Ordinary Heroes (17 page)

The Beano--actually two of them--were for Christian and Henri. We would all initially approach from the south, ascending the hills behind the saltworks, with Christian and Henri then fanning off toward the front gates. They had grenade-launcher attachments for their Mrs, which, even firing something the size of the Beano, would have a range of one hundred yards. Their target was the gasoline tanks that serviced the garrison. If the fuel ignited, all troops would rush out there to extinguish the flames burning perilously close to the wooden entrance to the shafts and the tons of munitions below. But even if the father and son missed, the Germans could be expected to rouse off-duty troops to begin combing the overlooking hills. In the meantime, the locomotive would speed across the trestle, crash the railroad crossing gate, and hurtle down into the mine. There was a chance that the impact of the locomotive with the train cars loaded with shells might detonate them, but rather than count on that, Martin was packing a satchel charge whose fuse he would light before jumping from the train.

The explosion inside the mine would act more or less like a pipe bomb, with the shafts channeling the huge force of the blast from either end. If we made it back over and down the hill from which we'd come, we would escape unharmed. Martin didn't address his own safety, but I couldn't see how he'd get away, since he had to remain on the locomotive to steer it over the trestle. As for Biddy and me, Martin planned for us to wait on the hillside. We would have a clear view of his activities, but would need only a few seconds to get back over the top and down.

"But be alert for Krauts," Martin told us. "They may be out by then, looking for the saboteurs who fired the grenades.)
,
We would start again at 5
:00
a
. M
. That left abou
t s
ix hours to sleep, but I was much too excited to try.

Ready to turn in, Gita came to check on me. Sh
e r
emained concerned that she had told me too much with her stories about Bettjer.

"I am fine," I told her. "I am sure that before I sleep, I will think of those I have left at home and feel bad about that, as soldiers do. But I am pleased finally to know a little of what soldiers feel."

"I have that luck," she said. "No home." She dug a stick into the ground and pondered it. "Robert does not like talk of home," she said quietly. "He says it is not good for soldiers. But it would be unnatural to forget, no?"

"Of course," I said.

She did not look up, but smiled wistfully as she turned over clods.

"Did I tell you, Dubin, that my mother was killed for harboring Jews?"

"Certainly not. You have not mentioned she wa
s a
hero.,
,
"No," Gita answered decisively. "She was no heroine. She did it for money. She hated the Nazis, naturally. She worried constantly that they would send me to Germany to be made German as had been done with dozens of the Polish children in my town. But a man, Szymon Goldstein, came to her when the Nazis began rounding up the Jews and deporting them to Lublin. Goldstein ran a tannery and had been rich before the war. And was once my mother's lover, as well. Their affair had ended badly, as my mother's affairs tended to do. They were gruff wit
h e
ach other, but she was the only Pole he knew who might be daring enough to take his money. It was a huge sum. And even so, Dubin, I was very much against this. But my mother always refused to do what other people considered wise.

"So in the middle of the night, Goldstein and his wife and his four children stole into our tiny house and lived in our little root cellar. For the month it lasted, it made for a strange household--my mother under the same roof with Madame Goldstein, who despised her, these six people whose noises we always heard from below like mice in the walls. Then they were betrayed. The Nazis found another Jew who had been hiding in the woods. To save himself, he told them about Goldstein. The SS came into the house and found my mother and all the Goldsteins and shot them. I was out trying to find coal that day. When I came back the bodies were piled in front of the door, as a warning to anyone who might do the same.

"I have always thought, if only I had come back in time I could have saved them. But I have no idea how. Naturally enough, people say I am lucky not to have died with them, yet how can one remember such a thing with any feeling of good fortune?" She had been driving the stick into the ground all the time she told this story. "So what do you think, Dubin?"

"I think it is a terrible story. It makes me very sad for you."

"Yes." She said nothing for a moment, then finally cast her stick aside. "So tonight we both think of home before we are soldiers." She grasped my hand for a second, before moving off to her bedroll.

I was grateful to hear Gita's story, a powerful reminder of why we were fighting, but it had not brought me any closer to sleep. Instead, I watched Martin pack the satchel charges. He had a bottle of brandy, which he offered to me, and I took a long pull in the hope that it would make me weary. Martin was clearly going to finish off the rest himself. That did not strike me as wise, but his hands were still nimble assembling the charge. It was essentially dynamite, sixteen square blocks of TNT fixed in sawdust, each weighing more than a pound. Martin would strap them around a blasting cap, but first he had to prepare the fuse. He stood outside, lighting and relighting varying lengths, recording how fast they were consumed. He planned to hang the satchel charges in the windows of the locomotive cab, so that the explosions had the maximum effect, but timing was essential. If the charges went too quickly, they'd drop the locomotive into the Seille; too late and the Germans might have time to extinguish the flame. I held the ends of the lines for him, watching the flame sparkle toward me. Nine feet, six inches, is what he ultimately figured. It would give him about four minutes to escape. When he was done, at last, he carefully slid the charges into a green canvas sack.

"Time to turn in," he told me. He clapped me on the shoulder. "Exciting, eh?"

"Major," I said, "I'd like to do more than watch.), "You're here as an observer, Dubin."

"Frankly, sir, if something goes wrong, I don't think the Germans will care why we're here. We might as well take part."

"We'll see. Sleep now." He smiled. "You can carry the satchel in the morning. Damn heavy, too."

Biddy had brought a pup tent for the two of us. There was a strange domestic order in that. I thought of myself as tidy, but Bidwell was downright precise: boots, weapon, pack, in perfect rank. As a boy who'd grown up sleeping with my brother in the kitchen in my parents' small apartment, I sometimes thought I'd feel more at home in the closeness of enlisted quarters. Crossing the ocean, while the officers lived in style in our staterooms, the enlisted men below slept in shifts on rows of canvas bunks suspended between the posts every two feet like shelving. Their deck was tight as a hive, which made the perpetual good cheer of the troops there more remarkable--and enviable.

I crept in now and found paper and a pencil in my field jacket and stood outside to write quick letters to Grace and my parents by firelight. There was almost no chance the mail would be delivered if something went wrong, but it was a ritual I felt obliged to carry out. With that done, I crawled int
o t
he tent. Quiet as I'd been, I'd apparently roused Bidwell.

"Permission to speak, sir?" Biddy rarely invoked these formalities. "Lieutenant," he said, "you got me wrong today. And it's been weighin on my mind. About that Negro soldier I didn't talk to? I don't feel no better than him, Lieutenant. Not one bit. He knew my momma and daddy and there was some ruction at home I didn't want to hear tell about. But it wasn't 'cause I looked down at him for being colored. I swear."

There'd been too many incidents, but this was hardly the time for a debating society.

"I'm glad to hear that, Biddy."

"Yes, sir."

We said no more then.

Chapter
11.

ACTION

I
awoke from a dream of music. Biddy was up already, organizing his pack, and we took down the tent together. "I dreamed I was playing the clarinet, Biddy."

"Was that your thing, that old licorice stick?"

"It was. Not much of an embouchure left now. I thought I was Benny Goodman, Gideon. I just couldn't find anybody to agree."

He laughed and we talked about music. I asked which musicians he liked.

"Duke," he said. "Pretty niftic."

"I'll say."

"Did you have a group, Lieutenant?"

Here in the hills of Lorraine, about to take my first intentional risks since going to war, I felt th
e e
mbrace of the summer nights when we played on Mo Freeman's front stoop. The neighbors had been less than enthusiastic when we were freshmen, but by the time we reached our senior year we used to draw a little crowd.

"Killer-diller," I said, repeating the compliment we once gave one another on our improvisations. "Haven't played like that in years."

"What happened to you-all?"

"Oh, the world began to get in the way. I went off to Easton College. Mo deserved the scholarship more than me, but he was colored. He ended up okay, though. I saw him before I left. You know, that little tour we all made of the folks we wanted to remember us if anything happened? He went to medical school at the U. Two coloreds in his class, but he was past the rough part. He's done by now He was laughing because the draft board didn't know what to do with him. They weren't going to take a colored doctor. If he's over here, it's as a damn private in the Negro troops. And that's not right, Biddy."

"No, sir, it ain't, it surely ain't." I had a hard time believing I'd made a convert overnight, but he sounded sincere.

Antonio had been gone for more than two hours now The remaining six of us moved out a little after 5:3o a
. M
., careful as we climbed into the first hills. At one point when we stopped, Henri pointe
d t
o a stork's nest, the size of a harvest basket, on the roof of a farmhouse beside a small lake.

Halfway up the hill behind the saltworks, we parted with Henri and Christian. Each of us took turns wishing them well.

"Merde," answered Henri. I don't believe I'd heard another word from him in twelve hours. In the dark, they would assume positions on an adjoining hill to the north. The Germans walked the walled perimeter of the works in daylight, but at night, they relied on sentries posted in towers. If Henri and Christian were quiet, they could pitch down their grenades and be gone almost instantly. The wall would end up protecting them from the German forces, who would be a long time getting outside.

To signal Henri and Christian to fire, Martin would blow the locomotive whistle once, indicating that the guards at the switch had been dispatched. The Germans were unlikely to make much of the sound coming from the main line, but one minute later, the grenades would explode among the salt barns.

Without his guides, Martin touched a button on the tunic he wore beneath his field jacket and a compass popped open on his chest, mounted upside down so he could read the phosphorescent dial. Until now I'd been so absorbed with my own apprehensions that I had largely forgotten why I'd come.

But witnessing the elaborateness of the plans, the ingenious OSS gizmos with which Martin had been supplied, and the extensive cooperation from local elements, it was beyond doubt that Martin was acting under OSS command. Whether it was political prejudice or egotism or simply miscommunication amid the smoke of war, Teedle was plainly wrong.

The separation from Henri and Christian had brought a new gravity to both Martin and Gita, who led us in heavy silence as we ascended. Every now and then Martin took a strip of cloth from his sack and tied it to the bough of a buckthorn or other small tree, marking the way back. I wasn't certain if the sky was brightening a trace, with perhaps an hour to dawn, or if my. eyes had adjusted to the dark, but smoky puffs of fog were visible beneath the cloud cover. When we made the crest, Martin reached out to take the satchel charge from Bidwell. I'd labored with it, and Biddy had grabbed it from me, toting it along as if it were no heavier than a lunch bucket.

"Gentlemen," said Martin, "here we part. I suggest you continue down perhaps a hundred yards. You'll be able to see our activities clearly. Again, eye out for Krauts."

"And if we wish to help?" I asked.

Martin shrugged, as if it were no matter to him. "I'm sure Gita could use a hand in Bettjer's place." I looked at Biddy. He had a straightforward analysis. "Seems to me we're a helluva lot better off, Lieutenant, stayin with folks who know what-all they're doin."

I could see Martin had anticipated these responses, not because there was anything special about Biddy, or me, but because there wasn't. It was a tribute to our soldiers, most of whom would have made the same choice.

Before saying goodbye, Martin loosened the chin-strap on my helmet.

"You don't want that around your neck when the dump goes, Dubin. It could garotte you. Follow Gita," he said. "She'll give you directions."

Our role was to cover Martin. We edged our way down the hill behind him. At the foot, we were on the plain beside the Seille, still a quarter mile south and east of the switching point. The train tracks lay before us, and we dashed across one at a time, plunging into the heavy growth on the riverbank. Gita followed Martin, and I followed her; Biddy was at my back. It was slow going. Martin pulled aside the branches as if parting a heavy curtain, but there were still thorns that grabbed my clothes and clawed my face, and I stumbled several times on the soft ground. We crept along this way for half an hour until Martin suddenly stopped, one hand aloft.