IDAHO WINTERS COULD TURN THE Devil blue, but on this night Walter Waters was prepared to concede the prize for the coldest place on Earth to this desolate Hun city and its miserable stretch of cracked concrete pavement that he and Toddy Berks had been assigned to patrol. It was so damn frigid that he had to keep wiping the brim of his helmet to prevent the icicles from dropping like miniature spears through his nose. He couldn’t even bend the soles of his frozen boots, a sorry state that now forced him to scoot warily along the glaze like a decrepit old ice skater.
Since landing over here a year ago, he had been laboring under the assumption that soldiers got to go home after winning a war. But Black Jack Pershing had decided to cross the Rhine and keep several regiments stationed at the bridgeheads to insure that the ghosts of the German army didn’t somehow miraculously invade the Paris cafés and whorehouses. Last-in-last-out was the policy for this new occupation force, and it was just his daggum luck that the 146th Field Artillery Regiment had been one of the last units to cross the pond.
“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Berks asked him.
Waters huffed at the insufferable half-Injun shavetail who had arrived to join the regiment earlier that week from somewhere in the jungle of Appalachia. “How the hell would I k-k-know what you’re th-th-thinking?”
“In the short time I’ve known you, Dubya, you’ve impressed me as the pondering type.”
“Why don’t you p-p-ponder the various and sundry ways you might shut your t-t-trap.”
“Take it easy, for Christ’s sake, I’m just trying to pass the time. What’s gotten a burr under your saddle?”
“I’m not accustomed to p-p-partnering up with the town crier who goes rattling down the street like a t-t-tinker dragging his wares.”
Berks lifted the small burlap sack tied to his belt. “This is gonna make my fortune, Dubya. People back in Wheeling were saying this is the last war ever gonna be fought. I’m telling you, these relics will be worth their weight in bullion some day.”
“What the hell have you g-g-got in there?”
Berks peered into his stash and proudly rattled off the list of booty as if he were the lord high treasurer giving accountancy to the king. “Five Hun shoulder patches. Two belt buckles. Some letters in Bocheese. A bolo knife. And the crown jewel of the collection—a very hard-to-find trench grenade, certified as the genu-wine article from one of those Kraut prisoners we patted down on the train last week. This here pineapple would rearrange the heads and shoulders of an entire Berlin storm-trooping regiment.”
“What the hell would you know about s-s-storm-trooping?”
“I went through training.”
“Training? For what? How to p-p-piss into a latrine?”
“I don’t have to take this abuse! Not from a goddamn medic who never fired—” Berks stopped himself, apparently remembering that his patrol companion was a sergeant, even if nobody in the regiment gave that rank much consideration.
“Never fired what?”
“You gonna bust me if I say it?”
Waters dropped the rifle from his shoulder and leaned it against the wall of an abandoned storefront. “I’m g-g-gonna bust you if you d-d-don’t say, and real quick.”
Berks took a step back to be safe. “The old-timers in the regiment said you wouldn’t even put a bullet in your best buddy to save him a slow death.”
“That ain’t the way it h-h-happened!”
Berks raised his hands in a plea for Waters to calm down. “I ain’t making any judgment, Dubya. I mighta done the same thing. It’s just, I don’t take kindly to gettin’ my hide rode because I didn’t get sent over here before the fighting stopped.”
Waters started down their patrol route again, checking the locks on the doors and making sure there were no German deserters or Army grifters hiding out in the crevices. It was two hours past curfew, and this part of town, towered over by a giant ceramics factory that was abandoned during the war, looked pretty quiet. He kept his thoughts to himself as they walked in silence, except for the relics in Berks’s sack rattling behind them on the sidewalk.
After several minutes, Berks risked another question. “They ever find him?”
“Find who?”
“Your friend who got devoured by the mud.”
Waters felt one of his blinding migraines coming on. And his lungs were burning again, not helped by the cold air. He hadn’t felt himself since that gassing fiasco with the baseball immortals, but he passed it off as just the effects of the grippe spreading around camp. When he managed to open his eyes from the pounding throbs, he found Berks still waiting for an answer. “You looking to d-d-dig him up and t-t-take him home for a souvenir, too?”
“No cause for that. I was just wondering, is all.”
Tears began to freeze on his lids. “I never went b-b-back to look for him.”
Berks shook his head. “Some farmer’s gonna plow him up one day.”
“Reckon.”
“Tell me if I’m way out of the barn, here, Dubya, but I’d kick myself if I went back home not asking you. … What’d he look like just before he went under?”
“It was too d-d-damn d-d-dark to see.”
Berks stared down at the pavement as if trying to see into the depths of Hades. “The farmer who digs him up is the only one who’s ever gonna know. He’ll be the lone witness to that poor fella’s last expression of despair before he —”
A scream came from somewhere in the darkness, followed by a man’s bark of what sounded like an order in German.
Waters grabbed his rifle and motioned for Berks to button his mouth. They stalked the source of the cry, angling from corner to corner. More shouts in German came from an alley to their left. Waters checked the shells in his rifle and clicked on the new mechanical flashlight he had been issued. The beam illuminated a bedraggled mob of boys and elderly women hovering over what appeared to be a bum sitting cornered in the alley. He motioned Berks up, and together they walked into the alley for a better look. There, caught by the light, was the German scum beating the poor homeless wretch and tearing buttons and swatches from his shirt and pants. He shouted at the thieving bastards, “S-s-stop!”
The rag-clad gang reacted like a pack of coyotes caught over the carcass of a wounded deer. One of the women with them turned and flashed what was left of her teeth. “Verräter!”
Berks nervously fingered his rifle. “What’s she saying?”
“I don’t know.”
The German boys in the stalk pack backed away, but the mother superior of the wretches stood her ground. She made a motion that appeared to mimic someone stabbing her in the back.
“This m-m-man attacked you?” Waters asked her.
The hag spat on the downed man who lay sitting against the brick wall. She and the others scrambled off into a warren, kicking him as they passed.
“Shit,” Berks whispered. “The Kaiser shoulda put those fräuleins in his army.”
They edged closer to see if the abandoned man was injured.
Waters angled the flashlight and got a full glimpse. The fellow was in a German officer’s uniform, and an Iron Cross, awarded for valor in battle, hung from his left breast. His face was bloodied and his frayed tunic with black stiff collar had been pecked at until it looked like the hide of a molted buck.
Berks pulled out his canteen and offered the officer a drink of water. “Hey, pal. Why d-d-didn’t you fight those horseflies off?”
The officer just stared at him with deadened eyes.
Waters dropped the beam of the flashlight to below the officer’s belt to check for weapons. “Sonofabitch.”
Berks backed away. “He only has one leg.”
Enraged at how the crippled officer had been abused, Waters stood up fingering his rifle and searched the alley.
“Why’d they do this to him, Dubya?”
“Must have been some of them B-b-bolshevik bastards.”
Berks helped the officer take another drink from the canteen. “Boys and women? They didn’t look like Bolshies to me.”
“They’re all starving. Guess they g-g-gotta blame somebody for losing the war. The K-k-kaiser scampers off to hide, so the soldiers are all that’s left to be s-s-scapegoats.”
“Goddamn Hun!” Berks cursed. “We’re lucky to be American, Dubya. Not that we’ll ever lose a war, but the folks back home would never do this to us.”
“The Lord has b-b-blessed us, all right.”
When the officer was finished drinking, Berks screwed the cap back on the canteen. “What are we going to do with him?”
“Hell if I know. He needs a hot m-m-meal. We can try to r-r-rustle that up for him, I s’pose.”
Berks untied the sack from his belt. He dropped its contents and began rummaging through them. “I think I got a can of Hun beans in here somewhere. We can heat it up to tide him over.”
The German officer enlivened at seeing the cache of souvenirs. Unable to speak English, he pointed at the pile.
“What’s he want?” Berks asked.
Waters shrugged. “Not sure.”
The German officer unpinned the Iron Cross from his breast and offered it to Berks.
“Holy Toledo!” Berks cried. “He’s giving it to me? A German medal? You know how much that’ll fetch, Dubya?”
Waters noticed that the officer kept glancing at Berks’s collection of war paraphernalia. “He ain’t giving it to you. I think he wants to t-t-trade it for something.”
Berks rifled through his stash. “Ain’t nothing in here worth an Iron Cross.”
The officer struggled to reach the relic that he desperately wanted. Unable to crawl, he kept pointing.
Berks picked up several of the relics, until he found the one the German desired—the hand grenade.
“What’s he want that for, Dubya?”
“Beats me, but you ain’t g-g-giving it to him. I don’t trust him.”
“He ain’t gonna blow us up. We’re the only ones helping him.”
“Forget it.”
“I want that Iron Cross.”
“I said it ain’t happening. Th-th-that’s an order.”
Berks looked longingly at the medal just hanging like ripe fruit on the officer’s uniform. “I got an idea. We’ll keep our rifles trained on him as we back away. Then, when we’re at the mouth of the alley, I’ll roll the grenade to him. He can’t do nothin’ to us then.”
Waters stomped his feet, his brain nearly frozen into a stupor. “I dunno.”
“Look at him, Dubya. I think it has sentimental value for him.”
“And the Iron Cross d-d-don’t?”
“That medal was given to him by the very government elected by those assholes who just tried to beat him into sausage. No wonder he don’t want it no more. It has more value to me than him. Come on, Dubya. It’s the free market. That’s why we fought this war, ain’t it? To save the world for capitalism?”
Waters was just too damn cold to care anymore. “Maybe he wants it to f-f-fight off those wolves if they c-c-come back. Not a bad ending for ‘em, I’d have to agree.” He removed his overcoat and put it over the shoulder of the German officer. “Listen up, partner. We can’t carry you out in your present state of health, so we’re g-g-gonna let the MPs know you’re here. Don’t know if it’ll do you any g-g-good, but maybe you’ll get some grub, at least. Now, here’s the plan.” He pointed at the Iron Cross and told the officer, “You’re g-g-gonna give that to Berksie here.” He pointed at the end of the alley and made an underhand gesture, like bowling at pins. “We’ll roll the memento of your service to you, understand?”
The officer took in enough of Waters’s Injun signals to get his drift. He removed the Iron Cross, glanced at it one last time with tears in his eyes, and handed it to Berks.
When they reached the far end of the alley, Waters checked the grenade to make sure the safety on the pin was set, then he nodded to Berks. “Give it a tumble.”
Berks grinned with anticipation of his fortune as he took aim down the dark alley and underhanded the grenade like a Sicilian playing bocce ball. Waters flipped off the flashlight and listened to the thud of the rolling until it stopped. In the distance, he heard a weak voice rasp:
“Danke.”
As they walked away, Berks slapped Waters on the back and packed the Iron Cross in his pocket for safekeeping. “What’d I tell ya, Dubya. No sweat.”
“Yeah, you’re a regular Clemenceau with the peace negotiations. Quite a f-f-feat bartering down a gimp.”
“I’m telling ya, I think I got a talent for the trading profession. Maybe I should look into joining one of those Wall Street brokers and—”
An explosion rocked the buildings behind them.
Ducking their heads under their arms, they turned and saw a cloud of debris settling over the alley they had just left. When the dust finally settled, Waters flipped on the flashlight again. He ran back down the narrow passage.
He turned and retched.
The limbs and organs of the dead German officer—who had just committed suicide—lay splattered along the bloody wall.