We were going to Alsace, to a little town called Haguenau, about a hundred and sixty miles away on the border of France and Germany. We’d get a little time off, maybe get a shower and a change of clothes, but more fighting was right around the corner.
They put us in boxcars for the rest of the trip. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and straw lined the boxcars, but it was still very cold. Hayseed Rogers was platoon sergeant then and we shivered as we pulled into a little French town. “We got to have some heat,” Rogers said.
Inside the train station was a fuddy-looking guy sitting around a big ole potbellied stove. McClung glanced at Rogers, turned to another guy, and told him to put on his gloves. They jumped out as the train chugged slowly along. They ran over to the station, marched right up to that stove, pried it loose, and lugged it back to our boxcar. It was still going full blast with the coal still in it. The fuddy-looking guy just sat there with a confused look on his face.
My, but that stove warmed us up nice. We were the only boxcar in that whole train with a potbellied stove. A little later the train picked up speed. A while after that we screeched into a railroad yard. Our stomachs were growling something fierce. McClung climbed out again, looked over the cars, and picked one he reckoned had good potential. He leveled his rifle and shot the lock off the railway car. Well, glory. It was stocked with 10-1 rations. Bacon, ground coffee. The works. He lugged a crate back to our car and we licked our chops. We hadn’t had a good meal in nearly two months, but now we had a hot coal stove and bacon and coffee and we were still alive. We rode like kings all the way to Alsace.
12
MAYBE WE’LL ACTUALLY LIVE
Well, we kicked around on reserve for a short while, did our laundry, stood under lukewarm showers, ate some real chow, things like that. Then in early February 1945, we moved back to the line. We were defending this city called Haguenau, and I confess I didn’t feel like doing much. Mornings, I’d get up, you know, light a smoke and eat some stew and run a toothbrush over my teeth, then clean my rifle and head out for outpost duty. I’d sit in the upper window of this building and peer out the broken glass at the enemy on the other side of the river and try to be alert, always looking, always listening. But I felt run-through, plowed, like a man after a hard day’s work who only wants to climb the stairs to his porch and sit a spell.
Haguenau was maybe twenty thousand residents. It was French now, but depending on which war you’d been in, it’d been swapped back and forth between Germany and France a couple times. It was a strange way for us to hold the line. We camped in old houses on the bank of the Moder River, which ran between the two countries. Easy Company occupied the buildings on the south bank. The Germans held the position on the north bank. Shots were fired back and forth across the river, but mostly we were surrounded by this unsteady quietness.
I doubt it was an uncommon feeling, this weariness, at least among us old-timers. You’d notice exhaustion in the way men moved. Maybe a subtle groan when a soldier shouldered his rifle. A slower glance before a man crossed the street. The war was winding itself down. We were sure of it. We’d beat the Germans at Bastogne. Broke the enemy’s back. And because of that, we all walked more carefully now than ever before. I think even the Germans felt this way. Didn’t seem like they had much fight left. For us in Easy Company, a new hope stirred. It wasn’t a carefree hope, one that fills a man with energy. But an undeclared hope that drives a man to caution. It’s when you sense you might actually come through this thing alive.
Skinny Sisk fit this profile. I watched him out of the corner of my eye for a day or so and he acted more leery than I’d ever seen. Food wasn’t real abundant for us in Haguenau, and one day Skinny came across a chicken, sprinted back to the bombed out house we were staying in, and we cooked it in the backyard over an open fire. We’d had a shipment of beer trucked in from somewhere, oddly enough in spite of the scarcity of food, and three bottles each was the ration. Skinny and me both sucked ours down, pulling apart that chicken, and I asked him why he had such a faraway look in his eyes. He spat out a chicken bone, eyed the question guardedly, and said, “Well, the man upstairs and me had words.”
“Who—McClung?” It was One Lung’s turn to watch across the river.
Skinny shook his head. “Nah, it was during all that shit we took in Bastogne. Shifty, I told God if I ever made it out of there alive, I’d become a rev’rund.” He took the last sip of his beer, then opened another bottle.
Well, that was almost funny to hear. When I’d met Skinny back in Toccoa, he’d been the most foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, hard-living reprobate ever to enlist in Easy Company. I had a hard time ever picturing him as a preacher. All I said was “You?”
“Yeah. Why not?” Skinny poured the rest of his beer down his throat and wiped the grease from his hands on his pants. “Someday I’m gonna keep my promise to God.” He frowned and added, “If only I could get some goddam sleep first.”
I knew what he was talking about. Skinny had been a fine soldier all during the fighting. Back in Holland he’d led the charge a couple of times. He’d killed a lot of Krauts, seen a lot of blood. Experiences like those had a way of weighing heavy on a man’s mind, I knew it for fact, especially at night when sleep was hard to come by.
Sergeant Carwood Lipton had changed, too, although his experience wasn’t religious. The first day we got to Haguenau, I’d seen Sergeant Lipton sweating and chalk-eyed. He was running a powerful fever. There was talk floating around that they were gonna send Sergeant Lipton to the hospital, but he shook his head, you know, poured back some Schnapps, and said he was gonna go get a good night’s sleep. Well, next morning his fever had cleared. Doc said he could stay on the line if he wanted. I was happy, because you hate to lose another good man, even to the hospital. Shortly after that, Captain Winters and Lieutenant Spiers gathered us around and gave Sergeant Lipton a battlefield commission. Made him an officer. I felt right proud of him, I did. Sergeant Lipton had always been there for us when we needed him. When Foxhole Norman was off looking at trees, Sergeant Lipton was the glue that held Easy Company together. No one deserved a battlefield commission more than him.
That was happy news, but I started sensing something different about Bill Kiehn, something unfamiliar and not so happy. He was an only child, you know, and maybe the tension of so many months on the front line was worming its way inside his head. He’d said more than once that his folks would be beyond devastated if anything ever happened to him. One morning he sidled into the basement where I stayed and handed me three potatoes. He’d found a sack somewhere and was passing them out to the men.
“Shifty, you make sure you keep eating,” Bill said. “You’re not looking healthy.”
It was true. The day before I’d caught a glimpse of myself in a broken mirror in the house. My eyes were sunk into my face. Wrinkles ran up and down my forehead. My skin looked pasty and cold. I guess war ages a man. I was only twenty-one, but I looked about forty-five.
“Much obliged, Bill,” I said, and took the potatoes. “These will make a real fine supper later on.”
He eyed me suspiciously, almost like a mother might do when worrying about her son. “I mean it, Shifty,” Bill said. “You be real careful, you hear. We’re almost at the end of this thing.”
Something caught in his voice when he said careful, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what he meant. I thought back to the early days at Toccoa, when Bill Kiehn started out. He was real ornery then. Came in with a chip on his shoulder. But Sergeant Buck Taylor had taken a little extra time with him, helped him out, you know, and Bill straightened out and settled in. He’d come home with me on leave that one time, back to Clinchco. When the fighting started, he’d become a man you could trust with a rifle. He fought with the company at every major battle we’d been through. By Haguenau, Bill Kiehn was one of the most dependable soldiers in the outfit, and I reckoned he’d become one of my best friends.
Well, one day stretched into the n
ext. It snowed the first few days, but the snow didn’t stick much, and soon trees branches showed bare against the gray sky. Roads grew muddy and wet. Buildings looked bombed and crumbling. Sounds from artillery fire could be heard sporadically from across the river, but there wasn’t much action. The whole place was dismal. It was a paradise compared to Bastogne.
My squad was mostly stationed in this house with two stories up and a basement below. We always kept somebody on observation duty, always watching across the river. Upstairs, we darkened the background so nobody could see us, and whenever our turn came, we climbed the stairs and peered out the window, looking for things that needed looking for.
One morning from upstairs I saw a flash across the river, so I called the guys in artillery on the phone and told them a shell was coming. That shell exploded a street or two over but didn’t do much damage. We fired back a round. About the time we fired our round, the Germans fired another. This one flew in and crashed in our backyard. No harm done, I figured, so I kept watching. I saw another of our shells explode on the other side. The guys in artillery phoned back and said, “How’s that for range?” I told them it was fine. The Krauts were firing over and we were firing back. Nobody looked like they were hitting much of anything important, because both sides kept firing, so I guessed that it was a good day’s work for everybody, come this strange season in the war.
A few days went by, and the Germans must have trucked in this big ole railway gun from some place, because one day when I was upstairs they fired something that didn’t sound like anything I’d heard yet in Haguenau. See, when an 88 shell came through the air, it whistled downward, sort of like fhwee-eee-eee-ee, you know. But this new shell spiraled in with a whoor-whoor-whoor-whoor, like a truck starting up. It came slow, too, so slow I had enough time to run downstairs to the basement before it hit. It was safer in the basement. We all knew that.
The Germans must have liked that ole railway gun, because as soon as I got down to that basement and all was safe, I climbed back upstairs, and right away another big ole shell started flying my way, whoor-whoor-whoor. I sprinted downstairs again. This one hit the street behind us and exploded. No worries, so right back upstairs I went. I watched for another while, and still another big ole shell flew in. Back down the stairs I ran. It exploded in the next-door yard. Right back upstairs I went. That went on for most the rest of the afternoon. Me just running up and down the stairs, laughing and cursing at the ceiling every time the ground shook and the plaster rained down.
One night we got word that the upper brass wanted to send a patrol across the river to capture prisoners. None of the fellas were much happy about this. I didn’t say much, ’cause I figured they’d probably pick me whether I said anything or not. But McClung got picked as scout instead. So I felt sorry for McClung, but knew he could handle himself. About fifteen, sixteen men total were going, and most of the rest of us were ordered to help out alongside the river. Fine by me.
As soon as it got black outside, a rope was stretched across the water. The men climbed into rubber boats and started to pull themselves across hand by hand. One boat capsized, and the fellas in the frosty water made a bunch of splashing noise. I had my finger on the trigger, aimed at the other side, but nothing stirred over there.
The rest of the fellas got over okay. Wasn’t more than five minutes later we heard a rifle grenade. Explosions. For about a minute gunfire burst all over the place, then I saw the team hustle back into their boats and begin to paddle back. Everything opening up around them. Machine guns. Huge blasts. The Krauts weren’t none too happy, and we fired everything we had back at them across the river.
As soon as our men reached the bank, it looked like they’d got their two prisoners all right. They were stern-looking suckers with tight mouths. McClung gave me the thumbs-up sign as he scrambled up the bank, but he shook his head, too. One of our men was hurt bad. There was a lot of yelling and shouting and they carried him up: Private Jackson. His face and chest were covered with blood and he was screaming, “Kill me! Kill me! Christ, I can’t stand it.” It looked like he caught a grenade fragment in his head. Doc Roe ran up, stuck a morphine syrette in Jackson, and tried to get the bleeding to stop as we started carrying him back to the outpost. He twitched for twenty or thirty feet, but was motionless before we got him indoors. A man covered the dead man’s face with a wool blanket, and we put away the stretcher. I thought about how Eugene Jackson was just twenty years old. He’d lied about his age to go into the Army. He’d been a good soldier with a lot of life ahead of him, and now he was gone.
Our guards took the prisoners back to battalion headquarters. I hoped those prisoners would say a lot, but somehow I doubted they would. A man at my level isn’t paid to think, but I got to studying that situation and I concluded that patrol had been plumb useless. Two prisoners for the life of one of our men. And what were the prisoners going to talk about? How the war was winding down? How they were sorry they’d been captured? How they’d had cold coffee and stale bread that morning for breakfast?
We were right angry when word came around the next night that upper brass wanted more prisoners still. None of us relished the thought of yet another patrol. We sat around in our basement for a while cursing the Army. Men smoked and ate stew. I cleaned my weapon. I was pretty sure I’d need to go out on this patrol tonight. I wondered if I should try to doze a bit, but my adrenaline was running high, so I walked around the basement, you know, trying to get my head clear. I ate a canteen cup full of stew and lay on a bunk for a while, but I wasn’t sleeping.
The clock ticked near the time we were to go. Dick Winters came in to brief us. He’d become a major now, and I was real happy for the man. I knew such a stupid order as the second patrol had never come from him. We ten-hupped, thanks to the bushy-tailed ways of a new officer who was going out with us on the patrol as an observer, then stood at ease. Major Winters walked around the basement a moment. He took off his helmet and cleared his throat. “Colonel Sink is proud of the patrol that went on last night,” he said. “Real proud. So proud we’ll need to go further into town this time, since the outpost on the edge of the river was destroyed last night.”
I looked around the room. The men’s faces were alert. We were ready to go of course, but eyes registered weariness, and maybe some of the stuff we’d been thinking after last night. I lit a cigarette.
Major Winters must have been looking, too. Or maybe he’d already thought through his plan long in advance, because he sort of rubbed his forehead with his hands, then said in a husky whisper: “Here’s what I want you to do. Go get some sleep. In the morning you will report to me that you made it across the river to German lines but were unable to secure any live prisoners. Understand?” He looked around the room again. A few eyebrows lifted. A few grins twitched. Mouths hung open.
“Yes, sir,” someone finally said on our behalf.
Major Winters turned to go, paused, then turned back to us and said, “We’re moving off the line in a day or two. No sense anybody else getting killed at this point.”
I caught his full meaning. I think we all did. Major Winters could think things through plainly, and he was always looking out for his men. That second patrol never happened. Word came back to us the next day that a bogus report had been written up. None of us would ever say a thing about it, that was for sure. I felt a new sense of optimism, thinking we might all make it home alive after all.
It was maybe our last full day in Haguenau. Maybe we had another day to go. We ate some breakfast, and Bill Kiehn had come off duty. He said he needed to take care of some things, then maybe later he’d take a nap in the basement of one of the empty houses. I don’t think I said much in return. It was just part of a normal conversation one man might have with another when he comes in from duty.
I finished up whatever I was eating and climbed the stairs in our house to take my shift on outpost duty. For some time I didn’t see or hear a thing. I peered out the window at the quiet enemy on the ot
her side of the river. Morning stretched toward midday.
When an artillery shell flew in, it seemed like any other normal shell. It blasted a building down the street a ways. I radioed our artillery guys and told them where it had come from. Guys were hollering down on the street. I didn’t know what all the noise was about. It was just another shell. I peered out the window again and saw Paul Rogers running toward where the shell had hit. Other fellas were running, too, but Rogers had an uncommon look on his face. My forehead scrunched up and I started breathing hard through my nose. I was putting two and two together, you know, and I grabbed my rifle and flew down the stairs.
The fellas had dug him out by the time I got there. He was covered in plaster, debris, and broken bits of wood.
They were carrying him out of that bombed out house. The artillery shell had come straight through the front door and flown down the steps, and the ceiling had collapsed right on top of him.
He had decided to take a nap in the middle of the day. He’d gone down to that basement. It was an empty house.
Bill Kiehn was dead before Doc Roe even heard the call for a medic.
We all stood around, our helmets in our hands. Then we went back to whatever we needed to do.
13
AT WAR’S END
We rode in boxcars back to Mourmelon. Fellas swung their feet out the door of the train as we jolted through France, waving to farmers, taking pulls on Schnapps bottles. We were going into reserve for a while, a place where there’d be no more shooting, no more killing, no more dying.
I hunched in the straw near the back of the boxcar. My knees were near my chest, and I rested my elbows on my knees. My rifle lay some distance away. I’d got a new one and it was a piece of shit. My old rifle was just fine. It had been with me from the beginning, you know, back in Toccoa. But somewhere along the line I’d got a pit in the stock, and some chickenshit officer was always gigging me during inspection due to that pit. I was plumb sick and tired of getting gigged. A fella didn’t often think about his rifle the same way he’d think about a friend. But when I thought about how my best rifle was gone forever, well, a big ole tear splashed down my face. I wiped it away with the back of my hand before anybody would see. How stupid of me. How plumb stupid. To be crying over an ole rifle.
Shifty's War Page 16