David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  Joe Amos focused on the crimson slits of the Jimmy beyond his grille. For three more hours into Chartres, he fought his eyelids, tugging his own five tons through the dark.

  At the depot, Joe Amos climbed out of the cab with the Jimmies bunched tight and the sun orange and cold. He was almost asleep on his feet. McGee fetched them coffee from a Nissen hut. Joe Amos roused enough to hear a captain call orders to the gathered drivers, all of them stretching their backs.

  ‘Y’all leave these trucks. We’ll take ‘em from here.’

  The officer pointed to the far side of the giant lot, at rows of empty Jimmies.

  ‘Take those ones over there. They got good tires and full tanks. They’re ready to go.’ No one reacted to the order. ‘Come on, boys! Get on it!’

  Joe Amos groaned with two hundred others. The hour the drivers normally got to rest while their trucks were being off-loaded had been taken from them. Their turnaround here in Chartres was cut to ten minutes, long enough to grab a coffee and walk across the tarmac to another truck.

  The drivers slid their M-1s from their cabs and shuffled like drunks to the dark Jimmies. There were no assignments, just climb on the first truck you found and wind her up. McGee jogged ahead of Joe Amos, to get them a good one, not so worn. When Joe Amos reached the rows of trucks, he saw McGee already standing on a bumper, fiddling under the hood. The boy lifted the governor housing and removed the butterfly valve that held the top speed of the Jimmy to fifty-two mph. Now the truck would do over seventy on a good road. McGee replaced the housing to make it look like nothing had been tampered with, because messing with the governor was forbidden. Getting rid of that valve had quickly become SOP on the Red Ball, and every crew kept a few wrenches in their pockets. In the dangling dawn, hoods went up, some boys cursed, and the hoods clanged shut.

  The trucks were a sorry lot. The mufflers were shot on half of them, they resembled tanks with all their squeaks, moans, and the dirty spitting of exhaust. But they ran hard under the lead feet of the colored drivers out of Chartres.

  Joe Amos dozed for a hundred miles, all the way to the bivouac at Alençon. There, breakfast was eaten so fast the engines hadn’t stopped pinging before they were running again. In the time it took for Joe Amos to down a plate of eggs with hash, five hundred trucks and tractors rumbled in and out of the field. Another hundred bypassed the bivouac altogether, keeping the hammer down for St. Lô.

  Back on the road, he thought about Geneviève. Other than tossing her the carton of cigarettes the other morning, he hadn’t laid eyes on her in two and a half weeks. This was the longest they had been apart since they’d met. He kicked himself for the thousandth time for not making love to her in the forest. At least right now he’d have that to think about. Instead he was trapped in his head with the recollection of just her breasts and buttoning her blouse. It was like being stuck in second gear, like having a governor on you. In his imagination he romped all over her. She was willing that day, sure enough, a done deal. But that’s what being a hero is all about, he thought. You’ve got to give shit up to be a hero. Sacrifice. The right thing is not often the easiest, or the funnest, or the thing you wish you had done. Burdens come with being a hero. But damn, she wanted it.

  Joe Amos thought about seeing her again. He had no idea when COM Z was going to back off this frenzy and give him leave. Also, the Red Ball wasn’t allowing him any time to sell cigarettes. When there was a chance, like meals at the bivouacs or downtime during loading and off-loading, his customers were usually dead asleep, or he was. Every day he and McGee smoked four packs between them. The roll of cash in his pocket was not growing fast enough to top what he’d laid out for the Marquis last time. Before he saw her again, Joe Amos needed to figure another way to make a score.

  The rest of the day circled along in sameness, although Joe Amos enjoyed the short periods he spent at OMAHA. He got to look out over the Channel and the beach, watching other men, black and white, pitch war supplies up on the sand. He let his eyes play on the infinities of the water and the American invasion. Then the road, dawn into dark, was spent staring at nothing but the smoke-choking rear end of another Jimmy, plus the same fields, hedges, thickets, towns, and ruins he’d already seen, over and over. McGee made so little conversation, as quiet as the black of a well, that Joe Amos began to fantasize that half the time the truck was driving itself.

  By 2100 hours, he was behind the wheel again. The sun was newly set and Joe Amos’s convoy ran with headlamps full-on; COM Z had changed the rule to allow trucks to use headlights instead of cat’s eyes up to ten miles from the front line. Joe Amos’s column was just a twelve-truck squad, all with fuel headed for an ASP at Fontainebleau, fifty miles past Chartres. Each Jimmy was loaded with a thousand gallons of gasoline. Morales rode the lead, Joe Amos drove tucked between him and Baskerville. McGee sucked on a Lucky Strike. A nippy wind blew over Joe Amos’s arm in the window.

  Etampes, a town halfway to the fuel dump, flew by. The dozen trucks barely slowed, gunning down the skinny main street. Their headlights were the brightest things for miles in every direction. Beyond Etampes, the road lay straight. The column was beyond the Red Ball route, and traffic was light. Morales set a fast pace and the rest, with their governors disabled, swayed and sloshed to keep up.

  On a dark passage ten miles shy of Fontainebleau, the convoy slowed. A handheld searchlight in the middle of the road waved them down. Morales stopped at a deuce-and-a-half parked on the shoulder. Joe Amos snugged behind Morales.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Joe Amos asked McGee, expecting no answer. ‘Stay here.’

  He climbed down. As the lone sergeant on the column, he walked to the light. Morales and Baskerville flanked him. The beam flashed in their faces.

  Morales barked, ‘Hey, cabrón, get that fucking thing out my eyes!’

  The light pivoted to the ground. Its blue stain hovered in Joe Amos’s vision. He couldn’t see much in the dark ahead, but he kept walking. A voice answered Morales: ‘Watch your mouth, Mac.’

  Joe Amos and his two drivers stopped. They stood blinking to see who they were talking to, who had halted their convoy in the middle of nowhere in the night. By the light of the headlamps shining from his convoy, Joe Amos made out soldiers, twenty at least. From the sounds of rifles shifting on their backs and what little he could see, he guessed they were all infantry. They had with them one Jimmy.

  A soldier stepped forward.

  Joe Amos said, ‘Buddy, y’all got to get out the way. We got a delivery to make.’

  The soldier put hands to his hips. The gesture said plainly he wasn’t getting out of anyone’s way.

  ‘Sergeant, we’ve got orders to commandeer these vehicles.’

  Joe Amos crossed his arms over his chest. Morales and Baskerville stepped up and did the same.

  ‘You got what?’ Joe Amos said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  The soldier came closer. Joe Amos’s eyes cleared enough for him to see captain’s bars on the man’s collar.

  ‘Sir,’ Joe Amos said.

  All three drivers dropped their crossed arms. The infantry captain pulled one fist from his hip. The other rested on a holster.

  ‘General Patton has instructed me to requisition these vehicles and your cargo, sergeant. That’s what we’re doing. Now get your boys down off ‘em.’

  Joe Amos couldn’t believe he was being hijacked by Third Army.

  ‘Sir, can’t you just get the gas after we deliver it to the depot?’

  The officer shook his head.

  ‘Get your boys down, Sergeant. We been waitin’ awhile.’

  Joe Amos spat on the road. Then he said, ‘Baskerville.’

  Joe Amos did not watch Baskerville spread the word down the line. Morales held his ground while Joe Amos moved closer to the captain for a private talk.

  ‘Sir, you want to tell me what’s goin’ on?’

  The officer slipped his hand off the holster. His doughboys moved toward the Jimmies, jangling the we
apons clustered all over them.

  ‘Truth is, we’re outa gas. The whole damn Third Army is sitting still. Meanwhile, the Krauts are bailing out of France fast as they can go and we can’t stay after ‘em. Patton’s having a fit. If we can draw ‘em into a fight before they get across the Meuse River, we can keep ‘em from manning that Siegfried Line of theirs. But we can’t fight without gas. Right now the Siegfried Line is just a bunch of empty pillboxes and defense works. But if the Krauts get in there with any kind of numbers, it’ll be like D-Day all over again when we try to crack the German border. If that happens, this war might have a little more left in it.’

  Joe Amos turned to watch his drivers clamber out of their cabs and grab their own rifles. The soldier with the searchlight played the beam over Joe Amos’s boys like a white cordon holding them back. The infantrymen were disciplined, they answered none of the curses coming from the Red Ballers.

  ‘So Patton wants my gas enough to steal it.’

  ‘Let’s just say George wants it enough to make sure he gets it and not First Army.’

  The searchlight switched off. The captain turned for his own truck. The engines of the Jimmies revved with new boots on the pedals.

  ‘Captain, can we at least get a ride into Fontainebleau?’

  ‘We’re not going there. We’re headed to Reims.’

  Reims? That was almost a hundred miles farther east, past the Marne River. Patton was already halfway from Paris to the German border! Joe Amos wanted to know more. He wanted to go with them.

  ‘Then how we gonna get home?’ The voice was McGee’s. He sounded provoked.

  The officer stepped on the running board of his own Jimmy. He grinned in the headlights.

  ‘You fellas do what we did. Wait for a ride.’

  The twenty-four Red Ball drivers watched their convoy roll away without them. Some of the infantry struggled with the Jimmies’ gears. From the shoulder of the road the colored drivers shouted more abuse, some yelled, ‘Double-clutch it, man! Double-clutch!’

  The night closed in. No moon brightened the drivers’ situation. By starlight they took seats in the ditch. It made no sense to walk to Chartres or Fontainebleau, both were too far. And no self-respecting driver was going to pull into a depot on foot.

  For half an hour, sparse civilian traffic whizzed by. Joe Amos made no effort to flag down any of the cars. He passed out cigarettes; before turning over their Jimmy, McGee’d had the presence of mind to grab the carton from the glove compartment. Twenty-four scarlet embers glowed along the road, a silent and surly constellation in the dark.

  At last, the headlamps of a convoy could be seen. The stranded drivers shouldered their carbines and stood from the ditch. ‘Bout time, they muttered. Morales cussed in Spanish. Miles away, Joe Amos could hear how fast they were coming, the stove-in mufflers howled down the distance. Red Ballers, when the column arrived it was twenty trucks of rations and small-arms ammo also headed for Fontainebleau. Joe Amos and the rest waved their arms. The lead Jimmy was well past them before the convoy hit the brakes. Passenger windows rolled down. Negro voices called into the wash of the headlamps: What the hell you guys doin’ out here? The stranded drivers jumped on running boards to give explanations. Joe Amos watched until all his boys had hitched rides. McGee went off by himself.

  Joe Amos walked down the idling line, twirling a finger in the air to signal the column to get rolling again. He figured he’d jump on one of the last Jimmies. A truck in the middle of the pack pulled out of line, into his path on the shoulder, aiming headlamps right at Joe Amos. A voice bellowed from the driver’s window: ‘Get in, College!’

  ~ * ~

  Boogie was let out of the stockade at the end of July. He missed the big breakout from Normandy. Lieutenant Garner greeted him with three weeks of digging latrines. Boog didn’t get behind the wheel of a Jimmy until just before the Red Ball started up. Already, he’d earned back his corporal stripe. He was too good a driver, too natural a leader. The supply crisis needed both, and Boogie John Bailey was given another chance.

  Boog’s assistant driver sat in the middle, trying to sleep for the ten miles to Fontainebleau while Boogie and Joe Amos guffawed and slapped skin across him. He seemed a quiet boy, like McGee. After off-loading at the depot, Boogie asked him to ride back to St. Lô with someone else. The boy gladly headed off.

  In privacy, rumbling in the middle of the pack headed west, Boogie told Joe Amos about his month and a half behind bars.

  ‘I found out I can do it,’ he said. ‘I think I might be a criminal. That shit didn’t bother me. I slept all day, die some push-ups, talked mess with the crackers.’

  ‘I could do it,’ Joe Amos said.

  ‘Naw, you’d go nuts in jail.’ Boogie popped a paw across the back of Joe Amos’s helmet. ‘You’d be in there all thinking. You got to just turn it off.’

  Over the past month, since meeting Geneviève, Joe Amos had contemplated the stockade, how he’d get a stretch in there if he were caught selling black marker smokes.

  ‘I could do it,’ he repeated. ‘ I mean, hell, Boog. We ain’t gonna be havin’ careers in the Army or nothin’.’

  Boogie chuckled. ‘You got that right. But they sure love their niggers now, don’t they? Yes, they do.’

  Joe Amos offered a cigarette from his last pack. Boogie shrugged it off.

  ‘I quit. Jail and latrines made a new man outa me. Lost me some weight. You a new man, too. You lookin’ good, College. You still got that French honey?’

  Joe Amos told him about Geneviève, about the money he’d taken to the Marquis, and how the old man had teared up at his gift. He said nothing about the picnic in the forest. He said he loved her.

  ‘You’ll meet her, Boog. You’ll see.’

  Boogie made no effort to hide his skepticism. Stung, Joe Amos called him on it.

  ‘You got somethin’ to say, Boog?’

  By the dashboard light the big man widened his eyes, playing surprise at Joe Amos, his former assistant. ‘You don’ mind, Sarge, I’m gonna wait on it.’

  The mood of their reunion soured for a minute, until Joe Amos finished his cigarette. Then they laughed again over jail, girls, the war, the road. Boogie made fun of Joe Amos losing his entire fuel convoy to Patton,

  ‘I can’t wait to see you explain that one to Garner.’

  Boogie’s column sliced through the night fast and recklessly. Their speeds topped sixty on every straight-away. In every small town, if the road was wide they barely tapped their brakes, and if the way was curvy or bogged with debris they dodged and shifted like race-car drivers. The Red Ball was Boogie’s meat, slapdash and headlong; finally the big man’s get-the-hell-out-of-my-way attitude was something the Army coveted.

  At Alençon the column broke for coffee and a midnight snack of stew and soda biscuits. All the drivers in Joe Amos’s squad gathered around. Morales continued his Latin swearing at the bandits who’d stolen their trucks.

  ‘I’ll take care of it when we get back to the company area,’ Joe Amos told them.

  ‘They didn’t have to steal nothin’, man,’ Grove said over his coffee. ‘I’d of driven it to Germany for them if they’d asked. Shit. Don’t got to steal a brother’s truck.’

  All the Red Ballers agreed. The theft wasn’t as insulting as the fact that they were displaced from their steering wheels. Driving was their job, not some fool foot soldier’s. They would have driven to Reims or Berlin or goddam Moscow, all Patton or anyone had to do was say what and where, then try to keep up.

  Two hours later the column rolled into St. Lô. Boogie stopped in front of Major Clay’s Nissen hut.

  ‘Here you go, College. Time to take your medicine.’

  Joe Amos dropped from the passenger seat. Boogie jumped from the cab, too.

  ‘Where you goin’?’

  ‘I got to see this for myself. This the second time you come back without your truck. It oughta be good.’

  Inside, a clerk fetched Lieutenant Garner. The off
icer arrived puffy-eyed, tucking in his tunic.

  ‘Aw, Christ,’ he said. ‘You two, please, stay the hell away from each other.’

  ‘Good evening, Lieutenant.’ Boogie smiled. ‘If you need to take a crap, sir, I can dig you a fresh hole right smart.’

  ‘Soon as things slow down, Boogie, I’ll take you up on that. Here.’

  The officer ignored Joe Amos while he shuffled though papers on a clipboard. He handed a blue sheet to Boogie.

  ‘Gas up and take your squad to Cherbourg. COM Z is relocating their HQ to Paris. Thalhimer’ll get you squared away. And be quick. We can’t spare the trucks for long.’

  Boogie snickered, elbowing Joe Amos. ‘No, sir. You sure can’t spare no trucks.’

  Garner glowered at the two. ‘What?’