by Jane Smiley
Private Hill was eager to get into the backcountry and shoot himself some Jerries, though some Eyeties would be good enough in a pinch. The rumor was that Mussolini was in trouble, but Frank didn’t think that the invasion would necessarily go well because of that. Whenever the generals thought something would work out, Frank was immediately suspicious. He knew, for example (everyone did), that they had sent the tanks and the infantry into the Kasserine Pass without even having a good map of the place. Maybe Patton had more on the ball than Fredendall had had. He hoped Patton had a good map of Sicily, though he wasn’t counting on it. Frank himself had eleven kills. He had heard that in the marines there were whole squadrons of snipers who had dozens of kills, but that was the Pacific, where the Japs were dispersed all over otherwise worthless little islands. You had to kill them or they would kill you. All of Frank’s kills had been distant ones. That was the point of being a sniper with a precision telescopic sight—you killed them, their buddies looked around for where that came from, and if you could, you killed another one, but if you couldn’t, you snuck away. They didn’t know you had snuck away, and they started to worry.
Once they had gotten through Licata (by late afternoon), their job was to spread out, past the flats and into the hills. The river was a dry bed meandering through fields, but protected by some vegetation. Frank decided that they would make their way along it, not in it, along the edge. The whole time, they could see the road—who was driving, and who was not looking out for himself. Late in the afternoon, the riverbed diverged from the road, and tilted upward into the pale hills. It was so dry that the six of them were already dusted with white. Murphy and Jones went to the east, crossing the riverbed and following the edges of some fields, and Landers and Ruben went along the riverbank. Frank kept Lyman Hill with him. They stayed in sight of the road. Lyman was itching to shoot something, and shortly before dusk he did—a cat that was itself hunting. When Lyman flipped it on its back with the muzzle of his rifle, they saw that it was a fat cat. Lyman said, “Well, someone in this place is eating, anyway.” The residents of Licata, of which they had seen only a few, had been thin and desperate-looking. But there had been no fearsome German nests of snipers in the buildings. His sergeant at Fort Leonard Wood had proved correct: while the Brits and the Americans were wondering about the rules, the Germans were breaking them. The rumor was that the Russians were even worse: they broke the rules of war and they broke the rules of life. If you killed two Russians, somehow four appeared in their place, and if you then killed four Russians, eight appeared. That was what they had heard. When they finally defeated Rommel and took some German prisoners, some had hugged their captors, because they knew that if they got back to their own lines, they would be transferred from Africa to the Eastern Front—to Kharkov, for example, which was worse than Stalingrad. When a corporal Frank knew said to a prisoner, “What if I shoot you?,” the fellow shrugged and said, “Hier oder dort, was ist der Unterschied?” Frank knew this meant, “Here or there, what’s the difference?”
He and Lyman walked along. Lyman was chewing gum. He didn’t smoke (Frank had stopped smoking, too—it was dangerous for a sniper to light up), but he needed an endless supply of Juicy Fruit. If he ran out, he got Frank or one of the others to give him theirs. They moved quietly and cautiously, they paused, they avoided twigs, leaves, grass, they surveyed the encroaching darkness. Frank had good night vision, but Lyman’s was better, because, Frank thought, Lyman never pondered anything. Nothing preoccupied him—he was like a dog or a fox, an empty head with eyes observing the horizon. Part of the reason Frank sometimes teamed up with him was just to watch him. Lyman had twenty kills.
The bombed-out, barren fields along the river gave way to steep, barren slopes even drier than the fields. Frank and Lyman started diagonally up one of them, staying as best they could against the shadow of the hill. He looked upward and forward; Lyman looked downward and backward. Murphy, Jones, Landers, and Ruben had disappeared, which was exactly what they were supposed to do.
Frank started to look for a spot to bivouac. It wasn’t raining, so, even though it would probably get cold, they wouldn’t pitch a tent (too much trouble). He found a little ridge in the hillside, and the two of them took shelter there, ate some rations, and set up their tripods in case of something. They hadn’t seen much, but you never knew.
Frank was sound asleep when the crash woke him up. Lyman woke up, too, and, like a dog, he was already entirely alert when he looked over the ridge at the road below. The moon had gone down, but against the pale hillside, they could make out what had happened pretty well—a car, a Kübelwagen, had missed the turn where the road angled sharply to the west, and gone over the edge, rolled, and landed on its top. From the road to where the vehicle lay was a drop of about twelve feet, Frank thought. He and Lyman were silent, waiting for the thing to burst into flame, but it didn’t. In the quiet, Frank could hear noises coming from the vehicle, not quite terrified yelling, and something more senseless. Whoever was in the Kübelwagen was drunk. He ducked down behind the ridge and pulled Hill after him. He said, “Not our business, Private.”
“They are if they get out.”
“Maybe,” said Frank, but this was, in fact, the case. “I’m sure he’s, or they’re, pretty smashed up.”
“Don’t you want to see? We haven’t seen any Jerries since we landed. Wonder what they were doing.”
“Saying goodbye to the girlfriend?” suggested Frank.
This made Lyman stifle a laugh.
Frank said, “What time is it?”
“Two hundred hours. What if someone else comes along?”
“We’ll do what we have to do.”
But they could not stay down behind the ridge. Watching the car was like watching a movie or a deer in a clearing—they were there to do it, and so they did.
A Kübelwagen, like a jeep, had a cloth top, but, unlike a jeep, the back end of the top was unsupported, and so it lay with the front wheels tilted upward, resting precariously on its windshield. There was no easy way for the occupants to get out, and if the windshield were to collapse, they would certainly be trapped. But the windshield did not collapse, and after a long quiet period, the one door Frank could see pressed open against the dirt, little by little, and at last a dark figure wiggled out. It took a long time, and when it was out (he was out—no reason to believe that this was a woman), he was quiet for a period and then groaned. Then he started talking, in German, and Frank understood that he was certainly drunk, and possibly delirious with pain. Lyman leapt over the ridge, and Frank called out, “Private Hill!” but in the end, Frank followed him. They didn’t get close enough for the Jerry to see them, and Frank made Lyman squat down.
The man was lying on his back beside the Kübelwagen, staring up at the sky. Judging by his uniform, he was an officer, maybe an Oberst. But if he was one of those, then, like a colonel in the U.S. Army, he would not be driving alone. Frank moved in front of Lyman Hill, pressed him backward, and whispered, “There has to be a driver.”
Lyman took this as an order, and began creeping toward the other side of the Kübelwagen, out of sight of the Oberst, who did turn his head, but then looked upward again. A moment after that, he started talking, babbling. One of his hands was on his chest, and the other one was resting on his holster and his pistol, but maybe it was just resting there. Frank didn’t think the man had seen him. The door on the other side of the Kübelwagen creaked once and then stopped. The man turned his head in that direction and said a word. Frank thought the word was Heim-something, a name, but he said no more. Frank saw Lyman edge back toward him, not without stretching upward in an effort to see the officer more clearly, but he did get back to Frank without doing anything. He whispered, “The guy’s stuck in the steering wheel. I mean stuck, Corporal. Right through the solar plexus.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, Corporal Langdon.”
Then, without really meaning to, they began to inch toward the officer. He saw t
hem. Frank was certain that he saw them, or saw movement or shadow. His head turned in their direction. His hand folded over the handle of his pistol, and he took it out of the holster. Frank and Lyman Hill drew their service revolvers. But the man, the officer, the Oberst, did not aim at them, or even in their direction. He put his pistol to his head, and then, a very long moment after that, he pulled the trigger.
“Damn me,” said Private Hill.
The man gave a loud groan.
Frank felt his skin prickle, and Lyman looked at him. Frank did not quite know what order to give, and the man said, in a clear voice, “Töte mich. Töte mich, bitte.”
Frank knew what bitte meant—“please.” And töte was “kill,” as in “Ja, ja, es ist Weihnachten, Zeit, um die Weihnachtsgans zu töten.”
“Is he talking?” said Lyman. Frank knew that Lyman would be happy to kill the Jerry—the pleasure would be all the greater at point-blank range.
“He said something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Lyman believed him.
“I think we have to take him prisoner.”
“And do what with him?”
“Take him to the nearest medic.”
Frank and Lyman stared at one another.
Lyman said, “That’s miles from here.”
The man said, “Bitte, bitte, bitte. Erschießen Sie mich!”
Frank stood up, walked over, placed the muzzle of his revolver on the man’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.
After that, they did what they were supposed to do—they rifled through the man’s clothing, and through the things in the Kübelwagen, and through the pockets of the driver, collecting anything that might provide valuable intelligence. That took about an hour. It wasn’t until daylight that Frank saw that he was spattered with blood and brains, bits of bone and hair.
The next day, they made their way farther inland.
1944
FRANK HAD TO WONDER once again whether the generals had any maps or not. He suspected that they merely had compasses, and that they found out which direction was west, and told the troops to go there. Frank was still a corporal, even though he had twenty-two kills now, and had delivered some intelligence from what he and Lyman Hill always called “the accident.” For a while, Frank had resented not being promoted, even when his colonel, Drake, happened to say, “So what is it you boys do out there, Corporal?” and Frank had said, “Save ammunition, sir.” But once they got to Camino, Frank ceased wishing to be in charge of more snipers. Murphy was shot on December 6. Lyman Hill stepped on a mine on December 17 and had to be carried down the mountain, which took four hours and, because of German mortars, nearly got the rest of them killed—they’d dropped Lyman and hit the dirt four times, but Lyman had lived. Jones had his head blown off by artillery fire on January 4, and Landers drowned in the Rapido River on January 21, though the river was so cold, Frank thought, that it was possible he froze to death before he went under. On the day of the bombing, only Ruben was still with him, only Ruben and he were under orders to attack yet again.
Ruben was from somewhere around New York City. He was short, and better with a pistol than a rifle, but he was exceptional with a pistol. Frank never quite knew if he was joking or not when he said he learned to shoot shooting rats in alleyways “or scurrying from building to building across clotheslines. It was easy to pick them off when they were doing that.” Ruben hadn’t finished high school—he had, instead, run numbers for a local gangster. He reminded Frank of that kid Terry, in Chicago. He looked tough and he was tough, and there was no trying involved. He had enlisted because the cops had a warrant out on him. He had gotten from New York to Florida, changed his name from something to Ruben, and joined the army. In Florida, he said, they took about anyone. He accepted that Frank was his superior officer, and he took orders as if he had always taken orders, which maybe he had. He was a criminal and he was brave, but he was a born follower.
The abbey was visible from everywhere, even through the curtain of constant rain, and Frank had heard all the arguments—you could see lights, you could see soldiers, you could see artillery, or, if you couldn’t, why in the world would any army, especially the Jerries, forgo such a perfect spot for recon? And if they weren’t there now, well, give them a day, or a week—they would get there. It was also evident that a thousand guys, or ten thousand guys, or twenty thousand guys, no matter how well equipped, were not going to climb that mountain and storm those walls—in addition to the terrain difficulty, the Jerries had planted every square inch with traps, mines, and wire. Five days before the bombing, after the Italian regiment that stormed up the hill were mowed down, Frank’s group was asked to do the impossible again. Some of the boys had taken Lieutenant Martin aside, and they had explained to him their point of view. That Ruben had pressed the lieutenant by the throat to the wall of their emplacement and simultaneously removed the service revolver from the lieutenant’s holster certainly accounted for much of Martin’s willingness to listen to his soldiers.
Frank would not have said that he ordered Ruben to offer his opinion (and the opinion of all the men) to Lieutenant Martin so forcefully, but he did say that he thought Martin was not only something of a dope, but also of two minds himself. A little persuading was all that was needed. But they did not fall back so far that they didn’t experience the night of the fifteenth, when the ranks of Flying Fortresses, Mitchells, and Marauders showed up and pounded the abbey for hours on end, shaking the earth with tremors and the sky with booms, and lighting up all the mountains. Bombs dropped everywhere, it didn’t matter where the lines were or were supposed to be—Frank huddled against the earth and wondered again if the generals had bothered with a map. The good thing was that the mountains were so steep and craggy that a bomb had to drop right on you to kill you, and, lucky again, Frank found himself alive in the morning. Ruben, who had whispered prayers all night in some language that was not English, found himself alive, too. Lieutenant Martin did not. But Frank suspected that that was a relief for him more than anything else.
Things were no better at Anzio when their unit was moved there. The Allies had landed months before—right around the time Frank’s unit had attacked Monte Cassino the first time—but they had gotten nowhere, and were now drowning in mud. Frank had thought that surely the German army was massed at Monte Cassino, but in fact they seemed to be in the ridges encircling the beach at Anzio, pouring 88mm artillery shells on everything and everyone—it was generally known that they aimed for Red Cross tents. And they had an unbelievable amount of firepower. Day after day, they shelled everything that moved in the marshes below the cliffs, exploding one little stone house after another. Frank saw at once that the Allied plan here was like it had been in Africa, to attack and attack and attack, even though defense forces were superbly entrenched and didn’t even bother to bury their own dead. The Allies didn’t want the Jerries to dare divert anyone to France, or Greece, or wherever else they might be useful. Every so often, you heard the words “cannon fodder.” Well, this was cannon fodder at its most expensive. Frank saw that his job had changed. What use were snipers? You couldn’t get around the Jerries, and you couldn’t get above them, and they controlled all the buildings. You could do one thing and one thing alone, which was to press them over and over, until—until what? Until, Frank thought (the generals thought), some happenstance turned up. Maybe that happenstance was only this, that it was spring, and therefore freezing cold had been superseded by pouring rain, and they didn’t have to cross the Rapido ever again.
Dawn on May 23 was rather nice, if you were only looking at the weather, but when the artillery commenced firing, and Frank began advancing toward the cliffs with the rest of his unit, he thought, and maybe for the first time, You’re in the army now. He was in charge of five men. They carried tommy guns, pistols, grenades, and plenty of ammunition. They wore helmets and were, except for the smoke all around them, entirely visible. But they did attain the cliff
s. Private Ruben, who was short and quick, managed to take out two machine-gun nests one right after the other, and to get back to their unit, stand on a little promontory, and give everyone and everything around them an exuberant finger. The squad then fought their way through the pass, with only Private Cornhill getting shot, a flesh wound in his left arm that did not, he insisted, even hurt, much less compromise his fighting prowess. Frank let him keep at it through the rest of the day. Frank wasn’t as heroic, but he did get six or eight kills. It wasn’t until the next day that they realized how hard it had been—their unit was intact, but hundreds of men had been wounded or killed, and dozens of tanks disabled. However, they were off the beach.
Late the next day, they got to a town called Cisterna. Frank guessed that it had once been a nice town—there were the remnants of streets, of parks, of houses, of shops. Their orders were to go house to house, rousting out the last Jerries and shooting them. Ruben was good at this, too, but so was Hernandez, who was from Oakland, California. The both of them actually seemed to relax as they got farther from the countryside. Frank himself got jumpy. Maybe the most disturbing of the Jerries was a fellow in the fourth house they entered, who had barricaded himself in a corner room on what was left of the second floor. He had seen them coming, and shot at them, a fatal error, since Frank had not intended to check that house. They went slowly up the stairs, pressing against the walls on either side of the steps, which were intact. The fellow made no sound and no move until Frank guessed which door he was behind, kicked it open, and ducked. But the Jerry was too frightened to come out, and as they stormed the room, he sat down on the windowsill and was shot from behind by some troops from the Thirty-fourth in the street below. He fell backward out of the window. One other Jerry tried to shoot them but missed, and two simply gave themselves up. At the end of the day, the town was quiet, and the entire German unit wiped out, according to Major Sandler. They bivouacked in the town for two days after that, sleeping most of the time.
