Mundy and Gordon untangle the bodies and lower them to the ground. Mundy does his ersatz Extreme Unction thing, Gordon hovering over the bodies.
I have time to pull myself together. Gordon and Mundy come back and we move toward the jeeps without saying anything. Even for a bunch of self-proclaimed smart asses with a wisecrack for almost anything, there isn’t much to say.
Shutzer and Miller won’t believe it when we tell them. They’ve got to go in and see for themselves. We tell them they aren’t ‘dancing’ anymore, how Mundy and Gordon let them down, but they want to check. Faith is going out of style, even in our squad, despite Mundy’s heroic last-ditch efforts.
We get the rations, grenades, camouflage suits and other junk, including twelve mini chess sets, packed tight in the jeep; Mother climbs in with me behind the fifty. Gordon starts the other jeep and rolls close behind ours.
When Shutzer and Miller come back, Shutzer’s like a lunatic.
‘Those filthy, Nazi, Kraut-headed, super-Aryan, mother-fucking bastards. Only pigs would even think of a thing like that. That whole Goddamned country doesn’t deserve to live with human beings. We should shove them in their gas ovens and wipe them all out. I personally would be glad to supervise the entire operation.
‘And don’t give me any crap, Mundy! You tell me why anybody’d do something like that to anybody else! What kind of God lets things like that happen?’
Mundy’s sitting in the other jeep. He’s quiet. Then he looks at Shutzer climbing in beside him.
‘Yes, it’s a terrible thing, Stan, a horrible way to treat the temple of the Holy Ghost, even if the immortal soul has departed. But we don’t know for sure the Germans did that.’
Miller turns over our jeep and guns the motor so I just pick up what Shutzer says.
‘For Chrissake; who else, Mundy, gremlins?’
We go along slowly, twisting, turning; up and down hills, around cuts in mountains, under snow-covered trees. I stay behind the fifty, head ducked tight into my shoulders, trying to follow on the map where we’re going. It’s a small sector map of the one Love had, a contour job, an inch to a thousand feet, so it should be reasonably accurate. But we’re making more twists and turns than are shown.
‘What’s the mileage, Bud?’
He looks down at the odometer.
‘We’ve come about six and two-tenths so far, since K Company.’
We go through a narrow defile and suddenly there’s a bridge over a small stream, the bridge I’ve been looking for, the one we’re supposed to watch.
Up a steep road from this bridge is the château. I mean it’s really a château, not just a fancy house. It isn’t all that big, but this is something from a French fairy tale.
Miller glides to a stop; I hand-signal back to Gordon. We turn off both motors and listen. It’s quiet except for winter birds, running water and the sound of wind through pines. Slopes of forest come down behind, close to the château. Looking at the bridge, I can see there’s no vehicle or foot traffic marks. It appears the place really might be deserted.
We scramble out of our jeeps. Gordon takes the scope and inches forward to a tree nearest the château with a good view and some cover. He leans the scope against this tree and scans everything for maybe five minutes.
Nobody’s saying anything. All of us are staring at that château. It’s built in pinkish-gray stone with a blue-gray slate roof and white shutters. All the shutters are closed. It’s three stories tall and has a mansard roof. It doesn’t look real.
Gordon comes back.
‘I don’t see anything, Wont: no smoke, no movement, no tracks. The windows and doors are all closed; there are no vehicles and no smells.’
‘What do you think, Mel? Send in a two-man patrol or just charge up that hill with the jeeps?’
‘I thought Shutzer and I could ford the creek downstream a ways and approach from that side. We can look around back, then come on down the road in front to the bridge and check for mines. How’s that sound?’
‘We’ll spread out and cover for you.’
If Mel hadn’t gotten trench foot in the mud at Metz, he’d sure as hell be squad leader and that’s the way it should be. Or maybe he’d be dead.
He and Shutzer start down through the trees. I pass the word for everybody to spread out and be ready to give covering fire if they need it. I slide down to Gordon’s tree, where there’s a good field of fire.
I watch as they ford the narrow stream on some rocks. Shutzer slips and dunks one foot up over his boot top. They clamber uphill on the château’s left, keeping the hill between themselves and the windows.
It’s like watching a war or cowboy movie, actually more a cowboy movie with the good guys sneaking up on the shack where the cavalry colonel’s beautiful blonde daughter, in total décolletage, is being held by a bunch of wild-eyed bandits who sweat a lot, wear black hats and two-day beards.
Then they disappear. I figure they’re behind the château. I wait. Waiting is 99 percent of soldiering. Sometimes it’s only waiting for chow, sometimes it’s waiting like this; but definitely too much waiting.
Then Shutzer comes around the other side of the château. He leans forward and peers through one of the shutters. Gordon slinks along behind him and is swinging his head back and forth like some bird dog trying to pick up a scent.
Gordon and Fred Brandt both claimed they had the best schnozzolas in the world. They insisted they could pick up smells other people don’t even dream about. Once at Shelby, out on the firing range, we had a smelling contest using a pair of Jim Freize’s socks as bait. Freize could stink up a pair of socks in two days so they stood by themselves. His feet were like a dog’s tongue; it was the only part of him that sweated. And some sweat.
It was a treasure hunt. I went into the woods and hid a pair of Jim’s socks; then Gordon and Brandt had to search them out by scent alone. Both of them were remarkable. They’d find those socks faster than it took me to hide them. Fred won in a best of ten series but it was close. I think the difference was mostly a matter of luck with the wind.
Now Mel has it to himself. We called him Mel the Smell for a while there, but he objected to the double meaning. Actually, Mel’s on the neat side, not in a class with Wilkins, but way ahead of me or most of the squad, even Morrie.
Gordon and Shutzer start down the hill. They both take a side and are peering carefully at the steep road. Once Shutzer leans and carefully scratches at a spot with the tip of his bayonet. They cross the bridge, then the road on our side of the bridge, and come up toward us. I step out from behind my tree.
‘How’d it go?’
Shutzer sits on the ground beside me.
‘Nobody home. Looks like nobody’s been there for a while, either.’
Gordon hands me back the scope. I should’ve asked for it before they left. Chalk off another two points.
‘Can’t see what’s inside. There are curtains or drapes inside
