Mac wingate 10, p.8
Mac Wingate 10, page 8
Wingate, following his speech and his rescue operation, was all but accepted as one of their own. Mergallo and Meyer had obviously spread the word that Wingate knew what he was doing and was willing for the men to act naturally. The men weren’t showing off for him, they were just being themselves. Mac took it as a high compliment. He was beginning to feel that his transfer choice was the right one.
“Hey, Mike,” Meyer called, holding up a can of somewhat rancid-looking hamburger, “do you know the difference between a cocksucker and a corned beef sandwich?”
It was obvious Schwartz didn’t like being put on the spot. He had seen Meyer do it to others and they never emerged unscathed. But despite the obvious difference between the two choices given him, the soldier couldn’t come up with a good riposte, so he simply answered, “No.”
“Good,” Meyer replied, dumping the junk out onto the ground. “Come over tomorrow for lunch.”
There were more groans than laughs. “Come on, Meyer,” Parker complained with a grin. “Enough with these easy rim shots. Let’s have a real joke.”
“Yeah,” said Samuels. “Enough of these chickenfeed one-liners. We’ll give you a subject and you have to tell us a joke about it.”
The rest of the men loudly concurred with the challenge. “All right!” Meyer proclaimed. “All right. You want a joke, I’ll give you a joke. Any subject. You just name it.” All the men started yelling things at once.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Meyer stemmed the flood. “I can’t do them all at once. Let one guy do it. The new man. Captain Wingate, you pick a subject.”
“Oh, no,” Mac laughed. “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.”
“I thought somebody said no more Polish jokes,” Meyer said quickly.
“Smart move,” Mergallo whispered to Wingate, leaning in.
“Let the other new man do it then,” Meyer suggested. “That’s fair, isn’t it? Hey, Glynn, you give me a subject.”
The private was taken by surprise by the request. He was midway through slurping up some spaghetti when Meyer’s call came. Hastily cutting the strands off with his teeth, he made a mighty swallow and came up gasping. Finally his eyes cleared and his brow unfurrowed. “The President of the United States,” he said.
Everyone looked at Meyer with challenging anticipation. The joker didn’t let them down. “OK, the President,” Meyer began. “One day the President goes into a whorehouse looking for some fun. He sees three girls he really likes but can’t decide which one should get the honors. So he goes over to the first—a beautiful long-legged blond—and says ‘I am the President of the United States. How much would it cost me to spend some time with you?’”
Some of the men were laughing already. Wingate looked at their faces, seeing a revitalization going on right before his eyes. Mergallo had been right. Meyer was the unit’s recharger. They had come to depend on him for humor and good spirits when there was death all around them.
“Well, the blond says, ‘The President! For you, two hundred and fifty dollars.’ Then he goes over to the second girl, a stunning, big-breasted brunette, and asks the same question. Her reply is one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Finally he goes over to the last girl, a gorgeous redhead, and asks the same question for the last time. And she says, ‘Well, Mr. President, if you can raise my skirt as high as my taxes, get my panties as low as my wages, get your private parts as hard as the times, keep it as high as the gas and meat prices, and screw me the way you do the public, it ain’t gonna cost you a goddamn cent!’”
The explosion of laughter was about as loud as the explosion of the German shells to Wingate’s ears. Meyer fairly glowed in triumph as the men guffawed, clapped and slapped him on the back. This went on for about two seconds until an even louder sound shattered the noontime camaraderie.
“Captain Wingate!” boomed an angry voice.
Mac reacted instinctively. He rolled to his feet and stood at attention. It was the trained response of a soldier, he realized. The trained response of a spy would be to shoot first and salute later. He didn’t have long to wait for the owner of that voice to appear. Major Bender marched from behind a parked tank and strode among the eight seated men. There were only eight because Mergallo had snapped to attention the same second Wingate had.
“Attention!” he barked, the men snapping up in response. Bender ignored the saluting group, choosing instead to stride straight up to the captain.
“Listen,” he growled into Wingate’s face, his breath smelling of something alien, “I gave you the benefit of the doubt when you first landed because of the glowing reports Colonel Erikson sent me. But I had no idea you allowed this kind of laxity and profanity. When you serve with Major Fred Bender, mister, you serve the best. And I demand only the best from my men!”
At that point, he turned to the others. “I never want to hear that kind of smut again, do you understand? I will not have that kind of language or lascivious manner from any man under my command, is that clear?”
Mergallo led the shout in unison. “Yes, sir!” To Wingate’s ears, it sounded like the bark of a beaten, but unaffected dog. At first, he thought the major might be joking. That, any second, the man would be all smiles and saying, “Just kidding, just kidding.” But he soon realized that Bender was dead serious. The difference between the joking, sardonic man inside the officers’ headquarters and the man who berated his men for telling a risqué story was extraordinary. Suddenly, Bender’s earlier sarcasm smacked of self-pity, and his present rage seemed fueled by what Wingate had smelled on his breath. The captain finally recognized it as wine. Rich, flavorful, aromatic wine—not the cheap rotgut he usually discovered on his missions, but vino nevertheless.
“Very well,” Bender replied to the men’s previous affirmation. “Well, what are you standing around for? I want Sergeant Mergallo and Captain Wingate to report to me at 0500 hours. The rest of you uncover the equipment from the rubble. I’ll want a report from Corporal Meyer on the extent of the damages as soon as you’ve done it. That is all. Now, get moving!”
The men waited until Bender had tromped back the way he had come. Then they slumped from their straight postures. Throwing down and kicking away their rations, they moved back toward their cellar headquarters. Wingate turned to look at Mergallo, who held his gaze for only a second, then looked down, shaking his head. Wingate looked over to Meyer, who silently lifted his canteen, jerked his head toward the spot where Bender had come from and lifted the canteen to his lips.
“His major-ship is in his cups,” Mergallo said into Wingate’s ear, with disgust tinging his tones. “That means we’ll be seeing action soon. Heavy action.”
Five
The weather turned as sour as Wingate’s disposition. By 0500 the pale sky had turned deep, textured gray, and tiny spinning flakes of ice cut across the air. It wasn’t the soft, lyrical snowfall of Christmas at home. It was the punishing, slicing sleet of some sadistic god. By itself, the little slivers of frozen rain might be bearable. But the north, south, east and west winds were trying to blow their brains out. Occasional gusts reaching fifty miles an hour were logged by the company weathermen. It got so bad, in fact, that the engineering unit retreated back to their untrustworthy basement for protection.
When Wingate and Mergallo set off for Bender’s dwelling, they were not looking forward to their destination. By the time they arrived, however, the house was a welcome shelter from the storm. They left a blinding, buffeting maelstrom and entered a warm, dry, solid structure. It almost made them glad to see Bender.
This would be the major’s acid test, Wingate figured. If the man couldn’t find some middle ground between the sarcastic superior of the morning and the vicious disciplinarian of the afternoon, Mac would put his battlefield manner under severe scrutiny.
The two lower-ranking men headed for the still-roaring fireplace, moving in between a throng of officers. As they arrived, the man Mac knew as Second Lieutenant Tommy moved toward them.
“You waiting for the major?” the man asked, his reserved English accent still in great evidence. Wingate nodded. “I’ll tell him you’re here then.” With that, Tommy disappeared back into the throng.
Mergallo looked at Wingate with an expression that mingled interest with doubt. Wingate looked over the ever-busy group of officers—not one of whom seemed to be relaxed or enjoying himself—then turned inward, considering the rest of the afternoon’s activity. He had done his best to become familiar with the land and the situation while the engineers tried to salvage whatever was left under the pounds of blasted building. The high point of the afternoon came when Meyer ceremoniously presented him with what was left of his Sten gun—a twisted metal stick with a spring awkwardly sticking out of the top. Wingate thanked him profusely. And that was the high point, remember.
It was just as well, Wingate figured. The Sten was a rather optimistic piece of equipment to bring along in the first place. If he were really going to get into the thick of things, there was no way he could handle a machine gun. He wouldn’t want it bouncing off his back as he ran or getting in the way if he was doing some delicate defusing. Actually, his whole pack was excess baggage, brought along just in case. As it was, the krauts had made his stuff obsolete before he had a chance to use it.
Several hours before the sergeant and captain set out, Meyer had put together his own report and prepared to deliver it to his major-ship—as the corporal continued to call him since his last departure. Of the material belonging to the unit prior to the mid-morning attack, the only thing still usable were three out of ten knives and two rolls of white tape. Andrew Samuels’s condoms were basically unscathed as well, but Meyer left that out of his inventory. When asked what good those would do him on Anzio, Samuels had replied, “You never know.”
Meyer had a better answer. “An American soldier and an Italian partisan were hunting in the Padiglione woods—the forest between Anzio and Carraceto—when a voluptuous nude woman suddenly ran across their path. ‘Boy, would I love to eat that!’ the American said. So the Italian shot her.”
“Just hope the major doesn’t shoot you,” Schwartz suggested. “I don’t think we could find a rabbi to sing over your body on such short notice.”
“Rabbi, schmabbi,” Meyer said. “The major can’t blame me for the Nazis.”
“Don’t put it past him,” Charlie Dodson said. “He seems to blame us for everything else.”
Mergallo brought them all back to the matter at hand, but Wingate couldn’t blame them for worrying. He couldn’t help wondering himself what the erratic major’s reaction would be.
“Captain Wingate,” said Bender’s booming voice beside him. “Sergeant Mergallo. Good to see you. Right on time, too. That’s a good sign. A good sign.”
Wingate was impressed. Either Bender had extraordinary recuperative powers or he liked the idea that his last ten engineers were going into battle with three knives, two rolls of tape and a pack of condoms between them. Both the captain and sergeant saluted, which the major returned. From the way Bender was dressed—in full coat and gloves—Wingate gathered that the interior greetings weren’t going to last for long.
He was right. As soon as all their arms settled back to their sides, Bender got right down to cases with the manner of a child on Christmas morning. “The news from Corporal Meyer was not very good, as I’m sure the both of you know,” he began. Actually Wingate had to amend his simile. Bender wasn’t acting like a child on a holiday, he was acting like a parent who was proud of his gifts and anxious for the child to see the bounty. “But we were lucky; after the first wave of reinforcements came in this morning, a supply shipment came in. In it was some equipment I had been asking for. Gentlemen, if you will follow me …”
Bender plowed through the officers in much the same way he had plowed through the Italian civilians after he and Wingate had first met. Mergallo and Mac were right behind him once he had pushed the door aside and together they moved into the nasty night. Not much conversation was possible with the howling winds and punishing rainfall, so the three just moved forward in a fast walk, Wingate keeping Bender in his sight like a downed flier swimming toward a bobbing buoy.
Finally they arrived at a shack protected by a ring of closely parked tanks. If any shell were to fall on the area, they’d have to hit the tanks first. Bender threw open the door with a flourish and shined his flashlight on the equipment inside. Wingate recognized the material immediately. Along the wall were a variety of SCR 625 mine detectors. Next to them was one brand-spanking-new RCA AN/PRS mine detector.
“That should make our job a hell of a lot easier!” Bender shouted, as if finishing a proclamation from the king. “And take a look at this!” He moved away from the shack, closing the door gingerly. He walked around the structure and past the tank at its rear wall. Lying in the shadow of that tank was a smaller armored vehicle—a thing that looked like a scaled-down tank. But instead of a turret, it had what looked roughly like a bulldozer’s cab and on the front of it was a large, straight, toothless blade.
“A tank-dozer!” Bender explained, shouting against the wind. “Colonel Eklund and his civilian aide have just tested it. We’ve got the makings of an unbeatable force now, boys!” The major held up his finger. “And one more thing.”
He brought the men away from the tank dozer and led them to a regular Sherman tank. On its side Mac saw a sign proclaiming that this particular vehicle was named “O Mistress Mine.” All the tanks had names—the American Shermans and the British Honeys—but their monikers usually tended toward the bloodthirsty, like “Kraut Killer,” or toward the macho, like “Daughter Detector.”
“O Mistress Mine” turn out to have one hell of a train. Attached to its rear was a trailer which carried a three-hundred-foot-long steel tube.
“That’s either the longest Bangalore torpedo ever made,” Mergallo said right into Wingate’s ear, “or something I don’t know about.”
It was the latter. “That’s a ‘Snake’, boys!” Bender cried to the others. “It’s the thing that’s going to turn our part of the battle completely around!” The major then went into a rather animated description of what the device could do, which Wingate was forced to cut off with a hand signal. Most of Bender’s words were being blown out to sea.
Undaunted, Bender shooed the men back toward the officer’s club, a wide smile stretched across the lower half of his face. The trio went back the way they had come, their trip boosted by Bender’s high morale. It was even evident in his jaunty steps. Once they had gotten back to the comfortable one-story structure, Bender continued his lecture as if he hadn’t been interrupted.
“The 1st Armored Engineers adapted this baby,” the major went on. “You tow it behind the tank first, and then back it onto a minefield. It works like a charm. It’s going to make a big difference, boys, just wait and see!” Wingate was pleased that Bender’s disposition had improved, but he was worried about the supposed infallibility of the new equipment. He had used mine detectors before and they were far from perfect. Furthermore, the use of heavy equipment, like tanks and tank dozers—no matter their improvements—was fraught with disadvantages. Finally, Bender’s assurance could lead to problems. The only thing more dangerous than an incompetent leader was one who was too sure of himself.
“It still won’t be easy, sir,” he said, “considering the weather and the lack of men ...”
“Captain,” Bender said strictly, “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk! From you or anyone else. I won’t stand for it. The addition of the new equipment will more than make up for whatever losses we’ve suffered. I would put our dozen men next to any platoon on the beachhead. We’ll uncover more roadway than anybody, British or American. This I vow—and this you’ll help me implement. If I hear any of your lax or defeatist talk to the men, I will bust you lower than my lowest orderly.”
Wingate felt the heat of Bender’s words against his face. The background to the heat was a light aroma of grapes. The major’s diatribe had the closeness of an open blast furnace, but Mac didn’t wither. He didn’t even bend in its wind. He only acknowledged to himself that his worst fears might be confirmed. Bender seemed to be setting himself up as the emotional opposite to General Lucas. While the latter was overcautious, Bender was overanxious.
It was all right to act like General Patton as long as one kept a realistic view of the obstacles before him. Major Bender seemed to think that all the German traps were going to wither and blow away in the face of some minesweepers and a Snake.
But Wingate admitted none of these thoughts. The best way to deal with men like Bender was not to cross them in public. “Yes, sir,” was all Wingate said aloud.
Mergallo looked at the rest of the officers while the major came down on Wingate. Although his voice was low, it was loud enough for the crowd of officers to overhear. From what the sergeant could see, they were used to Bender’s sudden flare-ups. They all studiously ignored his dressing down of the captain, although some of their faces betrayed an unusual sympathy—whether it was toward Bender or Wingate, Mergallo couldn’t tell.
His anger dissipated for the moment, the major turned back to his appeasing, rational manner. “Second Lieutenant Tommy Woolcott will be our communications officer on this run,” Bender informed them. Woolcott had magically appeared at Bender’s side, his face strained but smiling.
“Pardon me, sir,” he said to Bender, “but all is ready for you in the briefing room.”
“Come on, then,” Bender summarily instructed the other two, as if begrudgingly allowing them a special treat.
The briefing room was actually more of a briefing hallway. It was a thin section in the back of the house with a map and blackboard along the long rear wall and on each abrupt side wall. The men were forced to look at one of these display boards shoulder to shoulder with the other field commanders. Bender left Wingate and Mergallo just inside the entrance and shouldered his way past four other officers ranging from sergeants to first lieutenants. No introductions were forthcoming, but Wingate could see from their shoulder insignias that they were from the 2nd New Zealand Corps.
