At one point in the pitched fighting a few downhill Krauts climbed close enough to lob grenades into the trench. Each was flung back in time: One exploded in the air only a second outside the trench. The doughs fired and fired. Ben eyed the pistol still in the dead lieutenant’s hip holster. What would he do if the Krauts reached the trench and poured in? Would he grab the gun and shoot, dying in defense of his country and his life, spilling more blood, defying God at the last? Ben did not know. He sat sweating by the lieutenant, afraid and unarmed, still obedient. When the Germans backed down and the sergeants stopped the platoon’s triggers with shouts of ‘Save it, save it!’ Ben exhaled. He hung his head to calm himself, to push away the old soldier in him and restore the rabbi.
He peeked above the lip of the wall to see German bodies buckled beside smoking tree stumps. Some were wounded and crawling back down the hill. These broken ones drew fire from the platoon. Ben commanded the shooting stop. The call to war did not include killing the already maimed. The platoon let them go. The sight of bleeding, slinking men pulled dusk down on them all very slowly.
The forest grew too dark to see into. The shooting slowed. The face of Mont Castre slipped into night, an eerie, jagged ghost of a hill. Both remaining sergeants moved along the line, checking ammo, telling the dogfaces to save their rounds, water, and rations, this might be a long haul. Ben followed the radioman to one of the sergeants, the Kansan. The private held out the walkie-talkie.
‘Cap’n Whitcomb’s on the horn, Sarge.’
The sergeant took the radio.
‘Sir, this is Sergeant Pullin.... He’s dead, sir.... Yes, sir, I am.... Five wounded, three dead, with the lieutenant... Pretty low, we took a lot of incoming, it’s been hot here, sir.... Yes, sir... I’ll make sure... Sir?... Help’s comin, ain’t it?... Alright. Out.’
Pullin handed off the talkie. The private scooted away a few paces but held his place near the sergeant, the new 2nd Platoon leader.
‘How you fixed for batteries?’
‘Got one more, Sarge.’
‘Damn it. Doc?’
The medic scampered up.
‘How’re the wounded?’
‘One of ‘em ain’t gonna be alive tomorrow morning we don’t get him off this hill. The other four’ll likely make it.’
‘Can any of them fight?’
‘Maybe two.’
‘Alright. Keep on it.’
The medic peeled away to his labors. Sergeant Pullin knee-walked across the trench to Ben.
‘Chaplain.’ He kept his voice low.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not gonna tell the men this. Okay?’
‘Alright.’
‘The cavalry don’t look like they’re comin’ for a while.’
Ben said nothing.
‘Maybe tomorrow, Captain Whitcomb says. They’re trying to find a battalion that can disengage and get through to us. For right now the Krauts have sunk their teeth into every unit we got around Mont Castre and Beau Coudray. It looks like 1st and 3rd Battalions are gonna spend the night right where we are. We got us a situation here.’
‘I understand.’
‘Good. I figure you do. Chap, I need your help with this one, ‘cause I ain’t no officer. The men got to stay frosty. No more trigger-happy fighting. No guzzlin’ canteens. Everybody stays awake on the line. We’re gonna take more attacks and we’re gonna lose more men. We’re gonna run out of food, medicine, and probably the radio and water. If we run out of ammo, that’s my fault. If we run out of spirit, I’m gonna blame you.’
The sergeant did not smile. Ben grinned at the Kansan. This baker’s boy had been heated into a leader. His folks would be proud of what they had made, the doughboy, the son.
Ben unbuttoned his breast pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes given him by General Billups. He shook a coffin nail out for Sergeant Pullin.
The sergeant took the cigarette. Staying low, he flicked his Zippo.
Pullin said, ‘You know, I can’t tell if you’re good luck or bad, Chaplain.’
Ben did not put the cigarettes away. He would ease down the line and hand them out, telling the men to stay low and share the smokes.
‘I’m hoping good.’
‘Yeah. Me, too.’
Before the sergeant could pocket his lighter, a crackle pierced the shattered woods out of the night, from the German positions uphill.
‘Amerikaners...’
‘Aw, Christ,’ the sergeant muttered, shaking his head. Now the man broke a smile. ‘I change my mind. I’m thinking you’re bad luck.’
‘Amerikaners,’ a loudspeaker blared. The voice behind it arched high, made tinny and almost girly by the little machine in the dark.
‘You are surrounded. You must surrender. We will treat you according to the Geneva Convention. There is no need to die. Surrender. You have our word, we will…’
No one in the platoon made a sound. The Kraut’s English was serrated and ugly. The GIs with their chins and rifles on the lip of the trench stared into the black scars of the woods. Dodging and returning bullets with the enemy was one thing, that was battle; this was another, equally harsh fight, not for blood but for the will. The platoon had no ammunition of that kind to fire back. They began to fidget and mumble.
Beside Ben and the sergeant, the private lugging the walkie-talkie scooted close. He held out the radio.
‘Cap’n Whitcomb for the chaplain.’
The sergeant raised an eyebrow. Ben took the radio.
‘Chaplain Kahn here.’
The German loudspeaker kept whining across the trench, across all the positions of 1st and 3rd Battalions on Mont Castre.
Whitcomb’s voice asked, ‘Hey, Chap. That Yiddish you speak. You talk Kraut, too?’
‘Ja.’
‘Good. Tell him to go fuck himself, pardon my French.’
‘Serious?’
‘I got permission from Regiment. You’re our man.’
Ben handed off the radio. He stood to his full height, rising above the trench, standing for the first time in fifteen hours.
He pocketed the cigarettes, sliding them in front of the letter from Thomas. He cupped his hands over his mouth and bellowed.
‘Deutsche!’
The loudspeaker snapped silent.
‘Deutsche! Die armee die Vereinigte Staaten erklart ihnen, sich humsen zu gehen!’
Ben listened to his echoes fly over the Germans in the dark. He hoped his insult slapped every one of them, the more thousands the better, He was sorry the lieutenant and Thomas did not hear him. But other sons, thousands, did.
The platoon stirred. Across the slope, hunkered-down dogfaces cheered.
‘What’d he say?’ the GIs muttered. ‘What was that? You hear that, the Chap speaks Kraut! What’d he say?’
Ben ducked below the trench wall. Sitting again, he spoke clearly down the length of the trench.
‘Boys, I told the Krauts to go fuck themselves. I told them I was a Jew and to come fucking get me.’
The three dozen living doughs of the platoon chuckled, and as one they set themselves to their guns aimed up or down into the night.
Sergeant Pullin patted Ben’s shoulder. The cigarette limned his face red and hellish. He looked into the ruins of the forest.
‘You’re sure enough bad luck, Chap. I’m just hopin’ it’s for the Krauts and not us.’
~ * ~
The MPs were a lazy-looking bunch. Not one of the four pulled their boots down from desks when Joe Amos inquired where John Bailey was kept. One hooked a thumb toward a door. Joe Amos glanced to the ceiling where a big sheet of plyboard had been nailed over a shell hole in the roof. Even swept and re-bricked, one month after almost being knocked over, this squat building in Isigny kept the ferrous smell of a jail.
Joe Amos passed into a narrow, unscrubbed hall. Black-barred cages lined both sides. An optical illusion worked here, the passage seemed longer and taller than it could have been. Just walking past two and three cells m
ade Joe Amos self-conscious. Men looked out at him from unsheeted cots, through rusty rods and wafts of body odor and slop buckets. Every one of them beamed his story in his eyes, stories of anger, alcohol, stupidity. Joe Amos counted eight cells on each side. Out of sixteen prisoners, seven were colored. Joe Amos did not wonder how that could be, in an army made up of ten percent black men. Even in France, this was an American jail.
A few of the prisoners, black and white, called to him.
Hey, man, what’s up? What’s the news? Who’s this now?’ The others just stared at him as he walking past.
Joe Amos found Boogie John in the last cage. Boogie lay on his cot, arms crossed over his face to hide from the bare bulbs in the hall. The smell from Boogie’s cell was no nicer than the others. A metal bucket stood in the corner, covered by a towel.
‘Hey, Boog.’
The big man dropped his arms and sat up. Joe Amos rejoiced the moment Boogie stood and came to the bars. The hard faces he’d seen walking through the cells had made him afraid that Boog would be bitter and harmed like these locked-up others. Boogie John smiled and his vast face was shaven, his eyes were untrammeled, and his laugh was giant.
‘Brother, brother, brother,’ Boogie said, opening his arms wide. ‘College done come to see his old partner. Gimme some sugar, my man.’
The two men hugged around the bars. Boogie’s clothes were rank. Joe Amos squeezed his face between two peeling rods, and the inch his face entered Boogie’s cell made him restive, to be inside even such a little bit.
Boogie backed off but kept his bearish hands on Joe Amos’s biceps. ‘What’s that I feel?’
He peeled back his hands.
‘Three stripes. My, my, my, you must be playing the man’s game really good, College. Look at you. Gettin’ all high cotton.’
Joe Amos felt the tinge of rebuke in Boogie’s tone. He said nothing, tumbling back into his place beside Boogie John, playing the quiet, naive, book-smart one.
Boogie indicated a stool in the hall. ‘Grab that. Stay awhile. Catch me up.’
Joe Amos walked to the stool and lifted it. The white man inside the bars there growled, ‘That’s mine, boy.’
Joe Amos backed away with the stool. Boogie shouted from his cell, ‘Shut your mouth, you cracker piece of shit. You’re talking to a sergeant.’
Up and down the metallic hall, cages burbled. Other springs squealed, other voices joined in, ‘Yeah, man,’ or muttered ‘Jungle bunny ...’ Up and down the hall, knuckles wrapped around bars. Joe Amos wished he’d been the one to bark at the cracker. He should have, he made up his mind that next time he would. He set the stool in front of Boogie’s cell. Boogie took the corner of his bed, squeaking the cheap springs.
‘You’re lookin’ good.’ Joe Amos started slowly.
‘Smell like hell.’ Boogie laughed. ‘I look better’n you, anyways.’
Joe Amos rubbed his chin, stubbled. ‘Yeah, they got us goin’ day and night. I ought to be asleep right now, only got five hours off. I got another run after midnight.’
‘That’s the only good thing about bein’ in here with these assholes, I get to goldbrick and catch up on sleep. What’s going on?’
‘We’re hauling mostly three directions. Back and forth to Cherbourg trying to get the port open up there. Down toward St. Lô where there’s some big fighting goin’ on. And over south of Ste. Mère-Église they’re trying to take some kind of mountain the Krauts are hanging on to. Everything’s still all cramped up across Normandy, same as before. Damn bocage is everywhere. Ground’s coming real slow. But I hear the breakout is on the way soon.’
‘Still pickin’ everything up off the beach?’
‘Yeah. Man, that big storm beat the hell out of everything. You shoulda seen the mess at OMAHA, there were ships and pieces of the harbor busted up all over the place.’
‘You seen some fightin’?’
Joe Amos shook his head. ‘Boog, man, I seen some shit. Not a day goes by I don’t wash out the back of my truck.’
Joe Amos expected Boogie to use this against him, to gig him once more about his desire to fight, to remind him of the dangers and cost, and to tell Joe Amos again how the white folks are welcome to their war because they’ll end up keeping all the spoils. But Boogie John just nodded over the undescribed red images of the bed of Joe Amos’s truck. Joe Amos knew his friend was a hell-raiser and hard to govern, but Boogie loved life, and that was why he was always in trouble in the Army.
‘Well, I figured you was busy, since you’re just now comin’ to see me.’
‘Sorry, Boog.’
‘It’s alright. You’re here, and I’m halfway done. They gave me forty-five days. Besides, I been wonderin’. Why ain’t you in here? You were in that fight, too.’
Joe Amos shrugged, glad to make light again. ‘Major Clay thinks you’re the troublemaker. Not me.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I heard all about you and Major Clay. I see you got the stripe I told him to give you. And I see that third one. He give you that ‘cause you shot down a Jabo, or ‘cause you shut your mouth after doin’ it?’
Boogie smiled big as ever when he asked this. Boogie already knew the answer. He’d warned Joe Amos three weeks ago. No matter what you do, they ain’t gonna call you a hero.
‘Don’t matter,’ he continued. ‘Those stripes look good on you, College. Try to keep ‘em.’
Joe Amos chuckled, relieved that Boogie meant no scold. Sergeant ain’t enough, he thought, I’ll have to make general before I stop listening to this big son of a bitch.
‘You’re stuck in here for three more weeks,’ he said. ‘I figure I’ll be able to keep them about that long.’
Boogie stood. He advanced to the bars. ‘I’ll get you into somethin’ else.’
‘I reckon. See you, Boog.’
‘See you, College. Thanks for the visit. Get some sleep.’
Joe Amos stepped away, then stopped. He came back to the bars.
‘Oh, hey, I forgot to tell you. 1 think I met a girl.’
‘Oh, man! I’m stuck in here and you’re getting laid. Man, that is not right! Who is she?’
Joe Amos told Boogie about the broken universal joint, the thieving Marquis and his daughter, the latrine and the German POWs, the big house down in Couvains, the dinner, the secret look.
Boogie guffawed, enjoying Joe Amos’s escapade. ‘Well, that’s why I ain’t gettin’ no visits. Little brother is gettin’ seriously busy.’
Joe Amos spanked the bars in laughter. ‘Man, shut up.’
Behind the steel rods, Boogie brought his face close. He lowered his voice.
‘College, for real. You think this is a good idea? How often you gonna get to see the girl?’
‘Hell, I don’t know. Whenever I get the chance, I reckon.’
‘It’s soundin’ awful busy out there. How often you gonna get the chance?’
‘Can’t say. I like her, though.’
Boogie cocked his head, in that troublemaking way of his. ‘You got a truck outside? You still got a couple hours off?’
Joe Amos laughed, backing away from the bars. He waved goodbye. ‘Always trying to get me into hot water.’
‘Ain’t nobody gonna miss you. No one ‘cept me, and I’m stuck in here.’
‘I’ll see you.’
‘Shit, College, the rate you goin’, you be in the next cell by morning.’
Boogie called after him. ‘Better yet, you go shoot down another Kraut. Major Clay’ll make you a captain next time. Then you might have a chance with that gal.’
Joe Amos strode away from Boogie’s catcalls. The rest of the cells held men watching him. The hall seemed just as long going the other direction.
‘Hey, nigger.’
Joe Amos stopped in front of the cell of the prisoner who said this, the white fellow whose stool Joe Amos had taken.
‘What?’ he asked, inviting it.
‘You keep your darkie hands offa white girls. You don’t touch ‘em back home. You don’t to
uch ‘em here. You got that, boy?’
Joe Amos nodded. The rows of cells had gone quiet. Joe Amos walked back to Boogie’s cell. He picked up the stool. Lifting it over his head, he hurled it against the bars of the cracker prisoner’s cell. The legs broke off and flew into the cage. The stench of the prisoner wafted out when he ducked away.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 23