by Bill Mesce
“Sets your teeth on edge!”
I turned my head just enough to see Van Damm lying nearby. Though he’d had to shout to be heard over the din, he was strikingly unexcited, watching the pyrotechnics overhead with dispassionate appraisal. “Heard about ‘em; never saw ‘em!”
I think he mistook my look of disbelief at his sangfroid for question, and answered it by jerking a finger toward the sky. “Nebelwerfers!” was his shouted explanation. “Kraut rockets! Fellas call ‘em ‘Screaming Meemies’!”
“Apt!” I shouted back but it was muffled by both the roars above and my unwillingness to lift my head very far from the ground.
“We’re gonna be ok!” he said, smiling calmingly. “Hey, Sarge!” he called to Bonilla who was moving up and down the creek in a crouching run. It may have been Andy Thom’s squad, but Bonilla was the one moving from man to man, very proprietary, telling this one to keep his head or bum down, keep his weapon muzzle clear of the mud. “Hey, Sarge! How long ago did you guys move the CP here?”
“Couple days.”
Which seemed to clarify some point Van Damm was mulling. Bonilla picked up the cue. He looked skyward at the projectiles roaring by, then to the explosions ranging up and down behind the western barrier of trees.
“They all comin’ down behin’ us,” Bonilla said.
“Nothing along the front line,” I observed, now daring a slight raising of the head.
Van Damm nodded. “Nothing.” I could only see his mouth move; not hear the word over the noise.
Almost as suddenly as it began, the bombardment ended, dwindling to a few laggard rounds tossed off, echoes quickly fading in the firebreak and then nothing.
But it was hardly quiet. Ahead of us, from down in the river gorge, the loose rattle of rifle fire, the occasional crump of a grenade.
I heard someone sobbing.
“Dontcha worry ‘bout it, Chicken, you just stay by ol’ Horse, kiddo, you’ll be fine.” To Andy Thom: “They’re givin’ ‘em some kinda shit down there, Sarge! We just gonna sit here?”
“Shuddup,” Thom said quietly.
“Oye, chico!” I looked round for Bonilla. A sneeze announced his presence up on the rear rim of the ditch behind Andy Thom. “Maybe a good idea you send that hombre wi’ the eagle eye who drop the deer, you send ‘im upstair so he can see over this soup, tu sabe?”
Thom nodded. “McQuill! Get your arse inside and upstairs! Keep your eyes on the road!”
Which drew my own eyes down the narrow band of asphalt, or rather, what I could see of it in the passing gaps in the thin curtain of fog. The road itself was narrow, slightly wider than a single lorry, and ran straight across the firebreak. At the east side of the break it sharply–angled left in defilade to our position, into a steep–sided, shallow draw, the heights on either side ranging from ten to fifteen meters, then ran straight for over 150 meters to another sharp turn to the right at which point it headed down the gorge of the Our River to Le Pont du Ste. Marc.
The firing from down in the gorge became more sporadic, ebbing.
“C’mon, Sarge!” Horse, again. “They’re gettin’ creamed down there!”
Thom turned to Bonilla. “Maybe he doesn’t know.”
“He ain’ stupid, chico.” Bonilla hacked up a wad of phlegm, spat it into the snow, looked back up to find Thom still standing there, voicelessly pleading. Bonilla nodded him toward the inn. “Go talk to him.”
Thom scrambled up the bank and toward the inn.
Bonilla walked the top of the bank. Despite the Thompson cradled in one arm, for all the overt concern he displayed over our situation, he might just as well have been walking the firing line at a shooting range back in the States, giving constructive suggestions on how to improve one’s aim: “Ok, mes ninos, calma, calma…Keep you eye open, huh? Don’ jus’ watch the road; watch the trees, watch the open flank. Keep you ear open, too, huh? Easy onna trigger, mes ninos, maybe we got some our people tryin’ to come in.”
And then, of all things…of all things, he began to sing. His gruff voice, roughened still more by illness, actually had the soothing quality of a comforting grandfather’s growl as he issued forth. Quietly. Like a lullaby.
I had spent some time in Mexico over 20 years before covering the Civil War. I’d seen lovers nestle to the tune, and mothers coo it to the babes cradled in their arms. “La Golondrina”: “The Swallow.” As Bonilla gave out in Spanish, I remembered a long ago translation:
Where now so swiftly flies the timid swallow?
What distant region seeks her tireless wing?
To reach it safe what needle does she follow
When darkness hides the way she’s wandering?
Ah, come to me, a soft warm nest I offer;
Why wilt thou strive so far away to roam?
Heed well my warning, no ill shall befall thee,
And well I know, ‘tis sad afar from home.
Seeing him walk that rim with his preternatural ease, soothe the lads with the gravelly lilt, I understood the difference between soldiers and warriors. Soldiers visit the battlefield, hope to survive long enough to make it home. For warriors, the battlefield is home. Bonilla, walking through the mists that gave him an undefined, spectral quality, was he; Gilgamesh, the warrior eternal.
“That…that can’t be the moon,” Harry said, regarding the iridescent sky.
“Searchlights,” Van Damm replied. “They’re bouncing them off the clouds.”
Andy Thom called to Bonilla from the inn entranceway, then the top sergeant turned to us. “Colonel Van Damm? The l’tenan’, he wan’ you inside.”
Van Damm nodded, crawled up the bank.
Bonilla knelt behind us so he could speak discretely. “Señors, maybe you go inside, too, huh? You all amigos, si, you ‘n’ the l’tenan’? The way he is, you should be in there. I’d feel better, tu sabe?”
I followed Harry inside.
They were in the dining room. Peter Ricks sat at the wireless set, the kapok mittens of the earphones clamped to his ears as he fiddled with the frequency dials. Sisto was hovering on Makris’ shoulder at the switchboard. Van Damm was standing over the situation map that still lay spread out on one of the dining tables.
“You got anything?” the lieutenant asked Makris.
“Nothin’, Lieutenant. I keep buzzin’ ‘em – ”
“Buzz ‘em again!”
“Sir, it’s not like they’re not pickin’ up! The line’s gone! It’s been gone!”
“Try Battalion,” Van Damm said.
“Fuck Battalion!” Sisto flared. “I’ve got four platoons on the line – ”
“No, you don’t,” Van Damm declared flatly. “You’re the line now. Call Battalion.”
I think Sisto’d known the truth of it all along; it had just been a matter of acknowledging it. He gave a curt nod to Makris who plugged in the line to Battalion HQ in Heinerscheid. While he waited for the connection, he turned to Ricks. “Anything?”
“I’m not sure…” Ricks switched on the exterior speaker.
There was a great deal of static, occasional garbled voices breaking through, the voices always desperate, always distorted from overmodulation as they frantically pleaded into the ether. Frustrated, Sisto scooped up the microphone: “This is Blue Six to Blue Able, Blue Six to Blue Able, come in Blue Able. Do you read me, Blue Able?” He repeated the call, kept repeating it.
Makris held up the switchboard headset and mouthpiece to Sisto. “I got Captain Schup, Sir.”
Sisto ignored him: “Blue Six to Blue Able…”
The speaker crackled. Then, a frightened voice: “…Six…krauts all…cut off, we’re cut off!”
“Hullo! Hullo! This is Blue Six! This is Sisto! Is the XO there? Where’s Lieutenant Woodbridge? Can you read me?”
“…all over the town, inside the…for Chrissakes, can you get us…”
The signal faded, despite Ricks’ fingers dancing about the dials of the wireless.
Sisto shook
his head, exasperated. “I don’t even know if that was Ste. Marc.” Back to the microphone: “This is Blue Six to any Blue, come in anybody!”
“There’s too much interference,” Ricks said. “I don’t know if it’s all these goddamned trees or we’re being jammed but there’s not enough to grab on to.”
“Sir!” Makris urged, “I’ve got Captain Schup!”
Sisto pulled the headphones and mouthpiece away from Makris. “Schup! This is Sisto! What the fuck is going on? My lines to all three of my forward positions are out! I’ve got my exec at a forward CP in Ste. Marc – …No, radio reception is all fucked up, I can’t get anything clear other than it sounds like there’s big trouble – .” Whatever it was Schup had interrupted with caused Sisto to shoo Makris from his chair so he could sink down, one hand not so much holding the earphones to his head as much as supporting a head that seemed to grow heavier with each second. After a moment, he signaled for the situation map. I fetched it and he spread it on the table before him, started making grease pencil marks here and there as Schup filled him in. “Ok, but what about my people on the line? I’ve only got a squad and change here, but I should at least – …Can you send me – wait a second, would you just listen? Give me a squad, a lousy fucking squad so I – …So, what is it you want us to do? What’re the orders?…” A long, collapsing breath. “No, yeah, I understand. Look, I’m gonna keep this line open. Whenever you hear anything, yell.”
Sisto turned the chair back over to Makris with orders to alert him at any incoming call, then he took the map with him and sat by himself in a corner of the dining room studying the fresh grease pencil markings. He let the map slide from his fingers to the floor, put one arm across his knees while he massaged tired eyes with his other hand. “He’s waiting to hear from Regiment. It looks like the whole divisional sector is lit up. We’re supposed to sit and – ”
Bonilla burst into the room. “Son’t’in onna road, L’tenan’. Truck, sounds like. One of ours comin’ up from Ste. Marc!”
Had it been me at the wheel of the oncoming lorry, the sight of burly Juan Bonilla standing in the middle of the road, wreathed in foggy vapor, cigarette dangling from his lips in manly fashion, brandishing his Thompson in one hand and flashing an electric torch in my eyes with the other would have been sufficient to bring me to an abrupt halt. But in service of certainty, Bonilla had been reinforced by Sergeant Farron’s Stuart tank sitting on the road immediately behind him, its headlamps blinding in the fog, its stubby 37 mm cannon directed up the road, Dominick Sisto perched on the rear deck with the .30 machine gun mounted by the commander’s hatch near at hand.
“I see ‘im!” McQuill hailed from the upstairs of the inn. “Single truck! Two hundred yards!”
Andy Thom’s squad arrayed in the creek on either side of the road brought up their rifles, no doubt anticipating the possibility of avenging their mates in the Three Villages. Bonilla proceeded beyond the creek to flag down the vehicle now perceptible – if only vaguely – in the fog. Harry and I, huddled with Van Damm by the gasthaus, heard the squeak of the lorry’s brakes, watched its shadowy shape slow to a halt a few meters in front of Bonilla.
“Careful, Sarge!” Van Damm called out. “Remember those English–speaking krauts!”
We could make out the shape of the occupants of the lorry’s cab climbing out onto the pavement, hands upraised in accordance with Bonilla’s instructions, then the beam of the sergeant’s torch playing about their faces.
Bonilla laughed so hard he began to cough.
“What the fuck is so fucking funny?” Sisto called out impatiently from the tank.
“If these hombres is krauts,” Bonilla gasped, “is a helluva disguise!”
*
I suppose, technically, it was to be considered a debriefing, but, at first, courtesy of Sergeant Farron, it certainly looked to be more of an interrogation. Oliver Valence and Isaiah Wright sat in two of the dining room chairs surrounded by Dominick Sisto, Van Damm, Andy Thom, and Farron, with myself and Harry looking on.
“How come it is of everybody down there, y’all are the two t’ get out?” Farron’s belligerent tone supplied an accusatory subtext.
“We almos’ didn’t, Sarge,” Valence said.
“I’ll tell ya how y’all got out! A nigger hears first sign o’ trouble ‘n’ he jack rabbits – ”
“Enough,” Sisto said.
“I know the Nicholas Brothers here, Lootenant,” Farron said, “‘n’ I don’t think it’s no lucky break they – ”
“Enough!”
“We got three men in the truck hurt,” Wright said urgently. “If you got a medic, Suh – ”
“We don’t,” Sisto said. “Now tell me about it.”
“Not much to tell,” Wright said.
“We heard all the shellin’,” Valance took it up, “‘n’ no sooner we was woke up when there’s krauts everywhere. Practically comin’ down the chimbly!”
“Where were you in the town when all this happened?” Van Damm asked.
“There was a garage there, Suh,” Valence said, “kinda toward the back a the town, away from the river. We was bunked there.”
“We worked on the sarge’s tank,” Wright said, nodding at Farron.
“That ain’t all you boys worked on!” Farron snapped.
This time, it took only a stony glare from Sisto to silence the tanker.
“Take us through it one step at a time,” Van Damm said. “You heard the shelling. You woke up. There was already fighting in the town?”
“We gets to the window to see what’s goin’ on ‘n’ I see krauts runnin’ by,” Valence says. “The only one a our boys we see is this kid outside the garage, he’s awready hit. Big Man – ” he nodded at Wright “ – he went out for a quick look around – “
“My arse he did,” Farron muttered.
“They were all over,” Wright said.
“The forward command post was in the hotel at the other end of the street,” Sisto said. “My XO was in there: Lieutenant Woodridge.”
The two black men shrugged.
“We couldn’t see much down that end a town,” Wright said.
“We heard a mess a shootin’ down there, Suh,” Valence said, “but we didn’t see none a our boys anywheres. So, we loaded up the wounded kid, hopped in the truck ‘n’ made a break. We found another kid on the road, then there was a kraut squad watchin’ the road out, awready dug in. We got by them, then we found that third fella. I don’t think he was from Ste. Marc. He was awready pretty woozy; it sounded like he said he was from the one up the river.”
“Velôt.”
“I guess.”
“It makes sense,” Van Damm explained. “They must’ve put men across the river at all three points during the night in boats.” The G–2 officer went back to studying the situation map. “The MLR in this sector is so fluid it would’ve been easy to scout your positions. They’d know how light you are up front; they wouldn’t’ve needed to get all that many men across to pull off a small–scale coup de mains. So, they get shock troops across, dig ‘em in, the bombardment starts, pins down the larger units behind us, and the krauts catch your men along the river as they’re dragging themselves out of bed.”
A sneeze. We turned and it was Bonilla in the dining room doorway. “Hey, amigo,” he nodded familiarly at Valence, “you pick up a good buncha bullet holes in that gu’min’ property you drivin’ ‘roun’.” To the rest of us: “They was inna fight awrigh’.”
“What about those three fellas in the back?” Wright asked.
Bonilla shook his head. “Is two, now. L’tenan’, I had the wounded put in the other room wi’ the fire, some fellas is wi’ them, try to get some food in ‘em. The one didn’ make it, he’s out in the tool shed. We worry ‘bout a burial party later, righ’?”
The two men looked to Sisto, who looked to Van Damm but there were no more questions to ask. At the dining room door, Wright tugged at Valence to stop, and they turned back to the
lieutenant.
“Uh, Suh? What about us? Where do we go now?”
“Go? You’re not in my command, Private. I guess you report back to – ”
“Excuse me, Suh, then do y’all mind if we stay on here?”
Sisto shook his head, as if not hearing it quite clearly. “Stay on?”
“Suh, we been in Europe better ‘n five months,” Spider Valence said, “‘n’ we ain’t done nothin’ in that time but fillin’ station work ‘n’ diggin’ latrines. I don’t know ‘bout nobody else here, Lootenant, but Big Man ‘n’ me, we enlisted. ‘N’ it wasn’t to come over here to dig crappers.”
“Nobody wants to share a hole with us,” Wright said, “just put us somewhere together.”
“Well, amigos,” Bonilla grinned, “all we got is one, big hole. But you gonna have to get in wi’ the white folks.”
“We don’t usually associate with that kind of riff–raff,” Wright straight–facedly, “but we’ll make an exception this time.”
Sisto gave them a smile. “Get ‘em something to eat, Juan.”
The exchange had a notable effect on Farron. The choler that seemed to be the norm on the tanker’s face faded somewhat, the sharp, angry countenance eased. “I never did give niggers much credit for sense.” He said it in a way that, I suppose, was as much of a compliment as he could possibly give to the likes of Big Man Wright and Spider Valence.
“The krauts’ll be pushin’ up that road ‘fore a little while,” Andy Thom fretted.
“I don’t think so,” Van Damm said. “Your sergeant Pancho Villa there says you’ve only been in this place a few days. I think their scouts missed the move. I think they don’t even know you’re here. That’s why you didn’t get hit by the artillery prep or the troops they sent across during the night.”
“I don’t want to sound too much like an egg–layer,” Thom said, “but shouldn’t we think about pullin’ out ‘fore they do find out we’re here?”
“We have some time.” Van Damm was try to be calming as much as informative.
“Back where I come from we call that a head start!” Farron said.