The Liberation of Paris Read online

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  As the Allied army's deadly fire rips the Nazis to shreds, maverick Sgt C. J. Mahoney and his kill-crazy sidekick Cranepool have drawn a sweet assignment: to spearhead the first infantry assault in the liberation of Paris. Champagne and girls to the victors! But ahead lies a suicidal road -- twenty miles of enemy -- where Panzer platoons stalk in murder raids; mines and snipers can blast a lifetime in a burst of flame. As time runs out, a vengeful group of Nazis race toward Paris with the ultimate human death weapon to carry out their blood-crazed Fuehrer's last command -- destroy Paris! Only Mahoney can save the City of Light -- its fate is up to him!

  THE LIBERATION OF PARIS

  THE SERGEANT 4:

  By Len Levinson

  First Published by Bantam Books in 1981

  Copyright © 1981, 2014 by Len Levinson

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: August 2014

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  Cover image © 2014 by Tony Masero

  Visit Tony here

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  Chapter One

  It was a hot August day and the sun baked the boxing ring. In the middle of the ring, two men stood toe to toe and tried to punch each other into oblivion while thousands of soldiers cheered them on. The soldiers smoked cigarettes and waved dollar bills as they placed their bets. Some wore their steel helmets and others sat on them. They shouted their approval whenever one of the boxers landed a solid punch.

  At opposite edges of the crowd were two O.D. tents used as dressing rooms for the fighters. In one of the tents, sitting on a bench, was Master Sergeant Clarence J. Mahoney, and bending over him, taping up his hands, was Sergeant William “Shoeface” McGhee. Watching sternly nearby was Lieutenant Frank Grissom from Special Services. He was making sure McGhee didn’t put brass knuckles or razor blades underneath the tape.

  Mahoney was broad-shouldered with black hair recently shorn close to his scalp. His outfit, the 33rd Division, known as the Hammerhead Division, had just been pulled off the line after forty-five days of continuous fighting and sent to the rear for Rest and Recuperation. In addition to the haircuts, all the troops got new uniforms and boots, three hot meals a day, their back pay, and organized athletics. Today’s boxing matches were part of the athletic program devised by high-ranking officers to keep the men happy and out of trouble. But from Mahoney’s point of view they were keeping him from his bunk and the sleep that he wanted to catch up on.

  McGhee finished tying up the gloves and looked at Lieutenant Grissom, who stepped forward and scrutinized Mahoney suspiciously. “Stand up,” Grissom said.

  Mahoney wore black trunks with white stripes down their sides and an O.D. towel around his neck. When he stood, he was a foot taller than the officer and his stomach was rippled with muscles.

  “Hold out your hands.”

  Mahoney held out his hands, and the officer took out a pen and wrote his name across the tape on each hand, certifying that the tape had been applied legally. Later, in the ring, the gloves would be put on under the watchful eye of the referee; and if Grissom’s signature on the tape appeared strange, there would be grounds to suspect the tape had been tampered with.

  Grissom returned the pen to his shirt pocket and slapped Mahoney on the bicep. “Give us a good clean fight, Mahoney,” he said.

  “Yes sir.”

  Grissom turned and walked out of the tent, and Mahoney sat on the bench again. It was hot inside the tent and it smelled like rotting canvas. Mahoney’s fight would be the last of the afternoon, and the other fighters were putting on their clothes or having bruises and cuts attended to by a doctor and some medics. On a cot in the corner lay a fighter who’d been knocked cold in the last fight and still hadn’t come to. An ambulance was supposed to be on the way to take him to the hospital.

  McGhee pulled up a spindly wooden chair and sat opposite Mahoney. “How d’ya feel, buddy?”

  Mahoney wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Too fucking hot in here.”

  “That’s good for you,” McGhee said. “It’ll keep you loose.”

  “I’m so loose I think I’m gonna pass out.”

  “You won’t pass out—don’t worry about it.” McGhee chuckled confidently, as though he was Joe Louis’s trainer, instead of the mess sergeant for Charlie Company of the 15th Regiment. Like Mahoney he was a career soldier who had been busted up and down the ranks many times. He had an enormous potbelly like many mess sergeants.

  “Gimme a cigarette, McGhee,” Mahoney said.

  McGhee wrinkled his pug nose. “You know athletes aren’t supposed to smoke!”

  “I said gimme a cigarette, you little fuck!”

  Grumbling, McGhee took out his package of Chesterfields and offered it to Mahoney, who took one clumsily in his taped hands and placed it in his mouth. McGhee gave him a light and Mahoney puffed the cigarette, wondering if he was going to get the shit kicked out of him in the next fight.

  “How did I ever get into this mess?” Mahoney said grumpily.

  “Somebody had to fight the cocksucker,” McGhee replied.

  Mahoney wanted to say “why me?” but he knew the answer. He’d been railroaded into the fight by the commanding officer of the 15th Regiment, Colonel Simmons. The heavyweight champion of the Hammerhead Division was a sergeant from the 27th Regiment named Kowalski. He was a big mean son of a bitch who had ten professional fights in civilian life, winning six of them by knockouts and the rest by unanimous decisions. Nobody wanted to fight him, and Colonel Simmons decided that the 15th Regiment would be disgraced unless somebody stepped forward to challenge Kowalski, so he made Mahoney step forward. Mahoney had a reputation for being a nasty bastard, and Simmons told him that if he didn’t fight Kowalski he’d give him every shit detail he could find and bust him at the least provocation; but if he fought he’d see to it that Mahoney would get a cushy desk job behind the lines, where Mahoney would have a reasonable chance of surviving the war. Mahoney wanted to survive the war, and he’d had some semiprofessional fights in New York before joining the army. They’d all been club fights—five bucks if you won and three if you lost—and he’d trained in Gleason’s Gym on West Thirtieth Street, so he wasn’t entirely ignorant of what to do in a boxing ring. However, he’d heard that Kowalski was a killer, so he wasn’t exactly optimistic about the outcome of his big fight.

  The only illumination in the tent came from sunlight streaming in through the open tent flaps. Mahoney could hear the crowd screaming and cheering, and he wondered if Kowalski would break his nose or maybe put out one of his eyes. He’d been fighting the Germans since 1942, and now, far from the front, he had to fight Kowalski. There seemed to be no way he could escape fighting.

  The interior of the tent darkened momentarily as a figure entered through one of the flaps. It was Corporal Edward Cranepool of Ottumwa, Iowa, who moved toward Mahoney with both of his fists filled with greenbacks.

  “Hiya Sarge,” Cranepool said happily, sitting down on the bench beside Mahoney.

  “How’d you do out there?”

  “I bet all the money—three hundred of yours, two hundred of mine, and three-fifty of McGhee’s.”

&nb
sp; “Shit,” Mahoney said, certain they’d all lose their money; but the odds were ten to one in favor of Kowalski and he hadn’t been able to resist the opportunity to make a bundle. Now, as the time approached for him to go into the ring and fight Kowalski, he thought he’d fucked up again.

  “You okay, Sarge?” Cranepool asked.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “You look a little green around the gills.”

  “It’s hot in here.”

  “Why don’t you go out and get some fresh air?”

  McGhee frowned. “Mind your fuckin’ business, asshole. I don’t want my fighter to get a chill.”

  Cranepool shrugged and counted the money again. He knew Kowalski was supposed to be a fantastic fighter, but he’d been with Mahoney in North Africa and Italy as well as in France and he had seen him fight the Germans. He thought Mahoney was the wildest, toughest man in the army and figured he had a good chance to knock out Kowalski, despite Kowalski’s ten pro fights.

  “I need a drink,” Mahoney said.

  McGhee held out his canteen.

  Mahoney pushed it away. “I said a drink.”

  McGhee looked horrified. “You’re not supposed to drink before a fight!”

  “I fight better when I got a drink in me.”

  McGhee shook his head. “You might think you fight better, but you don’t. It’ll slow you down.”

  “Gimme a drink and shut your fucking yap.”

  Snorting, McGhee reached into his back pocket for his flask full of cognac.

  “Aw Sarge,” Cranepool said, looking sideways at Mahoney, “you know you shouldn’t drink before the fight. It’s okay to drink after the fight, but not before.”

  “Who asked you?” Mahoney said, snatching the flask out of McGhee’s hands.

  “But Sarge—all the guys in the regiment are rooting for you to win,” Cranepool said earnestly. “You can’t let them down!”

  “What are they—crazy?” Mahoney asked, unscrewing the top of the flask.

  “Naw—they think you can win! They’re betting all their money on you! Even you’re betting all your money on you!”

  Mahoney shrugged. “Well, I got a little carried away at the beginning there. Are you sure the guys in the regiment are betting on me?”

  “Sure they are,” Cranepool replied. “You should see them.”

  “Don’t they know that Kowalski won ten professional fights?”

  “Of course they know, but they think you can take him.”

  “What makes them think that?”

  “Because you’re so big and horrible.”

  “Shit,” Mahoney said, staring mournfully at the flask.

  “Don’t drink, Sarge,” Cranepool said. “Don’t let us down.”

  McGhee leaned forward. “The booze’ll take the edge off your strength.”

  “Aw fuck,” Mahoney said.

  “You can’t let the regiment down,” Cranepool said. “Everybody’s bet all his money on you.”

  Mahoney screwed the top on the flask and handed it back to McGhee, who grinned like a baboon and pushed it into his back pocket.

  “You can have some water,” McGhee said consolingly.

  “Fuck water.”

  Cranepool finished counting the money, stood, stuffed it into his pocket, and then sat down again. “They say we’re gonna be in Paris pretty soon,” he said. “The extra money is gonna come in handy once we get there.”

  Mahoney wiped his nose with the back of his hand. If he lost the fight he’d lose all his money, and he wouldn’t have any when they got to Paris. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than being broke in Paris. The whores wouldn’t fuck him for nothing.

  The tent darkened as someone came inside. It was a sergeant from Special Services, one of the guys who’d organized the fights. “Mahoney?” he asked.

  Mahoney raised his taped hand. “Over here.”

  “This fight’s almost over, so you might as well get ready.”

  The sergeant left the tent, and Mahoney took some deep breaths.

  “Maybe you’d better warm up a little,” McGhee said.

  “If I get any warmer I’m gonna be cooked.”

  “You should get your muscles moving—shadowbox a little.”

  “Gimme a break, willya McGhee?”

  “C’mon Mahoney,” McGhee said wearily. “If you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it right. You don’t want to get knocked out in the first round because your muscles aren’t ready, do you?”

  Cranepool snapped his fingers. “C’mon Sarge, do what he says.”

  Mahoney wheezed as he rose from the bench. He took the towel from his neck, tossed it into McGhee’s lap, moved to a corner of the tent and, dancing on the balls of his feet, he started throwing jabs and hooks at an imaginary opponent. He expelled air with every punch and danced from side to side, remembering Gleason’s Gym in New York and an old ex-pug named Hampton Williams, a Negro with cauliflower ears who’d taught him how to move in the ring.

  “Whozat?” asked a soldier nearby, smoking a cigarette with a buddy.

  “That’s Mahoney from the 15th Regiment.”

  “Whoze he gonna fight?”

  “Kowalski from the 27th.”

  The first soldier grimaced. “They might as well measure this clown for a coffin right now and save time.”

  Mahoney heard them as he danced back and forth and punched the air. His forehead was wet with perspiration and his armpits stank. He was thinking of how terrible it would be to get a three-day pass to Paris and not have any money to spend.

  Somehow I’ve got to knock this cocksucker out, Mahoney thought as he delivered two fast uppercuts into the hot humid air.

  Chapter Two

  General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General Omar Bradley looked down at the huge map of France in Bradley’s headquarters in the town of Laval. Bright sunlight streamed through the open windows and outside the sound of jeeps could be heard running up and down the street. Both generals wore tan summer uniforms with no ties and the top button of their shirts undone.

  Ike shook his head and sighed. “I hate to change a plan once it’s been agreed upon and is in the process of being implemented, but I guess we have to.”

  Bradley shrugged. “If we don’t, the people of Paris might very well be massacred by the Krauts.”

  Ike looked at the city of Paris on the map. “If only the damned Parisians could have stayed calm for two more weeks. Then we would have handed their city to them on a silver platter.”

  “I guess they’re anxious to get the Krauts out of their hair, sir.”

  “Damn!” said Ike, because he didn’t want to send troops to Paris to liberate it. He was afraid the city would be destroyed in the ensuing battle, and the diversion of troops and equipment would slow down his drive to the Rhine. But the people of Paris had begun an insurrection, and word had been received that the Germans were putting it down harshly. The only thing to do was send in some troops quickly. “How many Germans do we estimate are in Paris right now?”

  “About twenty thousand, sir.”

  “And how many maquis?”

  “About the same number, sir, but the Germans have tanks and heavy weapons, whereas the maquis only have rifles. My information is that some of the Germans are evacuating the city already. We might be able to take Paris with one armored division.”

  Ike crossed his arms and looked down at the map. “The President has advised me that for political reasons we should let Paris be liberated by a French unit.”

  “Send Duloc.”

  “You think he’s the right man?”

  “He’s the best tank commander they’ve got, and I’ve heard that he’s on his way to Paris anyway.”

  “What! Who gave him permission?”

  “Nobody, sir, but General Gerow reported a French armored unit moving east of his position. He went out to interrogate the commander, who told him he was heading for Paris. Gerow ordered the commander back and the commander obeyed orders, but who
knows how many other French soldiers are on their way to Paris right now?”

  “What a mess,” Ike said. “Well, I guess you might as well call Duloc and give him the green light. But I want some Americans to go with him so we’ll know what he’s doing all the time.”

  “I’ll set up a liaison unit of men who speak French. That ought to do it.”

  “Yes.” Ike looked at the map and rubbed his chin with his fingers. “I think maybe you should send in an American division to make sure. Duloc will liberate Paris officially, but our boys will be there to back him up.”

  “Okay,” Bradley said. He looked at the map to see which American division he should send. “How about the 33rd?”

  “The 33rd will be fine,” Ike replied. He pinched his lips together and raised his eyes pensively to the window.

  “Anything wrong, sir?”

  Ike turned to Bradley. “I’m worried about Duloc. The French haven’t been very good at following orders until now, and there’s no reason to expect them to change suddenly. I want you to make sure that your liaison unit stays in close touch with your headquarters and reports Duloc’s every move to you personally.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Chapter Three

  “Okay Mahoney—let’s go!”

  Mahoney was still in his corner, bobbing and weaving, throwing jabs. He stopped to turn around and saw the sergeant from Special Services.

  “I haven’t got all day,” the sergeant said peevishly.

  McGhee ambled toward Mahoney, holding out the gray-and-white-striped robe he’d scrounged from the medics. Mahoney put the robe on and McGhee covered Mahoney’s head and shoulders with a khaki towel, tucking it into the collar of the robe. Cranepool came over with the bucket and was followed by a medic with glasses who was the cut man.

  “Let’s go!” said the sergeant from Special Services, looking at his watch.

  McGhee looked up at Mahoney. “You ready?”

  Mahoney shrugged. “Yeah.”

  Cranepool slapped Mahoney on the shoulder. “You look terrific, Sarge.”

  “Fuck you,” Mahoney grumbled.