David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  ‘Good,’ the German said. ‘We should like to make an exchange, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. We will bring them here.’

  ‘We will do the same. Your German is very good, Chaplain.’

  ‘One half hour.’ Ben had no desire to swap pleasantries.

  ‘Ja. One half hour.’

  The officer pivoted to walk away. Ben called to him.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Among the prisoners -’

  ‘Yes?’

  Ben expected the German to smirk and mention they had taken quite a few. He did not.

  ‘Did you take a chaplain?’

  The paratrooper paused to recall, or perhaps to consider something else.

  ‘Ja,’ he said.

  ~ * ~

  The German paratroop captain checked to see that Ben carried no weapon, then led him through the hedge-rows. Ben saw now how ineffective the blind American artillery had been. The earth was scorched and the old mounds had been hacked at, but machine guns nested in the dense bush kept their eyes on Ben and his escort.

  The captain made no conversation. With a raised eyebrow, he noted the Ten Commandments pin on Ben’s collar and walked on.

  Many times in the Great War, Ben had been behind enemy lines, but always crawling at night with other Yank serpents on an assassin’s mission. He tried to dredge up some of the courage of those young days and could not; he was older now, frailer, in daylight, and protected only by the red cross on his helmet. In that first war he’d been a killer, not a Jew. Now, striding past five hundred hidden, watching Germans, he was only a Jew.

  The captain led him to the edge of the village, to a squat stone farmhouse. No trace of the shelling showed here, the house was unscathed. On a lawn beside the building, horses in the traces of wagons grazed. Ben saw no other vehicles.

  The gray captain took him to the foot of the porch. A paratrooper snapped to attention.

  ‘Von der Meer,’ the captain told the guard. To Ben, he said, ‘I’ll go get your wounded. Good luck,’ then turned away for the village.

  Ben stepped through the doorway, the guard at his shoulder. Soldiers filled the kitchen and den with talk and tobacco smoke, poring over maps. This was the German CP on Sèves Island. No one turned to notice.

  The guard motioned to the stairs. Ben climbed. At the top, in a broad loft, an officer sat bareheaded at his desk.

  The man stood, not tall, trim at the waist, and very white-skinned. His thin hands looked more to be made for the piano than battle.

  ‘Was ist lost Ein anderer Amerikaner?’ the officer called to another room, ‘Bergen, komtnen Sie hier!’ To Ben he gestured one of the pale hands, indicating he would speak with him in a moment when this other arrived.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Ben said, ‘Ich spreche Deutsch.’

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘Ja.’

  The officer indicated a chair for Ben. ‘Bergen,’ he called, ‘bring tea!’

  Sitting, he asked, ‘You will have tea, Chaplain?’ He leaned over his desk to peer at Ben’s collar. ‘Excuse me. Rabbi.’

  ‘Yes. Tea.’

  The man leaned back in his chair. He tapped his lips with a long finger. ‘You are?’

  ‘Captain Ben Kahn, 90th Division chaplain.’

  ‘Major Fritz Wilhelm Freiherr von der Meer, 6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment.’ The Major inclined his head, polite and cool.

  The tea tray arrived. Von der Meer waited for his adjutant to pour both cups. The young man did so, then left the loft.

  Only after the Major had taken his first taste of tea did he ask, ‘Where were you captured, Captain?’

  ‘I wasn’t captured, Major. I was escorted across the lines under a white flag.’

  The officer pursed his lips, seeming to approve. ‘And what do you wish to speak with me about, Rabbi?’

  Ben set the china cup on the saucer with a click. Unsaid, Ben heard the word, Jew.

  He said, ‘Thank you for allowing us to pick up our wounded.’

  ‘It seemed not too much to ask.’

  ‘Today, you took several hundred prisoners.’

  ‘Yes, we did. Quite a surprise.’

  ‘One of them was a Baptist chaplain. His name is Phineas Allenby.’

  ‘Yes, I met the chaplain this morning. I had him and the other ten officers from your 1st Battalion for tea. I remember, he was extremely red-faced all through our meeting.’

  ‘Where is Chaplain Allenby now?’

  ‘Nearby. Waiting with the rest of the prisoners to be sent to the rear, to a prisoner-of-war camp.’

  ‘Major, I must ask you for Chaplain Allenby’s release. He’s a non-combatant.’

  Von der Meer shook his head.

  ‘No, he is not. Unlike you, Rabbi, your Baptist friend had the red cross on his helmet obscured.’

  The Major slid open a desk drawer.

  ‘And more importantly, he was captured carrying a gun.’

  From the drawer, the paratroop Major lifted a .45 pistol.

  ‘In fact, he was carrying this gun. The sergeant who took it from him gave it to me as a souvenir.’

  The Major removed the magazine and slid the Colt across the desk.

  ‘I give it to you, Rabbi, to remember your friend.’

  Ben did not take the pistol from the table.

  ‘Major, look in the magazine. It’s full. I’m certain Phineas never fired it.’

  Von der Meer glanced at him in surprise, then pressed on the spring-loaded rounds in the clip.

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’

  ‘Then...’

  ‘Then that is our good fortune. Not his. I’ll tell him you stopped in.’

  Ben stood. His chair legs screeched on the floorboards.

  ‘You can’t do this.’

  ‘Are you in any position to tell me what I cannot do? Rabbi Kahn?’ The Major kept his seat.

  Ben glared at the man. Von der Meer sipped his tea again, then set it aside with distaste for its loss of heat. When he returned his eyes to Ben, they, too, had lost their warmth.

  ‘May I tell you something, Rabbi?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please have a seat.’

  ‘I’ll stand.’

  The Major was displeased. He took Ben’s measure, then nodded, affirming something to himself.

  ‘I understand your hatred of me, Rabbi. You do a poor job of hiding it. Now let me tell you something of my loathing for you.’

  Ben linked his hands behind his back at parade rest. He spread his feet to shoulder width, to firm himself. ‘Feel free, Major.’

  Von der Meer put his chin in the air. He drew a slow breath before he spoke, leaving Ben to stand rigid and waiting. He tapped a fingernail on the desk.

  ‘Twenty-five years ago, we were fatherless children, we Germans. You killed our fathers. Yes, yes, I see it on you, you were here and you did your share.’

  Ben glared back, soldier to soldier with this man, thinking, Yes, I did.

  The Major saw the look, noted it, and continued.

  ‘After the war, we had only mothers. Our women worked in the mills and factories, they were the ones put to labor to pay you for Germany’s humiliation. And though we had no fathers, millions of us young ones became brothers. Hitler came forward. He told us he wanted to become our father.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Ben.

  The Major waved this off. ‘Ach. At first, no one took him seriously. He was mad, he was brutal. But slowly, he became the only voice left to Germany. He became the new head of our broken family. He spoke to us as one. He gave us pride, gave us hatred, and after enough time the two became inseparable. Together they were new life for Germany. Before we knew it, before we could stop ourselves, we were a mad and brutal people. Now, in the middle of a war, fighting for my life, I find I am angry to be such a thing. I know what the world thinks of us, Rabbi. And the world is correct. But make no mistake, you did this as much as we did. You shamed us after the last war. You tried to
crush Germany. You gave us Hitler. Now sit.’

  The Major pointed to Ben’s chair. Ben wished for the bullets to Phineas’s gun.

  ‘Sit, Jew, and let me tell you what we have made.’

  Von der Meer gestured again at Ben’s chair, insisting. Ben sat, both hands squeezing the wooden arms.

  ‘There are too many bodies,’ the Major said. ‘So they use ovens.’

  ~ * ~

  D+49

  July 25

  Joe Amos and McGee sat on the Jimmy’s hood, smoking. They had orders not to smoke around the ammunition. Their convoy was two miles long and crammed with shells of every caliber, plus a million jerricans and enough lubricant to fill a pond. Lucky strained on her springs under five tons of 75 mm tank rounds. No one walked along the line of motionless trucks and tractors to tell the colored drivers not to smoke. Every eye was trained on the sky. Joe Amos and McGee lit up and leaned back.

  At 0936, the air attack started. Joe Amos and McGee heard the first pistons beat out of the north behind them. They waited for the first planes to zoom overhead, guessing what they would be and how many. They sat with heads tilted and fixed, like watching a movie at a Saturday matinee.

  Joe Amos offered the first guess. ‘P-47S.’ This one was easy, the fighter-bombers always came in fast and at tree-top height, their roar erupted and they were on you and gone in a snap.

  McGee puffed. He said, ‘Yep. A shitload of ‘em, too.’

  Yesterday Joe Amos and McGee sat right here, smoking, their backs against Lucky’s windshield. Smoking was a way to advertise they had cigarettes to trade. Lucky was becoming known in the 668th as Lucky Strike. Their convoy waited at Pont Hebert behind the 2nd Armored Division, ready to roll in the tanks’ wake. First would come the bombers, smashing or dazing everything German along a four-mile rectangle south of the St. Lô-Périers road. Then fifteen thousand infantrymen would pour through the gap, protecting the shoulders, keeping the hole open. Next, the Shermans. Then Joe Amos and his supply trucks, and at last the American Army would break out of Normandy and boot this battle for France in the ass. But the weather yesterday stayed gloomy. The air assault was canceled, but 350 bombers failed to get the word and dropped their payloads by mistake. In the soupy visibility some planes missed the blast zone and dropped short, killing a couple dozen GIs in the 30th Division and wounding over a hundred. After that, a gloom as fat as the weather spread over the entire breakout force. So did a fear that it could happen again today. That was why neither Joe Amos, McGee, nor any of the Negro drivers reclining on a thousand tons of ammo and gasoline worried about smoking.

  Joe Amos pointed up, with a Chesterfield between two fingers, at the speeding bellies of at least five hundred P-47S. Like great locusts crowding wing-to-wing, the planes flashed past, headed for the opening strafing run on the zone four miles away. Joe Amos shouted, ‘Whoooo-ee!’ into the rushing of the planes and kicked up a leg, he couldn’t sit still with that much sound and power storming past to make war just down the road. McGee tucked an arm behind his head against the windshield, unmoved by the opening spectacle. Joe Amos dug an elbow into the boy’s ribs.

  He shouted, ‘I bet they can hear that all the way over to Couvains!’

  McGee shrugged, and shouted back, ‘The Marquis hear this, he prob’ly think it’s a big lawn mower or some-thin’. That’s all he cares about.’

  Joe Amos chuckled. He settled back and listened to the first explosions arching over the treetops and hedgerows. For ten minutes the P-47S ripped into the dug-in Krauts with rockets, bombs, and napalm incendiaries. In that time, Joe Amos sold four packs of cigarettes, pocketing seven dollars, and tossing a buck to McGee. Some of the drivers offered trade, like rations or clean socks, things they’d bartered for or stolen themselves, but Joe Amos was a cigarette-and-cash man only.

  When the P-47S were done over the bocage, they fled north above the convoy, climbing to cross the Channel. As the blue-and-white morning grew still, the fields smoldered four miles off. Joe Amos dropped his half-finished Chesterfield over the edge of the hood and listened. McGee heard it first, saying, ‘Holy cow.’ Joe Amos only nodded, but his gut jumped.

  An army marching on the ground cannot compare to one in the sky. Wheels are not wings, and the drone of boots and trucks is not so terrible as the approach of waves of angered angels. This time the full air assault was on, and the sound was like nothing Joe Amos had ever heard. He gazed into the swelling din, holding his breath for the sight of the leading edge of the first flight of heavy bombers.

  The B-17s’ roar was full-throated, miles high. The bombers came in a swath, packed tight because the blast zone was only seven thousand yards wide. The lead formation inched ahead, scratching white contrails behind them. Around them popped the first black dots of antiaircraft fire.

  This was a promenade of power and determination that every German, Frenchman, and American in Normandy could see. The English over in their sector probably got a good gander, too. Joe Amos imagined Geneviève on her front lawn, gazing up, whistling and moved that her colored soldier’s country had come like this, across heaven for everyone to see, to rescue her and her father and their home. He wished the girl could see him here, sitting on Lucky’s hood, nonchalant, ready to roll behind the tanks right into battle. Then he thought maybe she shouldn’t see him with his truck, him and McGee just hauling the ammo for the goliath tanks and not fighting in them, just ogling the beautiful bombers aloft and not flying them. Tomorrow, when 2nd Armored whipped through the gap, two companies of riflemen would ride on the tanks, holding on and ballyhooing, each man and his buddies charging right out front, the best that America had to throw at the Krauts, while Joe Amos will ride into the breakout on the comfy seat of a Jimmy. His rifle will likely stay stowed beneath his bench, miles to the rear.

  But she knows all this, Joe Amos thought. She could have any of these white boys, and she picked me.

  Joe Amos shook himself another cigarette. A dense wave of heavy B-24S slid in behind the B-17S. He looked north, down the long conveyor of bombers stretching into specks. ‘Fifteen hundred,’ he said.

  ‘More,’ McGee said.

  ‘Two thousand?’

  ‘Whatever,’ McGee said, giving up his count. ‘It’s still a shitload.’

  Joe Amos sat back against the windshield. He crossed his legs at the knee, lounging on the hood like he was at the beach. He felt good again, sensing himself lifted and ready for the next phase, the one beginning this very moment, with the whine of the first sticks of heavy bombs plummeting on the Krauts’ heads. Something big lay ahead, changes, in the roads and fields outside Normandy.

  ~ * ~

  D+57

  August 2

  The German soldier dug into his wallet. He held out a fan of francs to White Dog.

  ‘Did you hear the rumor,’ the soldier asked while White Dog took the bills, ‘Patton is here now?’

  White Dog gave the soldier a paper sack. Inside were three pairs of nylon hose, for one hundred fifty francs each.

  ‘I heard. It was a bluff, you know. Keeping him in England. It was to make you think the real attack hadn’t started.’

  The soldier let this answer hang, to appreciate the irony.

  ‘Well, I think the real one has started.’

  He peeked into the sack, rummaging a finger to check the hosiery.

  ‘A goodbye gift,’ the soldier told White Dog.

  The German boy’s smile was sad, to be leaving Paris just when he’d found love. A week ago the Allies had broken out of Normandy. They’d pulverized a stretch of land west of St. Lô and swarmed over it. Nothing the Germans could do would stuff that genie back in the bottle. Now the unofficial word was that Patton was in France, and in charge of the newly formed Third Army. Already the Third had bolted thirty-five miles south to Avranches. It was about to turn the corner into Brittany. This young

  Kraut knew his days in Paris were likely on their last page of the calendar.

  ‘I guess you’ll be
going home soon, eh?’ the soldier asked White Dog, the hiding American.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Maybe me, too.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, danke.’

  ‘Kein problem.’

  White Dog pocketed the francs. The soldier turned to walk away into the alley. White Dog didn’t move. The Kraut’s high, polished boots clicked on the old cobbles, he was tucked and clean, going on a courting call this evening.