Before Their Time: A Memoir

by Robert Kotlowitz

  Bern Keaton lay flat out on the other side of Johnson, a couple of yards farther on, in position exactly as the other assistant BAR man. He was trying to say something to Johnson, maybe to me, too, but I couldn’t hear him against the rattling din of machine-gun fire, which emptied my head and, for the moment, smashed all my sensory perceptions. But then I could see Bern’s helmet, with the straps hanging loose, against all regulations, his head bobbing inside. He always let his straps hang loose; he was notorious for it. It drove Arch and Antonovich crazy.

  The rest of the squad—and the rest of the third platoon, as well—was spread-eagled on the ground in sloppy combat formation. Fedderman was positioned somewhere ahead of Bern, where he had fallen at the first salvo, like the rest of us, looking like a bloated loaf of bread as he lay there. Willis and Barnato were somewhere to their right, alongside both Brewster and Natale, who remained inseparable even in the worst crisis. Rocky was way ahead of us and no longer in sight, probably already on the other side of the rise, too far out in front. This was unforgivable, in my opinion—to lose contact with the squad, to separate himself from us like that.

  ROCKY had awakened us at 5 a.m. in our foxhole, hissing dim orders into our ears. Something about attack formation, something about the whole third platoon, plus a few extras from other units, moving out together. I could hardly see him, kneeling alongside us. I didn’t want to see him as he whispered to us in the dark. But Johnson and I listened carefully. Rocky was telling us that we were going to attack those shallow rises that lay in front of us. We were really going to move out against them, as we had always suspected. For a second only, as Rocky hissed at us, a terrifying paralysis came over me, then lifted. Johnson was making snorting noises again, and I was coughing, belching, farting—all the percussive effects of fear sounding off as one. In another moment, Rocky was gone to take the news to Bern and Fedderman, and soon we quieted down and began to wait in silence.

  When the platoon gathered a half-hour later, as ordered, the word was passed along to form a diamond formation. We did as we were told, shuffling around clumsily, taking our time and colliding with each other, as though we weren’t entirely in control of ourselves. We could barely see under the dim moon, and we were deliberately dragging our feet. So were the other squads. Rocky hissed at us to move our asses, to watch what we were doing, to be quiet, until he finally had us in formation, or as close as he would ever get us. From tip to tip, once it was shaped, the third platoon’s diamond probably extended for about fifty yards. We rested then on our feet and waited until the first light was almost up. While we waited, a kind of self-imposed boredom set in, a familiar rigidity of the senses that was like putting blinders on to shut out the world, pretty much what always happened when we were scared shitless. As we were that morning, waiting there to move out.

  Then Gallagher stepped out of the shadows, high-stepping in front of us like a nervous colt, at the very point of the diamond, as he prepared to lead us in attack formation out of the little Alsatian valley we had been occupying and to herd us up the slight rise that climbed in folds in front of our lines. We moved behind him sluggishly, slowed by inertia and terror, the diamond losing its pristine shape almost immediately. Close it up, Fedderman, I wanted to yell. And you, too, Johnson, and Bern, and all the rest. We climbed slowly, positioned almost midway along the diamond’s length, barely feeling the ascent.

  The folds of the rise, I could now see, were roughly shaped like a horseshoe, with the curve narrowly facing in our direction. What Rocky told us when we started was that we were expected to straighten out the curve, force it back so that it would no longer poke into our territory and threaten us. There was no discussion of tactics. There were barely any orders. There wasn’t time. We assumed, if we assumed anything, that our squad leaders had been filled in.

  The third platoon continued to move out, still climbing slowly, still wearing a mask of false boredom like a shield, half-blind with fear.

  WITHIN a few moments, in terrible confusion, in a situation that was no longer comprehensible, a lot had happened. Lieutenant Gallagher, for one, was already dead. We saw him die, quickly. A bullet pierced his scrawny boy’s neck, with its enlarged Adam’s apple and its zit, as he moved forward ahead of us, just over the top of the rise. I heard shouting, maybe the sound of my own voice, or Bern’s or Fedderman’s. Someone yelled Kaputt! as though it was an order. Gallagher stood there, upright and motionless, his ferret’s face full of surprise, when the Germans began to fire their Mausers. At the same moment, perfectly synchronized, a 180-degree sweep of machine-gun fire, which at first I mistook for our own, took us from right to left, along the horseshoe’s curve, dropping the platoon where it stood. It then came around in a second sweep. It was that sweep that smashed me.

  I saw a hole open up in the back of Lieutenant Gallagher’s neck when the bullet passed through from the front—surprised at how large and black it was, clean, too, as though it had been drilled by a mechanic’s precision tool. There was a surge of surface blood at first, then a gurgle, like a tap being turned on, then a sudden torrent as he fell without a sound. Both of his carotid arteries must have poured in one stream through the wound. All of this took perhaps a dozen seconds: Gallagher’s death, the machine-gun assault, and the paralysis of the third platoon.

  We lay on the ground without moving. It was now light. This was when Bern tried to say something to Johnson and maybe to me, too, but I couldn’t hear him. I remember from that moment, when mass disorientation began to set in, the glob-smell of mud in my nostrils. I remember, too, the sudden drying-up of saliva in my mouth and the instant dehydration it produced; the powerful feel of my own body, as though I was carrying it as a burden; my skinny, attenuated frame, lying there on the ground, waiting; the heavy presence of limbs extending from it; my helmeted skull, quivering torso, and vulnerable crotch, the tender genitals curled dead-center at my pelvis; and my swollen bladder, burning. The sounds, too, never before heard, swelling over the noise of small-arms and machine-gun fire, of men’s voices calling for help or screaming in pain or terror—our own men’s voices, unrecognizable at first, weird in pitch and timbre. And the hum inside my own head, just as weird and unfamiliar, buzzing furiously, trying to drown out the sounds coming from all around me.

  In that moment, also, Johnson was calling for water, moaning as though he was about to lose consciousness. Natale, lying alongside Brewster, was cursing and vomiting and drawing fire with his cries. There was nothing from the rest of the squad. I didn’t know where Rocky was. He was too far in front. By then, he was probably dead. The other voices—from the rest of the platoon and the extras from another unit, scattered everywhere—I hardly recognized.

  ALMOST without a pause, the German machine-gun fire segued into mortar explosions, then suddenly stopped. Mortar shells began to drop into the middle of our pathetic diamond, spraying shrapnel on all sides: large jagged metal jigsaws, tiny needle-splinters, chunky steel rocks whinging outward. But the range was apparently short, too short for accuracy, and the damage to us mostly accidental. When they finished with the mortars, the Germans began to lob grenades; these, too, fell inside the diamond but they were more effective than the mortars. Grenades were very accurate within their limited range. They were to draw blood all day long.

  Finally, I discovered—we all discovered, those of us who still lived—the chilling new presence of snipers, whose main job was to pick off our wounded: easy work that day, for each target was already immobilized. Nothing was neglected by the Germans in the face of our elephantine approach. They responded with lethal efficiency. And the Germans—who remained invisible in their positions, as they half-surrounded us on the curve of the horse-shoe—had all the time in the world to play with us. It was cushioned time, too, as it turned out, for there was no response that day from the rest of C Company behind us, no answering artillery or heavy weapons fire, and no supporting troops to help us slip out of the horseshoe rise that we had trapped ourselves in. The compan
y hung tight somewhere in the rear for reasons of its own, never explained by Captain Antonovich or Master Sergeant Archambault, both of whom had somehow managed to escape this trip. I thought of them bitterly and cursed them both for pigs.

  Slowly then, as the morning wore on and the knowledge began to sink in, I came to realize that for us there was nothing to do but wait, flat out as we were, for our own deaths.

  WITHIN minutes of Lieutenant Gallagher’s death, I began to play the corpse. It was the only option. I tried to freeze my muscles and nerves first, concentrating as though it was a yoga exercise. Then I allowed myself a single diminished breath every fifteen seconds or so, sometimes longer, increasingly longer, until I felt my heartbeat and pulse slow. Soon I was able to keep the rhythm of my breathing steady and my limbs from trembling. In that way, I hoped to make myself invisible. I imagined—I had to imagine—that I was actually shrinking from sight as I lay there, that no one could see me and that, unseen, I would be safe.

  That is how I went on for hours, playing the living corpse, beginning to believe, at odd moments, that I might really be dead and already in a transitory state, and occasionally distracting myself, in a purely nervous, hallucinatory reflex, by pretending to slip out of my body as I waited for the end so that I could detachedly observe my own sodden form from above, cringing and shriveled into itself in the mud below. An awful sight.

  • • •

  OUT OF my peripheral vision, I glimpsed a body suddenly rise to its feet and race for the rear, followed by a quick burst of machine-gun fire. The body disappeared, the firing ceased. Paul Willis? Barney Barnato? I couldn’t tell, and I would never know. By then, fifteen feet away, Johnson was begging for water, whimpering softly into the mud without stopping—an animal’s sound that came from deep in his larynx, with no recognizable human overtones. It was not possible to help him. That I swear. It was not possible to help anyone. Ralph Natale, alongside Brewster, was convulsing from his wounds. Ira Fedderman, somewhere ahead of Bern, whose helmet I could no longer see, was calling for his mother, the saddest call of all. So were others. Rocky was gone, on the other side of the ridge, too far in front. I was no longer sure where Bern was. If Fedderman and Natale would only shut up. And all the rest. I continued to breathe quietly, without motion, in that diminished way. I began to count slowly, to soothe myself. I watched myself from above. I probably was crying.

  AROUND noon, I heard the rattle of a plane overhead, the buzz of an old engine. It stayed around for a couple of minutes, hovering above us, then disappeared to the south, to our rear. I kept listening for it long after it vanished. Nothing came of it.

  BY EARLY afternoon, my canteen had opened up a sore on my hip, from the abrasive pressure that came from lying still. I could feel the sore begin to ooze. It burned, but it offered a distraction I could concentrate on. I didn’t mind.

  • • •

  THE DAY edged on. I could only guess at the time.

  At one point, I heard commands being given in German, loud and confident-sounding, but also harried and urgent. An exchange followed, then more commands. Maybe it meant that the Germans had decided to pack up and move out—a foolish judgment. In a little while, there was another round of machine-gun fire, then quiet, then one or two mortar shells, more quiet, then grenades and sniper fire. Sniper fire pretty much all the time—the pattern, the routine, perfectly regulated for the rest of the day, but at a far slower pace as the hours wore on.

  STILL, through it all, I remained untouched; I lived, safe in my levitating body, barely breathing, never moving. Not even when Natale, sprawled alongside Brewster maybe ten yards away, died with one final heave, still convulsing.

  And where was Bern? Who had tried to escape to the rear? And why was Johnson no longer whimpering? And when would Fedderman shut up? The noise he made, choking from asthma and terror, calling for his mother. And the noise all the others made …

  More time passed.

  HOURS later, toward dusk, when everything was in shadow and the air had noticeably chilled, the medics arrived. I heard them before I saw them, moving around carrying stretchers and speaking in whispers. I had a charge of adrenaline then, before stirring into action. That was what their unexpected arrival did for me. It brought me to life.

  I dared to move a limb, then another, shifting my legs to the right. Nothing happened. There was no machine-gun fire, no mortar shells, no grenades, no snipers. This worried me for a moment. I looked for a trick. Had the Germans actually pulled back? Or were they still in position, waiting to pick the rest of us off? I moved again. An arm this time, both legs again, calamitously stiff, then my head. I had the beginnings of a leg cramp; a contraction moved from my calf straight up through my thigh. I knew what was coming and how painful it would be. The medics were poking around, looking for wounded bodies. There were not many on that rise. The medics had not yet seen me, or I them. But I heard them and I felt them nearby, poking around. The light was fading fast. Shadows were now black. We had been trapped for twelve hours, and it was very quiet. I didn’t want the medics to miss me. I wanted them to know that I was there. I called something to them and got to my knees.

  “Don’t move.” A soft voice answering, full of anxiety.

  I looked up. A clean young man was standing over me. He wore an armband with a red cross on it and carried no weapon. “Don’t move,” he said again.

  “Is it over?” I asked.

  “We think it’s over,” he said. “It better be over. Are you all right?”

  “I have a leg cramp.”

  “No wounds?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t play the hero,” he said. He kept glancing over his shoulder as though he expected to be attacked. “Which leg?”

  I had been quietly moaning to myself as my muscles contracted. And now my other foot was asleep. I knelt there, waiting for the circulation to return, the muscles to relax. Now the moaning was involuntary.

  “I don’t know that there’s anything I can do about a leg cramp,” the medic said.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Two of the medics passed us then, carrying a body on a stretcher. They were slipping in the mud and trying to keep their balance. I didn’t recognize the face on the stretcher—somebody half-familiar, I thought, from another squad. Then, in another moment, the cramp was gone, a surge of unexpected energy suddenly went through me—perhaps the absolute last of my adrenaline—and I leapt up, touching myself everywhere, genitals first. Then I took a full minute to piss.

  What I think I wanted to do was look for Bern Keaton, but I was afraid, and it was dark; we were all becoming black silhouettes on the battleground. Where would I look?

  The medic was checking dog tags on some of the bodies, peering at them as he yanked them out of their shirt-fronts. “We’ll get this mess cleaned up by midnight,” he said.

  I knew he meant the dead.

  Without an exchange, I began to help the medic with a stretcher holding somebody from the third squad. I didn’t know his name. He looked dead to me—comfortable and slack from where I stood. Part of his lower jaw was missing, on the left side. One of the other medics was pouring some powder into the wound. The guy from the third squad didn’t move, didn’t flinch. I wanted to tell the medic that he was dead, that the powder was useless, but I kept quiet. They were the experts, they were the medics. I only knew how to fire a BAR and an M-1, under certain favorable conditions.

  The medic counted to three. “Now,” he said, and we picked the stretcher up. It didn’t weigh a lot but it felt lumpy. I still thought the guy was dead. In fact, I was sure of it. It was the lumpiness, as though there was no center of gravity to the body, as though the corpse was made up of nothing but pulpy tentacles. Then we were off to the rear, moving slowly as a few stars appeared in the east and evening really began to shield us. I felt invulnerable in that darkness. I was no longer afraid, and for a couple of seconds I was in a state of near-exaltation. The adrenaline again, I guessed. I tried
to hold on to the feeling, but it didn’t last. We moved on. I was dragging my feet and telling myself, as fear began to return, that everything that could happen had already happened.

  There was no more firing. The whole small valley, the horseshoe itself, was silent. I told myself that the Germans must have pulled back. They must have had enough for one day. And why not? They had won a splendid victory.

  IT WAS a long trip. My cramped leg hurt. My hip-sore burned and I wanted a cigarette. By the time we got back to company headquarters, perhaps five hundred yards to the rear, I was visibly trembling.

  “You’re shaking,” the medic said.

  I couldn’t stop. The medic said it again, and I waved him off. “It’s just from carrying the stretcher,” I said.

  Soon we were loading it onto a jeep for the journey back to the division hospital. Another jeep had left about ten minutes earlier, the driver said. I wanted to make the trip, too, as though I had been respectably wounded, something in the thigh, a piece of hot metal in the fleshy part. But I was intact and unbloodied, and a little contemptuous of myself for it.

  There were troops hanging around, I saw, maybe a couple of platoons lined up in the dark. They stood there in silence, shifting from one foot to the other. I thought they were staring at me. Were they getting ready to head back to the horseshoe, to occupy it? Were they going to try to fill the gap left in the lines by the disappearance of the third platoon? Whichever, I thought, it was tough shit for them, and their faces showed that they knew it, too.

  I soon discovered where Antonovich had spent the day. I found him inside company headquarters’ tent, standing in front of a table, facing me. He was as clean as a whistle. His field phone was off the hook, and he was blowing his nose violently. Then he hung up the phone. There were papers all over the place, as though someone had thrown them in the air and then let them rest wherever they landed. When Antonovich saw me, he began to moan. It was a terrible sound to hear coming from an officer.