“Well,” Cole told them, “I guess I’m glad to see you two clowns.” Then he said, “How you boys feeling, though? For real? You OK?”
“Good as new, Cap,” Kafak said.
“Ready for anythin’,” Carter said.
“Good, good,” Cole told them. “So far this fight in France has been pretty much hurrying to keep up with the German army. They’ve been retreating so fast, we can barely follow them. Once in a while, though, they turn and fight, and we have to be ready for that. That’s what I’m going to need you guys for. I’m desperate for good experienced soldiers like yourselves. We’ve got a lot of green boys with us now. They learn fast—”
“—Or they get killed fast,” Kafak said.
“Right,” Cole said, nodding. “Right. Anyhow, I can use all the experienced men I can get. I’ll need you guys to be scouts for me. Feel things out so we know when the Krauts plan on making a stand. That sound all right?”
“Sure thing,” Carter said. “Be just like huntin’ in the woods back home.”
“Why not?” Kafak said.
And that was how he became a scout.
14
The next night, Cole sent Kafak out on a night scout. To find Germans. See if they were just retreating or had left anyone behind for a rearguard action or if they had stopped and turned and were preparing for all-out battle. They hadn’t reached the Siegfried Line yet, but they would be coming to it within weeks, maybe even days, depending on the German resistance. Kafak patrolled for three hours. He didn’t see any Germans at first. He found some discarded equipment. Ration tins, broken weapons, one truck with a busted engine. All left behind. The evidence of a fast-retreating army. On his way back in, Kafak ran across a squad of Krauts. They were sneaking around the woods, not far from the American lines. Kafak steered clear of them, returned, and reported to Cole.
“Shit,” Cole told him when Kafak reported about the German squad lurking nearby. “We can’t have that. We’ve been getting a lot of infiltrators. They’re trying to slow us up so the main body of German troops has more time to retreat.”
“These guys didn’t look like they could do too much damage, Cap. They didn’t have any heavy weapons. No mortar. Not even a machine gun.”
“An assault squad. All burp guns and hand grenades, yeah?”
“Pretty much. Yeah.”
Cole frowned, looked around at the men, told a sergeant to wake them up. Cole turned back to Kafak.
“Figure you can find those Krauts again if you had to?”
“Could. Don’t want to.”
“Well, you’re going to have to,” Cole said. “Take Bama and Coo and a couple of the new guys. They could use the experience.”
Kafak swallowed anything he might have said. Then he looked at the men still dropping the sleep from their eyes.
“Any volunteers?” he asked. These guys might have been new, Kafak thought, but they’d already learned the rule about never volunteering for anything. A rule Kafak didn’t share, of course, and that had served him well some times and not so well others. He looked back at Cole. “No volunteers, Cap. You’re gonna have to order somebody to go.”
“Hell,” Cole said, “you order them.”
“I’m just a private.”
“Not anymore. You’re sergeant now. Acting until I can get the paperwork through to make it official.”
“Aw, hell with that, Cap. I don’t wanna be no sergeant.”
“Not your choice, Kafak.”
Kafak looked around, scowling. He waved toward Hastings then.
“Why don’t you make Coo the sergeant, Cap? He’s been one before. He’s pretty fucking good at it.”
“Thanks, Dash,” Hastings said, smiling.
“Oh my shit, boy,” Carter told Hastings. “He’s only sayin’ that to get out of it hisself.”
“Well damn. That true, Dash?” Hastings asked.
“I’d say anything to get out of a promotion,” Kafak said.
“Well, nothing you say is going to work, Kafak. I can’t make Hastings sergeant if I wanted to because he’s been busted for disciplinary reasons. There’s no way. You’re acting sergeant. Pick a couple of the greens and get moving. Wipe out that squad of Jerries. Got it?”
Kafak sighed.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Cole started off, then turned back.
“Oh, and one other thing,” he told Kafak.
“Sir?”
“Congratulations.”
“Aww, hell.”
“And sorry, Dash.”
Cole grinned, and Kafak cursed under his breath. He hated being a sergeant, hated having to give orders. Now he not only had to look out for his own ass but for four other guys’ asses as well. It was too much responsibility, he thought. He didn’t want it. He would get rid of it. He vowed he would. He kept in mind what Cole had said about Hastings being busted so that now the captain couldn’t promote him back to sergeant.
“That’s what I’m gonna do,” Kafak said to Carter as they got their gear together.
“What’s that, Dash?”
“I’m gonna get busted so I can’t be no fucking sergeant no more.”
“I’d be sergeant,” Carter said. “I don’t get it why you don’t wanna be, Dash.”
Kafak looked at Carter and shook his head.
“You dumb country boy,” he told Carter. “You’ll get your fucking ass shot off yet.”
Carter shrugged.
“Did anyway, and I was only a private. Same for you, I remember correctly.”
“You don’t—” Kafak began, then shut up because he realized there was no arguing with Carter’s logic.
They moved off through the night, carrying only their weapons. They left behind everything that might make noise. Just the way they’d learned it on Anzio. A good moon hung high above them, so they could see well enough. Of course, that meant the Germans could, too. Kafak led the group back to where he’d last seen the Germans. They weren’t there any longer. He wondered which way they had gone. He asked Carter and Hastings what they thought.
Hastings said, “I think we ought to go back and tell Cole we lost ’em. Fuck it.”
“Naw,” Kafak said, thinking on that. “He wanted us to find them pretty bad.”
“So when you go back and say you couldn’t, maybe he’ll bust you.”
“I would if I thought that’d work. But he won’t bust me. He’ll just send me back out again.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“I see some tracks headin’ thataway,” Carter told Kafak.
“‘Thataway,’ huh?” Hastings said. He grinned in the dark.
“Shut the fuck up, Coo,” Carter said. “I seen ’em, City Boy, you fuckin’ didn’t.”
Hastings only laughed, and Kafak said, “Let’s go, then.”
They followed some tracks and some roughed-up undergrowth that showed signs it had been trampled through. Soon enough they heard voices, low murmurs. German. Kafak signaled for everyone to get down and hold their positions. He moved forward to get a better look at the Krauts. They were sitting in a circle, back to back, resting and waiting for the American advance. They would look to ambush some guys; maybe pick off some stragglers. Anything to disrupt the advance. Kafak figured it that way, anyhow. He crept back to his comrades and whispered the situation. He sent Carter and Hastings around to the other side of the little clearing in which the Germans had hunkered down. He kept the new guys closer to himself but sent them off to either flank. He’d told them all not to fire until he did.
When he’d given everyone enough time to get into place, Kafak hollered to the Germans.
“You’re surrounded! Surrender!”
They looked startled. Kafak lay close enough in the encircling brush to see their faces clearly. They darted glances at one another. He could see their eyes asking each other what they should do. Two of them started putting down their guns, and then a third guy opened up. He fired toward Kafak’s position, and Kafak b
it at the ground in front of him. The bullets whipped by, slicing leaves and limbs from trees a few feet above him. That started off Hastings and Carter. They fired into the clearing. The Germans started dancing. Kafak raised his head and fired a couple of bursts from his tommy gun. That got the new guys firing as well. Pretty soon the forest was filled with racket. Gunshots ripping through the night. It lasted about forty, forty-five seconds. Then it was done. Three of the Germans were dead; the other two were wounded. The Americans took them prisoner. One of the Krauts could walk all right, so Kafak had Carter keep him covered. The other guy was shot up pretty bad, so Kafak ordered the two new guys to help him. The German threw an arm across each of their shoulders, and they dragged him along between them. That was how they came back to their own camp.
Cole was happy he had prisoners for G-2 to interrogate. He congratulated Kafak on the successful mission.
“I knew I made the right choice,” he said, grinning at Kafak.
“I still don’t wanna be no sergeant,” Kafak said. “Bama wants to. Make him fucking sergeant.”
“Not a democracy here, Dash,” Cole said.
Then he laughed and took the prisoners away.
There were a lot more buildings around, here in France, than there had been in Italy, at Anzio, where the shelling from both the Allies and Germans had laid waste to just about everything that stood between them. Kafak bunked down in an old barn. It smelled of sour hay and horse manure, but it was out of the weather. It was the very first days of September and already cooling, especially at night. No rain, though, and that was a blessing to Kafak. Some of the newer guys complained about the stink of the old shit in the barn. It had to be old because all the animals that had been in the barn were gone. Confiscated by the Germans. Carter said he liked the odor.
“That smell sure do remind me of home,” Carter said.
“What?” Kafak said. “The horse shit?”
“That manure smell, yessir.”
“What the hell?” Kafak said. “Maybe I won’t come visit you, after all.”
“You come see me,” Carter told him, “you’ll get used to it. You’ll see.”
“I don’t figure I want to get used to it,” Kafak said.
“Aw, this ain’t so bad,” Carter told him.
“Better than Anzio,” Kafak said.
“Sure is,” Carter said. “But what the fuck ain’t?”
“Fuckin-A right,” Kafak said.
The next couple of days there were more scouts. Kafak came up with nothing. He didn’t shirk; he tried his best. Still, he found nothing. And he was glad of that, especially when he had men with him. Men for whom he was responsible. He hated that idea. He didn’t want anyone killed because of him. The Allied troops moved forward. The Fifteenth was held in reserve for a lot of the time during that march, and that was good duty. Kafak liked it. You could relax a little more knowing there was nobody close enough to shoot at you. Still, you always had to be careful. Krauts might slip through. Try to pick you off. Just like the guys he had found that first night out. And then, during the patrols, the tension always ran real high. Still, it was not as bad as Anzio had been. But what the fuck was? to paraphrase Carter, Kafak thought.
Then they came to Besançon. They marched all day and marched through the night as well. They had marched for twenty-four hours so that they could block the roads south of the city. The Germans had decided to hole up there. One of the places they would make a stand. The Germans figured it for a good defensive position. There were a series of forts there that had been built back in the seventeenth century to protect the town. The biggest was one called the Citadelle. The Americans were ordered to take it.
Constant fire from small arms as well as machine guns, 20 mm flak wagons, and tanks beat at the Americans as they dug in and moved to take as much high ground as they could. Allied tank guns did little to disturb the walls of the various forts. Kafak watched as they brought up the 105 mm and 155 mm guns. Just pointing those big weapons at some of the smaller forts disheartened the enemy there. But the Germans in the Citadelle kept fighting. At the Citadelle, the guns fired at the three-foot-thick walls and exploded harmlessly. They did no real damage at all. Kafak shook his head and whistled.
“They’re practically bouncing off the motherfucker,” Hastings said.
Carter said, “Oh my shit. And we supposeta take that fucker?”
“That’s the orders,” Kafak said.
“And you know,” Hastings said, “if the artillery can’t do it, it always ends up in the hands of the fucking infantry.”
“Which only goes to show,” Kafak said, “we joined the wrong fucking part of this goddamned army.”
“Oh my shit, yes,” Carter said.
All three regiments of the Third Division, the Seventh, the Fifteenth, and the Thirtieth, were used in the attack against the Citadelle at Besançon. The assault began on September 4. Kafak thought it might be an interesting thing to attack the fortress, just like some medieval knight or something. Stupid, but interesting. In the event, he never did. Cole came to the men and told them, “We’ve been ordered to relieve elements of the Seventh Regiment at the Avanne Bridge. It’s an important bridge because it’s the only crossing left to us over the Doubs. We’ve been ordered to hold it at all costs.”
Kafak exchanged glances with Carter and Hastings. They all knew what “at all costs” meant. None of them liked the idea. They’d do it, though. Because that’s what you did.
Before seven they were moving toward the bridge. They held it for that first day of the assault and suffered little action. Random shelling kept them on the alert. No time to relax. Anything could happen. They watched the fight progress, saw the US troops make gains. The next day they rejoined the rest of the Fifteenth and fought northward, closing in on the city. Kafak was under constant fire as he moved forward with Carter and Hastings nearby. Intense firefights broke out. Mortar fire helped the advance. Kafak didn’t see any Germans, but he knew they were there from all the shit that they were firing at him. He kept his head and his ass down as much as he could. He’d been assigned to lead a squad in the assault, and he kept them moving forward as much as possible. He found he was running sideways, between his men, as much as he was going forward, and that was no good thing. It only gave the enemy more chances to hit him. He knew it, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He cursed Cole as he ran. He cursed being a sergeant. He cursed the fucking Germans for shooting at him. The company eventually moved the enemy off the high ground and took it for themselves. Kafak ran past a lot of dead Germans as the squad advanced. He wondered if he had been the one that killed any of them. He didn’t know, would never know. Not for certain. And that suited him just fine. They were ordered to hold it through the night. Although they took tank and mortar fire and some flak wagon barrages, the Germans didn’t counterattack. Kafak wondered if they had the manpower left for it. The next day, troops from the Third overran the fortress and poured into the Citadelle. They took some two hundred prisoners in the aged fort. Some of those told the Americans that, while the guns didn’t bust through the fort’s walls, seeing those big guns aimed directly at them sure as hell fucked with them psychologically.
“Well, they were good for something, then,” Hastings said.
“Yeah, just not much,” Kafak said.
“We aren’t done yet, boys,” Cole told them all. “We’ve still got to take the city itself.”
That attack began at 2000 hours. By 2130, L Company had come to the railway station, where they met stiff resistance. Kafak got his men down behind a stack of trestles intended for track repair. The rest of the company had pretty much surrounded the buildings. They put heavy fire on the station house but couldn’t dislodge the Germans. The firefight blasted through the night. Kafak tried to move up to a closer position behind some benches. He felt something kick him in the shin as he ran, and he fell midstride, rolling. He rolled all the way to one of the overturned benches and ducked behind it. He looked down.
He’d been shot in the leg.
“Shit and goddamn,” he said.
“You awright there, Dash?” Carter called out.
“Yeah, fucking hit in the fucking leg,” Kafak said.
“Bad?”
Kafak looked at it. He cleaned it and dressed it.
“Nothing but a graze,” he said.
The force of it had been something, though. Knocking him down like that. He was only glad it hadn’t hit him full. And that it was just a burp gun bullet. Not a 20 mm. Or a machine gun. Kafak rose up to fire over the edge of the bench, but slugs smashed all around him and he hunkered back down.
“You under some heavy fire there, Dash,” Carter said. “You want us come fetch you?”
“No. You guys stay there and keep your asses down. I’ll figure something out.”
“You’d best stay put a while.”
“You bet your ass,” Kafak said.
“Grand being a sergeant, ain’t it, Sarge?” Hastings said.
“Fuck you too,” Kafak said.
He could hear Hastings laughing and, despite himself, he laughed as well. He wondered what the fuck he was thinking. Then he thought he had to get out of this being a sergeant business. It was no good for his life expectancy. He really didn’t much like it. He waited there, thinking about all these things, for a couple of hours. He didn’t shoot anymore at the Germans. He wanted them to think he was dead. Or too wounded to fight, at any rate. So they would stop firing at him. At first it didn’t work out very well. They kept pouring small arms fire his way. After about fifteen minutes, though, they stopped. Then they’d just throw a little gunfire at his position every so often, to let him know they remembered him. He waited them out. When they finally gave up firing toward him and hadn’t shot at him at all for more than forty-five minutes, Kafak figured it was time to try to get back to his men. He didn’t much like being hung out to dry all by himself here. He wondered again what had gone through his head that had made him try to approach more closely. Then he recalled. He had thought to flank the station. A one-man flanking action. That certainly wasn’t going to do much good. “Shit,” he said, but he muttered it very quietly. There was enough gunfire going on that nobody heard him but himself. “Fucking hero,” he said. He sounded disgusted with himself. He thought he might be able to hit the station with a grenade from where he lay. His arm was good enough. He could do it. He felt fairly convinced. Still, he didn’t throw any. It would have alerted the Germans he was still alive, and they would’ve pinned him down even longer. He didn’t figure the grenades would’ve done much good anyhow. The place was fairly well buttoned up. He’d have to make a perfect throw through a small gap left in a window opening. The potential gain didn’t measure up to the risk. At 0030 hours he made his go to get back to Carter and Hastings. He used the duckwalk for a bit, and it worked, but then some son of a bitch Kraut saw him and fired his way. The bullets flew over his head but forced him to bite the cobblestones. He crawled the rest of the way, skinning his knees pretty good on the harsh stones of the platform. He circled around the ties and collapsed in a heap against them, breathing heavily.
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