Blood Alone: A Billy Boyle World War II Mystey

by James R Benn

  There were over fifty POWs, most of them complaining about the bastards who got to ride in trucks that left them covered in dust on a hot road. I couldn't understand their Italian words, but I didn't need to. The long-suffering tone of the infantryman was universal, along with the hand gestures offered to the trucks disappearing around a corner. Two dogfaces guarded them, one at the front, the other at the rear of the column.

  The Italian prisoners looked like a parade of happy hobos. With their lethal potential stripped away, they were nothing but a bunch of unshaven, smelly guys wearing all the clothes they owned. Some carried blankets or canvas bags, but most had nothing but the smiles on their faces. They were out of it. No more Germans at their backs, no more Americans gunning for them. They looked relieved as their two guards signaled them to move out.

  One of the Italians looked at me and gave a mock salute, shouting out, "Brooklyn!" at the top of his lungs. He and his pals laughed. Did he imagine he'd be joining a cousin or brother in Brooklyn? Or was it joy at his overwhelming luck at being safely in American hands?

  "Boston!" I yelled back. Someone whistled and more laughter rippled through the group. The tail end guard looked at me and shook his head, smiling wearily.

  "What a war," he said, running his sleeve across his face, vainly trying to clear the caked dirt and sweat away.

  The gesture nearly knocked me over. I envisaged another guy doing the same thing but in fading evening twilight. He was coated in grimy blackness and he drew his sleeve across his face just like this GI had. Except he was wearing an Italian uniform.

  "Hey, buddy, where're you taking these guys?" I asked as I trotted across the road. I was looking at the GI but seeing the Italian soldier leaning over me, helping me up.

  "POW center outside of Gela, place called Capo Soprano," he said. "They're givin' up faster than we can take 'em in."

  As he spoke, I could hear another voice, a voice I recalled from days earlier.

  "Come, my friend. I help you, yes? Come, my name is Roberto. Do not fear, I will take you back, then you help me get to America, yes?"

  Roberto Bellestri. Late of the 207th Coastal Defense Division, a machine gunner who preferred dancing with American girls to killing American GIs. An Italian who chose to live rather than die for Mussolini. A deserter who was looking for safe passage to a POW cage at the first sign of invasion.

  Roberto had talked incessantly as he took me--where? "I like Americans very much, I talk with the American ladies in Firenze, which you call Florence, every day in the piazza. They teach me their English better than my teacher at school, yes?" I could feel my arm across his shoulder, I had been hanging on to him as he led me down steps, to a street. Where ?

  "You OK?" The guard snapped his gum as he stared at me, concern, curiosity, and boredom mixed in his quizzical expression.

  "Sure, sure, been out in the sun too long, that's all," I said.

  "Ain't that the truth." He trudged off, his carbine, held loosely, pointing in the direction of his prisoners. They weren't high escape risks.

  Roberto. Who only wanted to go to America and dance with rich women and learn better English. I couldn't picture where he had picked me up, but I knew it was where I'd gotten hit on the head and cut up. We'd gone down a dirt path and onto a street. The next thing I remembered, Roberto was lifting me into a cart, tossing out cauliflowers to make room, hollering in Italian and waving a pistol at a short guy in a dirty shirt and black vest who obviously owned the cart. He'd reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out fistfuls of lire, throwing them at the cart owner, who stared in amazement at the shower of cash, pulling them out of the air with meaty fists. The gold handkerchief with the L had come out with the lire and lay in my lap. I'd known it was important, and that I shouldn't lose it. As I stuffed it back into my pocket, the Sicilian caught sight of it. This loosed a torrent of apologetic Italian, directed at me, with little bows and an abashed smile. His hands, stuffed with lira notes, waved us off and he ended his outburst with the sign of the cross. Roberto climbed onto the seat and grabbed the reins, clucking at the donkey, who ambled off with a slow gait that led us away from his former owner, now richer than the donkey could have ever made him, but more frightened than he should have been by the sight of an ordinary silk handkerchief.

  Capo Soprano, outside of Gela. I had to find it, and find Roberto. Because not only had I remembered all this, I remembered he'd been shot. Three GIs had come toward us, one of them pointing at me. Roberto had called to them from the cart, "Here, I save your wounded friend, Bill-lee Boyle from Boston, yes? Come help us."

  In response, one of the soldiers had raised his carbine and fired. Roberto had gone down, clutching his side, blood seeping through his fingers. "Why have you shot me? I am a friend, your friend, yes?" His eyes looked up to me, wide with shock and surprise. Then some other vehicles had arrived, and some GIs had taken Roberto away as medics bundled me into their jeep.

  Next thing I knew, Rocko was hovering over me in the field hospital. And I realized it was Rocko who'd aimed his carbine and shot Roberto. I couldn't remember the face of the guy who'd pointed at me first. But it told me something: Rocko and his pals had been out looking for me, and they'd known where to look. Since I was coming in from enemy territory, they had to have been in touch with someone behind enemy lines.

  For that matter, the same went for me. I felt the handkerchief under my T-shirt and wondered at the power it had wielded over the fellow who had given up his cart so willingly, lire or no lire.

  Yegg. A yegg is a safecracker. It came to me as easily as an apple from a grocery stand back on the beat in Boston. My memories were beginning to fall into place. A safecracker. The guy in Rocko's tent, he'd wanted to find their safecracker. Why ? It didn't make any sense.

  Sure it did. A bank heist in the middle of a war. Who 'd notice?

  CHAPTER * SEVEN

  I'D HAD ENOUGH OF walking. When I came to a cluster of tents, I strolled into the vehicle park and found a jeep screened from view by a supply truck. In the back were a couple of packs, which I left on the ground in case the owners had anything personal in them. I'd been a policeman, that I could recall now. My father and uncle were on the job in South Boston, too. Being a cop was in my blood, which meant I'd steal a jeep, but not somebody's letters from home or the souvenirs they'd scrounged or traded for. The army is impersonal, like an insurance company or the Boston Harbor Authority, so it didn't matter.

  I gunned the jeep out of there and soon passed my Italian friends, slogging it out on their way to Capo Soprano. I almost waved but figured they'd be cursing me because of my jeep, so I passed them with all the indifference military drivers show for the common foot soldier on either side.

  Minutes later, I saw the familiar white-banded helmets of the military police at an intersection about one hundred yards ahead. I braked and found myself trapped in a slow line of traffic. No roads led off to either side, only pine trees and cactus to my left and a row of bombed-out buildings on my right, their faded red brick scorched by fire. The MPs were looking anxiously up the other road, letting vehicles through the intersection one at a time. It didn't seem as if they were searching for stolen military property, but I knew they had a way of sniffing out suspicious characters. So I tried to play it as normal as I could when I approached the intersection.

  "Hey, Sarge," I yelled to one of the MPs standing apart, obviously in charge of the detail. "What's the holdup? My captain'll have my ass if I don't get this jeep to him on time."

  "Tell him to complain to General Eisenhower," the noncom growled back at me as the vehicle in front of me went through the intersection. The closest MP held up his hand.

  Uncle Ike. What? Shock registered in my head and plunged down to my gut. Uncle Ike? It sounded right and true, and yet impossible. I felt the blood drain from my face as I tried to keep up with all the new information flooding into my brain.

  "Hold up, you got a front-row seat to see Ike," the MP sergeant said. "That's gott
a be worth a pissed-off captain any day, am I right?"

  "Worth a dozen of them, Sarge," I managed to say.

  My mom and Ike's wife were second cousins but I'd called him uncle since he was so much older. That had never meant much, until my folks had cooked up a scheme to get me a safe job.

  Sitting in a line of jeeps and trucks, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened, it all started to come back, memories of my family rising up like heat from the road.

  Dad, Uncle Dan, and me in Kirby's one night, soon after Pearl Harbor. They had laid it out for me, how the Boyles had already lost one man fighting for the British and they didn't want the same to happen in another generation. Frank, their older brother, had been killed in the trenches during their own world war. To the Boyles, the British were nothing more than oppressors, and they weren't worth a single Boyle life, much less two.

  While my father and uncle came up with the solution, it was my mother who made it happen. Massachusetts politicians, all owing the Boyles for various favors granted over the years--especially on Election Day--were called. I rapidly found myself at Officer Candidate School, then assigned to Uncle Ike's staff, which I thought would mean an easy posting in the nation's capital. None of us could ever have guessed that this unknown general would be called upon to lead our armed forces in Europe. And that I'd end up going with him from London to North Africa and now to Sicily. Holy shit! I was an officer. A lieutenant. Not much as officers go, but I was one. Not my first surprise of the day, but a big one.

  So, I'm Lieutenant Billy Boyle, special investigator for General Dwight David Eisenhower. I look into military crimes for the general to be sure justice is served, but quietly, so as not to harm the war effort. How that had led me here, I still couldn't tell. I wondered if I'd gone bad, if I'd gotten in over my head in something on the wrong side of the law.

  Two U. S . Army motorcycles roared through the intersection. One halted, pulling over to the side of the road, as the other continued. A small crowd of GIs had gathered as word spread that Ike was coming through. He wasn't a general people got excited over, like Patton or Montgomery, but he was in charge of the whole shooting match, and he was one of ours, a regular American guy. He had a calm determination that was more impressive than Patton's bloody exhortations or Montgomery's posturing for glory.

  Had I failed Uncle Ike? Had I gotten mixed up in something that would make him ashamed of me? I remembered once, when I was a kid, I'd been caught breaking the windows of an old shed in an alleyway near our house. It had been a dare, and once I'd broken one, I was too caught up by the feel of the rock in my hand and the sound of shattered glass to stop. It was Mr. McGready's shed, and even though it was ready to fall down, he hadn't taken kindly to my efforts. And he knew my dad. It wasn't the spanking I'd gotten that bothered me or being sent to my room with no supper. It was the look of disappointment on my father's face. I didn't want Uncle Ike to look at me like that.

  A jeep with a mounted .50 caliber machine gun slowly made its way through the intersection. A DUKW followed. The Duck, a new addition to our invasion arsenal, was a wheeled amphibious vehicle that traveled through water, climbed up onto the beach, and then drove on inland. I could see a bunch of brass, American and British, but no Uncle Ike. I found him in the next jeep, stopped short of the intersection so he could get out and talk to the troops. He wore a khaki uniform with a fore-and-aft cap, his general's stars lined up and gleaming. He returned salutes and shook hands, mixing with privates and noncoms like he was one of them. No one cheered or hollered like they might have done if it had been Patton barreling through in a tank. They just gathered around and chatted.

  "Billy! Billy? Is that you?"

  I heard a familiar voice call out from the DUKW and watched Captain Harry Butcher climb out, looking natty in his tropical navy uniform, even in this heat. Harry had been commissioned a U. S . Navy captain, but his nautical experience was strictly limited to cocktails on yachts. Harry was Uncle Ike's aide, which meant he had a variety of duties, mostly revolving around keeping visiting dignitaries, politicians, admirals, generals, prime ministers--anyone important enough to rate time with the general--happy. Harry was one of the busiest men on Uncle Ike's staff. I waved back, resigned to having been spotted.

  "Billy, good to see you," Harry said, shaking my hand. As usual, military formalities were forgotten. I was Ike's nephew, I was among the anointed. "Haven't seen you around HQ, Billy. Where 'd you disappear to? General, over here, look who I found!"

  He waved excitedly, not waiting for an answer, and I counted my blessings. I got out of the jeep and stood at relative attention, snapping off a nervous salute and wondering what Uncle Ike knew about whatever I'd been up to.

  "William, what a surprise!"

  The general returned my salute and grinned broadly. His face lit up with affection that did little to hide the dark bags under his eyes and the lines of stress across his forehead.

  "Good to see you, sir. I didn't know--"

  "We arrived this morning by destroyer, straight from Malta," Harry put in. "The general wanted to see things firsthand. With everyone accompanying us, it's turned into a bit of a road show."

  "Captain, would you excuse us for a moment?" Uncle Ike asked as he put his arm around my shoulder and steered me away from the crowd that hovered around us.

  He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze as the smile on his face dropped away, leaving nothing but worried lines. We stood in the middle of the road, the sun beating down on us. I struggled to keep my voice normal while trying to remember the last time I'd seen Uncle Ike. Algiers? Was it Algiers? I could picture him at a desk, windows at his back, tape crosses on each, to protect against flying glass in case of an air raid.

  "I haven't had a report yet from Sam," he whispered. That had to be Major Sam Harding. "Did everything go as planned?"

  "Pretty much, General. I just have to wrap a few things up. I'm headed down to Capo Soprano now to find an Italian POW. He's important," I added hastily. I figured a vague answer mingled with the truth might sound convincing.

  "Good. We've been out of touch with headquarters since we landed. There will probably be a report from Sam waiting for me on the cruiser. We're returning tonight on the Vincennes." Uncle Ike glanced at the bandage sticking out from under my helmet, and then studied my face, his eyes searching mine. "Are you all right, William ?"

  "Yes sir, I'm OK. Not much sleep the past few days, that's all."

  He looked at me as if he saw into my soul. Uncle Ike was a good judge of character. You had to be if you were in charge of the entire war in the Mediterranean, balancing egos like Patton's and Montgomery's while keeping the brass and politicians back home happy. He knew something was wrong.

  "Did you run into much trouble?"

  "A fair bit," I admitted. I took off my helmet and wiped the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. I thought about taking out the handkerchief and seeing what Uncle Ike's reaction would be, but that was too risky. "I got pulled into the fight on Biazza Ridge the other day."

  "Is that where you got that?" Uncle Ike asked, pointing to the bandage wrapped around my head.

  "No, that happened before. Just a scrape."

  "How did you end up that far east?" His eyes narrowed as he watched me and waited for an answer.

  Again, I figured the truth was the best way to lie. Part of me wanted to tell him everything and ask him what I was supposed to do, but the other part couldn't face letting him down. Not to mention the fact that I wasn't sure if I was mixed up in something a commanding general would take kindly to.

  "I was in a field hospital getting bandaged up, and some paratroop officer shanghaied me. Next thing I knew I was on Biazza Ridge, trying not to get run over by a Tiger tank."

  "Well, William, that's not what I intended when I sent you on this mission, but I'm glad you were there to lend a hand, and lived through it. Jim Gavin and his boys saved the day, I'll tell you that."

  "Do you know about the paratrooper
s last night, sir?" I didn't know why I said that. Maybe I wanted to steer the conversation away from me. Maybe I was still haunted by visions of C-47s in flames arcing across the night sky. Uncle Ike's lips tightened and he looked away. He shook his head slightly and spoke to the ground at his feet.

  "It shouldn't have happened, William. It shouldn't have happened. Men die in war, like those boys you fought with on Biazza Ridge. I accept that my role is to send them where they may well be killed. But to have so many die through a goddamn mistake. . . ." He clenched and unclenched his hands. I saw his eyes race around the GIs surrounding us, perhaps wondering which of them would be dead before nightfall.

  "I'm sorry, Uncle Ike, I didn't mean--it's just that I saw it all. I was down by the beach, and I saw it happen. We thought it was an air raid. It was awful. I'm sorry," I said again, turning away. I felt as if I were confessing, another burden he didn't need. But I couldn't help myself, I couldn't stop the words. "Some of the planes exploded, and some burned as they fell. I watched men jump and parachute into the water. Their chutes were the only things that floated. They all drowned. I was so close but I couldn't help them. I'm sorry."

  I looked at the crowd around us, scanning it for MPs who might be out hunting for me, avoiding Uncle Ike's eyes.

  "William. Look at me."

  I did.

  "I have to ask you to focus on the job right now. Can you do that? I know it's tough, and it's a lot to ask. Can you do it?"

  I wanted to say no, that I needed a good night's sleep and to get off this damned island. I wanted to tell him there were things I couldn't remember, and that I was afraid of that dark hole in my mind. That I feared there were memories waiting even worse than those pitiful white parachutes floating on the water. I looked away, then back into his eyes.

  "Yes. Yes, sir. I can. I'm close, General. Not too much longer."

  "That's good, William. This is very important. What you do over the next few days will affect the rest of the campaign here and save lives. Plenty of these Italian troops are ready to give up, and I want to hurry that along as much as possible. I'm sorry to put all this on your shoulders, but I know you can do the job. I can't excuse a member of my family from danger, not when I have to send so many of these boys straight into it. Do you understand, William ?"