Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (20 page)

The only real doubt we might have expressed that night was about the absurdity of a late night capture and protect strategy in the rain, but instead we saluted and accepted our first mission. Natives were selected as scouts more than other soldiers because of romantic sentiments, and, of course, because the missions very were risky. Later the sergeant talked fast in the dark and dank command post, and he provided only minimal information about possible enemy positions on the other side of the forest.

So, we sauntered into the forest with only the security of an absolute cover of darkness and roar of artillery. At first not even the leaves near my nose were visible. The sense of sight, though, was not only by light. Misaabe told stories about a hunter who could sense the presence of animals by the faint puff and waft of breath, and by the glint and spirit of blood, bone, and the distinctive scent and stink of bodies.

The Boche soldiers were wild, demonic, but not animals with a natural sense of presence. No shine or cast of spirit was sensible that night in the forest of the enemy. Actually, we could smell the enemy even in the steady rain.

Aloysius crouched and moved slowly ahead of me through the forest with his rifle close to his chest, and in only a few minutes of concentration we could sense the presence of the trees, but not yet the brush and branches. We wore soft hats to avoid the sound of rain on helmets. Remarkably, we could sense the spirit of trees, but not by the ordinary light of sight. Misaabe once described what we see as more than the perception of the light. The eyes sensed the blue spirit and glint of life. I should have asked the old healer then if he could sense a dead body or the enemy.

Aloysius moved with wariness in the forest. He paused every few minutes to listen and to change the pattern of his hesitant pace. We tried to imitate the natural motion of the rain, and there was a great silence in the forest between artillery explosions.

I could hear the beat of my heart. Our presence in the hilly forest was not noticed for several hours. Past midnight the rain and bombardment ended, and we were distracted by an inscrutable silence in the forest. Creatures moved, or we imagined motion, and the only other sound was the turn of heavy leaves and late dash of rain on the earth.

I sensed the presence of someone by the hush of insects, and hunched my shoulders like a praying mantis to listen and imagine the faint sounds. I opened my Elephant Toe pocketknife and prepared to attack and wound the enemy. We were aware that only a frightened and untrained soldier would shoot into the night. The flash and sound of his weapon would only reveal his position, and bring about certain death. The more we moved in the forest the more we were determined to capture an enemy soldier that night, and that act alone would confirm our courage and instinct as native scouts.

Aloysius groaned and whispered my name. His body leaned to the right and collapsed in the brush. I turned, raised my rifle and was directly disarmed by a soldier with his bayonet at my throat. The enemy spoke softly in an unfamiliar language, but not German. Later, we were surprised when the enemy soldiers talked to each other in perfect English.

The soldiers who had captured us were on a similar mission to capture the enemy for interrogation. The gestures and whispers of the soldiers were familiar, but we could not distinguish faces or features in the dark. The soldier who had disarmed my brother was angular and strong. The other soldier
who easily grounded me was smaller, a wrestler who pushed my face into the musty earth.

The soldiers we thought were the enemy had muzzled and bound my brother and me. The soldiers were convinced that we were disguised enemy agents, and marched us back toward the allied military encampment. A short time later in the faint morning light we discovered that the captors and captives were natives. By some incredible coincidence the two teams of native scouts that night were in the same section of Forêt-de-Nesles.

Naturally, we were shied and humiliated as captives, but we were not amazed to realize that we had been outmaneuvered by two of the best native scouts in the infantry. Natives must be naturals at stealth, who else would have the instinct to imagine the scent of blood and capture other native scouts?

Aloysius was right, we could not return to our companies without at least one enemy soldier. So, as a team of four native scouts we turned around and moved quickly through the forest to the enemy positions.

The Rainbow Division scouts were more experienced so we learned stealthy strategies from the native shamans of the decimated forests. The new strategy was to capture as many enemy soldiers as we could that night, but at least one for each team of scouts. We were obliged to impress our sergeant.

Strut, the huge angular native scout, was Oneida from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Hunch, the wrestler, was Oneida from New York, one of the first five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Oneida was the first language we heard whispered that night, and then English. Hunch had served in a National Guard regiment that became part of the great Rainbow Division in the American Expeditionary Forces.

Hunch suggested that we choose a likely natural pathway in the forest close to the enemy and camouflage ourselves nearby in the brush. Most of the trees had been shattered by artillery explosions and provided a strategic cover and unnatural concealment. The strategy was similar to the way natives once hunted animals, to enter the forest early in the morning and then fall asleep. The tension of the hunter was released, and when the hunter awakened he became part of a natural scene, not a breathy invasion of the surroundings.

Four native scouts waited about an hour that early morning for the enemy. I thought about the trader Odysseus, Misaabe, and the mongrel healers, and could not fall asleep. Luckily the enemy was not as perceptive as animals in the forest.

Three German soldiers entered the forest and followed the natural pathway. Two soldiers set their rifles aside, and lowered their trousers to defecate. The third soldier, the youngest, stood guard nearby but looked away.

Strut cracked a stick as the signal and we pounced on the soldiers. Two were already disarmed, and were easily subdued with their trousers around their ankles. The third soldier panicked and fired one shot in the air. Strut reached from behind the young soldier and cut his throat. The soldier gurgled on blood, stared at me with fear, and died in the wet broken brush. Quickly we covered the body, and marched the other two soldiers double time through the forest back to our military units.

Naturally, our sergeant was pleased that we had captured one enemy soldier, but the interrogation revealed nothing of value to our regiment. The soldier was a replacement without much knowledge of the defensive positions of the Germans.

Hunch was a storier and he would not hesitate to include in his repertoire of native stories the capture of two scouts from the White Earth Reservation. So, we anticipated his stories and recounted the reverse, that we had almost, yes, almost, captured two Oneida scouts from the Rainbow Division.

The Germans had been driven across the Vesle River and two months later out of France. So, our risky missions as native scouts were decreased and then hardly necessary. German soldiers were captured in the thousands, and many thousands more surrendered near the end of the war to the British, French, and Americans.

Strut and Hunch were at a reserve encampment when we met them for the last time at the end of the war. We were united by chance that afternoon at a Cootie Machine created by the Rainbow Division. The marvelous machine killed enemy body lice on our uniforms. We had survived the war, captured the cooties, and after a warm shower, the first in several weeks, we were restored, clean, and ready for the tease of stories that night at the mess tent.

Hunch told the story about Private Arthur Elm, an Oneida from Wisconsin,
who served with a machine gun company in the mighty Red Arrow Division. Elm was wounded and survived the battle at Ronchères and Bois-de-Cierges east of Reims near Verdun. Elm and his machine gun team advanced to Juvigny in the deadly Oise-Aisne Offensive. Elm encountered three enemy soldiers with Red Cross armbands who were about to throw grenades, so he killed them with his bayonet.

The Red Arrow Division was bombarded and under direct enemy fire for two days and without food. Elm and another soldier volunteered to return to the supply depot and secure food for the company. They traveled under fire with a compass and map through the brush, craters, barbed wire, and bodies to a mobile supply depot behind the line of combat.

Elm secured a wagonload of beans and tomatoes and was about to leave for the front when he heard the sound of an artillery shell. He ducked in a trench for cover. The shell exploded on the wagon and killed the mule and two soldiers. Hunch gestured with his hands and shouted there were beans and tomatoes everywhere, in the trees, on helmets, and beans covered the supply trucks.

Hunch recounted the native story about the explosion, the shower of beans and tomatoes, as a comedy first and then the casualties as a tragedy. Chance was a distinct native story, the irony and comedy over the misery and tragedy. Not everyone, however, appreciated the manner and tease of native stories.

Private Elm and the other soldier observed boxes of food at the back of a supply truck. The Military Police guarded the truck, so he told the story about hungry soldiers at the front and the explosion, and asked for a couple of boxes of prunes. The request was refused, and at that very minute there was the sound of another round of artillery shells. The Military Police took cover in a bunker.

Elm and the other soldier stole two boxes of prunes and ran toward the trees. They retraced the route but could not locate their company, so they shared the food with another hungry unit near the front. The captain recommended the two soldiers for a medal, but the Military Police had their names and reported them as thieves. The recommendation of bravery was enough evidence to withdraw the criminal report, but the soldiers were ordered to pay for the cost of the prunes. Elm lamented that he had almost won but for the stolen prunes a Distinguished Service Cross.

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V
ESLE
R
IVER

— — — — — — —
1918
— — — — — — —

Aloysius painted one, three, four, and seven blue ravens, never more in one scene, and with a trace of black and rouge. He painted in the back of trucks on the rough roads to war, at meals, and even in the beam and roar of enemy bombardments. My brother carried the paste of three colors in a compact, and moistened the brush with his tongue. His tongue was blue most of the time. Blueblood became his new nickname as an infantry scout.

The blue ravens were marvelous creations that late summer, the visionary images of peace, sway, irony, and, of course, a native sense of presence in the pitch and atrocities of war. The totemic ravens were forever our solace and protection. Ravens were blue in creation stories, and remained blue in the name of storiers. Black ravens turned blue by visions and ingenuity. The new woad blues of the ravens were subtle hues, and the scenes created a sense of motion and ceremony. The woad blues were elusive, never the flamboyant blues of royalty or the Virgin Mary.

Aloysius traded a blue raven pendant for a wad of woad, the blue paste made from the crushed and cured leaves of a plant that grew in the area. Harry Greene, an ambulance driver, located the woad in a nearby commune and arranged the trade for my brother. Harry was a novelist from Asheville, North Carolina, and a volunteer driver who lived most of the time in Paris. He had never met natives, and was impressed with the totemic blue ravens. Harry became a good friend, and later he introduced us to the City of Light.

Odysseus came to mind, of course, when my brother used the traded woad to paint with, and we actually considered the life of traders in France. Aloysius could easily trade his art, but words and stories were my only objects of commerce. Stories and original art by natives would not be a fair trade for food or favors at the desperate end of the war. Odysseus might have declared that peyote, white lace, and absinthe were hardly necessary to trade in France.

I read book four of
The Odyssey
that night in the corner of a trench and traveled with the spirits in the ancient stories.
At times I cry aloud for sorrow, but presently I leave off again, for crying is cold comfort and one soon tires of it. Yet grieve for these as I may, I do so for one man more than for them all…. He took nothing by it, and has left a legacy of sorrow to myself, for he has been gone a long time, and we know not whether he is alive or dead.

Aloysius carved blue raven medals for the native scouts Strut and Hunch. My brother had collected broken wood to carve the pendants. Some of the local trees were similar to those on the reservation,
arbre de chêne
, oak tree,
charme
, hornbeam or ironwood,
cendre
, ash, and
hêtre
or beech. The hornbeam was hard with a close grain, and the polished image of a raven absorbed the blue in muted hues. The peace pendants were slowly carved under constant enemy bombardment and the bloody rage of war.

My brother presented the pendants at a timely second cootie and shower ceremony. The stories told by scouts are not the same as other combat stories. Scouts were secretive, moved by stealth, and there were very few observers to comment on the risky missions at night to capture enemy soldiers.

We were worried about two of our close cousins who were in separate divisions. Ignatius Vizenor was an infantry soldier in the Thirtieth Infantry Division near Saint-Quentin under the command of the British Expeditionary Forces. Strut and Huntch said they would ask about our cousin Lawrence Vizenor in the nearby Thirty-Third Infantry Division. The Rainbow Division was deployed a few days later to the south near the Meuse River for the decisive and bloody Battle of the Argonne Forest.

The Third Army Corps, engineers, and other companies of the First Pioneer Infantry gathered at Bois Meunière between Cierges and Goussancourt. From there the soldiers marched east in rain and thunder near Dead Man's Curve to Fismes. The Boche soldiers were on high ground, a strategic enemy position over the river valley.