CHAPTER FIVE MEETING AT THE BULGE
CHAPTER
FIVE
Meeting at the Bulge
With Africa won, Benny and his battalion got on a ship and sailed to England. There they drank beer and sang songs and tried to kiss girls. They were too boisterous, but they’d earned the right to be loud and happy. They’d fought and lived. That was something to celebrate.
The locals thought they were rowdy and vulgar, but the locals hadn’t faced off with an MG 42 ‘Buzzsaw’ and lived to tell about it.
They hadn’t had a live grenade land in their foxhole and thrown it back at the enemy, knowing that if they were too slow it would rip them to pieces.
Doing these things unleashed something in a man that made him need to howl at the moon, beat his chest and drink too much.
Such a man filled up on living, because he knew that the army would send him back to the ‘Screaming Mimi’ rocket launchers and ‘Bouncing Betty’ S-mines to let him try his luck at staying alive one more time.
Sure enough, the order soon came through.
Benny and the 34th were sent to France where they marched to the Ardennes Forest, where the Germans were dug in tight holding a line they had no intention of moving.
The raucous banter that had marked their trip all the way up to England gave way to bickering when they neared France and the fear kicked in.
By the time they approached the German line, no one spoke.
A chill bit at Benny’s ears and nose, fingers and toes, and every day seemed to get colder. Grass crunched hard and frozen underfoot as he marched until the snows came and covered everything with a blanket of white.
Ten guys died on the first day. Twenty-five on the second. Medics evacuated dozens. On the third day, Benny almost got himself killed when he dove away from a blast but toward machine-gun fire. He didn’t know why he was still alive.
They got their tank escort on day four when a tank battalion that had been long due to rotate off instead got reassigned to the 34th.
When a few of the men climbed out of the tank, Benny’s eyes bugged out of his head.
They were a colored tank battalion. Benny had seen other Negro soldiers, but they’d been ditch-diggers and mess-servers and street-builders and supply-train workers.
Always service corps, never infantry, and certainly never tankers.
He felt an avalanche of pride for a battalion that wasn’t even his.
The infantry and tank escort got about two miles through a wood when the assault came.
Relentless blasts that shook the earth. Benny had to whack his numb fingers against his thighs to make them bend to the trigger of his weapon.
All around shells exploded and bullets flew.
Crawley stepped forward and triggered a Bouncing Betty.
Benny dove away from the blast, covering his head as he landed hard on his side.
He looked back at Crawley. His stomach and chest had been ripped open.
Benny could see the man’s insides glistening with dirt-smeared blood.
Steam rose from his warm body into the frigid air.
Two weeks they stayed out there, without winning even an inch of ground, and when they finally rotated off the front line, the tank company rotated off with them.
They all pulled back behind US lines, and that was when Benny saw Lee with his tank mates, looking about ten years older, but alive and well.
‘Lee,’ Benny called, waving, surprised and thrilled to see him. After three years of homesickness, finding Lee in this carnage was like finding gold in the dirt. He was a living, breathing piece of home.
Benny started over to his friend.
‘You know that guy?’ Parker asked, and Benny stopped, remembering who he was now.
‘I … I …’ Benny stuttered. He could not tell Parker how he knew Lee.
Lee’s beaming, wide-open grin, which had spread across his face when he saw Benny, faltered. His expression shifted from joy to shocked understanding. His face closed down with a guarded expression, giving nothing away.
‘As I live and breathe,’ Lee said, casual words bright with tension, ‘am I seeing a ghost or is this Benny North right in front of me?’
Benny wondered if he heard contempt in his voice. Was ‘ghost’ a jab at him passing? Was he judging him?
‘It’s good to see you,’ Benny said, dragging out the words until they meant so much more. The slow words said, Don’t tell them, and asked, Can I trust you? Are you glad to see me? Are we still friends?
He felt eyes on them both and took a step back.
‘It’s been a spell,’ Lee said into the awkward silence.
Benny felt the flush of blood rushing to his face. He wished it was Roscoe he’d found in the middle of the war. Lee had always been so high-minded about passing, but Roscoe would have understood.
‘I know Lee a little from back home,’ Benny said to Parker, and anyone else who was listening. ‘He’s a great ball player. A musician too.’
‘And a hell of a tanker,’ Parker said, his hand coming down on Lee’s shoulder. ‘That was some fighting out there. I can’t tell you how glad I was to have you with us.’
Lee shrugged and side-stepped Parker, slipping out from under his touch. ‘We all do what we’ve got to do,’ he said, with a pointed look at Benny.
‘Yeah. We do,’ Benny said. He wanted to tell Lee that passing hadn’t been his idea, but there was no way to explain in front of the others. And he wasn’t sure Lee wanted to hear it anyways. ‘It’s been a hell of a war.’
Lee walked up to him, and Benny braced himself to be cursed out, to be slugged, to be exposed, his heart thumping so hard the blood rushed in his ears, but Lee offered his hand.
Benny took it and they shook. An ordinary handshake.
Not the complicated, grappling ritual of brotherhood they used back home. The handshake of strangers.
‘Good luck to you,’ Lee said, like any stranger might. His eyes burned into Benny’s and Benny knew he didn’t just mean the fighting.