Emotions never to be experienced otherwise in life govern the combat soldier. Bat's ran strong, wholly in control of him. He was relieved not to be first across the bridge, but he was torn with anger that other platoons were rushing forward while his stood and stared. From the corner of his eye he saw Captain Grimes returning to give the order. He would not wait.
"Go, for Christ sake! What're we waitin' for? Move! Move! Move!"
He ran ahead of his platoon. He didn't have to glance back to see if they were following him. His men, some of them old enough to be his father, respected him or were afraid of him. They wouldn't let him go across alone. They dreaded what he would do to a man who proved afraid to follow him.
Maybe they dreaded more what their fellow soldiers would think of them.
Bat ran forward. He jumped over the bodies of Americans who had fallen to defensive fire, then over bodies of Germans caught in the sudden onslaught. Tanks on the river highway had zeroed in on the defense towers at the eastern end of the bridge. The white smoke and red fire of phosphorous shells enveloped the entire east end of the bridge. He could hear the agonized screams of German soldiers with phosphorus burning on their skin.
Slugs ricocheted off the steel around him. Ahead he saw a man fall. Drizzle and sweat in his eyes obscured his vision. The air was chilly, but he sweated nevertheless. Time, too, was obscure. He ran for less than a minute, but it seemed as if he were running for ten minutes. His eyes were dimmed, but he saw the situation as if it were engraved on a bright crystal. The danger was the explosive charges under the bridge. "Hey, Mac! Hey, Mac!"
The man was yelling at him. A man over the side. "Hey, Mac! Look! See the cable? Can you hit it?" Bat saw what the man was yelling about: a cable about half the thickness of a man's wrist, running from somewhere to the east and under the bridge — to an explosive charge, without any doubt at all.
"Shoot the son of a bitch! Break that son of a bitch!" Bat nodded. The carbine he was carrying was not the war's most accurate weapon, but he braced himself on the bridge rail and took aim. His first shot missed. A little high. He adjusted. His second slug severed the cable. It hung in shreds. He fired again. And again. The two ends separated and fell apart. "Hey, Mac —"
He had stood still too long. It made him a target. He felt the shock in a lower right rib, then the burning pain. He was aware of nothing after he felt Sergeant Amory dragging him into the shelter of a steel girder.
3
In that, on the 7th day of March 1945, First Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista, while leading his platoon across the Ludendorff Bridge in the face of heavy enemy fire in the best practice of infantry leadership, did stop and, exposing himself as a target, did by accurate fire from his weapon break an electric cable that connected heavy explosive charges to the enemy's source of electric power, thereby preventing detonation of such charges, but subjecting Lieutenant Batista to severe and life-threatening wounds; and
In that First Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista did conduct himself in the face of an armed enemy with extraordinary courage and gallantry in the finest tradition of the Armed Services of the United States,
NOW THEREFORE it is ordered that Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista be awarded and he hereby is awarded THE DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS.
He was also promoted to captain. He was hospitalized first in Antwerp and then in Paris, finally at Walter Reed in Washington. He was at home for Christmas, at the hacienda outside Cordoba.
While he was away his grandfather had died. The hacienda seemed empty without him. Virgilio Escalante now invited him to share cigars and brandy after dinner. He took him into the town and treated him to the ministrations of the finest young puta Cordoba could offer. Bat accepted the gift. He returned to see the girl several times. She became a teacher for him.
At the end of his leave he went back to Walter Reed Hospital. The war was over, and he would be discharged as soon as the hospital granted him its final release. He took some time to inquire of Corporal Prizio. The young man had survived and was at home on a farm not far from Watkins Glen. He inquired of Jerry Rabin and learned that Ensign Jerome Rabin had been killed in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Captain — now Major — Grimes was in Japan, a professional soldier staying in the army. Sergeant Dave Amory was at home in Boston.
Bat applied to Harvard, to return and begin the rest of his education in the fall term of 1946.
The fall term began six months later. He had nothing to do for six months. He bought a car: a 1938 Cadillac. He drove up to Watkins Glen and visited Corporal Prizio. After that he drove on to Cambridge and began to look for a place to live. The returning GIs did not want to live in college dorms, and he didn't either. He began to look for an apartment.
He remembered that Sergeant Dave Amory lived in Boston. He called him, and they met for beer and sandwiches at a Cambridge pub.
He didn't raise the subject immediately, but after they'd finished a beer Bat said to Dave, "You saved my life."
"I did like hell," said Dave. "You were down. They wouldn't have wasted ammunition on you."
"Well then, they might have wasted it on you, while you exposed your ass running out there to get me."
Dave shook his head. "I had to run someplace. The other option was run on across the bridge, toward where the firing was hotter. Taking a minute to drag you behind a girder may have saved my life."
Dave Amory was as tall as Bat, and he was a great deal bulkier. His shoulders were broader than Bat's, his body was more solid, and his arms and legs were thicker. His broad, long-jawed face was more often solemn than jocular, but he had a submerged sense of humor that emerged in eccentric comments on just about anything. He was two years older than Bat and would begin his senior year in the fall. After that he would go to law school.
"What are you doing this summer, Dave?"
"Nothing. I'm drawing my fifty-two twenty. Sit around the VFW hall and soak up beer. I figure I'm entitled to a little time off before I pick myself up again."
Bat frowned at him. He lifted his chin. "You bored?" he asked.
Dave tipped his head to one side and drew one corner of his lower lip back between his teeth. He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Yeah, I guess I am. You know what it is."
"I sure do. It was a fuckin' nightmare, Dave, but nothing ever gets a man's juices flowing as strong. I doubt anything ever will. We have to admit it. God grant we never find anything again in our lives that — Well, it sure as hell wasn't boring. I wonder if everything for the rest of our lives will be boring ... by comparison."
"Are you absolutely sure you want to come back to Harvard?" Dave asked.
"No. But I've got to do something, and I don't know what else to do. Besides ... I don't want to disappoint my mother."
Dave chuckled. "As good a reason as any," he said. "What are you, Lieutenant? Twenty-one?"
"Not quite, but please don't call me Lieutenant."
"What you doing about boredom?" Dave asked. "Gettin' laid any?"
"When I was at home last winter, my stepfather set me up with a pretty little whore. I had a wonderful time with her, but —" He shrugged.
Dave nodded.
"When I was here in '42 and '43, my freshman roommate couldn't think of anything but what he called getting his wick dipped. He said he didn't want to die a virgin. Well, he ... didn't. He died, but he wasn't a virgin. God, what enthusiasm we had for it! My first. It wasn't very good, I know now, but —"