20

An hour later, the Americans were roused, time to kick off. And there was Boots Mulveen, their commander, and Cromwell Webster, adjutant. A few encouraging words were spoken by Mulveen, then a stutter from the inarticulate Webster. He, they were informed, was their new commander. Mulveen had been promoted to brigade. The pols and the boys scouts cheered. The rest of them bit their lips, fiddled with their guns. Someone muttered, ‘Maybe we’ll be lucky and he’ll be killed right away.’

Archie Cohen said, ‘Amen.’

They marched all night towards Valdemorillo, marched through the Castilian mancha on roads clogged with troops of the Republic, tanks, camiones, staff cars inching forward and back. Once they saw Jake Starr in a staff car with some Russian consejeros, advisers, and he grinned and waved to them when they called out to him. ‘Hey, Jake!’ and he yelled, ‘Suerte, mucha suerte.’

And they suddenly felt themselves to be part of a huge army on the move for as far as the eye could see and they forgot everything but the anxiety in their stomachs at what the coming battle would bring; also an exhilaration which came with the hope that victory was at last possible, it was there all about them, a joyful contagion which touched all the men involved in this vast undertaking, many of whom could remember with a distinct and fine recollection the horrors of February when they had fought almost as individual men with unfamiliar rifles and a poverty of bullets and leaders. They would not now require a voice to give them courage against the enemy, for they had themselves, proven now, tempered, wily, skilful. To hell with Webster, to hell with Mulveen, to hell with the pols, they were now in the hands, they were certain, of men who directed armies and who had the tools of war.

In February they had sparked their will and hatred of fascism into a holy flame which had kept them from defeat and which had helped save Madrid. Now they possessed will, too, and the rumors which flew among them as they marched through the night said there were two or three army corps, perhaps ten divisions, a plenitude of artillery, and with their very own eyes they saw the tanks manned by Russians, German exiles, hundreds of young Spaniards, and at least one American, Bob Gladd, formerly of their own battalion, a brash, blue-eyed blond kid with Tartar cheekbones and a loud laugh. In the sky above them, they could see and hear the rumbling hum of pursuits and fighters like hordes of murderous mosquitoes on a night raid.

It was hot, the scorpion were about, and they marched. In the dawn they bivouacked outside Valdemorillo in a grove of oak, chestnut, pine at the foothills of the mountains. Cool and aromatic, the sun filtering through the leaves like honey. Café con leche, pan, sleep scented with pine and the smell of battle, of victory. When they didn’t sleep, they talked with excitement, their eyes bright, alternating laughter with fear, exultation with anxiety. Was it possible that they could win?

Night: again they marched. Their mouths were dry, their hearts beat swiftly. The dawn rose and in the distance they could see a dense spiral of smoke from a fire in some town, Quijorna, they were told. To its left, closer, they saw a white-walled town, stone blockhouses, stone walls, stone houses, their immediate destination. Beyond, another town, Brunete, and all about them wheat fields, rye, maize, silver-leafed olive groves, long slender cypress, and endlessly rolling hills, barrancas, dry rivers and gullies, the beauty of which was now invisible to them. Their artillery began a continual thumping, give it to the bastards, give it to them good. They could see tanks spread out in battle formation gently rising and falling as they trundled over the fields, and planes swiftly running to meet the enemy, column after column of Spanish Republican troops deployed for battle. And they themselves began to march faster down the long incline of the Valdemorillo—de la Canada road, faster, faster, not wasting breath on words, silent in the midst of the cannonading, the rattle and clang of forged metal, honed steel, the explosion of shells, already men were dying, they better hurry, the battle had begun, the enemy, surprised, was engaged.

At the bottom of the long incline, at the foot of a shallow crest, they rested, drank coffee, ate a big chunk of bread. Over and beyond the crest, machine-guns were shooting incessantly, there was the snap of rifle fire. A real brawl. Somewhere to the side and below a man screamed. They waited near the road.

Greg Ballard was talking with Garms and Cohen, when he noticed everyone staring at a point behind them. He screwed his head about, stared too, pursed his thick lips in disdain. Captain Cromwell Webster, commander, stood in the shadow of a plane tree, sweating no sweat, lips dry. Webster fumbled with a map, fingering it one way, then another. Lost in a pea soup fog, Ballard thought. Panic scared. Runners kept coming and going, pointing to the right of the crest, gesticulating wildly, throwing up their hands in despair, turning their backs on him, spitting.

Beyond the crest, the firing thundered, brash, hard, metallic. The Americans observed their commander, waiting, contempt a collective grimace. Three-quarters were replacements, Spanish and American, who had never been over the top. The remainder were from the old days, many wounded at Tajuña returned to the line. The sun rose rapidly, the battle clamored for their guns, and Ace Webster was so blind and paralyzed he couldn’t read his map. Well, better to lie there than go into battle led by Uncle Tom. A staff car pulled up, from which alighted Boots Mulveen himself, all shined up, his boots, his pink britches, his gold leaf clashing with the sun. ‘Stupid,’ he sneered at Webster. ‘You so goddam blind you can’t read a map? Beat it!’ Ace Webster, his sweat glands dried up from fear, stumbled into the staff car, sped away.

Major Mulveen, bucking for general, will lead his troops into battle. With a wave of his hand he led the way around the crest to the right of the town to the edge of a field, near a stone blockhouse. ‘Battle formation,’ he cried. ‘Bayonets!’ Erect as a British lieutenant, ‘Follow me, comrades!’ he ordered, leading the American battalion over the shallow crest. For the split second they perched there, they saw the white stone town. Between it and them stretched five hundred meters of an open field, young wheat still green a foot and a half high their only cover. The town, it seemed, was on fire. On either flank, Interbrigaders and Spaniards hugged the earth, shooting and dying.

Mulveen led the Americans, striding erectly, shining like a brand new copper pot. They caught one good look at the battle, fell to their bellies, hoping when they were hit they would die quickly.

The sun was monstrous as they crawled, Mulveen stomping ahead. A general’s star is powerful stuff. Zwing! Zwing zwing!

Mulveen fell. The men wanted to laugh, but they were just about crying. Mulveen actually was. ‘Help me, I’m wounded,’ he wept. Three men went to get him—green men—two were killed, one just stretched there paralyzed. So Turk Drobny, whom they called the Immortal, crawled out and got Mulveen, raised him to his broad back and ignoring those few ounces of steel-jacketed death zwinging about him carried their commander to the rear with a bullet through one ball.

Mack Berg, a nasty bastard, couldn’t keep his mouth shut. ‘Before half a man; now no man.’ Archie Cohen and Joe Garms laughed.

Greg Ballard snapped, ‘Shut up!’

Boots Mulveen wept.

They screwed their bellies into the ground, not daring to twitch. That sun was hot. The ground was hot. The fire from those white stone walls down that slope five hundred meters distant had spread over the wheat field and they all thought they were going to burn to death. Just bullets and sun. A command from a voice lost in the fire ordered them to attack. No one moved. Nevins, a pol they respected, commanded them to attack. ‘We ain’t gonna move for nobody.’ Joe Garms. And he was right.

There was no covering fire from artillery, aviones or tanks. They were in an open field. Down below was a town constructed of stone from which poured a solid phalanx of steel bullets. Thus began for them the great offensive. Men had already died. Men were already screaming. It was a romantic war, legendary. Their throats were dry. Canteens were already empty. The sun—that sun. The wheat field already stank from blood, gunpowder. No place to hide. They lay there for an hour.

Now a megaphone ordered them to retire to the shelter of the shallow crest and blockhouse behind them.

They moved then—very orderly.

This wasn’t going to be February 27th all over again.

Now they observed the battle from box seats, applauding their team’s hits and runs, silent at the errors.

Then, to their amazement, their side sent in a new team. Americans. The Second American Battalion: trained to a fine sharpness, had trained for months they had heard, their morale so high veterans of the First hadn’t been permitted to approach them. The new troops slid past the veterans quietly, averting their eyes. Green.

‘Bet they bunch up,’ yelled Garms as the new troops, bayonets unsheathed, took perfect battle positions ahead of them in the open wheat field, flanked by the Franco-Belges with their stogies and guns and the Slav and Spanish troops on the left flank, the English on the right, encircling the town. They did not see the English, they were too far over. The walled town was an endless flame. The tourist sun seemed to be standing stark still overawed by the sight. Fascinating. How quaint are those little two-footed beasts.

‘What odds are you giving, Joe?’ sang out Archie Cohen, pulling out a wad of pesetas—his whore money. Everyone knew and laughed. Archie was the great muffman of the battalion. Once heard that a couple of American nurses had come up to visit the trenches. Went AWOL; stumbled back five hours later, nonchalantly picking hair out of his teeth.

‘Ten’ll get yuh fifty,’ Joe Garms called over the battle din.

‘Covered,’ yelled Archie.

They observed the battle.

The Slavs were very good to watch. Very smart. Why not? They had an excellent commander. He was out there with his troops, just slightly behind his battalion at the apex of the triangle they formed, observing his men, the wall, the pattern of fire. Two Slavs would move, then two more, a quick run, a crawl. No big movement, he was taking his time. When he was ready, they would scale the walls with bayonets flashing. They were good. Very good.

The Second American was prettily spread out. They were so fresh, they still shit mustard. Their commander, too. The pol, Wagstaff, Mack Berg had to admit, was very cool. The First American heard the commander call out an order. A few seconds later, to their utter astonishment, his battalion jumped to its feet, and one, two, three were in very correct battle formation. In that open field, that white stone town aflame.

Every gun in that town took aim in one direction. Their bullets flew like homing pigeons.

‘Goddam sonuvabitch!’ Mack Berg screamed.

‘I tole yuh, I tole yuh!’ yelled Joe Garms, collecting his bet from Archie Cohen, as the Second American troops panicked, bunched, were slaughtered. Mack Berg howled curses, Greg Ballard merely pounded a stone with his fist, muttering, ‘Shitaasses, shitaasses.’

They could see themselves back in February. It had taken Jake Starr a second to see and to teach them. These boys had never been taught. They bunched. A highpowered rifle bullet can go through seven men ass to belly.

The Second American suffered heavily. Many of those still alive fled in wild retreat, their new gear making up a shiny wake behind them. Wagstaff lay dead.

And in their box seats the veterans laughed hysterically: better them than us, slapped one another’s back, doubled over from the sight. A first-rate entertainment.

Greg Ballard observed them, man to man. He wasn’t yet as far gone as they were. Perhaps his chance would come later. ‘Shut up,’ he yelled. ‘Shut up!’

They did. But no one was ashamed.

So it was up to the Slavs, the Spanish, the Franco-Beiges, and the unseen English. They had been informed they would have artillery to soften up the town; aviones, too. Nothing showed. It would have to be rifle fire, machine-guns, bayonets and tin cans against those stone redoubts.

It took the entire day, but they took it. Led by the Slavs’ commander, of course. His men scaled those damn stone walls when the sun, a tired tourist, had gone to bathe its feet in the Atlantic; a beautiful red-blue twilight, the horizon a delicately streaked lavender.

And the Americans, too. As the Slav commander inched his men into that safest position of all, close to the wall under the enemy fire, a blind spot, Joe Garms no longer could hold his water. ‘Let’s go get ’em’ he yelled, bayonet pointing, and began the long lope down the wheat field, his comrades of the First and Second now impatient behind him. The Spaniards, the Americans, the Slavs went over, bayonets like slender steel spires flashing red and lavender in the blazing twilight. The Franco-Belges followed on their flank, flinging tin cans into the enemy’s gullet.

Pasaremos! they screamed. Pasaremos!

So they stormed the redoubts, the walls, the gates and took the town. ‘A town so big, yuh belch, you’re out of it.’ Joe Garms.

The English they did not see at all.

The victorious troops shared the spoils: fat boned sardines, much bread, eggs, canned milk, dates, figs, oranges, casks of jerez oloroso and slabs of pork and beef from the enemy stores. ‘The enemy soldiers are starved, will surrender,’ had lied the pols. A man came to Spain, lived through February and four months in the line without deserting, and they thought they had to lie. Now they kept their mouths shut. The enemy, may he rot, fought well, fought like hell, took his shellacking, retreated. Orderly, too. The only ones starving in the town were its populace. In their patched black, their angular torn faces, their careworn eyes, they greeted the Republican troops with open hungry arms. Liberty, at last. They were fed from the spoils of war.

And then they saw the English. A survivor told the story.

They had approached the town on the extreme right flank. They had approached the gates, prepared to storm them. Before their astonished eyes, the gates opened, by themselves it seemed. They stood a moment in the stillness. From the open gates as from a beggars’ cornucopia trickled a bedraggled, bellybloated blight of old knock-kneed men, dried prunes of women and pus-eyed children. The fruits of war. The English cheered, for now it seemed the battle had been won. But the cheers became a cry of woe, for behind the villagers, guns on the ready, grins on their faces, stood the falangistas and their Moorish mercenaries.

Mad, fine Englishmen. They ducked into a gully, didn’t fire a shot. Innocent blood is for the carrion crow as the heaven’s face stares with its inscrutable eye.

The English died by the score—and fired not a shot.

Greg Ballard plodded ahead. They had left the walled town two nights before, led by Webster and Nevins, the battalion pol. They marched through a vast open country of rolling hills and dried-out tributaries of the Guadarrama river, burros to help carry their tools of war, the rest on their backs. Thank God for the night in this country, a night which never came soon enough. That fireball in the sky dried out a man’s blood, scorched and dehydrated the land and the men on it. For two days they had been lost, separated from Nevins and his troops, wandering like the tribes of Israel in the wilderness. Scraggly trees like beheaded men, arms outstretched pleading for life, mesquite, yellowed gorse, scorpion, vicious lizards, desert mice made up their world. Ballard thought of the sea at North Truro and moaned. There the sun yielded to the sea, but here the sun never yielded, only varied its color: yellow, orange, red, white. It made a man wild, hot-tempered, dried him out, yet never enough to kill. That was left for the bullets or the bombs or their clumsy commanders. The enemy had its own variety. The sight of the English outside the walled town made him shudder.

The man in front of Greg stumbled, fell to all fours. As Greg reached him he stopped, helped the man to his feet, kept going. Neither spoke a word. During the day, as they wandered, they encountered enemy tabors, fought, killed and were killed. At night, unlike this one, they slept. The fatigue was like a plague, yet asleep he dreamed wild dreams derived from the sun and the death and the hatred for the enemy and for the pols and Ace Webster. He hated Webster. In the last day or two he believed he was going mad with the obsession of it. Yet when he slept he dreamed wild dreams, sometimes a bacchanale with all the women he had ever known in reality or in the movies or in books. He laughed to himself at the thought. One night Jean Harlow, another night Ursuline Washington who’d lived next door in Woods Hole and had been as sweet as a caramel. Oh, Christ, those little girl breasts, chocolate kisses—and the harshness of her tongue. Where was she now? The Cape hadn’t been big enough for her. She had ideas, to be something big, to be something hurtful, she weren’t gonna live with no fisherman. Ah, they all had ideas. Ursuline and Ace Webster and Greg Ballard and Loney, too. To be what they weren’t. It was like a nagging leech sucking them dry. A starfish. To be accepted by the world. To be ogled by the world. Look at me. Me! Accepted? No, not him. He didn’t want acceptance. He just wanted to be Greg Ballard, five by five, brown skin, smashed black face. He wanted to be himself, at peace with his dreams, no obsessions, no naggings. He supposed that was what most men wanted. But his dreams were wild, and yet awake he found he had lost his sense of touch, his sense of smell. He was a man who needed peace, the universality of the sea, his boat on the galloping sea. How could he be so dried out, so tired and still have those wild dreams? A dog would already have died, its bones dry white in the yellow sage. But he was a man: he dreamed.

Up ahead he could hear Joe Garms singing,

Snatch a little kiss in the mornin’,

Kiss a little snatch at night …

At his side marched Archie, string-muscled, tough-fibred Archie Cohen from Chicago’s south side and Bughouse Square, with his sandy hair and freckled face and his flute of a voice. Loved women, indiscriminately: Dresden china or brass horse, skewered or parboiled, didn’t matter. Women. It was he who had a fight with Joe Garms after a political seminar. ‘You guys are a covey of whores—sold yourself to an idea, never ask a question, trip round the world or a blow job, it’s all the same to you. I ever get out of Spain alive, I’m quitting the party.’

‘Once you’re in and yuh quit,’ Joe said right to the point, ‘we’re enemies. There’s no in-between wit’ us. Enemies!’

Archie piped, all the pols and stoolies heard him, ‘Then we’ll be enemies. I stopped being a whore the first time I read a book.’

They squared off, and Ballard had to break it up. Joe, a pro, would have killed Archie, and besides the pols’ fingers were itching. Tommy Demo who didn’t kill comrades with vino. Greg had learned. For weeks on end after that Archie and Greg and Mack, who hadn’t taken any position in the matter, just stared biting his thin lips, kept guard over one another during the night. And Joe Garms? Strangely enough he didn’t sleep either. He kept guard over the guard.

‘Why?’ Ballard asked him. ‘I thought you said we were enemies.’

Joe Garms didn’t answer, just glared at the ground, then shrugged those lumpy shoulders of his. And Greg thought, there are ninety-nine watertight compartments to a man’s brain.

Now Greg Ballard plodded ahead, tired, bushed, beat, obsessed. In the distance under a bright night sky he and his comrades could see a group of hills like a herd of fat cows fossilized by time. They had to reach those hills by morning and as they marched the hills didn’t seem to come any closer. But at least now they knew where they were going.

A few camouflaged cars rolled past them, trucks, ambulances. A pair of tanks clanked out in the field.

And they marched.

Far ahead, beyond the reach of the night sky, thunder and lightning—enemy cannonading. Few friendly aviones passed overhead, in three days the enemy had regained its superiority and had cleared the skies.

Tired, dismal, tongue like a dirty dry rag, they marched.

No one spoke as they plodded on, the momentum of the man ahead pulling the man behind. ‘Five minutes,’ some one called. ‘Five minutes.’

Greg dropped where he stood. His eyelids were weighted with lead. Don’t shut your eyes or you’ll never open them again.

Mack Berg’s long bony body was alongside him. Filthy. ‘How you feeling, Greg?’

‘As usual.’

‘I’m scared.’

‘You’ve been before.’

‘Very, very scared.’

‘Ditto.’

‘Are we going to climb those hills?’

‘Yup.’

‘I’ll never make it,’ Mack said, passing him a cigarette.

‘You will.’

‘Only if we get there before the sun comes up.’

They smoked in silence.

They heard someone running towards them. Who had the strength to run?

Joe Garms, of course. He slid to a standstill, rolled from foot to foot like an ashcan emptied of its refuse.

‘Take it easy, José José,’ Archie said, coming up at that point.

‘Jake Starr,’ Joe said.

‘Give him a drink,’ piped Archie. ‘He’s gone nuts from thirst.’

A tired laugh from the men around them.

‘He’s wit’ a Russki,’ Joe said.

‘Punchdrunk,’ Archie snickered. ‘Get the paddy wagon.’

‘Yuh dirty bastids, he’s talkin’ to Webster up there. Warnin’ him.’

They ran with Joe to say hello to Jake Starr, who had come up with a Russian staff car. There he was, tall, brawny, sagging shoulder, very tan, talking in a very calm voice to Webster. Alongside Starr stood a tall, lean, straight Russian who smelled of perfume and had powder on his face. As Jake spoke to Webster, the Russian kept pulling on his sleeve, hurrying him along. Starr was warning Webster to be very careful. ‘I ran into the Dutchman, the commander of the Franco-Belges. As you know there are tabors of Moors and requetés all over the mancha and they know how to fight. He told me he was badly mauled yesterday. A company of Moors showed themselves to him, without thinking he charged and they led him into a machine-gun trap in a pine wood. Be careful, Ace. Don’t go where you don’t know.’ The Russian kept pulling on Jake’s elbow.

‘Of course, Jake,’ Webster piped in his high-pitched voice, swishing his swagger stick. He was acting very much the commander. ‘Thanks a lot, but I know, yes, thanks.’

Starr shook the Russian off a moment. ‘Those are the heights of Romanillos,’ Jake nodded in the direction of the hills. ‘Nevins is already there and engaged. Hurry up, he needs you. Salud, and be careful. Okay, okay, Tovarich Lipin, I’m coming,’ he said to the Russian. But before he slid into the staff car, he hugged Joe and Greg, told the rest of them to be careful, waved and departed, the Russian hurrying trippingly behind him.

The Americans watched the car until it was lost in the night, then resumed their march. With fear. If that could happen to the Franco-Belges led by the Dutchman, he of the red hair and the beard like a burning bush, it could certainly happen to them led by Ace Webster. They were wary now, their fatigue left them. In the distance, near the heights of Romanillos they could hear incessant shooting. They followed behind Webster, also a tall man, dressed in beautiful breeches, highly polished boots, an Ascot tie, a khaki chambray shirt, swagger stick flicking at fireflies. At three in the morning, they bivouacked, drank hot coffee, ate their usual chunk of bread. The clump of hills was still at a good distance, dominated by a large hump in its center. They would reach it sometime that morning.

‘Let’s go,’ ordered Webster.

They followed after him in a ragged line. He was looking more and more like a commander. Well, perhaps he would come around. It had happened to others, why not to him?

It was still night, but it was hot. The day would again be a flame, a blast, a furnace, a cauldron. Marched over a shallow hill, into a barranca, up out of it, over another shallow rise.

Spotted a company of requetés under the bright moon.

‘The trick!’ Mack Berg shouted. ‘The trick!’ It was a good thing Jake Starr had warned them. Without waiting for a command they spread out, set up machine-guns, beautiful Russian Dikterevs, unsheathed bayonets. They would take these bastards. But the enemy wouldn’t fight, merely retreated slowly, sort of beckoning them to come forward.

‘C’mon and fight,’ somebody yelled at the requetés, those of the sacred heart.

But perhaps Ace Webster hadn’t heard; perhaps he had already forgotten what Starr had told him; perhaps he just panicked; perhaps he wanted to show the world. He ordered battle formation and a charge at the requetés. They were soldiers. Many were still green and thought the veterans too damned ornery. They did as they were commanded.

As they charged, bayonets fixed, the requetés began slowly to retreat towards some trees. The Americans, led by Webster, scenting a quick victory followed them on the run.

Into a steel trap set in a cypress wood. Into a trap sprung for them; into the wood without knowing what was there. Hijo de puta! Webster had forgotten the first rule of war. Don’t go where you don’t know.

A slaughter. And they couldn’t extricate themselves. The cypress trees stood in perfect rows, each row controlled by an enemy machine-gun.

A man stuck out his head, he was dead.

The moon, still out, smiled a silly grin. Communications were lost with Webster. Ace was behind a crest of a hill waiting for his troops to come fetch him.

The wood was now deathly quiet. Should they move the hell out of there or shouldn’t they? It would be best to wait. Something would break. Perhaps Nevins would come to look for them with his troops.

The enemy didn’t waste a bullet. Just waited.

Fifteen minutes later an order arrived. Cohen, Garms, Ballard, Berg, the most experienced, leave your squads, crawl into the wood, see if the enemy’s still there.

‘I’m scared,’ Joe said.

‘So am I,’ snapped Greg. ‘If you have to sing, make it a chant, the requetés’ll think you’re one of theirs.’

‘We’ll go in thirty-second intervals,’ Joe said. ‘Me, Greg, Mack, then Archie.’

Okay.

‘Put your helmet on, Mack,’ Greg said.

‘You must be blind. I got it on.’

They looked at one another a moment.

‘I guess I gotta go,’ Joe said.

‘Before you go,’ whispered Mack Berg hoarsely, ‘I want to tell you something.’

They stared at him under that silly moon. What the hell did Mack want?

‘I never went to college. That was pure bullshit.’ Their eyes popped, but his back was turned to them as he started crawling into the wood, his helmet plopped over his head to his ears, he never did have one that fit properly, the sloppiest, dirtiest soldier in the International Brigades. Oh, Christ, what a time to make a confession. Must think he’s gonna die.

‘Who the crap cares, yuh big jerk,’ Joe whispered after him. If Mack heard, he gave no sign.

The remaining three looked at each other quickly, smiled, shrugged, then followed after him, Joe, Greg and Archie, in that order.

Ballard reckoned it was about three thirty when he went in. It was pitch black under the trees except where the moon filtered through. He laughed mirthlessly to himself at his own joke: he’d be the most difficult to see. There were advantages to his color in time of war, and even filtered moonlight couldn’t change it.

Inch by inch he crawled, making no more sound than a leaf on leaf. The cicadas’ chatter was a blessing. He must have crawled twenty minutes, perhaps more, it was impossible to tell. In that time his only encounter had been with tree trunks. Not even a corpse. They’re gone, he thought. Vamosed. He kept going, always wary, the wood couldn’t be more than a couple hundred meters deep.

Saw a form, became abruptly inert. He stared at it for what seemed hours. There wasn’t even a breath from the form. Must be a dead soldier. He inched closer, his heartbeat a clatter. Closer. Discerned its contour. Had to hold his mouth to cage an hysterical laugh. A dead burro.

Kept moving. Saw moonlight, a klieg. Was at the other edge of the wood. All he confronted was the moon’s silly grin. They were gone. Decamped. Not even a sardine tin remained.

The sky was changing color. Must be four o’clock. Dawn would come early. It was July ninth, he remembered. An early dawn. Must return now. Be careful, they’re pros, know their business. War. But he moved faster now, for the darkness in the wood was graying.

Dawn was at the threshold of day when he returned to the beginning of the wood and found his squad. The moon was a pale silver hoop in the gray sky. Long flashes of blue and orange. Archie and Joe were already there. They had found nothing. The enemy had done their work, decamped.

They waited for Mack Berg. Soon he would return, his pisspot, as he called it, down to his ears, and they would laugh. To us you’re a Harvard grad. Phi beta.

‘Report to the commander,’ Joe instructed Archie. ‘When Mack gets back we’ll get the hell outa here.’

Dawn now crossed the threshold and daylight was at their backs. Still no Mack Berg.

When Archie returned, daylight had already pushed ahead of them into the wood, and still no Mack Berg.

‘The requetés are gone,’ Greg said. ‘We have to go find him. Stuck by a scorpion. What else?’

In they went, Joe, Archie, Greg. They were breathing hard. Walked now, guns and bayonets on the ready. Went clear through to the very end of the cypress wood. No Mack Berg.

They moved over five rows of trees, started back. Each was afraid to look at the other.

Halfway back they found Mack Berg.

His helmet on his head, his head on a stake, his genitalia stuffed in his mouth. His headless mutilated body lay against a tree, emptied of its blood, some of which had been used to scrawl a note now pinned to his chest: ‘Buen apetito.’

The requetés were very gentle.

Laudamus te, they sang.

Benedicimus te, they sang.

Adoramus te, they sang.

Glorificamus te, they sang.

Man, man, what is it you want from us.

They dug a grave, put Mack Berg together again, unweeping buried him.

‘Slow,’ Joe said as they started back.

Neither Greg nor Archie said a word, they were thinking about Mack Berg. The big bastard had known, somehow he had known, and so he had confessed to his great sin. The big fool had never known when to keep his mouth shut. When he was born, he staked out two lines, one for himself, one for life. In between was a battlefield. He raged, he stormed, he was mean, he complained, he was a friend to friends, hateful to enemies, but only the party could hogtie him. Hot and cold Mack Berg, very, very bold. Buen apetito, Mack. They shivved you good.

‘Slow, real slow,’ Joe muttered under his breath as they walked. Still they ignored him. ‘I’m gonna put a slug in Webster’s gut. I’ll use the pistol Jake Starr sent me after I left Murcia, it’s got a smaller gauge, he’ll croak slow. Real slow.’

‘Shut up!’ Greg shouted.

‘I won’t shut up. Been shut up long enough. Mack Berg did the talkin’ for us, now I’m gonna talk. In his gut. Let him die slow.’

Greg and Archie stopped, looked at him mournfully.

Joe Garms began to cry.

They sat with him under the slender aspiring cypresses, the sun threading their green with gold, sat with him until his reservoir of tears was dry.

As they stood, Greg said, ‘No, Joe.’

‘Okay,’ he whispered. ‘Okay, but only for you.’

They returned to their squads, what remained of them.

They left their dead for the burial squads and their wounded for the medics.

Sorted their gear, men cursed under their breath, they resumed their march. An inner violence shook them, a violence divorced, isolated from the violence of war itself, the corpses, the fatigue, the firing in the distance, a battle taking place in the clump of hills towards which they plodded. Another ambush and there would be nothing left of them. Many a man raised his gun in the direction of Webster’s back, only to lower it, wanting to break it in two at his inability to cross the line into murder, individual murder. They had gone into battle against the walled town three days before under-strength, as it was, and they had lost about sixty men, dead and wounded, in that final bayonet charge led by Joe Garms. They had fought skirmish actions as they marched, lost a few more men. In that cypress wood they left another fifty men, dead and wounded. Here they were at the very beginning of what was to be a major offensive with a battalion at little more than half-strength. And where were the fighter planes they had overhead when they left Valdemorillo? Where was the artillery? A couple of light tanks maundered tinnily ahead of them. They plodded behind Webster and wondered what was going on with Nevins at that clump of hills.

They marched. Filthy, their asses bare in their shredded uniforms, led by Ace Webster, a very soldierly man, neat and clean, his boots shined, his Ascot exquisitely ruffled at his strong muscular throat, oh, how they would have loved to strangle him with it. All they wanted was a commander—no Napoleon, no Wellington, just a fucking commander no more scared than they. Brunete had fallen to the armies of the Republic, de la Canada, too. Quijorna and del Pardillo were about to fall. The enemy had been surprised and almost overwhelmed by the superiority of the Republican forces. Still it was apparent to the men as they marched that the enemy had come charging back in great strength, their aviones redoubled in numbers, roaring overhead. And they themselves had lost two days wandering about in a daze. Now ambushed. What else awaited them?

But they were told if they helped take that clump of hills the way would be open to destroy the fascist siege of Madrid once and for all. That alone gave them courage as they marched.

Their approach was marked by enemy bullets zwinging overhead. Small flowers of dust sprung up about them. They could see a battle being fought at one sector of the heights. Before them was a series of ravines, rises, gullies, higher rises, all dominated by a hill shaped like a fortress with its tower destroyed by a shell—ragged, steep and soon easily discerned to be heavily armed and fortified.

They approached in a state of collective rage and madness. Their fury at Webster would be expended on the enemy. In spite of him they would destroy the fascist army for that was their only chance at survival.

‘Let’s watch that sonuvabitch,’ Archie Cohen said to Greg Ballard and Turk Drobny. ‘If he makes a stupid command, countermand it. No more fucking ambush.’

Joe Garms called out from the side, ‘I’m watchin’ the fucker, don’t worry.’

They approached the first short rise, hunched over, guns carried loosely. This time a patrol went over first as they waited among the leaping dust flowers.

Ballard and Drobny observed only Webster. Fantastic how neat the man kept himself, how handsome he was in the sun. That swagger stick swishing at flies, no sweat purpling his shirt. The man never sweat.

One of the observers slithered over the top of the barranca, waved them on.

The Americans ran swiftly, doubled over. Gorgeous silhouettes for a moment, soldiers poised with guns, wary. They were over the crest, into another barranca.

The sun was a storm of fire. Hot. Abrasive. Red hot nails pounded into eyeballs. The firing at their right was heavy, incessant. The enemy on the heights were firing down at them, but the rise of the gully shielded them well.

They could see their comrades led by Nevins on their bellies in the gully at the extreme right firing and moving ahead man by man. There were dead burros around. Dead men. The two tinny Christie tanks took positions at either flank and began pumping their small cannon at the tower on the heights.

Someone among Nevin’s troops waved his hand at them, directing them to wheel and turn the enemy line hidden by yet another shallow crest.

‘No!’ screamed Drobny, as Webster, without stopping to think, commanded his men to wheel and charge. ‘A patrol first!’

Too late again, the Americans, seeing their comrades on the right desperately engaged, ran to their aid.

Greg, Archie, Drobny, Joe, all yelling, ‘No! No!’ scrambled after their commander.

Over the crest smack into three enemy machine-guns.

The screaming was a horror.

They threw themselves into the earth. Ballard fired his gun without end at an enemy machine-gun, forgot everything in his rage, just fired, aiming almost unconsciously now. Kill or be killed. For ten minutes the world existed only in Ballard’s gun.

It was quiet in the ravine. On their extreme right Nevins’s troops were still embattled. To their left, high up, a Spanish battalion engaged another enemy fortification.

The sky was a furnace.

The stillness of death lay on the barranca, an open grave. The grotesquery of death made a strange, mad picture: the cracked open head, the upturned palm of outflung hand, the immobile twisted foot of an inert body. Not even the wounded cried out. Perhaps there were none. Perhaps all were dead.

In their barranca, for many seconds: silence.

On their flank the firing was incessant. No one in the barranca seemed to hear.

Suddenly Webster’s shrill voice could be heard. ‘Up and at ’em. Let’s go!’

Then Greg Ballard stood on his knees. He turned his head to see the enemy’s score. Slowly shook his head. He observed Webster on one knee, resting a neat elbow on the other. Greg’s heavy chest was concave, his short body wobbly on his knees, his eyes glazed, fevered. His smashed face, long since not gentle, was screwed up in bitterness and hatred. He rose slowly to his feet, covered by the ravine wall, his short arms dangled at his side, his back humped. With the helmet on his head he looked like the husk of a dead beetle, brown and dried out from many days in the sun. Others about him stood. Thirty men did not stand. They just lay there, immobile, twisted, broken. Bitterness, hatred, madness marked the dirt-caked faces of those who stood. Among them was Archie Cohen. Greg Ballard observed them as they stood, registering them, as it were, counting. If Ballard resembled the brown dried-out husk of a beetle, Archie Cohen in his leanness looked like a gray spider in slow motion, first one leg, then the other, a long arm, the other. Slowly, slowly. Even his blue eyes were gray.

Before him lay Joe Garms, a scooped-out little hole filled with a fat strawberry at his temple, a column of ants two feet long a queue of hungry diners at a popular eating place. They ate well.

At Webster’s feet lay Turk Drobny, the Immortal, with his fourth wound, his last. He reclined on his elbows, his massive arms his back rest, his belly wide open, his intestines untwining into one of his huge fists. The other held his exposed genitalia which he gently caressed as his blue eyes glared at Greg. ‘I got it in the gut, Greg,’ he said unbelieving, his voice a harsh whisper. ‘I’m gonna die.’ Slowly he caressed his last treasure, as the blood from his open stomach seeped through his cupped fist down into his blond pubic hair.

Ballard looked at Drobny; then he looked at Joe. Cold to the world. Joe Garms, Hero. Then he looked at Archie. Archie just stood, lean, spidery, gray, staring at the ants eating from Joe Garms. If yuh quit, we’ll be enemies, he’d said. And meant it, too. But had stood guard against the pols. After the war, Joe had said. Not here. Now we’re comrades. We’re buddies. Yeah.

Drobny caressed his penis, dying. ‘Gut him, Greg,’ he whispered harshly. ‘Slow. Let him die slow, before he finishes the rest of you.’

Webster stood close to Drobny. He stood easily, a handsome man, sweatless, only his tongue flicking at his lips which were dry. His eyes were innocent. ‘Let’s go, boys,’ he shrilled in his choirboy voice. ‘Let’s hit the bricks. Let’s go, comrades.’ He stood erect, soldierly, very neat and clean, flicking his swagger stick, his boots without blemish.

Those who stood turned their eyes to him. Otherwise they didn’t move an inch.

Webster looked from man to man. Where was Mack Berg? Mack would protect him, had promised. He had forgotten Mack Berg was dead. ‘Let’s go,’ he shrilled, himself standing perfectly still, not moving, covered by the ravine wall.

Archie conferred with two men near him. They looked to Greg, then pointed their heads at a pol who too had stood.

A cavernous voice echoed from down the line, ‘Fuck ’im. Webster’s wore out my luck.’

Stepping carefully over dead bodies, Archie approached Greg Ballard. ‘We’ve had enough. Too much!’

‘Gut him, you bastards,’ Drobny screamed, pulling hard, bloody. ‘Hurry up before I die.’

Greg Ballard forgot everything in the world, heard nothing in the world, nodded his head, said loudly so all heard him, ‘Okay, Turk.’

Six men, Archie and Greg among them, ringed Cromwell Webster, Drobny at his feet, dying. The silent pol they ignored.

In Cromwell Webster’s panicked, frightened brain, it must suddenly have occurred that his life was soon to come to an end. He turned his head from wretched face to wretched face, stood stark still a moment, became again totally unaware. He shrilled his order, ‘Now, comrades, let’s go. We got fightin’ tuh do.’ He laughed now, unseeing, not wanting to know, no, this couldn’t happen to him. Not him. He had worked so hard, had wanted so much to be what he wasn’t. No, no, not him. They merely stared at him a few seconds. He stopped laughing, flicked his swagger stick at an unseen fly. Came out of it with a wild scream. He saw. ‘It’s my coluh, you dirty fuckin’ white bastids. It’s my coluh. ’Cause I’m black.’

Turk Drobny, pulling frantically, looked up into Webster’s frightened face. ‘You dirty bastard Uncle Tom. You sold your color to the pols and they’ve been peddling your black ass ever since. You’re just a fuckin’ Uncle Tom.’

It was true. They all nodded. The pols were peddling his black ass and they were paying for it with their lives. It’s true, Greg Ballard said to himself. He must die so we can live.

The ring tightened around Webster now. He stood there, flicking his stick nervously, his eyes bulging, the sun playing about his handsome taut face. On either flank the battle continued. Then he began to scream. ‘It’s my coluh, it’s my coluh. You dirty fuckin’ white bastids it’s ’cause I’m a nigger.’ On he screamed, and now the sweat poured down his face, into his eyes, and he was raving mad. In one last hopeful scream, he cried, ‘Black and white, unite and fight.’

There was an explosion in the ring and he fell to the ground, his head resting on one of Turk Drobny’s massive thighs. Drobny began howling with pain, then grunted, and died.

Not Cromwell Webster. He took his good time.

And those who had killed him, and those who had stood by, became frenzied, mad. They yipped, they danced. Some spit into Webster’s dying face. Others kicked him. One man stripped him of his Córdoban boots, Sam Browne belt and binoculars. Another unpinned the gold bars from his shoulders and placed them on his half-blind dying eyes. Greg Ballard ripped the cap from Webster’s head and placed it askew on his own and danced about him. Still another man pissed on Ace Webster’s comatose face.

He bloated up from an internal hemorrhage and looked like a six-foot-long worm which had swallowed a hog whole. He turned green, a sickening yellow green.

Then Archie and Greg sat near him, feet akimbo, observing him die. All his blood seemed to flow into his bleeding perforated stomach. They watched him die. Drop by drop. His forehead was no longer black—it was yellow green. Then green white. Then his cheeks, his throat, his hands. Green white. His stomach bloated with blood.

Then as he approached death, Ballard stood and raised his hand. The singing stopped, the dancing, the spitting, the pissing. Ballard said, ‘Dig a grave.’

‘No! No! Let him rot in the sun.’

They stuck a pole into the ground near his head, placed his cap and swagger stick on it, attached a wooden marker. ‘Cromwell Webster. Black and white, unite and fight.’

He died.

Then they looked at one another and no one dropped his eyes. One man who had been in the line since mid-February with a four-day leave in all that time, a little man, his uniform in tatters, his big toe showing through a canvas alpargata, filthy and bone-thin, said, ‘It was him or us. That’s all.’

It was mid-morning, and the sun was murderous, too. Their comrades on the right flank were still engaged, the Spaniards on their left were digging in.

The battle called.

Leaderless now, they warily infiltrated man by man, cautiously, observant, to their comrades’ aid.

Late that night, after having chased the enemy halfway up the big crest of the heights of Romanillos, and then having had to retire to the knoll on the flank of the barranca where Webster had been killed and still lay unburied, they discovered that Joe Garms had not died, and that Jake Starr had returned to the line.

The men cheered, jumping up and down like a bunch of kids.

Cromwell Webster was forgotten, another casualty of war.