I had a rough time of it for a while in basic training. Not that I was ridden unmercifully or made the butt of crude humor. On the contrary—there were walls of ice around me. I learned that a four-syllable word, impeccably enunciated, was a better weapon and a better defense than a pair of brass knuckles. I was left alone. And that was the hardest thing of all to bear: the sense of being shut out from some warm and mysterious camaraderie that, it seemed to me, was the only thing that could make army life tolerable. It took a painful while before I learned how to melt the ice barrier, how to get through it and into the magic circle. I was a mighty proud joker when I saw the suspicion fade and knew that my education and my accent were no longer held against me.
Attitudes of suspicion and hostility in varying degrees of rigidity are encountered throughout the army, of course, as in any arbitrarily created group where traditional barriers of background and training are summarily leveled. The astonishing thing is that in spite of regional differences, social differences, religious, political, and economic differences, men learn to work together and live together.
I was lucky. From men like Shorty I learned that education, like other so-called “differences,” was only a fortuitous accident, a thin gloss carelessly applied, and under it walked the fundamental man, naked and unashamed. I was doubly fortunate in learning this before I was commissioned. The officers most hated by enlisted men, the officers responsible for the mud rightly flung at the army “caste system,” are officers who never learned it, or forgot it too soon.
Returning to Shorty: Between us there was no awkwardness or strain. As a combine, we clicked from the beginning, and from it we each gained the additional strength of a united front.
The first night in our new positions near Eupen was not happy. Both Shorty and I pulled guard duty, but he was blessed among men: he had overshoes. I lacked even the much publicized “combat boots,” and still wore the familiar ankle- high clodhoppers. Our field was a sticky pool of snow and mud, dotted with deep puddles of icy water. The mud ranged in depth from six to twelve inches, and I had not yet figured out how to stand in twelve-inch mud and keep it from oozing over the tops of five-inch shoes.
Early the following morning I walked to the C.P. to fill our canteens. Finding no water there, I trudged through the mud to the nearest farmhouse, from the doorway of which a young woman, baby on hip, had smiled and waved to us on our arrival the day before.
My timid knock was answered at once by the same smiling woman, and she invited me in. I demurred; my feet were encased in dripping blocks of mud, and her kitchen was spotless. But she insisted, I weakened, and for half an hour I sat in the anteroom to paradise. A soft chair by a glowing stove, two cups of warm milk, and gentle kindliness from the young woman and her husband. (He had a twisted foot, which explained his civilian status.) We grieved with each other on the evil of war—he had five brothers in the Wehrmacht, and all were dead or missing—and he said to me, “All any man wants is to be able to work and to come home at the end of the day to his wife and children.” Oh, and it’s true, it’s true!
In spite of their hospitality, I was careful to reveal nothing that could be called “information.” They seemed good people, kindly people, but how could I be sure? Already I was bewildered by the seeming contradiction that lay between what these people represented as a group, and what, as simple human beings, they seemed to be. General Eisenhower had issued orders prohibiting all intercourse between soldiers and German civilians, and I could have been punished for exchanging a simple Guten Tag with that farm family. Yet our officers and ranking NCOs were billeted in German homes, sharing them with German families, and only the lonely doggie shivered forlornly in the mud and cold. Or so I argued to myself, working up a fine case to justify my behavior. I salved my conscience further by trying hard to believe that these people, living only a few steps from the Belgian border, may have escaped a really thorough Nazi indoctrination. But I was aware of the weakness of such argument. Does a disease recognize the black boundary lines drawn on a map? Does it stop short where the map says, “This is where Germany ends and this is where Belgium begins”? So I kept my mouth shut on topics related to the war, and our conversation was innocent
Another night of guard duty in shoes still wet from the night before. We were under the most stern orders not to remove our shoes at any time, even during the daylight hours, when we did nothing but huddle in our blankets. The threat of counterattack was ever present and feet newly released from wet shoes puffed up grossly, so that it was impossible to get the wet boots on again in a hurry.
I played a grim game with myself on guard duty that night. I found two boards to stand on and tried to guess how soon they would sink and the mud creep above my shoe tops. There was a cold wind blowing, and sleet and snow in the air. No lights except the noiseless flashes of distant shells, and on the horizon a sporadic flickering, like heat lightning. I counted the minutes—minutes, hell! I counted the seconds! I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, allowing two deliberate, painful seconds per foot. It’s a long, long two hours when you count to sixty slowly, 120 tunes.
December 7.
Three years today...
We spent the day in our blankets. We were forbidden to move about in the daytime except to satisfy the most insistent demands of nature. We were under constant enemy observation.
Our exposed position made for very unsatisfactory chow. We went to breakfast in the dark, one group at a time, and ate hurriedly, racing back to our holes so the next group could go up. Always, the food was cold, and there was never enough. Lunch was cold C rations, eaten in our holes. Supper was like breakfast: up the road to the C.P. in the dark, eat, rush back. Then another long night
Tonight, however, our customary gloom changed abruptly to joy: another squad came to relieve us on the line for twenty- four hours, and we were going to spend the night and the following day in a hayloft. We stumbled up the road in the dark, joyous even through the mud. It was worth joy and much gratitude—our beds were sweet-smelling heaps of dry hay in the stone barn behind the platoon C.P. It wasn’t warm in the barn, but the hay, the dryness, were real luxuries. I had a special break and was assigned as a telephone guard in the C.P. for the night, in the dining room of the house. An easy chair, a hot stove, an electric light! I hugged the fire until I felt the sweat trickling down my body inside my woolen underwear. I took off my shoes, propped them against the side of the stove, and watched the steam curling from the toes. I hung my socks over the hot stovepipe, turning them frequently to prevent their scorching. I slept on the floor near the stove, except for my period of duty on the phones, receiving reports from our outposts and calling them in to the company C.P. It was altogether a beautiful night
One day in three we were to be relieved on the line and permitted to rest in the barn. The three rifle squads of the platoon would take turns on the line so there would always be one squad in reserve, resting.
The civilians in the farmhouse were women and children: three of the women old and sweet-faced, two younger women, a little girl of three, and a baby. The women did all the farm work and the chores. One of them, discovering that I spoke a little German, chattered at me in great delight. She showed me a letter, which I couldn’t read, from a twenty-four-year-old nephew who had been in a New York State prison camp for two years. He’d been with Rommel in Africa.
Outpost duty last night. Three of us spent the night there, a bitter cold night with a raw wind blowing and the hail and rain rattling down the back of our necks in spite of our most complicated tricks with a blanket. I discovered that it’s a very difficult operation to wrap yourself snugly in a blanket and at the same time keep your M-l in your hand, ready for instant use. It was a long night.
This waiting business is tough as hell. I don’t know that it’s really worse than being in action, but sometimes it seems so. I thought of dead Gilman, alive a short week ago, and wondered which of us was next We spend so much time doing nothing—lying in ou
r blankets, talking idly and without interest, or thinking in silence. Too much time to talk, too much time to think.
Last night Shorty and I were in bed at six p.m. Our trick at the outpost was to start at midnight, and I should have slept for six hours. But I didn’t sleep, it was impossible to sleep.
I twisted and turned inside the blankets, and my bones screamed at the long hours and my brain screamed at the long waiting... for something, something!
The Jerries were shelling us again, fumbling for our positions with terrible fingers. We watched the shells landing in the field around us, peeping with frightened eyes through the cracks in our “shelter” and in feeble bravado making small bets on the next hit.
I spent most of the long hours making plans for my homecoming. Each small detail was carefully polished to the last shining perfection. I debated seriously on small things. Which would be the perfect hour to come home? Early morning, late night, during a meal? Would I like the kids up and awake when I came in the door, or would the final drop of sweetness lie in arriving after dark, going up the stairs to the nursery, and opening the door softly ... to see them warm in sleep, tousled and sweet-smelling?
It was an endless and intoxicating game, but under the monotonous drip-drip of these days and nights, the magic of it palled a little and the old refrain started bleating in my brain again. When will it be over? I stood the long hours of guard, looked up at a malevolent and secretive sky, and my face twisted and writhed—not with sorrow, but with the madness of the prisoner, the sense of being trapped and bound—and the prayer wheel in my brain spun around and around: “When? When?”
The army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, is singularly uncommunicative. There’s been no word of peace lately. News of any sort is rare, and it appears I’ll lose my eighteen-franc bet that the European war will be over by Christmas. We’re getting very edgy. In spite of the shells whistling overhead, this sector is quiet, too quiet. We ask each other questions that no one can answer: Why is it quiet? Is another push brewing? Why is the entire northern sector dormant and all attention focused on Patton’s reported breakthrough in the south? What’s happened to the Russian drive in East Prussia? Why doesn’t it end, when will it end?
This way lies madness, I know. Something has to happen soon or we’ll all be at each other’s throats. Already there’s bad feeling between men who were friends only two weeks ago, and there have been several vicious fights. We go about too silently those days. And still the snow comes down—a foot and a half deep now—and in sick wonder we ask ourselves, “How can you fight when it’s like this?”
December 11.
We’d just been told that tomorrow or the day after we were moving back into Belgium. And we’d be billeted in houses! We were hysterical with joy, in spite of the rumor that the purpose of this vacation was to train us for river-crossing operations. That meant the Rhine. But we could not be sobered by that consideration: we’ll cross the Rhine when we come to it, but for Pete’s sake, let’s get warm and dry first!
I was a little ashamed of my happiness at the prospect of civilization again; we’d been out there so short a time. But I found it didn’t take long to get pretty damn sick of mud and cold and snow and constant wetness. Judging from our sick-call book, many men reacted to those conditions more violently than I did. Each day saw new cases of grippe, trench foot, bad colds, and even pneumonia. Several cases of jaundice, too. Why jaundice, I wonder?
That night I was in the farmhouse again, on phone guard. I was very grateful for the warm room because I’d had the GIs for two days. I was weak and groggy and aching all over.
Notwithstanding my physical state, it was an unforgettable evening. Sitting meek and unnoticed in a corner, I’d been listening to the conversation of our platoon sergeant and some of his friends.
The sergeant’s name is Misa, shortened by everyone to “Meese.” We have no platoon officer, and Meese is the real boss of the first platoon. He was with the 1st Army through Africa, Sicily, and the Normandy landing and St. Lo breakthrough. Tonight he and his buddies were reminiscing, and I listened, spellbound, unwilling to turn away and go to sleep. The stories I heard, the gaudy, bawdy, gallant stories ... I made surreptitious notes, fearful of forgetting tales like:
The day the company was trapped in a little town by an overwhelming counterattack. A task force of tanks was sent to the rescue and rumbled in, guns blazing, to form an iron screen while the company retreated across the river. Four wounded were forgotten, however, in the turmoil of the retreat, and Meese and a medic went back for them that night, returning to the battered town over the one bridge still standing. They located the four men, three of whom were able to walk, and led those three over the bridge to the safety of our lines. Then Meese went back for the fourth man, who was badly wounded. Half carrying, half dragging him, he got the man to the water’s edge, but it was so near dawn that he dared not risk another bridge crossing, a perfect silhouette against the lightening sky for an early-rising sniper. While Meese pondered the problem and sweated, the wounded man kept groaning, “I’m gonna die ... leave me here, Meese! Take my wallet and leave me! There’s a hundred bucks in my wallet, Meese. It’s for you...take it! G’wan, take it and leave me here... I’m gonna die!”
At this point in the story, Meese paused and said meditatively, “That’s just what I shoulda done—taken the dough and left him! Two months later the bastard writes me from a hospital in England and says ‘Thanks.’ Why the hell didn’t he send the hundred bucks?”
In the reeds at the water’s edge, Meese found a boat—it lacked oars—and lifted the wounded man into it. The river seemed shallow, and he prepared to wade across, pushing the boat before him. He shoved off hard, and as the boat lunged forward, pulling him momentarily off balance, he felt his feet leave bottom. Shallow, hell—this was deep! In another moment the current caught the boat and it swung downstream, heading toward the German lines. Towing the boat with one hand and swimming with the other, he fought the water and at last reached the far shore, not far from our lines. And delivered the wounded man to the waiting medics.
Then there was the time, in the same hotly contested town, when a Jerry and a GI left the safety of their respective positions simultaneously and started sprinting toward the same doorway. Instantly dropping from active participation in the war, Meese and his companions made hot bets of fantastic proportion on the outcome of the race, and then, with the dispassionate intensity of gamblers, settled back to watch. The GI won, and the German, acknowledging defeat with a cool shrug, turned and started for another refuge. Only then did the interested gamblers recall that sport was sport but there was a war on and this guy was an enemy. So they shot him. And after solemnly settling their wagers, resumed the serious business of taking the town.
And the time a shell smashed a building, and a flying splinter of rock hit a nearby Joe in the rear. He dropped his rifle in the panic of approaching death and collapsed on his face, weeping bitterly, “I’m wounded, I’m fatally wounded! Get me a medic, quick! Help, I’m dying!” An unsympathetic buddy heaved another rock at his floundering shape and yelled, “Get up, ya stupid sonofabitch, and look at your ass! That was only a rock that hit you!” The “dying” man peered anxiously over his shoulder at his unblemished rear, said “Oh!” in a chastened tone, picked up his rifle, and started fighting again.
Another time, in the blazing afternoon of an Italian town, another Joe felt the sudden violent impact of something hitting his rear, and a moment later a warm flood running down his leg. Dropping his rifle, he began to run in circles, waving his arms and screaming, “I’m hit, I’m bleeding to death! Help me ... somebody help me! I’m hit!” Finally someone took pity on him and in obscenely blunt terms told him to stop his goddamn yelling and look at his goddamn canteen. A bullet had punctured it, and its contents, red Italian wine that had been heated to blood temperature by the sun, had drained out, soaking his pants and running down his leg.
He spoke, too, of the time a certain
general—sorry, no names unless the reference is complimentary!—visited the front and inflicted a needless half hour of concentrated shelling on the battalion because he refused to accept the counsel of combatwise men, of lesser rank, naturally. The general insisted on climbing to the crest of a certain ridge, below which the troops were emplaced, well-concealed and invisible to the enemy. So he stood there, looking intrepidly toward the German positions and fussing with his maps and field glasses. Sharp eyes in the German lines caught the glint of sunlight on his glasses, German brains made hasty but accurate computations, German guns found the range, and the pounding started. Men died horribly on that ridge in the next half hour, but the general received a slight scratch from shrapnel and was hastily carried away in a stretcher. Later the home papers screamed in headlines, general blank wounded in front lines, and sang loud paeans of praise for his devotion to duty and what a wonderful guy he was to risk his important life just to bring the comfort of his presence to the men on the front lines.
Those are some of the stories I heard. To go along with them, here are some hasty sketches of a few of the men in this outfit:
Ketron (I’m not sure of the spelling): Two and a half years with the outfit and thus truly an old-timer. Hails from the deep South, twenty-six years old, unmarried. Blond, personable, a face that is easily merry. He is gentle with the new replacements, kind and patient. His favorite word, employed in ways new to me, is “harassing”—“That was downright harassing...the most harassing thing I ever did see...they’d harass the…out of us with that damn burp gun!” His next-favorite word is “harmless.” (As a matter of fact, that’s a favorite word with the entire outfit.) It, too, has strange uses and applications. Sometimes it means literally “harmless”; often it means the exact reverse, “harmful”; sometimes it means “useless, ineffectual,” especially when used in reference to persons—“the most harmless guy you ever met.”
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