‘A captain ran by me, then his whole company sprinted behind him. I screamed at him to stop. That’s how it happens, when the men see their officers crap out. You put this silver on your uniform,’ Trow tapped his collar, ‘you don’t run for the rear. Ever.’
The Colonel spit in the road, cleaning his mouth from the story.
‘I notice you haven’t got a chaplain’s assistant yet, Rabbi. Can’t find anybody in the T-Os you trust?’
Ben grimaced. The Colonel’s comment was scathing. The low morale in the 90th was already leaching into this good man. Ben wanted to defend the division. Tell Trow there was not a single officer or soldier of the 90th who, entering the bocage, had ever been fired at by an enemy before he heard that first round whistle through the leaves. These men, from officer to private, were as green as the bushes, and nowhere near as mature, facing battle-tested Germans at every turn, many of them probably veterans of the Eastern Front. The doughs had reluctant leadership combined with a fearsome assignment, to hack straight into the heart of enemy positions prepared years in advance of their coming. Other divisions in the hedges had performed better, yes, but the tension is so great in combat that one small spark of hesitation can spread like a wildfire if it spreads from top to bottom like it had in the 90th.
Ben answered, ‘No, that’s not it. I figure since I’m assigned to all three regiments, I’d wait till I visited them all to pick somebody.’
But Trow had stopped listening. He bent at the waist and slowed. Beside him, Ben did likewise.
Ahead, in the ditches on both sides of the dusty road, two lines of soldiers huddled. Every man gazed down the channel of the hedges. Trow moved off the road to a ditch, too. Ben followed. The officer made his way up to the closest kneeling soldier.
‘What’s going on?’ Trow demanded.
‘I don’t know, sir. We just stopped, is all.’
‘What company are you with?’
‘Lima Company, sir.’
‘Where’s your CO?’
‘He’s up ahead somewhere.’
‘Alright. Stay put. Chaplain, let’s go figure this out.’
Trow stood to his full height out of the ditch. Men squatting on both sides of the road muttered while the officer and the chaplain walked straight down the middle. Ben noted that many of the soldiers in L Company appeared to be replacements—few wore the crinkling, impregnate anti-gas uniforms and many had yet to throw away their extra equipment. These boys were newly minted from the repple depple and marched out here into the green void. They didn’t have a clue why they were in a ditch or why they should get out of it.
Lieutenant Colonel Trow shook his head.
‘Son of a bitch, Chap, this is just what I’m talking about. I sent this Captain Valentine out here an hour ago to set up observation posts west of town. And I come out to find two hundred men lying in a goddam ditch.’
Trow walked briskly, making every buckle, strap, and weapon on his person clatter as he stalked past the immobile company. Ben lengthened his own strides to keep up and found himself jangling, too, though just with his canteen and backpack.
The head of the halted column came into view around a bend in the hedgerows. A knot of men were gathered on their knees around an object on the ground that looked like a radio. One soldier held something to his head. Trow quickened his pace.
‘What in the hell is this?’
Closing in, Ben narrowed his gaze at what the men had circled around.
It wasn’t a radio. It was a helmet.
Ben ran forward,
‘Colonel! Sniper!’
From behind, he dove at Trow’s knees. He buckled the man at the instant a bullet buzzed past, followed close by a crack out of the hedges.
Trow barely had time to get his hands out to break his fall. Down, he rolled over, Ben still clutching him about the legs. The Colonel’s unbuckled helmet spilled into the road.
Trow said nothing while he scrambled on his belly, retrieving his helmet, then rose to run folded over to the men clustered at the front of the column. Ben stayed on his belly and crawled, not as nimble as the younger Colonel. Beside his elbows digging across the dust, a ruby-patch glistened and soaked into the dirt.
Ben scurried to the ditch, some soldiers helped him to his feet. He kept close to the bordering hedge and, doubled over, jogged to the front of the line. Lieutenant Colonel Trow did not keep his voice down, he was already scorching some ears.
‘Goddammit, Captain, I don’t give a hoot! You got a sniper in these trees, you damn well find him and do something about it and get your column moving! I didn’t send you out here to set up your OP in the goddam ditch! Now, what direction did the shot come from?’
The soldiers parted and let Ben into their ring. At their center on the ground lay a lieutenant. A medic pressed a gauze pad over the downed man’s breast. Empty sulfa packets lay on the road. The lieutenant’s face was shock pale, dark eyes blinking, clouding. He licked his lips, the thirst of dying. One soldier pressed the lieutenant’s hand high to his own chest. The medic snapped red fingers on his free hand, impatient for something. Others in the circle dug in their pockets for more morphine spikes. The lieutenant gulped for air, his jaw and Adam’s apple worked like pistons, but Ben knew this wound, the sucking hole in the chest and lung.
Ben lifted his attention now to the captain, Valentine, with the Colonel’s teeth almost chewing on his ear. The young captain was white-faced, eyes in the dust under the Colonel’s harangue.
‘Get your company off this road, Captain! Spread them out across these fields, and tell ‘em to watch for mines. I want these trees up ahead glassed by every pair of binoculars you got in your company. Then I want you to start blasting away at every damn thing that don’t look like wood. You following me?’
Valentine nodded.
‘I want that sniper’s ass down and I want this company in position. You’re letting one sumbitch in a tree and one casualty hold up an entire company. You better figure it out fast, Captain, men are gonna die.’
The Colonel eased his voice.
‘Men are gonna die, son. And you can’t give up command of the rest of them because you got a man down. Now, I need you to get up and get moving.’
Captain Valentine did not bound to action. He paused, still unsure. Ben guessed the captain was no more than twenty-three. He was a man and still so much a boy. His decisions carried life and death, but no matter how much Trow needed the man in this captain to step forward, the frightened boy in him would not relinquish his hold. Thomas, also a captain, was twenty-three, he’d be twenty-five now. Ben told himself to stop this, he could not superimpose Thomas onto every scared young soldier’s face.
Trow patted Captain Valentine on the back.
‘I’ll stay with the company till we get the son of a bitch.’
Valentine looked at the Colonel, relieved. The captain glanced at a kneeling first sergeant. For the first time, Ben heard Valentine’s voice. It was heartbreakingly pristine and plainly without resolve.
‘Sergeant Moran, you’ve got first platoon for now. Let’s get the men into these fields, like the Colonel says.’
Valentine peeled out of the circle, taking four others with him. The soldier who’d held the lieutenant’s hand had to go but didn’t know where to lay the arm. Ben reached out and took the dying soldier’s grip in his. With Valentine and his men gone, the medic watched the struggling lieutenant’s face, to be sure the wounded man was not watching when he shook his head at Trow and Ben.
Trow grew solemn over the reddening bandage. He muttered, careful that the fading lieutenant didn’t hear him. ‘I don’t even know this shavetail. He couldn’t have been here more’n a couple days. This is what I’m talking about. That kid captain is shitting his pants and everybody around him is ready to do the same. Zero morale. Goddammit.’
With that, the Colonel swept away.
Ben leaned close. ‘Lieutenant, can you hear me?’
The soldier’s face shivered s
ide to side, chilled to the bone by his seeping blood, which took his warmth with it. He nodded. Yes.
‘Mendelsohn,’ whispered the medic.
‘Lieutenant Mendelsohn,’ Ben said, ‘I’ll write your family. I’ll take care of everything.’
The young officer’s lids fluttered. He tried twice before he swallowed.
Ben felt the grip slacken. He had no time for conversation.
The medic fixed his eyes on the Ten Commandments insignia pinned at Ben’s collar and nodded. Mendelsohn was a Jew.
Ben brought his face closer above Lieutenant Mendelsohn and spoke into the man’s gaping mouth.
‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want...’
The hand in Ben’s became a weight. The lieutenant’s head stopped quivering. The gaping mouth issued a gurgle, as if a stone dropped long ago had found water. Ben completed the prayer. From under the OD T-shirt, he tugged Mendelsohn’s dog tags, with the ‘H’ stamped in the right-hand corner for ‘Hebrew.’ He unclipped one tablet, slid it into his pocket, and reconnected the necklace, tucking it in place. The medic rolled up his kit, leaving stained and emptied trash behind. Nameless, the medic jogged off to join his company dispersing in the fields. From the hedges, Colonel Trow’s urging and vulgar voice was the crow for Lieutenant Mendelsohn’s passing.
Ben reached into the dead man’s pockets, for letters and personal effects he would mail with his own letter to the family. He rested his palm across the face of Lieutenant Mendelsohn.
‘Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.’
He closed his eyes now and raised both hands, alone with Mendelsohn, who could not seek vengeance for himself. Ben would spend the night with L Company, out here on the rim of the regiment beside the young man’s body, watching, listening for the Krauts to move. He held his hands up, kept them up, did not let them fall even when his shoulders burned, until he heard several shots from the company to kill the sniper.
~ * ~
A dirty GI raised a hand. Behind a log, a machine gun swiveled Joe Amos’s way.
Joe Amos slowed for the checkpoint. The brakes squealed to stop the overloaded truck. Gonna need new brake pads, he thought. Running two weeks and already falling apart. That’s because we’re running non-stop.
A corporal sauntered up to the cab window. The man’s cheeks bore streaks of grime. He stank.
‘Ammo?’ he asked.
‘You 3rd Battalion 79th ?’
‘Let’s go, man. I got hungry babies to feed.’
The corporal shouldered his carbine. He moved to the side of the Jimmy, hoisted one boot on the double rear wheels, and catapulted over the rail to the top of the crates. In his rear window, Joe Amos watched the soldier’s boots drop inside the ring of the .50 caliber machine gun.
‘Naw, man,’ Joe Amos grumbled. ‘Damn, what’s he... ? That’s my machine gun.’
The filthy corporal checked the ammo belt, charged the gun’s chamber, and clouted on the canvas roof of the cab twice, pop pop!
‘Hit the road, buddy! Straight ahead. I’ll tell you when to turn.’
Joe Amos spun a griping and scrunched face to McGee. The dark boy grinned and said nothing.
‘White boys messing with my stuff,’ Joe Amos muttered, and slid into first gear.
The Jimmy passed quickly into the town of Valognes. The Krauts hadn’t put up much of a fight here, the streets were not strewn with the shards of buildings like most of the places Joe Amos rolled through.
‘See this,’ he said to McGee. ‘This is a bad sign. The Krauts didn’t make any kind of stand here.’
‘Why’s that bad?’
‘Shows they’re pulling back into Cherbourg. Hitler does crazy shit like that. Picks a spot and tells everybody no one leaves alive. Calls ‘em “fortresses.” He did that last year at Stalingrad, and look what happened. Place got blown to smithereens. A million Russians and Krauts got killed.’
McGee looked quizzical. ‘How you know all this?’
Joe Amos didn’t want to say, Because I went to college and I studied and now in war I listen and learn. What a man knows is what he is. Joe Amos held his tongue because he did not want to draw a dividing line between himself and McGee, the student and the strong-back Negro. Joe Amos came to war for every black man, so he shrugged, as if to say, I just do.
McGee asked another question. Despite the boy’s earlier remark that he was not afraid to be here, McGee appeared fidgety the more Joe Amos drove through the town, headed to the front line.
‘How come them soldiers back there didn’t check us for paperwork or nothin’? I mean, couldn’t we be infiltrators or somethin’?’
Joe Amos chortled. ‘Come on, man. The Germans don’t have no colored boys driving for them.’
McGee didn’t laugh. Joe Amos had guessed right, the boy was nervous. Joe Amos kept talking. ‘Besides, we don’t even have paperwork. Shoot, writin’ things down was the first thing COM Z stopped. Too much supplies got to get moving too fast to worry about paperwork. We get a load, we get told where to go, we fire up and go. Bang, baby, we get it on.’
Joe Amos put some pizzazz in his voice, to rile McGee past his worries. He held out a flat palm, waiting for McGee to slap it with spirit.
‘Hey, brother, we’re in the shit now. This is where we want to be. Give it to me!’
Reluctant, McGee spanked Joe Amos’s hand.
The road out of town narrowed as the Norman roads always did, a tar stitch between hedges. Branches and twigs reached into the lane, scraping the cab and rails. Clearly, the Germans had prevented the local folk from trimming these hedges, knowing at some point the Allies would come this way. The corporal knocked on the roof again. The canvas bulged down at Joe Amos’s head.
‘Turn right, up ahead. See that dirt road?’
Joe Amos guided the Jimmy off the road and down the lane. The earth was rutted from zero maintenance and recent tank tracks. From high in the cab, Joe Amos began to. see in the fields the trail of American soldiers, their litter, and a few German bodies.
‘Another couple hundred yards,’ the corporal bellowed, rapping again on the roof. This was aggravating; the corporal stood not only behind the gun Joe Amos coveted, but his constant rattling on the roof implied that Joe Amos wasn’t paying attention.
Before he could shout out his window some curse at the corporal to stop banging, sounds of automatic fire slashed from the fields and bocage ahead. The corporal swiveled the machine gun. Answering gunfire burst out of the bushes, coming from the corporal’s unit dug into the bocage. Joe Amos saw no muzzle flashes or smoke. He pushed forward as fast as he could without tipping the track over in the washboard ruts. This was the first time he’d driven this deep into the hedgerows. It was blind, all noise and green.
‘I can’t see shit,’ he said without looking at McGee. ‘Man, how can they fight in here? You can’t see a damn thing.’
Another smack landed on the roof. The corporal ordered a left turn at a dirt crossing. Joe Amos negotiated the bend and wheeled the Jimmy down an even narrower lane another hundred yards, when the corporal pounded one more time.
‘Right here! Stop!’
Joe Amos hit the brakes. Before the truck quit rolling, the corporal had tossed the first crate down to a soldier who appeared out of nowhere. In moments, a dozen men leaped out of the hedges wearing on their helmets cut branches stuck into webbing, all looking like the soldiers of a forest god. In a fireman’s brigade, they tossed and hefted ammo boxes away into their hidden and erupting battleground. No one called Joe Amos or McGee down to help. Joe Amos made no move to leave the cab. McGee was out the passenger door before Joe Amos could react.
Strong McGee moved to the tailgate below another soldier who’d climbed up to pitch down crates. In his mirror, Joe Amos watched the boy catch the boxes, maybe fifty pounds each, like pillows and swing them to reaching hands. Joe Amos did not op
en his door, he climbed out his window, set his foot on the Jimmy’s outside mirror, and clambered up and over into the machine-gun ring. Up here, with his hands on the handles, a finger scratching the trigger, he heard the fighting.
A hundred yards away, an assault raged. Joe Amos gazed into the thickness of the hedges and saw none of it, the leaves stopped everything but shouts and gunsmoke. He even heard German screamed above the tumult. His nostrils widened at the cordite stink and his hands tightened on the handles of the machine gun. If he caught sight of an enemy through the branches, he knew he would empty the whole ammo canister. McGee, a little breathless, called up to him, ‘Lookin’ good, Corporal.’
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 11