This is the shot Robert Capa took of me during the Sicilian campaign, though I wouldn't see it until years later, when we ran into each other in Hollywood.
"So where's the photo for my mother?" I said.
We both laughed. One look around his apartment and I understood that the man was literally submerged in his work. At the time, he was doing a book entitled Slightly Out of Focus. We talked about other battle zones Capa had covered. His war pictures had made him world-famous. On his wall was that unforgettable shot taken during the Spanish civil war of the Republican soldier hit by a bullet, falling backward, holding on to his rifle even as he dies. We went through some of the boxes of stills he'd taken during World War II, and that's how we found the photo of me sleeping aboard the Henrico just before D day. Capa gave it to me for Rebecca. Then we looked at those sensational photos he'd snapped on Omaha on June 6, 1944. There were only eight of them, all grainy and a little out of focus. Yet they vividly brought back that terrible day.
"I didn't see you on Omaha," I ribbed him. The only newspaperman that we heard about landing with us at Omaha was Beaver Thompson, from the Chicago Tribune. Thompson was nicknamed "the Beard" because he swore not to shave until Hitler was dead.
I asked Capa why there were only eight shots from D day. His face darkened. He told me that in all his battle experiences, he'd never seen anything as terrifying as Omaha. The exploding shells and bombs that morning were mind-boggling. With his telescopic lens, he'd focused on a German officer who was up on the bluff above the beach. The German stood with his hands on his hips, boldly barking out orders to soldiers behind him. The sight of that cocky Nazi officer, so sure of himself, was heart-stopping. Still, Capa snapped away, taking pictures of everything he could.
Even though he was accustomed to photographing men at war, Capa told me that D day had completely flustered him. He'd managed to get off Omaha with a boatload of wounded soldiers who were ferried out to the USS Thurston. He was lucky not to have caught a bullet as well. Still, he felt as if he were fleeing. When Capa got back to Portsmouth late on June 6, he took a train to London and turned in his film for development. A darkroom assistant was so eager to see the photos that they were dried too quickly, ruining the emulsions. Those eight shots were the only ones that survived.
"I was ashamed of myself at Omaha," said Capa.
"Why should you have felt ashamed?" I said. "We'd been training seven months for that morning. We'd rehearsed every goddamned thing. We were armed to the gills. You landed with only a camera and some lenses. That took real guts."
"I was scared out of my mind."
"Holy shit, so were we!" I told him, "Look, Robert, write exactly what you felt. Describe the fear. Every single soldier who survived D day will appreciate the honesty."
Capa was such a wonderful guy. Years later, my heart ached when I heard the news that he'd been killed while covering the war in Vietnam. I didn't know him that well, but I loved Robert Capa because he always tried to capture the truth with his images.
Delayed by rain, Cobra finally got under way on July 25, with saturation bombing from over twenty-five hundred American planes. Our regiment started moving toward Marigny on the twenty-seventh, encountering bitter resistance almost immediately. The Germans fought back with mortars and artillery and furious infantry fire. We suffered severe casualties but continued the advance, thanks to backup from the Ninth Air Force fighter bombers escorting us, strafing enemy armor as we went. As usual, friendly fire also killed some of our own. On August t, long-inactive German planes struck back with a vengeance, killing and wounding many of our men. By mid-August, however, it was clear the enemy was confused and couldn't contain our assault any longer. We'd taken a German colonel prisoner behind our lines who didn't even know where his goddamned troops were. We were driving toward La Sauvager, northeast of La Ferte Mace, where the thick woods of the Andaine forest were full of enemy infantry and artillery.
To learn about the effects of our artillery fire and check enemy positions, volunteers from the Free French forces were used to filter through German lines and bring back information. Many of the Free French were only teenagers, allowed to move through battle lines as long as they had nothing on them that proved they'd had any contact with American troops. Their reports saved many dogface lives. One French youngster, however, forgot to spit out the chewing gum that a GI had given him and was shot on the spot by an SS officer.
By the end of August, we'd broken completely through the German right flank at Marigny. Enemy divisions were retreating faster than we could advance. So the Big Red One was loaded onto a long convoy of trucks and moved 150 miles toward Paris, rumbling along country roads. Not having to march for the first time since the war began, our outfit was in high spirits. Every time the convoy passed road signs that said "Paris," there were shouts and whistles. Paris! The very word aroused us, sending an electric jolt through every guy. In our minds, we'd soon be holding yearning demoiselles in our arms and dancing along the Seine. Hundreds of pricks got a little bit harder.
In the summer of 1944, all we could do was wave at the French gals as our outfit was trucked through the French countryside to catch the retreating enemy.
See, on the beach at Omaha, Paris had seemed light-years away. Now we were barreling toward it, chasing German troops fleeing to safer positions beyond the Belgian border. From the skies, the long line of U.S. trucks and tanks must have looked like a snake meandering across the French countryside. We stopped in the vicinity of Soissons, where our boys had fought a bitter victory in World War I, and camped at St. Pierre-Aigle, overlooking a church that had been our CP in i9i8. That was the closest to Paris we'd get. The "snake" turned northeast at Laon with orders to bypass the capital in our race to catch up with the routed Nazis. We had no idea exactly when or where our path would converge with the enemy's. In any event, we'd have to wait to see the City of Light, because Germany had to be taken first and the Nazis put completely out of commission. Once the reality of our mission crystallized, all those erections wilted.
Detailed
Description
17
Headquarters 16th Infantry, APO #1, U.S. Army.
Corporal Samuel M. Fuller, while serving with the Army of the United States, distinguished himself by gallantry in action.
The Sixteenth Infantry Regiment invaded the coast of France in the vicinity of Colleville-sur-Mer on 6 June 1944. The inland advance of our units was prevented by the minefields, wire, tank traps, while the massed men on the beach were raked by intense mortar, artillery, sniper and machine gun fire. The continued accurate enemy fire inflicted tremendous casualties on the thousands of men packed on the beach, rendering them a confused, leaderless mass.
Corporal Fuller, 16th Infantry, landed with one of the initial assault waves, and immediately began moving about the beach in an effort to aid the wounded and bring about some degree of control. Disregarding the intensity of the enemy fire, and the numerous mines and obstacles in the water, Corporal Fuller moved into the surf several times in order to drag wounded men to a point where they could be treated. When a breach was finally blown in the wire, the mission was given to Corporal Fuller of notifying the Regimental Commander of this. In order to reach the Regimental Commander, Corporal Fuller moved along one hundred yards of open beach, under constant heavy fire by the enemy. Persisting in his mission, Corporal Fuller reached his destination and delivered the vital message. Not content with just having delivered the message, Corporal Fuller once more crossed the fire swept beach and notified the Regimental S-2 that the message had been delivered, and preparations were made for the advance off of the beachhead.
Corporal Fuller displayed magnificent courage and outstanding devotion to duty, in saving the lives of wounded comrades, and then playing a vital part in the control and organization of the drive inland. The actions of Corporal Fuller are worthy of the highest praise and are a credit to the Service to which he belongs. Corporal Fuller was not wounded during this acti
on.
John H. Lauten
Major, ist U.S.
Infantry Division
Death Rained
Down
18
We finally caught up with the German army northwest of Maubeuge, France, on September 2, 1944. Their backs were up against the Belgian border, seeking refuge in the Laniere forest, whose thick woods concealed their numbers. Our battalion advanced cautiously through the forest until the retreating Germans' exact position was discovered. Then we began a ferocious attack, unleashing every weapon we had on hand-artillery, mortars, bazookas, machine guns, and flamethrowers-not knowing how many enemy soldiers we were actually fighting. They returned fire, and the battle raged all night long. At 0400 hours, a German officer showed up at the battalion command post asking for an armistice so that his wounded soldiers could be evacuated to Liege. The request was denied. His only alternative was unconditional surrender. The officer, who spoke English, eventually agreed to our terms, without the faintest idea that, in numbers, we were only a fraction of the strength of his force.
Starting at o63o hours, groups of fifty Wehrmacht, accompanied by an officer, were to march into a designated prisoner area in a clearing. The first group appeared right on time. Shoulder weapons were thrown in a pile to the right, sidearms, in a pile to the left. By noon, about twenty-four hundred prisoners had come in from that forest. Ambulances and aid men were sent into the woods after another seven hundred wounded. Our overwhelmed medics detailed Nazi medics to help us out. Kitchen trucks were unloaded and turned into impromptu ambulances. Our prisoner-of-war cage, an open field surrounded by barbed wire, became so crowded that over a thousand prisoners had to be transferred to the Third Armored Division's big cage at Maubeuge. Hell, it was quite a sight, that enormous column of captured Germans moving out, led by just two American GIs, with one of our light tanks riding herd on the rear.
Advancing toward Mons, we moved cautiously into Belgium through the countryside on September 3. 1 really didn't know about the Belgian border crossing until that night, because there were no markers in the forest. When my sergeant confirmed it, I made a note about entering the new country in my journal. In Mons, we mopped up small enclaves of enemy troops and continued moving east. Somebody had permanently muzzled the sun in Belgium. The cold, gray days had neither beginning nor end, forming a dispassionate backdrop to our short, furious forays through the rain and fog against Nazis left behind in order to slow our advance. The mud was their best ally. Our socks were permanently soaked.
We liberated these French peasants from a Nazi nest of snipers holed up at their farm in late August 1944 as we pursued the enemy hordes toward the Belgian border. After the snapshot, we moved out fast.
One night, we camped in the countryside somewhere between Charleroi and Namur awaiting fresh supplies, especially gasoline, as our trucks and tanks were running low. As usual, it was raining cats and dogs. I was on patrol duty with a few other dogfaces, including our sergeant, keeping a lookout for rearguard actions. German troops were hunkered down all around us in the woods. Out of nowhere, a motorcycle with a sidecar came tearing down a dirt road and crashed into a ditch near us. We encircled the wrecked motorcycle, rifles aimed, ready to shoot. The driver had a bloody bandage around his chest and wore a white armband, meaning he was a member of the underground Belgian White Army. He'd probably gotten himself shot trying to blow up a Nazi munitions dump or sabotage a Wehrmacht troop convoy. The crash had killed him.
Inside the motorcycle's sidecar under a soaked blanket was a woman. She shrieked when we lifted her out. Her belly was big and round. She started to cry out desperate pleas. Our sergeant understood a little French.
"She's going to have a baby," he said.
"Jesus," murmured a stunned soldier.
We lifted the woman carefully into one of the abandoned Panzer tanks nearby. It was the only dry place around. Her belly was so big we almost couldn't get her through the hatch. The tank reeked of sweat, cheese, and brandy. We spread a blanket out on the steel floor, laid the suffering woman down gently, and crowded round her, staring helplessly at the painful contractions that racked her body. We knew a little about patching up wounds, but assisting a pregnant woman was completely foreign territory. First-aid training had simply omitted it.
One of our dogfaces, a country boy named Wilson, volunteered to help the woman have her baby. He'd seen how his parents had helped their cows birth calves back on the farm. With humans, Wilson figured hygiene was the first order of business. He called out for condoms to cover his fingers. We doused his hands in brandy, then fitted on the rubbers, one on his thumb, two for his other four fingers. He demanded a face mask, so we cut a piece of cheesecloth from the hunk of cheese hanging in the tank and tied it over his mouth. Machine-gun belts were looped overhead on fuel pipes, and the woman's feet were strapped into the makeshift stirrups, making sure the bullets in the belts were pointed away from her kicking legs. She groaned, grunted, and screamed. I suppose she was lashing out not only at us, but at the goddamned war and heaven itself for making her give birth in a stinking German tank with only a bunch of gawking American GIs to get her through it. She tried to hit all of us in our wide-eyed faces until we pinned her hands down.
Wilson put his hands on her big belly.
"Push, lady, push!" he said.
The enraged woman tried to kick Wilson in the mouth.
"How do you say `push,' Sergeant?" asked Wilson.
"Poussez. "
"Pussy! Pussy!" said Wilson.
"No, not pussy. Poo-say," instructed the sergeant.
"Poo-say!"
The woman began to push her abdominal muscles in rhythm with her contractions.
"Sonofabitch!" yelled Wilson. "It's working!"
We all started chanting "Poo-say, poo-say, poo-say."
A little bloody head appeared between the woman's thighs. Gently, Wilson pulled it out inch by inch. We watched the magnificent sight, our mouths agape.
"It's a boy," said Wilson. "What a pecker! Gimme some leggin' lace."
Somebody undid his bootlace, poured brandy on it and cut it with a trench knife. Wilson tied off the baby's umbilical cord. Then he slapped the infant on his bloody little ass. Not a sound came from its tiny pink mouth. Wilson slapped the little creature again.
"He's dead, goddamnit!" said Wilson, panicking.
"The hell he is!" said the sergeant, grabbing the baby away from him. He began slapping the baby's ass harder and harder. We held our breath. The mother's eyes filled with tears. Suddenly the baby let out a howl that resounded around the tank's cockpit, drowning out the thunder and pounding rain outside. The baby's cry made us all smile from ear to ear. I think it was the sweetest sound I'd heard in twenty months of military service. The woman took the baby into her arms, her face shining with relief. We laughed and celebrated with swigs from the brandy bottle. Wilson was elated with his maternity work. Even the battle-weary, sober-faced sergeant grinned with satisfaction.
On one of the supply trucks from France was a care package from my mother with a fresh supply of cigars, manna from heaven in that inhospitable place. Rebecca wrote me that The Dark Page had won some award as the "Best Psychological Novel" of 1943. She included an encouraging letter from my agent, Charlie Feldman, who was talking with Howard Hawks about buying the book's movie rights. Hawks wanted Humphrey Bogart to star as the hotshot reporter and Edward G. Robinson to play the murderous newspaper editor in the film adaptation. Hollywood! Looking around our camp, I couldn't help smiling. It didn't seem possible that Hollywood could be on the same planet, much less in the same goddamned galaxy, as that rainsoaked Belgian forest. The news from the West Coast made me feel lucky. I'd been through three amphibious assaults and somehow survived. The war had to end someday. Maybe my luck would continue and I'd survive to write more books, especially one from the point of view of a lowly infantryman.
I tried to keep up my journal, scribbling dates, times, places, quick images, story ideas. It was
far too hectic to jot down much else. Nevertheless, my brain was recording it, ready to pour out all those stories and impressions as soon as I could get my hands on a typewriter in a place where bullets weren't zipping around my head and shells weren't falling out of the foggy skies. I was already making plans to recount the gut-racking, nerve-mauling life of dogfaces at war in a motion picture.
In the town of Huy, we advanced on a slaughterhouse that thirty-odd SS were using as a hiding place. The abattoir was a big hangar filled with the sickening sight and smell of death. Moving past rows of loins and hams hanging from steel hooks, using live pigs as cover, we bellied forward. When the bullets began flying, the squealing of swine and the burst of machine guns was like music composed by a drunken organist. German and American blood mixed with that of the swine. When it was over, there was no time to reflect on the horrible scene. We had to move on rapidly, searching out the next pocket of Nazis trying to derail the American advance. The slaughterhouse firefight was just one of many rearguard actions we endured.
On the back of this drawing sent to my brother Ving from somewhere near Aachen, I wrote: 'Dahlink Vingo, A doggie showed me a folded collection of Collier's Cartoons of the Month 'smack in the center was your damned funny 4-box gag of'the fortune teller who took her own (naval) advice. All the doggies got a big kick out of it!"
In a Belgian village south of Liege where most of the buildings had been damaged by repeated Allied bombings, more treacherous combat awaited us. Only a church in the center of the village was intact. There, a horse was hitched to a glass hearse. Some doggies from our company eased into the church to check out the funeral ceremony, while the rest of us stayed at the front door. Four women and two men, their heads bowed, stood around four infant coffins. A priest in a black cassock was saying mass. Suddenly, Nazis ambushed us from drainage ditches around the village square. They killed one of our new recruits as we dove into the church and took cover behind the pews. The priest pulled a Schmeisser from his black cassock and killed two more of our men. The mourners starting shooting at us, too. Grenades were thrown wildly. Bullets bounced around the church walls, breaking stained-glass windows. Smoke filled the place. Outside, the Nazis were cut down by machine guns fired by a group of Belgian Maquis who appeared out of nowhere. We finished off the fake mourners. The fight was over as quickly as it had begun.
A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking Page 19