Ordinary Heroes Page 3

  The stall allowed the administrative staff, including the judge advocates, to make our first durable headquarters in Nancy early in October. Asa student of French in high school, I seemed to have acquired the impression that there was only one city to speak of in that country. But Nancy's center had been erected in the eighteenth century by a king without a country, Stanislas Leszczynski, later to become Duke of Lorraine, with a grandeur and panache equal to my images of Paris. Patton's forward headquarters was in the Palais du Gouverneur, a royal residence at the end of a tree-lined arcade that resembled pictures I'd seen of the Tuileries. Our offices, along with other rear elements, were about a fifteen-minute walk across town, in the Lycee Henri Poincare, the oldest school in Nancy.

  To process the backlog of cases that had collected as we were trying to keep up with Patton, Colonel Maples asked the personnel nabobs in G-1 to appoint two standing courts-martial. They ultimately assigned nine officers to each, allowing the members to attend to other duties on alternate days. Eisley and I, however, were in court seven days a week, ten hours a day. To break the routine we agreed to rotate roles as the prosecuting trial judge advocate, and as counsel for the accused.

  The military tribunal was set up in the former party room of the school, where three dormitory dining tables had been pushed together. At the center was the most senior officer serving as president of the court-martial, flanked by four junior officers on either side. At the far left, Eisley or I would sit with our client, and on the opposite end whoever that day was the TJA. In the center of the room, a table of stenographers worked, taking down the testimony, while a single straight-backed chair was reserved for the witness. The president of one panel was Lieutenant Colonel Harry Klike, a bluff little prewar noncom who'd risen through the Quartermaster Corps and was determined to exhibit the cultivation he believed appropriate for an officer and gentleman. Each day's session ended with Klike officiously announcing, "The court-martial stands adjourned until zero eight hundred tomorrow, when we will reconvene to dispense with justice." No one, as I recall, had the heart to correct him.

  We proceeded with dispatch and often finished two or even three cases in a day. In need of a break when court adjourned, Eisley and I often strolled down the rue Gambetta to the magnificent Place Stanislas, with its ornate state buildings and elaborate gates tipped in gold. At a cafe on the square we sipped cognac and eyed the good women of the town, with their wedgies and upswept hairdos. Tony, married but at full liberty three thousand miles away, praised the imagination of French women and their rugged lovemaking style. I listened without comment, while the patron tried to shoo the French kids who appeared beside our table with cupped hands, all of them the master of at least one line of English: "Some gum, chum?"

  Out on the avenue, long military columns passed, coming from or going to the front. The hardest-hit units on the way back passed with little expression, grimy, embittered hangdog men, on whom the wages of war were posted like a sign. Cordons of ambulances sometimes raced through, carrying the wounded to the local field hospital. But the replacement troops headed for battle made the most unsettling sight. A hush often came over the streets while the soldiers stared down at us from the trucks. In their faces you could see their desperation and anger about the cruel lottery that left us secure and them facing mortal danger. At those moments, I often found myself thinking uneasily about the way the Third Army's successes were described around headquarters using the word 'we.'

  Eventually, Tony and I would begin preparing for the coming day. When the crimes involved attacks on local residents we would go out to jointly interview the witnesses. With the benefit of my high-school French, I read well and could understand, but spoke with more difficulty. Nonetheless, I had improved considerably in my two months on the Continent, and allowing for the grace of hand gestures, we could usually make our way through these meetings without a translator.

  The MP who drove us most days, Staff Sergeant Gideon Bidwell, was called Biddy, a shortened version of the nickname Iddy Biddy he'd been awarded by the usual boot-camp smart alecks. He was as wide at the shoulder as a bus seat and at least six foot two, with curly black hair and a pink face holding a broad nose and green eyes. Bidwell was highly competent, but in a cheerless way. He was one of those enlisted men who realize that they are the true Army, whose jobs consist of winning the war at the same time that they keep the officers from making fools of themselves. He hauled the gear, and drove the jeep, and turned the map so I had it going in the right direction, but with a sullen air that made him somewhat unapproachable. When he had picked me up in Cherbourg where I landed, I recognized the sounds of Georgia in his speech, after my time at Fort Benning, but in response to my questions, he said only that his folks had left Georgia several years ago. He remained generally closemouthed about himself, not outwardly insubordinate, but with a sour look tending to indicate he didn't care much for anyone. I sensed that sooner or later we were going to clash.

  One evening, we stopped at the stockade so I could interview my client for the next day's proceedings. Biddy was with me as we entered the doubled-wire perimeter, where three long lines of pup tents were erected in abnormally tight formation. When my client shuffled out of the guardhouse in his ankle irons and manacles, Biddy buried a heavy groan in his chest.

  "Why they always colored?" he asked himself, but loud enough for me to hear. Enough of Georgia seemed to have come North with Bidwell that I preferred not to hear his answer. I gave him a bit of a look, at which he stiffened, but he had the good sense to turn away.

  Oddly, Biddy's remark provoked me to ponder his question, albeit from another angle. Given my sympathies for the French families who appeared so often as the victims in our courtrooms, it had not even struck me much at first that many of the soldiers being sentenced to long terms in disciplinary barracks were colored. Yet Biddy was right, at least about the pattern, and the next time I found myself alone with Colonel Maples, I asked why he thought Negroes appeared so frequently among the troops we prosecuted.

  "Negroes?" Maples looked at me sharply. "What in the world are you suggesting, Dubin? There are plenty in the stockade who are white." There surely were. Lots of soldiers had ended up in the Army only because a sentencing judge had given them that option rather than prison. Men who were strong-arm robbers and drug fiends at home did not always change their stripes, even on the battlefield. "Do you doubt these boys are guilty?"

  In most of the cases I handled, the soldiers were sober by the time I saw them and entered abashed guilty pleas. And the crimes with which they were charged were seldom minor. A few days ago, I had been the prosecutor of a colored soldier who literally knocked the door down at a girl's house, when she refused him; he'd had his way with her only after beating both her parents brutally. It puzzled me that the colored troops had generally maintained such good order in England, but were losing discipline on the Continent.

  "They're guilty, sir, no question. But thinking about it, I've found myself wondering, sir, if we're as understanding of the colored troops."

  I did not need to mention any particular incidents, because that week we had evaluated the case of a decorated officer who'd been on the front since D-Day. As he'd watched a line of German prisoners marching past, he'd suddenly raised his carbine and begun shooting, killing three and wounding four others. His sole explanation was, "I didn't like the way they were looking at me." Colonel Maples had decided that we would seek a sentence of only three years.

  "These Negro boys aren't in combat, Dubin, not for the most part. We can't treat them as we do the men who've been through that." I could have pointed out that the colored battalions weren't generally given the option, but I felt I had gone far enough. "It's liquor and women, Dubin," the Colonel added. "You're a smart man to stay clear of liquor and women.), I could tell my questions had troubled the Colonel, and I wasn't surprised two days later when he called me into his office. It was the former quarters of the school prefect, a room of tall antique cabinets in
mellow oak.

  "Listen, Dubin, I don't know how to say this, so I'll just come out with it. About your remarks to me the other day? You'd best be careful with that sort of thing, man. You don't want people to think you're the wrong kind of Jew. Is that too plain?"

  "Of course not." In truth, I received the Colonel's remark with the usual clotted feelings references to my heritage inevitably provoked. My parents were Socialists who disparaged religious practice. Thus for me, the principal meaning of being a Jew was as something people reliably held against me, a barrier to overcome. I had labored my whole life to believe in a land of equals where everyone deserved to be greeted by only one label--American.

  The Army did not always appear to see it that way. I was a week into basic training before I found out that the 'H' on my dog tags meant 'Hebrew,' which irritated me no end since the Italians and Irish were not branded with an 'I.' But the armed forces were awash in bias. The enlisted men could not talk to one another without epithets. Spic, Polack, dago, Mick, cracker, hick, Okie, mackerel-snapper. Everybody got it. Not to mention the coloreds and the Orientals, whom the Army preferred not even to let in. The JAG Department's officers, however, were primarily well-bred Episcopalians and Presbyterians with excellent manners who did not engage in crude insults. Colonel Maples had gone out of his way to make clear he harbored no prejudice, once saying to me that when we got to Berlin, he planned to march up to the Reichstag with the word 'Jude' written on his helmet. But his remark now was a reminder that my colleagues' silence about my ancestry did not mean any of them had forgotten it.

  A few days later, the Colonel again asked to see me.

  "Perhaps you need a break from these courts-martial day in and day out," he said. "Quite a grind, isn't it?"

  Given what the soldiers at the front put up with, I would never have taken the liberty to complain, but the Colonel was right. There was not much about my daily activities that would lift the spirits, sending boys who'd come here to risk their lives for their country to a military prison instead. But the Colonel had a plan to give all of us a breather. Eisley would switch places for a couple of weeks with Major Haggerty, the Deputy Staff Judge Advocate, who had been reviewing convictions and providing legal advice as the law member on one of the panels. As for me, I was to conduct a Rule 35 investigation, looking into the potential court-martial of an officer.

  "There's a bit of a problem on the General staff. The Brits have a word: lerfuffle.' Lord, I miss the Brits. The way they speak the language! Fellows made me howl several times a day. But that's what there is, a kerfuffle. I assume you've heard of Roland Teedle." General Teedle was a virtual legend, often said to be Patton's favorite among the brigadier generals. His i8th Armored Division had been at the forefront of the charge across France. "Teedle's gotten himself into a state of high dudgeon about some OSS major who's been operating on his flank. How much do you know about the OSS, Dubin?"

  Not much more than I'd read in the paper. "Spies and commandos," I said.

  "That's about right," said the Colonel. "And certainly true of this particular fellow. Major Robert Martin. Sort of an expatriate. Fought in Spain for the Republicans. Was living in Paris when the Nazis overran it. OSS recruited him, apparently, and he's done quite well. He's been on the Continent since sometime in 1942. Ran an Operational Group behind German lines--a collection of Allied spies and French resistance forces who sabotaged Nazi operations. After D-Day, he and his people were placed under Teedle's command. They derailed supply trains, ambushed German scouts, gave the Nazis fits while the i8th was bearing down on them."

  I said that Martin sounded brave.

  "Damn brave," said Maples. "No doubt of that. A hero, frankly. He's won the Distinguished Service Cross. And the Silver Star twice. And that doesn't count the ribbons de Gaulle has pinned on his chest."

  "Jesus," I said before I could think.

  The Colonel nodded solemnly during the brief silence, one that often fell among soldiers when they faced the evidence of another man's courage. We all had the same thought then: Could I do that?

  "But you see," the Colonel said, "it's one of those devilish ironies. Probably what's led to Martin's troubles. He's been a lone wolf too long, really. He has no fear. Not just of the enemy. But of his own command. The Army is not a place for individualists." I could tell that the Colonel had spent time thinking about this case. He smoothed the edges of his broad mustache before he continued. "I don't have the details. That's your job. But Teedle claims that Martin's defied his orders. Several times now. Says Martin is just sitting out in some chateau leading the life of Riley and thumbing his nose. Apparently there's a girl involved."

  The Colonel paused then, presumably reconsidering his frequent reminders that women and warriors were a bad mix.

  "At any rate," he said, "there's to be a Rule thirty-five investigation. Follow the manual. Interview Martin. Interview the General. Talk to the witnesses. Do formal examinations. Prepare a report. And be diplomatic. Formally, a junior officer shouldn't be interviewing his superiors. I'm trusting you, David, not to ruffle feathers. Remember, you act in my name.,, "Yes, sir."

  "G-i is hoping that this Major Martin will see the light when he recognizes that matters are turning serious. An actual court-martial would be tragic, frankly. Teedle and this fellow Martin--both are very fine soldiers, Dubin. General Patton hates that kind of catfight. Bring Martin to his senses, if you can. But watch yourself. Don't forget that at the end of the day, Roland's the one who's going to have Patton's ear."

  The Colonel came around his desk to put a hand on my shoulder, and with it I felt the weight of his avuncular affection for me.

  "I thought you'd enjoy this break, David. Get you a little closer to the front. Something's bound to start happening there again any day. I know you'd like that. And there may not be much more chance. Word is that Monty's bet Ike a fiver that the war here will be over before the New Year. Now that would make a fine Christmas present for all of us, wouldn't it?"

  He was beaming until something froze his features, the realization, I suspect, that Christmas meant far more to him than to me. But I answered, "Yes, sir," in my most enthusiastic manner and issued a brisk salute before going off to find out whatever I needed to about Major Robert Martin.

  Chapter 3.

  DAVID: THE GENERAL

  The 18th Armored Division had made camp about twenty-five miles north and east of Nancy, not far from Arracourt, where they were enjoying a period of rest and recovery. When Biddy and I showed up at the motor pool for a jeep to proceed to our interview with General Teedle, we were told that because of severe supply discipline with gasoline, we would have to squeeze in four boys from the 134th Infantry who'd missed their convoy. The 134th was relieving troops on the XII Corps front and these soldiers, who'd already seen their share of combat, made glum traveling companions. A private sitting behind me, a boy named Duck from Kentucky, struck up a few verses of "Mairzy Doats," until his buddies finally became spirited about one thing--that Duck should shut the hell up.

  The air remained sodden, and approaching the front the bleakness went beyond the weather, clinging to the soldiers trudging down the roads. The signs of the recent battles were all about. The earth was scorched and rutted, and the picturesque French farmhouses, with their thatched roofs that made them look like something out of "Hansel and Gretel," were mostly in ruins. Even the ones that had fared relatively well were usually open to the top, looking like a man without his hat. Timbers lay strewn on the ground and often all that remained of a structure that had been home to a family for decades, even centuries, was the whitewashed chimney or a lone wall. The debris had been bulldozed to the side of the road, but every now and then there were disturbing tokens of the civilian casualties, a decapitated doll, wounded like its human counterparts, or a coat without a sleeve.

  Given the conditions of the roads, it took us several hours to reach the i8th. They had spread out across the drier ground on the downslopes of several vast bean and
hay fields. Having dealt with the claims for the land our troops trampled in England, I could only imagine the joy of the French farmer who would now get compensation for the use of land on which his crops were already drowned.

  The i8th Armored Division had been the heroes of every newsreel we'd seen for months, the troops who'd dashed across France and were going to chase Hitler into some hole in Berlin and shoot a mortar down it for good riddance. There was a bold air here and loud voices after having survived the front. While Patton waited for fuel, ordnance, and rations, he had ordered many of the infantry divisions into intensive training, but for the i8th, with its tanks and mobile artillery, the strict conservation of gasoline left them with little to do each day but clean their weapons and write long letters home.

  Crossing the camp with our packs, looking for Teedle's HQ, Biddy and I drew resentful stares. Our uniforms were still fresh, not grease-stained or torn, and our helmets lacked the mottled camouflage nets handed out for combat. Once or twice we passed soldiers who made a chicken squawk behind us, but Biddy's sheer size was enough to stifle most of the insults I was used to hearing tossed down from the troop convoys that passed through Nancy.

  Rather than commandeer a house in town for himself, as other generals might have done, Teedle had remained with his men in a large tent that served combat-style as both his billet and headquarters. The heavy blackout flaps had been raised in daytime. Inside, a board floor had been installed in sections, and there were several desks, two of them face-to-face, where a couple of corporals were pounding away at Remingtons. Another, larger desk was unoccupied beside a frame cot which was certainly the General's. Two footlockers were stacked there with a kerosene lamp atop them for nighttime reading.