Word: habe
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...soldiers' bodies than to their brains. Like flying tanks, the Arrado planes, cruising so insolently low, observing every confused movement of French troops and of artillery, added to the Frenchmen's sense of German omnipotence and omniscience. "It was not a war, but a hunt." Habe's captain lost his head, ordered his men into a glade which was just right "for a solitary pair of lovers and not for two companies of infantry." Once the men were nicely crowded there, their heads buried in the damp, rich ground, the German artillery cut loose on them...
...There Habe experienced for the first time (it was to become daily breath) some of the strange poetry of war: "I was suddenly close to the smallest and lowest creatures, the insects and worms, everything that crawled and writhed humbly and flatly on the ground." The worms went on about their business while the shells exploded (they are, as Darwin learned, quite deaf), the bees hummed, and now and then, between explosions, a bird sang. "It sometimes seemed that we were already in our graves, half alive and half dead: and most curiously, the whistling shells meant life...
Before the whole shaking structure fell to pieces, there was a taste of bravery for some of these men. Captain Count Ravel forced enemy units five times superior in numbers to retire two kilometers; Habe's division-the Thirty-fifth-held a deep wedge of the victorious German army of Sedan motionless until the final collapse of France-although it was only half-fed, undefended from the air, tortured with noise and silence...
...length came a morning when Habe, at his observation post, saw the opposing slope mushroom brazenly with helmetless German heads, and their officers, calm on the skyline with spread maps, pointing at him with gloved fingers. The French had no ammunition. Later his phone went dead. He and his two companions realized that everyone had withdrawn behind them. They faced 60,000 Germans. Carrying their 250 pounds of observation equipment-"we were three soldiers unable to lose confidence in the army in a single night"-they retreated...
After his imprisonment and escape (described with many sharp sidelights on Nazi methods of occupation) Habe reached the U.S., where his wife and parents have joined him. He is at work on a new novel. Subject: the war between generations (he favors the elder). He lives in Manhattan's Alden Hotel, does his work out of town, at West Point. He has applied for U.S. citizenship; has a draft number. In his pocket he carries a crystal rosary, wrapped in a lace handkerchief. It was given to him by the proprietress of a Nancy brothel who hid him from...