Jane Smiley - Some Luck

Frank awoke with the first gust of wind, which was sharp and full of dust. It wasn’t yet light. He wrapped his scarf around his mouth and pulled his helmet down. Not hungry. He could both feel and hear armored divisions on the move, and he knelt up from where he had been lying and peered down toward the pass. There was movement there in the slit trenches, but it was too dark to see much.

At dawn, the ranks of panzers appeared, flat from this angle, much lower and maybe even wider than the Shermans the Americans were using. Frank thought they were ugly but frightening, and his job was to shoot them, which he did, with armor-penetrating shells. The American tanks, which had been supposed to engage them, were worthless — that was evident in the first ten minutes. Even Private Langdon could see that if the Sherman had to turn itself around to point its gun at the panzer, then the gun wasn’t going to be pointed in the proper direction very often. And it was frightening to watch what the German guns did to the American tanks — they set them on fire. All they had to do was aim at the gas tank and blow it up. The Sherman, and, Frank knew, the crew, were done for. But the Americans, perhaps by sheer luck, got a few hits, and when the German crews leapt from their hatches, Frank did his best to get them. Luckily, in the noise and smoke, the evidence of his presence was easily overlooked. He got two, though one of those was a wasted shot, since the fellow was burning already, and possibly a third — Frank couldn’t tell if he hit that one or not, because he had to duck back in his hole as soon as he fired.

The men in the slit trenches didn’t have a chance, did they? The panzers went straight for them, driving over them and then turning a bit, and crushing them under the tracks. And the mines did nothing. They weren’t even useful as rubble — the panzers ran right over them. By afternoon, the battle in Frank’s immediate vicinity was over, and he was stranded in his little pocket. The sniper nearby, Courtney, was shot and probably dead — Frank could see him stretched across the dry hillside, unmoving, making no noise. The wounded always made noise. The others, if they were alive, were as quiet as mice, just like Frank, waiting for darkness. He hoped that the Stukas would decide he wasn’t worth strafing, but he had chosen this indentation in the hillside with that very thing in his mind — they could not see him from above or behind or in front, only from below, and now there was nothing going on below. The Germans had moved on, leaving a horrifying mess of armor and bodies strewn across the pass. Frank took out his compass. Eisenhower had been at Sidi Bou Zid that morning, which was certainly where the panzers were headed. Sidi Bou Zid was east-southeast. There was another town, Frank remembered — maybe it was T-something — he had heard it spoken of but of course could not read the Arabic of the name. At any rate, it was north-northwest. Frank put away his compass, then settled into his pocket, and waited for the sun to drop and the stars to blaze forth. The moon was almost full, but it didn’t rise until nearly midnight. Frank guessed he had about four hours to get somewhere.

BY THE TIME the newsreels had shown the parade of prisoners after the Dieppe Raid, Rosanna and everyone else knew that Julius was dead, so they didn’t have to search the faces of the passing soldiers for a face that they knew. After the Battle of the Kasserine Pass, though (“Another fiasco!” insisted Walter. “Those German boys had been fighting for years, so they sent American boys right off the farm to take it on the chin!”), they did not know where Frankie was, only that he had been in the division, the brigade, and the company that was right in the thick of it, the very tank-and-infantry brigade that had allowed itself to be lured into the trap and destroyed. They knew Frankie was a sniper; that was their only hope, but it didn’t seem like much of one. When she saw the newsreel in Usherton, Rosanna prayed, but thought, Well, if they capture him, they are in for a few surprises. It was a pleasant thought, although it didn’t last very long. However, only two days after the newsreel, they had a letter. Frankie had been in the battle, but, suspecting that the Germans would come back after destroying the tank brigades and the infantry emplacements to mop up outlying sitting ducks, he had retreated into the mountains (“Pretty dry and hot. I didn’t get far in the middle of the day”) for three days. Fortunately, once Rommel had won the battle, he called the operation off (“I guess he thought he’d done us in,” wrote Frankie), and so the Americans were able to regroup. Even so, there were thousands of casualties, and their commanding officer, Fredendall, had been relieved of his command (“Big stink,” said Frankie). Rosanna was of course thrilled that Frankie had turned up — alive, more than alive, perfectly fine and his usual self. She even baked him a batch of gingersnaps, boxed them up, and sent them off — gingersnaps because they traveled the best, and were often better on arrival after weeks in the mail. She didn’t really think they would get to him, but anyone in the army who might open them and eat them along the way would deserve them, she thought.

Walter swore that he had never had any doubt that Frankie would turn up — didn’t he always? And he had been worried that Frank would be punished for leaving his unit, but maybe that’s what snipers were supposed to do. And he was promoted — he had picked off a German mortar team all by himself. Now he was a corporal. Walter said, “I hope that doesn’t mean he’s in charge of anything.” But he was, according to Frankie. He was in charge of five snipers.

With the letter, he enclosed a picture of himself and a kid named Lyman Hill, whom Frank had known in Missouri and Ohio, and who had not gone over with them earlier, so hadn’t been in the battle. Frank expected there to be another battle soon. Rosanna read this line over and over: “We are going to go after those Jerries any day now, and me, I can’t wait.” Then he wrote, “Love, your son, Frank.” He had never replied to the letter in which Rosanna told him about Julius. Rosanna didn’t know whether she wanted him to have gotten that letter or not, because she didn’t know whether a sense of one’s mortality was a good thing or a bad thing in a soldier. In the meantime, her brother Gus had joined up, and what was he doing? He was lying in the bellies of airplanes as they bombed the German industrial cities (though Rosanna didn’t know which ones). He was supposed to take pictures showing whether or not the bombs hit their targets. He had stopped writing home, according to Granny Mary, because he didn’t want his wife, Angela, to count on his return. Angela had taken to her bed and was talking about going back to stay with her family in Minneapolis, which Rosanna thought would be a good idea.

All Walter and Joey and John did was plant and plant and plant, and then cultivate and cultivate and cultivate. The weather was good. Joey had a knack for growing good seed corn, and Walter had stopped complaining or even telling Joey what to do. Joey told all of them what to do, and they had plenty of money as a result. Enough so that Joey could put an inside bathroom into that poky old house of Rolf’s, and even a bow window on the front of the living room. Once in a while, he took Minnie to the movies in Usherton, but if he wanted to do that, Rosanna had to go over and stay with Mrs. Frederick. She didn’t mind; she just read a book to Mrs. Frederick, and the poor woman was quiet enough. She was so thin now that Rosanna didn’t know how she survived, but it wasn’t Minnie’s fault — Minnie made her good, nourishing dishes, like hash and creamed spinach, and scrambled eggs with crushed-up bacon, and she made her drink milk with the cream on it, but they did her no good. Granny Mary said it was just like old people: when life held nothing for you, your food went right on through.