But it was clear from Brock’s body language, as well as the menacing presence of three or four of his rough-looking buddies, that the rule of finders keepers no longer applied. It had been supplanted by the law of the jungle. The jungle, in this case, being the bombed and blasted streets of Bastogne.
Brock squared his shoulders and stood directly in front of the GI, blocking his path. The GI’s giddy smile faded. He was sobering up fast. Brock held out his hand for the bottle, and the GI acquiesced.
However, the GI lingered, seemingly uncertain as to what to do next.
Brock gave him a shove, and the smaller man stumbled back a few steps.
“Get lost before you get worse than that,” Brock growled. “Maybe you can find yourself some milk and cookies.”
Brock and his cronies laughed as the confused GI scurried away, processing the fact that he had just been the victim of a strong-arm robbery.
“You sure told him, Brock,” said a soldier to his right. Everybody in the squad called him “Brock” — no nickname necessary. Deep down, he took pride in the fact that “Brock” had a certain ring to it, like one of those movie stars who always played a tough guy.
As for the squad itself, it was more like his personal gang than a military unit. The boys did what he said, no questions asked. Vern was more or less his right-hand man, with Walt “Boot” McCann a close second. Boot had gotten the nickname because a girl at a roadhouse bar had turned him down when he’d asked her to dance, saying he was ugly as a boot. His army buddies weren’t about to let that one go.
“Damn straight, Vern,” Brock replied. “No sense lettin’ good liquor go to waste on that poor excuse for a soldier.”
They made short work of the bottle even before they reached the impromptu hospital where one of his buddies from home had ended up.
His buddy’s name was Charlie Knuth. Charlie had been a star athlete and popular guy in high school, one of those genuinely nice guys everybody liked, but more than that, he was one of the few people who had actually seemed to like Brock, somehow seeing past his bullying facade to a quality in him that was worthy of friendship. Maybe it was the fact that Brock was loyal to a fault.
They had played baseball together and even gone out on a couple of double dates, which usually ended up with Brock and his girl making out in the front seat, and Charlie and his date making out in the back seat.
They had kept in touch during the intervening years after high school, playing baseball or going out for a beer from time to time. Then the war had come along, and like so many old friends, they had lost track of each other as young men from home headed in different directions, either to fight the Krauts or the Japs.
Whatever good qualities Charlie had seen and encouraged in Brock had not been improved by army life, and he had mostly reverted to his bullying ways.
Inside the hospital was nothing but confusion and misery. Wounded covered the floor in rows, bandaged and in various stages of suffering. Brock searched for his old friend but was soon distracted.
“Hello, beautiful,” Brock said rudely to a young woman working as a nurse. He made no effort to hide the fact that he was ogling her from top to bottom, though the nurse was barely more than a teenager. “What are you doin’ after the show?”
She hurried past, ignoring Brock, her arms loaded with bandages. Most of the American men were respectful and kind, grateful for her efforts, but she had learned that there were always exceptions to the rule.
As the light from a window she was passing caught her face, Brock could only stare, coming to the sudden realization that the nurse he’d just seen appeared to be a young Black woman. Light skinned, to be sure, but Black all the same. Someone of her race was a rare sight in Belgium.
He wondered what she was doing here. Back home in Florida, the Jim Crow laws ensured that there were separate hospitals for Blacks and whites. Separate schools and water fountains too. He was taken aback by the color of her skin, not to mention the fact that she had given him the brush-off.
“Uppity broad,” he said to her retreating figure, with little care as to whether she overheard him. He turned to an orderly nearby. “Hey, bub.”
“What is it?” The orderly wore a white armband and the haggard expression of someone who had seen too much grief and heartache in too little time.
“How come we’re letting a Black girl look after our boys?”
“If any of them don’t like it, they can join the corpses outside,” replied the orderly, who hurried on, his demeanor suggesting he had no patience for fools such as the one he had just encountered.
Little did Brock and his cronies know that this was the young woman who would go down in history as the “Angel of Bastogne” for her tireless care of the wounded. Years ago, her mother had fled war in the Belgian Congo to begin a new life in this peaceful town — only for her daughter to find war on her doorstep here in Bastogne.
