by Jon Stafford
“The Germans overran us and a lot of men got captured or killed. Only a couple of us got away. We came back maybe ten miles dodging patrols, and some hours later heard a big battle up ahead.”
“Yeah, we finally held ’em up.”
“We got split up from the others. The captain and I got trapped here by the guys you saw. We held ’em off as best we could, but late yesterday they flushed us and he got that wound you see. He was a good young officer.”
Wiley thought: I’m sorry for this guy, but I gotta look for my lieutenant. He saw a Williams carbine under the officer’s leg, with no clip in it. Four or five feet from it was the Thompson the scout had heard firing, no clip left in it either.
“Sergeant, we gotta get outta here.”
“Yes, lad, I’m ready. Help me get him up. I’ll carry him back.”
Wiley helped lift the dead man up onto the sergeant’s shoulder. The sergeant walked with his burden toward the lip of the depression several feet off, but struggled to step up the one-foot side.
“Lad,” he said, “help me!”
The scout tried to help him up. But the angle was too much for the two exhausted men, and all three fell back, hard, into the depression.
Wiley stopped to catch his breath. “Sergeant, we don’t got enough strength left to do this.”
“Well–” the Sergeant began, but stopped.
The wind carried intermittent heavy motor sounds their way: sputtering, stopping, then in a few seconds again cutting through the crisp air. Wiley stepped out of the depression, reached for his glasses, and gazed to the southeast.
“Looks like several vehicles headed this away. One . . . looks like . . . two, three half-tracks and a hundred or so infantry maybe half a mile or more off.”
“Private, you go back up on that incline and cover us.”
“Yonder, sergeant?”
The big man looked up at Wiley. “Yes. I’ll bury him.”
Wiley took off his helmet and set it down next to the sergeant. “Use that. Sergeant, it ain’t gonna be long before that column gets here. I have orders ta look for my lieutenant. I’m goin’ to head off ta the south before those troops get here.”
The sergeant nodded, then picked up the helmet and began digging into the sand.
Wiley walked away to the south, keeping the base of the peak about one hundred yards to his right. He had to assume that there were no Germans between him and the column.
This is another one of those chances a scout hasta take, he thought. With his young man’s bravado, he didn’t even bother to stoop. At this range a German looking directly at me, even with their super binoculars, couldn’t pick me out in this olive drab.
In twenty minutes, the column’s direction became clearer. They were headed more behind him and toward the sergeant. After some minutes, Wiley began to stoop. At the same time, a larger picture began to occur to him. He slowed down to think things over, standing still for a moment.
I wonder if I’m doin’ the right thing? Maybe nothin’ I can do’ll make this mission a success. How can I find Christopher or anybody else by walkin’ on the ground like this? He could be in a low spot ten feet away and I’d walk right by. At least I could see if I got up in those rocks. Naw, that can’t work neither. That column is comin’ close to here. So, if I find the guy or some other guy, I can’t get him out the way I come. And now the Germans’ll be blockin’ the road behind ’em too. So, how am I supposed to get a guy out? Even if I found a guy and could get behind that column, it would be twenty miles gettin’ back to our lines, and I can’t make that one; I just can’t carry a guy that far!
Wiley was now completely confused.
That sergeant looked tired. Maybe he’ll need help in gettin’ away. I know the way ta get back, but he don’t. Seems a shame to let the guy get captured or killed after all he’s been through. Besides goin’ back for him, what other choice I got?
He looked at the German column. It was now abreast of him, but five hundred yards off. With them closer to the sergeant’s position with every second, he needed to decide what to do, right now!
He started to walk back toward the sergeant.
This mission’s completely fucked! he thought. I might as well shoot myself in the head as try ta get across that damn highway. The retreat took place near the damn highway and the Germans have the damn highway. If Christopher’s over there, they already got him! If I do this, I’m givin’ up my mission, givin’ up on Christopher. Yeah, but at least I can help one guy I know for sure is still alive.
Still stooping, he began to run toward the sergeant’s position. He stayed almost parallel to the enemy column, which was now somewhat ahead of him and angling closer every minute. Then one of the half-track’s motors roared, and he stopped immediately.
It was the same sound that had caused him to panic in the pass when the onslaught of the enemy vehicles seemed to be unstoppable. He had never seen one of their tanks or half-tracks disabled. He crouched, and his mind immediately began to race out of control.
How can I get outta here? Out, out, away from here! I can’t hurt them! Those men inside the machines will see me, roar their engines, and run me over with those giant tracks like they did those other guys. They’ll laugh as they crush my bones into thousands of pieces!
He imagined his flesh and blood oozing out between the gaps in the steel tracks. He rose up just as one of the half-tracks turned slightly in his direction. His eyes almost popped out of his head!
They’ve seen me!
Wiley panicked. He began to back step, and then he turned and ran away from the sergeant’s position, not even stooping, his heart pounding. But he had only gone about forty yards when he stopped instantly.
There! There in front of me, somethin’ is movin’. I’m trapped! They’ll trap me between them! They’ll run me over with those tracks!
He ran back in the sergeant’s direction, all thought of his mission blown from his mind. The thought of falling in front of the massive treads terrorized him, and the laughter of the enemy echoed in his head over and over again.
I have ta get away! There’s only one way out, up the incline! I must get there. They can’t follow me there!
He ran wildly toward the incline five hundred yards away, his gear bouncing violently. He held on to his rifle only because he didn’t know he was holding it. His rations flopped out of his bag, but his other gear remained despite his gyrations.
He fled for several minutes. Then he looked back toward the Germans, tripped, and fell into one of the endless depressions, knocking the wind out of himself.
As he slowly raised his head, something startled him. There, not thirty feet from him, fully visible beyond a few bushes in the next depression was the sergeant! Panting, Wiley failed to notice that the man was motionless, sitting with his back against the lip of the depression, his legs splayed at almost a ninety-degree angle.
That sergeant, he’ll protect me from those tracks! Wiley thought.
The scout crawled toward the man on all fours, up the side of the lip, and into the next depression. But he stopped as he came within ten feet. The man’s eyes were open. He was dead!
The exhaustion from the run, the fall, and the shock of seeing the man dead cut the panic from Wiley’s mind.
“How could you be dead?” he said breathlessly. “We were just talkin’.” Dragging his rifle on the ground by the strap, he edged toward the man.
For the first time, he looked at the sergeant carefully and noticed what he had failed to notice before on the grimy uniform.
There’s blood several places where it came through his pants, he thought. Still breathing hard, he got closer and noticed more. There’s a small hole through his left side just below the beltline. And a second wound to his right leg under the groin.
Looking further, he discovered a hole through the man’s left boot, where one of the straps was torn away. I couldn’t have moved five feet with those holes in me, Wiley thought in wonderment. He sat back on his haunches with a miserable look on his face.
Damn, he thought sadly. He never said he was hurt. I looked him in the face and never saw any sign a pain. He seemed okay.
Wiley sat down, almost unable to move, heedless of the approaching enemy.
I’m so sorry for this man. He gave his life. I hope it was worth it.
Carefully, he pulled off the sergeant’s dog tags and read the name. “Blaik, George T.”
Wiley was motionless for a few more seconds. Then he noticed the mound of freshly turned sand nearby and the glint of metal atop it. He picked up the metallic thing: the captain’s tags, which Blaik had laid on the freshly dug grave.
Wiley heard the heavy motor sounds again and stood up. Without even getting out of the depression, he could see a half-track about a hundred yards off, going by obliquely.
The panic gone from his mind, he turned to go. Then his eye caught the dead man’s Browning .45 automatic, still in the holster. He stooped a little, lifted the holster’s flap and took it out. He pressed the button for the magazine, and the nine-shot clip ejected. There were two bullets still in it, and he could see one in the chamber.
“The guy had three shots left,” he said out loud. “Three goddam shots.”
He cradled the gun in both hands. A determined look came on his face.
“I’m gonna take this gun and use it as he would of, honor him.”
With its enormous, nearly deafening sound, the half-track passed by and out of view. A wave of fear went through Wiley again. He thought he had only one chance, to go right now. He stood again to see if the machine was headed back his way, but it proceeded on.
“I’m sorry ta leave you here, sorry I can’t bury you so that the damn A-rabs can’t desecrate your body, but you know I have ta save myself. Troops behind that thing’ll see me soon enough.”
Wiley stooped again, went to the side of the depression away from the enemy, and flopped down. He looked back.
“He was a good soldier,” he muttered in reverence.
Wiley crawled the two hundred yards to the escarpment and plopped down behind a giant rock. By now he felt absolutely exhausted. I know they won’t follow me here, he thought.
He felt relaxed for the first time in nearly two days, and he slept for a few minutes. He was awakened by motor sounds passing by.
He looked around the boulder to see that he was relatively safe and sat down again. His thoughts ran back to a time before the war and to another sergeant, his Basic drill sergeant at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.
What would First Sergeant Betts think a the way I acted today? he wondered. I’m ashamed. Will I ever make a good soldier?
Wiley had gone into the Army as a sixteen-year-old from Summersville, West Virginia. One day in 1940, while he was working as a clerk in a store, he noticed a poster in a store window:
JOIN THE ARMY AND SEE THE WORLD!
It had a picture of a handsome soldier with a pretty Asian girl. The tall, rawboned boy had straightened up. “This is a crap job I got here livin’ in the back a this store. What I gotta lose?”
He’d walked a block to the Army recruiter’s office on Main Street, telling the man behind the desk that he was eighteen.
“That’s fine, Bud, but you have to have a parent or guardian sign this form.”
“Sure thing, sir.”
Taking the form, he’d walked out the door, signed it himself, walked back in, and plopped it down on the desk.
But the Army didn’t turn out to be what I hoped, he thought. I’d been living by myself since I was fourteen. I was used ta doin’ whatever I pleased. Gettin’ up at 0400, eatin’ what and when you were told, and sleepin’ when told ground me the wrong way. One night after tellin’ some friends I meant ta go AWOL, I snuck out of those shitty wooden barracks left over from World War I and headed east into the most deserted part of the post. I had gone several miles when I had ta go under a viaduct I knew from a trainin’ exercise. I was thinkin’: A hundred yards and I’ll be off the post.” It was real dark, especially under that viaduct. I came pokin’ out the other side, got about ten feet, and a voice came out of the darkness:“Hey.” It was like bein’ hit with a hammer.
Wiley leaned back against the boulder and smiled weakly, remembering.
I stumbled and fell right on my face. “Come here,” the voice said, real calm. I peered back in the dim light to see Sergeant Orville Betts, or “S.O.B.” as us recruits called him. I thought a runnin’, but the shit that I was, I shamelessly decided ta stand up to the man.
He was sittin’ on top a the viaduct. He spoke again. “Come here. Sit here.” He was motionin’ for me ta climb up and sit next ta him, so I did.
“Whatcha doin’?”
“I don’t like this. I’m gettin’ outta here. I ain’t afraid a you or any man.”
“Where you headed?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. You can’t stop me neither.”
“Here, take a shot,” he said, forking over a small bottle of booze. “It’s rye.”
I’d never had rye before. I took a long pull that made me almost retch. I handed it back, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
“You got any family?”
“Yeah!” I said without thinkin’, stickin’ my nose in the air.
“Really, you got any folks?”
He could see right through me and I knew it. I looked down at the ground.
“No, Sergeant, I don’t . . . nobody.”
“I figured. Have another.”
He offered the bottle to me again. The bluster was gone and I was realizin’ how much trouble I was in, so I waved it away.
“Come to my quarters tomorrow night, 1800 sharp.” With that Betts jumped down and, before I could react, was gone into the darkness.
He cleaned me up inside and out, Wiley thought, sitting at the dorsal. Other than my grandparents, he was the first person who treated me like I wasn’t shit. He taught me ta respect myself, how ta speak ta people; that I should watch people I respected, how they dressed and talked and do as they did, which really opened my eyes. I gotta stop talkin’ like a hick.
The sergeant had proved a good friend, more of a father figure than the boy had ever known. Now, Wiley thought of him nearly halfway around the w
orld.
He knew now that he had two mentors.
Wiley remembered seeing a little draw when he ran down the incline toward the sergeant. If he could find that, it would cover him as he climbed up the incline.
Carefully, he walked along the base of the escarpment. Once or twice he heard voices—near or far away, he couldn’t tell with the rock sides twisting around—and stopped for a few minutes. Fearing that Arabs might be hiding just around the next turn, he held the .45 ready. He started again. His luck held, he found the draw and began climbing up.
In another few minutes, he could see the entire German force clearly, about four hundred yards off. There were four half-tracks and several hundred troops. The vehicles were stopped. It looked as though they were preparing to ambush any force that came along Highway 17.
Odd that they’d set up there without no tank support, he thought.
In the next instant his attention was diverted toward the pass. A vehicle came into view, then two more. He glimpsed what they were pulling through the blowing sand. It became clear why the force in front of him had stopped where they were.
They got eighty-eight millimeter cannons they’re towin’ up here! The most feared antitank weapons of the war, Wiley could only imagine the damage they could do to an American column. I need ta get back with this info.
Being able to bring back such lifesaving information made him feel slightly better about giving up on Lieutenant Christopher. He started along the peak, making his way back the way he had come, walking boldly in the open. He knew he was out of range of German rifles, even if they saw him. He knew the half-tracks could not touch him, and he wanted to show himself that he was not afraid. It would be a while before the eighty-eights limbered up and could shoot at him.
To the north, six or eight miles off, were his lines, if his people were still there. He noted it was 1730, growing late in the afternoon.
