This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

Behind them, their brothers are a strong force that follows. I Company. Many are cut down, but many also are pushing through. Throwing caution to the winds, charging up through the ridge that will later be called Suicide Hill.

Something has taken hold among the men. Something savage. Some are felled by the barrage of German bullets, but no matter; the others race up the ridge, like wave after wave crashing upon the shore. Until they are at the next nest, screaming with wild maniacal eyes and leaping in to engage in hand-to-hand combat. It is so elemental and raw, this face-off. A schoolyard scrap, a tussle. A tangle of arms, sudden grunts, leveraging for position, gasps for air. Only here it ends in death, when they find themselves pushing bayonets into soft German stomachs, necks, temples, eyeballs. Or find themselves impaled, killed with air hissing out of punctured lungs, or with blood filling the chambers of their pounding hearts.

Then there is only one last nest. Mutt, Alex, and two other soldiers they’ve never seen before but who are now brothers for life. Screaming with blood-streaked faces, flinging their last grenades into the pit, they leap in just as the smoke clears. Helmets get knocked off, German and American, revealing photos taped on the inside of girlfriends and wives and children and babies and mothers, German and American both.

They thrust their blades over and over into the enemy’s chest, stomach, face, neck, as curses are thrown out in German and English and pidgin in a bloody tangle of arms and hands. One German spits out what must be a curse over and over as Mutt sinks his blade slowly into his throat, Ich habe zwei Töchter, Ich habe zwei Töchter, Ich habe zwei …

And then there are no more nests. No more snipers. No more Germans.

K Company and I Company have taken the ridge.

Alex and Mutt collapse to the ground. Not sure if the blood on them is German or American. Or even their own. Not sure if they are alive or dead or dying.

55

OCTOBER 30, 1944

FORÊT DOMANIALE DE CHAMP, FRANCE

They find the Lost Battalion the next day.

Alex, Mutt, and a couple of others are out on patrol. They walk slowly, partly because of Alex’s trench foot, partly because they’re on the lookout for lurking Germans. It’s Mutt who discovers the cable wire. He’s scanning the ground for possible mines when he sees a tar-covered cable line. Thin, the width of a spaghetti strand. They bend, pick it up cautiously. It’s an American communication wire. Probably laid down by the Lost Battalion a week ago.

Excited now, they move faster, following the wire. At the bottom of the hill, just as the mist begins to clear before them, Alex stops. He’s seen something.

“What is it?” Mutt whispers.

Alex points to a tree. “Over there. I saw someone.”

“Where?”

“Swear I did. Peeked out from behind that tr—”

A solider steps out. Blond, blue-eyed, Aryan.

Immediately, Alex and Mutt raise their rifles.

“Hey!” the soldier yells. Even in that short syllable, a Southern drawl. “Hey, there!”

Still cautious but lowering their rifles, Alex and Mutt walk over to the man. The soldier is staring at them with confusion, eyes going from their faces to their uniforms.

“You guys American?” he asks.

Alex nods. Just past the tree behind the soldier, movement. A foxhole, well hidden, the logs covering it packed with mud and brush. Eyes peering out.

“You guys the Four Forty-Second?” the soldier asks, more animated now. “Good God.” He spins around. “Y’all, they’re here! The Four Forty-Second are here!”

And with that, soldiers pour out of the foxhole. Filthy, emaciated, stinking of piss and worse, eyes blinking at Alex and Mutt. They are gaunt, staggering with dizziness and fatigue, phantoms recalled from hell. But smiles are breaking out across their mud-smeared faces.

“You guys want a cigarette?” Mutt says, holding out his pack of Camels.

“Sure do. Oh, man, I can’t believe you guys are really here. We thought we were goners for sure.”

Mutt cups the match with his hands, leans over to light the cigarette dangling from the soldier’s lips.

“So happy to see you, man,” says another soldier, patting Alex on the back. “How the hell did you break through? We tried. Never could.” More soldiers come out of the foxhole. They surround him, patting him on the shoulder with relief and happiness beaming from their tired faces.

Alex thinks of Frank. How his teammates would huddle around him and look to him to lead them. How they would thump him on the back or shoulder pads after he called out a winning play. It’s what Frank lived for, Alex thinks. He understands why now. The feeling is intoxicating. To be a hero to them. Or better yet: to simply be one of them, accepted completely.

The soldiers move aside to let their leader through. The tall man steps up to Alex and Mutt. Despite a scruffy beard he has a youthful face. “I’m Second Lieutenant Marty Higgins.” He pauses. His eyes tear up. “Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for breaking through. For saving us. You look like giants to us.”

Alex looks down to the ground, not sure how to respond. It’s Mutt who speaks up.

“I thought I stink.” He grins. “But holy cow, you guys stink like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh, I believe it, trust me,” Higgins says with a smile. “I’ve been cooped up with these knuckleheads for a week.”

They all laugh, tears in their eyes.

56

OCTOBER 30, 1944, AFTERNOON

FORÊT DOMANIALE DE CHAMP, FRANCE

Transmission at 16:00. From Lost Battalion to CO Dahlquist at Headquarters:

Patrol from 442nd is here. Tell them we love them.

57

OCTOBER 30, 1944, EVENING

FORÊT DOMANIALE DE CHAMP, FRANCE

The 211 men of the Lost Battalion are evacuated back down the mountain, many of them carried by litter bearers on stretchers. But the 442nd is ordered to press on. To continue up the mountain. Cross the next ravine. No rest for the weary. Chase the Krauts back into Germany.

Not Alex, though. He can’t. His left trench foot. No longer can he ignore the acidic pain flaming out from it. When he pries off his boot—it takes him ten gruesome minutes—the medic takes one look at the swollen monstrosity otherwise known as his left foot and orders him to the aid station.

“How you’ve been able to walk on that is beyond me,” the medic mutters, shaking his head. “We’re out of stretchers so you’ll need to crawl. Or get someone to carry you down.”

“I’ll do it,” Mutt volunteers.

He piggybacks Alex the way they came. Slow going, the slippery mud slopes treacherous. They walk through the bloody carnage on Suicide Hill. German soldiers lie atop one another in machine-gun nests, jaws slack, eyes glassy, arms and legs sprawled like a stack of dropped mannequins. American soldiers lie unmoving behind tree stumps, or in slit trenches, eyeballs as hard as ice, hair festooned in icicles. One soldier is facedown in the mud, his exposed hands partially devoured. Paw prints of some animal—a wolf?—dot the mud and snow around him.

“How can we just leave our men lying out here?” Mutt says. He hoists Alex higher up his back. “I’m coming back for them, Alex, I swear. After I drop you off.”

“You need to rest. They’ll have recovery teams out soon enough.”

But Mutt shakes his head adamantly. “This is wrong. This is wrong.”

The bivouacked aid station is packed. Men waiting outside on fallen tree logs, their heads wrapped in dirty bandages, or nursing arms snapped in two, jutting bones exposed. Gamely gritting down on cigarette stubs, waiting their turn. Everyone shivering. Alex and Mutt fall asleep against a charred tree trunk. In the late afternoon, they’re brought inside the open tent.

“Another day longer, and the infection would have spread,” the medic tells Alex. “And you’d be dead.”

“Patch it up and I’ll be on my way.”

The medic shakes his head, starts scribbling on a me

dical transfer form. “You’re done. At least for a few days. Sending you to a clearing station in the rear. You leave tomorrow morning. For tonight, you sleep here. Can’t have you in a trench, your foot getting all wet again.”

They get up to leave, Mutt walking past the medic. The medic crinkles his nose, turns to Mutt. “Hold on.”

“What is it?”

The medic bends toward Mutt’s feet. “I can smell it from here.”

“Smell what?”

“The infection. Show me your feet.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Show me your feet,” the medic says forcefully.

They are barely recognizable, Mutt’s feet. The size of watermelons, the texture of leprous skin. Blisters and open lesions, the color of rotting eggplants, the skin completely sloughed off. A horrendous stink rises from them.