WALTER WATERS FELT HIS TOES burning as he slogged across yet another muddy field. It was the damn trench foot again, his unerring warning that all hell was about to break loose. That morning, he and his stretcher partner, Goins Gavin, had been drafted from their battalion in the 146th Field Artillery and sent up the line to an infantry regiment in I Corps desperate for medics. Now, here in the middle of the night, they were being marched single file down narrow duckboards with two hundred other doughboys. Up ahead lay a dim horizon rutted by splintered trees.
Their officers, as usual, were tight-lipped about the mission, but the Frogs back at camp had been grapevining for days about a big push into a salient a few miles ahead at a village called Saint-Mihiel. Quipsters had renamed the place ‘Saint My Hell,’ figuring that’d be what it eventually turned into. He didn’t have much of a knack for translating fancy French words, but best as he could make out, a salient was kind of like a nasty hemorrhoid that stuck out and caused a lot of pain and trouble. The most effective way to deal with a German hemorrhoid, he’d been told, was to pinch it from both sides until the bloody Boche exploded in retreat. And that was about all he knew about the entire situation, except that Black Jack was bringing up the big guns and stacking them, axle to axle.
Never a good sign.
Two steps behind him, his buddy Goins, carrying the far end of their folded stretcher, reached over and tugged at his sleeve. “Dubya, I gotta piss like a racehorse.”
“Wh-wh-what am I, your m-m-momma?”
“Tell the stripe we need to stop.”
“Hell, I ain’t t-t-telling him. He looks like he’d bite a m-m-man’s head off.”
“I can’t hold it much longer.”
“Let ’er fly on the run. Hell, we got so much mud on us nobody’d know.”
“I ain’t pissing myself like an old man. I got some dignity left.”
“Suit yourself.”
The trudging line came to a sudden halt, causing Waters to smack into the man in front of him.
“Watch it, jagoff,” snarled the soldier he had just head-butted.
The captain leading the column snapped an order over his shoulder. “Shut up back there!”
Waters figured this was as good a time as any to plead Goins’s case. “Captain, my orderly here needs to r-r-relieve hisself.”
The captain turned and elbowed his way back to the end of the line. He pressed his nose against Waters’s forehead and whispered through gritted teeth. “Listen up, you two Idaho spud heads. We run a tighter unit here in the infantry than you do in that tinkers outfit you call an artillery battery.”
“Sir, Private G-g-Gavin has a balky bladder.”
Goinsie was dancing in the mud, trying to hold it in.
The captain pulled his pistol. “I see that dick come out, soldier, I’ll shoot it off.”
That threat didn’t help Goinsie’s discomfort.
“I’m going to say this once,” the captain warned them all. “And then we go silent for the rest of the night.” He kept ramming his chin into the bridge of Water’s brow. “Do you know what I mean by going silent?”
Waters nodded, then shook his head, confessing he didn’t.
The captain holstered his pistol and drew a knife that would have made Jim Bowie jealous. “From this point on, no one speaks. No one. The Boche scouts are out there. If they hear us coming, we’re ground meat for their artillery. You will grab onto the pack of the man in front of you. There will be no light. Do not let go of that pack. One tug means ‘yes.’ Two tugs means ‘no.’”
“S-s-sir,” Waters said. “You m-m-mind telling us wh-where we’re going?”
“Half a mile ahead, the front trenches. In five hours, at dawn, four of our corps will launch the largest American attack in history. Our job is to take a village called Thiaucourt. The Germans defend it with some Big Berthas. Most of the local Frogs there haven’t been allowed outside in four years, but a few of them did us the kindness of risking their necks to come out here and lay this plank trail. Look around you. What do you see?”
Waters glanced up at the moonless sky. “I can’t see nothing.”
“Keep that revelation stuck in that thick skull of yours,” the captain said. “The Boche have shelled this sector for two years. On each side of this duckboard, the ground drops into giant holes that are filled fifteen feet deep with mud. Now here’s the part of my story that may pique your interest. The mud here is like quicksand. If you fall in, it takes ten men with three ropes to drag you out. Look around. You see anybody carrying ropes?”
Waters and Gavin swallowed hard and shook their heads.
The captain looked down at Waters’s belt. “Where’s your weapon?”
“I’m a m-m-medic, sir. We ain’t s-s-supposed to wear one.”
The captain demanded a pistol from one of his officers and drove its barrel into the crease of Waters’s belt. “In my company, medics are armed.” He turned to the other men. “Your lives depend on keeping hold of the backpack of the man in front of you. No talking. No gunfire. No lights. Any questions?”
The men didn’t dare ask, figuring that was a test. They stood aside on the board and allowed the captain to take his place at the head of the column.
As they resumed their silent approach to the Front, Waters felt Gavin grabbing at his pack. He wanted to tell him to lighten his grip, but he’d just been forbidden to speak. He wished Captain MacLeish were with them. That whip-smart fella had always been a calming influence on everyone, reciting his poetry whenever the boys had a bad day. But he had been sent back home to instruct artillery draftees after his brother, a fighter pilot, was shot down. He’d never forgotten the poem that the officer had written after receiving the news. To take his mind off the danger, he silently repeated the verses he had memorized:
And suddenly, and all at once, the rain!
The living scatter, they run into houses, the wind
Is trampled under the rain, shakes free, is again
Trampled. The rain gathers, running in thinned
Spurts of water that ravel in the dry sand,
Seeping in the sand under the grass roots, seeping
Between crack boards of the bones of a clenched hand:
The earth relaxes, loosens; he is sleeping,
He rests, he is quiet, he sleeps in a strange land.
Several minutes into the nearly blind advance, a strange sensation thrust Waters back to the present. He realized that Goins wasn’t holding onto his pack now. He tried to turn around to find out why, but he nearly lost his balance.
“Dubya!”
Still lurching forward, Waters turned and searched the darkness.
“Dubya! Help me!”
My God. Goins was somewhere below the duckboards, sucked down into one of those giant shell holes. He must have stopped to piss and fallen from the track boards. Waters kept his eyes fixed on the man in front of him. He was desperate to stop and save his buddy, but the captain was brandishing his knife above his head in a warning.
“Dubya! Don’t let me go down!” Goins shouted, gurgling mud.
Waters felt his elbow brush against the pistol the captain had forced on him. He couldn’t bear to hear Goinsie screaming. With each step closer to the Front, he heard his buddy’s pleas fading into the night. He took his right hand off the pack of the man in front of him and reached for the pistol. He couldn’t bring himself to draw it. That stripe would stockade him, or worse, if he fired.
“Give me a bullet, Dubya!”
Waters held tight to the pack under his chin and prayed Goinsie wouldn’t suffer long. The last scream ended with a moiling gasp, and the darkness became silent again. Captain MacLeish’s consoling voice came to his ear:
Between crack boards of the bones of a clenched hand:
The earth relaxes, loosens; he is sleeping,
He rests, he is quiet, he sleeps in a strange land.
COLONEL GLASSFORD RACED HIS TWO-CYLINDER motorcycle ahead of the 26th Division’s infantry column forming up behind the crest of a denuded ridge of hills. Reaching the highest point in the sector, he cut the motorcycle’s chugging engine and pulled out his binoculars to study the moon-like terrain. Below him lay the Meuse valley, pitted with old trench systems and strewn in rusted barbed wire. The eerie stillness confirmed that here, on the north side of the St. Mihiel salient, the Germans had pulled back their suicide squads into secondary trenches, an ominous sign suggesting they knew what was about to hit them. The rain continued to come down hard, bringing with it a bank of morning fog that would obstruct the view of his 103rd Field Artillery gunners.
Glassford shook his head, frustrated by the weather. He had received orders to lay down a rolling barrage toward St. Hilaire to soften up the Boche for the assault. But the gray thickness was descending fast, and soon he wouldn’t be able to see more than two hundred yards ahead, let alone locate the heavily defended village. He wiped the mud from his watch. Zero hour was in thirty minutes. If he couldn’t get more precise coordinates, the bombardment would be a bloody mess; his howitzers would likely hit the advancing doughboys.
A gaggle of infantry officers, led by a dyspeptic Colonel, came marching over the hill toward him. The Colonel snorted and cut off a testy salute. “It seems, Colonel Glassford, your artillery sighters cannot read a map. They have rolled your guns right up behind my lines.”
“Damn those boys,” Glassford said. “Can’t they understand orders?”
“Apparently not.”
“I told them to set those howitzers ahead of your lines.”
The infantry Colonel reddened. “You were warned about these unorthodox tactics! How do you think it looks if your batteries cover more ground than my infantry?”
“I guess it doesn’t shine too bright on your reputation.”
“I noticed that your teamsters—”
“Gunners,” Glassford corrected.
“They’re wearing hand grenades. Why in God’s name would an artilleryman need a trench explosive?”
Glassford glanced down at the fancy handled knife holstered on the officer’s belt. “I guess for the same reason a Colonel behind the lines would need an elephant gutter.”
The officer bristled. “Your men are transporting their packs on the caissons. Regulations require all American soldiers to carry their packs.”
“They have longer distances to cover. I need them at full strength.”
“Get those guns back behind me! Standard rearage of artillery is forty-five hundred meters!”
“I prefer fifteen hundred.”
The infantry officer glared at him harder. “How old are you, Colonel?”
“I’ll be turning thirty-four soon, if I make it through this little scuffle. You can send my birthday card up the line with your messenger.”
“Damn your insolence!” the striped relic shouted. “You’re too damn green to be leading a brigade!”
Glassford got up nose to nose with him. “We’re on the same side, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ve got my gunners up here risking their lives trying to save as many of your men as possible. The closer I get to the Boche lines, the more precise I can direct the strikes that will determine if we win this fight. Now, thanks to your dicking around, I’ve got only twenty minutes to get down there and see what I’m going to be firing at.”
“Down there? What the hell are you talking about?”
Glassford jumped on his motorcycle. “Hold your fire until I get back.”
“I did not dismiss you!”
Glassford gunned his engine and raced the cycle down the ridge into the fog, dodging shell holes and zagging through the wire gaps cut by the scouts. At the bottom of the hill, he stopped and pulled out his compass. After gaining his bearing for St. Hilaire, he motored cautiously toward the old German defenses and searched for the first line of trenches.
Thwarted by an abandoned row of ditches, he rode up and down the obstacles, hoping to find a plank to cross, but they had all been smashed. He sped back toward the American lines and, fifty yards away, spun a wheelie. He drove his heel into the accelerator for a blind running start toward the German trench.
He launched into the fog.
He landed with a jarring thud, still on his wheels. On the German side now, he circled and scouted for a road or path. He checked his compass again. The mists swirled thicker, and he saw no identifiable landmark. He drove in deeper toward the east. The soup thinned a bit, and the fractured spire of St. Hilaire’s church appeared, rising hazily in the distance. He pulled to a halt and confirmed the reading for the exact direction to give his gunners. All he had to do now was gain the range by counting the seconds it took him to race back toward his battery across—
The fog cleared over the ground ahead.
Twenty feet away, eight German soldiers sat around a mess bucket preparing breakfast. They looked up at him and went bug-eyed, as if visited by a ghost. Before they could jump for their rifles, Glassford pulled his pistol and peppered them with lead, dropping three. He slammed the motorcycle into gear and skidded off into the retreating mists, hoping to find the forward trench before the rising sun burned off the rest of the patchy fog.
German rifle fire rang out, popping the ground around his tires.
He didn’t have time to take careful aim for the trench, so he lowered his head and gunned the throttle for the receding fog. He took flight again.
He landed on the Allied side. Flung from the cycle, he crawled and groped until he found its handles. He lifted the motorbike and jumped back on the seat.
Behind him, the Germans poured into the trench and fired.
Bullets buzzed his head as he drove the sputtering motorbike up the ridge and split the American lines behind the crest, nearly running over the toes of the ranting infantry Colonel. Breathless, he leapt off the cycle and ran toward his waiting battery. He ordered Lt. Colonel Chaffee, his second-in-command, “Set the range for two thousand yards, Chaf. Creep up every three minutes and raise the elevation a degree with each roll.”
“Where do we aim?” Chaffee asked.
“Ten degrees, north-northeast azimuth.”
Chaffee wrote down the calculations and sent the order off with a runner. “We’d have a better angle at them if we dug in on the other side of this spine.”
“Then get it done.”
The infantry Colonel could only look on in disbelief as Glassford’s gunners rolled through his lines and began setting their sights. Noticing one of the howitzers with a bayonet taped to its barrel, the infantry Colonel stopped the driver of its caisson. “What the hell is that, soldier?”
“Sir, it’s a Glassford Trench Mortar,” the gunner said with pride. “We always arm our big boomers with these Boche ice picks. We tend to get a little close to the action at times, and they can come in handy, if you know what I mean. You and your boys give us a holler if you need any help down there on the playground.”
The Colonel stormed off.
JOE ANGELO HUNKERED DOWN IN his rifle pit as a German artillery barrage crept closer. Looking to his rear, he saw their American tanks bogged down in the mud, grinding and groaning like dinosaurs struggling to escape some ancient bog. They were near a village called Essey, that much he knew, only because he had overheard the runners passing messages to Colonel Patton. The one benefit from being an orderly was having a decent idea of what the hell was going on all over the battlefield. Thanks to his eavesdropping, he could now estimate that their tank corps was somewhere aside the Rainbow Division on the southeast face of the St. Mihiel salient, driving toward the heavily fortified city of Metz.
But there were a lot more disadvantages, and the most worrisome was having to follow a lunatic officer who seemed determined to earn a monument to his death on this field. And there the Colonel was up and at it again now, marching from tank to tank and haranguing their drivers while daring the German snipers to take off his head. Angelo peered over his forearm. As the shells from the Boche heavy guns plowed the ground around him, he tried again to convince his superior officer to take cover. “Colonel! Please get down!”
The booms were getting louder, but Colonel Patton remained standing on a mound, surveying the field of carnage. “Angelo, go tell that sonofabitch Trammel to stop flooding that goddamn carburetor on that goddamn Renault!”
Angelo offered up a quick Ave Maria and took off on a dash for the nearest tank. He banged on the iron lid over the driver’s compartment and yelled the order. Then, he scampered back across the field, weaving and skirting exploding shells like a rabbit on a shooting range. He dived back into the rifle pit below the colonel’s boots and pleaded with him again. “Sir, it ain’t gonna do none of us any good if you get blown to bits.”
“Goddamn,” Patton muttered under his breath at something coming at him across the pocked terrain. “I’d rather see the goddamn Devil.”
Angelo inched his head above the rim of the pit to discover what the Colonel had spotted. Walking toward them was a tall, slender brigadier general, newly pinned with his first star and sporting a barracks cap, plum silk scarf, and a muffler wrapped around his neck. The dandy held an ivory-handled pistol in one hand and a riding crop in the other. The doughboys around the lanky general kept falling and diving for cover, but he strolled coolly toward Patton as if on an afternoon jaunt in the park.
Arriving at their foxhole, the general saluted Patton and observed, “Your tanks are having a rough go of it, Colonel.”
His face flaming with embarrassment, Patton straightened and returned the salute testily. “General MacArthur, I will have these tanks back in operation before your men hit Essey.”
Hearing that name, Angelo risked raising his eyes a little higher to get a glimpse of the famous West Pointer the boys were calling the Beau Brummell of the AEF.
MacArthur tapped his thigh with his riding crop, as if keeping time with the gunfire. “We could use those tanks, if you manage to get them unstuck. But don’t feel you’ve let us down if not. I’ll take Essey regardless.”
Patton turned another shade redder. “They’ll reach that high ground if I have to drag them out of this muck myself.”
MacArthur jutted out his chin and set his fists on his waist for the benefit of the men around him who were watching their exchange. “I suppose you heard about Belleau Wood.”
Patton struggled to show no fear, but he couldn’t help flinch with each ping of a bullet. “The goddamn Marines are getting all the credit for that firefight. Hell, I’d never seen such a botched operation. Our Army boys on the flanks had to go in and save their asses over there.”
MacArthur gritted his pipe with clenched teeth, displaying his first sign of discomfiture. “That yarn-spinner Gibbons is to blame for that fiasco. Those incompetents in the censor office let his dispatch go across the wire. Next thing you know, the entire country will be laboring under the delusion that the Marines won the battle alone. Harbord’s now pinning medals on the scoundrel and calling him an honorary leatherneck.”
Patton nodded with a grimace. “I should have shot the bastard in Mexico when I had the chance.”
MacArthur maintained a dashing pose, raising his crop in a salute to the doughboys hunkered down around him. “Well, all we can do now is win this fight and correct the record.” He looked west, where the Allied artillery bombardment sounded the heaviest. “Our lads are doing some good work over there.”
Trying to steady his hands, Patton pulled a paper from his back pocket and examined his order of battle. “New Englanders. Hundred and Third Field Artillery.”
MacArthur nodded proudly. “Happy Glassford’s outfit. Artillery was the right choice for him, I think. Let’s hope he keeps his nickname today.”
A German whizz-bang hissed down from the sky and exploded only a few feet away. Angelo saw Colonel Patton duck involuntarily, but General MacArthur, in a stunning feat of dramatic discipline, didn’t even twitch.
Grinning, the general comforted Patton with some unsolicited advice. “Don’t sweat over them, Colonel. It’s the ones you don’t hear that get you.”
Angelo watched in disbelief as the two officers continued standing with their heads held high in the midst of the fusillade. Apparently neither wanted to be the one to break off the confrontation and allow the other to say for the rest of his life that he had not blinked under fire. Finally, he decided to risk a dressing down by coming to the rescue of his boss. “Colonel, Valerie in tank fourteen was asking to see you. Said it was urgent.”
Having won the standoff, MacArthur smiled thinly and brought his riding crop to the bill of his tilted cap again. “Carry on, Colonel. Good luck with your armored horses.”
As the general walked away, Patton dropped down into the foxhole and released a held breath. Motioning Angelo to follow him toward the protection of the nearest tank, he muttered angrily, “Armored horses my ass.”
“Was he an old friend, sir?” Angelo asked on the run.
Patton spat a wad of dry bile ahead of him and drove it into the mud with the heel of his boot. “First time I ever met the sonofabitch. In this life, anyway. I think we squared off a few centuries ago at Thermopylae. I suspect he was a goddamn Persian.”
OZZIE TAYLOR LUGGED A BAG of stale baguettes over his shoulder as he darted from house to house while trying to time the German machine-gun fire. His buddies, at least those who had survived the onslaught, were pinned down in this smoke-choked village, and these loaves were the only food that Major Little back at regimental headquarters had managed to forage for them. Word was that Black Jack and the Frenchies were throwing everything they had at the Boche this night along the line that stretched from the Meuse River to the Argonne forest. The 369th’s assault with the French Fourth Army up Bellevue Ridge here had taken three days. The Germans were putting up a fearsome last stand, fighting hand-to-hand in the streets and sniping from the windows.
Bullets cut the darkness, whizzing past his ears. He figured each miss raised the odds of the next one finding his skull. Faint from hunger, he was starting to regret volunteering to serve as a runner between the white officers and what remained of the companies doing the fighting up front here. A week ago, he had reckoned that he’d be safer behind the lines, but the truth of the matter proved to be that a communications relayer drew the most fire. He was mostly delivering grim news anyway, a fact that made him unpopular with both the stripes and the enlisted men. Worst of all, while on his dashes, he had to ignore the many wounded who groaned for water and grabbed at his ankles as he skedaddled past them in the fields. He sure could use Big Jim with him right about now, telling him what to do and assuring him everything would be all right. But he was grateful to know that the Boss was safe in Paris, entertaining the Frogs on leave.
“Taylor!” a voice shouted from a blasted storefront window. “Get over here!”
Ozzie crawled over a cobblestone street strewn with shell casings and shards of wood beams. Halfway across, he heard several dull thuds, like a fist pounding a pillow. He realized to his horror that Germans on the rooftops were shooting at the bag of bread on his back, thinking he was carrying a wounded buddy. He doubled the pace on his knees and scurried into the open door.
Five men, their eyes ravenous, grabbed at the bag and scattered its contents—a few moldy baguettes and a couple of straight razors—across the floor.
Ulysses Tebbs, a private from St. Louis, picked through the scraps. “This is all they sent us? We ain’t eaten in two days!”
Ozzie backed off into a corner, afraid they were going to tear him apart in retaliation. “I broughts what they told me.”
Kid Hawk Hawkins picked up one of the rusty razors and examined its blunt edge. “What’s this for? They expect us to cut the Boche throats when we run out of bullets?”
“Told us to shave,” Ozzie said.
Kid Hawk threw the razor against the wall. “Why? To save them time back at the morgue?”
“Some of the boys shaved this morning before going over the top,” Ozzie reported. “They was the only ones who’s still alive. It’s a portent.”
“You don’t even know what a portent is,” Kid Hawk said.
“I think it’s like a voodoo protective spell,” Ozzie said.
A couple of the more superstitious men, not taking any chances, ran the dull blade across their chins.
Tebbs rifled through the bread shards until he found a piece that wouldn’t crack his teeth. He tore into it, gulping it down before it was even half chewed. “What the hell is Little doing back there in his damn dugout? We’ve been holding these Boche sonsabitches off all night waiting for reinforcements?”
Ozzie tried to explain the lack of support. “The Major said Colonel Hayward is waiting for permission to send the last battalion down here.”
“Hell, we been waiting long enough!” said Woney Williams. “Those white officers are just sitting dry while we’re here doing their dirty work.”
Eddie Washington peered nervously out the window, watching for the metallic flashes of a German Mauser. “The stripes are leaving us here to die.”
Tibbs nodded bitterly. “Damn right they are.”
“Yeah, I’m gettin’ fed up with the white knights sending us to the slaughter pen,” Washington said. “Fish, Hayward, Little. The whole batch’ll go back to their mansions when this war is over and tell their smoking-club cronies how they led us with their swords in the air.”
Ozzie had never seen the men so full of despair. “Major says to hang on.”
Hawkins was pacing in agitation. “We got nothin’ to hang on to. Half the regiment is shot up and punchin’ their tickets at the Pearly Gates. Those damn rookies they sent us last week hightailed it off the first time we went over the top. We’re out here on our own.”
Ozzie tried to talk some sense into them. “If Big Jim were here—”
“Europe ain’t here!” Williams shouted. “Anybody who’s got any pull ain’t here! He and his goddamn tune boys are in Paris sipping the vino and parle-vousing with the dames. How’d you manage to get stuck back in this mess, Taylor? I thought you were assigned to wipe Reese Europe’s fat expensive ass.”
“They only transferred the band,” Ozzie said. “I ain’t made the cut yet.”
Williams sneered. “So you’re down in the bottom of the barrel with us again.”
“They’re using us for cannon fodder,” Tebbs said. “I was talking to some of those Moroccans on our right flank last week. They said the Frenchies did the same thing to them on the Somme. Told ’em blackies can’t fight, so they just threw them out there to draw the bullets.”
“What’s happening to those 368th boys?” Hawkins asked Ozzie.
Ozzie hesitated, not wanting to answer that question.
“You hear me, or your ears need swabbing?”
“Black Jack pulled them out of the line,” Ozzie finally admitted. “Claimed they ran off scared.”
The men froze, unable to comprehend how their fellow Negro regiment could have failed so shamefully under fire.
“They weren’t trained proper,” Hawkins insisted. “The Boche fight us to the death, but give up against the white boys. They won’t surrender to us cause they think were the goddamn Sen’galese gonna cut their ears off and use their innards for drum twine.”
“I can hear the whities spouting their jokes now,” Williams said. “What’d a Negro soldier tell the Boche in the trenches? Shine or haircut?”
Tebbs spat a dry wad of phlegm in anger. “What’re we fighting over here for anyway? We go back home, it’ll be the same Jim Crow with his boot smashing ginst our heads. We’re damn fools for not just pulling up stakes and stevedoring in Paris. At least we’d eat.”
“Damn right,” muttered Hawkins. “Those crackers won’t fight aside us. Why should spill our guts over these fields for them?”
Washington kept looking out the window. “If we’re gonna go, we gotta go now, before it gets light.”
Hawkins and Tebbs picked up their rifles, and the other men followed them toward the door. They turned and saw Ozzie hanging back.
“You coming, boy?” Williams asked.
It took every ounce of his courage for Ozzie to shake his head. “I can’t face Big Jim and tell him I ran.”
Hawkins kicked an empty tin can across the floor. “Big Jim this, Big Jim that. I’m tired of that baton twirler taking all the credit for this regiment!”
“Go on, then,” Ozzie said. “But while you’re out there hightailing it to sunshine, just remember what they’ll be saying back home. Every time a black man tries to take a step up the ladder, they’ll be whispering behind his back that the Three-Sixty-Ninth couldn’t stand the heat in France.”
The men looked at their toes, shuffling and waiting for someone to make the first move.
Finally, Tebbs dropped to his haunches against the wall. “What’s the name of this goddamn town anyway?”
“You authoring a gazetteer?” Hawkins asked as he and the other men reluctantly returned to their firing positions along the wall.
“I’d at least like to know the sonofabitchin’ place they’ll bury me.”
Grinning grimly, Hawkins knelt aside the window and stole a glance out toward the sign on the battered maison. “Séchault.”
“Custer’s Last Stand at Sea Salt,” Tebbs muttered. “I always thought the pale faces were the ones supposed to get massacred in that story.” He aimed his rifle at the white village sign atop the commune headquarters and began peppering it with bullets.
“What you doing, Tebbs?” Ozzie asked. “We’re short on ammunition.”
“I’m gonna make that goddamn sign black as our faces. So every goddamn officer who comes through here remembers whose blood is soaking that ground out there.”
IT WAS STILL SEPTEMBER, BUT Joe Angelo felt as if he'd been fighting nonstop for months. His tank brigade and the doughboys of the 35th Infantry Division were making a new push toward the Argonne Forest, and this time the brass had ordered them not to stop until they cracked the Hindenburg line and sent the damn Boche scampering back to Germany. Yet apparently Black Jack hadn’t counted on a morning fog so thick that you couldn’t see the man walking next to you. If the sonofabitching generals with their chevroned heads up their chevroned asses had bothered to check the weather forecast, maybe they would have thought better of ordering those artillery bastards a mile behind the trenches to launch their smoke bombs into no man’s land and cut the visibility even worse.
He lugged the pigeon cage over his shoulder, wiping the bird shit from his shirt as he hurried to keep a step behind Patton. The Colonel was marching through the soup as if on parade, stabbing at the churned earth with his new shillelagh and barking orders in his high-pitched squeal at the tank drivers, even though they couldn’t even hear their own thoughts above the grind of their engines. The rolling German artillery barrage was chewing up the ground in front of them, too close for comfort. He prayed for the Colonel to slow down before they all marched into one of those shells and got their heads splattered like watermelons on concrete.
He heard the crackling of machine-gun fire around him, which was not a welcome development, and soon the heavy mists were awhisper with the muffled pleas of lost doughboys trying to find their units. He turned to look over his shoulder and motioned up his fellow runners, five men chosen for the dangerous mission of sending communications and coordinates back to the rear line. “Colonel Patton!” he huffed, keeping his eyes down to avoid breaking an ankle in one of the pock holes. “We’d better hold up. I don’t hear the tanks no more.”
“They’re ahead of us! Come on, Spartacus! Pick up the pace.”
And that was another thing. He was getting damned tired of that nickname the Colonel had pinned on him because some Roman slave had made a bloody mess of things in the old country. He and the other runners pressed on, keeping their eyes fixed on the backpack of the man in front of them.
After twenty minutes of this ragged stumble into gray blindness, the Colonel became winded and sat down on a marking stone at a crossroads. While he studied his compass, the fog began to lift, revealing the rooftops of a village about five hundred yards to the north. “That must be Cheppy,” said with a self-congratulatory grin. “We’ll be in Metz by nightfall, my stalwart legionnaires.” He pulled his pipe from his breast pocket and lit up, then wrote a note in his order pad. He tore out the sheet and handed it to Angelo. “Send the pigeon to General Rockenbach. We’ll give him the good news of our rapid advance.”
Angelo questioned the wisdom of using their lone harbinger so soon, but he tied the note to the messenger bird’s foot and released it with a prayer that its homing instincts wouldn’t fail in this fog. He turned toward the ground that they had just crossed and watched the pigeon disappear into the gray wisps.
Moments later, the retreating fog gave way to streaks of sun, revealing the no-man’s land for the first time. What he saw nearly two hundred yards behind him stole his breath. “Colonel, ain’t those our tanks back there?”
Patton turned and nearly swallowed his pipe. Somehow, he had outraced his Renaults. He knifed up, desperate, and began pacing. Most of the forward tanks had become stuck in the mud, sitting ducks to be picked off. A German spotter plane buzzed the field, sending signals to the German artillery that sat dug in up the northern slopes. A second column of German tanks was now mashing into the halted Renaults, creating a snarled traffic jam, and the American infantrymen staggered between them, confused and panicked. Having lost their formations, many of the doughboys began retreating or hiding behind the disengaged machines. Patton tried to rally them, until dozens of German machine guns opened up from their entrenched positions in front of the village.
As bullets buzzed past like bees from an overturned hive, Angelo dived into a shallow railway with the other runners. He raised his eyes over his forearm and saw Patton standing several feet away, looking upward at the clearing sky and carrying on a conversation with the air as the gunfire zinged past him. “Colonel!” he yelled. “Get down!”
But Patton was mesmerized by something in the clouds. Suddenly, he ran across the field screaming at the retreating doughboys and making cutting hand signals at his tanks. “Come on, you sonsabitches! It’s time for a Patton to die!”
Angelo swore under his breath. And then he swore again for taking the Lord’s name in vain at such a dangerous moment. Ever since being attached to this cussing West Pointer, his own coarse talk had become so bad that twice he had gone to confession with the brigade chaplain just to clean the slate with the saints. Still, he had a damn good reason to be angry. Only a week ago, General Rockenbach had told Patton that under no circumstances should he walk into battle aside the tanks. He cursed again. It was just his black luck to get assigned as strikeman for the goddamnedest sonofabitching pazzo in the entire AEF, if you didn’t count that scarf-sporting, crop-twirling MacArthur in the Rainbow Division.
“Angelo! Get over there to that tank and get that sonofabitch moving!”
Angelo froze in his crouch. How does that sonofabitch expect me to move that sonofabitching tank? Glared to the task by Patton, he whispered a bitter prayer, following it up with several more ‘sonofabitches.’ Then, he took off on a run across the field, weaving through a storm of machine-gun fire until, miraculously, he reached the tank whose nose was angled at a dangerous angle into a hidden water trench. He slid behind its rear drum for cover and kicked at its underside to get the attention of the two men inside.
“The Colonel says to move this sonofabitchin’ tank!”
“The tracks are jammed with mud!” the driver yelled through his turret slit.
He was about to let loose with another torrent from Hell’s dictionary when the Colonel came charging at the tank, driving a dozen frightened doughboys in front of him with the end of his gnarled walking stick. As the bullets sprayed off the tank’s plated armor, the Colonel pulled several shovels and picks from the side of the turret. He threw the tools at the cowering men and shouted, “Dig this sonofabitch out now!”
The frightened doughboys just stared at the tank, unable to bring themselves to pick up the shovels and expose themselves to the Boche fire. Patton grabbed a spade and hit one of the squatting men on the head, knocking him senseless.
Angelo feared the poor fella was dead. “Colonel, you gotta take cover!”
“To hell with the Boche! They can’t hit me!”
The conscripted doughboys, convinced that this insane officer was even more of a threat to them than the Germans, scrambled for the tools and began digging wildly at the clogged tracks. Within minutes, the iron animal groaned like a monster being released from a bog and shot out from its muddy trap to resume its attack on the Boche lines.
Inspired anew, the Colonel ran across the field herding the fractured lines of the infantry into a pitiful gaggle. When he had gathered up a hundred men under the threat of his stick, he waved it over his head like a sword. “Let’s go get ’em! Who’s with me?”
The forlorn doughboys refused to follow Patton up the rise in the face of the machine-gun fire, but Angelo lowered his head in disgust and stayed within arm’s length of his superior. Figuring he was destined to meet his Maker any moment now, he turned and saw that he and the Colonel were charging behind the tank with only four other soldiers. No sooner had he counted them, all four of his fellow volunteers went down, deader than Judas on the tree.
Yet the Colonel wasn’t fazed. He soldiered on with his suicide charge, waving Angelo to his side and yelling again, “It’s time for another Patton to die!”
Angelo pumped his short legs in a keeling effort to keep up. One of the Boche snipers must have heard the colonel’s prophecy, because seconds later Patton collapsed to his knees and fell face down. Several yards away, Angelo looked around and saw that he was now the only man left standing. He dropped to his belly and crawled like a crab toward the downed Colonel. “You hit, sir?”
The Colonel sounded delirious, thrashing across the ground while quoting Old Testament verses and conversing with ghosts. “To that copse, Uncle Tazewell! Hancock breaks! We got those sonsabitching Yankees on the run!”
Angelo finally reached the Colonel. He pawed at his writhing body to locate the wound. The Germans, not a hundred yards off, zeroed in on them with their sights. At last, he found the source of the gushing blood—a hole in the officer’s upper left thigh. He sliced open the colonel’s pants and tied a bandage around the leg to slow the bleeding. The bullet had exited near the officer’s rectum and left a jagged gape the size of a silver dollar in his left buttock.
Angelo swerved, light-headed, and caught himself before his head slammed the ground. He hadn’t been this damn scared since a cave-in at the mine had nearly crushed him as a boy. He drove his head between his knees, trying to focus. If they stayed put out here in the open, it’d be just a matter of time before the Germans picked them off. Choosing the lesser of evils, he dragged the semi-conscious Colonel across the mud toward a small shell hole several yards away.
The snipers were reloading and shooting as fast as they could, desperate to notch their guns with the kill of an American colonel and his orderly. Near fainting, Angelo reached the gash of unturned sod and rolled Patton into its shallow impression. It wasn’t deep enough to protect them both, so he hovered over his superior to shield him from the fire. Timing the shots, he looked over his exposed shoulder. The lead Renault tank sat like a guard dog yards away, helpless to come to their aid. But at least it wasn’t retreating and abandoning them. He figured if the Colonel had any chance to make it, he’d have to keep him conscious and talking. “You in pain, sir?”
Patton was sweating and gasping. “Can’t feel my legs.”
“I think you’re in shock, sir.”
The officer flashed three fingers twice.
“Sir?”
“I’m thirty-three … my grandfather … thirty-three … when those Yankee bastards gunned him down at Winchester.”
He pressed a shaking palm to the Colonel’s forehead to calm him. “Yes, sir.”
“Just saw him.”
Dodging bullets, Angelo looked around. “Saw who, sir?”
The Colonel’s shrill voice was slipping gears. “He’s up there right now … in the sky with my kinsman… Hugh Mercer … All of my wounded progenitors… with me … I ever tell you how he fell at Princeton?”
“No sir, but—”
“Uncle Tazewell’s up there, too.… Died a hero in Pickett’s Charge. They’re telling me… be brave.” Patton tried to lurch his head up to ease his effort to speak. “You have any fighting men in your clan, Private?”
Angelo struggled to staunch the Colonel’s bleeding. “Only if you’re counting bar brawls, sir.”
On his back, Patton arched his neck and gasped fractured ejaculations at the clouds passing overhead. “The spirits say … you come from fine fighting stock… One fought … against Napoleon… I knew you had pedigree when I … chose you … You saved my life once before.… Cannae… maybe Marathon.”
Angelo levered all of his slight weight atop the Colonel, trying to keep him quiet to prevent the Boche from hearing his delirious babbling and sending out a kill squad. “I think we’re gonna be pinned down here awhile, sir, at least until dark. It’s not safe to move you while those Boche have a clear line on us.”
“Our ancestors are watching over us. Mine always watch me. They expect a hell … of a lot out of me.”
“I know they do, Colonel. They ain’t leaving you, and I ain’t, either.” Angelo’s swollen tongue was burning. He searched for his canteen and saw it lying out of reach and riddled with holes. Blinking hard to keep from fainting, he stared up at the clouds as German lead whistled around his ears. Pressing so hard on the colonel’s wound that his hand threatened to cramp, he kept watching the clouds and trying to see what the officer had spied. If those damn spirits were up there in that sky, he wished they’d make themselves useful and come down here and help keep this sonofabitching hole plugged in their descendant’s sonofabitching ass.
ANNA ALWAYS STARTED HER MORNING shift at Base Hospital 59 in Rimaucourt by walking down the aisle of the post-surgical recovery pavilion to check on the new American soldiers delivered to her care. She prayed this would be an uneventful day, or at least less hectic than the previous forty-eight hours when she had assisted the surgeons at the operating tables. Most of the men who reached this ward had survived the worst of their ordeals, first on the St. Mihiel salient, and more recently during what was being called the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. There was a good chance they’d recover if the infection and hemorrhage rates could be kept tolerable.
She weaved between the stretcher-bearers, replacing the transfusion bags and reading the scribbled charts. The dreaded transfer hour was near, when the patients were moved from one ward to another. Five different contingents of bearers were required to get the wounded from the ambulances to the triage stations. Four men stood waiting outside to unload the soldiers from the truck beds to the bathing tables; the mud mixed with blood was often so caked that rubbing it off threatened to remove the skin. Four more men were assigned to carry each soldier into the X-ray room, where a supervisor and four assistants often had to struggle to hold him down. Another supervisor and six bearers carried the men from the surgeries to the wards. In those rare moments when the cots were empty, another cadre of workers scurried about removing soiled linens and blankets. A five hundred-bed hospital employed enough bearers to fill an entire company of riflemen in the trenches.
Her nursing of these American boys brought back dark memories of her first days in the London hospital. There she had been thrust into service nearly two years after the start of the war, and by then, most of the men from the British Isles had known what grim business they were getting into. Yet Helen had once told her that, during the first bloody battles, the Brits had reacted with the same shock of discovery—that the world could descend to such brutality—now being experienced by these American troops. She kept her eyes trained down as she walked, looking for red stickers on the charts that indicated the patient was new. Their features were almost always the same now, drawn with that same ashen look of lost blood, their heads usually bandaged. She quickly scanned the physician’s notes for one patient:
Colonel Pelham Glassford. Chin wound. Infection and fever.
Seeing two large feet dangling off the edge, she traced them to a handsome officer whose throat was wrapped in gauze. Immersed in his work on a drawing pad, he looked up from his etchings and greeted her with such a boyish grin that it threw her off-guard. She caught herself grinning back at him, just why she could not explain. But there was something about the twinkle in his blue eyes and the dash of his manner that she found almost surreal in such a melancholic setting.
“Are you the entertainment today?” he asked her.
“Entertainment?”
He widened his grin, a feat that didn’t seem possible. “They told us some of the Paris film stars were coming down to give us a little show. I thought you might be one of them.”
“Colonel, I grew up on a farm. I know what a load of manure smells like.” She placed a palm to his forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“Should my heart be fluttering like this?”
She shook her head in mock disapproval, not wanting to let on that she was flattered by the compliment. “Let’s change that bandage.” While she carefully removed the gauze from under his chin, she looked down to see what he had been drawing. “You’re quite good. Are you a professional artist?”
“It’s just a hobby. I taught drawing at West Point.”
After finishing with his new bandage, she took the drawing pad from him to examine what he had sketched: an old church surrounded by a graveyard. “A favorite place from home?”
His grin vanished. “No. … One of my captains was killed on the salient. We buried him at this church, not far from Vaulx. I’m not much at writing letters to grieving mothers. So, I try to draw the place where their sons are buried and send that to the families.”
She finally regained her voice. “I’m sure they appreciate the kindness.”
A bearded physician wearing thick spectacles and white coat came hovering over her shoulder. “Nurse! This chart is wrong!”
Startled, she resolved to instruct the physician, who was apparently new to the hospital, on the proper way to address a nurse. “Pardon me, but I did not fill out the chart. And may I ask who you are?”
“Doctor Chaffee. Specialist in rectums.”
“There are no rectum wounds in this ward.”
“I’ll be the judge of that! Now roll this asshole over so I can have a look.”
“I certainly will not!”
“Well, then. I will have to call for reinforcements.” The physician turned and motioned toward the entry flap of the pavilion.
Twenty soldiers came marching down the aisle and filed in behind him, ready to arrest her at his command.
Anna stood her ground. “What is the meaning of this?”
“You will correct this man’s chart at once, or I will have you shipped back to the States on the next steamer.”
Anna yanked the chart from its hanger at the foot of the bed and studied it again. “What is wrong with it?”
“This man is identified as a colonel.”
“So?”
“This morning he was promoted to brigadier general. And there is nothing here about his citation for gallantry against eight German boneheads who had the chance to shoot him but didn’t, and now we have to keep putting up with his nonsense for the rest of the war.”
Anna turned and found her patient trying to suppress a howl of laughter. She realized that she had been the butt of a joke. Red-faced, she came over him and more closely examined the new bandage on his chin. “I’m sorry, General, but it looks like I didn’t get this on correctly.” She yanked off the adhesive tape with one quick motion, causing him to cry out and brush away tears of pain. “Sorry. Sometimes we have to hurt you a little to help you.” She put the bandage back on him in precisely the same spot. “There, that’s much better.”
“Atta girl.” Lt. Colonel Chaffee removed his fake beard and shed the white-coat disguise. “But I still think I should perform the exam on this slacker, just to make sure he isn’t smuggling any contraband into the ward.”
Still smarting, Glassford saluted his men. “At ease, boys.”
The men of the 103rd Field Artillery nearly crushed Anna as they crowded around their commander’s bed, grasping his hand and expressing their gratitude that he had recovered from his shrapnel wound.
“Shouldn’t you scoundrels be chasing the Boche right about now?” Glassford reached under his pillow and pulled out a hidden pack of cigarettes. He tried to pass it around for his men to enjoy some smokes, but Anna stole it, glancing at the oxygen tanks to remind him of the danger.
“They took us off the line for forty-eight hours, sir,” one of the men said. “We sweet-talked our way down here to see the youngest brigadier in the AEF.”
“Sweet talking seems to be the primary skill of this unit,” Anna muttered under her breath.
“Nurse, you might want to warn your fellow angels of mercy about Happy here,” Chaffee said. “He had quite a reputation as a ladies man at the Point.”
“Yes, I’ve seen him in action.” She caught her famous patient smirking at Chaffee. “How’s that bandage feel, General? Does it need another try?”
Glassford, contrite, cowered into his pillow. “Just fine, ma’am.”
“He was an accomplished thespian there, too,” Chaffee said. “You must have him tell you how he dressed up as a geisha and drew a standing ovation for his rendition of the Mikado.”
“Hey!” shouted one of the men. “That reminds me, General. You promised us a vaudeville show on your thirty-fourth birthday. You never got around to it. Interrupted by a little tussle with the Boche, as I recall.”
Chaffee curled a roguish grin. “Yeah, Ferdie’s right. We do owe the boys a performance.” He scanned the ward. “What about right here?”
Worried that she was losing control of her station, Anna pushed her way to the fore of the bed again. “Absolutely not. This is a hospital, not a cabaret.” She turned on Glassford with disapproval. “And you should consider your responsibilities, General. These men are of lesser rank than you.”
Shamed, Glassford dropped his eyes to his chest. “She’s right, Chaffee. Senior officers like us shouldn’t be cavorting with the enlisted men.”
Anna nodded in relief having finally restored some semblance of sanity.
Glassford flashed his teeth with a broad grin. “I’m declaring every man in this ward a civilian for one hour!”
“See, he can act.” Chaffee strode down the aisle lobbying the other patients. “What about it, men? Would you like a little vaudeville show?”
Browbeaten by the applause, Anna glanced worriedly at the door, expecting her supervisor to walk in and find these men grubbing around the place like hogs. She looked down and saw Glassford shrug helplessly, as if he was at the mercy of the war gods. With a resigned sigh, she marched down the aisle, tied the entry ropes, and turned over the No Admittance sign outside. Then, she turned back to Glassford and warned, “You’ve got five minutes.”
The men scrambled for what chairs were available, and those who lost out in the shuffle settled down on the floor. Anna helped the other patients to sit up against their headboards to watch the impromptu performance.
Glassford, looking like Lawrence of Arabia in his long nightshirt, arose from his bed and took center stage. “Chaffee and I need a fetching volunteer.” He searched the tent. “Do we have a female in the audience?”
Before Anna could protest, several of the men herded her forward.
“All right, then.” Glassford circled her, offering theatrical notes. “When I give the signal, you say one thing, and one thing only.”
She glared at him with suspicion. “Which would be?”
“Niagara Falls.”
She shrugged, seeing no harm in that small contribution. She nodded her readiness, eager to get this foolishness over.
Assuring that everyone was set, Glassford raised his arms for silence, and then he was off on his routine. He bent down on one knee and pleaded with Anna. “Madam, I am but a poor bum. Could you spare a coin for a meal?”
“Leave the lady alone!” demanded Chaffee, twirling an imaginary billy club.
“But Officer Chaffee,” Glassford pined. “Mine is a sad tale. And I’d not have the lady here turn out to be a miserable hobo like me.”
“Go on, then,” Chaffee ordered. “Tell us your story of woe, poor man, so that we all might avoid your fate.”
Glassford rose dramatically onto his toes and reached his hands toward the heavens as if lamenting to the Almighty. “I had me a fine family once. Beautiful wife, four children, all sweet-cheeked. I paid me bills on time, had money for Sunday dinner. And then, one day, I took me cherished ones on a trip into the lovely Lake region. As I sat there that day, enjoying a picnic of fried chicken, me wife decided to take a walk along the bluffs. And before I had me wing down me gullet, I hears me wife screaming for help. I rushed to her, but it was too late. She was disappearing down the rapids.”
Chaffee cried, “Such a tragedy! Where did this horrid event occur?”
The patients watched in anticipation as Glassford cued Anna with a wink.
She coughed the nervousness from her throat. “Niagara Falls.”
“Niagara Falls!" Glassford bellowed behind her ear.
His shout nearly startled Anna out of her shoes.
“My life was ruined at that place whose name brings nothing but pain upon me.” Glassford lunged at Chaffee and wrestled his friend as if bent on strangling the Devil himself.
Struggling and fighting, Chaffee finally extricated himself from the grieving widower. “Get hold of yourself, man!”
That blasted admonition snapped Glassford back to sanity. Slowly he comprehended that something lost from his memory had sent him into a frenzy of possession. “What happened, Officer Chaffee?”
The patients and visitors howled with laughter.
Chaffee brushed himself off. “That lady said ‘Niagara Falls’ and you lost—”
“Wait!” Glassford froze, not certain of his hearing. He turned to Anna and, winking again to give the cue, asked, “Ma’am, what did the officer just say?”
Anna was now getting into the act. Fluttering her imaginary fluff collar, she revealed, “Why sir, I do recall him mentioning something about, let’s see, what was it? Oh yes, Niagara Falls.”
“Niagara Falls!” Glassford lunged at Chaffee again, driving him to his knees in a headlock. “Oh, the mere name sends me into convulsions! The place where I lost me dear wife!”
Chaffee crawled out from under Glassford’s grip and backed away. “Get control of yourself, man! There appears to be a vicious demon lurking inside you! One that overtakes you at the utterance of those two words!”
The patients were now rollicking and laughing so loudly that Anna feared they might break their stitches.
Glassford dropped his hands to his knees, trying to regain control of his wits. “I’m so sorry, old chap. I’ve been told by a pretty nurse that at times I lose all control of me mind.”
“Apologies accepted, sir,” Chaffee said. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go downtown and pick up my new bride.”
“New bride, you say?”
“Yes, we were married last Saturday.”
Glassford reached for Chaffee’s hand. “A thousand congratulations, sir. I do hope the two of you will be the happiest couple in the world. May I ask, do you plan a honeymoon?”
The doughboys edged up on their seats and beds.
“We do. A lavish honeymoon at that.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Glassford said, “where will you be taking the little lady for your nuptial holiday?”
Wide-eyed with fear, Chaffee tried to avoid answering. “Sir, in all truth, the name of the place now escapes me.”
Denied so rudely in his harmless inquiry, Glassford drooped his shoulders in a pose of sadness. Then, he glanced at Anna. “Madam, perhaps you might assist us. Did by chance the forgetful officer here happen to mention in your presence where he’d be taking his new bride on their honeymoon?”
She turned toward their audience and gestured with opened hands, silently asking the wounded men if she should answer him. They stood and pleaded for her to do it, stomping their feet to tell her in no uncertain terms that she of course knows where the cop and his bride will be taking their honeymoon, the only place in the entire world where an appropriate honeymoon could be taken. Bending to their pleas, she shrugged and replied, “Sir, please do not hold me to this, but I think I saw in Officer Chaffee’s hospital chart that he intends to take his new bride to …”
“I beg of you, lady!” Chaffee cried. “Don’t say it!”
Anna squeaked, “Niagara Falls.”
Glassford let out a mighty roar of grief and fell upon Chaffee like a ravenous bear, pummeling him with pulled punches and chops. The other men formed a circle around the two wrestlers, egging them on and laughing so hard that the tent poles began shaking.
Surrounded by this theatrical chaos, Anna watched with tears in her eyes as a miracle unfolded. For these few precious minutes, this remarkable officer named Glassford had helped these scarred soldiers forget the war.