Roll Me Over

by Raymond Gantter

  The artillery barrage started, three battalions of it. I cannot describe it, but I never want to be that close to a barrage again. After observing the first several rounds, the captain ordered the range shortened, and presently the shells were dropping on the houses directly across the street. The barrage lasted over an hour. From within the cellar it felt like the rumbling and quivering of an earthquake, but I cannot imagine what it must have been like for the men who were in holes and shelters outside. With the barrage fingering so close to our own positions there were some short rounds, of course, but to my knowledge, none of our men were killed by our own shells.

  (I saw some of the outside men when the barrage had ceased. They were gray with shock, and trembling so much they could neither light a cigarette nor hold it with their fingers. Eifler and the men in the barn with him had had a bad time of it They shook uncontrollably, and their faces, their clothing—even their eyebrows were thickly white with plaster dust. They could not find words to tell of it—the explosions of sound that smashed at their eardrums like the sledgehammering of a lightning bolt the reeling shock of concussion that turned heart and stomach to jelly.)

  For a time I sat in the crowded cellar, wincing with each shell. There was no room to stretch out and my legs were soon tormented by cramp. I wanted to go to sleep, tried to sleep and could not. Two-year-old Hildegarde, a pert minx for whom the barrage was only a loud thunderstorm, clambered over the intervening knees and settled on my lap, and I thought of my Sukey at home and felt worse ... or maybe I felt better for a while, I don’t know. Still the barrage continued. After Hildegarde deserted my knees, I could bear the cellar no longer and I went upstairs to stand by a window, defying shrapnel and stone splinters.

  Old buildings made of stone have a quality of permanence that is hard to define, particularly to Americans, who belong to a frame-house culture. The stone is solid and firm and untroubled, heavy with years and rooted to the earth. You lean against such houses and they have none of the frailty that goes with decaying wood. Stone houses are never sick, never ill- tempered in a thin-blooded, malicious fashion, never ailing with petulant disorders, like a woman too long virginal. Stone houses are broad-bottomed, lusty, male. Touching them, you know that nothing can shake or destroy them.

  From a window in Geisbach I looked at houses like that, and scant seconds later watched them leap toward the sky in effortless, floating fragments, melt and disintegrate with the easy magic of soap bubbles ... quickly gone, and only dust to mark the place where they’d been. And after the dust, the flames, and after the flames, nothing but blackened rabble. Destruction was a giant wind raging over the town, an evil and terrible thing to witness.

  At last the guns stopped, and in the strange silence there was only the sound of flames, the dull grinding of falling walls. We came out and looked at what was left of Geisbach. The artillery had achieved violently what we’d been struggling with painful slowness to accomplish: force the enemy into the open. I got a stray Jerry as he came down the road, another as he crawled from the ruins of a building and started for the hills. Around me the rifles cracked with the bright impersonality of a shooting gallery, and the return fire was feeble and uncertain, a gesture of bravado.

  A twelve-year-old boy tugged at my sleeve, saying that his grandfather wanted to talk to me. The old man, a white-bearded patriarch, indicated that he wanted to lead me into a nearby field and point out a wounded soldier. I demurred: I was damn certain that the soldier would be German. At any rate, I was not a medic, I could do nothing ... and there had been so many deaths, so many wounded. But he persisted and I gave in, following him in weary patience.

  I remember starting out with him, but I do not know how far we walked. At intervals I blanked out from weariness, continuing to move and even to talk, I think, but without awareness. The town had begun to crawl from the wreckage, and I remember flames and bodies and dust, smoking timbers and vast mounds of broken masonry. But the picture is kaleidoscopic, moving shadows seen through mist.

  Two women stood beside a foxhole in the field, one of them tearing a sheet into strips of bandage with fierce energy. The other stood motionless, her face heavy and dull with shock, her nerveless hands limply holding a cup and saucer. A third woman bent over the young German soldier in the hole. His left leg had been fractured in two places and viciously torn by shrapnel, but he looked up at me and smiled weakly. For a moment I stared back without comprehension, and his smile faded, became tentative and very young. Then I prodded myself awake, spoke to him reassuringly, and told the women that the doctor would soon be there. (As soon as our men had been cared for, the medics would get to work on the German wounded.)

  I walked back to the house with the old man. He’d been badly shaken by the sight of the wounded soldier and he was trembling. Presently I saw that tears were running soundlessly down his face, blinding him after a while so that he could not see the path, and he clutched my arm for help. He did not speak to me, but I heard him murmur over and over again, “The things that men do to each other! The things that men do to each other!” and the tears ran down the thin brown face and into the white foam of his beard. And I was weary of death and bone tired and I envied him his tears because he was old and could weep easily and without shame.

  We cleaned up the town, taking listless potshots at the Germans who continued to crawl from the wreckage and scamper for the hills. The dead lay everywhere, grotesquely.

  Finally our relief arrived: the tanks and tank destroyers and troops for which the captain had begged a few hours before. The town was securely in our hands by that time, but some odds and ends of resistance remained.

  One of the tank destroyers pulled into the courtyard where the battered survivors of the first platoon had gathered. We grinned foolishly at the fresh-looking riflemen behind the T.D., looking at them with love because they’d come, but with something like contempt because they’d come so late and we’d survived without their help.

  We were happy to turn the remaining jobs over to our relief. We pointed to a house a hundred yards away and watched with joy as the T.D. maneuvered into position and began to lay the wood to the sniper nest. We should have been smarter, we’d been in this business long enough to know better. But we stood in the open courtyard, exclaiming in silly excitement as the shells poured into the battered house; we stood there until the man next to me gurgled a little, clutched at his throat, and sank heavily to the ground. “Pop” Cunningham, fat, grinning Pop, who had just arrived with the relief company.

  No one had heard the sniper’s shot, but we looked dazedly at “Pop” and saw the blood gushing from his throat. In thirty seconds the courtyard was empty, the men racing for the safety of the cellar, pouring down the steps like water. I was too damn tired to react quickly and I forgot to run. And maybe in the back of what was left of my brain was the secret assurance that nothing could touch me; I’d lived through this day and nothing could touch me now. I was too tired to be very smart.

  I yelled for the medic who was caring for the wounded in the cellar, and when he came to the doorway, I pointed wordlessly at Pop. He hadn’t moved, but his right hand was clenching and slowly unclenching in a spasmodic appeal that was intolerable to watch. It appeared there was nothing that could be done for him, and the medic said yeah, it looked like it but he’d like to see, he’d like to get him in the cellar and try ... a helluva lot of blood, but maybe... And he called out for someone to come and help us carry the wounded man.

  No one came out, no one volunteered. The scared faces in the doorway drew back for a moment in shame, but no one came to help, no man from Pop’s own company would help him. We waited, and I watched Pop and wished that slow hand would cease its blind groping. We bent over him, the medic at his shoulders and I at his heels, and we tried to lift him. A deep groan shuddered from the dying man, the fumbling hand clutched once more at the torn throat and blood, vomit, and saliva streamed from his mouth. The medic said, “No use ... he got it in the jugular.” Gently
, we lowered him again and stood there and watched him die. We couldn’t leave him, not while he still lived; we couldn’t turn our backs and go away and leave him to die alone. It didn’t take long. In less than a minute he was still, and the blind hand uncurling for the last time. We left him then, and went into the cellar. I wasn’t good for anything for a while. He’d been standing so close, and we were talking, and it had been so quick, so soon over....

  I established my C.P. in the remains of a nearby house. We found some canned fruit in the cupboard and ate greedy, dripping handfuls of it. A few moments later a Polish “slave” entered the kitchen. He was only a boy, not more than fourteen years old, but his eyes were shrewd and mature. He grinned boldly at our gluttony, placed a precautionary finger against his lips, and slipped down the cellar stairs. In a moment he was back, triumphantly brandishing two cans of cherries. We invited him to join us, and happily he dug in. When the civilian owner of the house suddenly appeared on the threshold, the boy started guiltily, heroically swallowed a mouthful of cherries, pits and all, and made a great show of sweeping up the kitchen, but as his “master” turned away, he grimaced slyly at us and patted his stomach.

  Behind the house a little group of civilians stood silently over something on the ground that was covered with a black overcoat—an old man who had unwisely left his cellar during the bombardment. The civilians showed no emotion. Neither did we.

  Shorty said he’d seen some camera film in the house next door, and we went after it. While he pawed in the cupboard, I opened the cellar door and idly glanced down. Some items of GI mess gear lay at the bottom of the steps, and I said, “Looks like the Jerries have been here,” and started down to investigate. (During the day, many of us had discarded our packs, throwing them off because they impeded action. The loot-hungry Germans had searched every pack they found, seeking American cigarettes in particular, and men who later discovered their packs found they’d been stripped of everything valuable. The scattered gear in the cellar hinted that some doggie’s pack had been brought here and looted.)

  Halfway down the stairs I stopped short, my eyes on the foot of the bed I could see through the open door of a storeroom. A bed in a cellar was a familiar sight, but a pair of unmistakably live feet in heavy German shoes gave this one a new twist. Gripping my rifle, I yipped, “Komme si raus!” and immediately five German soldiers meekly filed out of the room. One shamefacedly butted a Lucky Strike on the dirt floor before he started up the stairs. We marched them to the courtyard where prisoners were being collected and strolled back to our C.P., well pleased with ourselves.

  We started to dig in against further counterattack, but no sooner had we begun than the captain ordered us to another sector at the opposite end of town. Wearily we trudged across town and wearily started to dig once again. At last the holes were finished and we made preparations for sleep, hoping that we would not move out until the morning. It took me a long time to get to sleep.

  At two-thirty a.m. a light flashed in my eyes and someone was shaking me. “Report to the C.P.” And I knew what that meant.

  A couple of footnotes before we leave Geisbach. Our G-2 was a little late with the intelligence, but we finally got an explanation for the extreme violence of the late battle and the desperate intensity of the enemy counterattack. The Germans had selected Geisbach as the jumping-off point for a major offensive designed to sweep American troops from the entire Sieg River valley. To that end the German High Command had been marshaling forces for several days, and our sudden move into the town caught them by surprise. The German marshaling area was just over the ridge from where they swept down on us in such grim force, and though they were not fully prepared for the large-scale offensive they’d been planning, they threw against us— against a single company of infantry!—everything they had. Our bag for the day included four German tanks, four self-propelled guns, and an unestimated number of prisoners, many of them wounded. In addition, our colonel had counted 150 German dead as he strolled through the town. Then he stopped counting.

  It cost us something, too.

  A final note on Geisbach. During the day I had heard stories about a German girl wearing a Red Cross uniform who’d been shot by a German officer because she was treating American wounded. The stories were vague, and no one with whom I talked had seen the incident, although everyone knew someone else who had seen it One of those things ...

  After some days I learned the story was true. The girl had emerged from her shelter to care for the wounded, German and American alike, and a German officer shot her when she ignored his repeated order to “Let the damn Americans die!” The story was confirmed, and it appeared that week in the New York papers. Incidentally, in the newspaper account of the battle, credit for the capture of Geisbach was given to a company that never set foot in it. Perhaps it was only a typographical error—although an officer who was not one of ours but with whom we were familiar was quoted in the story—but it sure as hell rankled in the collective breast of George Company. Geisbach belonged to us.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “The news of the big push was good…”

  March 25.

  We left Geisbach at four A.M., first platoon spearheading. We headed east on the road down which the German tanks had trundled only a few hours before. Our destination was the town of Wingenshof, over the ridge.

  It was dark but not dark enough, and I turned my head quickly when we passed the two soldiers I’d shot from the window of the corner house. But it was all right; they weren’t real anymore. They had been crushed under the passing of many tanks, and their bodies were thin and flat, two- dimensional ... paper dolls the size of men.

  There was no moon. Behind us the night sky was sullen with the red glare of burning Geisbach, punctuated with the harsh yellow of exploding shells. The village was still being shelled, although with rather lazy indifference, by the enemy in the hills to the east.

  We moved in weary silence, a column on each side of the road. As we neared the crest of the hill, two German shells screamed brief warning and landed in our ranks. We scattered instantly, fanning far out into the fields, but there were no more shells. Apparently these had been intended for Geisbach, and falling short, found us by evil accident. We waited a bit, then re-formed and moved ahead.

  It was another hour before I learned that the shells had killed two men in my platoon. One of them, Cox, had been killed instantly. Bob Berthot was the other, and he died within the hour. No one else was injured. Cox and Berthot, incidentally, had been the sole remaining BAR men in the platoon.

  There was no resistance in Wingenshof and we took it easily, and started at once for our next objective, Dondorf. We were to secure the main highway north of Dondorf, my platoon occupying the extreme left flank.

  Our sector was a pushover, and the roused civilians who shivered in their night clothing vowed there were no German soldiers in the neighborhood. We picked up three prisoners: a machine gunner and two burp gunners we found sleeping behind a farmhouse. I set up a six-man outpost in a small house and selected a stone farmhouse, three hundred yards distant, for my C.P. Later in the morning the captain sent us a light tank, a mortar squad, and a machine-gun section. With the machine guns and mortar emplaced and the tank snuggled discreetly in the shadow of the barn, we had a real strong point. Leo Allen, now attached to the communications squad, ran a phone line to us, and we felt warmly secure against attack.

  Notwithstanding our defenses, it was not a comfortable spot. We faced a deep valley, and the long, wooded hill across from us was thick with Germans. We were exposed to their direct fire, and they harassed us with a running commentary of rockets and mortars. (A rocket barrage, incidentally, is truly terrifying. The shells scream like a thousand violated banshees, a sound to turn the blood of strong men to sherbet.)

  As Shorty and I stood in the orchard and discussed the location of his squad, a shower of mortar shells began to splash in the trees around us. We lunged desperately toward the corner of the hou
se a dozen feet away, and though I made it unscathed, Shorty got a splinter of shrapnel in his leg. I helped him to the cellar and sat with him while the medic bandaged his thigh and the German hausfrau sewed the rip in his trousers made by the medic’s knife.

  Leaving him, I walked to a nearby cellar where a group of men rested between guard tricks. As I chatted with them, a German shell scored a hit on the thick wall of the cellar, smashing it in upon us. Four men were injured, and again I was stoned and powdered with plaster dust. But no wound, no lovely five points for me! I phoned for a jeep and trailer to come for the wounded and waved a mournful good-bye to Shorty, sitting erect beside the driver. I felt lost and alone and frightened—Luecke was gone (combat fatigue), Leo was with the headquarters company, and now Shorty was gone. Of the men who had come in with me, not one remained.

  Lacking telephone communication with the six men in the outpost, I trotted down at frequent intervals to check on their welfare. The road was under constant enemy fire and I did not dally en route. Puffing up to the outpost at the end of one such run, I felt the curious stare of John Basile, who was digging a foxhole in the front lawn. Fifteen minutes later, as I prepared to start my run back to the C.P., John spoke up.

  “Hey, Sarge! Do you go to church much?”

  A little taken aback, I replied, “Well... uh, no, I guess not. Not very much.”

  “Uh-huh.” He resumed his digging.

  I waited for a puzzled moment, then inquired, “Why? I mean—why do you ask?”

  He put down his shovel and looked up, a little surprised to find me still there. Then he said slowly, “Well, I don’t know ... guess it’s just that whenever I see you gallopin’ down the road with the Jerries throwin’ that stuff over, I figure you don’t go to church much!”