In the Wolf's Mouth (6 page)

‘Listen. Fuck. Goddamn it, listen. You’re a little wop virgin, Marfione.’

‘That’s Italian virgin to you,’ Ray said.

‘That’s nice,’ George said. ‘Like a Leonardo da Vinci.’

Floyd held a cigarette in his left hand. With his right he lit a match against his teeth, poking it far back into his mouth and dragging it along the underside of his molars. A tussle of brightness inside his mouth then he held up a match in full flame. Nonchalantly, he lit his cigarette. That was Floyd announcing he was bored with Daisy. ‘Out of our hands anyway,’ he said. ‘The war will decide if we get to see any of these people again.’

‘Don’t talk that way.’

‘Where are we even going? Nobody knows. Officers don’t tell us.’

‘We’re going to fight, to land. We know that.’

‘Too busy eating that gourmet shit upstairs.’

‘Fuckin’ right.’

‘I’ve got to say I’m looking forward to some fighting. Get some fresh air at least.’

Fear thickened in the ship over the coming days. You could feel it. The men got angry, exercising furiously or stalled, torpid, their faces seizing up. After they were briefed about the operation they had at least a target to think about, an object in mind, procedures. But still in his dreams Ray flailed forwards on the training ground, sweat stinging his eyes and loosening his grip on his rifle. Impotent with his bayonet, he was unable to drive it into the dummy or scream his battle cry. Other indistinct men ran past him into the danger he wasn’t ready to meet.

Bad weather took hold of the ship two days before the landings. The men hung on as the dark interior sank suddenly sideways, rose, slid across, plunged. There were rumours of torpedoes but none came. Vomit rolled across the floors. There was a kind of mad festivity about it as they puked and shouted, kicked about inside a turbulence equal to their dread. Rain clattered onto the metal hull and decks. The engines churned. Men vocalised as they retched, barking, moaning, almost singing. George held onto his bunk. For comfort, Ray watched him. George’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be speaking a prayer. Dunphy,
the big machine-gunner in Ray’s squad, fell badly and sat and cursed, holding his wrist. A few of the men had started cheering as the ship reached the summit of its tilt and fell down, like it was all a ride at Coney Island.

When the storm let go of them there was cleaning up to be done, heads to be cleared, as after a wild, violent party.

In the final hours before landing on the North African coast, the boys listened to their instructions again and again, readied their weapons and kit. They were consumed with practical thoughts, or at least attempted to be, thinking things through with a determined sanity: materialist, mechanical, rational, so clear and potent it was as dizzying as moonshine. Army sanity. This was how you did it. This was how you got through. Drills and procedures. There was an opportunity to automate yourself and just fit in. This was what Ray’s urge to hide counselled him – the hope that he could disappear into the military machine and present no individual target. Religion was there to cover the part of them that remained exposed. The padre said prayers. Ray looked at George, standing there, praying along. His ears looked small and serious. There was a Catholic priest as well for the boys who wanted him. Ray was not really a church guy. The priests back home were too friendly with the tough guys, both types parading around the neighbourhood in their fancy outfits, accepting the tributes of the people. But he went for a blessing anyway. His mother would want him to.

3

The waiting to land, like all the interminable waiting, felt like it would never end and then suddenly did. Ray found himself on deck loaded with his equipment waiting to climb down into a landing craft. In a grid all around him in the darkness the others were waiting to do the same. So many of them, Ray felt for the first time the pent-up strength of the force. They couldn’t lose. Men went over the side and everyone stepped forward. Then Ray went over the side, clambering down from square to warping square of netting. Beside him, a soldier Ray didn’t know mistimed the jump and fell between the troopship and the landing craft. His helmet struck the hull with a ringing sound and before he had time to cry out he was gone, disappeared into the black water, and didn’t resurface. A quiet, rapid, weird death – the first Ray witnessed – that no one had time to remark on. It made Ray pant with terror for a minute. This was it. This was battle. This was where men died.

Ray dropped into the craft as it was rising on a wave so that it caught the bottom of his feet and almost threw him. He stepped forward, gripped the handle where he stood. Beside him, Floyd whispered, ‘Let’s hope the Frenchies are sleeping.’

‘They’ll wake up.’

‘Look up at those.’

‘What?’ Ray glanced up: the huge side of the ship, the night sky. ‘What?’

‘Those stars. If I knew astrology then what could I know about what’s coming.’

‘We are.’

‘Maybe it’s all up there already.’

‘Shut the fuck up, you two.’ Another voice, tight with fear.

‘I agree with that guy,’ Ray said.

‘Okay, men.’ That was Sergeant Carlson, standing right behind Ray. ‘Settle down. God bless us and our victory.’

The craft surged forward. For the long ride of five miles to the port that was their target, Ray stood and thought and tried not to think. He noticed how strange it was that this was the same world, the same wind blowing against them, the same sea they were moving over, but now everything was different. All the rules were different. And that falling man – had that happened? Maybe he dreamed it. No dreaming. Look. Think forwards. Think weapons. This was a night-time attack, an attack on sleep. Only the sentries would be standing upright with their eyes open. Enemies. He had a picture in his head suddenly of his older brother with his friends from the corner, different when he was with his friends, hostile. At night Ray and Tony’s breath mingled in the small bed. During the day they separated. The look in his eye, hard and distant, when his kid brother walked by. That was the space you had to shoot across, corner to corner. Ray’s mind was too busy. He had his rifle in his hands. He
gripped it, feeling the solidity, wood and metal, remembering the parts, the action. That was all he needed to know. Until they reached the target he should be empty like a movie camera pushing forwards into the world, seeing things.
I’m in a war!
he thought to himself.
I’m in a movie!

Now out. Okay. Just the tiniest moment between knowing he had to get out and his muscles responding, a refusal he overcame. Ray was in the cold sea, taking long slow strides to get out of it, holding his rifle over his head. Then he was on the beach, lying down on the smooth sand. The fort was where it should be, up on the right, smaller than he had pictured it. The sentries weren’t firing. Ray wasn’t firing. Other soldiers started firing and the sentries responded, a
put-put-put
sound that didn’t seem to be hurting anyone. Soldiers were running up the steps, waving others after them. One of the sentries fell. Then the other stopped firing. Ray was running up the stone steps with the others into the fort where people were already corralled outside with their hands up. Flashlights showed their faces soft with sleep. Hearing American voices ahead, one soldier arrived up the steps shouting ‘Geronimo!’ There was laughter. Cigarettes were lit. Everyone was panting, airy with relief. Randall punched Ray on the arm.

‘I think I shot one of those guys.’

‘Well, it wasn’t me. How do you know, though? Lots of shots, Randall.’

‘Yeah, but the timing. When he fell. Think I got him right in the heart.’

‘I’m shaking. Are you shaking?’

‘Why the fuck would I be shaking?’

‘It’s the sea.’ George appeared. ‘We’re not on a boat any more. Feel how solid the ground is. It’s weird.’

‘That’s it,’ Ray said. ‘That must be why. I feel like I’m on waves.’

Sergeant Carlson collected his men together. His squad was one of three ordered to patrol the town and respond to any signs of resistance. A French soldier was issued to him to translate if necessary, a man now already civilian in his indifferent slouch and muttered opinions. Carlson, a head taller with white-gold hair that sparkled in the darkness, patted him on the shoulder with heavy, meaningful friendliness.

‘Tell him, if he tries anything …’ Floyd said.

‘He knows,’ Carlson said. ‘And don’t be talking about anything.’

They walked through old stone streets, alert for some danger from doorways or alleys but none came. Ray looked up at the ancient buildings of pitted stone. They walked across a deserted square, the sound of their boots echoing back from store fronts, the high façade of a great basilica.

Ray wanted to see it all but by the time the sun was up and the town was alive – Ray imagined shy, fascinated children, dark women – he and the others were in pup tents on the outskirts of the town waiting for tanks and vehicles to be landed before the army headed east. Ray stared across low, faded, biblical-looking hills and turned slowly round to the north, watching the town come into view and rocks, sea, sky. He wasn’t the first to hear the planes but as soon as someone did the reaction was general, people either staring or running. Up in the heights Ray saw glinting
fuselages. A formation of small planes around a couple of bombers. As they approached, the Stukas – that was what they were – went into their dive like something sliding off a table, falling then powering down towards the town. They roared overhead. Their bay doors opened and elegant, pointed bombs dropped silently out, turning end over end. Ray fell onto his face in time to feel the first explosion buck through the ground. Then again and again, a fit, an attack. Any one of them could be the end of him, any second. He listened to the detonations and in the gaps between them felt a strange swimming uplift, himself exposed, expanding, until the next one fell. The earth beneath him was blackness, oblivion. He lay on the thin, bouncing surface waiting to die. A frantic, dry popping sound was small arms fire discharged at the sky. He should be doing that, he should be up on his feet. He pushed himself up onto his knees and went to the tent for his rifle, keeping low, running round-shouldered, shrinking from the sky. There was smoke rising from the town as German aircraft made snarling, curving runs and flew away. He wrestled his gun up to his shoulder, chose one plane and shot pointlessly at it. An artillery weapon, possibly in the fort, was being fired with effect: a fighter plane cartwheeled chaotically into the sea. A bomb landed close, less than a hundred yards away, a dark speeding freefalling object that vanished inside a blast that Ray felt against his face and hands. The power was tremendous. It could kill him so easily. Bullying, shaking, the biggest thing he’d ever felt and it was personal, it meant him, it wanted to kill him.

That was the last explosion. Aircraft engines droned into the distance. Gunfire thinned. Soldiers shouted at each other and vehicles raced. No one among the tents had been killed but in the town things were different. Someone said ‘bodies’. The word ‘bodies’ was repeated. Ray heard it. Bodies on the beach, apparently, and in the water. Smoke rose from one place in the town, thick and black, not like woodsmoke or cigarette smoke or anything but dense, full of matter, poisonous, chugging upwards.

Sergeant Carlson was right there, forming his men together. Floyd, Randall, George, Sorenson, Coyne, Dunphy, Wosniak, they were all there. Orders were to get the tents down and be ready to move out. Those not needed in town would be clearing the area. Either way, clear the camp. Carlson walked away to get further orders himself from higher up the chain.

Randall said, ‘Now I got good reason to kill some of them sons of bitches.’

‘Ready and willing,’ Floyd said. He spat hard, checked the backs of his hands a couple of times. ‘I wanna keep on invading. I wanna invade the hell out of those motherfuckers.’

George said, ‘Well, we have come all this way.’

Sorenson said, ‘Would you faggots actually shift and get this shit cleared up.’

‘Invasion time,’ Ray said, wanting to join in and convince himself. ‘You better believe it.’ And he did feel it inside, the havoc he wanted to wreak, maybe it was the fear thrashing away but it wanted out, it wanted action, even though the raid had left something in his mind he knew he wouldn’t get rid of. A small
hard certainty was lodged in his brain that he’d just have to ignore. Ray knew that he wouldn’t live long. There was no way. Not against all that.

On the road into the desert, Ray knew his death had come. Planes tore down low over them and the whole column of men fell onto their faces, crawled under vehicles. Strafing fire chattered down, kicking up stones, whining off armour. Ray felt his back blown open in a ragged circle of heat. The planes angled up, turned, overflew again, firing, and flew away as guns chased them from the ground. Crying quietly, Ray felt for the wound. His fingers touched hot metal but it was loose. It was nothing, an empty shell case. He stood up, alive. Some other men weren’t. There was blood, stillness, twitching, moaning, running men. Wosniak was one of them, a red foam of blood around his mouth, eyes open and blank.
Just let’s do it again. Another chance. Just go back a minute
.

Artillery, guns bucking, jumping back, men feeding them, cringing away from the blast with hands to their ears, reloading, firing, volley after volley. The smell of it drifting back, the blasts felt in the soles of the men’s feet, the spasming light in darkness. And then, into the incoming fire, the tanks rolled forward with a high-pitched continuous mechanical noise. It was like the surface of another planet and a war between machines, like something from the alien adventure comics some of the boys had with them, death rays and strange technologies. Ray felt small, and human. A shell landed near, thumping some men to pieces,
and his bowels opened warmly into his pants as the infantry squads jogged forward behind the tanks. Their task was to mop up, to catch any enemy fleeing their burning tanks or whatnot, when eventually they crossed their line. The squad jogged over the soft ground together, only eight of them now with no replacement yet for Wosniak. Sergeant Carlson set the pace. Dunphy bounced up and down with the big Browning at his hip. The tanks, whining, ground forwards, firing shells. It was like herding, Randall had said, pretending to be a cowboy. It was like. It was like. It was like nothing on earth.