“I never was able to find out if you made it,” Lett said. “Hoped maybe you got the million-dollar wound.”
“Never been that lucky. Went AWOL from my hospital once I heard they were sending me back up on the line. Came straight back here. Didn’t want to end up in some other unit. What are they going to do—send me to the front?”
They laughed about it.
“Thanks for pulling me out,” Godfrey said.
“You woulda done it for me,” Lett said.
“I heard what you guys have been through since. It’s no picnic.”
Lett nodded. “See what happens when you’re not around?”
Godfrey had a musette bag with him. He pulled out a bottle of gin and two ceramic mugs, painted delicately with farm scenes but sturdy. He poured, they sipped, licking the heat off their lips.
“I got you limited duty. Company courier. Don’t know how long it will last though. Word was we’d stay off the line for at least a month. But who really knows? Only a general.”
Lett knew how limited duty worked. It had become routine to put a cracked dogface behind the lines a while, see how things went. “I’m no good hanging around the rear,” he said.
“It’s not like that. Some charity case. This is only till they send us back out. One of the others can play platoon sergeant meanwhile. Let them be my gopher. Besides, we’ll need all the guys with some experience we can get.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“You’ll get some fresh air. Sort things out. Be on your own from here to battalion, all the way back to division some days. Maps and special mail, mostly. Do the occasional interrogation or translation for me should our patrols pick anything up—that’s valid right there. You’re in reports for knowing German.”
“I said, sure. Why convince me? You’re the looie.”
“It’s not for me.”
“Thanks, Tom. That what you want to hear?”
“I already heard it.”
Lett lifted the mug. His hand shook.
Godfrey looked away, till Lett got it to his lips. They toasted, and Lett noticed Godfrey’s hand shaking too.
***
Holger Frings ended up in a field hospital in a former schoolhouse farther north up the Dutch coast. For a time, days maybe, he had been left to float in a warm sea of morphine. In such a state the hospital worked on him in a macabre way, with all its layers of unreal white mixed with a smell of gangrene, of burnt flesh from patients worse off around him. He remembered: He only suffered from smoke inhalation and a severe concussion, his symptoms ranging from a burning, wrenching cough and retching to nausea and confusion. The skin of his face felt tender, his eyebrows and nostril hairs had singed and his beard shrunken from heat. His saliva had tasted burnt for days. He was more shocked to find out that he had lice, like some sorry foot soldier.
The morphine gave way. Then a man was talking to him, a Navy ensign with the silver piping of Administration, squinting, a quivering chin—the type who probably used a magnifying glass to find the lint on his tunic. Hanssen was dead, the ensign told him. All on the open bridge had died, which explained the blood Frings had seen running down the wheelhouse windows. Frings demanded details. Shrapnel had ripped Hanssen apart from shoulders up. Another flotilla on return march had found them just as the weather turned so bad the British MTBs pulled out and the light destroyer didn’t bother coming back to finish them off, this after Kammel had hurtled them to safety—his throttle-up must have sent Frings falling on his back. Kammel had lost a hand and an eye from a burst that shattered the wheelhouse window; they had to amputate his hand right out on deck. Both Hanssen’s and Baum’s boats had to be left to the sea. Baum went down with his. More sailors had been lost than survived.
The ensign had pulled up a chair. He kept his attaché case upright on his knees, like a shield. Frings had sat upright on his bed, lining up his angle of attack.
“You look like you have a question,” the ensign said.
“I have one for starters. I don’t understand why all the morphine.”
The ensign looked around, as if for a nurse, an orderly. “I’m not a doctor, mind.”
“My injuries aren’t that bad. I just want to get back out there. So what’s this all about?”
The ensign cleared his throat. “We would like to know why your boats did not return to the pens with the rest of the flotilla. What were your last instructions, as you understood them?”
Frings didn’t answer, at first. What was this? They were building some kind of case against them? A heat seethed in his inflamed lungs, sinuses. He wheezed and glared at the ensign, who seemed to shrink behind his attaché.
Frings said: “Oberleutnant zur See Hanssen wanted it. Obersteuermann Baum did. And I think they were right. It gave us something like an opportunity. Odds. The Beefs thought we were all heading in. We thought we could decoy. It’s called sacrifice.”
The ensign paused a moment, as if referring to notes in his head. “We understand you left the wheel. Why?”
Frings pushed off his blankets and swung out his legs, brushing the ensign’s knees.
“Where is Kammel?” Frings shouted. “I want to see him. He’ll tell you.”
“That’s not possible. He’s been moved to Germany for convalescence.” With that, the ensign added a sick little smile. The man had gotten in Frings’ head, he appeared to believe, and that was all he had probably ever wanted. This binder commando had a cruel streak.
“What about the rest of my flotilla?” Frings said.
The ensign shook his head. “More bombers came. They caught our boats right before they could reach the pens. Only two made it inside. The rest scrambled away but were sunk.” The ensign pushed up his glasses. “The total able survivors? Well, they could barely man one boat,” he added.
Frings thought he saw the hint of a smile.
He lunged at the ensign, grabbed him by the collars, pinning him to his chair. The attaché tumbled away. “What about all that intelligence that’s supposed to alert us to all these goddamn planes, eh? You can wipe my ass with it. What about the radar owed us going back years, and for so many dead? Huh? Where’s that leave us?”
It took three orderlies to pull Frings off the ensign. The ensign hurried out, gasping.
He never returned. No one did.
And Frings came to understand why they had first given him the morphine.
After two weeks in the field hospital, Frings was ordered to a billet nearby, a hotel on the coast just outside Den Helder. He got a room of his own, top floor, low gable ceiling, one tiny dormer window, a cross on the otherwise blank walls, what had probably been servants’ quarters. It was a cell, more or less. He had been told to bring whatever things he had. He would have preferred the brig or a penal unit to this, even a training flotilla. At least there he would know the score. They had their sharp hook to hang him on. Their two boats had not radioed in to report the approaching planes nor their plan to turn around, the ensign was clear on that. Frings didn’t know if it was true. Radios cut out all the time. It didn’t matter. It was a formality. Maybe they would try and pin it on him, or maybe on dead Hanssen. Frings wouldn’t put it past them. Not when the likes of Scherenberg were running the land. They always needed a scapegoat.
In the hotel’s dank and narrow cellar bar he huddled with a Number One from the other flotilla, Obermaat Schenkel. Schenkel had been there that day. Their own boats had already radioed in that bombers were heading for them and their pens, Schenkel told Frings, so no one needed an alert from Frings’ boat or any other. Schenkel set down his beer mug. He stubbed out his cigarette. “The worst thing is: There was never even a convoy.”
“What?”
“The intelligence was shit all around. There was no reason to venture into Quadrant 76, period. For all we know, the Beefs had been luring us all into a clever trap. Got me? The bastards got so much control, they can do anything they want now. It was like they’re reading our goddamn minds—or at least our secret
codes.”
***
Wendell Lett liked the illusion of freedom a motorcycle gave him. At division motor pool he had chosen a 500cc Indian Scout, so worn its OD green silvered at the edges, the hefty leather side bags well rubbed with mud and grime. He could have had a jeep and probably should have for any large packages. A bike offered extra mobility. If the call came down he could get back to Godfrey and the platoon that much sooner. And something else had entered his noodle. He had heard guys talking in the hospital about all the desertions—the Army was losing Joes by the thousands every day. They would just up and disappear but had nowhere to go after a few weeks at best, so most came back and got a second chance unless they were head cases. Sure, others found a way to vanish. Paris was full of them. But what then? Lett told himself he would never choose that. He’d had his chance. Back in the states he could have claimed CO—conscientious objector status—on account of his Mennonite upbringing. It was too late. This was all he knew. The only way he would desert, he told himself, was if they did not send him back to combat. Two weeks in that hospital had shown him that he’d lost any connection to a normal world.
The battalion was spread out for this close to the line. The company command post was a couple miles behind the line. Division was at least fifteen miles back, at the base of a hill that had a grand villa on top. Lett had only been down below, where farmhouses and barns endured like serfs below the great lord up in the castle, now turned into US Army depots and service and supply posts. He stopped for chow there. Locals often lined up across the lane from where they dumped leftovers, women and children mostly. After mess Lett, like the other lapsed dogfaces, always crossed the lane and set down his mess tray, then turned away and crossed back over and shared a chat with some of the other guys, to give the poor people some privacy while they scooped into their pots and bowls. Sometimes Lett went back two or three times for chow and left out more for them. He’d keep doing it till the mess sergeant would wink at him and cut him off like a seasoned barkeep.
Riding the narrow, snaking country roads gave Lett room to breathe again. Rumbling along when the morning fog burned off was best. He didn’t need the sun to come out. Just to feel the light, to see it sparkle in the dew of the hill grass when he’d come roaring out of a turn and a wood. The mornings were getting colder, so he traded a Joe for thick leather German motorcycle gloves, and he pulled his helmet beanie down tight under the straps of his goggles. He allowed himself to appreciate the countryside. It was beautiful, like something out of Grimm’s tales. He told himself not to get too used to it. Reminders were everywhere. He sometimes passed forest battlefields that graves registration hadn’t found yet and could make out the distinct smells of American and German—the two enemies smelled differently when decomposing owing to the different fabrics they wore, the various wools and denims breaking down along with flesh, muscle, organs. He himself would reek a certain way, and he took some solace in that.
His billet was a standard Army wall tent with stove. He shared his canvas with five other diehards from across the company—the doggies had taken their own tent, ignoring billet assignments. Lett would try to sleep but he twitched and gasped as if choking, as if trying to scream. Combat plundered his dreams. Anxiety robbed reality. To get over the rough humps, he would hole up with Tom Godfrey in his tent and listen to music. Tom had scored a record player and records—musicals mostly—from a captain who had showed up at the front with a trunk. All that was missing was the valet and personal porter. That fat cat found a way to get transferred out of the company within weeks, yet he could tell all back home that he’d been on the line.
“That’s the way a lot of them are,” Godfrey said. “We should be happy to see them go. It’s when they want to stay that we start praying.”
When Lett had time, he would fan out and drive more skinny roads and discover the valleys, ravines, junctions, towns and villages farther off the straight line from company. Taking it slow. The ritual found him within a few days of starting courier duty. He kept coming back to one village—Stromville. It stood on its own like others but wasn’t crammed into the rugged land like many were, crowded around swelling secondary rivers or their backs up against some rocky hill. Stromville had its own valley and occupied one end of it. It was no bigger than a few football fields squared together but the open yet secluded space felt like a sanctuary, ringed as it was with the ridge and trees and Stromville’s quaint skyline. Stromville had the requisite village steeple and the gables and old stone buildings like all. But Stromville had a special obscurity. It had insignificance. It had no junction to fight over. The place didn’t seem to want to be anything it wasn’t. Walking through the brief main street, taking in the few sights, Lett saw no references to this or that bishop seating here in the Middle Ages, or some plaque pointing to the birthplace of a certain poet or national dish invented here. The population? Nor more than a few hundred, if you counted the outlying farms. He visited the place four times in his first week, and each time heard no thumps of far-off battles or shelling, no clanking of armor columns, hell, he didn’t even hear planes overhead. Without the few cars, the place might as well have been three hundred years ago. He saw no other GIs here, no Off Limits signs left behind by a battalion XO or his rule-bound German equivalent. The people left Lett alone, too. No one wanting to hustle him. The place didn’t smell like war either. The worst odor was when the cobblestones got damp.
Lett always did the same thing. He would park his bike inside the half open rear courtyard of a nondescript, two-story red-brick house on the main street. He would stroll the town. Each time he ended up on a bench, or overlooking the valley, or leaning on a lamppost. And he would start trembling, uncontrollably, as if in an earthquake, as if a hundred hands were shaking him from all sides. And he would cry.
On his second week, he found himself on the bench near the small main square, under trees. It must have been about noon. It was colder now, approaching the end of October. He had kept his motorcycle gloves on. He shivered. He felt his fellow dead Joes around him, but he couldn’t see them. He tried to shake them off. He squeezed his eyes shut but it only made him see them. His foxhole buddies sat on the bench with him, others at his feet. They offered him smokes and hooch, played cards and shared mail from home. They joked about Lett. What a sad sack. How could such a nice bub let them go and die?
Lett cried again. His head lowered, between his knees. Once he was finished, he stretched his legs, letting his boots rest on their heels, and sighed. He couldn’t wipe his tears with the gloves on, so he’d just let them dry. He closed his eyes, listening to nothing at all. The silence awed him, but he didn’t know if it was from the beauty or frailty of it.
Someone sat next to him. A woman. He hadn’t heard her coming? He sat up. Gave her the top-to-bottom. She wore shiny loafers with soft soles.
“You’re good at that,” he said.
A corner of her mouth fought a smile. Her hair was neither blond nor brown but could be either in the light, parted to one side in a way that reminded him of Veronica Lake. She could only be a couple years older than he. Her eyes were blue with sparkles of mischief, her skin light and face a little lean, Lett thought, until her smile began to lengthen, lifting her cheekbones and eyebrows, which seemed to spread her eyes farther apart even as it widened them. Wonderful.
“I mean it,” he said, turning to her and taking in her smart blazer over a dress with buttons that ran from her collar down. What was she? She could be anything from schoolteacher to town hall secretary to shopkeeper, but probably not a farmer girl. She was the village girl with smarts, he decided. “Do you speak English?”
“A little,” she said, pronouncing it like “leetle.”
“I said, you are good—sneaking up on me like that, I mean. We could use you in my outfit.”
“Outfeet?” She looked down at her blazer.
“Oh, no, not clothes. Like a unit. A platoon.”
“Ah. I know it,” she said, smoothing out
her skirt, her smile fading. Was she scared of front-line GIs?
“I’m harmless,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
She pulled a hanky, and wiped at his eyes.
He’d forgotten about the tears. Tough luck.
She pressed a finger to the divisional patch on his arm. “Your outfeet, it stays near here, yes?”
“That’s right. We’re getting the royal rest treatment. Damp forest, cold chow, latrine tent, the whole works.”
“You have seen much fighting.”
“How can you tell? You know what? Never mind.”
They stared a moment, she with her hanky clenched in her hand, he with those German motorcycle gloves hanging off his knees like two rabbit skins. He pulled them off.
“You are parked in my court,” she said, leaving off the “t” in the French way. Like this it sounded like the word “heart”—cur—to Lett’s untrained ears. “Once again, you are,” she added.
Lett’s face flushed, and it surely showed on his cold cheeks. “Well. It didn’t seem to be bugging anyone, so I just . . . kept doing it. I’m not hiding anything.”
“I know.”
Lett sat up, feeling an actual smile push through his dogface mask. “Oh, you do, huh? You’ve been following me, have you?”
“It’s true. I watch you. Someone must keep an eye on the invaders.”
“I’m not invading anything.”
“I know that too. But I have not informed the authorities proper. So you are safe.”
They laughed.
“You know what? I have an idea. I got a couple hours to kill, and a bottle of Riesling in my cargo bag.”
She cocked her head at him.
“Understand? Wine. It’s boche stuff, sure, but it would probably go good with bread.”
“I understand.”
She walked him to a picnic space just inside a wood, along a creek. She had stopped on the way in a shop for bread, half a short baguette and a couple inches of hard salami, telling him to wait outside. So he had waited. He could get used to taking orders from a CO like this. The picnic space had a little table—blocks of pocked stone and a narrow old door atop it, wood benches. They sat across from each other, their knees touching often. She had slung her satchel-sized purse crossways, in the military way. From it she pulled a large and sturdy knife and used it to cut thick slices of the salami. Godfrey would be proud of him. He had managed a meal with a local girl all on his own. They ate staring at each other, she tearing off pieces of meat and bread and he making a little sandwich that made her chuckle. He drank straight from the bottle and so did she, which surprised him. She had a little roughness in her background. For a moment he imagined her doing the same with some German NCO the previous year, then lost the thought. Who cared? That poor bastard was a goner too.
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