William Boyd - Sweet Caress

We had lodged a unanimous protest on behalf of our newspapers and magazines, hence this face-to-face encounter with Colonel Bovelander. Of the six of us, there were two women — me and a veteran reporter for McCall’s named Mary Poundstone (who, I strongly suspected, didn’t much like me. Mary preferred to be the only woman in the team). The four men, three journalists and a photographer from Associated Press, weren’t too unhappy with this boring but easy life. It was Mary and I who had allied to provide the consensus, this united front of free expression, and we were not going to be cowed by Bovelander’s bluster.

He strode in, accompanied by his public relations officer. Bovelander was thirty-two years old, one of the youngest regimental commanders in the US Army, fair, tall and handsome, and was wearing his trademark, a red bandana tied loosely at the throat. ‘Farm boy,’ Poundstone had sneered when she’d first seen it. ‘Oh, yeah. Nice touch.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Bovelander began without any formalities, ‘your protest has been noted — and rejected. I resent this waste of my time. Anyone who does not follow the precise instructions of Captain Enright here,’ he indicated the PRO beside him, ‘will be arrested and charged.’

‘Charged with what, pray?’ Mary Poundstone called out.

‘Insubordination. Good morning.’

He smiled and walked out.

‘Well, at least we protested,’ I said.

‘I’ve got to get reassigned,’ Poundstone said and went to speak to Enright.

I wandered out on to the rear terrace that overlooked a long untended garden. The lawns had been churned up by vehicle tracks and at the far end by an ornamental stable block was an advanced dressing station that had a big tarpaulin with a red cross draped over the stable’s tiled roof. I lit a cigarette and wandered over. I knew a few of the medics — they were as far behind the front as we were and seemed to travel with us as we advanced. I saw a young private I knew — Ephraim Abrams — stacking packs into the back of a jeep that had its engine running. I had taken Abrams’ photograph standing by an abandoned 88 mm field gun and developed the print so he could send it back to his parents in New Jersey.

‘Where’re you off to?’ I asked.

‘Heading up to Villeforte. We cleared it out yesterday.’

‘Can I hitch a ride?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll be two seconds.’

I ran into my room and grabbed my helmet, cameras and film, and raced back out to the stables. I jumped in the rear of the jeep, pulled my helmet down low and wrapped a scarf around my face as Abrams gunned the motor and we drove out of the yard up a muddy lane towards Villeforte. As usual the traffic was heavy, and going both ways — trucks, jeeps, half-tracks and a long column of German prisoners tramping sullenly back towards captivity — and it took us almost an hour to travel the two miles to the small town. Villeforte showed few signs of fighting. There was a large hole in the roof of the mairie and some of the bigger farms on the outskirts that had been used as strongpoints were pretty much levelled — shattered walls and piles of rubble — but there were no fires burning and the clock in the church tower was telling the correct time.

Abrams pulled into a supply dump and I hopped off, but not before I had covertly snaffled a red-cross armband that I found on the jeep’s floor.

‘When are you heading back?’ I asked.

‘In an hour. Give or take.’

‘Don’t leave without me.’

I wandered off, up the road to the town, slipping on my armband, feeling a sudden surge of excitement in me as if I were playing truant. I was certainly disobeying Bovelander; categorically ignoring his explicit order. Fuck Bovelander, I thought and then paused, as I saw a small unit of military police up ahead directing traffic. I turned right down a farm track and as soon as I was out of sight cut across a meadow heading for another road that would lead me to the town centre, aiming for the spire of the church. I climbed over a wooden fence. And stopped.

The body of a German soldier lay there, his head a battered turnip of blood, bone and hair. He was supine on flattened meadow-grass a few yards from a tall blackthorn hedge. I looked around, feeling a little dizzy. How had he been missed by the corpsmen? I took out my camera and snapped him lying there. My excitement had disappeared, replaced by a hyper-alert apprehension. It was my first picture as a war photographer. I moved on.

Dead German soldier, Villeforte, November 1944.

I wandered cautiously into the narrow lanes of Villeforte, all the houses shuttered and locked. Here and there on the streets were groups of soldiers, sitting, lounging, eating, smoking. None of them paid me any attention — my red-cross armband the perfect passport.

However, I was stopped by a sentry as I tried to enter the main square.

‘Sorry,’ the soldier said. ‘We got brass checking out the tank.’

I backed off and circled round. The tank? From another side street I managed to gain an oblique view of the square and I could see an enormous German tank — the size of a house, it seemed — painted a matt sandy-grey and apparently undamaged, with American soldiers clambering over it. I could hear excited chatter and the odd whoop of elation. I crept forward to a doorway and fired off a few shots. I’d never seen a tank this large — some sort of captured secret weapon? Was that another reason the press were being kept out of Villeforte?

German mystery-tank, Villeforte, November 1944.

I looked at my watch. Time to return to Abrams at the supply dump. I headed off down a sloping paved lane — I could see fields at its end. I felt elated, pleased with my initiative at going AWOL like this. I intended to do the same as Poundstone and apply to be reassigned to a different unit with a more accommodating CO. Bovelander wasn’t worth bothering about, he—

The air was suddenly filled with a curious combination of noise: shrill tin whistles and the ripping of stiff canvas. Then, from somewhere on the edge of town a volley of percussive explosions. I felt the blast sweep through the streets to tug at my clothes. I crouched down. Shouts. Then more shrill whistling and explosions. Within seconds there was a crazed reaction of firing, as if every weapon in Villeforte was being loosed off.

I ran down the lane to its foot and hugged the wall of the last house before the countryside began. I could see a wide ploughed field and beyond it straggling copses of leafless trees. Peering round the corner I saw a squad of GIs sheltering in a patch of garden behind a waist-high wall. Every now and then one of them would poke his head up and fire off a few shots at some target across the field towards a distant wood. I peered — I could hear some vehicles revving in the scrub by the trees and I thought I saw small figures in green-grey uniforms scurrying about.

I shouted at the soldiers and ran over, ducking down behind the wall.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Fuckin’ counter-attack. You a medic?’

‘What? Yeah.’

Artillery shells — ours, I assumed — began to explode in the wood across the field. Great towering billows of chocolate-brown smoke, then the shock wave rocking us. I watched a tree slowly fall — creaking, the tear of timber splitting — then the crash and blustering cloud of twigs and branches. The air was full of the fat-popping noise of small arms. Then bits of tile began to fly up in the air on the roof of the house behind us and shards fell tinkling on and around us. We all ducked down. I’m under fire, I thought, so this is what it’s like.