David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  ‘Before he was hit, he told me about someone in Paris, a man in the black market.’

  ‘Was my Joe Amos... ?’

  ‘No, ma’am, no, he wasn’t. But this man he told me about, I believed it might have been my own son.’

  She pressed fingertips to her lips.

  ‘Your son was dying. And instead of comforting him I asked him questions. About Paris, about the man I hoped was my Thomas. Where I could find him.’

  ‘While he was dying.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mrs. Biggs paused, glaring.

  ‘Well, Mr. Kahn. Did my son tell you?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And then he died in my arms. After I had traded his comfort for mine. That is what I came to tell you.’

  The woman nodded, a slow and grim motion.

  ‘Did you find your boy in Paris?’

  ‘I found what happened to him. The man Joe Amos sent me to was my son’s partner in the black market. They were both deserters. They were monsters. Both had blood on their hands. This man turned Thomas over to the Gestapo on the day I arrived in France. Thomas is dead.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  Ben did not tell Mrs. Biggs why he was certain, the camps, the Jews. He lowered his hands to his lap and gazed into them, struggling.

  She waited, then asked, ‘What’d you do when you found this man?’

  He looked up from his hands.

  ‘I killed him.’

  She tilted her head at him, as if to see him in some different kind of light. She said nothing.

  He explained how he had walked out of the garage and told an MP what he had done. He’d been arrested. Quickly, the Army and the Chaplain Corps agreed it served no purpose to prosecute Rabbi Ben Kahn. The war was ongoing; nothing good could come from making it public that two American flyers had started a black-market ring, robbing the invasion of gasoline. Or that their chaplains were carrying firearms. Ben was told to resign from the military, given an unexplained Honorable Discharge, set loose, and sent home. Thomas was filed as a POW. White Dog, whose name was Lt. Gerome Semmes, was listed as Killed in Action.

  Mrs. Biggs stood from the rocker. She collected the two damp glasses. From the kitchen, she asked, ‘Did you stay with my boy till he passed?’

  Ben called to her, she was out of sight at the sink.

  ‘Yes.’

  She stepped into the living room. She opened the woodstove door and tossed in another log. The swell of heat cuffed Ben on the sofa.

  ‘Did you ever pray for him afterward?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For your own boy?’

  ‘No.’

  With a creak she closed the iron door.

  ‘What did you come here for, Mr. Kahn? Forgiveness?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Good. Then why are you here?’

  ‘Confession.’

  Mrs. Biggs looked down her nose at him.

  ‘Alright, then. You come with me.’

  ~ * ~

  When they left the farmhouse, the sun was down enough to loosen starlight. Ben’s Ford was left in the drive. They walked, bundled against the cold.

  Mrs. Biggs greeted several colored people on the street. A gathering was taking place. Everyone was decorative. Mrs. Biggs walked in a bright scarf and a knee-length coat, her hands tucked into a fur muffler. Ben stayed at her side, bland, huddled in his great coat. She did not introduce him nor look at him next to her.

  The Baptist church stood a half mile from her home, a white clapboard rectangle smoking from twin chimneys. The front doors were flung wide and light spilled to the sidewalk and dead grass. Folks made their way inside after hugs and handshakes. Ben faded behind Mrs. Biggs when she entered the crowd at the church entrance. After a minute she fixed him with a look and held out her hand. He stepped forward.

  A thin young man in spectacles bowed when Ben approached. His suit was jet around a starched shirt and string tie. When he spoke, his voice seemed to come out of the church’s bell tower, it rang so deeply.

  ‘An honor to have you in my church. I’m Reverend Willis.’

  ‘Reverend.’

  Ben took the man’s offered hand. Reverend Willis covered Ben’s grip with both warm palms.

  ‘Mrs. Biggs here showed me your letter when it came. A sad affair, sir, but we thank you for your beautiful words. Joe Amos was a light in our community.’

  Ben could say none of the words that came to him in the grip of this pastor. I am an outcast. Let that hand free, you do not know what it has done.

  Mrs. Biggs tugged Ben away. The reverend bowed again.

  She sat in a middle pew. Ben followed. Four women and their men came behind and leaned over the wooden back to kiss her cheeks. They called her Mama. Ben exchanged nods and handshakes, each time feeling wrong and out of place, not because of his singular color in this church but his lack of goodness. These people were black but Ben felt darker than any skin could paint him, he was the one place where God did not look among these rows of worshippers on Christmas Eve, the blind spot in His eye. The hard benches filled, the doors closed behind them. Ben wanted to go, now, before the service began. He felt the collapse of his will, hemmed in on the long bench, and marked this in his caving heart as more evidence of his unrighteousness.

  On the altar, candles jiggled beside a limp American flag. The building’s interior was spare. The church had likely been built by these folks or their ancestors, sentenced and sequestered out here to the fields on the rim of town but within sight of the smokestacks. Ben glanced at the congregation, at pastel hats and square suited shoulders. He sensed their pride. These folks were called to worship and they came. Their sons were called to war and they sent them. Their rewards in America were ramshackle, but they labored at the mill, they tilled their soil, and hung their gold star banners in their windows when their sons fell. They were not free in America, but neither were they freed from God. Next to Mrs. Biggs, Ben felt cheated.

  Reverend Willis ascended the altar. Behind him a chorus in white gowns arranged their ranks. The reverend set his hands on the lectern. He searched the crowd for Ben.

  ‘Before we begin our Christmas Eve service, we have in our presence tonight a special guest.’

  Mrs. Biggs and Ben faced each other. She whispered, ‘Pay attention.’

  The reverend continued.

  ‘As you all know, the fighting in Europe recently got worse. Eight days ago the Germans attacked our forces through the Ardennes in Belgium. It looks like it’s going to be a tough Christmas for some of our troops, but I’m confident the boys will hold ‘em.’

  The young reverend bounced a resolved fist on the lectern.

  ‘Now, everyone here knows young Joe Amos Biggs from our congregation was killed in the fighting in France back in September. Joe Amos was awarded the Silver Star for his gallantry in combat. At his side for his last moments was Chaplain Ben Kahn, who’s with us tonight as a guest of Mrs. Belinda Biggs. Chaplain Kahn has recently returned from the battleground of Europe. If he doesn’t mind, I’d like to ask the kind chaplain to offer our opening prayer. Chaplain?’

  Mrs. Biggs had not pulled her eyes from him. Ben did not move. Now two hundred sets of eyes were on him.

  ‘Stand up. God wants you to speak.’

  ‘No, He doesn’t.’

  ‘Then I do. You get up and pray for my boy. You do it in front of his people.’

  The four women in the row behind reached to touch Ben. One of the men shook the kerchief from his pocket and handed it to one woman who had begun to weep.

  ‘And when you’re done,’ Mrs. Biggs told Ben Kahn, ‘I’m going to stand and every one of us here is going to pray for your boy.’

  She laid her hand over Ben’s. ‘And for your people. Now up you go, Rabbi.’

  The pew squealed when he rose. Mrs. Biggs did not let go his hand.

  He opened his mouth to speak, not knowing what to say. He took in the large room, and saw every face down-turned, all hands clasped. />
  Ben closed his eyes.

  ~ * ~

  GLOSSARY

  ASP—advance supply point, often no more than impromptu depots for units on

  the move

  A/T—anti-tank, typically 357 mm towed cannon

  BAR—Browning automatic rifle (M1918), a heavy weapon that uses the same

  ammunition as the M-1 and can fire 450 shots per minute

  CO—commanding officer

  COE—cab over engine; 2½-ton cargo truck, like the Jimmy, with slightly more

  cargo space because the engine was placed below the cab

  COM Z—Communication Zone; the command in charge of communication lines

  and logistics in all liberated territory

  CP—command post

  DUKW—an amphibious version of the 2½-ton truck, used to ferry supplies to the

  beach from anchored ships

  ETO—European Theater of Operations

  FFI—Forces Français de l’Intérieur; the French Forces of the Interior, the

  underground resistance during the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1945

  FUBAR—military jargon for ‘fucked up beyond all recognition’

  G-1—staff personnel and administrative officer

  G-2—staff intelligence officer

  HQ—headquarters

  KIA—killed in action

  LCM—landing craft, mechanized; designed to deliver a single 30-ton tank or 100

  troops onto a beach

  LCT—landing craft, tank; designed to deliver four Sherman tanks onto a beach

  LD—line of departure

  LP—listening post

  LST—landing ship, tank; a specially designed ship that could handle both open

  seas and shallow draft beaches, for deployment of troops, vehicles, and supplies

  MG—machine gun

  MLR—main line of resistance

  MOS—military occupation specialty

  MP—military police

  MTB—Motor Transport Brigade—the branch of the Army’s Transportation Corps

  which had authority over many trucking companies in the ETO and inevitably organized and ran the Red Ball Express highway

  OD—olive drab; often used to refer to a soldier’s underwear

  OP—observation post

  POL—petroleum, oil, lubricants

  QM—Quartermaster; in 1944, the branch of the U.S. Army responsible for

  supplies

  repple depple—GI slang for replacement depot

  SNAFU—military jargon for ‘situation normal, all fucked up’

  SOP—standard operating procedure

  TD—tank destroyer

  ~ * ~

  ANNOTATIONS

  1) Page 19: The Chaplain School at Harvard

  In August 1942, Fort Benjamin Harrison in Lawrence, IN, was replaced by Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, as the site for the U.S. Army’s Chaplain School.

  Each two-month session at the school consisted of eighty applicants. These men were billeted by diversity: each four-chaplain suite was to include one Catholic, one non-liturgical Protestant, one liturgical Protestant, and one Jew. The ability to work with clergymen of other denominations was highly prized.

  The main subjects studied were: Practical Duties (instruction in military life); Graves Registration; Discipline, Courtesies and Customs (military custom); Army Morale; Administration; Rules of Land Warfare; Recreation, Education and Music; Military Sanitation; Map Reading; and Chemical Warfare.

  ~ * ~

  2) Page 19: Rabbis in the Chaplain Corps

  To ensure a fair and broad distribution of five thousand chaplaincy positions, the military used a quota system based on the 1936 census of America. Forty faith groups were identified and granted chaplaincy positions based on their general population numbers. The largest group represented was the Roman Catholics, which received just over 30 percent of the Army’s chaplaincy positions. Following were three Protestant denominations. The fifth-largest group was Judaism, which was allocated just over 4 percent of the chaplaincy positions. This resulted in over two hundred spots for rabbis in the Army and another hundred rabbis in the Navy.

  Out of the 311 rabbis who served in the war, 2 were killed in action, 2 were wounded, and 46 were cited for bravery.

  By 1943, half the rabbis in America had volunteered to serve in the chaplaincy.

  ~ * ~

  3) Page 24: Red Cross blood

  ‘[By 1942], the Red Cross had literally drawn a line over blood. Later, there was a compromise in which the Red Cross agreed to accept blood from blacks but to label and separate it from that of whites. Red Cross chairman Normal H. Davis agreed that the distinction had no scientific validity but declared, “The question really is whether or not the views of the majority of those for whom the blood is being produced ... are to prevail or whether the views of the minority who wish to donate their blood should prevail.” The notion that a seriously wounded battlefield casualty would rather delay his chances of survival until pints with the white label were available is hard to believe. But this separation by race continued in the Red Cross until 1963.’

  (Gerald Astor, The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in the Military, Da Capo Press, 1998, page 164).

  ~ * ~

  4) Pages 41-42: The sinking of the Susan B. Anthony

  The 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 359th Infantry crossed the Channel in LSTs on June 6 as part of the D-Day invasion, landing at UTAH beach. The following day, 2nd Battalion followed on the Susan B. Anthony, an 8,100-ton Navy transport. This ship struck a mine at 0730 and began to sink by the stern. All three thousand troops got off the Susan B. Anthony, but the travails of the 90th Division—troubles that would dog them for the first two months of their combat in France—began when half of G Company, approximately one hundred and seventy-five men, boarded the wrong British gunboat that had come to their aid, and returned to

  England. G Company was not restored to full strength for at least two more weeks. Additionally, many of the men who did reach UTAH beach did so without their weapons, abandoned in their escape from the sinking ship.

  ~ * ~

  5) Page 49-50: The 90th’s first combat CO

  This section refers to Brig. Gen. Jay W. McKelvie, who led the 90th to England in April 1944. Prior to being given command of the 90th, McKelvie was the division’s artilleryman. Just before embarking for England, the division’s CO was reassigned to a corps, and McKelvie was elevated to a job he was not properly trained for. On June 12, as a result of the 90th’s foundering in its opening attacks in Normandy, McKelvie was replaced as the division’s CO.

  In one history of the Tough Ombres, McKelvie was described as follows: ‘Should never have been given command of a division. In Normandy, critically weak in all aspects of leadership, command, and tactics. Could not communicate with subordinates, enlisted or commissioned. Relieved on 12 June, after 5 days of combat command.’

  (John Colby, War from the Ground Up: The Ninetieth Division in WWII, Nortex Press, 1991, pages 148-149).

  ~ * ~

  6) Page 50: The 90th as a ‘problem’ division

  In General Omar Bradley’s autobiography, A Soldier’s Story, he made the following comments:

  ‘For the first few days in combat most new divisions suffer a disorder resulting from acute mental shock. Until troops can acclimate themselves to the agony of the wounded and the finality of death, they herd by instinct in fear and confusion. They cannot be driven into attack but must be led, and sometimes even coaxed, by their commanders. Within a few days this shock ordinarily wears off, the division overcomes its baptismal panic, and troops respond normally to assured and intelligent command. Where possible we made an effort to relieve the severity of that shock by conditioning each new unit in a “quiet” sector before committing it to attack. But when the 90th came ashore on the heels of the 4th Division across Utah Beach, there were no “quiet” sectors. We had no choice but to fling it in
to an attack that would have tested the mettle of veterans. But this sudden immersion was not confined to the 90th alone. Other equally green divisions entered the line under even more appalling conditions and most of them weathered the ordeal with distinction. Almost from the moment of its starting attack, however, the 90th became a “problem” division. So exasperating was its performance that at one point the First Army staff gave up and recommended that we break it up for replacements. Instead, we stayed with the division and in the end the 90th became one of the most outstanding in the European Theater. In the metamorphosis, it demonstrated how swiftly a strong commander can transfuse his own strength into a command. But even more than that it proved what we had long contended: That man-for-man one division is just as good as another—they vary only in the skill and leadership of their commanders.’