“Yes, of course, Father Dalakis. Take me to the poor boy.” The captain looked confused for a moment, but recovered quickly. He nodded and we followed him to the sidewalk where the wounded were laid out. The dying soldier was obvious. A kid set apart from the others, a medic at his side, holding a bloody compress to his chest. The captain knelt by him.
“Hans, Hans,” he said, squeezing the boy’s hand. Hans opened his eyes, his straw-colored hair splashed across his forehead. His eyes were crystal blue, and seemed to be looking at something far, far away. I didn’t want to do this, but I couldn’t say no. It didn’t seem right, since only a priest could perform the sacrament. But Hans was dying, and he’d never know the difference.
“I have no holy oil,” I said to Kaz. I heard Kaz whispering to the captain, hopefully a story that would hold up. I was glad he didn’t let Hans hear. I got down on my knees, took Hans’s hand from the captain, and laid both of my hands on them, just as I’d seen Father Kearny do back in Boston.
“Vater?” Hans gasped. The captain said something reassuring, and Hans focused on me. With each breath, a thin, pink bubble formed on his lips, then burst. His eyes widened, waiting for me to perform the blessing. He gasped in pain as he fumbled at his neck and held up a small medal. Saint George, the patron saint of soldiers, the slayer of dragons. He kissed it, and I struggled to remember the words I needed to say, hoping they’d give comfort, and not betray my falseness.
“Through this holy unction may the Lord pardon thee, whatever sins or faults thou hast committed. Thus do I commend thee into the arms of our Lord.” The benediction flowed without thought, from that place where I kept all things holy, memories of what I had been taught about goodness before I learned evil. I laid Hans’s hands, still clutching the medal, high on his chest, above the bandage. His breath was ragged and his eyes desperate. He knew he was about to die. I touched both his hands with two fingers, then his forehead, just as Father Kearny would have anointed him with oil. He took hold of my hand, both of his hands bloody from his wound, as tears fell across his cheeks. He was a boy, but old enough to kill and be killed in turn. I leaned in close to his ear, and whispered a fragment of a prayer that had always stayed with me. “May He, the true shepherd, recognize you as one of his own. Amen.”
Hans squeezed my hand, and with a rattle of breath from his lungs, let go. I leaned back, aware of a circle of soldiers around me, their heads bowed. I was in the presence of mine enemies, as the old psalm said, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. I unclenched Hans’s hand from mine and stood. The captain took my hands and poured water from a canteen over them, washing away the sticky blood, perhaps my falseness too, but certainly not my sins. “Danke sehr,” he said.
“I am sorry,” I said, and could not look him in the eye. I had probably committed a sin against the clergy and church, if not God himself. Maybe Hans would put in a good word for me.
Kaz took me by the arm and turned me toward the train. No reason to linger, he was right. We hadn’t gone ten steps when the captain called out to us, “Moment!” He pointed to us, and two soldiers led by a sergeant trotted our way, rifles at the ready. Kaz and I looked at each other, wondering how we’d given ourselves away and what to do. If we ran, they’d cut us down in seconds.
“Komm,” the sergeant said, motioning us to follow him to the train. We trailed him, the two others on either side of us. The platform was full, lines of soldiers and civilians waiting to board the train. The sergeant pushed his way through with a ruthlessness that spared no one. Angry shouts went up, but no one in the crowd objected to the small formation. At the door to our railcar, we saw the holdup. Several SS men in gray dress uniforms were questioning everyone boarding the train, checking identity papers and consulting clipboards with long lists of names.
Our sergeant spoke to the SS men and in no time an argument erupted. I glanced at Kaz, but this was no time to ask for a translation. Behind us, more shouts broke out, and I saw the wounded from the trucks being led toward the train. The lead SS guy was yelling something at the sergeant, his hand on the pistol in his holster. That was a mistake, since the sergeant held a Schmeisser MP-40 submachine at the ready and had a squad of men on the way. He and the other soldiers pushed the security detail aside and waved the wounded and their medics on board. There was a lot of indignant shouting, but the SS knew they were outnumbered, and by actual combat soldiers at that. They retreated to a corner of the platform and glared at everyone who looked their way, lighting cigarettes and shaking their heads.
The sergeant gave us a smile and a wave as the train pulled out, crammed with travelers, the wounded, and perhaps a few other fugitives. I couldn’t help waving back. I even smiled. It was one crazy war.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Italian partisans, ” Kaz whispered. “They mined the road, then machine-gunned the convoy. The captain said he headed here to put the wounded on the train for Viterbo, since it was the fastest route to a military hospital.”
“That’s why the SS was checking papers: looking for partisans,” I said. “We’re lucky he took a liking to us.” The groans of the wounded increased as the train took a curve. Stretcher cases were laid over the seat backs, and the less seriously wounded lay beneath them, or sat up if they could.
“I don’t know if we need to worry, Billy,” Kaz said, in a very low whisper. “I think our papers are real. Have you studied them? The letters have Vatican watermarks.”
“Even so, my guess is those SS bastards are going to want to get back at these boys for being pushed around. When we get into Viterbo, I’d bet on a heavily armed reception committee. Watermarks or no, I don’t want to get caught up in that.”
“But we have someone to meet at the station,” Kaz said. “Trust in the Lord, Father Boyle,” he said in a louder voice as the conductor passed us by. The train moved slowly on switchbacks around a mountain, and then sped up on the downside. Kaz and I finished what food we had left, and watched the countryside slip by. We were running along a riverbed now, in a narrow valley with a parallel roadway. I watched the wounded, and was glad they were all well enough to move and speak, even if in moans. I didn’t want to go through last rites again. It was one thing to kill an enemy soldier in combat-bad enough, but necessary. But Hans’s death came after the adrenaline of the fight, one more fatal aftermath, a passing that lingered for the living to witness longer than anyone wanted. I wished for death at a distance, if I had to deal in it at all. Not as close as Hans, with his wide blue eyes and wet tears, fooled in his last moments by another soldier in disguise.
“Jabos!” one of the Germans yelled, his head out of the window, craned at the sky. I knew that much German. Jagdebomber was the word for fighter-bomber, the curse of anything moving, and this train was moving straight and slow. I looked out of my window and caught a glimpse of two single-engine aircraft banking away, probably getting set up for a run. They looked like P-47 Thunderbolts, and that was bad news. They carried rockets and bombs, along with eight. 50-caliber machine guns, which could turn these cars into toothpicks within seconds. Voices rose into frantic screams as the word spread, a cacophony of German and Italian that didn’t need translation. The train seemed to pick up speed, the engineer probably pouring everything on, opening up the throttle and hoping to outrun the deadly planes. But where was there to go?
We rounded a curve and I could see what he was heading for. A bridge spanned the river we’d been following, and then the tracks entered a tunnel in the next hill. Plumes of white steam flowed from the locomotive; the chug-chug sound sped up, as the pistons drove the wheels faster. The engineer opened the steam whistle in one long, mournful note, for no reason I could see, except that I knew I’d do the same.