Black Ass at the Cross Roads, Ernest Hemingway

“Black Ass at the Cross Roads,” a completed short story, was written between the end of World War II and 1961.

Black Ass at the Cross Roads

WE HAD REACHED THE CROSS ROADS before noon and had shot a French civilian by mistake. He had run across the field on our right beyond the farmhouse when he saw the first jeep come up. Claude had ordered him to halt and when he had kept on running across the field Red shot him. It was the first man he had killed that day and he was very pleased.
We had all thought he was a German who had stolen civilian clothes, but he turned out to be French. Anyway his papers were French and they said he was from Soissons.

“Sans doute c’était un Collabo,” Claude said.
“He ran, didn’t he?” Red asked. “Claude told him to halt in good French.”
“Put him in the game book as a Collabo,” I said. “Put his papers back on him.”
“What was he doing up here if he comes from Soissons?” Red asked. “Soissons’s way the hell back.”
“He fled ahead of our troops because he was a collaborator,” Claude explained.

“He’s got a mean face.” Red looked down at him.
“You spoiled it a little,” I said. “Listen, Claude. Put the papers back and leave the money.”
“Someone else will take it.”
“You won’t take it,” I said. “There will be plenty of money coming through on Krauts.”

Then I told them where to put the two vehicles and where to set up shop and sent Onèsime across the field to cross the two roads and get into the shuttered estaminet and find out what had gone through on the escape-route road.

Quite a little had gone through, always on the road to the right. I knew plenty more had to come through and I paced the distances back from the road to the two traps we had set up. We were using Kraut weapons so the noise would not alarm them if anyone heard the noise coming up on the cross roads. We set the traps well beyond the cross roads so that we would not louse up the cross roads and make it look like a shambles. We wanted them to hit the cross roads fast and keep coming.

“It is a beautiful guet-apens,” Claude said and Red asked me what was that. I told him it was only a trap as always. Red said he must remember the word. He now spoke his idea of French about half the time and if given an order perhaps half the time he would answer in what he thought was French. It was comic and I liked it.

It was a beautiful late summer day and there were very few more to come that summer. We lay where we had set up and the two vehicles covered us from behind the manure pile. It was a big rich manure pile and very solid and we lay in the grass behind the ditch and the grass smelled as all summers smell and the two trees made a shade over each trap.

Perhaps I had set up too close but you cannot ever be too close if you have fire power and the stuff is going to come through fast. One hundred yards is all right. Fifty yards is ideal. We were closer than that. Of course in that kind of thing it always seems closer.

Some people would disagree with this setup. But we had to figure to get out and back and keep the road as clean looking as possible. There was nothing much you could do about vehicles, but other vehicles coming would normally assume they had been destroyed by aircraft. On this day, though, there was no aircraft. But nobody coming would know there had not been aircraft through here. Anybody making their run on an escape route sees things differently too.

“Mon Capitaine,” Red said to me. “If the point comes up they will not shoot the shit out of us when they hear these Kraut weapons?”
“We have observation on the road where the point will come from the two vehicles. They’ll flag them off. Don’t sweat.”
“I am not sweating,” Red said. “I have shot a proved collaborator. The only thing we have killed today and we will kill many Krauts in this setup. Pas vrai, Onie?”

Onèsime said, “Merde” and just then we heard a car coming very fast. I saw it come down the beech-tree bordered road. It was an overloaded grey-green camouflaged Volkswagen and it was filled with steel-helmeted people looking as though they were racing to catch a train.

There were two aiming stones by the side of the road that I had taken from a wall by the farm, and as the Volkswagen crossed the notch of the cross roads and came toward us on the good straight escape road that crossed in front of us and led up a hill, I said to Red, “Kill the driver at the first stone.” To Onèsime I said, “Traverse at body height.”

The Volkswagen driver had no control of his vehicle after Red shot. I could not see the expression on his face because of the helmet. His hands relaxed. They did not crisp tight nor hold on the wheel. The machine gun started firing before the driver’s hands relaxed and the car went into the ditch spilling the occupants in slow motion. Some were on the road and the second outfit gave them a small carefully hoarded burst. One man rolled over and another started to crawl and while I watched Claude shot them both.
“I think I got that driver in the head,” Red said.

“Don’t be too fancy.”
“She throws a little high at this range,” Red said. “I shot for the lowest part of him I could see.”
“Bertrand,” I called over to the second outfit. “You and your people get them off the road, please. Bring me all the Feldbuchen and you hold the money for splitting. Get them off fast. Go on and help, Red. Get them into the ditch.”

I watched the road to the west beyond the estaminet while the cleaning up was going on. I never watched the cleaning up unless I had to take part in it myself. Watching the cleaning up is bad for you. It is no worse for me than for anyone else. But I was in command.

“How many did you get, Onie?”
“All eight, I think. Hit, I mean.”
“At this range—”
“It’s not very sporting. But after all it’s their machine gun.”
“We have to get set now fast again.”

“I don’t think the vehicle is shot up badly.”
“We’ll check her afterwards.”
“Listen,” Red said. I listened, then blew the whistle twice and everybody faded back, Red hauling the last Kraut by one leg with his head shuddering and the trap was set again. But nothing came and I was worried.

We were set up for a simple job of assassination astride an escape route. We were not astride, technically, because we did not have enough people to set up on both sides of the road and we were not technically prepared to cope with armored vehicles. But each trap had two German Panzerfausten. They were much more powerful and simpler than the general-issue American bazooka, having a bigger warhead and you could throw away the launching tube; but lately, many that we had found in the German retreat had been booby-trapped and others had been sabotaged. We used only those as fresh as anything in that market could be fresh and we always asked a German prisoner to fire off samples taken at random from the lot.

German prisoners who had been taken by irregulars were often as cooperative as head waiters or minor diplomats. In general we regarded the Germans as perverted Boy Scouts. This is another way of saying they were splendid soldiers. We were not splendid soldiers. We were specialists in a dirty trade. In French we said, “un métier très sale.”

We knew, from repeated questionings, that all Germans coming through on this escape route were making for Aachen and I knew that all we killed now we would not have to fight in Aachen nor behind the West Wall. This was simple. I was pleased when anything was that simple.

The Germans we saw coming now were on bicycles. There were four of them and they were in a hurry too but they were very tired. They were not cyclist troops. They were just Germans on stolen bicycles. The leading rider saw the fresh blood on the road and then he turned his head and saw the vehicle and he put his weight hard down on his right pedal with his right boot and we opened on him and on the others.

A man shot off a bicycle is always a sad thing to see, although not as sad as a horse shot with a man riding him nor a milk cow gut-shot when she walks into a fire fight. But there is something about a man shot off a bicycle at close range that is too intimate. These were four men and four bicycles. It was very intimate and you could hear the thin tragic noise the bicycles made when they went over onto the road and the heavy sound of men falling and the clatter of equipment.

“Get them off the road quick,” I said. “And hide the four vélos.”
As I turned to watch the road one of the doors of the estaminet opened and two civilians wearing caps and working clothes came out each carrying two