Moon Above, Moon Below

by William Peter Grasso

  “Should you not go to him, child? Show him some tenderness and mercy on his last night?”

  “I’m sure he’s quite busy saying goodbye to his many lovers. I think it’s better I wish him good riddance, at least for now.”

  “I can’t say I blame you, little girl. I never did understand why you married that communist scumbag.”

  “For the thousandth time, Papa, Bernard is not a communist.”

  “A man is who he associates with, my child.”

  “I’m so tired of arguing about this. Let’s just call my marriage a romantic mistake in the confusion of war, Papa. To hell with him. Right now, what I need most is a bath and some clean clothes.”

  Tommy found Herb Clinchmore at Café Madeleine, already under the influence of the alcohol he’d slugged down. When asked why he returned to base without so much as a wing waggle, Clinchmore replied with a slurred, “I don’t think I like your tone, Moon.”

  “Just answer the damn question, Herb. You work for me, remember?”

  Clinchmore began to mumble something about the radio.

  “There was nothing wrong with your radio, Herb. I was there when the radio tech checked it out.”

  “I’m the goddamn pilot, not some little greaseball wrench bender. If I say the radio didn’t work, it didn’t fucking work.”

  “Radios don’t fix themselves, Herb. And did you forget the procedures for flying with a radio out?”

  Clinchmore was getting loud and attracting attention. “You know, Half, I don’t have to take this shit from you, you little pipsqueak. If you want to have me court-martialed, go right ahead. I’m betting no court in this man’s army is gonna convict a pilot for bringing his fucked-up plane home safe and sound.”

  “You want a court-martial, Herb? That can be arranged. I’d say you’re racking up a pretty impressive list of charges right now.”

  “You don’t have the balls, Tommy,” Clinchmore replied, still louder. “And everyone knows you’re all sweet on those fucking ground pounders and how you’re all fucked up because you got a brother down there and how that’s been affecting your judgment and all. Well, I’m here to tell you, if you don’t fly, you ain’t shit. I don’t give a fuck about any of them ground pounders. The only ass I care about is—”

  Clinchmore’s words were cut off by the beefy hand of an infantry lieutenant clamped around his throat. That hand jerked him from the chair, spun him around, and was now cocked to deliver a killer jab to the drunken pilot’s startled face. Behind the infantryman, a crowd of fellow ground pounders had gathered, eager to join in and do a little pounding of a different kind.

  “Hang on there, buddy,” Tommy said to Clinchmore’s assailant. “This isn’t your fight.”

  “Him and his big fucking mouth just made it my fight, pal.”

  Everyone knew Herb Clinchmore was a split second away from being beaten to within an inch of his life. The bar owner and his bouncers were already moving in to break up the imminent mauling. They liked the whopping increase in business the Americans brought. Too much fighting on premises would cause the Army’s Provost Marshall to designate Café Madeleine off limits to GIs.

  But it was a woman’s voice which provided the antidote to the poisoned atmosphere. “Mes amies,” Sylvie Bergerac pleaded, “isn’t it enough that you have to fight the Boche? Can’t you see this is not the time for fighting? It is the time for drink, for fellowship…and to spend some time around the corner at Papa’s House in the warm comfort of a woman.”

  Her words worked like a soothing salve. They gave Tommy the second he needed to get Clinchmore out of the bar alive. His two tentmates were already out in the street, having fled the moment they saw the odds stacked badly against anyone wearing aviator’s wings.

  “Get him the fuck out of here,” Tommy told them. “If anybody’s going to kill him, I’ve got first dibs.” There was no argument from Clinchmore’s tentmates as they scuttled him off down the street.

  Tommy walked back inside the pacified café. Sylvie was sitting at the bar, chatting with the owner. She beckoned him to join them.

  “Lieutenant Tommy Moon, I’d like to introduce the proprietor, my uncle Honoré,” she said in English.

  Tommy shook his hand, wondering if there’d be any glimmer of recognition from the night before, when this same man had claimed not to know her and thrown him out of the bar, to boot. But there was none.

  In French, Tommy asked, “Don’t you recognize me? I was in here last night, looking for Sylvie.”

  The uncle smirked as he replied, “Americans all think they are so unforgettable. But at least he speaks almost intelligible French.”

  “Be nice, Uncle. This one is a gentleman.”

  His smirk turned to a smile. “Ahh, she likes you, airman. Be careful, before she steals your wallet as well as your heart. Now, if you two will excuse me, I have a business to look after.”

  “What did he mean by that, Sylvie?”

  She smiled and said, “Uncle Honoré is always teasing me about how I drum up business. He says I have a nose for money.”

  “Yeah, I noticed when you broke up that fight, you managed to hawk the bar and Papa’s House all in the same sentence.”

  “Hawk?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Promote…build up.”

  “Voilà,” she replied, smiling triumphantly.

  “And by the way, thanks a lot for doing that.”

  “Doing what, Tommy?”

  “Breaking up the fight.”

  She shrugged, like it was something she did 10 times a day. “Come, Tommy. Let’s get you another drink and find a quiet place to talk.”

  Tucked at a table for two in a dark corner of the bar, she said, “I saw your brother this afternoon—”

  “You saw Sean? Where? Is he okay?”

  “Near Gacé. And yes, he is well.”

  “Wow, that’s great! My brother’s okay! But what the hell were you doing in Gacé?”

  She told him of leading the ammunition convoy to CCF, of visiting her grandmother, her capture by the Gestapo…and her liberation courtesy of an American bomb.

  For a moment, Tommy was stunned into silence. He finally managed to ask, “The place you were being held…you said it was the police station?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the grand-rue?”

  “It’s not a large town, Tommy. There is only one police station.”

  He fell back into silence again. She watched the expression on his face change from surprise, to guilt, to horror, and back to guilt again.

  “It was your plane, then?”

  “It…it must’ve been.” He felt—and looked—like he’d just confessed to breaking every one of the Ten Commandments. The feeling lasted the few seconds it took her to lean across the table and kiss him full on the mouth, a deep, open-mouth kiss that felt wonderful and deliciously guilty. In the back of his mind, a chorus of priests and nuns from his school days in Brooklyn ranted on and on about the first step on the path straight to hell being the French kiss.

  Like they’d ever know.

  She pulled him to his feet and said, “Come with me, my savior.”

  As they stepped from the Café Madeleine, they came face to face with Sylvie’s husband, Bernard, his arm wrapped around another woman. Both couples seemed to freeze in place as husband and wife exchanged looks of contrition without any hint of apology. Their marriage dissolved in one final glance of dismissal. And then both pairs made off in opposite directions, just as their lives were doing.

  Tommy knew Sylvie was leading him to Papa’s House. He tugged her to a halt and said, “Nothing’s changed, you know. You’re still married.” It sounded less a statement of fact than an attempt to convince himself.

  She pulled him close and replied, “You’ve used that excuse already, Tommy. You’ll have to think of another one.”

  But as their mouths melded into another exquisite kiss and their bodies pressed tightly together, she could feel he’d alre
ady stopped thinking.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The field telephone from Listening Post One-Eight clattered its muted ring as the call came in to CCF’s CP. “We’ve got company coming,” the sergeant at the LP reported in a hushed voice. “No idea how many. Not enough moonlight to see good.”

  The captain at the CP asked, “Which road are they on?”

  “I’m not real sure. They may not even be on a road. They’re going slow. I’m guessing they’re moving at the pace of foot traffic.”

  The captain told his runner. “Get Colonel Abrams, on the double.”

  Abrams was at the CP within a minute. “Which LP is reporting?” he asked.

  “One-Eight, sir.”

  “Hmm…the south side,” Abrams said, his eyes glued to the dimly lit map. “How much you want to bet this is the remnants of that infantry division our flyboys beat up right before the storm?”

  “I’d say it’s a real good bet, sir,” the captain replied. “But remnants or not, I’m worried if they’re not on either road they could be walking right into us.”

  “Yeah,” Abrams replied. “I see your point. Take an artillery FO with you and get out to the LP. We may have to light them up.” Then he told the operations sergeant, “Tell every unit the shit’s about to hit the fan.”

  His words couldn’t have been more prophetic. No sooner were they spoken than another phone in the CP began to ring. It was Captain Newcomb on the line from the west side of the perimeter. He reported, “We’ve got heavy engine noise from Gacé. Sounds like the Krauts might be on the move.”

  The phone from the tankers on the north side rang, too. “We hear vehicles...sounds like a lot of them. Can’t tell yet if they’re moving across our front or toward us.”

  Only the infantry and artillery on the east side of the perimeter had nothing to report.

  Colonel Abrams said, “We’re either about to get hit on three sides, or there’s a mass exodus of Germans passing us by.”

  “Should we fire the illum now, sir?” the operations sergeant asked.

  “Negative, negative,” Abrams replied. “Let’s let the darkness be our friend a little bit longer.”

  It only took a few minutes for the darkness to change from friend to enemy. “I can hear them breathing,” the sergeant at LP 1-8 whispered into his field phone. “I think they’re going to pass just west of the LP. A hundred yards away, more or less. They sound like they’re on an admin stroll or something. I can hear ’em yakking, like they don’t have a clue we’re here.”

  “That’ll put them right smack in front of our west sector,” Abrams said, “in an open field with no cover or concealment, except for those few tank carcasses. Ask him if he can tell how many there are now.”

  The LP sergeant’s reply: “I have no fucking idea. I’m seeing a lot of silhouettes and hearing a lot of boots shuffling along. Could be fifty…could be five hundred. I don’t know. Permission to pull back?”

  “Permission granted.”

  “So what’s the plan, sir?” the operations officer asked Abrams.

  “We’re going to let them march right in front of us and then cut them down.”

  The colonel could tell that wasn’t what the operations officer was expecting to hear. “What would you propose instead, Major? Let them pass? Maybe try and capture them?”

  “No, no…of course not, sir. But what about the tanks in Gacé…and whatever it is we’re hearing on the north side?”

  “What about them, Major? If they come out to fight, we fight them. If they try to break out, we try and kill them. Get the preplanned fire missions laid in on the artillery and mortars. Just make damn sure nobody starts shooting until I say so.”

  Midway down the western side of CCF’s perimeter, Sean Moon was poised on Eclipse’s .50 caliber as the rest of his crew stood ready on her .30 calibers and main gun. The leading element of the German infantry had just ambled across their field of fire, looking more like phantoms in the darkness than human forms. Sean offered a silent plea: Let’s not wait too damn long now and let them get away. Just a couple minutes more and we’ll have a maximum kill zone. They won’t know what hit them. This is gonna be fucking slaughter.

  Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours, as the unsuspecting Germans trooped past. Yet, with the enemy practically close enough to hit with a rock, the GIs waited as ordered.

  Yeah, keep ’em coming, Sean thought. I can hear the vehicles crawling along in the column now, too. Nothing but light trucks, thank God.

  A whispered command over the radio: “Stand by for illum. Hold your fire. Repeat—hold your fire.”

  Sean could hear the dull ploompf of the mortars firing the illumination rounds. Let’s see what the Krauts do when they hear that. Do they freeze in place or do they run?

  The Germans did neither; they kept walking. No sooner had the flares begun to pop high over their heads, bathing the startled Germans in their pale, surreal light, than the command spilled from CCF’s radios: “COMMENCE FIRE.”

  Whether they froze or ran made little difference now. A hail of machine gun bullets from two companies of tanks sliced them down in the open field like wheat at harvest. The only direction for them to run was west, toward Gacé. But there was no outrunning the grazing fire of all those machine guns. Some threw up their hands; it was a futile gesture. There would be no mercy in the vagaries of night. Bullets accepted no surrender.

  In less than a minute, it was over. As the killing zone fell dark again and the American machine guns fell silent, the only sounds on the still night air were the wails of dying Germans lying in the field and the distant growl of tank engines coming from Gacé.

  “I think those tanks are moving out,” Captain Newcomb reported over the field telephone to Abrams’ CP. “Can’t tell which way they’re going, though. Request we light them up.”

  Colonel Abrams agreed. In less than 30 seconds, the artillery fired a spread of illumination rounds to light the highways running north and east out of Gacé, some two miles from CCF’s position. Binoculars pressed to their eyes, both the colonel and Newcomb watched five tanks assemble on the north side of town. They appeared to have no interest in engaging CCF.

  “They’re running,” Abrams said. “If Madame Bergerac’s info is right—and when hasn’t she been right?—that’s all the armor they have in Gacé.”

  “Shall we engage them with artillery, sir?” the operations officer asked.

  “I’d like to, Major. I really would. But I don’t think we’ll do much damage to them at this distance. They’re sure as hell not going to stand still while we shoot them.”

  Sean Moon entered the CP. “Begging your pardon, sir, but Captain Newcomb told me to come talk to you. I’ve got an idea how to take out those tanks leaving Gacé.”

  “Go ahead, Sergeant,” Abrams replied. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I think I can take them by surprise, sir,” Sean began. “I’ve got two jeeps already lined up with enough gas in ’em to cover about ten miles, plus five GIs and all those panzerfausts we picked up last night. We can intercept them here”—he poked the map at a point on the north highway a few miles down the road—“and set up an ambush. If these Kraut rockets are as good as everyone thinks they are, we can knock out all those tanks before they know what hit them.”

  Abrams wasn’t convinced. “How are you going to find that spot in the dark, Sergeant?”

  “There’s a trail out of these woods that heads that way, sir. It’s got to go to the highway…and if it doesn’t, we’ll take the jeeps overland. It’s pretty easy terrain around here, and I can sure as hell read a compass. We’ll be moving faster than the tanks over a more direct route, so we’ve got a little bit of time to play with. And they’ll never hear the jeeps over the noise of their own engines.”

  “All right,” Abrams said, “let’s assume you get where you want to be. Have any of you ever used a panzerfaust before?”

  “Yes, sir. Me and Sergeant Algood fired a couple of
captured ones for practice when we were back in the Cotentin. It’s pretty simple, sir. Simpler than a bazooka, even. No wires to screw with. Just point, shoot, and then chuck the launch tube away.”

  “And you’re actually volunteering to lead this ambush, Sergeant Moon?”

  “I never volunteer for shit, sir. But it’s my idea, so I guess I’m the guy to lead it. And I figure us tankers know where to hit Kraut armor better than some infantry-types, anyway.”

  Colonel Abrams looked around to gauge the reaction of his staff. Only the operations officer looked skeptical. “If you’ve got something to say, Major, say it fast. We’re running out of time.”

  “I’m worried about those vehicles we heard to the north, sir. We don’t know what they are or where they’re going. If they’re coming to reinforce the ones leaving Gacé, our men just might end up caught between them.”

  Sean replied, “I like my chances in the dark all the same, Major.” Then he checked his wristwatch and asked Abrams, “What’s it going to be, sir? I’ve got to get moving if I’m going at all.”

  Abrams patted Sean on the shoulder and said, “Do it, Sergeant. And good luck to you. Just do me one favor…take some bazookas for backup.”

  “With all due respect, sir, we’ll be carrying enough as it is. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll leave those stovepipes behind.”

  Just as Sean suspected, the forest trail led them straight to the highway. The narrow ribbon of pavement—a darker shade of gray than the surrounding fields in the colorless night— meandered like a calm river across the rolling countryside. The GIs stashed the two jeeps behind a patch of scrawny trees which wouldn’t have provided much in the way of concealment in daylight. But this was the middle of the night; though only 50 yards from the highway, the jeeps were as good as invisible.