Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  Van Damm sat at the bar, Peter Ricks as well, and between them – atop the bar – Dominick Sisto. To this day, I cannot fathom how the lieutenant managed to suppress that air of fragility and haunted sense of doom Harry and I had witnessed since we’d arrived the night before, that we knew to be devouring him. To do so represented a mental effort I can only describe as Herculean. To his men, he did not indulge in false brio and give–’em–hell theatrics. Instead, he appeared…I look for the proper word and come to “businesslike”: even, thorough, concerned but not overly so.

  “There’s no way we can go head–to–head with these guys,” Sisto said. “This is strictly going to be hit–and–run all the way. Keep your head and stay sharp and we can come through this in pretty good shape. According to Colonel Van Damm, we do go in with a little bit of an edge.” Sisto nodded at the G–2 officer to take over.

  “Some of you may have already overheard me say that I’m pretty sure the krauts don’t know we’re here.”

  “‘Pretty sure’?” one of the troopers called out. Whether he meant it as a humorous riposte or not, it did generate a chuckle through the room albeit a nervous, somewhat forced chuckle.

  Van Damm smiled at the expressed skepticism. “If they knew about us, we’d already be getting probed.”

  “Hey, Colonel!” It was Horse, standing in the rear of the room. “Tell ‘em krauts to come probe this”! at which Horse about–faced, bent over and patted his bum. “I’m lonely!”

  Another chuckle rippled through the room.

  But from the dour Farron who was sitting near me I heard muttered, “Laugh now, joker.”

  “The other thing is it looks like they’re waiting to move up the road in vehicles. That means they’ll be road–bound. And these woods are too thick for big unit maneuvering, so they’ll stay road–bound. It also looks like they’ll be moving up before they can get armor across the river so, at least at first, we won’t have to worry about tanks. Even if they do get armor up that road, as long as we hug the edge of the draw, you’ll be above a tank’s guns; they won’t be able to elevate them high enough to get at you.”

  “How do we do this, then, Lieutenant?” asked Corporal Bott. “A fire team on either side of the road?”

  Sisto shook his head. “Any of you clowns stay awake during your history class? Remember the Minutemen hiding behind the trees picking off the Redcoats? It’s going to be something like that with us as the Minutemen.”

  “Hey, Horse!” McQuill called out. “According to that hooker in Wiltz, a minute’d be an endurance record for you!”

  The laughter, again; a desperate need to laugh to keep from brooding.

  “We’ll break up into two–man teams spread out on each side of the road,” Sisto continued.

  “That’s me ‘n’ you, Chicken,” Horse called to the compulsive letter–writer. “You just stick with ol’ Horse you wanna get outta this in one piece, kiddo.” He tussled the smaller lad’s curls.

  “Do not get into a stand–up fight with ‘em!” Sisto warned. “They come under your sights, you snap off a few rounds. The second they get a bead on you, or start coming after you, you pull out, move down the road and find another position. It’s not going to take much of this for them to figure out what we’re doing and just how many of us there isn’t, so keep an eye on your down–road flank and your rear, because sooner or later they’re going to try to loop around and slip a pill up your arse.

  “I know this isn’t the way you’ve been trained to do things, and it means you’re going to be on your own out there. But keep your head, stay sharp, and we can come out of this pretty ok and do them some real damage in the bargain.

  “The hotel here, this is our fallback position. If you make it here with nobody on your tail, wait and see if any more of us come out of the trees. If not, or you see swastikas, lam out for Heinerscheid.” He turned to Van Damm and Ricks. “You guys got anything else?”

  Ricks slid from his stool. “Who’s your squad BAR man?”

  Horse raised a hand.

  “You have any armor piercing ammo?” Ricks asked.

  “If he been doin’ his homework like I taugh’ him, ‘as all he should have,” Bonilla said.

  “Then gimme an A on my report card, Sarge!”

  “Forget about the infantry,” Ricks told Horse. “You’re job is the vehicles: scout cars, trucks, half–tracks, anything where you can take out a tire or punch through to the engine. The more junks there are clogging that road the better.

  “Now where’s this Sergeant York who shot the deer?”

  McQuill raised his Springfield sniper rifle.

  “Was that as good a shot as everybody’s been bragging?” Ricks asked.

  “Hell, Cap’n!” someone called out, “he put one through that thing’s pump at what was it, Mac? Hunnerd ‘n’ thirty yards?”

  “More like 150,” McQuill said, perhaps a wee smugly. “Shee–yet, Cap’n, you get me to Berlin ‘n’ I’ll thread that little paper hanger’s ass at 200 yards!”

  “Let’s get through today first,” Ricks said. “Your job is officers and non–coms.”

  “Ours or theirs?” McQuill quipped. The laughs, again.

  Ricks produced the appropriate appreciative grin. “Today, the season is strictly for theirs. You do a good job and then we’ll see.”

  Seriously, now: “Ya know, Cap’n, them collar insignias them ol’ boys got is awful hard to read, even through a Weaver scope. Gonna be hard to pick ‘em out.”

  “I give you a clue,” Bonilla said. “If he’s sittin’ on his arse, he’s a cap’n! If he’s kissin’ arse, he’s a l’tenan’, ‘n’ if he’s kickin’ arse, he’s a sargean’!”

  “I guess that’s it, then,” Sisto concluded. “Draw as much ammo and grenades as you can carry. Gear up. We’ll move out in a coupla minutes. Look, fellas…” For the only time in front of them, Sisto allowed himself a softness. “Fellas, this is a shitty deal. It’s a bad one to cut your teeth on. We hardly know each other. I don’t even know most of your names. But you seem like a good bunch. They didn’t give our buddies down in Ste. Marc much of a chance. Or in Velôt. Or in Osthaus. So you don’t give them one.”

  He did not say it to fire them up – it was simply a plain truth – but it did so none the less and as they availed themselves of the open tins of bandoliers and crates of grenades, enthusiasm seemed to have, at least for the moment, eclipsed their fears.

  Sisto waved Farron over to the bar along with Bonilla and Harry. As usual, I hovered about close to Harry.

  “I know you must got somethin’ special for me, huh, Lootenant?” Farron asked with unhappy expectancy.

  “You’re the cork in the bottle, Farron,” Sisto told the tanker. “You sit here and keep ‘em from coming outta that draw.” He turned to Harry. “What’re my chances of getting you on a jeep back to Heinerscheid.”

  “I have no intention of showing up at your mother’s door without you, Dominick,” Harry said.

  Sisto smiled. “Knowing my mother, I don’t blame you. Juan, Colonel Voss’ll stay here with you and help you with the .30. Set it up out by the creek somewhere where you’ve got a lane of fire down the draw.”

  Long before Sisto had finished, Bonilla was shaking his head violently no. “C’mon, L’tenan’, ‘as a job you give to one a these niños, sittin’ on that gun.”

  “Forget it,” Sisto rebuffed. “If any of us make it out of those woods, the krauts are gonna be right on our arses and we’re gonna need cover fire. I want somebody on that gun who can keep his head no matter how much shit goes flying past it. That’s you, Ja–wan.”

  Bonilla was about to continue his protest when a violent sneeze overtook him. Both he and Sisto knew the detonation made further argument moot.

  “Besides,” Sisto said gently, “you’re in no shape for a sprint through the woods.” He turned to Harry. “You think you can handle your end of it, Signor?”

  “Dominick, how much of this is about putting me somew
here safe with a babysitter?” Harry chided.

  Sisto smiled slightly. “Some.” Then hard: “Can you do it?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I’d ‘ppreciate son’t’in’ more sure,” Bonilla said and though it was meant as a jest, Harry flushed.

  Sisto turned back to Farron. “Bonilla’s in charge. You take your orders from him, understand?”

  Farron would only have been moderately more unhappy to have heard he’d be taking orders from Spider Valence, but he nodded in the affirmative. “I gotta tell you somethin’, Lootenant,” Farron said. “Ya know, my grandpappy’s got a ‘35 LaSalle’s got more steel on it then that jalopy a mine outside.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meanin’ you know if the krauts ever do get tanks comin’ down that road, that 37 mm gun a mine ain’t worth a fart in a gale wind. I see anythin’ come down that road heavier than my grandpappy’s LaSalle, ‘n’ I’m gonna have to bug out. I’m sorry, Lootenant, but that’s just the way it is.”

  Sisto didn’t bridle, he didn’t anger. He knew the truth of what Farron was saying. “Do what you can.”

  “And as for me?” It was my turn to step forward. I brandished my carbine. “I’m not quite the marksman young McQuill is, but Harry and Peter can vouch that I’m not completely without – ”

  “You’re out of here, Mr. O,” Sisto declared flatly.

  “Sorry?”

  He glanced at his watch, shook his head. “I don’t have time to be nice about this, Mr. O. You’re old and you’re a cripple. Even if you managed not to get yourself killed, there’s a good chance you’d get somebody else killed.”

  I thought to argue the point, but I knew the sense of it. And the last thing Dominick Sisto needed at that point, I thought, was an unnecessary argument. I put my carbine and sidearm on the bar along with my ammunition belt. “You’ll need that, I suppose.”

  “I’ll have the wounded put in one of the jeeps. Get them back for me, Mr. O.”

  “Of course.”

  He held out his hand. “I wouldn’t blame you for not taking it. You did a lot for me, and I’m sorry it came out…well, the way it did.”

  I took his hand. “All things considered, Dominick, I’m glad to have made your acquaintance.”

  Van Damm stepped up, finishing a hasty scribble in his notebook. “Hey, Owen! Schup’s the CO back in Heinerscheid, right? See that he gets this, and that he forwards it to Regiment in Clervaux, and to General Cota’s staff in Wiltz.”

  The note read:

  ENEMY CROSSING OUR RIV IN FORCE AT 3 VILLS

  BUILD–UP IN VELOT S/MARC OSTHS PERIMETER

  EST STRENGTH 1 INF DIV 1 PZR DIV IN SUPPORT

  EXPECT INF MOVE IN AM

  ENGNRS NOW PREP S/MARC BRIDGE EXPECT ARMOR

  LATE AM/EARL PM

  WILL FITE DELAY ACTION BELOW HEINER LONG AS POSS– VAN DAMM

  I tucked it safely in my shirt breast pocket.

  “Can I borrow that, Van Damm?” Harry held out his hand for the notebook.

  While Harry sat, pencil poised in his hand, Andy Thom came up to Van Damm.

  “Are you stickin’ around for the party, Colonel? I figure you owe it to us to stay since this seems to pretty much be your fault.”

  “Once you put it that way, how can I leave?”

  “How’re your combat infantry skills, Colonel?”

  “Rusty,” Van Damm said with an uncustomary sheepishness.

  “Then why don’t you buddy up with me?” With cartoonish menace: “I’ll take reeeaall good care of you!”

  “Boy, could I feel any safer after that invitation?” Van Damm slung his carbine over his shoulder to follow Andy Thom outside. The young colonel’s usual cockiness faltered. “You know, I’ve never actually been in a fight.” He patted his pockets nervously. “And not a single fucking cigar left.”

  “Good luck, Colonel,” I said and held out my hand. “I hope to see you soon.”

  “I hope you see me soon, too!” He followed Andy Thom outside to where the men were forming up along the road.

  “How about you, Cap’n?” Sisto asked Ricks. “Anybody ask you to the dance yet?”

  “Not yet, Dominick. You asking?”

  “I’m asking.”

  “I usually get flowers and candy.”

  “How about a fart and a can of Spam?”

  “You’ve got a date!”

  “Peter…” He stopped at my call. But what was there to say?

  “Yeah, well…” he said, holding out his good hand. I shook it and he exited.

  Harry came up to me holding a single piece of paper. “The address is on there. In case…You know.” He seemed reluctant to turn the note over to me.

  “C’mon, Colonel, we gotta get movin’!” It was Bonilla, holding a .30 caliber machine gun on his shoulder, a tin of ammo and a trenching tool in his other hand.

  Harry still fretted over the paper in his hands. “It’s like I said…I never know what to say.”

  I took the note, looked at it only briefly, not wishing to embarrass him. “I would think this to be more than enough, Harry.”

  *

  The sun – invisible as it was behind the overcast – was well–up, but offered nothing more than a charcoal sketch of a day: the close, dark ranks of firs, the upper boughs fluffy with snow; the clean band of white that was the firebreak broken only by the jagged dark line of the creek; the gray stone of the inn, its upper floor of dark wood, its snow–laden roof; the gray sheet of sky; the dark huddle of men milling about in front of the gasthaus.

  Corporal Bott pointed me to the jeep, its engine already idling, where the two wounded men, swaddled in blankets, were waiting. “You’re all set, Mr. Owen. You gonna be able to handle ‘er with that leg of yours?”

  “We’ll see, Corporal. I wasn’t much of a driver before, actually.”

  “Hey, Mister!” It was the lad they called Chicken, holding out two V–mail envelopes. “I heard you’re goin’ back to Heinerscheid. You do me a favor ‘n’ take these back for me? See they get sent home? Look…” He was a polite fellow, reluctant to impose. And perhaps even more reluctant to face a morbid possibility. “Look…” This time in a hushed voice, “if somethin’ happens, maybe you see that somebody sends a note to my folks?”

  I handed him my notebook and a pencil. “I’ll do it if you don’t mind, laddie. Just jot me down the particulars.”

  The other men took notice. One by one they began to file over. “Just in case,” they would say. “You never know,” they would say. Andy Thom handed me a prepared letter he evidently always carried about his person. So did the other veteran: Spiro Makris.

  “Doesn’t hardly seem fair after what they put us through on that damned hill, does it, Mr. Owen?” Makris ruminated, then joined the rest.

  Dominick Sisto did not do it at all.

  Harry, laden with the .30 caliber’s tripod and a tin of ammunition, started up to Dominick, but the lad waved him away with a smile.

  “I’ll be back, Signor. We still have some stuff to figure out, right? In the meantime – ” quite stern, now “ – keep your head down and listen to Bonilla.” As he turned to leave –

  “Dominick!” Harry called. “Buono fortuno.”

  “Et tu, Signor.”

  I climbed into the jeep as they started off, Andy Thom heading a file of eight men on the right–hand side of the road, Dominick on the other side with a squad of ten.

  “Ok, people!” Dominick addressed them. “Let’s earn all that GI pay Uncle Sam’s been paying you!” and they started off.

  “Make me proud, mes ninos!” Bonilla called after them. “Make me proud!”

  I found it difficult to convince myself to slip the jeep into gear, continuing instead to watch them march off. As they approached the draw, they pulled away from the road and awkwardly made their way up the snow–covered slope to the trees. Dominick stepped out of line as the men filed on past. He raised his hand in a small wave – to Harry, me, Bonilla; I
wasn’t sure, maybe just a farewell to all present and not – then followed his men, quickly disappearing into the shadows of the forest.

  I turned to watch Harry follow Bonilla out along the creek, away from the inn, toting the machine gun’s tripod and another tin of ammunition. He seemed to sense my looking, turned, made a clumsy gesture with his laden hands.

  It seemed requisite to issue some grandiloquent statement or sign. But for the first time in my adulthood I found myself at a loss for word or gesture. All that sharply honed wit and dramatic flair seemed to have evaporated, and in its place came an overwhelming sadness. Years of it, I think, all the compassion and care I’d subdued with a practiced cynicism and a deftly turned bon mot at long last asserted itself. I felt tears begin to well up and felt that if I let them erupt, they’d never stop.

  “Hey, buddy,” one of the wounded men said weakly through chattering teeth, “ya know I’m fuckin’ freezin’ here?”

  I turned away from Harry trundling out into the field, blinked my eyes clear, slipped the jeep into gear, and turned west onto the road.

  *

  Harry’s note, of course, I no longer have. Yet I can cite it the way a vicar quotes a favorite verse:

  Cynthia, Ricky, Jerry –

  I haven’t been fair to you this last year. But never think it was because I didn’t love you. You have always been the best part of my life. I would rather have had my days with you than live twice as long without you. Look after each other.

  All my love,

  Harry/Daddy

  As for the others…

  I still have those 23 pages from my notebook: those names, addresses, those last few hasty words.

  Odd. I have covered war and disaster, criminal mayhem and tragic accident. Yet it is only those two dozen soldiers whose faces come back to me so clearly…so…damned…clearly. I touch those pages and they there are in front of me, as plain as if they were standing in my parlor. I hear every color of the tenor of their voice, every twitch of their unshaven, adolescently fuzzy faces. I remember well their struggle to form what they had only then began to suspect might be an epitaph; their surprise that what they felt so profoundly reduced – on paper – to greeting card banality. Their resignation when they realized that no words would do a proper job.