One Fight at a Time

by Jeff Dowson

  *

  In January 1944, sick of watching men he admired take off into the blue, not knowing if they would return, Grover got himself transferred to the 21st US Armoured Division. He celebrated his twenty-third birthday on the evening of June 4th. Just a small gathering of buddies around a couple of tables in the bar. Only three glasses of beer allowed to each man. They were all on standby for an operation that would see them make history, providing the weather cleared. So they toasted Ed in the stuff that made Milwaukee famous and tried not to think about what was coming. An inch short of six feet tall and a comfortable eleven stones in weight, Grover was fit and tough and respected. The savage army haircut had not succeeded entirely in disguising his dark brown curls. The steady and uncompromising look in his blue eyes, lent a solid re-assurance to those around him, in the nervous dawn of June 6.

  The 21st battled every yard from Omaha Beach to the River Elbe.

  Grover began D Day as a private. He survived the Battle of the Bulge winter because he came from Tomah Wisconsin, which had the coldest sonovabitch winters on the planet. While his compatriots from South Carolina and Georgia shivered in soaked battledress and boots, he thumped on through the Ardennes snow, guiding the way like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.

  He got his first stripe after the 21st broke out of Bastogne. They gave him his second, after Baker Company led the charge over the Saar River, blowing up both German machine gun posts.

  While he was somewhere between Remagen Bridge and Betzdorf, slogging eastwards, his mother died of liver cancer. His brother Arnold, who was building Sherman tanks in Detroit, sent him a wire he never got. Div Coms was busy trying to direct the frenzied advance and lost it somehow. A subsequent letter reached him two weeks after the funeral. At that stage, there seemed no point in going home. So he stitched on his third chevron and kept moving.

  In the course of ten months, Grover morphed from scared rookie into experienced killer. Advance at whatever cost was the order, blasting onwards and trying not to die was the method, and home was a world away. He began to wonder who he had been before all this. What sort of person was the Ed Grover he had left behind in Tomah Wisconsin? He hoped to Christ he hadn’t been the person he was now. Because now, the only thing that mattered was this day in history and how many of the men in his company were still alive as it dawned.

  Finally, on the west bank of the Elbe, the soldiers of Baker Company stood still and silent, waiting for the end. Grover watched through binoculars, as soldiers of the Ukraine 1st Army gathered in a massive swarm across the river. Fleeing Germans, refugee Poles and Slavs were rounded up and bundled into makeshift compounds.

  Now, Europe belonged to the Allies, and the hammer and sickle flew over the Reichstag.

  *

  In the station Waiting Room, the tall man finished reading his newspaper, folded it and offered it to Zoe. She read the front page headline. BRITAIN’S WOMEN ENJOY BEING HOME-MAKERS AGAIN. This was the conclusion arrived at, following a survey conducted by the recently created Home Plans for Britain Committee – a group of prominent civil servants, set up to review how Britain was coping, five years on. Marvellously well apparently. Zoe wondered how comprehensive that survey had been. Which, in turn, led to considering how life had moved on in the West Country.

  The war effort in Swindon’s railway yards had been immense. Millions of fighter cannon shells, thousands of bombs, field generators, bailey bridges and landing craft. Most of them built by women who had learned overnight how to be fitters and riveters. Now, the men had returned from Europe to take their old jobs back. The women who had kept Britain in the war and made a huge contribution to the winning of it, were once again housewives and home makers. But almost five years on, sweets and chocolate, tea, sugar, eggs, tinned fruit, jam, cheese, soap and petrol were still on ration. Even if the new age of austerity housewife could make three pounds ten shillings a week housekeeping seem like a fortune, she still struggled to put a decent family meal on the table.

  The tannoy crackled into life. Announced that the 9.05 to Bristol Temple Meads was approaching platform 2. Bodies spilled out of the Waiting Room.

  Zoe walked towards the front of the train. Ahead of her, a soldier rose from the bench in the shelter, crossed the platform and opened the rear door of the front carriage. He saw her approaching, held the door open and waved her into the carriage ahead of him. She nodded her thanks. He climbed in behind her and closed the door.

  The compartments had spare seats, here and there. Zoe walked the length of the corridor, towards the engine. In the foremost compartment, two workmen in heavy woollen jackets and wearing GWR badges, were sitting facing each other on opposite sides of the door. One of them nodded a greeting to her as she stepped in from the corridor and squeezed between their knees. She sat down in a corner by the window. The soldier followed her into the compartment and sat down on the seat opposite.

  There was a roar of steam from the engine ahead. The carriage jolted and began to move. The train pulled out of Swindon, got up to speed and began to chug rhythmically on.

  In his seat, Grover leaned his head into the corner cushions and allowed himself a few moments to look at the woman in front of him. She was pretty. Dark, shoulder length hair, brown eyes and dimples in her cheeks. About five feet six he estimated. Probably older than he was. She was wearing a dark coat, which she had unbuttoned because the compartment was warm. Underneath she wore a high-necked navy blue sweater and matching skirt, the hem of which rested on her knees. She had long legs.

  Then conscious that she must be aware of the inspection he had just made, he leaned forwards and offered the woman his right hand.

  “My name’s Ed Grover.”

  She took his hand. “Zoe,” she said. “Zoe Easton.”

  “Pleasure to meet you Zoe.”

  “You’re a long way from home.”

  He leaned back into the seat again. “I came over here in the summer of 1940.”

  “And you’re still here.”

  “Minor miracle I guess.”

  “And home…?”

  Grover had been over this ground many times. And he had slipped into an uncomfortable rationalisation about home.

  “The land of the free and the home of the brave, looks very different from this distance. We Americans are an acquired taste. We were late pitching up for the war. Again. And we brought with us burgers and Hershey Bars. The US is as big as Europeans imagine. With big motor cars and shopping malls and freeways that run for hundreds of miles. Where some very frightening people are working around the clock building atomic bombs. All the prices end in ninety-nine cents and mortuary plots are sold on billboards next to the freeway.”

  Zoe looked straight into Grover’s eyes, surprised by the assessment of his homeland. He looked out of the window.

  “In any case, there’s not much to go back for.”

  “Have you no family?”

  “My father was killed by a drunk driver when I was six. My mother died while I was in Germany. My brother and I get on well enough, but I guess that’s because we rarely meet up. He’s in Detroit. Married, with two kids. He builds Chrysler gearboxes.”

  “And you’re a soldier.”

  “Only for another five days.”

  “So... What will you do next?”

  “I don’t know. Go with the flow I guess. That’s what I’ve always done. My brother went off to Motor City, I stayed at home. Joined the Tomah PD when I was seventeen. Did a couple of years as a beat cop. Then I got interested in the practice of the law – how it was supposed to work, not just enforcing it. I was about to do a law degree in Chicago, when the war arrived and got in the way.”

  He paused and leaned back in his seat. Zoe waited for him to go on.

  “I should go back home and do it now,” he said. “But... Hell, I was nineteen then. And that seems a lifetime ago.”

  He drifted back to the present. Zoe smiled at him. It was infectious. He smiled back. The train slowed and slid into Chip
penham. The GWR men got to their feet and left the compartment. Zoe re-arranged herself against the seat cushions. Grover studied her once more.

  “Now you,” he said.

  She looked at him.

  “What about me?”

  “Your turn. Tell me about you.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Oh er... Age, marital status.”

  “Always the first two questions.”

  Grover raised his hands, palms outwards. “Sorry.”

  Zoe took a couple of beats pause. Then a deep breath.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m thirty-eight. I was married. My husband flew Lancasters. His plane was shot down over the Ruhr in September 1944. Our son Christopher, was killed in the Luftwaffe raid in January ’41. I was in London, so he was spending the night with his aunt, my sister. A direct hit on the garden smashed the Anderson shelter to pieces.”

  Grover shifted in his seat. Uncomfortable, for the first time since the conversation had begun. Zoe helped him out.

  “Don’t worry Ed. Talking with a stranger on a train is good. No baggage, and no explanations necessary.”

  “I lost count of the number of people I watched die,” he said. “I kept the score for a while. I didn’t want the deaths to go un-recalled. But I stopped when I realised it was a senseless activity. There were just too many.”

  There was a long pause. Both of them waiting for the other to offer the last words on the subject. Zoe broke the silence.

  “I think you should go home, Ed Grover.”

  He looked at her. They lapsed into silence again. The train rumbled on. Grover stared out of the window again, thinking about what he had left behind.

  *

  In the summer of 1945, now promoted to Master Sergeant, Grover was posted to Wiesbaden. And back on the banks of the Rhine, he found himself having to cultivate a new bunch of skills.

  Only three months earlier, he and Baker Company had stormed the town, guns blazing, adrenalin levels off the scale. Now the war was over and the killing done, but Grover discovered the peace was no cakewalk. Building life after death was an eerie and complicated business. While struggling across Europe, through the fighting and the dying, there had been times when Grover had prayed for the war to end. Not that he was much of a church goer, but there are no atheists in foxholes. He soon came to realise however, that ending the war wasn’t in God’s hands, but in his and in the hands of his buddies. Baker Company had a greater purpose than anyone at any time in history. And now, with that purpose achieved, they had to help win the peace.

  Grover had got used to the killing. Even close up. He had seen the whites of his enemy’s eyes. Now, in Wiesbaden, he was looking into the faces of bewildered mothers and children, traumatised and helpless. Charged with distributing food and medicines, and waging a different kind of war, against chancers, exploiters and black marketeers.

  He segued slowly from soldier into uneasy peacekeeper.

  *

  In the compartment he dozed again. Woke up as the train stopped in Bath. No one moved in. Zoe and he remained alone.

  “Why are you going to Bristol?” she asked.

  “Because... on a cold, rainy, Easter Saturday nine years ago, a family in Bedminster showed me a kindness. And I want to see them again.”

  “You kept in touch?”

  “Ellie and I wrote to each other,” he said. “Every couple of months or so, until the weeks before D Day. At which point, all letters out of the bases were censored. And then during the fighting, well... mail got lost, un-posted and un-delivered. We swapped letters while I was in Berlin. And again, when I got back to the UK.”

  “Where does the family live?”

  “Gladstone Street.”

  Zoe smiled at him. “I’ll take you there.”

  “No no. Not if it’s out of your way.”

  “It isn’t.”

  Outside the window, the Station Master stepped into vision and looked back along the platform. He hoisted a green flag, put his whistle into his mouth and blew three blasts. A single blast echoed a response from the guard at the rear of the train. The Station Master turned and waved ahead at the driver. The carriage lurched, there was a series of steam bellows from the locomotive and the train began to move again.

  “Fifteen minutes into Bristol,” Zoe said.

  Grover nodded. The suburbs of Oldfield and Twerton trundled by.

  Chapter Four

  In Bristol, Zoe led the way out of Temple Meads to the station car park; a cleared and flattened bomb site which backed on to the old cattle market. She pointed at a graceful, dark maroon Riley.

  “Here we are.”

  The one and a half litre RMA, was a car for people on the rise. Sleek and desirable. Grover wondered what Zoe did for a living.

  She unlocked the driver’s door, climbed in, tossed her handbag onto the back seat, leaned across the car and unlocked the front passenger door. Grover got in, suddenly enveloped by the welcoming smell of wood panelling and soft leather. The Riley fired first time and Zoe negotiated her way out of the car park. A couple of minutes later, driving along Redcliffe Way towards the river, she spoke again.

  “Tell me about your interest in the law.”

  Grover blew out his cheeks and leaned his neck against the top curve of the seat.

  “At the time, it seemed the most worthwhile thing I could do.”

  “And now you don’t know?”

  “As I said, it was a long time ago.”

  “I’m a lawyer,” she said. “A barrister.”

  Grover turned his head and looked at her. “That’s the guy... sorry person... who works the courtroom.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Because at home, we do it differently.”

  “You have Perry Mason,” Zoe said.

  Grover laughed. “Yeh. That says it all.”

  Zoe crossed the river and drove through south Bedminster, roads and avenues still bearing the scars of the blitz. A few minutes later, she swung the Riley into Gladstone Street.

  “What number?”

  Grover nodded ahead through the windscreen.

  “The shop on the corner.”

  Zoe coasted towards the corner, pulled the car to a stop and switched off the ignition.

  “Are they expecting you?”

  “Kind of. I wrote them last week and said I’d try and get here.”

  Zoe swivelled round and reached onto the rear seat. She collected her handbag, swung back to the front and put the bag on her knee. She dug into it, came out with a business card and passed it to Grover.

  “Will you call me before you leave?”

  “Yeh. Sure. Thanks.”

  Grover put the card in the inside pocket of his coat and opened the car door.

  “Thanks for the lift. And for your company,” he said.

  “Don’t forget. Call me.”

  Grover got out of the car and closed the door. The Riley fired up again and purred away from the kerb. He watched as it swung right and disappeared from view. He turned and scanned the front of the building. The place looked brighter and more prosperous than it had done nine years ago. It was sporting a new coat of paint. The windows were full of brightly packaged stuff. Grover stepped into the shop doorway.

  He took a deep breath and pushed the shop door open.

  The top of the door hit a lever attached to the door frame and a bell rang out. Cheerfully. Optimistically. He closed the door and the bell rang again. The shop counters were the same, but the wood frames had been sanded down and re-stained in a lighter oak. The floor too. The shelves on the walls behind the counters had been re-built. Altogether, the place seemed to have acquired a newly minted sense of purpose.

  Grover stood in the spot he had nine years earlier and waited.

  Ellie Morrison stepped into the shop from the back kitchen. She paused, waited just a fraction of a second, until recognition dawned. Then she grabbed the hinged counter top, lifted it up and over and stepped into the middl
e of the shop floor. Grover wrapped his arms around her, breathed in, and held her tight.

  Ellie held on too. Then she stepped out of the embrace and looked Grover up and down.

  “My my,” she said. “My oh my.”

  He breathed out again.

  “You look terrific,” he said.

  And she did. Nine years on and now in her sixties, but with the blue eyes as brilliant as ever.

  “So do you,” she said. “And considerably drier.”

  Grover grinned. Ellie moved to the shop door, turned the open/closed sign around and took his arm. Grover looked at the door.

  “You’ll lose business,” he said.

  “The customers will come back.”

  She ushered him though the gap in the counter and on into the back kitchen. This had been painted too. The furniture was the same and in the same place and a fire burned in the grate. But like the shop interior, the room looked and felt brighter

  “Give me your coat,” Ellie said.

  Grover took it off and passed it to her. She stared at his uniform jacket. “Just look at you. From aircraftsman, to boss of the squad.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I thought about you a lot.” Ellie said. “We all did.”

  “Thank you. I made it.”

  “Yes you did.”

  She dropped his coat onto the table, grabbed him and hugged him again.

  “I got something for you,” he said, over her shoulder.

  Eleanor let go of him.

  “In the greatcoat pockets.”

  She picked up the coat, draped it over her left arm and searched through the pockets. She found two sealed silver foil bags, each with one word stamped on it.

  “Tea!”

  “Got it from the RAF Quartermaster. Had to promise him the earth.”

  “Then we must celebrate with some. As strong as you like.”