Roll Me Over

by Raymond Gantter

  Twice more I called the C.P. and pleaded for medical aid. The man’s courage reproached us all. Now the moans were more frequent, forced from him, inched out over an iron determination that faltered only momentarily. He became delirious and we bathed his head with water, feeling sick and helpless, ashamed of our own uniforms and unable to look at the table where we’d placed the safe-conduct he had carried in his hand. The safe-conduct promised him “medical attention as required,” and that he would be “removed from the danger zone as soon as possible.” Even if the C.P. chose to disregard Eisenhower’s orders, over and above those orders were the basic humanities that, theoretically, we were fighting to preserve.

  We were relieved at dusk, and the wounded German was still in the house when we left. I think he was unconscious— he didn’t answer when I bent over him to promise once more, however feebly, that he would be cared for soon. The outfit relieving us promised to take good care of him. I hope they did. I’d like to think that he lived.

  After reporting at the C.P., we had our first hot meal in two days. Then we found a barn and rested in the hay for an hour, exchanging stories—most of them exaggerated—with the other squads and platoons. Our casualties for the day had been surprisingly light: half a dozen dead and a dozen and a half wounded. Among the dead was Boyd Smith, leader of the first squad, who had returned from the hospital only two days before. He’d been given the Purple Heart while in the hospital, and mailed it to his mother immediately. After comparing what we knew of mail service versus the speed of official notices, we decided that his mother would receive the medal and his accompanying letter almost simultaneously with the official report of his death.

  Heard an ugly story from Chief as we lay in the barn. He claimed he’d seen a woman with the Jerries on the hill. She had started to run across the field, her blond hair streaming. She wore a green dress. He played with her for a while, teasing her with bullets that landed directly before her flying feet. At each shot, each deadly puff of dust, she would throw herself on the ground and lie there for a moment Then she’d get up and start to run again. Tiring of the game at last he ended it, and when she went down the next time, she stayed down, the green dress flung vulgarly above her naked hips.

  We were sickened by the story, but didn’t know whether to believe it. You never could tell with Chief’s stories, and this one might have been true. It’s common knowledge that the Germans are frequently attended by camp followers. We’ve captured some. (They always claim to be nurses, but questioning usually reveals that their talents, though possibly equally hygienic, were employed in more robust activities—surcease for the healthy and whole, rather than the wounded. “Horizontal refreshment,” we called it.) At any rate, sometimes there were women with the Jerries. And Chief’s ability as a sharpshooter was well-known, so his story may have been true. True or not, we weren’t amused.

  We rested in the hay for an hour, and the fever of action drained from us slowly. The hammering in our heads lessened and we curled up, ready for sleep. Then the order came: “On

  your feet!” We were to push during the night and take the next town, Soller. The men reeled with weariness as they fell into line, and we moved out along a mine-flanked road, under enemy fire.

  Soller was not far, and the nervous shells that dropped along our route kept us moving briskly. Half the town had already been cleared, and we were to finish the job. It was the night we cleared Drove all over again—sweating, tension, and terror; darkened houses and shadows that moved.

  A certain episode of that night is still an unexplained mystery. One of the men, hearing a suspicious noise, immediately hailed, “Komme sie raus!" There was instant silence. He called again, and again there was no answer. Alarmed, he yelled for the platoon leader: “Hey, Misa!” And a strange, unhuman voice echoed him, “Misa!” Again he called, “Misa!” and the mysterious voice repeated, “Misa!” Only the single word. They sent for me, and I arrived just as Misa hurried up. Standing in the darkest shadow I could find, I hurled orders and threats in bad German at the dark house. And the mocking reply came back, “Mee-ee-sa!” Nothing more. The voice had a cavernous, echoing quality, seeming to come from the cellar. Cautiously, we crept to the cellar door, opened it, and yelled down. There was no reply; the voice was silent. We fired a few shots down the stairs and through the floor and finally tossed a grenade into the dark hole. Still no sound. Mystified and more than a little shaken by the experience, we finished clearing the village. An hour later Misa returned to the house, determined to ferret out the mystery. He found nothing. It remains a mystery, and the most reasonable explanation we were able to invent was that it was a parrot, left behind by its owners. A parrot, an exotic tropical bird in an almost medieval German hamlet of half a hundred houses? Well, you suggest a better answer!

  The first platoon was, as usual, on the point of the town. We spread out in a fan-shaped line in a garden, in the middle of which was a German-constructed dugout. It was well made: long enough to hold ten men, buttressed and braced with heavy timbers, and deep. The earth floor was thick with the blankets and quilts left behind by the fleeing Germans. Misa suggested it as a central C.P. for all the squad leaders since the entire platoon was emplaced in the garden, and we moved in gratefully. (I was acting squad leader, now that Ketron was gone.) I spent most of the night helping one of the greener replacements dig his foxhole, and tottered off to bed at four a.m.

  The hours that passed while we dug had a strange beauty. The night was very black, no moon or stars, but out in the field a hayrick blazed, set afire by a stray shell. Clouds of heavy white smoke billowed into the air, and we were choked with the acrid taste of burning hay.

  Before we’d finished our digging, someone in authority decided that the half-dozen hayricks still standing offered too kindly a cover to the enemy, providing them with a convenient route to come almost within spittin’ distance of us. The order came, “Burn the hay!” White phosphorus grenades were fired at the hayricks, and within five minutes all of them were ablaze. The nearby buildings were thrown in startling relief against the encircling night, and we were nervously aware of how nakedly we ourselves were revealed in that glare of light After a while the flames subsided, but another danger arose: the heavy smoke hugged the ground, and a blanket of haze cut our visibility to less than fifty feet. Tears streaming from our aching eyes, we peered into the smoke, halting our digging in tense alarm at every small sound. The fire disturbed a nearby owl and he hooted fretfully throughout the night. A macabre touch that was hardly necessary, I thought.

  February 28.

  A dim and misty day. With hungry eyes I noted the magnificent brussels sprouts in the garden, wondering if there was time to cook a mess of them. There wasn’t. At ten-thirty a.m. the familiar word came: “Get ready to move!”

  After an uncomfortable passage along a mined road under enemy artillery, we reached Vettweiss. We halted there, and the platoon wearily collapsed in the elegant home of a wealthy apothecary. An imposing library filled one room of the mansion and I browsed happily. It was an astonishing collection. Several shelves were given over entirely to Nazi-approved histories of Germany—glorious Germany, valiant Germany, warrior Germany, virile and clean-jawed Germany, endlessly depicted in hand-to-hand combat with hordes of evil-looking wretches with slanted foreheads and greasy mouths. (I only know what I saw in the pictures.)

  Food arrived at three and we hurried to the chow truck, stepping carelessly over the dead bodies that dotted the streets. Then more waiting, and our tension mounted with each passing moment because they didn’t tell us and they didn't tell us when we’d be leaving. At last the official word came: after dark, about nine o’clock. Meanwhile, we’d better rest.

  The cellar of the mansion was crowded, every man trying to find stretching space. I discovered a curious cement “room” in the very middle of the cellar. It was an indoor air raid shelter, and the only entrance to it was a small opening close to the floor. I wriggled in on my belly and was delig
hted to find it furnished with mattresses and quilts. Another man, Guyette, crawled in with me and we made ourselves comfortable. I didn’t know Guyette well. He was a new replacement, but he seemed a nice youngster—dark, quiet, clean-looking. He bubbled now with a shy excitement, because only a couple of days ago word had come from home that his first baby had been born. He was proud and happy, and his new delight in his manhood was a gentle thing to see. His joy made me feel old and tired and a little soiled. We talked for a while, then fell silent. And slept finally.

  At dusk we were awakened and briefed. Our immediate objective was the town of Gladbach, and the first platoon’s job was to set up some roadblocks on the far end of town and latch ourselves firmly to the three roads that converged there. We were advised that we might have to throw a bridge across the creek on the edge of Gladbach in order to reach the pinpoint on the map that was our assigned position.

  We moved out, again over a mine-studded road. In Gladbach we paused for an hour before pushing on. We’d been hoping that the 26th, which had taken the town, managed to bridge the creek: we were like cats in our loathing of water and we knew that the stream would be swollen and icy. The 26th had managed to build a bridge, but it was knocked out by delicately accurate German artillery. They’d tried again, and the second bridge had been blown to bits.

  Cautiously, we crept out of Gladbach. Arriving at the creek, we found it deeper and swifter than we had expected, and that it was actually two streams. Down a slippery clay bank, we waded the first stream—one man fell flat, weapons and all— crossed a thin spit of land, waded the second stream, and clambered up the steep bank on the far side. Wet, cold, and disgusted, I crawled up the bank, my fingers reaching for the weeds at the top, when wham! Blinding white light burned my eyes and I threw myself back down the bank, stars jigging under my closed and aching eyelids. I listened to the thin and evil hissing of the shrapnel and tensed myself. The first squad was just ahead of me and I could hear someone groaning. I waited a long five minutes, then lunged over the rim of the bank and across the road to the dark shelter of the trees. As the men joined me, we moved out hurriedly, passing a dark and motionless shape on the road. (Next day we learned that two men had been wounded by that shell and one killed. The dead man was Guyette. For a time they hadn’t been able to identify him because they couldn’t find his head. It was lying in the ditch on the other side of the road.)

  With ragged nerves to prick us on, we moved along briskly, but soon we had another bad five minutes. With no preliminary whine of warning, a shell hit the road a few yards ahead of us. I had never seen a shell explode with such dazzling white light, but Misa—wise old man!—recognized it instantly as an American bazooka rocket and realized that we were being fired on by our own troops. There followed a screaming and obscene dialogue between Misa and some unmistakably American voices in the woods. Most of the exchange consisted of Misa describing in violent detail precisely what he was going to do to the “goddamn -------s who were firing those sunsabitchin’ -------s at his ------- men.”

  At last we reached the fork in the road. Ahead of us, crouched on a low hill, was the woods in which we were to place an outpost. Our Intelligence had reported that they “didn’t think there were any Jerries in the woods, but they weren’t sure.” Weak assurance in the middle of the night.

  Chief and I led our squads up the right fork—his squad on the left side of the road, mine on the right. In the black silence we failed to notice that our road split and became two, parted first by a thick hedge of thorn apple and then, as the distance between us increased, by the width of a field. I became suddenly aware of this when we reached the end of the hedge, and on my left, instead of the road I expected to see, an open field appeared. Now the sky was filled with low, scudding clouds and the moon began to peer out fitfully. On the far side of the field I could dimly see Chief and his men. The moonlight also kindly revealed the barbed wire fences that divided the field.

  I told the scouts to cut a path through the barbed wire so we might join Chief on the main road. We started crawling across the field—the scouts first, then me. Reaching the first fence, the lead scout cut the bottom strand and the wire twanged loudly. We froze and waited. When nothing happened, he pushed through and moved on. The second scout was just passing through the opening when the hysterical rattle of a burp gun burst from the woods ahead. We hugged the ground, feeling with desperate fingers for a hollow, a depression in the arched breast of the field that would offer cover. There was a moment of blind panic and then we realized with a surge of warm relief that the enemy gunner was shooting at Chief’s squad, which had incautiously silhouetted itself against the night sky for a moment. Somebody else was getting it, but we were safe for the moment—that’s all that mattered to us. Kind of a callous way of looking at things? Yeah, ain’t it?

  Raising my nose from the mud a few inches, I looked for the scouts. They were gone, vanished... lost in the dim grayness. I couldn’t call aloud, but I whispered their names and the thin sound seemed a scream. There was no answer; they were dead... or perhaps they had gained the upper road and joined Chiefs squad. At any rate, the open field was a lousy place for brooding: the sky had miraculously cleared and the moon was brilliant. I wriggled backward across the field to the bank and found Misa waiting there with the word that the C.O. wanted the squad to work along the bank and reach the woods. He wanted us to “wipe out those Jerries,” they were “holding us up!” O gallant phrases...

  Leaving the BAR team with Misa, I started off with the three remaining men of the squad, crawling on our guts in the ditch. It was a slow, painful progress and I looked back frequently, needing the visual assurance of the three men following. They were there, all right, but I felt alone and damn well scared. My pack interfered with crawling and I sloughed it off, and then my gas mask. The three-quarter moon hung steady, glittered on my glasses like sequins and I winced, imagining the sniper’s bullet pierce my eye and the bright crystal slivers drive deep into my brain.

  The mud in the ditch was foul-smelling and slimy, and I hated the feel of it and myself for being squeamish at such a moment. Nettles whipped my face, and my hands and knees flinched from the knife edges of unseen stones. Ahead of us the woods were black, but we could hear movement in the trees—they were there, all right ... they were there ... wonder if my ass is low enough?... why oh goddamn it why doesn’t that bitchin’ moon go away, and goddamn ’em anyway!

  I stopped. The protecting bank on my left had dwindled away and ahead of me was an open space, fifty feet wide and flooded with moonlight. On its far edge were the brooding woods and the patient guns, the eyes watching for the black shape that would attempt to swim that white pool. I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants, nervously clasped and unclasped my rifle. Glancing backward, I saw the quiet figure of the man behind me... waiting for me to make up my mind.

  Maybe I’d have made the woods... I don’t know. But while I hesitated, trying to whip up my courage, I heard my name whispered. Word had been passed up from the rear that we were to withdraw, not attempt it. Shaky with relief, I crawled back to where Misa huddled against the bank. He said the old man had decided it was too risky: we’d try something else. We retreated to the fork in the road and were joined there by the other squads. I worried about my missing scouts, but they drifted in shortly. They had been with Chiefs squad.

  During the night the Jerries withdrew, with the exception of a few stragglers who surrendered in the morning. One neither surrendered nor fled. He was lying dead of a bullet wound in the throat when we went up to take a look at the enemy positions.

  The hill was a honeycomb of trenches, passages, and cross passages. German equipment and arms were scattered throughout the woods: blankets, mess gear, canteens, rifles, burp guns, machine guns, hand grenades, bazookas, and ammunition. Who said the German army was feeling the pinch of shortages?

  [That rumor of “shortages” circulated persistently, and perhaps an examination of the whole picture would prove it
true. But not according to our experience. Everywhere we went we captured vast supplies of German arms and equipment, and we saw no evidence of shortages until the very end of the war, except for gasoline and medical supplies. German tanks and planes needed gas, and there was progressively less; wounded men needed drugs, and there were literally none. In Bamberg after the war I saw hundreds of amputees, Germans whose arms or legs had been amputated at shoulder or hip, often for quite minor wounds. There had been no drugs to halt gangrene, and the German surgeons had been ruthless.]

  As the night sky started to lighten I noted a glimmer of startling white in the black shadows of the roadside. With the coming of true dawn, the black and white patchwork was identified as a cow, a young and pretty beast, vivid as the lithograph on a dairy calendar. She did not rise when daylight had come, so I went down to investigate. As I drew near, I saw the blood on her right flank, but she struggled to her feet and stood motionless, regarding me steadily. Her leg hung limp, and I saw it was broken in several places and cruelly torn by shrapnel. She made no complaint but looked at me with bewildered, pain-filled eyes. They asked nothing, and that was the thing I could not bear. I climbed back up the hill and asked the men if one of them would volunteer to shoot her. Quickly, through the head. One volunteered, and I forced myself to watch him. She died quietly, making no sound, and the heavy body sank unstruggling at the side of the road. It was curiously comforting to see that the suffering head rested on a soft patch of grass, shaded by the trees overhead.

  Shortly after daylight the kitchen jeep arrived with hot coffee and C rations. Then we moved up the road several hundred yards, passing the woods we had besieged in the night. At the edge of a wide field we dug in once more. And so we spent the day, and I tried to forget the spitting rain, the cold winds, my wet and aching feet, my sleep-heavy body. It was March 1, the winter was over, there was an occasional flash of sunshine, and the war was dying. I lifted a German blanket from the abandoned equipment in the woods, curled up in my hole—which was a kind of cave, dug into the steep side of a sandbank—and slept for an hour. Then we were told we’d be relieved, and pulled back to some town for a rest.