Ordinary Heroes

  "I wouldn't mind having use of that tommy gun, Dubin. We don't have anything like that around. It might come in handy and you have my word it will be returned. I'll swap you my MI for a few hours."

  I looked at the submachine gun. I was glad Bidwell wasn't here, so I didn't have to hear the sounds he would make at the idea of giving Martin anything.

  "Will you promise to surrender yourself to me, Major, when we're capable of moving out?"

  Martin laughed. "Oh, Dubin," he said. In the darkness, he looked out to the snow. "Yes, I'll surrender myself. On the condition that you reach OSS personally before turning me over to Teedle."

  We shook on that and I handed him the gun and the one ammo box I had with me.

  "You'll have it back in a few hours," Martin promised before he drove off.

  He was barely out of sight when the sentry outside the barn told me that Algar had gone up to the staging area to go over the maps one last time with Martin and his team. He said that Martin and Algar had set that meeting only half an hour ago when Martin first stopped here. I stood there in the wind. I would never be sharp enough to deal with Martin. I was not even angry at myself. It was simply the nature of things.

  I considered walking back to Hemroulle, but I had a faint hope Algar might return before Martin's team set off. There was a hay locker attached to the barn, a platformed area raised so that the fodder could be tossed in from the back of a cart or truck through an opening outside. The sentry told me troops had slept in there the last two nights. He promised to rouse me as soon as Algar came back.

  Only a little hay remained in the height of winter, but its sweet smell lingered. My predecessors had swept up the remnants and mounded them into a couple of beds and I lay down on one and fell soundly asleep. My dreams seemed rough and desperate, the kind that make you cry out in the night, but I stayed for many hours in that world, rather than this besieged circle in Belgium.

  My name roused me. Hamza Algar, looking weary and nibbling at his mustache, was a few feet below me in the barn. He shoved my tommy gun across the board floor of the hay locker.

  "Martin told his men to make sure this got back to you," he said and turned away. As I crawled out, Algar walked to his desk at the center of the barn. There was daylight visible in the seam between the stone walls and the tin roof of the building. Sitting, Algar rested his face in his hands.

  "How did they do?" I asked Algar.

  He sighed. "Poorly. The Krauts pinned them down and then blasted the shit out of them at first light. The men who made it back came on foot."

  "And Martin?"

  "Gone," Algar said.

  That was the same word Bettjer had used when I'd awoken at the Comtesse's after we blew the dump. I'd known it would happen. I reviewed in my mind what I'd been through--the terror of the jump, the shot, and the enduring indignity of fouling my trousers--only for Martin to have run from me again. Sisyphus came to mind.

  "Any idea where he headed?" I asked.

  I received another fixed uncomprehending look from Algar. So far all our conversations had somehow devolved into a competition in provoking speechlessness. The Lieutenant Colonel sighed deeply again.

  "Well, if there's anything to your arrest order, Captain, he's probably headed to hell. Captain Dubin, you didn't understand me. Bob Martin is dead."

  Chapter 17.

  CHAMPS

  Since December 16, Robert Martin had been in command of units that had been isolated from the 110th Infantry Regiment during its retreat from Skyline Drive in Luxembourg in the early hours of that day. Regrouping here with the remains of the regiment, Martin's two rifle companies and two towed guns from a tank destroyer battalion had been teamed with a platoon of M18 Hellcats. It was these troops Martin had led toward Vaux-lesRosieres, where the ammunition train was marooned. North and west of the town of Monty, they had crossed our lines and encountered thinly manned German positions, which they quickly pushed through.

  Half a mile on, however, they were engaged by the Panzer Lehr, the tank division formed from Nazi training units. Less brazen forces might have fallen back to form a stronger line, as McAuliffe and Algar had anticipated, but the Panzer Lehr prided themselves on backing off from no one and had spread out to take on Martin's team. During the protracted firelight that resulted, Martin and his men moved to the top of a knob, which allowed them to destroy a number of the German tanks. Near daybreak, the Panzer Lehr withdrew. Martin and his unit leaders had gone up to the second floor of a small lodge on the hill to assess whether they still had a chance to reach the ammunition train. From there, they saw what had provoked the Germans' retreat, a battalion of American tanks emerging like specters through the falling snow. Patton had arrived.

  Even when the first rocket came screaming toward Martin from a turret of the approaching armor, no one in his command had caught on that the tanks they saw had been captured by the Nazis from the 9th Armored Division. Never mustering a defense, Martin's unit had been left with only isolated survivors. The Major himself had gone down when the initial tank shell flew in the window at which he stood. At least four other shells hit the building, reducing it to a bonfire.

  All of this was related to me the morning after we jumped into Savy by a boy named Barnes. He was perhaps five foot two, and slight as a butterfly. His nose was dripping the entire time I spoke to him, and he flinched whenever a shell exploded in the distance. For the moment, the fighting seemed to he a couple of miles off, to the north and east.

  "Captain, we was blown to shit, there just ain't no other way to put it. I mean, those was American tanks. How was we supposed to know any different?"

  Algar had corralled this boy, and one of the few other survivors of Martin's team, Corporal Dale Edgeworthy, and the two of them sat with Biddy and me, on wooden chairs in a corner of the empty barn.

  "Martin got it right at the start of the attack," said Edgeworthy. "That's what came over the radio. We all saw the building go, Captain. It was the only thing standing out there. Sort of looked like when you toss a melon out of a truck and it hits the road. Pieces everywhere. The tech sergeant had command after that. But that couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes. Soon on, Captain, it was just run like hell and scatter, run for your life. There wasn't any choice, sir, but to leave the dead and wounded behind."

  Edgeworthy, a tall man close to thirty, began to cry then. He kept saying there wasn't any choice about running.

  I was ready to dismiss them, when one more question occurred to me. I told myself not to ask, then did anyway. These men had been with Martin nearly a week.

  "What about the woman? I heard there was a woman with Martin originally."

  Barnes and Edgeworthy looked at each other.

  "I don't know, Captain," said Barnes. "When the offensive started on the sixteenth, we was up near Marnach in Luxembourg. The first night, when Major Martin took over after Colonel Gordon got it, the Major led us around to this farmhouse after dark. There was three people there, this farmer and this round old doll and their daughter. Seemed like they knew Martin, at least I thought so, 'cause the Krauts was a pretty good bet to take that ground, but they was still letting us in, a few soldiers at a time, so we could warm up while we ate our rations. But that was just a couple of hours. The Krauts never stopped fighting that night. They had their tanks painted white to match the snow and bounced them klieg lights off the clouds and they come right up that hill. They've got all that territory now

  "How old was the daughter?"

  "Young, I guess." Barnes dragged his sleeve across his nose. "You know, Captain, I'm like any other fella, but I was pretty grateful to he out of the cold, I wasn't gonna give that girl the hairy eyeball. She was small," said Barnes, and smiled for the first time in the half hour we'd been with him. "You know, I'm kind of always watching out for short women. That's about all to tell you. I remember she was the right size.''

  Once they were gone, Biddy and I waited for Algar to return, shooting the breeze with the troops
and officers who passed through the headquarters. The shelling continued in the mid-distance. It had begun at daybreak and started and stopped intermittently. Reports on Patton's progress were mixed. For each man who'd heard the Third Army was gaining, there were two bearing rumors that its divisions were stalled. In the meantime, the shortages of food and ammunition were past critical, not to mention the complete lack of medical items. This was not the moment to get wounded. The wises Division Clearing Station, and the eighteen doctors who manned it, had been captured on December 19. Yesterday, American artillery units south of the German troops had tried to cannon in bandages and plasma in howitzer shells, but the firing charge had blown all of it to smithereens. Everybody we encountered thanked us for the medical supplies that had fallen with us.

  However, what the men here really craved was a few more degrees on the thermometer. They had stopped referring to the town as Savy. Everyone, officers included, usually called the village 'Save Me,' with salvation from the cold being their chief desire.

  Tank turrets and gas lines had frozen, and the soldiers routinely found their Mis inoperable until the bolts were freed by beating them with hand grenades. Some of the men who'd started suffering frostbite a couple of days ago claimed that they'd been cold so long that the intense burning sensations had ceased. The troops called themselves 'doggies' and everybody made the same joke: "This doggy can't feel his paws."

  Algar came in, stamping the snow off his boots. He asked if I was satisfied after the interviews.

  "Not to be grisly or cynical, Colonel, but I'm going to have to view the remains when they're recovered. Martin's been fairly slippery and there are people in London who'll want proof positive. I'd like to be certain myself."

  I had irritated Algar again. He told me I'd know better than to say that if I'd ever seen a wooden building hit by four tank rockets. But he promised that as soon as the skies cleared and supplies came, we'd all be back on that hill, not so much for my sake but so that the men who'd died there, including Martin, could receive a proper burial. At his desk, Algar spent a minute shooting fire into the bowl of his pipe.

  "And have you had a chance to consider what kind of duty Teedle's orders foresee for you now, Captain?" Algar asked this neutrally, as if it were not a loaded question. Biddy and I had discussed the answer at length this morning once Gideon had walked up here.

  "Well, sir, Bidwell and I called a Yellow Cab so we could get back to Nancy, but they say there will be a delay picking us up, so we thought we might be able to serve with you, sir, in the meantime." Biddy had grumped around when I told him we had to volunteer for combat, but by now I understood that for him that was simply a prelude to bravery. He knew the score. If we didn't volunteer, Algar would have to order us into action. And there was no choice, anyway. The town was surrounded. It was a matter of fighting for our own survival.

  "I don't suppose you two have any combat experience, Captain."

  I said that Bidwell had gone up Omaha Beach. Algar had been there, too.

  "That was a bitch," he said to Biddy.

  "Hell on earth, sir."

  "That's about the size of it. And what about you, Dubin?"

  I told him I had only been shot at twice, including last night. "But I was trained as an infantry officer before I went to JAG school, sir."

  Algar actually jumped out of his seat.

  "A trained infantry officer? Ho my God," he said. He turned to his Exec, Ralph, who'd just arrived. "A trained infantry officer fell out of the sky, Ralph. Christmas has come early."

  The 110th Infantry Regiment, what little was left of it, had been aggregated in a combat unit which Algar and his officers had named Team SNAFU. They were now under the ioist Airborne, plugging gaps as General McAuliffe designated, working in coordination with the 5oznd Infantry Regiment. I was placed in command of a re-formed rifle company in a re-formed battalion. Given my lack of experience, I would have been challenged as a platoon leader, but on the other hand, G Company, which at full complement would have numbered around 193 troops, was all of 98. I had no lieutenants, just three sergeants, including Biddy, in charge of three platoons, and sparse support personnel.

  On the afternoon of December 22, the newly reformed G Company was assembled at the center of Savy. By daylight, Save Me was no more than it had seemed at night, a cluster of farm buildings composed of small slate-toned stones with thick joints of yellowish mortar. The tin-roofed structures had been added on to over centuries, and the windows and doors were all different sizes and varying heights, making them look as if they'd been thrown onto the buildings.

  My first sergeant, named Bill Meadows, functioned for all purposes as my first lieutenant. Meadows greeted me when we met as if we were going out together for a night of drinking.

  "Whatta you know, Captain?" He smiled widely and seemed on the verge of delivering a comradely poke in the shoulder. Bill Meadows was a stocky man in his early forties, wearing metal-framed specs. Like every other soldier I had, he was unshaved and his face after nearly a week of fighting was grayed by perspiration, gunpowder, and the airborne debris of shell bursts. "All right, boys," he called out to the troops. "Bend an ear. Captain Dubin's going to give us our orders.

  Outmanned and outgunned by virtually everyone, Team SNAFU had been positioned here on the west of Bastogne because it was the least likely point of attack. Most of the German tanks and artillery remained north and east. Given the difficulties of moving over the snowy hills, particularly with the remaining softness in the bottomlands, the odds were against the Germans mounting a major offensive from this direction. The fact was they didn't have to. Due to the thinness of the western defenses, Team SNAFU had been unable to prevent the Germans from working their way around us, flanking south toward the town, where they were now positioned.

  For all of that, no place around Bastogne was secure. There had been a skirmish outside Champs earlier yesterday, when a German grenadier team and one half-track had briefly appeared there. But just as McAuliffe situated Algar to be less in harm's way, so Algar was locating G where we were not as likely to suffer attack. We were assigned to seal off a narrow farm road that came down from the west through Champs and Hemroulle and joined the main byway at Savy. Algar wanted G to go out after dark and dig in, in a wooded draw just north of Champs, on high ground that looked down on the road and the railroad track and a cow path directly to the west. The Germans, in theory, could come from any of those approaches. We were relieving E Company, who had been closer to Hemroulle and were taking a shellacking from German artillery which had gotten a fix on their position. E, which was down to seventy-two men, would serve as Headquarters Company, waiting as reinforcements if there was an assault.

  Algar was certain that yesterday's encounter near Champs was a diversionary feint. If the Germans launched a significant western attack, they were far more likely to come at Savy, which was on one of the main roads to Bastogne. It ran north to Longchamps, and was big enough to make it vulnerable to the King Panzers. For that reason, Algar kept what little armor he had with him. Naturally, if the Krauts sent an armored column toward Champs, he would use his tanks and half-tracks and tank destroyers to reinforce us. Our job would be only to hold the road for a short time until the cavalry arrived, but that was a formidable assignment given our lack of ammunition. Algar ordered us not to shoot, even when fired on, unless we could see a human target. I was with Algar when Colonel Hunt, the soznd's commander, called, and Algar described his intended defense of the Champs road as consisting of "a couple of empty muskets." It was something less than a vote of confidence.

  I sent the men to pack up, ordering them to be in formation at 1615. Meadows drew what few rations we were allowed and gathered the maps. At 4:15 p. M., as dark was falling, I walked down the line for inspection, greeted every man by name and checked his equipment. Not one had an overcoat. They were dressed only in field jackets, sometimes more than one. All of them looked dirty, grim, and sleep deprived, but I was already proud to be
their CO. They were prepared to fight, and that, I recognized, was what I'd really wanted to know in all my fretting about combat--what was worth fighting for.

  The feelings of admiration were far from mutual. Most of the men hated me on sight and were sullen at best when I addressed them. For one thing, I had warmer clothes and a Thompson submachine gun, neither of which I was about to surrender, even after I learned that the undersupplied mist had been instructed to shoot anyone in an overcoat, on the theory they were German impostors. Envy, however, was not the primary motive for my troops' discontent. They knew they were under the command of a man with no combat experience, and might as well have been led by a crawling infant.

  I had little appreciation at that point for what these boys had been through, since nobody ever talked about the beating the 110th had absorbed in the last week. After my time in the VIII Corps signal office, I knew that the LVII Panzer Corps had literally swept the entire 28th Infantry Division, of which the 110th was part, from the map. But positioned with only two of its three battalions along Skyline, the paved highway that paralleled the border between Luxembourg and Germany, the 'loth had absorbed the worst of the initial assaults, when the Panzer infantries had crossed the Our River in rubber boats in darkness and overwhelmed them at dawn.

  In the desperation of the first hours, with no Americans behind them, the 110th had been ordered not to surrender and had forced the Germans into house-to-house fighting in towns like Clervaux, Consthum, and Holzthum. Most of the men I commanded were alive only because they had run when their lines finally broke, and, given their orders, probably didn't know how to regard their survival. The majority of my troops had been replacements themselves, with less time on the Continent than I'd had, but they all seemed to feel they had unfinished business with the Germans, whatever the perils.