Soldiers of ’44

Chapter Four

December 13, 1944. Eastern Belgium. Wednesday, 0600 Hours.

First Lieutenant Whitter arrived at Section Eight’s gun position as first light was beginning to spread across the valley. The heavy-weather front was holding; fogs and snow continued to produce visibility-zero conditions throughout the Ardennes.

Whitter was accompanied by a corporal from the battery motor pool, Cleve Haskell, and his junior officer. Second Lieutenant Donald Longworth, a career soldier with nine years in the regular Army.

Lieutenant Bart Whitter had been in the Army three years. A vertical white stripe was painted on the front of his helmet, and the silver single bars of his rank were clipped to the epaulets on his field overcoat. He was short and stocky, with light brown hair and a fair complexion that had reddened and peeled painfully in the battalion’s basic training at Camp Stewart near Hinesville, Georgia. Although born and raised in the Deep South in Mobile, Alabama, Lieutenant Whitter never tanned, even when he smeared himself with cocoa butter. Still, he had always been proud of his pink and sensitive skin; in a state whose white majorities applied visual litmus paper tests to everyone as a matter of course, Whitter had decided early in life that it was no asset to tan darkly or display a tolerance for strong sunlight.

The lieutenant was twenty-nine. He believed in the customs and traditions of the service, military courtesy and discipline, and in RHIP — initials embodying the army concept that “rank has its privileges.” Whitter enjoyed rolling the letters on his tongue and lips, seeming to taste them there like warm molasses, and in his native accent they came drawling out as, “Ah, Aich, Ah, Pee.”

His father was a county sheriff whose family had been planters and soldiers before the Civil War. Whitter was fond of quoting his father. “Pappy believed in full bellies for them that worked and did right, and full prisons for them ’at din’t. He tol’ me, ‘Pessimists say prisons are only half-full. Optimists know they just half-empty.’ ”

Some of Whitter’s plantation mannerisms were employed for what he obviously hoped would be a humorous effect. His accent was not always consistent; it tended toward canebrake darky rhythms and resonances when he was in a frivolous or good-old-boy mood and was also pronounced when he spoke of more serious matters such as the value of regular church attendance and personal hygiene and white virginity. When he was impatient or angry, the accent tended to disappear.

Whitter climbed down now from the jeep and returned Docker’s salute. “All your men okay, sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how about supplies? Got plenty of ammo and gasoline?”

“We’re in good shape, lieutenant.”

“Then I’d like to know why in hell you stopped here. My last orders to you were to continue moving east.” Whitter stared at the cannon and machine guns, which were masked with camouflage netting. “Now it looks like you bedded down for the fucking duration. How come?”

When Docker explained why he had decided to stop, Whitter said, “You got your wind up because some old Belgian fart wouldn’t take Army money? Shit, you should know better. These people don’t know what they want anymore. Used to be every whore and bartender wanted Invasion loot. Now you’re spooked ’cause an old fool wants Belgian money that don’t even make good craphouse paper.”

“I didn’t see any point in taking a chance,” Docker said.

“Well, sometimes that makes sense. And sometimes it sure as hell don’t. Now fall your section in.”

Docker gave the orders to Larkin and accompanied Whitter and Lieutenant Longworth on an inspection of the gun position. When they had completed the tour, Larkin had formed the section into two columns in front of the trucks.

Whitter looked them over. “All right, men, I know it’s snowing, and colder than a witch’s tit, but we still got to try to look like soldiers. Let’s dress down and get to attention now.”

Corporal Larkin slowly spit on the ground and looked with eloquent blankness at the low, drifting fogs.

“You heard the lieutenant, goddamn it,” he said. “Try to remember there’s a fucking war on. Drop your cocks and grab your socks and try to look like soldiers. You want a fucking example, look at Haskell here. There’s some spit and polish for you.”

Corporal Haskell was built widely and massively, with sloping shoulders and a bulging stomach that looked like blubber but was actually hard as a tree trunk. His fatigue uniforms were usually oil-stained from his work at the motor pool and he seldom shaved more than twice a week, a dispensation from Captain Grant because of a persistent rash that mottled the skin under his heavy whiskers.

When Larkin pointed at him and said, “Just look at the fine figure of the corporal there,” Spinelli and Tubby Gruber looked at the ground and tried to suppress their laughter.

Haskell stared at Larkin, tight little grin bunching rubbery cheeks around his eyes.

“Jesus, you’re a real clown,” he said. “I guess Fred Allen and them other funny guys pay you hush money to keep you off the radio.”

Docker knew that Haskell was no one for Larkin to antagonize; Haskell could be violent, brutal, and a streak in him relished it.

“At ease,” Docker said to the section. “Settle down now.”

The men dressed right and came to attention. Whitter was puzzled and relieved; something had been starting between Haskell and that sarcastic son of a bitch Larkin, and Docker had put a stop to it with just a few words.

“All right, let’s get this I and E bullshit over with,” the lieutenant said. “For your Information and Education, you’re up to your ass in snow and shit somewhere in Belgium. I hope that don’t come as no big surprise. We just got word at Battalion that our B-29S are flying daylight raids for the first time and pounding the honorable shit out of Tokyo. In Italy — our boys there just rammed a big firecracker up Mussolini’s ass and they’re holding a match to the fuse right this minute.”

Whitter grinned at the men, encouraging them, for the moment, to forget his silver bars and the wall of rank between them, to relax and join him in a bit of soldier-to-soldier camaraderie. The men declined the invitation; their faces remained impassive and their eyes stared through him.

Well, they didn’t know how fucking tough it was, he thought. Or they just didn’t give a shit. They probably figured his rank and an occasional bottle of whiskey made up for it. Or they were too damn ignorant — he looked resentfully at the new corporal, Schmitzer, and at Trankic and the kids in the section. Laurel and Farrel, he didn’t even know the names of the others, just that they were still babies with damn little use for the razor blades they’d been issued... Still and all, he wanted their approval, and needed to anesthetize a curious irritation at the way Docker had handled whatever it was between Haskell and Larkin. So he proceeded to announce to the section what he hadn’t intended to tell them, what in fact had been told him in total confidence only that morning by Captain Grant and the battalion commander. Lieutenant Colonel Leary.

“Now I don’t want you men to be spreading this around, but you’re not rag-ass rookies, you got a right — hell, you earned a right — to know what’s going on.” Whitter rubbed his mittened hands together briskly. “Every report we’ve had for the last ten days tells us the same thing: we got the enemy in a goddamn meat grinder. They’re nothing but kraut sausage and kraut hamburger now. With any luck at all, we could be startin’ home by Christmas...”

“Come here. Little Sicily, I want to talk to you.”

Corporal Haskell took Carmine Spinelli by the arm and led him down the hill a dozen yards from the cannon, where he stopped and poked Spinelli in the chest with a finger the size of a gnarled sausage.

Spinelli tried to pull away, but Haskell grinned and tightened his grip.

“Little Sicily, when Larkin was being a fucking wise guy, I had an idea you were laughing at me.”

“No, I wasn’t. Why would I do a dumb thing like that?”

“Little Sicily, I hear you guys still got some of that black booze Trankic made in Normandy.”

“What’s this ‘Little Sicily’ shit? I got nothing against you.”

“No offense, Little Sicily.” Haskell continued to smile, his cheeks bunching and creating the flaking skin under his whiskers. When he prodded him again, Spinelli gasped with pain.

“What you want with me?”

“You’re not listening. I told you. I want some of that black whiskey.”

“What whiskey?”

“Now don’t fuck with me, ginzo,” Haskell said quietly. “The stuff Trankic made from the alcohol he stole at Utah Beach.”

“Utah Beach?” Spinelli was recovering some of his confidence; he was safe enough here, so close to the rest of the section that he could almost enjoy the anger darkening Haskell’s muddy eyes. “What you talking about?”

Haskell glanced around; no one was watching them. “I told you once, don’t fuck with me, you little wop cock-sucker.”

“Go shit in your hat and punch it.”

Haskell smiled. “Know something, ginzo? I’m gonna say you called me a mother-fucker. Which I don’t take from anybody. So they’ll understand I had to slap them words back down your throat.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Spinelli said, “I didn’t mean nothing. It was just a joke.”

He started to back away, but Haskell spun him around as effortlessly as he would a small child. Holding him by the lapels of his jacket, Haskell drew back his hand, abruptly lowered it when Docker said from behind him, “All right, knock it off, Haskell.”

“This ain’t any of your business,” Haskell said. “Unless you want to make it.”

“Let me tell you something. Everything that goes on in this gun section is my business. Take your hands off Spinelli.”

Haskell stood perfectly still for a moment. Then he nodded slowly. He put his hands on his hips and looked off at the mountains, vague, insubstantial shapes in the rolling fogs. Then: “Okay, Docker, I’ll see you around one of these days. Maybe someplace where we can forget them sergeant’s stripes of yours.”

“Kiss off, Haskell,” Docker said, and walked back to the guns with Spinelli.

Lieutenant Whitter took a small ledger and pencil from an inner pocket of his overcoat and made notes of his final orders to Sergeant Docker.

“You head out due east toward a Belgian town called Werpen, it’s on your grid maps. It’s ten, fifteen miles from here but I don’t know how in hell them mountain roads are, so be ready for some shoveling. Like I told your men, there ain’t a kraut left between here and the Rhine, but just in case you run into anything you can’t handle, you got a fall-back position, a town called Lepont on the Salm, which is about eight or ten miles northwest of here. If you don’t have to fall back, keep heading east after you get to Werpen.” Whitter studied his notes, nodded and tucked the ledger into his pocket. “I know something’s bothering you, Docker. So talk or shake a bush. It’s a democratic army, too goddamn democratic if you ask me — so go ahead and spit it out.”

“Just a suggestion that we tone down this talk about starting home by Christmas.”

“You didn’t say anything about that,” Whitter said. “I’m the one said it. And I’m about to say something else.” Whitter patted the silver bar on his shoulder. “That little piece of brass says I can say anything I want to your gun section.”

“I think I understand what Docker’s getting at,” Longworth said.

Whitter stared at him. “I wasn’t talking to you, was I, lieutenant?”

“No, you weren’t,” Longworth said, and climbed into the rear of the jeep.

Lieutenant Whitter grinned and eased himself in beside the driver, Haskell. “Okay, maybe I was wrong,” he said. “However, that’s one of the privileges of being an officer. Docker. Screwin’ up. It’s what Ah, Aich, Ah, Pee is all about. Just don’t you screw up, sergeant, ’cause that ain’t one of your privileges. You keep everybody on the ball.”

The jeep rolled down the hill, disappearing into the fogs, and soon the throb of its motor faded and the silence settled again through the valleys of the Ardennes.