Tough Guys Die Hard Read online

  The chow line was outdoors, and he stood behind it to make sure nobody got more than he was supposed to get. His cooks were lined up with their pots of food, and the men streamed past, holding out their messkits. They got tomato soup, spaghetti and meatballs, two slices of bread each, and a few slices of canned peaches. At the end of the line they filled up their canteen cups with coffee that tasted like kerosene. They could kill the taste with sugar, but Dinkel had run out of powdered milk.

  Dinkel was tall and slim and had a mustache. His face was covered with red pimples and he had bushy black eyebrows over suspicious evil eyes. He wished he had a cup of Sergeant Snider’s white lightning to drink, so he could steady his nerves. He’d become accustomed to drinking the stuff every day, and now was undergoing mild alcohol withdrawal.

  The soldiers from Headquarters Company continued to move past the cooks, and Corporal Dinkel scrutinized each soldier carefully, because he didn’t want any soldiers from other units eating up his rations. He knew that some soldiers drifted from unit to unit at chowtime, trying to eat as many meals as they could, outsmarting cooks throughout the division. Corporal Dinkel hated to be outsmarted. It was a major blow to his honor to be outsmarted, and whenever it happened he stayed awake nights tossing and turning, trying to figure out all the things he should have said and shouldn’t have said, so that he wouldn’t be outsmarted in that particular way again.

  Corporal Dinkel hated the roving chowhounds who ate unauthorized rations. That’s why he stood behind his row of cooks, his hands on his hips and his fatigue cap low over his eyes, examining every trooper who came through the chow line.

  A little burglar alarm went off inside his head when he saw a group of strange men at the end of the Headquarters Company chow line. He’d never seen the men before and hadn’t received any orders on them. Therefore he hadn’t drawn rations for them. They were roving chowhounds, he figured, and if they thought they were going to eat his rations without being authorized to do so, they had another think coming.

  Corporal Dinkel frowned as he walked toward the beginning of the chow line. Those soldiers were the ugliest-looking sons of bitches he’d seen in a long time. One was nearly seven feet tall, another appeared demented, a third had a harelip and a black eye, the fourth looked like a buzzard, the fifth had a sickly baby face with big eyes that turned down at the corners, and the sixth looked like an arrogant son of a bitch.

  Corporal Dinkel walked up to Private McGurk, the first man in line, and held up his hand. “Hold on there! Who the hell are you?”

  Private McGurk looked at Corporal Dinkel with confusion, because Private McGurk always became confused by sudden changes in his environment. Private McGurk blinked. He tried to think of an appropriate response to what Corporal Dinkel had said.

  Corporal Dinkel interpreted Private McGurk’s confusion as lack of respect. This was one of Corporal Dinkel’s major personality problems: He didn’t think he received the respect he was entitled to as a cook. He believed combat soldiers thought he was a sissy and a coward, because he made soup all day in safe places while they were out getting their asses shot off by Japs. Corporal Dinkel was very sensitive about this, and there is nothing in the world more dangerous than a man who is overly sensitive.

  Corporal Dinkel made his face more ugly and bared his teeth as he stepped forward and pushed his hand against the mighty barrel chest of Private McGurk. “What the hell are you doing here!” Corporal Dinkel demanded.

  “Food,” replied McGurk, looking down with desire into the big pot of tomato soup.

  “You ain’t in this company!” Corporal Dinkel said. “You ain’t getting none of my rations!”

  “Food,” said McGurk.

  Private Schlegelmilch, the demented rapist, leaned around the massive body of Private McGurk. “We’re in this company now,” he said.

  “I never got any orders on you.”

  The commotion in front of the soup pot attracted the attention of everybody in the vicinity. Corporal Dinkel knew that his reputation would rise or fall according to how well he handled himself during the next few minutes. He was so ego-centered that he had not paid proper attention to the fact that Private McGurk was a gigantic, powerful human being who was getting red in the face, a sure sign of onrushing anger.

  McGurk held out his mess kit. “Food!” he demanded.

  Now Corporal Dinkel really became tense, because no chowhound had the right to make any demands on him.

  “Go back to your own company,” Corporal Dinkel said, stepping between McGurk and the soup pot. “You’re not getting any food here.”

  McGurk became confused again, because he thought he was in his own company. “Food!” he said, rattling his mess gear.

  “Get the hell out of here!” Corporal Dinkel said forcefully. “I got no orders on you!”

  Private Hampton, the upper-class snob, decided the time had come for him to restore sense and reason to the deteriorating situation. “You haven’t received the orders yet,” he said, “because we’ve just been assigned to the company not more than two hours ago.”

  Corporal Dinkel thought Private Hampton was trying to con him, and Corporal Dinkel was the kind of lunatic who’d rather be shot than conned, because he thought being conned was the ultimate humiliation and act of disrespect.

  “Bullshit!” said Dinkel. “You fuckheads can’t fool me! Get the hell out of here!”

  Now Tronolone thought he’d get into the act. “Whataya mean—get out of here! We’re in this company now and we want to eat!”

  “You’re not in this company until I got orders that say you’re in this company!” Corporal Dinkel said.

  McGurk shook his mess kit again. “Food!”

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Corporal Dinkel replied.

  Private Bisbee smiled like an innocent babe. “You can check with headquarters,” he said pleasantly. “They must know we’re here!”

  “I ain’t got the time!” Dinkel said, pushing McGurk. “You guys get the hell out of here and let the others through.”

  McGurk rattled his mess kit. “Food!”

  Corporal Dinkel pushed him again. “I said beat it, you stupid son of a bitch!”

  That was a very foolhardy thing to say, but Corporal Dinkel didn’t realize it at the time. McGurk’s eyes widened to the size of saucers, and his face went from a beet red color to deep purple. He snarled like a wild animal, and his voice sent shivers up the spines of every soldier and cook in the vicinity. Leaning forward, he grabbed Corporal Dinkel by the shirt.

  “Hey!” said Dinkel. “Take your hands off me! Who do you think you are?”

  McGurk roared like a lion, lifted Dinkel in the air, turned him upside down, and plunged him headfirst into the big pot of tomato soup. Dinkel kicked his feet and struggled to get loose, but McGurk held him in the pot.

  “Bastard!” said McGurk.

  Private Hampton put his hand on McGurk’s arm. “Maybe you’d better turn him loose, old man. There’ll be terrible repercussions if you don’t.”

  “Food!”

  Dinkel’s face and eyes were scalded by the soup, and he choked and coughed underneath the rich broth. Soldiers from Headquarters Company rushed toward the soup pot, but none of them had the guts to jump on McGurk. They watched Dinkel’s legs kicking in the air. They knew that Dinkel was drowning in his own soup.

  Nobody took charge because most of the personnel in Headquarters Company were technicians and specialists. However, Sergeant Plunkett, who’d recently been transferred to the company from an infantry unit, realized he’d better do something fast. He sized up the situation quickly and realized that McGurk wasn’t dealing from a full deck. Moreover, McGurk was too big to be responsive to force.

  “Now, take it easy, there, son,” said Sergeant Plunkett, who was from Tennessee. “I think you’d better turn the mess sergeant out of there.”

  “Food!” said McGurk.

  “Have all you want,” Sergeant Plunkett said. “Go ahead. Take your me
ss kit down the chow line.”

  McGurk smiled and took his hands off Dinkel. “It’s okay?”

  “Help yourself,” replied Sergeant Plunkett, indicating the mess line with a beneficent wave of his hand.

  McGurk bent over and picked up his mess kit and canteen cup. Sergeant Plunkett grabbed Corporal Dinkel’s legs and pulled him out of the soup. Corporal Dinkel collapsed onto the ground, coughing and sputtering. McGurk pushed his canteen cup into the soup and filled it to the rim. He drank half the cup down, then filled it up again.

  “Good soup,” he said. “Very good soup.”

  He walked down the line and held out his mess kit in front of the next cook. The cook’s teeth chattered with fear as he ladled spaghetti and meat balls onto McGurk’s mess kit.

  “More!” said McGurk.

  “Right,” replied the cook. “You got it.”

  The cook filled McGurk’s mess kit to overflowing, and McGurk walked down to the next cook, who was in charge of passing out bread.

  “Food!” said McGurk.

  The cook grabbed eight slices with one hand and dropped it onto McGurk’s spaghetti and meatballs.

  “Enough?” asked the cook, who would have given McGurk every slice of bread he had to keep him calm.

  McGurk closed one eye and examined the bread on his mess kit. Finally he reached a decision.

  “Enough,” he said, moving down the chow line toward the cook in charge of the canned peaches.

  The other former prisoners from the stockade followed him, filling their mess kits liberally with food, while Sergeant Plunkett rolled Corporal Dinkel onto his stomach and proceeded to administer artificial respiration as Corporal Dinkel vomited tomato soup onto the ground.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge lay on a cot in a small tent full of wounded officers. He was drowsy from all the drugs they’d shot into him, but his wounds were sewed up and he’d been given a blood transfusion. The gash on his chest and shoulder required forty-two stitches. They told him he’d have to stay in the hospital for a while.

  Lieutenant Beverly McCaffrey approached from his rear, her mind filled with doubt. She wanted to talk with Lieutenant Breckenridge and find out how he was, but she didn’t want him to think she was being too forward, or that she liked him as much as she did.

  She’d developed a crush on him when they were trapped behind enemy Lines together, and they’d had a number of serious conversations, but she thought he might not be interested in her anymore, now that the danger was over, and she hated to make a pest of herself with men.

  Lieutenant McCaffrey had known many men in her life. She’d always been pretty and always had men chasing after her. They’d promise her the world and say anything to get into her pants, and she couldn’t help it if she had a normal amount of hormones and liked to fuck.

  She found that problems develop when you fuck too many men and when you’re too easy. Men don’t respect you. They fuck you and then never call you again. Now she had a complex about men and didn’t fuck nearly as much as she used to. She’d rather go without sex than have her feelings hurt constantly. But yet she couldn’t help liking men, although they were such rotten bastards. It was a real dilemma for her, but she was a brave young woman and put one foot in front of the other until she was standing beside Lieutenant Breckenridge’s cot.

  “Hi,” she said, making herself sound cheerful. “How’re you feeling?”

  Lieutenant Breckenridge rolled his head to the side and looked up at her. “Okay,” he said with a smile. “How about you?”

  “My arm wasn’t broken like I thought,” she replied, holding it up. “It was only sprained. I’ll be able to use it in a little while.” She held out a copy of Yank magazine. “I brought you something to read.”

  “Thanks,” he said, taking it from her. “I appreciate it.”

  There was silence. She didn’t know what to say next, and neither did he.

  “Well,” she said, a catch in her voice, “I guess I’ll be moseying along. Just wanted to see how you were.”

  “Are you on duty?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Can’t you stay and talk with me awhile longer?”

  She couldn’t suppress a smile. “Sure, if you want me to.”

  Again there was awkward, uncomfortable silence. It was difficult to talk with other officers lying on cots nearby. Lieutenant Breckenridge liked her but was too much of a southern gentleman to take advantage of a woman. Sometimes when a woman was friendly with a man, the man would think the woman was in love with him, and he’d try to seduce her. Lieutenant Breckenridge knew that women were often leery of becoming friendly with men for that reason. He didn’t want to take advantage of the friendship and closeness that had developed when they were trapped behind enemy lines.

  “Well,” he said, trying to make conversation, “there were times when I thought we’d never get back here alive.”

  “We were lucky,” she replied.

  “You really were a wildcat back there in that cave. I never saw a woman kill a Jap before.”

  She shrugged. “I did what I had to. I never thought I could ever kill somebody, but I did. All my training has been to help people, and there I was, killing Japs. I never realized I wanted to live so badly.”

  “Yes, I understand,” he said.

  “I’m sure you do. You’ve done a lot more of that than I.” She looked down at the edge of the cot. “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Not at all.”

  He moved over and she sat on the edge of the cot. Her thigh touched his, and she felt his warmth. He felt her warmth, too, and started to get a hard-on.

  “I wonder what I’ll be like after this war is over,” she said. “I wonder if I could ever be normal again.”

  “What makes you think you’re not normal now.”

  “You can’t kill people and remain normal.”

  “You don’t think I’m normal?”

  She looked at his face. “In a way you are and in another way you’re not.”

  “In what way is it that I’m not normal?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “A certain roughness that you have. A coldness, maybe.”

  “The war has changed me a lot, I guess. I know I used to be different from the way I am now. I’ve got awfully cynical since I’ve been in the war.”

  “So have I.”

  “You don’t seem so cynical.”

  “You should have seen me before.”

  “I wish I had known you before.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Before he could answer, a voice came to them from the other side of the tent. “Anybody know if there’s a Lieutenant Breckenridge in here?”

  Lieutenant Breckenridge raised his head and looked across the tent at Sergeant Butsko. “My god!” he whispered. “That’s my old platoon sergeant over there! Hey, Butsko!”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said Butsko.

  Butsko walked toward Lieutenant Breckenridge and the blond nurse standing beside his cot. A connoisseur of women, Butsko couldn’t help comparing the blond nurse to Betty Caldwell, who was also a blonde. This nurse was tall and busty, whereas Betty was short and cute. Betty looked like the girl next door, whereas this one looked as though she’d spent two weeks in a saloon that sold mostly shots and beers.

  “When did you get back?” Lieutenant Breckenridge asked, as Butsko drew closer.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Butsko said almost simultaneously.

  They shook hands.

  “This is Lieutenant Beverly McCaffrey,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said, making introductions. “And that bruiser over there is Master Sergeant Johnny Butsko.”

  “Hi,” said Beverly with a smile.

  “How ya doin’?” replied Butsko with a wink.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Glad to hear it.” Butsko took her hand and pumped it. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Before s
he could answer, Butsko looked down at Lieutenant Breckenridge again. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “A few minor cuts,” Lieutenant Breckenridge replied.

  “He’s got forty-six stitches in his chest,” Beverly said.

  “That all?” Butsko asked. “That’s not so bad. I hear some of the guys from the old recon platoon are pushing up daisies.”

  “That’s right,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said.

  Beverly looked at her watch. “I’ve got things to do,” she said. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  “Hey—don’t go,” Butsko said. “I don’t wanna interrupt anything.”

  “No, I’ve really got to be going,” Beverly said. “I’ll see you later, Lieutenant Breckenridge.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lieutenant Beverly McCaffrey walked away, and Butsko studied the swing of her booty.

  “You getting any of that?” Butsko asked.

  “C’mon,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said. “She’s a nice girl.”

  “Nice girls fuck the best,” Butsko said. “How come you’re not getting any of that?”

  “Give me a break,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said. “I just met her.”

  “I just saw Pfc. La Barbara back in there someplace,” Butsko said. “He seems even crazier than usual.”

  “I had to kick the shit out of him yesterday, or was it the day before yesterday? It’s hard to keep track of those things. Anyway, every time I told him to do something, he gave me backtalk, so I had to kick his ass.”

  “That’s the only thing he understands. How many men from the old platoon are still alive.”

  “Not too many. I’m not sure of the exact number.”

  “Jesus,” Butsko said, the strength going out of his legs. He sat on the edge of the cot, thinking of all the men in the recon platoon who were gone. “The wounded guys’ll come back to the platoon when they get better, right?”

  “Right,” agreed Lieutenant Breckenridge. “I’ll probably go back myself as soon as they take these stitches out.”