The planes did as they were instructed, dropping in well-spaced pairs to low level in a swirling descent. As they rolled out of the turn on the attack heading Tommy provided, the WP round from the mortar struck the road and began to spew its thick white smoke into the air.”
“Got the smoke,” Topeka Leader reported.
The Shermans had been raking the bunkers with their .50 calibers to deter the Germans from firing on the aircraft. Once the planes began the attack run, though, Tommy ordered the tankers to cease fire. “Thanks for the help, guys,” he added, “but let’s not have any accidents here today.”
It wouldn’t have been the first time target-fixated gunners accidentally shot down friendly aircraft.
Topeka Leader and Topeka Two flashed by, releasing two bombs each along the line of bunkers. The bombs tore the log roofs off all but one of the bunkers, kicking up a storm of dust and smoke. The last two jugs were starting their attack run, 15 seconds out.
“Good drop, Topeka Leader,” Tommy said. “Okay, Topeka Three, on my mark…three, two, one, DROP.”
Those bombs struck the remaining bunker, blowing off its log roof as if it was nothing but twigs.
“Outstanding, Topeka,” Tommy reported, his voice turning giddy, losing the usual radio monotone. “Orbit south, stand by.”
He needed a moment to catch his breath. Though he’d dropped them many times, he’d never felt the swift, earth-shaking violence wreaked by 500-pound bombs up close. From the air, they were just all smoke and dust, with perhaps a fleeting glimpse of the circular shock wave coursing outward from the point of impact as your plane sped away. But viewed from the ground, they were enough to scare you shitless. All the tank, artillery, and mortar shells he’d seen impact in the last few days paled in comparison.
The bunkers might have been pummeled and the Germans within dead or dazed, but the walls of those ancient structures had hardly a stone displaced. They provided excellent cover for the Shermans from the guns in the town as they closed in to mop up.
“Are we looking for prisoners, sir?” Tommy asked.
“Only if they’re not already bleeding to death,” Newcomb replied. “Let the Krauts take care of their own wounded. Mostly, we’re looking for intel…maps, documents. That kind of stuff.”
“Can I help, sir?”
“Suit yourself, Lieutenant.”
As he walked toward his brother’s tank, Tommy heard a man screaming in German. Hurrying to the sound, he found Fabiano, Sean’s gunner, standing over a kneeling, frantic Wehrmacht soldier with his hands up. The muzzle of the gunner’s Thompson was wedged under the man’s chin.
“Kamerad! Kamerad!”
“Kamerad my fucking ass,” Fabiano said and then took a step back. Leveling the Thompson at the German’s head, he said, “I don’t want to get any of your shit for brains on me when I blow your fucking head off.”
Before he could pull the trigger, Tommy jerked the weapon from his hands.
“Better stay out of this, Lieutenant,” Fabiano said. “This ain’t no concern of you flyboys.”
It was only then Tommy realized his brother was leaning casually against his tank just a few yards away, watching. He could tell Sean had no intention of stopping his gunner from murdering their prisoner.
“Captain Newcomb says to take prisoners if they’re not too badly wounded,” Tommy said. “This guy seems to qualify.”
Fabiano kept looking at Sean, waiting for him to set this annoying lieutenant straight. Even if it was his brother. But Sean just stood there, a look of amused contempt on his face.
“We’re supposed to be better than that, Sean,” Tommy said.
“Better than what? You ain’t gonna give me any of that knights of the sky bullshit, are you, Tommy? Chivalry and all that crap? Oh wait…you’re a virgin at all this. You ain’t never even seen the Luftwaffe, right? So how the hell would you know how it really is?”
Sean shook his head and spit on the ground. “Get out of here, Half. Go back to dreamland.”
As he grabbed the German by the arm and led him to Captain Newcomb, Tommy knew he’d never need to ask his brother if he’d killed those prisoners two days ago.
He’d just gotten his answer.
Chapter Nineteen
ALLIED GROUND FORCES DIRECTIVE
FROM:
MONTGOMERY--COMMANDER, ALLIED GROUND FORCES
DATE--TIME OF ORIGIN:
12 AUG 44/1500 HRS
TO:
BRADLEY--COMMANDER, 12TH ARMY GROUP
COPY (FOR INFO):
SHAEF (EISENHOWER); HODGES--US 1ST ARMY; PATTON--US 3RD ARMY; DEMPSEY--2ND BRITISH ARMY; CRERAR--1ST CANADIAN ARMY; CONINGHAM--RAF 2ND TAF; QUESADA--IX TAC; WEYLAND--XIX TAC
RE YOUR COMMUNIQUE OF 2100/11 AUG, DO NOT—REPEAT--DO NOT ALLOW ANY UNIT OF 12TH ARMY GROUP TO VENTURE BEYOND THE DESIGNATED FLERS-ARGENTAN “HOLD LINE.” SUCH A MOVE BY ANY UNIT IN YOUR COMMAND IN THE FACE OF MASSED GERMAN ARMOR RISKS THAT UNIT’S DECIMATION AND RENDERS A SERIOUS SETBACK TO THE GREAT ADVANCES THIS COMMAND HAS MADE SO FAR.
IF YOUR UNITS WILL BE IN POSITION FAR AHEAD OF THE 0600/14 AUG SCHEDULED TIME AS YOU CLAIM, THEN USE THAT TIME TO SOLIDIFY YOUR POSITIONS ALONG THE “HOLD LINE.”
YOU ARE FURTHER INSTRUCTED TO MAKE NO MORE “SUGGESTIONS” ABOUT HOW BEST TO COORDINATE THIS OR ANY OTHER ALLIED OPERATION.
SIGNED,
MONTGOMERY
Chapter Twenty
Night had fallen in Alençon before Tommy finally found his replacement, Lieutenant Charlie Webster, in the Café Madeleine, whooping it up among scores of inebriated 4th Armored GIs. “These tanker boys sure know how to have themselves a fine old time,” Webster said as he drained a glass of whiskey and added it to the half-dozen empties stacked in front of him.
“They’re celebrating,” Tommy replied. “Tonight’s a reprieve—they could’ve been rolling to Sées right now. What are you celebrating, by the way?”
“How about I’m glad you got back in one piece, Half? I heard you guys got beat up a little.”
“Sure did. Two light tanks lost, four guys dead. Our jugs did a great job, though.”
Webster’s reply dripped with the blind certainty only alcohol can provide: “Don’t we always, Half?”
“Better lighten up on the fire-water, Charlie. Tomorrow’s going to be your turn to shine, bright and early.”
Webster didn’t seem to hear the suggestion. He was fixed in glassy-eyed captivation on something at the other side of the room. Tommy turned to see what—or who—it was and found Sylvie Bergerac walking toward their table. She looked strikingly beautiful in that same shimmering dress from the night before. With unmistakable delight in her voice, she said, “Lieutenant Moon, you are still here! I thought you would have left us by now.”
“No, you’re stuck with me one more night. My ride home doesn’t leave until morning. May I introduce my replacement, Lieutenant Charlie Webster?”
That was as far as the introduction got. As Webster tried to rise for the lady, he didn’t quite make it fully upright before keeling over and landing face down on the polished wooden floor. When he tried to scamper to his feet, he slipped and fell flat all over again.
With the help of two tankers from 37th Battalion, Tommy got Webster back on his feet. “Do me a favor, guys,” Tommy said, “and take this gentleman to his billet at the S3’s shop.”
“No problem, sir,” a corporal replied. “Will do.”
“And tell my brother I’m looking for him.”
“Sure thing, Lieutenant.”
As they sloppily waltzed the drunken aviator toward the door, the corporal called back, “Kinda wish you were staying around, Lieutenant. Nobody ever had to carry your ass.”
Webster out of the way, Tommy asked Sylvie, “Can I buy you a drink?”
“No, Lieutenant, you may not. I will buy you a drink instead. I believe you have more than earned it. You Americans prefer whiskey, I believe?”
She returned quickly from the bar and plunked th
e glass down before him. “What’s that you’re drinking?” he asked.
She swirled the clear liquid in her glass and laughed. “It is soda water, Lieutenant. I must stay sober.”
He thought of his brother’s words from last night: See? I told you that jane’s a fucking whore.
“Oh, are you working or something?”
Instantly, he wished he hadn’t said it. The word working sounded so demeaning. He could understand French women resorting to prostitution with their conquerors to feed their families. But the whole concept of bedding German officers for the information they might inadvertently divulge—spying between the sheets, as Sylvie claimed to be doing—seemed a silly and dangerous game. But his tone didn’t perturb her in the least.
“No, Lieutenant. Not tonight. Not any night, in fact. The need has vanished along with the Boche.”
She settled back in her chair, taking in the panorama of hard-drinking, rowdy GIs all around them. Then she fixed Tommy in a steady, appraising gaze.
In French, she asked him, “Perhaps I can do more than buy you a drink, Lieutenant?”
Tommy took a sip of his whiskey, running her words through his head one more time to ensure he hadn’t misheard them. Once convinced of the translation, he basked for just a moment in the flattery of her proposition before rectitude and its flock of inhibitions came roaring back like cops raiding a speakeasy.
“I couldn’t, Sylvie. Not with a married woman. Not that it doesn’t sound wonderful, mind you…”
Her face settled into a serene smile. “I did not realize some of you Americans are so amusingly Catholic.”
“What? You don’t have churches here in France?”
“Of course we have churches, and they are very beautiful. But religion is politics, Lieutenant. Nothing more. It was Napoleon who said, religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”
He looked genuinely shocked by her words and could only sputter, “Regardless, but…”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You certainly are not like the others. But I expected as much, and you have not disappointed me.”
“So that was just some test, Sylvie?”
“All life is a test, Lieutenant.” She stood and took him by the hand. “At least do me the favor of walking me back to Papa’s House.”
They walked at a leisurely pace through the streets of Alençon, crowded with every GI not on security duty. Content on Tommy’s arm, she said, “Your comrades can be quite a nuisance to an unescorted woman. Thank you for your help.”
The line of GIs waiting for their turn in the bordello wound down the alley and around the corner into the grand-rue. Tommy and Sylvie got more than a few askance looks from GIs. “They think I’m jumping the line,” he said.
“Nonsense. You are just being a gentleman. They will see that soon enough.”
“Are you going in? I thought you said there was no need for you to work here anymore.”
“That is true, and I am not going to work in that way. But Papa will need some help with—how should I say?—administration?”
At the doorway, a towering Frenchman in a maquis beret held the door open for her with one hand while effortlessly holding back the queue of eager GIs pushing to get in.
“Au revoir, Tommy,” she said, kissing him goodbye—French-style—on both cheeks. “Perhaps we will meet again someday?”
“Yeah, I sure hope so. That would be great.”
As he turned and walked away, he had an inkling of what all those French husbands must have felt when they dropped their wives off for another night of servicing their conquerors. But the conquerors were gone; now they’d be servicing their liberators.
And I’ve got about a snowball’s chance in hell of ever crossing paths with that lady again, dammit.
Tommy wandered back through the streets of Alençon, in no hurry to catch some sleep or gather his limited kit before he rejoined the fighter squadron tomorrow. He looked inside every bar he passed, expecting to find his brother. He even looped back to the bordello, standing on a dark corner, trying to be inconspicuous—or as inconspicuous as an airman in khakis could be in a sea of olive drab—as he surveyed the line of restless GIs waiting to pay for a brief encounter with a woman. Sean Moon wasn’t there, either. There was no place left for Tommy to go but 37th Tank Battalion HQ.
At the S3 section’s tent, he blundered into a gathering of General Wood and his subordinates. “Come on in, Lieutenant Moon,” the general called to him. “You’ll get a kick out of this, too.”
Colonel Abrams pointed to an empty camp stool. Tommy settled in, feeling like a very small fish in a very big pond.
“Lieutenant,” Wood said, “I was just about to give the boys here some words of wisdom from General Patton. I was asking the general for his permission to deviate to Gacé, based on what our friends in the Underground told us and how they’d been dead right about Sées. Now, this huge map on his wall had that Flers-Argentan hold line drawn in bright red grease pencil, straight as an arrow. Looks like it extended all the way to the damn Rhine. Well, after mulling it over for a few moments, Georgie Patton walks right up to that map, takes a rag, and erases that line. Wipes it clean off. Then he turns around to me and everyone else in the room—we’re all standing there open-mouthed, mind you, because we sure as hell weren’t expecting that—and he says, ‘Fuck Monty and his fucking hold line. We didn’t come all this way so we can stand around, waiting on him to get his ass in gear again. I’ll embarrass that strutting little clerk just like I did in Sicily. If Brad or Ike don’t like it, they can fire my ass.’ Then he asks me, ‘Wood, you say Gacé?’ And I tell him, ‘Yes, sir. That’s where we want to go.’ So he looks at me, real serious, and says, ‘So why the hell are you still standing here, General? Get moving!’”
General Wood stood there for a moment, enjoying the same open-mouthed looks of surprise Patton had received. “So listen up, gentlemen,” he continued, “because here’s what we’re going to do.” He pointed to Colonel Abrams. “Creighton, you’re going to lead a combat team—let’s call it Combat Command Fox—to Gacé. CCF will be comprised of two armored battalions—yours and Colonel Jeffrey’s Forty-Third, plus Major Bowman’s Fifty-First Armored Infantry with two batteries of one-oh-fives from the Ninety-Fourth Artillery. I want to see if the situation and terrain will really allow us to block an entire German Army. The rest of us will stay and secure Alençon until Eightieth Division relieves us in a day or two, and then we’ll join you up there. Or, if it’s not working out, we’ll pull you back and try something else.”
“Just one question, sir,” Abrams replied. “A combat command like the one you’ve just described—shouldn’t someone higher in rank than me be in command?”
“I believe you’re up to the job, Creighton. Do you disagree?”
“No sir.”
“Well, then, it looks like you’re the man,” General Wood said. “Now let’s go finish off the whole damn German Seventh Army and get our boys home by Christmas.”
Tommy found it impossible to sleep. He couldn’t leave things the way they were with Sean. First, he had to find him, but wandering in the dark through the tank parks on the outskirts of town was a great way to get shot by jumpy sentries. Maybe he’d get one last chance at first light, right before CCF set off for Gacé.
It was just before dawn as the engines of the American tanks rumbled to life, shredding the night’s silence with their mechanized arrogance. Stumbling through the grayness from one platoon to another, Tommy finally saw his brother as he was performing some final preparations on the deck of Eclipse of the Hun. It was still too dark to make out his face from 50 feet away, but he didn’t need the light of day to know it was Sean.
Tommy was right next to the tank before his brother noticed him. He never got a chance to speak; the look on his big brother’s face stopped him cold. Sean’s expression was a kaleidoscope, changing in split seconds from shame, to annoyance, to dismissal, to go fuck yourself. Then he cli
mbed into the turret, spoke commands to his crew Tommy couldn’t hear and didn’t look back as the Sherman growled, creaked, and clanked into its place on the ready line.
Chapter Twenty-One
The P-47 was poised on a forward airfield every bit as new as she was, her blunt nose angled upward as if craving the sky. She lacked only two things to make her complete: a pilot and a name. Tommy Moon was about to provide both.
“You guys threw me a curve,” Tommy said to Sergeant Harry McNulty, his crew chief. “I had no idea the Three-oh-First moved to this place. We were only on the highway from Alençon an hour, and it would have been a whole lot less if it wasn’t for all that Third Army traffic going the other way hogging the road. I didn’t even know there was such an airfield as A-14.”
“A lot happened in the five days you been gone, Lieutenant,” McNulty replied. “As soon as you left, we got the word to pack up at A-6 and move up here with unparalyzed speed.”
Tommy was pretty sure he’d meant unparalleled.
“And when we got here, these new birds were waiting for us, like it was all deranged ahead of time and nobody told us. You got a name in mind for this bird, sir?”
“Yeah, Sarge. I’m going to call her Eclipse of the Hun.”
McNulty made a face like he’d just sucked a lemon. “With all due respect, Lieutenant, just what the fuck does that mean?”
Tommy explained the name and its origin. McNulty gave a what the hell shrug and said, “Okay, I get it. Keeping it in the family, then. Two Moons driving rigs with the same name.”
“Yeah. That’s it in a nutshell.” He reached into a pocket, pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to McNulty. “Here’s a sketch of the nose art that goes with the name.”
Moon Above, Moon Below Page 9