Invasion Read online

  It wasn’t really a dream that came to me; it was more like a half dream, something that had been lurking in my mind for days, that I had always managed to push away, to avoid. In the dream, a group of us were sitting around having chow. It was a gray dream, and the light rain that I thought would come later in the evening had already arrived, the wind slanting the falling drops so that they found every opening, every opportunity to make life more miserable.

  I glanced down into my mess kit and saw cut green beans, a lump of ground hash, and three small potatoes. When I looked up, away from the pathetic food on my plate, I saw two figures coming toward where we sat. I knew who they were before they stopped and sat. It was Sergeant Duncan and Private Kroll.

  Sergeant Duncan, in life a big, square, exclamation point of a man with a wide grin and a heavy (if somewhat annoying) voice, sat heavily across from me. I looked quickly down at my plate. I was holding my breath, hoping that when I lifted my head again he wouldn’t be there. I raised my eyes. He was still there, his mess kit on his lap, looking back at me.

  There was no need for anyone to say that he had been killed in the cold waters off Omaha Beach, or to mention that they were sorry. Everything that needed to be said was expressed in the shadows that were his eyes. No longer the surprised agony of those final moments as he floundered desperately in the race for the sand, the life spurting from his frantic body, but, rather, the quiet darkness that we were all feeling inside, that had become part of us. I turned away again and again, but whenever I turned back to him, compelled by my own demons, his eyes would pin me to the spot.

  And Kroll, the knowing laugh frozen into a chilling grimace, turning from one face to the next. Why had I pushed him out of my mind? How many more were in my mind that I had to push away, had to rid myself of? Could I move away from them even when this war was over? I didn’t know. Kroll was dead. Collected by the Negroes, wrapped in canvas, and shipped home. Why?

  I was accustomed to pushing thoughts from my mind. I’d grown good at it and could almost tell when a thought would come, when an image was on the verge of breaking through and filling me with an instant nightmare. Good at turning away, at avoiding those memories I didn’t want to see as truths or failures, I kept myself focused on what was around me.

  What was around me was Mink, trying to hold his own thoughts away from the moment, and Gomez, returning with what was left of the toilet paper, and an endless array of shadows.

  Morning came, and we were issued more ammunition. I watched as Burns took his gas mask out of its case and let it fall. He put the ammunition into his gas mask case. All the warnings were in place. Suppose the Krauts gassed us? Suppose we were hit with clouds of mustard gas that left us coughing our lungs out?

  Burns had fought in Italy. I trusted him. I discarded my gas mask, too, and filled the case with clips. Each of us was issued twenty-five clips of ammunition, two hundred shots. The belt held ten, and I already had five clips left, so the others I put in my gas mask case. I saw Burns take a pack of cigarettes from one of his belt pouches and put them into his shirt.

  I was hungry again, and thirsty. It seemed I never had enough food, but then I thought of Duncan and Kroll and the hunger went away. I made it go away and forced myself to think of Vernelle. The thought came to me that Vernelle didn’t even know me and would think my letters to her ridiculous. I pushed the thought away.

  Gerhardt was in the area. We saw his jeep come up and D-Day, his dog, sitting in the backseat.

  Gomez stopped near me. “Hey, Woody, what do you think Uncle Charlie wants this time? You think he wants us to paint targets on our field jackets?”

  “Whatever he wants, it’s going to mean bad news for us,” I said. “Look, he’s coming this way.”

  We watched as Gerhardt strode over. He had a funny walk, with his legs wider than most people’s. He could have been in an old cowboy movie. He stopped a few feet away from where Gomez was leaning against a tree. Gomez straightened up and snapped off a salute.

  “At ease, men!” Gerhardt barked as he returned Gomez’s salute. “I want those chin straps fastened and all rifles cleaned and ready for inspection at any time. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “You’re going to be getting ready for a big push into St. Lo,” Gerhardt went on. “The Germans have to hold it, and we have to take it. We’ll take it! Any questions?”

  “No, sir,” Gomez answered.

  Gerhardt turned on one heel and started away. He knew we didn’t like him, and we knew he didn’t like us. Lieutenant Milton was called to another meeting, and he gave us a look before he went that said he was tired of meetings and getting tired of the war. But I have a good feeling about him. I think he’s going to pull us through.

  Some guys came over from the 1st Battalion and asked if we had any extra gas. Mink asked them if they had any extra trucks.

  “We’re tired of walking through these hedgerows,” he said. “We’re thinking of finding the main road and heading straight for Germany.”

  “You’re the hotshot 29th, right?” The corporal speaking had a broad face and red hair that hung down from under his cap.

  “We’re the 29th,” Gomez said. “We’re supposed to be hot?”

  “Jumping tall buildings with a single bound and stuff,” the redhead said. “You actually see any Germans up close?”

  “We try to kill them before they get too close,” Gomez said. “That’s because they smell bad up close. How about you guys?”

  “The only time we see them is when we get the game on,” the corporal answered. “The way we play is that we march along, they nail a few of us, then we chase them all over hell, then we march along, then they nail a few more of us, then we chase them, and the friggin’ game goes on.”

  “That’s about how we’re seeing it, too,” Mink added. “Only we’re just doing it at a more leisurely pace.”

  We told the corporal we didn’t have any trucks, let alone extra fuel, and he shook hands with a few of the guys before leaving.

  “You think that everybody is doing the same thing as we are?” Gomez asked. “Because if we’re all getting whacked like he said, then we’re losing this war.”

  I hadn’t thought about it before, but I knew Gomez could have been right. Maybe we were just going to be over here until all of us got killed or wounded and the Germans would win.

  “What do you think, Woody?” Gomez pushed for an answer.

  “I think we’re making progress,” I said. “We were supposed to get on shore, and we got on shore. We were supposed to move inland, and we’re moving. Gerhardt says the Germans are catching hell, and I believe him. We got a pissload of prisoners on D-Day. We’ve captured more since then. I don’t think they’re getting too many of our guys.”

  “Yeah.” Gomez looked away.

  From what we could see, from what we were hearing from other units, I realized that we could be losing. It made me feel like shit.

  Back home in Virginia I had always thought of France as a far-off place with young Frenchies sitting on the grass near lakes having picnics and scoffing down bottles of wine. Sometimes I would imagine myself in Paris, always in some scene from a travel poster with the Eiffel Tower over my shoulder. None of what I was seeing was that France. The whole area was more countryside than city, and the idea that behind every tree there could be a German with a machine gun changed the images in my head completely.

  Lieutenant Milton came out of the meeting, and we watched as Gerhardt and some of the other brass took off. Burns went over to where Milton flopped near the base of a tree and offered him a cigarette. Milton took it and lit up. The two men talked, and then Burns turned and signaled for me and Gomez to come to him.

  “What’s up?” Gomez asked.

  “Lieutenant?” Burns turned to Lieutenant Milton.

  “Gerhardt is still talking about companies and battalions and regiments,” Milton said. “Major Johns told him that none of the companies were complete, non
e of the battalions were up to strength, and he couldn’t even recognize us as a regiment anymore.”

  “What did he say to that?” Gomez asked.

  “He said that as long as we’re companies on paper, we’re companies.” Lieutenant Milton’s lips hardly moved as he spoke. “The way I figure is right now we have a company of fifty-three men. But we have a job to do and we need to get it done if we’re going to get home again. We’re pushing the Germans back, but they’ve got more stuff to show us. They’ve got panzer battalions on the way to the front to be waiting for us when we attack. We’ve got control of the air, so their tanks can’t move in the open.”

  “We have tanks, too,” Mink said.

  I liked the idea of him saying we.

  “We have tanks, but their panzers are bigger, better armored, and their crews are damn good,” Milton said. “Until the Third Army gets its equipment into gear, their tanks are going to rule.”

  “So what are we supposed to be doing?” I asked. “I can’t stand up to no tank.”

  “You can’t stand up to a tank,” Mink said, smiling. “No tank is a double negative.”

  “What we’re supposed to do is to create and control an area in which we can bring enough equipment to overwhelm the Krauts,” Milton said. “Everybody figures they know this, so they need to regroup and push us back into the sea before we get too much gear and too many men ashore for them to do it.”

  “And this is supposed to work?” Mink asked.

  “I hope so,” Lieutenant Milton said. “I really hope so. We’re starting off tomorrow before daybreak, so get some rest.”

  Rest. Lieutenant Milton got some guys from a military police company to stand guard for the night, and we dug in and tried to sleep. I told my body to relax, but it had forgotten how. Each muscle twitched, my hands jerked in my sleep, and I woke with a start. I was frightened out of my sleep a dozen times by things I wasn’t aware of. Was there a noise? Did something touch me? I didn’t know. Over and over again I was suddenly awake and my heart was racing. Gomez and Mink were lying not far from me. I watched their silhouettes until I was sure they were breathing before I shut my eyes again.

  Morning. The distant horizon was rimmed with light. Birds were singing, or chirping, or whatever they do just before sunrise. I peed and felt good about it. We had coffee and scrambled eggs before moving out.

  Mink was behind me as we pushed down a dark road. Any moment I expected to hear the familiar burping of a German machine gun. I remembered Petrocelli saying that if you actually hear the sound of the gun then you know it missed you. It was a logical thing to say, but it didn’t make walking through the muddy Normandy road any better.

  We walked for an hour without receiving any fire. We were passing other companies, and sometimes stragglers. Burns didn’t trust anybody. He kept telling us to watch the guys we passed, even if they were speaking English. Burns was freaking me out.

  Daybreak. We were on a bluff overlooking a small cluster of houses huddled together at the end of a field. There was a stream running by the houses, and a patrol went down with water cans. We kept an eye on the houses until the men had filled the cans and were on the way back to our lines. In back of one of the houses was a smaller house, and I thought it was an outhouse. I would have liked to go see if it was, but I didn’t have the nerve to go alone. I wanted to be with the guys around me. Mink was sitting at the base of a tree. Milton was sitting cross-legged, looking at some maps. Burns and Stagg were talking quietly. By himself, Gomez was checking his rifle. He was young-looking, but he looked like a soldier.

  We were past the other units, and Milton called for artillery before we moved ahead. We were told that there wouldn’t be any artillery unless we spotted enemy troops.

  “Tell ’em you’ve seen some!” Stagg said.

  Lieutenant Milton got back on the radio and, pinpointing an area where there might be soldiers, called for artillery again.

  In a little under two minutes, our artillery opened up and we could see the explosions. Some fell short, and Stagg called in new coordinates. The barrage lasted five minutes, and then Milton had us up and moving.

  “Don’t bunch!”

  We moved up and saw nothing. Then Petrocelli saw something and we hit the deck.

  “Woody! Gomez! Check it out,” Milton called.

  “On the right!” Petrocelli called. “Where that branch is sticking out.”

  I took one side of the road and Gomez took the other. My heart was pounding, and I was gripping my rifle with both hands. As I got near, I held my hand up for Gomez to stop. I took a breath and looked closely. Two guys crouched under the branch.

  “Halten!” I shouted at them.

  They didn’t move. I thought they were dead. I crept closer and saw that one of them had a huge wound in his shoulder. It was still bleeding, but he wasn’t moving. Edging even closer, I saw the face of the other German soldier. One eye was open. His helmet had been hit and driven into his skull. I stood up and pulled the machine gun from between his legs.

  “Search them!” Lieutenant Milton said.

  I didn’t want to touch them, but I made myself go through their pockets. The one with the head wound had a letter in his breast pocket, a few rounds of ammunition, and a Hershey bar.

  I didn’t want to be there. Not touching the dead, not trying to block out that they were as young as I was, that they had mothers and sweethearts and houses and dogs. Making sense of what they were and who they were filled me with a kind of terror, and I wanted to look away from them. Yes, and I was embarrassed. It was as if I had walked into a stranger’s house by mistake and found him naked; we were both embarrassed, but he was the one who was naked and was more embarrassed than I was. But there would be nothing that he could do about how he felt, for he couldn’t undo that moment when I had discovered him. It was the same with the dead. We found them lying by the side of the road, or their bodies protruded through the dense bush of the hedgerow, and they were caught in the moment, and there was nothing that they could do about it as I fumbled through their clothing, looking for clues to who they might have been, taking souvenirs of their lives.

  One day, I thought, I might be the one lying on the road, or crumpled in the ruins of a house, or under the treads of a tank. The dead have no knowledge of what is going on, and yet I thought, When that moment comes, somehow I will feel the hands going through my pockets, and the great sadness of death will fall on me.

  Lieutenant Milton told us that we were just outside of Saint-André-de-l’Épine. Petrocelli pulled out his maps.

  “We’re the same distance from St. Lo as Roosevelt Field in Jersey City is to Yankee Stadium,” he announced. “It’s forty minutes by cab, and ten weeks by M1.”

  “Yo, Petrocelli, go tell Lieutenant Milton that we want to go to Yankee Stadium today,” Sergeant Burns said.

  “Summer in Yankee Stadium, that’s like heaven.” Petrocelli plopped down and put his legs straight out before him. “If I was in Yankee Stadium today, I’d order two hot dogs. They’re trying to push sausages on people these days, but I don’t trust a sausage, you know what I mean? Somehow a sausage just doesn’t cut it.”

  “What do Germans eat?” Burns asked. “I know they eat sausages, but what else do they eat?”

  “Everything,” Mac answered. “The only difference between us and the Germans is that the Germans eat their big meal in the middle of the day instead of at the end of the day, the way we do.”

  It was two o’clock when we were told to move into Saint André. Lieutenant Milton said he needed volunteers to scout the town. Stagg went, and Gomez.

  There were fields all around the town, and a small cluster of houses in the center. If it was occupied, the Germans would be waiting in the fields, dug in, all the roads zeroed in. There would be mines, too.

  “Why not just call in an air strike?” Minkowitz asked.

  “And if there’s nobody there but the French, is it all right just to kill them?”

  Ho
w do you not think that yes is the right answer? Yes, it is all right to kill the French, because if we don’t kill them we stand a greater chance of being killed ourselves.

  Who was answering that question? Who was living inside my body and saying that my life was more important than someone else’s? How did my brain suddenly become judgmental?

  We formed skirmish lines to the east of the village, breaking up into squads. The fields were covered with swaying wheat plants, but the summer wind also blew the scent of fresh herbs toward us. I remembered my grandmother Darlene planting small beds of oregano and mint in the early springtime just so she could get the occasional surprise of their scent as we went through the fields of corn and alfalfa that we grew to feed the livestock.

  Mac was on the radio and he gave us the all-clear signal and pointed toward the village. I looked over at Lieutenant Milton and saw him take a deep breath, hold it, and then let it out slowly. All clear didn’t mean a thing if the Germans were well concealed. Stagg and Gomez knew that the same as we did. All that all clear meant was that there wasn’t a sizable amount of Krauts waiting for us. Maybe three or four with machine guns ready to kill a few of us before they were killed, and maybe they would chicken out and surrender.

  We started moving forward. We had hooked up with three guys from Headquarters Company, and they were lugging heavy communications equipment. Nobody gave them a hand.

  “Watch out for trip wires!”

  I stopped dead in my tracks and looked down at my feet. There was a vine across the top of my combat boots. I backed off of it gently and stepped over.

  The distance from the closest field was about half the distance of a football field. There was no cover. Stagg and Gomez were at the edge of the field. They had made it this far.

  “You two guys! Start checking the houses!”

  I looked and saw Minkowitz tightening his chin strap. I didn’t know the guy who was going with him. Mink looked scared. Something told me to go with him, but nothing on me moved.