by Jon Stafford
“Any eighty-eights?”
“No, not that we saw. Sir, we’d need the six Shermans we lost yesterday, and probably twenty more tanks, ta blast through there.”
“What about the road you said you came in on?”
“It’s a sunken lane really, not on your map, runs here.” Wiley pointed. “But we actually measured it, and it’s wide enough for a tank destroyer. Here’s where we picked it up. It’s sunken about two feet, steep sides. Then it goes north toward the town. Right here in the middle of town, it runs inta the main road. The left goes north somewhere, as it shows here, while the right goes down ta the back of the position we’ve been attacking. As it leaves town, it goes sunken again. The sides are two, three feet high a some kinda rock like flagstone that’s stacked up. A tank can’t get outta it once it gets down in there. If we start our tank destroyer on the sunken road on our left, advance inta town and get inta the sunken road, even if it gets blasted, they’d be trapped. But you’ll have ta have that tank destroyer with the seventy-six-millimeter cannon. You know a seventy-five on a Sherman doesn’t have the velocity to handle a Panther.”
“Redding, we only have that one tank destroyer left?” the colonel asked.
“Yes, sir.”
The colonel’s mind was racing. He talked quietly, every officer in the tent knowing that his thoughts would become orders soon enough.
“We’d need several bazookas and two fifty-caliber machine guns, just in case they have some half-tracks stashed somewhere that Wiley didn’t see. Let’s send in A Company on Wiley’s road, with the weapons platoon on the point and the other two platoons coming behind it. They’ll come through town and attack the enemy position from behind as the other two companies attack up the main road as a diversion. I hope to hell you’re right, soldier. That leaves us very weak up front if they attack with those tanks.”
“May I say somethin’, sir?” Wiley asked.
The colonel thought for a minute and then turned Wiley’s way. “Go ahead.”
“They’re thin, sir.” The scout shook his head. “There were no guards hardly anywhere. I doubt from what we saw that they got enough men or supplies ta resist long. If we block that sunken road, I think they’ll give up.”
The colonel thought for a full minute, weighing his options. Finally, he said, “We have no choice. All right!” He looked at Redding. “Captain, I want you to be in command.”
“Yes, sir!”
Completely calm now, Pope nodded toward Wiley. “Son, I want you to lead this. If you pull this off and live through it, I will see you to a battlefield commission, tomorrow.”
“I thank the colonel,” Wiley said, as he saluted.
There were a few hours to rest before the attack began. As he sat against a tree, huddled in his poncho, Wiley wondered if he could still be arrested and about Dietrich and Torgeson. His clothes itched badly. He could not recall how long they had been on his body. Was it months or just weeks? He had a strange thought, wondering if the enemy could smell him.
That’s stupid, he thought. But he really wasn’t sure it was stupid at all. He had seen inside many a German home in the last few weeks and knew that they had a higher standard of living than he’d seen in the States. They were educated and cultured, just as he wished to be. He hated them for what they had and what they had done to his friends. In twenty minutes, in complete exhaustion, he finally went to sleep.
He was awakened by someone tapping his shoulder. He looked up. It was Sergeant Bracey.
“All right, Chip, captain says it’s time.”
“Okay. I was just thinkin’ about the last two attacks. I hope this one’s better.”
Bracey turned away. “I learned a long time ago, Chip, that thinking about this war is just a really bad idea.”
“Okay, Sarge, I know you’re right.” Wiley watched him walk away.
In about twenty minutes, he was on the sunken road for the third night in a row. The artillery barrage commenced right on time, 0500. Wiley could see the shells flying right into the enemy position, perhaps nine hundred yards off to the right.
Unlike the previous nights, he walked alone directly down the middle of the dirt road, defying anyone to shoot at him. It was foolhardy, since anyone could have put a bullet in him, and he was the only person left who knew the enemy position. But he was bone-tired, and tired men don’t make very good choices.
The weapons platoon and the tank destroyer were about one hundred yards behind him. The enemy appeared as lax as before, evidently so thin as to not even have anyone close enough to hear the tank destroyer.
The bright winter moon occasionally peeked through the clouds, just as it had the night before. Soon Wiley came up to the cobblestones at the edge of the town. There wasn’t a single light on anywhere. But, as always, he was wary of a trap, so he waited.
The lead elements of the platoon came up, led by Sergeant Larry Betters. Nothing happened. Wiley felt relieved that he’d told the colonel the enemy was so thin as to not even place sentries on the road.
With the tank going ahead, he took two squads and went down the parallel street. They passed the doorway where Dietrich had been shot. Wiley silently lamented that he had not shot the boy.
I’d be glad ta shoot him the next time. It was a pointless thing to think, hoping Dietrich was alive in some German hospital. They passed the same doorways, saw the same boot on the stoop of the same house, the same pots that might hold flowers again in the spring. Wiley wondered if he would still be alive in the spring.
After what seemed a long time, they came to the statue, some guy on a horse. The road ended there, and they turned right toward the back of the enemy position and their own lines. Wiley began to feel confident that the trap would work, strung on the enemy and not on them. Just a few more yards, and they could spring their trap and the Germans would be in the bag.
Then an ugly thought came into his head. I never saw the far side of the German position, the American right. Maybe they can retreat there.
Wiley settled for what seemed likely. “Well, at least we’ll take the town.”
As they edged out the other side of the town, Wiley turned to Betters. “Larry, send your point men ahead. We’re close enough ta the position.”
“Okay, Chip.”
Betters motioned to his guys, and they went forward. In another couple of minutes, Wiley heard rifle fire. At the same moment, someone touched him on the arm. He turned to see Captain Redding.
“What’s up, Chip?”
“Sir, we need to stop the barrage! It hides the sound of the tank destroyer real good, but we’re close ta comin’ in contact with it. Betters and his men are ahead and came in contact with the Germans.”
They both heard the rifle fire continue.
“Yes, I’ve done that.”
They could see fairly well by this time, with all of the fires their artillery had started up.
“Captain! See that wall over there, forty yards out? What about the tank destroyer behind that? It won’t be long before one a those Panthers comes lumberin’ up this road. That seventy-six right there’ll fix those guys real good.”
“If we leav
e the TD on the road,” Redding argued, “even if they blow it up, they’re trapped.”
“Well, sir, we haven’t seen their left flank. If we put the TD over there, maybe it can cover that too.”
“Okay. That’s good.” Redding turned to the TD commander behind him. “Sergeant Pettibone, get your tank behind that stone wall over there as fast as you can. You know what to do.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, saluting.
“Lieutenant?” Lieutenant Gummerson was standing behind Redding. “Bill, you take the part of the field on both sides of this road. Get four bazooka men and spread them out. Take one of the fifties. See that house there by the road?” He pointed.
“Yes, sir,” Gummerson replied.
“That second floor window on this corner looks like it’ll give you a good field of fire. Get a thousand rounds up there. I want Chip here in the middle near the TD, and I’ll handle the other flank.”
“Yes, sir!” Wiley and Gummerson said at the same time.
By 0600, as the two companies began their attack up the main road on the front of the German line, the TD had backed up the road, into the town, and come over behind the stone wall. It was just in time. The ground began to shake slightly as one of the Panthers began to grind up the hill from somewhere below.
The dawn’s light became better with every passing second. It was becoming more and more obvious that putting the tank behind the stone wall was a good idea. It commanded the sunken road and a great area below of about three hundred yards’ width. Unseen, the TD held its fire as the much greater German weapon came slowly up, perpendicular to its cannon. Only forty yards off, the seventy-six-millimeter sounded. The Panther stopped and soon caught fire. Wiley nearly cheered.
As the gun fired, a young private darted past it. Wiley tried to shout a warning, but it was too late. He watched, helpless, as the private ran right into the line of fire. The blast knocked the boy down, and he was still.
It had begun to snow. Wiley stared down at the handsome boy, only a year or two younger than himself. His face was unmarked and so peaceful! He looks like he just went ta sleep! Wiley thought.
As he turned away, a bullet struck him in the left side and spun him around. He fell on his back.
He lay there on the cold ground, stunned, not feeling any pain yet. He couldn’t get up.
For a few minutes, he was fully alert and completely aware of what went on around him. He could see peripherally all the chaos of the battle: men running by him, one inadvertently stepping on him, the sounds of the cannon firing and of shells hitting nearby.
But in a few minutes, his body began to cool. He drifted into the ethereal world of shock, no longer registering outside sensory data. He lay in suspended animation, feeling no pain, wonderfully comfortable, each minute shaving a fraction of a degree from his body temperature.
“Chip,” the voice came to him softly, “Chip.”
He knew it was his mother, though he could not ever remember seeing her. But he saw her so clearly now, a plain country woman wrapped in a brown shawl.
“Mama.”
“Chip, I am here for you.”
“Mama, why did you leave me? Didn’t you love me?”
“Oh, Chip, you were my own sweet baby. I never left you! I am here for you now.”
“But you left me to him, and he hurt me.”
“No, Chip, I lay close to you all that time. He killed me and buried me in the woods close to the house. I protected you as best I could.”
“But, they said you ran off with a man. Even Grandma and Grandpa said that.”
“Yes, but that wasn’t true. Your father is a very bad man. Sheriff Borders is his half-brother, which no one knows. He only said he’d seen me with another man. But, it wasn’t true. I held you to my breast and loved you with all my heart till he killed me.”
She faded away.
Wiley’s eyes opened, just a little. His consciousness registered the cold, the pain, and the noise around him once again, just barely. He could feel himself failing.
Something moved above him. A man looked down at him.
“A bad wound with that much blood,” someone else called. “Leave him. He’s gone. How about the guy over there?”
The man walked off.
Wiley’s eyes closed again. He called out in his mind. Mama!
She appeared again, indistinct before him.
“Mama.”
“Yes, my only love.”
“Mama, I want to go with you,” he said in his mind, but his lips did not move.
“No, my love, your time is not now. You need to awaken. There are men here who will help you.”
She was smiling so sweetly, so peacefully. He reached toward her. “Please, take me with you!”
“No, baby. You must do this one thing for me. You must go back and be alive again. I must go now.”
He tried to move but could not. “Mama, I can’t get up.”
“All you have to do is move and they will see you. I must go.”
She faded away. Wiley cried out in anguish in his mind! His mouth opened to let out the cry, but there was no sound.
Crunching footsteps nearby, then a shout. “Hey, this sergeant is alive. Medic! MEDIC! Over here! This guy’s alive!”
Wiley awoke on something warm and soft. He opened his eyes, slowly, and looked around blearily. There was a blanket over him and rows of occupied cots stretching away on both sides of him. On the opposite wall, there was a sign with a big red cross on it. He was in a hospital ward, then, probably a field hospital.
There was a terrible pain in his side. He looked down at himself, noting with relief that all his limbs were still there. Then he noticed the gleam of something metal on his chest.
He looked closer. It was the gold bar of a second lieutenant, pinned to his gown.
The Faded Rose
. . . morning fair
Came forth with Pilgrim steps in amice gray;
Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar
Of thunder, chas’d the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly Specters, which the Fiend had rais’d . . .
And now the Sun with more effectual beams
Had chear’d the face of Earth . . .
—Milton, Paradise Regained, Book 4
New York City, May 1945
Twenty-year-old Second Lieutenant Chip Wiley stepped out of the hospital with a smile on his face and took a deep breath of the air of New York City. He stood erect, displaying a perfect martial bearing. His red hair blew slightly in the gusts that swept up the street.
“Feels good,” he muttered. “Air’s not as good as in the country, but I’m not gonna complain.”
It was a wonderful relief to finally be out after more than two months lying in a hospital bed and then two weeks more just sitting around. The nurses and staff had been great. “But, no more hospital,” he said to himself, a smile on his face. “I got ninety days convalescent leave. Bye-bye Army after thirty-five months.”
He walked to the paymaster’s off
ice, collected three hundred dollars, and then hailed a cab. He was headed for Columbia, South Carolina, to see the Gregorys. He’d met them five years ago, when he and their son Scott had become friends during Basic Training together there.
He was confident the money would be enough to get him there. On the way, he would make three stops to visit with the families of some of his fallen comrades: Albany, New York, to see “Long Shot” McMurtha’s folks; Detroit, to see Mrs. Jack Dietrich; and Calumet City, Illinois, to see Thomas Kuehl’s family.
The day after McMurtha was killed, Wiley had looked amongst his things for an address. McMurtha almost never got mail, but there had been one letter. The return address said “1214 E. Washington, Albany, New York.” Wiley had written it down.
Now five months later and a world away, he was on a train to Albany. It was only a two-hour ride from Grand Central Station.
He flagged down a cab at the Albany train station. The cabbie studied Wiley’s uniform as he got in. “Heading home, soldier?”
“Not exactly.” Wiley settled into the seat, feeling a twinge in his side where the old wound was. “I’m gonna see the family of a buddy of mine, a guy who didn’t make it back.”
“I know that tune.” The cabbie’s lined face looked sympathetic. “I was in the Navy myself. Convoy duty in the north Atlantic. Just got out for good six months ago.”
They drove to what had been 1214 East Washington, only to find a large area being cleared by a bulldozer. The operator didn’t know much. “Yeah, there was some houses here, real run-down stuff. Why, soldier? You from around here?”
Wiley had the cabbie stop by the police station next, but they knew nothing. The phone book showed no listing for McMurtha. The former scout racked his brain but could recall nothing his dead friend had said of any family. I thought findin’ them would be easy, and the hard part would be facin’ them, he thought.
