I watched the dawn light the soft, fluffy clouds over the Mediterranean, slowly turning darkness into red-tinged daylight. Sitting on a crate of mortar rounds I drank coffee, cupping my hands around the aluminum cup to take in the warmth. I blew on it, but the hot rim still burned my lips.
It had been cold last night when I left the beach and made my way up the road to find a place to sleep. A navy shore-party crew let me bunk in their tent, no questions asked. I fell asleep in a minute but an hour ago I'd awakened with a start, bolted upright, heart racing, not sure where I was, but certain I was being chased. A bad dream, I guess. I left before the swabbies woke up and thought of any embarrassing questions to ask me.
There were always guys walking around the rear area. Some of them belonged, some didn't. I looked like I didn't belong anywhere. No helmet, no weapon except my. 45, and no unit I could claim as my own. I pinched an M1, a bandolier of ammo, and a helmet, then walked into a mess tent for some joe, filled my cup, and took some hot biscuits. At least I looked like I was going somewhere.
The sun was fully up. From behind me came the noises of a waking army-clanks, grunts, footsteps, curses, splashing water-rising in volume, accompanied by the sound of gear being buckled on, the soft tinkling and clinking of grenades and canteens and ammo clips that signaled a new dawn, an awakening to the possibility of death, maybe only one last day of life.
Out at sea, ships still moved back and forth, ferrying supplies and men, breaking the waves with purpose, cutting across water where hours ago helpless paratroopers had drowned. That was yesterday, this is today. That much I remembered about war. That was then, and it was horrible. This is now: Get some hot chow while you can, you have a chance to live another day.
There was something else I remembered but I was afraid to say it. Not actually say it, since I was alone. I mean even to think it. It lurked in the back of my mind like the aroma of a sweet strawberry ready to be eaten. I liked strawberries, especially when my mom served them with cream flavored with powdered sugar. At the kitchen table, in our home, in South Boston.
I let the words come, speaking them softly in my mind.
I like strawberries. And my name is Billy Boyle.
That was enough. There was other stuff, other memories, but they weren't from my mom's kitchen. I blinked and shut the door on them. I didn't want to know more, not yet. I drank some more coffee. It had gone cold.
Three British Motor Torpedo Boats sped across the bay a few hundred yards offshore. Their engines were deep and throaty, their wakes high, white, and frothy. They cut across each other and sent angry foam lapping against the beach. My stomach knotted, and I closed my eyes, scrunching them up tight. I felt my hand shake as coffee spilled out over the rim of the cup. I dumped it into the sand and packed my gear, my back to the sea. The sea. Flashes of ocean water flitted across my mind. The dirty harbor. Bone-chilling cold water. Scrambling over sharp rocks to the shore. Hot sun, palm trees. Then nothing. Pieces of a story that still made no sense.
Forget about it, I told myself. I knew I had to move on before some officer or sergeant starting asking questions or put me into a work detail. I had an idea; it wasn't much, but I had a couple of names. I had Harding, but somehow I knew he wasn't the first person I should approach. I listened to the MTBs in the distance, their motors growling low as they faded away. My thoughts were jumbled, and a wave of confusion and sweat broke over me. More images I couldn't make out flashed through my mind. Not water this time but a fire. Something about a fire, and an explosion.
I couldn't think about it now. I had to focus. Focus on Harding, yeah, hard-ass Harding, the last guy I'd want to run into. Unless I was going to turn myself in. West Point, by the book, a professional soldier. Not one to cut corners, and I needed a lot of corners smoothed out for me. I had to have help, but it had to come from someone who didn't live by U. S. Army field manuals. I trudged up from the beach, head down, M1 slung over my shoulder. Another GI heading up to the front or on some chickenshit errand for an officer. I thought some more about Harding. He was a lifer, but he didn't enjoy lording it over the enlisted men either. OK, Harding was all right for an officer. But I still couldn't go to him. I was surprised by my own thought: I respected him too much to put him in that position. It was odd learning who I was in bits and pieces, through fragments of dreams, splintered memories, names bubbling to the surface. A lot of it worried me, some of it frightened me, but finally this was something worthwhile I could hang on to. Something that wasn't bound up in dirty water, fire, and death.
Kaz. That name surfaced as quickly as I could say it. I could go to Kaz. I was amazed when I managed to remember his full name: Lieutenant-sometimes Baron-Piotr Augustus Kazimierz. Real Polish nobility, and there weren't many of them around anymore. I wasn't worried about putting Kaz in a tough spot. He didn't do things by the book, at least not anymore. Why was that?
I knew Kaz had been studying languages at Oxford when the war broke out, and that his entire family had been butchered by the Nazis. He'd talked his way into a commission with the Polish Army in exile, despite his bad eyes and bum ticker. They'd given him a job as a translator with Eisenhower and somehow he'd ended up working with me. There were memories with cobwebs around them and others down a deep black hole I couldn't even get close to. Kaz still wore cobwebs, and the dark hole blotted out my vision whenever I thought too hard about him. But I knew I could count on him. We were close, closer than I would've ever thought I could be to a skinny little four-eyed Polack genius.
I stopped. There it was. He was Polish. I was Irish, Boston Irish. I hadn't even thought about my family. Of course I was Irish, goddamn it! I kicked at a stone and kept going. Something in my head wasn't right. I kept thinking in circles, avoiding things, even the most obvious, natural facts of my own life. It felt like there was a barrier around some dark hole, filled with lost memories.
Lost? Or terrible? I trembled, afraid of finding that dark hole filled with nightmares. Instead, I thought about strawberries and walked onto the shore road, picked a direction and started off at a brisk march, rifle slung, just another GI under orders. The heat reflected up from the road and shimmered ahead of me. A few yards away from the breeze off the water and I felt the sweat begin to soak my wool shirt. A convoy of deuce-and-a-half trucks thundered by, each towing an artillery piece. Tires kicked up dirt and the wheeled artillery bounced on the uneven road, creating a dust storm as they went by. I shielded my eyes and pressed my lips together as dry, chalky particles settled on me. Head bowed, I didn't notice a column of soldiers on the other side of the road, standing back and waiting for the trucks to pass. It was the Italian they spoke that drew my attention.
There were over fifty POWs, most of them complaining about the bastards who got to ride in trucks that left them covered in dust on a hot road. I couldn't understand their Italian words, but I didn't need to. The long-suffering tone of the infantryman was universal, along with the hand gestures offered to the trucks disappearing around a corner. Two dogfaces guarded them, one at the front, the other at the rear of the column.
The Italian prisoners looked like a parade of happy hobos. With their lethal potential stripped away, they were nothing but a bunch of unshaven, smelly guys wearing all the clothes they owned. Some carried blankets or canvas bags, but most had nothing but the smiles on their faces. They were out of it. No more Germans at their backs, no more Americans gunning for them. They looked relieved as their two guards signaled them to move out.
One of the Italians looked at me and gave a mock salute, shouting out, "Brooklyn!" at the top of his lungs. He and his pals laughed. Did he imagine he'd be joining a cousin or brother in Brooklyn? Or was it joy at his overwhelming luck at being safely in American hands?
"Boston!" I yelled back. Someone whistled and more laughter rippled through the group. The tail end guard looked at me and shook his head, smiling wearily.
"What a war," he said, running his sleeve across his face, vainly trying to clear the caked dirt and sweat away.
The gesture nearly knocked me over. I envisaged another guy doing the same thing but in fading evening twilight. He was coated in grimy blackness and he drew his sleeve across his face just like this GI had. Except he was wearing an Italian uniform.
"Hey, buddy, where're you taking these guys?" I asked as I trotted across the road. I was looking at the GI but seeing the Italian soldier leaning over me, helping me up.
"POW center outside of Gela, place called Capo Soprano," he said. "They're givin' up faster than we can take 'em in."
As he spoke, I could hear another voice, a voice I recalled from days earlier.
"Come, my friend. I help you, yes? Come, my name is Roberto. Do not fear, I will take you back, then you help me get to America, yes?"
Roberto Bellestri. Late of the 207th Coastal Defense Division, a machine gunner who preferred dancing with American girls to killing American GIs. An Italian who chose to live rather than die for Mussolini. A deserter who was looking for safe passage to a POW cage at the first sign of invasion.
Roberto had talked incessantly as he took me-where? "I like Americans very much, I talk with the American ladies in Firenze, which you call Florence, every day in the piazza. They teach me their English better than my teacher at school, yes?" I could feel my arm across his shoulder, I had been hanging on to him as he led me down steps, to a street. Where?
"You OK?" The guard snapped his gum as he stared at me, concern, curiosity, and boredom mixed in his quizzical expression.
"Sure, sure, been out in the sun too long, that's all," I said.
"Ain't that the truth." He trudged off, his carbine, held loosely, pointing in the direction of his prisoners. They weren't high escape risks.
Roberto. Who only wanted to go to America and dance with rich women and learn better English. I couldn't picture where he had picked me up, but I knew it was where I'd gotten hit on the head and cut up. We'd gone down a dirt path and onto a street. The next thing I remembered, Roberto was lifting me into a cart, tossing out cauliflowers to make room, hollering in Italian and waving a pistol at a short guy in a dirty shirt and black vest who obviously owned the cart. He'd reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out fistfuls of lire, throwing them at the cart owner, who stared in amazement at the shower of cash, pulling them out of the air with meaty fists. The gold handkerchief with the L had come out with the lire and lay in my lap. I'd known it was important, and that I shouldn't lose it. As I stuffed it back into my pocket, the Sicilian caught sight of it. This loosed a torrent of apologetic Italian, directed at me, with little bows and an abashed smile. His hands, stuffed with lira notes, waved us off and he ended his outburst with the sign of the cross. Roberto climbed onto the seat and grabbed the reins, clucking at the donkey, who ambled off with a slow gait that led us away from his former owner, now richer than the donkey could have ever made him, but more frightened than he should have been by the sight of an ordinary silk handkerchief.
Capo Soprano, outside of Gela. I had to find it, and find Roberto. Because not only had I remembered all this, I remembered he'd been shot. Three GIs had come toward us, one of them pointing at me. Roberto had called to them from the cart, "Here, I save your wounded friend, Bill-lee Boyle from Boston, yes? Come help us."
In response, one of the soldiers had raised his carbine and fired. Roberto had gone down, clutching his side, blood seeping through his fingers. "Why have you shot me? I am a friend, your friend, yes?" His eyes looked up to me, wide with shock and surprise. Then some other vehicles had arrived, and some GIs had taken Roberto away as medics bundled me into their jeep.
Next thing I knew, Rocko was hovering over me in the field hospital. And I realized it was Rocko who'd aimed his carbine and shot Roberto. I couldn't remember the face of the guy who'd pointed at me first. But it told me something: Rocko and his pals had been out looking for me, and they'd known where to look. Since I was coming in from enemy territory, they had to have been in touch with someone behind enemy lines.
For that matter, the same went for me. I felt the handkerchief under my T-shirt and wondered at the power it had wielded over the fellow who had given up his cart so willingly, lire or no lire.
Yegg. A yegg is a safecracker. It came to me as easily as an apple from a grocery stand back on the beat in Boston. My memories were beginning to fall into place. A safecracker. The guy in Rocko's tent, he'd wanted to find their safecracker. Why? It didn't make any sense.
Sure it did. A bank heist in the middle of a war. Who 'd notice?