It was over very quickly: we burst from the front door, the other squad rushed forward, and we had six prisoners, two of them wounded. Leaving a snuff-chewing southern boy to guard them, we headed for the schoolhouse across the road, our primary objective.
There ought to be a way to tell how it was from here on— how it had been exciting but familiar all the way from Soven to the road, from eleven o’clock last night to three o’clock that morning. The road was the marker: beyond it color flowed into movement, and sound had a smell, and the night had hands and a voice, and there were no dimensions, no rules. The road was the dividing line: on one side of it was the known, and on the other side—chaos, the negation of mathematics and all cool disciplines.
At the schoolhouse we took two more prisoners, whom I sent back to the mill to be kept with the others. I’d just given the order to fire the green flare that would inform the captain all was well when a flare rose from the lower end of the village and burst in slow green brilliance against the sky. What the hell! This wasn’t according to plan! The captain had said he would answer my flare, but how could he be answering when we hadn’t yet signaled him? Another thing, this was a green flare, but it was a parachute flare, not a star cluster!
Even as I gnawed my lips in angry indecision, another flare lighted the sky. A white star cluster! Then another—a red parachute flare! Another ... then another! This was insane— these couldn’t be our signals. We’d planned to use green star clusters because we didn’t have anything else in the whole damn company. But maybe plans had been changed during the night, after I’d started for Edgoven; maybe we’d attached some other units and these were their signals?
(I learned later that the Germans, taking alarm from the captain’s first flare, had surmised our pincer plan of attack and done their best to confuse us by themselves discharging a meaningless potpourri of flares. They’d done a good job. It sure as hell confused me.)
It seemed a futile gesture in view of the holiday colors already in the sky, but I told the grenadier to discharge our specified flare, according to our instructions. Then we started grimly into the town.
Somewhere in here the snuff-chewing southern boy— who’d been relieved of his prisoner guard detail—had an accident. He’d been given a spare flare against the possibility of the first grenadier having a misfire, and he was carefully instructed to carry the flare in his belt—not mounted on the launcher attached to his rifle. He’d also been cautioned to be sure the flare was not on the launcher if he had to use his rifle as a weapon, firing live rounds. (Flares are discharged by means of blank cartridges.) He forgot both warnings: he carried the flare on the launcher, then forgot it was there and tried to fire a live round. The speeding bullet exploded the flare only a rifle barrel’s length from his face. But he was lucky: he escaped alive and wasn’t even seriously injured, though his features were shifted around a little. He was evacuated and I never saw him again.
All hell broke loose before we’d moved fifty yards into the village. The firing we’d been hearing in the distance erupted violently upon us, and we were suddenly in a mess of fighting. I remember the chattering dialogue of bullets from rifles, machine guns, and burp guns, and the flares that blossomed endlessly in the dark sky. I remember a new and strange enemy weapon from which a tail of flame lashed malevolently, and my skin crawled because we’d never before faced a flamethrower. It turned out to be not a flamethrower but a bazooka. They were firing at us with bazookas, and this was a fantastic and outrageous thing, to fire bazookas at men. It wasn’t according to the rules!
And there was shouting and many dark figures darting across the road and no way of knowing whether they were friends or enemies, and the sound of doors being battered down and the thin screaming of civilians, and unutterable confusion. And the new men in the platoon, lost and frightened and no one to show them how ... the new men huddling in little clusters and milling in pathetic bewilderment when I screamed at them and whipped them with my voice and the butt of my rifle. Green, green, they were so lost and green! Four of them would be sent to search a house, and in a moment they would be back, saying they couldn’t get in because the doors were locked, and we’d yell at them, “For Chrissake, smash ’em, smash ’em, what’ve ya got a rifle butt for?” But I was sick at heart to use them so and drive them so: casualties would be high before the night was over.
And so through the village: fighting, smashing, terrorizing women and children ... more Hunlike than Attila. (Except that we didn’t rape. There wasn’t time for that.) The night was graying into dawn when we reached an important road junction in the north section of the village.
We’d been progressing steadily south along the main road, and the junction was formed where another road branched off to the east. A pretty little house sat on one of the corners of the fork, a picture-book house fronted by a neat little yard. The road to the east ran snugly beside it, so close to the house that a farmer in a wagon could shake hands with the hausfrau through a window.
We entered the house through a rear window that faced upon an apple orchard. After falling over a bicycle that some damn fool had parked in the dining room, I stumbled around in the dark until I found the cellar door. It was locked, and I pounded on it with my fist. Instantly, female screams of great intensity rose from the cellar. Two women, it sounded like, and they were yipping. “Nicht schiessen, nicht schiessen!" Don’t shoot, don’t shoot In my bastard German I replied that we wouldn’t shoot but intended to find out who and what was down there, and how about opening the door? They yelled a little more at that and again wailed, “Nicht schiessen, ” there were no “Deutsches soldaten” in the cellar. I pounded again, they yipped again, and then I heard footsteps on the stairs.
The steps mounted until I knew someone was standing on the other side of the door, facing me beyond this thin wall of wood. There was a pause, and suddenly a new wail of fear—she’d forgotten the key! I heard her calling to the other woman to bring the key, and between her breathless phrases she kept moaning, “Nicht schiessen! ” In a moment a new wail of terror rose from the cellar—the second woman couldn’t find the key! At that, the one standing on the other side of the door let go with a series of really fine screeches, each one progressively louder in spite of my efforts to reassure her. I was about to give up the whole business in disgust when a howl of joy sounded from below. The key had been found! A moment later the door opened and a thoroughly frightened woman backed away, murmuring that monotonous phrase through fear-stiffened lips. I pitied her, but I was still going to search the cellar.
I started down the stairs and had taken only three steps when a calm, male voice said in perfect English, “I surrender!” and a German officer appeared at the foot of the stairs, his hands over his head. He was unarmed, and when I asked him for his pistol, he replied that it was in the cellar. Sending him off to join our growing collection of prisoners, I returned to the cellar and demanded the pistol. The women assumed round-eyed expressions of innocence, made extravagant play of searching in the most unlikely places for five minutes, and at last I found the pistol myself, demurely tucked away under a mattress.
The advance elements of the company reached us at dawn and were nearly mowed down when one of my trigger-happy infants, challenging the dim figures advancing through the mist, opened up with his BAR without waiting for an answer. Fortunately, he was so nervy that his first blast was wide of the mark, and he dropped his weapon when I yelled.
Three houses dominated the road that stretched eastward. Beyond them the land rolled in gentle swells, cresting to a ridge six hundred yards to the east. I sent two squads to clear the houses, and there was a brisk fight in the shadowy half dawn with Germans who were entrenched in a bunker before the farthest house.
Now, again, it is all confusion and blurred impressions. There was a ceaseless rain of bullets from the hills, from the bunker on the lawn, and from the windows of one of the houses. From somewhere a German machine gun sprayed the road, and interspersed
with the vicious coughing of the gun we could hear the hoarse babble of German voices.
The platoon was spread thin. Most of the men were in the vicinity of the three houses, a few were in another building, and four of us—Shorty, Frank Eifler, a lad named Bowers, and myself—were still in the house on the corner, barred from joining the rest of the platoon by the mocking machine gun that dominated the road.
The back window of the house gave a clear view of the orchard, the hill beyond, and the road that curved over it. And as the half-light of dawn slid into full day, I heard the first warning rumble and saw the blunt pig snout of a German Tiger tank peer over the crest of the hill. It came down the road toward the junction, toward us, and I drew back from the window, sudden sweat making my rifle slimy. There was a flurry of movement across the road as the men caught sight of the tank and started for cover. The tank wasn’t alone. A second followed it... than another ... and now an endless stream of them poured heavily over the ridge. Self-propelled guns, too—mobile cannon that we called S.P.’s—and German infantry, gray shadows that moved furtively behind the iron giants. Some of the tanks and S.P.’s turned as they reached the orchard and swung toward the lower town, smashing through the apple trees. Some turned in the opposite direction, heading for the sawmill. A perfect pincer maneuver, and we were the nut. One medium tank continued along the road, coming our way, and I shrank back in the room, deep in the shadows, watching it There was no escape for us: any attempt to leave the house would place us squarely before the guns of the tank. Now I could see the riflemen who walked behind the tank, peering over its protecting shoulders. Twenty-five yards to go ... twenty ... fifteen ... okay, our luck had worn thin, that’s all. It was nearly up to the corner of the house now, slowing as it approached the junction, and there was a German rifleman close behind it, twenty feet from me. He hadn’t seen me through the torn lace curtains, he didn’t know we were there, and if we were already lost, there wasn’t anything else to lose. I got him between the eyes, because how could I miss at twenty feet? No one saw him fall, no one but me saw a walking man become a smear of dingy gray-blue in the road, one leg doubled under him and his rifle fallen in the thick foulness of cow droppings.
This part is hard to write, as it was when I tried to tell about the dead German soldier in the field near Drove ... the overcoat spread like blue wings against the pale stubble.
The man I’d shot had a comrade, another rifleman who’d gone on with the tank, unseeing. Suddenly becoming aware of his friend’s absence, he turned and saw and hurried back to the dead man in the road. He knelt beside him ... and I shot him. In that act of grace I killed him, and when he crumbled, the two bodies were very close, their faces almost touching. And I cannot forget that he was kneeling, his body curved in sorrow over the body of his dead friend. If only he hadn’t been kneeling.
It was quickly over, the last i dotted and every t crossed in the few seconds before the tank drew up beside the house. Even as I stared at the two figures in the road I became aware of silence. The tank had halted.
Through a broken window I could see the tank, could see the evil muzzle of the cannon pointing toward the junction. I could see the pet name painted in white on the barrel of the cannon: Tutti! in neat Gothic script, this black bitch at the window was called Tutti by those who loved her, and I could reach through the broken pane and pat Tutti on the nose. How the hell were we going to get out of here now?
Exit by the rear window was no dice: the rear end of the tank projected beyond the back of the house. As though that were not enough, the orchard seemed to be crawling with tanks, S.P.’s, and men in gray uniform. No exit by the front door, either: we’d have to run right under the nose of Tutti and her twin-sister machine guns.
There was no sound from the tank: no voices, no shots fired, no grating of machinery. We wondered what they were waiting for, and stationed ourselves by the doors and windows, prepared to welcome any guests.
Digging a package of gum from my pocket, I silently passed it around. Softening the gum with hasty chewing, we lodged the cuds between our teeth to hush their nervous clicking. Our breathing was loud and rasping to our ears and we tried to breathe slower, easing the air in and out gently through open mouths. So we waited, ten minutes ... fifteen minutes... half an hour...
An elbow nudged me. Shorty. He held a white phosphorus grenade in his hand, the safety pin already removed. A few wisps of hay clinging to the side of the tank—obviously it had been hiding in a barn—had inspired him to try to set it afire. But now he was doubtful. Was there enough hay? Would the grenade land in the right place? If it failed to disable the tank, wouldn’t Tutti swing around to breathe death against the house, against us? I was doubtful, too, and decided to wait a bit. We might get out of this yet
Our situation was serious enough, but now there was an element of farce in it I grinned at Shorty and he grinned back uncertainly, holding the grenade gingerly but with determination ... a man with a handful of flypaper. He had to hang on. Once he let go, the handle would fly off, activating the fuse, and the grenade would burn within five seconds. And he couldn’t replace the safety pin because he’d dropped it on the floor somewhere and couldn’t find it. Choking with nervous giggles, we finally solved the dilemma by tying a strip of cloth over the release handle, and with a great sigh of relief Shorty tucked the grenade in his pack.
Still no sound from the tank. I crept into the side room, sword-dancing over the fragments of glass that littered the floor and crunched noisily underfoot. Concentrating on these small hazards, I forgot the shell holes in the wall and looked up to be instantly transfixed by the open eye slot of the tank regarding me grimly through a lath-shredded hole. For a freezing moment I stared at that iron eyelid, expecting death to blink at me. But nothing happened; nothing. Growing bolder, I looked through the hole and studied the entire length of the tank. Not a sound, not a person in sight I crawled up the stairway to the second floor and looked down on the tank from a window. The turret top was open but there was no sign of a crew. Maybe the men in the houses across the road had knocked off the crew ... maybe the crew had run away when their infantry escort fell ... maybe they were just hiding, waiting.
We talked it over and decided to run for it. We left by the front door, closing it behind us quietly, and raced under Tutti’s nose and across the road, fear snapping at our heels.
I flubbed badly on this deal by failing to disable Tutti. She was not a dead tank, only deserted, and I should have killed her. But we weren’t anticipating a major counterattack; we couldn’t know that Tutti would be recaptured and remanned by a German crew and used against us once more. Later that day—a hundred years later—I saw Tutti again, blackened and smoking, but dead at last. She had raised a lot of hell in the lower town before being knocked out finally.
The Jerries seemed to be under control for the moment, and there was a lull in the fighting, but Captain Wirt warned us to get set for another counterattack. My platoon was to stay in the north end of town and hold the vitally important junction.
I selected a house on the east road as my major strong point, since it was obvious that attack would come from the east and northeast. It was a large brick building with vast stables and barns, situated on a knoll that commanded a view of the ridge to the east It was apparent we weren’t going to have time to dig in: the enemy fire was growing steadily warmer.
There were a number of new men in the platoon, young and green but okay. That is, all okay but one. He’d been dubbed “the Combat Soldier” the day he joined us. (We wondered why the army had taken him: he had a wife and six children back in the States.) He’d been with us for only two days, and for two days he’d been irritating us with his swaggering, his windy assurances of fighting ability. Poor bastard—we knew he boasted because he was scared, but that didn’t make us like him any better. Here in Geisbach, because I knew his windiness for what it concealed, I assigned him to the safest position I could find. A safe post but damned important because i
t overlooked the road down which the tanks had come. His position was the steps of the deep bunker on the lawn from which we’d evicted the Germans. It was the equivalent of a Grade-A foxhole. Hell, he could even sit down!
Ten minutes later, while I was trying to decide whether I should endanger a man’s life by ordering him to a vital but unprotected position, I turned and found the Combat Soldier standing behind me. I tried to be calm as I asked him what he was doing there, why he wasn’t at his post (But the thing was, the blinding thing was, “This man deserted his post endangering the fives of his own comrades!”) His answer to my questions made me blow my stack completely: someone had fired at him out there—he’d heard the bullet go over his head—and he wanted “another post.”
A counterattack was blowing our way and I was oppressed by the responsibility for other men’s lives, but I let the war struggle along by itself for thirty seconds while I vented my own sickness and fear on the Combat Soldier. It was a merciless reaming.
The next counterattack hit us before we were prepared. A heavy shelling first and then the tanks and S.P.’s began to roll, pouring over the crest of the hill and down the road. The earlier pattern was faithfully followed. Some of the tanks swung toward the lower town, some of them turned in the opposite direction. Infantry slipped like gray shadows over the hill, skulked behind the tanks. They were coming from the north, the northeast and the east and it was obvious they were forming a giant pincer to be slipped around us and squeezed shut.
Our house was taking a pounding. Tiny knife-edged fragments of brick whined through the air and many of the men were bleeding from myriad cuts. Running to the barn, I found the two men stationed there hugging the ground, nearly paralyzed by concussion. I moved them to a safer spot. The cattle in the stalls were bleeding from scores of small wounds, many of them in the head, and the scarlet drops clung to the white faces like tears of blood. During a brief lull I unchained several of them and tried to lead them from the doomed building, but they would not budge. In one stall a beautiful bay mare nuzzled with mute comfort the trembling, week-old colt huddled under the curve of her belly. She was chained to the stall and I could not free her.
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