David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  He turned for the convoy. There, standing five feet off, with smoke and flickering fires as a backdrop, stood one of the colored drivers.

  ‘Damn,’ the boy said.

  ~ * ~

  The chaplain lowered his pistol and turned away from the three dead Krauts. He looked ready to buckle again. His left side was soaked with blood. Joe Amos hurried to the chaplain and propped him up, then leaped to the GI’s body to fetch the spilled rifle.

  ‘Sorry, man,’ Joe Amos said to the corpse. Moving fast, he hoped this boy had at least heard whatever blessing the padre had given him dying. Joe Amos shouldered the M-1 and grabbed the chaplain by his gun arm.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, already hauling the chaplain over the grass. The man stifled a cry. His feet barely kept up. Joe Amos took the chaplain’s arm over his shoulders and ran, almost lifting him over the ground. The sounds of their boots and the wounded groans from the chaplain did not hide the hiss of bullets. Joe Amos blurted with every stride, ‘Come on, come on, come on...’

  The run was forty yards to the road. Joe Amos glanced up from their feet to see the colored driver on top of the Jimmy still raking his machine gun behind them, keeping the Krauts’ heads down. Smoke from the blazing dump scraped in Joe Amos’s chest but he ran into it, gulping. The chaplain grunted with every step. Joe Amos answered him, ‘Come on...’

  Ten yards from the foxhole, the tanks hit another Jimmy. The roar was immense, this truck had been carrying artillery shells. Joe Amos flinched sideways at the explosion. The chaplain slipped from his grip. The man stumbled and the blast toppled him. Joe Amos dove, flames mushrooming over their heads. The concussion flipped the Jimmy into the air. The two trucks in line snugged front and rear were jacked off the road to crunch on their sides. Only three of the dozen trucks remained. The colored boy and his machine gun had vanished.

  Joe Amos scrabbled on his belly to the chaplain. The man waved him off.

  ‘Go,’ the chaplain rasped.

  ‘Can you make it?’

  ‘Go!’

  Joe Amos skittered for the foxhole. The chaplain bared his teeth and crawled. Joe Amos helped him slide into the hole. The chaplain folded to the dirt bottom. He had not let loose his pistol.

  Joe Amos squatted next to him.

  ‘You gonna be alright?’

  The chaplain nodded. One hand went into his lap with the Colt, the other pressed over his bloody side.

  ‘What were you doin’ out there?’

  There wasn’t much to the man. He was scrawny, with a few days’ growth of gray beard. There wasn’t much to us answer, either.

  ‘Walking.’

  ‘I guess. Man, look at you. How bad is it?’

  ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘You weren’t gonna do much livin’ out there.’

  The chaplain returned the nod, an acknowledgment of me rescue. The red splotch on his tunic was spreading.

  Joe Amos saw the Ten Commandments insignia at the chaplain’s collar.

  ‘You’re a rabbi.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Man. Who shoots a rabbi?’

  The chaplain snorted and shook his head. ‘Everyone.’

  ‘Well, you damn sure shot back. I didn’t know you guys could handle a gun like that.’

  The man’s eyes brimmed with tears. He dropped his head to his chest, obscuring his face below the rim of his helmet. That hole in his side must be hurting him a lot, Joe Amos thought. Probably he’s scared, too.

  ‘I know you from somewhere?’

  The rabbi shrugged and did not look up.

  Joe Amos slid the rifle off his shoulder. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing, Chap. You’re with Joe Amos Biggs. Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to you.’

  Joe Amos rose to lean over the lip of the trench. He set his cheek to the rifle stock, aware that this was a dead man’s gun, feeling that it might for that reason be better, maybe vengeful on the Germans. He found a target, a grenadier sneaking up through the smoke. The depot was in full blaze. Nine wrecked Jimmies crackled and fumed. Joe Amos lost the Kraut for a moment in the haze but got him back on the end of the rifle. He closed one eye and walked the Kraut over the sight. He squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked. The gray soldier kept moving up. Joe Amos made no adjustment in his aim but fired again twice, then the Kraut went down.

  ‘Yeah!’ he shouted. ‘You see that, Padre? Got him.’

  The chaplain’s head was down, not watching.

  Joe Amos lined up another target. He fired and missed, but this didn’t matter. What counted was the gun in his hands, the colored boys all around mixing it up, and the white boys fighting, too, everyone together.

  ‘You ain’t lookin’, Chap.’ Joe Amos spoke without taking his cheek from the stock, scanning for someone to shoot. ‘But this is what I been talkin’ about since I got here. Say a colored man can’t fight. The hell with that. Look here, man. Come on, get your head up, look around. What do you call this? Can’t fight, my ass.’ Joe Amos glanced down to the chaplain, thinking perhaps the vulgarity would rouse him. The chaplain stayed curled and quiet.

  Kraut infantry had gathered again behind one of the panzers. Joe Amos eased the barrel and waited. The tank powered closer, inexorable and dangerous. The machine gun in its face spewed bullets at a lightning rate. Joe Amos wasted a shot down the length of the machine, then another. He was firing not so much to hit someone as he was making the bullets fly, for the driver with his .50 cal who’d looked out for him in the field, and for that dead white boy whose gun this was. Joe Amos squeezed off two more rounds, for both of them.

  He lifted his eyes from the barrel to the battlefield, both tanks pressed slowly forward through the smoke, with plenty of infantry hunkered behind. Off to his right, another bazooka team snuck into the field. At their backs, their squad fired volley after volley to try and get them in close.

  On his left, the drivers did the same, plopped on the ground, ducking in holes or behind smoldering pieces of their blasted trucks. Every one of them held a barking rifle.

  Joe Amos lifted the M-1 and let fly at one of the tanks, careless but carried away on the din. He tugged the trigger again. One more bullet grazed the side of a panzer, then the M-1 cartridge was empty and ejected.

  ‘Out,’ he said.

  The chaplain looked up. There was nothing like fear on the man’s face. There was nothing at all, Joe Amos thought. Whatever tears or pain had been there were gone. This was a blank man. Joe Amos had seen this look on dead faces, after the spirit had flown.

  The chaplain struggled to his feet. Joe Amos thought he might say something, but the chaplain did not speak or meet his eyes. He gained his balance and lifted the .45 to pop out the clip. The man palmed the gun like he knew his way around it. He had four rounds left. He slapped the clip back into the butt and turned to face the battle.

  In the field, the tanks and grenadiers had advanced inside a hundred yards. The smoke from the dump pulsed behind them. The panzers’ turrets took the measure of the last three Jimmies.

  ‘Alright,’ Joe Amos said to the silent chaplain. He laid down the rifle. ‘Okay, then. Be right back.’

  He jumped out of the foxhole and hit the grass running for the nearest Jimmy. Pumping his arms, he glanced over his shoulder at the tanks, racing a turning turret, hoping the bazooka boys would keep it off him for fifteen more seconds. There was no cover, the Jimmies had been blown catawampus all over the road and Joe Amos had to dodge bits and clumps of them, running so close to flames he felt his uniform singe. Small-arms fire pinged off the wreckage until he reached a loaded Jimmy and scrambled on top. He was lucky and found what he was looking for fast. He lifted the box of .30-06 ammo and tossed it over the rail to the ground, hoping it would break open. It didn’t. He jumped down after it. There was no time to try and crack the crate and grab just a handful of cartridges, and he’d brought no tool to do that. He hefted the box to his shoulder. On an impulse, he jerked open the driver’s-side door and looked under the seat. He felt his
luck running strong with him, there was another M-1. He grabbed it, figuring maybe that chaplain could handle a rifle, the way he worked that Colt.

  Joe Amos ran back to the foxhole by the same flaming, serpentine course. More bullets searched him out but he stayed behind the wrecks as much as possible, moving slower with his load through the smoke and heat. Five yards from the hole, he threw the ammo box like a shot put, hoping again it would crack open. It held firm. Joe Amos clambered into the safety of the hole and unshouldered the rifle, winded. Before he could catch his breath, the chaplain had smashed the crate twice with the butt of the rifle Joe Amos had left behind. A plank on the top gave way. The chaplain yanked out cartridges. He tossed one to Joe Amos just as the Kraut tank blew away the Jimmy where Joe Amos had fetched the crate two minutes earlier. Both of them cringed into the hole, away from spinning debris.

  The tank had come to a standstill to take aim at the last two Jimmies, confident it was being protected by the grenadiers at its rear and flanks. Covering fire coming from the Red Ballers and the quartermasters was intense. The bazooka team took advantage to creep close. With one shot they scored a powerful blast on the tank’s treads. The behemoth shuddered and screamed as the tracks running over its right bogey wheels broke loose and spilled on the grass like a great busted watchband. The tank was hobbled. Now the bazooka team drew careful aim on the side of the stilled turret. Hatches on the tank were opening when the next shell hit. The blast enveloped the Mark IV. When the fire swirled away and the echoes had died, no one came out of the lifted hatches.

  The chaplain had laid his pistol on the edge of the foxhole. He loaded the M-1. Joe Amos shoved a fresh cartridge into his. The two lifted their rifles in tandem, moulder to shoulder.

  Joe Amos fired. He had hundreds of bullets in the crate, why not let them fly? He shot at the grenadiers scattering away from their killed panzer. He found the soldiers hard to hit at a hundred yards, running or diving to their stomachs. But he exulted with the rifle. He muttered ‘Bang’ and ‘You want some?’ with every few rounds. He liked it when the spent cartridges kicked themselves out of the rifle, collecting on the ground in front of the foxhole. They were like medallions, proof. Beside him, the chaplain fired more slowly, calm on the trigger. He had the strap wrapped around his extended left arm. He used one clip in the time Joe Amos went through four. Before reloading, Joe Amos paused and watched the chaplain fire. Sure enough, a grenadier went down.

  Joe Amos loaded and returned to his own rifle. The Germans were down to a single tank but this one was a bastard. It roared fast back and forth across the field, never setting itself up for a bazooka shell. It pivoted fast on its tracks, and whenever it faced the GIs or the colored drivers it let loose with a cannon blast or a burst of machine gun. All the defenders cringed when the tank faced them; the Kraut grenadiers used that gap to move up. They were hard to hit, still shrouded in smoke. They fired and moved with precision, ducking behind the tank, then flashing out to charge and take more ground.

  The quartermasters and drivers fought back with everything they had, but it wasn’t enough. The enemy was well drilled and coordinated. The battle was ten minutes old and already the Krauts had advanced over half the width of the field. At this rate they’d be in grenade range in another five. Joe Amos had no grenades, and he didn’t think any of the drivers or QM boys did, either.

  He started getting nervous. Bullets whizzed close to where he set his left elbow in the dirt, the rifle kicking at his cheek and shoulder. The chaplain beside him never changed his tempo. The man said nothing.

  ‘You know,’ Joe Amos spoke to him, ‘I almost made a big mistake the other day. I might’ve missed this.’

  The chaplain fired. His clip was done. He reached behind him for another, not hurrying. He surprised Joe Amos when he uttered, ‘Maybe that wasn’t a mistake, then.’

  Joe Amos fired off two quick rounds while he had the chaplain’s attention. He kept talking.

  ‘Naw, it was a mistake. I almost did something really bad. I got involved with a French girl. I was gonna sell my whole load of gas on the black market just to kiss up to her father.’

  The chaplain loaded and took his position. Again he selected targets slowly. Joe Amos kept talking, focusing away from his weapon. He figured the chaplain was doing more good anyway with fewer shots.

  ‘Buddy of mine found some guy in Paris who was gonna buy the gas and the truck for four thousand dollars. I mean, that’s a lot of jack. I was gonna do it, too. But it didn’t work out. The girl, I mean. She didn’t work out. So I didn’t go through with it. My assistant did. McGee. McGee Mays. His real name is Adolph. That’s somethin’. I reckon he’s in Paris right now having a high time. Probably ain’t comin back, either. He didn’t seem like he cared much for the Army.’

  Joe Amos fired again at the approaching Krauts. The chaplain fired, too. Joe Amos guessed the grenadier who went down took the chaplain’s round.

  ‘Weird thing is,’ he spoke into the rifle stock, ‘the black market fella in Paris who was gonna buy me out, my buddy said he was an American. Some B-17 pilot shot down in ‘43 over Verdun.’

  Joe Amos quit shooting and laid down his rifle. To his astonishment, he wasn’t frightened, nowhere near like he ought to be. Not next to this chaplain. The white man had an aura, something hard like fired steel. He was quiet, and he seemed a good man, the way he’d knelt with that soldier who’d got shot coming to save him. He wasn’t blank, Joe Amos thought, he was filled with will and spirit but grim like one of the prophets. He was wounded bad and still had strength to fight, the kind of peace and power that comes from belief. Next to him, touching shoulders and feeling the snap of the man’s rifle through his body and into Joe Amos’s own, Joe Amos believed, too. There was indeed a God, there had to be, especially at times and places like this. God was here, and all this was in His hands. Out there in the smoke, wasn’t that Jesus on that cross? Joe Amos only had to have faith, and he had to be brave in that faith. Everything else would work itself out. God was on the chaplain’s side, sure enough, and Joe Amos was at his side. Geneviève, the Marquis, Boogie, McGee, the Messerschmitt, Garner, Speedy, Himey—every one of them had brought Joe Amos here like road signs.

  The chaplain had stopped firing. He was staring at Joe Amos.

  He asked, ‘What did you say?’

  Joe Amos looked away, to the two remaining Jimmies.

  ‘I bet one of those trucks has got grenades.’

  ‘Wait,’ the chaplain said.

  Joe Amos set his palms on the lip of the trench. He bent his knees to spring.

  ‘Don’t worry, Chap. I’m a hero today.’

  ~ * ~

  The driver took a bullet the moment he was out of the foxhole.

  The round struck him high in the back. He staggered, waving his arms like a man out of balance. Something strong ran in him and he kept his feet, even took a step. Then another bullet thudded low in his back and knocked whatever it was out of him. He swayed backward.

  Joe Amos Biggs fell hard. Ben collapsed beneath him to the bottom of the foxhole. The boy lay faceup in his lap.

  Quickly Ben undid the boy’s chin strap and tugged off his helmet to clear his face. Joe Amos Biggs’s eyes were flung wildly open, whites showed all around his dark pupils. Ben felt the boy’s heartbeat as wild as his eyes, thumping.

  The boy panted. Sweat broke on his brow. Ben wiped it with a palm. He ran his hand over the boy’s short, brushy hair.

  ‘Damn,’ Joe Amos growled. ‘Man, what’d I do?’

  The boy swallowed. No blood foamed on his lips. The bullets had missed his lungs but hadn’t come out the front. They stayed cozied inside him, making sure whatever damage they’d done stayed lodged open.

  He began to shiver. This was bad, a sign of severe blood loss. Ben rolled him over enough to see the two rips in the boy’s jacket. The first bullet had drilled all shoulder, just meat and broken bones. The second round had hit low, close to the spine. Ben probed the puncture, the b
oy made a guttural mewl. The wound did not gush blood but dribbled a steady pulse. Ben guessed this second bullet had cut a renal artery. Even if the hole was bandaged and stoppered by a medic, the boy would bleed out internally in a minute, more or less.

  ‘Joe Amos.’

  The boy closed his eyes. Ben stroked his cheek to bring his eyes open again. When he looked up his drifting gaze fixed on Ben.

  ‘I’m thinking.... I’m thinking maybe you go get the grenades. I’m not gonna make this run.’

  ‘You sit this one out.’

  ‘But hey, I got you off that field, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. You did.’

  ‘Fought, too.’

  Ben nodded.