The Liberation of Paris Page 9

  Mahoney shrugged. “There isn’t anything we can do except hope the Krauts don’t come where we are, because if they do we’ll have to fight.”

  “Fight!” Denton said. “Us? But we’re a liaison unit that’s supposed to be traveling with General Duloc’s headquarters!”

  “I know, but General Duloc’s headquarters have hightailed it to the rear, and we can’t go with them. All we can do is sit here and hope the Krauts don’t attack us.”

  “I see,” replied Denton, turning pale as the full horrible truth of the situation became clear to him. He actually might have to fight for his life before the day was out, and all the public relations in the world wouldn’t help him.

  Mahoney turned to Rossi. “Would you know how to install a new distributor?”

  “Sure, but where am I gonna get a new distributor?”

  “From some other truck that’s been hit, but whose distributor is still working.”

  Rossi wrinkled his forehead and tried to look wise. “Ah, I gotcha, Sarge.”

  “Get your tools and come with me.”

  “Right, Sarge.”

  “Wait a minute!” yelled Denton.

  “What’s the matter?” Mahoney asked.

  “What about me?”

  “What are you talking about, sir?”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “I guess you’ll have to lead the defense of this liaison unit if the Krauts attack.”

  Denton’s eyes bulged out of his head. “But I don’t know how to do that!”

  “You’ll learn. Let’s go, Rossi.”

  Mahoney and Rossi crawled out from underneath the truck, and Denton tried to remember the basic infantry tactics they’d taught him in Officers Candidate School. Mahoney raised himself over the cornstalks and peered through the long green leaves at the battle up ahead.

  The German and French tanks were locked in combat now, stopping and firing shells at each other, then moving so that they wouldn’t be stationary targets too long. Field artillery on both sides were shooting up each other’s tanks. He could see the disabled, smoking tanks in the distance. Mahoney couldn’t tell if the Germans or French were winning, but he didn’t want to hang around to find out.

  Rossi crawled into the cab of the truck and came down with his little canvas roll of tools. He was a short muscular man and like Mahoney he always looked as though he needed a shave.

  “You see any trucks, Sarge?” he asked.

  Mahoney pointed through the cornstalks. “There’s one over there.”

  Rossi squinted at a ruined truck around a hundred yards away. “It looks pretty fucked up to me, Sarge.”

  “But the distributor might still be okay.”

  There was a rustling sound close by and suddenly Cranepool appeared in the corn leaves. “Where ya going, Sarge?” he asked.

  “We’re gonna try and find a part for the truck. You wanna come along?”

  “Sure thing, Sarge.”

  “Okay—let’s go.”

  Mahoney parted two cornstalks and passed between them. Behind him were Cranepool and Corporal Rossi. They could see tanks gunning each other in the distance, but neither side seemed to have won the advantage. Mahoney hoped they could fix the truck and get out of there before the battle heated up.

  They approached the truck cautiously, Mahoney and Cranepool holding their carbines ready for action and Rossi with his .45 in hand. As they drew closer they could see that it was charred and torn apart. It looked as though it had taken a direct hit, and portions of bodies were scattered everywhere. In the artillery smoke Mahoney could detect the new odor of fresh meat, and it made him gag. Sometimes he thought it was more terrifying to be alive and see carnage like this than to be dead and in hell.

  The truck had driven directly into the cornfield where it had been hit. The blast had blown away the corn that circled the truck, and beyond that circle were charred and broken cornstalks. The three G.I.s walked into the clearing that surrounded the truck, taking care not to step on heads or arms. Mahoney heard a choking sound behind him and turned to see Rossi bent over and vomiting onto the ground.

  Cranepool smirked cockily. “Guess he ain’t used to this,” he said to Mahoney.

  “Guess not,” Mahoney replied equally cockily, not wanting to mention that he too felt sick to his stomach. “Hey asshole!” he screamed at Rossi. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

  Rossi spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He unsnapped his canteen from its canvas container, rinsed his mouth out with water, and spat again. He walked toward the front of the truck with his eyes averted from the bodies on the ground. He didn’t see the mutilated torso of a French soldier, and he tripped over it and fell to the ground next to a severed head that was leaking blood through its mouth, nose, and ears. Rossi began to vomit the water he’d just drunk.

  “What a fucking asshole,” Mahoney said. Although his stomach still felt queasy, he had no patience for anyone who could be disabled by the sight of a little blood. “Hey—get up you bastard!”

  Rossi arose from the ground, still puking his guts out.

  Mahoney kicked him in the ass. “Get over there and look at the distributor!”

  Clutching his churning guts, Rossi stumbled toward the front of the truck. Cranepool, a fairly good mechanic himself, went with him, and Mahoney looked toward the scene of the battle. The French tanks seemed to be holding back the German tanks. No German artillery was falling in his vicinity anymore, so he felt reasonably safe.

  He looked at the truck; it looked like the German shell had landed in the rear section where the troops were sitting. If so, there would be a good chance that the engine hadn’t been harmed much and the distributor might still be serviceable. He saw Cranepool and Rossi raise the panel that covered the engine.

  “What’s the story!” he yelled.

  “It looks okay!” Cranepool replied.

  “Then get it the fuck out of there!”

  “Hup Sarge.”

  Cranepool and Rossi went to work on the engine, and Mahoney strolled to the cab of the truck. He looked up and couldn’t see anybody; maybe the driver and whoever was with him had been able to get away? Jumping to the running board, Mahoney looked into the window and saw that the driver and passenger hadn’t gotten away. They were both slumped forward, their backs torn apart by shrapnel that had exploded through the back of the cab. The passenger was a French officer with binoculars hanging around his neck. Mahoney thought the binoculars might come in handy, so he opened the door, pushed the driver backwards, and crawled over him to get at the officer.

  The officer was young, evidently a lieutenant. He had a blond mustache and his helmet had fallen off. Mahoney straightened him up and pulled the binoculars off his neck, noticing that they were American-made Bausch and Lombs. As he was about to move backwards, Mahoney noticed the shine of gold on the lieutenant’s wrist underneath his khaki shirt. He pulled the shirt back and saw a gold watch with the name PATEK PHILLIPE printed on the face. His eyes lit up because he knew it was an expensive one. He’d been collecting gold watches since the war began and had been sending them back to New York for his mother to hold for him. He figured they were going to be worth a lot of money someday.

  He untied the leather watchband and fastened the watch to his own wrist. He figured the lieutenant must have been rich when he was alive, but now you could see the vertebrae of his spine. Poor bastard, Mahoney thought. Better him than me.

  Mahoney climbed down from the cab. “How’re you two fuck-heads doing?”

  “We almost got it out, Sarge,” Cranepool said.

  “Hurry up! We haven’t got all day!”

  Mahoney looked at his watches. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. He hadn’t had lunch yet and felt hungry, so he took the ear of corn out of his shirt, peeled it down, picked off the corn silk, and gnawed away.

  Rossi heard Mahoney chomping and turned around. “How can you eat with all these dead people around?”

 
; “No problem at all. Get that fucking thing out of there, willya?”

  “It’ll be out in a minute.”

  Mahoney chewed on the ear of corn, wishing it could have been cooked but deciding it wasn’t so bad raw. He remembered when he and his pals used to go out to Nathan’s on Coney Island for hot dogs and hot buttered corn when he was a kid, but that seemed like a thousand years ago.

  “We got it, Sarge!” Cranepool shouted, holding up the distributor in his greasy hand.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Mahoney said.

  Mahoney, still chewing on the corn, led them into the cornstalks again, but after a few paces he thought he heard a new sound in the din of the tank battle. It sounded as though there were more tanks and more shooting. Turning around, he raised the binoculars to his eyes and looked toward the battleground.

  His body tensed as he saw hordes of German tanks spilling onto the battlefield from the foothills and woods. It looked as though the Germans were going to run right over the French. If they ran over the French it’d only be a matter of time before they caught up with Mahoney, and one of Mahoney’s great battlefield fears was of being crushed alive by a tank.

  Cranepool noticed the expression on Mahoney’s face. “What’s wrong, Sarge?”

  “The Krauts’re bringing up reinforcements. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Double time.”

  They ran back through the cornfield to their disabled truck. Mahoney threw the half-eaten ear of corn over his shoulder and plowed a path through the corn with his carbine held in both hands in front of him. He huffed and puffed and his mouth became dry, but he didn’t want to stop for a drink until he made it back to the truck. The sound of battle grew more intense behind them.

  Major Denton, Sergeant Bates, Sergeant Goldberg, and Pfc Washington were lying in the corn near their truck when Mahoney returned. Denton arose and brushed dirt from his pressed and starched fatigues, as Mahoney dispatched Cranepool and Rossi to fix the engine of the truck. Major Denton swaggered toward Mahoney. He felt like a combat officer although he’d not yet fired a shot in anger.

  “Well,” Denton said cheerily, “I imagine we’ll be out of here presently.”

  Mahoney took a Lucky out of his pack. “Let’s hope they fix the distributor before the Germans get here.” Taking out his Zippo, he lit the cigarette.

  “What are you talking about?” Denton asked.

  “The Germans are attacking in force,” Mahoney replied. “Can’t you hear it?”

  “Huh?” Denton raised his binoculars and spun around. He spun the little wheel until the battlefield came into focus, and he sucked in air. “The Germans are breaking through!”

  Mahoney looked through his own binoculars. “Not yet they’re not, but they probably will soon.”

  “We’ve got to tell General Duloc!”

  “He probably knows.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “He does.”

  “We’d better make sure. I think I’ll call him myself.” Denton turned around. “Sergeant Bates—Sergeant Goldberg—crank up the radio and call General Duloc’s headquarters.

  “Yes sir!”

  Denton, Goldberg, and Bates climbed into the rear of the truck. Mahoney looked at Pfc Washington sitting on the ground, writing a letter.

  “How’s it going, Wash?” Mahoney asked.

  “Just fine, Sarge.”

  “Where you from, Wash?”

  “New York.”

  “Yeah? I’m from New York too. What part of New York you live in?”

  “Harlem.”

  “No shit! I used to go to Harlem once in a while to play cards! There was a place around 138th and Lenox—know which one I mean?”

  Washington smiled. “I’ve been there.”

  “No shit!”

  “No shit.”

  “Well isn’t that a coincidence,” Mahoney said. “We might’ve even been there gambling on the same night.”

  “Might’ve been,” Washington agreed.

  “And now here we are in France.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a crazy world, Wash. You’d better check your weapon, because the Germans are headed this way.”

  Washington put away his letter, and Mahoney raised his binoculars. He couldn’t see much in the dust and smoke that now enveloped the battlefield, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before the Germans broke through. He hoped Cranepool and Rossi could get the engine fixed before then.

  “Sir,” said the radio operator, “I’ve just received an urgent message for General Duloc from a Major Denton.”

  “I’ll take it,” replied Lieutenant Grévin, standing nearby. He took the piece of paper from the radio operator’s hand.

  Germans on verge of breaking through in this sector. Request immediate reinforcements to forestall looming catastrophe.

  “What is it, Grévin?” asked General Duloc, who was standing with his aides around a map table set up hastily in a wooded thicket.

  “Nothing new. He’s reporting the German attack in his sector.”

  Duloc grunted and returned to the map. Grévin told the radio operator to send Denton a message stating that action was being taken to stem the German advance, then he walked back to the map table.

  General Duloc was pointing at the map with his pencil. “We’ll move up the 107th from here and the 85th from here, and that ought to be sufficient to stop them, don’t you agree?”

  His aides nodded, and General Duloc issued the orders that would move these tank units into the sector where the German tanks were threatening to break through.

  “Well gentlemen,” Duloc said, “now all we can do is wait and hope.” He turned to Grévin. “By the way, exactly where are Major Denton and his Americans?”

  “They’re back in the valley, sir.”

  “Their truck must have broken down, I imagine.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well,” Duloc said sarcastically, “let’s hope nothing happens to them out there.”

  Grévin smiled. “Yes sir.”

  Cranepool and Rossi worked feverishly to install the new distributor while Mahoney, puffing his cigarette, sat on the ground and leaned against one of the truck’s tires. The sounds of battle were fiercer now and Mahoney found it difficult to relax. He felt the way he did before his big fight with Kowalski.

  Major Denton stood nearby, looking at the battleground through his binoculars. “Sergeant Mahoney, would you come here a moment please?”

  Mahoney stood up. “What is it, sir?”

  “It looks as if the battle is moving this way. Would you take a look?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Mahoney was chilled by what he saw through his binoculars. It looked as though the French troops were in a full headlong retreat, and the Germans were in hot pursuit.

  “We’ve got to get out of here right away, sir,” Mahoney said, lowering his binoculars. He turned toward the front of the truck. “Cranepool—what the fuck’s going on over there?”

  “We’ve almost got it in, Sarge.”

  “We don’t have much time!”

  “Just a couple more minutes.”

  Goldberg, Bates, and Washington gathered around the engine to watch the progress of the work. Mahoney raised his binoculars again and looked at the onrushing French and German tanks. He figured they’d be where he was in about five minutes unless the Germans ran out of gas first.

  “We’ve got it Sarge!” Cranepool shouted triumphantly.

  Rossi, wiping his greasy hands on his pants, dashed toward the cab of the truck, jumped into it, and turned the switch. He stepped on the starter, pressed on the gas pedal. . . and nothing happened. The engine turned over as before, but it wouldn’t explode to life.

  “It’s still fucked up,” Rossi said with defeat in his voice. He tried again but the engine refused to start.

  Furious, Mahoney reached up and dragged Rossi out of the cab. “I thought you said all it needed was a new distributor!”

  Rossi’s
face was two inches from Mahoney’s and Mahoney’s spit flew onto his cheeks. “That’s what I thought, Sarge,” Rossi said weakly.

  “YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” Mahoney let Rossi go, and Rossi dropped to the ground.

  Everyone crowded around Mahoney.

  Denton cleared his throat. “What do you suggest we do, Sergeant?”

  “Lemme think.”

  Mahoney could see the tanks without his binoculars now. He and the others couldn’t run faster than tanks and there were no trees to climb. They couldn’t hide in the corn because the tanks might roll right over them, so the only place to go was underneath the truck.

  “Under the truck!” he yelled.

  They scrambled underneath the truck and looked fearfully from behind the big tires at the onrushing German tanks.

  Sergeant Goldberg tried to claw a hole in the ground with his bare hands. Sergeant Bates’s face developed uncontrollable twitches. Pfc Washington looked as though he was scared out of his wits. Major Denton’s face was pale and he looked like he was going to faint. Cranepool, ever the cool combat soldier, laid his hand grenades on the ground and began loosening the pins. Mahoney heard a sound from the rear and turned around, peering through his binoculars. In the distance he saw a swarm of French tanks speeding across the field to engage the Germans.

  “Reinforcements!” he screamed.

  “Where?”

  He pointed and everybody turned around. Major Denton looked through his binoculars. “By God—we’re saved!”

  “Not necessarily,” Mahoney said. “I hate to say it, but I think we’re going to be right in the middle of it.”

  Artillery shells whistled overhead as the French and Germans tried to get each other’s range. Mahoney tried to keep his teeth from chattering. Huge clouds of dust were billowing in front of and behind the truck, and then in front they saw tanks!

  “Get down!” Mahoney yelled.

  They all got on their stomachs and looked around them. Mahoney recognized the tanks as Shermans; they were the French running away from the Germans. The French Shermans had their cannons turned around so they could fire wild shots at the Germans as they fled, and the pursuing Germans fired wildly at the French. Shells were falling everywhere and machine gun bullets whistled through the air as the French tanks rumbled by. Mahoney peeked ahead to see the advancing waves of German tanks with huge iron crosses painted on their turrets. He prayed that the Germans wouldn’t see them. He recalled the carnage around the French truck and realized the same thing could happen to them. His head would be lying in one place and his ass someplace else. Somebody would steal his watches and not give a damn about him, just as he hadn’t cared about the French lieutenant. I’ve got to stop stealing so much, he thought. It’s really disgusting.