by Jon Stafford
Soon, the peak ended and Wiley sat down. He felt exhausted again and starved. As he looked in his coat for the rations that had fallen out when he panicked, he happened to recognize the place about fifty yards off where he had begun his ascent a few hours before. He thought of all that had happened to him and took a long drink from his canteen. His mouth felt as though it were coated in dust.
He stood and headed directly north into the great expanse. For the first time, he noticed the coldness of the afternoon with the sun beginning to descend to the west.
He began relaxing his guard as he came closer to his lines. He had gone about a mile when, with a loud, whining ZIP!, a bullet passed not far from him. He hit the ground, his nose smashing into a particularly foul-smelling plant.
Several seconds passed, Wiley listening with all of his senses. Suddenly, a grenade flew up in front of him. He lost it in the grayness of the sky and, for an instant, thought it would hit him in the head. It fell twenty-five feet in front of him, and as he hugged the ground, it blew up harmlessly.
That’s an American grenade, he thought incredulously. Jesus Christ, my own people tryin’ ta kill me!
Had he gotten so far only to have his own people try to kill him? His temper got the best of him. Wiley brought his rifle up and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“If you do that again, I’m goin’ ta shoot you!”
He was a veteran now, and his voice had a quality in it that was not there before. It was the voice of a man who knew how to command others, a voice to be obeyed.
What happened next stunned him. Almost at the same moment, twelve men, spread out over nearly half an acre, stood up from small depressions with their hands over their heads. Some were still terrified by the German blitzkrieg attack, some were lost, and all were tired and hungry and disoriented enough to surrender to a fellow American.
“You really never can tell,” he said aloud.
“Please, please, please, please don’t shoot me,” several begged.
Wiley, shocked but wary, didn’t know whether to hold his rifle on them or shoulder it. He decided on something in between. In a loud voice, he yelled, “All a you, get over here and line up!”
The exhausted and depressed men, their heads hanging down, shuffled as though being scolded by parents. They took some time to get in order. Some had rifles, which they held by the straps so that they almost touched the ground, but most had no weapon. Wiley noticed a number of privates, three corporals, and even a lieutenant! One close look at the officer, and the scout could see that he was in no condition to lead anyone. The man was pale, his eyes empty and staring, his face slack and expressionless.
“Sir? . . . Sir?” But the man didn’t even look up.
“His men got killed,” a private announced sheepishly. “He’s been like that since we found him yesterday.”
“You watch him, soldier. Take care a him. Take that carbine from him and put it over your shoulder.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wiley thought for a minute and figured he would try a question. “Anybody here know where you are?”
A corporal volunteered. “Sir, ain’t we behind German lines?”
Several nodded in agreement. It was a rag-tag group, to be sure, some looking at Wiley as though he were a general. They were kids just as he was, men who were in shock and had lost the will to care.
Wiley shook his head at the whole scene. A private, commanding corporals? But he knew he would have to take charge.
“Right face!”
The men turned, slowly, unconvincingly.
“In column of twos, march!”
Sometimes it was hard to tell they were in column of twos, but the little army proceeded, their footsteps crunching in the sand.
Within about an hour and a half, just as night was falling, the voices of American sentries challenged them out of the dark.
“Who goes there?”
“A small group a Americans, comin’ in.”
“Stand and be recognized! Any funny moves and we’ll blast hell out of you.”
Wiley’s energy and patience had both run out. “Oh, shut up, you morons! Do we look like Germans? Look at these guys, they’re about done in,” he said, in the same authoritative voice he had invented an hour or so before.
“No, sir! Come on in!” the sentry said, saluting.
The next day, Wiley was promoted to buck sergeant. The man with no high school education had become a professional man and a person of responsibility.
A Downed Plane
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die, . . .
Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
And the hunter home from the hill.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem
Northern France, July 23, 1944
The two officers were talking as Sergeant Joseph “Chip” Wiley entered the tent, stopped in front of the desk, and saluted. There were several other men Wiley knew as well, working away at their various tasks. Captain Redding, his company commander, returned the salute in cursory fashion. He never looked up, just continued to talk to a major from headquarters whose nametag said White.
Within minutes of his arrival, the news of the major’s presence had spread throughout E Company. The word was that another dirty job was at hand. As he stood at attention, watching and listening, Wiley could tell that these two were old friends.
“So you saw him?” Redding asked.
“Yes, many a time at Twenty-First Army Group after D-Day,” the major answered. “And I was attached to First Division HQ in North Africa before you came overseas when he was assistant division commander, and I saw him every day for months.”
“What was he like?” Redding asked, intently interested, as the two men sat smoking cigarettes.
“Well, he was a little squirt of a guy,” White said. “Just a little guy, but a real powerful, raspy voice, which was known to literally everyone in the division, all fourteen thousand. They could pick his voice out at night in pitch darkness! He was the type of guy there are just too many stories to tell about.”
“Like what?”
“Well, everyone knows he was the only general to land in the first wave on D-Day at Utah Beach.” White shook his head in reverence. “All the goldbrickers we’ve seen and then this guy, the son of president, under machine gun and artillery fire! Can you beat that?”
Redding nodded in agreement. “We heard that. Tell me something else.”
“The guys just marveled at what he did during the assault on Cherbourg. The Germans were in these medieval forts, castles really, on the edge of the harbor, solid rock. We didn’t have anything that would make a dent in that stuff. I’m telling you, I watched the armor piercing stuff from our seventy-fives hit that stone and bounce off like they were peas. And we were taking serious casualties. You know we had to have that port because the one we constructed off Normandy, ‘Mulberry,’ broke up in that storm.”
“Yeah, we heard.”
“Well, here’s this bri
gadier general. He throws his helmet on the ground and curses that his people are being shot up. Now I have heard people curse, but you just had to get out of the way when he was like that. So he curses for a while, until you could see an idea come into his head and for just a second he freezes. You could have heard a pin drop. I just happened to be there, but I’ll never forget watching him operate. He says, ‘Get Tommy Wagner on the phone.’ You know, Wagner’s Corps artillery so Roosevelt can’t command him to do anything. In a minute, this Colonel’s on the line, and Teddy starts in on him.
“‘Tommy, you got any 155s that have come ashore yet? You do! That’s great. I need two of them here as soon as possible.’
“We had no idea what the hell he wanted with 155s. You know, they’ll shoot maybe fifteen miles. We just listened. He lets this guy carp for a minute.
“‘I know it, Tommy,’ he said, ‘but I have to have those guns here. I’ll square it with General Bradley. When can you get them here? . . . Well, that’ll be too late. In the morning? Great. I’m depending on you. Yes. My best to Mary and the boys.’
“The monster guns arrive and he orders them put right in the front lines! There was no elevation at all to these babies. They were just point blank at these forts.
“Teddy says to the major commanding the 155s, ‘If one of those goddamn Germans sticks his head up, you shoot at it!’ You know, Redd, the shell from a 155 weighs a hundred pounds! Then he says to the major, ‘If they shoot at my people with a machine gun, you shoot at that machine gun.’
“Well, in two hours the Germans surrender! We get this regular army colonel, a real Prussian, the gloves, the monocle, a spotless guy. He comes forward to surrender, hands over this engraved pistol, and says ‘When you start using a 155 as a sniper rifle, it is time to surrender, my compliments,’ and he clicks his heels together.” White shook his head again, grinning.
“So, Lewis, what killed him?” Redding asked.
“His heart. He had a heart attack right there on the battlefield.”
“Damn, that’s tough.”
White went on. “The guy served the country as treaty negotiator, governor-general of the Philippines, and other stuff, served until the last moment of his life.”
Wiley, tired as usual, had relaxed somewhat by this time. Redding finally noticed. “Soldier, you’re at attention!”
“Yes, sir!”
Redding went on, “We heard the First and Fourth Divisions stood down out of respect the next day and refused to fight. Is it true?”
“Well, I don’t know about that. I think Eisenhower and Bradley agreed to let them stand down.”
Both officers turned toward Wiley at the same time.
“All right sergeant, I mean, corporal,” Redding said, “at ease. We go from Theodore Roosevelt, Junior, to you,” he said sarcastically. “What did you do with your .25 Colt?”
“Threw it away, sir.”
The captain rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell,” he snapped, and turned to Major White.
“Lewis, since advanced training at Fort Benning, this guy’s been carrying a little .25 Colt. So we put him in charge of this German major we captured, and he winds up shooting the guy with the damn thing and killing him. Tell the major and me how that happened.”
Wiley swallowed hard, then answered in an apologetic tone. “He had a pistol in his hat, sirs, a Walther PPK, which Wal . . . which we missed. He went for it, so I shot him. I only winged him. But he was kinda an old guy and croaked anyway.”
“Yeah, great, so no PPK! So, you lost your third chevron. And battalion is steamed. They sure wanted to question that guy.”
Wiley held up a German pistol. “Here it is, sir. One shot’s missin’ where he creased the top a my ear here.” He pointed at his left ear. “Wallinski took it from the German while I was tryin’ ta explain myself ta Lieutenant Bates.”
Redding stared. “Really? Why didn’t Wallinski say something?”
“Guess he wanted the souvenir, sir.”
“So, that was good of him to come forward,” Major White chimed in.
Redding looked suspicious. He knew that Wallinski was one of the least-liked men in the company. “Why didn’t Wallinski bring it in himself ?”
“He’s at the aid station, sir.”
“Oh, really. What’s the problem?”
“Broken arm, sir.”
“And how did he get a broken arm?”
“Must have slipped, sir.”
Redding rolled his eyes. “Okay. And how did you get that cut over your eye? You ‘slip’ too?”
“Must have, sir.”
“All right, sergeant, you can put on your third stripe. And Chip, if you pull this one off, you’ll make staff sergeant. I know that you send your money back home. Might make a difference for your family.”
“Thank you, sir!”
“Major White, the battalion intelligence officer, has come down to brief you. Major?”
“Corporal, rather sergeant, you have been picked by your commanding officer to go behind the lines and find a plane that went down this morning about ten miles from here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here is your map.” White motioned for Wiley to come around next to him and opened a large, detailed map with topographical markings on it. “Soldier, this is yours, but make no marks of any type on it in case you get captured. We are here, and we think the plane went down right here.” He pointed. “The plane is a P-38 photo reconnaissance job. You know what a P-38 looks like, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We have noticed a great deal of enemy activity across the river. He was to photograph that and a target behind the lines that is very important to us.”
“May I know the nature of the important tar . . .”
“No, you may not,” White interrupted. “All you have to know is that we need that photographic cartridge. We have someone from the Air Force outside who will brief you on how to remove such a cartridge from the plane.”
“May I speak, sir?”
“Yes, you may, sergeant.”
“What about the pilot, sir? Do I get him out too?”
“Sure, if he can move. But, the information on board that plane and the scouting you do going in and out can save many lives. We would send another plane, but the whole area’s socked in and might continue to be for the next few days. So don’t risk anything much for the pilot. Look,” White went on, “Division feels that the Germans are building up in this sector and that they might attack soon. If we sent a squad in there, you wouldn’t get two feet past that river. You are it, you and, ah, the other man.”
Wiley looked concerned. “Another man, sir?”
“Yes, two men. Captain Redding says you have been a scout for a long time; good record. Many missions, North Africa to now.”
“Thank you, sirs.”
“Sergeant,” White said, looking Wiley directly in the eyes, “you have thirty-six hours. If you don’t report back by 0600 on the 25th, you’ll be too late. I can’t tell you more than that. Well I’m due back.” He rose and walked toward the fla
p. “Where’s Sergeant Kennedy, my driver?”
Redding’s aide, Sergeant Bracey, piped up: “He was just outside the tent, sir.”
“Thank you, sergeant.”
White turned, pointed at Wiley, and said, “Thirty-six hours!” He saluted. Redding, Wiley, and the others in the tent returned the salute. White disappeared outside.
Redding turned toward Bracey. “Sergeant, get that photo guy in here.”
For the next twenty minutes, a diminutive corporal from the Air Corps, who Wiley privately thought was a real pipsqueak, went over and over and over the correct way to remove a photographic cartridge from a P-38. After the first two repetitions, Wiley began to despise the little man.
He must think I’m stupid or somethin’. I got more rank that that little twerp, he thought.
He wanted to stay awake, but soon a more powerful notion came over him, one that had helped to keep him alive one time or another. If your life ain’t on the line, to hell with it. He nodded off.
Captain Redding dropped something and Wiley started.
“Thank you, corporal, that will be enough.”
“But, sir, I thought I’d go over it once more.”
Redding was having a hard time staying awake himself. “Thank you, corporal. That will be all!”
The corporal turned, a smirk on his face, and went out the flap. Redding eyed Wiley.
“Sergeant, it’s about 1900. You have an hour and a half before dark and close to thirty-five hours after that. Get your stuff together and get down to the river. We want you to get across as soon as possible and be maybe halfway to the plane, say five miles in, by dawn. You should be able to see enemy positions by their fires after you pass through the lines. Zip in and zip out.”
