"German paratroopers," someone yelled. "There's Krauts landing all around us." The group scattered, the previously quiet spectators screaming and firing their weapons into the air, fear replacing their sideshow glee.
"No!" I hollered, as loud as I could. "No, they're not Germans!"
No one listened. Guys pushed past me, running for cover, sprinting off the beach to save their lives. I watched the parachutes descend over the water, their bright whiteness as clear as if they'd been lit from beneath. One by one the canopies flattened, floated on the surface, then disappeared, each pulled under by an American paratrooper carrying his body weight in gear, weapons, and ammo. We were slaughtering our own.
I fell to my knees. I knew what this was. A reinforcement drop of the 82nd Airborne Division's 504th Regimental Combat Team, over two thousand men carried to the Gela Plain drop zone on C-47 transports. I ticked off the facts in my mind as if I were reading them from a report. I must have, before I came here. The navy was supposed to have been alerted. Whatever the plan was, it hadn't worked.
The firing died down. The transport planes had either made it over, or been scattered or shot down. How many, I thought. How many dead? I pounded my fist in the sand, the thought of our guys killing our own men a poison inside me. My skin went clammy. I gasped as if the wind had been knocked out of me. I cradled my head in my hands and cried, gushing tears and sobs. A small voice in the back of my mind asked, What's the matter with me? I didn't have an answer. What I'd seen was terrible and tragic, but why was I doubled up in agony, bawling like a baby?
That little voice didn't last long. I was sick to my stomach and vomited until dry heaves racked my body, while tears and snot ran down my face. I cried at the agony of useless death, then I cried for myself, scared I was losing my mind. I crawled off the beach, into a patch of scrubby brush, and curled up, hands tucked under my armpits. I was cold. I didn't want to think about it. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I couldn't hold it back. The wall was cracking, and names and faces flew at me. One of them was a friend of mine, I was sure, and I had killed him.
CHAPTER SIX
I watched the dawn light the soft, fluffy clouds over the Mediterranean, slowly turning darkness into red-tinged daylight. Sitting on a crate of mortar rounds I drank coffee, cupping my hands around the aluminum cup to take in the warmth. I blew on it, but the hot rim still burned my lips.
It had been cold last night when I left the beach and made my way up the road to find a place to sleep. A navy shore-party crew let me bunk in their tent, no questions asked. I fell asleep in a minute but an hour ago I'd awakened with a start, bolted upright, heart racing, not sure where I was, but certain I was being chased. A bad dream, I guess. I left before the swabbies woke up and thought of any embarrassing questions to ask me.
There were always guys walking around the rear area. Some of them belonged, some didn't. I looked like I didn't belong anywhere. No helmet, no weapon except my. 45, and no unit I could claim as my own. I pinched an M1, a bandolier of ammo, and a helmet, then walked into a mess tent for some joe, filled my cup, and took some hot biscuits. At least I looked like I was going somewhere.
The sun was fully up. From behind me came the noises of a waking army-clanks, grunts, footsteps, curses, splashing water-rising in volume, accompanied by the sound of gear being buckled on, the soft tinkling and clinking of grenades and canteens and ammo clips that signaled a new dawn, an awakening to the possibility of death, maybe only one last day of life.
Out at sea, ships still moved back and forth, ferrying supplies and men, breaking the waves with purpose, cutting across water where hours ago helpless paratroopers had drowned. That was yesterday, this is today. That much I remembered about war. That was then, and it was horrible. This is now: Get some hot chow while you can, you have a chance to live another day.
There was something else I remembered but I was afraid to say it. Not actually say it, since I was alone. I mean even to think it. It lurked in the back of my mind like the aroma of a sweet strawberry ready to be eaten. I liked strawberries, especially when my mom served them with cream flavored with powdered sugar. At the kitchen table, in our home, in South Boston.
I let the words come, speaking them softly in my mind.
I like strawberries. And my name is Billy Boyle.
That was enough. There was other stuff, other memories, but they weren't from my mom's kitchen. I blinked and shut the door on them. I didn't want to know more, not yet. I drank some more coffee. It had gone cold.
Three British Motor Torpedo Boats sped across the bay a few hundred yards offshore. Their engines were deep and throaty, their wakes high, white, and frothy. They cut across each other and sent angry foam lapping against the beach. My stomach knotted, and I closed my eyes, scrunching them up tight. I felt my hand shake as coffee spilled out over the rim of the cup. I dumped it into the sand and packed my gear, my back to the sea. The sea. Flashes of ocean water flitted across my mind. The dirty harbor. Bone-chilling cold water. Scrambling over sharp rocks to the shore. Hot sun, palm trees. Then nothing. Pieces of a story that still made no sense.
Forget about it, I told myself. I knew I had to move on before some officer or sergeant starting asking questions or put me into a work detail. I had an idea; it wasn't much, but I had a couple of names. I had Harding, but somehow I knew he wasn't the first person I should approach. I listened to the MTBs in the distance, their motors growling low as they faded away. My thoughts were jumbled, and a wave of confusion and sweat broke over me. More images I couldn't make out flashed through my mind. Not water this time but a fire. Something about a fire, and an explosion.
I couldn't think about it now. I had to focus. Focus on Harding, yeah, hard-ass Harding, the last guy I'd want to run into. Unless I was going to turn myself in. West Point, by the book, a professional soldier. Not one to cut corners, and I needed a lot of corners smoothed out for me. I had to have help, but it had to come from someone who didn't live by U. S. Army field manuals. I trudged up from the beach, head down, M1 slung over my shoulder. Another GI heading up to the front or on some chickenshit errand for an officer. I thought some more about Harding. He was a lifer, but he didn't enjoy lording it over the enlisted men either. OK, Harding was all right for an officer. But I still couldn't go to him. I was surprised by my own thought: I respected him too much to put him in that position. It was odd learning who I was in bits and pieces, through fragments of dreams, splintered memories, names bubbling to the surface. A lot of it worried me, some of it frightened me, but finally this was something worthwhile I could hang on to. Something that wasn't bound up in dirty water, fire, and death.
Kaz. That name surfaced as quickly as I could say it. I could go to Kaz. I was amazed when I managed to remember his full name: Lieutenant-sometimes Baron-Piotr Augustus Kazimierz. Real Polish nobility, and there weren't many of them around anymore. I wasn't worried about putting Kaz in a tough spot. He didn't do things by the book, at least not anymore. Why was that?
I knew Kaz had been studying languages at Oxford when the war broke out, and that his entire family had been butchered by the Nazis. He'd talked his way into a commission with the Polish Army in exile, despite his bad eyes and bum ticker. They'd given him a job as a translator with Eisenhower and somehow he'd ended up working with me. There were memories with cobwebs around them and others down a deep black hole I couldn't even get close to. Kaz still wore cobwebs, and the dark hole blotted out my vision whenever I thought too hard about him. But I knew I could count on him. We were close, closer than I would've ever thought I could be to a skinny little four-eyed Polack genius.