He pulled off his jacket, quickly. The sergeant helped him. He tore off a piece of Kafak’s shirt and wiped down the arm. There was a bullet crease beneath all the blood.
“That ain’t so bad,” the sergeant said.
Kafak thought, Sure, it ain’t your goddamned arm.
But he said, “Don’t mean nothing, Sarge.”
“You did a good job out there, Private,” the sergeant said as he was tying a wrapping around the arm. “Get that looked at by a medic once things calm down a little. Right now, we need you to fight.”
“Sure thing.”
“By the way,” the sergeant said, just before moving off, “nice arm.”
He meant about the grenades, Kafak understood, throwing the grenades.
“Thanks,” Kafak said.
“You play some ball?”
“High school.”
“Yeah, didn’t figure you to be much older than that, Private.”
A captain arrived then with a half dozen more men. He and the sergeant talked quietly for a few moments as the captain looked over the preparations. He added the new men to the wall and said to everyone, “We hold this position. There are four other buildings we want to take tonight, and our troops are moving toward all of them even as I speak. But this one we got. And this one we hold. Understood?”
Everyone said their “yessirs,” though some were louder than others. Most were mumbles, truth be told. Only a few of the newer guys shouted theirs out.
The captain took what he could get and turned away to talk more with the sergeant.
Kafak watched the darkness out in front of them. He wondered when the Germans would be coming. Occasional rifle fire zinged off the bricks of the wall. Nothing close to him, though.
Then the Germans sent up another flare. In seconds, it exploded, turning the night to day.
And Kafak screamed out loud.
“Goddamn son of a bitch!” he said.
Because dozens of German troops were advancing and were now about twenty yards from the building. All the Americans opened up. The Germans gave as good back. The firefight was fast, harsh, intense. Bullets whizzed everywhere around Kafak. He felt a smack in the head, and it knocked him down. Dizziness flowed over him, through him. He lay there for a few moments, wondering what the hell had happened. He shook his head to clear it. He had a ferocious headache. He felt his head, but no blood came away in his hand. He realized his helmet was missing. He looked around the ground for it, found it. He saw a bullet had smashed a dent into it, on the front right side. The slug hadn’t gone through, had caromed off. Kafak whistled.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “They fucking One-Eyed my ass.”
The sergeant genuflected beside him.
“You all right, soldier?” he asked.
“I guess so, Sarge,” Kafak said, not really sure, in fact.
“Then get off your ass and fight before we get overrun, goddamnit.”
“Sure thing, Sarge,” Kafak said.
He took back his position and started firing again. The German fire was lessening now, though. The American troops kept theirs up, steady, strong. Suddenly, the sergeant was yelling at them.
“Hold fire! Hold fire!” he said.
Kafak stopped firing, wondering why. Then he realized: no more fire from the Germans.
“We beat those fuckers,” Marshak said.
“They’ll be back,” the sergeant said.
“We need some heavier weapons,” somebody else said.
But there was no radio to call for anything. They couldn’t afford to send anyone back as a runner either. Of the fourteen men that had started their defense, only eight remained. Six had been killed, including the captain. Four of the eight were wounded, including Kafak. But he thought he wouldn’t even count himself as wounded. One of the others was in a similar situation, but the two other guys who’d been hit had taken it pretty hard. One guy had a gaping hole in his chest. He was on the ground, a couple of the others trying to help him. Kafak didn’t think there was too much help for the poor SOB, though. The other wounded man had been hit in the leg. He’d bandaged it up, but he looked pale from loss of blood, and he couldn’t put any pressure on the limb.
Marshak moved up beside Kafak and whispered to him.
“We’re all fucking dead,” he said.
“Shut the fuck up, Marshak,” Kafak said.
“If we fucking stay here, Dash, we’re all fucking dead. Don’t you get that, pal?”
“Don’t matter, Marshak. We were ordered to stay here. That’s what we gotta fucking do, right?”
“Hell, that captain gave them orders is dead, buddy. Long dead. We ain’t gotta follow a dead man’s orders, do we?”
“Until better ones come along.”
“Ain’t nothing or nobody coming along here, Dash. It’s just us. It’s just us against the whole fucking Nazi fucking army.”
“Fuck that.”
“Get back to your post, Private,” the sergeant said, barking the order at Marshak.
Kafak wondered if the sergeant heard what Marshak had been saying. He felt embarrassed that the sergeant might have. He hoped the sergeant hadn’t.
Then they all heard it. The low, whining growl of a Panzer making its way through the thick mud.
“Oh Christ!” Marshak said.
“Goddamnit,” Kafak said.
“We’re fucked now,” one of the others said.
Kafak glanced at the sergeant. The sergeant frowned, looking around. Kafak knew he was assessing their chances. Kafak could tell the sergeant didn’t want to give up this building because it was one of the night’s objectives and they had taken it and they had paid a high price to take it and to hold it this far. So, no, he didn’t want to just walk away from it. On the other hand, they all could see it was futile. If that many German troops attacked again, with a tank in support, there was no chance that the seven men who could still fight were going to hold onto that building.
“Son of a bitch,” the sergeant said.
Kafak knew he’d made his decision.
“We getting the fuck outta here, Sarge?” Marshak said.
The sergeant said, “You and you,” pointing at Marshak and another of the unwounded guys, “you carry Bryce there back to the lines.”
Bryce was the soldier with the chest wound.
Another guy said, “Bryce just died, Sarge.”
“Fuck!” The sergeant shouted that. Frustration and anger echoed against the building’s walls. He took off his helmet and ran a hand over his sweating head. Even as cold as it was he was sweating. Kafak was, too. A lot. The sergeant plunked his helmet back on his head and said, “All right. You,” again pointing to Marshak, “you help him,” pointing to the guy with the wounded leg. “Get back to the lines. The rest of us will fight as we retreat.” He looked around. “Got that?” to everyone. They all nodded and mumbled their agreement. Then he looked at Kafak. “You might want to take one of the dead guys’ helmets, soldier. You could use a new one.”
Kafak nodded and found one with netting, grabbed it, tossing his own onto the ground.
Then they all fell back, leaving the house, fighting as they retreated. It took them a long time before they reached any US troops. And then the front line wasn’t much farther behind them. The German counterattack had been very successful.
They fell, exhausted, into their foxhole.
“Well, that was classic FUBAR,” Marshak said.
And Kafak said, “Sure, that didn’t go so well.”
Stoddard said, “Right back where we fuckin’ started from.”
“Told you,” Kafak said.
Marshak sighed.
“What a way to fight a fucking war,” he said.
8
They didn’t get any sleep after that because the Germans weren’t about to give up their morning rolling barrage just because the Americans had tried another attack. In fact, Kafak thought the barrage was even more nasty and relentless than usual, probably because of t
he attack. As if to say, We’ll show you since you want to go and try something like that.
The thing of it was, the rolling barrage was an annoyance. It increased tension. Kept you from getting any rest while it lasted. Banged through your ears, smashed against your brain. Still, you knew it wouldn’t likely hurt you. It was a fact of war, and they had all been told about it time and again: artillery can’t really hurt a well-entrenched force. Now if they caught you out in the open, forget it. They’d tear you a new one. But if you were well entrenched and kept your head down, and there were no air bursts, artillery couldn’t physically hurt you unless a direct hit. But it could mess with your head, well enough. The noise of it, the thunderous, unceasing, earth-rattling horror of the overpowering noise of it, could make you want to crawl right back into your mother’s womb. Or, failing that, ten feet deeper into the mud and gunk that surrounded you.
And then there was always the tension, the fear, that one day they just might get lucky and make that direct hit.
One of the guys in their foxhole that morning was a new guy, one of the new guys from the building last night. They found out his name was Acker. He was with G Company.
Kafak had told him, “You best wait until tonight when it’s dark to get back to your own folks, Ack-Ack.”
They’d already nicknamed him.
Acker thought that a sound idea.
Kafak saw the way he seemed to shrink into himself when the bombing started. He could tell Acker was afraid, but he didn’t want to make a big deal about it.
Marshak said, “You OK there, Ack-Ack, buddy?”
“Sure,” Acker said. “I’m OK.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Pale as a fucking ghost, buddy.”
“Let it be, Sleepy Ass,” Kafak said.
Acker looked at Kafak.
“Don’t this shit bother you guys?” he said.
“We been on this beach too long for anything to bother us,” Marshak said.
“Fuck you, Sleepy Ass,” Kafak said, laughing at him.
“What?” Marshak said, pretending to be hurt. “I’m a fucking veteran, I’ll have you know.”
“So’s he,” Kafak said, nodding toward Acker. “After last night.”
“Yeah,” Marshak said, acknowledged, “that was some shit, all right.”
Stoddard said, “These fuckin’ ’splosions cain’ hurt ya none, Ack-Ack, on accounta they blow up ’n outwards when they hit the ground. So’s all ya gotta do is git low ’n they blow right over ya.”
“That’s why we’re in fucking foxholes, see,” Marshak said.
“I know all that,” Acker said.
“What you really got to worry about,” Marshak said, going right on, “is the treed bombs and shit like that. When those bombs hit a tree and explode above ground level, that can tear you to pieces, all right. And then there’s the delayed fuse bombs. Those’ll sink right into the mud and then they blow, and they can take your fucking head off, you don’t watch out.”
“Shut the fuck up, Sleepy Ass,” Stoddard said.
“I’m telling you, guys,” Marshak went on. “One time, early on, it was, wasn’t it, Bobby? Me and Dash here, we were in a hole, a nice one, too, big, we’d made it a real home away from home, hadn’t we, Dash?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Kafak said, shaking his head.
“Anyhow, we had a perfect little holiday getaway there, and then the fucking Krauts had to go and drop a delayed fuse bomb on us. It landed not far off, and when it blew, brother, I’m telling you, it caved in the sides of our foxhole until we were buried in fucking mud. Me and Dash were digging out of that mud for weeks. Ain’t that right, Dash?”
“No fucking way,” Acker said. He clearly didn’t believe this story. “That never happened.”
“You’d better check around, pally,” Marshak said. “There’s been guys buried alive that never dug out from that kind of thing. I was walking by a foxhole once when a bomb with a delayed fuse went off right next to that hole and cut the two guys in the hole right in half. Both of them. Turned them into four guys. One way to get reinforcements, I suppose.”
“Now that’s a load a hosscrap,” Stoddard said, “’n I kin prove it.”
“Prove it, then,” Marshak said.
“If the fuckin’ Nazis was droppin’ bombs like that delayed fuse one you talkin’ about, old Sleepy Ass would nevuh be walkin’ ’round neah any foxholes. He’d be right smack dab in the bottom a one. Now, ain’t that right, Dash?”
“You got that one, all right, Country.”
“Now, that’s a hell of a thing, don’t you think, Ack-Ack? A guy’s pals telling stories like that on him. I’m just trying to give some information might could save your life, and these boys here don’t want me to help you. You ought to ask yourself the reason why that’s so, my friend.”
“I don’t believe nothing you said,” Acker told Marshak.
“Dash,” Marshak said. “Tell this boy about the bomb that caved in our nice foxhole we had. Tell him how that was true.”
“It’s true, all right,” Kafak said.
“Really?” Acker said.
“’Fraid so. What Sleepy Ass said about delayed fuse bombs is true. You got to watch out for them.”
“See? I told you so, Ack-Ack.”
“But he was lying about the foxhole.”
“It was a piece a shit, wan’ it?” Country said, grinning.
“They always are,” Kafak said.
Later that morning somebody laid down some smoke, so the boys in the frontline foxholes like Kafak and the rest knew something was up. Somebody was coming for a visit. They’d just finished their shoepac regimen when a supply sergeant arrived. He was dragging a mattress cover along with him. It looked filled to bursting and lumpy.
“Hot damn!” Marshak cried. “Fresh bread!”
The sergeant dropped into the hole with his corporal right beside him. Denny and Batarski. They occasionally brought bread to the troops in these mattress covers.
“Here you go, fellas!” Denny said. “Have at it!”
He handed out a loaf to each of them. Marshak started right in eating his. Kafak put his aside until he ate his C-ration.
“Hey, Sarge,” Marshak said. “I always wanted to ask you something. How come you use them goddamned mattress covers to bring us bread in?”
“What?” Denny said. “You got a mattress in here you need it for?”
“Naw, I don’t mean that.”
“Ain’t nobody using mattresses up here in this war, Sleepy Ass, case you hadn’t noticed. Might as well use them for something worthwhile, like feeding your scrawny ass.”
“You’re missing the point, smart-ass,” Marshak said.
“That’s Sergeant Smart-ass to you, Sleepy Ass. So what’s the point I’m fucking missing, then?”
“You fuckers use the same fucking mattress covers to take corpses back to HQ.”
“They ain’t the same bags, you fucking idiot.”
“They sure look like the same bags.”
“My only question is,” Country said, joining in teasing Denny, “do ya use ’em fust fo’ the bread ’n then the bodies, o’ fust fo’ the bodies ’n then the bread?”
“Which you figure it is?” Denny said.
“Knowing the army,” Marshak said, “it’s the bodies, then the bread.”
“You don’t want no more bread, you just tell me so.”
“We just want you to bring us the bread in something other than these goddamned mattress covers, Sarge,” Marshak said.
“Yeah, well, that ain’t gonna happen.”
“See how it is, Dash?” Marshak said, trying to get Kafak involved in the ribbing. “These supply guys just don’t care about us boys in the rifle companies.”
“Hell,” Kafak said, “nobody cares about us boys in the rifle companies.”
“I like that,” Denny said. “Me and Batarski risk our lives crawling around the fucking Anzio Bitc
hhead to bring you boys fresh bread, and this is the fucking thanks we get.”
“I’m only wondering,” Marshak went on, “why it is we always seem to get fresh bread right after a battle. You know, when there’s all them fresh bodies around.”
“Well, that do seem to ansuh the question, though, don’ it, now, Sleepy Ass?” Country said. He laughed. “The bread comes fust, then they use the bags to take back the bodies.”
“See?” Denny said. “So it ain’t all that bad, is it?”
“Fuck you, Sarge. That’s still the shit.” Marshak turned to Kafak. “What’d you say, Dash? You figure it’s bodies first, then bread? Or other way around?”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Kafak said. “S’long as it ain’t bread and bodies in the bag at the same fucking time.”
“And there you have it,” Denny said. “The voice of reason.”
He grinned and slid out of the foxhole to pay his visit to the next bunch of soldiers.
Acker said, “They don’t really use the bags for both, do they? I mean, not the same bags?”
“Hell,” Marshak said, “you never know with the fucking army, pal. You just never know.”
They settled in and ate the rest of their breakfast then. Kafak had cold beans. The bread worked well with them. He was glad he saved it. After that they all used their helmets to bail water out of the foxhole because it had gotten deep from the rain that had been falling all morning. Up to their ankles. They bailed until there was only soupy mud left. Then Kafak went to sleep. The sound of a bullet damned close startled him awake a few hours later. He looked around and saw Marshak hovering over Stoddard.
“Son of a bitch!” Acker said.
Kafak thought he sounded near hysterical. He spoke to Marshak.
“What the hell happened?”
“Sniper,” Marshak said.
“I can fucking see that. How?”
“Goddamn idiot Stoddard wanted another loaf of bread. I told him Denny wouldn’t give it to him, anyway, but he insisted. He wanted to crawl out and find him. He didn’t get but halfway out of the hole before some fucker nailed him.”
“He dead?” Kafak said.
“Yeah,” Marshak said, “he’s fucking dead.”
One Man's War Page 9