Sam stayed on Ben’s chest, pressing them both to the dirt. The explosion quaked in the ground and in Sam’s chest. Ben pushed him off.
‘Sam...’
‘Rabbi! Damn it! What the hell!’
Ben rolled to his stomach, ignoring his assistant to listen for more incoming, and for the sounds of wounded.
‘Rabbi!’
‘What, Sam? What?’
‘You’re hit, damn it!’
Ben felt the sting now, in his right hip, just beside his pocket. He reached a hand to his pants, felt a rip over his buttock. He flexed the leg, the sting did not worsen.
‘Flesh wound.’
‘Yeah, this time.’
‘Thank you, Sam.’
‘Yeah, I know. Look, Rabbi, right now might not be the best time, but are you out of your mind?’
Ben wiped his blood on the grass. The platoon lieutenant bellowed through the curtains of the weeds, for the unit to move up and stay down. Boys slithered past, headed deeper into the meadow. A voice cut through the weeds and the rain, in the pauses of the machine guns, crying, ‘Medic!’
‘Rabbi, listen. You get hit, you know what’s gonna happen to me? I’m gonna get court-martialed. You’re the only thing stoppin’ ‘em. So, for God’s sake, do you gotta be out front all the time?’
Sam shook as if he were cased in ice. Ben marveled that this scared boy had the balls to stay upright when the machine guns fired, to knock down his chaplain just ahead of the worst of the bullets. Shaking or not, Sam was no coward. Ben patted his hand, to calm him.
But why did Ben hesitate when the MGs opened up? What made him move to the head of the men beside the lieutenant, not the place for a chaplain? Not even Phineas walked out front into battle. Ben wondered, looking into Sam’s disapproving face: did he have to admit he was so distracted over finding his son’s fate, so driven to end his worry and this war that he’d begun to lose sight of his own life? Was his carelessness, his brave posing, really a wish to atone through his own sacrifice?
No. That wasn’t what God wanted from him. Not Ben’s death.
He crawled forward, moving with the rest of the unit. The bullet gouge in his hip was little bother.
Sam took a grip on his pants leg to hold him back.
‘Rabbi, hang on. Let me get in front. For Pete’s sake.’
Sam edged past, muttering into the ground.
~ * ~
‘The white boys are gatherin’.’
Joe Amos hung an arm out the cab window. His Jimmy eased to a stop on the narrow road, another drab link in the long traffic jam north of Amigny.
Beside him, McGee nodded. ‘That’s always bad for someone, sure enough.’
Joe Amos snickered. His windshield wiper squeaked, not enough water to ease its swipe now that they were idling in line. Joe Amos cut off the wipers, letting the gentle rain patter on the glass.
The girl’s kiss was just three days old on his lips. He put his fingertips there.
‘I reckon now’s a good time.’
‘Okay.’ McGee shrugged.
Joe Amos opened his door and hopped down to the road. More trucks arrived behind him, lengthening the backup. Ahead, probably two hundred Jimmies and tractors waited to move forward. Their cargo was men.
Joe Amos walked around Lucky’s grille while McGee slid behind the wheel. He strode off the road, gazing south down the traffic jam. Hedgerows bristled the backs of green hills in the rainy haze. Joe Amos thought again about winning the war and the freedom that would follow, to drive up and down those hills anywhere he wanted, but this time it was not a Jimmy he drove in the daydream but the Marquis’s little car, and not McGee next to him but Geneviève.
Several steps off the road, Joe Amos took a leak. He paid no notice to the two dozen soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Regiment in his truck bed, keeping his back to them. Before he was done, traffic inched forward. Joe Amos walked alongside his own truck. Saying nothing, he took from his tunic a pack of cigarettes and lit up. He had two cartons in the glove compartment, gotten in trade from Speedy Clapp for two bottles of the Marquis’s wine.
Joe Amos exhaled smoke, strolling close to the wooden slats of the Jimmy. Several soldiers leaned and looked down on him. Joe Amos knew from seeing a hundred thousand white boys come and go that these had not been in combat. It’s that white skin, he thought, it shows every mark like a piece of paper. You can read the days on a white boy’s face. Not like a black man. You don’t see a beating so fast on a dark face.
‘You fellas gettin’ ready to go kick some ass?’ he called up with a billow of tobacco smoke. ‘The big breakout, huh? Man. Y’all look ready!’
‘Yeah,’ replied a few voices. Joe Amos looked into young eyes confused by the slow momentum sweeping them into battle, envious of the black fellow walking happily below them with a cigarette, not going off to fight and die with them, not allowed to go do this and lucky for it, but still black and unlucky.
A company of Sherman tanks clanked up from behind, rolling over the shoulder of the road. Joe Amos jumped on the Jimmy’s running board, out of the way. The tanks rolled past and Joe Amos saw something new and odd on them: a pair of steel tusks welded low on the front chassis. Instantly, the tanks created a stir among the soldiers in the truck bed, buzzing with guesses at the purpose of the innovation. Joe Amos listened while one old man explained his theory, grinning at the simplicity and inventiveness. Those steel horns would allow a Sherman to ram a hedgerow and, instead of bouncing off, the tank would dig into the roots and plow through, keeping its tracks on the ground and its vulnerable belly down.
The doughs agreed. Another soldier bet the beams had been cut from the obstacles the Krauts had set off OMAHA and UTAH.
Joe Amos found this exciting, to see a secret weapon moving up, on the way to get its baptism in the breakout, and to see that the Generals who ran the war were adjusting, trying new ways for the fight. Soldiers in every truck cheered the passing tanks. Joe Amos shouted to McGee, ‘You see that?’
The Shermans and their tusks shot forward in tight formation, like circus elephants. They did not kick dust out of the wet earth but chewed corduroys beside the road and spit a nasty exhaust. With their black puffs, Joe Amos blew more cigarette smoke over the crowded, staring soldiers. He saw a few nostrils lift.
He dropped off when the tanks were past and walked beside the creeping Jimmy, keeping up his chatter.
‘What y’all think? War’s gonna be over in a month? Two?’
A voice knifed out of the truck bed: ‘Tell that nigger to shut up and get back in the truck and drive.’
Joe Amos made no reaction. Many of the young faces looking down at him grimaced. They wanted to apologize for the mean voice in their bunch and did it with their eyes. Joe Amos took one more drag on the cigarette and handed up the unsmoked half.
Soldiers reached for it. One GI grabbed it, swallowed a hit of tobacco, and passed the butt along. A boy asked, ‘Hey, Sergeant, you got any more smokes?’
Joe Amos appreciated the mention of his rank from a white boy. In that moment, he sensed the same kind of confusion he figured these soldiers felt looking down on him. He wanted to go with them, to fight in the big breakout, be right there when America kicked down the door out of Normandy. At the same time he was glad not to be going, glad to have a French girl here and not just a perfumed letter from home like these crackers going off to get shot at. He thought of Boogie in jail, the Jabo in flames, the .50 caliber rattling in his hands, Geneviève’s touch, and the bodies he carted back from the bocage day after day. In the last month and a half, more had happened to him than in the rest of his whole life. He couldn’t be mad at Uncle Sam for letting him have this adventure, even if it meant he wasn’t going off with these boys to win the war with a gun.
‘Yeah,’ Joe Amos answered, ‘I got a few packs.’
‘Hey, how ‘bout lettin’ us have a couple. We’ll pay for ‘em. Come on, Sarge. Be a pal.’
Joe Amos pulled off his helmet to
scratch his head, to mock thinking it over.
‘I don’t know, y’all. They were pretty expensive for me.’
‘Shit,’ one soldier said, ‘what do we care? We’re goin’ to get our asses shot off anyhow. How much? Gimme a pack.’
Joe Amos stuck his helmet back on his head.
‘Okay, I’ll sell ‘em to you for what I paid. How’s that?’
‘Good enough.’
Joe Amos lifted a hand to the open passenger window. A carton of Chesterfields sailed out of the cab. He caught McGee’s toss, opened the box, and held up a fresh pack.
‘Two bucks each.’
‘Two bucks?’ Faces curdled. ‘That’s a night on the town in Paris. Christ.’
‘Sorry, boys. It’s what they cost me.’
The ugly voice from the far side of the truck bed cut in: ‘Where’d a coon get that kind of money?’
The Jimmy jarred to a halt, jostling the soldiers. Joe Amos scowled at McGee, jerking his head at the boy to get the truck moving again.
One of the GIs turned around to snap, ‘Hollywood, shut up.’ He dug in his pocket and handed down two bills. ‘Here you go, Sarge. Gimme one.’
Joe Amos sold the whole carton. In the truck bed Zippos flipped, cigarettes fired up. He could have sold some from the second carton but thought it unwise to break that one out. Then he might have had some explaining to do.
Climbing back into the cab, he peeled off three dollars and handed them over. McGee stuffed the bills in his shirt.
Joe Amos glowered. ‘You never been called nothin’ before? Huh?’
McGee stared ahead, driving slow.
Joe Amos pulled the last carton from the glove compartment. He took a pack and spun it into McGee’s lap, then stowed the rest.
‘This ain’t your little town in Florida. This is business now. Don’t you screw this up for me.’
McGee pursed his lips. He set the cigarettes on the dash.
Joe Amos rolled the bills and strapped them with a rubber band. He stuffed the wad in his pants.
~ * ~
At 1800, under a gray drizzle, sounds of the German counterattack sheared across the open ground.
Rumbles of mortar fire and crackling shots pitched from far ahead. The CO of 2nd Battalion reached for the radio almost flung at him.
Ben listened. He watched the Colonel spit his frustration into the grass and shake his head at the tinny shouts in his earpiece. 1st Battalion was under attack on their flank. There was nothing anyone could do to help them.
During the afternoon, while he and the rest of 2nd Battalion had crawled and crept forward drawing fire, 1st Battalion on their right advanced too far, a half mile from the river. 2nd made it only 350 yards beyond the Sèves, and was stopped in the meadowland, deep to 1st’s rear. 1st Battalion was up there alone, exposed on three sides.
Watching the Colonel clutch his radio, Ben saw the blows the 1st was taking by itself.
Phineas was up there. Ben waited while the Colonel assured his counterpart on the radio everything possible would be done, but for now he was stuck in place, with a significant Kraut force pinning him in the grasses.
When the Colonel handed away the radio, Ben asked if any units were being sent forward. If so, he’d like to go, too.
‘Sorry, Chap. We’re both stuck where we are for the night. Besides, I’m afraid soon enough they’ll be back here in bits and pieces.’
By nightfall, the Colonel was proven right. Wounded and stragglers by the dozens stumbled over the field to the rear. Ben ran into the dusk and the fast-fallen misty night to take soldiers by the arm, help them limp to the river. He walked beside stretchers, murmuring comfort. A few of those coming in from the dark were not hurt, just green boys who’d seen their first day of battle and could not stand to see another. One soldier had a bullet shot cleanly through his hand, a wound Ben suspected was self-inflicted. He stayed silent to these quitters and let them go on, they were nothing he could salvage.
~ * ~
D+47
July 23
At 0300, Ben walked the last of the wounded to the river. He guessed close to a hundred men had staggered back in the night. Almost one in six from 1st Battalion had been hit on just the first day’s action. Ben had no idea how many dead there were.
He lowered himself into a foxhole. Sam left him alone, finding his own shelter nearby. Before seeking sleep, Ben gazed into the dark sky, starless and quilted. A couple hundred yards back, the Sèves swelled from the rains. By morning, bridging the river was going to be impossible. That meant no more tanks on this side beyond the four already here. The sky showed no intention of breaking, once more ruling out close air support, 1st and 2nd Battalions were marooned on Sèves Island, tangling with a determined and clever force of defenders.
Ben’s last thoughts before closing his eyes were of the lousy leadership the 90th was getting. How could all this happen in a single day, almost two hundred casualties in two battalions, in what was supposed to be just a local skirmish while bigger forces primed for the breakout? How could everything keep going wrong for the Ombres?
The night was quiet and Ben did not dream. When he woke, he looked out of the hole into fog so thick it swirled in the hole around his knees. He moved, stiff, not young in any part of him. His mouth tasted vile. He rubbed his chin, over an itchy beard. His hands were so dirty he thought of his papa’s hands, the coal miner.
Ben rose out of the foxhole. He caught the sounds of fighting, again from the 1st Battalion, now fully lost in the fog. Sam came with a plate of hash and a mug of coffee. The boy’s face still had bits of dirt clinging on one side of his own growing beard where he’d slept against a dirt wall.
Ben ate without talking. No one in 2nd Battalion was readying to push forward, to ease the pressure on ist, up there alone and under assault. The fog clung too tightly to the meadow, artillery cover would be dicey. A pair of tanks by the battalion CP tent did not even have their motors running. Finishing his breakfast, Ben figured the Germans on Sèves Island might be a smaller force than everyone reckoned. The Krauts seemed only able to deal with one GI position at a time.
At 0800, the reports and explosions flared again out of the mist. The Krauts were staging another counterattack against 1st Battalion. No one around Ben moved from their foxholes. Supply trains on foot began to pass by, laden soldiers soaked from crossing the fattening river, hauling crates of ammo and medicine forward.
‘Let’s go,’ Ben said.
Sam unshouldered his weapon.
‘Go where?’
‘Up there.’
‘I sweat, Rabbi.’ The boy shook his head. ‘If I could go back to the infantry without gettin’ court-martialed, I’d do it. It’s gotta be safer.’
Ben put fists on his hips, disapproving. ‘See, that’s the problem with you Schenley boys.’
Ben turned into the mist. Sam moved in front, saying, ‘Get behind me, Allderdice.’
They caught up with a pair of A&P soldiers and took over the handles of a heavy ammo box. The A&P boys returned to the river for more.
They walked with the weighty crate hanging between them. Ahead, the sounds of battle faded, 1st Battalion had beaten off the second counterattack. Several times Ben and Sam stopped and listened, sometimes dropping the crate and diving for the ground when artillery or tank fire whined out of the haze. Gauzy forms of soldiers headed through the fog past them, more wounded making for the river.
By 0930, Ben had followed the supply line to 1st Battalion’s CP, a collection of folding tables and chairs beneath a rare tree here on the meadow’s edge. The mist had begun to thin. Ben and Sam laid the ammo with the stacks of supplies seventy yards from the CP. Sam waited there while Ben approached the officers at their desks and radio sets.
Beyond this rim of the field, Ben noted the ridges of hedgerows, and behind them the first roofs of the village of St. Germain, the nests of the Krauts on Sèves Island. Several hundred riflemen were gathered in a knot around the battalion’s comman
ders and their tree. Few foxholes had been dug; the CP must have been forced to move several times in the night and dawn.
Ben looked at the gathered officers, leaning on flattened palms over tables or holding field radios to their ears. He hoped to spot Phineas, knowing it was more likely the little chaplain was crawling from boy to boy in the last of the reeds. He wondered if Phineas had fired his pistol yet, or if he’d taken a wound himself. Ben looked forward to showing off to Phineas the rip in his pants and the sore red stripe on his tail.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 33
