Dexter hurried over to his foxhole to check on him. ‘He’s like God.’
‘You mean
‘I mean God is everywhere.’
Not long after, with their combat casualty rate nudging sixty per cent, they were pulled out of the mountains and assigned to the thirty-two-mile-long stalemate that was the Anzio beachhead. Caught unawares by the amphibious landing deep behind their lines, the German army had soon retrenched and began throwing everything they had at the Allied forces, intent on driving them back into the sea. Penned in like cattle in a narrow corral, they were strafed and bombed from the air. Long-range 88mm and 170mm artillery shells rained down on them day and night, as did the flak from their own anti-aircraft guns, almost as deadly.
That first month, shell fragments accounted for almost all of their casualties. When a lone shell burst killed the three Canadians with whom Conrad was playing a game of horseshoes one dismal gray afternoon, the other men in the outfit began avoiding him.
No one ever voiced it straight to his face. They didn’t need to; it was clear what they were thinking. In its apparent eagerness to spare Conrad, Death seized those around him instead. Even the young, poorly trained replacements shipped in to bolster their dwindling ranks knew of his reputation and kept their distance.
Only the Professor sought out his company, and then only in order to play chess. Driven below ground into the warren of trenches and dugouts by the constant aerial assaults, they relieved the torpor of static warfare by rigging radio sets from razor blades, using pilfered tank headsets to tune into ‘Axis Sally’s’ broadcasts. They made light of her taunts, while being strangely drawn to the sultry lilt of her voice. They speculated about her looks, settling on a pleasing confection of Jeanne Crain and Lana Turner—part girl-next-door, part smoldering temptress—and they described in salacious detail exactly what they would do if given a few hours alone with her in the suite of a top hotel. Above all, though, they tuned in to her because of the music. You might be huddled in a damp hole on the edge of the Pontine marshes, but thanks to Sally you could still listen to the very latest songs from back home. Their standing as a commando force to be reckoned with had been secured by their successful assault on Monte la Difensa, where the US 3rd Infantry, the 36th, and the British 56th had all tried and failed before them. They now raised that reputation further on both sides of the front line with their deep-penetration night raids out over the Mussolini Canal, stepping gingerly through the minefields, employing a little psychological warfare of their own, leaving calling cards on the foreheads of their unsuspecting victims emblazoned with the message: DAS DICKE ENDE KOMMT NOCH!—The Worst is Yet to Come.
They came and went like ghosts in the night, using their guns only as a last resort, their weapon of choice being the combat knife. A fear soon took a grip of the enemy troops ranged directly across from them on the eastern flank of the beachhead. They learned from German prisoners that they were known as the ‘Black Devils’ or the ‘Devils in Baggy Pants’ because of their loose, billowing mountain fatigues.
They didn’t take as many prisoners as they might have, but then the nature of the lightning raids didn’t allow for it. Likewise, any of their number captured while on patrol was more likely to end up on the Killed in Action roster than on a truck bound for a German stalag. The first infringement of the Geneva Conventions that Conrad witnessed was committed by a man in his own unit—a part-Indian fur trapper from Vermont. It had proved impossible to sustain his levels of disgust, though, for within a week he too had joined the club. You told yourself that that was war, and maybe some even believed it. Others suspected and feared that the reasons lay closer to home, in some darkened corner of themselves.
It was a dirty conflict, a war of attrition, and by the time the order came through for the breakout from the beachhead many of those whom Conrad had originally trained with in the mountains of Montana were dead, maimed or otherwise unfit for line duty. Exhaustion and disease had claimed a fair number, mental imbalance more than you could ever have predicted.
One night, after a particularly severe pounding by the German 88s, Reg Horley had stripped off, hurled himself into the Mussolini Canal and started swimming in circles, kicking beneath the surface every so often. When he was finally dragged from the water he explained, between racking sobs, that he was looking for his father’s wristwatch. It was a mildly amusing incident, but you knew you were in trouble when the medics started losing it.
The Professor was one of the few beacons of sanity in the madness unfolding around them. Some warned him about his association with Conrad, but the Professor seemed content with their games of chess and their nocturnal forays to recover the bodies of fallen GIs. They rarely touched on the subject of their other lives, placed on hold on the far side of the world. The one time they had done so, it hadn’t gone well.
‘What do you hunt?’ the Professor had asked while they were setting up the board one night.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Last night when you picked off that Jerry trying to outflank us—swing-lead-squeeze,’ he said, demonstrating. ‘One shot, no waste. I figure you hunt, you know, back home.’
‘Black duck, quail, coot, some deer,’ said Conrad. ‘You?’
‘Canadian geese. We get a lot in southern Illinois, though we near wiped them out twenty years back, squeezed the season down to a month.’
Conrad told the Professor about Sam and Billy Ockham—their little hunting trio—tramping through the frosty underbrush on winter mornings, crouching in duck blinds, rowing their sharpies out to Cartwright Shoals for some open-water coot shooting, and poaching wild turkey in the primeval forests of Gardiner’s Island during the Depression.
A little while later, the Professor looked up from the board. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you kill a man,’ he said.
‘I guess,’ said Conrad.
‘How does it feel?’
Conrad shrugged the question off, could have played on in silence, but he stepped through the door the Professor had opened, regretting it later.
‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘How it feels.’
‘I couldn’t do it.’
‘You might have to.’
‘Some things you know.’
