Souvenir

by James R Benn

  Clay turned his wool cap around so the visor wouldn’t get in the way of the binoculars, pulling it down to his eyebrows so his skin wouldn’t show. He gave a curt nod to Jake, who gave it back. No expression. That meant, if I get my head blown off, it was good to know you, buddy. Didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye. He didn’t put the binoculars right on top of the rock, but below the top, so the bottom half of what he saw was a blur. The top half was enough. In the tree line, past where the sugar beet field turned to brush and pine seedlings, he could see logs, stacked up about three feet, with cut pine branches strewn around them to soften the straight lines, German helmets, bobbing up and down, rifle snouts sticking out, and two heavy machine guns, one oriented in the other direction, one straight towards him. The woods curved away to the right, beyond the rise. The Germans had a good spot there, good fields of fire in either direction. He scanned left. No more log emplacements. Maybe they were dug in, camouflaged? The rise was either a strong point on the MLR, or an outpost in front of it. He knew what that meant. Fuck. He slid down, head low.

  “MG-42s, two of them, with plenty of Krauts, in that hunk of woods, on the right, up on the rise,” Clay said in a low voice.

  “See anything else?” Jake asked.

  “Nope. Can’t see a thing anywhere else.”

  “Shit. I’ll go tell Red.”

  Jake went flat, crawling back and staying in the tracks he had made coming out. No nods, winks or other gestures were necessary. Clay was safe behind a big rock, and Jake was headed the same way he had gone before. Such things were left for the obvious dangers, not the everyday routine of patrolling. A guy would be one big, constant, twitching nod if it were.

  Red and the rest of the squad had moved up about twenty yards to the edge of the tree line. A sergeant should have been leading the patrol, but Marty Dorsch got his right leg ripped open in a mortar barrage when they advanced on Hoffelt a couple of weeks ago. Marty was probably in England right now, maybe with his leg, maybe not. It was a favorite debate in the squad as to whether that was a good trade. The optimists didn’t think so, but there weren’t many of them. Jake missed Marty, one-legged or whole. He had been with them since Basic, made corporal in Normandy and buck sergeant when the leaves were still on the trees. He watched out for his men and was a good sergeant, but not so great that his squad got all the dirty details, the perfect combination in his opinion. There was no corporal to take over since a sniper got Hartman outside of Dinant. No one missed him. Replacements were slim, and everyone worried about who they’d end up with. Meanwhile, Red—Lieutenant Christopher Monahan—except no one ever called him anything but Red, led them on patrols when he needed something done, like today. Red wasn’t a bad officer, and the men liked that his foxhole was right up with theirs, not as far back as he could get and still say he was at the front. Like some.

  Jake scrambled around the base of the pine Red was behind. He put his arm over Red’s shoulder and pointed to the rise on the other side of the field.

  “There, two MG-42s, camouflaged behind logs, buncha Krauts around ‘em.” Jake kept his fingers pointed until Red got out his binoculars, not as nice as Clay’s German pair, but that’s the kind of officer Red was. Their first lieutenant might’ve confiscated them as a military necessity, but Red knew that a two-hundred yard shot was something, and that the man who made it was due whatever loot he got off of it.

  “Yeah,” Red said, “Got ‘em. Any more?”

  “Can’t see on the right, and Clay couldn’t make out anything along the left side there. Could be dug in.”

  Jake couldn’t put much certainty into that last statement. They could be, or not. He knew he might be back here with the whole Company, waiting out an artillery barrage on that line. If it wasn’t there, if this was nothing but a single machine-gun nest, then they’d have to do this all over again until they found the MLR. Or it found them.

  “Let’s find out,” Red said. He looked at Jake and the others gathered around him. He wasn’t asking, not at all, but Red liked everybody on board. He liked everyone to understand, that it was important, not some chicken-shit order he didn’t like any more than they did. So he waited.

  “OK,” said Jake. Five other heads bobbed up and down.

  “Big Ned, Little Ned,” the lieutenant said. “Get the BAR set up over there, under that fallen pine. Here, check out the Kraut position first.” Red handed Big Ned the binoculars. Ned Warren and Ned Kelleher were a team, and it was obvious which was Big Ned and which was Little Ned. Big Ned handled the Browning Automatic Rifle, a 16 pound monster that looked like a BB gun in his big, beefy hands. Big Ned was the strongest guy in the platoon, a Michigan lumberjack who almost split the shoulder seams of his field jacket. A jagged scar ran from his left ear across his cheek, the result of either a faulty chainsaw or a knife fight with an Indian from Mackinac Island, depending on how much Big Ned had had to drink. When he drank too much he could be a mean drunk, and no one dared ask if the knife fight story was true or not. Little Ned was the ammo carrier for Big Ned. In addition to all his own gear, he had to carry an extra ammo pouch for the BAR, which could eat up rounds in no time flat. Little Ned was a small guy, but appearances weren’t everything. There was wiry muscle on every bone, and Little Ned could walk lighter than any man in the squad. His union card said he was a structural steel worker, used to climbing up I and H columns floating far above city streets and bolting steel beams with a spud wrench. Little Ned was great with tools, and could fix a jam in the BAR faster than Big Ned could get his trigger finger mitten off.

  “OK,” Big Ned said.

  “That fallen pine is a little exposed, Red,” said Little Ned, not arguing, just pointing out a fact.

  “Yeah, but you can crawl down to it, dig out a little snow, and fire from underneath it. It’s good cover, don’t worry.”

  “I ain’t worried about getting there, Red,” said Little Ned, looking out at the field and not bothering to say the obvious. He saw Red was right. They could crawl through some brush easy enough. The pine had toppled over from the edge of the tree line, and lay at an angle, facing away from the machine-gun nest. Broken branches held the tree up just off the ground, and they’d be able to fire through a narrow slit between the frozen ground and the trunk. But if all hell broke loose…

  “I got two smoke grenades,” Red said, willing himself to speak slowly and calmly, as if explaining to a kid that a shot at the doctors wasn’t going to hurt. “When I throw them in front of you, haul ass out. Everybody gives covering fire. Understood?”

  “Yessir,” said Miller, the newest replacement.

  “Shut the fuck up, asshole,” said Hank Tucker. He had been in the line three weeks now, and considered himself a veteran, since Marty had told him he’d be a combat vet if he lasted three days. “What if some goddamn Kraut heard you call Red that? Jesus!”

  “OK, Tuck, simmer down. You and Shorty take Miller here and set up just above Big Ned and Little Ned. Jake, get Clay back up to the tree line and watch our left flank. No surprises, OK? When I fire, we open up on that position, find out what they’ve got out there. Smoke is the signal for you guys to clear out, plenty of covering fire. Got it?”

  “Sure, Red, OK,” said Tuck. “C’mon, Shorty.” Shorty was six foot barefoot, and walked with a permanent stoop, the result of his intense desire not to get shot in the head simply because he was the tallest guy in the squad. It might happen anyway, but he hated the idea of some Kraut seeing his helmet bobbing along over a hedge or stonewall somewhere and sending a slug through it, while the other guys, who had it easy at five foot eight and less, walked on without a scratch. Miller followed, miserable. Everyone else was paired up, he was odd man out. All he could do is hope for another replacement to come along, so he could call him a dumb sonovabitch, and take him under his wing, dig foxholes together, complain about the chow and the Army like the other guys. Give each other nicknames, too. Failing that, maybe one of these guys would get killed. Or maybe he would.
He was so cold, and lonely, he didn’t even care that much. If it were quick, anyway.

  Jake made sure he kept Red in sight as he chose his position at the tree line. He didn’t want him opening up too soon, leaving Clay hanging out there. Clay was prone, a bit of his head to the side of the rock, scanning slowly with the binoculars. Jake moved in the snow, just enough for Clay to hear. He looked up, shook his head. Nothing else out there, nothing he could see. Jake motioned him to come back up to the tree line, and Clay slithered back the way he had come. When he got close enough, Jake reached out and pulled him in, the darkness of the pine forest a welcome contrast to the stark white of the field below.

  “OK, see that dead pine?” Jake whispered. “BAR down there, the other guys above them. Red fires, we all open up. We watch the left flank. Smoke is the signal for Big Ned and Little Ned to pull out, once we know what’s up.”

  “Sounds easy,” said Clay, trying to catch his breath. It did. Plans always sounded good. They were soothing, giving you the illusion of something to count on. Red was good at that. He trusted Red, trusted him with his life, he knew. Red, and the guys in the squad, the ones that had been around, at least. It was the rest of the world, the world across the field, he wasn’t so sure of.

  Clay settled in, resting his M1 in the snow, twisting the sling around his forearm to steady his aim. At this distance, aimed fire didn’t mean much, but it was how Clay did things. The right way, even when it didn’t matter, the way he was taught, whether it made much sense at all. He was as much behind the pine tree as he could be and still see the target. Like deer hunting, the way his big brother taught him. If you can see them and they can’t see you, why then, you got the drop on them and its venison steaks on the griddle tonight.

  Jake was above him, up on one knee. He gave the high sign to Red. All set. He’d watch the flank in case any fire came from that way, or even worse, Krauts in these woods. But right now they both watched Big Ned and Little Ned snake their way down the slope from the tree line towards the fallen pine.

  Jake had his M1 up, elbow on his knee. He knew Clay was drawing a bead, working his rear sight and filling the front with the target. It was just a smudge in the woods from here, but once you saw it you knew. Jake’s frosted breath blew out his nose, obscured his view, and he dropped the rifle to his knee. At this distance, he didn’t have a rat’s ass chance of hitting anything he aimed at. When Red fired, he’d empty his clip at the clump in the woods and then turn, reload, and watch the flanks. You never know, he might hit something if a Kraut was dumb enough to stick his head up and run into one of his rounds. The geometry of death. He suddenly couldn’t get Miss Peabody out of his mind, her white lace collar burned into his memory. High school math. Intersecting lines and angles. It wasn’t too hard, once you worked it out. The path of the bullet was one line, the path of a Kraut, or G.I., was another. Intersecting lines. You could draw a straight line from where the bullet started, and where the poor slob who got it began, and you’d have a nice triangle. Somewhere, maybe from deep inside a factory in Germany, a bullet was moving towards him, in a shipping crate, on a train to the front. Could he draw a line from Minersville to that factory?

  Big Ned moved easily for such a large guy. He dragged the BAR by the barrel, too big to cradle in your arms like a rifle. Big Ned was strong and heavy, and he moved over the snow like a plow, flattening it as he went. Little Ned was to his right. He scuttled like a crab, too light to weigh down the snow. He didn’t have the best technique, too much elbow and butt above his head. But he’d stop often, freeze himself motionless so if his movement caught a Kraut’s eye, maybe he’d blink and look again before he shot, and think, damn, I’m too jumpy out here, it’s nothing.

  Little Ned moved from one of his frozen positions and crawled forward. He glanced at Big Ned, who had stopped behind a small pine tree to wait for him. They had about twelve yards to go. He got to the pine, the last bit of cover before the fallen tree. He looked at the path Big Ned had made crawling down and decided at the first sign of smoke, he’d run his ass up that path into the woods. It’d be easier than running through the soft snow. Good plan.

  Big Ned saw him and nodded. Damn right that’s the way home.

  Big Ned and Little Ned didn’t really like each other. Big Ned was an outdoorsman, a backwoods boy. Little Ned had a few years on him, and at twenty-five thought he knew all there was to know about the world. He had worked in Philadelphia, D.C., Richmond, and Baltimore, seen more people from up on those beams than they had in all of Michigan. Some guys, with different backgrounds like that, would pepper each other with questions about their home, eager to learn about a part of the country they had never seen, never would have known about, except for the war. Then they’d write their Mom and Dad about this swell fellow from Idaho, or a great pal from Georgia, and little stories about distant states would be scattered around the nation like fireflies on a summer night.

  But Big Ned and Little Ned’s parents would not read much of their son’s foxhole partner, except maybe the names, the names were funny, the kind of thing you could write your folks about and distract them for a minute from the constant worry and dread that hung over the homes of G.I. parents in the cold winter of 1945. You won’t believe it, Mom, but my ammo carrier is named Ned, and they call him Little Ned. Funny, huh?

  They tolerated each other, didn’t hate each other or get into fights, except for that time in Paris and that had been the liquor talking, they both knew that. They never took a liking to each other, that was all. Each knew the other guy pretty damn well, and could count on him. But they grated on each other in a way that let them know, if they lived through this, they’d shake hands at the end, turn away, and that’d be enough.

  But this wasn’t about being pals. This was serious, a job to be done like so many others done before. They both moved to the side, to skirt the small pine on the final approach to the fallen tree. Big Ned moved off, going wide to be sure his trailing BAR didn’t snag on a half-buried branch.

  Jake could see Little Ned move right, and stop, like he always did. Big Ned was almost to the tree now, and Little Ned scurried forward, flailing his arms too much like he always did, then stopped again. Jake could feel his heart begin to thump louder in his chest. Jesus Christ, Big Ned is about ready, he’s got the BAR under the tree. Sweat broke out on his forehead, feeling like it might freeze before it dripped off. He shivered, trying to still himself. He looked at Red, saw him aiming, waiting for Little Ned to get in position. Any second now.

  Little Ned moved. He stuck his elbow in the snow and pushed off with his left leg, aching to get behind that big pine tree, aching even more to be running up that packed snowpath with clouds of smoke between them and the Kraut gunners. His foot hit something.

  Clump.

  Jake saw it, a tremor at first, then the achingly slow slide as heavy snow slid down a thick pine branch. He saw Little Ned turn his head as the snow hit him and buried his feet.

  Whoosh.

  The green fir arced up in the air, freed of its snowy burden. The tip of the branch had been buried, but Little Ned had pushed off on it, dislodged it, kicked off the terrible chain of events that left a clear signal, green against white and G.I. brown half buried in snow.

  Jake knew light traveled faster than sound. But he didn’t think it possible ever to see it, or some of the things he saw in combat. It didn’t happen often, but at a time like this, when everything slowed down, and you had a clear view of the Krauts firing at you, it was true. Waiting those last seconds, with the green fir flying up, Little Ned twisting in the snow, Jake couldn’t feel anything, not the cold, not the weight of his M1 as he raised it, couldn’t hear either, not even Red’s first shots, then his. Everything in sight was crystal clear, intense, as if it were suddenly blue skies and sun, all color and clarity. In that moment he saw the twinkling, before he heard it. Bright exploding whiteness from machine-guns, but also sparkling lights all along the woods, hundreds of them. They were everywhere, s
ilent, incandescent, and it was beautiful.

  Clay heard the snow fall from the branches. He didn’t wait for Red to fire, he squeezed off his first shot, then the second, breathing in and out, not wanting to be some trigger-happy fool firing into the air. Take aim, fire at the enemy. He knew it was useless.

  “Jesus Christ,” Red said as he fired, over and over. He pulled the first smoke grenade and threw it. “Jesus Christ.”

  Big Ned turned in time to see Little Ned try to pull himself out from under the snow. The MG-42 chopped up the top of the dead pine, and he had to duck and cover his head. He knew. He didn’t look back, he fired the BAR and tried not to think about it.

  The German machine-gunner aimed his bursts at Little Ned and so did every other German dug in under camouflaged trenches and foxholes along the MLR. Little Ned and the tree were the only things moving, and they drew fire. Little Ned was hit, hit, hit and hit again, killed twenty times over as swarms of bullets chopped the branches and brush all around him. He never had a chance to say a thing, to curse the branch, think about home, never even took in exactly what was happening, or saw the bright bursts of gunfire that Jake saw as a strange thing of distant beauty.

  Red pulled the pin on the second smoke grenade and flung it out in front of Big Ned as a round caught his left arm, passing through it, spraying blood on the snow. He saw the blood, didn’t feel a thing, but couldn’t get his arm to work.