ANY “ENCOURAGEMENT” YOU CAN OFFER OUR ALLIED GROUND COMMANDER TO GET MOVING ON THE DOUBLE IS GREATLY APPRECIATED.
SIGNED,
BRADLEY
Chapter Four
Tommy Moon tossed his AWOL bag into the back of the jeep and then climbed into the passenger’s seat. The driver, another flyer from the 301st named Hank Kirkland, lounged against a fender nursing a cigarette and the last of the breakfast coffee in his canteen cup. He seemed in no hurry to begin the journey.
“C’mon, Lieutenant,” Moon called to Kirkland, “we’ve got about forty miles of crummy French roads ahead of us.”
“I ain’t in no hurry, Half. You may be going on a social call but I’m going on business. Shitty business at that.”
“Hey, that’ll teach you to get yourself grounded with an ear infection. Might as well make yourself useful in the meantime.”
“Being an ASO with Fourth Armored was not the being useful I had in mind, Tommy. Even if General Quesada thinks putting pilots with the tankers to coordinate air support is the greatest thing since flush toilets. You’ll see. You’ll get your turn.”
Probably not, Tommy told himself. Not as long as I’m a flight leader.
“And you’d be a natural, too, Tommy, with a brother in Fourth Armored and everything. He know you’re burning leave time just to come visit?”
“Hell, no, Hank. I’m not even sure where his unit is, exactly. I’m taking a shot in the dark here.” He took a last look at the map board he’d carefully marked up at the intel section and then tucked it under his seat. “At least the weather’s good. We should make it to Mayenne by noon.”
“You sure of the route? I don’t want to take a wrong turn and drive right into Kraut country.”
“Knock it off, Hank. I’ve seen most of these roads from the air already. So have you. We’ll be miles behind the front lines the whole way.”
“We’d better be, that’s all I can say.”
Halfway to Mayenne, the town of Fougères seemed as good a place as any for Moon and Kirkland to stop and stretch their legs. They weren’t making forward progress at the moment, anyway. A herd of cattle was being slowly marched through the town, completely blocking their path.
Three main highways intersected in Fougères, providing easy identification for the American bombardiers who had plastered the town in the days before Overlord. The bombing had taken a frightful toll of its civilians as well as its German garrison. The rubble of shattered stone buildings—many of them centuries old—was everywhere. It was much too soon for the citizens of the town to forget their hundreds of dead and injured at the hands of American pilots. The eyes of the bartender and his few morning patrons fell on the shiny wings Moon and Kirkland wore on their chests, symbols that seemed badges of guilt to the Frenchmen. They watched in hostile silence as the Americans took a big round table by the door.
A waitress approached, a haggard, middle-aged woman whose face seemed incapable of smiling. She pointed to the three empty chairs around the table and said, “Pour le cinq, messieurs.”
“What the hell did she say?” Kirkland asked.
“She says the table’s for five, Hank.”
“So what? There’s nobody in this dump. What’s wrong with these fucking frogs?”
“Shut the hell up, Hank. Let me handle this.”
In the schoolboy French the nuns had taught him back in Brooklyn, Tommy began to apologize for their faux pas. He was halfway through asking where it would be all right for them to sit when the roar of trucks spilled through the open door of the cafe, growing louder until it was clear they had no intention of stopping for the bovine parade still blocking the road. For a sickening second, the thrum of motors blended with the soft thuds and the shrieks of animals being mowed down. Those inside the cafe watched in shock as the American deuce-and-a-halves lurched over the thrashing bodies of their mortally wounded victims.
Not a truck in the long column bothered to slow down. As the last one raced by, the waitress split the air of silent outrage by answering Tommy’s unfinished question:
“S’asseoir dans le caniveau avec les vaches, meurtriers.”
Sit in the gutter with the cows, murderers.
As they drove out of Fougères, Hank Kirkland said, “I tell you, Half, you parlez vous that stuff pretty good. That was some hot shit back in town, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t think the frogs thought so.”
“Ahh, fuck ’em. They oughta be kissing our asses. That clown hopping around like some looney in the middle of the street…what the hell was he saying to you, anyway?”
“He wanted to know who was going to pay for all his dead cows.”
Expelling a burst of laughter, Kirkland said, “Did you tell him to send the bill to Hitler?”
“No, I told him to send it to General Patton. You did notice those were Third Army trucks, didn’t you?”
Kirkland shrugged. He couldn’t have cared less.
They drove on through the French countryside, down narrow highways lined and crowned with single columns of tall trees on either side. “It’s like driving through a damn tunnel,” Kirkland said. Beyond the trees were miles of open, gently rolling terrain. “I’d love to catch me a bunch of Krauts out there in the open,” he added. “They could run but they couldn’t hide.” He weaved the jeep left and right, mimicking the s-turns of a strafing aircraft as he bellowed, with great glee, “BA-DA-DA-DA-DA.”
“Is that supposed to be your fifty cals, Hank?” Tommy Moon asked.
“Of course.”
“Pretty crappy imitation, if you ask me.”
Tommy peered ahead into the distance, then rechecked his map.
“Something wrong?” Kirkland asked.
“Yeah, slow down. We’re coming to a fork in the road…and it’s not showing up here.”
The jeep rolled to a stop. Unlike most road junctions, there were no signs pointing toward one town or another. Both paths looked like they’d seen lots of military traffic; the distinctive marks of tank tracks and tactical tires were sketched in mud on their pavement and imprinted into the soft shoulders.
Kirkland said, “I don’t like the north fork.”
“Why?”
“Because north gets us closer to the Krauts.”
Tommy studied the map for a few moments. It wasn’t helping him:
It’s all just lines, and none of them mean shit, as usual.
“Yeah, you’re right, Hank,” Tommy said. “Let’s take the south fork. Worst we can do is end up in Laval instead of Mayenne, I think…and that’s even deeper into friendly territory.” He almost added, or at least it was earlier this morning.
As Kirkland guided the jeep to the south fork, he laughed and said, “Ain’t this hot shit? Put two flyboys in a jeep instead of a plane and watch them fuck up a free lunch.”
Chapter Five
The tall trees lining the south fork road abruptly ended. After less than a mile, the smooth pavement ended, too, devolving into a rutted and muddy dirt track. Kirkland slid the jeep to a stop in the slippery muck. Slamming the gearshift into reverse, he said, “No wonder it wasn’t on the map…it doesn’t fucking go anywhere.”
“Yeah,” Tommy Moon replied, “and that isn’t our only problem.” He tapped the engine’s temperature gauge. The needle quivered each time his finger struck the glass but didn’t budge from the lower end of the warning range. “I think she wants to boil over. Don’t tell me you didn’t check the Prestone in this thing when you signed her out?”
Kirkland shook his head.
“Shut her down for a minute, Hank. Let her cool off…and get our bearings in the meantime.”
He watched as Kirkland switched off the ignition, waiting to hear nothing but pastoral silence. But it never came. There was still the steady rumble of idling engines—lower-pitched than the sound of the jeep’s motor and farther away—but with a menacing, bassy timbre their light vehicle could never project.
Oh, shit…
Those engines were revving now as two German tanks emerged from the woods a hundred yards ahead. Overheating radiator or not, the jeep was cranked, thrown into reverse, and racing backward up the muddy trail.
His head and torso twisted to the rear, Kirkland struggled to keep the skidding wheels on track. His frightened voice an octave higher than usual, he said, “We’re gonna have to turn around at some damn point.”
“Not in this mud,” Tommy replied. “Don’t want to get stuck. Wait for the pavement.”
“What kind of tanks are those, Tommy? Panthers? Tigers?”
“Nah, they’re smaller ones. Panzer Fours, I think.”
“Small, my ass! They still got guns, don’t they?”
A burst of machine gun fire from the lead tank answered Kirkland’s question. They couldn’t tell where the rounds landed. All they knew was they hadn’t hit the jeep.
Moon said, “As long as they’re moving, they’ll never get a good bead on us, bouncing along like they are.”
“But what if they stop to aim?”
“That’ll be a different story, Hank.”
“Are they gaining on us?”
“No. Just drive, dammit.”
They’d almost doubled the distance between them and the tanks when the jeep’s wheels hugged pavement again. Tommy got a good grip on his seat and said, “OKAY, HANK, SWAP ENDS NOW.”
Kirkland performed the feat far more skillfully than Tommy could have imagined. With a deft jerk of the steering wheel while applying the hand brake, the jeep’s rear wheels locked and it snapped around in a vehicular pirouette. Now facing away from the tanks, he slammed the accelerator to the floor.
But when he glanced to the passenger’s seat, it was empty. Tommy Moon was gone.
Kirkland didn’t slow down. The jeep traveled a few hundred yards before he looked back.
There was no sign of Moon, not on the road, not in the tall grass on either side. The lead tank had stopped, its main gun being tweaked into position for a shot at the jeep.
Shit! Gotta get away!
He pushed harder on the accelerator, but it was already firmly on the floor.
Daring one last look back, he saw the lead tank suddenly plunge off the road as a P-47 streaked low over it, its belly nearly scraping the turret’s protruding antennas.
The American plane would be on him in a heartbeat. The muzzle flashes from its guns made Kirkland shriek, “Don’t shoot at me, you stupid son of a—”
Like a band saw, .50-caliber rounds ripped the jeep open right down the middle, bathing Hank Kirkland’s legs in metal splinters and gasoline from the ruptured tank below his seat. The armor-piercing incendiaries promptly ignited the fuel.
A human torch from the waist down, Kirkland tumbled from the mangled jeep as it juddered to a stop. He never noticed the three other P-47s whizzing by split-seconds later or the second German tank off the road, her crew bailing out and running to get as far from their tank as they could. He was too busy struggling to shed his burning trousers. All he could think of was:
Ain’t this some shit? We’re all worried about burning in our cockpits…but I get burned up in a Willys jeep.
He got the trousers off in seconds that seemed like hours. Exhausted, he lay in the waist-high grass and examined his legs. Large, crinkled patches of crisp black skin were charred like the pages of a book thrown into a fire, their curled-up edges revealing the raw redness below. The pain he’d felt when wearing the flaming trousers was gone. He lied to himself that that was a good thing. The only sound was the snarl of the loitering P-47s.
Suddenly, the grass next to him ruffled as if being threshed by invisible hands—and Tommy Moon appeared, crawling on all fours.
“Shit, Tommy, I thought you were some fucking Kraut.”
“I could’ve been. Those tankers are running around here somewhere. I guess it really is true some of them bail out at the first sign of planes. Where’s your forty-five?”
Kirkland gave a weary shrug. “Maybe it’s still on the road somewhere.”
“Here, take mine,” Moon replied, pressing the pistol into the man’s hand. “C’mon, we’re gonna get out of here.”
“I don’t think I can walk, Tommy. Can’t feel my legs.”
He began to lift Kirkland across his shoulders—a fireman’s carry.
“Wait, Tommy…you ain’t big enough to—”
But Moon was already walking, struggling to bear his wounded comrade. “Just shut up and cover our asses, Hank.”
Not far down the road, they came to their wrecked and smoldering jeep. Tommy stopped to take a good look. The seat he’d been thrown from was a bullet-riddled tangle of twisted metal.
Moon said, “You know, Hank, when that fancy driving of yours sent me flying—and then you didn’t come back for me—I was cursing you and your whole family.” He glanced back at the carcass of the jeep. “But now, I’m thinking maybe you did me a real big favor.”
Tommy Moon was exhausted. He’d carried Kirkland as far as he could, but they still hadn’t made it back to the fork in the road. At least they’d reached the welcome safety of some tree cover. Tommy laid his wounded partner down and said, “I’m going back to that main drag and flag down some help. You wait here. I’ll be back for you.”
Kirkland nodded and tried to hand the .45 to Tommy.
“No, Hank. You keep it.”
As Moon set out again, Kirkland called after him, “You are coming back, ain’t you, Tommy? I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if…”
“Shut up, you idiot, and try to stay out of trouble.”
Once Tommy made it back to the fork, it was just a matter of minutes before a platoon of American tanks, four in all, rumbled up. The lieutenant in the lead tank took one look at the wings on Moon’s chest and asked, “You get shot down or something?”
Tommy told his story, finishing with, “Those Kraut tanks—I thought around here was supposed to be way behind the lines.”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to be,” the tank lieutenant replied, “but I guess nobody told the Krauts. We’ve been mopping up infiltrations for days. Hop on—let’s go get your burned-up buddy.”
Chapter Six
21ST ARMY GROUP COMMUNIQUE
FROM:
MONTGOMERY--COMMANDER, ALLIED GROUND FORCES
DATE--TIME OF ORIGIN:
9 AUG 44/1200 HRS
TO:
SHAEF--EISENHOWER
COPY (FOR INFO):
BRADLEY--COMMANDER, 12TH ARMY GROUP
IN RECEIPT OF YOUR MESSAGE URGING RAPID ACTION RE ENCIRCLEMENT OF GERMAN 7TH ARMY. BE ADVISED THIS COMMAND HAS BEEN AWARE OF THIS POSSIBILITY FOR SOME TIME AND IS MOVING TOWARDS ITS EXECUTION WITH ALL DUE CAUTION. HASTE IS A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR PROPER TACTICAL PLANNING AND PREPARATION.
SIGNED,
MONTGOMERY
Chapter Seven
The doctor took one look at Hank Kirkland’s legs and announced, “Lieutenant, you’re a lucky man. Your war is over.” For just a brief moment, the months of treatment ahead—complete with frequent, painful debridements, skin grafts, the almost inevitable infections, even the possibility of amputation—seemed like a gift:
My war is over. And I’ve still got my pecker, at least.
Tommy Moon said goodbye as he was being wheeled off to burn ward quarantine. As they shook hands, Kirkland, his voice weak but earnest, said, “You won’t tell anyone what I did, will you?”
Tommy smiled. “Fog of war, pal. Who the hell remembers?”
Two hours of hitchhiking and a few misdirections later, Tommy found his brother’s outfit: 37th Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division. As he walked into the battalion CP tent, the crusty master sergeant behind the front desk gave this diminutive flyboy lieutenant a disapproving once-over as he asked, “You lost, Lieutenant?”
“No, I think this might be the place, Sergeant. I’m looking for a guy named Sean Moon.”
“Crunch? What do you want with ol’ Crunch, Lieutenant? You didn’t come to arrest him or nothing, d
id you?”
“No, just visiting. He’s my brother. Where can I find him?”
“Let us save you some time. Private Odom here’s gotta run some errands for me down that way. He’ll take you to him.”
In the jeep with Odom at the wheel, Tommy asked, “Private, do you know how Sergeant Moon got the nickname Crunch?”
“Yessir, everybody knows that. That’s the sound a Jerry makes when you run over him with a tank. I heard tell that Sergeant Moon says when you’re up close, it’s easier than shooting them, and it saves ammo, too.”
Odom turned the jeep down a trail of fresh tank tracks cut through a thick stand of trees. Tommy could see the outlines of a dozen or more Shermans parked under camouflage nets, swarmed by crewmen and mechanics servicing them. He saw Sean, too, berating a team of men slathered in grease and grime, struggling to shove a very long ramming staff down the tube of a tank’s main gun. It had been seven months since he laid eyes on his big brother back in England. In that time, Sean Moon seemed to have aged 10 years.
“End of the line, sir,” Odom said as he braked to a stop.
Sean did an angry double take as he saw his brother walking toward him. “Holy shit, Half. Just what the fuck are you doing out here?”
“You’d better snap to and salute me, Sergeant,” Tommy said, a big grin on his face. “You don’t want your men to think you’re an insubordinate son of a bitch, do you?”
Sean was grinning now, too. “I am an insubordinate son of a bitch, you little jerk-off. Now get over here.” He wrapped his little brother in a bear hug that left no doubt he really was happy to see him. With an arm still around Tommy’s shoulder, he pulled him toward his tank and the team of men working on it.
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