Roll Me Over

Home > Other > Roll Me Over > Page 18
Roll Me Over Page 18

by Raymond Gantter


  It took me a while to realize that he was honestly interested in my life—he wasn’t just rubbing it in! And my anger was not truly directed against him, nor did it spring from a study of the contrast in our lots. He was lucky and I envied him, sure! But something was wrong because he didn’t know how it was for us; we weren’t in the same war. And it seemed a hopeless task to try to explain to him what this war was like from my point of view, and it seemed a little unfair that the misery couldn’t be distributed more evenly. We sure as hell had more than our share, we thought.

  There were other sharp reminders of the distance between frontline and rear echelon troops. One of them was a letter from another friend in the rear, received in February while we waited in the woods for the floodwaters of the Roer to subside. He told me his outfit snug in Brussels, was putting on a play: Arsenic and Old Lace. Aw hell, what’s the use?

  From a letter written February 18:

  Have I told you about our “lighting” arrangements? As you know, fires are not permitted after sunset, but lights under cover are okay so long as no ray can be seen outside. Our usual light is a crude gasoline flare, a bottle or can filled with gasoline and a bit of rag as a taper. When nothing better is available, heating units are used, but they last only a few minutes.

  Our present light is a German canteen filled with gasoline. We punched a hole in the aluminum cap and inserted a length of tent rope for a wick. The lamp burns fine, but it throws off a black, sticky smoke. All the next day we spit black sputum and blow our noses black.

  * * *

  A few days ago we passed through a town that had been almost completely destroyed. The church—imposing even in the tiniest village—was in ruins, and only a fragment of tower and a broken wall remained. Once, the high altar had been framed in a high Romanesque arch upon which bloomed cherubim and angels, a heavenly host that hovered over the altar. All was gone now—the wall of the apse, the stained-glass windows, the high altar, the arch. Actually, half of the arch remained, hanging jagged and crumbling from a fragment of wall, and painted on that scrap in blue and coral was the figure of a kneeling cherub—just the single bright shape, exposed to raw daylight and the winter eyes of strangers. The revelation was indecent, somehow, compelling the curious to lower their gaze and hurry by.

  The failure of the army Orientation Program continued to bother me, and I wrote frequently about it to Ree. In one of her answering letters she quoted a statement made by Helen Kirkpatrick of the Chicago Daily News, as reported by Leland Stowe in They Shall Not Sleep. Miss Kirkpatrick, discussing the American army’s poor record in the field of soldier education as compared to the British, said that in her belief American soldiers were deeply concerned with serious issues, controversial subjects. To prove her thesis she claimed, “A vote taken among two units—one the Air Force and the other ground troops—showed that the majority would prefer serious discussions to floor shows.” And hotly she declaims, “Yet they are provided with floor shows of fifth-rate quality.”

  The implications are seriously misleading. A vote polled in an Air Force unit would be a useless measuring stick to estimate the percentage of thinking men throughout the armed services. It must be remembered that the Air Corps was largely handpicked, and numbered the greatest percentage of college men of any branch of general service. As for the ground force troops that were polled, I’d like to know what unit it was!

  No, the implications are false even if the bare statement is accurate. With the exception of selected groups like the Air Corps—which would be comparable to a college-level group—most branches of general service would show a range of intellectual virility no whit different from one revealed by a civilian poll that embraced all levels of education, income, religion, place of residence, type of work, and family status. The only common denominators in any army poll are: (1) age group; (2) present occupation; (3) sex. And like any heterogeneous assemblage of civilian males, an army unit would present the usual ratio of dolts and dunces, business brains and Babbitts, artists and asses, thinkers and chest thumpers.

  I cannot resist a parting shot: I’d be more inclined to agree with Miss Kirkpatrick if her final sentence had read “Because they are provided with floor shows of fifth-rate quality.” But that’s throwing a dirty punch at the USO. Many of the USO shows stunk on ice; many of the entertainers weren’t good enough to win, place, or show in a grange hall amateur contest. But some of them were good, and all worked gallantly under conditions that tested the heart of any trouper. Whether good, bad, or indifferent, it was the kind of entertainment we liked.

  Most of the men I knew sought recreation in the following order: a woman, a bottle, a crap game, a show, a book. Funny thing... can’t remember ever hearing a Joe say, “Y’know what I’d like most of all right now? A good, hot political discussion!”

  February 20, 1945.

  Today was Christmas for me. I got two of the Christmas boxes that were mailed last October from home. The cookies were still crisp.

  I did something hasty that shames me now. In one box were some toys for small children, gay, inexpensive trinkets from Geoff and Sukey that I was commanded to give to “some little Belgian kids.” I held the toys helplessly in my hands, an incongruous note of color in the gloomy forest. Give them to some Belgian kids? Sure, but where? When?

  We’d be moving out soon and my pack was crowded, and I felt oddly shy about carrying the toys until some future time of gift-giving. Finally, aching inside, I walked to the edge of the forest and scooped a shallow hole at the base of a big tree. There I placed the small packages, wrapping them carefully in a scrap of canvas. I covered them over, mounding the soft earth and pine needles high, and soberly returned to my tent.

  Last night I attended the early movie again. To bed immediately after, to lie awake listening to the music and dialogue of the second showing. Over and under the silly words and the brittle chattering of Lana Turner and Robert Young, I heard the mutter and rumble of distant artillery. (Add screen credits: “Sound Effects, courtesy of Adolf Hitler.”)

  It comes as something of a shock, but for the first time in my life I find myself the eldest of a group of young men... the old man. The man nearest my advanced years is a child of twenty-seven. It’s a new responsibility for me, and I wonder if I exhibit the mature judgment the youngsters have a right to expect of me. Four men in the squad are husbands and fathers, but I’m the only one with two children—that is, if I count only the “Union members” of the squad and disqualify the southern boy, who has, in addition to a legal child in North Carolina, an extracurricular offspring somewhere in England.

  We’re a pretty good representation of the army melting pot: two men from Oklahoma, one from Michigan, one from North Carolina, one from Indiana, one from Missouri, one from Pennsylvania, and one from New York. One college graduate, one who never finished grammar school—all the rest high school graduates. A good bunch, but I miss Shorty and Greg Luecke and Leo Allen.

  A few days ago I was summoned to the company C.P. and ordered to lay out a sand table—in this instance, a mud table—of the town we are to assault when we leave here. Working from maps and aerial photographs, I laid out a relief map eight feet by twelve of the town and environs, complete with buildings and streets. Then the C.O. gave us a briefing on our forthcoming assignment. I think he understated the difficulties, and deliberately, but it was good to be told explicitly what our task would be. I wish more preliminary briefings were given. The NCOs usually get one, but the rest of us go out blind.

  It’s February 23 now. It has been an indolent interlude here in the woods, but tomorrow night we push off. The Big Push. We’re a little frightened, and our spirits veer wildly from wisecracking to sudden silence and back again. We spent the day cleaning weapons, replenishing our ammo, getting our gear ready. I’ve been transferred to the second squad, as an assistant squad leader. “Acting,” of course! Wonder if I’ll ever get out of the “acting gadget” class. Ketron is squad leader of the second and a hellu
va good guy. Overseas two years and not wounded yet. Wow!

  CHAPTER SIX

  “...the quiet figure lying in the stubble, the blue overcoat like wings beside him...”

  February 25.

  We left the woods in the morning, crossed the Roer, and entered newly captured Düren, which was still burning. Düren was a ghost city, and many of the ghosts were very new. The dead littered the streets like empty orange skins. This was a rich city of many beautiful homes, tumbled marble now and scorched mahogany.

  No bridges into the city remained, but engineers were busily constructing temporary ones of heavy timbers. There was a large sign over the one on which we crossed: YOU ARE

  NOW ENTERING DUREN, THROUGH THE COURTESY OF THE 8TH DIVISION.

  The next town was Niederau, and there we left the trucks and took shelter against sporadic shelling. The town had been captured only a few hours before. Between shells we strolled in the mined formal garden behind the house in which we’d taken refuge. Crocuses bloomed there, and from the dark shadow of yews an indifferent marble Eros simpered at the chickens that scratched for grubs at his feet.

  There was a piano in the house, a good piano, with a volume of Mozart sonatas open on the music rack. I thirsted for the astringent coolness of Mozart, but the men wanted “Stardust” and “Deep Purple.” They were right: what have larks and nightingales to do with a burning city?

  In the few hours that we lingered there I witnessed again the strange fever of destruction that attacks soldiers. I watched in silence while windows were smashed by deliberate rifle butts, while lace curtains were shredded and fine furniture scarred by bayonets. I protested weakly when two men, finding nothing of value in a handsome sideboard, gave vent to their disappointment by tearing the magnificent carved doors from their hinges. My protest accomplished nothing. They looked at me suspiciously, regarding my pleas as a mark of weakness. They were diverted from further meaningless destruction by the discovery of a secret cupboard under the stairs. Tom open, it revealed neat stores of linen and damask, blankets, satin comforters, also three watches, two cameras, and a cigarette lighter. I shrugged and gave up. Okay, so this was war. Wrapping myself in a comforter of green satin, I dozed on a sofa.

  In the afternoon we took off for Kreuzau. E and F companies had the dirty work of assault, while G Company was in reserve, to be called upon only if needed. We made fast time from Niederau to Kreuzau because the road was under harassing enemy fire. En route we met files of prisoners being escorted back to Niederau. It was a cheering sight: things seemed to be going well up ahead. Most of the prisoners we encountered were pathetic denials of the super-race fable. They were dirty (as we were), frightened (as we were), bewildered (as we were), but despairing, as we were not. Whipped in spirit, they were relieved to be prisoners and done with it. They regarded us sullenly; a few smiled in timid greeting.

  As company-in-reserve, we waited in the portion of the town that had fallen under the first assault wave. Fighting continued ahead of us, and we could see flickers of movement among the buildings, the darting figures obscured momentarily by clouds of smoke and dust. It was cold waiting, but the house next door to us was afire, its cellar a red-hot pit of burning coal. At frequent intervals I ran over to warm myself, standing as near as possible and half strangling on coal gas.

  The owner of our house had obviously been a man with literary tastes. His library on the second floor held not less than five thousand volumes, including the collected works of James

  Oliver Curwood, in German—an evidence of that romantic German interest in the America of cowboys and Indians. Other shelves bore witness that not all Germans were good Nazis: I found several Thomas Mann books, as well as a copy of The Good Soldier Schweik.

  Kreuzau had been the original objective of the day, but it developed that G Company was to push on and take the next village, Drove. We were to be accompanied by two light tanks.

  We left Kreuzau at dusk. On the outskirts we paused near a burning mansion for half an hour, waiting for full darkness. We watched the flames lick the interior walls of the house, stood on tiptoe and looked through empty window flames to see the beautiful formal staircase sink smoothly under this bright flood. The dining room was yet undamaged, and we watched intently as the room dimmed with smoke. A dark patch appeared on one wall and spread until the entire wall was black and blacker still, and a small hole appeared in the center of that blackness and a tongue of flame licked inward greedily, grew larger... then violently the wall was engulfed and the flames sang with the arrogant voice of trumpets.

  At last we started, moving in a skirmish line across an open field, the first platoon leading and keeping pace with the two tanks, which moved forward on the road beside us. We knew that the field was thickly seeded with antipersonnel mines and we were jittery. It was dark and there were humps in the ground that you couldn’t see until you stumbled over them and were chilled with sudden fear. The tanks encountered a roadblock, and we halted for a moment. Stupidly, the tanks did the obvious things. They attempted to go around the roadblock, and one of them ran over an antitank mine, subtly planted by the Germans to check that gambit. The ensuing blast shook our nerves considerably, and then we had one tank. We shook a little harder a few minutes later when a sudden sharp explosion told us that someone had stepped on an antipersonnel mine.

  At length we reached the outskirts of Drove. The first building was an apartment house, a huge barracks of a building, and we left the field to surround it and search it.

  I cannot tell how it feels to enter a strange and hostile building in the dark. There’s fear, of course, and tension, and even a kind of exhilaration. Enmity is there like a solid presence, and shadows crouching in doorways and windows are evil. The creaking of timbers, the clattering of loose tin in the wind, are cold hands that stretch toward you in the darkness. Someone is waiting for you ... at the head of the stairs, machine gun leveled at the landing ... perhaps around the corner of that half-open door. So you drive yourself, whip yourself into movement, trying to remember what you were taught in Basic Training about the proper way to search a house, and you challenge “Komme sie raus!” in a loud voice because you’re afraid to show fear. And the squad is mostly green men and you have to put up a front to prove that the job isn’t so bad. So you bellow loudly, fire a few rounds through the ceilings of the rooms, heave a couple of grenades into the cellar, and there is complete and dead silence presently, and a moment of pure panic because where the hell has the rest of the squad gone? You find them outside, huddled under a window and afraid to move, and Ketron chews their asses for bunching up in front of a building. You all feel better then, and you move on.

  The second and third platoons had passed us while we searched the apartment house. (Clearing a town is a leapfrog business: while you clear one group of houses, the platoon behind you pushes through and works on the next buildings. When you’ve finished, you bypass them and so on.) We caught up with the other two platoons, passed them, and continued through the dark and blasted streets, hugging the buildings and stepping over the dead. Our assignment was to move through the town to the “point,” clear the houses there, and take up positions against possible counterattack.

  When we reached the far end of town, Misa pointed out the house the second squad was to occupy. We moved upon it silently, approaching it from the rear through an orchard honeycombed with German foxholes. Ketron and I each took half of the squad and we circled the house, meeting at the main door. We consulted in whispers for a moment, then

  stepped into the hall. In my boldest voice I challenged, “Komme sie raus!” and from the basement came the faint reply, in English, “I surrender!” Stuttering with surprise, I yelled, “Komme sie raus!” and paused a moment before adding, weakly, “Immediatement!” (Damned if I could think of the German for “Make it snappy!” Wonderful to be a linguist!) We heard footsteps on the cellar stairs and saw the faint glimmer of an approaching light Finally he appeared, a German soldier in breeches an
d sleeveless sweater. He carried a carbide lamp, and he complied agreeably when I ordered him to put it out. In his thirties, he was completely self- possessed and unafraid. The situation had its element of humor. He was so much more in command of the situation than we who trembled there with nervous suspicion. He was willing, even eager, to surrender, but there was no servility in his manner. He indicated clearly that this was an affair of honor, arranged between gentlemen. He vowed there was no one else in the house. They had all gone away and he’d been alone there for “eine stunde. ” He wanted to return to the cellar for his coat before being marched off to prison camp, and I nodded permission. The nights were cold, and his coolness of spirit had surely earned him a warm body. I accompanied him while the rest of the squad waited in the hall, alert for trouble.

 

‹ Prev