Standing at the Scratch Line (8 page)

“Where’s Second Squad?” Professor asked. “Are they down there where the Germans are looking?”

“Below the bridge. They got the assignment to blow it up,” the sergeant answered quietly. “If all has gone well, they’ve laid the detonators by now and are safely hidden somewhere on the other side of the gorge.”

“You can’t cross that river anywhere down near here. It’s deep and the water’s rushing too fast,” LeRoi observed. “If they ain’t come up to the road, they probably still down below the bridge somewhere.”

“Then it’s on us to save their asses!” the sergeant asserted. “Let’s get this first assignment out of the way. Big Ed, you position the machine gun on that shelter. If you hear shots fired, the first thing that I want you to do is take out that telephone line.”

“Who gon’ work the mortars?” Big Ed asked.

“Don’t worry about the mortars. We won’t fire them until the squads are clear or the bridge has been blown. I’ll send someone to check and make sure the outbuildings are empty.”

Professor and LeRoi reported to the lieutenant in a stand of trees where he was meeting with the headman of the local civilian brigade. The meeting place was about a half mile from where Big Ed had set up the Vickers, about five hundred feet from the train depot.

“Yes, Tremain and Morris,” McHenry said as he hurriedly returned their salute, “we have a job for a couple of sharpshooters. I’ve been telling André that you are two of the best shots in the whole division.”

A short, squat man stepped forward and held his hand out to LeRoi. LeRoi was momentarily hesitant. Other than Captain Mack and his family, he had not met many whites who extended the true hand of friendship. And the army’s code of conduct, of course, made it official that Negro servicemen were inferior. He stared into the man’s blue green eyes, looking for evidence of patronization. Finding none, he shook his hand.

“He say you very good shot.” André nodded his head, a smile crinkling his eyes. “Maybe you hit something so we see?” He handed Professor and LeRoi Lugers with metallic cylinders attached to the end of the barrels.

Professor shook his head. “I’m better with a rifle.”

LeRoi took the second Luger and fired one bullet from each gun into the trunk of a tree twenty yards distant. The guns’ discharges sounded like muffled thuds. The sound of the bullets hitting the tree made more noise than the actual firing of the guns. LeRoi noticed that the gun in his left hand fired low while the one in his right seemed true. He switched hands and pointed to a row of pine cones on a lower branch of the tree that had been his original target. He fired the guns in steady succession, hitting pine cones with each shot. He quit when all the pine cones had been shot off the branch.

“Formidable!”
declared André. “But can you kill Germans with such accuracy?”

Now it was LeRoi’s turn to smile. “Anytime.”

Professor was situated above the depot on the ridge leading up to the Vickers machine gun. It allowed him a clear view of the railroad tracks and the depot. LeRoi hid among the outbuildings. He had on a German greatcoat and a German helmet. The Lugers were in his hands and extra magazines were in his pockets. He took several deep breaths as the sound of clanking drew nearer on the tracks. The first team of soldiers on a handcar came into view. There were eight men on the first car, four of whom were industriously involved in cranking the car along. The remaining four were watching the countryside with their guns at the ready. One man carried a Lewis machine gun in the crook of his arm. LeRoi resolved to kill him first.

There was no wind. There was no sound of birds. There was only the distant metal clatter of the handcar drawing nearer in the surrounding silence. LeRoi did not stop to consider that he was about to take more human lives. He had adapted to the rules of war. An enemy soldier’s life or death was nothing to him. The Germans were merely things to be killed. If he mourned at all, it was for the colored dead, men with whom he had shared coffee and jokes over small fires, men whose personalities and conversations were now lost in unrecorded history. LeRoi saw his breath as he exhaled and thought that at least there would be no lingering smell of death.

The handcar cranked up to the depot. The four soldiers who had supplied the power took seats and rested while three of their companions leaped down to check out the depot. The man with the Lewis stayed on the handcar and watched warily. LeRoi waited until his back was turned and started walking toward the handcar. He wanted to get close enough to get a sure shot. When he was within twenty paces, one of the resting Germans saw him and shouted halt.

LeRoi answered with guns blazing. The man who shouted and the man with the Lewis were dead before they hit the ground. Two other men were killed by fire from the other side of the tracks. The fifth soldier was seriously injured and fell off the handcar. Only the man’s shout had been heard; the soft thudding sounds of the silencers were lost in the general activity. Of the three soldiers who had entered the depot, two were killed as they exited and the third threw down his gun in surrender and was taken prisoner.

The dead were dragged away and the ambushers returned to their hiding places, awaiting the next arrivals. LeRoi was the first to the Lewis machine gun. He picked it up and carried it, plus a forty-pound box of ammunition, behind some trees at the edge of the clearing. The Lewis weighed forty-five pounds and, as a much smaller weapon than the Vickers, was more suited to the type of missions to which LeRoi’s squad was assigned. He wanted to make sure his squad got to use it.

The second handcar was more difficult to attack. The soldiers did not come in all the way, but stopped some distance from the depot and hailed the soldiers who had preceded them. When there was no answer, the soldiers started to crank in the opposite direction, but LeRoi opened fire on them from behind the last outbuilding. Three soldiers fell off the handcar. His opening fusillade made the crankers drop the crank and grab their weapons. Their return fire splintered the wood above his head. LeRoi ran around to the other side of the building and emptied his guns at the figures on the handcar. He threw himself backward down in the snow behind the building to avoid giving the Germans a target. He popped new magazines into his Lugers and got to his feet cautiously. A salvo of pistol fire from the opposite side of the tracks caught the Germans in a cross fire of whizzing bullets.

The skirmish was over before the Germans could fire again. No one was left alive on the handcar. The riders on the last handcar had appeared in time to see their comrades fall. Their crankers were working energetically to return from whence they came. Shots began to ring out along the track as snipers began to take their toll on the German soldiers who struggled to pump the handcar along.

The steady drumming of the Vickers echoed over the ridge. Big Ed was following orders. On the ridge behind him, LeRoi heard Professor’s Springfield fire at a measured pace. Across the tracks he heard the lieutenant shout, “Cease Fire! Cease Fire!”

A couple of the German soldiers, lying near the tracks, were struggling to sit up. One actually pushed himself erect to a sitting position. LeRoi aimed one of his Lugers at the man’s head, but the voice of the lieutenant stopped him.

“Hold it there, Tremain! I ordered cease fire!” The lieutenant and a Negro soldier named Ike Evans were crossing the tracks, walking toward the injured Germans. “We are not savages, Tremain! Just because we’re at war doesn’t mean we have to act like we’re from the jungle!” With a wave of his hand, McHenry sent Evans to check on the Germans. “If I have to speak to you about this again, I’ll have you up on charges. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” LeRoi responded, thinking that he’d rather shoot the lieutenant than the Germans.

Two shots rang out and Evans fell over backward and hit the snow with a grunt. The seated German had a smoking Luger in his hand, pointing directly at the lieutenant, who was twenty feet away. The German laughed and blood dripped out of his mouth. He coughed and raised the gun. McHenry stood transfixed, like a hare caught in the gaze of a snake.

The German hesitated and did not pull the trigger, perhaps savoring the power of the moment. His delay saved McHenry’s life. LeRoi had been waiting for the German to shoot the lieutenant. When he didn’t, LeRoi got impatient and shot the German in the head. He also shot the other German, who was still moving, and then slowly swung the barrel in McHenry’s direction. He was seething. Evans had been in his induction group.

“Good shooting, Tremain,” Sergeant Williams said, slapping LeRoi on the back as he came running out of the trees. Williams kept running until he reached the spot where Evans was lying. Williams stooped quickly, checking for vital signs, but there were none. André, following the sergeant, trotted past LeRoi, and said,
“C’est bon. Très bien!”

Slick came walking down the tracks from the depot. He was talking loudly. “Some shootin’. I saw you from the top of the depot. Boy, you was smokin’! I wonder if there is some kind of medal in all that? They probably don’t give medals to colored folks, huh?” Slick’s voice was loud and his tone was taunting. He had seen LeRoi save McHenry’s life. Now he was testing how far he could stretch the lieutenant’s gratitude. Slick walked up to LeRoi with the upturned palm of his hand stuck out to be slapped, as if he and LeRoi shared some private joke.

LeRoi looked from Slick’s face to his hand, then back again. “You always stirring shit, ain’t ya? You always try to drag in somebody else too. Let me tell it to you straight.” LeRoi popped the magazines out of his Lugers and checked the rounds as he spoke. “I stir my own shit and I choose whether I’m gon’ jump in it or not. I don’t need no extra.”

“You awful high and mighty,” Slick sputtered. “I saw you was ready to kill Mr. Charlie. You ain’t fooled no one but maybe the fool himself. How come you just got to ignore my hand? Just pretend like you didn’t see it? That ain’t right!”

“You’s the one pretendin’,” LeRoi answered. “You was signifyin’ at the lieutenant the whole time you was talkin’. You wasn’t talkin’ to me. That’s yo’ shit. Then you want to pretend that I was part of it. Like drag me in without me havin’ no say at all? You the one that’s wrong. I cut you slack ’cause you’s a bunk mate, but you usin’ up my patience!”

“Ah, man, you always take things the wrong way. We supposed to be tight! You’s way too sensitive!”

LeRoi stood up and went over to where he set the Lewis down and checked out the gun for damage. He was still checking the action of its breechblock when Williams walked over to him.

“I just want you to know, Tremain, that I saw you from the trees and I saw you struggling with temptation. It’s the temptation that every colored man who has worn a uniform for his country has felt at some time during his military service. I’m glad you fought the temptation and won. You’ll find it doesn’t make much difference anyway. They just send a new fool and he ends up being worse than the man who preceded him. You do better if you can reach an understanding, because there are all sorts of fools in the service. Prejudice is the army’s middle name.”

“Seem to be the first name and last name too,” LeRoi commented dryly.

“LT, I been part of this man’s army for over twenty years. I rode with the Rough Riders in Puerto Rico. We were still called ‘buffalo soldiers’ then. There’s been many a time that I had my sights on a white officer and a couple times I had to go ahead and pull the trigger, but I never did it in a way that would bring dishonor on the reputation of the Negro fighting man. Too many colored men have died maintaining the honor of their uniform for us to lose all that because of one hothead.”

LeRoi looked up at the sergeant with surprise. He was speechless. He never expected to hear ‘Old-Follow-the-Rules-to-the-Letter’ Williams say that he had ever thought about killing a white officer, much less admitting he had killed a couple. He felt a new respect for the sergeant.

“There’s something else, son,” Williams continued. “Prejudice is like gravity. You can’t waste time thinkin’ about it. You just have to keep on pushin’ against it. You just worry about bein’ a man and you’ll do yo’ part in the struggle.”

“Don’t you just want to explode sometimes?” LeRoi asked. “Don’t you want to say to hell with the rules?”

Williams shook his head. “No, I’m doin’ my part. The toughest thing about bein’ a man is not explodin’! You see, because of soldiers like me, with blood and guts and spit and polish, one day there’ll be a Negro general in the army; maybe even in yo’ lifetime.”

“You got ‘Frontline Fever’ if you believe that!” LeRoi scoffed.

“If I didn’t have that as my dream, I would explode! There’d be nothin’ to sacrifice for!”

“I feel like explodin’ all the time!” LeRoi admitted. He held up his thumb and index finger. “Sometimes I’m this close!”

“A man has got to find himself a star and head for it,” Williams asserted. “It’s got to guide him through the trials! Killin’ comes easily to you. You got to watch yourself. You don’t want to lose your soul!”

“Sometimes I wonders if I got a soul,” LeRoi mused.

“It takes a bit of livin’ to find it,” Williams acknowledged. “You gon’ be alright. You one of the men that I count on to do right. You got the weight of many lives on your shoulders. I need you to be strong. Don’t disappoint me!”

“You don’t have to worry, Sarge. I ain’t gon’ do nothin’ that’s gon’ bring dishonor on the Three hundred Fifty-first.”

“Good, here’s your first test,” said Williams. “You’re going to need all the restraint you have because Red McGraw and his rednecks are coming up here. André’s people saw them coming up from the river. We’re all going to need a lot of discipline. We can’t let them draw us into any fights.”

LeRoi shook his head disbelievingly. All the colored soldiers had heard about McGraw and how he and his squad had lynched two colored soldiers because they had been seen with French white women. It was common knowledge that the army had conducted no investigation into the two deaths and McGraw’s squad had gone unpunished.

“How come they sending McGraw out here?” LeRoi asked. “Don’t they know his feelings about colored people?”