David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  ‘I missed those. I was stateside.’

  ‘I wish I had been, sir.’

  ‘Yeah. Tommy,’ the General spoke without taking his eyes from Ben, ‘the chaplain here is an old doughboy. You’re a bloody man, Chap.’

  He said this as though it were flattery.

  ‘Don’t take that the wrong way. We need men like you right now.’

  There it was again, something urgent and unsaid.

  ‘So what are you doing back here, soldier?’

  Ben could have shown him. He carried the reason. But he only reported to this general. He was answerable elsewhere.

  ‘There’s a war on, sir.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll buy that. Have you been briefed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Alright. I’m not going to give you your own unit just yet, Padre. I’m going to wait on that. See how you do. But I will give you the dope on the 90th, since you’re an old Tough Ombre. Maybe you can do some good. Lord knows somebody’s got to around here. Tommy?’

  ‘General.’

  ‘Give the rabbi your seat. Get my map.’

  Ben walked over the straw to the opposite side of the desk to sit on the upside-down trough. Colonel Meadow returned and unfolded Billups’s map across the table, then moved aside. The General tapped a knuckle on the blue lines of the map.

  ‘Alright, Padre, here’s the situation. One week ago at 6:30 A.M. we landed here and here, on OMAHA and UTAH beaches. The night before the invasion, the 82nd and the 101st Airborne Divisions dropped behind these swamps at UTAH to screw with the Krauts and cut off the main roads from the Cotentin to keep reinforcements out. They got plopped all over the place in the dark and ended up lost in the damn hedgerows. Even so, those paratroop sumbitches pulled off every one of their missions. Incredible. The morning of D-Day, we got lucky over here at UTAH. The first LCs taking the 4th Division ashore hit the surf two thousand yards south from their target beach. Turns out this part of UTAH had a lot less resistance and fewer fixed defenses than if they’d landed where they were supposed to. The whole UTAH assault was moved here, and after a few hours the 4th had the beach secured and had units moving a mile inland.’

  With his finger, Billups dotted UTAH beach, satisfying-ly thumping the table. He drew the finger east over the map, to OMAHA.

  ‘Now, the deal over here was a lot worse. Piece of bad luck, really. We landed two infantry divisions, the 29th and the 1st, here on OMAHA. Just the day before, the Krauts transferred in their 352nd Division, a crack unit up from St. Lô, for a training exercise on our invasion beach. The 1st ran right smack into them. To make matters worse, once our boys got onshore, it turned out the big naval and air bombardments had landed too far inland and didn’t do much to soften up the Krauts along these bluffs. For most of the morning, all along seven thousand yards of open beach, OMAHA was a shooting gallery. We lost twenty-five hundred soldiers before they ever got off the sand.’

  Billups looked up from the map. His tongue prodded his lower lip, his eyes batted. He seemed to fight back emotion.

  ‘But, as you can see, Padre, they did.’

  Ben and Colonel Meadow gave the General a moment. Billups swept a knuckle into both eye sockets and continued.

  ‘Today marks the seventh day we’ve been in Normandy. So far we’ve landed nine divisions over our beaches, the Brits and Canadians have brought ashore six on theirs. We’ve got a hundred and thirty thousand GIs in our beachhead and six thousand vehicles. More are coming every hour. To date, the Krauts haven’t mustered a decent counterattack. Our guess is, they still don’t believe this is the main Allied invasion. They think we’re still planning on hitting them up there in the Pas de Calais.’

  ‘That’s why Patton’s not here,’ Meadow said. ‘He’s still in England, running a ghost army.’

  Ben guessed at the massive deception. ‘You’re making the Germans figure we’re holding Patton back. For something bigger.’

  Billups nodded. ‘That, and for slapping those two kids down in Sicily. Don’t worry, old Blood ‘n’ Guts will be here soon enough. For now, Rommel doesn’t know whether to shit or go bowling. In the meantime, we’re exploiting the situation as fast as we can until he and Hitler figure it out. The Krauts have stiffened here at Caen against the Brits. That’s draining the Kraut positions against us here on the Cotentin peninsula. And because we own the skies, every tank the Krauts move had damn well better move at night or he’s not gonna make it. Even so, they’re putting up one hell of a fight. This morning, the Krauts fired their first V-1 rocket at London. They’re not throwing in the towel, that’s for certain.’

  Meadow piped in, pointing. ‘Montgomery’s keeping the pressure on the Krauts at Caen. We’re trying to break through to the west coast of the peninsula and seal it off. Up here at the northern tip is Cherbourg. We need that port real bad. Until we capture the city and get the port up and running, all our logistics have to flow across the beaches, and that just isn’t going to cut it if we’re going to support a big enough army in France to kick the Huns out.’

  ‘It looks like Montgomery’s going to take a while to break out through Caen. Too much resistance,’ Billups said. ‘The Krauts figure Caen is the fastest way to Paris and the Seine, and they’re right, so they’re tossing the kitchen sink at Monty. Eisenhower and Bradley have made up their minds that we can’t just sit inside our bridgehead and wait for the Brits to get a head of steam. We need elbow room. We’ve got another twenty divisions in England waiting to land. So instead of going right for Cherbourg, we’re going to cut off the peninsula first.’

  Meadow slid a finger west across the map, from Ste. Mère-Église to the Atlantic. The gesture looked like a man slashing a finger under a throat.

  ‘That takes us through here. Right into the bocage.’

  ‘General,’ Ben said, ‘that’s the worst-looking place I’ve ever seen to have a fight.’

  The General hissed a palm across his stubbled chin.

  ‘Yeah, well, Chaplain, we’re not getting to call our shots just yet. Monty’s lack of progress at Caen means we’ve got to fight our way through the bocage if we’re ever gonna break out of Normandy. It’s not anybody’s first choice, I assure you. We didn’t exactly plan on this, to be honest.’

  ‘How’s it going so far?’

  Ben expected Billups to dissemble, to keep invisible whatever was wrong in the 90th. But the General did not hesitate.

  ‘We’re getting our asses kicked, Padre. And if you came through Ste. Mère-Église, you saw the casualties we’re racking up.’

  ‘I saw them.’

  Silence followed this statement, as if the wounded and dead were here with them and respect was being paid. Ben glanced at the map under Billups’s elbows. Two-thirds of the Cotentin peninsula remained to be taken. All of it to the ocean was dense, enemy-held hedgerows, fortified villages, and troop-swallowing swamplands.

  Billups moved from behind the table. ‘Tommy, get back to work. Chaplain, come with me.’

  Colonel Meadow folded the General’s map, inclining his head to the new chaplain. Ben followed Billups out of the stall, then through the rear door of the barn.

  Outside, the road leading into Gueutteville dodged away into the maze of hedges. Soldiers dug foxholes in the fields or burrowed into the root walls of the hedgerows. Late-afternoon clouds predicted a damp evening. Billups led Ben several steps from the barn.

  ‘I figured it was better if you and me talked out here, Chaplain. You’re not a priest, I know, but we’re talking in private, right?’

  ‘Of course, General.’

  ‘Alright.’

  Billups removed his helmet, displaying a pate of gray thistles. Ben guessed the man was only a few years older than himself, maybe early fifties. Billups had the directness and flat accent of a Midwesterner.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ he muttered.

  Ben waited the General out.

  ‘Sorry, Chap. It’s just...’ The General lifted a hand to indicate west, where Ben caught
more sounds of warfare.

  ‘We’re getting our hats handed to us out there. And if we don’t take the peninsula, we can’t expand the bridgehead. That keeps us vulnerable to a German counterattack that, frankly, at this point might stand a chance of shoving us right back into the water.’

  ‘How bad is it, General?’

  ‘Bad. Over these first three days I reckon it could be worse, but not a lot. You want to hear this?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I need to know everything.’

  ‘Alright, then.’ Billups swished his tongue over his teeth, deciding to speak.

  ‘Two days ago the 357th and the 358th moved into battle. For every one of those kids it was the first time they’d been under enemy fire. I assume you remember what that was like.’

  The fear whisked through Ben’s gut before Billups could finish the sentence. He recalled shock, at the rustle of bullets like whispering women, the blasts of artillery, and the agony of seeing wounded and dead, the finality—the reality—of death and dismemberment as common as trash on the ground.

  ‘You know as well as I do,’ Billups continued, ‘you can’t drive green soldiers into that.’ He pointed again to the west. ‘They got to be led. You got to have commanders who can coax them in. If you don’t... well, they just get killed.’

  The trucks of bodies flowing out of Ste. Mère-Église.

  ‘Where’s the 90th right now, General?’

  ‘Right now, we’ve got all three regiments in a line, the 357th, 358th, and 359th, from Amfreville down to Pont l’Abbé.’

  Billups jabbed the air, locating each of his regiments beyond the green mask of the fields and hedges. For Ben this underscored how close the fighting was to where he stood, and with each stab of the General’s finger, he heard muted shooting. He wanted to walk away from this assistant division CO. In a mile he could be there, with the guns and the men.

  ‘Since June 10th, the 90th has grabbed about a mile of these hedgerows. That’s it. And already, out of fifty-five hundred infantry, we’ve taken fifteen percent casualties. In two and a half days of fighting. And he just sits there.’

  Ben followed Billups’s accusing arm. Another man, older, lanky, sat in a chair he’d rocked back on its hind legs, smoking a pipe. Ben hadn’t noticed him out front of the barn. He’d walked past the 90th’s commanding General.

  ‘Sulking,’ Billups spat.

  ‘You want me to talk to him?’

  Billups ignored the suggestion. He spoke with eyes fixed on his superior officer.

  ‘Problem is, he’s not infantry. He was the division’s artillery chief. He got the CO job in January, right when we left the States. Our old CO got bumped up to corps.’

  Billups lowered his arm. He shuffled in the grass.

  ‘I don’t reckon it’s his fault. Aw, hell, maybe it is. Yesterday, I found him hiding in a ditch next to the road. There’d been some shelling and he and his adjutant got caught out in it. I walked up and nearly kicked the sumbitch. I told him to get the hell out of that ditch. You can’t lead a division lying in a damn hole. Get back to the CP, for Christ’s sake, and walk, man, don’t run, or you’ll have the whole division wading in the Channel. That’s what I told him. The man doesn’t have a Chinaman’s chance of knowing how to lead soldiers into combat. He knows logarithms, and that’s it.’

  ‘Do you want me to talk to him?’

  ‘Huh? No. No. I got the word, he’s being replaced. And none too damn soon.’

  Ben turned from the commanding officer, so quietly frightened in his chair. War does this, he thought. It doesn’t break just the green recruit, the clean-cheeked boys. Death visiting the lone soldier swings one scythe, but for field commanders, the numbers are a harvest. War is not for every man.

  ‘What do you want me to do, General?’

  Billups screwed his helmet back on his head. He pounded on top to mash it down.

  ‘A few things. First, pray the new CO can lead this bunch, because if he can’t, the 90th might be done for. There’s already talk of breaking the division up for replacements. They’re calling us a “problem” division. We’re not going to have that, you and me. Second, you get out in the field and show my boys what a man is. I figure you can do that, Chaplain Kahn.’

  The pang of Ben’s doubt was fleet but sharp. Did he know anymore what kind of man he was? Regardless, he and Billups shared the same intention.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And what can I do for you, Rabbi?’

  Ben was the one pointing now, at the crackles of fighting. An air raid had started over a town to the south.

  ‘I want to go there, sir.’

  ~ * ~

  White Dog stalked the cobblestones.

  The ten o’clock curfew loomed less than an hour away. This did not concern him. He knew Montparnasse better than any Gestapo or Kraut policeman. He’d hidden in these alleys and doorways for a year and a half now. When he needed to disappear, White Dog could become a shadow unstaked from the ground. Paris was a city made for a thief.

  He let his heels click on the cobbles, echoing in the narrow way, off-gray walls and dirty windows. He passed a woman hauling a small wagon stacked with sticks for her cooking, an old man who needed a shave and a meal, and no one else.

  The street ran long, curling past shuttered shops. He found the turn, a grim tributary off the wider, untrafficked road. The address he’d been given was in the middle of the block. He let loose a curse and a sigh of disgust at the chore.

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ he muttered in English, ‘this is the last time.’

  Before knocking, he glanced over his shoulder, at the dark way he had come. Paris under the Germans was not the City of Light. The sickly hues of kerosene glowed in only a handful of windows. The rest made do with the flickers of wax or nothing at all. There was no electricity. White Dog saw none of the ones who’d followed him.

  He rapped on the door.

  In a window, a heavy curtain shifted. Lantern light framed a slice of a big head and a thick hand wearing two rings. The curtain fell back in place.

  Behind the closed door, a man’s gruff voice demanded, ‘Yes? Who’s there?’

  White Dog leaned close to the wood panels. He lowered his voice.

  ‘Chien Blanc.’

  A pause followed. Behind the door a woman’s voice hissed, the wife. A chain was pulled off, the door opened inches. The same wedge of the big head—one eye and a grizzled cheek—slipped into the gap.

  ‘Tell Monsieur Acier I will speak with him tomorrow.’

  White Dog slid his fingers into the rift between door and jamb. The big man could slam the door and mangle his hand. He would not dare.

  ‘Monsieur Acier will not see you tomorrow. You will see me now.’

  White Dog pushed on the door. It gave way. The large head retreated, the door widened to show shoulders and midriff, broad and smelly in an undershirt. The French, White Dog thought, they never bathe.

  With one hand closing the door behind him, White Dog whipped a Luger pistol from his belt. The door clicked as he advanced on the big man in his own small hallway.

  White Dog held the pistol head-high. The man back-pedaled clumsily, spilling an unlit lamp off a table, jarring a mirror. His shoulders struck a wall beside the stairs where his wife stood. White Dog glanced up to her. She, too, wore undergarments in the Paris summer. Both her hands muffled her mouth.

  White Dog lifted the gun to tip the barrel into the man’s eye.

  ‘Chien Blanc, Chien Blanc,’ the man uttered, recoiling into the wall. Through her fingers his wife whispered, ‘No, no, no.”

  ‘Shut up,’ White Dog told them, ‘both of you. Shut up.’

  The man and woman in their stained underclothes froze. White Dog listened to the wife, she did not breathe. Her husband panted and gaped out of the one eye.

  ‘Alain?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘You know me?’

  ‘I know about you, Chien Blanc. Yes.’

  ‘Then why d
idn’t you let me in when you heard who I was?’

  The large man shuddered. He didn’t know the answer, didn’t know why he was being asked this with a gun to his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Chien Blanc. What can I say?’

  White Dog leaned closer to the man. He tilted the gun higher, as if to pour a bullet into the man’s socket.

  ‘Tell me who I am.’

  The wife gasped through her hands. To this odorous French couple, it might have appeared like White Dog was rabid, not making sense. But the question seemed simple enough.