by Bill Mesce
“Patrol wen’ ‘cross the river las’ nigh’. Shoulda been back ‘fore sunup. Now the l’tenan’s havin’ kittens wantin’ to know where they at.”
“I thought nobody sent patrols out at night up here,” Valence said.
“The l’tenan’ does.”
“He one of those hardarse crackers?”
“Nope. Is jus’ how he does thin’s.”
They passed by the footbridge at Velôt, where Bonilla had them halt while he checked in for a moment with the garrison before having Valence continue on. It was just a few hundred yards further that Valence stopped the lorry and called Bonilla’s attention to something in the tall grass uphill from them.
He was a sandy–haired lad of 19 whose dogtags identified him as Lupin, Alexander F. He had, evidently, stripped himself of his gear and outerwear, down to his shirt and trousers. He had stuffed his socks in his boots, tied the laces of his boots together and hung them about his neck, and then swam the river. The cold had been too much for him. He had stumbled this far up the bank, then lay down and curled in on himself like a cold child, and gone to sleep. That was how he died, his body now sparkling with the ice crystals that crusted him from his hair to his bare feet.
Valence stood back from the body while Bonilla knelt alongside the boy, forced a gloved hand inside the ice–stiffened blouse to draw out his dogtags.
“That one of ‘em?” Valence asked quietly.
Bonilla nodded and rose with a sigh. He put his kerchief to his nose and blew. “This col’ is killin’ me.” He turned his bleary eyes to the high ground across the river. “Where da fock are you guys?”
“Hey!” a voice hailed from upriver. “You with the 110th?”
Bonilla jogged back to the quarter–ton and climbed onto the bonnet. From that vantage he could see a soldier on some high ground just a few yards distant was waving at them.
“You the 112th?” Bonilla called back.
“Yeah! I think we got some of your strays!”
Valence and Bonilla climbed back into the truck. On the other side of the high mound was a hollow at the bottom of which they found eleven bedraggled troopers huddled about several campfires. They had suffered the same intemperate drenching as the unfortunate Lupin, but had – as Bonilla learned – been almost immediately stumbled upon by men of the 112th moving up just before dawn to take their daytime positions in a line of outposts along the west bank of the Our. The 112th men quickly supplied the sodden and shivering patrol with blankets and some dry clothing. At the sight of Bonilla, one of the men detached himself from his group round one of the fires.
It was Andy Thom.
“Oye! Viejo!” Bonilla greeted him. Viejo: an honorific, the way the Anglo veterans called each other old men. Andy Thom had earned the title at Hill 399. “Where da fock you been? The l’tenan’s havin’ kittens, tu sabe?”
Thom shrugged helplessly. “We spent all night trying to get back, Sarge. We couldn’t get back to the bridge. We were all up and down the other side of the river but wherever we went, there were the krauts. Finally, we found a little hole this morning, dropped our gear, belly–crawled down to the river and made a swim for it.” Andy Thom dropped his head. “I lost one, Sarge.”
“I know. We found him jus’ over there.”
“Lupin?”
Bonilla nodded.
“Aw, hell…” Andy Thom sighed heavily. “We musta just missed him in the dark. Twenty goddamn yards…”
Bonilla spread a map on the bonnet of the quarter–ton. “Show me where you was. C’mon, chico, earn you pay!”
Andy Thom shook off the dazed gloom and pointed out the path his patrol had taken the night before on Bonilla’s map.
Bonilla sneezed, then spat up a plug of phlegm.
“You don’t sound so good, Sarge.”
“No shit. You say there was krauts all through here? Some I & R patrol was up there las’ week, said wan’ nobody up there.”
“They’re up there now, Sarge. Lots of ‘em.”
“Armor?”
“Couldn’t see it in the dark, but we heard ‘em. They sound loaded for bear.”
“Ok, load up your guys. Gonna have to squeeze ‘em in; this thin’ was all I could get.”
“What about Lupin?”
“Ain’ no room. We’re gonna have to come back for him.”
As Valence tried to engineer the eleven men into the cramped rear compartment of the lorry, Bonilla and Andy Thom stood looking at the high ground across the Our.
“That was a pretty crappy first day on a new job,” the younger man said emptily. “I know the lootenant thinks he was doin’ somethin’ nice puttin’ me in for my buck stripes, but right now I’d just as soon give ‘em back.”
“You did ok, chico, tu sabe?”
“Tell it to Lupin.”
Bonilla sneezed so hard his eyes teared. “Righ’ now, I don’ know I min’ one o’ those krauts you fin’ pips me through my sinus ‘n’ put me outta my misery.”
Valence strode up to announce that the patrol was loaded in the quarter–ton. “They’re in there kinda tight.”
“It’ll keep ‘em warm,” Bonilla observed prosaically.
Bonilla, Valence and Andy Thom squeezed together in the lorry’s small cab as Valance wheeled the vehicle about and headed it southbound along the river bank.
Valance reached inside his windcheater for the remainder of his ration of chocolate and proffered it to Andy Thom. “Figure you prolly ain’t had no breakfast yet, Sarge.”
Andy Thom stared at the glossy square of chocolate with unresponsive eyes.
“Take it, chico,” Bonilla urged.
Thom smiled dryly. “Piece of candy supposed ta make it all better, Sarge?”
“Take it,” Bonilla said, again. “The l’tenan’ lookin’ to put a squad back up the St. Marc road at the CP. I’ll put you up for it. That’ll get you off the line ‘n’ outta the patrol rotation for a while. We get back, getcha warm’ up, some hot food in ya, you feel better.”
“You think so?”
“No.”
Thom suddenly realized that the chocolate was gone, wolfed down in a hungry bite. He looked self–consciously to Valance. “Thanks.”
“Honest–to–God Swiss chocolate, Sarge.”
“I didn’t mean to take your last piece.”
“‘S’ok, Sarge. I don’t much like chocolate,” Spider Valance lied. The kid looked like he’d had enough on his mind, even if he was white.
PART III: Apocrypha
CHAPTER NINE: Mount Sinai
THE MEN OF THE NINTH AIR FORCE were tasked with the unglamorous assignment of “close air support.” Though the German ground troops feared what they called Jabos – marauding P–47s scything across the countryside looking for something to kill – the way children shiver at mention of the bogeyman, the flyers contemptuously described their job as being nothing more than “flying artillery.” They flew out of scruffy sites scattered about northern France and the Low Countries; bases so hastily built they often consisted of nothing more than a scattering of tents and a steel–mesh runway thrown across a muddy field.
It was at one such aerodrome – home to the 984th Fighter Group – south of Mons, just a few miles north of the Franco/Belgian border, that Harry, Peter Ricks, and I found the man whose name had been provided to us by Andy Thom: Lieutenant Tyrone Compton.
At a later time I would come across a photograph of Compton he’d posted to his family who lived in a sleepy little fishing village in southern California called La Jolla. It had been taken before his group was relocated from England to The Continent. The photo shows a lithe, tanned, good–looking lad of 20, wearing the crushed officer’s cap of a veteran pilot cocked on his head so sharply it looks unable to find a comfortable seat on his crest of thick, wavy hair. The sharp angle of his cap is mirrored in the jaunty lop–sided grin. He’s leaning against his P–47 Thunderbolt the way any other young man at any other time would proudly pose by his first automobile.
That was a markedly different fellow from the one we found walking the floorboards of his tent in Belgium. His mates had graciously left us alone and we each parked ourselves on one or another of the ten cots while Compton paced this way and that about the wood–burning stove in the center of the tent. He was unshaven, pale, the eyes that I would find so bright and smiling in that photo were red–rimmed and nervous. He was huddled deep in his fleece–lined flying clothes, subject to bouts of shivering, though he’d stoked the stove so high it nearly glowed red.
And he talked. His jaws worked ceaselessly, as if powered by an abject terror of silence.
“Where’d you guys say you were from? Judge Advocate? Whatever it is, I didn’t do it!” A nervous giggle. “Just kiddin’! ‘We wuz all in the back singin’, Officer!’ You ever hear that one? Cop pulls over a car and there’s these three drunks in the back seat and the cop says, ‘All right, which one of you bozos is the driver?’ and one of them says back, he says – ” poorly feigning a drunk’s slur, “ – ‘Nobody wuz drivin’, Offisher! We wuz all in the back shingin’!” An explosion of harsh laughter, then quickly reigning in. “You never heard that one? That’s a good one, huh? So, Judge Advocate – ” eyes narrowing in concern “ – seriously, I don’t know, uh – ”
“You’re not in any trouble, Lieutenant,” Harry said calmly.
“Uh–huh, uh–huh, ok,” fingers sifting through the unkempt tangle of hair. “So, what’s up, then, huh? What’s the poop? Hey, anybody see my smokes?”
Harry held up the crushed form of an empty packet of Lucky Strikes he found near him on the cot where he was sitting.
“Damn.” Compton’s hands flitted about his Irvine jacket, looking for a packet of cigarettes that wasn’t there. “Can anybody here butt me? Anybody, uh, spare something? I’m just dyin’ – Oh, hey, thanks, Cap.” He took a cigarette from the packet held outstretched by Ricks.
“Keep ‘em,” Ricks told him.
“Good deal, thanks loads, really, thanks.” Compton fumbled a ragged book of matches from his pocket but couldn’t steady his hands long enough to strike one. Ricks held out the blaze of his Ronson. “Hey, thanks again, Cap, really.” Compton held out his shaking hands for us all to see, himself surprised at his inability to master them. “Do you believe this? This is somethin’, huh? You know I flew 32 missions, I was a rock, no kiddin’. No shit. Ask anybody. Really. Thirty–two missions, didn’t bring up sweat on a cow’s brow with me, really. I know guys with half that got to practically drag themselves into the cockpit, but not me! Really! I was a fuckin’ rock!” It seemed to suddenly occur to him that we had yet to get to the subject of our meeting. “Jeez, I’m sorry, fellas, I keep goin’ off like that. Don’t know why. I really don’t. You said you were with the Judge Advocate? Whaddaya want with me?”
“Just a few questions,” Harry said. “About Hill 399.”
“What do you guys have to do with Hill 399? Oh, none of my business, right? Confidential and all that, right? Ok, sure, I understand, sure. I mean, whaddaya want to know?”
“You were a Forward Air Controller with a battalion that tried to take the hill last month, weren’t you?”
Compton let a darkly humorous chuckle bubble up. “That was a fuckin’ joke, huh? I mean the weather was never good enough to call the planes in! You know they only stuck me out there as a joke! Well, not a joke, the idea was to teach me a lesson. Colonel Graham, he’s the group CO – I guess you guys musta met him, huh? Sure, right – I think he thought I was getting’ a little too full of myself or somethin’, too cocky, well, what it was, what it was, it was this: you know any fighter jock worth a damn doesn’t want to be tree–hopping and stuck down in the grass helping the doughs, he thinks – we all think – we’re Rickenbacker or somethin’, so we’re out on a sweep, I see some bandits comin’ back from wherever they’re comin’ back from, they didn’t even see us, so I peel off, bounce these krauts and before you can say ‘Goodnight Mrs. Calabash’ I flame two of ‘em! So, I get pretty big–headed about it, I’ve got these two kills while most of the rest of the guys are digging up dirt with their props – Fuck you, plowboys, I’m the fuckin’ God of the Air, know what I mean? So, the colonel – he’s a right guy, don’t get me wrong – but he says, ‘I’m gonna remind you what your job is so you won’t forget,’ and the next time there’s a call for an FAC I’m on the express out. But – you ask the colonel – he figures I’m going to spend my time on the line spottin’ from some nice deep hole, or maybe inside a tank or somethin’ and believe you me that woulda been enough to teach me the error of my ways, but nobody figured on this mess at that goddamn hill.
“You ask the colonel. I feel sorry for the guy ‘cause he feels so sorry. That guy’s practically begged me to say, hey, Colonel, it’s ok! Really! Who knew, right? Jeez, are you guy’s cold?” An attack of shivering. Comptom reached for another block of wood from the pile by the stove and tossed it through the grate. “You’d think these furs would do it, huh? Keep you warm? Look at these boots! They weigh a goddamn ton! Look at that fur! I had some doughfoot once offer me fifty bucks for a set of flying boots. But they don’t keep out water. You don’t need to keep out water at 10,000 feet, but it rains, it snows, it gets in, then your feet are wet, you’d just as soon wear those infantry clodhoppers, you know? Really! You have a choice: you wear the clodhoppers and you’re cold but dry, or you wear these and – well, I guess if your feet get wet you’re going to be cold anyway – ”
“Lieutenant,” Harry said.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sorry, I’m goin’ off again. I’ll be damned if I know why that is. I’ll tell you when it started – ”
“With Hill 399,” Ricks sympathized.
“You’re goddamn right with Hill 399!” Suddenly, viciously bitter. “You know the doughs, they think everything’s squeaky clean up you–know–where.” A thumb jerked skyward. “But I’ve seen things. A guy’s plane flames, you see him stuck in the cockpit, can’t get the canopy open, and you see him in there…or he jumps, and his chute snags or something, and then it’s a long, looong, bad way down… One time – you know, I’m not up there with the heavies, up where the air is rare, we sometimes come in low, Cap, we come in so low I’ll part your fuckin’ hair – I’m down in the grass, we’re raking this kraut column, the trucks start going up like a string of firecrackers, and I see this thing go by my canopy, some guy’s fuckin’ leg, ok? I mean still in the pants, still wearing his boot, just this leg go sailing by… Ok, so what I’m sayin’ is I’m no virgin. But those three days on that fuckin’ hill?” Compton held out his hands for us again. “Thirty–two missions, not even a quiver. Three days on that goddamn hill and this! Isn’t that a kick in the drawers? You know I’m grounded? They tell you that? Because of how I was when I came back? The flight doc grounded me! Unfit, he says, unfit!”
“Lieutenant,” Harry said.
“Goddammit!” Exasperated with himself, slapping his hand against his forehead. Comptom dropped on one of the cots, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be like this, fellas, I really don’t.”
“It’s ok,” Ricks said.
“Fuck you it’s ok,” Compton spat back.
“About Hill 399,” Harry said.
“Ya know? Fuck it!” Compton clapped his hands as if sealing a bargain. He resumed his pacing. “What happened to my smoke?” At some point it had dropped forgotten from his lips. “How the hell…?” He fumbled another from the packet, gestured to Ricks for another light. “I’m not talkin’ about that place. Sorry, guys. There was five hundred other guys there, I’m sure one of them – ” He froze, his eyes grew moist. I think the thought had fought its way to his consciousness from where ever he had buried it under all that verbiage that, perhaps, five hundred men may have gone up Hill 399, but five hundred didn’t make it down. His voice choking: “I’m not talkin’ about it.” He turned away, pulled open the door flap and looked out at the Thunderbolts parked across the field protectively draped with tarpaulins,
their mud–splattered undercarriages peeping out underneath. A drizzle had begun, the drops churning up the thin layer of snow outside, making gentle pats on the peaked canvas of the tent top. Compton looked down at his shaking hands. “We wouldn’ta been flyin’ today anyway.”
Harry rose from his cot with a grunt, walked over to Compton and set a hand on his shoulder. With his other hand he took the door flap from Compton and let it fall closed. “Aren’t you cold, Lieutenant?”
“All the goddamn time.”
Harry steered him back into the tent, pulled a cot up close to the stove and sat the pilot down, pulled another cot up nearby and sat across from him. “I only want to ask what happened on top of the hill. Just that.”
“On top of the hill?”
“That’s all.”
Compton’s head wavered from side to side, as if he was having some inner negotiation with himself, finally agreeing, Well, that might not be so bad. “I was with the doughs that went up the right–hand side of the hill,” Compton began.
“The eastern slope,” Ricks said.
Compton shrugged. “I guess. Put me in the air I can navigate you all the way to Podunk, U.S.A. Put me on the ground, I get lost goin’ around a corner.” A thin, forced smile. “They put me on that side because they thought it was safer.” A short, blurted laugh, and he was on his feet again, moving about the tent. “That was supposed to be safer? Safer then what? I don’t even want to know what it must’ve been like on the other side if my side was supposed to be the easy one!” He rubbed at his forehead, as if to massage an ache away. “Three times we went up that goddamn manure pile ya know.”