The Second Half of Cat-Tee-Nee
(I was blessed this weekend to spend a couple of days at the beautiful Solecito in Rociada, New Mexico)
I appreciate the clever reader who found I had misspelled the pronunciation of Catginy, the World War I battle that provides the impetus the the second half of Chapter One of Journey, American.
Catigny was the first battle the United States Army fought in World War I. Sucked into the war in 1917, American forces arrived at the front in early 1918 and just in time. The Germans were preparing what would be their last great counteroffensive of the war and the French and British were showing cracks.
There were many doubters among the battle-hardened European veterans. Americans were unproven and, despite the great courage displayed during the American Civil War, no one was sure about the unproven Americans.
Catigny undid all that. The Americans held under withering German artillery fire and withstood a great assault. These new doughboys had courage and great leadership. This now nearly forgotten battle set the table for the beginning of the American Century.
And here we are. Journey Seeger is a motorcycle messenger at the front. His personal battle gives us our first glimpse into who he will become.
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I appreciate every single one of you.
They were all awful, but Catigny was worse in a way because we were all so green and nobody believed in us, especially the fucking French. I’ve always called them the fucking French and not just the French because they were arrogant then and they were arrogant when Hitler turned half of them into traitors, and they were still arrogant when the Viet Cong beat their ass at Dien Bin Phu.
Some people call it dignity, but I call it arrogance.
I can tell you, but nothing anyone tells you about being in a war is really true. Stories about wars always have a softer edge than living them.
The weird thing is, I miss Catigny, bad as it was. Maybe it’s because I was 17 and you only get to be like that once in life.
When we were in boot camp, we all used to say, “Let’s hurry up and get there so we can get back sooner.”
Can you believe that? One hundred and ninety-nine of us get back sooner in pine boxes, but I know they wish they hadn’t. There were over a thousand more that got out that day, too. They were the wounded, and they didn’t want to go back that way, either. Damaged goods.
Catigny is where I met Max, then I met Clint through Max.
I remember everything. Black Jack Pershing himself sent me up to the front so I could tell General Robert Lee Bullard not to give the damn Germans an inch of ground.
I never questioned it. Why would I? All I knew back then was following orders and motorcycles.
I chugged up there. The roads weren’t too bad. It was dusty, but there was no mud, and I was grateful for that. Those Indians were heavy as shit and no fun in the mud.
I got there late morning. That area had been pretty well blasted by artillery, and it was cratered like the moon and what trees were left were just skeletons.
Except for one.
One tree was in full bloom. It was covered in the purest white flowers I had ever seen. When I got off the bike, I had to stand there for a bit. I was in disbelief. It was like seeing an angel come down from heaven to make sure we knew God had not completely forgotten us.
I believe He must let the devil have his head sometimes so He can get the world back in balance. Getting things back right is a tough prescription sometimes and there is a lot of suffering for a lot of people to be had.
It is not spread evenly, either. I have said for years, there is no equality in money or dying. Both eventually find their own level and behave accordingly.
The reality of the situation forced me to ignore that beauty. It was wild to see beauty in the middle of hell.
I was far from alone. There were soldiers in various stages of filth going this way and that.
The krauts were attacking our salient and I could see the buildings of Catigny clearly. The guns weren’t like thunder in the distance like you hear in the movies. They were individual cracks of doom and whooshes and explosions all around and in Catigny.
The headquarters was a farmhouse. I found General Bullard in a big stone dining room. He was with his staff, who were gathered around a long and kind of primitive dining table. The table was covered in maps. The general and his adjutant, who stood beside him holding a phone wired out to the artillery – there were no radios then – were the cleanest men in the room.
The room swirled with tobacco smoke, and I choked on it because I’d never been a smoker.
I did all the things a soldier does in front of a general and handed him the message. His face was serious before, but now a sort of cloud drifted over it, then he got his resolve back and told the room to get the word out – Catigny would stay in American hands until the French to there to help.
The fucking French were coming to save us!
Figuring I was done with my mission and could get back to Pershing, I saluted and asked to be dismissed.
General Bullard looked me over. What he saw must have given him pause. I’m kind of short and I was skinny as a rail and dressed in motorcycle livery, black leather boots, the whole nine yards.
Did you know the saying the whole nine yards came out of that war? Nine yards was the length of a machine gun belt.
Anyway, he sized me up and turned to his adjutant, who was also a general, just a lower one than Bullard.
“Heintzelman, is that Army illustrator still looking for a ride?”
“Yes sir, he is.”
“Tell him it’s here.”
A short, light brown soon walked in. He was thin with dark doe eyes – I pegged him for a drinker because the drinkers always had a sort of watery eye look. He held a wooden case by its handle.
He looked at me, then Bullard, and he flashed a glittery quick smile for whatever reason and looked back at me.
“You would be?” he said.
He did not salute or anything, which made me nervous, but I saluted him because he had the stripes of a captain, and I didn’t want to take any chances.
“Corporal Seeger, sir.”
“Pleased to meet you. I would be needing a lift to the line east of here. Are you prepared to do that?”
Bullard answered for him, “Captain Martinez, he would be honored to take you wherever you need to go, which I suggest you do while we still have some daylight.”
Martinez flashed that smile again, this one a little more knowing, “I hear you quite clearly, sir. Corporal Seeger, shall we?”
All those men in that smoky room had stopped all their map drawing and yakking and stood smoking for this weird little show and I swear they all nodded a little when I saluted Bullard and Heintzelman, shit, I saluted everybody in the room and walked past Martinez and out of the house.
It was good to be out in the fresh air and sun, which was beginning to arc down toward the black trees which made me sing The Old, Rugged Cross we used to sing about back at Brother Tommy’s revivals. Not much time had passed since I was singing that hymn with the best of the ragged bunch of farmers and shopkeepers filling a revival tent in Nebraska, but it felt like a million years had passed now. And, if those were old, rugged crosses, they weren’t there for anybody dying for anyone’s sins. The whole sorry thing was a sin to me.
Martinez had laid on his backpack and helmet and stood smoking in front of the farmhouse. He was looking a little bewildered.
“Seeger,” he said. “Where is your car?”
“Car?”
“You are my transportation, aren’t you, Seeger?”
I gestured over to the muddy Indian and pulled my leather helmet over my head and drew it tight.
I dug into one of my saddlebags and pulled out a spare pair of goggles.
“You best put these on, sir, you don’t want mud flying into your eyes. Let me start this thing, then you can climb on. Mind the pegs and keep your foot out of the chain.”
“God,” Martinez said.
“I’m not sure He’s around to help, sir.”
I kicked the Indian to life and got Martinez nestled in behind me.
“Where are we headed?”
Martinez dug a map rolled up in leather out of the inside of his jacket and stuck it in front of my face.
“See the Bois de Catigny? Go that way. Let’s move then, I need this light.”
Off we went, heading southeast of Catigny proper.
The thunder of artillery was clear even over the noise of the Indian’s exhaust. We rode slow, and I kept a sharp eye out for any Huns that may have strayed across the lines. The smoke began to blot out the blue of the sky, which was becoming a memory the farther we got.
The road was fairly straight, and the dirt was still smooth because the shells had not gotten this far. I had never seen the front line and imagined it to be like one of Nebraska’s greatest preachers Brother Tommy and one of his sweaty descriptions of hell brought up to the surface of the Earth.
The edge of the forest was to our right when Martinez clapped me on the shoulder.
“We should stop here and hide this motorcycle in the trees,” Martinez said sickle dandies did in Omaha when I was coming up.
Elvis whipped a college boy for that in _Roustabout. _Have you seen that movie? I was in it. I also saw Elvis whip some boys in real life, too.
I digress. You need to keep me on track.
I carried an Army-issue Colt .45 and had a good number of rounds on me. I had never fired the thing in anger, but I know I would hit whatever I aimed at.
Still, I was scared and even shaking a little.
Martinez was coolly determined and led me straight to the front lines, holding that wooden box like a weapon, even though he had an Army-issue service revolver on his hip, too.
We started to see detritus from the fighting. There was miscellaneous junk and piles of spent artillery shells. There were single boots, encrusted with dried mud, bent helmets, and just plain trash.
I worried that I might see body parts soon, and hoped I didn’t because I was not sure how I would act.
Martinez pointed to a small rise crowned by large stones, “This is the place.”
We wound our way up the rise, which was green with grass that had gone a little rough like it was formerly grazed by cows who had the good sense to leave this place.
The fighting was close the big guns were violent and loud, no longer thundering off the horizon. We were there.
The Germans were barraging from just beyond this point and north up past Catigny. It was intense and I felt a deep fear wrapped by exhilarating excitement.
I would feel this intensity again by choice, but then, at just 18, I started to wonder what in the hell this demented man was getting me into.
Martinez scrambled to the top of the rise first. He laid the wooden box flat on the stones, sat opposite it, and quickly opened it. Inside were a large sketchbook and a collection of pencils.
“Sir, what are you doing?”
“My job, Seeger.”
Martinez whipped the sketchbook open and laid it across his lap. He took the time to roll a cigarette, lit it, then studied the scene stretched below us. His hands were not trembling in the least.
The American trenches were just ahead of us and laid deep up to and past Catigny as far as the smoke would allow us to see. The intensity of the barrage was terrifying. Machine gun fire ripped through the explosions and the rifle fire was incessant. I could hear the screams of men and I did not know if they were from bravery or pain.
I gripped my revolver and tried not to shake. I must admit, it was calming to be with someone in absolute commitment, oblivious to the chance of sudden death – a lesson I have remembered all my life.
Looking over Martinez’s shoulder, I could see a magnificent drawing taking shape in black scrawls. He had taken a piece of charcoal from the box and was shading some areas, and it was obvious that much of the sketch was to be filled in with color later. There was the violence, the rolling barrage chewing up men, and the French earth and the milling smoke. He had gotten it all in the life of a single cigarette.
He placed it all neatly back in the box, fastened it, and stood, now in a bit of crouch.
“Time to go,” he said.
I led the way.
We were back in the forest and close to the Indian.
Everybody has heard about the strange fates of war, how destiny can turn on a dime or be snuffed out like a candle between its fingers.
There was crashing in the forest near us. Haphazard and urgent.
I pulled the Colt again, fully expecting a pack of Germans to come thundering out of the darkness of those woods, which had begun to grow more intense with the waning of the early evening light.
Faster than I could cock the pistol, out of the shadows stumbled not a crowd of murderous Huns but a single soldier in a tattered American uniform. The man looked like he had been through hell. He was holding the side of his face. Blood seeped through his fingers, and he was obviously badly injured.
Martinez ran to him, then stopped hard and pointed into the woods. The soldier collapsed on the forest floor, alive and moaning, his face grisly and glimmering in the few shafts of light getting through the canopy.
I heard German talk and my hand trembled with the pistol was shaking and I was going to pray but there was no time. Out of the shadows, he came. I had never seen a German before. He was filthy and skinny and looked like he was possessed by the devil here to finish off the poor American, who Martinez was already tending to with his handkerchief.
I did not think or pray for a second more. I pulled the trigger and the gun went off and it relaxed me in a strange way so I fired again and caught the kraut a second time as he fell.
I must have been the one possessed now because I stepped up and over the dying man and let him have a third one in the face before I realized what I was doing.
“Do you have a first aid kit, Seeger?”
Shook up, I had stood there frozen. Now I got into action, took it from the motorcycle, and knelt beside the two of them. I grabbed a bottle of alcohol and Martinez soaked it and laid it on the soldier’s face where it was instantly dyed red.
The soldier wailed in agony, but Martinez held his hand firm.
“We’ve got to get him to medical,” Martinez said. “Can that thing haul the three of us?”
I practically leaped straight from there to the top of the motorcycle, opened the choke, and kicked it on. Terrifying excitement can make you do incredible things, stupid and smart and murderous.
I helped Martinez get the soldier up and then we crowded onto the bike with me nearly on top of the gas tank. I just needed a foot on the clutch to keep us moving. I slipped and popped the clutch. The soldier grunted. I could feel his blood on my back.
Out of the trees and turned toward the farmhouse where I hoped Bullard still was, I drove the bogged-down bike as fast as I could. I couldn’t use the headlight because I didn’t want us trapped by a sniper from either side.
The barrage seemed to have gotten in front of us, moving closer to Catigny. I could hear gunners to our north and east responding with cannons. The French had finally arrived.
This calmed me down and now the sound of the motor and the groans of the soldier filled my ears. I may have heard my heart beating, too, or it could have been the concussions of the shells. I don’t think it mattered.
Americans had the road blocked and we stopped. We were a shock to them. A filthy bloody kid on a motorcycle with two soldiers: one with his face half blown off and the other with nothing but a box full of pencils and paints.
“What in the hell are you doing?” A soldier yelled. “The Huns are about to break through the line just ahead. You can’t go any farther.”
“We’re trying to get this man some help before he dies,” Martinez said. It struck me just then that Martinez sounded a bit fey. It’s funny the things you realize in moments like that. “Is there an ambulance?”
The soldier saluted Martinez, then grabbed the wounded man, and the both of them helped him away. I stood there not sure what I should do. I was a courier with no message.
A battery opened up from a clot of trees not far away. My ears rang.
A filthy soldier walked out of the trees and approached me. I couldn’t see his rank for the mud covering him from head to toe.
I saluted him anyway.
“You know where Bullard is?” he said.
“I believe I do sir.”
“You tell that old man that the Germans almost broke out but McCormick’s battalion held. The French just sent word they are hammering them just east of here. On May 28, 1918, the Army of the U.S. of A. grew up. Not one of those son of a bitches is getting through here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You tell him just how I said it to, you hear.”
I was ready to leave the front behind, crank the bike, and get this behind me, and fast when Martinez strolled up. He was bloodied up from the soldier and a lot less slick looking than he was when I met him what seemed like a lifetime ago.
He still had the wooden box, which was battered and scratched now, and I bet a man like him would carry those like a badge of honor when he got the chance.
“Can you get us back to Bullard before nightfall?” he said.
I jumped on the crank and got the motorcycle running.
“As long as God and the Devil are willing.”
Convinced the Germans had not crossed the road and cut Catigny off, the soldiers let us through. We left the wounded man behind, thinking we would forget him and the dead and the violence in time.
We reached the farmhouse with a waning gibbous moon guiding us. Light like that, lending everything a silvery edge and making even military lanterns softly glow, is poetic and I felt an elation in the beauty that was beyond feeling lucky to be alive. That was the day I learned you almost kiss death in the mouth and still think it was a beautiful thing.
When were both off the motorcycle and brushing the dust off ourselves, I finally asked Martinez exactly what he was in the war to do. It wasn’t for killing anyone.
“I’m an illustrator,” he said. His voice was back to that cool, confident man I started out with. “There’s a group of us the Army hired. We are all over the front to document what this carnage looked like. Thank you for your effort, Seeger.”
He shook my hand, which I did not expect, and sat on a bench near the farmhouse, opened the box, and started a new drawing, probably as taken with the moonlight as I was.
I took off my leather helmet and headed for the door to give Bullard his message. I was sure he would have something to tell Black Jack Pershing, but I was hoping to wait until morning to deliver it. Even a magical moon sets at some point.
Bullard was pleased. I stood at ease and he composed a message for Pershing. Bad as it was, the feeling of success had everyone pretty happy.
Of course, for someone like me, it only meant more work.
“Corporal, this needs to go to General Pershing right now,” Bullard said. Then he shook my hand just like the captain had. Happiness makes even powerful men who they are. “Oh, and best change your shirt before you do. You look a mess.”
I put the message in my pouch and steeled myself for the ride back. I wouldn’t brave a headlight even going away from the front because there was no knowing what a sniper might see or think he sees.
I stepped into a large tent and found it empty. The shirt, washed in the blood of the soldier, came off and pulled another from a saddlebag. Martinez stepped in.
“Seeger, I will be requiring one more ride,” he said. “My work here is finished.”
He pulled a silver flask from his shirt and offered it to me. I hesitated.
“Regulations be damned,” Martinez said. “We are drinking to art.”
“In that case,” I said and took it.
That, my friend, was the first swallow of scotch whiskey I ever took.
“One more thing before we go,” Martinez said. He opened the box and unrolled a drawing. This must have been a new one because it showed a wild and skinny boy firing a pistol point-blank into a soldier’s face while he lay defenseless on a forest floor.
We rode again with the moon bright and beautiful, which seemed like a crime because it hung over so many who took sorrow in its light.