Mark Mills - Amagansett

The Professor was one of the few beacons of sanity in the madness unfolding around them. Some warned him about his association with Conrad, but the Professor seemed content with their games of chess and their nocturnal forays to recover the bodies of fallen GIs. They rarely touched on the subject of their other lives, placed on hold on the far side of the world. The one time they had done so, it hadn’t gone well.

‘What do you hunt?’ the Professor had asked while they were setting up the board one night.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Last night when you picked off that Jerry trying to outflank us—swing-lead-squeeze,’ he said, demonstrating. ‘One shot, no waste. I figure you hunt, you know, back home.’

‘Black duck, quail, coot, some deer,’ said Conrad. ‘You?’

‘Canadian geese. We get a lot in southern Illinois, though we near wiped them out twenty years back, squeezed the season down to a month.’

Conrad told the Professor about Sam and Billy Ockham—their little hunting trio—tramping through the frosty underbrush on winter mornings, crouching in duck blinds, rowing their sharpies out to Cartwright Shoals for some open-water coot shooting, and poaching wild turkey in the primeval forests of Gardiner’s Island during the Depression.

A little while later, the Professor looked up from the board. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you kill a man,’ he said.

‘I guess,’ said Conrad.

‘How does it feel?’

Conrad shrugged the question off, could have played on in silence, but he stepped through the door the Professor had opened, regretting it later.

‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘How it feels.’

‘I couldn’t do it.’

‘You might have to.’

‘Some things you know.’

‘Don’t be so sure.’

‘It’s not a criticism. Don’t take it as a criticism. It isn’t.’

‘So what are you doing here?’ asked Conrad.

‘Helping.’

‘Clearing up our mess?’

‘Someone’s got to. I don’t have a problem with death.’

‘That’s right, I forgot, we’re all just vehicles for bacteria.’

‘Don’t be like that. I couldn’t do what you do, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘But you bought yourself a ringside seat. Why is that?’

‘Conrad…’ said the Professor gently.

‘Who do you think you are, Florence fuckin’ Nightingale?’

‘Conrad…’

‘No, screw you!’ He swept the pieces off the board on to the earth-packed floor.

‘Girls, girls…’ They turned to see Captain Roxburgh enter the dugout. ‘We just got our marching orders,’ he said.

He didn’t see the Professor for two days. Conrad’s unit was one of those chosen to spearhead the drive out of the beachhead, and they left at dawn the next morning. It was a warm May day, a day of slaughter and confusion. You couldn’t challenge the brass, but the decision to advance across open ground devoid of any cover in broad daylight displayed all the tactical wisdom of a general on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

When they weren’t being devastated by German machine-gun fire and artillery airbursts they fell prey to friendly fire from the rear. The promised tank support evaporated, with many of the Shermans throwing their tracks when they ran over antipersonnel mines, and the ones that didn’t proving no match for the German Tigers with their superior firepower. It was a miracle that any of them managed to reach Highway 6 and the railroad tracks by nightfall.

Fierce fighting on day two depleted their numbers further, but they continued their thrust towards the Alban hills, advancing well beyond the flanking units, arriving at the ancient village of Cori, perched high above the plain, as the afternoon heat was easing off. In stark contrast to the stiff German resistance, they were welcomed by hordes of cheering Italians. Many of the men were mistrustful of a people who had switched allegiance halfway through a war, but Conrad couldn’t really care. He remembered something the Professor had once said: ‘The thing about the Italians is, they’ve seen civilizations rise and fall and they know it’s all a lot of crap.’

They rested up in the shade of the Roman temple beside the church, and Conrad wondered how many other soldiers had done exactly the same over the centuries.

Towards dusk, he was refilling his canteen from a nearby well when he heard a voice from behind him.

‘Make mine a double.’

It wasn’t that the Professor looked tired—they’d been functioning at a level of terminal exhaustion for so long now that you no longer noticed it in others or yourself—but he looked depleted, as if some incubus had drained him of vital fluids. The ever-present chuckle behind his green eyes was gone and his bloodied fatigues seemed to hang off him.

‘Here—’ said Conrad, handing him the canteen.

The Professor emptied it then caught his breath.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Conrad.

‘Me too.’

That night they went out together again, just like old times, searching for the dead. A section from 3rd Regiment had been worked over by a mortar crew earlier in the day to the west of Cori, taking numerous casualties, abandoned in the field. It was assumed the Germans had retreated to the hills, but you couldn’t be too sure. They were dogged fighters, to be respected, and both sides knew there was too much at stake. If the Allies were allowed to reach Highway 7 the tide of battle would turn. The Appian Way would lead them straight into the heart of Rome, the coveted prize.

The moon was near full, the limestone path bright beneath his feet as Conrad scouted the lower slopes of the hills. He sniffed the air for cigarette smoke and freshly turned earth, but there was nothing. If they were up there and dug in, they were well beyond range. He padded back to the Professor, who was lurking in an olive grove, and they struck out through the adjacent pasture, the tall grass swishing against their legs.

The first body was intact, or near enough. While Conrad stood guard, the Professor gathered up something and placed it beside the corpse. This was how he liked to work, circumstances permitting—assessing the overall damage, reconstructing, before beginning the process of removal. Ten minutes later, he was ready. He unfolded a tarpaulin, laying it on the ground, and rolled the first body on to it.

The blast from the explosion knocked Conrad sideways, sending him sprawling into the grass. The screams began before the last of the debris had fallen to earth.

‘Oh Christ! Oh Christ…’

Conrad stayed low as he scrabbled towards the Professor, the next mortar due any moment. Due now. Where was it?

‘Oh Christ!’

The blast had taken the Professor’s left leg off below the knee. His right foot was also missing, and he was staring at the void where his left hand had been, holding the ragged stump up to the moon for a better view.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Shit…’

Conrad pushed him back down on to the ground and pumped two shots of morphine into him.

‘Conrad.’

‘It’s me, I’m here.’ He used his knife to cut a length of the parachute cord he always carried with him.

‘They rigged it, they rigged the body, the sonsofbitches rigged the body.’

Conrad fashioned a hasty tourniquet and secured it above the left knee.

‘You sonsofbitches!’ screamed the Professor. ‘YOU SONSOFBITCHES!’

Conrad wanted to say ‘Keep quiet, don’t give them the satisfaction,’ and he prayed the Germans were long gone.

The Professor struggled, resisting, as Conrad tried to apply a tourniquet to his other leg.

‘Lie still, goddamnit.’

‘Don’t do it, don’t do it.’

The Professor twisted, rolling away. Conrad went after him, straddling his chest, pinning him to the ground.

‘I don’t want to live. Not like this.’

He was sobbing now, slapping at Conrad with his only hand, snatching at the loop of rope.

‘Okay,’ said Conrad, holding up his hands in surrender.

The Professor stopped resisting. ‘Thanks, thanks…’ he gasped.

Conrad slugged him on the jaw, fitted the tourniquets and applied sulfa to the stumps.

He was doing double time along a dirt track about a mile from Cori when the Professor came to, slung over his shoulder like a sack of fish meal. Conrad closed his ears to the curses. The pummeling of the fist on his back was too weak to have any effect. They said there were no atheists in trenches, but not once did the Professor call out to God, remaining an unbeliever till the end, which came a few minutes later, half a mile shy of the aid station. Not that they could have done anything for him. Way too much of his blood had already soaked into Conrad’s fatigues.

He laid the Professor in the grass beside the track and sat with him a while. Then he carried him the rest of the way in his arms.

The two medics on duty at the aid station were enjoying a wellearned rest, but they insisted on checking Conrad over for injuries. He could have told them that beneath all the gore he would be completely unmarked. When they were done, they set him up with a shot of brandy and stretchered the body away.

He was gone before they returned, pounding off down the track, back towards the hills.

It was reckless soldiering, but stealth wasn’t the answer. He could have crept through the wooded slopes for the rest of the night and never found them. The answer lay in covering as much terrain as possible, crashing his way through the undergrowth, drawing attention to himself.

He was making his way up the side of a valley when a burst of fire raked the branches above his head. He hit the ground, scrabbling for cover behind a tree. Someone shouted in German—a challenge.

‘ Schwarze Teufel! ’ he called back: Black Devil. He heard the soldier relay the information to his comrades, a satisfying note of panic in his voice. Then the lead started flying again, tracers this time, which meant only one thing.

He was gone before the first mortar tore into the trees. If they were using the mortar they must be occupying an area of open ground beyond the tree line up near the ridge. He dismissed the idea of a direct assault, not because the terrain would play in their favor, but because he figured they’d soon be thinking about retreating. They knew who they were up against, they’d heard the stories, and the silence of the night would soon transmute into fear.

He was waiting for them near the foot of the neighboring valley—two mortar crews, six men, pounding down a woodland path, equipment clattering. Whether they were the ones responsible, he neither knew nor cared, his head thick with thoughts of vengeance.

He had already pulled the pins from the grenades, but he waited for the point man to pass before tossing them, opening fire before they exploded, ducking behind a tree as they did so.

The two who didn’t die immediately, he finished off with the knife. One was very young, wispy hairs masquerading as a mustache, wheezing his last terrified breath as Conrad slowly slid the blade between his ribs, talking to him, cursing him, the same words the Professor had hurled at him, handing them on: take these with you.

When he was done, he smoked a cigarette then placed the barrel of the M-1 in his mouth, but he was unable to pull the trigger.

He returned to Cori via the pasture, recovering the Professor’s shattered glasses from the long grass.

It was a miracle that the glasses had somehow stayed in his possession for the remainder of the war. He took it as a sign that they had, and he’d kept them on the writing desk in his bedroom ever since.