Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [27]
“Maggots. What else do you observe?” asked Younger.
“The wound is clean,” she said.
“Identical wounds, inflicted at the same time on the same man by the same causes. Yet one has healed, while the other has festered. And the wound that has healed has been treated only with maggots. It’s not my idea. Men in the field have been using them for years. And this old buzzard, knowing how important his knees are to science, goes and gets himself shot in the stomach. No sense of duty whatever.”
Younger noticed that the little boy had silently taken up a position beside the girl, eyeing raptly Corporal Dubeney’s maggoty knee.
“My brother,” she said to Younger. “His name is Luc.”
The boy had dirty blond hair, quite unlike his sister’s, unkempt, and for a boy quite a lot of it, down to his shoulders. His skin was much less white than hers—or perhaps simply much dirtier—but his brown eyes shared a similar severity, equally intelligent but more watchful than the girl’s, less distracted. Younger had the feeling the boy saw everything. “And how old are you, young man?” he asked.
The boy neither looked at Younger nor answered.
“Luc, you are very poorly mannered,” said the girl. “He doesn’t like to speak. So you are the one.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Younger.
“The men have been telling stories of an American doctor who refuses to leave the front lines. Who treats wounded men on the field.”
“I’m not treating them. I’m conducting experiments on them.”
“And who fights, they say.”
“Rubbish.”
“Like the devil,” said Dubeney.
The boy looked up at Younger with interest.
“Can’t feel a thing, eh?” said Younger to Dubeney, repositioning his knife and prompting a howl from the old corporal.
Hours later, under the stars, they repacked the girl’s truck. She was surprisingly strong for her size. An explosion shook the earth gently beneath them, its firestorm erupting far away, deep in the woods. “You’re not afraid?” asked Younger.
“Of the war?”
“Of being alone with a stranger.”
“No,” she said.
“You’re trusting.”
“I never trust men,” she answered. “That’s why I’m not afraid of them.”
“Sound policy,” said Younger. He looked up at the twinkling canopy above. “I saw something today I’ll never forget. An American marine sergeant was ordering his platoon out of a trench. They were outgunned, out-manned, but the sergeant decided to attack. His marines were too afraid to come out. The sergeant said to them—well, it involves a term that shouldn’t be used in polite company. Shall I say it?”
“Are you joking?” asked Colette.
“The sergeant yelled, ‘Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?’ His men came out. It was a bloodbath.”
“Did he live, the sergeant?”
“Yes, he did.”
A sound like a banshee’s scream was followed by another explosion. This time the blast was closer. The ground shook, and they could see fires burning perhaps a thousand yards away.
“You should get out,” said Younger. “Tonight. If the Germans break through, they’ll be here before morning. They may do worse to a French girl than your soldiers did.”
She said nothing. Younger reshouldered his gear and set off for the woods again—in the direction of the explosions.
It was July, 1918, before he saw her again. Germany had commenced a series of ferocious offensives in France, determined to seize victory before the United States could fully mobilize. Hundreds of thousands of seasoned German troops were pouring in from the east, where Russia’s new Bolshevik rulers had surrendered, releasing the Kaiser’s armies from the Eastern Front. By the end of May, Germany had pressed the French forces back to the Marne, only fifty miles from Paris.
But there, at Belleau, at Vaux, at Château-Thierry, Americans blocked the German advance, charging to their deaths with an abandon unseen in Allied troops since 1914. United States newspapers trumpeted the Yankee victories, wildly exaggerating their importance. The question was whether the new line would hold.
For forty days, the two sides threw wave after wave of firepower and young