Trankic called to Docker. “Hey, Bull, I’m getting something.”
Docker walked to the jeep, but by then only static was sputtering from the speaker.
“What was it?”
“It was some English but mostly German,” Trankic said. “Maybe it’s a lot of bullshit. They say they got Bastogne surrounded. The Twenty-eighth Division is knocked off the line, the One-hundred-sixth is kaput. They say nine thousand men captured, ammo, gasoline, the works.”
Shorty Kohler said: “That’s the outfit the guy we picked up is from, the One-hundred-sixth. They got a lion on their shoulder patch, the Golden Lions, that’s what they’re called. Golden fuck-ups, you ask me. All fucking POWs now.”
Jackson Baird was seated on the tailgate of a truck, his helmet beside him. He had a mess kit of K-rations in his hands but wasn’t eating; he was watching the dog playing with Farrel and Sonny Laurel and his food had whitened with a powder of snow.
He looked strong and wiry, Docker thought, of medium height but on the thin side, with sandy brown hair, and what Docker’s father would have called a “good” jaw — hard and firm, a hint of stubbornness in its bony strength.
Docker had not yet had a chance to talk with him, so he joined Baird and said, “I’m Sergeant Docker. I’m going to tell you something just once now. Put your helmet on and keep it on.”
In a scramble, Baird put his mess kit aside, slid off the tailgate and crammed his helmet onto his head, buckling the chin strap with shaking fingers. “I’m... I’m sorry, sergeant. I was brushing snow from under my collar and I forgot that I took it off.”
“Okay,” Docker said. “Remember to keep it on. Where’s your rifle?”
“My rifle? I don’t know, sergeant, in all that firing, with the shells landing, it got knocked out of my hands.”
“Let me have a look at your dog tags.”
“Well, I lost them, too. I fell down the side of a hill and they got snagged on a bush or something.”
“You have a wallet, letters from home? Any ID at all?”
“All that stuffs in my musette bag. It was with my bedroll and I didn’t have a chance to get it.”
Docker said, “Start at the beginning, Baird. How did you get separated from your outfit?”
“Well, our company was on the left flank of the division somewhere near the Losheim Gap. The Fourteenth Armored was on the line north of us, I think.”
Shorty Kohler and Farrel and several others had gathered in a loose semicircle behind Docker.
“Yesterday morning — I guess it was around six o’clock — we heard artillery and saw a lot of rockets to the east of us. Then while it was still dark, the German tanks and troops came across the fields. It was like a nightmare after that, everybody running and shooting. There was so much noise we couldn’t even hear what the noncoms were telling us.”
Baird looked uneasily at the men standing behind Docker, his eyes shifting away from Kohler and Linari and Matt Larkin. “Nobody knew what was going on.” Moistening his chapped lips he pushed a strand of hair back under his helmet. “It was like, I don’t know — like we were caught in a tornado or something.”
“Who’s your commanding general?”
“Major General Jones. Major General Alan Jones.”
“And your company officers?”
“The company commander is Captain George Dilworth, sergeant. The lieutenant in charge of my squad was Lieutenant Rick Russo. Our sergeant was Floyd Greene.”
“Were you on guard when the Germans attacked?”
Baird nodded quickly. “Another private and me, Tommy Guthrie, we were posted about two hundred yards from company headquarters.”
“Did you sound an alarm?”
Baird moistened his lips again. “Sure, sergeant. I mean, we yelled and fired our rifles.”
“Did an officer or noncom tell you to fall back from your guard position?”
“I don’t know who gave the orders, sergeant.” Baird’s eyes were blinking more rapidly now. “But somebody yelled at us to get out of there. It might have been Lieutenant Russo or Sergeant Greene.”
Docker said, “Baird, you’d better try to remember your last orders. And who gave them to you. Because you’re at least a dozen miles behind your division now. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“I’m not sure, sergeant.”
Without any particular emphasis, Kohler said, “You’re a fucking deserter, that’s what the sarge is telling you.”
“At ease, goddamn it,” Docker said. “Baird, what happened to the other soldier on guard with you?”
“Tommy Guthrie? I don’t know, sergeant. After I fell down the hill, I didn’t see any of them again.”
“Where you from in the States, Baird?”
“Well, I was born in Chicago but we moved a lot. We’ve been living in New York State for the last ten years or so, in Peekskill—”
Trankic’s call to Docker interrupted. “Hey, Bull, you better get over here.”
Most of the men followed Docker to the radio, but Sonny Laurel stayed behind and looked at Baird, who was picking listlessly at his food. Tex Farrel stood nearby, holding Radar on the leash they’d made from strips of knotted tarpaulin. “I wish Kohler would keep his big mouth shut,” he said.
Baird saw them watching him and managed a narrow smile. He whistled to the dog. “Looks like he’s half Alsatian.”
“His name’s Radar,” Sonny Laurel said. “It’s what we call him anyway. We requisitioned him from Werpen.”
Farrel pulled the lunging dog over to the truck and gave the lead to Baird. “Hold him,” he said. “There’s foxes around here and he’d like to go AWOL.”
Sonny and Farrel slogged through the snow to the jeep, where the rest of the section stood with Trankic and Docker, listening to a miniature, static-threaded, voice.
“... a First Army unit, I’m sure, shoulder patches of the Seventh Armored...” The voice was British, exhausted but charged with tension. “This is Tail Gunner Euan Perlough in a farmhouse about a mile from the village called Baugnies. I have a bad leg since bailing out over Cologne. Made it this far on plain luck. There’s been a frightful massacre here... a hundred or more Yanks herded into a field and gunned down... cut down in their tracks with their hands in the air. Seventh Armored chaps, most of them...” The British gunner’s voice rose in a burst of emotion. “Command Group Peiper, it was his outfit... the Yanks had their hands in the air, thought they were being taken prisoner, some of them even laughing. More than a hundred in all, never a chance... at Malmédy...”
Silence then, broken only by humming threads of static. A few seconds later they heard, “I’d better make a try—” and then there was a final click and the set went silent.
Docker gave his orders, the sharpness in his voice discouraging discussion or reflection. “We’re pulling out. Nobody inside the trucks, everybody on the gun mounts, rifles off safe. Jackets open so you can reach grenades. No goddamn talking. Pitko, you ride shotgun in the first truck with Schmitzer. Shorty, take the cab with Trankic. Larkin, you and me in the jeep. Now let’s haul ass.”
When everyone was in position, the huge dog tied to the stake of the lead truck. Docker climbed into the jeep and pumped his fist twice and the two trucks followed him out of the clearing, their motors making a rasping sound against the heavy silence of the hills.
In the truck behind the jeep. Corporal Schmitzer slowly and carefully applied the brakes as they started down a slick grade. At his side, Pitko lightly stroked the pages of his Bible with his fingertips. Schmitzer peered out the open window and saw nothing but fogs and falling snow. Anxiety had created a cold twist of tension in his stomach; you couldn’t see the enemy, couldn’t fire at him, you couldn’t even run from him... His mood was agitated, bitter; he had seen the warmth between the three youngsters in the section — Sonny Laurel, Farrel and the straggler they’d picked up, that Jackson Baird. Their youth and excitement seemed to draw a circle around them, shutting everybody else out... He felt a sudden exasperation for Pitko and his Bible, which were both about as useless as the Hogman, if you got down to it... “Look, I don’t mind you reading your Bible, that’s your business, but keep an eye out your side of the truck, okay?”