Roll Me Over

by Raymond Gantter

  The cellar was a surprise. There was a glowing kitchen stove, a table covered with dishes, a white-painted bed in the corner, several mattresses on the floor ... even a tapestry hanging on the whitewashed wall to dress the place up a bit.

  The man’s calm aplomb was a constant amazement to me. All day he’d been expecting our arrival and passed the hours preparing for it washing and shaving, packing his personal belongings. He talked freely as he busied himself assembling his gear, making disparaging remarks about the Nazis, comments like “Deutschland ist alles kaput!” and even an intimation that the Gestapo was responsible for his presence in the German army. When he was ready, I ushered him upstairs and sent him to the company C.P. under guard.

  Then we looked around. Our situation was peculiar. The house itself was on the very point of the town, the last house on the road. The rub lay in its construction. All the windows were in the north and south walls, the narrow ends of the house. The west side, beyond which were our nearest neighbors, was a blank wall, innocent of door or window openings. The east side, facing an orchard, a field, a hill, and the enemy, had but two openings: the “front door” and a small window on the landing of the stairway to the second floor. A helluva setup for defensive positions. In the event of counterattack we’d have to stay and slug it out—we couldn’t get out of the place without passing under the noses of the Germans.

  We set guards at the windows, arranging the guard tricks so two men at a time could get a little sleep in the warm cellar. At two-thirty a.m. Leo Allen, now our platoon runner, brought orders from the company C.P. that all men were to remain awake: counterattack was expected at any moment. I made numerous pots of coffee from the jar of ersatz coffee we found in the cellar—and lousy stuff it was, too!—and fried the cold boiled potatoes I found in a kettle behind the stove. One at a time the men came down to get warm and have a bite to eat. We hadn’t eaten since six the previous morning.

  During the night, German soldiers who had been hiding in cellars and lofts tried to slip out of town. One of our scouts— Bob Berthot of Niagara Falls—saw a moving shadow in the street and challenged it. The shadow whirled and fired at the window where Bob stood. Bob returned the fire and missed, but the noise woke the men in nearby houses and rifles began cracking throughout our area. The total bag was seven prisoners, two of them wounded.

  At four-thirty I woke Ketron, who had been asleep for two hours, and took his place on the bed. Half an hour later he rushed in and called to me: “The Jerries are counterattacking!”

  We could see them in the half dawn, coming down the sides of the high hill to the east, slipping through the field and working their way to the ridge beyond the orchard. That ridge was only a hundred yards from the house, and safe from our fire. But they had to cross a stretch of open ground to get there, and we opened up. They weren’t expecting it, and they high-tailed for cover.

  We weren’t happy. Not only were we trapped in the house, unable to leave it while the Jerries were out there, but we had no means of communication with the C.P. Or with anyone. The 26th Regiment had pushed through Drove during the night to attack the town on our right flank, and our phone wires had been ripped out by passing tanks. We had no way to report our plight, no way to ask for ammo or reinforcements, no way to contact medics if we needed them. We felt uncomfortably deserted, as though we eight were alone against the numberless Germans moving so ominously through the field.

  The next seven hours were a ride on a runaway merry-go-round. We were dizzied and blurred by speed and excitement. We watched so intently that our eyeballs ached, firing whenever we glimpsed a scrap of blue-gray uniform or caught a hint of movement. Once, a blue-clad rump appeared squarely between the sights of my rifle, and when I squeezed the trigger, it leaped convulsively, as though it had been caressed with a hot iron. We crowed with vulgar delight.

  The Germans succeeded in working their way to the ridge, and from there opened up on us with rifles, machine guns, and burp guns. Since our one firing position was the window on the landing, we crowded around it, and even the men guarding the other windows left their posts and flocked to the landing, only to be chased back to their assigned positions.

  Ketron and I circulated nervously from post to post. We were uncomfortably aware that the south side of the house was our soft spot: the orchard offered a convenient avenue of approach to the very windows of the house, and the enemy could be upon us in a moment.

  I climbed the stairs to the attic. It wasn’t a smart place to go; half of the roof—the half facing the enemy—had been blown away, and I was in a helluva spot if mortars were brought up against us. It would be a good position until that moment, however, because I could look over the top of the ridge and beyond it, and see enemy soldiers who were concealed from the men on the floor below me. So I lay in the plaster dust on the bare floor, open sky and broken rafters above me, the tangled clutter of anyone’s attic around me—trunks, old books, clothes, broken furniture, and discarded toys.

  It’s hard to write this next part, because this is where I killed a man. The first one. The first one I was sure of. It ought to be told simply, because it’s important that you should understand what it’s like—how you feel when you have trapped a small, running creature between the cold sights of a deliberate gun and pulled the trigger, and suddenly the creature has stopped running and is lying there, and now it’s a man and his body is naked and soft and crumpled. It ought to be told without hint of boast, and yet so that you would see there’s something of the bragging boy in the sense of achievement; it ought to be told without sentiment, and yet so you would see what a big thing it is.

  I saw a German soldier rise from behind the protective shoulder of the ridge and start to run to the rear, sprinting across the open field toward the hills. Perhaps he was a runner, a messenger—I cannot remember that he carried a weapon. It occurred to me later that he must have been young and very green, because he ran in a straight line, an easy course to follow with the sights of a rifle. He had unbuttoned his overcoat for greater freedom in running, and the skirts flapped like huge blue wings around his legs. He was a moving dot of blue, a clumsy blue object to be stalked deliberately ... now, impaled within the sights, the blue coat was enormous, presenting itself to my squinted eye like a cloud, like a house, like a target painted solid blue on the firing range at Camp Wheeler. I squeezed the trigger and he fell. He did not move again, and the skirts of the blue overcoat made a patch of unnatural color in the field where he lay.

  For a moment I was triumphant and my eyes lingered on my prize, confirming it. There he was!... He was there, still lying there, and it wasn’t a game any longer. He hadn’t risen to his feet, dusted himself off, and thumbed his nose at me gaily before starting to run again. He lay there, quiet now, and he hadn’t moved, and I laid my rifle on the floor of the attic— carefully, because of the plaster dust—and put my head in my hands. I wanted to be sick, but there wasn’t time to be sick. And I thought, Poor bastard ... he was hungry and cold, too ... scared and homesick and missing his people and tired of war. And I was sick and ashamed because I never hated him, never him specifically, and I never wanted to kill him. And it was an evil and an ugly thing that this man, this particular Hans or Ludwig or Emil, should lie dead on a field because I had willed it; it was an evil and an ugly thing that this particular man should never again hear music or feel the hands of his children upon his face.

  Then I picked up my rifle and went back to my job.

  The fight lasted throughout the day, and other men in blue-gray went down, not to move again, but their falling did not hit me as a personal thing. They were moving targets, that was all. But again and again my eyes turned back to the figure lying quiet in the stubble, the blue overcoat like wings beside him.

  A new danger developed while I was in the attic. Two German tanks, painted white, appeared on the crest of the hill. They were easy to see against the dark background of pine. One was a fight tank, a child’s toy beside the grim hulk of t
he other, which we recognized as one of the dreaded Tigers. Between our house and the tanks was only the field, a bare and empty space. I didn’t see how they could miss us.

  As the tanks opened up, the Germans behind the ridge started a mortar barrage. I scurried down the stairs to Ketron and we conferred hastily. We figured the Jerries would throw a lot of lead and then rush the house from the ridge. We sweated it out, fearing the one solid hit from the Tiger that would surely come.

  The tanks had been observed by our tank destroyers in the center of town, and the resulting fire was hot enough to force the Tiger from its position on the hill. It lumbered away toward the lower end of town, and we heaved king-size gasps of relief. I started for the attic once more, and Ketron turned to go to the cellar. I’d just reached the attic when a breath-walloping explosion rocked the house and plaster dust billowed up in a choking, blinding cloud. Coughing and strangling, I crawled to the stairway on hands and knees and yelled down, “Everybody all right? Anybody hurt down there?”

  There was a hubbub of sound and I heard Ketron’s voice: “Help me... help me!”

  Feeling my way down the stairs, I bumped into someone who identified himself as Joe Hornung. Believing that Ketron was with me, Joe had been on his way to the attic. I sent Joe toward the cellar to care for Ketron, and I got to work, hurrying the nerve-shattered men back to their posts to prepare for an enemy rush. Fifteen minutes later the rush hadn’t materialized, there was a lull on our front, and I went downstairs to see about Ketron.

  The front door had been blown clear from its hinges. It leaned in the archway opening on the parlor. Broken laths protruded from the battered walls, and plaster dust was inches thick on the floor. A tank shell had scored a direct hit on the door. The gaping doorway exposed to enemy observation a stretch of floor that had to be crossed in order to reach the cellar. I bounded over it like a frightened rabbit and went down to Ketron.

  There was blood in the hall, blood on the stairs, blood on the cellar floor. Ket was stretched on the floor and Joe was bandaging his leg. “How bad?” I asked, and Joe replied, “I think his leg’s smashed above the knee. And there’s a bad shrapnel wound in the inner side of his thigh.” I looked. Another two inches and Ket could have forgotten that girl back home—he’d have been a bachelor for the rest of his life.

  When Joe reached him, Ket had been doggedly crawling down the cellar stairs, dragging his useless leg. He was losing a lot of blood. There was nothing I could do for him, and my responsibility now was the squad. I left him in Joe’s care and went upstairs.

  The day wheeled slowly by, and after a while the tension lessened. The Germans showed no inclination to storm the house, and the whole business became a dreary guard detail, a matter of watching as intently as our tired eyes would permit, firing at each furtive glimpse of blue-gray uniform. Ketron needed medical aid, but we couldn’t get it because our phone connection with the C.P. was gone. During a lull, I leaned from the south window and yelled loudly to attract the attention of our nearest neighbors, a hundred yards away. They heard me and waved, but a solo voice wasn’t strong enough to be understood. Collaring two men, I formed a trio, and through our concerted vocal effort we got our message across. A medic appeared within half an hour and without haste, without fear, walked the length of the house in full view of the Germans on the ridge, entered by the ruined doorway where Ketron had been hit, and asked where the wounded man was. I was breathless with admiration of his cool daring.

  It took nerve to be a medic. Geneva Convention notwithstanding, medics were fired on sometimes. Often it was accidental, but sometimes it was not, and many men swore bitterly that the Jerries always tried to get our medics. (I don’t believe that. That afternoon I saw an example of what can happen, the mistake that is so easily snowballed into legend.)

  The medic who came to care for Ketron walked—(walked, not ran!)—the length of the house in full view of the Jerry lines. Finding that a stretcher would be necessary, he went back for it, and appeared a little later accompanied by four bearers who carried a folded stretcher. As they entered the door a shot came from the German lines. Only one shot. Leaving the house with Ketron on the stretcher, their progress was slow as they maneuvered through the doorway, and again a single shot came from the German lines. They continued with their ticklish job without looking around, but the men in the house were raging, convinced that the Germans were deliberately trying to kill our medics. They vowed vengeance and swore that they’d fire on the next German medic they saw. I argued and pleaded with them to no avail, and finally said bluntly that I’d shoot the first man who fired on a German medic. My argument was that some eager beaver in the German lines had failed to note the folded stretcher, the dim red crosses on helmets and armbands, and thought simply that we were getting reinforcements. Seeing the medics leaving, a similar eager beaver, or perhaps the same one, had assumed that we were running out. Proof of my theory lay in the fact that on each occasion only a single shot had been fired, and had the intent been truly evil, there was ample time and opportunity to pick off every one of the medics as they walked the length of the house. It seemed evident to me that the shots were mistakes, fired in haste, and the fire halted as soon as the mistake had been realized.

  The risks our medics took shocked me because their immunity was so scantily guaranteed. There was little in their dress to indicate their calling. Lacking only weapons, they wore the usual GI uniform, and their sole distinctive markings were red crosses on a white ground, painted on the four sides of their helmets, and white armbands, also marked with a red cross. A helmet and an armband, that was all. But helmets got dirty, scratched, chipped; armbands became grimy rags, twisted, narrow bands that were indistinguishable on dark sleeves. I’m surprised that more medics weren’t killed. And I was filled with admiring envy of the way the Germans protected their medics, as demonstrated that day.

  Casualties in the German ranks had been high, and the field was dotted with motionless splotches of blue-gray. The German medics appeared during a lull. From a clump of trees on the hill a large white flag was raised, bearing an enormous red cross. The man carrying the flag remained hidden in the trees for several minutes, waving the flag back and forth slowly, calling our attention to it. Then he stepped out and stood motionless a moment longer, still waving the flag. He walked down the hill to a wounded man and stood by his side, the flag held high. After a moment four stretcher bearers and a medic came from the clump behind him, to where he stood. Swiftly they did their work, and the bearers took the loaded stretcher back up the hill while the medic and the flag waver moved to the next casualty. Soon the bearers appeared again, emerging from the same clump of trees and carrying the empty stretcher. They carried it open, a man at each pole. That was important, I thought, because the grouping of four men on a stretcher is distinctive and not likely to be confused with four infantry replacements coming to reinforce a threatened position.

  Slowly, they cleared the field of their wounded, and I watched intently, hoping a little. There was a figure in the middle of the field, his blue overcoat spread wide. At last they walked over there and the medic kneeled for a moment. Only for a moment. Then he rose and walked away without a backward look, walked across the field to another blue-clad form, and the bearers followed him, their stretcher hanging loose and empty.

  Around noon the Germans started to withdraw, slipping through the tall grass, darting across open ground, working their way back to the hill and the shelter of the trees. They suffered many casualties en route, because they took foolish chances in their eagerness to get away.

  About one o’clock we saw someone walking along the road that led from the ridge into town. He was staggering, reeling from side to side, and we could see it was a German soldier. I ordered him in when he reached the house. In his hand he carried a safe-conduct. (Our planes showered German lines with official safe-conducts that promised fair treatment to German soldiers who surrendered honorably. They were signed by Eisenhower.) When we’d
examined our prisoner, we looked at each other in silence, respect and admiration battling the sense of triumph that is the rightful mood of the prisoner taker. He had walked in—no one knew how far—carrying all of his equipment except his weapons, and he had seven wounds in his body. One thigh was horribly torn by shrapnel, the raw meat squeezing out in ugly red and white bulges. Below this was another, smaller wound. A gaping wound in the calf of the other leg. A bullet hole in his shoulder, a bullet hole in his neck, a bullet hole in the middle of his back from which dark, rich blood pulsed sullenly, and another shrapnel wound at the base of his spine. He was a lot of man. He didn’t whimper when we dressed his wounds, although we were clumsy. Having done what we could, we laid him gently on a sofa and spread a torn quilt over him. He had to lie on his face, one leg on the sofa and the other propped on a chair next to it.

  He was in his mid-twenties, seemed well-educated, and spoke English. His uniform was of the Luftwaffe, but he told us that this had been his first day in the infantry. (An indication of how desperately the Germans needed men. And gasoline. There was no shortage of planes and pilots in the Reich, he said, but there was no gas. As a result, many men had recently been transferred from the Luftwaffe to the infantry.)

  Our phone line was repaired during the afternoon, and I immediately called the C.P. to report our prisoner. I asked for a medic and an ambulance. The answer I received made us sick with helpless rage. The C.P. refused to send a medic: the officious noncom on the phone, who refused to let me speak to an officer, said that since we’d already bandaged the man’s wounds, there was nothing more a medic could do. There was, of course; our repair work had been crude and inexpert, and we had no morphine, something he needed desperately. At first he’d been stoically silent, but then we began to hear small moans, quickly stifled, but moans. The C.P. also told me that we had no ambulance: we’d have to care for him as best we could until we were relieved, and then we could turn him over to the relieving outfit. He’d be their baby.