A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking

by Samuel Fuller;Christa Lang Fuller;Jerome Henry Rudes

  The casualties in the theater would be bad for business. Such reaching for reality in the name of art is against the law. Hell, the heavy human toll is just too much for anyone to comprehend fully. What I try to do is make audiences feel the emotional strife of total war.

  During the North African campaign, I had to kill a man for the first time. The act begets the most basic revulsion. I couldn't believe it was me pulling the trigger. It left me feeling hollow inside. But a soldier must overcome that disgust if he is to survive. Afterward, when you kill, you're shooting the same man over and over again. Your will to survive surprises you, eventually kicking abstract thoughts like remorse or mercy out of your brain. The reality is, you're glad the other guy is dead and you're still alive. You become a killing machine.

  To regroup before our next campaign, we were loaded into trucks and driven back along the coast road to Algeria. All the way, the convoy encountered continuous demonstrations of cheering civilians strewing flowers on the road and offering us wine. Battle-weary and ragged, we were much too tired to do anything more than smile and wave back at the crowds. For most of the next six weeks, we bivouacked about thirty miles from Algiers near a village called Staouli. The place was surrounded by dunes and magnificent hills. At dawn and dusk, the sun would hit the rocks and shimmer with millions of fragments of color. We lived in pup tents, ate hard-boiled eggs, drank Algerian wine, and tried to keep the mosquitoes from eating us alive at night by propping mesh nets over our heads with our rifles.

  As soon as we regained our strength, there was a new round of training and exercises. There was also time to explore the Casbah in Algiers-nothing like the one in Julien Duvivier's Pepe le Moko (1937), where Jean Gabin, playing a Parisian gangster, hides out from the police and falls in love with a gorgeous tourist. The real Casbah destroyed, for once and for all, my exotic movie fantasies. The place was nothing more than a squalid quarter in a big, bustling city. Besides, the Algerians considered all soldiers, whether German, English, Canadian, or American, trespassers in their land. The French, however, were kind to us.

  One day my sergeant and I went to a wine merchant at 14 rue de Janina to buy some good French wine. When we knocked at the door, a woman opened it and welcomed us inside. We'd gotten the address wrong, for this was a private home, not a wine store. We were embarrassed and tried to leave. The woman's husband made us sit down, introduced us to their little boy, and showed us pictures of their relatives back in France. They were decent, hardworking people. Since the war began, they'd had very little to eat. They opened a bottle of really good Bordeaux they'd put away for a special occasion and shared it with their "American liberators."

  We thanked our hosts and left. Separating from my sergeant, I walked and walked, curious to see as much as I could of the Casbah. General George Patton's Seventh Army headquarters was in the Aletti Hotel. As I passed the Aletti, I saw trucks unloading crates of canned goods and vegetables. The driver saw my Big Red One patch and hollered at me. He belonged to the First Division, too.

  "You know rue de Janina?" I asked the man.

  "Sure," he said.

  "A major in our regiment is staying at number 14," I lied. "The major would really appreciate some extra grub. Deliver a few crates, and I'll make sure he knows who took care of him."

  I slapped the man on the shoulder and offered him one of the precious Optimo cigars that my mother had sent me. The driver delivered the crates, as requested. When I stopped in to see my French friends the following week, they were in seventh heaven. To show their appreciation, they gave me a white handkerchief with a little blue flower, as a souvenir. I carried that handkerchief with me throughout the war, my good-luck charm. Years later, I received a letter from my French friends from Algiers. They'd tracked me down through the War Department, inviting me to their son's engagement party in Paris. Their little boy had become an engineer. I couldn't go, but I was thrilled to hear from them, honored that they'd never forgotten our meeting in the Casbah.

  A V-mail to Rebecca from Algeria. Letters home had to be short, vague, and carefree.

  One day a jeep with two soldiers from the Sixteenth Command Post drove up to our camp looking for me. The sergeant sitting next to the driver had written orders from Colonel George A. Taylor to bring me to his headquarters. What could the commander of the Sixteenth Regiment want with me, a recently promoted corporal in the Twenty-sixth? I got in the back of the jeep and drove with them to the Sixteenth's CP. Nobody spoke. The jeep stopped in front of a big tent. I walked in, clicked my heels, and saluted. It was the first time I'd needed to perform all that military crap since back at drill camp.

  "Corporal Fuller, reporting as requested," I barked out.

  "What kind of cigars do you smoke, Fuller?" asked Colonel Taylor.

  "Optimos," I said. "Only thing I can get hold of over here."

  "Everything else is in your file," said the colonel. "I've been reading about you. Impressive stuff. Reporter. Novelist. Movies."

  "Yes sir."

  "Now you're going to write for us."

  "Write what, sir?"

  "A full report after each battle. I want you to record exactly what you've seen in your own words. I want a detailed description of this regiment's actions, every combat, every movement, every victory, every error. Complete honesty."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "In all wars," said Taylor, hitting me between the eyes with his philosophy, "the only stories of individual battles that get written are those from the army's point of view. Military historians try to write history as if it belonged to the army. One regiment did this. Another did that. Always the same point of view. History, for me, is something that can save lives."

  "I don't want that responsibility, Colonel," I said.

  "Hell if I care what you want," he replied. "I'm giving you a great opportunity, Fuller. You'll get to observe the entire operation. No damned corporal has ever had the opportunity to see a combat plan, participate in it, then report on its execution."

  "You asked for honesty, Colonel. I'm giving it to you straight. After a battle, all I want to do is laugh with the other guys, get a little drunk, and celebrate. If I'm still alive."

  I felt free to refuse Colonel Taylor's offer, because I was about the lowest grade in the army. If they demoted me, there wasn't a long way to go before hitting bottom. I hadn't asked for the promotion to corporal at the conclusion of Torch, and I didn't give a shit if they took it away from me.

  "Look, young man," said Taylor, "when I order a man to paint a fence white, white it will be! Understand? From now on, you're part of my regiment, the Sixteenth."

  "But sir . . ." I began.

  "But nothing!" said Taylor. "You were transferred to the Sixteenth the minute you got into the jeep that brought you here! Maybe you'll change your mind about writing for me. Meanwhile, I want you on hand at all times, Fuller."

  Colonel George A. Taylor's earthiness, good humor, and steely determination come through in this drawing by William Fraccio. Taylor was an outstanding combat leader and a wonderful guy.

  We both smiled. That's how I got moved over to the Sixteenth for the rest of the war. Beneath all the officer veneer, Colonel Taylor had a heart of gold. I loved the guy. He became yet another father figure for me. I'd do anything for him, except write battle reports.

  By June 1943, final preparations were being made for another invasion. We'd been put through more hard exercises to keep us in good shape. More importantly, we were battle-trained now, mentally ready to meet the Nazis head on, wherever the front would be. Tanks, jeeps, and trucks were painted to get them ready for another amphibious operation, then loaded onto waiting ships. The quays in the harbor at Algiers were crowded with more and more troop transports, destroyers, cruisers, and subchasers. Invasion rumors Hew thick and fast. No one knew for sure where the beachhead was, nor did we have the faintest idea when we'd ship out. We were on tenterhooks. Even though we'd survived North Africa, a fatal bullet could be waiting for us in the ne
xt campaign.

  As we were marching one day, a group of prisoners of war passed us going the opposite way. Among them was a dogface from our company. Turning my eyes away, I pretended not to recognize him. The American soldier had bandaged himself up and was standing in the line of Germans and Italians waiting to board a prisoner ship sailing for the States. Prisoners of war were sent to work on farms, the safest places to be for young Germans or Italians in 1943. The deserter's plan was to have a couple weeks lazing around the prison ship bound for New York, work on a farm, maybe get fingered and land in the hoosegow for a while. Whatever happened to him, he figured he'd be alive at the end of the war. The poor sonofabitch's timing was just a little off.

  They identified the AWOL soldier during the Atlantic crossing, and MPs took him into custody as soon as the ship docked in Manhattan. Following Colonel Taylor's request to the War Department, the deserter was put on a transport plane and immediately sent back to Algiers, where he was urgently needed back on the front lines. He reappeared in our regiment the day before we shipped out. We teased the poor sonofabitch mercilessly.

  "Tell us about New York!"

  "Did you meet any pretty girls?"

  "Any good whiskey?"

  The deserter felt a little cocky about his caper. He was expecting much worse, but Colonel Taylor decided that his only punishment was to take the same risks as the rest of us. His face dropped when we told him that our next campaign was about to begin.

  "When exactly?" he asked, his panicky eyes bulging.

  "Don't know, but very soon."

  "Where's the assault?" he asked, his voice trembling.

  "No idea."

  On July 3 and 4, the entire First Division was trucked in and loaded on the USS Elizabeth Stanton and the USS Thurston. The mighty fleet that had been assembling for weeks put out to sea on July 8. That's when we found out our target was Sicily. The code name for the operation would be "Husky." Booklets about Sicily were distributed to all dogfaces on board. Eager boys aching for action had replaced the soldiers killed or wounded in North Africa. I remember looking around at all the untried warriors and making a note in my journal, calling them "oatmeal invaders." One played the harmonica. Others sang. They had no reason to fear death by violence. They still didn't know what it was. Only a few months before, I myself had been an oatmeal invader.

  The troop transports maneuvered into position off the southern coast of Sicily in very stormy weather the night of July 9. The ship was rolling violently in the heavy seas. The night was pitch-black, the Mediterranean, furious. The wind shrieked mercilessly. Waves crashed against the ship's bow like a relentless hammer out of a Greek myth. Suddenly navy destroyers opened fire, brightening the hostile horizon with crimson splotches. The sky vibrated with the roar of planes overhead. A searchlight from a destroyer right behind us blinded a plane. Anti-aircraft gunners on the ship opened fire. Holy shit, they were our planes, the Eighty-second Airborne, carrying the 504th Battalion of paratroopers! Over a loudspeaker, an officer screamed to cease fire. With a vicious wail and motors in flames, two C-478s plummeted into the sea right in front of our ship. Dead bodies tumbled from the sky. Some paratroopers barely escaped, by jumping out and hitting the silk. One of the jumpers, however, landed on the deck not far from me, his flesh still burning.

  Wars are full of accidents. The sad fate of those Eighty-second Airborne paratroopers isn't mentioned very often in the history books. It made me sick to see it, even sicker to think of the families of those dead boys, confronted with the truth that they hadn't died by enemy fire but rather at the hands of their own countrymen.

  Our big guns continued mercilessly, seeking out the enemy's coastal positions. We saw flashes on the horizon, shells bursting on the beach. The deafening crash of the artillery was like one long rolling peal of thunder, blending insanely with the quiet, calm command piped over the ship's sound system: "First wave to your stations."

  Doggies ran to their boats, but because of the storm, we weren't able to board the landing craft until after midnight. Once lowered away, the cramped boats seemed like they would surely capsize before we ever reached the beach, tossing, bucking, and smashing against the side of the troopship. Vomit ambushed most of us. How could such small craft remain whole in that whirlpool of fury? Just as it seemed the invasion couldn't get any more nightmarish, someone screamed, "Incoming mail!"

  We flattened ourselves down as much as possible. A shell from coastal artillery came crashing down on a landing ship tank-affectionately called a "long slow target"-making a direct hit on an ammunition truck on board the LST. The truck exploded, setting off chain reactions. It came a few days late, but we had the greatest July 4th fireworks show in history. Sheets of fire mushroomed upward, illuminating assault boats crammed with nauseous men armed with rifles, machine guns, and bazookas.

  From ship to ship, silhouetted against the blazing horizon, scores of green lights blinked at red lights and yellow lights. One by one, the bucking boats pulled away from the troop transports and raced us to beachheads at Gela, a city founded by settlers from Rhodes and Crete in 688 B.C. Coastal searchlights streaked across the sky, hunting our ships. Our destroyers continued to rain hell on those beacons. Behind the beaches, our paratroopers were landing at their inland positions.

  Safeties off, pieces ready, we crouched in the landing crafts, jammed one against the other, squinting at the quickly approaching sand dunes.

  "Looks like Coney Island on a lousy night," said a lieutenant, binoculars glued to his eyes.

  "She's gonna hit!" someone screamed.

  We steeled ourselves for the jarring blow of the landing craft vehicle personnel, the LCVP (which we also referred to as a "Higgins boat"), against the sand. When it came to a sudden halt, we were thrown forward. LCVPs held thirty-two infantrymen and two marines. One marine was in charge, the other was an expert sniper. The ramp dropped. Machine-gun bullets cracked ahead of us in the dark. Many of the first men off the boat were almost always killed. We scrambled over their bodies and broke for shore without pausing. We were taught to never look at their faces. Never! The dead were dead. A split second wasted glancing at a corpse's haunting face and you'd wind up being a corpse too. We splashed forward into the water, dark, death-dealing figures, soaked waist-high, rifles held aloft, dashing through the surf.

  "Somebody's pack!" a soldier yelled.

  It was no pack. It was Sergeant Rideout, shot through the head.

  "My toilet paper and tobacco are getting wet," griped another.

  Our officers had welcomed the gale, saying it camouflaged the invasion. Bullshit! The Italians were waiting for us. Those same officers had told us that Mussolini's men were laughable and their armies incompetent. More bullshit! At Gela, we were welcomed by highly trained professionals and fierce fighters. As our boats hit the beach, flares lit up the sky. A Breda heavy machine gun exploded through the slit in a concrete pillbox camouflaged high up on the beach. From dug-in positions, mortars, submachine guns, and rifles fired at our men as we plopped down on our bellies in the sand.

  The North African landing had been kindergarten next to the invasion of Sicily. We were in Europe now. This was home turf to the Duce, backed by Hitler. There were three hundred thousand Italian and German soldiers occupying Sicily under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. Each battle was going to be fought tooth and nail. For cryin' out loud, we were in their goddamned backyard!

  I made it up the beach alive and shed my life jacket. There were bloody arms, legs, and heads strewn everywhere. That pillbox had to be knocked out. Our company commander sent a bazooka team over there. We covered them by unleashing a barrage of fire at the slit in the pillbox. A direct hit with a bazooka rocket blew the pillbox to smithereens, giving us momentary relief.

  Up until then, Husky was the largest assault operation ever attempted by the Allies. The Third and Forty-fifth Divisions came ashore on either flank of the First. Up and down the beach, pillboxes were knocked out. Montgomery's Eighth Army touc
hed down farther south, at Pachino. The timing of the invasion had to be precise. Wave after wave of men assaulted the beachheads. Nevertheless, we felt very alone out there. And goddamned wet. The big knot in the pit of my stomach was the same one that was churning in every other soldier's gut. We'd had battle experience, but the ferociousness of the fighting at Gela was beyond anything we'd ever seen before. We'd faced the enemy, but never this many. Our endurance had been tested, but never to this extent. The noise of all the machine guns, grenades, land mines, mortar explosions, and heavy artillery was maddening.

  Gradually, we moved up the beach, knocking out their positions one after another. Demoralized, the Italians fell back. Dawn brought a lull. Thanks to the pinkish light, we could see the entire corpse-strewn beach. We had to keep moving up. Barbed wire barricades were cut through, and a railway embankment was scaled. We hustled through vegetable gardens and out into narrow streets, rooting out snipers as we advanced. We took a nearby airfield and blew up the Messerschmitts and Heinkels we caught on the landing strip. Patrols were formed. One of them rushed back to our base camp and reported that German tanks and troops were moving back toward us. It was the anticipated counterattack, like at Kasserine Pass, led by the crack Hermann Goring Panzer Division. German tanks got into position, expecting to hit us hard and push our asses into the Mediterranean.

  The battle was desperate, purely defensive, trying to hold our lines. There could be no retreat, for that meant annihilation. Fighting with only our rifles and a couple 57-mm antitank guns on hand, we tried to hold off the advancing Panzers, knocking a few out of commission. But by tioo hours, forty tanks had moved up, confronting us on the road to Niscemi, the nearest village. A navy reconnaissance plane had radioed the Panzers' position to the destroyer Savannah, which unleashed its heavy artillery. The exploding shells were deafening but off target. The Panzers regrouped and proceeded to smash through our positions, heading for the beach to destroy supplies and cut us off from our support. Behind the tanks, over fifty truckloads of Wehrmacht troops were unloaded to join the counteroffensive.