Lincoln nodded. “Just what I needed. Stuck out here with Whitey surrounded by Jerry.”
“Give it a rest,” he almost said ‘boy’ but caught himself. “You want to get out of this alive, we gotta work together.”
Lincoln nodded again. “Okay, so what’s the plan, Kilroy?”
“I got no plan. If they attack we got this quad fifty.” He slapped the ammo canister. “And we got this other fifty mounted behind the driver’s seat. That’s yours.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Also we got these.” He opened both cargo box compartments. “One Thompson. You can have that too.” He flipped the submachine gun to Lincoln. “One .30-caliber M1903 Springfield rifle with sniper scope, three carbines and a box of thirty-six grenades. We got what looks like ten thousand rounds of fifty-cal ammo and a couple of cans of gas. Thank God they loaded this halftrack up!”
“Great! Custer’s Last Stand!”
“C’mon, Lincoln. We got no choice! What would you have us do?”
“We can hide. There’s a crawl space under the house and we can squirrel ourselves away in there until the Krauts leave.”
“No way. They could be here for days and I’m not going to get myself cooped up like that. Besides, we need to be able to move and fight. And one more thing, I’m not surrendering.”
“And what if the tanks come, ‘Sergeant York’?”
“You get in the driver’s seat and we go like hell and make a break for our lines.”
Lincoln shook his head. He had a splitting headache and was trying to gather himself after the adrenaline rush of obliterating the flakwagon. “Not my idea of a good plan but I guess we’re stuck with each other. For now! Anything to eat, Kilroy?”
The paratrooper kicked around some more boxes. “Nothing here but a pair of binoculars and a medical kit. Let’s look in the house.”
The two men scoured the small farmhouse and came up with a jar of preserves and a stale loaf of bread. They stood watch at the windows while they ate in silence even though the ground fog limited their visibility to just a few yards. Lincoln watched his cohort bandage his forehead to stop the bleeding from a grazing wound. He easily resisted the fleeting temptation to help while he picked a small piece of shrapnel from his bleeding leg. He didn’t want to be there and he wanted no part of this crazy, ballsy white paratrooper.
The deep rumbling sounds coming from Noville told of a fierce battle still raging. The booming sound of cannon fire could be heard echoing off the hills. Both German and American ordnance were identifiable to the trained ear. The battle raged on through the afternoon as the two Americans moved from window to window in a fruitless effort to observe their surroundings. Late in the day, gunfire erupted from near the town of Foy. That battle raged furiously for hours. There were Germans engaged in battles all around them. They were penned in with no place to go and would certainly be discovered in short order when the interminable fog finally lifted.
“We just gonna stay here?” Lincoln finally blurted out after long hours of silence. The waiting was wearing away his resolve.
“For now. There’s no place to go until we can see.”
“And what if they find us here?”
“We fight our way out. That halftrack out there moves along pretty good.”
“You a fucking crazy-ass cracker, you know that?”
“Drop the chip on your shoulder for once. Your attitude sucks. No wonder why they don’t let you people fight!”
“You people? Oh, yeah. You try being a colored boy in this man’s army and then tell me about motivation,” Lincoln said through an angry grimace.
“If it’s sympathy you want, go see the Chaplain or look it up in the dictionary next to syphilis. I ain’t got none for you!”
“Fuck you, Whitey!”
“Right. Now it’s ‘fuck you, Whitey’. Back in London it wasn’t our fight but we saved your ass anyway and now it’s ‘fuck you, Whitey’.” He pushed his webbed steel helmet up and back on his head. “You need to aim all that anger at the Krauts.”
“I got enough to spread around pretty good.”
The paratrooper wouldn’t back down. “All I hear is how you boys are all pissed off they make you drive trucks, dig graves, and never let you fight. Well, ever since we’ve been together you’ve shown no willingness to fight. You complain but when you get the chance to prove yourselves, you got no balls!”
Lincoln took a step closer. “That’s ‘cause we’re surrounded man and it’s hopeless!”
“Get this once and for all, soldier.” He took a step toward Lincoln. “I’m airborne. We’re always surrounded. But we’re not surrendering. And I didn’t make the damn rules in this man’s army. I’m not the one who says what colored troops can and can’t do. I follow orders just like everybody else so don’t take your damn shit out on me!”
Lincoln turned away but Kilroy continued. “Maybe they were right not letting you boys into combat if this is how you plan on fighting. What the hell’s the point if you’re ready to give up as soon as it gets rough?”
The Red Ball driver wheeled around and was about to say something when he was interrupted. “You think I want to be here, Lincoln? You think I’m not scared? If you want to surrender, go hide in the cellar and wait for me to get myself killed. Then you can wave a white flag and do whatever the hell you want!”
A strange calm came over Lincoln. He regained control of himself and smiled. “Go hide in the cellar? Like my granddaddy did when he hid from the Klan?” He reflected on the frightening stories his father told him when he was just a young boy. “If it’s all the same to you, Kilroy, my people are done hiding in cellars. I’ll fight with you!”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Washington, D.C. - January 27, 1998
“One deceit needs many others,
and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground.”
Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658)
Cynthia Powers walked into the condo after a long day of work to find J.P. sitting at the kitchen table staring blankly at his flowchart. He normally got home before she did and usually started dinner by the time she walked in. The two customary glasses of wine on the table were also missing. He was drinking Chivas Regal on the rocks. Something was wrong.
“Honey, I’m home,” she mocked the oft-used greeting with a big smile.
He returned her greeting with a weak smile. Whatever was bothering him, she concluded, had nothing to do with her. Their relationship had become a bit more complicated. Her subtle hints for something more permanent failed to elicit any response from him. In spite of that, she enjoyed being with J.P. The sex was good, the conversations were stimulating and he made her laugh. She wasn’t ready to admit she was in love with him yet but he would do for now.
J.P. was staring at a diagram he sketched of the relationships of all the men involved with his father. He drew a box for each person and connected them with lines drawn in black magic marker. The connecting lines each had a comment and through every box was a bold red line labeled “reunion-parade-1946”. There were additional notes in the margins.
She stepped up behind him and began massaging his shoulders. He loved that. She intentionally saved it for special moments, to ease tensions, making up after an argument or the beginning of foreplay. He murmured softly.
“Do you almost have this figured out?” she glanced at the flowchart.
“It had me puzzled for awhile, especially Lincoln’s relationship with Harley and Jake but the answer to the great mystery is not on this diagram.”
“Really? You’ve spent so much time on it. How do you know that?”
“Because I figured it out.” He took a sip of scotch.
“When?”
“Today. And it’s just as well because I can’t be wasting energy on this anymore. With the Lewinsky scandal breaking wide open I won’t have the time. There’s going to be a media feeding frenzy and I think there’s more to it than a vast right wing conspirac
y.” He was clearly distressed.
“So, how did you figure it out? We haven’t talked to anyone lately.” He had made her a partner in his search for answers and she relished the job. But now he seemed to be withholding something from her.
“It was something you said. It struck me as odd at the time and it stuck in my mind.”
“Really? What?”
“You said, ‘it’s kind of weird to know the day you were actually conceived’.”
“Yeah, I remember that. It is kind of freaky.”
“Well, I just couldn’t get that out of my mind so I did something about it.”
“Oh, shit.” She stopped rubbing his shoulders. “What did you do?”
“I sent my father’s DNA from a coffee cup I took in Bedford, along with mine, to a commercial lab for analysis.”
“Oh my God! And?”
“And he’s not my father, Cynthia. The DNA doesn’t match.” He emptied the glass of scotch and poured another.
She got herself a glass, pulled up a chair next to him and poured herself three fingers. He looked wounded and she felt the need to comfort him. “J.P. What does it matter? It doesn’t mean anything. Whatever was between you and him doesn’t change. He raised you. The good is not better and the bad is not worse. It’s just biology.”
J.P. nodded. He appreciated her effort to comfort him but he had a knot in his stomach since opening the lab report. “On one hand I’m happy to finally solve the mystery. On the other hand perhaps it would have been better if the secret stayed a secret.”
“We’ll never know, now. Will we?” She sipped her scotch. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Sure, but I can’t help but wonder what the hell happened. Or how these four old men found out and banded together to keep it from me.”
“It really doesn’t matter any longer, does it?”
He continued without hearing her. “Or why my mother wanted me to know so badly before she died. That makes no sense.”
“Stop! Maybe she was looking for forgiveness.”
“And the sixty-four thousand dollar question is, who’s my father?”
“Don’t do this to yourself!”
“And why did Johnny…I can’t call him my father any longer…go to Bedford? Did he make a promise to Jake he had to keep? Or did he find out my mother was unfaithful? That would certainly explain why he left us if he found out. And why did Lincoln send me back to him?”
“Let it go, J.P.”
He took a deep breath. “You’re right, Cynthia. I have to let it all go. I’m not sure that old man in Bedford who raised me even knows who my real father is. But those four old warriors, they wouldn’t give up my mother, no matter what!” He smiled at the thought.
“Somehow they found out Johnny wasn’t your father,” she speculated. “Then they agreed never to tell anyone, especially you.”
“Probably at that homecoming parade in forty-six. That was the only time they were all together.” J.P. tapped the flowchart and pointed to the red slash he used to connect all of the boxes.
She took another sip of scotch. She would rather be drinking her wine but was trying to demonstrate some empathy toward J.P. in his time of need. “I’ll help you as much as I can if you decide to try to find out who your real father is.”
He smiled and pulled her closer to him. “I don’t want to scare you away, Cynthia, but I think I’m falling for you. I may even be in love with you.”
“You’re so romantic,” she chided. It was all she could do to stifle the cough in her throat. “Do you want my help or not?”
“I think I have to let go of what’s left of this quest and focus on my job and on us.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
Foy, Belgium - December 20, 1944
“Duty is ours; consequences are God’s.”
Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, (1824 - 1863)
At dawn on 19 December, General der Panzertruppen Hasso Eccard von Manteuffel’s XLVII Panzer Corps, having clawed its way out of the deep ravines and steep river valleys, was finally in open tank country. Three German divisions were now bearing down on Bastogne. The road hub town should have been his on the second day but the persistent Americans bravely resisted even when there was no hope of victory. They frustrated him, delayed his timetable and thwarted his plans. Just as he was poised to finally take Bastogne, the Americans pushed out probing forces on the roads leading into the city. Skirmishes ensued. Now the Germans would waste even more time dealing with these tenacious Americans, which now included paratroopers.
Manteuffel’s 2nd Panzer Division had run into determined resistance at Noville while trying to approach Bastogne on the N-15 Highway. A small American force of paratroopers and armored infantry stubbornly held the village. The German Panzers outgunned the American Sherman tanks but not the American tank destroyers. The M36 with its 90-millimeter gun and the M18 Hellcat with its 76-millimeter long barrel high velocity gun made the Panzers pay dearly. On 19 December, outside Noville, thirty-two German tanks were destroyed. Lieutenant Colonel James L. LaPrade, who took command when Major William R. Desobry was critically wounded and evacuated, asked for permission to withdraw and awaited orders.
These were the sounds of battle the two isolated American soldiers heard from the fog-shrouded stone farmhouse, which remained in a clingy mist for the rest of the day. As the temperature dropped below freezing, both soldiers wrapped themselves in blankets against the cold. The fog would occasionally lift like a curtain rising from a stage, offering some brief moments of vision before crashing back down and smothering everything in a cloak of invisibility. In those brief moments of clarity the two men scanned all points of the compass. All that was discernible were the heaps of high haystacks spread across the rich farmland.
The Americans took turns trying to snatch some sleep. The constant noise of a battle raging around Noville served to deny them much needed rest. As both soldiers struggled with brief, fitful naps, it snowed through the night.
Shortly after dawn, on 20 December, the two soldiers were shaken by the sounds of 88-millimeter rounds smashing into Noville. The orange glow, acrid smell of gunpowder and smoke from burning vehicles served to remind them that the battle was still being fiercely contested.
Noises of tracked vehicles reverberated through the bowl-shaped plain. Small arms and cannon fire from the direction of Noville went on all day long. From time to time voices could be heard in the distance and they were always German voices. It was a miracle that they had not yet been discovered by enemy forces which flowed around them heading toward Foy and Bastogne.
It was shortly after 0800 hours when Foy again came under attack. The battle raged for hours while the fight for Noville was still underway. With enemy forces in their front and rear as well as surging around them they felt safer remaining in the farmhouse tucked into an undulation in the terrain and shrouded in the dense fog.
Both men heard the sound at the same time. It was an American jeep pulling up in the back. The driver brought the jeep to a halt. The two Americans stepped out of the back door; weapons trained on the four occupants.
“Hey, Mac. What outfit?” The jeep driver asked.
Lincoln circled the jeep and seemed to be studying it. The driver peered at him condescendingly. The other passengers sat quietly, hands on weapons.
“Who are you?” Kilroy finally asked.
“We’re from the Twenty-eighth Division. We’re heading for Bastogne.”
“So is everybody else, it seems.”
Lincoln came completely around the jeep and whispered, “They’re stinking Krauts.”
“You think?” he answered out loud and raised his weapon. “Easy everybody. Just empty your pockets. No sudden moves.” Lincoln moved to one side of the jeep.
The driver was getting nervous. The other men began reaching into their pockets. One soldier pulled out some pound notes and dollars.
“Jeez, you’re Krauts! Lincoln, tie them up!”
Su
ddenly one of the soldiers in the rear reached for his rifle. The two Americans reacted immediately. Both Thompsons roared and in less than three seconds the four German infiltrators were sprawled out in the blood-drenched jeep.
The two GIs stood for a moment, inhaling the acrid smell of cordite and the sweet smell of blood. They were both breathing hard. “How did you know, Lincoln?”
“Well, the markings on the jeep are all wrong. Also, we were ordered not to use hooded headlights. Either lights full on or completely off. Americans would know that.” Lincoln smiled; satisfied he contributed with information only a driver would know. “How about you?”
“They were carrying pound notes and dollars. GIs only carry invasion money.”
“Oh, these boys were screwed. I wonder what the hell they were up to?”
Before Lincoln received an answer, the sounds of motors and tracks became audible from the direction of the main highway. The engine noises became louder. They looked at each other.
“Sounds like our vehicles to me.”
“You ought to know, Lincoln. Let’s hope to God you’re right.”
The two men jumped into the halftrack. Lincoln backed it out of its hideout through the wall of hay bales. One bale fell into the back compartment. The halftrack pushed the stricken jeep aside and cleared the farmhouse. Lincoln proceeded slowly toward the sound of engines he prayed were American.
The deep voice pierced the fog. “Halt. Identify yourself. What’s the password?”
The paratrooper jumped out of the back and approached the voice. “Corporal Kilroy. Easy Company, Five-oh-Sink.” He used the nickname of his regiment to convince his challengers he was an American soldier.
A group of ragged, dirty paratroopers came out of the fog and surrounded them with weapons at the ready. “Yeah, how do we know you’re for real and not lousy Krauts?”
They closed in, boots crunching the snow. Kilroy pointed to Lincoln who was standing in the cab. “Do the Krauts have any of these?”
The Last Jump: A Novel of World War II Page 64