Hard Country (61 page)

Dear Mother,

We leave tomorrow for France. I have now traveled from coast to coast and seen more of this great country than most folks I know. The forests and the farmlands are nothing like the land back home. The sky isn’t as big and the land crowds you.

People lined the rails to cheer us as our train passed by and that made us feel good. We’re encamped in a weedy, sandy area favored by pesky mosquitoes, and I’ll be glad to get done with them. Soon I’ll be on the ocean and then in France, but to reach our ship we go by train and ferry back across the bay. We should be at sea for about twelve days.

We’ve got a new commanding general, and the old-time regular sergeants who know him say he’s a good one. Strict but fair.

I’ll write to you from Europe and will send mementos to you and Matt.

Your loving son,
CJ

He sealed the letter in an envelope and put it aside. He was eager to cross the ocean on a ship and at the same time worried about it getting sunk by a U-boat. He couldn’t swim a lick and the idea of drowning frightened him.

John Lockhart had said all men go to war scared. CJ figured it was just happening to him a bit early. He pushed aside his worry and picked up the noncommissioned officers infantry field guide John Lockhart had given him to study. At least he’d go to war prepared.

68

I
n the port of Brest, CJ left the troopship seasick and miserable. There were times during the voyage when he felt like drowning might not be such a bad way to die after all. Ferried to the dock in barges called lighters, the men were assembled and marched through the town in the rain to a muddy, smelly camp. The fact he was in France registered, but at the moment CJ didn’t give a damn. He’d been leaking at both ends for days and was just glad to be on solid ground. After he put up his shelter tent, he fell asleep without bothering to eat chow or take off his boots. John Lockhart woke him the next morning.

“Get moving,” he said, handing CJ a lit cigarette. “It seems we’re gonna be here for a little while, so the colonel wants us to get our gear in order and squared away. Then it’s hot showers, a hot meal, and the rest of the day to ourselves.”

CJ tested his land legs and figured he was better. He actually felt hungry. “When do we go to war?” he asked.

Lockhart shrugged. “According to the generals, we ain’t fit to fight yet. We’re gonna get trained some more before they send us to the front.”

“Here?” CJ asked, looking around.

A two-story stone building that made up one side of a large stone-wall enclosure loomed over the sea of tents. A breeze picked up, blowing a foul smell over the camp as it started to rain. CJ clamped on his helmet.

“No,” Lockhart answered. “We’ll be moved inland to a training center.”

The water-soaked pup tents sagged, muddy water filled the puddles, and rivulets ran in the gravel walkways. “I hope it’s better than this place,” CJ said.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Lockhart replied.

That afternoon, feeling better than he had in days, CJ wrote home.

Dear Mother,

We arrived in France yesterday so I haven’t seen much of the place. We got marched through town to our camp so the best I can say for now is it’s an old country and the folks look poor and ragged. Where we’re bivouacked is near a two-story stone barracks where Napoleon housed troops and prisoners a hundred years ago. Leastways that’s what I’ve been told. Of course, that’s where the generals and the colonels get to sleep.

It rains here a lot and it is damp and muddy. But we’ll leave soon for training and I’ll get to see more of the countryside. I’ll write again when I can.

Your loving son,
CJ

The rain had stopped and the sky cleared when he dropped the letter off to be mailed, so he took a hike away from the camp to stretch his legs. He ambled along a dirt lane past some old farmhouses and cultivated fields partially hidden by hedgerows that were as pretty as a picture. The houses and barns were all stone, with steep roofs that looked like they somehow grew out of the land. Big trees with massive trunks shaded tended lawns. He veered off the lane up a path through a meadow of knee-high coarse grass to the crest of a small hill. Below, an orchard surrounded a whitewashed stone cottage, and several goats were in a small paddock near an ancient-looking barn.

He perched on a stone wall, smoked a cigarette, and took it all in, thinking he’d have to remember what he saw because when he got home, Ma would pester him about every detail.

He turned back when it clouded up and started to drizzle. Already there were rumors in camp that the division was to be held in reserve after training. At roll call, the colonel had addressed the regiment to tell them a big push was on to drive the Germans back. The Allies had fought off the spring offensives by the Huns, and a recent French counterattack had smashed their lines on the Western Front. The colonel warned that if the German army collapsed and retreated, the war could be over before the division joined the line.

CJ didn’t like that notion at all. If he could help it, he darn sure wasn’t going to be left out of the action.

* * *

A
fter two days of rest, the division moved to a training center behind the front lines, near a château, where huts and dozens of buildings had been thrown up in level fields. Twenty-eight thousand men were encamped, and for the next six weeks the troops trained day and night.

They learned how to fire as a line while continuing to advance, how to flank machine-gun nests and use rifle grenades to destroy them. Heavy wire cutters were issued and the men practiced cutting through wire in mud-soaked fields. They were taught to crawl and infiltrate enemy lines, how to cross open fire-swept ground in small units, and how to concentrate fire on an objective.

Told they would lose their stripes if they didn’t measure up, CJ and the other noncoms received additional instruction in squad and platoon tactics. They practiced how to control the movement of men on patrol, maneuver platoons across open fields, use cover and concealment, and deploy automatic weapons when attacking the enemy. CJ became expert with the new Browning automatic rifle and was soon teaching others how to use it.

CJ kept his rank, but a number of men got busted down to private. Even some junior officers were sent packing. Assigned to a replacement company to be moved to the front, CJ wrote a note to his mother the night before he left and gave it to John Lockhart, who had been promoted to first lieutenant and ordered to remain with the division pending reassignment to the front.

“Just in case something happens,” he said, “please mail this for me, sir.”

Lockhart nodded. “I will, CJ. You’ll do just fine.”

“I sure hope so,” CJ said with a tight smile.

“Are you a drinking man, sergeant?” Lockhart asked with an easy smile.

“I got drunk once in Fort Worth,” CJ said, “and didn’t like it much.”

Lockhart laughed and slapped CJ on the back. “I’ve got a bottle of sipping whiskey that goes down smooth as silk. Let’s you and me have a drink together before lights-out.”

“I’d like that,” CJ said.

Lockhart fetched the bottle from his tent. They walked to the small white church with a soaring spire at the far end of the château, drank some sipping whiskey that indeed went down as smooth as silk, and talked about anything but the war and home.

* * *

C
J marched with the replacement company along a sunken road so deep he could see nothing of the land on either side. Bursting German shells made him want to flinch, but he stiffened his back and plodded through the mud with his head up, covered in dirt from the explosions. Along the way, he passed stretcher-bearers carrying wounded back to medical dressing stations. He glanced at the faces of the wounded men, wondering if his old boyhood pals, Billy and Austin, were up ahead, already in the fight, or if they’d been shot or killed in some earlier battle. He worried about how he’d act when he got the order to go over the top. Would he freeze or run like a scared rabbit for the nearest shell hole in no-man’s-land?

They came out of the sunken road to an area that looked at first glance like a plowed field, except the furrows were shell holes separated by mounds of earth. The Germans had retired from the field, and stretcher-bearers were out beyond the wire picking up bodies swarming with blowflies that rose like black clouds from the dead.

CJ thought he had endured all of the awful putrid smells of army life, but once they entered the trenches, the stench was almost unbearable. It smelled of rotting flesh, urine, human waste, the stink of filthy men, and the acid odor of poison mustard gas, which first the Germans and then the Allies had begun to use as a weapon.

He was dropped out of the march along with three other sergeants and a corporal at a regimental command bunker, where a weary lieutenant colonel with a thick New York accent examined them briefly.

“Don’t flaunt your stripes, men,” he said before sending them down the line to their various companies. “My boys have seen plenty of action and can teach you a thing or two if you’ll listen. And for God’s sake, don’t decide to take a peek over the assault trenches at the German line. You’ll be dead from a sniper’s bullet in a second, and I damn well can’t afford to lose any more replacements. They get killed fast enough as it is.”

CJ joined the First Platoon of Company A and reported to Lieutenant Grayson Tyler, who gave him the once-over and asked if he knew how to handle a Browning.

“Yes, sir,” CJ replied. “I’m qualified as an instructor.”

“Good,” Tyler said. “Report to Corporal Morrison. You’ll be his BAR man until I decide if you’re fit to take over a squad. Do you understand, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

CJ reported to Morrison, an older man with the lobe of his left ear shot off and crudely stitched up.

“I’m your BAR man,” CJ said.

“That’s lovely,” Morrison replied in an Irish brogue, giving CJ a careful look. “Haven’t been in the thick of it yet, have you?”

“Not yet.”

“It will seize you up soon enough,” Morrison said. “Tonight, after the Krauts stop shelling, you’ll man an observation post with two privates, Blakely and Ingram. They know the way. It’s a disabled French tank half a kilometer from here. If the Krauts start an attack, send a runner back and provide covering fire before returning to our lines. Have you got that, laddie?”

“Understood, Corporal,” CJ replied. “And it’s sergeant, not laddie.”

Morrison smiled benignly and looked at his watch. “You’ve got several hours before you go over the top. Come meet Blakely and Ingram. I’m sure they can’t wait to address you by your exalted rank.”

CJ met Privates Harold Blakely and Osmond Ingram, who looked at his fresh uniform with sergeant’s chevrons and grinned as if Corporal Morrison had told them a funny joke. Both soldiers wore mud-encrusted uniforms, had a week’s worth of whiskers, and smelled rank.

“The Hun will come at us tonight,” Ingram predicted, thrusting a BAR into CJ’s hands. “Carry as much ammo as you can, for it’s my turn to be runner and I don’t wish to be killed.”

CJ checked the Browning. It needed to be broken down and cleaned. “What other weapons will we have?”

“There’s a light machine gun that’s set up in the tank,” Blakely replied, “and we’ll have our rifles. We’ll hold the Krauts off until Ozzie reaches our lines, then retreat.”

CJ nodded. “What happened to the other BAR man?”

“Dead,” Morrison said. “Have you any more questions?”

CJ shook his head and got to work on the Browning.

That night before moonrise, a German patrol came crawling out of their trench. CJ spotted the movement and sent Ozzie back just as a Kraut machine gun opened up on the tank. Blakely fired back at the German gun position while CJ sprayed the approaching troops, who suddenly rose and started to rush his position. Bullets clanged against the steel. Men in CJ’s sights fell.

“It’s a whole goddamn platoon of Krauts,” Blakely shouted as he turned the machine gun on the advancing men. “It’s time to go, time to go.”

“Can we be sure Ozzie made it?” CJ shouted.

“Doesn’t matter now,” Blakely said. “Let’s get the hell out of here while we still can.”

They left the tank under small-arms fire, zigzagging from shell hole to shell hole. Behind them, German artillery blew the French tank to smithereens, and a roar went up from the Krauts. CJ and Blakely rolled into the trench as shells began to explode around them, answered by American cannon.

Corporal Morrison pulled CJ to his feet as Lieutenant Tyler blew his whistle to signal the counterattack. “Reload and get back over the top,” he said. “We’ve got Germans to kill.”

CJ’s hands were shaking. He looked around for Private Blakely. “Where’s Blakely? Where’s Ozzie?”

“Not now.” Morrison pushed him up the ladder. “Get going!”

Under a thousand flares, they forced the Germans back. All around CJ men fell, some blown up, some shot down. As he pressed forward next to Corporal Morrison, the horrible hammering, crashing sounds of war surrounded him. The air screamed with shells, hissed with bullets; the moans and cries of dying and wounded men were an unrelenting chorus. Moving from shell hole to mound to shell hole, CJ fired the Browning blindly at the retreating Germans. When the sky went dark and sudden silence came, it was almost as terrifying.

Morrison had to tell CJ to get up and move back. Lugging the BAR, he slogged through mud and dropped down into the trench. Amazed that he was still alive, he tried to catch his breath.

Lieutenant Tyler, his arm in a sling, sought him out. “You’ll take over the Second Squad, First Platoon, in the morning, Sergeant. Get some rest.”