by Len Levinson
A battle was taking place not far away. You could see explosions and a haze of gunsmoke about seven hundred yards ahead in the rolling fields of the Cherbourg Peninsula. The jeep just had passed the American artillery emplacements that were bombarding the German lines, and occasionally a German shell would fall into the fields, blowing mud and sod into the air. The fields were littered with destroyed German and American tanks, some of them still smoking. Mahoney could see that this peaceful farmland had been hotly contested not very long ago.
The Pfc pulled the jeep to the side of the road and stopped. He took out a wrinkled, filthy map and squinted at it. The map was covered with pencil marks and Mahoney wondered how anybody could read it. The Pfc looked to his right and pointed in the direction of the battle.
“The Twenty-third Rangers should be just about over there,” he said.
Mahoney looked in the direction of the Pfc’s finger. “You’re sure about that?”
“Yes, sergeant.” The Pfc pointed to the map. “See?”
“I can’t see a goddamn thing.”
“Well, that’s where they are, or at least where they were this morning.”
“Why don’t you drive over there and we’ll see?”
“Can’t do that, Sergeant. Got to bring the jeep back to headquarters.”
“You’re supposed to deliver me to my unit,” Mahoney argued.
“That’s what I’ve done,” the Pfc said self-righteously, “but I’m not supposed to place my jeep in danger. Them’s my orders.”
Mahoney pointed to the field. “There’s not much going on over there.”
“Oh, yes there is. I’m sorry, Sergeant, but this is as far as I’m supposed to go.”
Mahoney looked at him and grunted. The Pfc was a typical rear echelon soldier, scared to death of getting killed. What he needed was a few months up on the line—that’d change his whole vision of the world. It’d make him more accustomed to danger, and if he didn’t get killed too soon he’d learn a lot about it. He’d find out that there were gradations of danger, and that some frontline situations are safer than sitting in the command post in the rear, because artillery shells fall quite frequently in the rear, and that’s how high-ranking officers get killed.
“You can look mean all you want to, Sergeant,” the Pfc said nervously, “but I don’t have to go up there and I’m not gonna.”
Mahoney slapped him easily on the shoulder. “It’s okay, kid. Take it easy.”
Mahoney got out of the jeep and rapped his knuckles on the top of his steel helmet. He pulled his full field pack out of the jeep and ran his arms through the straps. His blanket and tent half were tied to the top of the pack and bent down its sides like a horseshoe. When it got dark he’d find some other asshole and button both their tent halfs together. If Cranepool still was alive he’d buddy up with him.
Mahoney took his carbine in his left hand and waved it to the Pfc. “Thanks for the lift, kid.”
“Good luck, Sarge.”
“You too. Watch your step on the way back.”
The Pfc nodded and shifted into reverse. He backed up and around in the round until he was pointed more or less in the direction from which they’d come. Then he shifted into gear, tugged the wheel around, and rumbled off.
Mahoney stood on the shoulder of the road and watched him go, thinking, here I am again. Puffing his cigar, he slung his carbine over his shoulder and trudged into the field, heading for the front lines. He knew that a German artillery shell might land on his head at any moment, and that scared him a little, but he knew that the odds were against it. A stray German machine-gun bullet could blow through his heart, but the odds were against that, too. Mahoney had learned long ago that in combat you had to play the odds, otherwise you’d be scared shitless all the time.
He shifted the weight of his pack and puffed his cigar, still moving toward the front lines. He passed a destroyed German tank lying on its side and emitting faint streams of gray smoke at the sky. Nearing it, he could feel the intense heat from the charred metal. He peered through the big jagged hole in the front deck of the tank and saw a mass of blood and bones inside, smelling like cooked guts.
Pulling his head away, he spit onto the ground and took a deep draught of fresh air. Then he continued his solitary march toward the front, thinking that he’d do anything rather than serve in a tank. He thought tank duty was the most dangerous and horrible in the entire Army, because you had to sit inside a big slow target and you couldn’t run and hide anywhere. The odds were high that you’d be roasted alive or blown into unrecognizable red pulp. Mahoney couldn’t understand men who volunteered for the tank corps. They had to be out of their fucking minds.
An Army truck appeared over the crest of a hill straight ahead and came toward Mahoney. He watched it approach and it passed by only a few yards away from him. Turning to look at it, he saw two soldiers sitting in back underneath the canvas.
“Here you go, Sarge!” one of them shouted in a southern accent, tossing a package out the back.
Mahoney knew what it was before it hit the ground: Assault Rations. Evidently the truck had been passing them around at the front lines. He stopped and took off his pack, laying it on the ground and opening it up. He stuffed the canned food inside, put the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, and thought he’d eat the candy bar on his way to the front. Putting his arms through the straps again, he put his cigar butt in the pocket with the cigarette pack, peeled the wrapper off the candy bar, and bit half of it away, munching like a bull as he walked to the front.
He looked at his watch, and it was four o’clock in the afternoon. He’d awakened that morning at a repple depple (replacement depot) in England. Yesterday morning he’d awakened at the hospital in Southwick. He’d spent the night before that saying goodbye to Shirley in the hotel where they’d first made love. She cried while he was screwing her and he’d felt like crying too. The sex was pretty good, although it was strange and bittersweet and drenched in her tears. She said she’d never forget him and he told her she’d better if she ever hoped to get any peace of mind. Perhaps she was so good in bed because she was so tormented by guilt. Lovely little thing, though. Very nice blowjobs. If the world had been different he would have asked her to marry him, but the world wasn’t different, she was a lieutenant and he was a dogface, and she was supposed to marry her Navy pilot if he ever came back alive.
Probably neither of us will come back alive, Mahoney thought as he plodded over the field. The sound of battle was closer and he could see explosions and flashes of small arms fire in woods four hundred yards to his front. That’s where the Americans were, and he assumed that the Germans were a few hundred yards beyond them in the same woods. He could see tanks rumbling around and shooting at each other in the distance behind the woods, and there were a number of hills back there that he figured were heavily fortified by the Germans.
“Oh, this fucking war,” he growled as he tucked his head down a few inches. He didn’t know when he’d screw a woman again or when he’d eat a hot meal. He might even be killed in the next five minutes. The Germans back in those hills could see him through binoculars and could call an artillery strike in on him if they wanted to be shitty about it. It would be a shameful waste of ammunition, but once he’d seen an American artillery sergeant blast away a cow like that just for the hell of it.
It was strange to have passed so quickly from London to the front lines. He didn’t know whether he was dreaming that he was here or had dreamed that he’d been there. He knew that his instincts were off and he wasn’t in very good physical shape because he’d been lying in the hospital bed for most of his days and screwing Shirley for most of his nights. He hadn’t even had time to shoot craps in the latrine, and only had forty-two dollars in his shirt pocket. Maybe when they got to Cherbourg he could do a little black-market thing with the connivance of a mess sergeant. He’d arranged deals like that in North Africa and Italy, and had made a lot of money, but he’d spent it all on booz
e and whores.
He finished the candy bar and relit the stub of his cigar. Here I go, he thought, leaving the field and entering the woods. Drops of rainwater fell from the branches onto his helmet, making an inordinately loud sound to his ears. The woods smelled like swamp water and gunpowder. He heard the whump-whump-whump of mortars being fired and headed in that direction, keeping his head low. He passed shell craters with shattered trees lying all around them. Other trees had bullet holes in them. The fight was taking place a few hundred yards in front of him. Bullets and shrapnel whistled past him sporadically, and he moved forward with his head nearly as low as his knees.
Finally he came to the mortar squad. A private was arming the mortar rounds, a Pfc was dropping them down the tube, and a corporal made adjustments in the sights. Another private was opening a crate of fresh mortar rounds, and the crew was in a foxhole a few feet deep. Mahoney slid into the hole with them and the private opening the crate went for his carbine.
“Cool your motor,” Mahoney said, getting the drop on him with his own carbine.
The others turned around, saw that he was in the same Army they were in, and relaxed.
“Keep firing,” Mahoney said to the corporal. “Don’t stop just because you got a visitor.”
“You heard him,” the corporal said to the Pfc who was supposed to be dropping the mortar rounds into the tube.
The Pfc dropped a round into the tube, and it went whump as it came back out. It moved quickly but Mahoney could see it make a high arc into the sky, and then come down hopefully on the head of some Kraut.
“Where are the Twenty-Third Rangers?” Mahoney asked.
“The Twenty-Third Rangers?” the corporal replied. “Never heard of them.”
“They’re supposed to be right around here,” Mahoney said.
“Search me.”
“What outfit are you in?”
“Fourth Division, Fifteenth Regiment.”
“Do you know where you are on the line?”
“Whataya mean?”
“Are you on the right flank, the left flank, or kind of in the middle?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” the corporal said.
Mahoney puffed his cigar and hooded his eyes. “You’re doing a great job, kid. They’re all talking about you.”
“Yeah?” the corporal said, like a wise guy. “What are they saying?”
“They’re saying that you’re a fucking asshole. So long, and it might be a good idea if you found out where in the fuck you are.”
Mahoney climbed out of the hole and moved to his left, staying in a low crouch. There probably weren’t any Germans around to worry about, but there were lots of stray bullets and shrapnel. He was getting close to the fighting and could feel the special excitement that went along with it. His glands started to pump out adrenalin, making him tense and sharp-eyed. He liked the feeling, and a lot of front-line soldiers liked it so much that they volunteered to stay close to the enemy, because you never feel so alive as when you’re close to getting your head blown off.
Mahoney pushed a branch to the side with his carbine, but it snapped back and hit him in the face. He touched his finger to his cheek and it came away with blood. He’d just got there and already he was bleeding. That was a bad omen, and Mahoney became superstitious when he was at the front. He started believing in fate and all that shit, but he couldn’t help it when, for instance, he’d be sitting in a foxhole for a few hours, and then after leaving it to take a quick shit, it would be hit with a German artillery shell.
He thought about the corporal in the mortar squad he’d just left. Clowns like that had caused him to volunteer for the Rangers. He’d realized very early in the war that the regular line infantry divisions were filled with guys like that corporal who didn’t know shit from Shinola. They walked around in a daze, following orders on the most simplistic level, making the absolute minimum of effort, and as a result, were not reliable in tight situations. Mahoney realized that if an enemy was trying to kill him, he’d better surround himself with men on whom he could rely, men who brought some professionalism into the front lines with them, men who knew what in the fuck they were doing.
He chose the Rangers because he figured they were the Army’s elite. A Ranger theoretically was supposed to know how to do anything. He could jump out of planes like paratroopers. He was skilled with knife, garrote, or his plain bare hands. He was trained to fire, maintain, and strip down all of the Army’s weapons. He also was trained in all the specialties of the Army, such as communications, demolition, map reading, combat engineering, and ordnance. Rangers were kept in tip-top physical condition and every day that they were in garrison they studied tactical problems so that they could command a squad, platoon, or company in every kind of action conceivable on any type of terrain imaginable.
Mahoney had been a so-so soldier in the infantry, but he really came into his own in the Rangers. The challenges of an elite unit brought out the best in him and slowly he earned his stripes, but more importantly, he proved himself in that great acid test: battle. He’d earned a reputation as a cool head and a hard charger. In Italy his platoon used to joke around and say that he was made of steel, and he actually believed this after a while, but then one day he caught that shrapnel in his gut, and he discovered that he really wasn’t made of steel.
He kept moving in a southerly direction parallel to the front lines, keeping his head down and hoping that the Twenty-Third Rangers were in this part of the woods. It would be good to be back with the old crew, and he was looking forward to it. He figured that the Twenty-Third Rangers were to the American Army as the French Foreign Legion was to the French Army: a collection of crazy, violent bastards who for the most part had been the dregs of society in civilian life, but had coalesced into a crackerjack front-line fighting unit.
Through the rattle of machine-gun fire and explosion of artillery shells, he heard human voices. Stopping and peering around a tree in their direction, he saw five American soldiers crouched behind a huge boulder ten feet in diameter. One of them was turning the crank on a field telephone and the others watched him intently. Mahoney ran toward them and they all went for their guns until they realized he was a GI.
Mahoney got behind the boulder with them. The one turning the crank on the field telephone was a young captain, and he was with two lieutenants and two sergeants.
“I’m looking for the Twenty-Third Rangers,” Mahoney said. “Are they around here?”
The captain pointed in the direction that Mahoney had been moving toward. “They should be about two hundred yards thataway, but if it’s a war you’re looking for, we’ve got one right here.”
His statement was punctuated by the whistle of an artillery shell overhead, and they all dropped to their stomachs. The shell exploded fifty yards away, knocking down a bunch of trees.
“See what I mean?” the captain said.
“I’ve got to rejoin my unit, sir,” Mahoney said. “Thanks for the directions.”
“Keep your head down, sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain got to his knees and continued cranking up his field telephone, while Mahoney moved off in the direction of the Twenty-Third Rangers.
Chapter Ten
In Cherbourg, Lieutenant Keller of the Wehrmacht engineers, entered the front door of a five-story apartment building and climbed the wide stairs. He was compactly built, of less than average height, and had blond hair. His back was stiff as a ramrod as he moved up the stairs, and his visored cap was cocked jauntily to the side of his head. When he reached the fourth floor he turned right down the hall and knocked on a door toward its end.
It was opened by a wraithlike young brunette who would be considered quite beautiful were it not for the fact that her nose was about a half-inch too long for her face.
“Helmut!” she said happily, holding out her arms and moving toward him.
He hugged and kissed her. “My darling Francine.”
&nb
sp; “You’re late, I was beginning to think that you weren’t coming.”
“I’ve been very busy, and I can’t stay long.”
She wrinkled her long nose as he entered her little flat. “But I’ve cooked dinner!”
“I’ll be able to eat a little, but then I have to get back to work.”
“What’s keeping you so busy?”
“Oh, it’s a long story. After I wash my hands I’ll come to the table and tell you.”
He skillfully threw his hat onto the rack, then ambled to the bathroom which was located in the bedroom. Francine watched him until the wall hid him from her view, then went to the stove and took the cover off the pot of pea soup that she was cooking. She wore a blue cotton dress with little red flowers imprinted on it, and a white apron that had a few food stains. Opening the oven, she looked at the chicken being kept warm in there; it was surrounded by a gravy containing sliced carrots and potatoes.
Helmut returned to the kitchen, kissed Francine again, and sat at the kitchen table, unbuttoning his tunic. “Smells good in here,” he said.
“I’ve cooked a marvelous supper for you,” she said crossly, “and you can’t even sit and enjoy it.”
“There’s a war on, darling. Don’t you know that?”
“Yes, I know it, but it’s not here yet.”
“It’ll be here soon enough, don’t worry.”
Francine ladled the soup into bowls. She’d made the stock with real ham bones that Helmut had secured from his mess hall. He’d also obtained the chicken from somewhere in his Army post. There were all sorts of advantages to being the girlfriend of a German officer, and Helmut had no illusions about the motivation for Francine’s professed love for him, but what he didn’t know, and indeed would have been horrified to learn, was that Francine was a spy for the Free French, and reported daily to her superior officer on information she gleaned from Helmut’s conversations.
