Ordinary Heroes (30 page)

Before he left, we took a moment to inspect the terrain. The open, rolling hills--hayfields or grasslands grazed by beef cattle--were now deep in snow with no animals in sight. Most, I imagined, had been killed or eaten long ago. North of us, beyond the railroad tracks and the drifts mounded here and there on the road, several fields undulated, separate
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nly by stone markers. With my field glasses, I saw that the land had already seen combat. The Germans who had once occupied our holes had been hit hard before retreating. The blackened form of a Panzer was out there, with snow heaped on the tracks and the turret, and I also could make out the axle and fenders of a truck. My guess was that there had been more wreckage, which our engineers had towed off to assemble the crude roadblock that stood a couple hundred yards from us. It was comprised of commandeered tractors and two burned-out tanks, one ours, one German.

To the west, in the distance, lay dense green woods of tall pines, where the German grenadiers were probably hiding. Even in daylight the forest appeared black and impenetrable. I thought of the Brothers Grimm, and their goblins and spooks stealing from the trees to snatch souls and visit curses.

The last thing Meadows pointed out was the stand we occupied, a mixture of the same skinny, thick-branched pines that were across the way and deciduous trees, most of them beeches still wearing some of their coppery leaves. The Germans were delivering daily artillery barrages across a broad sector, wherever they figured Americans might be positioned to protect the roads, often utilizing their 20MM antiaircraft guns, which had proven effective as offensive weapons, or the dual-purpose 88s. Fixed on quad mounts and half-tracks, the guns wer
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ilted forward and fired into the treetops. The result was a little like a bomb exploding in midair, raining shrapnel down on everyone below. Algar had sent us north of E's holes in hopes that the Germans might not have been aiming here, but up high the trees were ragged, as if they had been eaten away by moths. Several of the beeches had most of their boughs blown away, the remaining trunks standing like solitary amputees, blackened by the shell bursts. In other words, we were going to get it. The Germans had been firing in the hour after dawn and just before sunset, periods when they could be certain that our planes, which could navigate only by daylight in this weather, would never be in the air.

"I want to tell the
boys to stay low when that starts," said Meadows. "Or else get out and go hug the trees."

"Right."

"But the sergeants need to keep watch. It'd be a good time for that Panzer infantry to come out of the woods, with us hunkered down."

"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 compare
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o 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 th
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ame 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 ha
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hought 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 wa
s h
ard 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 a
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e 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'
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uite 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
. P
ut 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, h
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ught 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.