David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  I got to go now. But when this is all over, we’ll sit and talk about our wars. I bet when it’s all said and done, they won’t have been too different, either. Everything else is fine. Don’t worry.

  Thomas

  Ben folded the page. In his own voice he’d heard his son’s, another fooling thing to make Thomas alive for one more minute. The boy retreated with the letter into Ben’s pocket.

  Phineas said, ‘He sounds like a handful.’

  Ben released a rueful chuckle.

  Phineas spun his helmet in his hands. ‘A prosecutor cannot become a defender.’

  ‘No,’ Ben said.

  ‘You’re afraid God took him because of the blood staining your hands.’

  ‘Yes, Phineas. I am; And maybe the blood on his, too.’

  ‘Like he said, you’re a lot alike. Except for one big difference.’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘Sounds to me,’ Phineas said, ‘like Thomas was a little quicker than you in regretting the blood on his hands.’

  ‘Ours isn’t a Christian God, Phineas. He doesn’t ask us for regret. He asks for obedience.’

  Phineas nodded, calculating.

  ‘So that’s why you’ve come back, isn’t it? You’ve found a loophole. You’ve lost your wife and probably your son. You’re angry. You can’t fight anymore, or you’ll lose God, too. But others can fight for you.’

  ‘Yes, they can.’

  Phineas held out his own pink palm, accusing Ben with a hand unbloodied in war.

  Phineas said, ‘You came back for revenge.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘On the Germans.’

  ‘I can’t take it on God.’

  Phineas stood from the stool. Even scorning, Phineas Allenby would not sacrifice compassion.

  ‘You came back to war as a man of God. But you’re not.’

  Ben stood also. He clapped his helmet on his head, ending the session with Phineas and his barefoot stay in the aid station.

  ‘God wanted my son dead. I don’t know if He succeeded or not. But I’m here to find out. Me, I want Germans dead. My reasons are as good as God’s. He won’t abandon me for that.’

  Ben pointed at Phineas’s hip, to the bulge of his pistol holster.

  ‘That’s the great thing about God, Phineas. He’s no hypocrite.’

  Alone, Ben headed out of the tent. The day was blue and clean, the last smoke of the battle coiled at a distance, rising from the far side of Mont Castre. Ben paused and gazed up, hoping for a clear night, an English night, to look at the stars.

  ~ * ~

  D+43

  July 19

  Lieutenant Garner propped a foot on the Jimmy’s bumper. Exhaling smoke, he set about answering Joe Amos’s question: When’s the breakout coming?

  Yesterday, Garner explained, pointing the cigarette south, the 29th Division rolled into St. Lô like a cavalry charge and the Germans finally retreated.

  Once St. Lô fell into the GIs’ hands, those hands had to be cupped to keep it from sifting through. The entire town, a thousand years old, was beat to rubbish and remains. Little was left standing, barely more than the tower of a church, some chimneys. This was the worst devastation so far of any liberation in France. From his drivers, Garner heard reports of entering 29ers dazed by what they had done.

  Over on the western side of the American bridgehead, Mont Castre was captured and the Krauts evicted from their best observation point. The 90th and 8th Divisions were rearming and refilling their depleted ranks, especially the Tough Ombres, who’d fought through the worst of it, over the top of the hill and down the back side. Garner’s trucks had ferried over a thousand replacements to the 90th.

  This morning, on all fronts, the American war in Normandy rested.

  Garner ground out the cigarette. Joe Amos extended another.

  The lieutenant waved away the offer. ‘Something big is shaping up,’ Garner said, getting to the point. ‘I think the breakout’s right around the corner.’

  The officer took a swig from his canteen. He’d been standing in the sun talking with Joe Amos for a half hour now, in the late morning. Garner, although he hailed from the Deep South, spent a lot of time in the shade. He had that bald head to protect.

  Joe Amos asked, ‘Where you think it’s gonna happen?’

  Garner looked south again, squinting, pretending he could see the landscape beyond the hedges.

  ‘Don’t know. They pushed awful hard for St. Lô. The breakout’s gonna be near there, I reckon.’

  Breakout. The word was magic. Joe Amos envisioned his trucks, cramped for so long, sprung free across the rest of France. Jimmies and tractors like a vast green swarm powering over the countryside. They’d spread America and freedom into every corner, the way light in a kitchen runs off roaches. Breakout. Then lookout, Germany.

  ‘Even so,’ Garner said, still squinting into the distance, ‘we’re a ways from being out of these hedgerows.’

  Joe Amos was eager to see the land beyond the bocage. He figured it was long, easy plains, green fields, vineyards. He’d arrived in France wanting to see all of it, run down every road, capture it and take it home in his memory. The desire for rolling down new highways, past new-named towns, really began to percolate when Lieutenant Garner walked up this morning and told Joe Amos the good news from the fronts, and that his company had a day to rest and repair. It was their first day off in eight days of solid wheeling.

  Garner spat in the grass. Perhaps this was the way in Louisiana they ended conversations, Joe Amos didn’t know. The lieutenant mopped his brow.

  ‘Make sure your truck here gets some lookin’ after. That’s what the day’s for, alright? Then pick up some cable at OMAHA and take it down to St. Lô. Go ahead. Major Clay don’t mind. Be back by dawn. Then we go again.’

  The lieutenant nodded into Joe Amos’s eyes like a man laying down a dollar to pay an old debt, with a there you go wink. He sauntered over the grass to find shade.

  ~ * ~

  Joe Amos painted the last strokes, daubing black dots on a pair of white dice, a one and a six. Beneath this roll of seven, the name Lucky dried, a florid white script on his driver-side fender.

  He set the brush in a jar of turpentine. McGee stood on the bumper, folded over the grille, bare torso across the engine block. His dark back gleamed like rain on coal. Both of McGee’s arms were swallowed in the engine compartment. The sounds of a tool and a bolt fiddled up from the guts of the Jimmy.

  ‘Jus’ about done,’ McGee said, sensing Joe Amos watching. Joe Amos walked to the rear, inspecting his good tires, the welded patch on the muffler, and the new springs on his axles. Lucky was the best-maintained deuce-and-a-half in the 688th, because McGee was the top mechanic among the drivers. McGee said some of the men were even calling Joe Amos by a nickname, Sergeant Lucky. Joe Amos stuck a finger into one of the bullet holes in his truck bed, liking the sound of that.

  McGee climbed off the grille. Grease coated his palms. He made a show of closing the hood with his elbows. No other trucks in the battalion, parked all around the bivouac this noon hour, had their crews attending to them, and only a few waited in line at the maintenance depot. Most A the Jimmies looked exhausted after a month and a half on the ruined roads of Normandy. The colored drivers, too, began to take on a gamey shell. They didn’t shave or shower in these rare rest periods, maintaining themselves as badly as their trucks. They seemed to take pride in grinding their Jimmies down to wheezing engines and bubbling rubber. The drivers let this happen to their bodies, as well, growing rough and bleary. They wanted their deterioration to show for the white soldiers coming and going to the front. The colored men weren’t earning stripes and medals like the whites, so they put on display the wear and tear of their own war.

  Not Joe Amos. He kept himself, Lucky, and McGee running and looking sharp. The .50 cal in the bed had extra ammo belts slung visibly over the ring. He made McGee shave regularly and clip his nails to keep the grease from building un
der them. Two days ago, Joe Amos washed his and McGee’s uniforms in the rain and dried them on Lucky’s hot manifold. The winning dice painted on the Jimmy’s fender was a nice touch, he thought. It’ll look good running over France, maybe right into Paris.

  He tossed McGee a turpentine rag. ‘How we doin’?’

  ‘New plugs, points, cap, and rotor. I peeked at the starter, some rust on the brushes but they good now. Oil’s black but I get that later.’

  ‘Take a shower. I’ll see you at mess.’

  McGee swung his OD and tunic over his shoulder. He dug into the cab for his kit and ambled for the showers, trailing a short shadow in the midday sun. He turned.

  ‘Look, if he’s gon’ make me do the yard or somethin’, I’d just as soon take a shower later. Don’t make sense, get all clean and have to work.’

  Joe Amos waved the boy on to the showers. ‘It’s alright.’

  McGee batted the air. He walked off.

  No one was going to be cutting grass anymore for the Marquis.

  ~ * ~

  Joe Amos jumped from the cab to the hard sand of OMAHA. By now so many bulldozers and tracked vehicles had plied this beach, the sand was solid as tarmac, and smoother than most of the roads in Normandy.

  OMAHA teemed. Landing craft bellied through the surf disgorging trucks and tanks, and men on foot wet from the knees down. The only remaining marks of the great storm were red buoys out in the water marking wrecks as shoals and some concrete pontoons washed to the sand that had not been hauled away.

  Joe Amos walked off from Lucky, leaving McGee at the wheel. He wanted the boy to drive today. The 29ers were a division made entirely of Virginians and Marylanders. They’d fought through the worst of the invasion landings and some of the ugliest swamps and thickets of the bocage, to reach St. Lô, a city they blew to hell. They were known among the Negro drivers as a tough-tongued bunch. Joe Amos figured he’d keep McGee in the cab and keep his day rolling without problem.

  He searched through the rambling vehicles, engineers, and arriving troops. Dodging rolling Jimmies, he gave the colored boys driving a thumbs-up. He found the man he was looking for, a Quartermaster sergeant, standing beside an acre of gasoline jerricans. The man held a clipboard and pointed at the jerricans, counting them. He stubbed his hand at the cans three, four times, then recorded something on a sheet.

  ‘Speedy,’ Joe Amos called, approaching.

  ‘Lucky man!’

  The top of Speedy Clapp’s head did not rise to Joe Amos’s chin. From Queens, he seemed to be the shortest man in the Army, called Speedy because he was no bigger than a jockey. He complained that somebody at the Draft Board hated him. Speedy made everything look big. The clipboard he waved at Joe Amos appeared to be a barn door, the rows of jerricans looked like a pasture in the middle of the beach. Joe Amos laughed to hear Speedy call him by his new nickname.

  ‘What can I do to you, my friend?’ Speedy put out a mitt, Joe Amos took it.

  ‘How many jerricans you got here, Speedy?’

  ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue. What’s it look like to you?’

  ‘A hundred thousand.’

  ‘Funny. I wrote down one-fifty. Who fucking knows? What ya need?’

  ‘A couple spools of cable.’

  ‘Over there. For who?’

  ‘The 29th.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, my favorites. Half the ammo comes across this beach gets fired by those bastards. Trigger-happy bunch. What else?’

  Joe Amos dug a fresh pack of cigarettes from his tunic. He was already halfway through the carton he’d skimmed off Major Clay.

  ‘Think you can let me have a couple of jerries?’

  Speedy examined the Chesterfields. He pressed the pack to his nose and inhaled. Speedy was a known connoisseur of barter. Joe Amos was getting a taste for this, toss a guy some smokes and walk off with whatever you want.

  ‘Sure, sure. Take two.’ Speedy grinned. ‘Lemme mark ‘em off on my chart here.’ The Quartermaster sergeant pretended to write something. ‘There you go. All accounted for. Pleasure doin’ business.’

  Joe Amos bopped Speedy in the shoulder. ‘See you around.’

  Speedy hid the cigarettes in his trousers.

  He said, ‘Oh, yeah. I think so.’

  Joe Amos grabbed a jerrican in each hand and tottered across the beach to McGee and Lucky. No one paid him any mind, the beach swelled with soldiers carrying stuff, full of colored boys, too. So much materiel flowed ashore and spewed out of LCs every minute that the height of the Army’s record keeping was Speedy Clapp’s make-believe accounting. Again, magic. You want it, you got it, no one’s hurt and no one’s the wiser.

  Joe Amos hefted the jerricans into the bed. He climbed in the cab and pointed McGee to the storage area for the wire spools, high on the sand below the steep dunes. Another soldier waved the Jimmy to a stop and asked what they needed. The man did not even have the pretense of a clipboard, he just shouted, ‘Sure thing, boys,’ and padded away like a walking teddy bear. Joe Amos figured this one had his fingers into the chocolate rations. Everybody was taking a piece for themselves.

  Five minutes later the cable spools were lifted by crane to Lucky’s bed. McGee tapped on the steering wheel, anxious, looking at the glove compartment where the rest of the Chesterfields were stowed. Joe Amos did not let him have any more. He saw a greater value for the smokes than letting McGee hack away at them.

  The afternoon road to St. Lô was choked. Now that the fighting had slowed, every division in the field was refitting and reloading. Just looking at the traffic, Joe Amos saw what Garner had alluded to, the coming breakout. Everywhere, on the main arteries and the side roads, in fields and blasted orchards, over dirt paths leading into the bocage, the beachhead seemed to be swelling, almost inhaling, before jumping off into the free spaces of France. Guilt again nagged in Joe Amos’s breast, that he should be gallivanting off on his own today, hauling just a few spools of wire to make it look like he was busy. McGee was oblivious, along for the ride.

  Awe replaced the guilt, though, when Joe Amos saw St. Lô. The road crested above green humps of fields. Joe Amos told McGee to pull to the shoulder as the convoy they’d tagged along with pulled away, continuing south. Joe Amos climbed from the cab. A few miles away, St. Lô lay inside the green hills, nestled on river flatland. But the town was blackened, something scorched and pulled from a fire; St. Lô, a town they’d heard about and followed the fight for, a town of twelve thousand before the attack, was gone, more gone than Cherbourg or Sodom and Gomorrah.

  ‘My goodness,’ McGee breathed.

  Joe Amos shook his head.

  McGee raised a hand to shield his eyes in the afternoon light.

  ‘We don’t give a damn, do we?’

  These were the first words Joe Amos had heard his assistant utter about the war that were not excited or bored. McGee stared at the ruins, at the tumbled stones of a high and ancient fortress wall, at a lonely Gothic spire missing its church. McGee appeared affected more by this ruined vista than anything he’d seen in France. Something had just snapped in McGee Mays, some belief in America that had survived this long.

  Joe Amos again took the passenger seat, keeping McGee behind the wheel. They found the 29th depot a mile north of town. The compound was a chaos, a confusion of crates, barrels, boxes, stacks, and debris. All the mobile depots were this way; every armed unit sucked in supplies and moved on, leaving behind mountains of garbage and spills. McGee drove into the field where the 29th’s supplies were staged, beckoned by a guiding MP. He pulled to a stop; within seconds, soldiers leaped aboard to shove the two wire spools off the truck bed. The spools hit the ground, and one soldier leaped down carrying the two jerricans. Joe Amos spotted him in his mirror and climbed out, telling him to put them back. The soldier refused. Before Joe Amos could curse or argue, McGee came out of the cab, saying nothing, just standing beside Joe Amos at the foot of the bullet-holed truck bed with hands on his hips and a look in his eyes that made them small
and very dark. The soldier set the gas cans down and stamped off behind the rolling spools, glowering behind him at both colored boys.

  ~ * ~

  ‘I put him over here.’

  Captain Whitcomb walked beside Ben without much chatter. The young officer had shaved recently and managed a fresh uniform. He looked now to be the sum of his years—maybe half Ben’s age—instead of much older, the way he had on Mont Castre. Even so, his voice and eyes bore an edge only a much older man should have, but the young inherit in wartime. Whitcomb’s mouth stayed drawn, his glances quick, never settling but searching for danger, in the trees and on the ground, used to watching for snipers and teller mines. That was the edge, the thin boundary between clutching your life close and letting it go, the line that older men cross at some point through illness and loss, and young Whitcomb traipsed daily under enemy fire. He will never lose this, Ben thought, sad and recalling his own youth following his war. The chasm between life and death should be wide for the young, they should not be able to see across it. But war makes the divide so narrow. Whitcomb and every combat soldier will never again see death as far away, they are done with being so young as that.