JC2 The Raiders (17 page)

Inside the beer hall, Captain Grimes sat at one of the heavy oaken
tables. Four big steins of beer stood on the table, one for himself
and one for each of his three platoon leaders. A map was spread on
the table.

"Okay, guys," said the captain. "Everything's
changed." He put a finger on the symbol for a village on the
Rhine. "That's where we're going. Remagen. The Krauts haven't
blown up the Ludendorff Bridge yet. There just might be a chance,
just a chance, to capture that bridge before it goes boom. Our orders
are to bust ass into Remagen as fast as we can. We're gonna outrun
the tank companies, 'cause the roads are shitty. If we run into light
resistance, we bypass it if we can. Other infantry companies are
moving. Whoever gets to the bridge first gets the honor of going
across."

"And of getting our asses blown into the river when the
demolition charges go off," said Sergeant Cline, leader of the
third platoon. Cline had the most experience of them all, more than
the rest of them combined, and he was a battle-weary cynic.

"Blown into history," said Captain Grimes sarcastically.
"That's the way it is. Ride as far as you can, but you'll have
to go into the village on foot. Now move!"

Bat took one great gulp of beer, then trotted down the street to
where his platoon sat around their vehicles: a truck and a halftrack.
He ordered his men into the truck and halftrack, and they set off.
Half an hour later they dismounted and advanced through a vineyard on
foot. They reached a small grove of trees, hurried through it, and
emerged to a spectacular view.

The Rhine lay below. A smooth paved highway ran along the west side
of the river. The village was directly below them, dominated by a
beautiful centuries-old church. And there was the bridge. It stood.
Men and vehicles were streaming across.

Bat used a pair of binoculars from the halftrack and stared at the
bridge. "Those are Krauts," he said. "Retreating.
Okay. Let's move down. C'mon."

He led his platoon down the hill. He did not take time to look for a
road or path. They just walked down, through terraced vineyards.
Other units were moving. Something like twenty halftracks were
advancing on the highway. The Germans on the bridge began to run.
Only a few of them stopped to fire at the Americans.

"They're running away!" one man yelled. "They're not
going to defend it!"

"Don't kid yourself," grunted Sergeant Dave Amory.

As Bat's platoon reached the bottom of the hill and the first houses
of the village, sniper fire from the windows caught one man in the
leg. He was Corporal Prizio, the son of a farmer from upstate New
York. He screamed and fell. Bat ordered heavy fire on the houses and
then knelt beside Prizio. He would survive. How well he would walk in
future was another question.

The platoon moved forward. Their burst of automatic fire, especially
that from the BARs, had shattered the windows of the nearest houses
and knocked big jagged holes in the stucco on their rear walls. No
more sniper fire. First squad, led by Sergeant Amory, kicked down the
back door of the nearest house and charged in. Second squad entered
another house.

Bat ordered two men to carry Prizio forward and
into the first house. First squad spread out through the house and
found a German family cowering in the cellar. "
Heraus
!"
Bat screamed. "
Heraus
!
Schnell
!"

The Germans came up from their cellar: an elderly woman and two
teenaged girls. Bat spoke German to them. "One of you fired on
my soldiers and wounded that one. Lawfully, I can shoot all of you.
If I decide to shoot you, I will allow my men to take such pleasure
of you as they may wish before we shoot you. I offer you one chance
to survive. You care for my wounded man. I will return for him —
or one of us will. If he has not survived, or if he has been
mistreated, you will die, and this house will be burned to the
ground."

The women swore they had not fired a shot. It had
been done by a
Volksturmer
— an overage militiaman —
who had run when the Americans fired on the house. Bat left Prizio
with sulfa and morphine, also with a carbine and a grenade.

The platoon assembled and advanced toward the river and the bridge.
Other Americans were in the streets. They could hear the roar of tank
engines.

The Ludendorff Bridge was a railway bridge. The Germans had planked
over its tracks so tanks and trucks could cross. And it stood there,
crossing the sullen gray and swift Rhine. At the far end it debouched
at the foot of a stone escarpment. Whoever crossed it would have a
hard fight to get beyond it.

As Bat and his platoon stood staring at the bridge, Captain Grimes
came to them. "We go across," he said.

A moment later an explosion lifted the bridge and filled the air with
smoke and dust. Bat shook his head, then shrugged. Well ... they were
relieved of the crossing. The honor would not be theirs. They had
arrived a few minutes too late.

But as the air cleared they could see the bridge again, still intact.
The explosion had blown open a trench that would temporarily block
tanks from crossing, but nothing but German small-arms fire blocked
the infantry. Other units ventured onto the bridge. Enemy machine
guns in stone guard towers opened fire. American infantrymen moved
against it, peppering the towers with steel and lead. Engineers went
over the railings and began to cut wires, disarming charges.

Emotions never to be experienced otherwise in life govern the combat
soldier. Bat's ran strong, wholly in control of him. He was relieved
not to be first across the bridge, but he was torn with anger that
other platoons were rushing forward while his stood and stared. From
the corner of his eye he saw Captain Grimes returning to give the
order. He would not wait.

"Go, for Christ sake! What're we waitin' for? Move! Move! Move!"

He ran ahead of his platoon. He didn't have to glance back to see if
they were following him. His men, some of them old enough to be his
father, respected him or were afraid of him. They wouldn't let him go
across alone. They dreaded what he would do to a man who proved
afraid to follow him.

Maybe they dreaded more what their fellow soldiers would think of
them.

Bat ran forward. He jumped over the bodies of Americans who had
fallen to defensive fire, then over bodies of Germans caught in the
sudden onslaught. Tanks on the river highway had zeroed in on the
defense towers at the eastern end of the bridge. The white smoke and
red fire of phosphorous shells enveloped the entire east end of the
bridge. He could hear the agonized screams of German soldiers with
phosphorus burning on their skin.

Slugs ricocheted off the steel around him. Ahead he saw a man fall.
Drizzle and sweat in his eyes obscured his vision. The air was
chilly, but he sweated nevertheless. Time, too, was obscure. He ran
for less than a minute, but it seemed as if he were running for ten
minutes. His eyes were dimmed, but he saw the situation as if it were
engraved on a bright crystal. The danger was the explosive charges
under the bridge. "Hey, Mac! Hey, Mac!"

The man was yelling at
him
. A man over the
side. "Hey, Mac! Look! See the cable? Can you hit it?" Bat
saw what the man was yelling about: a cable about half the thickness
of a man's wrist, running from somewhere to the east and under the
bridge — to an explosive charge, without any doubt at all.

"
Shoot the son of a bitch
!
Break
that son of a bitch
!" Bat nodded. The carbine he was
carrying was not the war's most accurate weapon, but he braced
himself on the bridge rail and took aim. His first shot missed. A
little high. He adjusted. His second slug severed the cable. It hung
in shreds. He fired again. And again. The two ends separated and fell
apart. "Hey, Mac —"

He had stood still too long. It made him a target. He felt the shock
in a lower right rib, then the burning pain. He was aware of nothing
after he felt Sergeant Amory dragging him into the shelter of a steel
girder.

In that, on the 7th day of March 1945, First Lieutenant Jonas E.
Batista, while leading his platoon across the Ludendorff Bridge in
the face of heavy enemy fire in the best practice of infantry
leadership, did stop and, exposing himself as a target, did by
accurate fire from his weapon break an electric cable that connected
heavy explosive charges to the enemy's source of electric power,
thereby preventing detonation of such charges, but subjecting
Lieutenant Batista to severe and life-threatening wounds; and

In that First Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista did conduct himself in the
face of an armed enemy with extraordinary courage and gallantry in
the finest tradition of the Armed Services of the United States,

NOW THEREFORE it is ordered that Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista be
awarded and he hereby is awarded THE DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS.

He was also promoted to captain. He was hospitalized first in Antwerp
and then in Paris, finally at Walter Reed in Washington. He was at
home for Christmas, at the hacienda outside Cordoba.

While he was away his grandfather had died. The
hacienda seemed empty without him. Virgilio Escalante now invited him
to share cigars and brandy after dinner. He took him into the town
and treated him to the ministrations of the finest young
puta
Cordoba could offer. Bat accepted the gift. He returned to see
the girl several times. She became a teacher for him.

At the end of his leave he went back to Walter Reed Hospital. The war
was over, and he would be discharged as soon as the hospital granted
him its final release. He took some time to inquire of Corporal
Prizio. The young man had survived and was at home on a farm not far
from Watkins Glen. He inquired of Jerry Rabin and learned that Ensign
Jerome Rabin had been killed in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Captain
— now Major — Grimes was in Japan, a professional soldier
staying in the army. Sergeant Dave Amory was at home in Boston.

Bat applied to Harvard, to return and begin the rest of his education
in the fall term of 1946.

The fall term began six months later. He had nothing to do for six
months. He bought a car: a 1938 Cadillac. He drove up to Watkins Glen
and visited Corporal Prizio. After that he drove on to Cambridge and
began to look for a place to live. The returning GIs did not want to
live in college dorms, and he didn't either. He began to look for an
apartment.

He remembered that Sergeant Dave Amory lived in Boston. He called
him, and they met for beer and sandwiches at a Cambridge pub.

He didn't raise the subject immediately, but after they'd finished a
beer Bat said to Dave, "You saved my life."

"I did like hell," said Dave. "You were down. They
wouldn't have wasted ammunition on you."

"Well then, they might have wasted it on you, while you exposed
your ass running out there to get me."

Dave shook his head. "I had to run someplace.
The other option was run on across the bridge, toward where the
firing was hotter. Taking a minute to drag you behind a girder may
have saved
my
life."

Dave Amory was as tall as Bat, and he was a great deal bulkier. His
shoulders were broader than Bat's, his body was more solid, and his
arms and legs were thicker. His broad, long-jawed face was more often
solemn than jocular, but he had a submerged sense of humor that
emerged in eccentric comments on just about anything. He was two
years older than Bat and would begin his senior year in the fall.
After that he would go to law school.

"What are you doing this summer, Dave?"

"Nothing. I'm drawing my fifty-two twenty. Sit around the VFW
hall and soak up beer. I figure I'm entitled to a little time off
before I pick myself up again."

Bat frowned at him. He lifted his chin. "You bored?" he
asked.

Dave tipped his head to one side and drew one corner of his lower lip
back between his teeth. He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Yeah,
I guess I am. You know what it is."

"I sure do. It was a fuckin' nightmare, Dave, but nothing ever
gets a man's juices flowing as strong. I doubt anything ever will. We
have to admit it. God grant we never find anything again in our lives
that — Well, it sure as hell wasn't boring. I wonder if
everything for the rest of our lives will be boring ... by
comparison."

"Are you absolutely sure you want to come back to Harvard?"
Dave asked.

"No. But I've got to do something, and I don't know what else to
do. Besides ... I don't want to disappoint my mother."

Dave chuckled. "As good a reason as any," he said. "What
are you, Lieutenant? Twenty-one?"

"Not quite, but please don't call me Lieutenant."

"What you doing about boredom?" Dave asked. "Gettin'
laid any?"

"When I was at home last winter, my stepfather set me up with a
pretty little whore. I had a wonderful time with her, but —"
He shrugged.

Dave nodded.

"When I was here in '42 and '43, my freshman roommate couldn't
think of anything but what he called getting his wick dipped. He said
he didn't want to die a virgin. Well, he ... didn't. He died, but he
wasn't a virgin. God, what enthusiasm we had for it! My first. It
wasn't very good, I know now, but —"

"It'll never be quite as good again," said Dave. "In
another sense. When the mystery is gone out of a thing —"

"I was terrified of being shot," Bat interrupted. "Then
I was hit. I got hit twice, you know. It's not the biggest thing in
my life. It would have been if I'd been killed. It would have been if
I'd been crippled."

"You had a punctured lung, didn't you? I saw the blood running
out of your mouth."

"Lung was full of rib fragments," said Bat. "The
Germans made good ammunition. The slugs went through cleanly. But not
the bone fragments. Let's talk about something else."