Somewhere in the Stars

by Frank Polizzi

  When the festivities were over, Colonel Jones positioned his squadron near the Kalsa section of Palermo, the old Arab quarter that fronted onto the harbor. Nathan’s crew began routine maintenance on their tank while waiting for orders. As they were working, a long ragged line of Italian soldiers was being marched over to a prisoner’s compound outside the city limits. Nick handed a wrench to his cousin and watched them go by along the road. All four of them had stopped what they were doing till the POWs passed. In disheveled and dusty uniforms, they dragged themselves along in uneven lines surrounded by armed guards. Nick thought many of the Italian soldiers seemed relieved and some even smiling. He was tempted to go over to speak with some of them but then he remembered the flaming Italian tank near Gela beach. Nathan handed out some cigarettes but Nick held back with the crew.

  Sergeant Ackers came up from behind the crew and yelled: “Stop your gawking and get working on that tank.” They all turned towards the sergeant who moved sharply to the next tank and managed to smash into Nathan’s shoulder with his massive biceps, knocking him off balance. Paul picked up Nathan and Nick got into the sergeant’s face. “What the hell to do you think you’re doing?”

  “Mind your business, corporal,” the sergeant barked, while towering over Nick, his chest pumped out. “Your friend can’t even stand straight.”

  Nathan ran towards the sergeant and halted when he heard the colonel yell from a distance, “Don’t move, Sergeant Fein!” The colonel strode over to Ackers with Captain Monroe right behind him, as a bunch of tankers circled around. All the soldiers stood at attention and saluted but the colonel didn’t return the salute, bellowing, “At ease!” He glared at Ackers for a moment, and then turned to the group. “Okay, the troops need a little entertainment tonight, so you guys are going to settle this once and for all. A boxing match between Sergeant Fein and Sergeant First Class Ackers.”

  “It’s my fight, colonel,” Nick volunteered.

  “Wait a minute. This is between the sergeant and me,” Nathan protested. “I’m the one that hit the ground.”

  “Captain Monroe, you settle this. I have to see to the rest of my rounds with the troops.” The colonel moved through the parting crowd.

  “It’s you two,” as the captain pointed to Nathan and Ackers. “The Colonel has to meet with General Patton this evening at the Palazzo Normanni. I’ll referee this fight to make sure it stays clean.” The captain checked his watch. “Nineteen hundred oh fifteen, right in this spot.”

  The troops dispersed to their tents and Nick and Nathan sat on the fender of the tank, while Paul and Al crouched under its shade and had a smoke. “Why didn’t you let me handle Ackers, Nate?”

  “Remember what happened in Lincoln Park?”

  “Yeah.” Nick laughed.

  “What’s goin’ on up there, guys?” Paul stood up, squinting his eyes from the sun. “You’re pissin’ me off. Like you two are speakin’ another language or somethin’.” I was there too. Maybe youse guys got a case of amnesia?”

  They jumped off and dragged Paul to the ground in a playful manner, then let him go. The three of them told their versions of the story to a wide-eyed Al, exaggerating the details and interrupting each other at will.

  In the evening the whole squadron turned out, waiting for the captain’s arrival. Some of the soldiers were mock fighting, while others made jokes about each other. The bulk of them were placing bets with the company bookie and his two partners, who reminded Nick of the Three Stooges, except these mugs were real operators who always had plenty of dough to lend. Large groups of GIs gathered around, even ones from other companies, playing the odds in a frenzy. As soon as the officers showed up, the troopers calmed down. Nick managed to place the last bet for their crew without the captain seeing him, knowing that he disapproved of gambling.

  “Listen up, gents,” the captain shouted, while a lieutenant gave a shrill whistle. “Our boxers are here now, so let’s form a circle. But give them plenty of room.”

  Sergeant Ackers broke through the crowd, barechested to show off his massive pectoral muscles, a gut exposed over his shorts. Nathan wore a tight, once white undershirt, which outlined his wiry frame and loose fitting fatigue pants. They approached the captain who handed them the gloves. “A clean fight and you break the second I tell you. We’re following the Queensberry rules for 12 rounds. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” the two fighters said in unison.

  The first six rounds were a standoff with neither opponent attaining an advantage over the other in points scored. After the midway point, Sergeant Ackers used the same techniques as before, but the blows had a more damaging effect on Nathan’s face and torso, which panicked Nick as he tried to stop the blood from flowing when Nathan hobbled to his corner. It looked like a TKO might be declared in Acker’s favor.

  During a minute break into the tenth round, the captain went over to the sergeant and whispered into his ear: “If you don’t take out whatever you have in your left glove, not only will I disqualify you, you’ll never make Master Sergeant.”

  “Something’s not kosher,” Nick said in Nathan’s ear. “Stay focused and show that sonofabitch.”

  “Cover that puffed eye and get that testa di merda,” Paul advised, as Al jabbed the air with his fists several times.

  The captain signaled for the next round. Nathan’s agility and adrenalin came back like a sudden crack of lightning and he overwhelmed Sergeant Ackers, who was knocked down as the gong sounded the end of the eleventh. The 12th round Ackers went on the defensive and dropped his guard for a split second, enabling Nathan to knock him flat out on the ground. Ackers sat up, shaking his head and the captain declared Nathan the winner. The crowd roared while Nick, Paul and Al ran over to Nathan. The foursome jumped up and down, linked arms and strutted back towards their tank. Later, hot showers were set up for the squadron and Nathan and his crew were ushered to the front of the line.

  By noon the next day, they had completed their maintenance checklist, so Nick and Paul decided to explore the Kalsa neighborhood. They came upon abandoned, baronial palazzi in a maze of narrow streets reminiscent of a medieval medina. They lost themselves for a while, then followed the smell of Arab-Sicilian cooking that came from a tiny kiosk with a twisted corrugated roof. A woman with a wrinkled face and a desperate look coaxed the American GIs into buying fish couscous, redolent with spices. They sat on the dusty ground to avoid the streaming sun and picked the bones clean. Paul purchased a half dozen blood oranges from her and stuffed them into his shirt.

  As they continued deeper into the neighborhood, what had been a glancing view during the parade became a stark reality for Nick—cratered out buildings multiplied, some houses crumbling down in the heat and dust. The rescue workers were pulling out corpses from previous bombings. Nick got teary-eyed when he saw a tiny shrouded body being placed on an open truck, a family wailing as they followed the body in a procession as the vehicle inched its way through the rubble. Paul shook his head in disgust. Nick figured some children had missed the evacuation, their families too poor and illiterate to escape the city. They had died hiding in buildings that collapsed. He agonized over how many more paesani disgraziati perished and recognized that, if he wanted to get through this with any sanity left, he would have to shelve these thoughts in the back of his memory stacks.

  On their way out, they became disoriented by the maze-like alleys and streets, the sun searing their brows, the sweat breaking through the back of their shirts.

  “I feel dizzy, Paul. Let’s stop awhile.”

  “You look pale as a ghost. Sit over here in the doorway. There’s some shade.” Nick plopped down and Paul slid next to him. He took out an orange and cut it half with his pocketknife. “Here, suck the juice out.” When Nick finished, he gave him the second half. “Maybe the Sicilian sun’s gettin’ to you, Nick.”

  “You’re right.” Nick took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

  “Hope I wasn’t a jerk for puttin’
pressure on you to team up with me.”

  “I wanted to spring Papà, so I figured I’d volunteer for this.”

  “I was goin’ anyways, with or without you. I came here to kill the enemy, all of them. That’s what we trained for. Your problem is you think too much. I ain’t gonna lose any sleep over this. Just want to get the job over, so we can get the hell out of here in one piece. I’ll tell you another thing cuginu, when we go back home, we will be 100% bonafide Americans.” Paul stood up. “Grab my arm and I’ll pull you up.” Nick worked his way up and wiped his brow again. “I got one question for you.” Paul looked down the street.

  “Chi?”

  “Why else did you agree to come here?”

  “I wanted to stick with you guys. Figured maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. A pipe dream of mine that the Italians would say minchia, we had enough of this Mussolini merda. They’d side with us before we landed on the first beach.”

  “Like I’ve said before. You think too much. Remember cuginu—we always played on the same baseball team.” Paul smiled and tapped Nick’s cheek.

  Nick and Paul eyed each other that it was time to go and they stumbled over crushed building stones, somehow finding the way back through the portal gate of Kalsa that led to their tank. Paul delighted in Nathan’s just finished artwork—a painting of a Fiat 3000 tank and two Panther tanks on the driver’s side of the steel armored turret. Nick had recognized Nathan’s talent right away but had nothing to say this time, the silence broken by a dog yelping as its skeletal frame foraged through the rubble. It straggled over to them but kept a safe distance. Paul took a blood orange out of his shirt and threw it near the gate. The dog dragged itself to the fruit, clamped it into his mouth and moved furtively through the gate. Nick and Paul recounted what they had seen to Nathan and Al, who smoked cigarettes in silence. After crushing the butts into the pavement, they hopped onto the tank and sat around the edge of the rear engine, facing the Mediterranean. As dusk approached and the sea darkened, Nick’s buddies had already found other things to do but he remained on top.

  Nick felt as if he were soldered to the steel, mulling over the bodies he had seen being dragged out of the razed homes. But his crew was lucky they weren’t dead like all those young GIs on the beach, who would be buried here, never to go back home to their families and his thoughts then segued to the dead Italians from their first tank kill. Who were those men? Where did they come from? The north or south of Italy? And what about their parents, wives, children? Yes, he was only killing fascists but Nick would never know if they were real fasciste or just young men drafted to fight Mussolini’s war.

  It was not that Nick wasn’t grateful they survived their first amphibious assault, but as he sat at the edge of his ancient, ancestral island, he knew, è veru, it was just the beginning of their odyssey, but this wasn’t going to be a mythological journey. There was no mistaking that he got to Palermo in a tank and not on a passenger liner. If he could ever get himself to return someday, maybe he would see things differently, talk himself out of all the things he had seen, all the things he had done. It already felt years since Nick left home, the voyage murky and unfathomable ahead.

  He didn’t want to turn in for the night because he sensed a nightmare was coming on and he didn’t want to embarrass himself near his buddies. He conjured up the Laestroygonians, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, Cyclops and Circe, monsters that the Jesuits filled his head with, the whole damn bunch of them ganging up on him tonight, but he was not as wily and strong as Odysseus who had a wife waiting for his return. Nick went down to the sea and crawled into his sleeping bag, close enough to hear the surf. He would either meet these demons head on near their natural habitat or be swallowed up by a titan wave. Think of all the stories that would be spun about the missing Nick, lost somewhere in the Mediterraneo.

  VIII

  After intense combat in the northwest corner of Sicily, the Allies liberated the island. Lieutenant General Clark led the new Fifth Army in an amphibious invasion of mainland Salerno, codenamed Operation Avalanche, on September 9th, 1943. An Italian armistice had been declared the day before the landing. Colonel Jones’ tank destroyer squadron had been reassigned to participate in this mission. While the British forces invaded the Salerno beaches, the American troops hit the shores of Paestum.

  From the deck of a transport, Nick checked his watch and precisely at 0330 the faint light spread in the sky, revealing the outline of Mount Soprano that loomed in the background. At that moment a division of infantrymen charged onto the shore, not far from the ruins of Greek temples, a counterpoint to the looming mountain.

  Nick’s crewmates gathered around him to observe what they would soon be up against as the visibility improved.

  “They’re clobbering those infantrymen with everything they got—88mm shells, mortars, you name it,” Nick announced.

  “They’re taking all this heat for us, so we can drive onto the beach,” Nathan commented.

  Paul extended his neck. “Those dirty, sneakin’ krauts! Why don’t they show their faces?”

  “Oh my God, our guys are being picked off in the water.” Al pointed. “Nazi machine gunners there! In those towers.”

  “Madonna, the bodies are piling up before they even reach the sand,” Nick added. “See those flashes. Must be tanks hidden in those buildings.”

  “They’re big cannons all right. What did I tell ya, they’re sneakin’ bastards,” Paul interjected.

  “Luftwaffe! Over there! They’re strafing our guys in the water, on the sand. Slaughtering them!” Nathan cried out.

  Even after the defending Germans in the beach area were killed or captured, the U.S. troops still had to contend with the pandemonium of people, vehicles and supplies landing throughout the day. Further inland Nick could hear shots from the foot soldiers fighting off a squadron of Panzer IV tanks. Judging from his map, the Krauts must have been using the ancient Greek fortification walls. Later on, Captain Monroe revealed how the bazookas, 105 howitzers and the big Navy guns had knocked out the German defenses, their remaining Panzers retreating inland.

  By late afternoon of D-Day, two companies of American tanks, the medium size Sherman M4s and the M10 tank destroyers, rolled onto the Paestum beach. Nick placed their tank in a defensive position, waiting for orders to move out. He scrutinized the area, realizing that this was far worse than the Gela beaches of Sicily. His eyes squinted at the dead bodies strewn everywhere in murky water and on the beach. The blood was already changing color in the water and he could hear the unmistakable sounds of German 88mm cannon fire booming in the distance. Nick felt the muscles in his calves tighten at the mere sound of it. He was glad that he didn’t have to drive at that moment. Nathan looked aghast, his eyes welling up at the sight of body parts strung along the beach. He took the canteen from his belt and gulped the water in big mouthfuls.

  Paul and Al turned their heads from the beach scene and busied themselves, Paul checking the operating system of the gun and Al positioning the ammo. Paul’s eyes twitched while he examined the equipment and Al’s hands shook as he moved some of the shells, as the sound of the Acht-achts, a term everyone used for the feared eight-eight shells, were getting closer and closer, pounding every minute. A piss stain spread on Al’s groin area, which caught the eye of Nathan who was checking to see if they were ready for action.

  Within seconds Nathan spilled water from his canteen. “Sorry I got you all wet, Al.” While Al pried the wet pants from his legs, Nathan fumbled with the aluminum flask before managing to attach it to his belt. He screamed over the booming rounds: “Guess we’re all jumpy.”

  The medics were still taking care of countless wounded, while a detail of men removed the bodies or what was left of them for burial. Nick crossed himself and muttered: “Mother of God.” Things were degenerating the further they moved up the boot of Italy and he was anxious about the ensuing combat along this path.

  Over the next ten days the Fifth Army would experience
what was later called some of the fiercest fighting in the war. After a tactical group of tanks assembled on the beach, Nathan’s crew was sent out in advance to scout the position of the Acht-achts. Just before they left, a report came in from the shifting front, describing how an 88mm gun cut a hole through two sides of a Sherman M4 tank and obliterated wide clusters of infantrymen.

  On the second day of the operation, Nick drove their tank destroyer beyond Paestum to find where the Acht-achts were hidden. As they proceeded north up highway 18, Nathan directed Nick to cruise east at a fork on a country road. He had him stop on the side of the road to study his terrain map, when he spotted the telltale, smoke puffs from a battery of Acht-achts camouflaged in a small forest behind Persano.

  Nathan panned the area with his field glasses. “Massive column of Panzer IV tanks heading south,” he shouted. “On auxiliary road from Eboli. Can’t believe it’s General Herr’s 16th Panzers in counterattack.” The field glasses slipped from his fingers, dangling from the neck. “We’re in deep shit, Nick! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  When Nathan came across the first signal corps outpost, an air strike was called in to knock out the 88mm guns in the forest near Persano. By the time Nathan’s crew reached the midpoint of their return, several companies of Sherman M4 tanks passed them up, speeding straight for the Eboli road. Their tank destroyer squadron must have taken another route, so Nathan ordered Nick to turn around and follow the medium tank column. The Panzer IV tanks had already spread across the valley and Sherman M4s met the enemy in a deafening tank battle.

  “Nick, I can see orange flashes,” Nathan called out over the headsets. “We’re going to run behind the M4s parallel to the battle line. So we can reconnoiter before our company gets here.”