The Eleventh Man (49 page)

"I've had enough if you have," he called across the mound top to Maurice and they descended the steps of the hill to begin the journey back to Antwerp.

No sooner were they on the road along the foggy forest than the jeep popped around a corner near where a telephone line crossed and on the roadside just ahead were three American GIs, surprise all over them, arrayed at the closest pole. The pair in pole-climbing gear were about halfway up while the third one, carrying a rifle, stood guard.

"Minions of your Alexander Graham Bell at Waterloo," Maurice remarked, "what next?" He and Ben saw the guard call up to the others, then wave urgently for the jeep to stop.

As they pulled to a halt, the GI on guard stepped in close to the jeep and saluted. His winterweight field jacket and olive drab pants showing the grime of duty, his tone carried customary soldierly complaint. "Sure glad to see you, officers, isn't this weather crappy? They"—the universal infantryman's code for those in charge—"dropped us here to fix the line. Can you give us a lift, to catch up with the other fellows?"

"Willingly," said Maurice, elegantly courteous beyond what the soldier seemed to have expected. Ben looked at the reddened hands clutching the rifle. He chipped in some down-to-earth sympathy over standing around in the snow guarding Signal Corps handymen. "They've got you riding shotgun on the spool crew, have they. That can't be fun. Who's going to be around here except tourists like us?"

The soldier, no youngster, glanced around nervously. "Sir, looking out for infiltrators. Strict instructions, sir."

Maurice lifted an eyebrow skeptically. "This far from the front? That would be ambitious of the Huns." Overhead, Ben could see the pair of linemen feverishly squirreling into work position at the top of the pole, apparently eager for the jeep ride. The one leaning back in his climbing belt at the top said something to the lower one, who fumbled in the tool bag at his waist to hand up a set of wire pliers. It occurred to Ben, under the circumstances, to make conversation with the soldier at the side of the jeep. "What did you think of the Army-Navy game?"

"Army beat them good, hah?" the GI responded appreciatively. "Twenty-three to seven, right, sir?"

"Navy never stood a chance against guys who can run the ball like Pilchard and Travis," Ben offered his analysis. Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel during this football talk, Maurice looked over at him with abstract curiosity. Ben breezed on, "I didn't get to hear the game, so I missed out on the details—who got the touchdowns?"

The soldier worked at remembering. "Pilchard and Travis had one each, I think, sir."

Ben reached casually to his side and pulled out the .45 pistol. "It's Blanchard and Davis,
kamerad.
" Then shot the man in the shoulder before he could yank the rifle up into action.

With that one crying out in German as he writhed on the ground, Ben for good measure fired a couple of shots up at the phone-line saboteurs. One hurled the tool bag and hit the hood of the jeep as Maurice jammed into reverse, while the other sought the skinny shelter of the pole as he tried to pull a pistol from the unfamiliar American holster with a flap. The jeep careening backward was well out of range down the road, when Maurice swung it around and tromped on the accelerator.

As the jeep roared its way back to the main road, they could already see a confusion of American and British military traffic ahead, armored vehicles streaming toward the German breakthrough on the Ardennes front and ambulances forcing through in the opposite direction. It was mid-December, and the moving wall of oblivion that Allied troops would call the Battle of the Bulge was set into motion.

(TPWP priority dispatch—Antwerp—byline Reinking)

German armored columns pierced the Allied lines in a surprise counterattack today along the Ardennes front. The offensive, spearheaded by tanks, took advantage of a ghostly infiltration by English-speaking Germans in U.S. Army uniforms who cut phone lines and changed road signs, sowing confusion behind the lines from the Ardennes forest to Antwerp.

Royal Air Force Lieutenant Maurice Overby and I witnessed this dark art of sabotage at a place haunted with history's bloody joust of armies, the battlefield of Waterloo. Our jeep was hailed by a rifle-carrying soldier, his GI uniform appropriately grimy and a footslogger's usual complaints ready on his lips....

Apprehensively, Ben watched while Maurice read the piece, as if chewing every word and letting it digest. The wire clerk, bored, took off his glasses, polished them, held them up to the light, polished them some more.

Finally Maurice issued with a polite but firm frown: "Sorry, Ben, but this simply cannot be let pass."

No, no, goddamn it, Maurice, oh please. My biggest story of the war and you're going to sit on it. Why couldn't you tell me that before I busted my butt writing it?
Anguished words building in him for what he knew would be a futile protest, he was stopped by the censorious finger significantly tapping the first sheet of copy paper.

"Flattering as it would be to have my name entered in posterity in this fashion," Maurice was holding forth, "you must strike it. Regulations." He handed Ben the full set of pages.

"That's it? That's all?"

"Right." Unmoving as a crate, Maurice stood watching Ben's pencil slash out his name and dab in substitute wording. He nodded in satisfaction and walked off as Ben thrust the pages to the waiting wire clerk.

(New lede—byline Reinking)

Allied forces are trying to regroup along a shattered Ardennes front, where German tank columns shadowed by Wehrmacht foot soldiers in snow-colored camouflage uniforms have advanced nearly a quarter of the way to Antwerp. The surprise breakout, bulging 25 miles into Allied lines, was aided by German infiltrators who snarled communication lines before the armored attack. (Pick up previous piece as follows.)

A Royal Air Force officer and I witnessed this dark art of sabotage at a place haunted with history's bloody joust of armies, the battlefield of Waterloo...

As transmissions of combat reports filtered in to the wildly clattering wire room, Ben pieced together the picture and updated his story time and again. He eyed Maurice warily each time he handed him a new first page, but invariably it was handed back with that benign nod.

All that night and into next day—Ben had lost track of time—as the German attack careened through surprised Allied forces, the only interruption to his flow of story was the periodic message from Tepee Weepy: G
REAT STUFF, KEEP SENDING
.

(6th new lede—byline Reinking)

The bulge in the line of fierce fighting along the Ardennes front has grown hour by hour, as Allied forces fall back from the brunt of the desperate German counterattack. Smoke arose outside abandoned command posts as Christmas mail not yet distributed to American troops was burned to keep it from falling into German hands. Communications among Allied forces still suffer from the snipped phone lines and misdirected road signs inflicted by infiltrators. (Pick up previous piece as follows.)

A Royal Air Force officer and I witnessed this dark art of sabotage...

"That's it, I must tell you, Ben." Maurice was just back from the command bunker. "HQ has had orders from Supreme Headquarters to halt all news reports except official releases. Which is to say, no news."

"Take a break," Ben blearily told the slumped-over wire clerk and saw him off to the beverage urn. He turned around to Maurice, rubbing his eyes and trying to work the kink out of his neck from all the hours bent over teletype machines. "Just between you and me and the red pencil that didn't come out of your pocket, why did they let me get away with what I sent?"

"Interesting situation," Maurice mused over it as if it were a problem in chess. "Our general was quite firm about making it known to the world this German breakthrough is a nasty business for us. What is the American term, to set up a howl?" His tone turned solemn. "All the combat reports indicate the bulge, so-called, is aimed directly here, to retake Antwerp. Shut down the port, cut our forces in two at the same time," he made a sweeping gesture to illustrate the extent of the strategy, "it makes quite good sense from the Hun point of view, doesn't it. Therefore HQ here thought wise to put the word out—your words, actually—before Supreme Headquarters clamped down on the embarrassing news that the Germans caught them with their trousers very much down."

Practically dead on his feet, Ben moved off from the TPWP teletype, clapping Maurice on the shoulder as he passed. "Tepee Weepy and me, always glad to be of service."

Moxie was taking the Battle of the Bulge personally. Wound tight, he sat on the edge of his bunk as if about to spring. "Those sneaky Kraut SOBs. They're going for broke." It was the best military analysis Ben had heard yet. "Goddamn it, Reinking, are we still going to get out of here tomorrow?"

Propped in the doorway, Ben answered with each sentence taking effort. "If the USO bunch gets here, I don't see why not. The brass will have to get them back out, and they can squeeze us onto the plane. Maurice keeps checking, the flying looks Okay—the Luftwaffe isn't so much in this, it's more a hell of a ground attack." He looked at the man rooted to the bunk and before he knew it heard himself saying what he was thinking: "You know, Mox, there's no law that you couldn't get off your duff and see what you can find out—"

"I am. I have." Moxie shifted to one side on his perch, then right back. "I was about to tell you. I hunted up our ack-ack intelligence officer, we go back a long ways together. They figure when Supreme Headquarters gets its head out of its butt, they'll be able to stop the Germans about halfway here. Ten days or two weeks. It's going to get worse before it gets better." He gnawed his mouth at the next news. "Ben? They're pulling my crews and some of the others to throw them into it as anti-tank outfits. Those ninety-millimeters can knock the turret off a Tiger tank. But it's frontline fighting, they could get overrun awful damn easy the way the Germans are rolling."

"Then aren't you lucky you're here and not there." Ben teetered away from the doorframe. "I need chow and sleep. Hold the fort, Captain Stamper."

He was forking down scrambled powdered eggs and sausages that tasted like sawdust when the wire clerk came looking for him.

"Sir, the Hollywood major wants to see you."

"The which?"

"The rec officer. He's big on USO shows and the bigger the movie star"—the clerk's glasses glinted as he cupped his hands in front of his chest to indicate the category of big—"the better he likes it."

Food and fork forgotten, Ben tried to see past the opaque gaze of the clerk. Was this the ticket home? Or the next thing the war had up its sleeve? "Does that mean the USO troupe is here? On the ground?"

"Yes, sir. Landed from Prestwick about an hour ago."

Now Ben was halfway up out of his chair. "Where do I find this major?"

Giving him a
where else?
look, the clerk answered: "In the Wonder Bar, sir."

The bunker corridor near the Officers' Club looked like a backstage that had dropped into a theater basement. The black pebbled leatherette cases of musical instruments were arrayed along the concrete base of the wall. People not in military olive drab, standing out like peacocks, bustled in and out of rooms. Passing one, Ben glimpsed the movie actress famous for choosing the shyest fuzz-cheeked soldier in the audience for the honor of sprinkling delousing powder down her back. Elsewhere, several band members were in a card game with the comedian whose jokes fed off how skinny he was. Picking his way in through the clutter of the USO troupe, Ben found the Wonder Bar all but unrecognizable—a temporary stage across one end and tables and elbow room banished to make space for wall-to-wall rows of folding chairs. Trying to tally it all, he felt cocooned in a weird mix of silly dream and nightmare. Not a hundred miles away soldiers were dying in droves in the German surprise attack, and in here was show business as usual, setting up to manufacture songs, patter, and jokes. Half-heartedly he tried a pep talk on himself: just get through this travesty of Antwerp's war; the Duke of Wellington had danced in Brussels a few nights before Waterloo, hadn't he? Morale of the troops, what antics are committed in thy name.

"Good, good, you're here. Ted has been wanting to see you." The major who had materialized and was patting him on the upper arm had chalky eyebrows and the hatchet face of a deacon. Amid the semi-chaos of entertainment being set up he was looking as pleased as could be. "I'll take you over and introduce you."

"That's okay, sir. We've met. Long ago."

Ben steeled himself and headed toward the familiar snap-brim hat in the small huddle near the stage steps. Bareheaded bored newsreel technicians stood on either side of Ted Loudon. The taller one, evidently a cameraman, was saying reluctantly: "All right, we can shoot that if we have to. What's the name of the damn place again, the Roxy?"

"Where do you think you are, back in palookaville?" Even in what passed for conversation, the sportscaster's pace of talk anymore was the fastest an ear could keep up with. "It's the Rex, you're in a country with a king, get it? So what I want is—" He caught sight of ginger hair and an impassive longitudinal face. "Ben Reinking! Captain Reinking. Captain on the gridiron, captain in the service of his country." The idea seemed to entertain the contriver of the Supreme Team and much else. "What a piece of luck you're here to be on the show with Moxie, two heroes for the price of one." He waved off the newsreel crew. "You know the drill, boys. See you when you get back. Ben, you still look like you're in great shape. Bet you could still run down one of Moxie's passes. Hey, I wonder if—"