David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  Edgy and alert in his perch, Joe Amos guarded the truck from an enemy he could not spot. The soldiers stripped the Jimmy’s load in two minutes and carted the crates away into the brush without thanks. When the last box was gone, so were the soldiers. Joe Amos and McGee were left alone in the shade with the battle swelling behind the curtain of the bocage. Mortars coughed somewhere off to Joe Amos’s right, the shells lobbed and landed to his left, the explosions sounded close. McGee stood mesmerized, looking up, and Joe Amos gazed down at him. The two stared while they listened, and imagined the combat on the other side of the hedge.

  McGee awoke first.

  ‘We’re gettin’ the hell outa here!’

  McGee leaped into the driver’s seat and flung the Jimmy into reverse. Joe Amos jarred his ribs against the machine gun. The Jimmy’s engine wound high as McGee charged backward down the lane to reach the crossing where there was room to turn around. Joe Amos had to pull his hands from the grips and hold on to the steel ring while McGee raced for the crossing, then cut sharp, shifted forward to first, and headed back the way they’d come. McGee had the truck in third gear and flying in no time, bouncing along the uneven dirt road. The truck almost danced with McGee at the wheel. The boy could surely drive scared.

  Joe Amos stayed tall behind the machine gun all the way to Valognes and through the town. He set his hands to the handles and left them there, so the soldiers milling around could see him with the .50 cal in his brown mitts. McGee drove the Jimmy like a scalded cat past the city limits and only slowed when he came up tight against another convoy heading east on the two-lane main road.

  With the Jimmy in line and moving slower, Joe Amos leaned to shout into McGee’s driver-side window.

  ‘Damn, what you think of that? That’s the closest I been to the fighting.’

  McGee raised a fist out of the window. Joe Amos made a fist, too, and they knocked knuckles. McGee shouted, ‘Whoooo-ee!’

  ‘Man,’ Joe Amos said to himself. He wanted to squeeze the trigger, let off a burst. If they weren’t in line with fifty-other trucks, he would have, just to shuck the bark off a tree.

  Another loaded convoy approached from the opposite direction. Too many trucks to count rode in echelon behind the lead jeep; the tail of the convoy was lost behind the trees. Joe Amos knew the makeup of a load just by looking at the way it was stacked and the type of cartons or boxes or crates in the beds. The first Jimmy whirred by, and Joe Amos thought, Lubricants. The boxes were cardboard, but the truck squatted low on its axles, the boxes were heavy. The second and third trucks whizzed past carrying the same, then in the fourth Joe Amos didn’t need to guess; once it was past he saw the bed full of artillery rounds, the pointy shell caps arranged neatly in stacked rows, they looked like a fat bed of nails. Then the fifth truck rolled by, another load of lube. This deuce-and-a-half, like Joe Amos’s new truck, had a machine gun welded to the cab. No one manned it.

  Joe Amos pivoted his head time and again, watching the long convoy, enjoying the whizzing voom! each passing truck made. The column looked to be over two miles long. Riding in the empty bed, standing behind his gun, he had a fresh view of the power of the convoys, the immensity of the materiel they moved. Just minutes after being so close to the fighting in the hedgerows, he understood better than ever how those boys back there were fighting with the ammunition he put in their hands. He tingled with pride at the job he was doing. Black hands and pink palms humming by raised from the convoy to him, standing behind his machine gun. He waved back.

  A new sound rushed at his ears. It was not the burr of truck engines and straining transmissions, not tires grubbing the road. This noise was leaner, an angered yowl that in the first moment he heard it pitched to a higher keen. Joe Amos saw it then: dark wings like a knife-cut in the blue just above the tree line, rushing at the convoy from behind. The wings of the Messerschmitt sparked, left and right of the cowling, blinking brighter than the sun. Geysers of canvas and chips of metal flipped off trucks in the opposite lane; three Jimmies dissolved under the fighter’s cannons. A truck careened off the road, spouting flames. Others pulled to the shoulder. The drivers flung open their doors to bolt for the cover of the hedges. By the time the Kraut fighter made its first pass, the convoy was snarled in the road, some of it burning.

  Joe Amos stood in the rolling truck bed and watched. The fantastic event of war had happened so fast, with screeching and bursts, trucks and men in disarray all over the road, flames spewing jets of smoke, he hadn’t even thought of aiming his machine gun and pulling the trigger. He was stunned by how quickly the plane came and went, at how much damage lay sown in its wake. Joe Amos hadn’t even noticed that McGee had stopped the Jimmy, but now he saw that all the trucks on both sides of the road were halted, over a mile of Jimmies and tractors in a dead straight line, a shooting gallery for the Messerschmitt. Most of the drivers had dived in the bushes, the rest were shouting and heading for the ditches and roots. Joe Amos scanned the havoc, wishing he’d fired his gun, damning himself for freezing. A single sound dominated the day. Joe Amos whirled behind him. The lone Kraut fighter wailed, banking steeply, returning.

  Joe Amos pounded on the canvas roof.

  ‘He’s comin’ back!’

  McGee shouted from the cab, ‘What you want me to do?’

  Joe Amos pressed the machine-gun grips. He bent at the knees to tilt the barrel up and revolved to press his backside against the cab. Dipping his head behind the sight, he moved the barrel at the swinging, silhouetted Jabo.

  ‘Get out!’ he yelled.

  McGee wasted no time flinging open the driver’s door and sprinting for the hedges. Joe Amos did not take his eyes from the leveling, coming Kraut. He heard McGee cussing while he ran.

  Joe Amos glanced down the lines of immobile trucks. The convoy was a sitting duck. But, looking closer, he saw every fifth Jimmy, the ones with the .50 caliber machine guns, had a black man standing in the truck bed, two fists on the grips, pointing their barrels at the Kraut dropping altitude and zooming in flat and hard. Joe Amos puffed his cheeks, blew out, and aimed his gun at the German.

  Someone in the convoy shouted, ‘Get ready!’

  Another called, ‘Here he comes, y’all!’

  The Messerschmitt pilot dared every one of these men. He made no evading moves but evened his wings low over the road and roared in, flaring blue and yellow fire out of his nose and twin hanging cannons. A quarter mile ahead, Joe Amos saw gouts of road and metal chucked into the air as the first trucks in line were shredded. Drivers on both sides of the road opened up now, machine guns squalled across the whole column. The Kraut matched his speed and firepower to the convoy’s weapons, he headed straight down the line to keep his profile small, just cockpit and flashing wings.

  Joe Amos waited seconds to let the Kraut close in. He got a bead on him and held it, refining his aim, sure he had the fighter between the eyes, and let loose. The machine gun kicked, harder than he was ready for. The barrel wavered away from his true aim. Without releasing the trigger, flailing rounds into the air, Joe Amos tugged the barrel back toward the Messerschmitt’s path. The engine roar ballooned and now Joe Amos heard the yapping of the plane’s own machine guns and cannons. The noise was like a rain of steel pots falling, clanging all around him, bang, bang, bang! Joe Amos went blind to everything but steel and sound and metal splinters and the pressure he put on the trigger and the machine gun pointed into the storm, flinching and clutching, firing and screaming until the fighter was past with a roar. A wash of oily wind kissed Joe Amos goodbye, did not kill him, left him standing in a truck riddled with holes.

  ~ * ~

  ‘Vous rentrez à la maison?’

  White Dog stood naked at the open window. A breeze licked across his bare privates; he was done and limp, contemplative in the afternoon heat. The chiffon curtain hoisted on both sides of him, framed him, and fell.

  White Dog did not turn from the window to face the bed.

  ‘No. I won’t be going ho
me. I’ll go to Africa.’

  She shifted on the mattress, making a noise and a fuss. White Dog could tell she was fluffing pillows to sit against the wall, to talk. He kept his back to her, facing the street six stories below.

  No one looked up at his white nude frame filling the window. The afternoon was hot, and Parisians did not notice an undressed fat man in an apartment building high above the sidewalks.

  ‘L’Afrique? Why not go home to America? You are a hero, no? You were a pilot. You were shot down. Now you have come to Paris to work with the Resistance.’

  White Dog chuckled. The French, he thought. They can rationalize anything.

  ‘I don’t think Uncle Sam’s going to agree with you on that one, mon cher.’

  ‘Ah, merde. Come, Chien Blanc. Sit with me.’

  He heard her pat the bed. She patted harder when he did not turn.

  ‘Come.’

  White Dog pivoted from the window, sighing over to the edge of the mattress. He sat. The cheap springs tilted the whole bed. He scooted more to the center. She made room for him, taking some of the pillows and arranging them for him along the wall.

  ‘Chien Blanc. Perhaps after so long in Paris, you still do not understand what you are doing for the French people. Le marché noir is...what is it in English, salut?’

  ‘Salvation.’

  ‘Oui, salvation for the French. Thousands of men and women are fugitives from the Gestapo. They are Resistance, they are Jews, they are soldiers who are hiding. They have no identification papiers, no ration cards. How will they eat if not from the hands of the black market, eh? How will they survive the Occupation? The black market, it is resistance against the Boche because it is to live, eh?’

  She waved an arm too thin for peacetime, only during war would a woman this beautiful be so starved. The spars of her ribs, where they came together at her sternum, showed pale ridges between her breasts. Her blond hair, which should have been golden and strawberry, had only the wan luster of poor nutrition and rare shampoo.

  ‘And me? The rest of us? What do I do with this, eh?’ She rolled over to the bedside table, grabbed her purse, and stabbed a lean hand into the mouth of it. She yanked out a tangle of francs and held it up like a magician disappointed with the skinny hare she’d pulled from a hat.

  ‘I wipe my derrière with these! I cannot buy from the regular stores anything! The prices, you have seen them. They are skyrockets! The Boche have stolen all for themselves. In four years they have picked France clean as a bone. Shortages, shortages, I cannot buy vegetables, butter, beef, more than a hundred francs. Eggs, bread, pff! I must be a queen to have a breakfast if I buy from the Vichy stores.’

  She stuck the wad of bills under White Dog’s nose.

  ‘But I bring these to you, Chien Blanc. Then I can eat. Then I can thumb my nose at the Boche and their Vichy ânes and I can live until your Americans throw them out on their ears. Bastards.’

  She stuffed the bills back into the depths of her handbag.

  ‘The black market is patriotique. Yes, you steal, but you steal from the Boche. You sell to the people. You sell to the Resistance. So you put the money in your pocket, what do I care? Bon, better you than the Boche. You are a hero, Chien Blanc. I will tell the Americans that.’

  White Dog lifted a knee and scratched between his legs. He knew he did not cut much of a heroic figure anymore. He gazed across the room, out the bright window. He imagined himself a hero. He’d throw up his arms to greet the first American tank. Hey, buddy buddy, where you been, you finally got here! I been here the whole stinkin’ time, hidin’ out. I’m a pilot, got shot down and stayed behind to work with the Resistance, making sure they got everything they needed. Helpin’ the French people out. Oh, this? This gigantic stack of francs and Deutsch-marks? Yeah, I’ll be takin’ these home with me. Can I get a lift? Here’s some cigarettes.

  Nope. I’m heading to Africa.

  A year and a half in the shadows was enough. He was tired of shadows, no matter that he was making a-score in the black market. There was nothing to spend it on here, no cars, no steaks, no luxury, just cigarettes, booze, women, and jazz.

  His days in Paris were numbered. The GIs had landed in Normandy. Adolf wasn’t going to stop them. White Dog looked forward to the Liberation, the chaos and opportunity of it.

  Then Morocco, he thought. That’s for me. Or Algiers. Sunlight, warm stucco, palm trees. Just hang on a little longer, until Uncle Sam gets here. A few months after that, a few lucky breaks, then I’m hightailing it.

  White Dog let the bubble of home burst. America was not an option, it would have no open arms for him, just a court-martial as a deserter and a criminal—a prison cell and shame. It was better if he stayed dead, a crashed hero to America and a rich bwana to some Africans.

  He let his eyes range beyond the window, between the lilting curtains, searching for something else, Paris’s mood. Below the sill, the city rustled. Every automobile sound was a German staff car. Who else had fuel to drive, or papers to go anywhere if they could afford the gas? Paris had been jumpy for almost two weeks, since the Allied invasion. Everyone could sense the Yanks and Brits closing in, even though the armies were still bottled up in Normandy. Not for long. White Dog knew from the beginning that Germany couldn’t hold the Allies back. He’d planned for it. It’s why he decided to stay.

  But Paris was more than the Krauts. Streaming just below the surface, jockeying for position, were the French Forces of the Interior—the fifis—and the Commies, the Maquis, the mob gangs, the folks with vendettas, collaborators biting their nails, Vichy on the brink of collapse, more black marketeers, and again the Krauts. The Krauts were crowding at the back door, ready to make a break. The two questions on everyone’s mind were: First, would Hitler’s famous and terrible habit for defending conquered ground turn Paris into a battlefield? Second, would the Krauts take off instead without a fight, and blow the City of Light to bits on their way out?

  White Dog didn’t care. He was positioned to win on every count. At the moment his trade was brisker than ever. The Reds, the fifis, the regular Parisiens, all of them swarmed to the black market before the big event, the Liberation, stockpiling everything they could afford. You name it and White Dog’s network was swiping it and selling it, sometimes even back to the Krauts themselves. Guns and ammo, food, spare parts, batteries, real coffee, booze, tires—his crews jacked it all from train cars, warehouses, depots, Vichy shops. Whether the Germans fought for the city or they just blew it up and took a powder for the Rhine, White Dog would make a pile just as he said he would. He’d focus his operation on gasoline. A martyred Paris or a spared Paris, either would be a good market. This wasn’t his city and these weren’t his people, just a means to an end. He’d be lounging in Africa three months after the shooting stopped.

  He leaned to kiss the girl on the shoulder. He pressed his lips to bone-stretched skin.

  ‘Cher.’

  ‘Ce qui?’

  ‘You know the Americans are coming. Yes? You know things are going to be different.’

  ‘Yes, of course. We all wait for them. It will be wonderful. No?’

  ‘For some. Maybe not for others.’

  She scooted away from him on the mattress, to face him square.

  ‘What do you say?’

  White Dog tried to lap his hand over hers but she yanked her fingers from beneath. Instead, he rubbed his chin.

  ‘I’m saying, in the liberated towns up in Normandy there’s already an épuration sauvage.’

  ‘A purge? Why do I care if there is a purge? What have I done?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m just sayin’. So’s you know. I heard that in St. Saveur le Vicomte, as soon as the GIs took over, a bunch of women got their heads shaved for collaboration horizontale.’

  She laughed. ‘That is a funny way to put it, Chien Blanc.’

  ‘I’m not being funny, cher. Those women got off easy. In other towns, they’re stripped and painted with tar swastikas. I he
ar a few have been kicked to death. What do you think is going to happen when the Allies hit Paris? I just want you to be careful, that’s all. Stay out of the way.’

  She sat bolt upright, indignant.

  ‘I have not laid a finger on the Boche. No one can say this!’

  ‘I don’t care, okay? Just, you know, just be careful. It’s gonna hit everybody.’

  ‘Oui, it is. And good!’ she said, smacking the mattress. ‘The Pétainists, the intellectuals, the fashionable people, writers, actors, maître d’s, all those lâches who lined up on the side of the Germans, looking out for themselves. Pfff! Yes, the épuration sauvage is coming, and I will be in the front line of it. Watch me. I pray for the day.’

  White Dog raised his hands in defeat and let the topic go. He’d stepped on a nerve. But he’d spoken plainly; he didn’t care. He made money, regardless of how things turned out. He bought hijacked goods, then sold them to anyone with francs or marks. That wasn’t going to stop because Paris teetered on the verge of a revenge spree. Everyone with a grudge or a suspicion was going to grab scissors, paint, even guns, and take to the streets. The Communists in particular were going to draw blood, since Vichy made a practice of selecting Commie hostages for execution. The Reds, the Maquis, the righteous folk, they’re going to remind the collaborators of their own sacrifices while they’re shaving heads, smashing windows, testifying at show trials, and emptying their gullets of every pent-up hatred four years of jackboots had stomped into them.