This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

Alex’s mouth falls agape. “Mutt. You never said a thing. What the hell, man.”

“You leave tomorrow, too,” the medic says, signing off on another transfer form. “A clearing station. Then probably an evac hospital.”

“Hospital? No, I—”

“Infection has spread. Amputation of both feet possible. At least you get to go home now.”

Mutt falls silent.

“This whole time, Mutt?” Alex says incredulously. “You had trench feet this whole time and you didn’t say a thing?”

“Didn’t bother me.”

“Like hell it didn’t. You gave me your socks. You shouldn’t have. You had it worse than me.”

The medic leads them out back. Shelter halves are spread out on the ground, weighed down by a dozen soldiers lying on top. Each soldier has at least one foot wrapped in fresh bandages. The smell of infection is ripe in the air. “You two stay here tonight,” the medic says, already heading back. “There should be a bottle of talcum powder somewhere. Or packets of sulfa powder. And absolutely no walking.”

The tarp stinks; the ground beneath is cold. Tree roots jut into their backs. A brisk wind whistles through the trees, flaps the corners and edges of the tarp. But after four nights sleeping in soggy slit trenches while being bombarded by mortar and artillery strikes, it is the softest mattress in the quietest, safest bedroom they’ve ever slept on. Despite the early hour and pain in their feet, Alex and Mutt fall asleep almost immediately.

58

OCTOBER 31, 1944, AFTER MIDNIGHT

FORÊT DOMANIALE DE CHAMP, FRANCE

Alex wakes up in a bewilderment of confusion. The quiet, the sense of safety—none of it is familiar to him. He sits up. Around him, in the open air, a dozen bodies snooze away. Three men sit at the corner of the tarp, playing cards by moonlight.

Alex gazes up. The clouds are finally breaking apart, and stars glimmer through, the first time he has seen them in what seems like a year. The miracle of them, light from a million burning suns a billion light-years away in a vacuum of eternity.

Mutt is gone. Probably went to piss in the woods.

Words float over to Alex. The men, shuffling the cards, talking softly. About their fallen friends, the awful ways they died. The random, arbitrary way death chose them.

“… can’t touch the bodies,” one of the murmurs. He shuffles the deck one more time. “Gotta leave them out in the field. The Germans rigged some of them with mines.”

The men suck on cigarettes at the same time. Three dots of orange glow in the dark.

“Sarge said engineering teams coming tomorrow to make sure the bodies ain’t booby-trapped. Then we can move them.”

“Damn Krauts. They did the same thing at Anzio beach.” They slap cards down in the space between them.

Alex closes his eyes. Lies back down. The men’s voices murmur low and strangely soothing, the names of friends they’ve lost—Robert Hajiro, Kaz Fukunaga, Gerry Akamine—in the towns they died: Livorno, Lanuvio, Monte Cassino. Alex drifts back to sleep.

… wakes up suddenly. Snaps into a sitting position. His heart hammering away for some reason. How much time has passed? The three men have stopped playing—two have fallen asleep. The third man sits staring into the dark woods, smoking.

Mutt is still gone.

“Hey,” Alex croaks.

The soldier turns to him. “Yeah?”

“The guy who was sleeping next to me. Did you see him walk off?”

The solider shrugs.

“Did he say where he was going?”

The soldier snorts, turns his back to Alex.

Alex stares into the woods. Then at the tarp. Five cigarette butts lie discarded where Mutt slept. He’d been up a while, then, before heading off. Thinking something over. Stewing.

Where would he go?

The answer comes at Alex like a cold wind. He stands up immediately, hopping as he squeezes his left foot into the boot. Tears of pain fill his eyes. He hobbles off the tarp, past the aid station. Past a few jeeps. Heads up the slope toward Suicide Hill.

How can they just leave our men lying out here? I’m coming back for them, Alex.

Alex’s feet move faster, despite the pain shooting up from his left foot. His breath expels faster, hotter, the cold air sawing through his lungs. The landscape before him, caught in a silvery X-ray film of moonlight, stark and cruel.

“Mutt!” he shouts. “Mutt!”

The trees, those still standing, stare blankly back at him like uninterested, tired sentries.

… can’t touch the bodies. Gotta leave them out in the field. The Germans rigged some of them.

He walks faster, his breath gusting white out of him. Past a nest of dead Germans. Wind blows, sending a thin sheet of snow sliding down the slope. He shivers. Keeps moving, the hill so steep, he’s almost on all fours.

There.

A small dot moving against the white, moon-bleached landscape. Farther up the hill, about a hundred yards away.

“Mutt!” But the wind muffles and carries his voice away. “Mutt!” he shouts louder. He sees Mutt limping toward a black form on the ground. A dead soldier. “Mutt! Stop! Don’t touch the body!”

But Mutt still doesn’t hear. He keeps moving toward the figure, his arms extending toward the body. Slowly, so slowly.

Alex is sprinting now, pain shooting up his left leg with every step, his feet fumbling over roots and rocks and branches. Dangles of saliva fluttering out of his mouth. “Mutt! MUTT!”

At last Mutt hears. He stops, turns toward Alex. Alex sprints faster, shouting, flapping his arms, trying to warn Mutt. But the wind picks up, carving up his words, their tone, their urgency.

Mutt lifts an arm, waves back. Alex can almost imagine the smile on his face. What’s up braddah, you come to give me a hand?

He sees Mutt reach down toward the body.

“MUTT!”

The explosion is no more than a little pop. Not loud at all. A misfire, it must have been a misfire. He almost expects to see Mutt picking himself up, dusting off the ice and dirt, laughing.

59

NOVEMBER 3, 1944

CLEARING STATION, VOSGES FOREST

Alex clutches the blanket. For a moment he thinks he’s back at Manzanar. Everything is weirdly familiar: the same cot, the same army-issued blanket, the room itself airy and cold and full of the sounds of others snoring, wheezing, murmuring in feverish nightmares.

But he’s only in the clearing station. His third day here. Tomorrow he’ll be released to make room for the more seriously wounded. His foot hasn’t quite healed, but he’s deemed well enough. His whole time here, he’s barely eaten, barely spoken. His immediate neighbors have tried conversing with him. He hasn’t said a word back. He doesn’t know their names, doesn’t want to hear their stories, or how many Fritzes they’ve killed. In the daytime, he curls up and sleeps, pretends to, anyway.

His cot lies before a large window in the coldest section of the room. A draft whistles through the imperfect seal all night and day. He doesn’t mind, doesn’t care. He feels nothing these days, not even the cold. Not even the needles when they inject him i

n his foot, his arm. They could inject him in the eyeball, and he’d feel nothing.

The only time he felt anything was yesterday morning. He’d gotten his hands on a newspaper. The rescue of the Lost Battalion had made the news. A photo splashed on the front page, of Marty Higgins, leader of the Lost Battalion, shaking hands with a Lieutenant C.O. Barry of “the relief unit.” Lots of smiling teeth and faces in this photo, but not a single Japanese American face in sight. He read the article. Doughboys Break German Ring to Free 270 Trapped Eight Days. In it, no mention that the doughboys were in fact Japanese Americans, or that they suffered more than 450 casualties in the rescue.

60

NOVEMBER 12, 1944

A FARM IN BRUYÈRES, FRANCE

They stand shoulder to shoulder in the bracing wind, drifts of snow lightly powdering their new boots and helmets. The sky is overcast this afternoon, swirls of black clouds darkening the French farmland beneath. The men of the 442nd, finally able to shuck their lightweight uniforms for heavy field jackets and shoepacs, stand in formation, stoic and expressionless.

Before them stands Major General Dahlquist. Two white stars on the front of his helmet stare unblinkingly like his own eyes as they scrutinize the assembled regiment before him. This is the man who ordered the 442nd to rescue the Lost Battalion “at all costs.” The man who, many say, used the 442nd as cannon fodder. Who ordered troops to charge up Suicide Hill even against his lieutenants’ objections. Who threatened those same lieutenants with court-martial unless they obeyed.

He has now ordered the 442nd to assemble here on this farmland in Bruyères. Pulled them out of Fays and Lépanges-sur-Vologne where they were resting, after finally being taken off the line after weeks of brutal fighting. Even after two days of rest, though, the men are still exhausted. None of them wants to be here. Not here before the small retinue of army photographers with Dahlquist, chest puffed out, preening for the cameras.