by Audie Murphy
“A kraut patrol. We got ‘em. One of ’em was moaning, but I wasn’t going out to investigate. I’m froze. What time is it?”
“About three o’clock.”
“What are the jerries doing?”
“Digging in.”
“Chris’, that means we do the attacking tomorrow.”
“I guess so.”
“What I wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee and a cigarette.”
“What I wouldn’t give for a lot of things. Good night; and don’t get shot.”
In the orderly room, Captain Buckman is shaving a stubbly beard from his chin. He has cut himself, and a streak of blood shows on his cheek.
“Where the army gets these blades I wouldn’t know,” says he. “I’d sooner use a trench knife. What did you find out?”
He dries his face with a handkerchief and hauls out the map.
“The krauts are digging in about four hundred yards this side of the road,” I report. “They’re moving up tanks–about six–and supplies. The ground between here and their lines is still dry enough to support armor, but I don’t believe they’ve got it in strength. Looks like they’re going into a defensive.”
“Yeah. They’ll let us do the attacking until they figure we’re bled white, then they’ll try to knock us off the beachhead. Was it bad going?”
“Nosir. We passed the patrol that Kraft knocked out. Otherwise it was routine business.”
“Okay. You’d better turn in. Hell will likely be popping tomorrow.”
“Yessir. Good night.”
When I re-enter the dugout, Beltsky is still awake, but Cooper is snoring vigorously.
“I’ve been putting up with this every night. Artillery I don’t mind. But this sawmill gets on my nerves. What happened?”
“The jerries are digging in and moving up tanks.”
“Godamighty!”
“Yeah. The old man didn’t seem to like our situation at all.”
I pour a canteen of water into a helmet and try washing some of the mud from my face. Then I roll into a blanket and stretch on the ground. My brain whirls; and my body shakes. For a moment, I think the malaria has returned. But it is only the cold and exhaustion.
Toward morning shells begin falling in our area. I open my eyes. The cave shudders, and dirt falls from the roof. I try to go back to sleep, but the effort is useless. Only Cooper and men like Snuffy can sleep in such noise.
Beltsky comes in with a box of rations. He strikes a light and begins counting out cans of corned beef and beans. The very sight of the stuff makes my stomach go queasy.
“You’d better get some grub to your men,” says Beltsky. “It’s almost daylight.” His eyes alight on the still slumbering Cooper; and his head shakes in wonder. “Look at that sonofabitch. If he knew what had been falling around us, he’d be shoveling us into China.” He gooses Cooper with his foot. “Rise and shine, you ground hog, and greet the goddamned dawn.”
I find my squad and distribute the tins. Snuffy and Kerrigan share a foxhole. They are both awake. Without asking, I know that the artillery aroused Kerrigan, and he punched Snuffy to consciousness.
They greet me with hearty curses, and I return the compliment.
“Since when did you and the reverend begin bunking together?” I ask.
“Tonight,” Kerrigan answers. “The bird-brain owes me ten bucks; and I aim to keep an eye on him. It’s blood money. On the boat coming up, I bet him a tenner I’d get hit before he did. Now he won’t pay off.”
“We said hit,” Snuffy argues. “If you call that scratch a wound, I’m the man who took Sicily singlehanded. A blind man could’ve seen that splinter coming, but this sonofabitch steps right into it. He howled for his money, before he howled for the medics.”
“You can trust the medics, but who can trust you? You’ll fall in a hole some day and break your neck. Then where’ll my dough be?”
“In the hole with me.”
“Is that any way to treat a genuine, concubined member of the distinguished order of the Purple Heart?”
“Heart, did you say. You oughta spell it different.”
Kerrigan turns to me. “Say, have you been sucking around the old man again? I hear you got pushed up to staff?”
“You heard right. I’m going to look for more respect from you characters.”
“Go to hell,” they chorus.
A cannon cracks; a shell whizzes overhead. The banter goes from Kerrigan’s voice. He thoughtfully fumbles with his shoe laces.
“You heard about Swope and Little Mike?”
“Yeah. Anderson told me.”
“I always said that coffee would be the death of him.”
“How’d it happen?”
“They went into a shack to heat up some java and got a direct hit from an 88. At the aid station I talked to the medic who tended Swope. He lost his right leg at the hip and part of a hand. He was conscious, but the medic said he never made a sound and never had any expression at all on his face.”
“He had guts.”
“Yeah. You can say that again. Mike was blown all to hell. Hardly enough of him left for identification. Stove was still burning. Medic told me where I could find it. But not me. I don’t want to see it again. Wish they could bury it with Mike.”
“Remember the time he got it caught in the bushes and the sniper started firing at him.”
“Jeezus! That was funny. There was Little Mike, jerking his pack, wrestling with that bush, and hollering ‘sonsabeeches.’”
“He was a good soldier.”
“Yeah, you’d have thought he was fighting a holy war.”
“Maybe he was.”
“Are you nuts? All he ever got out of life was work. What had he to save? A brain-baking job in a goddamned steel mill. A room in a slumgullion boarding house. A lousy dame who took his dough and then didn’t have the decency even to answer his letters. Man, he had plenty to fight for. When I think of some of those 4-F, draft-dodging bastards I know back home, I want to spit nails. Whose the hell war is this? Was it Novak’s? Is it mine? Is it yours? Is it Snuffy’s?”
“If it’s mine,” says Snuffy, “I’d like to turn it in on what I owe you.”
Light trembles in the east. To our left an artillery duel is growing fiercer. We hear the crack and thunder of our own guns; the whine and crash of incoming German shells. Kerrigan stands in his chest-deep foxhole and leans with his elbows on the bank. He studies the eastern horizon and shakes his head in mock ecstasy. “Gee!” says he, “another beautiful day.”
8
THAT AFTERNOON we attack. It is a major assault designed to expand the beachhead. The build-up of our strength is steady but slow. And days may pass before we are ready to attempt a smash through the encircling German strongholds.
Meanwhile, there is an urgent necessity of extending the terrain we have conquered. Every square foot of the beachhead is still in range of the enemy guns. Night and day they batter the men and materiel reaching the area. There is no question about it. The guns have to be shoved back. Otherwise they will continue crippling our forces and draining our power, thus delaying our offensive indefinitely.
In the operation, my company is assigned to clear a section of a highway along which the Germans are entrenched. We have been shown the maps, explained the details, and given our orders. Now we move forward.
Stripped down to the essential equipment for combat, we advance by squads along the flanks of a dirt road that stretches toward the enemy lines. The weather is sunny; and though it is January, beads of sweat roll from our skin. Fear is moving up with us.
It always does. In the heat of battle it may go away. Sometimes it vanishes in a blind, red rage that comes when you see a friend fall. Then again you get so tired that you become indifferent. But when you are moving into combat, why try fooling yourself. Fear is right there beside you.
Experience helps. You soon learn that a situation is seldom as black as the imagination paints it. Some always get through. Yes, but somebody us
ually gets it. You do not discuss the matter. It is quite personal. But the question keeps pounding through the brain:
This time will I be the one that gets it?
I am well acquainted with fear. It strikes first in the stomach, coming like the disemboweling hand that is thrust into the carcass of a chicken. I feel now as though icy fingers have reached into my mid-parts and twisted the intestines into knots.
Each of us has his own way of fighting off panic. I recall Novak and try working myself into a rage against the uniformed beings who killed him. But that proves futile. At this distance the enemy is as impersonal as the gun that blew Little Mike’s pathetic dreams into eternity.
I turn my mind to faraway things: the meadows at home with the wind in the grass; a forgotten moment of laughter; a girl’s face. But this also accomplishes nothing. The frosty fingers tighten their grip. Sweat drips from my forehead.
The German lines are nearly a mile away, but our scouts prowl cautiously ahead with eyes alert for surprises. Over a long section of the front our artillery pounds to prepare the way for our small arms.
Behind us the communication crew trails us with strings of telephone wire. In the gang I recognize Dillon, who wears the shamrocks in his shoes. A green kerchief is knotted about his neck. He would not go into battle without it. That is another of his charms against bad luck.
Horse-Face waves to him. “Ever play poker with that guy?” he asks.
“No,” I reply.
“Don’t. He’s won nine thousand bucks since we left North Africa. Bought himself a farm in Arkansas.”
“That’s one way of making the war pay off.”
“Yep. It’d took him nine years to collect that much gal-bait in Arkansas. That place is worse than Texas.”
Thompson, a young replacement, walks just ahead of us. This is his first action. Horse-Face gives me a wink, strides forward, and taps him on the shoulder.
“Pardon me, son,” says he. “But did you volunteer for service in this outfit?”
“What if I did?” replies Thompson, mildly belligerent.
“Well, sir,” continues Horse-Face with mock concern, “I hope you knowed what you was gettin’ into.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Good. But let it be my painful duty to inform you that you’ve got yourself hooked up with the roughest, toughest, rootin’, tootin’ division in the ETO and parts of the South Pacific.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh, for chrisake,” says Kerrigan, “here goes Johnson again.”
“Yessir,” remarks Horse-Face, “when we leave a field, the blood is runnin’ knee-deep; and bones stick up like sprouts in an Alabama new ground. Another whole division has to be sent up to fight off the buzzards while the burial squads snatch up the bodies.”
“Aw, go to hell.”
“It’s the dyin’ truth, son. Seen buzzards knock out three tanks once. North Africa. Boys called ’em Arab turkeys. They come in so thick the sky wouldn’t hold ‘em. Thousands had to walk. See ’em movin’ over the desert sands like a flopping ocean of tar.
“Colonel orders the tanks to start blastin’. Like tryin’ to stop the Mississippi with a sandbag. Them birds didn’t hesitate; swarmed right over the tanks, a-pukin’ and a-squawkin’, and smothered every man inside.
“Our whole battalion fixed bayonets and charged, but it was like fightin’ a swarm of locusts with a slingshot. Buzzards parried with their beaks and stirred up such a wind with their wings that they blowed our helmets off. Fell back and called for the heavy artillery. Took two days, two nights, and fourteen hours on Sunday–”
“Will you shut up?” snaps Kerrigan in a rare mood of depression. “Let the kid alone.”
“It’s for his own good. Saw them buzzards with my own eyes.
“Oh, blow it. We’ve got trouble ahead. Those krauts are staying too quiet to suit me.”
“They don’t aim to suit you,” says Snuffy.
“Step to hell.”
Thompson walks stiffly. His chin is thrust forward defiantly.
I catch his ear and say, “When we contact the jerries, stick with one of the old men. Brandon or Kerrigan. Watch them.”
“That sonofabitch thinks I’m scared.”
“He’s only kidding. He tells that wild yarn to every new man.”
“It ain’t funny.”
“Okay. It’s not funny. But do as I say. Keep an eye on Kerrigan or Brandon. And if you get through this fracas, you’ll know as much as the rest of us about this combat business.”
“And when you fill your drawers,” adds Mason, “don’t stop to take ’em off. It’ll give the medics something else to cuss about.”
He is a drawling Georgia boy, who has just returned from the hospital.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“Scared to death. It’s always harder to go back up after a long rest.”
“Yeah. You can say that again.”
“Lying there in the hospital, a man has too much time to think. And that’s bad. He gets in the mood to live again.”
“I know what you mean.”
“A man in my ward had lost a leg; and he was as happy as a catbird in a cherry tree. Shipping out for home next week. Wisconsin. Figures he’ll be out of the army by the time the fishing season opens.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
“It’s a little stiff, but I’m okay. Muscle was cut up pretty badly; the doc said if the splinter had been just an inch higher, it would have clipped the bone.”
“Yeah?”
“Yessir. One way ticket to Georgia.”
Speech ceases. Our artillery fire is dying off. We see the fresh sod thrown up by the shells and know that we are near the enemy lines. Nervously the men give a final check to their gear and weapons. We pause while the crouching scouts move ahead.
This is the worst moment. Just ahead the enemy waits silently. It will be far better when the guns open up. The nerves will relax; the heart, stop its thumping. The brain will turn to animal cunning. The job lies directly before us: Destroy and survive.
The scouts wave us forward, motioning us to keep close to the ground.
It happens with the suddenness of lightning. From hidden positions two flakwagon guns churn. One of the scouts is caught squarely in the chest; and the upper part of his body is turned into a shower of seared, torn flesh.
“Oh, the dirty bastards,” mutters Kerrigan as he plows into the earth beside me. “They’re using 20-millimeter stuff.”
These are deadly small shells that explode upon contact. According to the international rules of warfare, they are supposed to be employed against planes and armor, never directly against men. But somebody is always forgetting the rule book.
As if the fire were a prearranged signal for action, all hell erupts. From a dozen points come bursts of automatic fire. Branches and leaves clipped from the trees rain amid the whizzing steel.
Two men caught in the open squirm frantically for the doubtful cover of a slight ridge. Bullets kick all about them. They twist in every direction, but the spurting lead follows. The gunner finally gets his range. The bodies writhe like stricken worms. The gun fires again. The bodies relax and are still.
“Where are our goddam tanks?” fumes Kerrigan. “They’re never up when we need them.”
Other men have the same idea. From all along our lines comes the call. “Tanks. Get the goddam tanks.”
A scream rises from a wounded man, but the noise is lost in the whistle of an incoming shell. The German artillery has begun a barrage. The shells fall to our rear, forming a wall between us and reinforcements; between us and the possibility of retreat.
Now a second barrage is hurled directly upon us. Flames spurt; and the earth seems to roll weirdly.
From right and left comes the cry: “Medics! Medicsl Over here. For chrisake, come up! Over here. This way.”
We open up with everything we have, shooting blindly. The mass fire is supposed to still the enemy guns u
ntil we are close enough to pry out their positions. But the Germans are dug in too well. The fiery blanket woven by their guns never lifts. We may as well be hurtling naked bodies against a wall of spears.
I drag myself under a fence, pause, and intuitively run my fingers over the grenades I carry beneath me. My blood chills. The pin is missing from one of the grenades; and I lie directly above the prospects of being blown to bits.
A precaution, born of experience, is all that has saved me. When preparing my equipment, I stuck thin strips of adhesive tape around the levers controlling the grenade fuses. I mutter a brief thanks to Little Mike, who got the idea and passed it on to me.
I grasp the grenade in my fist; and on one elbow inch backward, find the pin, and replace it. Then I lie, blowing dirt with my breath. Once seized I could have tossed the grenade away, but that would have endangered the men about me. Besides, I have no grenades to waste.
Mason is ahead. He is stretched in a gutter so shallow that it barely covers his body. I wiggle forward and stop a few yards from him. We exchange grins, but there is sickness in them.
“What happened to the kid?” he asks.
“Thompson?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s with Kerrigan on the other side of the road.”
“Where the hell are our tanks?”
“Better ask the War Department.”
“Does anybody know what we’re supposed to do now?”
“Knock off a few million krauts and get the war over by sundown.”
“Well, we can’t hang around here. This spot’s hotter than the hinges of hell.”
Pi-toon! A sniper sends in his calling card.
“That sonofabitch,” says Mason. “Think I’ll walk over and twist his goddamned ears off.”
I move down the ditch, seeking a position from which I can shoot. A patch of seared weeds offers fair cover. I thrust my rifle barrel through the vegetation and wait.
Pi-toon! The German seems to be behind a fallen tree. I turn to signal to Mason. But he is already rising to his knees, with pointed rifle.
The shriek of a huge incoming shell sounds. I drop to the bottom of the gutter and drive my head into the bank. The explosion is tremendous. It seems to lift me bodily into the air. For a second I lose consciousness. Then I find myself frantically crawling up the ditch. My brain whirls; my ears ring with the noise of a hundred bells. Greasy black smoke drifts over the earth; and the stench of burnt powder fills my nostrils.