Beside the lieutenant, the private did the same. Down the trench, soldiers crossed themselves and whispered. Others kept the hands of buddies in theirs and nodded, saying a quiet, ‘Amen.’ Two recited out loud the Shema.
When they were done, every eye turned to Ben.
‘Okay,’ the lieutenant said. ‘That was good. Thanks, Padre.’
The lieutenant took the radio in hand and clapped it to his ear and lips. Every dogface in the platoon clattered at his position, changing to fresh clips, charging chambers, the machine gun and two BARs set their sights up the slope.
‘Lima Zebra, Lima Zebra,’ the lieutenant called into the walkie, ‘this is Lima Bear. We are in possession of target ridge. Do you read? Over.’
Ben stayed with 2nd Platoon through the morning. The morning settled into a humid and dense blanket against the slope. Orders did not come for L Company to move up, they were far enough out front of the rest of 3rd Battalion. With eyes narrowed into the leaves and the choppy, rising ground, trigger fingers tensed, the front line of Tough Ombres rested and sweated.
Ben moved through the platoon. He talked with the doughs about homes, listened to funny remarks about the dirty fellow beside each of them, some habit of snoring or smell; these men were forged into brothers in the days or weeks under fire. Veterans cliqued with each other, trusting only the guy they’d seen in action. Green boys huddled together. A prayer rippled just beneath the surface for many of them; some asked for it from Ben straight-out, others seemed ashamed at the need but asked through their eyes, or silence. One soldier waved Ben off, sullen, eyeing the trees uphill.
‘Everything alright, soldier?’
‘Fine. I got no need, okay?’
‘No need of what?’
The soldier turned his head to Ben. His hands stayed at his weapon.
‘Talking to you means a man’s gone weak. That’s all.’
Ben nodded. ‘Yes, it does.’
The soldier laughed ruefully. He glanced at the dogfaces on either side of him. These other boys knew this sad sack and let the statement go. He was still a brother of the gun to them.
‘The hell does that mean?’ the soldier said.
‘It means we’re all weak, and we’re all seeking strength.’
‘Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you what, I got mine, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Ben patted the soldier’s boot. ‘Good. We’ll all look to you, then.’
Ben slid away to the next dough, but as he did so he heard the young soldier mutter, ‘Keep the fuck away from me, you Jew fuck.’
Ben paused to look back. The boy’s face was turned to the Germans. Ben moved on.
A grizzly corporal manning one of the cumbersome BARs lamented a Dear John letter from his gal back in Waco. She even wanted him to return her photo. Ben told the corporal to wait right there. He slipped down the line, asking dogfaces for pictures of their own gals and wives. He even asked the soldier who’d told him to get away. The boy dug in his tunic without a word and handed a little photo over. Ben returned to the jilted GI with twenty pocket shots of pretty young women. He told the soldier to send all of these back to Waco along with the girl’s picture, and write her that she should pick out her picture and send back the rest, because he couldn’t remember which one she was. The soldier teared up and laughed in the same instant, like rain on a sunny day. The platoon called down to the corporal, ‘Forget her!’ ‘You’re out here bustin’ your hump!’ ‘Good riddance to bad garbage!’
Ben duckwalked along the line, getting thumbs-up and chuckles from the doughs. In two hours he’d spoken with every man in the platoon, cheering and comforting all who let him, except the lieutenant. Now Ben settled next to him.
‘Padre.’
‘Lieutenant. Where you from?’
‘Texas.’
‘What part?’
The officer’s eyes lifted, as though to think of his hometown, suddenly dumb. He made no answer. In another instant, Ben knew why the lieutenant looked skyward.
Beyond the leering branches of the forest, the sound of chariots arriving, neighing horses, screeched downward. The lieutenant filled his lungs.
‘Incoming!!’
Every soldier clapped hands over his pot and burrowed his head as low into his knees as he could get. Rifles were left above the trench when the platoon doubled over at the first explosion.
Ben reacted with the rest, burrowing into the side of the lieutenant. The big officer wrapped himself around Ben, as the concussions slammed invisible fists, pounding the ground in a flurry so close one did not fade before the next landed. Ben snapped shut his eyes and felt the lieutenant quake with every shock.
The bombardment poured through the trees. Once a minute, another, fiercer blow hit the forest with an immense force, a supersonic shrill that could only be an .88 fired from miles back. These rounds turned the woods into a razor-storm of flying splinters, the shards whizzed down into the trench, leaving only a smoking stump.
The barrage lasted for a half hour. Several times Ben began to crawl away from the lieutenant to check on the men, but the burly officer clamped his hold on Ben and shook his head. Ben knew there was little he could do, he had no medical supplies with him, and the lieutenant was right to hold him back. Still, he chafed; through the roar of guns and ringing ears, the calls of pain were his summons.
When the final shell exploded, the men roused, unfolding from each other and the depths of the trench. The lieutenant again reacted the quickest. This time Ben moved at his pace. He knew the Germans did not simply fling artillery willy-nilly. They always had a reason. Ben and the lieutenant were of like mind; they peered up the slope through the wafting smoke, expecting to see the first wave of a counterattack. The lieutenant grabbed his rifle, bellowing down the line, ‘Man your weapons, get on ‘em! Let’s go!’
Uphill, the forest and ripped-up earth stayed quiet except for the crackling of embers in blasted trees and earth settling in new craters. The platoon nervously fingered triggers. Nerves boiled in the trench. Ben slid behind the lieutenant to move down the line.
None of the dogfaces was seriously injured. Many had cuts and gashes from the spikes of erupting trees. The trench bottom looked like the floor of a saw mill, with wood chips everywhere. A current of jumpy laughter flowed along the platoon, the men believed they’d dodged another bit of bad luck. Ben kept his doubts to himself while he again played the smiling mascot, the running rabbi.
Finishing his rounds, he settled next to the lieutenant. The officer kept eyes on his binoculars, peering uphill, looking for signs that the Krauts had made some move.
‘Where were we?’ the lieutenant asked, still glassing the slope.
‘Texas. What part?’
‘Dallas.’
Ben had never been to Texas. He knew only that Dallas was a city that grew where two cattle trails crossed in the middle of an empty plain. He liked the thought of this, a wide-open place, not the steel confines of Pittsburgh, the tunnels of old Penn coal mines, and the wintry hollows of eastern valleys. He was about to say this when the sound of a bee zapped past his ear and plastered the lieutenant against the trench wall. A dot opened in the man’s back, his coat ripped neatly in a red buttonhole. The lieutenant pivoted even as he slumped from the bullet.
‘Goddammit!’ he growled.
‘Medic!’ Ben shouted. ‘Medic, down here! The lieutenant!’
The officer was winded, the bullet likely pierced a lung. He grabbed at Ben’s coat and gasped.
‘Padre...’
‘Medic!’ Ben hollered again.
‘Padre... downhill...’
The medic scrambled along the line. Men tightened against the wall to let him pass. He skidded to his knees on the trench floor. Ben said only, ‘Sniper.’ The medic nodded and got to work. Ben lifted the lieutenant’s dropped binoculars and backed out of the way. The medic hauled off the lieutenant’s coat, then rolled the man to his chest, tugging up his shirttail to view the wound. Ben set himself against the downhi
ll wall of the trench and slowly lifted the field glasses, keeping low.
For a moment he saw nothing, thinking only that a sniper had been overlooked in the advance up the hill. The shooter was likely camouflaged, hanging in a tree. He’d taken a shot at the GI with the binoculars, marking that one to be the unit’s officer. Ben intended only to glance for a few seconds downhill, he did not want to draw the sniper’s attention. What he saw made him scream.
‘They’re behind us!’
On the floor of the trench, the lieutenant grunted his pain and dismay. A sergeant almost rammed Ben scrambling to his side, grabbing the binoculars. Ben pointed to where he’d seen the gray-suited Germans hustling up the hill, carrying a machine gun and belts of ammo. In a moment the sergeant saw them. He shouted orders to turn half the platoon’s guns downhill.
The medic had needed only that minute to wrap the lieutenant’s wound, swaddling the officer’s torso in gauze. The bullet in his back did not keep him from hoisting himself to a sitting position against the trench.
‘Radio. Ahh... damn, get me Lima Zebra.’
The radioman got on the hand-talkie and located Captain Whitcomb. He gave the radio to the lieutenant.
‘Zebra, this is Bear. I’ve got Krauts downhill from my position. Over.’
He listened, eyes closed.
‘Yes, I’m hit. I’ll be okay. Over.’
The sergeant knelt close. The wounded lieutenant sensed his arrival and blinked up at him.
‘Roger. Will do. Out.’
The lieutenant handed off the radio.
‘Okay,’ he said. Ben could tell the man was marshaling his strength.
‘Here’s the skinny. The Krauts moved up under the bombardment. They’ve taken positions downhill from us. They’ve cut the trail. They’re behind 1st and 3rd Battalions.’
The sergeant leaned in closer, seeming to fold, not understanding. The radioman and the medic got the message faster. Their faces fell. They collapsed side by side against the trench wall.
The lieutenant held a shaky hand out to Ben.
‘Hope you don’t mind sticking around, Padre.’
‘Nope.’
‘Good. ‘Cause we’re surrounded.’
The sergeant had little patience for his lieutenant’s brave pose. His tone bore an edge.
‘So what are we gonna do, Lieutenant?’
Even sitting still against the wall, the bullet must have twisted in the lieutenant’s back like a dirk. Every word emerged gritted.
‘Captain Whitcomb says to hold the ridge.’
The sergeant spat. ‘That’s smart. Where the fuck else are we gonna go?’
‘Tell the men to hold fire unless fired on. We got to wait this one out, Sarge. I want discipline till the cavalry gets here. Everybody stays low till we get that sniper.’
‘Is the cavalry comin’, sir?’
‘Yeah. Just stay calm. We’ll get through this.’
Ben had spoken with this sergeant. He was older than the lieutenant, maybe twenty-six or -seven. He came from a small Kansas town. His family owned a bakery. His sister was a nurse. It was her picture he’d given up for the jilted GI from Waco.
Ben laid a hand to his wrist. ‘You remember how hard it was to get up on this ledge? Now we’ll see if the Krauts can do it. I don’t think they can.’
The sergeant smiled and looked away. ‘Yeah.’ He turned down the trench to issue the lieutenant’s orders to the other two sergeants in the platoon, then to the men.
The lieutenant struggled to move his right hand to his hip. With effort, he unholstered his .45. ‘Whitcomb says I should give you this. I won’t be using it.’
Ben let the pistol hover for a moment, until he saw how much pain it caused the lieutenant to offer. He took the gun.
‘Don’t say nothin’, Padre. I can see it on your face, you got something to tell me and honest to God I don’t have the strength to listen. Just shoot whatever sumbitch gets into this trench. Now go on. I won’t need you for a while yet.’
Ben’s fingers closed around the heft of the weapon. This good young Texan was being taken from the world one crimson drop at a time. That was enough reason for Ben to seize this gun, to work a trade for a German should he get the chance. He had that, and so many more reasons, he had the letter in his pocket and a hole in his soul. Holding the gun it seemed he had nothing else in the world. The reasons crowded into his hand for the feel of the pistol. The Germans were on all sides of them. The battalion would need every man, Captain Whitcomb had sent that message.
Ben slipped the pistol back into the lieutenant’s holster. He moved without a word, sparing the hurting officer his reasons and arguments.
‘We’ll get out of this,’ Ben said, his voice gentle.
He sat with the lieutenant until their own artillery barrage broke downhill over the Germans’ heads. The sound of American shelling lacked the crystal crack of the Kraut .88s, but came with typical Yank power, concentrated, relentless, and indiscriminate. Some of the rounds lobbed long and exploded close to the platoon’s ledge and the trench. The dogfaces cursed, nailing themselves into the floor of the furrow. The few trees left standing after the German fusillade ten minutes earlier were blasted now to sawdust and blades, the sniper was surely gone with them. The bombardment lasted just ten minutes and denuded the slope below the platoon and all of 1st Battalion. Ben crossed his legs to lay the lieutenant’s head in his lap, then folded himself over the man. Listening to the lieutenant’s heartbeat, he prayed to the heart, and to the God that made it beat, for the cavalry.
~ * ~
The Germans made their move at sundown.
Enemy mortars and artillery sowed fire across the north slope of Mont Castre. Ben and the trapped platoon crumpled again on the bottom of the trench. Ben clamped his hands over his helmet and felt the shivering shoulders of boys pressed against him. He knew the Krauts were moving up under the barrage. There was nothing anyone could do to stop them. You couldn’t even watch them come. Fragments would have instantly shaved off any head lifted above the trench.
The shelling lasted only five minutes. No one was hurt in the platoon. The instant the rounds slowed, all three sergeants bellowed for their squads to man their rifles. The machine-gun crew hoisted their heavy gun to the lip of the trench and set it on its tripod, aimed uphill. Ammo belts were slung around necks for loading. Both BARs faced down the hill. Ben lifted his head to peer above the trench, turning first up the slope, then down. The bullet splash that sent him ducking came from one direction or the other, he didn’t know. He dropped to all fours, and the firing began.
The platoon blasted in every direction, ignoring the lieutenant’s order to conserve ammo. Ben crawled past boots and bended knees to reach the lieutenant at the end of the line. When he got there the man lay on his side, his legs splayed into the trench. His cheek touched the dirt and Ben knew he was dead. There’d been nothing the medic could do all afternoon but change his wrapping and keep him dim on morphine. Ben slid beside the officer whose name he never knew, even after the day’s long hours in the trench waiting. The worried men, even the medic, referred to him only as ‘the lieutenant.’ Ben guessed he was a shavetail and that most of the platoon didn’t recall his name, either. He arranged the body to lie in a straighter, more dignified manner. The man’s wound was not so bad that he should have died from it, he could have been evacuated down the trail hours ago and saved, but the Krauts had closed the path with their counter-assault.
Ben sat beside the body, looking down the length of the trench. The doughs fired and fought in two directions. Ben watched the first soldier take a hit, in the neck. The boy fell against the legs of the dough behind him firing uphill. He checked his wound with the flat of his palm. He looked at the blood on his hand, found himself only nicked, and roared something Ben could not hear. The dough took up his rifle, slammed himself against the trench wall again, and returned fire, yelling as the blood trickled along his neck, fearsome-looking and young, not fighting anym
ore for apple pie or France or anyone’s freedom but his own vengeance and his own life. The medic slid behind the dough, tugged at his coattail for attention, and received a backhanded swat to get away.
Before full night fell, five men in the platoon were wounded and two more were killed. One of the sergeants had bullets in both shoulders. When the medic was done wrapping him the sarge looked like a football player on a white-clad team. One dying GI, a Protestant, passed quietly, giving Ben instructions for his mom and dad, accepting Ben’s prayer to open heaven’s gates. The other died madly, clutching and unbelieving. Ben could not hold this boy to comfort him; instead, he pinned him down while the medic dug into his pack for morphine. The boy died with fists on Ben’s coat that did not release until the medic pried them off. The medic and Ben dragged both bodies to the end of the trench, where they were laid beside the lieutenant and Ben mumbled final words.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 22