Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

“You know, Harry–boy,” I heard Ryan say, “I look at the way you’re taking all this…You mind if I offer you a last word of advice? Something that I think’ll help you live with whatever it is you managed to find to make you so miserable all the time?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Prunes, Harry. A nice bowl of ‘em in the morning, a good movement by afternoon, and the world will seem a brighter place.”

  “Prunes?”

  “It works for me!”

  *

  “There’s something wrong with the way this always works out with me back here in the toilet.” Ricks’ moaning was not based solely on his once more being squeezed into the jeep’s cramped rear seat with our collective luggage. A large pothole had jounced him about and nearly impaled one of his kidneys on Harry’s book bag. He massaged at the tender spot low on his back. “Right about now I really miss that palace.” I heard him re–settle in his seat, the rustle of paper. “Hmm. Maybe it’s the rationing…”

  “Eh?” I was absently watching the thick curtain of firs slip by alongside the narrow road, remembering the haggard little carriage house now miles behind us.

  “Back home,” Ricks said. “Everything’s about food. Says here that Bosco has more iron – ”

  “Bosco?”

  “It’s a chocolate syrup. Cocoa.”

  “Ah.”

  “Says Bosco has more iron than raisins and spinach.”

  “Really?”

  “So it says.”

  “Hm. If that’s so, imagine the nutritive properties of a plate of boiled spinach boasting a light adornment of sultanas – ”

  “Sul–what?”

  “ – raisins, you colonial prole – and dressed in a heavy glaze of this Bosco. Wouldn’t that be a healthy dish!”

  “Hm. Now imagine me throwing up.” Another rustle of pages. “See? This is what I’m talking about! Here’s this thing about Knox Gelatine. ‘Knox Gelatine Fights Fatigue!’ Says nine out of ten men and women in a 28–day test reported reduced – ”

  “Pardon, but might I ask what in bloody hell are you reading?” I turned half–about in my seat to find the captain buried behind the open pages of a yellowed newspaper.

  “One of those Signal Corps joes back at the chateau gave it to me. It was a newspaper from his home. It’s three weeks old. The entertainment possibilities at the lady’s estate being what they were, he’d read everything down to the masthead.”

  “And your interest in the – what is it? The Newburgh News?”

  “Eddy, after the last couple of weeks being cooped up with nothing but legal texts, I’d read the writing on Harry’s can of tooth powder just to break up the routine.” A pause. “You know, I don’t see your column in here.”

  “It doesn’t make the smaller American papers,” I pronounced haughtily.

  “This even has The Gumps, but nope, no Eddy Owen.”

  “Well, I can see where the journalistic efforts of Edward Owen should, naturally, take second place to a Gump, whatever that is – ”

  “When I was in England, I don’t even remember hearing people talk about your pieces. I’m starting to think you’re not really a reporter. You just say that so you can get into the American mess.”

  “Ah, yes, American Army cuisine! What lie wouldn’t I tell to partake of those fine delicacies from across The Pond! Powdered eggs!” I smacked my lips.

  “Knox Gelatine.”

  “Bosco!” And thusly we passed the monotony of the drive, the banter only interrupted as we passed through a small crossroad and I caught notice of the road sign. “Um, Harry; where are we going? I believe you’ve gone by your turn.”

  He’d sat behind the wheel, keeping his own company as they say since we’d left the chateau, giving up nothing more than a grunt or shrug in response to a jape or comment. Even now, as I called his attention to the error, he seemed distracted, unhearing. I picked up the map I’d seen him fiddling with before we left, traced a fingertip along the route we’d been following.

  “Yes, here, I was right! That sign back there! It was for the A26 to Liege.”

  He made no indication that he’d heard me or that he was considering turning about.

  “Harry?” Ricks called from the rear. Then, with more concern: “Harry!”

  “Harry, old boy,” I tried, “Why have we gone past the A26 to Liege?”

  “You’re sure that was the A26 to Liege?”

  “Quite sure, yes.”

  A shrug. “Because we’re not going to Liege.”

  I exchanged a curious glance with Ricks.

  “Why are we not going to Liege?” I asked.

  No response.

  “Where are we going?” Ricks asked.

  “Do you have something to do in Liege?” Harry said curtly. “Is there something there waiting for you I don’t know about? Either of you? I didn’t think so. So just sit back and relax and enjoy the ride.”

  Ricks leaned forward. “And if some MPs stop us and want to know why we’re not where our trip ticket says we’re supposed to be?”

  “We’ll tell them the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “I missed my turn.”

  I studied the soft, round orbs of Harry’s face for some clue as to what was about. His eyes were intent on something; some item, some idea, some place that sat beyond where the pitted road wound past the wooded hillocks and over the horizon. But what specifically was driving him – or drawing him – I could not discern.

  For a long few moments we listened to the putter of the jeep’s engine, the tires bouncing this way and that, the flutter of the canvas roof.

  “So,” I said, finally breaking the silence and turning back to Ricks, “You there! Strange creature from the wilds of America! Tell me more of these Gumps and Bosco!”

  *

  A village passed, then another, and another crossroads. We crossed the Meuse and the shadows of the east country forests fell behind. The country opened up in snow–covered pasture and fallow fields neatly hemmed with fences of field stone. Some of it was unmarked and timeless: stone barns and snug farmhouses, the small splash of a picturesque village huddled close to the road. But in other places, the war had left its mark. A column of burned–out vehicles pushed clear of the road, jumbled into a roadside ditch; out in the fields, the blackened hulk of a tank, mired in the frozen mud, it’s gun angled askew; a village now nothing more than a pile of rubble with a few solitary fire–scored walls standing death watch over empty streets. And more than once, Harry had to hug the jeep to one side to make way for military columns: a company of tanks, a lorry train toting fresh troops, cargo–laden lorries marked with the bright orb of the “Redball Express” rocketing toward the front.

  Harry seemed blind to my taking another study of the map. We were heading generally northwest. I turned about to Peter Ricks. Whether he’d already guessed, or suffered his realization at that same point as I, I couldn’t be sure. But at that moment when our eyes met, I could see that we both knew where Harry was taking us. We both wanted to raise objection…and both kept silent for we knew it would be useless.

  *

  You will not find Helsvagen on any map today, and before the war only on the most detailed surveys. The small village had stood astride the intersection of two sclerotic roads, one of which wound its way some twenty–odd kilometers northeast to Ghent, the other southeast to Brussels. The small huddle of buildings clustered about the fountain–adorned square had stood for centuries, untouched and ignored by the rise and fall of the empires which oft contained it. It had stood on land once called French, then Dutch, and even through some bizarre arrangement of pacts and treaties even fell under the Spanish crown at one point. For more than a millennium it had witnessed the traverse and retreat of armies whose concerns were too great to bother with the farmers and shopkeeps of Helsvagen; the armor–clad Crusaders off to fight the pagans in the Holy Land, Napoleon’s columns en route to Waterloo, the caissons of the Kaiser to bring Germany her “
place in the sun.” But to generation after generation of the people of Helsvagen, war – in any year, by any name, for any cause – had always been a distant and rarely heard rumble beyond the horizon; an irrelevancy.

  In August of 1943 I had become introduced to Harry Voss as he investigated the affair of several American fighter pilots he suspected of having attacked the village. Whether it was a case of an authorized attack on the German fuel depot sitting just a few hundred yards southwest of the village gone awry, or by some twisted intent he would never learn. All he would know is that aerial reconnaissance photographs showed the village to be burning from one end to the other. The incident promised to provide the Americans with any host of embarrassments, from which they were saved by the deaths in action of the pilots. Consequently, Harry’s investigation was terminated, his reports buried, and the incident remained formally unacknowledged – officially, it never happened.

  Harry pulled the jeep off the road where it joined the routes to Ghent and Brussels. From a distance, the site might have been taken as nothing more suspect than a snow–covered stony field. But as one drew closer, one could peep through the gaps in the white blanket and see that the innocent mounds were all that were left of houses and shops, walk–ups and places of business. It was all pounded flat, much flatter than anything we had passed, as if ground under some great weight; milled to gravel by the machinery of war.

  The site was transected by the Ghent and Brussels roads, each ploughed clear by engineers, and by the intersection sat a large tent marked by a crude, hand–painted sign as a Military Police station, the MPs presumably detailed to insure ease of passage through the crossroads. While their mates huddled inside round a petrol–fueled heater, two MPs watched over the crossroads holding their gloved hands over a fire burning in an open–ended 55–gallon drum. They looked suspiciously over toward the jeep. They seemed to exchange a few words before one began walking in our direction.

  “And that,” Peter Ricks pronounced, “is exactly what I was afraid of.”

  I looked to Harry. His gaze was directed out the windscreen, but he was looking past the oncoming MP; through him. The field of rubble filled him with something dark and heavy, a great, low ache. His lips parted and I almost expected him to moan. He clambered out of the jeep, his movements stiff and awkward, as if only a part of his mind was available for command and control. The MP turned toward him, calling to him, but Harry did not seem to hear. Ricks and I scrambled to follow. The captain hurried up to the MP to draw his attention while I followed after Harry.

  He walked on past the second MP who watched the dazed stranger pass by with curiosity, then past the tent and then stumbled over the snow–covered mounds – fallen walls, smashed furniture – on out into the field. He stepped up onto one of the larger mounds. I stepped up alongside.

  The land was level from horizon to horizon and at that moment the roads were oddly empty of traffic. Wind blew across the open ground, stirred up the snow among the ruins, and passed on. We both shivered. Just beyond what had been the southwest edge of the village were the remains of the German fuel depot: the petrol storage tanks collapsed like deflated balloons, the plank buildings reduced to piles of splintered and charred wood.

  I heard what, for me, was the familiar skitter of small, clawed feet over the stones. Harry looked down and the pain in his eyes seemed to grow even more acute at the heavily interlaced strands of small paw prints in the snow from what must have been an army of rats prowling about the carcass of the village. Harry turned about giving himself one, slow, full, panorama of the entire scene. Then, as if he’d had his fill and could stand no more, stepped down with wobbly legs. I offered him a cigarette. He found an upright door frame, comically intact, like some stage prop. Carefully, he leaned against it until he was sure it would support his weight. I lighted his cigarette and one for myself.

  He studied my face. “You never came?”

  I shook my head.

  “Weren’t you ever curious?”

  “I’ve seen graves enough, Harry.”

  He looked about his feet, found a small stone, picked it up, and tossed it – though not carelessly – out among the snow–covered debris. “A friend of mine back home… He’s Jewish. He says they have a tradition: you put a stone on a grave to honor the dead.”

  “Why are we here, Harry?”

  “There must be something written down somewhere… They have to account for this.”

  “There is a story, aye. A record. Aye, Harry, I did go as far as that. In the summer – you remember? – the Germans were collapsing so completely our spearheads could barely keep up with their retreat. The German First Army under Student was withdrawing on a northeast axis, disintegrating along the way. With this open country, the Hun was hard put to find any good place to make a defensive stand. The British 2nd Army under Dempsey was in pursuit. Dempsey had Horrocks’ XXX Corps in the lead trying to keep up with the Hun. On September 1st, Horrocks lads became the first Allied force to cross the Belgian frontier. Some time about the middle of the day, the spearhead – the Guards Armoured Division – caught up with a rear guard the Germans had patched together to try to deny the British the crossroads. There was a brief fight, the Germans showed a little too much spirit for the Guards’ taste, so they pulled back, set up their artillery, called in air support, and within two hours there wasn’t much left.”

  He nodded. Absently, he tried the door in the frame. It was locked. We both grinned blackly.

  “The people,” Harry said. “They never came back.”

  “To what?”

  “I remember laying their pictures out on my desk. The pilots. I went over their records. I must’ve read them a dozen times. And I kept looking at those pictures…”

  “For a reason.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because they all looked like such nice boys.”

  “They were all nice boys,” he said with a sad anger. “Dominick Sisto was a nice boy. Peter Ricks was a nice boy. They’d all still be nice boys if they’d stayed home.” He looked out over the stones beneath their white shroud. “It changes them…” Something seemed to trip inside him. “It changes them…” No longer a comment. Something was a–whir inside, crystallizing. “And once you believe they’re capable…” His cigarette slid from his fingers and died in the snow with a small hiss. He was moving back toward the jeep, first in that awkward way, but then quickly, with purpose.

  “Harry? Harry! Where are you going!”

  I caught up to him at the jeep where he was unfolding the map across the vehicle’s bonnet.

  Peter Ricks was returning from his long exchange with the MP. “Well, I’ve got them calmed – ”

  “Pete!” Harry pulled a folded message form from inside his windcheater. I recognized the message Joe Ryan had passed him back at the chateau; the one from Andy Thom. Harry thrust it at Ricks. “Do you know where this is? Do you think you could find it on the map?”

  Ricks shook his head a bit stunned by Harry’s assault. He tried to focus on the message form. “Hm? I, uh, well, you know it won’t be marked on – ”

  Harry jabbed a finger at the MP tent. “They’d probably know where it is!”

  Ricks looked unhappily from the tent back to Harry. “Aw, Christ, Harry! I just told those jokers a week’s worth of lies about why we’re not – ” He protestations faded under Harry’s adamantine glare. “Ok, fine.” He looked back to the message form. “Now where is it we’re going?”

  Harry briefly instructed Ricks who trotted back to the Military Police. I tried to decrypt the confluence of emotions passing across Harry’s tortured face.

  “Harry, can you tell me what game is afoot?”

  His head cocked, his shoulders moved; unsure. “Do you remember before you came to me about Kasabian? You said there was something going around and around in your head? That’s what tipped you to him?”

  “Aye. And you said as much yourself as I recall. That there was something – ”

 
; “Yeah, something. But after you figured out it was Kasabian…” He looked up, taking in the razed village, squinting against the painful coldness of the wind. “That was your answer. I still haven’t found mine.”

  GOLIATH

  THE SMALLER OF THE TWO NEGRO SOLDIERS was a 20–year–old from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania named Oliver Wardell Valence. He was so slight of stature his mates guessed he must have barely made the Army’s minimum qualifications for height and weight. His wiry frame had earned him the affectionately descriptive moniker, “Spider.”

  Isaiah Wright, conversely, could easily fill a doorway, and the 23–year–old Alabaman was simply – and with great respect – referred to as, “Big Man.”

  Private First Class Spider Valence and Private First Class Big Man Wright were members of the all–Negro 1022nd Ordnance Heavy Field Army Maintenance Company. They were one of several teams recently sent into the field from their base of operations in Luxembourg City to service the armor of the 707th Tank Battalion which was supporting units of the 28th Infantry Division at its positions along the Our River. The particular assignment of Valence and Wright was the light scout tanks assigned to a battalion of the 212th Regiment which was still operating as part of the Keystone division. The battalion – the regiment’s 3rd Battalion, in point of fact – had been attached to the Keystone’s 110th Regiment. Like the rest of the Division, the 3rd/112th was spread thin; two of its rifle companies barely covered a large gap in the division’s defensive line between the northernmost units of the Keystone’s 110th, and the southern wing of its 112th Regiment, with the remainder of the battalion held in reserve at the 110th’s headquarters in Clervaux.

  Love Company of the 3rd/112th was operating in an area that most local maps referred to as Les Trois Villes. The name was inaccurate in more than one sense. First, those maps so inscribed indicated a single municipality when, in fact, it was local argot for three separate sites – although the locals often thought of them collectively – within a kilometer of each other along the banks of the Our below the town of Heinerscheid sitting a kilometer and a half to the west. In the second inaccuracy, even the largest of them – with its barely a hundred residents – hardly qualified as a village.