Battle Cry - Leon Uris [158]
As the winter bore in there was that warm glow in the club that comes with snoozing in an easy chair by the fire. It helped us forget that we were lonely men. Some nights, though, just before taps, the phonograph would spin some song about home, and the drinking and the talking would stop and the deathly still would hit us. I could see the eyes of my boys, hungry for home, lousy blue and wanting the thing which seemed further and further away with each passing day. They were quiet as the notes and the words knifed in them. Quiet, as they fought off a lump in their throats.
Then, when the field music blew recall, we’d file slowly from the club, through the rain, over the catwalk and into the cold dark tent to get some sleep. Big hike tomorrow.
Every dry day we were in the field and on many of the rainy ones, too. One evening Lighttower and Levin were called to the Special Weapons Company for a pre-dawn field problem. They were interested in the way we worked our walkie-talkies. They were assigned to help repel the mock invasion by the First Battalion near the ocean.
The pair put awkward ponchos on over the radios in the still dark, cold and wet morning and hiked to the weapons area at the far end of the camp.
All morning they sat in water-filled foxholes as a chilling wind swept the hills where the 37 mms were set up to repel the invasion. They were ordered to secure and retreat to another defensive position.
“Man, I’m sure one glad redskin that this problem is over,” the Indian said, shaking. “I’ll get the bug for sure.”
“It ain’t over, Lighttower. We’re supposed to fall back.”
“I can see you ain’t been on many of these problems.”
“What you mean?”
“See that hill?”
“Yeah.”
“In about five minutes the First Battalion will be charging over it.”
“So?”
“So throw up your hands and surrender and you’re a prisoner so they’ll send you back to camp.”
“But we ain’t supposed to do that.”
“Look, Levin, my feet are soaked. I’m getting a chill. If you want to run around the hills all day that’s your business. I’m getting captured.”
“Aw, I’d better not.”
“I won’t say nothing.”
“I’d better not anyhow.”
As the officer finally gave the retreat signal, Levin arose and almost toppled over. He had been sitting in the freezing water for nearly three hours without movement. Lighttower wheeled and threw up his hands. “I quit, prisoner.” A corporal put a POW band on his arm and he limped through the slush back to camp.
Levin came in four hours later. He threw off his soaked gear, unlaced his shoes, pulled off the saturated socks. His feet were icy and numbed. He held them up near the hot fire going in the stove. He sighed as a tingle of feeling came back to them.
I walked into the tent…. “Hey, Levin, what in the hell you doing?”
“Warming my feet, Mac. They’re nearly froze off.”
“You crazy bastard, get them away from that fire!”
“Why?”
“You’ll get frostbite!”
He flopped back exhausted on his cot, drying himself. Then he sprang up and scratched his feet. “They itch!” he screamed and dug his fingers into the flesh. He scratched till tears ran down his cheeks. I helped him into his shoes and walked him to sick bay. He was in agony, begging the corpsmen to scratch them. They stood about dumbfounded; finally Pedro dashed off to get Doc Kyser. “They itch, they itch!” he cried over and over.
Kyser, irate from being pulled away from a poker game, stormed into the aid shack.