by James R Benn
I let loose my last round and the stripper clip ejected, hitting the ground with a metallic ping. As I grabbed another eight-round clip and slid it in, I remembered someone saying that was what he didn't like about the M1. That sound could give you away, and you couldn't reload until you were all out of ammo. Same guy who told me about wet helmets. Some guy who played every percentage. Who?
I aimed again. Germans filled up more of the sight as they got closer to the rise in front of us. I heard our machine gun and watched as men went down, hit or seeking cover. Yellow flowers were clipped by flying lead, scattering bouquets over the dead and dying. The Tiger was almost to the rise. It halted in front of it, raking the ground as its turret swung and fired in the direction of our machine gun. A loud explosion hit behind us and the MG went silent. I heard the hydraulic whir of the turret, as if the dark machine were thinking, calculating. Gears ground and it lurched forward, tilting back as it began to mount the rise. In a second it would be over the top and free to kill us all. It made no sense, but I began firing at it. I should have been scared, but there was no time. I should have run. I don't know why I didn't.
The paratroopers next to me sprang up, and I saw two more come from the other direction. Two bazooka teams. Then I knew why we were positioned here. The German infantry was down, waiting for the Tiger to get over the rise and finish us off, none of them wanting to risk getting killed when the Tiger was a sure bet. Each bazooka man knelt while his partner fed a rocket in, tapped his helmet, and ducked. They waited for the tank to reach the maximum angle, its front up in the air and its unarmored belly showing. They fired, bright orange flashes blossoming out from the metal tubes. One missed. The other hit square between the treads, a white flash followed by a searing explosion that blew the hatches off. Flames roared out of the tank as it lurched forward, falling hard, nose down, silent except for the roar of contained flames. Roiling black smoke from burning fuel and flesh filled the sky, and I cheered. I clapped Hutton on the shoulder. He didn't move. His head rolled toward me and his helmet tilted off. There was a hole in it dead center that matched the one high on his forehead. One hand lay flat on the ground, the long fingers splayed out as if he'd tried to ward off the shot that got him. His nails were still clean.
Some of the paratroopers crawled to the rise and began firing at the retreating Germans. I didn't know what to do about Hutton. Aloysius Hutton. A good solid name. A bit old-fashioned, but he'd said it like he didn't mind. I took his ammo bandolier and went forward. I saw Germans, more distant now, giving us their backs. I shot two and wondered what their names were.
I slumped against the rise, drank half the water in my canteen, and wished I had enough to wash my face. I couldn't have moved if my life depended on it, and it damn well might. My legs felt weak and I thought the water I'd swallowed was going to come right back up. I lay at the bottom of the rise, Hutton dead behind me, the enemy in front. I tried to get up, but the ground was spinning and I couldn't. I closed my eyes and felt the sun beating on my eyelids. Through a haze I heard medics moving the wounded out and felt someone start to grab my legs until one of the bazooka guys said to let me be, I was alive, I just didn't look it.
I woke to the sound of tank treads. I grabbed my rifle and looked around to get my bearings. The Tiger was smoldering, and Hutton was gone. One of the bazooka team raised his hand, palm up, as if to calm me.
"Don't worry, buddy. Those are ours. We got six Shermans coming up."
"Finally," his loader said, and tried to spit. It looked like his mouth was too dry and dusty to work anything up. I crawled over and gave him my canteen. He nodded his thanks and took a careful mouthful, then handed it back.
"How long was I out?" I asked.
"Couple hours," the loader answered. "You looked pretty banged up to start with, so we left you alone. Nothing much happened here since Joe popped that Tiger."
"What outfit you with?" Joe asked, eyeing me.
"Headquarters Company," I said, a plausible lie that might even be true.
"Jesus," the loader said. "They got everybody up here. Truck drivers, cooks, clerks, even some navy guys from the shore party."
"You shoot pretty good for a straight leg," Joe said. "Calm, not all shaky like some of these other guys."
"Straight leg?"
"He means everyone but paratroopers," the loader said. "After we qualify we stuff our pant legs into our jump boots."
"Straight leg. I get it," I said. "And straight legs can't shoot straight?"
"Some do," Joe agreed. "Some hunker down and don't do anyone no good. Some fire at anything. You took your time with aimed shots. Makes a difference."
I could hear someone else telling me about aimed fire. The helmet guy. He thought the same way. Like a professional. Who was he?
"Thanks," I said. The blurred image of a face swam through my mind. I could almost hear him. Aimed fire.
"Name's Clancy," the loader said, his hand extended. "This here's Joe."
I shook their hands. Joe lit a cigarette and they both looked at me, waiting.
"Aloysius Hutton," I said, my mind blank, as if that were the only name in the world.
"Pleasure," Clancy said after a moment. Joe drew on his cigarette and gave it to his buddy. We watched and listened. The Shermans clanked into position about fifty yards away on our left. Firing broke out intermittently along the line. Nothing as ferocious as before, only a rattle of rifles and short machine-gun bursts. We waited as the sun dipped down behind us and more GIs and paratroopers came up from the direction of Gela.
At six o'clock the Shermans roared forward and we got the signal to advance. I followed Clancy and Joe down the slope, jumping over dead Germans and wilting yellow flowers. Gunfire was heavy to our left, but in front of us all we could see were flashes of khaki running low, darting from cover and then going to ground again. We made it down to the road, to an abandoned pillbox situated to cover the road in the opposite direction. Inside was a lone German, dead, bandages swathing his abdomen. He looked a lot like the kid who had died next to me in the field hospital.
For about an hour we hunkered down by the pillbox and listened to the Shermans firing over the next hill. The shooting slackened, then died away. We walked out into the open, standing upright, which felt strange. The Germans were gone, except for a couple dozen prisoners being marched up the slope. No explosions, no machine guns. The quiet was so sweet no one dared speak. Clancy, Joe, and I wordlessly climbed back to the top and looked out over the plain below us. A trail of dust marked the retreat of the remaining German vehicles, and plumes of smoke marked those that didn't make it.
The top of the ridgeline was the collection point for the dead. We watched bodies being laid out in neat rows as POWs were put to work scraping graves out of the shale. No different than the holes we'd tried to dig. It looked easier to do standing up. A paratroop chaplain knelt, saying a prayer over each body. There were thirty-four of them. Someone started knocking K-ration cartons apart, forming makeshift crosses and a couple of Stars of David. Everyone was silent, and the noise of shovels biting the hard ground seemed even louder than all the fighting. Chink, chink, metal against rock, flesh against the earth. I turned to walk away and saw Slim Jim himself standing at attention, tears washing the dirt from his cheeks. Thirty-four good names were going to be written on those wooden planks, many of them belonging to boys he knew. All of them he'd put on this ridge to fight and die. I was glad I didn't have to make decisions like that, and then wondered if I ever had.
Joe put his hand on my shoulder and moved me away from the group, walking me down the slope toward the olive grove and the aid station. The light was fading, but I could still see his eyes moving back and forth, looking to see who was around. He stopped and grabbed the front of my shirt, ripping it open.
"I know you aren't Hutton," he said. "I helped bring his body over here and gave the lieutenant his dog tags. I doubt there's two Aloysius Huttons on this fuckin' island. And you don't have no dog tags.
"
"Listen, Joe-"
"Never mind. I got enough troubles with the Krauts, I don't give a crap about yours. If I hadn't seen you drop so many of them I would've shot you myself when you gave that phony name. But you stood your ground, helped us out, and we owe you. So scram. Grab a jeep before things get organized here. Go back to Gela or wherever you came from. And keep your head down, straight leg."
He nodded toward the road. Clancy stood a few yards away, keeping a lookout. "If you run into trouble with any guys from the 82nd, ask for Joe and Clancy of the 505th. Everyone knows us, we're a team."
He gave a little wave. I waved back and watched them trudge back to the ridge and their buddies, alive and dead. I headed down through the olive grove, past the aid station, to a jumble of vehicles pulled off the road, and wondered exactly where the hell it was I had come from.
CHAPTER THREE
"Hold still, darlin', let me get these bandages off. They're filthy," a woman said.
"OK," I said. I had been swiveling my head around, on the watch for officers or anybody else in the business of collecting stray GIs. Back at Biazza Ridge I had collected four wounded from the aid station and brought them down to the field hospital. I had wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, but it didn't seem right to steal a jeep just for myself. It was good cover, I'd figured. No one would stop and question me with four bleeding men crowded in the jeep.
"Not infected, thank goodness," she said, pulling off the once-white bandages, stained with blood, dirt, and sweat. She was dressed in army fatigues about five sizes too big for her, sleeves and pants rolled up to fit. Wisps of brown hair stuck out from beneath her helmet.
"I didn't know there were nurses here already," I said as she put a new dressing on my head. I was still sitting in the jeep. I had been ready to take off as soon as they got the casualties out, but she refused to let me go until she had checked my head wound.
"We landed this morning. They sent us up from the Evac Hospital to help out. We would've gotten here sooner but we ran into German tanks. We hid and watched them go by. That's as close as I ever want to get to those things," she said, shuddering, her shoulders bunching up.
"Yeah, you and me both."
A few tanks had broken through, but they were stopped short of the beachhead. I had passed two of them knocked out by the side of the road, black greasy smoke curling up out of their hatches. Plenty of our vehicles had been destroyed too, and dead bodies bloated in the heat amid twisted steel. The smell of smoke, death, and decay left a metallic taste in my mouth I could not quite shake.
There was more of everything coming ashore now, and long tents had sprouted everywhere since I'd been here last, more targets for the German planes buzzing overhead. They concentrated on the ships and landing craft, but every now and then a low roar of engines flared across the horizon, followed by a string of explosions. Something was burning not too far off, sharp crackles sending showers of sparks into the evening air.
"There you go, darlin', just get those bandages changed in a day or so. You can head back to your unit. You take care now."
"Thanks," I said, and gave her a grin. "Thanks a lot."
There was something comforting about being taken care of by a woman with a soft, sweet voice and a gentle touch. I hated to see her go. She smiled back, disappearing into the tent filled with the cries and groans of the wounded. That lingering smile left me feeling more alone than I had since I'd woken up this morning. I sat for a minute, wishing everything would come back to me-the people I knew and cared about, my own name, some clue as to who I was. And why I was here. But nothing came, and all I had was the thinnest of all possible human connections. A nice nurse doing her job. A smile. Take care.
I held onto the steering wheel and rested my head on it. I could've stayed like that all night. I could have cried me a river. I could've asked her name. I could've done all those things, but I knew I had to move out before someone else started asking questions.
I raised my head in time to see two MPs emerge from another hospital tent across the road. One held a clipboard, the other a carbine. A hand waved and I looked in the direction the MPs faced. Down the road, two officers walked out of another tent. One American and one British. The American pointed to the other hospital tents on my side of the road. They seemed to be looking for someone. Maybe me. Probably me. I thought about giving myself up to them, but then wondered why the American military police and the Brits would both be out hunting for me. I decided I better find out more about what kind of trouble I was in first. I didn't have a clue as to what I might have done to deserve such attention, but I didn't want to find out from these guys. For all I knew, they might use the carbine before the clipboard. I grabbed a field jacket from the back of the jeep, tilted my helmet down over my eyes and hoped the bandage around my head would help to further disguise me. I backed up the jeep and pulled out into the road, cutting across their path. A plane droned in the distance and antiaircraft fire lit up the sky in front of me. I looked up and hoped they did too as I sped by. I waited for shouts or shots. Did those guys know me, I wondered? Or were they working from a picture? Where would it have been taken and how long ago? I doubted my bandaged, unshaven face resembled any photograph they might have. I drove into the smoke and left them behind me, fear choking me worse than the black smoke from a burning truck.
Who was I running from? Was I a fugitive due for a court-martial? A deserter? A crook? A coward? Or worse? I could still see the men filling my sights, still feel the M1 steady in my hands, hear each shot, see the bodies drop, fold, crumple, spin, stumble, and fall. There were so many ways for a bullet to take a man down, and none of them had seemed to surprise me. God help me, what kind of man was I?
I turned onto the beach road. Rocko's empire of tents had grown, canvas and rope covering the ground along the shore. Camouflage netting covered it all, blocking out the stars that had begun to shine in the night sky. Wires ran from one tent and up the poles supporting the netting, then split off in different directions, draped on tree branches and makeshift poles. Antennas sprouted from another tent, reels of black wire stacked all around. Probably Hutton's Signals outfit. I wished I could have stopped and told them about him, but this wasn't the time. Beyond the Signals tent I drove the jeep behind a stack of wooden crates and hoped they held something nonexplosive.
I tried to figure my next move as I headed for Rocko's tent. I needed a place to rest, to eat and catch some shut-eye. And to think. Rocko was the only guy I knew on this island who could provide all that, barring a trip to the stockade, even though he seemed too interested in me by half, and had showed himself to be a real louse when he skipped out on the Biazza Ridge dragnet. It wasn't a good combination, but what better hideout than a supply dump? Everything I needed within easy reach. Of course, that meant I'd be within easy reach of Rocko too. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and unholstered my. 45. The pistol was better for close work if things didn't go well.
Close work? Where did I get that from? I seemed to know my weapons and the mechanics of killing. I gripped the automatic tightly, feeling the crosshatch marks on my palm. It felt familiar, and damn if it didn't calm me right down.
Light seeped out along the edges of the flaps of Rocko's tent. I went down the side, stepping over taut ropes, listening. I stopped and concentrated. Snatches of conversation drifted in from the road. Cigarette smoke mingled with the salty smell of the beach and the odor of dead fish. Engines rumbled and gears grinded. No one saw me as I lay flat along the edge of the tent. I eased the canvas up, slow and silent, to peer inside. A row of wooden crates, stacked four high, blocked my view. I took off my helmet and rifle, laid them down, and rolled under the flap. Everything sounded loud-my canteen as it hit the gravelly soil, the crunch of stiff canvas as I held the tent flap up, my own breathing. I fought down panic, telling myself it really wasn't that loud, it was my nerves. I heard voices from inside the tent but the blood was pounding so loudly in my temples that I couldn't
make them out. I reached for my helmet and pulled it in, then my rifle. There was about a foot of space between the stacked cartons and the tent flap. I gripped my. 45 tightly as I strained to listen. I needed to know the lay of the land before I stood up and said hello to Rocko. I took a few silent, deep breaths, willing myself into a state of calm and quiet.
Staring at the canvas above me, I saw water. It was as if I weren't flat on my back in a tent in Sicily but walking on a sidewalk, along the water. Then it was gone, replaced by the dull, dark green canvas, which was as blank as my mind. That had to have been a memory, though it felt real. I thought about today, about waking up, about Biazza Ridge, and all the things I'd done. Those scenes in my mind played out like that jaunt along the water. The water. It hadn't been clean like at the beach. It must've been in a city, a harbor someplace. I tried to replay that vision and get myself to turn, to see what was behind me, but I couldn't.
The whir of a field telephone being cranked up brought me back from wherever that place was.
"Lieutenant Andrews." That was Rocko, asking for someone at the other end of the line. I heard a match flare and smelled cigar smoke. "Yeah, it's me. You find that guinea prisoner yet? No? Well, I found out where he came from. The 207th Coastal Defense Division, based in Agrigento. We ain't there yet, so there shouldn't be too many-"
I heard his fingers drumming on the table as he listened and filled the tent with blue smoke. "I don't give a fuck if they're giving up by the thousands! You find that wop and bring him to me!"
He slammed the phone down. I knew of only one Italian POW Rocko would give a damn about-the guy who had been trying to shoot me when Rocko and his pals found me. At least, that was Rocko's story. I decided to wait a few minutes so he wouldn't think I had overheard his conversation.