To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [379]
The man was only a few yards down the hillside, called out, “Lieutenant! Order your men to withdraw! Pass the order! There’s an armistice! You are to withdraw to your position along the riverbank!”
Hopper was just above Temple now, said, “On whose authority?”
“Orders from General Lejeune.”
Hopper stood quietly for a long moment, but the men around him began to pass the word on their own. More officers reached the flat ground, the commotion spreading, the men beginning to cheer. Temple climbed up, stood on the flat ground, frozen. He thought of the rumors, the talk he had heard the night before. Now, the rumors had become orders, the attack halted even as it began, the artillery and the mortars and the machine-gun fire on both sides suddenly silent.
Hopper was talking to the officer on the slope, said, “Are you certain of this?”
“Orders from General Lejeune, Lieutenant. Your men are to withdraw to the position they had reached as of eleven o’clock. There is no discretion, Lieutenant.”
Hopper stood, said, “All right. Back down the hill! Let’s move!”
The men began to flow past Temple, boisterous talk, chattering men sliding back down the hill, obeying the order Temple still didn’t understand. Hopper said, “Let’s go, Private. Back to the river. There’s an armistice. Somebody thinks this is over.”
Hopper moved away, passing the order to the men along the flat ground, waving them back. Temple walked out away from the edge of the slope, stared toward the German position, saw men emerging from their cover, standing in plain sight, staring across the open ground at the Americans who only moments ago were bringing the rifles and the bayonets, the men who would be cut down by the deadly fire of the German guns. Temple walked out a few steps farther, saw men in gray doing the same. He wasn’t curious, didn’t want to speak to them, didn’t want to know them at all. He turned, looked along the edge of the bluff, saw dozens of men standing as he was, numb, silent. He knew what they shared, that they were the veterans, the men who had seen too much of the horror, who could not just set aside all they had seen and all they had lost. They did not cheer, could not yet feel the joy, could not yet share in any celebration. They carried wounds in some deep place, wounds that might never heal. Like so many nightmares on so many fields, this was just another dream, unreal, a cruel joke. Temple still pointed the bayonet, stared now at the men in gray, the men he was destined to kill, the faceless enemy who had taken so much from him. The cheering behind him became a faint echo now, and he thought, How can this be true? How can this just . . . end? He felt the taut spring in his mind slowly loosening, the hate and the horror and the images of so much death starting to move inside him. He looked to the side, saw some of the Marines dropping to their knees, and Temple felt it now, the utter exhaustion, was kneeling as well, the rifle falling from his hands, so many nightmares, so much sadness, the numbness starting to wear away. In the soft silence, he lowered his head, and began to cry.
NOVEMBER 11, 1918
THE DELEGATES HAD MET ON A RAILROAD SIDING IN THE COMPIÈGNE Forest, forty miles northeast of Paris, two rail cars perched beside each other beneath the skeletal limbs of wind-blown trees. The ground was French, and the man who hosted the meeting was not only the most symbolic representative the Allies could offer, he was the man who held the reins on the forces that were driving the German army toward oblivion: Marshal Ferdinand Foch.
The German delegation was headed by Matthias Erzberger, a man who had long made enemies among German military leaders by daring to speak out against Ludendorff’s prosecution of the war. For more than a year, Erzberger had been the champion of efforts to end the war by any means that would preserve Germany’s pride, even if it meant withdrawing from those foreign lands the German army now occupied. His growing influence had been