by Jon Stafford
I was just a kid then, he thought soberly. Since then I been in on the blastin’ a many a tank, some by myself. He remembered his first. That Mark III. Sicily. Then Italy, southern France, and here. He motioned to Kuehl.
“He’s goin’ some place in a hurry!”
“Yeah.”
As the tank went out of sight, they heard another vehicle approaching. Wiley immediately came to a conclusion. “The enemy’s not concentratin’ in this sector like Division thinks. They’re shiftin’ up north.”
The next thirty minutes confirmed his idea, as many vehicles came rumbling down the lane and passed by.
“They’re spacin’ themselves ta keep the noise down,” he said softly to Kuehl. “And comin’ down this lane ’cause the woods are thick enough that no photo plane could see ’em even if it wasn’t cloudy. And that first guy had on the black uniform of an SS officer. These are elements of an SS Panzer Division, headin’ north ta blast our people somewhere.”
“Okay, so what’s that to us?”
“Listen, buddy boy, this is probably more important than some stupid film.”
“So what do we do, go back?”
“No, you’re goin’ back!”
“No way!”
“Private, I’m orderin’ you ta go back. Tell Reddin’ that we’ve seen five Panthers, about a dozen Mark 4s and 3s and six half-tracks headin’ north. No troops at all. You got that?”
“Yeah, okay, okay, when do I leave?”
“Now. Do you have any idea where you are?”
“I was depending on you for that.”
“Where’s the compass I gave you?”
“Right here, Chip. What heading do you want me to take up?”
“Ah, 190 degrees.”
Kuehl was mystified. “You told me the plane was 330 degrees, northwest. So shouldn’t I go back 150 degrees? Ain’t 150 degrees 180 less than 330 degress?”
“Listen, I always go in an oval ta the east ta get ta a target, and then come back in an oval to the west. So, go 190 degrees straight back.”
Kuehl left in a few minutes. Meanwhile, since no more vehicles appeared, so Wiley carefully made his way down to the road.
The quiet seemed eerie to the scout after the thunderous sounds of the last forty minutes. He noticed crates of German matériel on the side of the road. He looked carefully up and down the lane. He could see less than two hundred yards to the south but a long distance to the north.
He heard nothing unusual. He crept right up to a few of the crates. They were made of wooden slats, and he could see what was inside.
“Teller mines!” he muttered to himself, “antitank mines. I could get out the old Bag a Tricks! Boy, would I love ta put a couple a these babies in the roadway!”
Wiley didn’t think what effect doing something like that might have on his mission. Perhaps his youth took control of his better judgment. An almost childlike idea of wishing to see something blow up seized him. Using the mines was something he could not resist.
He used his carbine’s barrel to pry a few of the slats away and took out two of the heavy, disc-shaped mines. Moving into the middle of the road, he continually looked both ways and listened intently.
“They were going ta mine this road for when our guys came up,” he muttered. “Two can play that game.”
He walked a few feet up the road to the north, bent and used the butt of his rifle to gouge a shallow hole for the first mine on the right side of the road, then covered it with leaves. About 350 pounds a pressure and this sucker’ll blow, Wiley thought.
He walked up the road for two or three minutes and planted the other mine on the left side. As he was pushing the leaves over it, he heard distant sounds to the south.
“Time ta go.”
He jumped up on the far side of the roadway and began to run perpendicular to the roadway, again farther away from American lines. It was still only early afternoon. The sun filtered through the trees as he ran as fast as he could uphill, with the sounds, multiple sounds now, becoming louder and louder.
He was far enough away that he couldn’t see the road any longer. He judged from the mechanical sounds that the vehicles had come to the mines. He plopped down against a large chestnut tree, expecting to hear a large explosion.
But none came, which baffled him.
Sounds like trucks passin’ on the road, so what gives? he thought. Well, shit! You never can tell. Maybe the damn trucks passed on the other side a the road. But the road’s not that wide!
Wiley shook his head, realizing that he had let his guard down. He reached for the ever-present Colt .25 and found it right where he expected, in his pocket. Hearing more vehicles all the time, he stood cautiously near the tree and looked carefully in every direction.
I guess I’m okay . . . Before he could finish his thought, there was a teeth-rattling explosion. He smiled that one of the mines had indeed taken its toll. “Ah, the old Bag a Tricks!”
He took out his map to figure out where he was. The woods were not as dense as before, but no landmarks were visible. It took several minutes to find the road he had just left. Then he heard another boom and knew that the second mine had exploded. It was definitely a big outfit with that many vehicles.
He smiled again at knowing that he had caused the enemy some inconvenience, and then he looked back at the map.
If it’s accurate, which is alwaysa big question, this is where I’m at. Damn, the Swede says you’re not supposed ta say ‘at’ at the end of a sentence. He put his finger on the map. If I’m right, I’m still on my arc ta the right side of the oval and only about three miles from where the plane should be.
He looked at his watch: 1400, six hours till dark and sixteen hours before he had to be back in camp. Damn, twenty hours gone already! No damn plane and more than half my time shot.
Wiley was starting to feel very doubtful about the mission. He put the carbine over his shoulder and headed out. As he crested the top of the hill, he could see, intermittently, a great distance. The plane was somewhere ahead of him down there.
He looked to the left. Eight or nine hundred yards off, he could see what had to be the continuation of the road he had just left. There were no tanks or vehicles on it at all.
Directly in front of him, down the other side of the hill, was a large open area containing farm buildings. For the first time, he took out his field glasses.
Better look this over, he thought. Crouching, he spent several minutes carefully looking at the entire area. Two barns, outbuildings, and several houses. No P-38 or evidence of a crash. Now that I seen it, I’ll avoid this open area completely. It’s just a real easy place ta get trapped.
He studied the area to his right, east. Wooded like what I’ve come through. I’ll go through it. No buildings that I can see. Looks like another road too.
He shrugged. “Those trees could hide an army,” he mused to himself, “an entire Panzer Division.”
His attention was distracted back to the continuation of the road he had left. He could see many men coming into view, going obliquely away from him. They were being mar
ched double time. He pulled up his field glasses again. He guessed those men were convicts or forced laborers.
Perhaps two hundred men had come into view when Wiley heard sounds behind him, toward where he had planted the mines. Immediately, he dropped to the ground. About three hundred yards away, he could see figures coming his way through the trees below him. Through the glasses, he could see dogs.
“Damn,” he said out loud, “how in hell did they get dogs on me?”
He thought of the answer in the next instant. It really wasn’t hard to figure out. I been here too long eyein’ the country, he thought. They had those dogs somewhere in those trucks, and when their pals got blown up they began ta track me. They probably think I’m some French guy.
His heart rate quickened. A disturbing thought came into his mind. What have I done this time? If I get away from these guys, are others goin’ ta be houndin’ me all over the place? That was stupid ta use those mines and wreck my mission. And get myself killt.
Surprisingly, only six men and two dogs appeared. The scout sat, taking the Williams carbine from his shoulder. German shepherds, comin’ quick. I can get these guys off my back.
He pushed off the safety. Sitting at an angle to the enemy, he brought the rifle around so that his left elbow rested on his left knee.
It was a long shot for a carbine. The velocity of its bullet was nowhere near that of the regular infantry rifle, the Garand. Methodically, Wiley hiked up the iron sights in the back.
His body absolutely motionless, he aimed at the man with the first dog, waiting until the group came to the next open spot. Dogs had chased him before, he recalled readily, and he knew what to do: shoot the man, not the dog. He squeezed the trigger and the carbine sounded: CRRRACK.
In the three-quarters of a second it took the bullet to traverse the distance, Wiley changed his target to the second dog handler. Just as the bullet hit the first man, the carbine sounded again: CRRRACK. In an instant, the second man spun around and fell, his rifle flying up in the air.
Wiley felt no emotion about the people that he had just killed. He never had nightmares or even thought of the families whose loved ones’ lives he had ended. He was completely certain that he hadn’t been seen and that the remaining enemy soldiers had no idea where his shots came from.
Suddenly, a bullet came within ten or fifteen feet of his head. ZIP! It cut two leaves off a nearby tree, delicately.
“What?” he muttered, nearly dumbfounded.
He hadn’t considered this possibility. The feeling was strong in him to remain motionless. But in less than a second he rolled to his right.
He had no idea that the bullet had come from a German fighter plane shooting at an American bomber thirty thousand feet above him in the overcast sky, completely out of hearing. Other bullets had fallen to earth as well, but the nearest had hit several hundreds yards from him. He never once considered such a possibility.
In an instant, Wiley was up and running. With two of the enemy soldiers dead and the others apparently diving for cover, he was floored thinking that someone had seen him and actually shot at him.
I got a damn flash-hider on the barrel! he thought. How could they see me? But don’t make no difference. Even without anyone seein’ me, I’d have ta run. It’s not a scout’s job ta fight it out with the enemy, ta take a few more with me. I’m on enemy ground, ground I don’t know. In the end, they’d kill me if I stayed there. I got ta see ta my mission and run from the enemy.
His first long strides were to the left. I’ll fool ’em. After a few yards, when he knew instinctively that he was beyond the crest of the hill and no one could see the direction he took, he cut to the right. His escape route, already set in his mind, was the road that he had seen to the right though the dense woods, the woods that could hide a division.
If there are troops in there, I’ll run inta ‘em and be killed or captured!
Wiley ran as fast as he could down the hill toward the woods. In two and a half minutes, he came down to the road and headed left, to the northeast. It was a dirt road of about the same quality of the one where he planted the mines.
Now his pace picked up, and he ran almost all out. On and on he raced on the slightly winding road, making the first mile in less than eight minutes. He maintained that pace for a second mile, the carbine impudently banging his backside and his gear flopping up and down, the water in his canteen sloshing violently. But he saw no enemy.
He knew that his direction was taking him farther and farther away from the plane. Finally, he stopped running. Breathless, he walked along the edge of the road, rainwater dripping on him from the trees.
Wiley knew he could always hear vehicles and even troops coming in plenty of time to hide. He felt safer now, but he also knew that a single enemy soldier standing in any one of the thousands of square feet within sight of him could put a bullet in him at any moment. After only two minutes, he heard something ahead on the road out of sight and walked calmly off to the left.
“That bush. Get behind that bush,” he muttered.
He lay down about thirty yards from the road and watched a German staff car pass by. He checked his watch. It said 1503. He decided to pause for a while to see if he was being tailed and enemy troops were closing in.
Nothing. He stood, made his way about 150 yards from the road, and slumped down. He noticed the sky had brightened just a little.
I gotta think a this mission, he thought. But instead all he could think about was running. I’ve always run away from my problems!
A smile came upon his face as he remembered the good days in his childhood in Fenwick, West Virginia.
Most every day I went ta my grandparents’ place up the road. Pop was gone three hundred or more days outta the year as a long haul trucker. For ten years I went to their house and they cared for me. They didn’t have anythin’, poor clothes, poor educations, and didn’t speak so well. Later, when I went ta boot camp and talked ta guys, I found out how plain and poor we were, and it hurt a lot. I’m a sergeant now and I need ta act and talk better. The Swede’s helpin’ me. For a long time it made me hate anybody who I figured came from any money. Grandma had no nice furniture or dishes, he thought, just a few knickknacks she prized and that plate with ‘Chicago World’s Fair, 1926’ painted on it.
The young soldier, who had missed most of his childhood, hit himself hard in the face as he sometimes did. Sometimes I hate who I am.
Finally, he had another thought. For a change he felt superior, almost.
I have somethin’ more valuable than any ol’ money! My grandpa taught me about the woods from the time I was a little shaver. All right, so I didn’t have those cars or the big house, or even any folks. But I know how ta survive in the woods, and that’s worth a lot in this war. I know all kinds a things those rich guys didn’t know, he thought, trying hard to convince himself.
A.C. was a little man, retired from the coalfields after twenty-five years under the ground. He’d say, “Obey the rules of the woods and you’ll be fine. The first is ta listen. And when you think you’ve listened, then really listen! If you can hear animals, birds, that’s a sign you’re alone.”
He smiled, then would not allow himself another thought until he to
ok his grandfather’s advice and listened to the sounds about him: water dripping off trees, the rustling of squirrels in the leaves on the ground, a bird piping faintly somewhere close. Good. That meant there wasn’t likely anyone nearby.
He thought again of his grandfather. He loved me. He was always good to me. “Chip,” he’d say, “look. And when you’ve looked, look again! Mother Nature’ll tell her secrets if you’ve a mind ta notice her clues. Animals that have passed by, man’s passin’ by, and man’s waste. The clues’ll be there.”
The old man’s voice came to Wiley so clearly.
“When you shoot at somethin’, shoot ta kill. We don’t shoot no animals fur fun but ta sustain ourselfs. You shoot it, you use it, just as The Creator intended. He put animals on this Earth for our use. It’s a Bible rule,” he’d say, “not ta waste what God gives ya.”
Wiley took off his knit cap and ran his hands through his matted hair. Then he died a black lung disease at fifty-nine, and my life began goin’ bad. Fifteen peoples came ta the funeral. Essie stood by the grave and wept slow tears. Was that all a poor man is worth, that only a few peoples would come ta your burial? I’ll bet a rich guy would have lots of peoples come.
He had much hatred washing about in his mind. It started with his malicious father, but it included people in general because they had not attended his grandfather’s funeral. It was also for himself, for running away and not seeing that his grandmother had been properly buried. Finally, he hated Germans because he had seen them act superior to American soldiers and because they had killed so many of his friends.
He saw his grandmother cooking in the kitchen.