"Andy Duncan - Fortitude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Andy)

medics. Why didn't he say that? He could if he wanted to. "Hell if I know
why I'm here, sir," he could say. "Doc said I needed a checkup. I'll be
back out there killing krauts before you know it, General." It'd be so
damned easy. Hadn't he been listening to the others? Didn't he know what
he was supposed to say?
Bennett -- no, I wouldn't think of his name, he hadn't earned it yet --
the yellow soldier opened his mouth, jaw dropping like a pin had been
removed. It gaped open. I leaned closer. From the back of his throat a
word was welling up, a slight sound like a distant scream or a rusty
hinge. I stooped there, quivering, waiting.
Beatrice wrote me once that when little Georgie was learning to talk, he'd
get hung up on a word, and he'd stand there holding onto her deck chair,
mouth open, trying to remember what the sound was, and she'd sit there in
suspense trying to will him to say something, anything. I never knew what
the hell she was talking about until that moment, trying to coax a word or
two out of that yellow rat in Sicily. Different words. Even "Screw you,
General" would have made me happy. Something -- anything!
"It's my nerves," he said.
The same goddamn thing all over again!
"What?" I yelled. "What did you say?" Behind me a nurse gasped.
"It's my nerves, General. I just can't stand the shelling anymore. I
can't." Eyes still shut, he started to cry, with a low and maddening whine
like Willie at the door, wanting to be let out. A noise fit for a dog.
I knew what I
goddamned coward
wanted to say and needed to say
yellow son of a bitch
and had said before
shut up that goddamned crying
but I remembered the headlines, and the hate mail, and the packs of
reporters pecking at my daughters' windows, and my orders from Ike's
hatchetman to crawl
disgrace to the Army
on my belly to every last unit in the Seventh Army asking forgiveness
back to the front, my man
and then the months of doing nothing, and then finding out that my next
"command"
ought to be lined up against a wall and shot
was to lead a non-existent army in a non-existent invasion -- and that
only because the last person who still believed I could do the job in
combat was Hitler.
No. Not again. Shut up, Georgie.
God damn you
Just shut up.
"I can't," the miserable rat whispered.
I leaned forward farther, gently laid my hands on his shoulders, my mouth
against his left ear. He flinched, the corner of his mouth jerked, but he
didn't resist. His whiskers pricked my cheek. He was a smoker. The pain
had returned, spasms in my back, my arms, my legs. Mother of mercy,
Georgie, don't fall on the boy. Anything but that. So low that not even