“How scared were you?” I asked. “I mean not just you personally, but all the troops?”
“Plenty,” he said. “And not nearly enough. It was supposed to be what they used to call a cakewalk. We figured to be in their biggest ports, Tunis and Bizerte, a week after we landed in November ’42. Should have known better. Shouldn’t ever have underestimated the Germans like we did.” Reverend Simpson shook his head sadly. “So many, so many,” he said.
“So many?” Julie asked, though I was pretty sure I knew what he was talking about — the men who died. And I was right.
“So many boys,” Reverend Simpson said. “I still pray for them. Every single day. That they were right with the Lord when they were taken so young. You think you’re going to live forever when you’re young like we were, of course. You think you have all the time in the world to get things straight in your life, get things straight in your soul.”
He didn’t say anything else for a while, and we all just sat there in silence. I wondered if this was how it was in Quaker meetings — everybody just sitting together, praying or whatever, mulling everything over. I guessed for Reverend Simpson — and for most soldiers and anybody who’d ever been in war — it was hard to talk about with those who hadn’t been there, who just knew about it from books and movies. Any sense you might start out with that war was some great adventure, heroes and bad guys and good versus evil and our side always wins — that probably vanished pretty quickly, giving way to the deep grief and maybe even despair about the horrors of war.
“They had a name for it,” Reverend Simpson said, rousing himself. “That North Africa campaign. They called it Operation TORCH. I guess because we were supposed to be carrying the torch of liberty and freedom and all that. And I suppose we were. But it didn’t always feel like it.”
We sat with Reverend Simpson for another hour while he told us about the long trip they made across Algeria, before they even got to the fight with the Germans and Italians. That cakewalk he’d mentioned before. How they split up the armies — ours and the British and the French, who were supposed to be working together — and tried to capture Tunis, the capital, not even a whole week after the landing. And how bad it went. “We got our butts handed to us” was how Reverend Simpson put it. “But we didn’t quit. Though from the way I heard it, we kept making the same mistakes over and over for about the next six weeks.”
He shook his head. “Bloody, costly, terrible mistakes.” He talked about places we’d never heard of but that apparently were really important battles during those six weeks. Tebourba was one. And Medjez-el-Bab. And Longstop Hill.
Our guys kept running up against their tanks because our tanks were no match for theirs and pretty quickly got knocked out of action. Reverend Simpson described how it was for him — a truck driver but also a mechanic — trying to repair vehicles by taking parts off other vehicles that had been mostly destroyed by the German tanks, and also by the German Stukas — their attack planes that kept strafing our troops with deadly accuracy because there were so few places to try to hide in the hard terrain.
He talked about other stuff, too, of course — not just the war. Like about taking baths in their helmets. Giving whisky to pet lizards to watch them stagger around. Betting on scorpion fights. Bartering with the local Algerians for, well, just about everything. Mostly food. How bad the villages smelled because, as the troops found out, the Algerians used human poop for fertilizer. But that didn’t stop the soldiers from swiping oranges from the orange groves, and helping themselves to anything else they could find. “Guess it wasn’t fair to the people that lived there,” Reverend Simpson said. “But at the time you just didn’t think about them. They were just a part of the landscape. And since they didn’t have anything to do with the fight, we mostly ignored them when they complained about us.
“So that’s how it went for the first six weeks,” he concluded. “We’d take a village, the Germans would take it right back. We’d attack their hill, they’d attack our hill. We’d move forward a couple of miles, they’d push us back even farther than we’d been before. We had our own generals, of course, but Eisenhower put one of the British generals in charge of the Tunisian campaign. I guess it was a political thing, since the British had been fighting a lot longer than we had. Anyway, it was a General Kenneth Anderson in charge of North Africa and Tunisia, and our generals had to take orders from him. And lots of folks didn’t like that one bit.”
“How come?” Greg asked. We’d been so silent, sitting and listening to Reverend Simpson, that I’d almost forgotten he and Julie were there.
“Well, our boys thought the British were a little too uppity. Too snooty. You know. That they looked down their noses at us, like we weren’t as good as them. Meanwhile, they thought the Yanks — that’s what they called us Americans — didn’t know what the heck we were doing. That we hadn’t been trained enough, or trained right, or whatever. That we wouldn’t stand and fight in battle. That sort of thing.”
“What about the French?” Julie asked.
Reverend Simpson laughed. “We were all pretty much in agreement that they were, well, not exactly cowardly, but let’s just say never the first to volunteer to lead the way into battle. And they were even snootier than the Brits. Of course I have to give those Brits the credit. Most of them did know how to fight. And they should, seeing as how they’d already been fighting the Germans and Italians for the past two years. So yeah, we were green and all that, but even from where I was, in the rear patching up trucks and tanks and half-tracks, I could still tell that those Brits knew what they were doing, even if they weren’t a match for the Germans, either. At least not right away.”
“So how did things end up?” I asked, wondering if John Wollman was around to hear all of this.
Reverend Simpson stifled a yawn. I could see we’d tired him out. “Fall turned into winter,” he said. “And not a one of us was ready for that.”
Though we could tell Reverend Simpson needed a break, we seemed to have barely scratched the surface of everything he knew, and had experienced, in the war in North Africa. And there was one more thing I wanted to ask him about.
“When you were in the war, in North Africa,” I started. “I know you said they wouldn’t let African American soldiers fight, but were things, um, better? I mean, since everybody was there fighting for the same cause, in the same war, on the same side and everything …”
I trailed off. But Reverend Simpson knew what I was getting at.
“Better in some ways,” he said. “By that I mean that since white soldiers were under orders not to be racist, say racist things, to black soldiers, then there was a whole lot less of that sort of thing than many of us were used to. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t still happen, of course. And that also doesn’t mean that black fellows didn’t stand up to that business a little more once they were in uniform. I still got called the same names you all likely still hear sometimes today. And I have to admit I got into a few scrapes over it myself. But there were a lot of officers who just saw us as soldiers with a job to do, and that was the end of it. Some of them even said to us that they thought we ought to be let into the actual fighting, that they knew we had it in us to be just as brave and just as strong and just as good on the front lines as any white soldier.
“But it was still mostly segregated. Where we set up our tents and where they set up theirs. Where we ate and where they ate. Where we got treated by the medics and where they got treated by the field surgeons. Where we got crammed into the transport ships and where they got to stay. The kinds of jobs we did and the kinds of jobs they did. Couldn’t keep us entirely apart, of course. It was a war, after all. But there was still plenty of segregated America that shipped out with us on those boats over to Africa.”
We ended things there, though Reverend Simpson invited us to come back and visit with him again soon, and he said he’d be happy to answer more of our questions about the war, as long as he had the energy to. I looked bac
k as we walked away from him down the hall from his little office. His head was already drooped forward, chin to his chest, and I could hear him softly snoring.
As soon as we got outside on the sidewalk, Greg asked the question that had been in the back of all our minds since we first showed up to visit Reverend Simpson.
“Did you see the way he looked right past us when we first came in?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Julie. “And he said it looked like someone was lost!”
“So you guys think maybe he saw John Wollman? That John was there with us?”
“Maybe,” Greg said. “Only Reverend Simpson didn’t say anything about it if he did. And except for that one second, he didn’t look past us at anybody, or anything, the whole rest of the time we were there.”
“I had a feeling that John was close by,” I said. “At least I think I did. But maybe I just hoped he was so he could hear everything Reverend Simpson was saying about North Africa.”
“Wishful thinking,” Julie said. “I know what you mean. I was hoping the same thing.”
“If he shows up tonight at your house, you should call us,” Greg said. “Even if he wasn’t here listening to Reverend Simpson we can always fill him in on what he missed.”
“Yeah, but it seems to be better if a ghost hears that stuff for himself,” I said. “At least based on what’s happened with our first two ghosts.”
Julie nodded and said, “We’ll see.”
We still had a little time before we all had to be home, so we stopped off at the Kitchen Sink for a short band practice. I noticed something as we were all tuning our instruments, and as Julie was warming up on the keyboard: We were all humming that “Simple Gifts” song!
“Hey, where did you guys hear that?” I asked.
They were oblivious, though. “Hear what?” Greg asked.
“Yes,” said Julie. “Hear what?”
“ ‘Simple Gifts,’ ” I said. “That song you were just humming.”
They looked at each other and both shrugged. They still didn’t know what I was talking about, so I let it go. We did a quick run-through of Julie’s hamster and antibullying songs, our standards, as she called them. Julie said she was still working on her rap song, but she wasn’t ready to play it for us yet, or teach it to us.
“We’re just that one perfect song away,” Greg said, sounding uncharacteristically optimistic. “I can feel it.”
“No way,” I said. “Even if Julie writes the best rap ever, Belman and the Bass Rats are too good. They’re eighth graders. They kill us every time.”
“Oh, by the way,” Julie said, “I thought I would tell you guys, just in case you’re interested, not that you probably are, and not that you would probably want to come anyway, but, you know, just in case, um …”
“What?” I asked impatiently. I couldn’t believe it was taking her so long to say whatever it was she was trying — and failing — to get out. This wasn’t like Julie at all.
“Yeah, what?” Greg asked, his voice a lot softer than mine. And, I guess, nicer.
Julie gave me a dirty look. She smiled at Greg. “Okay, well, here it is. I have a piano recital. Friday night. And you’re invited.” She shifted her gaze to me. “Both of you.”
“A recital?” I repeated. “Like Beethoven and Mozart and stuff like that?”
“I didn’t know you took piano lessons,” Greg added.
Julie sighed. Then she played the opening bars of a really pretty classical song that even I could recognize called “Für Elise.” And sure enough, it was by old Beethoven.
“Wow,” said Greg. “Of course we’ll be there. What are we supposed to wear?”
“Just regular clothes,” Julie said. “You know, nice pants, nice shoes, nice shirt.”
“Will there be food?” Greg asked. “I mean, it’s okay if there’s not. I was just wondering.”
“Oh sure,” Julie said. “Finger sandwiches, petit fours. That sort of thing.”
“I don’t know what those are,” Greg said, “but sounds good to me.”
Julie just laughed.
Since we didn’t know if or when Belman and his friends might try to attack us again with their potato cannon, Greg and I rode our bikes all the way to Julie’s house with her. “You really don’t have to do this,” she said, but we could tell she liked it — us being her escorts or guardians or whatever.
Greg and I rode together over to our own houses after we dropped her off. “I feel bad about that money,” I said.
“What money?” Greg asked.
“The money Julie said she was going to send the guy for John Wollman’s letters,” I said. “She didn’t even ask us to contribute or anything. She just said she’d take care of it.”
Greg shrugged. “She probably has more money than us. She can afford it.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “We were just in her neighborhood. It’s kind of run-down. And her house is smaller than my house.”
“I guess you’re right,” Greg said.
“So we should give her some money,” I said. “At least pay our fair share.”
“But how?” he asked. “I probably have about two dollars to my name. Maybe two fifty if I look under the couch cushions and stuff like that.”
“Same for me,” I said. “Which is why we have to win the open mic competition. I heard they pay you fifty dollars if you win, which is how much that guy is charging for the letters.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s going to be pretty hard, don’t you think?”
“Well, what else can we do?”
Greg didn’t answer, but I thought about it for a couple of minutes as we rode the rest of the way to Greg’s. I kept thinking about it as we sat on our bikes in his driveway, until his dad came out and yelled for Greg to come inside for dinner. He even invited me to stay and eat dinner with them, which I was pretty sure he’d never done before.
I wished I could, but I knew Mom was expecting me home. “Thanks anyway, Mr. Troutman,” I said.
“Well, I better go,” I said to Greg as I started to pedal away. And then I stopped so suddenly I nearly crashed my bike.
“I’ve got it!” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“We’ll be buskers.”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Greg said, pulling off his beanie and scratching his head. “And what’s a busker?”
I was already back on my bike. “It’s a street performer,” I said. “We’ll set up on a corner downtown and play our guitars. People will stop and listen and throw dollars in our guitar cases. I bet we’ll make a ton of money!”
I knew about busking from Uncle Dex, who told me he saw a lot of people doing it when he traveled in Europe after graduating from college. He tried it with his ukulele when he was in Spain and said he actually made enough to buy dinner. I figured what worked there would probably work even better in Fredericksburg, though when I told Mom and Dad about the plan they burst out laughing again.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
“Nothing, nothing, sweetheart,” Mom said. We had just sat down to dinner.
She and Dad exchanged a smile. “You just sounded so grown-up using that word,” Mom said. “I think it sounds like a great idea. You’ve always been so shy. It’s good that you’re willing to try new things.”
“What got you so interested in street performing all of a sudden?” Dad asked.
I hesitated, and then told them about Julie and John Wollman III and the letters. I once again left out the part about John Wollman being a ghost, of course. Mom and Dad knew Julie, Greg, and I were really big into solving war mysteries. They just didn’t know why exactly.
“Fifty dollars! That’s a lot of money,” Dad said. “Did she have permission from her parents?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Her mom even negotiated with the guy to get us a better deal.”
“I hope the letters turn out to be worth it,” Dad said. “Is this something else you’re researching for school — another his
tory project?”
“Sort of,” I said. I hated lying to Mom and Dad, so I didn’t want to just say yes.
“Well, enough about that for now. Everybody eat up,” Mom said. “But, Anderson, you’ll have to tell us all about the letters once you get them. And your dad and I want you to let us know, too, before you go contacting strangers about anything like this, even if it’s for a good cause.”
I was dead asleep when John Wollman came that night. He might have been sitting there for hours, not wanting to wake me. He might have just shown up. All I knew was that I sat up suddenly in my bed and there he was, sitting in my desk chair again. His head was bowed, his eyes closed, his chin on his fists. He might have been praying, though he didn’t say if he was or not. He just opened his eyes when I sat up. Then he smiled and nodded and said, “Hi, Anderson.”
I said, “Hi, John,” as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and I guess it was becoming kind of a normal thing for ghosts to keep showing up in my bedroom like that.
My mind was totally clear, somehow, instead of foggy from sleep. “Were you there this afternoon?” I asked. “At Reverend Simpson’s office? He acted almost as if he saw you with us, or behind us, or something.”
John shook his head. “Afraid not. At least I don’t think so. It’s been hard to bring things into focus since the last time I was here. Or wherever I was when I last saw you. Seems like everything’s getting harder. I can’t exactly explain it. So it’s possible I was there, but it’s also possible that I wasn’t, if that makes sense.” He laughed softly.
“I guess that all must sound pretty weird,” he admitted. “Well, never mind. Who’s Reverend Simpson and what did I miss?”
AWOL in North Africa Page 8