Remembering what I had learned in basic, I took the first rocket out of the case, checked the tube of the bazooka to make sure it was clear, and then put in the shell. My hands were shaking so badly, I could hardly get the wires in to arm the damned thing. Finally the wires were in, and I tapped Sergeant Reese on the helmet.
I looked down the ridge and saw nothing but fog and smoke. Then I saw a belch of red-and-yellow flame and knew something had fired up the ridge.
The dark shadow that emerged could have been a self-propelled 88, or an antitank gun, or even a small tank. It wasn’t one of their Tigers.
The blast from Reese’s bazooka caught me by surprise. It shouldn’t have. It burned the side of my face and my right ear.
“If it burns your left ear, it’s because you’re stupid and didn’t think to get out of the back blast area!” the drill sergeant had said. “If it burns your right ear, it’s because you’re stupid and didn’t get out of the back blast area and you’re a pussy hiding behind the shooter!”
I loaded the bazooka again without looking down at the target. This time I was already clear when I tapped Sergeant Reese. His next shot hit the target, and I saw bodies flailing in the thick, heavy air. German soldiers were turning and offering their backs as targets.
The next rocket went in easier than the others, and Reese fired at something, I couldn’t tell what, and then he stood up.
“That was for Major Howie,” he said. There was anger boiling up in him, a kind of rage that only he knew about. “Did you know him?”
“No,” I said.
“Fucking good man,” Reese said. “Fucking good man.”
We went back over the ridge where what was left of my battalion, my company, huddled and waited for more orders.
More artillery from our side. More mortars and then tracked antitank guns were being driven to the top of the ridge. The fog and smoke from the burning vehicles lifted, and I could see the wreckage we had caused. There were dead and wounded soldiers strewn between the half-burned trees. We had beaten off a suicide attack. They had to know they were going to die, running up the hill while we were shooting down at them. They had to know.
In the distance we could see mortars coming in from the far side of the town. There were fires everywhere and dark angry clouds of black smoke lifting angrily into the morning sky.
The food truck had got through, but without its food. It had been hit by a shell, and all the food had been scattered on the road. They had managed to save some chicken soup.
It was the best chicken soup that God had ever sent to earth.
At 1200 hours, our artillery began to bombard St. Lo. We could see the shells hitting, and Captain Milton was running around, telling us to get ready to attack.
“We going down there?” Sergeant Reese asked.
“We haven’t been given orders to move,” Milton said. “But the shelling has to be for something!”
“Where you from?” Gomez asked Sergeant Reese.
“Racine, Wisconsin.”
“What’s going on in Racine?”
“Americans,” Reese answered. “Americans are going on.”
The shelling went on forever. Not for a while, but forever. From the ridge we could occasionally see a Kraut running from one building to another.
“They look like roaches!” Reese said.
To me they looked like men running for their lives, with no place to run to.
“You people know what happened?” Reese asked. “You know that Major Howie was killed? Did you know that?”
We had heard, but nobody spoke up. Major Howie had meant something to Reese, and we didn’t want to take that away. I was hoping that if I got it, if I was lying somewhere faceup to the foggy Normandy sky, that someone would be upset. I wondered who it would be.
Shut up, mind. Stop thinking about it.
“Typhoons!” This from Petrocelli. “Thank God they’re on our side.”
I looked up and saw the British fighter planes coming in formation, then peeling off for bombing runs. A Kraut gunner sent a stream of cannon fire into the sky. I could see the tracer bullets going straight up and then arcing downward. The Brit fliers came down with a vengeance, blasting anything moving, bombing anything they thought might have been a likely target. The rockets from the Typhoons tore into the buildings, sending ugly sprays of black-and-yellow flames high into the air over the carcasses and bodies already lying there.
We were being rallied again. Captain Milton was pointing down the ridge into the city. I knew the Krauts, by instinct, by command, would send shells our way as we went toward the town.
Mink and I started down together. Ahead of us, a .30 caliber machine gun over his right shoulder, was Reese.
“I think he’s losing it!” I said to Mink.
“I hope he doesn’t find it!” Mink answered.
What the hell did that mean?
In ten minutes we were in St. Lo. This is what we had been fighting for the past month. Gerhardt had been pushing us, telling us how disappointed he was in us because we hadn’t taken St. Lo. And now we had taken it.
But there was no St. Lo.
There were the remnants of a city: torn-up buildings, a post office’s white walls pockmarked by a hundred — no, a thousand — shells. Fragments of walls and horizontal lines that were life markers and stories in people’s lives. There were animals lying dead in the streets. Some, which had been there for days, already bloated and stinking. There were burned-out German vehicles, some with the bodies of their drivers still in them, alongside the buildings. They, too, looked like dead animals.
We moved into the center of the city cautiously, in two groups, past an old railroad station, a shop front that Mink identified as once having been a bakery, and piles and piles of rubble. Some of the men were sent from house to house, looking for Krauts who hadn’t been killed and who hadn’t fled. Some were found. A few were captured. Most were killed. It was a matter of who had won and who had lost. Now we were the children with murderous eyes.
“Let’s go into the cathedral,” Mink said to me.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we can build memories better than the ones we stumble on.”
I didn’t want to go into the cathedral, and I shouldn’t have. Inside it was nothing but rubble, twisted wood where pews had been, an altar completely burned through one side but neat and gilded on the other. We picked our way around, and Mink pointed out a plaster fresco of cherubs and a figure on one of them.
“‘And he rode upon the cherubs, and flew upon the wind.’”
“Mink, don’t go deep on me,” I said. “I’m too tired.”
“So let’s go find some sleep,” he answered.
We got back to where Johns was re-forming the battalion again. He was asking each officer to give him a count of the men, and he was shocked to see how few of us were left. He told us to find an area of the city that seemed safe from incoming artillery and set out guards.
We collapsed in houses along the street that led to the ruined train depot. Some guys fell asleep, but I couldn’t. It was almost as if I had forgotten how. I tried to figure out if I was hungry, couldn’t, and just assumed I must be. Then we were up again. A bugle blew that told us it was time for something. A bugle? We were forming companies and squads, and I wondered what the hell was going on.
Major Johns had us forming a square that was more or less in the middle of the town away from the depot. There was a flag-draped body on a mound of rubble.
“That’s Major Howie,” Burns said.
“Who the hell was he?” Gomez asked.
“A believer, I guess.” Burns looked away. “A believer.”
We were lined up in a square, and I thought about the people I knew who had been believers. Stagg, Duncan, Freihofer, Arness …
“Men of the 29th Infantry Regiment, today we have achieved our goal, the taking of this city, the taking of St. Lo, which the enemy has defended so well and with such d
etermination. They thought that they would defeat us by making the price too high, by making the task too difficult, by making us doubt our purpose. But they have not defeated us. We have prevailed. Let no man or no citizen ever forget that fact. We have prevailed!”
General Gerhardt stood in front of the body of men, the survivors from Bedford and from Maryland, and spit out his words as if he were talking to children back in Virginia.
“Let no one forget that we stormed the beaches at Normandy armed primarily with our courage and the certain knowledge that we would defeat the Nazi war machine! Let no one forget what we have accomplished here today and what we will accomplish in the future. I leave you with this message, and with this message only: 29, let’s go!”
There was the Presentation of Colors, and we raised the American flag on the clock of the church in the square. A few Frenchwomen were brought into the square and presented us with a bottle of wine and a few loaves of French bread. Then General Gerhardt’s jeep was brought up, with D-Day in the backseat, and he was whisked off.
We relaxed, but I could feel the tension in the air. We had taken St. Lo, but there was no town here. Notre-Dame Cathedral, where Major Howie’s body was put on display, was a shell, a place where no God would live. We hadn’t liberated anything, or anyone. We had destroyed the city, killed or chased away most of the people in it, and were claiming a victory.
“Mink, is this what war is about?” I asked. “Why the hell are we doing this?”
“‘Theirs not to reason why,’” Mink answered. “‘Theirs but to do and die.’”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s the substance of war,” Mink said. “Can’t you taste it?”
“You’re cracking up,” I said.
Captain Milton found us and told us that we were going to be moving out of St. Lo at sundown.
“In case there’s a German counterattack,” he said. “Gerhardt wants the troops dispersed around the town. Their artillery, what’s left of it, has probably got the main parts of the town zeroed in, so we’ll move to the outskirts.”
“Why don’t we just give it back to them?” Petrocelli asked. “It would serve the bastards right to have to move back into this piece of crap!”
Captain Milton looked at Petrocelli and shrugged.
“Food coming in!” a corporal from the First Army called.
There were four deuce and a halfs pulling up in the town square in front of a building called Boulangerie. I was right there with Gomez and Mink, wanting some warm food for a change, and I watched as the trucks pulled up and the drivers got out.
Guys started forming a line even before the food was set up, and we had to watch while the food service guys set up stoves and GI cans of hot steamy water and brought out cases of rations.
“I don’t know if I want to eat most or take a bath most,” Petrocelli said.
“If you don’t eat first, I’ll eat your food,” Gomez said, which settled the matter.
The food was glorious. It was mashed potatoes, peas, and some real some-kind-of-meat in gravy that spilled over onto the potatoes and peas in a way that only the angels could have arranged. We got as much as we wanted, and some guys were close to crying it was so good, and we were so hungry.
The ice cream came in little packs, and we were each given two packs and something that tasted like fruit.
“This is peaches, Mink,” I said. “No, really, it is real peaches!”
“You ever think a peach could taste so good?” he asked.
“And I didn’t think … No, I guess not,” I said.
I thought about going back for more. I wasn’t hungry any longer — the first few bites had me filled — but I wanted to keep the moment going, to make it last.
“Gomez is screwed up!” Petrocelli said, walking up to us. He had his helmet hanging off his head.
“He bought it?”
“No, but it’s almost as bad.” Petrocelli looked worried. “Come on and talk to him with me.”
Petrocelli didn’t look good, either. He led the way, with me on his heels and Mink behind us, over to where some men stood around the back of a truck. On the ground, looking smaller than I had ever seen him, was Gomez. The tears were streaming down his cheeks and his face was distorted, as if he was feeling some pain somewhere but it just wasn’t clear where.
Kneeling by his side, I put my hand on his shoulder.
“What’s going on, buddy?”
“The fucking Krauts shot up the mail truck!” Gomez said. “They wasted the damned mail truck! Why the hell did they have to do that? Why?”
I could feel for Gomez. We were cut off from everything that was important to us. There was an ocean between us and the world that made sense.
There was nothing I could say to Gomez that made things better. We had fought for that damned mail. And now the Krauts had blown it up or burned it up or captured it or —
I asked Gomez if they had destroyed the mail or captured it.
“The black guys ran into an 88 sitting on the roadside. Killed everyone on two friggin’ trucks,” he said. “The mail and medical supplies burned up.”
Crap.
I imagined the letter from Vernelle. What would she say? That she loved me and was thinking so hard about me that it gave her headaches? Maybe she had been thinking of making me a peach pie when I got home. What would she say?
I wanted to hear her voice in my head so bad, it made my stomach turn knowing that it wouldn’t happen. The words would be enough to get the sound of her voice — I didn’t remember it, but in my mind it was sweet and soft, like the early morning breezes lifting off the fields around Bedford. Like the smell of fresh baked goods and preserves in the back of the car as we drove up from the Roanoke State Fair.
It was okay, though. As long as Vernelle didn’t mind waiting for me to be finished with this war, it would be okay. There wouldn’t be a lot I could offer her at first, I knew, but I would bring something back from Normandy, and from all of this fighting, and from all of this wondering who I was. I’d find something to bring back.
We lost another medic in the afternoon. He had been wounded earlier and tried to ignore it, but it caught up with him. Losing a medic was hard because you depended on them. Not when you were hit or down, but when you were running across a field knowing that any moment you could be lying on your back trying to suck air through a bloody wound or looking into the faces of the men around you to see if they thought you were going to make it. You needed someone you could rely on, or at least think would save your life if you got hit.
“Make sure your canteens are filled with water, and that you’re carrying all the food you can,” Captain Milton said. “We don’t want to get caught out there without food and water again!”
“Yo, Captain, when does the last bus leave for Coney Island?” Burns asked.
“You ever been to Coney Island?” Captain Milton asked. “I was there once with my wife. It’s a wild place. We must have dropped twenty-five dollars in half a day!”
“You got kids?” I asked.
“No, have you?” Captain Milton asked me. “You got any kids?”
“No, but I think I got a wife lined up,” I said. “It’s a could-be kind of thing.”
“Wish you luck with it, soldier.”
It was 1800 hours, and we were getting ready to move out once it got dark. I didn’t like that. The Krauts were scared to be on the road during the daylight hours and everybody knew it. They could fight from the hedgerows all they wanted, but our Mustangs and the Canadian Typhoons would pound anything we targeted and the entire German army knew that. Their Luftwaffe was mostly gone.
1900 hours. We were sitting around, and I was asking myself if I needed to go to the bathroom. There were a couple of toilets in St. Lo that weren’t blown up, but there were lines for them. Most of the guys were just finding corners to crap in if they had to go. A major came by and handed out captured German weapons.
“This is a panzerschreck!
It’s like our bazooka,” he said. “Wouldn’t you just love to knock out one of their tanks with their own weapon?”
No. Nobody said anything, but we were all thinking no, and the major moved on pretty quick. I had filled my canteen with water, as Captain Milton had recommended, and also filled a canteen I had found. The second one I put in my backpack. I wanted to take some extra food with me, but I knew none of it would last. Burns had once said that in a pinch we could butcher some of the dying animals. That didn’t go over too well, not even among the farm boys.
My mind drifted back to Vernelle, what she was thinking, and what she was thinking about me.
“Hey, Mink, I told you a little about Vernelle back home,” I said. “You think she’ll wait for me?”
“She have a choice?” Mink asked.
“Not really, physically,” I said. “But do you think she’ll want to have something more going on with me?”
“Could be,” Mink said. “I was thinking of writing to a girl back home.”
“You got a girl?”
“No, but that doesn’t stop me from dreaming,” Mink answered.
“I guess we’re all dreaming,” I said. “Even getting home —”
“Gott helfen Sie mir! Gott helfen Sie mir!”
From the restaurant, from the very restaurant that we had lined up in front of to hear General Gerhardt’s speech, came three Germans. Two of them were in uniforms, one with a bayonet on which he had tied a white undershirt. He was giving up.
The third one was stark naked. The first two were trying to cover the third guy with an overcoat.
“Gott helfen Sie mir! Gott helfen Sie mir!”
Some of the guys were stunned; others jumped up and trained their guns on the Kraut soldiers. The guys from the 29th made motions for the Krauts to lift their arms higher, and they did, dropping the bayonet and undershirt.
The other man fell to his knees, lifting his arms to the skies, and calling out again.
“Gott helfen Sie mir! Gott helfen Sie mir!”
“Who speaks German? Who speaks German?” Master Sergeant Reese looked around. Nobody answered.