Roll Me Over

by Raymond Gantter

  I am enclosing a clipping I took from that same issue of Time. I send it to you for two reasons: one, that it was written by that favorite person of mine, C. E. Montague; and two, though it was written in the time of World War I, it is strongly relevant to what I have written regarding the old ladies in the German farmhouse and the young couple who gave me hot milk. Here it is:

  How can you hate the small boy who stands at the farm door visibly torn between dread of the invader and deep delight in all soldiers as soldiers?... It is hopelessly bad for your Byronic hates if you sit through whole winter evenings in the abhorred foe’s kitchen and the abhorred foe grants you the uncovenanted mercy of hot coffee and discusses without rancor the relative daily yields of the British and German milch cow.

  When all the great and wise were making peace, as somebody said, with a vengeance, our command on the Rhone had to send a wire to say that unless something was done to feed the starving Germans, it could not answer for discipline in its army: the men were giving their rations away and no orders would stop them.

  There is little I can add to Montague’s statement. However, I believe the problem was simpler for the soldiers of World War I. The enemy was whoever wore a German uniform, and it was as simple as that. And notwithstanding the extravagant propaganda stories of “Belgian Nuns Ravished” and posters of children whose arms ended in bloody, mutilated stumps; in spite of the fighting hate that such propaganda may have inspired in the Allied heart, there was no basic conflict of ideology between the Allies and Germany. It is that which makes our problem so difficult: for them the enemy was an emperor, an army, a military aristocracy. We, too, fight an enemy, but our enemy is a people and not alone an opposing army. The people entire are our enemy because we fight an abhorred ideology which we believe has infected a nation, is blood and bone of that nation. And so, although our impulse is to accept unquestioningly the “uncovenanted mercy of hot coffee”—because we are not naturally a suspicious and reluctant people—and to discuss innocent topics “without rancor,” we are torn by the ever-fresh need to decide how much of this “uncovenanted mercy” is just that and how much is sly and deliberate expediency. Where does the human being leave off and the National Socialist begin?

  This is the thorn that tears our sides. And sometimes, in sick alarm, we wish that we could be more ruthless, perform this dirty business without also lacerating our own sensibilities, and having done, get us to our homes and forget what we have done.

  I wonder if—when I’m civilian again—I will ever be able (or have the desire) to recapture for brief moments the peculiar kind of despairing homesickness that frequently overcomes each of us here. I think not. There is sometimes a lecherous delight in wounding the spirit with old memories, but a recapitulation of old misery, a return in entirety to past pain, is impossible except to the spiritually unhealthy. A faint whiff of it, perhaps—I think there will be moments of partial evocation. And you will glance at me in sudden alarm, until I look up and see you there and pull my world snug about my ears once again. So should it be, with all fortunate men.

  You ask a lot of questions in your recent letters. I’ll answer the possible ones, in the order asked.

  Food: The food situation is enormously improved of late. We eat well. For breakfast this morning I had a huge scoop of oatmeal, three flapjacks drenched in apricot syrup, bacon, and coffee. It seemed adequate. There are still occasional meals of C-rations, but that hasn’t happened recently.

  Bread: You ask about the bread I mentioned buying while we were in the Bastogne woods, and you want to know if bread was included in our meals in camp. Yes, it was: our army meals included bread, white bread, tasteless bread, bread of bleached sawdust. But the bread we bought in town or from the peasants who walked out to our camp to peddle it was a sour rye bread with an intoxicating smell and a crisp, crunchy crust. It was a rare luxury, and it tasted wonderful going down, but I found that once down, it lay in my stomach like a lump of lead. But it was good to eat.

  Clothes: The wooden sabots I mentioned are worn by all peasants, regardless of sex or age. Entering a house, they leave the wooden shoes at the door and go about indoors in the black felt slippers that are worn inside the sabots. Sabots are always worn for farm or garden labor; for social occasions, church, or shopping, the citizenry don ordinary leather shoes, a little dowdy by our standards and very worn and tired. Clothes in general are like those at home—alas, no peasant costumes!—but neither as fashionable, as well-tailored, nor of such good quality. Years of war plus a native frugality explain that.

  I’ve seen only a few of the “Victory” turbans you describe the smart Parisiennes as wearing. (My social observations are necessarily a little rural.) They are truly enormous and gaily colored and successfully worn only by a woman with a flair for style.

  As for men’s clothing, due largely to the prevalence of the bicycle as a means of locomotion, most of the very few men to be seen wear either plus fours (shades of my dashing youth!) or motorcycle breeches and black leather puttees.

  Geoff and Sukey will be interested to learn that little boys in Belgium and France wear skirts. And even after they have graduated from skirts per se, they continue to wear skirted smocks of black or dark blue to school. (I can fairly hear Geoff s howls of outraged masculinity if you tried that on him!)

  Buildings: There are no wooden buildings here. Everything is of brick or ancient fieldstone, and many of the buildings are whitewashed. Often a mosaic in colored tiles is worked into the face of the house, and there is usually a niche over the front entrance that holds an image of the Virgin, or the Holy Family. Some of the figures are very lovely—I saw one today, very old and dim in outline but still graceful and gentle. It was carefully dressed in a new coat of paint: the Virgin in a robe the color of the sky, touched with gold, and the Babe in a scarlet smock.

  December 16, Minerie.

  Christmas Eve is a week from tomorrow. I can’t lift my spirits over that homely fact and I find myself getting veiy bitter about the whole thing in a melodramatic sort of way. As if the birth of a Jewish sage and poet-prophet nearly two thousand years ago is of any avail to us today! We pray to God, and our chaplains invoke the blessing of that deity and his anthropomorphic son upon us. Then, heartened by the certain knowledge that God is on our side, we gird up our khaki-clad and itching loins and go out to hunt Germans, who in turn bear emblazoned on their belt buckles the quaintly incongruous legend Gott Mit Uns! It’s a wonderful world. If I possessed a little more ruthlessness or a little less conscience, I’d be a gangster or a politician when I get home and a staunch pillar of the Episcopal Church on the side.

  The buzz bombs continue. There is rarely a moment of the day or night when the heavy rumble-rattle cannot be heard overhead. We have become so accustomed to their constant presence that we no longer lift our heads at the familiar sound. The principal targets seem to be Liege and Venders. When they land in the latter city, fifteen or sixteen kilometers from us, the heavy explosions rattle the windows here and shake loose plaster from the walls.

  In the air the buzz bombs seem grotesque denials of the laws of aerodynamics. They are clumsy and misshapen, and notwithstanding their speed of flight, oddly lumbering in movement, the noses dipped slightly toward the ground with

  the tremendous weight of the explosive-heavy heads. At night they are blazing comets that move mysteriously across the sky, casting a rosy and ambulant nimbus behind the clouds.

  We cannot understand why there have been so many in recent weeks. Is it the last all-out gesture of Hitler? That’s our latest hope, based on encouraging late news of 1st Army successes this week.

  Monday we start a formal training schedule. I’ve been selected (probably because of my classic brow!) to become the “tommy gun” expert of the squad. So on Monday I will report to the supply room, pick up a “tommy gun,” and trot off to “Tommy Gun School.”

  This afternoon the entire battalion marched to Thimister, the next town, to say farewell to Gen
eral Huebner, who is being transferred. The general decorated Colonel Grant, our battalion commander, with the Bronze Star and the Silver Star, and in a brief speech referred to the record of G Company as one “that no outfit could surpass.” Is it being shamefully adolescent to admit that I cast scornful and superior eyes on the men of E and F companies?

  Apropos of not very much, I guess, our current C.O.—Captain Shelby has gone home to the States on seventy-two days’ leave—has issued an order forbidding us to wear either scarves or wool-knit caps in any formation. We cursed him under our breaths because a helmet is a cold and cheerless weight lacking a warm cushion of wool on these early-winter days. But we complied, naturally. And today, at the ceremonies for the general, not a man in the company wore either a scarf or a wool-knit cap. We marched the five miles to Thimister briskly, getting well-heated with the exercise, then stood ankle-deep in a marshy field for an hour and a half, waiting for the general to arrive. The sweat on our bodies turned to ice, our clothing was damp and clammy, and our teeth began to chatter. Our miserable state was not made more tolerable by the sight of our C.O.—and every other officer on the field—with beautiful, thick wool scarves snug about their respective necks. But the last crashing indignity came when General Huebner removed his helmet to wave it in cheery salute to the assembled men—and revealed a wool-knit cap on his head!

  Oh, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—the army’s a wonderful place!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “We didn’t know this was the Battle of the Bulge until several days later.”

  December 20, morning.

  I am sitting on the roof of a dugout somewhere in Belgium, or perhaps Germany—I’m a little confused—with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I believe I am in full view of German observation on the hill across the valley, but I’m beyond the range of small arms and I can always dive into my hole if they start lobbing shells over.

  The past three days have been rough, unpleasant, and bewildering. I’ve had perhaps twelve hours’ sleep in that period, and I’m numb from the lack of it so I’m not sure these comments will make any sense.

  To go back to Sunday, December 17...

  After being assured by our officers of a long rest in our warm Belgian billets, a runner woke us at five-thirty a.m. to tell us we were ordered to an indefinite “alert.” The Germans were dropping paratroopers in our vicinity, and the order from HQ was for at least one man to be awake and on guard in every house where troops were billeted. I don’t need to tell you that none of us went back to sleep.

  At ten a.m. the runner returned. “Get your stuff packed!” he said. “You’re on a four-hour alert!” Sadly, silently, with no kidding, no boasting of prowess soon to be displayed, we packed. Merry Christmas! We all hurried to write one last letter, that last and most important letter. Then the word came: “No more letters will be submitted for censorship and mailing. Pack away or tear up those you have written.” Things were popping fast and no officer had time to read our letters. We went to chow.

  While we stood in the chow line, the order came to report to the company C.P. at three-thirty, packed and ready to leave. With our usual chow, we were given two thick sandwiches and told to save them until we got an order to eat. Our next meal was in the uncertain future, and those sandwiches might have to last a long time.

  At three-thirty we said “Au ’voir” to our Belgian friends. They gathered at the windows and doors of their homes and gave us brave but uncertain farewells. They kissed us, shook our hands, and there was fright on their faces. We marched to the C.P. silently but for the sound of heavy feet on the cobbled streets and the faint tinkling and creaking of our arms and equipment. The town crept to the side of the road to see us go, a thin line of women and old men and children standing in frozen attitudes, gripped by old fears. Only the children tried to smile. As we passed, we saw the women, one after another, throw their aprons over their heads to hide their tears. It was a strange and somber farewell, and its pace was cortegelike.

  It was six p.m. before we left the village, jammed in army tracks, cold, wet, and hungry. And scared. It was a long ride. All we knew was that we were heading for the front and our road was being strafed by Jerry planes. We were warned to be ready on an instant’s notice to get the hell off the tracks and into the ditches. Fortunately, Jerry didn’t come over—I don’t know how we would have been able to abandon ship in a hurry when men and weapons and packs were wedged so tightly, so inextricably, together that to tense a leg muscle meant discommoding at least eight other men.

  The traffic congestion on the road was made to order for enemy planes: tanks, jeeps, trucks, and “meat wagons” traveling both ways and with only the dimmest lights showing.

  We would drive fifty or seventy-five yards and stop. A wait. Another twenty yards and stop. Another wait. Then half a mile and stop. A wait. The total distance we traveled that night was not more than twenty miles, but it took us six hours.

  We passed through Venders, a large city. It was in total blackout, but as we passed the Civil Affairs Building, an incautious civilian opened a door briefly and I caught one transient, poignant glimpse of a Christmas tree in the foyer, brilliant with shining gold tinsel and crimson lights. I felt sorry for myself for a long time afterward.

  At midnight we detrucked. We were in the middle of a pine forest, the ground heavy with snow and slush. Not a building in sight. Our squad was deployed along a road that branched from the main highway and cut through the woods. We were to dig in immediately on both sides of the road. I think I was not alone in my sense of shock: others who were equally green were suddenly realizing that this was, in truth, war! And the enemy was near, so near that we were cautioned about noise, cautioned to challenge every unfamiliar figure, cautioned to keep eyes and ears alert, cautioned to be wary of danger from the rear as well as from the dim black and white mysteries of the forest that faced us. When we completed the digging of our two-man shelters, we stood guard for the rest of the night, one man resting while the other guarded.

  Shorty and I removed our packs and dug a hole nearly a foot and a half deep before we realized it was filling with water as fast as we were digging. We weren’t aware of it earlier because we couldn’t see what we were doing, and although we stood in the hole while digging, we were already so cold and wet that a little more ice water made no impression at all. We held a brief, despairing consultation and decided to dig another hole. I ate one of my sandwiches and enjoyed a gloomy satisfaction in thus defying authority.

  The new hole proved to be as sievelike as the first one. We were only six inches above the water table. At three a.m. we decided the hell with it: we’d finish in the morning, when we could see, and take our chances on Jerry artillery until then.

  Knowing I would not sleep—physical discomfort always has me wambling in throes of self-commiseration—I told Shorty to sleep if he was able and I’d stay on guard for the night. After we piled a thick matting of pine branches in the hole, Shorty went to sleep. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and over my head and tried to forget how cold and miserable I was and how my neck ached from the weight of my steel helmet. I counted the night away with cigarettes, cupping them in my hands to conceal their glow, and decided with sick and romantic abandon that there was small choice between death by pneumonia or a sniper’s bullet. Pneumonia just took longer. Long before morning I left off starting nervously every time a tree in the forest behind me creaked with protest under its weight of snow. I began to imagine, almost with longing, several score of king- size enemy soldiers creeping up behind me with knives in their teeth.

  Dawn came at last. I ate my second sandwich and made hot chocolate from a D-bar and water from the nearby, and doubtless unsanitary, stream.

  All day we waited for something to happen, playing at sentry duty in growing carelessness. Rumors were thick: “The Twenty-sixth has been wiped out”...“The Germans have retaken Eupen”...“Paratroopers have landed all over Belgium”...“The Allies
are retreating throughout the entire northern sector.” We didn’t know this was the Battle of the Bulge until several days later. I guess it was a good thing we didn’t know how grave the situation was.

  Gloomily, we saw the extension of the war into a far distant future. And only a few hours ago the end had seemed so rosily near!

  Nobody really knew anything—where we were, when we would move out, or where we’d go from here. Some of our officers and noncoms told us it was possible that we might not be needed. Perhaps this was a false alarm and maybe we’d return to Minerie and pick up our vacation where we’d dropped it. Shifting our tired weight from one frozen foot to

  the other, we thought long thoughts of warmth and food and waited.

  We stayed another night. The eighteenth of December, the week before Christmas. Between guard tricks I lay on a bed of soggy pine branches at the foot of a pine tree that dripped and whimpered all through the night. I tried to sleep and could not. There was some small comfort to be found in doubling up our guard tricks with the men from the next hole to ours. It meant standing guard for two hours instead of one, but we could talk in low whispers, we were not alone in the night.

  On December 19 we were fed. With the chow truck came our bedrolls, an assurance that we would be staying for an indefinite period. We budged up the slimy road to the place where the bedrolls had been dropped—in the mud, naturally—and carried them painfully back to our holes, tottering under the weight. Within two hours we were ordered to take them back up the road and prepare to move out.