David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  The thing that did pop a minute later was the universal joint in the rear of Joe Amos’s deuce-and-a-half. He cursed it the second he heard the wrench of cogs in the Jimmy’s belly. A wretched grinding scraped the slow night calm. Joe Amos looked in his rearview, saw sparks flying under his chassis. The drive shaft had cut loose from the rear end and dragged, spinning over the pavement. The rear wheels of the truck were now severed from the engine. The Jimmy coasted in a noisy shower of sparks. McGee sat up only when Joe Amos poked him. He braked to the shoulder.

  ‘Universal’s gone,’ he said to a blinking McGee.

  ‘Dawg.’

  Joe Amos clambered out. The Jimmy behind followed him to the shoulder. The little light from the one white cat’s eye in front glowed enough to see the drive shaft hanging dead. The smell of hot, ground metal stank up the country air. The rest of the platoon powered by; one downed truck would not stop them.

  The driver of the following Jimmy, a black Latino from LA named Morales, ambled beside Joe Amos. McGee was already on his back under the truck, prodding.

  ‘Universal,’ Morales said. ‘Chingar.’

  Joe Amos stuck his hands on his hips. He kicked a tire.

  ‘Man, this is what happens. They make us drive till we’re cross-eyed, then there’s no time to keep the damn things maintained. Truck’s as tired as we are.’

  ‘Lube, man.’ Morales nudged McGee’s boot protruding from under the Jimmy. ‘No lube, right?’

  ‘Yep,’ grunted McGee. ‘Dry as Grandpa’s pecker.’

  ‘See?’ The truck Joe Amos had ignored the past week in his fervor to drive and deliver was again turned precious, reminding him how the holes in the cab and bed were his proof and medallions.

  McGee clambered to his feet, sure of the diagnosis. Joe Amos walked to the rear to examine the load. He’d been right about the crates of clothes, and a quarter of the cargo space was filled with jerricans of gasoline.

  ‘Morales?’

  ‘Yeah, man?’

  ‘Get as much of this off here as you can. Leave some jerricans for the tow truck and me to get back.’

  Wordless, Morales stepped into the road, flagging down the next several Jimmies in the platoon. McGee climbed over the rail to stand on top, to toss crates down.

  Ten minutes later every box and container was transferred to other Jimmies and put back on the road to Couvains, except for six full jerricans snug in a corner.

  ‘McGee, go with Morales. Send me a tow. I’ll wait here.’

  ‘You gon’ be alright, Sarge? You know, out here by yourself and all?’

  Joe Amos opened his driver’s door. He slid his Garand M-1 from beneath the seat and handed the other rifle to McGee.

  ‘Go on with you. I still got my baby up there.’ He stubbed his chin at the machine gun. This was raw bravado. Morales the Latino chuckled, but McGee gave Joe Amos a thumbs-up.

  Morales said, ‘Hasta luego,’ and climbed into his cab with McGee and his assistant driver. McGee waved goodbye in the lean cat’s eye light.

  Joe Amos set the butt of his rifle on the road. He knelt beside the double wheels to smell the dry fittings of the ruined universal joint. He clucked his tongue, thinking how much his Jimmy had run the past two weeks. He patted the big, cool tire, sorry she was hurt but glad she’d get some attention. He nodded a silent pride at his truck, his bullet-punched Jimmy, tired as a tobacco mule. He thought, You take a break, gal.

  The sky would not purple for another few hours. Joe Amos figured his situation was not that bad. A tow would come for him as soon as one was available, surely not before sunup. Plenty of traffic plied this road. The front lines of the 29th and 2nd Divisions were two miles south. He looked that way and saw no flashes, heard none of the clap of combat. Everything looked quiet. This was a chance to catch up on some shut-eye.

  Joe Amos stowed his M-1 under the cab seat. He climbed in and closed his door. The stars of France gleamed, vivid without the taint of electricity anywhere around. Another convoy rumbled up and past; he waved them on. In minutes, while more Jimmies and tractors strained in lower gears just outside his open window, Joe Amos fell asleep.

  Gears, exhaust, and the odd horn kept him from a deep rest. Joe Amos opened his eyes to an overcast morning. A raven cawed somewhere in the hedges. No trucks rumbled past in the moment he woke, though the front lines to the south made testy morning barks. Joe Amos licked his lips for coffee and other things that were back in America. Yawning, it occurred to him how little he thought of America lately. His life had gotten centered here in Normandy, on the job and the other boys in his company. There was danger, if not in his path, then lurking. He was a sergeant and responsible for others. He missed Boogie and worried about him in the stockade, hadn’t heard a peep from him since the fight with the white truckers. But without Boog around to remind him all the time they were both black and Jim Crow was white, Joe Amos had lately formed a better taste for everything. Maybe it was the shot-down Kraut plane that was in his chest forever, or it was the twenty hours a day of work. Maybe it was the fact that most of the GIs in the infantry units were coming to understand it didn’t serve to call the man a nigger who was bringing you rations, clothes, ammo, fuel, and replacements. In three weeks Joe Amos had seen enough of the white boys’ blood to grant them his respect; an ignorant cracker can call you a spook and still be a hell of a man. Maybe the whites were beginning to see Joe Amos and his drivers in somewhat the same light, the spooks hauling everything the crackers needed all damn day and night. Same hours they fight, Joe Amos drives, and that’s something for both of them to think over.

  He didn’t hear the tow truck pull up behind him. Footsteps trickled from the pebbles on the road shoulder. Someone inspected the rear of the Jimmy. Joe Amos sat up from the bench, wishing for coffee, hoping for a thermos on the tow truck. He looked out his busted rear window. A man, not a soldier, had one leg up on the Jimmy’s tailgate, starting to climb on.

  ‘What the hell you doin’?’

  The civilian started, losing his grip and tumbling off. Joe Amos flung open his driver’s door and landed, sweeping his carbine from under the seat. At the rear of the Jimmy, the man brushed grit off his pants.

  Joe Amos put the rifle in both hands. ‘I asked you what the hell you doin’?’

  The man lifted his head but continued brushing.

  ‘Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. I was going to take one of your canisters of gasoline. I did not know you were asleep there.’

  He appeared unarmed and a little old. Joe Amos relaxed his grip on the M-1. The man wore a satin jacket and dark khaki pants that showed the dust of his tumble even after all his cleaning. Gray streaked his hair, worn past his collar. A long, sharp nose pointed at Joe Amos once he gave up on his pants and straightened. He stood half a head taller than Joe Amos.

  The Frenchman showed no shame at being caught looting a broken-down truck.

  ‘I apologize.’

  The rifle held down one of Joe Amos’s hands. The other fluttered up on its own, flummoxed, a little amazed.

  ‘Just like that. You apologize. You’re gonna steal from the U.S. Army and all you got to say is you’re sorry.’

  ‘No. I will also say I need the gasoline, and may I have it?’

  ‘No. No, man, you cannot have it. What are you thinkin’?’

  The civilian motioned across the empty road, the closeting hedgerows, the early day.

  ‘No one will see. You will not get in trouble.’

  Joe Amos looked away, as though there were in fact some audience watching this comic routine. ‘No, it don’t work that way. You just...no, is all. No.’

  The Frenchman put out his hand. The fingers were clean and round-nailed, his wrist very white. The bare cuff of his shirt had frayed.

  ‘I am Marquis Jacques Chastain Villecourt de Couvains. And you?’

  This was the first Frenchman Joe Amos had spoken with. The man’s language was buttery slick, like he’d greased up every hard piece of English before he put
it on his tongue. He stood ramrod straight in some kind of housecoat, he fussed over dirt on his drawers, he wanted to shake hands. Joe Amos took the offered grip.

  ‘Sergeant Joe Amos Biggs. U.S. Army.’

  ‘Enchanté.’

  Joe Amos released the handshake. ‘You speak pretty good English there.’

  ‘Many years ago, I have studied in England. Cheerio.’

  ‘Did you say you’re a Marquis or something?’

  ‘Out. I am below an Earl and above a Duke. My chateau is down the road one kilometer. It is large and quite dark with the Germans gone and the electricity off. Your bombers are very good at what they do.’

  The man tugged at the hem of his jacket, bouncing once on his heels.

  ‘May I have one of your canisters?’

  ‘What’s a Marquis do? You steal shit?’ The first noises of a convoy sounded from the far bend in the road.

  ‘No, Joe Amos Biggs. A Marquis does not do such things unless he must. I will trade some of the gasoline for kerosene. I will light my house until your Americans can turn the power back on. I may pour a bit of the petrol into my old car and start it for the first time in two years. I may trade for some food. I do not know what bounty I will enjoy with one canister of your gasoline, Joe Amos Biggs.’

  The lead jeep of the coming convoy cleared the trees a half mile off. Behind it, a green column rumbled into view. Food, fuel, clothes, five hundred tons of everything moved for the GIs.

  Joe Amos leaped onto the bed of the Jimmy. He stepped over the bullet holes to grab a jerrican.

  He set it on the tailgate and jumped down. He hefted the can, then set it at the Frenchman’s feet. ‘Here. Go on.’

  The Marquis lifted the container with some strain. ‘Merci, mon ami.’

  The Marquis struggled away from the Jimmy, south along the shoulder. The weight of the canister tilted him

  to one side.

  ‘Marquis, man! Get your ass up in the bushes. That convoy sees you, they gonna take that gas away.’

  The nobleman stepped across the ditch and shouldered into the shrubs without replying. Joe Amos watched his silvery head turn.

  ‘Joe Amos Biggs! You will come this way again, yes? You will visit! I will thank you better.’

  Joe Amos waved. ‘Yeah, man. Marquis. Whatever. Go on.’

  The convoy approached. The Frenchman vanished into the thicket. Joe Amos heard him mewl at the brambles and mud. Joe Amos chuckled, thinking, he’s probably getting all kinds of crap on his pants now.

  The convoy came on, miles long. Embedded deep in the column, maybe the two hundredth vehicle, was a tow truck.

  ~ * ~

  Ben stopped crawling. A whisper jetted out of the dark.

  ‘Halt!’ The voice hissed, plenty of pressure behind it. ‘Who goes there?’ Ben did not see the gun but he knew an M-1 was trained at his shape on the ground.

  He whispered back, ‘Chaplain Kahn. It’s alright, I’m coming up.’

  A metal jangle expressed the re-aiming of the rifle.

  ‘Okay, Chap. Come on.’

  On his belly, Ben skittered across weeds and stones. He found the foxhole after a low pssst from the soldier. He almost butted helmets with the dogface.

  ‘Hey, soldier. Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.’

  ‘Better you’n some Kraut. Come on, there’s room.’

  Ben lowered into the foxhole. The crouching GI hadn’t lied, there was space for two, but barely. Their shoulders and hips touched.

  ‘What’re you doin’ way out here, Chaplain?’

  Ben shrugged, a subtle gesture likely unseen but felt by the dough.

  ‘Not much call for me anywhere else at the moment. Too late for a service. Everybody’s dug in for the attack. I couldn’t sleep. I figured if anybody was awake for a chat, it’d be you boys out here in the listening posts.’

  The soldier rubbed his chin. Ben heard the stubble sizzle. ‘You been in the other holes, too?’

  ‘You’re the last one, Private.’

  ‘You came all the way out here to talk to me.’

  ‘You came all the way out here, didn’t you?’

  The private considered this. Ben could tell little about the man in the dark, hidden up to their necks in the dirt hole, but certainly he had the smell, the bad breath and pits of a foot soldier. The private bore a dark, week-old beard. This marked him as one of the company’s ‘old men,’ a veteran who’d survived more than three days in the bocage. His orders tonight were to hunker in this LP dug fifty yards in front of his platoon. If he heard movement in the orchard ahead, he had a radio to call in fire support. He’d been chosen for this rotten, lonely, scary job in his unit by rotation. Somebody else would do it tomorrow night.

  Ben whispered a few questions. He listened past the soldier’s replies, into the woods and hedges. The enemy waited in the orchards only a hundred yards away. He sensed them with a timeless cringe that did not know a quarter century had passed since the last time he crouched this close to Germans.

  The soldier’s name was Previtera, from Rhode Island. He’d grown up ‘sort of Methodist.’ His father was a plumber. That’s what he’d be, too, when the war ended. Ben admitted he was no good with tools smaller than a pickax or a shovel. He’d grown up around the coal hills of Pennsylvania and the slag heaps of Pittsburgh.

  ‘Yeah? Go Pirates,’ Previtera whispered.

  ‘Go Red Sox.’

  The two sat quiet for minutes. Nothing chirped in the bushes, not crickets or Krauts or the GI battalion to the rear. Thousands of men on both sides kept their peace on this black morn of the fight for the Mahlman Line. Ben did not press more talk on Previtera. Combat soldiers often took comfort simply from Ben’s company, without chatter. The dogfaces seemed to think that talking to the chaplain was talking to God. While glad to have Ben bring God close, they figured it was best to clam up lest they cuss or say anything God might pay them back for. The more bloodshed they experienced, the more reluctant they became, suspecting God might not approve. More and more, when Ben spoke to the frontline boys it was of baseball or hometowns or their girls, common topics to show he was a man like them, and God did not come and go with the chaplain. Ben meant for them to understand that God was already there when he arrived and stayed behind when he went away.

  Ben let Previtera’s shoulder settle against his in the foxhole. Together they listened into the woods and sky. Ben sensed rain for the opening battle.

  Without prodding, Previtera did what soldiers on the verge did. He asked.

  ‘What about the commandments?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Thou shalt not kill. That one.’

  ‘The sixth.’

  ‘Yeah. How do we do this? I mean, holy smokes, man, you know?’

  ‘I know, son.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Previtera fell silent, listening to the darkness. Ben joined him, both held their breaths to listen. There, in the orchard, a voice coughed. The Germans had their own listening posts out, right there, so close the enemies could call to each other. Previtera gazed into the night, not seeing the man he would try to kill tomorrow morning, the man with a cough.

  The GI faced Ben.

  ‘What d’you say, Chap? What’s God got to say?’

  Every man of the cloth had to wrestle with this, or he could not come to war. Most, like Phineas Allenby, accepted the sword ideal, that one may kill the wicked, or those who threatened you or defamed your God. The Bible was a great friend to the man who sought righteous reasons to kill another. Ben had killed many in war, and never once felt right. He felt only victorious. That, he believed, was among his sins.

  ‘You want the Christian answer?’

  ‘Sure. Anything’ll do.’

  ‘Alright. In several places the New Testament talks about centurions, the Roman soldiers, as men of faith. One soldier admitted at the foot of the cross that Jesus was the son of God. Another was the first to be baptized as a
Gentile. Far as I know, the Bible accepts soldiering as an honorable profession.’

  The private snorted. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘I’m a rabbi, Private. That’s all I got for you out of the New Testament.’

  ‘Alright. Tell me something out of the Old Testament. What do you hand the Jewboys?’

  Ben did not flinch at the rough term. A foxhole, hours before an assault, was not the place to preach tolerance. He had to do what he’d promised Billups, find ways to keep these young men fighting.

  ‘It’s just another book, son.’