"Right," I said again. Commanding with Bill Meadows as your top NCO was a little like driving with a chauffeur. He and I exchanged salutes, but Meadows hung back.
"Captain, I hear you had a hard time with Collison last night."
"It was a short conversation, Bill. Nothing to be concerned about."
"Don't let Collison bother you, Captain. He's not a bad Joe, especially once he gets used to you. We got a lot of country boys in this man's Army just like him, and it don't matter if they're from Mississippi or the North Woods. First time he lived with indoor plumbing was in basic training. They've been through a lot, Captain, these boys. Sometimes they just talk a little bunk."
When Meadows left, Gideon crawled into his boots and coat to inform his platoon about today's orders. He'd been back in the hole only a few minutes, using my toothbrush for the first time, when the shelling began. If nothing else, the Krauts were punctual.
In the midst of combat, I was to discover that certain phrases would become lodged in my head, as if my brain was a Victrola stuck on a scratch. That day, the saying was "Forewarned is forearmed," mostly because it proved completely untrue. The Germans were employing a technique I'd learned in infantry school called TOT, or time on target. The idea was that their shells would fly at several areas at once, before anyone could scramble back to his hole. Not knowing precisely where we were, the Germans calibrated each gun at intervals of roughly thirty yards.
The first rounds were screaming meemies, rocket-propelled shells that bore down with a constant heart-stalling screech like a car's tires when its clutch is popped, and that proved to be nothing compared to my dread when the ordnance started landing. I had thought it couldn't be worse than the bombing at the Comtesse's, but there was no way to anticipate the emotional effect of being under sustained bombardment. I will never hear anything louder--ears simply can't absorb more sound--and combined with the way the earth rocked, I was soon rattled with a primitive panic whenever I detected the sound of the 88s. It was distinctive as somebody's cough, to which it bore a thunderous resemblance. The shells exploded with a magnificent bouquet of flame and snow and dirt, raining down hot shrapnel, pieces often a foot or two long that ricocheted off the trunks, while huge limbs crashed around us. The closest blast to me, about fifty yards away, made my eyes throb in their sockets and squeezed my chest so hard I thought something was broken. After each detonation, just as a way to hold on, I promised myself it was the last, trying to believe that until I heard the throaty rumble of the artillery firing and the keen of the next shell heading in to knock us flat.
And then after almost an hour on the dot, it stopped, leaving the air hazy and reeking of cordite. In the sudden silence, you could hear only the wind and the thud of branches that continued to fall from the trees. After the first few minutes of the shelling, between explosions, a scream had gone out for medics and that shouting resumed now I phoned Second Platoon. Masi told me that two men in the same hole had been struck by a tree burst. I didn't know what the CO should do, but I couldn't believe hiding was the answer, and I scrambled up there, weaving between the trees. The Krauts couldn't see much anyway, with all the smoke and dust in the air.
Arriving, I found a red-haired kid named Hunt dead from a piece of shrapnel that had descended like an arrow from an evil god and penetrated the soft spot beside his clavicle, plunging straight into his heart. He was lying in the hole, his eyes open and still. I was most struck by his arms, thrown back at an angle no one could have maintained in life.
The other man was being attended by a medic. His leg below the knee was a red mash. The bone was shattered and he was crying from the pain, but the medic thought he would live. They would move him out, once night fell, for what little good it would do. At this stage, this man, Kelly, was facing roughly the same chances for survival as soldiers wounded during the Civil War. The medics were using some sulfa powder, which they had been pilfering from the aid kits of the dead for days, in hopes of disinfecting the wound. Kelly would be transferred to an aid station Algar had set up yesterday at the church where we'd slept in Hemroulle. Back in my own hole, I took reports from the other platoons by phone. Only two casualties. Doing the arithmetic, I knew we had come through rather well.
During the barrage, it had started to snow. I had thought it was too cold to snow--we used to say that at home--but apparently the weather in Belgium didn't adhere to Midwestern rules. It was not a storm of great intensity. Instead the large flakes drifted down almost casually. Like most little boys, I had grown up regarding snow as a thrill. It was pretty. It was fun. But I had never endured it in a foxhole. The snow danced down for more than two hours. As soon as Biddy and I shook it off, it collected again. Eventually, we were soaked and frozen. And it kept snowing. With overcoats, Biddy and I were better off than many of our troops, who were sitting in their holes wrapped in their ponchos and blankets, with their cold Mis held next to their bodies to keep the trigger mechanisms from freezing. But I had no feeling in my hands and feet, and I was increasingly amazed that the blood didn't just go to ice in my veins.
Dealing with the cold proved a matter of will. I was desperate for distraction, and on pure whim decided to light one of the cigarettes that had come in my rations. Cigarettes were probably the one thing not in short supply, although the men complained relentlessly about the fact that the cheaper brands--Chelsea, Raleigh, Wings--had been sent to the front.
The skies had remained so dim that it seemed as if the light was oil being poured in by the drop. Now I found myself keeping track of the birds. It was hard to believe any were left. The artillery barrages must have killed most of them, and during the German occupation food had been scarce enough that I'd heard of the locals routinely eating sparrows. A few crows scavenged in the forest, and some swift long-tailed magpies darted by. I pointed out a hawk to Biddy, but he shook his head.
"Ain't no hawk, Cap," he said. "That there is a buzzard."
By midday, we knew there was little chance an attack would come. The offensives were taking place around us--the air spasmed from artillery rounds, and the sputtering of machine guns and the sharp crack of rifle fire a mile this way or that carried distinctly through the cold. In considering things, I'd decided that our most likely role would be as reinforcements if the Germans attacked Savy. But if that happened at all, it would be tomorrow or the day after. While the sun was up, there was little to do but stay out of sight in the hole and battle the cold.
"You think it ever gets this cold in Kindle County?" I asked Bidwell.
"As I recollect, sir, yes. Colder. I still have in mind, Cap, walking up to high school eight blocks, and the mercury stuck clear at the bottom of the thermometer. Colder than twenty below."
I'd made those trips myself and laughed at the memory. Insane with adolescent vanity, I'd refused to wear a hat. I could recall my mother screaming at me from the back porch and the feeling once I'd reached the high school's hallways that if my ears grazed something hard, they'd break straight off my head.
In the middle of the day, there were suddenly shouts from within our midst. I jumped out with my tommy gun, certain the Germans had somehow snuck up on us, only to find that two men in Biddy's platoon had uncovered a discarded Luger in their hole--the breach mechanism had seized up--and a fistfight had broken out between them about who would get the souvenir. I put both men on discipline--meaningless now--and said the Browning crews, who'd been on the strongpoints without communication for hours, could draw straws for the pistol when they were relieved. We had to reassign the two soldiers to other holes, and even though I demanded silence, I could hear both calling one another "motherfucker" as I left. That wasn't a word used much among the officer class, who usually adhered to a certain gentility.
"You ever know of anybody who actually fucked his mother?" I asked Biddy.
"Had a friend in high school who fucked one of my buddy's mothers. I heard of that."
"Well, that's not the same thing."
"No sir, not
at all." We fell silent for a while. "Biddy, where in the world did you go to high school, anyway?" He'd told me before that he hadn't quite made it to graduation. His family needed money.
No place you'd know, sir."
"Don't bet on that. I think I swam against every school in Kindle County."
"You didn't never hear of Thomas More, sir. Wasn't no swimmers there."
"Thomas More? In the North End? Wasn't that all colored? I didn't know there were any white men in that school."
"Wasn't," he said. "Two white girls. No white men.
I had been looking at the sky, just realizing that blue was starting to edge past the dirty gray masses. That meant the planes would be flying. When I finally processed Gideon's words, I was sure I'd misunderstood. He had removed his helmet and, big as he was, I found him staring down at me, unconsciously drumming one finger on the MP stenciled in white on the front.
"You heard me, Captain."
"What the heck are you telling me, soldier?" "I'm trusting you is what I'm doing. Against my better judgment.
A hundred things fell into place. After the artillery barrage, I was too drained to feel shock, but I was lost in some fundamental way.
"Now what're you thinking?" he asked me. "Truthfully? I don't think I believe you."
"You better. Because this here's no off-time jive." He was sullen and probably more astonished with himself than I was. His choice of words, however, went to make his point.
Now that he'd said it, of course, now that I was actually looking, appraising his nose, his hair, I suppose I could see how he might have been colored. But there were men in the next hole, Rapazzalli and Gomez--not to mention me--who were probably darker complected, and none of us with eyes as light as Biddy's green peepers.
"I got my draft notice," he said. "I went down there. I didn't never say one way or the other. They just looked at me and. Put me in. You know, I'd always had that, folks saying as how I could pass. When I was a kid in Georgia, and we was away from home, I always knew I could go strolling free as a bird into places my brothers couldn't. It didn't seem to matter all that much once we got North. But there I was now. I come home and told my folks.
"Did you lie?' my daddy asked me.
"Not a solitary word.'
"My mom and he really got going. She wanted me to head straight down there and tell the truth. If the Army didn't want me doin no fighting, she was in no mind to quarrel. But Daddy wudn't hear none of that. 'What truth is that? That even though he looks every bit as good as any other man, even though he is every bit as good as any other man, he ought not get treated like it 'cause he's actually colored. Is that the truth? The day ain't dawned yet where I'll let a child of mine say that. Not yet.' I'm not sure the two of them have patched it up completely even now.
"But how it was really, Captain, I went along with it mainly because I was just like you. I wanted to fight. I wanted to be like Jesse Owens and rub old Adolf Hitler's face in the dirt so hard that that damn mustache come off his face. And I knew they wouldn't see hide of many colored troops near the front.
"Once I got in the middle of Omaha Beach, I gave that another think, all right. I'd'a been just as happy to set 'em straight and go back to England. It's full crazy, what I got myself into. Ain't a day that passes I don't think once or twice I should have listened harder to my mom. Times I feel like I'm not being true to my own, even though I never said a false word to nobody. And I'm always tellin myself I gotta get home alive, just so ain't nobody there sayin how it's a mistake for a colored man to think he can do the same things as white folks. It's just all one hell of a mess."
He peeked over at me again and reached onto the ledge for my toothbrush, which he'd pulled from his mouth and thrown in there as the shelling began.
You want this back?"
The word 'yes' was halfway to my lips, but I retrieved it without a flicker.
"Yeah, damn it, I want it back," I said then and snatched it from him, jamming it into my mouth. The toothpowder had frozen hard on the bristles. "I didn't get a chance to use it this morning. And tomorrow I'm first. You can be first the day after that."
He looked at me for a while.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Chapter 19.
THE SKIES
Late in the day, American C-47s passed overhead. Looking back toward Savy, we could actually see the chutes and supplies drifting down out of the big Gooney Birds, and the glowing trails of the German antiaircraft fire darting at them like malign June bugs. The parachutes, red, yellow, and blue, resembled blossoms, a lovely sight in the clean sky, but not one we enjoyed for long. Nazi bombers and fighters appeared from the other direction, and the fierceness of the AA soon cleared the skies. Once our planes were gone, the Germans repositioned their guns and another artillery barrage began. They clearly feared that with their AA occupied, the Americans might have moved out ground forces, and the new volleys seemed to go on twice as long as they had in the morning. As we huddled in the hole, I felt my teeth smash against each other so hard I thought I might have broken one of my molars.
Once it was over, the field telephone pealed. It was Algar, who'd chosen the code name Lebanon.
"What's the condition out there, Lawyer?"
We'd sustained two more wounded from the last barrage, both relatively minor injuries. One man would need to be moved back to town, along with the young fellow with the leg wound. Algar promised that the ambulances would be there after dark.
"I'm hearing that your Army commander has broken through to the south," Algar said. "Punched a hole, they're saying. We should start seeing reinforcements. Make sure your men know. We had a hundred sixty supply drops here, now Not enough. But there's some ammo. Medicine."
"Yes, sir." The news about Patton was welcome, but my men would believe only what they saw. Everything was rumor until then.
"How's the mood?"
The mood, I said, was good, considering. The men realized there was nothing to do about the cold, but they were complaining often about not being allowed out of the holes in daylight, especially to relieve themselves. Orders were to shit in your hat if you had to, but since nobody was going to abandon his helmet with two tree bursts every day, the directive put the troops to a ridiculous choice.
Sunset came shortly after that, a moment of great solemnity, as it signaled a lessening of the dangers. The Panzers wouldn't come at night in these conditions when they could get stuck so easily if they veered off the roads. And the Germans, after the huge push that drove us back from the Ardennes, were too short supplied to engage in the harassing artillery fire they normally would have ordered up in darkness. We had to be alert for Kraut scout teams, who could sneak across the field in an effort to assay our position, but we all knew we had survived and would soon be able to move around. The sun, which had edged in and out for hours, knifed through in the distance, breaching the clouds with an intense coppery shaft blazing on the forest across the field. Biddy grabbed his camera, somehow seeing a blackand-white picture in all that color.
Meadows called and we made night assignments. Bill also had a request. The men wanted to make a fire in the pump house. There would be no light. The issue was the smoke, which might betray our position. But the wind was still coming from the north, which would carry the odor back toward town. It was a calculated risk, but we decided it was worth it. I doubted that even if the wind shifted the Germans would be able to tell our smoke from their own. Each squad would be allowed in the pump house for half an hour to eat their rations, as well as fifteen minutes before and after night guard. The gunners who'd been out on the strongpoints all day without communication would get stretches twice as long and go first.
The ambulance arrived near 6:00 p. M., accompanied by a supply truck. The quartermasters were supposed to be bringing tomorrow's rations, but they had only two C ration containers. It meant I was going to be able to feed the men just once tomorrow.
"Colonel hopes for better Christmas Day," said the quartermaste
r sergeant. I knew he was husbanding whatever he had for a Yule treat, but starving the troops in advance seemed like a poor way to enhance their appreciation. "He did send these, though. Requisitioned them from a local cafe in Bastogne. Owner beefed something terrible, but hell, he ain't doing much business these days anyway."
I stuck my field knife into one of the soft pine boxes and found table linens. It took me a moment to catch on, then I summoned my three noncoms, Meadows and Biddy and Masi, to distribute them to their platoons.
"What the hell?" Meadows asked.
I explained that the men could use the white tablecloths as camouflage, if they needed to leave their holes during daylight. We were lucky the linens had been starched. Otherwise they would have been shredded for bandages.
Once he'd handed out the cloths and napkins, Meadows returned. He wanted me to know this had elevated me in the eyes of the men, an effect that would undoubtedly be lost when they got hungry tomorrow. Nevertheless, I appreciated the fact that Meadows was looking out for my morale, too.
"If Algar had any sense, Bill, he'd have made you the company commander."
"Tell you a secret, Captain, he offered. But I don't see myself as officer material. Second lieutenant, frankly, that's the worst job in the Army. At least in the infantry."
Biddy, across the hole, grumbled in agreement. I'd heard the statistics, but I answered, "The food is better at headquarters."
"Suppose that's so," said Meadows. "I'm just not the one to give orders, sir. Not in combat." "Because?"
"Because if you live through it and your men don't, that's something I don't want to deal with. All respect, sir.
It was another problem I'd never considered, because I was too green, and I dwelt on it in silence while Meadows went on his way.
As captain, I'd assigned myself the last stretch in the pump house, and I decided to try to sleep before then. I took off my overcoat. The snow had frozen it solid and it actually stood up by itself, leaned against one wall in the foxhole. I was too cold to fall off. Instead, near the end, awaiting my turn in the pump house, I actually started counting to myself. When I finally walked in, the heat was one of the sweetest sensations of my life, even though my hands and feet burned intensely as they thawed. The men of Meadows' Second Squad were in there again, taking as long as they could to consume their rations. I knew they'd overstayed by the speed with which they all jumped up when I entered.