‘I see your point.’
‘Hang on, Padre, it gets worse. On the south side of the Sèves it’s like an island. See? My map shows the town over there is up on high ground about three clicks long and one click deep. On three sides it’s surrounded by swamp. So there’s only one way in. Right here, where we’re headed. You think maybe the Krauts’ll see us comin’, Chap? They got nothin’ else to do today.’
The lieutenant gazed into the haze.
‘And just for good measure, we ain’t gonna get air support in this mess.’
The lieutenant ran a hand over the back of his neck. Then he snapped his fingers, brightening.
‘Hey, on a good note. Did you hear about Hitler?’
Ben started at this. There was good news about Hitler?
‘No, Lieutenant. What has Adolph done now?’
‘He almost got himself dead.’
Ben’s jaw dropped. He hadn’t heard. But last night the lieutenant caught a snatch of news on the radio. Two days ago, a bomb in a briefcase had been snuck into a meeting with Hitler. The case was set under a table. When the blast went off, Hitler escaped only slightly injured. He broadcast to the listening world that a cadre of ‘ambitious, unscrupulous, and stupid’ officers had attempted to kill him, but he remained very much alive.
‘Churchill was on the radio yesterday. He said, “They missed the old bastard, but there’s time yet.” Ain’t that a hoot?’
Ben shook his head. Without closing his eyes, he prayed that someone would try again. He asked God to stop dawdling and get the job done, to pick better confederates next time, with a bigger bomb and a smaller table.
The drops fattened and soon would become rain. The young officer looked at his watch.
‘Best get down.’
He laid on the ground beside Ben, who stared down on him. In foxholes up and down the LD and in the platoon where Ben stood, the helmets of a thousand GIs dipped below the earth.
The lieutenant said, ‘It’s 0615.’
Ben put his hands to his hips, remaining upright.
The shush of a locomotive whisked overhead, low and frightful. Ben looked up into the clatter. The shells were fired from the rear, they were American rounds aimed at the Germans on Sèves Island.
Three hundred meters away, the tree line erupted in fireballs. Shock waves pulsed across the river reeds, nodding them like wind. Ben felt the nudge of the explosions with the roar.
Hands still on his hips, he turned to find Sam and the frightened GI. He spotted his assistant sprawled beside a foxhole. Sam’s hand reached into the hole, still connected to the scared dough. Sam’s lips moved at the boy’s ear.
‘Those are our guns,’ Ben said to the lieutenant.
‘Yeah,’ the young officer called up through the woofing din across the river. ‘They got replacements back there, too, you know.’
To make his point, a round swooped lower than the others and blew on the wrong side of the river, no more than seventy meters away. Ben dove and crammed his helmet to his head, shoveling his nose into the crushed grasses.
~ * ~
The artillery preparation lasted fifteen minutes. In the middle of it flowering fire across the river, Sam crawled up to Ben.
‘He’ll be alright,’ the boy shouted close to Ben’s ear.
Ben, on his belly, asked, ‘What’d you tell him?’
‘Pretty much what you told me.’
The explosions boomed three hundred meters away, dense and vivid through the mist. Ben had to bellow to be heard.
‘What was that, specifically?’
‘That a hero’s just a regular Joe who waits five minutes.’
Ben smiled, pleased.
‘Right. The Emerson quote.’
Sam winced at the erupting shells. Ben searched for clues in his assistant’s eyes of how he was handling the barrage. The boy seemed on edge but under control.
‘Yeah! Tell you, Chap. I left out the Emerson part. I just said it was something you said.’
Ben patted the boy’s helmet. Together, they lay beside the lieutenant and his platoon, waiting while the artillery softened up the enemy on Sèves Island.
The lieutenant had been right about one thing so far. Every American cannon in range was bearing down on the Krauts across the river.
Five minutes later, the detonations stopped. Echoes raced away. The doughs stumbled from their holes, officers along the LD ordered them to their feet, 1st and 2nd Battalions took their first tentative steps into the thistles of the meadow. Ben watched the lieutenant lead his fifty into the hazy field. Rain and smoke parted for their passing, then closed behind them to swallow the platoon and all thousand moving men. The boy Sam had coddled walked with his unit, no less sure than the rest but on his feet and headed forward.
Ben rose to his knees, flecked with grass and dirt. He brushed his uniform once, then stopped.
The two battalions in the mist froze, craning their heads upward.
Across the river, red and green flares seared high.
The German defenders of Sèves Island were marking their positions.
Ben listened, beneath the sizzle of the slow-falling flares.
Several men shouted, ‘Incoming mail!’
The GIs raced back for the pits they’d just left. Officers and sergeants screamed, flapping their arms to wave the men down, down’. Sam’s hand drove Ben to the ground.
The first German rounds smacked hard among those who’d been farthest into the field, several of them officers. Ben raised his head to see at least a dozen doughs twisting in the grasses. Under his ribs, explosions rocked the earth. The young lieutenant had been right again. Today, the Krauts, too, had nowhere for their big guns to focus but here.
Sam tugged hard on Ben’s sleeve. Ben turned to see the boy pointing at an empty foxhole, big enough for the two of them.
Ben shook his head.
He scrambled to his feet, bent at the waist. He ran forward, into the field.
Ben skidded to his knees beside a corporal missing a leg. The GI’s face furled in a howl Ben could not hear for the blasts. He shoved both hands onto the soldier’s chest to push him to the ground. The boy opened his eyes to see Ben kneeling over him. He beat the dirt with fists, bared his teeth, and clamped his jaw.
Nodding to him, Ben unbuckled the corporal’s web belt and slid it from beneath him, contorting the boy’s face again. He strapped the belt around the stump at the groin and knotted it to form a tourniquet. The blast had ripped a jagged wound; splintered muscle and bone made Ben choke down a gag. Blood throbbed from severed vessels with the wild beating of the boy’s heart and the pounding of his fists. Ben took the boy’s shaking fist in his hands, checking that the tourniquet quelled the spilling blood. The leg was somewhere in the grass, Ben did not look for it. Concussions came thick and quick, flinging hails of dirt. Rain and grit blew against Ben’s cheeks and neck, stinging him, scratching at his eyes. He kept low, fearing the whizzing shards.
The corporal lay exhausted and in shock. Ben scuttled around to grip under the boy’s armpits. Through the haze he saw others had followed his lead, dragging comrades out of the blasting meadow. With hands under the dough’s shoulders, Ben struggled to lift. He looked back to the platoon, hoping for help.
Ten yards away, Sam lay faceup, spread-eagled. He must have been right behind when Ben jumped into the field. Ben’s heart plummeted.
In that instant, Sam lifted his head and shook it, woozy but alive. Relieved, Ben lay across the corporal’s torso, waiting for Sam to gather himself and slither the rest of the way into the field. Another shell blew close, deafening, hammering.
‘You alright?’ Ben hollered.
Sam pointed to his ear and shook his head again.
‘Can’t hear, Rabbi!’ Sam scurried alongside. ‘Let’s go!’
Together they dragged the unconscious soldier to the platoon. A medic hurried from another wound to attend, immediately doping the corporal with morphine spikes and unraveling a plasma bag
. Without looking up he shouted, ‘Thanks, fellas. He’ll make it.’
Ben and Sam skittered to the lip of a foxhole and fell in together. Blood trickled from Sam’s ear. The boy took up drumming his back against the dirt wall. Ben sat pressed against Sam’s shoulder. With every explosion he felt the tremor in the ground and in the boy, like stones railing in water.
By 0700 the German barrage slacked enough for the two battalions to jump off again for the riverbank. Officers hollered at their men, prying their shaken replacement soldiers out of the holes. The veterans moved first, and even they balked at each explosion. Ben watched officers tread backward into the field, bellowing and demanding the men to follow.
Halfway to the river, German machine guns opened fire out of the hedges across the Sèves. The GIs hit the ground again. Quickly, the MGs were answered by more American artillery, while German shells continued to fall on the advancing doughs. The world on every side of the GIs, on their guts in the grass, roiled in mid-air, blown there on gales of concussion and blinding smoke.
In their foxhole, Ben nudged Sam.
‘Time to go.’
The boy looked into the exploding field, at the soldiers cowering on open ground. He lowered his eyes. Ben was packed tight enough in the hole beside him to feel him draw a shaky breath.
The boy raised his face. He smiled, laughing in apology at how scared he was.
‘Okay, Rabbi. You say so.’
Sam eased first out of the hole, Ben in his wake. Sam took his rifle in hand and walked yards ahead, eyeing the grasses, moving into the midst of the men where they could be seen. A shell rocked them off their feet. Ben and Sam stayed flattened, crawling through the men. Under the explosions, several GIs beckoned Ben over, with hurrying gestures, as though they had only a little time.
The advance to the riverside was torturous. The weather stayed socked in, barring air support. Through the battle haze and damp mist, Ben caught no sight of Phineas. It seemed every ten seconds after getting to their feet the men dove back to the ground at the cue of another whistling incoming round or the crackle of a Kraut MG. Sam stayed in front of Ben, quiet and boring a trail through the mist and smoke for his chaplain to follow.
It took two hours for 2nd Battalion to reach the north bank of the river. E Company lost thirty-five men in the advance through the pasture, including their CO. Ben and Sam jogged back and forth at the rear of the assault, tending to wounded, giving comfort to three men dying, saying a fast prayer over four men dead. Sam lent what hand he could, sometimes pushing an agonizing soldier down so the medic could tend to him, or just laying a hand to a shoulder. Once, Ben heard him utter the Shema. Every explosion made the boy flinch.
At 1030 hours, E Company forded the river under cover of artillery. With no spotter planes in the air to direct fire, and difficult visibility on the ground, the big American guns, miles away, flung haphazard rounds at best-guess coordinates, unable to keep up with the shifts in the German defense on the island. Still, enough gun-smoke and dirt were hoisted out of the ground to cover a hundred and fifty doughs squeezing over the Sèves. On the German side, the Tough Ombres took up positions in a row of farm buildings.
Ben lay in sight of the river. Upstream arched the remains of a little bridge, blown by the Krauts. As soon as the GIs formed a bridgehead on the island, engineers would bridge the gap and send over tanks. In the meantime, just like in the bocage and on Mont Castre, this fight raged man-to-man under a blistering fall of shells.
Ben watched the doughs of 1st Battalion, next to wade the river. He caught sight of Phineas, up to his neck in water, in the company of two other chaplains. Ben chuckled: this was probably the first bath the Baptist had allowed himself in weeks.
Ben pointed for Sam to see. ‘That’s my friend! Chaplain Allenby.’
Sam said, ‘He’s little.’
‘Only on the outside.’
They joined E Company for their crossing, The water chilled Ben up to his armpits. A hundred and thirty boys waded with their rifles held high. A round blew in the water near the bridge. The GIs cursed and leaped sideways, as jittery at the underwater concussions as if there were a shark under the surface nipping at them. Before the spray and steam had blown off, the boys were out of the water and running up the south bank. Ben jogged with them into farm buildings along the riverside. Kneeling, looking out a window, he measured the next crossing. Another uncut meadow lay ahead, maybe a half kilometer wide, bordered on the right by swamp. The land spread without cover of trees, structures, not even crops, just hip-high grass, and drizzle. The approach to St. Germain was a shooting gallery.
The soldiers in the barn huddled along the walls, staring into the empty center. Ben put his back to the stones. Beside him, Sam did his slow drumbeat with his back against the wall. A lieutenant moved inside the ring.
‘Everybody alright?’
Nods answered, and only a few voices.
‘Now, boys, what’s the worst thing we can do out there? Huh?’
No one spoke, until someone said, ‘Get killed.’
‘No,’ the lieutenant said, patient. ‘The worst thing is to stop. ‘Cause if someone does get hit and you stop, then others are gonna stop, and then all we’ll have to show for the price we’ll pay is nothin’. So we gotta keep movin’ up, no matter what.’
Ben figured, looking at the young, listening faces, that half the fifty or so soldiers in the barn were replacements. He saw it in their eyes, darting too much or fixed too long at the floor. The old men in the unit did the same as Ben, identifying the green kids and making up their minds to keep away from them. The lieutenant moved to his sergeants, speaking with each. Then he stepped to the center again and said, ‘Padre, good to have you with us this morning. ‘Fore we head out there, you got any words?’
‘Yes,’ Ben said, standing against the wall. ‘Fight.’
The lieutenant smiled, rubbing his brow.
‘Yeah, Chap. I kinda meant, words from God.’
Ben did not pull his gaze from the young officer.
‘God doesn’t like to repeat himself, Lieutenant.’
Ben cast his eyes around the barn, and like a taper lighting candles, where he looked the doughs stood. The lieutenant turned, watching his reluctant boys rise. He walked over to Ben, and stuck out his hand for a shake. Ben granted it. Every one of the wet GIs came to shake or pat Ben’s arm. The medic was the last of them, then Sam, too. No one made a sound until they were all done, and the lieutenant, squatting by the door, said, ‘Follow me.’
The officer stepped out under a dribbling eave. The platoon left the shelter of the building tepidly, Ben in their middle. Left and right, other units of the two battalions walked with them into the meadow. Two hundred soldiers advanced, bent at the waist in the light rain. Ben walked empty-handed, though he laid his hands to the shoulders and ribs of the slow marchers, the reluctant ones. Ben prodded with a firm voice, ‘Move up, soldier. Come on.’
The only cover in the field was the soldiers themselves. Every man moved exposed from the belt up. When a Kraut MG opened on the left flank, the doughs around Ben froze. The lieutenant gave them a vulgar lashing. He strode forward, determined to lead his unit across the field, widening the gulf between himself and his unit while shouting to drag them along. The soldiers balked, casting crazy glances across the field, unable to find an enemy in the tall grasses to shoot at. A few of the men laid down right there.
Ben moved through the platoon, to walk beside the lieutenant. The officer turned a sour face to him.
‘Thanks, Rabbi. But you better fall back.’
Ben did not answer, tramping on pale stalks alongside the lieutenant. He walked, listening to the guns firing elsewhere but close. Behind him, someone said, ‘What’re we doin’ out here?’ but Ben kept his back to the unit, plowing forward, sensing this was all he could do. The lieutenant pivoted, watched, then announced, ‘Let him go.’ Ben heard the running boots fade, one soldier hightailing it for the rear. The rest of the unit kept
walking forward, another hundred yards into the damp meadow.
The blare of two MGs did not send Ben to the earth while every soldier around him plunged. He kept his feet for the first moment, smitten by the sight of the meadow grasses ripping, weeds sliced off in straight lines. The bullet trails from the pair of guns crisscrossed, drawing a cat’s cradle in the grass.
Ben knew he’d waited too long. He tensed to get down, when the first bullet hit him.
Before the pain of the bullet could fully strike Ben, he was bowled over. He landed on his rump, Sam’s arms wrapped around him, a hard tackle. The two lay below the palisade of weeds, face to face. Ben looked up past Sam’s nose to the shredding grass inches above his back. The meadow was being whipped into a froth by the Kraut machine guns. Beneath the fizz of the bullets and the hiss of rain, Ben heard the falling whine of artillery.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 32