Not Lost
Lewis Nixon/Dick Winters, PG
Lewis Nixon begins the worst day of his entire life by falling out of the sky.
At the moment he leaps, when the first blast of air hits him, he isn't even the slightest bit afraid—only glad to get out of the plane that stinks of vomit and lists like a clipper ship caught in a storm. His leg bag hurtles to the ground. As the little star-like bursts of machine gun fire angle up toward him, he decides not to bother searching for it. He hits earth at the mucky edge of a flooded field. Cold water seeps into his boots.
His first coherent thought, after he finishes swearing and slogging out of the mud, is—where's Dick?
He hears a tentative “Flash?” and hisses "Thunder!" in reply. Frank Perconte comes out from a stand of trees and starts to salute, but catches himself and nods instead. "Lieutenant Nixon, sir."
"Perconte. Whose stick were you in?”
“Lieutenant Welsh’s, sir.”
“Have you seen Lieutenant Winters?”
“No sir. Believe me, if I had, I’d be followin’ him. I ain’t seen nobody. Well—” His voice gets lower. “I saw somebody drown out in the field there, but I don’t know who it was.”
As they crawl up the embankment towards the road, Nixon starts to think about all the different ways a paratrooper could die in France.
"Do you know where we are, sir?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," he says. "That's what I'm good for."
It's an hour or more before they meet anyone else. There are no Germans to be found. He wonders what’s happened to all the French peasants they'd been told would be so grateful to see them. He'd be happy to see a baguette and a block of cheese.
His stomach hurts and his cold wet feet don't quite seem to be touching the ground. He runs over the company's mission in his head, visualizes the sand table, pinpoints the path he and Perconte are traveling, looks at it from all angles. Anything to keep from dwelling on his own private terror.
He'd been at the front of his stick, and through the open door he saw one of the company's planes go down. Tiny pinpricks of light pierced the metal skin, and then one of the engines exploded. The fireburst when the plane hit earth threw the landscape briefly into illumination for miles around.
He had prayed, at that moment—and this is something he will never admit to anyone—he had prayed that it was Meehan's or Lipton’s or Welsh’s stick who had burned alive.
But that's a question Nixon can't ponder, not without sacrificing his ability to do his job.
He stops suddenly and drops into a crouch. Perconte does the same. “Did you hear something?” Nixon says.
Perconte stays silent, although Nixon can hear him breathing. Somewhere nearby, a man groans. He reaches for his cricket and clicks it once.
“Flash,” says a voice coming from a few yards to his left.
“Thunder,” Perconte says.
“Password?”
“What the fuck?”
“Hey,” Nixon says, moving down into the underbrush along the road. “You from the 82nd?”
“Yeah. Ain’t you?”
Nixon almost trips over the soldier when he finds him. He’s lying on the ground, propped up on his right elbow. His left leg is twisted underneath him.
“Broken leg?”
“I think,” the soldier says.
“How’d you make it into the airborne? Didn’t anybody teach you how to fall?”
“Sure they did,” the soldier says irritably. “Nobody taught me how to land when I have to cut myself out of my goddamn chute ‘cause it’s hung up in a tree.” He points above Nixon’s head, where the canopy’s draped over the branches of a forty-foot oak, looking like an ominous, rising cloud.
“What’s your outfit, Private?”
“Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 505th.”
“Ain’t this the 101st’s DZ? What the hell are you doing here?” Perconte says.
“Whaddaya think I’m doing? I fell where they dropped me.”
“Goddamned 82nd,” Perconte says, shaking his head.
“Hey,” says the soldier on the ground. “Our Gen’l Ridgway could whup your Gen’l Taylor.” He looks at Nixon as if noticing his lieutenant’s bars for the first time. “Sir.”
Nixon would, under normal circumstances, be inclined to smile, but he has other things on his mind. “Seen anybody from the 101st? Any tall redheads?”
“Ain’t seen anybody but you guys,” the soldier says. “Say, you got any morphine on you?”
Perconte donates one of his syrettes, and they leave the man on the ground, promising to send a medic back as soon as they find one.
The encounter seems to have shaken Perconte awake, and he starts talking and doesn’t stop. “I think it was one of the guys in front of me who went down in the water. Coulda been Lieutenant Welsh, Dukeman, Tip, George Luz… Goddamn, I hope it wasn’t George…”
“Shut up, Perconte,” Nixon says.
“I don’t think it was George. I didn’t see no radio on the guy’s back. That thing would drag a fella down fast, though. I wonder if—”
“Perconte. Shut up.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“Thank you.”
After a few minutes, he decides the silence is almost as bad.
He starts to bargain. Dear God, if Dick’s still alive, I won’t sleep in church anymore. If Dick’s alive, I’ll stop swearing in front of small children. The if is too much, and he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Bring Dick through this, and I’ll stop drinking. Keep Dick safe, and I’ll stop lying to You.
Nixon’s parents weren’t devout, and he hasn’t believed in God much since he read his first Nietzche, but there’s something they say about atheists in foxholes.
He expected to be afraid. Perconte’s scared; it’s easy to tell. His eyes are huge and he’s creeping along the road in an awkward crouch. Nixon’s walking carefully, deliberately, with his weapon at his hip, but inside he is starting to flail.
He expected to be afraid for his life, ice-cold bone-terrified, but now that he’s on the ground the question seems irrelevant. He’s feeling a nihilistic immortality; at least, that’s what he’d decide if he stopped to think about it.
Instead he’s running through all the poems he read in his college literature classes. Lines tangle in his head, Eliot twisted around Frost and Sandburg and encircled by Milton and Yeats. He’s looking for the words, somebody else’s words, to take away the loss that hasn’t happened yet.
The last time he saw Dick Winters was as they were suiting up on the Upottery tarmac. The men were passing around giant cans of black and green paint, pretending to be Indians, and Dick declined it at first but then said, “Ah, might as well,” and put a tentative smudge over his right eyebrow.
“Here,” Nixon said, “let me do it.”
Men in pairs and groups were doing the same thing all around them. There shouldn’t have been anything strange about it. Still, when he swept his thumbs across Dick’s cheekbones, Dick’s skin was cool and Nixon’s fingers felt prickly and hot.
He squinted at Dick as he painted him, as if it mattered that the marks be symmetrical. Dick just gazed back with that almost-smile that Nixon could never read.
“There you are, Dick,” he said when he was finished. “Like a redheaded Crazy Horse.” And Dick smiled a little more, still guarded, still no teeth showing, helped tighten some straps on his life jacket, and squeezed his shoulder before turning away to organize his platoon. It was a quick squeeze, but Nixon didn’t stop feeling it until he was out the door and falling toward France.
By the time they get close to Causeway 2, it’s midday, and the once-silent and foreboding landscape is teeming with American life: they’re surrounded by paratroopers, mostly 82nd, and 8th army Shermans are starting to move in from the beach. Perconte locates a group of Easy enlisted men and is put to work as a scout while Nixon looks for fellow officers. Nobody he surveys has seen Dick Winters.
He recognizes the regimental S-2, one Captain Terry, and battalion S-4 and quietly insinuates himself into their discussion.
“Lieutenant Nixon,” Terry says. “Good to see you. It’s been a rough few hours.”
“What’s regimental strength?”
“Not good. About ten percent. Everything that could’ve gone wrong with the drop seems to have gone wrong. Good news, though: the Utah landing’s been a piece of cake, so far. Now, this battery at Brecourt—”
“Taken care of, sir,” says a harried-looking young officer who Nixon doesn’t recognize. “News just came in over radio. Thirteen boys from your regiment took ‘em.”
“Who from the 506th?”
“2nd battalion. Can’t remember which company. Word is Colonel Sink’s going to put the leader in for a DSC. Guy with a—” He snaps his fingers and chews on his lip. “With a season name. Summers, or something.”
As the tanks pull into Ste. Marie-du-Mont, Nixon feels as if the war’s already been won; more so when he catches sight of a tall figure with perfect posture and a familiar semi-smile. And Dick’s smile when he sees Nixon is real, reaching his eyes, and that’s the best part.
“It’s good to see you, Dick,” he says. “I was starting to wonder if you’d gotten lost in the woods.”
“Lost?” Dick says. “You thought I’d get lost? Give me a little credit, Nix.”
“Well,” Nixon says, shrugging, “you send a mess officer into combat, God knows what can happen.”
Dick thumps the top of Nixon’s knee with a fist, not quite hard enough to hurt, and tries to hide his grin.
The second worst day of Lewis Nixon’s life will begin with a combat jump over Germany; but Dick will be far away, safe in supply briefings, and that, at least, will be a comforting thought.