Mac wingate 10, p.5
Mac Wingate 10, page 5
A division had twenty-seven rifle companies. Each company had three rifle platoons and a weapons platoon. Each rifle platoon contained three squads of a dozen men armed with the likes of M1 Garand rifles and a variety of automatic weapons. The weapons platoon was outfitted with the heavier stuff: some .30 inch machine guns, a few 60 mm mortars, a group of antitank rocket launchers and one .50 inch machine gun which could fire both antiaircraft and armor-piercing ammo.
Three such rifle companies made up an infantry battalion. Within these confines were a half dozen 81 mm mortars, seven antitank rocket launchers, eight .30 inch machine guns and a trio of .50 inchers. Each battalion had an antitank platoon which incorporated three .30 inch machine guns, a like number of 37 mm antitank guns and eight rocket launchers. Held in support were six 105 mm howitzers with a service company.
Three infantry battalions made up an infantry regiment. Three infantry regiments combined with three artillery battalions made up the combat elements of a division. The artillery battalions consisted of a 155 mm howitzer battery with a dozen guns, two 105 mm batteries with three dozen guns, and enough men to service them. General Lucas had all this and more, and it was all stuck on the Anzio beaches, getting the crap knocked out of it.
Wingate turned back toward the waves as he heard a new sound behind him. He saw a DUKW outfitted with a rocket battery on its back blasting shells into the hills. It stood outlined against the variety of destroyers farther out in the bay, adding their own guns to the attack. The battery on the amphibian truck looked like a rectangular Gatling gun, each chamber blasting its rocket in succession. It was an impressive sight, but Wingate doubted if it would have much effect on the enemy. Its effect on the Allies could be gauged from Private Glynn’s reaction.
“Jesus,” he breathed. “Look at that, would you!”
Wingate saw the return bombardment only as an opportunity to get to the Reception Center with his butt intact. Getting to his feet in a crouch, he looked back over the bunker top and spied a soldier moving between armored cars. He asked directions and got a stabbing, pointing motion to the right in reply.
“Come on,” he instructed Glynn, moving cautiously but quickly in the direction he was signaled. By the time they had gotten a hundred feet, the sun had appeared over the hills, bringing light, some small measure of warmth and a slight respite of the Nazi shelling. The two engineer reppls could almost have walked with their heads up if they hadn’t been so cold, wet, rushed and worried. The crystalline sand crunched beneath their sodden boots, its consistency made more brittle by the thin sheet of ice that covered it in patches.
The arriving sun seemed to bring others out in force as well. Like groundhogs coming up to see their shadows, the other Allied forces moved into the open to check and recheck their equipment—preparing for the big, easy push that never seemed to come. Wingate and Glynn’s manner became more casual as they found themselves among friends, but they never completely lost their scurrying speed. The Germans were still sprinkling the beach with fire, so Wingate led this one remaining man further and further inland.
As he went, the ground got firmer and the crunch of frozen sand turned into the crackling slosh of cold mud and the crinkling of something else—something Wingate saw no reason to investigate. Glynn’s curiosity, however, got the better of him.
“Jeez, look at this,” he said, handing a dirt-streaked pamphlet over to Wingate.
Mac took it without stopping, seeing a somber painting of a skull on a black-and-white background. In one empty eye socket of the skull was the word “Anzio.” In the other eye socket was the word “Nettuno.” Around the jawline were drawings of sinking ships and planes. Above the head were the large letters “BEACHHEAD.” Beneath the chin were the matching sized letters, “DEATH’S-HEAD!”
“Where did you get this?” Wingate asked the private.
“They’re all over the ground,” Glynn replied, kneeling down. “There are all sorts of them. Jeez, look at the broad on this one!”
He handed another pamphlet over to the captain. On this one was a fine, naked specimen of womanhood slipping on a shoe at the edge of her bed. In the background was a well-dressed 4-F male specimen lasciviously knotting his tie. The romantically inscribed letters beneath this domestic scene read, “While you are away.”
Inside was a more macabre scene of a hastily dug grave with an Allied helmet placed on the rough wooden cross at the base. The legend here was longer winded. “Soldiers!” it read. “You are fighting and dying far away from your country while many other men are putting up their tents in front of your wives’ and sweethearts’ houses. They’ve got lots of money and loads of time to chase after your women.” Wingate closed the propaganda leaflet. It seemed as if the Boche were dropping more than bombs from their planes. But Mac couldn’t understand it. How did the krauts expect them to react to these things? Run screaming with jealousy into the waves, waving meat cleavers? He shook his head and prepared to throw the thing away.
“Uh, Captain,” Glynn interrupted his motion, “would you mind letting me keep that one?”
Wingate remembered the naked girl on the cover and suddenly realized the Nazis’ insidious plan. They were going to cover the beach with cheesecake and creep up on the Allies while they jacked off in their foxholes. With a grin, Wingate handed the paper back to Glynn—who shoved it beneath his undershirt. Mac figured the enemy had a surprise coming. It was too damned cold—even to jack off.
Coming out from between two rows of troop carriers, Wingate spied a dank, plain, two-story house on a bluff overlooking the water. Further up the bluff was the shattered spire of a church. On the well-worn roadway between the two was a line of bare-branched trees—some knocked over from direct shell hits—and a column of trudging, unarmed peasants. They seemed to be moving from the house doorway to the church entrance in a steady, never-ending chain.
Milling around this line were more soldiers, all seemingly intent on their own individual duties. They too came out of the house, but none went toward the church. Of the two structures, Wingate guessed that it was the house which served as the RC. Before entering, he saw a makeshift board consisting of a piece of wood nailed to the house’s outside wall. On this board, fluttering in the morning wind, was a stack of maps.
Mac checked out the maps. To his ever-deepening chagrin, they were the daily maps of the Operation’s progress—one tacked here each day since January 22nd. Wingate hefted the pile from the loose bottom and let them drop one at a time like a flipbook. The tragedy of Anzio was evident from the red line of the beachhead boundary. First it surged forward with cautious assurance, gaining a little ground every day. Then, slowly, but with gathering speed, it was pushed back—pushed back until it was smaller than when it started. By the looks of it, the enemy was making good its threat to push the Allies back into the sea.
For some reasons, this normally depressing situation had the opposite effect on Wingate. He might have felt lousy about the rape of the earth by the ravages of war, but the Nazis’ intent to destroy his army only made him want to kill them all the more. Their pamphlets didn’t depress him. He simply wanted to ram the propaganda down the authors’ throats. The threat of destroying them utterly didn’t cow him with fear. It just made him want to make the krauts eat their words.
With revived conviction, Wingate led Glynn into the Reception Center. The cold of the exterior was replaced with the claustrophobic heat of the interior. Wood stoves were everywhere, as were the civilian peasants and unenlisted personnel around them. Men were jibbering in all sorts of languages, although the majority of strange tongues were dialects of Italian.
Making his way through the gesticulating, complaining throng, Wingate reached the front of a circular stove. He and Glynn were standing next to a thin, pockmarked man in a rumpled overcoat and crumpled fedora. The private breathed a sigh of relief as he loomed over the heater. The captain looked over at the civilian.
“Do you know where I can find Major Bender?” he inquired.
Without surprise, the man in the fedora looked back at him and replied in the unmistakable tones of an Australian. “Bender? Gee, I don’t know, mate.” He turned and strained his neck to look over the crowd’s heads. “Hey, Bob!” he called out. “You seen Major Bender?”
“Bender?” came the cockney reply. “Last time I saw him, he was ripping out mouthfuls from a Sherman. Can’t help you, luv.”
The Aussie laughed, turning back to Wingate. “There you have it, boyo. He was last seen eating metal sheets in frustration. A man with a bigger John Wayne complex I’ve never seen.”
Mac’s curiosity concerning the Aussie became greater than his desire to find his superior. “Are you a refugee?” he asked, wondering how an Australian got to Anzio.
“Refugee?” the man retorted with surprise. “Hell, no! I’m a reporter.” He put out his hand. “Edward Woodlie, London Express-Courier.” Mac paused for a moment, then took the proffered hand. Still, the journalist had to prod a bit more for an introduction. “And you are ... ?”
Mac saw no harm in telling him, although he couldn’t completely eliminate his reticence. “Captain Wingate,” he said succinctly.
“American, eh?” the reporter said. “And freezing cold too,” he added, releasing Mac’s chapped fingers. “We better get you warmed up before you catch your death.” Without waiting for an answer, Woodlie wrapped one arm around the Captain’s shaking shoulders and propelled him toward the back of the room. “Make way there!” the reporter called out. “Back, you heathen! Cold captain coming through!”
Wingate didn’t have to tell Glynn to tag along. The engineer was dogging the Aussie’s heels the moment he heard something about warmth. The reporter led Mac to a slim stairwell at the right corner of the room. He propelled Wingate up the stairs, and they came out in a small hallway. Wingate waited there until Woodlie reached the landing and threw open the closest door.
“Close that goddamn door!” roared a voice from inside as Woodlie waved the two soldiers in. “It’s damn cold downstairs with all those peasants tramping in and out all the time.”
Wingate and Glynn entered a smaller, warmer room which was already occupied by two men standing in front of a stove, smoking cigarettes. Woodlie introduced the two pairs before either could raise a query or complaint.
“Captain Wingate,” he said, “meet two of my brother journalists.”
“Brother?” the one who had spoken before scoffed. “The word journalist hardly relates to you, Woodlie. If I were your brother, I’d cut my private parts off.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.” The most urbane of the trio spoke for the first time with the lilt of a French accent. “Given the situation, the Boche may do it for you yet.”
“Captain,” Woodlie continued, “may I present Carl Browne of the New York Sun and Earl Bourgeau of the Montreal Star. Gentlemen, may I present Captain Wingate, a new arrival to these shores. And a slowly freezing one at that.”
Browne, the American, waved. Bourgeau, the French Canadian, bowed slightly.
“Here,” Woodlie added, with a gesture that included Glynn, “take off your jackets. We’ll dry them by the fire.” He turned to Browne. “Come on, Carl,” he admonished. “Nobody but you has ice water in their veins. Get these boys some blankets.”
Before the American moved, Browne looked at Wingate and waved a cigarette at the private. “Who’s your friend?”
“Private First Class Glynn,” Wingate replied, feeling the cold gnawing toward his bones. It took the heat of the room to show just how frozen he was. “Now how about those blankets?”
“Sure, sure,” Browne drawled, moving toward a closet on the side wall.
Wingate undid his web belt and shrugged off his coat, letting Woodlie take it from him. He unbuttoned, then unzipped the mission jacket, moving closer to the heater. Glynn was right with him, jacket for jacket, step for step.
“Wingate, huh?” Browne inquired, returning from the closet with some dark covers. “Any relation to Major General Charles Wingate of the famed Burma campaign?”
“No,” Mac replied, having been asked the question before. “None.”
“Too bad,” Browne shrugged. “Americans, huh?” The captain nodded. “Well, you’ve come to the wrrrrong place. I’ve been at Sicily, I’ve been at Salerno, but nothing compares to this hellhole.”
“Yeah, Captain,” Woodlie said, bringing up some chairs for the two soldiers. “What’s the word at Allied Headquarters about this operation? Are they going to ease old man Lucas out?”
“Yes,” Bourgeau echoed. “And are there going to be any other nationalities brought into the fighting?”
Wingate suddenly understood the kindness the reporters had shown him. He wasn’t just a raw recruit—an inexperienced newcomer. They saw him as a news source from the more civilized sections of Europe. That’s what was niggling at the back of his mind when Woodlie approached him.
“I really don’t know, gentlemen,” he told them.
“Of course he doesn’t know,” Browne said laconically, bringing up a chair and straddling it next to Glynn. “They wouldn’t send anybody in the know through the hell the Nazis just hit the beach with.” Seeing the weak link in the information chain, Browne spoke directly to Glynn. “It looked pretty hard out there.”
Fully in the spirit of the thing, Glynn replied, “Hard isn’t the word!” He went on to tell the story of the LCT’s fate. Wingate didn’t see any reason to stop him. The reporters were on the Allied side and they needed something to write about. What made better copy than an eyewitness report of bravery and sacrifice? The thing that irritated Wingate was that Glynn made it sound like the story of “Ted” and he knew the journalists would report it just as fatuously in their own ways.
“What’s your full name, son, and where do you hail from?” Brown asked gently, pencil scribbling on paper furiously. The private told him. “What’s your parents’ names?” Glynn told him. Suddenly all the men reporters were writing, each mumbling their story concepts as their minds formulated them.
“The gray morning was suddenly split open with the red streaks of tracer bullets and the screams of enemy fire,” Woodlie mumbled.
“Private First Class Kenneth W. Glynn, son of William and Ida Glynn of East Bend, Indiana, witnessed the terrible toll the enemy’s guns at Anzio took on the brave sailor boys in blue,” Browne unabashedly penned.
“The clash of mighty powers once again gave breadth to the task before us all,” Bourgeau began.
“God damn it!” came a booming voice from the doorway as a cold wind swept into the room. All eyes turned to the massive form framed in the open portal. It was a big man, standing at least six feet, three inches tall with a torso that looked like a redwood trunk and a face which looked like the inside of a leather glove. “I can’t turn my back for one second without you guys getting your claws into every one of my men.”
“Now, Major Bender ...” Woodlie began.
“Button it, Woody,” Bender replied. “And seal it. All you guys know my attitude concerning incoming troops. What’s the big idea?”
“They were freezing, Major,” Bourgeau explained.
“All my men are freezing!” Bender exploded. “What makes these guys any different? Besides the fact they might have some rumors from High Command?”
“Come on, Major,” Browne soothed slickly. “You know us better than that.”
“You’re damn right I do,” he replied, eyes narrowing. “And let me tell you this. Off the record. If any of you guys detour the reppls again before I can brief them, you’ll be ground up for C rations. And I mean it this time.” He looked directly at Wingate and Glynn. “There are other stoves to dry your clothes with. Now, move out.”
Bender maintained his stiff poise until Mac and the private retrieved their coats and were led downstairs. As soon as the general hubbub of the Italian peasants covered their exit from the press corps, Bender visibly turned from a hard-bitten officer to a human being.
“Captain Wingate?” he asked. Mac replied in the affirmative. “Thank God,” Bender breathed. “I was afraid you might have gone down with the LCT and the other engineers. I heard you had a beard.” At the mention of the craft, Glynn perked up, opening his mouth to retell his story. Without a pause or a glance, Bender told him, “Button it, private. Can’t you see I’m talking to your superior?” Bender winked at Mac, his expression growing tired. “Come on, Captain. Let’s get this song started.”
The first thing Wingate wanted to know as they made their way out of the Reception Center was where all the civilians and reporters fit in.
“Thank God the majority of the journalists aren’t as bad as that lot,” Bender answered, jerking his head toward the upstairs room. “They’re the ‘ambulance chasers’ of the group. Even so, we’ve all had to face the fact that there just isn’t enough good news to go around on this operation. So, being unable to fight the ‘freedom of the press’ without giving democracy a black eye, we’ve had to let them print pretty much what they wanted. That’s bad enough, but when they start spreading their ‘happiness and light’ to my troops, I draw the line.”
“And the civilians?” Wingate re-inquired.
Bender served as a blocker for the other two, making a wedge among the peasants lining the Reception Center floor. He looked back at the captain with a grin. “If you were a resident of this fair city with two armies trying to make a sandwich out of it, what would you do? Adolf isn’t going to give them a way out, since he lost what little love he had for the country when Benito skipped town. So we established a little travel agency out of the goodness of our hearts.”
The trio finally got outside the RC, with Bender pointing toward the church. “That’s the debarkation point,” he said. He then squinted up at the sky, which had become overcast since Wingate and Glynn had gone in. He turned up his coat collar and swore. “Looks like the forecasters were right again, blast them. More sleet on the way.”
