stove.
When you worked on cold metal, you bummed cotton ‘anticontact’ gloves from artillerymen. You never touched metal that had been outside in the elements. The sergeant excused the soldier from duty.
Stempel hefted his M-16 and joined the line at the bunker’s exit. The opening was covered only by two layers of tarpaulin.
It blocked the wind from outside and masked the dim light from within. The tarps did not, however, hold in the paltry heat from the chemical burners. They couldn’t seal the bunker off. Eight guys in a maintenance platoon had been found dead the week before. They’d closed off their bunker during a blizzard. The fumes had killed them in their sleep.
‘Whatta ya say, sergeant?’ someone up ahead asked plaintively.
‘I’d say I’ve cut myself shavin’ worse,’ he replied.
‘It’s shrapnel!’ exploded the outraged soldier. ‘I should get a Goddamn Purple Heart and a trip home! All I’m askin’ is light duty for a week or so.’ The platoon sergeant laughed. The man was ushered out. Stempel stepped up to the platoon sergeant when it was his turn. The NCO tugged roughly at Stempel’s parka. ‘Feel loose in the armpits?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sergeant,’ Stempel replied.
The platoon sergeant knelt. ‘Loosen these Goddamn drawstrings, son!’ He jerked at the cord around Stempel’s thighs. ‘You wanta end up rattlin’ a cup on a streetcomer? Gotta keep yer blood flowin’. Blood is warmth, understand?’ He handed Stempel a Snickers bar and turned to the next man in line.
Stempel took the candy bar through the two tarps at the entrance. Both sheets were frozen as solid as plywood. It actually felt good to be outside. The heavy gear had grown too warm inside the sleeping bunker. Plus the air outside was always fresher. Pausing in the slit trench, Stempel pulled down his face mask and tore the end of the Snickers’ wrapper with his teeth. High-energy food for cold weather, Stempel thought as he devoured the candy before it froze. Snickers for breakfast. Mom would be appalled.
With the last chewy bites still in his mouth, Stempel reached the main trench line. His squad was loosening the slings on their rifles and hanging the weapons over their shoulders and heads. Without asking, Stempel did the same. They were going out — probably to raise the wire above the latest depths of snowfall.
When he saw the trash bags, Stempel froze stock still. Every third man got one. Trash bags!
Stempel counted as the squad leader neared, A bag was handed to a man just down the wall. Then one, two… Shit! The sergeant handed Stempel a trash bag. Shit!
Stempel climbed over the front lip of the trench wall. The new sun cast an anemic, flat light. Thick mists limited visibility. The first men from the neighboring platoon were returning in pairs — the man in front carrying the head and shoulders, the man in back the feet. Stretched out in between and hard as a board was a dead Chinese soldier.
‘We oughta burn the bastards for firewood,’ the tall Arkansan next to Stempel said.
‘Smell too bad,’ a wiry kid from Detroit replied. Both men — one white, one black — looked like twins inside their mound of thick clothing.
‘Why don’t we just leave ’em out there, for Christ’s sake?’ asked the boy they called Jumpy. Stempel had never in his life seen anyone so nervous. The mere presence of the kid had a calming effect on Stempel. Jumpy proved to him again and again there was at least someone more scared than he was.
‘When the thaw came, they’d rot,’ someone suggested.
‘Naw, it’s on account of wolves,’ came another view. ‘They’d come lookin’ for food.’ He loosed a laugh. ‘That’s just what we need on trench duty. To have to fight fuckin’ wolves every fuckin’ night!’
‘Snow drifts!’ they all heard from behind. They slowed up to admit their squad leader — a sergeant at age twenty-one. ‘All them bodies out there would gather snow. The drifts would fuck up our firing lanes and give the Chinks cover.’
They passed men probing with long poles. They searched for Chinese snow tunnels. Harold’s squad found the first bodies lying in ranks. They’d been mowed down in rows when machine-guns opened up. Ribbons of grayish bowels were strung but for yards. Contorted bodies lay in pools of crimson ice. Other blood still steamed. It had come from men who’d died more recently. They never found anyone alive. The worst were the men who’d been missed for days. They swelled up from decomposition. If you stepped on them, they’d let loose a shout as gases rushed passed their vocal cords.
The dead were frozen forever in the most grotesque and ridiculous of poses. It reminded Stempel of an exhibit on Pompeii to which his parents had taken him as a child. He imagined them being buried in the permafrost and unearthed thousands of years later. Scientists would study their remains and figure out how they had lived and how they had died.
‘This one got hit so hard both eyeballs popped out,’ a squadmate commented. He had a dozen automatic rifles slung over his shoulder. Some were American M-16s. Some were from Stempel’s Lost Battalion, he felt sure. ‘He’s all yours, Stemp,’ he said with a laugh. All he had to police up were weapons.
Stempel began to search for his bounty. Men grunted under the strain of their frozen loads. ‘Here ya go, Stemp!’ another of his squadmates shouted. He pointed at a brown crater before picking up a severed torso. He hauled the light cargo off unaided. Stempel went to the edge of the hole which was rapidly filling with fluffy snow. Blood and viscera were splattered everywhere. Bits and pieces of humans. A frozen hand — its index finger wrapped around an imaginary trigger. He tossed it into the trash bag.
In his mind, he was a scientist — an archeologist — a long, long time in the future.
‘Thank you, Mr President, for agreeing to meet with us,’ the anchorman said. CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN — the anchors were almost invisible in the glare of the television lights. A film of perspiration had formed on Gordon’s forehead and neck. He didn’t want to mop his brow. The dreadful image of a wounded and weak chief executive would be beamed into every set.
Gordon lay in bed wearing a royal blue robe. A gold Presidential seal adorned his left breast pocket. The tubes, wires and other medical paraphernalia had been moved away from the cameras’ cruel, unblinking stare. All of the details of the interview had been thoroughly negotiated. The number of cameras. Their positioning. Which could zoom in for close-ups. The format of the questioning. They had even obtained the networks’ agreement not to edit the interview or to lead into it with any editorialization about the war.