by Leo Litwak
We lifted him onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.
The ambulance driver went fast. I braced against the cab sides while trying to figure out how to bandage the stump. I raised his leg to get a bandage roll underneath and he reared and screamed. I yelled at the driver to slow down.
I took out a large compress and placed it over the stump and looped the strings around the upper calf.
He screamed, “My balls!”
I opened his pants, looked at his balls. Darts of powder peppered the sac and the surrounding flesh.
I told him, “You’re okay.”
They were waiting for us at the post hospital with a stretcher on wheels. Four orderlies carried him from the ambulance. A white-smocked doctor lifted the belly compress as they wheeled him toward emergency.
I called after them, “I gave him morphine. An eighth of a grain.” They were already inside when I remembered that I had forgotten to fill out the tag. Describe the wound, its treatment, give your name, rank, serial number, and medical organization.
The ambulance driver said, “You did great.”
We returned to the rifle range but the day was finished.
They had heard back at the detachment. The lieutenant who tied the tourniquet had called to praise me.
Our CO, a southern doctor, slapped my back. “Nice going, son.”
I’d made him scream in the ambulance. The belly compress hadn’t been neatly tied. I’d looped the free strings over his leg and fumbled with the knot. A clumsy job. But good enough for Joe Witty.
“Listen,” he said, “whatever we’ve had going let’s call it off.” His hand reached for mine; we shook hands. “You did great out there.” He was boyish and charming. “I hear the leg was off. Entirely off. Nice going, buddy.” He tapped my arm with his fist.
My bloody field jacket was good enough credentials for Joe Witty. He invited me to the PX for a beer after retreat. There he advertised me as a credit to our outfit. “This is the medic who handled that amputation on the rifle range today.” He went on to speak of campus life as if we owned a common experience.
He was a kid like me, foolish like me. That knowledge both connected us and released us.
The air force application was approved. Harry and I transferred to Miami Beach. I went on to school in Sioux City, Iowa; he went elsewhere. Two months into the air force training, the war in Europe took a turn for the worse; there was a demand for infantry, and the program was terminated. I was sent to an infantry division, again a medic, this time an aid man attached to a rifle platoon. I went on bivouacs and field maneuvers with my new unit. We trained through the spring and fall of 1944. In late fall we bobbed and rocked on a Liberty Ship in Boston Harbor. We joined a long convoy and crossed the North Atlantic in rough seas on our way to England. We idled in Bournemouth until early winter and then embarked across the channel for the ruined port of Le Havre. We crammed into boxcars outside Le Havre. It was already freezing. We dismounted in northern France, snow on the ground. We immediately dug in. We were warned to be on guard. Germans, dressed as GIs, speaking vernacular English, had infiltrated our lines. We were warned not to move out of the company area without knowing the password. We dug our first trenches in frozen ground. We experienced our first shelling. My first battlefield death was a GI whose trench collapsed after a shell hit close. We dug him out. I put him on his belly, turned his face to the side, cleared his mouth and throat, straddled him, hands on his ribs, and pressed down in rhythm with my own breathing, the old method of artificial respiration. I worked until I was too exhausted to care but couldn’t bring him to life.
It was easy to become a veteran. You only needed to survive. A few more casualties and I was promoted to Technician Fifth Grade, the rank of corporal.
I HAD FOLLOWED my dreams into combat. There I met the dead and dying and faced my own death. It was all I wanted when I first dreamed of war.
CHAPTER 3
< BELGIAN WINTER, 1945 >
That winter the Germans were in full retreat on all fronts. In the west the Allies had reached the German border. In the east the German invasion of Russia had been reversed and the Russians were aiming for Berlin and closing fast.
My regiment was in Luxembourg about to cross into Germany at the Sauer River. It wouldn’t be an easy crossing. The bridge was down at Echternach. The east bank of the river rose sharply. The Germans had mined roads and trails on the other side; artillery zeroed in on crossing points. The rumor circulated that General Patton, directing the operation as head of the Third Army, meant to force his way into Germany even at the cost of a truckload of dog tags collected from dead GIs.
My company was spared. We remained in reserve on the Belgium-Luxembourg side of the Sauer, preparing withdrawal positions in case the assault failed and the Germans counterattacked.
We dug slit trenches up and down a hillside a few kilometers from the river. We dug every day until the light gave out. We scraped away snow, swung picks at the frozen ground, shoved quarter-pound sticks of dynamite a foot down, lit the fuse, and got out of the way. Afterward we cleared out slit trenches, four feet deep, two to three feet wide, six feet long. We axed saplings and tree limbs, crossed them over the trench, leaving an opening in back to squeeze through, another in front for a field of vision. We covered the roof with soil, then camouflaged the works with snow.
Winter’s ferocity was unexpected. We had no special winter issue. A single wool blanket barely cut the freeze. At night we lay in trenches, huddling against each other for body heat, belly against rump.
I was the first platoon medic and at morning sick call I began to see cases of flu. My instructions were to keep them up front. If the fever didn’t rage it wasn’t hot enough; if the wound didn’t kill or incapacitate it wasn’t serious enough; if someone begged to go back to battalion he wasn’t crazy enough. A man might say, I’m dying, and I’d give him aspirin for the pain. If he had diarrhea I dispensed bismuth and paregoric.
I heard of cases of trench foot—toes blackened, skin dead white, a putrid smell coming from spongy flesh. Gangrene and amputation followed if circulation wasn’t restored. The prevention was to keep feet dry. Every night we paired off and rubbed each other’s feet and put on dry socks.
BILLY BAKER DIDN’T have anyone to rub his feet. He slept alone in a slit trench. Sergeant Lucca told him to pair up with someone.
“I can’t find no one,” Billy said.
The sergeant asked Rebel to dig in with Billy but Rebel said he and Alfieri were already a pair. The sergeant went to Stanky who shared a trench with Fisher and Coleman.
“One of you has to dig in with Billy Baker.”
Stanky said he’d rather take company punishment. Fisher and Coleman felt the same way.
No one wanted to dig in with Billy, a notorious bed wetter. He had somehow managed to hide the fact when he got into the army, but once assigned to our platoon barracks his shame was discovered and he was afterward shunned as dim-witted and unclean.
Sergeant Lucca asked if I could get Billy reassigned for medical reasons. “If he can’t control his piss what’s he going to hit with his M-one? He’s more a threat to us than to the krauts. Let’s send him back where he can’t do any damage.”
I asked Billy if he’d like to be transferred to a rear unit where he’d have hot meals and be warm and safe. Maybe he’d even be sent back to the States, a deal any frontline GI would sacrifice arms or legs to get.
Billy didn’t want to go back. “I do my best,” he said. “It happens less and less.”
“He’s found a home,” I told the sergeant. “He won’t leave.”
It ended with Billy digging in with me and Sergeant Lucca. At night we rubbed his feet and made sure he put on dry socks and warned him not to piss.
• • •
HE HAD LITTLE to say about himself. He was a farm boy from Alabama.
“What kind of farm?”
He shrugged.
“Were there tractors? Combines?”
>
He said a Model A Ford pickup and two mules.
“Cows, chickens?”
“One cow,” he said. “Pigs. Chickens.”
Lucca told me it was no use trying to draw him out. Billy wasn’t eager to remember a scruffy Alabama farm that even pigs and chickens didn’t favor. “This slit trench is probably the closest that lonesome son of a bitch has ever come to having a home.”
ONE MORNING BILLY reported to sick call with a black and swollen thumb. He told me he didn’t want to complain but he was having a hard time digging.
I asked Captain Roth if there was room in the company jeep to take Billy to the aid station.
“Is it an emergency?”
“It’s not life or death. He’s got a bad thumb.”
“Wait till the jeep goes to battalion so we don’t have to make a special trip.”
I bandaged Billy’s thumb and excused him from digging. Later that day the jeep took him to Battalion Aid. I didn’t know how he had been treated until the next morning when the captain came to our platoon and called me over. “Private Baker is going to lose his thumb, Corporal. If you’d have told me how serious it was we could have gotten him back in time.”
I told him I was just a T-5 aid man, not a doctor.
“You don’t have to be a goddamn doctor to have some common sense.”
Billy returned from the aid station a day later, his thumb splinted and bandaged.
“It’s okay,” he said. “They told me I shouldn’t dig.”
I knew they’d never get his thumb; he never willingly let go of anything, including his piss, which left of its own will, not his. When the captain came around I said to him, “Private Baker is here and so is his thumb, sir.”
He shrugged. “You’re lucky this time, Corporal.”
CAPTAIN ROTH HAD needled me before but this time he got to me. I told Lucca I didn’t have to take any shit from the captain. I could get reassigned to any company in the battalion. Everyone knew my reputation. They’d all be glad to have me. The platoon might end up with an aid man like the third platoon’s Grace.
Lucca didn’t want an aid man like Grace. “You’re our man, Leo. Don’t worry about the captain. If he gives you any trouble, come to me. I’ll take care of him.”
Sergeant Lucca was no burly, bass growler of a sergeant. He was a motherly man, slim, careful, thoughtful. When he said, “I’ll take care of him,” I understood him to mean he would take care of the captain as he took care of the platoon, keeping everything sane and orderly and reasonable.
THIS IS WHAT Sergeant Lucca didn’t like about Grace, the third platoon aid man. A few weeks before, we were probing the high ground near some Belgian village, and a Third Platoon scout was hit by a sniper. He lay in the road up ahead, facedown, on his belly. The company took cover in the woods off the road. Aid man Grace crept to where he could see the scout lying in the road. “He’s not moving. You can see he’s dead. There’s a sniper waiting to knock off anyone who goes out there.”
Grace wouldn’t go to him.
They called on Cooper, aid man with the Second Platoon. Cooper said the Third Platoon was Grace’s responsibility, not his, and he wouldn’t go to the scout either.
Sergeant Lucca came to me. “The Third Platoon has a man down out there and Grace and Cooper won’t go.”
I took off down the road, full speed, came up over the rise, saw the scout lying in the road, hit the ground next to him, turned him over, saw a nickel-sized wound on his forehead. I couldn’t feel a pulse. I put my cheek to his mouth and there was no breath. I expected to be hit the same way, above the eyes, in the middle of the forehead. Either the sniper respected my red cross markings or he’d taken off.
Sergeant Lucca didn’t want anything to do with an aid man like Grace. He wanted someone who would come for him if he was hit. “You’re our man, Leo, not Grace.”
Did he claim me for his own? That suited me fine.
LUCCA WASN’T THE only one to hear my complaint about Captain Roth. Cooper, another of the Alabamans in our outfit, told me to pay no mind to the JB.
“What’s a JB?”
“A Jew Bastard.”
Lucca said, “Roth’s no Jew. He leads us to mass.”
“He looks like an MOT,” Cooper said.
I asked Cooper what an MOT was.
“Member of the Tribe.”
“What do you mean he looks like an MOT?”
“You know. The nose and the big mouth.”
“The captain’s no Jew,” Lucca said again.
“He might as well be,” said Cooper.
Later I asked Lucca if Cooper knew I was a Jew.
“What does that redneck know besides rednecks? Don’t worry about the captain, Leo. I’ll keep him in line.”
Cooper remained my friend. It didn’t matter to him when I told him I was a Jew. I bullied him and cursed him but couldn’t alter his map of the world where the Jews he didn’t know were located at the outermost boundary among serpents and dragons.
THIS IS WHAT Sergeant Lucca had on Captain Roth. When the division was in England, waiting to cross the Channel, our company occupied a small seaside hotel in Bournemouth. It was the time of air raids and buzz bombs and there was a strict curfew. Captain Roth conducted bed check himself. He went through the hotel around ten at night. Lucca then shared a room with PFC Van Pelt, a nineteen-year-old classic Dutch boy: blond hair, red cheeks, juicy lips. Van Pelt was the company messenger at the time, though he later lost the job.
One night the captain sent Lucca to battalion headquarters for a briefing. Van Pelt was almost asleep when the captain came by for bed check. The captain lingered by the bed, touched Van Pelt’s throat. Van Pelt wasn’t sure what the touch meant and pretended to be asleep. The captain, a dapper, by-the-book West Pointer, didn’t seem a fatherly type.
A few nights later, with Lucca again at battalion, the captain put his hand under Van Pelt’s covers. This time Van Pelt told Lucca what was happening. During the next bed check Lucca hid in the closet and caught Roth going under the covers.
“Can I speak to you in the hallway, sir?” The captain followed Lucca into the hallway.
“I think someone else should do bed check.”
The captain nodded. “I’ll see to it.”
Lucca didn’t mean to take it any further. Roth was a devout Catholic with a wife and kid. What happened had been an accident. Lucca was positive it wouldn’t happen again. Anyway, he now had clout.
“If he gives you any trouble, Leo, I’ll take care of it.”
THE REST OF the battalion bridged the Sauer River at Echternach and climbed the high ridge into Germany. We could hear artillery operating nonstop at the front, a muffled boom, boom, boom, day and night. The battalion was being mauled at the Siegfried line across the river. At night the horizon pulsed with white-green light. Convoys of trucks and ambulances returned through our position. I pulled back the rear flap of a graves detail truck in a convoy stopped near our command and saw layers of dead GIs stacked like cordwood.
We’d soon have our turn on the other side of the Sauer. Pillboxes and tank traps and barbed wire and minefields and artillery and machine guns waited for us.
While we were stalled there in Belgium we made our slit trenches as much like home as we could. We plastered the bottom with pine needles, covered the needles with our ponchos. Lucca borrowed a Coleman lantern from the cook and hung it from our roof, shaded with a GI towel. We joined our blankets together and lay there with our boots off, feet rubbed and wearing dry wool socks, wool caps pulled over our ears, listening to the distant boom-boom from Germany across the Sauer. It was the only home any of us—not only Billy Baker—believed in.
Someone found an old treadle sewing machine in the wreck of a house. It was still in working condition. Lucca’s father was a tailor and Lucca knew the trade. He set up the sewing machine on the snow-filled road. He borrowed my bandage scissors and cut a pattern from the army newspaper. He sat on a wobbly, broken chair, p
umping the treadle, and made face hoods out of GI blankets. He outfitted the entire platoon.
THE PROCEDURE WE were given for taking a pillbox was this. The artillery laid down a rolling barrage of smoke and shells. Engineers crawled behind the barrage to clear a path through the minefield. They were followed by men who set long pipes of explosive under coils of barbed wire. That opened the way for someone to crawl to the pillbox and place a butterfly charge against the concrete wall. Once the pillbox was torn open a flamethrower scoured the inside and we moved in.
The strategy rarely worked smoothly. Tracer fire lit up the hills from another tier of pillboxes. Artillery was zeroed in. The assault sometimes didn’t get past the wire. The butterfly man, under a bulky pack, was an easy target. If his pack was hit only shards of him would be recovered.
Lucca asked for volunteers for a platoon assault team. He needed someone to carry the explosive. Billy Baker said, “I will.” He was an ideal butterfly man, too dim to anticipate dying. Lucca told him it was a simple job. All he had to do was place the pack with the shaped charge against the wall of the pillbox, trigger the fuse, then crawl away as fast as he could. He told Billy it was the most important job in the assault. Billy was glad to be our butterfly man and didn’t need convincing.
“Ask him to take the Siegfried line,” I told Lucca, “and he won’t stop until he gives you Berlin.”
Billy adored Sergeant Lucca, and who didn’t? When I risked sniper fire to reach the wounded scout I was no braver than Grace or Cooper, who had refused to go out there. I was numb and terrified. I had less of a sense of my needs than either of them. I did what I had no heart to do because I was ready to die for Lucca’s good word. He told me what to wear, what to eat, how to survive. I sometimes didn’t have the foggiest idea where we were until Lucca told me, and then I felt located.