by Len Levinson
Mahoney bent low in the sidecar and lit another cigarette. Like Cranepool, he knew they’d be in the thick of the front line fighting in just a little while, and he didn’t look forward to it very much because his leg hurt and he felt dizzy. He didn’t feel up to a fight just then, and he knew how dangerous it was to be that way. A combat soldier has to be at peak efficiency at all times, and once he loses that fine-honed edge, he becomes a candidate for the cemetery. He gritted his teeth and tried to convince himself that he wasn’t as badly off as he truly was. He shook his shoulders and growled.
Cranepool glanced back. “You all right, Sarge?”
“Keep your fucking eyes on the road!”
“We’re gonna be in Carentan pretty soon!”
“Don’t stop for anything!”
“Hup, Sarge!
They passed a company of German soldiers walking in a column of twos toward Carentan, and the Germans were dragging ass. Mahoney figured they’d been on the march for a long time and if they went right up on the line they wouldn’t last long, unless the American soldiers were dragging ass too.
Mahoney closed his eyes to slits and the town of Carentan blurred in the distance. In his dazed and comatose state, he thought of how nice it would be if he could take a hot shower and then go to sleep in a clean bed. When he woke up he’d have a steak and a bottle of beer, and then he’d go out and find himself a frisky young girl. Mahoney hadn’t had any sex for a while and wanted very much to crawl into the sack with a frisky young girl, the kind that scratched and bit you and did all sorts of weird things. At various times, depending on his moods, Mahoney craved tall girls, short girls, fat girls, skinny girls, crazy girls, smart girls, young girls or old girls, but right now he had a taste for a young one who was utterly depraved.
“We’re comin’ into town, Sarge!”
Mahoney opened his eyes and saw the town coming up fast, only it didn’t look like the Carentan he’d seen a few months ago. That town had been clean and solid, whereas this town was nearly destroyed by bombs and artillery shells. The din of battle was quite close; he could smell gunpowder and corpses. Evidently the fighting was taking place on the far side of the town, a few miles down the road.
Cranepool slowed down and the motorcycle sputtered through the town, passing columns of soldiers moving toward or coming back from the front. Cranepool threaded the motorcycle skillfully among them and the hospital trucks and kubelwagens. Many buildings only had one wall standing, and they passed one undamaged building that was being used as a field hospital. Mahoney saw a couple of nurses in front and wondered if they were frisky young girls.
“Uh-oh,” said Cranepool.
Mahoney looked ahead and saw that they were approaching an intersection in whose center stood an SS man in black uniform and helmet, signaling for them to halt.
“Should I stop, Sarge?”
“Yeah, and let me do the talking. If I tell you move out, that means move out, you got me?”
“I gotcha, Sarge.”
Cranepool braked the motorcycle and it glided to a stop in front of the SS man, whose left collar patch indicated that his rank was equivalent to that of a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army.
“Let me see your papers,” said the SS man, holding out his hand. He had deep-set spooky eyes and needed a shave.
Mahoney stood up in the sidecar and looked at the SS man, who was directly in front of him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time,” Mahoney said in perfect German.
The SS man blinked, but his tone of voice and expression didn’t change. “I said let me see your papers.”
“Get out of my way, I don’t have time.”
“Don’t have time?” the SS man asked. “I think perhaps a few months in the stockade might make you wish you took the time.”
“Move out!” Mahoney screamed, dropping into the sidecar.
Cranepool let the clutch lever loose and twisted the accelerator as far as it would go. The engine stalled. The SS man took a step backwards and reached for his service revolver, but Mahoney brought his submachine gun up fast and opened fire before the German could aim. Mahoney’s first bullets slammed into the mud but the next ones caught the German on the kneecap, and as Mahoney raised the jerking, twisting submachine gun the SS man’s body was torn apart. He stumbled backwards, dead on his feet, as Cranepool frantically jumped up and down on the starter. The engine came alive again, sputtering and farting. Cranepool let the clutch lever loose more smoothly this time, and didn’t twist the accelerator so far. The rear wheel spun out on the mud, and the motorcycle darted forward. German soldiers nearby ran into the street to look at the SS man, as Cranepool skidded around the first corner.
Mahoney hung onto the rim of the sidecar. “You fuckin’ asshole!” he yelled.
“I didn’t do nothing, Sarge!” Cranepool replied as he dodged a donkey standing dumbly in the middle of the street.
“You stalled the motorcycle!”
“I couldn’t help it!”
“Asshole!”
“How was I supposed to know you were gonna shoot the bastard?”
“Did you think I was gonna whistle Dixie with him?”
“How should I know?”
“You’d better know how to get us out of here, you little fuck!”
“Leave it to me, Sarge!”
Cranepool turned the next corner and realized he didn’t know where he was. He decided that his best bet would be to head for the sound of the fighting, because that’s where the Americans were. He zoomed past a row of one and two-story houses that hadn’t been damaged too badly by shelling and bombing, turned left, and accelerated toward the front lines.
Mahoney fed a fresh clip of ammunition into his submachine gun, his teeth chattering. That one had been a little too close for comfort. He didn’t feel up to shit like that with his leg bleeding and his head spinning. Something told him he wasn’t going to get out of this one alive. They were going to shoot him like a dog in the middle of the road and that would be the end of him. Oh what a fucking miserable war.
Cranepool was on the road leading out of town, zipping along at sixty miles an hour. He passed a column of German Tiger tanks heading for the front, and then heard the ominous sound of aircraft overhead. He looked up and out of the clouds came diving a swarm of American fighter planes.
“Get off the road, you asshole!” Mahoney yelled.
Cranepool lurched to the right and went down a gully on the side of the road. He accelerated up the incline and the motorcycle flew into the air, giving Mahoney a queasy feeling in his stomach. The motorcycle landed on its rear wheel first and Cranepool poured on the coal. The tiny vehicle flew across a field, as the fighters strafed the road behind them. Mahoney looked back and could see tankers battening down their hatches and German troops running in all directions. One of the fighters shot its cannon at a Tiger tank and blew it to smithereens. Another fighter scored a direct hit on another tank, and a third one missed its target, blowing a huge hole in the road instead.
Ahead was a stone wall about four feet high. Cranepool steered to the right, found an opening in it, and barreled through. He stormed up a hill and down the other side. Hitting a bump, the motorcycle soared into the air, and slowly came down.
“Cut that shit out!” Mahoney screamed.
“Hup, Sarge!”
Hup Sarge your ass, Mahoney thought, bouncing up and down in the sidecar. He looked back at the road and was pleased to see that the American fighter planes were decimating the German column. An artillery shell whistled through the sky and fell to earth fifty yards away, blowing mud and stones into the air, and some fell on Mahoney and Cranepool. Ahead was a forest that extended from left to right as far as the eye could see. Smoke trailed into the sky from various points in the forest, and a huge orange ball of flame exploded on Mahoney’s left.
“Hey, Sarge, I just thought of something!” Cranepool called over his shoulder. “When our guys see us they’re gonna think we’re Germans and they’re gonna shoo
t at us!”
“Let me worry about that!” Mahoney replied.
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Just keep driving and leave everything else to me!”
“Hup, Sarge!”
Cranepool twisted the accelerator and shifted up. The motorcycle sped across the field, passing shell craters and dead Germans. Mahoney reached into his back pocket and took out a dirty handkerchief. It wasn’t very big and it wasn’t very white, but if he waved it in the air maybe the Americans wouldn’t shoot.
Cranepool shifted down and decelerated as the motorcycle entered the woods. He steered among the trees and thought that the Germans might consider it odd for their motorcycle couriers to be riding in the woods instead of the road. He wondered if someone in Carentan had sent a report forward that there was a renegade motorcycle courier on the loose. If so, trouble could be expected.
They came to a section of the forest that had been blown up. Two dead Germans were lying face down in the mud, and Mahoney noticed hand grenades affixed to their belts.
“Stop the motorcycle!” Mahoney shouted.
“What for?”
“Because I said so!”
Cranepool braked and shifted down. “What’s the matter?”
“Get me those hand grenades over there.”
Cranepool dismounted and ran toward the dead Germans. They were starting to stink so he held his breath and took the hand grenades off their belts. There were five in all, and he brought them back to Mahoney, dumping them into his lap.
“Here you go, Sarge.”
“Get on that motorcycle and move out.”
“Hup, Sarge.”
Cranepool mounted up and they drove off again. The sound of battle was quite close now, and Mahoney figured they’d be in the thick of it pretty soon. He had his white handkerchief ready between his legs and his submachine gun in his hands.
Ahead, Cranepool saw a row of German trenches. “Hey, Sarge, should I go over them?”
“Well, you sure as hell can’t go under them!”
Cranepool shifted down and wound out the accelerator. The motorcycle bucked forward and raced toward the trenches. The Germans in the trenches looked behind them and were astonished to see the motorcycle and sidecar approaching at top speed. They ducked their heads, and Cranepool pulled back on his handlebars. The motorcycle sailed into the air and spewed exhaust smoke into the trench. It landed, Cranepool dodged a tree, then a rock, and accelerated again. He steered around another trench and the Germans in it cheered them on, thinking he and Mahoney were on their side.
A shell exploded nearby, knocking down some trees. The brush was getting thick. Bullets whizzed through the air, and Cranepool thought they might be in no-man’s-land.
“Try to get back on the road,” Mahoney said.
“I don’t know where the fuck the road is!”
Mahoney pointed to his right. “It’s over there.”
“I think we should keep going straight, Sarge. Somebody’s liable to stop us on the road.”
“Okay, go straight! Just get the fuck moving!”
“Hup, Sarge!”
Cranepool threaded through the trees, and Mahoney was having serious doubts that they were going to make it through. They passed more trenches, some of them firing mortars into the air. The rattle of machine-gun fire came from up ahead, and another shell exploded harmlessly nearby. Things were getting a little hot in the woods. He realized that the enemy’s defense was in considerable depth, deployed that way to absorb attacks. Sooner or later, probably sooner, he and Cranepool would come to the front of the German defenses, and then the shit really would hit the fan.
“Hey, what are you doing out here!” called a German soldier in a trench.
“The same thing you’re doing out here!” Mahoney replied.
Twenty yards later a German officer sitting in a trench asked if they were lost.
“No,” replied Mahoney, “we know where we’re going, sir!”
“We do?” asked Cranepool.
“Shaddup!”
They continued to make their way through the woods, passing Germans in trenches and artillery emplacements firing shells at the American lines. The deployment became gradually thicker as they moved along, and then Mahoney saw light through the trees. Cranepool saw it, too, as he steered around obstacles and moved steadily forward. It was the battlefield.
“Stop here!” Mahoney said.
Cranepool braked, and when the motorcycle stopped he stood up and looked through his binoculars. Through the prismatic tubes he saw the edge of the forest straight ahead, and beyond it was a grassy field that inclined downwards toward a little river, and then upwards toward another forest where the Americans evidently were. The other forest was approximately eight hundred yards away, too far for small arms fire to be effective but a good staging area for an attack. It was inevitable that sooner or later either the Germans or the Americans would mount one against each other. Puffs of smoke and explosions could be seen in the forest where the Americans were.
Mahoney pointed ahead. “That’s where we’ve got to go.”
“I’m ready when you are.”
“Just hang on a minute.”
Mahoney looked through the binoculars, trying to find a clear section where they could break through without getting too many machine-gun bullets in their backs. He saw a long trench that appeared to be filled with only riflemen, and at the end of the trench was an artillery emplacement featuring one 88, the piece the Germans used against both aircraft and tanks. Mahoney doubted whether that 88 could be aimed quickly enough to hit a fast-moving motorcycle.
Mahoney pointed in the direction he wanted Cranepool to go. “You see that trench over there?”
“Over where?”
Mahoney handed him the binoculars and pointed again. “Over there.”
Cranepool looked through the binoculars. “You mean the long trench with the 88 on the end?”
“Yeah. I want you to go right over it the way you went over those trenches we passed, and then I want you to head for the American lines as fast as you can.”
Cranepool looked at the field and the river at its bottom. “Hope that river isn’t too deep.”
“If it’s too deep, we’ll abandon the motorcycle and swim the fucking thing.”
“We’ll be sitting ducks for the riflemen up here.”
“They won’t be able to hit us.”
“But we won’t be that far away, Sarge.”
“We’ll be moving too fast for them to draw a bead on us. What’s the matter with you, Cranepool, are you scared or something?”
“Scared? Me? No, I’m not scared, Sarge.” He lowered the binoculars and turned around. “I just thought I’d raise certain military considerations.”
“Stop trying to talk like an officer, you fucking asshole. Get going and keep your head down. Once we get in that field there, take every evasive action you know.”
“Hup, Sarge.”
Cranepool blipped the engine, and Mahoney pulled the pin on two of the German hand grenades. If he was going to die, he intended to leave this earth in a big blast. Cranepool shifted into first and twisted the accelerator. The motorcycle moved forward and Cranepool steered it around trees and bushes, making slow but steady progress toward the trench Mahoney had told him to jump over. He maneuvered the motorcycle until he had a clear path to the trench ahead, and the German soldiers in other trenches looked at him curiously.
“Where are you going with that thing?” one of the soldiers asked jokingly.
“Up your ass,” Cranepool mumbled as he accelerated away.
Mahoney gritted his teeth and held on tightly as the motorcycle gathered speed. The trench came up fast and he thought okay this is it. Cranepool pulled back on the handlebars and the motorcycle was in the air, directly over the trench. Mahoney dropped one of the hand grenades into the Germans below, then twisted and flung the other at the 88 emplacement. The motorcycle landed on the ground and Cranepool wound it
out. It streaked down the hill at a slight angle to the river below, and suddenly Cranepool changed direction and went the other way. Mahoney looked back and saw the hand grenades explode one after the other. Arms, legs, and heads flew up out of the trench but only a puff of smoke and a fireball issued from the 88 emplacement. Mahoney figured the Germans inside were splattered against the walls of the fortifications they’d made, but that was tough shit for then.
He’d heard machine guns and rifles firing during the time they’d been in the woods, but now the bullets whistled over his head and he realized the Germans had got wise and were firing at them. The sidecar bounced around so much he couldn’t return the fire effectively, so he ducked his head and prayed that God would help him escape, although he was a terrible sinner and a lapsed Catholic, he hadn’t been to Mass for years, and back when he’d been married he’d committed adultery so many times it wasn’t even funny.
Cranepool zigzagged down the hill, remembering all the motorcycle races he’d run on his good old Harley, and how similar this was, except that now he was trying to outrace bullets in an effort to save his skin. Bullets whapped into the ground all around him and whistled past his ears. He knew that the Americans in the forest ahead could see what was happening, and he wondered what they were thinking. Finally he neared the bottom of the hill and the river loomed ahead.
“Should I stop?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Are you crazy? Keep going, you stupid asshole!”
“But what if it’s too deep?”
“It’s not too deep! Just go right through it!”
Whether it was deep or not, Cranepool knew that the water would slow the motorcycle down and maybe stop it. The only thing to do was give it all the gas he could and barrel right through. He shifted down and twisted the accelerator as far as it would go. The rear wheel bit into the mud and the motorcycle leapt forward. Mahoney saw the river approach and held onto the sidecar so that he wouldn’t get knocked out when they hit the water. It was only fifteen yards wide and didn’t appear to be very deep. They’d just slosh through it and climb the hill to safety. He’d be in a nice warm bed within an hour, maybe with frisky young nurses playing with his joint.