One Man's War

by P. M. Kippert

“I no unnerstan’,” he told the officer.

  The lieutenant looked at Kafak.

  “What’re you doing here?” he said.

  “Drinking this wine, sir.”

  “Why here?”

  “First place I come across while I was walking around.”

  “You here before them?”

  The lieutenant jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the two at the bar.

  Kafak shrugged.

  “Didn’t see when they come in, tell you the truth, sir. I just been concentrating on this wine.”

  The officer looked at him.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking wine with coloreds, Private.”

  “I ain’t, sir. They’re there and I’m here, sir.”

  “Why don’t you just get the hell out of here?”

  “They got some good wine here, Lieutenant. Want some?”

  “No,” the officer said. “Not with them. You wouldn’t either, if you had any brains, peckerwood.”

  Kafak shrugged. The second lieutenant scowled at him once more, then at the two Negroes for good measure, and then he spun on his heel and left, calling over his shoulder to the bar owner.

  “Remember what I said about these goddamned coloreds,” he said.

  The owner looked at the three men in his place.

  “What this mean, ‘coloreds’?” he asked.

  Kafak didn’t say anything. He heard the men at the bar mumble something, but he didn’t catch what they told the Italian. He sipped some more of his wine.

  One of the men at the bar turned on his stool and looked at Kafak.

  “How come you didn’t leave?” he said.

  Kafak looked around. He remembered he was the only one in the place besides them. He smiled awkwardly, a little embarrassed that he’d forgotten that.

  “They got good wine here,” he said.

  “Yeah, they do.”

  “But what I really want is a beer.”

  The second Negro laughed, and the first Negro said, “Then how come you don’t find some place that’s got beer?”

  Kafak shrugged.

  “First place I seen. I got to get back soon.”

  “You got time for dinner?”

  “What the fuck you doing, Lester?” the second Negro said. “Leave the motherfucker alone.”

  “He’s all right,” Lester said. Then to Kafak, he said, “They got real good spaghetti here. S’why we come in. The wine’s OK, but the food is better’n a motherfucker.”

  “Sure,” Kafak said. “Spaghetti sounds good.”

  Lester ordered three plates, and he and the other man came to the table where Kafak sat.

  “This here’s Orville,” Lester said.

  “Fellas,” Kafak said, nodding to them both. “Have a seat.”

  “You don’t mind?” Lester asked.

  “S’long as you don’t try eating my food.”

  “All right, then.”

  The two men sat down.

  “You guys’re Red Tails, ain’t you?” Kafak said.

  They both nodded, smiling. Happy to be recognized.

  Lester said, “We’re with the 332nd Fighter Group.”

  “I thought so,” Kafak said. “Tuskegee Airmen.”

  “That’s us,” Lester said, still smiling broadly.

  “You know us?” Orville said.

  “Seen you guys hitting the Germans over to Anzio.”

  “You on Anzio?”

  “Until a couple weeks ago.”

  “Shit, man. That place is hell.”

  “If hell is made up of mud and rain,” Kafak said. “And Germans trying to shoot your ass.”

  “Well,” Orville said, “motherfucker got that last part right.”

  Kafak looked at him, frowning.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “What?”

  “That word. Motherfucker. I never heard that word used that way before.”

  The two Negroes looked at one another for a moment. Then Lester spoke without looking directly at Kafak.

  He said, “Just something we all say, the Negro troops, you know. It comes from all these white soldiers over here. They meet up with these Italian women around here who got them some kids but ain’t got their husbands no more on account of they either dead or off fighting somewhere or in some POW camp or something. So these white boys fuck these mothers, see. So that’s where it comes from.”

  Kafak smiled. He thought about it, then nodded.

  “I like that,” he said. “Motherfucker. Hell, yeah. That’s good. Got a ring to it, all right.”

  “We like it,” Lester said, looking back at Kafak, smiling.

  “So what?” Kafak said. “It’s only white boys fucking these mothers? You boys don’t do that?”

  “Shit, motherfucker,” Orville said, “a black man get caught with one of these Italian women, they’d string the motherfucker up. We don’t go near the Italian women, friend.”

  Kafak didn’t believe that for a second, but he said, “Good. More for me.”

  Lester laughed.

  “Mother-fucker!” Orville said, then laughed, too.

  They ate their spaghetti and had another glass of wine and talked about the war and how long it might last, and they both had big plans afterward. Lester was going to open a pizza parlor with recipes he was collecting here in Naples. Orville was going to go back and run a photography studio. He had some photos he’d taken around Naples. He showed them to Kafak while they ate. Kafak was no judge, but he liked them well enough.

  Kafak headed back to the hospital. The next day he went into the town again, but this time he just wore an old uniform of his own. He didn’t see the use of getting himself up in the dress uniform. His A bag had been sent from Anzio to the hospital. The mud-caked uniform he’d come to the hospital in had been taken off somewhere and shot. That was what one of the nurses told him, anyhow. He wasn’t ever going to see that thing again. He didn’t mind. It had been torn up, soaked through, worn out. He felt glad it was gone. In fatigues and helmet, he toured Naples once again. His glasses had been broken and were taped together. He’d lost the backups somewhere. He strolled about, heading always toward the neighborhood where he’d met the girl. The one in the photograph. He again spent a couple hours just sitting on the edge of a dead fountain, waiting. Wondering if she would pass by. He smoked half a pack of cigarettes while he waited and watched. He stopped a couple of people and showed them the picture, asked them if they knew the girl. None of them spoke English. All he got was a lot of headshakes. Whether those meant they didn’t understand him or that they didn’t know the girl, Kafak couldn’t figure. It didn’t matter, really. Either way ended up the same thing. He thought he might go back to that little place with the spaghetti, but he didn’t bother. He stood up, ground out his latest cigarette, and started back toward the hospital. Nearly there, he found a small place and ate some more Italian food. It was very good. Homemade stuff. The building was really somebody’s home, but they had turned it into a kind of small café while the Allied troops were around. Try to get a stake to start themselves up again. Kafak finished the meal and walked back to the hospital. He lay in bed that night, thinking. Thinking about the girl. He wondered why he hadn’t found her. He thought maybe he’d gotten the neighborhood wrong. Then he started wondering whether she might be dead. Or something. He didn’t like thinking about that. She couldn’t be dead. That would ruin everything, he figured. He stopped thinking that. He decided he didn’t want to find the girl. He wouldn’t go looking for her anymore. He didn’t want to find out she had been killed. Or something. Beyond that, though, he didn’t want to run into her again because it might ruin the memory he already had. Of that other day. That first time in Naples. Before Anzio. Before the war, really. Because, until Anzio, he hadn’t really been in the war. He could say he was. A soldier. There was North Africa. Then there had been Naples. But there really hadn’t been any war. Then there had been Anzio.

  Kafak sighed.

  No, h
e wouldn’t look for the girl anymore.

  He fell asleep.

  11

  Kafak spent his last day of leave helping out around the hospital. He tagged after the nurses and did whatever chores they needed done. Things they didn’t want to do themselves, or things they’d been wanting to do for some while but just couldn’t find the time. The day flew by. The next morning Kafak reported to the Bagnoli Repo Depo. All his equipment was replaced or repaired. He got a couple new uniforms. Nice and clean and fitting right. He liked them. New underwear as well. They even gave him new boots. Ones that didn’t leak. They gave him a new bayonet and M1 and some grenades, and all the rest of the stuff he’d need as well. He asked them for a Thompson instead of the M1.

  “Fuggedaboudit,” the supply sergeant said. He was from Brooklyn, Kafak could tell from guys he’d talked to in his foxhole, other guys from Brooklyn. The accent was telltale. “The M1’s a good fuckin’ weapon.”

  “I like the Thompson.”

  “We ain’t got no tommies. What the fuck’s wrong with the M1? Ah, don’t tell me. You’re another one don’t like it cuz the stripper clip makes a loud noise when it pops out, right? Give your position away, right?”

  The M1’s stripper clip made a metallic pinging sound as it automatically ejected.

  Kafak shook his head.

  “That don’t bother me,” he said. “If they don’t already know where I’m at from me shooting at ’em, I don’t figure the ping’d give me away.”

  “Well fuggedaboudit then, what?”

  “You can’t reload the clip. You gotta take all eight shots before you can reload.”

  “So what?”

  “So I don’t like walking around holding a gun with only one or two bullets ready to fire. That scares me.”

  “Why?”

  “Cuz I’m usually gonna have to shoot at more than one or two guys.”

  “Fuggedaboudit, soldier, you’re getting the M1. I’ll give you some extra clips. Don’t worry ’bout nothin’. Fuggedaboudit.”

  After that, they replaced his glasses, which kept him at the replacement depot for another day. He didn’t mind. They had decent food there, and a couple of English soldiers had ended up there somehow and they had a nice talk, and the English guys had some rum that they shared with Kafak. He’d never had rum before. He didn’t much like it, but he liked the way it made him feel.

  “You could really get through a war on this shit,” he told the English troopers.

  “Why d’you suppose they give us our ration of the bit?” one of them said.

  “The English sure know how to fight a fucking war,” Kafak said.

  “We’ve been at it a long time,” one of them said.

  The next day, it was the very beginning of May, Kafak was loaded on another LCT, a different one than the one that had brought him to Naples, and headed back for the beachhead. The LCT was packed tight. New guys as well as returnees, like himself. Some of the new guys seemed nervous, asked questions. Kafak didn’t listen to the answers. Some of the returning troops had expressions on their faces that Kafak couldn’t stand to look at. Defeated expressions. Faces awaiting death. As if they just knew that, in going back after they had thought they had escaped, they were somehow tempting fate. They knew they were going to buy it this time around. They just knew it. Their faces told that story.

  Kafak turned away from all of that. The guy packed in next to him started in on a conversation. He was a corporal.

  “Brother,” he said, “the Germans don’t need to spy on communications to know what the fuck we’re doing.”

  “How’s that?” Kafak said.

  “All they got to do is watch the hospitals. The hospitals get cleaned out of every available trooper once the big boys are getting ready for a push. You notice that?”

  Kafak had. He had noticed how packed the LCT was.

  He said, “There’s that English girl, too.”

  “What English girl?”

  “You know, the one in that comic.”

  He meant “Jane.”

  “Oh yeah, her. What about her?”

  “The closer we get to a big push, the more naked she gets.”

  The corporal laughed.

  “I hadn’t noticed that,” he said.

  “Check on it. You’ll see.”

  “I guess it’s one last treat before we hit the shit, huh?”

  “I suppose it’s something like that,” Kafak said.

  There were more indicators on the beachhead. Things were hopping. Everywhere you looked, Anzio was crowded. Even the foxholes were crowded. Kafak had just arrived and been sent to a reassignment tent. He asked to be sent back to L Company, Fifteenth Regiment. The lieutenant there nodded and grunted an OK. Then he looked up at Kafak and said, “Unless you want to volunteer for the boat teams?”

  “Boat teams?” Kafak said. “Hell yeah. I’ll volunteer for that.”

  The lieutenant smiled at him.

  “Great,” he said. “That’s just great, Private. We need some experienced soldiers for that duty. They’ll be glad to have you. And it’ll keep you off the line, too. Leastways, for a while. So that’s good news, right?”

  “Sure,” Kafak said. “Just tell me where to go, sir.”

  He reported to an area well to the rear, near the beach, in fact. A sergeant fresh out from the States was in charge of the boat team to which Kafak had been assigned.

  “I’m Staley,” he said. The sergeant looked at the orders Kafak handed him. Then he looked at Kafak. “You volunteered for this?” he said. He didn’t sound like he believed it. He sounded like he thought Kafak was crazy.

  At least, that’s how it all sounded to Kafak.

  Kafak shrugged.

  “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  “You know what this is all about?”

  “Not really, Sarge. What’s up?”

  “Some higher-up got the idea from the Russians. They do this on the Russian front, apparently. See those?” The sergeant pointed to what looked like a couple of water heaters that had been cut in half, lengthwise. They were chained together in a series of six rows of two each. A metal bar was welded to the two in each row, connecting them fast. “All of that is gonna get hooked up behind a tank. Then a guy climbs into every one of those sleds, and the tank takes them into battle. We’re supposed to lead the attack when the breakout comes. It’s such shit duty we can’t get enough men for it. Hardly anybody’s volunteering. So Command has ordered every unit to supply us with troops. They all got a quota. Well, you can guess the kind of guys they’re throwing at us. All their green boys or the goldbrickers or the guys they got no use for. It’s not the best crew I’ve ever seen, I can tell you that.”

  Kafak eyed the sergeant.

  “You’re new to Anzio, ain’t you?” he said.

  The sergeant looked back at him.

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “If a guy ain’t a goldbricker on this motherfucking beach, then he’s already dead.”

  “That right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then why you volunteer, soldier?”

  “Well,” Kafak said, and smiled. “That’s kind of a long story, Sarge.”

  “I got the time.”

  Kafak shrugged.

  “All right, then.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Back when I was in North Africa, they needed volunteers for what they called a boat team. So I volunteered. What that was, that boat team, was loading barracks bags onto a boat for shipment to Italy. Easy duty, see. We spent the whole day loading that shit. It worked out for us, too, because the boat we otherwise would’ve been on got sunk. I’d’ve likely been killed if I’d’ve got on that boat. Instead, volunteering for the boat team saved my fucking life. So when they asked me to volunteer for this boat team, I remembered that and volunteered.”

  “Well, this boat team is more likely to kill you than save your ass, Private.”

  “I kinda see that now, Sarge, but I guess I’m too late.�
��

  Kafak turned away, but the sergeant called him back.

  “By the way, what happened after that? With your boat team?”

  “Well, that’s another long story.”

  “I still got time.”

  “We stayed on the boat, it was a barge, supposed to take us somewhere, probably Italy. Used to ferry folks between North Africa and Marseilles before the war, I heard. Anyway, we shared it with a bunch of French native troops. These guys really knew how to go to war. They had their fucking women with ’em. The officer in charge, though, he told us not to even glance at those dames on account of these African troops would cut our throats. They were good with knives, and they didn’t like nobody looking at their women, see. So we looked the other way and just went to sleep. It started raining, though, like hard, and it wouldn’t stop, so we couldn’t make the crossing. The next day they put us on a Liberty ship, and we started to head for Italy. Next thing we know, we get rammed by another Liberty ship. We had to go back to North Africa. We heard later that ship that rammed us? It was loaded with high explosives. Lucky for us, it didn’t go up, right?”

  “You seem to get a lot of luck, soldier.”

  “Sure,” Kafak said. “That’s why the fuck I’m on motherfucking Anzio.”

  Kafak figured it all balanced out, one way and another. He tried not to think about it. It was no good jinxing something like that.

  “How long you been on Anzio?”

  “Two months or more. You lose track of time when the days all run together in mud and shit.”

  “Yeah, I can understand that. Well, I’m glad to have someone like you aboard, a guy with your experience. I may be relying on your help.”

  Kafak shook his head.

  “I’m a private,” he said, “I just follow orders.”

  “You could be an NCO, Kafak.”

  “No thanks. I don’t want the responsibility. See, I like being a private.”

  “Yeah? So what’s that about?”

  “The more responsibility a guy gets, the more he’s got to do. The more a guy’s got to do, the more he’s got to run around. The more a guy runs around, the more likely he’s gonna get his ass shot off. So, no thanks to the responsibility, Sarge.”

  “Right. Goldbricking, huh?”