Reluctant Warriors (33 page)

But the Army didn't turn out to be what I hoped,
he thought.
I'd been living by myself
since I was fourteen. I was used ta doin' whatever I pleased. Gettin' up at 0400,
eatin' what and when you were told, and sleepin' when told ground me the wrong way.
One night after tellin' some friends I meant ta go AWOL, I snuck out of those shitty
wooden barracks left over from World War I and headed east into the most deserted
part of the post. I had gone several miles when I had ta go under a viaduct I knew
from a trainin' exercise. I was thinkin': A hundred yards and I'll be off the post.”
It was real dark, especially under that viaduct. I came pokin' out the other side,
got about ten feet, and a voice came out of the darkness:“Hey.” It was like bein'
hit with a hammer.

Wiley leaned back against the boulder and smiled weakly, remembering.

I stumbled and fell right on my face. “Come here,” the voice said, real calm. I peered
back in the dim light to see Sergeant Orville Betts, or “S.O.B.” as us recruits called
him. I thought a runnin', but the shit that I was, I shamelessly decided ta stand
up to the man.

He was sittin' on top a the viaduct. He spoke again. “Come here. Sit here.” He was
motionin' for me ta climb up and sit next ta him, so I did.

“Whatcha doin'?”

“I don't like this. I'm gettin' outta here. I ain't afraid a you or any man.”

“Where you headed?”

“I don't know and I don't care. You can't stop me neither.”

“Here, take a shot,” he said, forking over a small bottle of booze. “It's rye.”

I'd never had rye before. I took a long pull that made me almost retch. I handed
it back, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“You got any family?”

“Yeah!” I said without thinkin', stickin' my nose in the air.

“Really, you got any folks?”

He could see right through me and I knew it. I looked down at the ground.

“No, Sergeant, I don't . . . nobody.”

“I figured. Have another.”

He offered the bottle to me again. The bluster was gone and I was realizin' how much
trouble I was in, so I waved it away.

“Come to my quarters tomorrow night, 1800 sharp.” With that Betts jumped down and,
before I could react, was gone into the darkness.

He cleaned me up inside and out,
Wiley thought, sitting at the dorsal.
Other than
my grandparents, he was the first person who treated me like I wasn't shit. He taught
me ta respect myself, how ta speak ta people; that I should watch people I respected,
how they dressed and talked and do as they did, which really opened my eyes. I gotta
stop talkin' like a hick.

The sergeant had proved a good friend, more of a father figure than the boy had ever
known. Now, Wiley thought of him nearly halfway around the world.

He knew now that he had two mentors.

Wiley remembered seeing a little draw when he ran down the incline toward the sergeant.
If he could find that, it would cover him as he climbed up the incline.

Carefully, he walked along the base of the escarpment. Once or twice he heard voices—near
or far away, he couldn't tell with the rock sides twisting around—and stopped for
a few minutes. Fearing that Arabs might be hiding just around the next turn, he held
the .45 ready. He started again. His luck held, he found the draw and began climbing
up.

In another few minutes, he could see the entire German force clearly, about four
hundred yards off. There were four half-tracks and several hundred troops. The vehicles
were stopped. It looked as though they were preparing to ambush any force that came
along Highway 17.

Odd that they'd set up there without no tank support
, he thought.

In the next instant his attention was diverted toward the pass. A vehicle came into
view, then two more. He glimpsed what they were pulling through the blowing sand.
It became clear why the force in front of him had stopped where they were.

They got eighty-eight millimeter cannons they're towin' up here!
The most feared
antitank weapons of the war, Wiley could only imagine the damage they could do to
an American column.
I need ta get back with this info.

Being able to bring back such lifesaving information made him feel slightly better
about giving up on Lieutenant Christopher. He started along the peak, making his
way back the way he had come, walking boldly in the open. He knew he was out of range
of German rifles, even if they saw him. He knew the half-tracks could not touch him,
and he wanted to show himself that he was not afraid. It would be a while before
the eighty-eights limbered up and could shoot at him.

To the north, six or eight miles off, were his lines, if his people were still there.
He noted it was 1730, growing late in the afternoon.

Soon, the peak ended and Wiley sat down. He felt exhausted again and starved. As
he looked in his coat for the rations that had fallen out when he panicked, he happened
to recognize the place about fifty yards off where he had begun his ascent a few
hours before. He thought of all that had
happened to him and took a long drink from
his canteen. His mouth felt as though it were coated in dust.

He stood and headed directly north into the great expanse. For the first time, he
noticed the coldness of the afternoon with the sun beginning to descend to the west.

He began relaxing his guard as he came closer to his lines. He had gone about a mile
when, with a loud, whining ZIP!, a bullet passed not far from him. He hit the ground,
his nose smashing into a particularly foul-smelling plant.

Several seconds passed, Wiley listening with all of his senses. Suddenly, a grenade
flew up in front of him. He lost it in the grayness of the sky and, for an instant,
thought it would hit him in the head. It fell twenty-five feet in front of him, and
as he hugged the ground, it blew up harmlessly.

That's an American grenade
, he thought incredulously.
Jesus Christ, my own people
tryin' ta kill me!

Had he gotten so far only to have his own people try to kill him? His temper got
the best of him. Wiley brought his rifle up and yelled at the top of his lungs.

“If you do that again, I'm goin' ta shoot you!”

He was a veteran now, and his voice had a quality in it that was not there before.
It was the voice of a man who knew how to command others, a voice to be obeyed.

What happened next stunned him. Almost at the same moment, twelve men, spread out
over nearly half an acre, stood up from small depressions with their hands over their
heads. Some were still terrified by the German blitzkrieg attack, some were lost,
and all were tired and hungry and disoriented enough to surrender to a fellow American.

“You really never can tell,” he said aloud.

“Please, please, please, please don't shoot me,” several begged.

Wiley, shocked but wary, didn't know whether to hold his rifle on them or shoulder
it. He decided on something in between. In a loud voice, he yelled, “All a you, get
over here and line up!”

The exhausted and depressed men, their heads hanging down, shuffled as
though being
scolded by parents. They took some time to get in order. Some had rifles, which they
held by the straps so that they almost touched the ground, but most had no weapon.
Wiley noticed a number of privates, three corporals, and even a lieutenant! One close
look at the officer, and the scout could see that he was in no condition to lead
anyone. The man was pale, his eyes empty and staring, his face slack and expressionless.

“Sir? . . . Sir?” But the man didn't even look up.

“His men got killed,” a private announced sheepishly. “He's been like that since
we found him yesterday.”

“You watch him, soldier. Take care a him. Take that carbine from him and put it over
your shoulder.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wiley thought for a minute and figured he would try a question. “Anybody here know
where you are?”

A corporal volunteered. “Sir, ain't we behind German lines?”

Several nodded in agreement. It was a rag-tag group, to be sure, some looking at
Wiley as though he were a general. They were kids just as he was, men who were in
shock and had lost the will to care.

Wiley shook his head at the whole scene. A private, commanding corporals? But he
knew he would have to take charge.

“Right face!”

The men turned, slowly, unconvincingly.

“In column of twos, march!”

Sometimes it was hard to tell they were in column of twos, but the little army proceeded,
their footsteps crunching in the sand.

Within about an hour and a half, just as night was falling, the voices of American
sentries challenged them out of the dark.

“Who goes there?”

“A small group a Americans, comin' in.”

“Stand and be recognized! Any funny moves and we'll blast hell out of you.”

Wiley's energy and patience had both run out. “Oh, shut up, you morons! Do we
look
like Germans? Look at these guys, they're about done in,” he said, in the same authoritative
voice he had invented an hour or so before.

“No, sir! Come on in!” the sentry said, saluting.

The next day, Wiley was promoted to buck sergeant. The man with no high school education
had become a professional man and a person of responsibility.

A Downed Plane

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die, . . .
Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
And the hunter home from the hill.

—Robert Louis Stevenson,
Requiem

Northern France, July 23, 1944

T
he two officers were talking as Sergeant Joseph “Chip” Wiley entered the tent, stopped
in front of the desk, and saluted. There were several other men Wiley knew as well,
working away at their various tasks. Captain Redding, his company commander, returned
the salute in cursory fashion. He never looked up, just continued to talk to a major
from headquarters whose nametag said White.

Within minutes of his arrival, the news of the major's presence had spread throughout
E Company. The word was that another dirty job was at hand. As he stood at attention,
watching and listening, Wiley could tell that these two were old friends.

“So you saw him?” Redding asked.

“Yes, many a time at Twenty-First Army Group after D-Day,” the major answered. “And
I was attached to First Division HQ in North Africa before you came overseas when
he was assistant division commander, and I saw him every day for months.”

“What was he like?” Redding asked, intently interested, as the two men sat smoking
cigarettes.

“Well, he was a little squirt of a guy,” White said. “Just a little guy, but a real
powerful, raspy voice, which was known to literally
everyone
in the division, all
fourteen thousand. They could pick his voice out at night in pitch darkness! He was
the type of guy there are just too many stories to tell about.”

“Like what?”

“Well, everyone knows he was the only general to land in the first wave on D-Day
at Utah Beach.” White shook his head in reverence. “All the goldbrickers we've seen
and then this guy, the son of president, under machine gun and artillery fire! Can
you beat that?”

Redding nodded in agreement. “We heard that. Tell me something else.”

“The guys just marveled at what he did during the assault on Cherbourg. The Germans
were in these medieval forts, castles really, on the edge of the harbor, solid rock.
We didn't have anything that would make a dent in that stuff. I'm telling you, I
watched the armor piercing stuff from our seventy-fives hit that stone and bounce
off like they were peas. And we were taking serious casualties. You know we had to
have that port because the one we constructed off Normandy, ‘Mulberry,' broke up
in that storm.”

“Yeah, we heard.”

“Well, here's this brigadier general. He throws his helmet on the ground and curses
that his people are being shot up. Now I have heard people curse, but you just had
to get out of the way when he was like that. So he curses for a while, until you
could see an idea come into his head and for just a second he freezes. You could
have heard a pin drop. I just happened to be there, but I'll never forget watching
him operate. He says, ‘Get Tommy Wagner on the phone.' You know, Wagner's Corps artillery
so Roosevelt can't command him to do anything. In a minute, this Colonel's on the
line, and Teddy starts in on him.

“‘Tommy, you got any 155s that have come ashore yet? You do! That's great. I need
two of them here as soon as possible.'

“We had no idea what the hell he wanted with 155s. You know, they'll shoot maybe
fifteen miles. We just listened. He lets this guy carp for a minute.

“‘I know it, Tommy,' he said, ‘but I have to have those guns here. I'll square it
with General Bradley. When can you get them here? . . . Well, that'll be too late.
In the morning? Great. I'm depending on you. Yes. My best to Mary and the boys.'

“The monster guns arrive and he orders them put right in the front lines! There was
no elevation at all to these babies. They were just point blank at these forts.

“Teddy says to the major commanding the 155s, ‘If one of those goddamn Germans sticks
his head up, you shoot at it!' You know, Redd, the shell from a 155 weighs a hundred
pounds! Then he says to the major, ‘If they shoot at my people with a machine gun,
you shoot at that machine gun.'

“Well, in two hours the Germans surrender! We get this regular army colonel, a real
Prussian, the gloves, the monocle, a spotless guy. He comes forward to surrender,
hands over this engraved pistol, and says ‘When you start using a 155 as a sniper
rifle, it is time to surrender, my compliments,' and he clicks his heels together.”
White shook his head again, grinning.

“So, Lewis, what killed him?” Redding asked.

“His heart. He had a heart attack right there on the battlefield.”

“Damn, that's tough.”

White went on. “The guy served the country as treaty negotiator, governor-general
of the Philippines, and other stuff, served until the last moment of his life.”

Wiley, tired as usual, had relaxed somewhat by this time. Redding finally noticed.
“Soldier, you're at attention!”

“Yes, sir!”

Redding went on, “We heard the First and Fourth Divisions stood down out of respect
the next day and refused to fight. Is it true?”

“Well, I don't know about that. I think Eisenhower and Bradley agreed to let them
stand down.”

Both officers turned toward Wiley at the same time.

“All right sergeant, I mean, corporal,” Redding said, “at ease. We go from Theodore
Roosevelt, Junior, to you,” he said sarcastically. “What did you do with your .25
Colt?”

“Threw it away, sir.”

The captain rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell,” he snapped, and turned to Major White.

“Lewis, since advanced training at Fort Benning, this guy's been carrying a little
.25 Colt. So we put him in charge of this German major we captured, and he winds
up shooting the guy with the damn thing and killing him. Tell the major and me how
that happened.”

Wiley swallowed hard, then answered in an apologetic tone. “He had a pistol in his
hat, sirs, a Walther PPK, which Wal . . . which we missed. He went for it, so I shot
him. I only winged him. But he was kinda an old guy and croaked anyway.”

“Yeah, great, so no PPK! So, you lost your third chevron. And battalion is
steamed
.
They sure wanted to question that guy.”

Wiley held up a German pistol. “Here it is, sir. One shot's missin' where he creased
the top a my ear here.” He pointed at his left ear. “Wallinski took it from the German
while I was tryin' ta explain myself ta Lieutenant Bates.”

Redding stared. “Really? Why didn't Wallinski say something?”

“Guess he wanted the souvenir, sir.”

“So, that was good of him to come forward,” Major White chimed in.

Redding looked suspicious. He knew that Wallinski was one of the least-liked men
in the company. “Why didn't Wallinski bring it in himself ?”

“He's at the aid station, sir.”

“Oh, really. What's the problem?”

“Broken arm, sir.”

“And how did he get a broken arm?”

“Must have slipped, sir.”

Redding rolled his eyes. “Okay. And how did you get that cut over your eye? You ‘slip'
too?”

“Must have, sir.”

“All right, sergeant, you can put on your third stripe. And Chip, if you pull this
one off, you'll make staff sergeant. I know that you send your money back home. Might
make a difference for your family.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“Major White, the battalion intelligence officer, has come down to brief you. Major?”

“Corporal, rather sergeant, you have been picked by your commanding officer to go
behind the lines and find a plane that went down this morning about ten miles from
here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here is your map.” White motioned for Wiley to come around next to him and opened
a large, detailed map with topographical markings on it. “Soldier, this is yours,
but make no marks of any type on it in case you get captured. We are here, and we
think the plane went down right here.” He pointed. “The plane is a P-38 photo reconnaissance
job. You know what a P-38 looks like, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have noticed a great deal of enemy activity across the river. He was to photograph
that and a target behind the lines that is very important to us.”

“May I know the nature of the important tar . . .”

“No, you may not,” White interrupted. “All you have to know is that we need that
photographic cartridge. We have someone from the Air Force outside who will brief
you on how to remove such a cartridge from the plane.”

“May I speak, sir?”

“Yes, you may, sergeant.”

“What about the pilot, sir? Do I get him out too?”

“Sure, if he can move. But, the information on board that plane and the scouting
you do going in and out can save many lives. We would send another plane, but the
whole area's socked in and might continue to be for the next few days. So don't risk
anything much for the pilot. Look,” White went on, “Division feels that the Germans
are building up in this sector and that they might attack soon. If we sent a squad
in there, you wouldn't get two feet past that river. You are it, you and, ah, the
other man.”

Wiley looked concerned. “Another man, sir?”

“Yes, two men. Captain Redding says you have been a scout for a long time; good record.
Many missions, North Africa to now.”

“Thank you, sirs.”

“Sergeant,” White said, looking Wiley directly in the eyes, “you have thirty-six
hours. If you don't report back by 0600 on the 25th, you'll be too late. I can't
tell you more than that. Well I'm due back.” He rose and walked toward the flap.
“Where's Sergeant Kennedy, my driver?”

Redding's aide, Sergeant Bracey, piped up: “He was just outside the tent, sir.”

“Thank you, sergeant.”

White turned, pointed at Wiley, and said, “Thirty-six hours!” He saluted. Redding,
Wiley, and the others in the tent returned the salute. White disappeared outside.

Redding turned toward Bracey. “Sergeant, get that photo guy in here.”

For the next twenty minutes, a diminutive corporal from the Air Corps, who Wiley
privately thought was a real pipsqueak, went over and over and over the correct way
to remove a photographic cartridge from a P-38. After the first two repetitions,
Wiley began to despise the little man.

He must think I'm stupid or somethin'. I got more rank that that little twerp
, he
thought.

He wanted to stay awake, but soon a more powerful notion came over him, one that
had helped to keep him alive one time or another.
If your life ain't on the line,
to hell with it.
He nodded off.

Captain Redding dropped something and Wiley started.

“Thank you, corporal, that will be enough.”

“But, sir, I thought I'd go over it once more.”

Redding was having a hard time staying awake himself. “Thank you, corporal. That
will be all!”

The corporal turned, a smirk on his face, and went out the flap. Redding eyed Wiley.

“Sergeant, it's about 1900. You have an hour and a half before dark and close to
thirty-five hours after that. Get your stuff together and get down to
the river.
We want you to get across as soon as possible and be maybe halfway to the plane,
say five miles in, by dawn. You should be able to see enemy positions by their fires
after you pass through the lines. Zip in and zip out.”

Wiley thought:
Sure, just ‘zip in and out'! What does he know?

Redding continued. “I know you like to scout during the day, but it can't be helped.”

“Yes, sir. Do I really need ta take someone with me?”

“Yes, I want you to take Private Kuehl.”

Redding knew Wiley wouldn't be thrilled about this. He was greeted by the blank look
he'd expected.

“Sir, I'd rather not take Kuehl.”

“Who would you like to take?”

“Well, nobody, sir. The captain knows what happens ta the guys that go along with
me.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Sir, I've been doin' these missions since we hit the beach at Oran. First with Noah
Hendricks. He got himself captured at Kasserine Pass. Then they gave me Enrique.
He got shot by that sniper in Sicily. Then Tony Dutton who got it in the side and
I had ta carry six miles. I hope he's okay. And now Burke last week. We ran outta
that basement with Germans shooting at us, and I never saw him again.”

“Yeah, your point is?”

“Well, sir, I got ta know these guys real well. Dutton, I made six trips with him.
I just don't want this ta happen ta some other guy. Kuehl's a pretty good sort.”

Redding looked up at Wiley. “Chip, we can't afford
not
to send someone with you.”
He looked down at some of his mounting paperwork. “Someday it'll be you that doesn't
come back.”

He looked coldly at Wiley. “Or it'll be me. I've told Kuehl, but given him no details.
That's up to you. Go.”

Wiley walked out of the tent and toward the company's tents, spread out over several
acres of ground. It was an overcast day, with the threat of rain making the air heavy.

“Yeah,” he said to himself, “just ‘zip in and out.' I wonder if any a these people
have any idea at all about crawlin' around behind the lines.”

As he came into the middle of the company, his comrades, exhausted from continuous
action since D-Day on June 6, called across to him from their tents or where they
were milling about.

Jerry Daghastani was the first. “Hey, Chip, watch out for that pile of shit in front
of you, you might slip and bust
your
arm!”