Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

Above the valley of the Ourthe and Amblève rivers, two American military trucks traveled west toward the town of La Roche-en-Ardennes. The trucks were loaded with soldiers, several with arms in splints, some with bandages stark white against grimy faces. A half-dozen soldiers were clinging to the hoods and fenders of each truck, and more were packed on the lowered tailgates. As the trucks turned off a winding road toward a bridge spanning the Ourthe, both were waved on urgently by Americans wearing MP brassards on the sleeves of their overcoats. A U.S. command car was parked off the road, VIII Corps insignia on its hood and door panels.

An MP corporal shouted at the driver of the lead truck, “Move your ass, Mac. Snap shit.”

“Where the hell’s the fire?”

“You heard me — move it. On the double!”

When the trucks rolled onto the bridge, tires making a sucking sound, lumbering black shapes almost lost in the freezing mists, the corporal waved to a sergeant standing near the command car.

The sergeant raised a gloved hand, then walked behind the car and leaned his weight on the plunger of a concealed detonating device.

The charges under the bridge exploded in a series of heavy, linked blasts. Smoke and flames rushed toward the swollen sky. The bridge broke into jagged sections, beams and girders splintering as if struck by giant hammers. The trucks were rent into nightmarish shapes by the upward surge of the explosion, jackknifing and falling in fragments into the icy currents below them.

The screams of the dying soldiers were faint but clear in the rolling echoes created by the detonations.

The soldiers in American uniforms climbed rapidly into the command car marked with the numeral viii on a blue field surrounded by blue and white hexagons. The vehicle was lost in the haze of the Amblève valley even before the sounds of the explosions were carried away by scattering winds.

On the same afternoon, Lieutenant Donald Longworth and his driver. Private Lenny Rado, were waved down by an American officer standing beside a recon car on the road above the Amblève, several kilometers east of the Belgian town of Stoumont. Lenny Rado waited for a nod from Longworth before braking their jeep and pulling off the road.

The American officer, a captain, walked toward them, his body bent against the freezing winds.

Longworth stepped from the jeep, a hand close to the open holster of his .45 automatic. The captain wore an VIII Corps shoulder patch and an overcoat buttoned to his throat. Twin silver bars were pinned to his epaulets. Two white stripes shone on his helmet.

“The name’s Madden.” The captain’s face was lined with fatigue but there was a look of energy and vitality in his sharp, blue eyes. “Where the hell you guys lost, strayed or stolen from?”

“Lieutenant Longworth, sir. Two Sixty-ninth Automatic Weapons Battalion.”

“And you, soldier?”

“Private Lenny Rado, same outfit, sir.”

At the wheel of Madden’s recon car a sergeant watched Longworth and Rado.

“Lieutenant, you’re a damned fool to volunteer information,” the captain said. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but there’s a brigade of Germans in the Ardennes wearing our uniforms. So let’s see your dog tags. You, too, soldier.”

Longworth and Lenny Rado opened their overcoats and flipped out their ID tags.

Madden checked them. “Where you from in the States, lieutenant?”

“San Diego.”

“You, soldier?”

“Wisconsin, sir.”

“What kind of fishing you got there?”

“Pike, bass, muskies if you’re lucky, sir.”

“I could use a mess of ’em right now,” the captain said. “Lieutenant, what’s that big hotel on the island off San Diego?”

“The Del Coronado, sir.”

“You guys go to the head of the class. Let’s get back to this goddamn war. I been looking for some sign of the Eighty-second Airborne. We heard it’s heading toward Werbomont. You meet any of their units?”

“Captain, let’s take a look at your dog tags,” Longworth said.

“I was wondering what the fuck you were using for brains,” the captain said, and pulled out his dog tags.

Longworth checked them, then said, “Where you from in the States, sir?”

“Chicago, the Windy City.”

His sergeant stepped casually from the recon car, a hand near his gun.

“Tell me about Chicago,” Longworth said.

“Sure. The Palmer House, the Drake, the Cubs and White Sox, Chicago University, and more polacks than you’ll find in Warsaw.” He grinned at them. “I’ll tell you something else. There’s a great little tattoo parlor on South State Street. Take a look.”

The captain pushed back the sleeve of his overcoat and tunic, revealing a blue-and-gold tattoo on his wrist, the slender figure of a nude woman holding two feathered fans. Underneath the tiny posturing dancer were the words: “Chicago World’s Fair. Miss Sally Rand.”

“She’s a comfort on a cold night.” The captain tensed the muscles in his forearm, causing a ripple to tremble up and down the dancer’s body.

Longworth smiled. “Looks like we’re on the same side, sir, including Miss Rand. No, we haven’t seen anything of the Eighty-second. But according to German transmitters, the Hundred-and-first is in trouble at Bastogne.”

“Well, you can’t believe those fucking kraut-heads.” His sergeant laughed and the captain said, “What’d you say your battalion was?”

“The Two sixty-ninth, sir.”

“We ran into some of your headquarters people about half an hour ago. Straight down this hill, first fork on the left.”

Rado put in, “First left on this road, sir?”

“That’s right. The turn is about twelve or fourteen hundred meters from here.” The captain smiled at them, his eyes amused and cheerful. “Here’s a tip if you run into anybody else you’re not sure about. Ask ’em what’s on the flip side of Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas.’ ”

“They could bluff me out of the pot,” Longworth said. “I haven’t a clue.”

The captain thought about it, frowning and rubbing his jaw, then laughed. “It beats the shit out of me, too, lieutenant. We better check it with Der Bingle next time we see him.”

Longworth gave a casual salute at the captain, who returned it smartly, the blue-and-gold tattoo twinkling softly through the gathering sleet-flecked darkness.

Climbing into the jeep, they drove slowly down the hill, Rado staying as close as possible to the side of the mountain. Longworth looked across at the fog drifting above the drop into the valley.

“What’s bothering you, sir?” Rado said.

“I can’t put my finger on it.”

“How far he say that turn was?”

“That’s one of the things.”

“Twelve hundred meters. That struck me kind of funny too,” Rado said. “Should of been yards.”

“Everything about Chicago checked out,” Longworth said. “So why that last stupid question about the record?”

Rado saw the left fork in the road through the fog and eased the jeep into it, the vehicle picking up speed rapidly as it started down the slick grade into the valley.

“We’d better have another talk with the captain,” Longworth said. “Turn around the first chance you get, Lenny. Maybe I’m just—”

The lieutenant never completed the sentence, for neither he nor Lenny Rado had seen the taut steel wire stretched across the road four feet above its frozen surface. And had they seen it, there was nothing they could have done because there was no time to stop, no way to check their swift acceleration... The quarter-inch cable tore away the metal posts of the windshield, shattering the glass into sparkling fragments, cutting off the screams rising in the throats of Rado and Lieutenant Longworth.