‘On the 12th, our 1st Battalion tried to get into Pont 1’Abbe and got stopped again. So the brass gave up and called in an air raid and artillery both. That evening we walked in, kind of embarrassed, you know, about needing to blow the town to smithereens like that. All we saw alive was two rabbits, and they were none too spry. And the way I hear it, the 357th and 359th haven’t done much better. Everybody’s behind schedule, and everybody’s getting beat up.’
The next day, on the 13th, Ben recalled, the 90th got a new CO. The message was sent through the entire division: You failed.
‘So now with Pont l’Abbé secured, or what’s left of it,’ Phineas said, ‘the brass told us to double-time it eight miles north, to take up position on the 357th’s right flank. We’re heading west, all three regiments side by side. We’re going to choke the Cotentin peninsula like a chicken neck. Then the rest can get to Cherbourg. I reckon we’re heading into the hedgerows.’
‘A fresh start for the Tough Ombres,’ Ben said. ‘Might raise some spirits.’
‘Raise some hell is what we need to do.’
Ben surveyed the little Baptist chaplain, and cataloged him as a gamecock. He tapped the covered Red Cross emblem on Phineas’s helmet.
‘What’s with this?’
The preacher snickered at some private memory, either a brave moment or another revelation of the poor clay men are made of. ‘Kraut snipers. They seem pretty PO-ed that God’s on our side. So I’ve kind of changed my own tactics.’
‘Yes?’
Phineas lifted the hem of his jacket. Tucked in his belt was a Colt .45 pistol.
He asked, ‘You carrying a gun? Look, I know we’re non-combatants and all, but there’s nothing in the Geneva Convention that absolutely says we can’t.’
Ben raised a palm, rejecting the weapon. Phineas covered the gun with his coat. He hoisted a finger.
‘You think about your Old Testament, alright? Your Moses held his staff up on a mountaintop while the Jews conquered the Amalekites. Shucks, one time he even held his hands up for so long, he needed help to keep them up. Ben, I’ll tell you, there’s nothing says we can’t carry a gun for our own protection. Not in the Bible or the regulations. Sniper wants to shoot at me, that varmint best hope I don’t see him first.’
Ben could have snatched the Colt from Allenby’s web belt and clicked off every round into a man at forty meters. With a rifle he could hit a head at three hundred, a torso at five hundred. He knew this ability lurked in his hands and eyes. He could not flush it out of his body, but he could barricade his heart, his soul, and his fate.
Ben said, ‘I need to get through this war without a gun.’
‘Well, alright.’
The young preacher’s pace had quickened while showing off his pistol. Ben kept pace with him.
‘I noticed you showed up without an assistant. You don’t have one yet?’
‘No.’
‘Well, he’ll carry a gun for you. We’ll find you a good Jew soldier.’
Ben didn’t react to the coarseness of this language, any more than he’d jumped at the artillery fusillade earlier. You need to know always when something is aimed at you. And this comment was not.
‘Thanks, Phineas.’
The two had walked a mile together. Out of sight, more small-arms fire sizzled, other units were engaged in the hedges.
‘I got me a brother in the 82nd, out there somewhere.’
‘Airborne.’
‘Yeah. When we were kids he was always afraid of heights. So I was surprised when he went into the paratroopers. Last Christmas, we were both home in Little Rock and I asked him about his first jump. He said when he got to the door of the plane, the sergeant pointed down to the ground and yelled, Go! And my brother froze up, right there.’
Ben asked, ‘What happened?’
‘The sergeant told him he was either going to jump or he’d stick his boot twelve inches up my brother’s bee-hind. So I asked him, “Did you jump?” And my brother, he said, “Well, a little at first.”‘
Ben wanted to guffaw but would not beside the somber column of soldiers. Phineas loosed only a low chortle. Both men trudged on. Ben skirted a lump of blanket flung onto the road.
‘Do you really have a brother in the 82nd?’
‘Naw. Just joshin’. You got any kin in the war?’
Ben hesitated. He wasn’t sure right now how God was working in his life. He couldn’t tell if this Phineas Allenby was God’s extended hand or if it was His foot to trip him. Moses had indeed held his fists high while the Hebrews battled and won. Moses had been given a burning bush. Moses was so fortunate, so certain.
Ben said, ‘A son,’ and left it at that.
~ * ~
The MP pulled the jeep to a brisk stop.
‘Right in there, Private,’ the MP said. Joe Amos swung his legs out, then stood in a dust swirl behind the gunning jeep. He dabbed a fingertip on his tender left eye socket and cheek.
Another MP stood in the door, waving him over. The building was the remains of the city hall of Isigny, the inscription over the door read Hôtel de Ville. This is no hotel, Joe Amos thought. This is the town’s jail.
In the doorway he gave the MP his name and battalion. The policeman checked a clipboard in his hand, then said, ‘Follow me.’
Joe Amos expected to be led inside the building, a tough old structure of stone and mortar, pocked but still standing. He figured he was headed straight for the stockade. Instead, the policeman strode into the street, glancing to make sure Joe Amos followed.
The two moved down a block of buildings that bustled like some Main Street in America, except everything that moved was olive drab. The cramped conditions in the beachhead were stuffing the U.S. force into an area too small for it. Joe Amos was in trouble, but with so much Yank strength packed around him, he at least felt safe.
The MP dropped him off at the entrance to what had once been a bakery. Empty shelves were still dusted with flour, mingled with plaster from holes in the roof. Glass cases had been denuded of pastries, but the panes were miraculously unbroken. Joe Amos shouldered his way inside. Soldiers flowed past with folders and stapled bills, handing them off on the fly. He entered the stream and walked through the shop portion of the bakery to the rear, where the ovens and tables were. The room was big and full of white men, white as dough, all of them officers. Joe Amos recognized a few, the general staff of his 688th Truck Battalion. Only a handful in the room were black, all privates, like him. Joe Amos snagged the sleeve of a colored boy darting by.
‘Hey. I need to see someone.’
‘Brother, what happened to your eye?’
‘Little scrap.’
‘Oh, yeah. Then you got to see the man. Right over there.’
This soldier turned Joe Amos by the arm and gave him a shove. In that direction was a major in a tie. He was seated at a table that had standing beside it a cooling pie rack festooned with files. The Negro soldier sped off with his papers, looking to swap them for new ones.
Joe Amos advanced, unsure. He’d seen this officer before, Major Clay, the personnel officer with the 668th, but rarely. Down in the hustle where Joe Amos and the rest of the guys operated, in the cabs, on the roads, the staff officers didn’t come around much. If you didn’t wrangle a wheel or a wrench, you typically stayed out of their way and did whatever the Major and this hive of clean soldiers did. Joe Amos watched the Major swirl pages on his desk as if he were stirring dough. He looked up after Joe Amos had been near for almost a minute.
‘You’re the other one in the fight, aren’t you?’
Joe Amos had not looked in a mirror, but his eye must be pretty swollen to keep getting this attention. One of those white drivers on the road had snuck in a punch and it had been a doozy. Joe Amos staggered, then waded right back in, on his toes, one-two, jab and roundhouse, the way his club-boxer uncle Carlos showed him, but sloppier because this was a real dustup. It was the first fistfight Joe Amos had ever been in, and he hadn’t bee
n scared; he marveled at it while slugging away. It pleased him to see his makings, his own fists defending his friend, the way a man ought. Boogie roared and rammed the white boys, and got himself pummeled until Joe Amos jumped down to join him. The fight got broken up by Grove and some others after just a few seconds, but there was enough time for some good swats. The convoy that came the other direction had a white officer in the lead jeep. Boogie and Joe Amos were carted back up the road in separate empty truck beds. The white drivers got told to stay with their truck and calm down. From the back of the Jimmy, Joe Amos watched while his own convoy continued past the dead truck pushed out of the way like it should have been. He was handed off to the first MPs the convoy passed—Boogie, too, and then Joe Amos lost sight of him. He had no idea where Boogie was, but he sure wasn’t in this big bakery room. Boogie John would have stood out like a house afire against all this flour.
‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. But they started it.’
‘Really?’ The Major settled back in his chair, knitting his fingers over his belt. ‘That’s not the way I heard it.’
The Major’s scalp showed under slicked-down hair -not the slick from sweat, but some pomade. The Major had a gap in his front teeth, and for all the world he looked to Joe Amos like a gas station attendant.
‘It doesn’t matter. Have a seat.’
The throb in Joe Amos’s cheek and eye told him squarely it did too matter, but he kept his peace. He took the chair the Major indicated.
‘Private Joe.’
‘Joe Amos Biggs, sir.’
‘Alright. My name is Major Clay. Battalion G-1. We’ve seen each other around.’
Joe Amos knew the accent. Tidewater. Virginia or Carolina. More than a cracker. Less than a loaf.
‘Am I going to the stockade, sir?’
The Major smiled, and while he talked, Joe Amos watched the pink bit of gum snugged between the man’s front teeth.
‘No, I reckon not, Private Joe. But I’m afraid Private John is going to spend a few weeks behind bars.’
‘You mean Corporal Bailey, sir?’
‘I mean Private John Bailey. He left one of his stripes on my desk about twenty minutes ago.’
Again, Joe Amos bit his tongue, and did not mention that Boogie John Bailey would gladly have left his entire uniform on this Major’s desk.
‘Sir, what about the two white drivers? They started the fight. I just got in because they jumped on my partner.’
‘I know, Joe. That’s why you’re not in the hooskow with Private Bailey. I’ll tell you, that one is as hard-headed as a Swede. As for them other two, they’re not from my battalion and they’re not my problem. And what are you doing getting in a fight with whites, anyway? We do everything we can to keep you fellas apart so this sort of thing won’t happen. But I reckon some of it’s inevitable.’
The Major wriggled his fingers resting over his belly while he leaned back farther in his chair. Joe Amos dispelled the image that this was a gasoline alley redneck and elevated the Major to backwoods county judge.
‘You may have noticed, son, that the 668th, along with every other transportation unit in France, is busting hump to move supplies off the beach and into the hands of the combat troops. Pretty soon we’re going to bust out of this bridgehead and kick the Krauts’ tails all the way to Berlin, and the Army’s going to need our trucks to do it. To be honest, with that in mind, we can’t spare good drivers.’
‘John Bailey is a good driver, sir.’
Major Clay sighed and sat forward in his chair. He laid his palms flat on the papers littering his desk. ‘You’re a good boy, Joe. Everybody says so. You keep your dress neat, you handle your duties. Lieutenant Garner tells me you’re not a troublemaker. Now, I don’t want to make trouble for you, either, but I can’t have you making trouble for me. Do we understand each other?’
Joe Amos could only say yes to this. The officer had nicely summed up relations in the U.S. Army between blacks and whites. The whites were relieved when blacks did not make trouble for them. This man, this gap-toothed Major, was why Boogie could give a damn and Joe Amos longed for a gun to go fight Germans. Neither of them wanted their worth measured by how easy they were to get along with.
Major Clay tapped a finger on his desk. ‘Where you from?’
‘Danville.’
‘Family?’
‘Mom, four sisters.’
‘They must be real proud. No Pop?’
‘Passed on. The cancer.’
‘Too bad.’ The Major seemed genuine about this. There were three kinds of white folks in the Army, Joe Amos knew. The ones who hate you, the ones who let you be, and the ones in the middle like the Major, who think they know best.
‘I hear you got some college, Joe.’
‘Three years at Virginia Union University.’
‘Yeah, I know it. Good Negro college. Founded right after the Civil War.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Why didn’t you finish?’
‘I enlisted.’
Major Clay cocked his head. Joe Amos read the questions on the officer’s face as clear as the sheen in the man’s hair. Why would a young Negro quit college and join the Army? Why would he put on a uniform and put up with the shit the Army had to hand out, why be a truck driver, a porter, stevedore, an orderly, a cook, when instead he could be a college graduate and the cock of the walk in his own neighborhood? And why in hell would he voluntarily come to Europe to defend freedoms he was not given at home?
‘My country, right or wrong, sir.’
Major Clay grinned. ‘I like that, Joe. What’d you study?’
‘History.’
‘That’s good. You know, I went to college. William and Mary. Right down the road from you, in Williamsburg. Oldest college in America.’
‘I thought that was Harvard, sir.’
Major Clay hummed to himself.
‘Okay. We’re just about done. You’re going to be getting a new partner in a few days. Private John will be reassigned in the battalion when he gets out. Don’t worry about him, you move on. Now, I got one more thing to ask you. You feel like you’re ready to be a leader? I know you jumped into that fight to stick up for one of your own, and I admire that. But we need role models in this battalion. Got to give the men good images to live up to. You up for that?’
‘I reckon, sir.’
‘That means keeping your nose clean. Folks’ll be watching.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m going to be looking for big things from you.’
From his desk drawer Major Clay pulled a white cloth stripe. Threads hung from it. He tossed it on the papers in front of Joe Amos.
‘Private John said I ought to give it to you. Dismissed, Corporal.’
~ * ~
The march lasted another three hours. Twice, the dirt track led the long column of the 358th to the edge of swamps. The regiment had to snake through fields that as recently as yesterday had been in enemy hands. Now German corpses began to appear in the pastures and ditches. Ben watched men break ranks to run up to the bodies. No officer or non-com prevented them. They rifled through muddy pockets, checked under sleeves and inside tunics, but found little of value—no pistols, watches, pins, or patches. The dead Krauts had already been looted.
Colonel Paar led the regiment on a path less than a mile behind the rear of the 359th and the 357th. He intended to take up position on the right flank of the 357th north of Amfreville. Out of the west, beyond the hedges framing the road, gunfire bursts popped the air, but nothing sounded menacing enough to make the soldiers break stride. Ben supposed the other regiments were waiting for the 358th to get in line before making a concerted move tonight or tomorrow. He faded back into the column, telling Phineas Allenby he wanted to get to know the soldiers. This was true. Also Ben wanted to move away from the inquisitive young reverend. He’d liked Phineas right off, but was not going to open himself up like a clam just because Phineas pried at him. Ben chalked it up to Chaplain Allen
by’s youth and his Christian training to ferret out sin and guilt. Ben, a Jew, kept his transgressions closer to heart. He believed he wouldn’t be shed of them just by asking forgiveness. The Old Testament required more—remembrance, sometimes struggle, or blood.
Down the line, Ben spread the word that, once the regiment stopped and had dug in, he would conduct a sundown service. Anyone was welcome to attend, but he encouraged every soldier to tell their Jewish buddies about it. Phineas Allenby sprinted past, dipping into the line and racing out like an excited collie, barking about the new rabbi and the first evening service coming up for the Jews in the regiment. Ben watched the young chaplain head down the long file, hopping and tireless.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 8