James Benn - A Mortal Terror

“Father,” I said, kneeling at his side. Even though he was a rough-and-tumble padre, and we’d dodged bullets together, here in God’s house I felt ill at ease, like the altar boy I’d been, unsure of the ways of adults and especially priests. “Are you all right?”

“I am praying, Billy. Praying for God himself to come down and save us. I told him to leave Jesus home, that this was no place for children.” He folded his hands in prayer once again, and fell into my arms.

“Shrapnel in his calf,” the medic told me after I’d carried Father Dare back. “He must have been bleeding into his boot, and when he knelt down, it all came out.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“He won’t be dancing anytime soon, but it should heal up. It’s mostly shock that concerns me, losing all that blood. It would have been a lot worse if you hadn’t gotten him back here.” With that, he went back to tending to the last of the wounded, the less serious cases who’d had to wait.

Danny had found Evans, on a litter, waiting for the next ambulance. His arm and shoulder were heavily bandaged, and an IV drip had been set up on a rifle set in the ground by its bayonet. He looked as white as a sheet.

“Doc said he lost a lot of blood,” Danny told me. “Flint saved his life getting here.”

“How you doing, Evans?” I asked as I squatted down next to him.

“They gave me enough morphine that I think I’m okay,” he said lazily. “But I don’t think I am.”

“That’s a million-dollar wound you got, Lieutenant,” Flint said, appearing at Evans’s side. “Doc told me himself. You’ll live, but you’ll do your living back in the States.”

“I’m sorry,” Evans said. “Sorry to leave you guys so soon. Did we lose many men?”

“It would have been worse without you, Lieutenant,” Flint said. “You did real good for your first time out, you can be proud of that.”

“Thanks. Tell Louie and Stump so long, okay?”

“Sure,” Flint said, barely missing a beat. “Soon as I see them.” He walked away, giving me a secretive wink as he passed. No need to burden Evans with the bad news. Danny and Charlie said their good-byes, and I sat next to Evans.

“What was it you wanted to ask me back there?” Evans said, his eyes closing.

“When you were assigned to the supply depot in Acerra, did you ever go the Bar Raffaele?”

“Sure, lots of guys did. But I never… you know.”

“Never paid for a whore?”

“Right.”

“You talked with the girls though,” I said.

“Couldn’t avoid it,” Evans said. His eyes were fully closed now.

“Ever meet a girl named Ileana?”

“Oh yeah, Ileana. A looker.” His head nodded off as the morphine took effect. He mumbled something under his breath. “… one of the guys

… wanted…”

“What? Who?” But there was no waking him, the drug had taken him far away from this ruined village and the jagged steel buried in his shoulder.

The jeep careened around an antiaircraft emplacement, hitting forty as the driver gunned the engine and sped by a fuel dump, jerrycans stacked ten high for a hundred yards. He was trying to outrun a stick of bombs dropped by a Ju 88, exploding in a ragged line behind us. I held my breath, waiting to be blown to kingdom come if one came close to all that gasoline.

“Listen,” I said, grabbing the driver’s shoulder from the backseat. “I want to get to the hospital, not be admitted to it. Slow down.”

“Not the way it’s done, sir,” he said, downshifting as he cleared the burning wreckage of a truck and towed artillery piece. “This hospital is set up next to an airfield, ammo dump, supply depot, and most of the ack-ack in the beachhead. It ain’t a healthy place to linger, wounded or healthy.”

“Why the hell did they put it there?”

“On account of there’s nowhere else. You mighta noticed real estate is at a premium around here. I’ve been ferrying wounded from the aid stations for two days straight, and I’ve brought guys here and seen ’em hitching a ride back to the line on my next trip. They say it’s too damn dangerous.”

He slowed as we drove through a gap in the five-foot-high sandbag wall surrounding the field hospital. Rows and rows of tents marked with giant red crosses were set up, the ground between them churned into mud. Engineers were excavating one area, digging in tents so only the canvas roofs were above ground. A field hospital was supposed to be behind the lines, far from enemy fire. This was not a good sign. If the walking wounded started walking away from a field hospital for the relative safety of their foxholes on the front line, something was seriously wrong.

The driver backed up the jeep to an open tent as medical personnel scurried out. Stump was still unconscious, strapped to a litter across the rear of the jeep. By the time the orderlies got Stump off and I had one foot on the ground, the driver had hit twenty, one hand waving good-bye.

“Welcome to Hell’s Half Acre, Lieutenant,” said a nurse clad in fatigues several sizes too large and GI boots caked in mud. “We’ll take good care of your pal, don’t worry.”

“He’s not my pal,” I said, pointing to his wrists, tied tight. “He’s my prisoner.”

“He’s my patient, and the rope comes off. I don’t care what regulations he broke, he gets treated just like everyone else. Now get out of my way.”

“Okay, okay. But I’ll be watching. And give me his clothes, I need to search them.”

“What’d he do, swipe General Lucas’s pipe?”

“He’s murdered at least six people.” Landry, Galante, Cole, Inzerillo, Arnold. Probably Louie Walla from Walla Walla. Cole was by proxy, but he was a victim just the same.

“You mean six on our side? Who’d want to kill his own kind in this hellhole?”

“Good question,” I said. I watched as she checked his eyes and another nurse cut away his clothes, looking for wounds. She called for a doctor as I gathered up Stump’s uniform and sat on a cot to check its contents. Like a lot of GIs, Stump fought out of his pockets, not wanting to carry a pack and risk losing it. The medics had made sure to empty out ammo and grenades, but they didn’t bother with personal effects.

Cigarettes, a lighter, packs of toilet paper. Chewing gum. A letter from his mother, asking if he’d gotten the mittens she’d knitted him, and reminding him to keep clean and change his socks. It sounded like he was at summer camp, not war. He’d started a letter back to her, saying how swell Naples was, and how their barracks were warm and dry. Odd that a six-time murderer would fib to his mother so she wouldn’t worry about him at the front.

Other than a half-eaten Hershey’s bar, that was it. No clues. No deck of cards missing the ten through king of hearts.

All I knew was that I was hungry. I ate the rest of the chocolate, and waited.

“Lieutenant,” a voice said, from somewhere off in the distance. “Lieutenant?”

“Yeah,” I said, waking up with a start. At some point the cot must have reached up and grabbed me, since I was laid out flat.

“The doctor can fill you in now,” the nurse said, pointing to a guy in a white operating gown, removing his cotton mask. But I would have recognized him anyway, with that blond hair.

“Doctor Cassidy, right?”

“Boyle! I guess we were both headed to the same place. Did you find that murderer back in Caserta?”

“I think I found him here. The sergeant you just treated.”

“No kidding? Did you give him that whack on the head? Nearly did him in.”

“No, that was courtesy of a German 88, or at least a piece of a farmhouse that was hit by it.”