One time we caught a German lieutenant who told us they thought we were division level-maybe sixteen thousand strong. I doubt we even had sixteen hundred then. You couldn’t blame him, though-there were almost a hundred thousand Allies on that beach, and our piss-ant unit was assigned one quarter of the line.”
I tried phrasing my next question delicately. “Mr. Kearley, I know you were all skilled in unarmed combat, silent killing, and the rest, so I don’t mean any disrespect, but sometimes in those situations-given the backgrounds of some of the men-the opportunity must’ve popped up to be a little more thorough than was necessary.”
He was totally unfazed. “Nut cases, you mean? We had a few. Almost none of them survived, though. Things had a way of catching up to them. Antoine wasn’t one of those, anyway. He was just really good at his job.”
“Actually,” I continued, “I was thinking more about non-combat situations. You know-competitive, violent men, literally under the gun for days on end. I was wondering if any of them took it out on their fellows-like Antoine.”
Dick Kearley thought a moment. “Charlie Webber and he had it out one night. It started normally enough-guys were always razzing each other-but I guess it got personal. Anyhow, we had to break them up, which we usually didn’t bother doing-we’d take bets instead.” Then he shook his head. “But it didn’t last. Couple of weeks later, they were on patrol together, pulled off a good one, and that seemed to do the trick. If anything, it brought them closer together ’cause they were thick as thieves after that. That kind of thing occurred pretty often.”
He rubbed his chin, thinking back. “It’s really hard to say, though. There were so many people who would’ve been in jail if they hadn’t joined the Force, and a few who ended up there anyway, for rape or murder or whatever. In fact, in every place we were stationed, including Burlington, at least one local business had its safe blown. They never pinned it on anyone, but we knew it had to be one of us. We weren’t all that way, of course. We had college professors, too. But there was a rough element.”
He looked up at me as if I’d just appeared. “’Course, you were asking about Antoine. He wheeled and dealed with the best of them-made money stealing stuff and selling it to the troops, pimping for girls he conned to keep us company, especially at Anzio where we had time on our hands. But he wasn’t one of the vicious ones.”
“He might have pissed one of them off, though,” I suggested.
Kearley didn’t deny it. “Could be.”
“When was the last time you saw Antoine?”
“The outskirts of Rome. We were the advance element, like always, ordered to secure all the bridges across the Tiber. The Krauts had declared it an open city, but I guess either word hadn’t reached everybody or they were jerking us around. Even after we’d cleared the bridges and had actually entered the town, there were enough snipers around that you had to watch your step. From what I heard, that’s how Antoine bought it-probably chasing some skirt.”
“But you didn’t see it happen.”
“No. We were in different parts of town.” He paused and looked at the picture of Deschamps again. “I was sorry to lose him. There weren’t many of us left by then-not who went all the way back to Helena.”
“Do you know who might’ve been with him?” Paul asked.
“No idea. Things could get pretty fluid, ’specially if you combined something like the Forcemen with a city like Rome, ready for the plucking.”
“How about the officer who signed off on the death papers?”
Kearley shook his head. “I doubt it. We had more active front line officers than any outfit I knew, so don’t get me wrong-Frederick himself was a general by then, and still doing recon patrols behind the lines. But generally that kind of paperwork wasn’t done with a whole lot of care. Someone would hand over a set of dog tags and tell the officer what happened and that would be it. And sometimes that ‘what happened’ part wouldn’t be much more than, ‘got hit by a sniper’ or whatever. It could get a little vague, especially the way we were always way out front.”
“What about Webber?” I asked. “You said they were close. Would he know?”
“He might’ve known,” came the answer, “but he’s dead, too. I think he caught one in France. The Champagne Campaign, they called it, except for the dumb turkeys that got killed in it. Anyway, I was home-bound by then, so I don’t really know.” He paused and scratched his head, looking around at the bookcases. “But I might have it here somewhere. After it was all over, I went around collecting everything having to do with the Force-documents, books, articles, pictures. Kind of gave me something to do after all the excitement. It was a little hard adjusting…”
His voice trailed off as he began scrounging through the shelves, finally straightening up with what looked like a thick old log book.
“This might have it-a roster listing guys in, out, KIA, all the rest.”
He spread it open on top of one of the bookcases and flipped through its contents-page after page of names in columns.
“Here we go,” he finally said. “Webber, Charles.” He ran his finger along the line and then grunted softly. “KIA-body not recovered. Might mean he went over the hill.”
“Deserted?” Paul asked, sounding shocked.
Kearley looked up at him, obviously insulted. “Not that way. We never had a man run under fire-never. But you’ve got to understand the way we were. The Force wasn’t standard military. It was all volunteer, and it was made crystal clear from the start that no one expected us to survive. And that’s how we were treated. Got an impossible job? Send in the Forcemen. Even if they get wiped out, it’s no big loss-bunch of dumb crooks anyway. That was the attitude. We were there because we wanted to be, not because someone ordered us. And when it was all over, some of us left the same way-under our own steam. The assholes who kept trying to get us killed called that desertion, but to us, it was just leaving after a job well done, no muss, no fuss. I read an article by an old Force officer who went back to the battlefields after the war, and he said he met dozens of supposed MIA Forcemen or KIAs ‘without bodies’ who were living in France and Italy, married with kids, who’d just decided to set down roots where they were. Made more sense than going back home to jail or poverty or a life they’d run out on in the first place.”
He closed the book. “I don’t know what happened to Charlie Webber. He was probably blown to bits and never found. But he might be living over there right now, happy as a clam. I think he’s dead, though, ’cause if he’d made it, he’d be living where you come from-Vermont.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, startled. “He have family there?”
“Hell, no. That would defeat the purpose. It’s just that when we were in Burlington, he never missed a chance to leave base and explore the state. Used to say it was Heaven on earth and a bunch of other crap-made it sound like a woman. We used to kid him about it.”
The old man’s shoulders slumped at the thought and he lowered himself into the room’s one chair, as if conceding defeat. “I wish I’d had someplace like that. Instead, I came back here and spent the rest of my life in a brewery, going through wives till I finally gave it up.”