“Fire into that fucking window!” shouts Stringer from behind a broken wall. Rifles and a Bren gun are trained on the window in a furious clatter, bullets chipping away at the masonry and window frame, cutting through the curtain. “Get the PIAT on there!” In response to this order, two soldiers crouching beside him fumble about loading and cocking a spring-loaded anti-tank projector. One of them then braces the weapon against a broken section of the wall and, resting the tube on his shoulder, squeezes the trigger. There is an explosion up inside the window of the house. “Corporal Tomlinson! Lead your section in and clear that house! Move!” and the soldiers of Corporal Tomlinson’s section leap to their feet as Tomlinson relays to them a signal, protected by the fire of their comrades now banging away with their rifles. In minutes the house is silenced, and the rest of the lane seems for the moment clear.
“Advance to the end of the street!” shouts Jim.
They leap into the fray, covered by Corporal Tomlinson’s section, now holding the house they have just stormed. An eternity of a moment. Bullets snap by from beyond, impossibly fast, knifing through the air. He feels as though he is running through water, through molasses, through quicksand, as though he cannot move fast enough. He feels at the random mercy of fate. If he is hit, he is hit, that’s just the way it is, there is no escaping from such speed, such force. Past Carson, his blood pouring onto the stones, channelled into and streaming through the cracks between them and irrigating the weeds from a half-dozen holes, eyes bugged white. Past Symic, who reaches out to grab onto someone, anyone, legs and pelvis soaked in blood. Behind, another loud bang. He dives to the ground, to a smell of dirt and cordite mingled with the lactic taste of his own exertion. As he stands up again and resumes his run to the façade of the house at the end of the street, there is the mechanical grunting of an approaching engine, and the long barrel of a self-propelled gun protrudes through what was once the window of a building. He can scarcely formulate the words to command those about him to take cover when the gun belches a tongue of flame, and there is a whooshing vacuum beside him, a sharp bang behind. Another machine gun erupts, and there are the harsh shouts of German commands: “Schnell! Schnell!” The vehicle crashes through the remains of the wall, fully visible, its long barrel set in the slopes of its armour, its engine grunting and rumbling. The engine labours and the tracks squeal and grind as the vehicle pivots to aim at another target. Another shot, and behind, a Bren carrier that has just unloaded spare ammunition is hit, bursting into flames. The driver leaps out of the blazing and crumpled wreck, clothing aflame, shrieking and rolling in the street, until another soldier smothers the flames by dropping a gas cape on him. Soldiers scatter and run backward. Jim cannot help but to join the retreat, which is hastened by the bark of the machine gun, the crackle of rifle fire on the heels. Another shell tears by and blasts away the corner of a house held by men in Jim’s company. Jim dives into a deep slit trench dug into a garden, one of the Germans’ defensive works now in Allied hands. Members of the company regroup in similar positions and in houses now held by them. Under a protective hail of artillery and mortar and machine-gun fire, German soldiers race in to occupy a deep trench dug in front of the gun. Several fall as they do so, shot by members of Able.
There is the sound of approaching men in the distance, of bootsteps marching from their distant right. They are from Baker, coming to mop up resistance in Able’s wake and push beyond. Neidhart’s radio, tuned in to the same frequency as those of the tanks, has been broken and discarded in the retreat, and Jim fires a red flare into the sky from a Verey pistol to warn the tanks of the mobile gun; and the soldiers of Baker’s leading platoon are pinned down, unable to do anything as German mortars and artillery shells begin to rain down them as well. It is unthinkable for the tanks to penetrate this far into town, with so many anti-tank boobytraps and such weapons as the self-propelled gun and the German tank holding the central piazza. The attack has stalled.
32
Over a hastily eaten midmorning breakfast of rations, of dry scones and hard bread and saccharine jam, Jim is able to centre himself a little and think up a way to deal with the gun impeding their advance.
“Cooley, I don’t suppose you’ve been able to scrounge up anything better than this in our journeys this morning?” he jokingly asks as he bolts a scone with jam.
“’Fraid not, sir. It’s hairy out here.” A grin as he takes a drink from his canteen.
“I can’t believe we’ve been fighting in this town for over four hours.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
Jim guffaws. “True enough, true enough.” Now it is time for business, he thinks. “Okay, we need to get this gun out of the picture before we link up with Charlie. Stringer!”
“Yes, sir!” responds Sergeant Stringer from his neighbouring hole, keeping hidden from the bombardment.
“I’ll round up all the company PIATs, and then we will attack their position head-on. I will go in with you. I will get Doyle to hold our main line of advance and cover those machine guns and snipers, and Therrien to cover our attack. Got it?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Hey, Cooley,” he says, looking beside him at Cooley, who is nervously holding his rifle upright in his lap.
“Yes, sir, what?”
“Come with me to Therrien’s command post. I need you to help carry some ammunition.” Cooley follows Jim back to Therrien’s position behind the sole remaining wall of a house, and as they scramble to this position, they are harried by machine-gun fire.
“Sir!” exclaims Therrien with surprise at their arrival, huddling at the base of the wall under its only window with several of his soldiers, one of them wounded in the side and shivering.
“We need to rush that gun.” An explosion from the gun pulverizes the earth nearby as the German gun crew tries to methodically smoke out the attackers, giving impetus to Jim’s words. Mortar rounds pepper the area as well, keeping the men further pinned down. “We need to rush that gun,” he repeats. “Therrien, you will stand by in reserve and provide fire support for us when we move in. Once we take out the gun and consolidate our position, you will push ahead to link up with Charlie—understand?”
“Okay sir, no problem.”
“Also, give us your PIAT.”
“Okay, sir, it’s yours.” Jim takes the platoon’s anti-tank projector from one of Doyle’s soldiers, Lance Corporal Snell, and Cooley takes a satchel of ammunition. The two of them scurry back to his trench with the heavy and cumbersome weapon and its accompanying ammunition, risking incoming mortar rounds and machine-gun volleys as they do so, and they give it and the ammo to Stringer to delegate who in his platoon will carry it.
“Witchewski!” Jim shouts into the fray. “Witchewski!”
“Yes!” responds Witchewski from a nearby trench.
“I want you to make a break for Doyle’s position and tell him to cover those high buildings on our front with the machine guns and the snipers. Round up a 6-pounder or two to give them more punch. Have them flush out any snipers and destroy them if possible. They can hold the line at least until Baker gets there. Take Lafontaine and Cavanagh with you and send them back here with their PIAT, so that we can better deal with the gun. Once we take out the gun, we can send in tanks with Baker to finish those positions off!”
“Yes, sir, I’m on it!” Witchewski assures him. “Lafontaine, Cavanagh, come with me!” At Witchewski’s command, Lafontaine and Cavanagh shimmy out from their positions and the three of them scramble under fire to Doyle’s more distant position.
The soldiers wait in their positions for Doyle to engage the machine guns and snipers harassing them, and enemy mortar bombs dive in among them, the concussions pummelling the earth and reverberating off the walls. After what seems an eternity, as Jim sweats in his earthy trench and huddles from the incessant mortar blasts, he hears a cacophony of gunfire from Doyle’s direc
tion, complete with the banging of two 6-pounders. They have received Witchewski’s message, thank God. Moments later, Cavanagh, weighted down with a PIAT and ammunition satchel, struggles back under the weight of his load amid the exploding mortar bombs and plunks back into his trench, sweating from strain and fright.
“Here’s the PIAT,” he huffs. “Lafontaine got wounded on the way back. Shrapnel.”
“Thanks, Cavanagh, glad you made it back okay. Give it to Stringer.” Jim then shouts out, “Platoon mortars at the ready with smoke! Get ready to lay down a smokescreen on their position and keep it up until we’re on them! Alternate with high explosive as well to keep them down! And Tillman, get a fix on those trenches and be ready to call in the coordinates to your mortars to stonk them! Platoon mortars, when the 3-inchers come in, fire your smoke rounds!”
“I’ve called in the shots!” shouts Tillman from a nearby trench. “They’re on their way!”
“Be ready, Stringer,” advises Jim. Moments later, two mortar rounds crash in near the trench. Tillman calls in again to adjust the range, and then more come crashing in about the Germans’ defences. Smoke rounds from the company’s own small 2-inch mortars burst amid the defenders as well, obfuscating the view in an acrid haze. More enemy mortar rounds crash in, again, and again and again.
Jim rallies his men and yells, “8 Platoon, ready with covering fire! 9 Platoon, advance!” This they do, covered by men from Therrien’s platoon. From the lip of the trench he leaps, moving ahead in a low crouch, and the men make their way up the slight incline of the lane, and a round from the big gun lands nearby, felling a tree; mortar bombs explode in their midst. As they get closer, bullets whip past in a swarm. Closer, he can now see the barrel of the gun. The vehicle turns on its axis to point straight at them. Everyone has made it, except Private Smith, who is clutching his foot and clenching his teeth. He has been wounded by the gun, or by the mortars. The stretcher-bearers will get him. Jim looks ahead and the barrel of the German gun recoils, spitting a dragon’s breath of flame. The shell explodes close by, felling several men.
Jim’s men trade fire, firing their rifles and submachine guns and their light machine guns from the hip, and bullets ring off the armoured hull and casemate of the gun, and men firing from trenches around the gun and from houses in the distance return fire at them. They charge at the soldiers in front of and around the gun position, German soldiers frantically firing and reloading and pitching stick grenades at them. The grenades explode among them. Several fall from enemy bullets and shrapnel, wounded. Men lob grenades into the trenches and fire down on them, killing and maiming the defenders. In the fever of the melee, Jim dodges a swing from a shovel. The wild-eyed German soldier swinging the shovel hits someone else in the head before being gunned down in a blaze of bullets from a Bren machine gun fired from an advancing soldier’s hip, and he slumps into his trench. Able Company overwhelms the position, and realizing this, the crew of the self-propelled gun throw their vehicle into reverse, but it is knocked out by projectiles fired from the three PIATS carried by soldiers in Stringer’s platoon. The crew attempt to surrender, to run out the top hatch of their now-burning vehicle, but they are cut down to a man in a fusillade of rifle fire, their bodies tumbling off the casemate onto the pile of stones below them.
Jim observes this last coup de grace in a half daze, nodding to his men, bells born of noise tolling in his head this recent forfeiture of life. Men begin combing through the belongings of the dead Germans. One of them tosses aside an empty wallet; another peels the boots off from another. Someone kicks away a coal scuttle helmet. Jim’s soldiers begin occupying the slit trenches and the ruins of adjacent buildings, and men from Therrien’s platoon and from Baker Company move ahead in the push to link with Charlie Company. In his newly taken trench, over which looms the imposing wreck of the gun, Jim attempts to catch his breath. Cooley and Neidhart are with him, and they deepen the trench with their spades in this lull in the battle, the action for the most part having moved beyond where Baker has joined the fight. Jim surveys the decimated ranks of his company, ordering them to fortify, to dig in and hold, and as he does so, another clutch of mortars comes raining down on them. He huddles against the side of the trench, and he joins in the digging, hacking into the earth and heaving a shovelful of dirt out onto the ground. There is the crack of a rifle. Neidhart whimpers in pain. Jim presses himself to the dirt wall of his trench, against the hairy root endings, and he turns to face Neidhart, who is holding his face and rocking himself back and forth, blood in his hands, and he sees as Neidhart moves his hands that he is missing his four upper teeth, and there is a hole through each of his cheeks, his mouth a sobbing, blubbering, bloody hole; as well, there is a bloody gash in his forehead from him hitting his head against a rock when he was shot.
“Neidhart!” Jim addresses him in a harsh whisper. There is another crack of a rifle shot amid the shelling and mortaring. Neidhart whimpers and shouts and sobs. Neidhart’s war is finished; he will never again regain his nerve, he has what they call combat exhaustion, what is more accurately described as shellshock. Jim at once feels sorry for him and loathes him, and he looks at this simpering coward, this stout and muscular farmboy reduced to a trembling child with a mouthful of broken teeth and a bleeding forehead, and he wants to shake him, and he wants to punch him, and he wants to toss him aside, and he wants to comfort him, and he hates what he sees because it makes him uncomfortable, and he wants to look away, to avert his eyes from what he may well himself become, what he feels welling up inside him. “Neidhart!”
Neidhart is moaning, rocking himself, “Uh-uh, uh-uh-uh,” he is shaking, and his voice is shaking, a fragile whimper, and he puts his hands over the holes of his cheeks.
“Neidhart!” Neidhart tightens into a ball at the bottom of the trench, elbows pressed against his knees, hands blocking the holes in his cheeks, and he rocks himself back and forth, rocking himself in place of his mother whose lap he would crawl into now if he could, momentarily shorn of manhood and dignity. There is a dark patch in the crotch of his khaki woollen pants, the sharp ammonia tinge of urine. “Get yourself together! Here, let me try to clean you up! Cooley, I need some bandages!”
He turns to face Cooley—and he is greeted by the sight of Cooley lying dead against the opposite side of the trench, his eyes closed and his face gone a waxy white, blood pouring down his cheek from a bullet in the temple. He is still holding his spade. Coldly murdered in a sniper’s sights. Jim registers this sight unbelievingly. His hands begin to tremble. He turns to look at Neidhart again, Neidhart sobbing, bloody hands over his face, whimpering and blubbering like a child. A third shot from the sniper grazes his own shoulder, shredding his maroon divisional patch. He sinks lower into the trench. He feels tears welling in his eyes, tears of sadness, tears of rage. He looks again at Cooley and touches his hand, the hand growing cold in his own, growing cold as the warmth of his life, its thermal register, dissipates into the air, growing cold like the stones and the rocks and the timeworn erosion of the earth that line the walls and floor of the trench.
“Cooley,” he whimpers, his own whimpering joining that of Neidhart. He feels ready to stand down, to admit that he has battle exhaustion, to malinger. A tear burns hot down his cheek. “Cooley, I’m sorry Cooley, I’m so sorry, oh God Cooley, why you for Christ’s sake why you and not me if it weren’t for you I’d be in the stockade right now, oh God Cooley, oh God.” He sniffles and his nose runs. He feels rage burn within him, a white-hot rage competing with his anguish, and it begins to focus into a compressed tautness, a controlled and focused anger.
“We need to take out this sniper!” he shouts, tears drying on his cheek. “Flush him out! Where is that goddamn sniper! We need to draw him out!” Another shot lands near another trench; the source seems to be from off to the side, from a house yet untaken, or previously taken and reoccupied by way of the tunnels. A tank approaches, supporting tanks having made their way
back into the secured areas of the town as engineers and the platoons from Baker take out remaining anti-tank emplacements and remove anti-tank mines in the northern areas of the town. As the tank approaches, Jim shouts to the commander and the drivers to watch out, batten down the hatches, there is a sniper, we are going to draw him out, and we need you to fire at him. He orders a soldier to leap up and run, and as the soldier does so his actions are answered by a clatter of rifle fire from a row of several houses, and the tank begins shelling the houses, its shells biting away at the walls and at the roofs, blasting and blasting. Jim shouts to Sergeant Stringer to ready members of his platoon, we’re going in, and together they surge toward the central house, the one from which the most fire is coming, and they charge to the front door, bullets snapping past them. Bullets crack all about him, and he charges, emboldened by his anger and contemptuous of the vagaries of fate.
Into the gutted, blasted interior of the house they surge. Three soldiers charge upstairs to search amid the broken furniture and gaping shellholes and sagging roof, finding only one body buried in rubble. Jim and Sergeant Stringer and another storm into the kitchen, hearing frantic footfalls in that direction, the tromping of fleeing enemies, Sergeant Stringer spraying bullets from his Tommy gun as they do so. They face the closed wooden cellar door in the floor. Jim pulls open the doors, stone steps leading down into the darkness of the root cellar. All three of them unpin grenades, and in unison they throw them down the stairs, and the grenades clatter and roll down the steps. They crouch to the floor in anticipation of the earsplitting triple bang that erupts smoke and plaster debris up into the room. There is a rush of air, a loss of pressure, a sudden and instant storm. Dust and smoke choke the kitchen. They get up and charge down the steps, Jim in the lead with his pistol drawn, Sergeant Stringer close behind with his Tommy gun. Stringer unloads a drumroll burst from his Tommy gun into the dusty darkness. They look about in the root cellar. There is a jumble of broken furniture, gardening tools, canned goods, a workbench, handsaws and hammers, a smashed table, broken chair legs, all heaped about. The walls are sooty and pitted and sprayed and splashed with dollops of blood. One German is propped against the wall, legs splayed, covered in dust. His midsection is black with dirty blood, centred by his crossed blood-syrupy palms trying to hold in a twisting slither of intestines, as if he were trying to divine his fate from his own entrails. He breathes shallow, gurgly breaths, looks up with wide and pleading eyes. Another is dead across the room, head hanging to the side from a neck sinew like a broken lollipop or candy apple. The last is crumpled amid the jumbled heap of household items, missing a forearm, the splintered white couplings of ulna and radius exposed, stunned surprise on the misting deadlights of his eyes. His torso is a raw and mangled meatscape of perforated flesh. A broken cask spouts airily from a score of ragged holes red wine gone to vinegar, the wine mixing in the dirt with the blood of the dead and dying in base communion, a false transubstantiation of the sacrifice done in this cellar. The air stinks with the sulfurous burn of cordite mixed with the earthy smell of the dirt cellar floor, undercut with the syrupy richness of blood, the humid sickly rot of excrement, the sharp sourness of vinegar. The smoke settles into a greyish pall, like trapped and bitter ghosts. Nausea queases through him as his stomach curdles at the sights and smells he is registering, but he holds his instinct to vomit.
Beckoning War Page 26