I've moved this story here from my "Combat!" fanfic site knowing full well some of you have already read it. However, for those who haven't, it is my hope you'll enjoy "The Promise."
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Oppressive heat, the buzzing of flies, the thick cloying odor of blood, the combined stench of death pressed him down into the earth. He could barely draw a breath of the fetid air into his lungs and when he did, the taste of it in his mouth made him gag.
In the field where he lay, all around were the dead - not the dead and dying - only the dead. There was no breeze to carry sound. If there had been, it would've brought to him no sounds of life - no moans, no cries of distress, no pleadings for mother. He was completely and utterly alone. That was more frightening than battle, more terrifying than a sleeping nightmare.
Being alone had always been Paul Lemay's greatest dread. It was now his reality.
Memories of the aloneness flooded the Cajun. Smells returned, bringing the strongest memories, the thick honeyed scent of wisteria, the reek of rotting vegetation mingled with the scent of the air itself, damp and wet, all served to heighten the process of remembering the terror of a child, a small thin boy of 5 with dark straight hair and eyes the color of transparent amber.
Sound memories followed; the mournful calling of doves, the deep resonant croaking of the bull frogs, the cacophony of the spring peepers, and the most frightening of all to a child, the mysterious hoo-hooing of the owls readying for their nightly forage deep into the bayou. In the Cajun mix of religion and superstition, the owl was the harbinger of death. To a child left alone in the night-time shadowy realm of the swamp by older boys playing hide and seek - "You hide, Paulie, and we'll find you!" (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, snicker), then running off and forgetting the lonesome little boy, not remembering him until well after dark when Paul's anxious parents went
door to door searching for the child.
By dawn, Paul was shivering in damp clammy clothes. Hunger pangs cramped his empty belly. Yet the worst was the terror of what lay hidden in the gloom of cypress and mangrove trees with their wigs of hanging Spanish moss like tangled witch-hair in manic disarray, demon arms outstretched to grab and squeeze the life from one small child. Ultimate horror went beyond what imagination could bring, the knowledge that there were things in the bayou that could rend or kill - cougars, alligators, cotton mouth water moccasins. By the time Paul was found he was in a frenzy of terror. He didn't speak for two days. When he did finally talk again, he never once mentioned the experience in the swamp. He blotted it from his mind...until now. Now he was alone again and this terror returned fully and Caje was again a lonely, frightened child in a world full of horrors - this time horrors he had seen and needed no help to imagine.
A wail of terror so profound, so heart wrenchingly eerie it brought tears to the woman's eyes, caught her and her companions totally unaware. They exchanged surprised looks. This small group of maquis had just criss-crossed the battlefield, checking for survivors. Germans they put out of their misery. Americans they did their best to help. Many GI lives had been saved this
way, men secreted away by the underground, given medical attention and returned to the allies.
The maquis listened, intent on locating the soldier whose despondent cry had brought goosebumps to even these hardened veterans.
It was no easy task. Going through the bodies had been difficult the first time. The woman thought maybe she had been so anxious to get the job finished she had not checked each man carefully enough. But there was only so much you could take - so much you could see. Too many torn bloody young men - too much agony on frozen, lifeless faces. She had been negligent, thinking only of hurrying through so she could be spared even one more moment of emotional carnage. To be honest, she hurt deeply, way down beneath blood and bone and heart. She hurt to her soul. When the terrified wail came again, it was all she could do not to join in because the grief she felt was such kindred grief.
The effort of releasing his pent up despair exhausted Caje. He closed his eyes against the gloom of the advancing twilight and to block out the sight of his dead comrades. What he couldn't see, perhaps he could imagine, the men alive, moving about, coming to his aid. He so desperately wanted that, so terribly needed it, that his mind began playing tricks. Behind the closed eyelids, in his secret place, he thought he felt the presence of someone nearby - someone living, breathing, moving. He was gladdened by it, even if it was only his imagination. He reveled in it and dared not open his eyes. The illusion would be spoiled! He refused to open them even when he heard the sounds of movement, even when the negligible weight of a hand lay against his chest, then moved to lift the dog tags at his throat. Only when the soft voice called him by name, did he dare open his eyes. He saw more an outline of a person than any definite features. The twilight had deepened considerably but the figure was small, the voice female and heavily French accented. Other outlines appeared and Caje was lifted and carried away from the field. Relief and physical pain mingled and he passed out.
He came to consciousness slowly and wished he hadn't. Someone was working over him, checking for wounds and injuries, going for speed and not delicacy. The pain was indescribable.
His jacket, wool shirt and undershirt had been cut off. One bullet wound was plainly visible in the right upper side of his chest. It still bled, hours after it had been inflicted. It was carefully examined and Caje was rolled onto his side and checked for an exit wound. There was none. The bullet remained inside.There was much muted conversation, some of it Caje understood, the rest gibberish, confused and run together by a brain fogged by exhaustion and pain.
The bullet wound was quickly bandaged. A face came down close to the Pfc.'s. It wavered, seemed to disappear behind a misty haze only to re-appear. It took all of Caje's concentration to focus on it. The voice coming from the mist was the same voice he remembered from the battlefield, the woman's voice, soft and very very French."The bullet...we can't remove...but the doctor, he comes later. You must sleep. You are safe here."
Lemay reached a hand up towards the voice. It shook from weakness, was dirty and blood streaked. The woman took it in hers, squeezing the shaking fingers, pressing them together. Slowly they closed around hers. The trembling lessened.
"Don't leave me alone," the Pfc. pleaded, his amber eyes ringed with fatigue, bloodshot from exhaustion, the face pinched from pain. Beneath the dirt and sweat and blood, the woman noticed the soldier was probably much younger than he looked. She was more surprised however, that his first words to her had been in French.
She was used to seeing beneath the outer surfaces. She'd been with the maquis three years now. It was all she could remember. Before that...there was nothing.
For Caje it was nearly the same. He'd only been on the front lines for three months, but it seemed all there was now consisted of living day to day, fatigue so great you would've sold your soul for a few hours of sleep, hunger, pain, loss and death. But his purgatory was that he did remember life before war. He remembered peace, quiet evenings on a porch swing, Benny Goodman's band, the scent of a woman. He remembered and it tore him to pieces because he thought, he truly believed, he wouldn't live to experience it all again. Tears came to his eyes, welled over, streaked down his cheeks. Silent tears.
Tenderly, the woman wiped at them with what was left of a once delicate handkerchief she pulled from inside her jacket pocket. The once exquisitely handmade lace was ragged, a shred of gossamer memories of a vanished life.
"Don't leave me," Lemay whispered again. "Please."
She shook her head in the negative. "I won't leave," she promised.
Caje was being kept in the cellar of a convent. More precisely, it was a sub-cellar. The entire place was catacombed with hallways, tiny rooms known as cells and beneath those, tunnels and more tunnels - a labyrinth. And although he wasn't aware of it, Caje was not alone. There were four other allied soldiers in the room with him, all wounded. In the night, one died, calling not for his mother, but for God. The other three had been in the care of the maquis for several days.
Towards morning the doctor came, delayed by heavy kraut activity in the area. Caje wasn't asleep when the tiny bearded man knelt at the pallet upon which he lay. He'd been plagued by thirst, the beginnings of a fever and the restlessness that accompanied the rise in temperature.
A kerosene lamp was held close and the doctor removed bandaging over the Pfc.'s wound. The pain was intense and so far all that had been done was a cursory examination. Paul bit his lip and tried to be still, but try as he might, his body twisted away from the physician's touch. Strong hands held him down and still, and the faces of the men who held him were not without great pity.
There was no morphine and at the first touch of the cold probe into the wound, Caje fainted. It was the best thing that could've happened to all concerned.
xxxx
"He's gone, you say? Just not there?" Lieutenant Hanley was not happy with the news. Saunders and Kirby had gone back to the scene of battle for one purpose only - to locate the missing scout. They fully expected to find his body among all the others. Instead they found only his beret.
"Yes, Sir, gone...and Lieutenant..."Saunders paused uncomfortably. "There was a lot of blood, but Caje never walked outta there. All that blood...he couldn't have."
The lieutenant didn't know what he felt - relief, worry, despair? Caje wasn't dead. At least he wasn't only hours ago...worry, most certainly that. Blood, a lot of it, Saunders had said. Was Caje a captive of the Germans or wounded but safe in some French farm house? There wasn't time to pursue the question further. Orders were to rendezvous with Company by 0800 tomorrow at St. Onge. Hanley ground out the butt of his cigarette beneath his boot. His heart was heavy, his spirit as low as it had ever been. The officer leaned back in the broken down chair and closed his eyes. Images flashed past, like moving pictures on a screen, faces of the men he'd lost. God how it hurt to lose each and every one of them. It was worse, much worse, when you lost one who had become a friend.
Hanley shook off the feelings of melancholy with superhuman effort. There was so much work to be done still and there was hope. Caje could still very well be alive. Yes, there was hope - at least and always that.
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"The water pipes are broken from heavy shelling. We have to carry in the water in buckets. It's hard sneaking past the Bosch!" The young maquis' attempts at explaining why the water supply to the convent had been cut off meant little to her. All that was important was that the wounded men in her care suffered as little as possible and in the past 36 hours, they had
suffered terribly. The French speaking PFC suffered the most. His fever had continued to rise as his body fought to heal itself. He cried for water, begged for it. When he had a lucid moment and she explained to him why there was none, the hurt expression in his feverish eyes broke down her determination to remain strong and stoic. She began to cry. She turned her face from him, to
hide the tears. But she didn't leave his side.
When Caje next asked for a drink, he was given water, one sip at a time and as much as he needed. He drifted off into a feverish sleep, his hot face cooled by a bit of cloth dipped in the precious fluid. His dreams were filled with visions of home, the first such vivid images in a long time. Hours later, his fever began to break.
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Artillery rocked the aged building to its foundations, sending masonry dust and dirt sifting down to blanket those hiding in the lowest levels.
The maquis moved the wounded back to the farthest, darkest cover of the room, closest to the protection of the imposing stone foundations. Caje stood on unsteady legs, nearly falling to his knees as the vertigo and weakness gripped him. He propped himself up against her, not truly seeing her in the dimness.
"Give me a gun...give me your .45." He tried to lend authority to his voice, be a soldier again. The woman was not one to obey simply because he ordered it so. She was not a man, but was more a soldier than many the Cajun had served with. As much as he might try to disguise the facts, they were facts nevertheless - he was weak and sick and in no condition to even be on his
feet, let alone handle a weapon.
The Germans were in rapid retreat, the Americans snarling and snapping at their heels. It was American artillery they'd been feeling and hearing, but the Germans were running right over this bit of France and right over its people. Nothing and no one would stand in their way. Already machine guns and small arms fire could be heard, though muffled in the subterranean
sanctuary.
"Give me your .45," Lemay pressed again. The small arms fire seemed nearer - clearer. Finally, she nodded in the near darkness, a gesture he couldn't see, before she passed the loaded automatic into his hand. She helped him maneuver over to where the other wounded GIs waited.
With difficulty, Caje pulled the weapon's slide back and jacked a round into the chamber. His eyes never left the doorway with its soft glow of distant light. Alone at the open door stood the woman. It was only at this moment that Caje realized he'd never even asked for her name.
xxxx
From St. Onge, King Two was assigned to escort a pair of ambulances to a convent 10 miles away where a small group of wounded GIs would be turned over to them via the French underground. The mood of the men remained somber and tempers were short. Caje was listed as MIA and the men were certain, nearly to a man, that classification would soon be changed to KIA, all the men except Littlejohn, who remained an optimist. As much as the others all wished it, prayed it to be so, they thought the big man was wrong. Naturally, it was Kirby, BAR man without equal and big mouth to the extreme, who made the mistake of calling the huge private "a dumb ass farm boy without the sense he was born with! Caje is dead, damn it! Dead and no use you makin' it worse by keepin' some fairytale alive!"
For his hot-headed outburst, the slender rifleman was lifted bodily up by his jacket and slammed repeatedly into a crumbling stone wall.
Sergeant Saunders broke up the one sided fight before Littlejohn had a chance to actually do too much physical harm to the mouthy Irishman. All Saunders said was "Saddle up, we've got a job to do."
Within the hour, they were riding shotgun on the ambulances and bringing up the rear in a jeep.
The closer the small caravan got to its destination, the more destruction there seemed to be. Artillery had flattened buildings and trees indiscriminately. None of the men gave much thought to the destruction. It had been friendly fire after all. There appeared to be a mop up in progress - lots of dead krauts and many prisoners.
The convent itself was intact for the most part, but seemed deserted as the squad and the medics pulled up in front and parked their vehicles. Hanley sent the squad out for a recon while the medics began to unload their equipment.A sweep of the building itself revealed a goodly number of dead Germans, 10 to 12 nuns, also dead, and a small number of French civilians - most likely the maquis the squad had been sent to rendezvous with.
It was Saunders who discovered the sub-basement. What he'd already seen in this house of God had angered, saddened and disgusted the battle-weary sergeant. Saunders hadn't been raised religiously, like say Caje had been. He only remembered going to church before his father died, to services and even to Sunday school. But after his father's death, his mother lost interest in church altogether and his trips there had been infrequent at best. He still believed in God, but it was days like this one that sorely tested that belief.
To add to Saunders anger and disgust this place gave him the creeps. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. It was dark, damp and musty and his flashlight's meager light did little to dispel the gloom. Finding a lantern hanging on a wall hook, Saunders lit it and pocketed his flashlight, better, but not by much.
The krauts had obviously found this place. Two of them lay dead in the long narrow corridor, another in one room along with a French civilian. Stepping over the bodies in the corridor, Saunders continued on, with the knowledge that anyone could be hiding in this dismal place.
More bodies, stored supplies and after what seemed an eternity, Saunders came to the last room. He wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but the feelings he had encountered when he first entered the sub-basement hadn't left him. If anything, they made him more careful, more aware of the danger of his situation.
Outside the final room, Saunders set aside the bulky lantern and retrieved the flashlight from his jacket. He clicked it on and with his body hidden from sight extended only his arm partially into the room, panning the flash around, peering in cautiously, Thompson ready.
He heard something! A scraping sound, the sound of a breath taken, a faint click. If it hadn't been for the fact that he'd seen the presence of civilians, Saunders would've lobbed in a grenade and been done with it, but he wouldn't take the chance.
"Come out with your hands up," Saunders commanded, knowing he sounded like an actor in some B movie western. "Come out now!"
"We can't. We're all wounded," replied a voice the sergeant never believed he'd hear again. Seconds slipped by, then "Sarge?"
Paul Lemay was beyond shock. He hadn't expected the voice of the person outside the door to be an American let alone Sergeant Saunders'. The Cajun fully expected them all to die here as the woman had done. He had fully expected to die in defense of the wounded who couldn't protect themselves. Wasn't it only moments earlier that several German soldiers had peppered the room with gunfire? Only moments since she had killed the kraut who in turn had caused her own death? Moments or hours?
Caje slumped over, his pistol empty, his heart equally so. The woman's head and shoulders rested across his legs. She had failed to keep her promise to him. She had left him, but it took death to make her.
END