‘Sit,’ she said.
Geneviève busied herself cutting a tomato, laying slices over bread and cheese.
‘They are bastards,’ she said, after a time.
‘They don’t mean nothin’.’
‘Not to me, no.’ She spoke without looking up from her hands. ‘But to you, they mean everything. They are your Americans.’ She handed him the bread. ‘You must hate them.’
Joe Amos shook his head. He reached for her chin to lift it. He did this gently, like holding a dove.
‘No, I don’t hate ‘em. They don’t know any better. After a man knows different, then you can ask him to be different. But those boys back there, they’re just stupid. So they’re actin’ stupid.’
‘And who will teach them? Who will change them, Joe Amos? You? McGee?’
‘Yeah. Us.’
‘How?’
‘By being men, just like them.’
‘No.’ The girl reached for the wine bottle to open it. Her movements were agitated. ‘No, c’est impossible. You will never be like them. You are better. Merde, even your McGee is better.’
Joe Amos leaned back at her flash of anger. She saw him retreat, and softened. She set down the bottle to cover his hand with hers. She lifted his palm to her cheek.
‘No,’ he said, softly. ‘I don’t care about being better, just the same, is all. That’ll be good enough.’
Geneviève kissed him. Joe Amos let go her hand and tried to set the bread on the blanket without toppling the tomato, to get both his arms around her. She released the unopened bottle, it thudded on the blanket and rolled off to the pine needles. She wrapped him in her arms and pulled him down.
In the first moments, Joe Amos was lost, tangled in the sounds of her breathing, the caress of her palms running over his back. He kept most of his weight on his elbows but laid his hip across hers. She pulled away her lips, baring her neck for his mouth. Joe Amos opened his eyes and gulped at her skin.
Slowly, as if careful not to blind him, Geneviève undid the buttons on her own blouse. Fixing him with a stare, she uncoupled her brassiere. Joe Amos held himself above her, hands flat on the blanket.
He cupped one of her breasts, toying with the brown nipple. Geneviève’s back arched, and she did not take her eyes from him. He traced the curve of her waist, down her ribs, feeling good flesh there. He slid his hand under the loose blouse, to the swale of her back. He pulled himself down.
‘Geneviève.’
‘Out?’
‘I ought to tell you. I’ve never...’
Her face pinched, then an odd smile surfaced. She made no move to come from beneath him. She laid both hands to his temples.
‘Never what? Oh, Joe Amos, mon cher. You are not un vierge? I do not know how to say in English.’
‘A what? No. I’m not. I. ..’
He sat up.
‘It’s just I never did it with a...’ He gestured at her naked breast.
‘Ahhh,’ she laughed. ‘With a white girl?’
He nodded.
‘Never in England?’
‘No.’
‘Not in...’
‘No,’ he laughed with her, ‘for damn sure not in America.’
‘But you have.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’
‘Tell me, then, am I so different?’ Geneviève laid a finger to her sternum, to point out for him the one woman of the world, without color or nation. ‘Am I?’
Again, he slipped a hand beneath her back. This time he lifted Geneviève to sit upright on the blanket. He kissed her once.
‘Yeah, you’re different.’
He got lucky and hooked her brassiere on the first try, then buttoned her blouse for her.
~ * ~
D+72
August 17
Ben gave Sam the option of not coming into Le Bourg-St. Léonard.
‘You can stay with the jeep.’
Sam kicked at a clod of dung in the barn. Outside, Shermans and M10 tank destroyers moved up. The six hundred doughs of 2nd Battalion, 358th, checked weapons and stepped behind the squealing armor. The Krauts had booted the Tough Ombres out of the town for breakfast. Now, for dinner, the 358th was going to take it back.
‘It’s alright, Sam. Come up later when it calms down.’
Ben opened his pack. He withdrew Phineas’s pistol. He stuck the gun in his waistband, then headed for the open barn door.
Outside, dusk hung over the end of the day like something freshly skinned, damp and warm. Men and machines flowed by, aimed at the crossroads village two kilometers east. Walking away from the barn, the evening attack sent Ben back to the other war, crawling into the gloom to the German trenches, a pistol 011 one hip, knife on the other.
‘Rabbi, what are you doin’?’ Sam caught up and stomped in front of him.
Ben looked at the boy and did not think him weak for being like the rest, not able to hear. Sam was simply lucky.
‘What are you doin’?’ Sam asked again.
I’m hating, Ben thought. I’m going into the night.
‘This ain’t...’ the boy gestured at all the men and arms moving for the attack, ‘this ain’t your profession.’
Ben could tell the boy had thought out in advance this thing to tell him, had prepared it with the word ‘profession.’
Before he turned to Le Bourg-St. Léonard, Ben asked, ‘You going or staying, Schenley?’
‘I’m goin’, Allderdice. But doggone it, Rabbi, keep your head down, okay?’
Ben answered Sam’s concerns by tromping away from the barnyard into the flow of a company of riflemen. He was certain that Sam stayed somewhere close behind; he was equally sure these men around him would fight harder to protect their chaplain.
The Germans needed to hold Le Bourg-St. Léonard. After four days of fighting at Mortain, their offensive had flopped. The Allied corridor out of Normandy would not be closed. On the 11th, the German Seventh Army began a retreat east to the Seine. Nineteen Kraut divisions—100,000 men with their machines and weapons—stumbled backward through a fifty-mile gauntlet of British, Canadian, Polish, French, and American forces, which paddled them every step with artillery fire and flank attacks. The Allies controlled two of the three major east-to-west roads. This meant that the Krauts had only a small gap to rush through in order to reach their own lines, just fifteen miles between Falaise in the north and Argentan to the south, between the jaws of Montgomery and Patton.
Ben strode among the 358th. This was Phineas’s bunch. Nothing remained of the hesitance and nerves of the regiment that foundered in the bocage, lost most of its men on Mont Castre, and surrendered a whole company at Sèves Island. These GIs walked to the town grim and tight-lipped, almost all of them dirty and unkempt. This was a good sign, that they had been alive long enough to get that way.
By the time the first tanks reached Le Bourg-St. Léonard, the sun lay below the horizon. The town ran no farther than a quarter mile, nothing but a string of structures and an intersection. The Krauts wanted the intersection to widen the gap for their escape; more importantly, they needed to deny the 90th the unrestricted view over-poking the valley two miles north, where their comrades fled east in a massive rabble.
2nd Battalion halted four hundred yards from the edge of town. In the fading light, Ben made out the shapes of German tanks slithering among the tight walls. An artillery spotter with Ben’s company called in firing solutions. Five TDs rumbled into position, their turrets depressed to aim across open ground. The first artillery rounds whipped in and ranges were adjusted. The observer called in ‘Fire for effect,’ and the town was lit up. In the glow of phosphorus and high-explosives, the battalion moved. The armor inched forward, pausing to fire. The men leaned into the sonic storm of shells shattering walls, and turrets booming so hard the Shermans and TDs rocked backward on their treads. Machine-gun fire managed to rattle out of windows in the town, but the Krauts were being cuffed hard by the barrage. The light that flickered to show them the GIs advancing was light
ning around their heads. On all sides of Ben, the doughs did not go to ground: they took some hits and kept advancing. The first Sherman clawed to the entrance of the village, standing beside the town’s sign. The gunner drew a bead on a facade that he took a dislike to and blew it down with two cannon bursts. The artillery onslaught called up from the rear rolled down the street, to batter the structures at the far end of town. The buildings of Le Bourg-St. Léonard went off like giant flashbulbs taking photos of the doughs charging in.
Small-arms fire hailed against the tank that shielded Ben and the boys.
‘Rabbi!’ From close behind, Sam’s voice cut through the din. ‘Rabbi!’
Ben did not want to turn around. He knew what he would see. Sam and a medic bent over a dropped boy, the medic tearing open bandages with his teeth, jabbing a morphine spike, Sam’s hands stoppering some fount of blood. Ben did not want to turn away from Le Bourg-St. Léonard. He walked on.
Then he stopped. He came back to kneel beside the wounded soldier, the medic, and Sam. He prayed out loud for the injured man, and kept one eye into the burning night.
~ * ~
D+74
August 19
The obliteration of the German Seventh Army began at first light.
Ben did not need binoculars to see it, though officers standing around him gazed through field glasses, whistling and approving like they were on the rail at a racetrack. Three miles north from Le Bourg-St. Léonard, the valley floor erupted under a thousand cannons.
Enemy columns of all description scurried in plain view. Tanks, infantry, field kitchens, towed artillery, horse-drawn carts, every one tried to retreat in order but could not. The 90th held the high ground to the south and east; their guns had perfect visibility. The T-Os had taken Ste. Eugenie, Menil, and Fougy, and had cut the road at Chambois. Seventh Army was hemmed into a runnel, with only a few miles left open to squeeze out. Montgomery’s Canadians held the north, the Tough Ombres stood alone here at the southern edge. Together, they slammed the Krauts hard, shoving them back into the cauldron to escape or be eliminated.
Twenty battalions of artillery had been attached to the 90th. Ben watched black pillars rise in the valley. He listened to the cannonade blazing along the ridgeline and from the rear, the guns pausing only to let the tubes cool. Each shell made its own whistle overhead, shrill eight-inch howitzers, the tenor whoosh of 105 mm cannons, and the gallop-like hooves of 155 mm Long Toms. Each round rent its own blast and crater in the valley floor. Phosphorus rounds bloomed hot white chrysanthemums, each piece scalding enough to melt metal. High explosives killed with shock and shrapnel, armor-piercing rounds drilled through the thickest plating and turned the inside of a tank into a volcano. Timed rounds lay unnoticed in the ground, shattering minutes later.
Forward observers from every battalion crowded the ridge, relaying solutions into walkie-talkies. Their trick was to lay fire on the lead elements of enemy columns, blocking the way with wreckage. Vehicles were forced into the blistered fields, where they slowed or bogged, making them even better targets.
In the 359th’s CP, someone had installed a large radio. Standing near the tent, Ben heard the speaker blare reports from the six Cub spotter planes circling over the Krauts in the crystal morning. The Germans were stampeding and confused. One pilot made it clear over the radio he was irritated with the delay between when he called in a target and the firing of the mission.
The flyboy shouted: ‘Stop computin’ and start shootin’!’
The officers who heard this laughed.
Ben watched through the morning. The Krauts clawed at the forces that walled them in, but the T-Os and Canadians around Falaise held fast. Vehicles were tossed in the air on plumes of dirt and fire, to cheers from the officers on the ridge. By noon, white flags of surrender began to sprout in the valley. Where they did, the spotters called off the big guns. The Cub pilots radioed, ‘Ease up, we got a bunch comin’ in.’
An officer with the 344th Field Artillery walked over to Ben.
‘You been here all morning, Padre. How’d you like the show?’ The man was so excited, he forgot himself. ‘It’s a goddammed massacre, isn’t it?’
Funny, Ben thought. He’d not considered God at all this morning, not damning the Germans or otherwise. Ben felt no offense at His name taken in vain. In fact, he didn’t sense God anywhere, doing anything. He reached inward, into the dark, and found it quiet, an empty hall. The argument’s over, he thought.
Ben stared out to the valley floor, at the white flags, the several thousand German lives preserved under them.
He looked to the officer.
‘A massacre?’ Ben asked. ‘No.’
~ * ~
White Dog spit in his palm. He spread the gob over his temple. A lock of hair had come dislodged from the grease. He checked the other side, shot his cuffs in the sleeves of his white dinner jacket, and walked into the open.
Avenue Marceau was jammed with traffic heading away from the Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe. Great shiny staff cars, Mercedes torpedoes, made their way east out of Paris, bulging with roped-on luggage. Inside the cars, red-faced officers sat behind chauffeurs, often with a mademoiselle beside them, not so stoic, peering anxiously over her shoulder at the crowds. White Dog blew a kiss to one pretty lady disappearing with her General.
Normally, he would never walk alone in daylight down a broad boulevard. In his pocket he carried false papers and his French was passable to fool a German patrol. But why dare the Krauts, the Vichy police, or a gang from the fascist Parti Populaire who might spot him in his zazou getup and try to beat him up? In daylight, Paris held little interest for White Dog, he was not a shopper or a tourist. He preferred the city’s splendors by night. But this morning, he felt no need for protection. This morning, White Dog wanted to see the uprising for himself.
Strolling, he thought how history is just dominoes. What some people see as a great event is really the result of something that happened elsewhere. Some GI in the path of a German offensive doesn’t have the sense to duck and run. This dumbass stands his ground, other dumb-asses get inspired and they hold too; the next thing you know, the Krauts were stopped and Paris was about to be torn apart, or liberated, or both.
On top of the colossal failure of the Mortain attack, the Germans had to deal with the fact that, four days ago, the Yanks made a second major invasion landing in France, this one on the southern coast. The end of the Reich’s occupation was only days away.
Blood was in the water. And in Paris, no one went madder at the smell than the Communists.
Posters tacked to benches, poles, and glued to walls called for l’insurrection populaire. The color of the ink or paint was always red. The Commies ran the FFI, they owned most of the dead heroes. The Gaullists, to prevent a civil war, were forced to follow along. White Dog figured between the two factions the Resistance was maybe fifteen thousand strong in the city. They had less than a few thousand guns against a crack German garrison of sixteen thousand. The revolt was not going to come from the fifi fighters alone but from the people in the streets, a Parisian specialty. This was what White Dog walked to see. He considered his sunny walk a fact-finding mission, taking the measure of both history and the changing marketplace.
He ambled from the Arc de Triomphe toward the opulent hotels on Rue Lafayette. Here the departing German officers were shameless, strapping furniture, paintings, even rolled carpets to their limousines. Some had furnishings piled into trucks to follow them over the Rhine. Parisians who for four years pretended the Germans were invisible glared openly now at the soldiers looting their treasures.
The mood in the city heated under a mounting, hot sun. Stores closed early, a sure sign of trouble, and just as well. White Dog thought; he had more goods stashed in one warehouse than any five government shops, and at better prices. He grinned: after a few days of this nonsense, the black market would be booming.
On every block, shadowy men ran between corners and alleys carrying rifles and
gasoline bomb bottles with rags stuffed in the neck. Tensions reared like scared horses. He caught sight of a German patrol stopped on Avenue George V to fire a volley into a tricolor that had been draped over a balcony. Minutes later, in the direction of the Prefecture of Police he heard tank fire. Heading along the Boulevard Saint-Michel, he watched a squad of Krauts taunted by a crowd of old folks waving toilet brushes. The soldiers ordered them to disperse, and when the people did not, they leveled their rifles with execution precision and fired. White Dog slapped his back against a wall at this and decided to head south, across the Seine to Montparnasse.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 40