Roll Me Over

by Raymond Gantter

  Something new has been added to my winter costume. Taking an O.D. bath towel, I drape it carefully over my head, on top of my wool-knit cap. Held in place by the weight of my helmet, the towel falls over my shoulders and back, a combination hood, snood, and wimple. It helps to keep the icy winds from fingering my spine. In spite of taunts from Shorty, I am convinced that it gives my unmistakably Nordic features a soulful Arabic cast.

  I wish the smug people at home could see this “best- equipped army in the world,” particularly in our present dress. We read about us in rare magazines and hometown papers, and we look at ourselves in stark amazement. No matter what the papers say, we look like Czech guerrilla forces. Shorty has constructed a fancy headgear from an extra scarf he skonavished. Since it was of double thickness, he opened one end of it, making it into a kind of sock. With his jackknife he then cut a hole in one side of the “foot,” a hole just large enough to encircle his eyes, nose, and mouth. Pulling the thing over his head, he flips the loose ends about his neck, claps his “steel” on his head, and voila! A balaclava helmet, homemade!

  Another GI, Schiaparelli, boldly removed the wool liner from a sleeping bag, slashed off the bottom at knee length, cut two armholes with a jackknife, and he had an overcoat that was the envy of the entire company.

  I’ve invented a new game to while away the guard hours. T irking a watch, Shorty and I must guess when our two-hour tricks are up, and my invention serves as both game and clock. Here’s how it works:

  The average “popular” song contains 32 bars or measures. Allowing four beats to the measure (since a fox-trot is in 4/4 time), there are thus 128 beats to the chorus of a song. Two songs, or two choruses, would then contain 256 beats.

  Establishing a mental beat and drawing on my repertoire of “pop” songs, I progress through the alphabet: “As Time Goes By”...“At Last”...“Am I Blue”...“At Sundown”...“Begin the Beguine”...“Blue Skies,” and so on. Not singing or whistling—I think each song through, following the convolutions of melody and chord in my brain, and when I have thus “sung” two songs, I know that five minutes have passed. (To compensate for the 44-second difference between my 256 beats and the 300 seconds in five minutes, I set a rhythm that’s a shade slower than one beat per second.)

  Part of the game, from night to night, is to avoid repetition and use only songs I have not “sung” on previous nights. Another self-imposed challenge is the avoidance of tunes I dislike—“Dinah,” “Blueberry Hill,” “I Love You Truly”— even when I’ve exhausted my stock of titles for that letter of the alphabet. For tough letters like X and Z I substitute “I” titles because there are so many of them.

  It’s a good game because it’s semiautomatic: the top half of my brain remains alert and clear and on guard. And it helps to shut out the dreary refrain that forever tries to sneak in the back door of my consciousness: “When will it end?”

  A sorry business, isn’t it? Such are the pitiful subterfuges to which we resort—anything that will bridge, even for a moment, the pit of misery over which we’re suspended.

  The winter of 1944-45 was the real beginning of the long debate at home on the fascinating question “Will He Be Changed?” It was, by all accounts, a field day for the feature writers, particularly those prominent in the female magazines. One of the few sane articles was written by Dorothy Parker, but most of them were pretty bad. Ree was interested, naturally, and sent me a boiled-down version of the typical article, inviting my comment. I was happy to oblige:

  First of all, my comments are mine only, although I believe that most married men, happily married men, would submit the same answers. For single men the problem is different and infinitely more complex. Anyway, here are my comments, point by point:

  (1) No, I won’t be homesick for this life. I’ll not be homesick for “packs and field kitchens.” [Sic! Honest, that’s what the article said!] Nor for dugouts and C rations and army shoes, and the weight of several hundred rounds of ammo dragging at my shoulders. Nor for mud and snow and cold, and a week’s stubble of beard on my face and a month’s dirt on my body. Nor will I be homesick for danger, lie awake nights pining for the familiar sweetness of German 88s crooning over my head. I will miss some of the men I have known, but the friends I’ve made will be friends still when we are civilians again. As for being homesick for guys with whom I can talk, knowing they understand—ah, if you only knew how good it would be to come home to people who speak my language!

  [I was wrong here. I learned when I reached home that, without discarding my old civilian language, I had learned a new tongue in the army, a special language born of an experience foreign to the civilian. I was homesick for that language; I am still, sometimes. Perhaps I sound like a “barroom veteran,” a sentimental drunk who slobbers fond army memories over his third beer. That isn’t so, but I think every veteran has known what I have experienced, bitter times since I came home. You’re talking to a civilian (maybe he used to be one of your best friends) and suddenly there is discomfort present, a nausea that hits you abruptly because you realize that you’re bouncing your words against a stone wall of incomprehension. More than that and worse than that, it is a disinclination for the mere effort of comprehension. Somewhere back in the war months the route of common experience had split, becoming two roads where there had been only one. It was the unique friendship that could conquer, thus divided.]

  It assumes that this war experience will be the greatest thing in a man’s life. That seems to me an exaggerated judgment. My active participation in this war is a circumstance that has obtruded on the life I had planned. I don’t discount its importance, nor can I predict its particular effects on my

  life in the future. But as I see it now, the circumstance of my soldierhood doesn’t stack up with the importance of being a husband and a father, doesn’t stack up with the importance of accomplishing something in my chosen career.

  (2) It will be difficult in some respects to take up once more the responsibilities of a civilian, “after depending largely on the decisions of others in my life.” But I’m a rebel at heart and resentful of having my life directed and molded by the decisions of others. The prerogative of making my own decisions again will be zestful rather than otherwise.

  (3) On the futility of making anyone at home “understand things”—that will be a tough problem for the inarticulate. Being naturally a gabby sort of person, I expect less difficulty. It’s a frustration I won’t encounter too often.

  [I was wrong about this, as I indicated above. But I am convinced that the gap could have been bridged, however tenuously, if the people at home had tried to understand, had wanted to understand. Most of them didn’t: in part because they were tired of hearing about the war, in part because they were more concerned with the recounting of what they had endured and accomplished, and partly because they had been persuaded by feature writers and such that we didn’t want to talk about our war experiences and it was bad for us to be urged.]

  (4) Yes, I have built a “dream house, a dream life, a dream family.” But I don’t think the reality will seem meager and unsatisfying. It will be different, it won’t be the dream come to life—that I know!—but I think it will be the reality and not the dream that has the extra richness. [Lacking a few small details, I was right on this.]

  There will be other problems a little more complex, a little more difficult to define. Certainly there will be a readjustment, which will vary in intensity with the individual. But it needn’t be painful! Remember, the adjustment from civilian to soldier was tough, too, but mostly because it was unwelcome. It was rape, not seduction, and we resisted. Our roots clung valiantly to home soil. We’re ready and

  eager for this readjustment, for the change-back from soldier to civilian, and most of the sins and blunders committed will come from overanxiety.

  And I repeat, the whole business will be much more complex and painful for the single man. The married man coming home to the very private haven of married love ha
s a security, a starting stake that cannot be matched by even the most devoted and understanding parental love. Children will help enormously, too.

  [Everything I have observed since coming home bears me out on this point. I think a survey of veteran troubles and veteran unhappiness would indicate that an overwhelming majority of the cases involve either single men or men who married hastily, in a romantically patriotic mist, shortly before shipping overseas.]

  December 31, and the end of this lousy year.

  Yesterday we had a little barrage of 88s from Jerry. We huddled in our hole, bracing ourselves against concussion, the dirt from our roof cascading on our heads with each shell, tensing ourselves against the One. It didn’t come, although a close one landed not thirty yards from our hole. I was greatly comforted that my current siege of GIs was in a “lull” stage. It would have been a helluva time to have to leave the dugout.

  Notwithstanding the daily testimony of shells, this has not been an active sector. We are holding and the Germans are holding and that’s about all that can be said. A little patrolling every night, a little small-arms fire occasionally; the remainder is desultory artillery fire. No deaths in the past week, although several men have been wounded. Yet our forces dwindle daily, a sick list composed of men suffering from frostbite, trench foot, the “bloody GIs,” and similar line diseases. Several cases of pneumonia. It is a slow, whittling- down process, an exquisitely long-drawn attenuation of our numbers and our morale. A war of attrition. And no replacements arrive.

  About three more months of wretched weather to live through. Last night we were permitted to stay in all night: no patrol, no wire-stringing, no guard duty. We kept the stove red-hot all night and slept close to it.

  Every now and then I am engulfed by a wave of unreality and I feel like a sleepwalker, moving with outstretched hands and shuttered eyes through a room that is strange and filled with alien terrors. There is always the bitter shock of awakening, the realization that I am here and this is my life and all I have to live.

  January 1, 1945.

  Happy New Year! When would you like me to arrive home? My fingers are crossed for (a) the end of the war by February 1; (b) home by Easter. Wonder how wild I am in my guesses. [Note: Haw!]

  No New Year’s Eve noisemakers last night, but we had our own special brand of New Year’s excitement. Here’s what happened. Our kitchen being several miles to the rear, chow is brought up at mealtime in a jeep and trailer. The kettles are set out in the courtyard of the farmhouse and thus screened from enemy observation. Last night we formed for chow when the Jerries opened up with some of their six-barreled mortars, and their apparent target was the courtyard. We scrambled for the shelter of the house and barn—built in 1781 of massive gray stone—and in a moment the steaming kettles were deserted. We bided in safety until the danger appeared to be over, but no sooner had the line re-formed than the shells started to drop again. I filled my plate with “seconds,” so I fared rather well. But the Jerries were obviously zeroed in on the courtyard, and many of the men—the sensible as well as the timid—scurried to the cellars, eschewing food for the moment. Tempted though I was to follow their wise lead, my stomach won an easy victory over common sense. Dessert was raisin pudding, and I like raisin pudding. I had the courtyard, the chow line, and the raisin pudding to myself, and the mess sergeant was hiding in the cellar. So I had thirds. And then—well, damn it, I like raisin pudding!—I had fourths and fifths!

  No casualties from the shelling, but most of the remaining

  windows were shattered by concussion, and a direct hit started a fire in the hayloft. We formed a bucket brigade and worked for an hour and a half before the last spark gave up.

  Another uninterrupted night of sleep and warmth. I can face the next forty-eight hours on the line with equanimity now. We go out after chow tonight

  Today a German plane was shot down, crash-landing just in front of our lines. The pilot was unhurt, and he was marched to the C.P. for questioning. He swaggered in, wearing an insolent grin and a beautiful fur-lined flying jacket. Half an hour later he emerged from the C.P., minus both grin and jacket. At chow tonight Lieutenant Jim Krucas was resplendent: he was wearing the jacket... and the grin! C’est la guerre, c’est les brass!

  From a letter:

  You say you want to know more about the minutiae of this life because the Hollywood version doesn’t ring quite true? Bravo, me love, you’re a wise and discerning female!

  You ask what I’m wearing to keep warm. Here’s the list, from the bottom up: overshoes (at last!), shoes, double-sole woolen socks, woolen drawers and undershirt, wool shirt and trousers, sweater, another wool shirt over the sweater, scarf, field jacket, overcoat, gloves, wool-knit cap, the towel snood I described to you, helmet liner and steel helmet. Sounds like enough insulation, doesn’t it? Perhaps too much. But it’s betwixt and between: it doesn’t keep the chill out during the motionless hours of guard duty in zero weather, and it’s too heavy and sweat-provoking for any kind of action.

  Our dugouts are much more solidly constructed than they were in Bastogne. We make them deep and roomy, and roof them solidly with wood (any kind of wood—old fence posts, doors, beds, etc.) and pile several feet of earth on top.

  No, I haven’t seen any USO shows. Some weeks ago while we were in Germany, Marlene Dietrich came through with a unit, and a few of the guys were selected to go. But our quota was small and my luck was bad.

  A minor footnote that you will like as I do: recent prisoners have informed us that the Germans have a special name, a most felicitous name for our big artillery pieces, the 240s. They refer to them as the “Whispering Death.” On the other hand, the American doggie, a tough-minded, sardonic realist—and how sharply this points out the difference between the German mind and the American!—calls the German six-barreled mortar “Leo the Lion”!

  January 4, 1945.

  No change in our routine here: forty-eight hours on line, forty-eight hours’ rest in the farmhouse. Nothing else, save the patrols. We shell the enemy sporadically; they return the compliment in a weary tit-for-tat fashion, neither side trying very hard.

  The days go by so slowly. I mark them off on a homemade calendar, and each canceled day is a minor and bitter triumph. I’ve reached the point where I hate to see the rare copies of Stars and Stripes; Allied gains are minute and the reports are tepid.

  This morning, as we bull-sessioned in our chicken roost, the talk took a diverting and horrible turn and we exchanged stories about men whose sex organs have been maimed or destroyed. The talk of lonely men is curious. Each one of us—there are eight now sharing this room—soberly admitted that he didn’t want to go home, he won’t go home if he’s hit like that.

  January 5, 1945.

  Out on another recon patrol last night, from midnight until five a.m. It was pretty bad. We went deep into Jerry territory, so close we could hear them talking and coughing, but we failed to get a prisoner. Again we laid an ambush by a well- worn trail and stretched on our stomachs in the snow for a solid hour and a half. I use the term “solid” advisedly: that’s how our blood felt when we gave up at last and creaked our way homeward. No point in describing the patrol in greater detail—it was like the other. I still hate and fear patrols worse than anything else.

  Shorty promised that if anything happens to me, he’d see to it that my writing case, these notes, and all my personals were delivered home to you.

  We go back to the holes tonight.

  January 8, 1945.

  Tonight I’m really low, hitting rock bottom. Too much snow and ice and mud, too many long nights and too little sleep, too few letters—the total of my woes up and hit me over the head and I am thoroughly cowed and miserable.

  Three nights ago a runner appeared at our hole. It was ten- thirty, and he said we were to pack up, we were being moved to another position on the line. See? Like I told you, it’s always that way—Shorty and I had completed our hole that very day. After long and painful scraping
, we had at last made it long enough and wide enough and had just hung “tapestries” on the walls to keep out the damp—gunnysacks cushioned with straw and pinned to the dirt walls with twigs. So now we had to move, and in an evil temper, we packed up, staggered after the guide, and finally arrived at our new position. We regarded the unbroken snow with bitter resignation. We had to dig a new hole, starting right then. This would be our “night” home, and each night we would stand guard here. Our “day” hole, which we’d been told had already been dug, was in a hedgerow a hundred yards to our rear. Two positions were necessary because the night hole was nakedly exposed to enemy observation and we’d be unable to leave it in the daytime.

  We started digging. After removing two feet of snow and ice from the site, we discovered that our entrenching tools would not dent the iron-hard ground. I borrowed an ax from the nearest farmhouse and we chopped the top layer of frozen earth into manageable lumps. A thin snow that froze as it fell added an additional soupcon of misery to our woe. We worked all night, and shortly before dawn I went to chow, bringing Shorty’s breakfast back with me. Then we picked up our gear and moved wearily to the “day” hole we’d been told

  about We hurried as we approached the spot anticipating something like the comfortable two-man hole from which we’d been hauled the night before. Already we remembered that old dugout of ours with the sentimental warmth of home.

  At first sight of our new home we dropped our gear and looked at each other in stupid disbelief. Sure enough, there was a hole, but it was for one man only, and he a midget Shorty, five feet two, was unable to squeeze in.

  Tearing off the wooden roof—it had to be chopped loose— we started digging again. The ground was frozen and very rocky, and we worked in dull anger, saying little. We labored throughout the day and barely finished replacing the roof when it was again time for us to return to the night hole for another twelve hours of guard duty. About that time a very small German, armed with spitballs or a bean blower, could have whipped me to a standstill. I’d had no sleep in three days and I reeled when I walked.