To Hell and Back

by Audie Murphy

  The remaining tanks wallow back. Again I correct the artillery. The shells follow the armor in a hectic chase, but I soon lose sight of the krauts and notify our gunners. Wasting further ammunition would be senseless.

  I sit down weakly. Sweat stands on my forehead; my knees shake; and the pit of my stomach seems to have fallen out.

  The tanks are there.

  Even the wrecked one worries me. I guess that when night falls, it will be picked up by a retriever, repaired, and sent against us again. True, it is only one tank among many, but to the foot soldier that is how the war goes. Infinite small threats make up the whole. Eliminate the little problems, and the big ones will take care of themselves.

  I check the terrain with a compass; get my directions. Then I call company headquarters for permission to take out a patrol after dusk. Brandon, Kerrigan, and Snuffy volunteer to accompany me. Horse-Face is also willing. But I am afraid that he will take a notion to spin one of those wild yarns of his in the shadow of the enemy himself. I put him on a machine-gun watch and take Jackoby instead.

  Yes, Jackoby is changing his tune. He has seen that at the front there is little bucking for rank and that nobody is the fair-haired boy. Each has his share in the work and common misery. So the chip falls from Jackoby’s shoulder.

  Loaded with rifles and antitank grenades, we slip through the night. Over the muddy ground, progress is slow; and frequently we must halt for breath. Snuffy deliberates over a Molotov cocktail, which is simply a bottle of gasoline with an ignition fuse attached. It is supposed to set the tank afire, but Snuffy does not trust it.

  “If it works,” says he, “I’m a blue-tailed monkey’s uncle. And if it don’t work, we’re in a hell of a fix. I’ll lay anybody three-to-one that them krauts have got that tank guarded. Any takers?”

  “Keep your voice down,” urges Kerrigan. “Did anybody ever see such a fool? Must have learned to whisper in a sawmill.”

  “And when this mulatto cockytail conks that tank, what happens? Clank. Them krauts are goin’to start blazin’ away. Four-to-one. Any takers?”

  “Maybe he’s right,” observes Jackoby.

  “He’s never right. Let’s move up and get this damned job over.”

  “Gittin’ nervous?”

  “Hell, no. I’m getting cold. Come on, you hillbilly. Let’s go to war.”

  When the Germans evacuated the tank, they left a light burning inside. It sends a glow through the open manhole, marking our target perfectly.

  Leaving the men to cover me, I crawl to within range, rise on one knee, and hurl a Molotov cocktail. The bottle crashes against the steel. In the stillness, the noise is like a bell. But nothing else happens. I try again with no better luck. The fuses are obviously faulty.

  I hear the voice of a German and know that I must work in split seconds. Swiftly sliding up a ditch, I lob a grenade through the open manhole. The explosion does not even extinguish the light. I crawl back a short distance and begin blasting off the treads with rifle grenades.

  The operation stirs up a hornet’s nest. Two enemy machine guns bark. Tracer bullets streak about me: I follow the ditch as far as possible. Then I kick caution out of the way and take off like a jack rabbit.

  My comrades, hearing me coming, get a fifty yard start on me. But I catch up before we pause to rest our aching lungs a quarter of a mile away.

  “Jist lack I said. Them mulatto cockytails should be give back to the Russians. They damned nigh got us slewn,” pants Snuffy.

  “Where in the hell did that guy learn to speak English?” asks Kerrigan.

  “Rat where I’d like to be now. In them Tennessee hills so fur away.”

  “Will the Germans follow us?” Jackoby inquires anxiously.

  “Keerist, no,” Kerrigan snorts. “You couldn’t pry them out of their holes with a crowbar. They wouldn’t know where we’d be laying for them.”

  “Yessir. We’d done better with far-crackers.”

  “Far-crackers? What in the hell you talking about now?”

  “Far-crackers, you dumb ass. Ain’t you ever thowed no far-crackers on the Fourth of July?”

  “Firecrackers, for chrisakel”

  “That’s what I said; far-crackers.”

  The next morning the ruined tank is still visible. Evidently it is no longer worth repairing. The Germans never retrieve it.

  Now the rain starts again; the water drips; and the wind moans. We slog through the mud on routine duty; wait for night; wait for day. Even the sound of the guns fits into the pattern of tedium. And the utter boredom of static warfare drives men to strange deeds.

  Kerrigan discovers he is a poet. He composes some verse to which Snuffy adds a monotonous folk tune. In a quavering, rusty voice, he sings:

  Oh, gather ’round me, comrades; and listen while I speak

  Of a war, a war, a war, where hell is six feet deep.

  Along the shore, the cannons roar. Oh, how can a soldier sleep?

  The going’s slow on Anzio. And hell is six feet deep.

  Praise be to God for this captured sod that rich with blood does seep;

  With yours and mine, like butchered swine’s; and hell is six feet deep.

  That death awaits there’s no debate; no triumph will we reap.

  The crosses grow on Anzio, where hell is six feet deep.

  It is a major achievement. Kerrigan is flattered and has to be severely discouraged from indulging in further literary efforts.

  Movement gives the illusion of progress; and that illusion is our greatest need. Monotony often achieves more than either pleading or patriotism. To spike the rot of existence; to get out of our holes and relieve irritation by a slash at the enemy, we volunteer for dangerous patrols.

  One misty night three of us are in the command post, playing poker by candlelight. The telephone jingles. Kerrigan reaches for the receiver.

  “Hello. No, this is not the boneyard. It’s Lil’s place. Yeah. Anderson. The hell you say. Now ain’t that just ducky? Yeah. Yeah. I’ll tell him.”

  “What is it now?” asks Berner, a corporal who has had a losing streak all evening.

  “Anderson. The old man says intelligence has got to have some prisoners. Asking for volunteers to go out and round them up. Count me out. It’s too damp outside.”

  Berner throws down his cards. “Just as my luck was changing,” he grumbles.

  “Don’t worry about that. You’ll need all your luck now. Every time I come into this hole to get warm, I land up on one of these murder details.”

  “Go break the news to Kohl. We’ll need his German lingo,” I say. “And tell Caskill to get his rear-end here and look after the phone.”

  “What’s wrong with my German, arschlock?”

  “Too vulgar. For this we need that delicate touch.”

  “Kohl’s going to love this.”

  “It’ll give him some exercise.”

  The first hint of the Germans’ presence is the smell of strong tobacco smoke. We tread softly with weapons ready. A murmur of voices sounds in the night. But in the mist we can see nothing. We sling our rifles on our shoulders and grasp grenades.

  A hut looms suddenly in the fog. Again the odor of tobacco hits our nostrils. Inside the house, a man laughs.

  Like cats we creep to a window and flatten ourselves against a wall.

  “Tell them to come out,” I whisper to Kohl.

  “Hey, Wir sind Amerikaner. Alles kaput. Hände hoch! Komm ’raus.”

  Only silence greets his words.

  “Tell them to come out; or we’ll blast them out with grenades.”

  “Komm ‘raus. Oder wir pfeffern eine Granate ’rein!”

  There is a scramble inside, but still the door remains shut.

  “Tell them this is the last warning.”

  “Wir warnen euch zum letzen mal.”

  “No response comes from the house.

  “Okay. Let them have it.”

  We hurl four grenades through the window and dart to a safe
distance. The hut rocks; and in the fumes of powder is mingled the smell of powdered masonry. Berner and Kohl cover us with rifles. Kerrigan and I dash forward, kick open the splintered door, and jump to the sides.

  “Ask them if they’ve had enough,” I say.

  “I don’t think the bastards are alive. Na habt Ihr die Nase voll?”

  The low groan of an agonized man comes through the door. We enter with fixed weapons. Guided by the moans, I reach a hand to the floor, find a body; and my fingers become sticky with blood. I grab the uniform and drag the man from a hole in the floor.

  He gasps and becomes still. I bend my ear to his heart. It has stopped beating.

  I fish into the hole again and pull out another body. The legs kick spasmodically; and the breathing seems horribly loud. It sounds as though the man had a throatful of phlegm. I run my hands over the chest and find a gaping hole from which the blood spurts like a fountain. There is nothing we can do about it.

  Frantically I try once more. The third man, protected by the flesh of his comrades, has escaped the blast. I jerk him to his feet and frisk him for weapons. He trembles like a frightened bird but is otherwise unharmed.

  Kohl addresses him in German. “Warum könnt lhr nicht ’raus?”

  The prisoner replies with muttered words.

  “What does he say?”

  “I don’t know. I asked him why he didn’t come out when we called. But he’s either too scared to talk or he’s speaking a dialect I don’t understand. Sounds like he’s tongue-tied.”

  “Well, get him to the rear quickly.”

  “The same way we came?”

  “Any damned way. Just get going.”

  From outside comes the thud of running feet.

  “Keerist!” Kerrigan exclaims. “Here’s old man trouble. His pals, no doubt.”

  Kohl and Berner grab the prisoner by the shoulders and hustle him off through the mist. Kerrigan and I edge to a corner of the house. A jerry calls, “Hans! Hans!” We answer with two clips of cartridges.

  Then cautiously we steal away in a direction at angles to that taken by Berner and Kohl. The running continues on the right. Shouting comes from our rear. We now hear the pounding of footsteps on our left. Dropping to our knees, we shoot in both directions. Six rifles return the fire. The Germans have evidently guessed the nature of our mission and are attempting to head us off. It is the prisoner that concerns them most. Captured men often give out information that has disastrous results.

  Wheeling to our right for about fifty yards, we shoot again. The Germans make no response. Maybe they are waiting for us to plunge into their trap. If so, our ruse has worked.

  We retrace our steps. And I check my compass for the straightest direction to our lines. Stealthily we walk for a couple of hundred yards; then we run like deer. With relief I remember that we have encountered few antipersonnel mines in this area.

  The Germans, now aware of the trick, blast wildly. Bullets sing overhead. I increase my speed; trip on a snag; and pitch on my head. For a moment, I think my ankle is sprained. Kerrigan pulls me to my feet. I test the joint gingerly. The sound of our pursuers grows louder.

  I hear the click of the safety lock on Kerrigan’s rifle.

  “Don’t shoot, for godsake,” I say. “They still don’t know where we are.”

  “Damn ’em. They’ll never get me.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “If I can’t, I can crawl like hell. Go ahead.”

  “Don’t talk like that to me, you hop-headed goon. I can just see myself leaving you here.”

  “I can walk.”

  “Then let’s move.”

  Resting one hand on Kerrigan’s shoulder, I manage to limp at a rather fast pace. But hours seem to pass before we reach the security of our lines.

  Kohl and Berner are waiting in the command post. They have already delivered their prisoner to company headquarters. Now they stand with foolish grins on their faces.

  “No wonder I couldn’t understand that German,” says Kohl. “The guy was a Polack. The old man had Paderwicz talk to him. He’d been in this area only three days and was about as full of information as an empty barrel.”

  “Besides,” adds Berner, “he was half drunk.”

  “He was sure of only two things. He wanted to go home; and he had lost his bottle.”

  Kerrigan sinks to the floor. Placing his forehead in the palms of his hands, he rocks his head back and forth.

  “Holy keerist!” he sighs. “I thought his breath smelled familiar.”

  During our absence the mail has been brought up. I thumb through the packet of frayed envelopes. There is nothing for me. I toss a letter to Kerrigan. A flourishing feminine hand has addressed it in violet ink.

  Then I finger a small paper. It is directed to Private Michael Novak and must have escaped the eye of the company clerk. Seeing the name of a dead man on such an intimate thing as mail gives one a queer feeling. I slip the paper from its encircling sheath; turn the pages.

  It is a company publication. Under a headline (OUR BOYS AND GIRLS IN SERVICE) is a picture of Novak. Yes, Little Mike as a civilian. He must have been quite like the man we knew as a soldier. He has the same crooked nose, with a smile to match; the stubborn chin; the need of a shave; the tousled, black hair; the broken depths of thought and sadness in his eyes. And his necktie is knotted at the throat like a noose.

  Beneath the photograph:

  Private Michael Novak. “Little Mike,” as he was familiarly known among his co-workers at Eureka, is now with the Seventh Army in Italy. That is bad news for the Germans. During the four years he was with us, Mike, though on the quiet side, endeared himself to all with his industry and unfailing good humor. We are expecting great things of him in the war. According to his sister, Mrs. Zigmund Sawa, he has already seen considerable combat. Keep up the good work, Mike. We are proud of you.

  I glance again at the picture, then turn the page. Another headline: EUREKA QUINTET LICKS EAGLE CAGERS 52-36.

  In an unbroken string of victories, the Eureka basketball team added another scalp to its belt when it tangled last week with Eagle Consolidated. It was a bitterly contested game until the last whistle. Outstanding performances were contributed by John “Red” Cathy, as right forward, and–

  Folding the paper, I return it to its holder, and above the typed address, mark “Deceased.”

  Kerrigan scowls over his letter. “Have I gone nuts?” he asks. “Or is this dame crazy? Listen to what the bitch writes.

  Dear honeybunch. It is little me again. How are you? I’ll bet you have already forgot your “blue eyes”. I haven’t heard from you in weeks and weeks. Well, I wish you could see my sailor. He is the “cat’s whiskers”. Ha-ha. I am just kidding. You know I am strictly an “army girl”. Honey, I do miss you. I was over at Sally’s last night. She has a new “love”. You know Sally. He is an oil man. Runs a filling station. Ha-ha. He wanted to bring a friend along for me. But I said, no siree. I don’t sit under the cherry tree with anybody else but my Irishman. We went out to Joe’s “joint” and drunk some beer. I never seen the like of soldiers. And I want you to know that your little “blue eyes” has not lost her “sex appeal”. Three soldiers tried to move in on our party, but believe me I gave them “the old elbow”. I get lonesome, but after all you are “the tops” in this girl’s life. I tell every man I go out with about you. Oh, honey, I do miss you. This awful war “gets me down”. But if it hadn’t been for the war, I maybe wouldn’t have met you at all. And that would have been “tragic”. When I think of all the “good times” we had together, I want to cry. Well, don’t take any wooden nickels. With oodles of love. Cora.

  “Brilliant. Simply brilliant,” remarks Kohl. “That’s the very kind of girl I always wanted to meet. The home-loving type. Who the hell is she?”

  “Some broad I used to shack with in Boston. No, I guess it was New Haven. She’s living in Boston now.”

  “Was she a
pro?”

  “Hell, no. I still had a good amateur standing until I came overseas. ‘Blue-eyes.’ I must’ve been drunker than usual if I called her that.”

  “Who was Sally?”

  “I don’t know. But this I must say for Cora. If I remember correctly, she was first-class in the hay.”

  Regularly combat patrols are sent out to harass the Germans. We must continue to remind them that we still have a striking force. Our present defensive stand is not to be mistaken for weakness. Usually these missions include fierce, bloody skirmishes; and often not even the tedium of the foxholes impels enough men to volunteer for them.

  One day reconnaissance informs us that the krauts have moved up their forward outposts in our sector. It could be the prelude to an attack. A patrol is organized to knock out the positions. In our platoon Kerrigan, Berner, and Thompson get tapped for service.

  The Irishman groans; Berner swears softly; Thompson alone is silent as they buckle on their gear.

  During the course of action, Thompson vanishes. Nobody can explain what happened to him. He simply disappears.

  “Going up the road, I kept an eye on him,” says Kerrigan. “He was in a hell of a mood. His eyes kept darting about like a rat in a cheese factory. I asked him what was wrong. He said, ‘I got the bellyache. Somethin’ I eat I guess.’ I told him we wouldn’t be gone long; then when we got back, if he was still alive, he could get some baking soda. If he was dead, he wouldn’t need it. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. He looked at me in a funny way.”

  “When we stopped for a rest,” adds Berner, “he lay on his back with his eyes closed. I told him to cheer up. He may get shot in the leg and get a big rest. He told me to go to hell. I said, ‘Thanks. I’m on my way.’ I don’t remember seeing him after that.”

  “The jerries threw a lot of stuff at us,” continues Kerrigan. “Mostly mortar and machine-gun fire. A couple guys got killed; several more were wounded. And I was too busy watching out for my own hide to study about the kid until we started back. Then I missed him. I asked the other fellows if they’d seen him, but they hadn’t.”