One Man's War

by P. M. Kippert

  “Hell of a show you put on,” Hastings said.

  “You crawl near fast as you can run, Dash,” Carter said.

  They both laughed at his expense.

  “Yeah, you fuckers,” Kafak said. “I’m sending you bastards next time.”

  “Oh my shit, no. That sort of shit is for sergeants to do.”

  “The privilege of rank,” Hastings said.

  “That’s right,” Carter said. “A man can’t follow where another don’t lead.”

  “I already led.”

  “And now you’re back,” Hastings said.

  “Shit,” Kafak said, shaking his head. “I ain’t cut out for this sergeant shit.”

  “Tell you a secret,” Hastings said. He grinned. “Neither was I.”

  “What you need to do,” Carter said to Kafak, “is find you a nice little Frenchie gal and catch the VD from her.”

  “Sure,” Hastings said. “That’ll fix you.”

  “Hell with that,” Kafak told them. “The Germans’ll go away eventually. The clap don’t ever.”

  “Aw fuck,” Hastings said. “Why you got to go and remind me of something like that?”

  “Serves you right, you bastard,” Kafak told him. “I wouldn’t be sergeant now if it weren’t for you fucking around.”

  Carter laughed. That time, Hastings didn’t.

  The firefight continued through the night. Sometimes it grew more heated. Other times it seemed to die down altogether so that somebody from the company thought to try what Kafak had done, and then the Germans erupted in a new barrage of blasting fire.

  “Oh my shit,” Carter said, “we gonna spend the rest of the war here, looks like.”

  “Naw,” Kafak said, “come light, Captain’ll get a tank up here. Blow that railway station to shit and back.”

  “He oughtta send somebody now, while it’s dark enough for them to get away.”

  “He already did. I saw the guy go,” Kafak said.

  “Well, that’s good,” Carter said.

  “You got places to go, or what, Bama?” Hastings said.

  “Sure,” Carter told him. “I heard about this nice little French whorehouse they got in Besançon. All we got to do is get the Germans outta there.”

  “Really?” Hastings said. Kafak thought he had to know that Carter was ribbing him, digging it in about Hastings’s VD, but Hastings either didn’t realize it or was so overcome by hope that there really was a whorehouse that he didn’t care about the teasing. Either way, he wanted to know what Carter knew. He said, “Where is this place? What’d you hear?”

  “Jesus, Coo,” Kafak said. “How many doses of the clap you gotta get before you give it up?”

  “Can’t never get enough, Dash. Cuz they always clap when old Coo gets through with them.”

  “You mean, they always have the clap when old Coo gets through with them.”

  “Hell, that’s their lookout.”

  “You a sick, sick fella, Coo,” Carter said.

  “Hey, I’ve got to get me a French gal,” Hastings said. “I’ve had American girls back home, of course, and I had me a couple of girls in North Africa, and then a few more in Italy. Now, I got to get me a French girl.”

  “You a real world traveler, all right,” Carter said.

  “Then I have to get me a German girl, once we get into Germany.”

  “Yeah, you and Eva Braun,” Kafak said.

  “Who’s she?”

  “That’s Hitler’s girlfriend, dumbass,” Carter said.

  “Well shit,” Hastings said. “I wouldn’t have nothing to do with her. You’d likely catch something worse than the clap from fucking where Hitler’s been.”

  “Why hell, Coo, I never knew you had a line you wouldn’t cross.”

  “Tell you the truth, Bama, I didn’t know either till you brought that shit up.”

  “Oh my shit, boy. You is really something, all right.”

  “You’re so fucked up, Coo,” Kafak said, and laughed. “Shoot your fucking gun instead of your dick for a change, why don’t you?”

  They all did.

  It went like that for the rest of the night. With morning came K Company to assist them, and Love Company was able to fall back.

  “We gonna get some rest now, Cap?” Carter said.

  “No,” Cole told them. “We’ve been assigned to clear out any pockets of resistance we can find left in the city.”

  “Like we did at the railway station?” Kafak said.

  But only Carter and Hastings heard him. They all laughed. That hadn’t gone so well. They could only hope any other “pockets of resistance” wouldn’t hold them up for so long.

  L Company moved through the streets of Besançon, looking for Germans.

  “How we supposed to know where they at?” Carter said.

  “We’ll know when they start shooting at our asses,” Hastings told him.

  “Oh my shit, that ain’t no decent way to go about the thing.”

  “No,” Kafak said, “but it’s the army way.”

  “Fuckin’ army,” Carter said.

  “Fuckin-A right,” Hastings said.

  They moved along the streets. A shot would ring out and maybe somebody would fall and maybe nobody would, and they’d all duck into doorways and behind walls. Anything they could find for cover. Someone would locate the shooter. They’d bring up a tank if they could, and if they couldn’t they would just pour fire on the location while some others would flank the sniper until the guy either surrendered or was shot up out of commission. Sometimes wounded; more oftentimes killed. Twice Kafak had to climb up to third stories of houses to see if a Kraut was actually dead or just playing dead. It was dangerous duty, tense. It could always be an ambush, after all. Once Carter went with him, and once Hastings did. Each time the one who went volunteered to back him up. Kafak appreciated it. He didn’t say anything to them about it because you didn’t do something like that, but he appreciated it and he knew they knew he did. Both times, Kafak flung himself through the door firing his tommy all the way. Both times he stitched the German in the room. Each time he felt certain the guy was already dead before he got there. Because if the German hadn’t been, he would’ve fired at Kafak. That’s how Kafak thought about it, anyway. By the end of the day, the Germans had either all been removed or had disappeared of themselves. Besançon was finished.

  It was still light out, and the people of Besançon poured into the streets. Some of the girls wanted to kiss them. They didn’t argue about it. Hastings disappeared, and Kafak said to Carter, “Well, I guess Hastings managed to find a French conquest.”

  “That old hound dog,” Carter said.

  Kafak smiled.

  “Can you just imagine a Hastings Junior in every fucking country in fucking Europe?”

  “Oh my shit,” Carter said. “That’d be a fuckin’ disaster.”

  “Yeah,” Kafak said. “For fucking Europe.”

  Carter shook his head.

  “Well,” he said. “Leastways, now I know what we fightin’ this fuckin’ war for.”

  “Good a reason as any, I suppose,” Kafak said.

  15

  The next day, the day after Besançon had fallen, German artillery shelled the town. The only building they hit was the whorehouse.

  “It’s like they don’t want us to have any fun at all,” Carter said.

  “Just because they lost the fucking battle,” Kafak said. “Poor fucking sports, is what they are.”

  “Hey, Dash,” Carter said, “you don’t suppose Hastings is in that ol’ whorehouse, do you?”

  “I don’t know. I ain’t seen him since yesterday.”

  “Think we oughtta go look?”

  They did. They found Hastings standing outside of the bordello watching as troops helped clear out the rubble. A lot of the girls were standing around swearing in French at the Germans. Others of the whores were propositioning the GIs hanging around nearby. A couple came up to Kafak and Carter, and they were thinking abou
t it when Cole came up behind them.

  “You don’t have the time, soldiers,” he said. He sounded rather cross. “Get yourselves together and follow me. We’re marching out of Besançon.”

  “Oh my shit,” Carter said, “it’s gettin’ so a man can’t even enjoy the spoils of victory anymore.”

  “I figure it’s a good thing,” Kafak said.

  “How’s that?”

  “We don’t need a bunch of Bama Juniors running around Europe any more than we need Coo Juniors.”

  “Fuck you,” both Carter and Hastings said simultaneously.

  Kafak laughed.

  Carter asked Hastings, “So was you in there when the bombs started droppin’?”

  “Naw,” Hastings said. “I never got a chance to go inside. I’d just found the place.”

  “So you haven’t polluted France then?” Kafak said.

  “I didn’t say that,” Hastings said. “I found me a French girl last night. We had a good old time.”

  “Fuckin’ Coo. Always makes his way,” Carter said. He sounded admiring. Kafak only shook his head. Then Carter said, “Where we goin’ now that’s so all-fired important, anyhow?”

  “The next fucking town,” Kafak said. “That’s all that matters.”

  It was like that. They marched on from one town to the next, rolling right through the ones the Germans had abandoned and fighting for the ones where the Krauts made a stand. After Besançon, things got different. They were closing in on the border of Germany and Austria now. The Germans didn’t seem to like that much. Resistance grew greater. They ran into more and more prepared defensive positions. Good ones, too. Roadblocks, pillboxes, machine gun nests. The vaunted Siegfried Line. Artillery fire picked up, too. The Germans still had plenty of life in them, seemed like. That was not good news to Kafak. Or any of the men of the Third, he figured. They’d have liked to be home for Christmas.

  All the towns ran one into the other. Kafak couldn’t keep track anymore. Every place was the same, whether they marched through it or fought through it. If they only passed through, it usually meant streets filled with crowds of French people cheering for them. Girls kissing them. Men shaking their hands, slapping their backs. Sometimes, if they were at the back of the column moving through a town, all the people had already spent their emotions on the earlier GIs that had passed through, and no one was left in the streets for them. It didn’t make much difference, Kafak thought. The whole thing grew into one huge blur. He wished he’d written down the names of the places they passed through. He might want to remember them later. For now, he only wanted to get through them, one after another, until they reached Germany and ended this fucking war. In every town where they had to fight their way through, that was the same, too. They’d move in. Encounter resistance. Engage in firefights. Kafak would keep his ass down. He’d fire at the enemy and toss grenades and wait for the tanks to come up. The Germans would either retreat or surrender. Or they would die. He might have been shot himself at any time. But he wasn’t. Hastings was. In a small town two weeks after Besançon, Hastings took a sniper’s bullet. Right in the chest. He went down like a puppet without strings. Kafak darted over to him. He shook him.

  “Coo!” he said. “Coo! You all right?” Hastings didn’t answer. Kafak knew he wouldn’t. He could see the eyes wide open. Nothing moving. He knew Hastings was dead. He only yelled at him hoping it was otherwise. Kafak slumped against Hastings’s corpse. “Ah, fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Goddamnit, fuck.”

  He felt something tug at his sleeve and then something else punch him in the back. He knew the sniper was firing at him, and he rolled away from the body and up against the wall Hastings had been running to for cover. The wall Hastings hadn’t made. Kafak ducked behind it now. He checked his arm, but the bullet had only hit his uniform, not any part of his flesh. His back hurt a little, but that was just from the force of the slug. Because it had hit where his back was still tender. Not entirely healed, not covered over with scar tissue yet. Kafak had his backpack on, and that had stopped the bullet. He supposed when things quieted down he could pull off the pack and find the bullet and have himself a unique souvenir. That was the thought running through his head just then, and he knew it was stupid, knew he should have been thinking about getting at that sniper. Or getting away from him. Either way. Then he didn’t have to. A tank rolled up and blew apart the clock tower the sniper had been nested in.

  “Well,” Carter said, running up to Kafak, “that sumbitch is dead.”

  “Sure figures to be,” Kafak said.

  “You OK, Dash?”

  “Took one in the shovel,” Kafak said. “Ain’t nothing,” he said.

  Carter looked down at Hastings.

  “Coo bought it, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah,” Kafak said, not looking at the body.

  “Oh my shit, but that’s a bitch of a thing.”

  “Yeah,” Kafak said. Then he said, “Well. At least the German women are safe.”

  They spent the night in that village after clearing it. The Germans didn’t even bother shelling it once they’d left. Kafak found a nice basement with floor-level windows. You could see if anything was coming, and you had more than one way out. Yet you were beneath the level of explosions if the Germans changed their minds about the shelling. It was a comfortable little nest for the night. They had hot food. They had cooks traveling with them now. Well, not far behind them, anyway. At night, they often had hot food brought up, and it was much better than things had been in Italy. Even the food was better. The army seemed to have figured out how to make the shit they fed the troops taste a little better. Some guys still complained, of course. Even Kafak did once in a while. He did that night. He took one bite of the chow and threw down his mess kit in disgust.

  “What’s up, Dash?” Carter asked.

  “I can’t eat this fucking shit,” Kafak said. “It tastes like the fuckers cut up a motherfucking dog and put it in a stew. And not a healthy fucking dog either.”

  “Tastes all right to me,” Carter said.

  “That’s because you’re from the South where you’re used to goddamned dog.”

  “Oh my shit, Dash. That ain’t right.”

  Kafak turned and walked away. He stood in an alley that led out of the town and into some woods. He kept a close watch but didn’t like the spot. A sniper could too easily sneak up on him. He found a doorway in which he could crouch protected. He had a smoke, cupping the end in his palm. He went back into the basement. Carter was there, eating. He stopped eating when Kafak arrived. Kafak sat down against the wall opposite the one where Carter sat. He lit up another cigarette. He held the pack out to Carter.

  “Smoke, Bama?” he said.

  “No,” Carter said. “No thanks, Dash.”

  “OK.”

  Kafak smoked, and Carter started eating again. They went on that way for some minutes, in silence. When Carter finished he stood up and washed off his mess kit at a sink in the basement. They were lucky because the water still ran and it looked clean. Clean enough, anyhow. They wouldn’t drink it. Not without the disinfectant pills. But it looked clean enough for cleaning, washing up. When he’d finished, he picked up Kafak’s kit and washed that, too. He walked over and handed it to Kafak.

  “I could use that smoke now,” he said.

  Kafak said, “Sure,” and handed the pack to him.

  “Thanks,” Carter said. He crouched down against the wall next to Kafak.

  “That dog,” Kafak said after a minute or so, “it didn’t taste that bad, I guess.”

  “Oh my shit,” Carter said, “it was way better than any I ever had to home, I can tell you that much.”

  Kafak laughed. Carter laughed. Carter stood up and looked out the window.

  “Somebody comin’,” he told Kafak.

  “Ours or theirs?” Kafak said without getting up or moving, except to smoke his cigarette.

  “Ours. Oh, it’s Muncher and some of the boys.”

  The
guy they called Muncher came down the stairs into the basement followed by about four other guys. “OK we bunk here with you guys?” Muncher asked. Muncher was chewing on something; he was always chewing on something. How he got his name.

  “Make yourselves to home,” Carter told them.

  “Sure,” Kafak said. “We’re all one big happy family.”

  “Fuckin-A,” Muncher said.

  Everybody settled in, and Muncher started a conversation. He was always talking about one thing or another. He should have been nicknamed Gabby, Kafak thought. But somebody else had already earned that one. So he got Muncher. From his other habits. They talked about the war and when it might be over and what they might have to deal with tomorrow and what they might find once they got into Germany proper since they weren’t that far off from it now. After a while, most of them went to sleep. Kafak didn’t. He waited until he thought everyone was asleep, and then he pulled out his picture. The one of him and the Italian girl in Naples. He stared at it for a long time.

  Carter said, “Who’s that in the picture, Dash?”

  “I thought you were asleep, Bama,” Kafak said.