For God and Country. Mark Bowlin

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ passed through the roadblock, and then took in the horrors of Campobasso. A much larger town than San Pietro, it had suffered somewhat less than total destruction, but the damage and loss of homes and businesses still shocked the soldiers who had yet to harden to the worst of the vicissitudes of war.

      1115 Hours

      Vasto, Italy

      The little procession had cleared numerous checkpoints, and they were without question in Eighth Army territory. The vehicles that they passed were a mix of Imperial equipment and American Lend-Lease, many carrying the scars of recent combat. The soldiers reflected an army as multinational as their own Fifth Army. Canadian, Indian, New Zealander, and British divisions comprised the heart of the Eighth Army, but other nationalities were also represented. Finley-Jones pointed out several small Asian soldiers that he called Gurkhas—“Splendid fellows,” he said. “Absolute brutes in battle.”

      The Canadian soldier was correct: there had been little traffic on the road to the coast, but it picked up dramatically as supplies raced to the front from whatever Italian ports on the Adriatic remained functional. All along the coastal road, Perkin and Sam saw the signs of recent combat, and Sam remarked to his cousin that he imagined it was what Georgia looked like after Sherman’s army swept through—buildings had been leveled on the streets to provide effective roadblocks; stores and hospitals had been looted by retreating German troops; and ancient stone bridges had been dropped into numerous streams and rivers. The soldiers from the Fifth Army held their breath as they passed over makeshift pontoon bridges and the amazing Bailey Bridges.

      When they reached the coastal highway, traffic slowed again. Kulis, after being tidied up, fell asleep once more. Perkin looked at his cousin, who seemed deep in thought.

      “Somethin’ on your mind? You ain’t said much this morning.”

      Sam looked around to see if Kulis was asleep, and then nodded. “After you and the boys turned in last night, I got around to reading Maggie’s letter. It’d been burning a hole in my pocket since mail call yesterday morning, but I wanted to, you know, read it in private.”

      “Is there somethin’ goin’ on back home?”

      Sam sighed, “I don’t belong here, Perk. I should be at home. With Maggie. It’s unfair to ask her to run that big ranch by herself. Unfair to wait for me all these years—we might not get home until ’47 or ’48, and we ain’t hardly doin’ anything here on the continent. We’re just now gettin’ started, and look how long the Great War took.” He looked hard off into the distance at a pasture that was bereft of animals.

      Perkin felt his cousin’s mood shift from self-pity to anger. “I don’t believe that, Sam. Once the second front’s begun in earnest, we’ll be home before you know it. I heard there’s more than a million dogfaces headed to England for the cross-channel landing. As soon as we get ’em across, the war’s as good as over. Hell, you’ve seen how well we’ve done here, and it ain’t like Italy’s made for modern warfare. I’m telling ya, we’ll meet the Soviets in Warsaw and have a hell of a party, and I promise it’ll be long before ’48.”

      “It don’t matter if we’re home by Christmas. This goddamned war is taking too long. It’s unfair for her to put up with all that crap.”

      “Bear, what did Maggie say to set you off so?”

      Sam hesitated, then said, “She was at our bank in Corpus to settle on a parcel of land that she bought over by Gum Hollow—”

      “That’s a bit from the ranch, ain’t it?”

      “Yeah, that’s OK. It’s some pretty property that abuts the back bay—we can go giggin’ for flounder there when we’re home.”

      “Oh Lord, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” Perkin said sincerely. “Except maybe trout fishin’ in the front bay. So what’s the problem at the bank?”

      “Well, she was waitin’ for her appointment, and she overheard two men talking. She looks over and one of ’em was old man Ebbins. Ronald’s dad.”

      “Uh-oh.”

      “Yeah, and he started to braggin’ to this other fella about how much money he’s made off the war—”

      “He didn’t!”

      “He did, and it gets worse. He keeps braggin’ and then tells this other man that he hopes the war goes on forever.”

      Perkin was disgusted. It was not that he didn’t know some people back home were profiting from the war, it was the unforgivable thought that a man with a son in a fighting unit in a theater of the war would voice such a sentiment.

      “I hope Maggie gave him a piece of her mind.”

      Sam’s frown disappeared and a proud grin spread slowly across his face. He reached over and slapped Perkin’s thigh with the back of his hand. “My girl did better than that. First she punched him in the face and knocked the old man down. Then she sat on his chest and slapped the hell outta him until the bank guard came and pulled her off. When Ebbins got to his feet, you know what that son-of-a-bitch did? He told the guard to hold her so he could hit her back. The guard wasn’t gonna do that, of course, but he was gonna have her arrested, until it came out what Ebbins said. Turns out the guard’s an old Marine and lost a son at Guadalcanal and has another boy missing in action from Makin Island. So the guard hollers out, ‘What the hell?’—although Maggie wrote ‘heck’—and he draws his nightstick and breaks old Ebbins’s collarbone faster than you can snap your fingers. I guess he was fixin’ to kill the old man, but the bank president stopped him first.”

      “By God, that woman’s got some starch!” Perkin slapped his hand down on the steering wheel. “It does my heart good to hear stories like that!”

      “Yeah, and believe me, that’s just her gentle side. But you know the Ebbins family ain’t likely to let that pass. I think that he would’ve pressed charges against her, except he’d either get laughed outta Texas for gettin’ beat up by a girl, or rode out on a rail for what he said. He tried to press charges against the guard, but the guard claimed he was defendin’ Maggie, so I suspect that’s that. Maggie says it likely won’t go nowhere. But all of that aside, I’m still worried about what Ebbins might try. Maggie wrote that she thinks some Mexican fella’s taken to followin’ her, and someone put sugar in her gas tank one day in town. My gas tank—it was my pickup, goddamn it! She made it to Gregory before it died on her, and she had to have the engine stripped completely down and cleaned—I don’t doubt that old Ebbins is up it to all.”

      “Oh, Sam.” Perkin looked at his cousin with concern. “You gotta be just sick. You want me to write Pop?”

      “He already knows. I am worried, but . . . well, Ebbins also got that guard fired from his job at the bank. So it looks like I now got a new employee—a former Marine who knows nothing about cattle, but always carries a Colt .45 that he brought home from Belleau Wood. Between her sharp tongue and that old Marine Gunny, I guess it’s Ebbins that ought to watch out!”

      1645 Hours

      Eighth Army Headquarters, Vasto, Italy

      “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m Captain Perkin Berger, the intelligence officer of the 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry, 36th Division. The classification of this briefing is secret. I would like to state up front that this is the work of Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Cardosi of the United States Navy. Commander СКАЧАТЬ