Backlands

by Michael McGarrity

  He stared at the blank piece of paper, decided to write again, and began:

  Amherst College

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  Dear Anna Lynn,

  I hope this letter finds you and Ginny in good health. I’d planned to come home on leave after basic training, but at the last minute I received orders to travel to Amherst College to attend a language training school and had to report immediately. I tried to get out of it but couldn’t, so here I am learning Italian at this all-male college in New England with no gals around to distract me.

  It’s a pretty campus right next to the town, which is very quaint. Everything about the place seems so settled and permanent, with lots of stately brick buildings, huge old trees lining the streets and campus walkways, and rows of Victorian houses with carefully tended lawns. I now understand why our part of the country seems so wild and untamed to easterners.

  I didn’t realize until I arrived at Amherst that I would have been disqualified for the program because of my age, if hadn’t known how to speak Spanish. How about that? The army considers me old. The boys in my unit here have taken to calling me “Pops,” just like the guys in my company did at Camp Hood.

  Most of the soldiers here are eight to ten years younger than me, with more college under their belts, but I’m holding my own in the advanced class. Why they have me learning Italian, since Spanish is also taught here, is beyond me. Sometimes “the army way” doesn’t make much sense.

  The first day of class, our instructor walked in and said, “Today we are studying the Italian language.” That has been the last thing he said in English. He’s a retired professor who speaks five languages fluently. We’re learning both the northern and southern dialects. Except for history and geography, all my other classes are also in Italian.

  The work is intense. We were supposed to get to go on leave after the first twelve-week period, but instead we’re to start the second term immediately. The only guys who aren’t bitching are the few married men who live off campus with their wives. Why the big hurry, no one knows.

  The program is officially known as the Army Specialized Training Program, and we even have our own patch: a lamp of learning with an upright sword thrust through the middle of it. Except for wearing a uniform and an occasional head-count formation, it’s like being a civilian.

  I got promoted to PFC before I left Camp Hood, and there’s a possibility that I might be commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant if I successfully complete the training. Even if I don’t get bars for my collar, the course work will put another year of college under my belt. That should count for something.

  New Mexico seems so far away, and I’m missing you a lot. Write if you want; it’ll boost my spirits considerably. Give a hug and kiss to Ginny.

  Love,

  Matt

  Matt read through the letter and sealed it. He wrote a short note to Pa and a slightly longer one to Al Jr., letting them know how he was doing and asking how things were going at the ranch. He bundled up against the cold and headed outside to the mailroom. When he got back, his roommate, Dominic Amato, a five-foot-five Sicilian from New York City who loved opera, had returned from the library. A naturalized citizen, Dominic spoke both Sicilian and Italian. Matt did language drills with him every night after chow, and it was paying off richly in his classes.

  “Are you ready to practice speaking the possessive adjectives?” Dominic asked him in Italian. “Your accent is still too American.”

  Matt groaned and began.

  ***

  Three weeks into the second term, Matt and Dominic received special orders to report immediately to the Forty-Fifth Infantry Division at Camp Pickett, Virginia. With the orders came promotions for both of them to the rank of technical corporal.

  A quick check of a world atlas at the library showed that the camp was located fairly close to the shipping port of Newport News.

  “We’re going to invade Italy,” Dominic crowed. “I hope we go to Sicily first. I’ve got relatives there.”

  “Maybe it’s a big mistake, and we’re being sent to invade Norway, where nobody speaks Italian,” Matt replied, studying his promotion orders. “I thought we were supposed to become lieutenants.”

  “What’sa matter, you don’t like being a corporal, Pops?” Dominic countered. “Besides, we didn’t finish, did we? You only get to be an officer if you finish.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Matt replied. “Corporal has a nice ring to it. Napoleon was a corporal.”

  “Yeah, and so was Hitler,” Dominic added.

  “Ouch,” Matt replied. “What do you know about the Forty-Fifth?”

  “Nothing. You?”

  “Nothing, except it’s infantry. I would have preferred the cavalry.” Matt hoisted his duffel and looked around their dorm room.

  “You’d think the army would get a horse just for you, Pops. A man your age and a real-live cowboy after all.” Dominic emptied his sock drawer into his duffel bag.

  “Call me corporal, not Pops,” Matt corrected. “Say good-bye to the good times and easy duty.”

  “Addio,” Dominic said, throwing his duffel over a shoulder.

  “Arrivederci,” Matt added, following Dominic out the door.

  ***

  Camp Pickett was in a frenzied state of mobilization when Matt and Dominic arrived. They reported to the S-1 personnel officer, a major with dark circles under his eyes and a disapproving look on his face. He read their orders twice.

  Outside his office, clerks were frantically typing while others were handing out paperwork to soldiers in a line that stretched outside the building.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Italian interpreters,” the major finally said. He sized up Matt and Dominic as they stood at attention in front of his desk. “Just the two of you?”

  “As far as we know, sir,” Matt volunteered.

  “You’re probably supposed to go to Intelligence,” the major remarked. “But S-2 has already left the post. We decamp for Newport News in two days. Without orders you’ll be left dockside.”

  The major bit his lip, pondered, and then started writing. When he finished, he handed one paper to Matt and one to Dominic.

  “Give those to my clerk, the PFC just outside my office. He’ll cut temporary orders assigning you to a company that’s short a couple of men. That’ll make you official until S-2 can be advised. Get over to post commissary and get your rank and division patches for your uniforms. Then come back here for your orders.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dominic said.

  “Welcome to the Forty-Fifth,” the major said without much enthusiasm. He looked the two soldiers up and down one last time. At least they weren’t going to be his problem anymore. “When you’re finished here, report to the quartermaster and draw your gear and weapons. You may have to do more than speak Italian to help win the war.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” Matt said, saluting and turning on his heel in unison with Dominic.

  It took several hours of running around, waiting, and filling out forms before Matt and Dominic, loaded down with combat gear, M-1 rifles, uniforms, and duffel bags, reported to the first sergeant of Company K, Second Battalion. He was a lanky Oklahoman named Roscoe Beal who silently mouthed the words he read as he went through their orders.

  When he finished, he looked up from his desk and said, “Well at least you’re both qualified with the M-1; that’s something, I guess. As for your rank, as far as I’m concerned you don’t have any while you’re in my outfit. Get them stripes sewn on, but don’t think about ordering anybody around.”

  He looked Dominic up and down. “You’re Amato?”

  “Yes, First Sergeant.”

  “You go to the Heavy Weapons Platoon; see Lieutenant Church.”

  “Yes, First Sergeant,” Dominic said.

  “Kerney, you see Lieutenant Daugherty at Third Pla
toon.”

  Matt nodded.

  “One more thing,” Master Sergeant Roscoe Beal said. “I don’t care if you two college boys can speak Italian like natives. You’re mine until the brass says otherwise, got it?”

  “Understood,” Dominic said.

  “Get going and don’t cause me any trouble.”

  Outside on the packed earth of the company assembly area, Dominic smiled and said, “Well, at least we fell into this can of worms together. Think we’ll get out of it before the shooting starts?”

  Matt shrugged. “Don’t hold your breath.”

  ***

  After one day with Second Squad, Third Platoon, K Company, all the men, including the squad leader, a fresh-faced twenty-year-old buck sergeant, started calling Matt Pops. On the second day, his moniker had spread to the entire platoon, including Lieutenant Daugherty, who was seven years Matt’s junior. A wise-guy gambler in the First Platoon heard about the old tech corporal who’d rotated in and started a betting pool as to who was the oldest dogface in the company. Was it Matt? The CO, Captain Marshall? First Sergeant Beal? The XO, Lieutenant Nelson? Or Corporal Dutton, who had six years in uniform?

  A five-spot to a clerk in personnel answered the question. Matt was the oldest man in the company by six months over Roscoe Beal. Dominic had bet heavy and won a hundred dollars.

  The Forty-Fifth was a National Guard outfit made up of men from Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. But K Company was almost a hundred percent Okie. When he could, Matt tried to find other New Mexicans in the division. But the rush to mobilize provided little time for it, and he soon stopped trying.

  Ten days were spent at Newport News loading the invasion fleet, bound first for Oran, Algeria. Each day Matt and Dominic looked for fresh orders reassigning them to S-2. Each day, their hopes diminished. They worked long hours with the other men of K Company, unloading trucks filled with crates and boxes of equipment, supplies, and clothing for transfer to the cargo vessels.

  From the moment Matt boarded the troop ship at Newport News with his platoon and was led down to a hold below the waterline, he was miserable. Canvas bunks fifteen inches apart and twelve inches above each soldier’s nose hung from floor to ceiling. Hundreds of them filled the windowless hold, lit only by dim bulbs that created a permanent artificial dusk. Every sound, every voice, every fart, reverberated off the steel-plated bulkhead, creating an interminable noise that made him wince.

  He’d never felt claustrophobia before, but it quickly settled over him like a panic. His hands shook as he stowed his gear. His bunk, up against the port-side hull, would be a perfect spot for a U-boat captain to aim a torpedo. The idea of it gave him shivers. He rolled into his bunk, closed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and lay perfectly still until the urge to get up and run to the deck and jump overboard subsided. He forced himself to think of home, the vast Tularosa Basin with its endless sky and magnificent mountains.

  By the end of the first day at sea, the hold reeked of vomit, sweat, and the stink of men. It only got worse as time passed. It was impossible to read and almost impossible to move about the cramped quarters, and the only form of diversion consisted of standing in line for chow three times a day, and occasional excursions topside to gaze at the gray North Atlantic Ocean and the vast convoy guarded by a dozen destroyers stretching off into the distance. It was the most depressing time of his life.

  The two-week passage ended with a predawn disembarkation off the Algerian coast by amphibious landing craft, with whole regiments put ashore miles from their destinations. It was such a major snafu, the brass had them doing amphibious landing drills almost to the day of their departure for Sicily.

  Matt, who had enlisted in the army to stay away from the water, half drowned each time he stepped out of the landing craft into five feet of water, loaded down with fifty pounds of equipment, clothing, weapons, and ammunition as he slogged his way to shore. As he dried out after the final practice run, the company orderly brought him three letters: two from Anna Lynn sent to Amherst College and one from Augustus Merton that Pa had forwarded from the ranch. Matt read Augustus’s letter first. He was working as a civilian for the War Department in Washington, supervising the inspection of munitions plants across the country, and wanted Matt to go to work for him. The job would keep him out of the draft for the duration, Gus noted. Matt smiled at the thought of working someplace with his feet on solid ground and little chance of getting shot at. He set it aside for a quick reply later.

  In Anna Lynn’s first letter she wrote that Patrick had been visited at the ranch by MPs who’d warned him to stop shooting at the warplanes practicing bombing and strafing tactics over the basin. Pa said he’d stop once the pilots quit shooting the livestock and scaring the ponies. According to what Al Jr. told Anna Lynn, Patrick escorted the MPs off the ranch by shotgun and warned them not to return. That prompted the arrival the next day of an apologetic officer from the airfield, who wanted Patrick to fill out official forms so the government could reimburse him for the dead cattle. A month later, no check had arrived, and Patrick was still grumbling about it. She sent her love and said Ginny missed him.

  Anna Lynn’s second letter, written a week later, contained sobering news about her youngest sister, Danette, who was eight months pregnant and living alone in a small Idaho town. Her husband, David Shirley, a crew member in an Air Corps bomber, had died in a training accident in Florida. Anna Lynn was leaving to fetch Danette back to live with her in Mountain Park until the baby came and other arrangements could be made. She closed by saying how glad she was he was safe and sound in college at Amherst.

  From the postmark on the letter, Matt figured Anna Lynn was back from her trip to fetch her sister and most likely an aunt by now.

  He was writing his regrets to Gus and explaining that the government had found other work for him, when Dominic rushed up waving papers.

  “Did yours come?” he asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Orders to report to G-2, ASAP.” He was grinning from ear to ear. “I’m assigned to division.”

  Matt plucked the orders out of Dominic’s hand and scanned them. “Well, I’ll be damned. Congratulations.”

  Dominic’s grin evaporated. “You didn’t get orders, did you?”

  “I sure didn’t,” Matt replied.

  “That sucks. Look, I’m to pack up and make my way to G-2 right now. As soon as I get there, I’ll find out what the snafu is and get it straightened out.”

  “Don’t screw anything up for yourself on my account,” Matt cautioned.

  “Come on,” Dominic replied, “it’s probably nothing more than a paperwork glitch.”

  Matt smiled and squeezed his pal’s shoulder. “Yeah, come get me when it’s all straightened out.”

  “Wilco,” Dominic replied.

  Half hoping Dominic was right, Matt waited throughout the heat of the day, fighting off a growing feeling that he wasn’t going to be leaving K Company before the invasion of Sicily. He broke down his M-1 and gave it a thorough cleaning. He borrowed some saddle soap from a squad member and worked it into his leather combat boots to help waterproof them, and he wrote farewell letters to Pa, Anna Lynn, Al Jr., Gus Merton, and even a little note to Ginny, just in case he didn’t make it.

  Surrounding him, tens of thousands of men waited to go to war, most, like him, for the very first time. The nervous chatter of anxious, scared boys, their forced laughs, their rough horseplay, their loudmouth ribbing of one another, was like an eerie, discordant Greek chorus.

  Behind the huge encampment that snaked along the coastline, the ancient town of Oran, liberated a mere seven months before, looked down on the latest army to come this way after the Romans and Carthaginians, the Spanish, the Ottomans, the French, the Germans, and now the Allies.

  Matt’s mouth was dry. He drank half a canteen of water, but it didn
’t seem to help. Tomorrow, he’d board another troop ship for another almost unendurable sea voyage. Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, was about to begin.

  40

  Matt stood crammed together with hundreds of scared, sweating men in the upper hold of a transport ship, listening to a thunderous naval bombardment of coastal defenses on the western shores of Sicily. The last day of sailing had been the worst. A storm and rough seas had made every soldier on board sick, and the hold stank of vomit. Matt had lost everything in his stomach twice, if that was possible. Once topside, he shuffled along the deck, the soldier in front of him inches from the tip of his helmet, craning to see some of the vessels in the vast armada. More than twenty-six hundred ships were going to deposit a hundred and eighty thousand men on Sicilian beaches, along with hundreds of tanks, thousands of vehicles, countless artillery pieces, and millions of tons of ammunition and supplies. Overhead, Allied fighter planes and bombers roared inland to strafe and bomb, adding to the deafening roar. Shot down by big guns from a destroyer, a German plane exploded in midair and fell in pieces into the sea.

  Matt went over the side, down the cargo net, and tumbled into the landing craft looking for a familiar face. He found his young squad leader, Sergeant Tom Kesling, crouched next to him, his face pasty white from seasickness, the M-1 shaking in his trembling hands.

  “You okay, Pops?” Kesling asked, barely getting the words out before he threw up at Matt’s feet.

  Matt nodded as the landing craft pitched forward in choppy waters, drenching the men as it dipped and rose over the waves. Most of the men in the boat were part of Matt’s platoon. In the prow, his platoon leader, Lieutenant Daugherty, was praying the rosary, his head bent over the beads in his hand.

  “You’ll be all right,” Kesling consoled, looking around at no one in particular, his eyes glazed with fear.