Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

Sisto nodded and Ricks returned to his position. “You may get your wish yet, Cap’n,” he told Kneece as he moved his BAR to a port that angled toward the right flank. “Probably in there.” Harry joined him at the port, followed the younger mans pointing to a train of small boulders and shrubs marking a rill sliding down the front of the American heights into the stream at the bottom of the dale. Sisto stripped off his slicker, the better to reach his ammunition bandolier. “You got a weapon under that, Signor Roosk?” He meant Harry’s slicker.

  “A.43.”

  Sisto chuckled. “Wyatt Earp.” He cocked the bolt of his BAR and adjusted the rear sight for the range. “You guys better unhook your chin straps.”

  “Why?”

  “‘Cause if somethin’ goes off close by, it’s gonna blow your helmet clear and take your head with it.”

  It was only minutes — long minutes — that they stood by the port, studying the shadowy line of rocks and brush. Harry could hear those short pants from Ricks again, and in the feeble light he could see the captain’s eyes were wide.

  “Peach!” Loud, from the American line.

  “This is it,” Sisto whispered.

  “Peach! I said peach, goddammit!”

  A pause. Then, from the shadows below the foxhole line: “Tree.”

  “Tree my ass you cocksucker!”

  Before the epithet ended, a.30-caliber machine gun stammered, sending a stream of tracers ricocheting among the rocks. Simultaneously the rattle of Ml’s followed along the stretch of the line immediately above the intruders.

  “See’em?” Sisto asked. Harry could see the corporal’s finger flex round the BAR’s trigger.

  “Is that them?” Kneece’s tongue kept running round his lips as if no sooner had they been dampened than they dried. “Is that them?”

  Harry did see them — shadows almost indistinguishable from the dark humps of the boulders, only they were moving, darting here and there on their way down the hill They would stop, turn, there’d be the flash and bark of a Mauser, then the scramble down the shallow defile would continue. One of the Germans broke from the shadows for the stream. Shimmering geysers of water spurted up round him. The figure seemed to lose its balance, stagger along off-kilter before falling facedown in the water. It didn’t move again.

  The Germans across the dale, up on the hills, answered with machine guns of their own, MG42’s, faster-firing than the American.30-calibers, the bursts ripping roars echoing across the dale, the flickering muzzle flashes radiating streams of tracers, arcing over the stream, covering the withdrawal of their Kameraden.

  Then came the thudding whumps of mortars behind them, and the dale filled with the brilliant, dead light of parachute flares lofted up by the 60-mm mortars of Love Company’s Heavy Weapons platoon. The flares sputtered and hissed, shed sparks, their flickering light painting the countryside in bleak chiaroscuro.

  Dominick Sisto followed the Germans down the defile with his sights, but held his fire. More than once Woody Kneece raised his Ml, and more than once Sisto restrained him: “Hold your fire!” And then it was one restraint too many for the captain.

  Kneece rushed out the dugout entryway. Through the observation port Harry saw him run past Ricks hunkered down in his hole just a few yards away. Kneece ran to the outermost cypress tree, raised his rifle, and began snapping off rounds.

  “Kneece!” Peter Ricks bolted from his foxhole, yanked Woody Kneece’s Ml from his hands with one hand and grabbed his collar with the other, dragging him back to the dugout. He thrust Kneece through the entryway. “I told you not to fire!” Ricks screamed, his enraged face twisting in the unearthly light of the flares.

  “I didn’t come all this way not to be a part of this!” Kneece shouted back.

  “Down!” Even as he yelled, Sisto was already diving, pulling Harry down with him.

  They hugged the floor as one of the MG42’s across the dale raked the cluster of cypress trees. Bullets thunked into the dirt and branches of the dugout’s roof.

  This was no longer some grotesquerie Harry could watch, in rapt horror, at some remove. They’re trying to kill me… they’re trying to kill me…

  But the burst of fire was short-lived, as if it could find little hidden among the cypress trees to keep its interest; soon it returned to the steady flashes of the weapons trying to kill its mates down by the water.

  “Asshole!” Ricks spat at Woody Kneece. He threw Kneece’s rifle to Harry “Don’t give that to him!” He turned and ran back outside to his position.

  “Oh, fuck…” Dominick Sisto muttered. “Get down deep, signor.”

  Sounds of mortars, but more distant, from behind the hills across the way. Harry heard a high, violent flutter, like the panicked burst of birds from the brush, then a volley of mortar shells crashed along the American line.

  Harry pressed closer to the dugout floor, his nose filled with the smell, his mouth the taste, of the churned mud beneath him. He felt the impacts through the ground, felt them pound deep in his chest. His fingers clawed at the wet earth as if he could bury himself deeper.

  Then a falling flutter, painfully, shatteringly clear in his ears… Jerry, Ricky, I’m sorry… coming in close… Jesus, Cynthia, Cyn, I’m — close enough that when it hit the impact bounced him off the ground, a torrent of dirt and sod vomiting through the ports on top of him.

  It had taken minutes for that first machine-gun burst to escalate into a mortar duel, but even more swiftly it was over.

  Scattered rifle shots, and finally nothing, not even echoes. There was nothing left to shoot at.

  “I think I’m bleeding.” Harry felt it on his face, tasted it in his mouth. You’re fine you’re fine if it was bad you’d be hurting you’re fine but not once, in his gut, did he believe it.

  “Let’s see.” Sisto helped him sit up. He found Coster’s torch, and, sheltering the light with his torso, quickly checked Harry over, then flicked the torch off. “You’re OK, signor. Just a bloody nose. Must’ve been the concussion. Next time, put your arm under your head. It’ll soak up the shock.”

  Ricks was back in the dugout. “Corporal, take my place outside.”

  After Sisto left, Harry helped Ricks replace the sandbags in the observation ports. He took a last look down into the dale. He saw the silhouette of the man who’d fallen in the stream, and farther beyond, in the fen on the other bank, another crumpled shape. That’s them; the krauts, the Germans, The Enemy All that noise, all that fire, and that’s how it ends; those two lumps.

  He slid the sandbag into place and sealed the view away.

  Ricks relit his candle. The dugout had not survived unscathed. Some of the branches serving as beams had buckled, and a square of tarp flapped, its dirt cover bleeding onto the floor. Ricks tucked the tarp back into place.

  Woody Kneece sulked in one comer. “I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “I don’t want to hear a fucking thing from you!” Ricks seethed. “In fact, you open your goddamned mouth just once and I’ll fucking shoot you myself.” And Harry never once thought — then and forever — that Peter Ricks didn’t mean every word he said.

  A moan, a stirring from the other end of the dugout: Coster.

  “OK, Major, you wanted to talk to this guy?” Ricks shook a splash of water from his canteen onto the flyer’s face, then another until Coster’s eyelids began to flutter. “There you go, Major. Talk to him. I just hope whatever you get is worth it.”

  Coster’s eyes lapsed into their frightened, darting mode. “Was it a dream, did I have a dream? They came at us, didn’t they? They hit us, didn’t th-they? Didn’t they?”

  “Just a probe,” Ricks said.

  Coster’s fear immediately turned to rage. “A probe? Fuck that! They come crawling up here like ants at ni-night, e-every night! Those aren’t no fuckin’ probes!”

  The flyer was a stewpot of emotions, each bubbling up violently, almost instantly replaced by another. How would he deal with the boy without using a whip a
nd chair, Harry wondered. “Coster.”

  “You were here before, weren’t you? All you guys? Where’s my gu-gun? Did you see my gun? I had a gu-gu-gun, did one of you fuckers steal my fuckin’ gun?”

  “Coster!”

  The sharp snap of Harry’s voice silenced Coster immediately He squinted about him in the flickering candlelight. “Who are you guys?”

  “I’m Major Harold Voss, Judge Advocate. That’s Captain Derwood Kneece, Criminal Investigation Corps.”

  Coster slumped, as if inwardly collapsing. “Oh, Jesus. You’re here about the c-crash, you’re here about the plane the plane the crash — Who’re you?” He peered suspiciously up at Peter Ricks.

  “Never mind me. Worry about them.” Ricks pointed to Harry and Kneece.

  “Nonononono.” Coster was staring at Peter Ricks. “You’re the one to watch the scary one y-y-you —” Coster began to sob. “I kn-kn-knew it always always knew it from the top the start from the b-b-beginning, I used to t-tell him, ‘How long?’ I used to say, ‘H-how long do you think this is gonna g-go on? S-s-sooner or later,’ I s-said, ‘s-s-sooner or later —’”

  “Who did you tell?”

  “M-Mac, M-M-Mac, who else do you tell?”

  “McKesson?” Kneece asked. “The pilot who commanded your transport?”

  Costers eyes closed tightly battling a memory. “Oh, Jesus J-Jesus M-Mac.” Then the tears were gone, the anger back on all burners. “I t-told him! I s-said, ‘Asshole! Asshole! Sooner or l-later.’” The voice turned small and plaintive. “Are you guys gonna get me outta here? Please? Gonna t-take me outta here?”

  Ricks sat on his helmet and rubbed wearily at the scabs around his eye. “I’m getting a headache from this jerk.”

  “What do they call you?” Harry said soothingly. “Andy? All right, Andy, try to listen to what I say, OK? Concentrate? Let’s go through this very slowly, one piece of it at a time. We know about the X-ray flights, OK?”

  “Oh G-God they know! You sonofabitch! You didn’t give a shit! He didn’t care, M-Mac didn’t care, he needed a copilot is all he c-cared about —”

  “Coster, do you remember me socking you?” Ricks cut in impatiently. “If you don’t get hold of yourself I’m going to lay you out again. Now: Forget the footnotes and just answer what this man asks you.”

  “Andy,” Harry said. “How did you get involved? Who brought you into this?”

  Coster’s lips trembled, the tears welled up again, the momentary control evaporated, but then a threatening look from Ricks shored him up. “OK,” he said, taking a shaky breath, “OKOKOK.” Another breath. “We were in flight school, flight school —”

  “You and McKesson?”

  “— kinda b-buddies even though Mac was an instructor, OK? An instructor this is in Oklahohoma, flight instructor, then he’s off somewhere, he gets transferred off somewhere, I dunno dunno wh-where, and I’m b-bakin’ my ass down in T-Texas —”

  “How did he bring you in?”

  Coster seemed astonished that Harry didn’t know the obvious answer: “He asked me.”

  “Asked you.”

  “He c-came to me.”

  “When was this?” Kneece asked.

  “L-last year, early f-f-forty-two, Mac shows up in T-Texas, says he’s on leave, wants to talk to me about this thing this th-thing, this job do I want in, c-clean, he says, it’s clean, n-no worries. No worries. Look at me! Look at this shit! N-no worries? You know why I’m here why they put m-me here oh Christ…”

  “Hey!” It was Sisto in the entryway. “They can hear you guys in fuckin’ Naples. They won’t need no recon to find us next time.”

  “What did McKesson tell you?” Harry asked Coster. “What did he say about what you’d be doing?”

  “We were gonna be flying some stuff, ‘goods,’ ‘the goods’ Mac called ’em, goods to England, under the c-counter. He didn’t say what, some stuff, some goods for some people is all he says to me, I f-f-figure it’s b-black m-m-market or something, I guess, I dunno, what else could it b-be, right? He s-says, look, he says, you get your legit flight pay, nobody’s gonna call you up for combat action, on top of that under the c-counter you get a hunnerd b-bucks, a hunnerd bucks every time you make the trip.” He saw Ricks lighting up a cigarette. “C-can I have one of those?”

  “No.”

  “Who brought McKesson in?”

  “S-s-somebody brought him in, how else how else do you —”

  “Who?”

  But Coster suddenly went still, now wanting to hoard what he knew.

  “Who brought McKesson in?” Harry pressed.

  “Look, before I go givin’ up names —”

  “We already know,” Harry said. “But I want to hear you tell the story”

  Coster squinted warily, then turned smug. “You d-don’t know sh-sh —”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Edghill,” Kneece pronounced, “handled the American side out of his office in Washington.”

  Coster’s smugness turned to alarm. “If you know Edghill, you don’t need m-me —”

  “We want to hear it from you, Andy,” Harry said. “Tell me.”

  “Awright, fine yeahyeahyeah, Edghill, this guy, this colonel, Edghill’s the big shot, some D.C. big shot —”

  “How did Edghill get to McKesson?”

  “‘G-get’? He didn’t ‘g-g-get’ to him, they’re buddies, all the way from school, all real hoity-t-toity up in Harvard together, b-before the war they’re up in Harvard these two b-brainy guys, Mac tells me the story, they’re real whizzes these two, he says they s-see the war’s comin’, no way ’round it, we’re gonna g-g-get dragged into this mess so let’s g-go in the service early, get the jump, get to p-p-pick their spots, everybody’s gonna wind up in, Roosevelt’s gonna drag everyb-b-body in, but who wants to get killed just ’cause Roosevelt’s got a thing for the limeys? Fuck ’em, f-f-fuck ’em it’s their war —”

  “So they both go into the service,” Harry cut in. “Then sometime later, after the war starts, Edghill gets McKesson to make these X-ray flights.”

  “I d-don’t know when they started, but ye-yeah, I g-guess like that —”

  “And then McKesson brought you in. How many X-ray crews are there?”

  “I’m n-n-not sure, I dunno, I never met any of ’em, not ’til I got flown over here oh Christ hereherehere —”

  “The crews, Andy,” Harry said.

  “I’d hear things s-sometimes make me think us and one other crew, sometimes I think maybe two, three altogether rotating, I g-guess.”

  “And the crews were all brought in the same way? Somebody knew somebody?”

  “I dunno, I didn’t know anything about the other crews, just ours. Marquez, he was somebody Mac rem-membered from somewhere he was stationed, we needed a radioman so he got Marquez, we needed a flight engineer he doesn’t know anyb-body he asks me m-me he asks, somebody you can trust, Andy, who c-can k-keep his mouth shut, this guy I knew from Texas…” The name stalled on his lips.

  “Sergeant Bell,” Harry said.

  Coster’s face squeezed painfully closed, his fists thrown up to his eyes. “Did you see him? All b-b-burned up like th-that? How do you live like that, all —”

  “You don’t,” Kneece said. “He’s dead.”

  The flyer went rigid. He wanted to doubt; couldn’t.

  “The doctors wanted Bell to stay in Greenland until he was well enough to travel,” Harry said.

  “But your friend Edghill wouldn’t wait,” Kneece said.

  “They brought him back to the States on the next X-ray return flight and he died.”

  Coster fell back against the muddy wall of the dugout, wailing. “Oh, God, oh God, G-God! I brought him in I brought him in!” He sat bolt upright. “That fuck McKesson!” Then, just as upset over McKesson as Bell: “Did you see M-Mac, poor p-poor Mac, like you step on a bug can’t even tell what it is anymore.”

  “Andy, Edghill managed the U.S. side of the X-ray flights. How did it work on the
other side?”

  “It was a timing thing, always g-gotta be there a certain t-time, after d-dark, come in just about on the d-deck, Mac, Mac, he used to scare the c-crap outta me he’d take it soooo d-down I thought we’d end up in the drink is how it was” — anger — “how he did stuff, always pushin’ a limit, that’s how he got ’em all how Marquez and Bell —”

  “Andy! The English side. You’d fly into the Orkneys, there was a field set up for you. Then what?”

  “— I t-told him let’s just w-w-wait the w-weather out but Mac l-laughs, he says, ‘My ass sticks to the t-toilet seat here it’s s-s-so c-cold,’ he says, real smartass, always with the wise remarks, ‘I st-stick to the toilet seat, I’m not stayin’ here no longer than I have to’ and we go and he pushes it —”

  “Coster!” This time, Kneece cracking the whip. “How did it work when you came down in the Orkneys?”

  “I d-dunno who any of ’em were, we got t-told when to come d-d-down and wh-where but nothin’ about who, so we come in and there’d be these limeys to unload the plane, I d-dunno where the stuff, the ‘goods’ went from there, these limeys, all in civvies — You’re sure’ b-bout B-Bell, ’bout him bein’ d-dead?”

  Harry nodded. “After the crash in Greenland, an Army officer came down from Godthåb to talk to you: Lieutenant Grassi.”

  A new emotion for Coster: annoyance. “Little pain in the ass.”

  “That’s him,” Ricks commented.

  “I figure, I think he m-musta seen what was l-left of the c-cargo,” Coster said, “figured somethin’ out, he was always in my ear.”

  “Definitely Armando,” Ricks muttered.

  “I d-didn’t say anything to him, I say anything I kn-know it’s over f-for me, no more g-gravy train gravy train!” Fearful eyes ran round the dugout. “This is where the train stops, guy, this this th-this!”

  “What happened with Grassi?” Harry pressed. “How did he wind up on that plane with you?”

  “It wasn’t my fault!”

  “Coster!” Ricks put a finger to his lips.

  “He tells me, this Grassi, he says he’s with JAG —”

  “Slight exaggeration,” Kneece said.

  “— and he’s always on me, even in the hospital, in my ear, what’s goin’ on, what’s all this stuff, who’s involved, what’s goin’ on, who’s involved, over and over —”