Jim’s tongue is parched. Sweat beads on his brow, coaxed to the surface of his skin in the intensifying sun, and a drop tickles its way down his cheek. He wipes his brow with his hand as the morning sun beats down and bathes the world golden, morning shadows huddled in corners, at the bases of trees and buildings, and at the feet of patrolling soldiers, straggling and deserted in the wake of the retreated night; and he unscrews the cap from his canteen as he pulls it from his webbing, yessiree, not a bad morning for yourself, you’re taking your objective without a bloody shot—
A rifle crack. Explosions, an exchange of shells, a banging of tank guns, muffled and refracted by the buildings. Alarmed, Jim looks down the road, turning his attention away from the cat, which flees into the shadows, and looks toward the arch, the piazza, and sees a column of black smoke rising up from beyond. Another exchange of tank fire, and an orange ball of fire rises up above the rooftops and dissolves into smoke, followed by a sky-high shower of whistling, popping ammunition.
“Jesus Christ!” someone yells. Another flurry of explosions, and the nearly solid ripping sound of a German machine gun.
“8 Platoon, follow me! 9, cover and then follow!” Dashing down the lane toward the fire and smoke, toward the spraying of machine guns. As he approaches, he sees the column of tanks jammed up, and there is a grunting of engines as one of them moves ahead and shoves the burning lead tank into the piazza, and then fires its own turret at some unseen target. It is answered by a German turret. The remaining tanks grumble into reverse, backing up toward 8 Platoon.
“There’s a goddamn Panther in the square!” yells the commander of the tank closest, as his vehicle backs toward Jim’s men. “Took out the leader!” The angry scour of a machine gun from behind, and the crack of rifles. Bullets snap about and chip into the cobblestone lane, pluming in white puffs of dust and smoke. Men lie prone or crouch in doorways, or huddle beside and behind trees and hedges and walls. Jim finds himself kneeling beside the segmented treads of the bogie wheels of the tank, the smells of dirt and grease in his nostrils, the ground vibrating to the loose shudder of the engine, bullets cracking about overhead. The thud of a grenade. From another street, a loud explosion. There is the ragged yelling of German commands, the frantic shouting of Canadian soldiers caught in an ambush.
The tanks continue reversing, and the wheels squeal and the treads crawl along, buckling here and there in Jim’s close view, one tank, then the next, then the next, leaving the first one a burning wreck in their wake, smoke and fire twisting upward from the scorched chassis, the German tank in the piazza looming over it, turning its turret and blasting with a recoil toward another street or building, then turning again and blasting elsewhere, and there are machine guns and rifles and grenades, and all about the clatter and bang of a melee—
Hands on his lapels, shaking him. “Sir! Sir! Are you wounded?” It is Stringer.
“No, no, I’m okay!” He can scarcely hear himself for the noise. “Just stunned!” He gathers himself. “Pull back to the approaches and let’s regroup with the tanks!” He pulls himself to his feet and falls back, gesturing wildly to his soldiers and yelling, “Fall back and regroup, fall back and regroup!” His commands are relayed by the sharp barks and shouts of his subordinates, and soldiers withdraw when they can in a slow and piecemeal fighting retreat, dashing through lanes and alleys, gardens and orchards; others are pinned down by the sweep of machine guns or the murderous accuracy of snipers.
Back at the entrance to the village, soldiers occupy the abandoned slit trenches and dig shellscrapes while trading fire with enemy soldiers shooting from windows and breached roofs and walls. The tanks have made their way to the edge of town as well, and Marchand, his nose bloodied and his face scratched and blackened with soot, dismounts from his tank and confers with Jim and his platoon commanders as they, along with many others, huddle in a trench behind a hedge. Marchand’s eyes are wild, scared, angry, yet focused.
“In you go, house to house,” orders Marchand. “We will provide covering fire. Once you’ve secured the way in, we move in and assist you in small groups—understand?”
“Yes.”
“Be damn sure you nail any AT positions you see, got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Jim answers.
“Good. Bonne chance!” At this, Marchand leaps out of the trench and climbs aboard his awaiting tank.
“Mortars!” Jim yells. “We need mortars on those first houses! Get those mortars into action!” He turns to Corporal Tillman, crouched near him in the trench, chewing his wad of gum ever more quickly and forcefully. “Get your mortars firing!”
“Yes, sir!” Tillman calls orders and coordinates into the microphone of his small radio set, repeating them loudly over the noise of combat. The mortar crews respond from out of sight, the bulbous, finned projectiles of their weapons diving down onto the buildings from on high after a number of seconds. Jim signals for Doyle to lead in his platoon first, and the others to fire. In they move again, squad by squad, under a fusillade of supporting tank shells and mortar bombs and the supporting fire of their comrades, that further chip and chunk and chomp away at the shattered buildings. A rifle shot from a house, and a man goes down, hand on his hip. Someone scurries out from the hedge to save him, but he is turned away by another shot, and then there is the sweep of a machine gun, the strobe flicker of its muzzle pulsing in the broken window of a house and illuminating the helmets of its two operators. The machine gun knocks down several of the attacking men in Doyle’s platoon in its scything arc. The whine of a turret, and the window is blasted away into a shapeless hole by a tank shell. A tank rumbles ahead to better cover the advancing men, when a rocket slices the air and erupts against the sloped front of its hull with a sharp report. The crew, now hunkered down under the hatches, throw the tank into reverse, and it pulls away, its sloping front ablaze with burning paint. The other tanks sensibly remain out of range.
Moments later, another machine gun snarls to life from another vantage point and scours the air and the ground, bullets shearing the hedges above Jim’s head. Mortar bombs and artillery shells crash about them. Jim peers over the hedge with his field glasses as the bullets snap overhead, and in the shaky frame of his magnified view he sees a section of Doyle’s men kick in a doorway, one of their own writhing on the street and bleeding, and they charge into the doorway. He sees the flash of gunfire and grenades in the house, and he scans by and sees others dash through a large hole in the wall of another house, and moments later he watches as a German soldier falls headfirst from an upstairs window, limp and dangly as a doll, his helmet tumbling from his head as he does so. His hands tremble and his view trembles, and he feels a rush of air as a mortar explodes nearby, and he hits the ground and is covered with dust and earth, and he looks about himself, dazed, at Cavanagh, and Cavanagh looks at Jim as he loads a magazine into his rifle and pulls himself back up into a firing crouch, and Jim looks at Cooley, and Cooley looks back at him and smiles and nods as he too changes his cartridge, and all about is the din of combat, the shouts of men: “Jesus, Selk, watch out there, keep yer head down!” “More fire on that first house there, get that machine gun!” “Where’s that sniper, where is he firing from?” “I’m hit, I’m hit, I’m hit!” “Hold your fire, save a little ammo, will you!” “They seem to pop up everywhere and vanish!”
“Where? Where is he?” Another crack from the unseen sniper.
“Witchewski!” barks Jim.
“Yes, sir!”
“Go up there and find out what the hell is going on and come back with a report!”
“Right sir, I’m going!” And with that, Witchewski scrambles out of the trench and back toward the perimeter of the town. There is another nearby mortar blast, and Jim is yanked about in the push-pull vacuum of the concussion, and his bad ear is once again ravaged by the noise. He turns his head to see a soldier, whom he recognizes as Private Schneider, a black soldier f
rom Hamilton, gagging and gurgling and shaking, bright red arterial blood spurting from his neck, blood pooling in his chest and soaking through his uniform. Jim yells for a medic, and caught in the moment finds himself trying to apply a field dressing of sorts, feverishly ripping a shell dressing from Schneider’s own belt. As he rips open Schneider’s shirt he sees a mangled meaty mass of torn flesh and exposed innards, the glistening slats of ribs, one broken, yes, one broken he notes, snapped like the twig of a tree, and he hears a whistling, a gurgly sighing whistling from the ragged pulpy hole, and Jim gags and burps in his mouth and tastes the sourness of his own bile, and he puts gauze on Schneider’s chest. Schneider’s eyes are wide open, elsewhere, gazing at the gates of mortality, and the blood coats Jim’s hands and it soaks the gauze, making the gauze useless, and a medic crawls over and takes over, pouring sulfa powder on his chest and saying, “It’s okay there buddy just hang in there, you’re going to be okay buddy just good as new, that’s right, there, there, you’ll be good as new and you’ll be back at Blighty with the nurses in no time,” gently calming him like a parent would a frightened child. As Jim turns away to mind his command, to pull himself away from this horrible morale-draining scene, Schneider’s hand darts out and grabs his, bloody hand clasping bloody hand, and Jim turns his head a moment, and Schneider looks pleadingly, imploringly, deeply, into his eyes, his own eyes wide and terrified, irises and pupils bordered in bright and infinite white. Jim meets his gaze a moment with sad, wide eyes, a reluctant shrug that says in an instant, I’m sorry, I have to go, I have more important things to do, that is the way war works, I have to go; and the lights go out from Schneider’s eyes and his agony is over.
Jim feels the world withdraw away from him, or he from it, the world whitening as his heart begins to pound, Schneider dead beside him, bleeding from the neck and the chest, spurting bright freshets now reduced to a trickle congealing into and dying the fabric of his uniform and slicked onto Jim’s hands and soaking into the earth, a metallic odour of iron-rich blood, of raw meat, his face gone a greenish white, his hand gone cold in Jim’s, eyes deadlit under the early morning sun that filters indistinct through the smoke, the bullets shearing the hedge, sshk sshk, cracking and snapping to the side and overhead. Jesus, Jesus, Jim thinks in a hurry, oh fuck what to do where’s the colonel where’s the colonel or where’s Reynolds I don’t know what to do anymore I’m not fit for this anymore get me off the line I’ve cracked I’m not good I’m just going to get everyone killed. He hears behind him the grumble and squealing treads of a Bren carrier. Turning his head, he sees the carrier silhouetted low to the ground and, obscured in the pall of smoke, the crouched silhouette of the battle adjutant, Major Reynolds, and lower, his batman and his driver and his radioman. The cocky young major, with his black tapered moustache, and wearing his beret and goggles, observes calmly the scene about him with his field glasses. The madness of those in command! How I long for such control! Jim releases Schneider’s cooling hand and shimmies over the backs and legs of Smith and Hauser, crouching from the storm of bullets and shrapnel.
“Jesus Christ, train that machine gun up on that house over there!” he shouts as he regains his composure. “Get that thing into action, boys, don’t just lie there or we’ll be pinned down here forever!” This bolsters the gunners and they train their Bren machine gun, mounted on a bipod and with a banana-shaped magazine jammed into the top, up at a house being used as a machine-gun post, and they open fire in deep thudding volleys. The clatter of the gun in its proximity to him assaults his eardrums. Others, he can see, are aiming their rifles, discharging them with their pops and cracks and puffs of smoke, joining the exchange of metal, and he shimmies over legs and backs back to Reynolds’ carrier.
“McFarlane!” Reynolds shouts over the noise.
“Sir!” Jim responds, looking up.
“What’s the situation?”
“We moved in and were ambushed! We had to fall back! I’ve sent Doyle in to secure us the entrance before we move back in with the tanks! Our 18 set is broken, too!”
“Okay, good work Jim, just get a move on when the coast is clear! The aid post is up and the 6-pounders are on the way!”
“Yes, sir!”
“When you get the perimeter secure, I’ll send Charlie into action, and Baker is forming up in reserve behind you!”
“Thank you!”
At this, the carrier backs up. Jim scurries back to his position, field glasses hanging from his neck and bumping against his chest, and he picks them up in his hands and resumes his shaky, magnified survey of the carnage ahead of him, the muscles of his arms burning as he holds them rigid. There is a fierce melee, the silhouettes of men in smoke, a house ablaze. Suddenly, his view is blocked and he is knocked backward and whipped by the leafy branches of the hedge as someone heavy tumbles into him. It is Witchewski.
“Sorry for that!” he shouts, as he picks himself up into a crouch. “Nearly got a mortar there! We have secured several houses. They come out here and there with machine guns, rockets and snipers! The whole place is booby-trapped and ready for defence!”
“Thank you Witchewski, go back and tell them we’re coming!” Witchewski does as ordered, and Jim shouts out to advance, 9 Platoon covered and then followed by 8, let’s move, out and on with it, out out out, come on, move it like you mean it and let’s get in there and take this town, yes, that’s it, do it, go go go, and he watches with his field glasses as they dash out of the shallow trenches and back out into the field into a noisome haze, a smokescreen fired by the artillery and tanks to hide them, a smokescreen that has mixed with the dust and earth kicked up by boots and treads, and artillery and mortar fire. There is blood on his hands, Schneider’s blood, sticky, syrupy. As he joins them, trotting out into the open, dust cakes on Schneider’s blood on his hand. In the acrid haze, Jim retches, his passages choked. A thin stream of bile lurches upward into his mouth, and he tastes the sourness of his own stomach contents, feels the acidic burn on the roof of his mouth, his membranes scorched. With the stimulus of an explosion, instinct picks him up and throws him to the earth. Just ahead of him a bullet rips into the earth in a mushroom-shaped puff. Lead by example Jim, expose yourself running down the road, go straight, there’s no hiding in the fields for the threat of mines, get the hell moving, get rolling, there is no time to dawdle, to lose your nerve, just move, just move on will you, Jesus Christ! The remainder of the company advances ahead, ahead into the livid, roaring inferno of combat, into the arena of its ruthless and anonymous causality, the riflemen of Able Company bowed over in a quick march, rifles in their hands or hanging loosely from their shoulders, teeth clenched, eyes wide, a unity of cells, a body of men.
30
Upon reentering the town, he ducks into one of the first houses, one taken by Doyle’s men. There, in the shattered roofless interior, a ragged, splintery hole in the ceiling above him, the floor heaped in masonry and wood, he finds Doyle with a number of his men, and he congratulates them on their job securing the outskirts. Doyle thanks him while trying to stage an attack on another house, acting and reacting, pointing here, barking there, responding fluidly to the needs of the battle. Jim ascends the stairway with Tillman and Cavanagh and Neidhart to what remains of the above floor, surveying the efforts of his company through a breach in the upper wall. Witchewski, Cooley and Lafontaine remain downstairs with Doyle. For a long while much of the company hides out in or around several captured houses, trading fire with Germans perched in windows and holes, and Jim and Tillman direct mortar fire to aid with the ongoing attack.
Eventually, the tanks return to the outer edges of the town, one by one, and grumbling down the road and crunching over rubble, they fire at a house occupied by a machine gun and several riflemen, several turrets pounding away into the windows and at the walls until the edifice disintegrates and collapses into a dusty heap, exposing the interior of the house like a multistoried play set or the cutaway of a
dollhouse, the edges of the upper floor leaning downward, poised to fall. The silencing of this fortress frees up a section of men to dash off to another objective, running exposed down the road, though Jim can see one of them slump forward and fall limply onto the street like a sack of grain.
“Huh?” Doyle reacts, bewildered, shouting from below. “That came from behind!”
Jim looks out from the hole in the wall of the house they occupy.
“Didn’t you take out that house there?”
“We did!” shouts Doyle from the bottom of the stairs.
“Well, how the hell could they be in it again? We secured the perimeter!”
Other men shout from their positions: “Sniper, somewhere behind!”
“Draw his fire and flush him out!” Jim yells through the hole. “Gutch and Daniels, do it! When you identify, Pitwanikwat, line up your shot and try to take him out!” He shouts out to Neidhart. “Neidhart, get on the radio and get us the services of a tank!”
“Yes, sir!” comes the answer. Gutch and Daniels do as ordered, running into the street, and they are pursued by one, then another, and another shot, bullets nipping at their heels. Pitwanikwat crouches and identifies the source of fire, and the source is indeed a previously captured house. He fires a shot, and the sniper fires again. Minutes later, there is the grunting of an approaching tank; it raises its turret and fires into the sniper’s window, blasting inside the house. Doyle dispatches a squad of men to charge through the door and clear the house of any remaining men. Other shots come from another supposedly captured house, including a rocket that narrowly misses the tank, exploding beside it with a terrific report. The tank’s turret turns in the direction of the rocket, and blasts again. It dawns on Jim that they are under fire from all directions. A terrific clamour coming from the west announces that Charlie Company is now engaged in battle. The term ‘front’ loses all meaning as the village and its surroundings become fogged in a shapeless, directionless, cacophonous turmoil that erupts from everywhere all at once, small battles flaring up here and there as small parties of men attempt to extinguish other small parties of men. Another rocket from another window, and with a clang the tank is hit in the wheels, its tread snapping, its lumbering bulk now immobilized in the street. Still, the crew fires shell after shell into the building, bolstering the fire of Jim’s own company.
Beckoning War Page 24