Читать книгу Victory Road - Mark Bowlin - Страница 8

November 7, 1943

1435 Hours

Naples, Italy

The tall, lean captain staggered from the blow to his ribs. In years of boxing, including nearly thirty amateur matches, he had never before been hit this hard. He moved back quickly and protected his side before the massive lieutenant could move in on his ribs again. It was notionally a friendly match, but as the captain was finding out, there really wouldn’t be such a thing as a friendly boxing match after the captain had made an ill-fated pass at the girlfriend of the lieutenant’s cousin.

It was much ado about nothing, the captain had thought. He had drunk too much grappa two nights before and the girl, whose name was Gianina, spoke fluent English and had sharply put him in his place. Even the lieutenant’s cousin, a captain himself, was amused when told about the incident and held no ill-will against the boxer.

First Lieutenant Sam Taft was another matter. Taft had taken it upon himself to be the girl’s protector from would-be suitors in the absence of his busy cousin, and while he had been friendly enough to the captain since that Friday night, he intended to impart a little lesson on manners. Sam actually liked John Huston, the captain, immensely—after all, they had been drinking together when the incident occurred—but there were limits to friendship. When Sam had finished with the Hollywood boy from Weatherford, he would buy him a drink and the slate would be clean again.

Huston was a very talented boxer, however, and he no intention of losing even a friendly match. He was confident that he would be able to finish off his friend before the remaining round of the three-round match was over. He had speed and experience over the lieutenant, and a quick jab caught Sam below the eye. It had no effect, and Huston ducked just in time to avoid a left hook and then a straight right aimed at his head. It was thrown with deadly force, not friendly at all, and Huston began to suspect that he was being held accountable for his behavior that night. He also began to get angry. Is he really looking for a fight?

A sharper jab caught Sam in the face again, and then another one. However, Sam was not without experience either—although he had no equivalent boxing history to his credit. Sam had learned to fight on his father’s ranch when he was just a boy. Two of his father’s hands, later his when Sam inherited the ranch, had messed around on the rodeo circuit, where they had also learned to box. From them, Sam had learned the fundamentals of boxing and had refined his technique on the boxing team at Texas A&M. He had a love for the sport as well. When he was twelve, he and his father had taken the train from Texas to Chicago to see Jack Dempsey’s second fight with Gene Tunney, and even though there were more than a hundred thousand spectators at that fight, Sam and his father were only four rows away from the ring. Although Dempsey had lost the long count match, Dempsey’s style was more to his liking than was the cerebral boxer Tunney’s. By virtue of his size and demeanor, Sam was a slugger as well. He liked to finish fights with as much economy as possible, and had his last punch connected with Huston, the fight would have been over. As another jab brushed by Sam’s cheek, he countered with another hard right to Huston’s ribs.

The captain dropped to a knee and glared up at Sam, who calmly moved away. Huston stood up, wiped his brow with his glove, and moved in to finish off the lieutenant. He had had enough, and would not let friendship stand in the way any longer.

“Cap’n Huston!” A signal corps corporal was running hard towards the impromptu ring. “Cap’n!”

Huston looked at Sam who nodded and dropped his guard.

“What?”

“The film’s gone! The goddamned film ain’t in the warehouse any more.”

“Oh, Christ! Did you…never mind. Get back there, I’m on my way.” Huston turned to his recent opponent, his anger about the match replaced by anger over the missing film. “I gotta go, Sam. Next time you say you want some lessons, I won’t take it so easy on you. Apologize to the girl, will ya?”

Sam smiled and nodded, “I will. Do you need some help lookin’ for your stuff?”

“No thanks. I’ll find it—these idiots couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. So long. See ya, Jim.” With that, Captain Huston bent over gingerly and picked up his uniform shirt and jacket and walked away with the corporal.

Captain Jim Lockridge, the battalion intelligence officer and a friend of Sam and his cousin, had been watching the match. He walked over to Sam stepping over the pegged twine that had served as the boundary of the boxers’ ring. Lockridge looked his friend over, saw no appreciable damage, and offered him a towel and a canteen. “You asked Huston for boxin’ lessons?”

Sam took the canteen and drank gratefully until it was empty. “Not exactly. I think my words were, ‘how ’bout some boxin’ lessons?’ He must’ve misunderstood me.”

1600 Hours

36th Reconnaissance Troop HQ, Naples

“Let’s get started. Where are we at with the replacements?” The commanding officer of the divisional cavalry reconnaissance troop was tired and knew that his officers didn’t want a Sunday afternoon meeting, but that was tough. The division would be back on the line very soon, and there weren’t enough hours in the week to receive replacement men and officers and get them ready for the inevitable.

Captain Perkin Berger was in temporary command of the 36th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop (Mechanized), although he hoped it would become a permanent command. He liked the independent nature of the reconnaissance command, and he was forming solid bonds with his officers and his NCOs—even though he was a rifleman and they were cavalry. He missed serving in Able Company with his cousin Sam Taft, and he missed his old platoon, but he could quite honestly say that there was nothing like being in command. He was bivouacked in another section of the sprawling Italian Army base, but one of the benefits of command was his own jeep, and he was able to see his friends in the old battalion as his schedule permitted.

For their part, the cavalrymen of the troop had initially greeted their new commander with a great deal of skepticism and more than a little hostility. Many within the command quietly held the view that if the cavalry community of the Army could not provide an officer quickly to replace Captain Leveque, the previous commanding officer, then an officer within the troop should be promoted and assume command. But those were not the wishes of General Walker, the division commander, and the troop had no remaining officers that were senior enough for command in any case.

Captain Berger was an unknown entity to the troop prior to his arrival, but he had been a very pleasant surprise in the two weeks that he had held command. He had personally talked to every one of his two hundred soldiers in his first week, whether the soldier was a veteran or one of the few replacements that had trickled down to the troop. On his first Saturday in command, the troop had thrown a Texas barbeque, and from his own money Berger had purchased several sides of water buffalo—beef cattle were impossible to come by—which were slow-cooked in hand-dug pits, and the cooking of the briskets had been personally supervised by the new commanding officer. His company cooks had rounded out the meal by providing beans, pork ribs, and cornbread for the soldiers and their dates—some of whom were American USO volunteers, while others were local Italian girls.

His own date was a tall, pretty Italian widow named Gianina, who teased and flirted innocently with his officers and soldiers. Gianina was an art restorer at the Neapolitan National Gallery whose husband, a junior officer, had been killed in the south of France in 1940. She was comfortable around soldiers, and she did what she could to ease the discomfort of the other Italian women present. Very hard times had come to Naples, and decent women could be bought by the relatively rich Americans for the price of a can of meat or vegetables—or for less than a pack of cigarettes. Gianina recognized that many of the women present at the barbeque probably fell into that category, and she pretended not to notice when many of the women scooped their leftovers into a purse, or when some women left with soldiers for short visits to the bushes. She had quite naturally assumed the role of the first lady of the troop, and she quietly ensured that the most shy of the Italian women present left with enough food for themselves and, in many cases, their husbands and children.

The barbeque was a wild success at many levels. A good time was had by all, even if many soldiers regretted the excess the next day when Perkin, before Sunday services, led the troop on a five mile run through the hills surrounding the base. The troopers had fallen in love with Gianina, and they became very protective of her reputation when the inevitable divisional gossip surfaced about their troop commander and his Italian woman. In short order, Perkin was able to win over many of his soldiers—not by paying for the food, but through the force of personality. He had found over the years that there was no substitute for aggressive leadership, and the first step towards being an effective leader was to get to know his soldiers. Although the army disagreed, there was no better way to do that, he believed, than over a cold beer at a barbeque. The army prohibited close fraternization of officers and enlisted, but the 36th Division was a National Guard division in a theater of war, and the usual rules had been bent for so long that many forgotten what they were in the first place. So when the division’s military police arrived to shut down the party and the new commander had chatted with them about their hometowns in Texas, joked about old comrades, and given them a gallon jug of iced tea and a tray of brisket and buns to take back to their post, his soldiers were not surprised when the party continued unabated. Two of the MPs came back to the party when they were off duty, and they had been greeted by Perkin and Gianina like long-lost kin.

Personality and a pretty girlfriend only go so far, however, and it was Perkin’s professional background that the senior NCOs and officers examined very closely. Feelers were put out by the non-commissioned officers to their counterparts in Able Company, and the news that they got back was reassuring. They learned through the NCO grapevine that Captain Berger was instrumental in holding the southern flank of the beachhead on D-Day at Salerno, and the NCOs of Able Company told a fantastic tale of then-Lieutenant Berger driving a German panzer from the battlefield with a Thompson submachine gun and the tank’s own sledgehammer. The troop NCOs were at first skeptical of such a report but it was verified again and again through NCO contacts. The division’s senior NCO told his counterparts that the Old Man had personally awarded the Silver Star to Berger just before promoting him. Another Able Company sergeant named Kenton sought out the top sergeant of the troop, and over a few beers at the provisional NCO club, described how his lieutenant had led him and six others on a long-range mission to establish contact with Montgomery’s Eighth Army. The master sergeant whistled when Kenton told him the lieutenant had personally killed four German soldiers on the expedition—one with a trench knife. Kenton did not mention the effect the mission had on Captain Berger, nor did he explain that sometimes the officer’s impulsive nature got the best of him. The troop would find that out soon enough, he thought.

First Lieutenant Fenton Mayberry, known as Mabes, was the company executive officer—the XO. He was second-in-command of the company, and most administrative functions of the unit fell on his shoulders. It was to Mabes that the company commander’s question on the status of replacements was directed.

“Sir, we got two more cavalrymen in last night. Division says that we’ve received all the replacements that we’ll get for some time, and there are no more troopers for us in the replacement depot. Our Salerno losses have been replaced at 85 percent, and division says that is our fair share, and not to expect any more before we go into combat again.” Mayberry was unhappy about the bad news, but there was little that he or his company commander could do about it. Losses at Salerno had been more severe than expected, and there were other units still on the line that were drawing from the repple-depple, as the replacement depot was known. Even though the 36th Infantry Division, the Texas Army, had received notification that it would be back on the line very soon, it was still a lower priority than those American divisions that were currently fighting.

“What’d we get?” Perkin was certain that the new soldiers would be of limited value—in his short experience as company commander, he was becoming aware that the army was sending the troops that it had, and these were not necessarily the same as those that were needed.

“Last night? A qualified M-8 driver from Colorado and a reconnaissance scout from Gonzales.”

Perkin was surprised. “Really? Holy smokes…I’d expected a goat-wrangler and a gynecologist.” He smiled inwardly as he watched Mabes blush. The lieutenant was a very innocent sort, and he had not quite adjusted to Perkin’s off-color sense of humor.

“Er…yes sir. As for the training, we’ve gotten most of the replacements up to basic standards, but it’ll be a long time before they can match the men they’ve replaced.”

That, Perkin worried, applied as much to him as any other replacement soldier.