by Robert Adams
He immediately dismissed his Thompson. The submachine gun was a superlative, if very heavy, weapon at normal combat ranges, but in this instance, he knew it just could not reach the needed distance. Forgetting his wounds and his pain in his worry for his men in such a state of deadly danger out there, he allowed his body to slide down the bank, then wormed his way back to where Pettus lay.
All of his strength was required to shift the big man's weight enough to get both the BAR and the six-pocket magazine belt off it without standing up and giving that sniper a new target. Then, laden with his own weapons and equipment, as well as the twenty-odd pounds of automatic rifle and its seven weighty twenty-round magazines, he crawled up the bank to its brushy top and took up a position that allowed him a splendid field of fire.
A pair of mossy boulders situated close together provided both a bracing for the bipod of the BAR and a measure of cover from return fire, almost like the embrasure of a fortification.
He took the time to once more scan his target area with the pair of binoculars and shrewdly estimated the range at about eight hundred yards, give or take some dozen or so yards. With the bipod resting securely on the gray boulders at either side, he slid backward and calibrated the rear sights for the range he had guessed. Then he set the steel-shod butt firmly into the hollow of his shoulder, nestled his cheek against the stock, took the grip in his hand and crooked his forefinger around the trigger.
Chapter X
Expertly feathering the trigger so as to loose off only three rounds per firing until he knew himself to be dead on target, Milo cruelly shocked the understrength squad of Wehrmacht as they were preparing their deadly surprise for the two small units of attacking Americans.
As the bursts of .30 caliber bullets struck the fire-blackened stones and ricocheted around and about the area of the ruined house, the Gefreite reared up high enough from where he lay to use his missing Zugsführer's fine binoculars to sweep the area from which the fire seemed to be coming. It did not take the twenty-year-old veteran long to spot the flashes of the BAR, and as the present danger to his squad superseded in his experienced mind the planned ambush, he pointed out the location of the automatic weapon that now had them under its well-aimed fire to the Maschinengewehrmann and ordered return fire.
When he had caught the glint of sun on glass, Milo had anticipated counterbattery fire and had scooted his body off to one side, behind the larger and longer of the two boulders, pressing himself tightly against it and the hard, pebbly ground, so he only had to wait until the German machine gun ceased firing, brush off stone shards and bits of moss, then get back into firing position. As he dropped the partially emptied magazine into a waiting hand, then slipped and hooked in a fresh one, he smiled coldly. Now he knew he had the range.
As Chamberlin later stated it, "Well, when I beard that damn fuckin' tearing-linoleum sound, I knew fuckin' well it was more up there ahead than just some friggin' Jerry sniper in that place, so I just stayed down myself, and I hoped old Gardner would have the fuckin' good sense to do the same thing, and of course he did."
"Then, when the BAR cut in on full—for some reason, I hadn't heard the fucker before then—and I realized it must be shooting at the Jerries from the fuckin' road, all I could figger then was that old Pettus, he hadn't been killed after all and was giving us covering fire, keeping the fuckin' Jerries down so's we could get up to hand-grenade range of them. So I waved my boys on, slung my MI and got a pineapple out and ready."
Milo was working on the seventh magazine when he saw the flash, then after a pause heard the cruummpp of the first grenade explosion within the perimeter of the German position. At that point, he ceased firing lest he find himself shooting at his own men. When he had collected the emptied magazines, he reslung the BAR and Thompson, slid down the bank and was there to greet the two sections as they straggled back to their starting point.
When Sergeant Chamberlin saw Milo standing there, his eyes widened, boggled out, and he almost dropped the cased pair of fine Zeiss binoculars he had stripped from off the now incomplete corpse of the Wehrmacht Gefreite, and he still was just standing and staring, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, as the others came up behind him.
"Fuck a fuckin' duck!" Corporal Gardner exclaimed, letting the holstered broomstick Mauser that had been the machine gunner's sidearm dangle in the dust beside his worn field shoes. "Sarge… I means, lootinunt, we thought you's daid, fer shure. I know damn well that fuckin' bullet hit you, Gawd dammit! I seen the dust fly up outen your fuckin' shirt, I did. So why the fuck ain't you a'layin' dead, like old Pettus there, huh?"
And Milo had no real answer for the understandable questions of the squad members—Chamberlin, Gardner and the rest—or for his own, not then, not for years yet to come. So recalling old John Saxon's explanation of the last unexplainable incident of similar nature back in the States, he spun a tale of the bullet passing through his loose-fitting field shirt without fleshing anywhere, opined that he must have struck hard enough when he dove to the rocky ground at the sound of the first shot, the one that had killed Pettus, to briefly stun him. The blood still wet in his clothing he blamed on wrestling with the BAR man's gory corpse to free the automatic rifle and its belt of magazines.
Although he still caught the odd stare from Chamber-lin and Gardner, now and again, for weeks, they and the squad members all ended up believing him, for disbelief would have meant a descent into madness, after all. But Milo himself did not, could not put any stock in his glib fabrications. He knew damned good and well that the sniper's shot had been accurate and should by all rights have been his death wound. In a logical world, he should be back there rotting in a shallow grave beside Pettus, with a steel pot and an identity tag for a marker, waiting for the attention of a graves registration unit. But he was not, and that inescapable fact cost him more than one sleepless night of wondering and speculation as to just what made him so different from the millions of other men now fighting and dying on the continent of Europe and elsewhere around the world.
In August of that momentous year of 1944, a second Allied invasion of Fortress Europe took place, this one in southern France, and eventually elements of this force hooked up with General George Patton's hell-bent-for-leather Third Army. But these events were of little interest to the men of a certain battalion of General Courtney Hodges' First Army. They had all they could do just trying to stay alive and still do the tasks assigned their much-reduced, worn-out, fought-out units. When, in early September, the entire forward movement ground to a halt through lack of gasoline, lubricants and most of the other sinews of modern mechanized warfare, the respite was none too soon for the common soldiers and the company-grade officers.
In their encampment by the side of a meandering tributary stream to the nearby Meuse River, the twenty-two men of Lieutenant Milo Moray's platoon moved like automatons and as little as possible, their exhaustion and malnutrition writ large upon their dirty, stubbly faces and staring from the deep-sunk, dark-circled bloodshot eyes. With a seven-man strength, Chamberlin's still was the largest "squad" of the "platoon"; Bernie Cohen had five men left in his third squad, but Ryan had been seriously wounded and the second squad now was being led by Corporal Gardner.
But high as had been the losses of enlisted personnel in Charlie Company during their hotly resisted advance across France, the proportionate loss of commissioned officers had been even higher; Milo was now not the only platoon leader commissioned from the ranks since D-Day. None of the original second lieutenants was left with a platoon, in fact. Captain Leo Burke had lost part of a leg when his jeep had triggered off a land mine. He had been replaced by his exec, First Lieutenant Tom Beverley, like Burke a Virginian and a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, though a year or so after Burke. His new exec was an OCS second lieutenant sent down to Charlie Company by division, a replacement officer who had still been Stateside on D-Day, Lieutenant John Brettmann.
Even after a full, uninterrupted—thanks mos
tly to Sergeants Cohen and Chamberlin—twenty-four hours of sleep and a luxurious bath in the riverlet with soap, even with his too long empty belly now gleefully working on a can of beans with pork, one of grease patties, one of hard crackers and two D-bars washed down with a pint of coffee that really was hot and sweet, even after being able to shave with hot water and throw away his tattered, incredibly filthy clothing for a new issue that had included no less than four pairs of thick socks and a pair of new field shoes that had broad, thick pieces of leather secured by brass buckles sewn to the top to go around and protect the lower leg and ankle, even after he had pared his fingernails down to the very quick and scrubbed away the last of the ground-in, fecal-stinking black filth that had for so long found lodgment under his nails, he still was not quite the old Milo Moray when he responded to a field-telephoned summons and came into the Charlie Company CP area.
Because the other two platoon leaders had not as yet made their appearances, Milo seized upon the oppor-tunity to pick through the small hillocks of recently delivered supplies, principally in search of new ponchos for him, Chamberlin and Cohen, but not intending to turn down any odd but necessary goodies he should chance across. He already had been able to stuff several items into his ready duffel bag—soap and shaving soap, some GI spoons, a brand-new carbine bayonet and case, four ponchos, a number of new magazines for pistol, Thompson and BARs, two, new canteens with cups and covers, a compact carton containing a gross of book matches, another of chewing gum, a dozen toothbrushes and cans of toothpowder, foot powder and some dozens of razor blades. He had just dragged his bag over to another pile and squatted before it to delve when he heard a vaguely familiar nasal whine of a voice behind him.
"You need a haircut, soldier. Who gave you permission to paw through those supplies, anyway? They belong to the unit as a whole, not to you personally, you know. You could be charged with theft, for misappropriation of government materiel, and I think I should do just that, here and now, and… eeek!"
Upon hearing a strange voice behind him, Milo's combat-honed senses had reacted, and the drawing and aiming of the pistol, the spinning about on his deeply flexed legs, had been as instinctive as breathing. Not until then did his still-tired mind register that the figure standing there was clad in a too-clean GI uniform and polished boots, and was staring—wide-eyed and pale-faced, trembling with very obvious fear—at the gaping .45 caliber muzzle pointing up at him. As it all registered, including the gold bars pinned to each epaulette of the pressed, flat-pocketed field shirt, Milo grinned and lowered the pistol, rapidly disarmed it and returned it to its worn holster.
"Sorry, lieutenant. Are you a replacement? You must be, else you'd know better than to come up behind a man and startle him like that. I could've blown your silly head off, you know? The next time around, you might not be so lucky." Then, recalling just how the new officer had looked, Milo chuckled and added, "You scare easy, don't you, sonny?"
The officer turned and screamed at a noncom just coming out of a squad tent. "Sergeant, sergeant… yes, you, over here, on the double! I want this man placed under arrest, now! And seal that bag of his, too. I'll prefer charges against him. Well, are you going to obey my orders to arrest him?"
First Sergeant Dixon looked quizzical. "You want me to put Lootenant Moray under arrest, Lootenant Brett-mann? What in hell for? Why don't you go in and talk to the captain about it?"
The new officer was stunned. "You… you mean… are you trying to tell me that this… this larcenous, insubordinate, murderous ragamuffin is a commissioned officer of the Army of the United States of America?"
Catching Milo's eye, Dixon raised his eyebrows and shook his head, but spoke to the new officer slowly and distinctly, as if to an idiot child. "Thass right, Lootenant Brettmann, sir. Thishere's Lootenant Milo Moray of the secon' pl'toon, sir."
At the sergeant's mention of the surname, it all finally came back to Milo—the vaguely familiar voice and the pointy, ratlike features. Smiling coldly, he said in Dutch, "Well, Comrade Jaan Brettman, how are things in Moscow?"
Later, seated on a wooden case of small-arms ammo across a folding field table from Tom Beverley, with a white-faced, trembling Brettmann standing stiffly off to one side of the small tent, Milo said tiredly, "He's full of shit, too, Tom, he always has been. If I'd really tried to kill him, ever, the little fucker would be pushing up daisies by now, and you know me well enough to know it, too. Don't you?"
Beverbry just nodded; he did know Milo that well. He fumbled briefly in a bag at his feet to come up with a bottle and a pair of battered tin cups. After pulling the cork with his teeth, he filled both cups and shoved one across to Milo. He did not even glance at Brettmann.
"Okay, Milo, division wished the Jewboy here off on us, and ah don't know him from Adam's housecat. He says you tried to kill him years back and again just now, so you must've known him before this, unless he's completely round the bend… and that's possible, too. If you did know him sometime and someplace else, tell me about it. Ah need to know all ah can about mah men and officers."
Milo sipped appreciatively at the smooth single-malt whisky and sighed with pleasure. "There's not all that much to tell, Tom. I knew him only very briefly. We met on only one occasion, in fact. He was from a family of Dutch Jewish immigrants; all except him were good, decent, hardworking people. Out of the proceeds of a tiny one-man tailor ship, his father was sending both him and his elder brother, Sol, to college… and all this was in '37, too, mind you."
"Sol Brettmann was in law school, but Jaan here apparently was a major in revolutionary Bolshevism, while on the side he was teaching impressionable, sheltered young girls the finer points of burglary and sneak-thievery. When I caught him trying to break into my strongbox in my room of the house I was then calling home, he tried to knife me, and I broke his arm for him. Because he had involved a daughter of my landlady in his criminal activities, the police were never called into it, and after he was deemed fit to travel, he was sent back East somewhere to live with relatives. Until today, when he surprised me and I drew my pistol on him, I'd never seen or heard of him again, and I'm here to tell you that even this meeting, seven years since the last, was way too soon."
Beverley drained his cup, refilled it, then leaned across to pour more into Moray's half-empty one. He nodded. "That's all we need, Milo, all we need. We don't have enough troubles with the comp'ny more than forty percent understren'th and another fucking push coming fast as sure as God makes road apples? So ah told John Saxon ah had to have an exec, hoping ah'd get a mustang like you or him that knew shit from Shinola, and what did those division shitheads send down here? A lying, thieving kike bastard of a pinko who's so damn dumb in important things that ah don't think he knows which end to wipe the shit off of! And ah cannot imagine how he ended up in Charlie Comp'ny, to begin with, Milo. His frigging 201 file says he's a fucking quartermaster officer, for Christ's sake!"
Momentarily forgetting his circumstances in his righteous wrath, Second Lieutenant John Brettmann abruptly burst out, "It was all a conspiracy, I tell you, a hideous capitalistic conspiracy, to send me over here to die. I was at Camp Lee, Virginia, showing the enlisted men how they could form a union and teaching those who wanted to learn about progressive ideas the philosophy of Marx and Engels and the teachings of Lenin. Then, all at once, I was ordered to report to a port of embarkation and found myself being sent to Europe as a replacement infanty officer. I don't want to be here any more than you foul-mouthed, anti-Semitic alcoholics want me here. I'd never have gone into the Army, anyway, if the Party hadn't said to."
Captain Tom Beverley just looked at Milo and Milo looked back at him. No words were necessary between them, not on this matter. For the sake of bare survival of the men who depended upon them, this officer could not ever be allowed in a combat-command position, and for just such a position he was currently in direct line.
Leaving the tent, the three officers paced across the CP area, passed the perimeter and walked on seve
ral scores of yards beyond it before Tom Beverley halted.
Pointing to the blackened, rusting hulk of a Mark III panzer squatting some fifty yards away just beyond a flat field with knee-high grass growing around shell craters, the captain said, "Brettmann, your ticket back Stateside is in the turret of that tank. Go over there and climb up on it and open the hatch and fetch me back the musette bag that's hanging in it, heah? And be damned careful with it, too, boy. You break airy one of those bottles and ah'll have your guts for garters."
Brettmann paced rapidly across the field, clambered clumsily onto the hull of the gutted tank, then jerked at the flaking handle of the central hatch until it came open with a shrill protest from rust-eaten hinges. After a moment, he shouted back, "Captain, there's nothing in here that even looks like a musette bag."
Beverley cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, "A'raht, then, just come on back here, on the double!"
Second Lieutenant John Brettmann had trotted about halfway back in their direction when, with a flash and an ear-shattering explosion, his body was flung a good ten feet into the air to flop down sprawling, unmoving and incomplete.
"Do you think he's dead, Tom?" asked Milo coolly.
The captain shrugged. "Looks to be from here, and ah'm not about to send any of mah men into a minefield to find out one way or the othuh. Whenevuh regiment or division gets around to clearing that field, they can take his tag and bury him. Let's us get back—the othuhs ought to be there by now, and ah need to hash out some things with the bunch of you."
Reinforced with replacements to only about twelve percent under their D-Day strength, the battalion took part in the attack on and capture of the German city of Aachen, just behind the broken Siegfried Line. But it did not prove a bloodless victory. Quite a few of the ill-trained new men were lost in it, along with irreplaceable men like Sergeants Gardner and Cooper and Captain Tom Beverley. Major John Saxon was wounded, but before he would let them take him back to the division hospital, he ordered the necessary promotions and transfers to keep his battalion running as smoothly as possible under the circumstances.