Backlands (42 page)

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” Matt said, saluting and turning on his heel in unison with Dominic.

It took several hours of running around, waiting, and filling out forms before Matt and Dominic, loaded down with combat gear, M-1 rifles, uniforms, and duffel bags, reported to the first sergeant of Company K, Second Battalion. He was a lanky Oklahoman named Roscoe Beal who silently mouthed the words he read as he went through their orders.

When he finished, he looked up from his desk and said, “Well at least you're both qualified with the M-1; that's something, I guess. As for your rank, as far as I'm concerned you don't have any while you're in my outfit. Get them stripes sewn on, but don't think about ordering anybody around.”

He looked Dominic up and down. “You're Amato?”

“Yes, First Sergeant.”

“You go to the Heavy Weapons Platoon; see Lieutenant Church.”

“Yes, First Sergeant,” Dominic said.

“Kerney, you see Lieutenant Daugherty at Third Platoon.”

Matt nodded.

“One more thing,” Master Sergeant Roscoe Beal said. “I don't care if you two college boys can speak Italian like natives. You're mine until the brass says otherwise, got it?”

“Understood,” Dominic said.

“Get going and don't cause me any trouble.”

Outside on the packed earth of the company assembly area, Dominic smiled and said, “Well, at least we fell into this can of worms together. Think we'll get out of it before the shooting starts?”

Matt shrugged. “Don't hold your breath.”

***

A
fter one day with Second Squad, Third Platoon, K Company, all the men, including the squad leader, a fresh-faced twenty-year-old buck sergeant, started calling Matt Pops. On the second day, his moniker had spread to the entire platoon, including Lieutenant Daugherty, who was seven years Matt's junior. A wise-guy gambler in the First Platoon heard about the old tech corporal who'd rotated in and started a betting pool as to who was the oldest dogface in the company. Was it Matt? The CO, Captain Marshall? First Sergeant Beal? The XO, Lieutenant Nelson? Or Corporal Dutton, who had six years in uniform?

A five-spot to a clerk in personnel answered the question. Matt was the oldest man in the company by six months over Roscoe Beal. Dominic had bet heavy and won a hundred dollars.

The Forty-Fifth was a National Guard outfit made up of men from Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. But K Company was almost a hundred percent Okie. When he could, Matt tried to find other New Mexicans in the division. But the rush to mobilize provided little time for it, and he soon stopped trying.

Ten days were spent at Newport News loading the invasion fleet, bound first for Oran, Algeria. Each day Matt and Dominic looked for fresh orders reassigning them to S-2. Each day, their hopes diminished. They worked long hours with the other men of K Company, unloading trucks filled with crates and boxes of equipment, supplies, and clothing for transfer to the cargo vessels.

From the moment Matt boarded the troop ship at Newport News with his platoon and was led down to a hold below the waterline, he was miserable. Canvas bunks fifteen inches apart and twelve inches above each soldier's nose hung from floor to ceiling. Hundreds of them filled the windowless hold, lit only by dim bulbs that created a permanent artificial dusk. Every sound, every voice, every fart, reverberated off the steel-plated bulkhead, creating an interminable noise that made him wince.

He'd never felt claustrophobia before, but it quickly settled over him like a panic. His hands shook as he stowed his gear. His bunk, up against the port-side hull, would be a perfect spot for a U-boat captain to aim a torpedo. The idea of it gave him shivers. He rolled into his bunk, closed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and lay perfectly still until the urge to get up and run to the deck and jump overboard subsided. He forced himself to think of home, the vast Tularosa Basin with its endless sky and magnificent mountains.

By the end of the first day at sea, the hold reeked of vomit, sweat, and the stink of men. It only got worse as time passed. It was impossible to read and almost impossible to move about the cramped quarters, and the only form of diversion consisted of standing in line for chow three times a day, and occasional excursions topside to gaze at the gray North Atlantic Ocean and the vast convoy guarded by a dozen destroyers stretching off into the distance. It was the most depressing time of his life.

The two-week passage ended with a predawn disembarkation off the Algerian coast by amphibious landing craft, with whole regiments put ashore miles from their destinations. It was such a major snafu, the brass had them doing amphibious landing drills almost to the day of their departure for Sicily.

Matt, who had enlisted in the army to stay away from the water, half drowned each time he stepped out of the landing craft into five feet of water, loaded down with fifty pounds of equipment, clothing, weapons, and ammunition as he slogged his way to shore. As he dried out after the final practice run, the company orderly brought him three letters: two from Anna Lynn sent to Amherst College and one from Augustus Merton that Pa had forwarded from the ranch. Matt read Augustus's letter first. He was working as a civilian for the War Department in Washington, supervising the inspection of munitions plants across the country, and wanted Matt to go to work for him. The job would keep him out of the draft for the duration, Gus noted. Matt smiled at the thought of working someplace with his feet on solid ground and little chance of getting shot at. He set it aside for a quick reply later.

In Anna Lynn's first letter she wrote that Patrick had been visited at the ranch by MPs who'd warned him to stop shooting at the warplanes practicing bombing and strafing tactics over the basin. Pa said he'd stop once the pilots quit shooting the livestock and scaring the ponies. According to what Al Jr. told Anna Lynn, Patrick escorted the MPs off the ranch by shotgun and warned them not to return. That prompted the arrival the next day of an apologetic officer from the airfield, who wanted Patrick to fill out official forms so the government could reimburse him for the dead cattle. A month later, no check had arrived, and Patrick was still grumbling about it. She sent her love and said Ginny missed him.

Anna Lynn's second letter, written a week later, contained sobering news about her youngest sister, Danette, who was eight months pregnant and living alone in a small Idaho town. Her husband, David Shirley, a crew member in an Air Corps bomber, had died in a training accident in Florida. Anna Lynn was leaving to fetch Danette back to live with her in Mountain Park until the baby came and other arrangements could be made. She closed by saying how glad she was he was safe and sound in college at Amherst.

From the postmark on the letter, Matt figured Anna Lynn was back from her trip to fetch her sister and most likely an aunt by now.

He was writing his regrets to Gus and explaining that the government had found other work for him, when Dominic rushed up waving papers.

“Did yours come?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Orders to report to G-2, ASAP.” He was grinning from ear to ear. “I'm assigned to division.”

Matt plucked the orders out of Dominic's hand and scanned them. “Well, I'll be damned. Congratulations.”

Dominic's grin evaporated. “You didn't get orders, did you?”

“I sure didn't,” Matt replied.

“That sucks. Look, I'm to pack up and make my way to G-2 right now. As soon as I get there, I'll find out what the snafu is and get it straightened out.”

“Don't screw anything up for yourself on my account,” Matt cautioned.

“Come on,” Dominic replied, “it's probably nothing more than a paperwork glitch.”

Matt smiled and squeezed his pal's shoulder. “Yeah, come get me when it's all straightened out.”

“Wilco,” Dominic replied.

Half hoping Dominic was right, Matt waited throughout the heat of the day, fighting off a growing feeling that he wasn't going to be leaving K Company before the invasion of Sicily. He broke down his M-1 and gave it a thorough cleaning. He borrowed some saddle soap from a squad member and worked it into his leather combat boots to help waterproof them, and he wrote farewell letters to Pa, Anna Lynn, Al Jr., Gus Merton, and even a little note to Ginny, just in case he didn't make it.

Surrounding him, tens of thousands of men waited to go to war, most, like him, for the very first time. The nervous chatter of anxious, scared boys, their forced laughs, their rough horseplay, their loudmouth ribbing of one another, was like an eerie, discordant Greek chorus.

Behind the huge encampment that snaked along the coastline, the ancient town of Oran, liberated a mere seven months before, looked down on the latest army to come this way after the Romans and Carthaginians, the Spanish, the Ottomans, the French, the Germans, and now the Allies.

Matt's mouth was dry. He drank half a canteen of water, but it didn't seem to help. Tomorrow, he'd board another troop ship for another almost unendurable sea voyage. Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, was about to begin.

M
att stood crammed together with hundreds of scared, sweating men in the upper hold of a transport ship, listening to a thunderous naval bombardment of coastal defenses on the western shores of Sicily. The last day of sailing had been the worst. A storm and rough seas had made every soldier on board sick, and the hold stank of vomit. Matt had lost everything in his stomach twice, if that was possible. Once topside, he shuffled along the deck, the soldier in front of him inches from the tip of his helmet, craning to see some of the vessels in the vast armada. More than twenty-six hundred ships were going to deposit a hundred and eighty thousand men on Sicilian beaches, along with hundreds of tanks, thousands of vehicles, countless artillery pieces, and millions of tons of ammunition and supplies. Overhead, Allied fighter planes and bombers roared inland to strafe and bomb, adding to the deafening roar. Shot down by big guns from a destroyer, a German plane exploded in midair and fell in pieces into the sea.

Matt went over the side, down the cargo net, and tumbled into the landing craft looking for a familiar face. He found his young squad leader, Sergeant Tom Kesling, crouched next to him, his face pasty white from seasickness, the M-1 shaking in his trembling hands.

“You okay, Pops?” Kesling asked, barely getting the words out before he threw up at Matt's feet.

Matt nodded as the landing craft pitched forward in choppy waters, drenching the men as it dipped and rose over the waves. Most of the men in the boat were part of Matt's platoon. In the prow, his platoon leader, Lieutenant Daugherty, was praying the rosary, his head bent over the beads in his hand.

“You'll be all right,” Kesling consoled, looking around at no one in particular, his eyes glazed with fear.

Matt nodded again, but he didn't expect to survive. The Germans and Italians had at least a two-to-one advantage, and all the officers and noncoms in Company K had forecast heavy resistance.

Closer to shore, they passed swamped and capsized landing craft, half-submerged trucks and howitzers, and blown-up landing craft surround by bodies floating in the water. The navy coxswain slowed the boat and lowered the bow ramp, and at the urging of the lieutenant, the men plowed into the chest-high water, weapons held above their heads, mortar and artillery shells exploding all around them. Matt reached the beach untouched and made it to cover under sporadic small-arms fire to Lieutenant Daugherty's position at a sheltered dune.

“Where's Kesling?” Daugherty asked, scanning the surf. Two dozen men huddled around him with not another corporal or three-striper in sight.

“I don't know,” Matt replied, following Daugherty's gaze. There were bodies of men sprawled in the lapping surf. Officers ran around ordering men to dig foxholes. Medics tended to the wounded and dying. Down the beach, a small group of Italian soldiers marched with their hands up toward an engineer company offloading equipment. A mile out to sea, smoke billowed from a burning merchant ship. Behind him, machine gun fire from higher ground tore into a soldier trying to drag a buddy to cover. Matt flinched at the sight.

“Where's Kesling?” Daugherty demanded again, looking undone.

“I don't know, sir; he was right beside me.”

“The squad is yours until he shows,” Daugherty said. “Take ten men up that draw and clear any enemy resistance you encounter. I'll go left and we'll meet at the top. Got that?”

Matt nodded, gathered his men, and moved out. That was the last he saw of Lieutenant Daugherty and a dozen other men from Third Platoon. Halfway up the draw Matt looked back in time to see enemy artillery rounds blow them to shreds as soon as they broke cover.

Above the beach, Matt and his squad got close enough to clear a machine gun nest of Italian soldiers with hand grenades without taking casualties. Thinking they probably weren't facing German soldiers, Matt had the squad hunker down and started talking Italian to enemy troops lodged behind a fortified, dug-in position twenty-five yards ahead.

In between the mortar bursts and automatic weapons fire the Italians poured at the squad, Matt cupped his hands and told them they were doomed if they didn't surrender immediately.

“You will all be killed,” he warned in Italian. “I will radio your position to our destroyers and they will blow you up with their heavy guns.”

The firing didn't stop.

“What are you saying to them, Pops?” a young soldier named Barry Peters asked.

Matt translated.

“The radio got blown up with the lieutenant and those other boys,” Barry noted.

“I know that,” Matt hissed. He cupped his hands again, waited for a lull in the shooting, and shouted in Italian, “Save yourselves. Retreat with honor or you will all be slaughtered.”

Firing from the Italians slackened.

“Do not hesitate, brave Italian soldiers,” Matt yelled as loud as he could. “You have fought for far too long. Leave your position now before I give your coordinates to our navy. Live to return with pride to your wives and mothers. You have two minutes to decide.”

The firing ceased. Up ahead, Matt could hear snatches of Italian, but he couldn't make out what was being said. On either side of him, skirmishes and firefights raged along a ragged front, with some platoons stalled and others pushing slowly inland.

When the whispering stopped, it got quiet. He waited three minutes before wiggling out of the machine gun nest and slowly crawling toward the enemy position. Either his ruse had worked or he was about to become dead. He didn't start breathing again until he reached the abandoned fortification, cleared the area, and called the squad forward.

Barry grinned as he plopped down next to Matt. “Jeez, that was something, you sounding like a real Italian and all. I'm stickin' with you, Pops.”

“It was just dumb luck,” Matt replied. “We'll hold here until the CO or some other officer arrives,” he added after the last man tumbled safely into the trench.

The enemy defenses had been breached, a little bit at least. He sent one man back to the machine gun nest to direct the foot traffic of soldiers now pouring up the draw, and had the rest of the squad take up covering positions facing inland. When Captain Marshall arrived and learned what had happened, he shook his head in amazement and promoted Matt to buck sergeant on the spot. He assembled what was left of the company plus a few stragglers and led them forward.

They met pockets of heavy resistance from German troops that controlled fields of fire from wooded thickets. The company suffered several casualties, and Matt lost a squad member to a mortar round. That night, the regiment regrouped and Matt's squad was folded into First Platoon and placed on sentry duty at a forward position.

The men dug foxholes, ate cold K rations, and smoked cigarettes. Enemy mortars exploded around them all night long. Nobody slept. In the morning, the regiment moved out, only to get strafed by the Luftwaffe, which scattered whole companies into olive groves for cover while the German planes destroyed trucks on the roadway, bombed tanks, and blew up jeeps.

Over the next several days, they engaged a stubborn element of the elite Hermann Göring Division from dawn to dusk, secured an airfield, and liberated two small villages to the wild cheering of the townspeople. Ordered to stand down for the night, the men commandeered churches and public buildings for billets and secured perimeters with sentries.

Much to the dismay of an ancient priest and his equally decrepit housekeeper, Matt and his squad took up quarters in a church rectory. Early in the morning, word came down from division that they would move out at ten hundred hours. After a K ration breakfast and a cup of coffee, Matt used the precious extra time to shave, wash his feet, and put on a pair of clean socks.

He stepped outside the rectory just as a jeep with two soldiers pulled to a stop in front of the church.

The driver jumped out and hurried to him. “Are you with Company K, Second Battalion?”

“Yep,” Matt replied.

“I'm Don Robinson with the
45th Division News.
I'm looking for the guy who talked a bunch of Italian soldiers into surrendering on the beachhead.”

“They didn't surrender; they retreated,” Matt corrected.

“You were there?” Robinson gestured to his buddy in the jeep.

“I was.”

“We want to do a story about what happened for the newspaper. That guy helped get a couple hundred GIs safely off the beach and out of harm's way. You know where I can find him?”

Matt nodded.

Robinson yanked a notepad from his shirt pocket as his buddy, a short, skinny sergeant with big ears, came up, gave Matt a careful once-over, and said, “What's your name, Corporal?”

“It's sergeant, and the name's Matt Kerney.”

The skinny sergeant broke into a grin. “I'll be damned. Matt Kerney from the Tularosa? I'm Bill Mauldin.”

Matt's jaw dropped as he took a closer look. “By God, it
is
you, Billy.”

“Sure as shooting,” Bill Mauldin replied, thumping Matt on the back. “It's been a long time.”

“Yes, it has,” Matt said, grinning.

“Okay, it's real sweet that you two guys know each other from back home,” Robinson said impatiently. “But enough of the lovey-dovey stuff. Where can we find this Italian-speaking dogface?”

“You're looking at him,” Matt replied with a laugh.

“Seriously?” Robinson asked.

“Seriously,” Matt confirmed.

Robinson licked his pencil point and said he wanted all the details, and Matt told him what had happened. Robinson asked a few more questions before hurrying off to interview the squad members who were lounging in the graveyard next to the rectory. That gave Matt a chance to catch up with Billy, who told him he had joined the National Guard in Arizona in 1940 and had been cartooning for the
45th Division News
ever since, trying to turn it into a full-time job.

Billy asked about Anna Lynn just as Lieutenant Church drove up in a jeep and called Matt over. Billy tagged along.

“You're wanted at regiment,” Church said.

“What for, L.T.?”

“Seems the colonel is awarding you the Bronze Star,” Church answered, looking none too happy. “Why anyone would get decorated for scaring away the enemy by speaking Italian is beyond me.”

“Maybe my Italian is so bad, they couldn't stand listening to it anymore,” Matt replied, straight-faced.

Church's dour expression didn't change.

“Now, that's even a better story,” Bill Mauldin hooted, turning on his heel to locate Robinson and scurrying away.

“Who was that?” Church asked sternly.

Matt shrugged. “I don't know his name, Lieutenant, some reporter from the division's newspaper.”

Church groaned and put the jeep in gear. “You're due at regimental HQ in fifteen minutes. Bring your squad.”

Matt saluted. “Yes, sir.”

***

A
fter a hastily called regimental formation, where Matt and a dozen other soldiers were decorated by the colonel, Company K formed up and moved out, pushing deeper inland. A day of light resistance turned into heavy fighting the following morning when a paratroop drop to seize and hold key objectives got so screwed up that troops were scattered miles behind enemy lines. Entrenched enemy positions that should have been overrun and in friendly hands by the time ground forces arrived were offering heavy resistance. By nightfall, the regiment had retreated, with many casualties.

When the division finally broke through, Matt and his squad wound their way slowly through bare, brown, coastal mountains where the enemy continued to have the high ground. He lost another squad member on a company assault of a ridgetop bunker. In the same action Lieutenant Church went down with a serious wound that put him out of action. Roscoe Beal, the first sergeant, took over the platoon. By the end of the week he'd won a battlefield commission.

Matt was damn glad to have Beal helming the platoon. He was cautious when necessary and decisive when it counted, worked hard to keep morale up, and went easy on the terrified new replacements sent up from the rear.

Matt, on the other hand, didn't have a reservoir of goodwill for anybody except the men in his squad. Combat dulled his sensibilities, although he tried not to let his men see it. He no longer paid much attention to the villages, which were dingy and dull to begin with, or the smiling Sicilian people, who cursed the Fascists as the company marched by. The rows of olive groves and the few hillside houses weren't scenery, only places where the enemy could hide. And the rugged mountains, denuded of trees, held the hidden dangers of booby traps and antipersonnel mines.

He had no enthusiasm for war, yet it was all he thought about: enemy minefields, machine gun nests, sniper positions, camouflaged panzer tanks, heavy artillery pieces zeroed in on his position. Everything out there was designed for the sole purpose of killing him and every other member of his squad. He thought death was inevitable and he didn't like the idea of having no future.

Night patrols were the worst. Every sound, even the single chirp or flutter of a disturbed bird, signaled potential death and destruction. The only benefit of the darkness was that his men couldn't see his hands shaking.

He often thought of Tom Kesling, the young sergeant who threw up at his feet in the landing craft, as sick as a dog and trying hard to lead in spite of it. Word had come down that his body had washed up on the shore, drowned, not shot. Would his parents ever learn how brave their young Tom had been in the face of death on a hostile, embattled shore?

Matt lost track of the days of the week. He couldn't even remember how long he'd been in Sicily. All that mattered were the hours, minutes, and seconds he spent waiting to move out, waiting for the mortar barrages to begin, waiting for the artillery shelling to commence and for the next order to advance.