I loped off, confused by his logic. And as I thudded down the road, I thought, Now what the hell! Why didn’t he reach exactly the opposite conclusion—that I’m a good Christian, that I’m safe and untouchable because I’m a loyal member of somebody’s flock and safe in the arms of Jesus?
In the orchard behind my C.P. daffodils stood in sturdy golden clusters, and indoors a vase of them offered spring incense to a blue and scarlet image of the Blessed Virgin. I buried my face in the cool petals and sniffed mightily, and enjoyed the luxury of choking with a sudden fierce yearning for home and our garden and our daffodils.
Sometimes it seems there are no German civilians left in Germany. Most of the people we meet of late are “slaves,” usually Polish or Russian, and young. Hundreds of them, thousands of them—the drudges who have kept the German machine running. They stand at the side of the road and cheer us and salute awkwardly and flash wide, radiant smiles. Many of them do not smile; many of them only stare with dull, vacant eyes. Our passing means nothing; it’s an interruption of their toil, a chance to stand erect for a moment and ease aching muscles. Nothing more.
All slaves wear on their garments a label, marked P for Pole, OST for Russian. The labels are large and brightly colored for easy identification.
Average “pay,” when they were paid at all, was about two and a half marks per month. This sum they were graciously permitted to squander on colored postcards extolling the Greater Reich, and they were allowed to send these cards to any relatives who might still be alive in their native villages. Postcards they could buy; all else was Verboten to slaves.
Ah, it’s a wonderful empire Herr Hitler built! Here on either hand are the rich fields that were plowed and planted by slaves last spring, and here are those same slaves, their few possessions in cardboard valises or burlap bags, trekking painfully along these muddy roads, moving toward assembly points, repatriation depots ... going home. You look at the fields, smiling with the promise of fat crops, and you wonder, Who will weed you this year, and who will harvest you? With whose sweat, with how many slow drops of whose blood, will you be moistened this year? You look again at the dull faces of the slaves, the hopeless bodies, the bright labels ... you turn away, and for a moment you cannot see the fields, and you curse, “Starve, you German bastards, starve!”
The day was quiet after our wounded had been taken away. The shelling and sniping continued, but there was no violent action. Early in the afternoon we spied a long column of prisoners coming up the road from Dondorf, and we watched them and counted. There were 130 of them. They turned at the junction and moved slowly toward the crest of the hill that overlooked Geisbach. Then we saw something horrible and shocking: the Germans on the other side of the valley began shelling their captured comrades in arms. It was unmistakably deliberate: the gray-blue uniforms were apparent to the naked eye, and German artillery observers, using field glasses, could not possibly have mistaken them for Americans. No, it was deliberately done. And the orderly column of prisoners became an hysterical rout—we could hear the cries of panic and pain—and they broke and ran, clumsily, toward Geisbach and the haven of our stockade.
Further Note on How War Hardens the Tender Sensibilities (or Every Man a Killer): the death of Cox and Berthot had been a double, even a quadruple loss. We lost our only two BAR men and our only two BARs as well. No one had thought to pick up the weapons dropped by the two men when they were hit. We needed them badly, and I put in a call for a jeep to pick them up on his next trip out. When the jeep arrived, the driver handed me one BAR: the other had been damaged beyond hope of repair. It was Berthot’s weapon, thick with young Bob’s blood. I took it gingerly and passed it to the rifleman who had been Bob’s assistant. He accepted it but held it stiffly at arm’s length, his face twitching. For a moment he did not speak and I waited. Finally the words came and he said, not looking at me, “I can’t—” He swallowed and tried again “I can’t clean this thing, Sarge.” I didn’t press him but took the gun from him and tried another man. Same result. And so it went through most of the platoon. Finally I returned the weapon to the jeep driver and asked him to take it back to Battalion HQ and bring us another gun.
These men were frontline troops, not old and seasoned, perhaps, but surely well-acquainted with blood. This was not enemy blood, however, or the blood of a stranger—it was the blood of Bob Berthot, gummy and cold on his own weapon. Most of us had eaten and talked with Bob only a few hours ago.
In the middle of the afternoon orders came to prepare to move into Dondorf. E and F companies, captors of the town, were moving out and we were to take over. However, we meant only the first platoon, not the entire company. “Oh, fine!” we thought miserably. It took two companies to capture the lousy town, and now one understrength platoon was supposed to hold it against a possible counterattack. Fine!
We started out, three or four men at a time, and with plenty of space between. The Jerries were blasting hell out of the road, using rockets, mortars, and tank guns. A heavy ground mist in our sector prevented the enemy from actually seeing us, but their guns were beautifully zeroed in on the road and they were obviously taking no chances on our movements. We covered the mile and a quarter to Dondorf in a series of convulsive leaps. We were running like a bat out of hell for a few yards, diving headlong into the nearest ditch when inbound shells screamed a warning, climbing back to the road when the shells had landed and you made sure you were still in one piece, running again, diving again ... and at last through the mist we saw the first houses of Dondorf and heard the welcoming challenge of the men standing guard there.
I saw something on that road that I cannot forget. Perhaps if I’d been less tired I would have passed it without comprehension, seeing but not seeing. But I was in the state of fatigue that is akin to a certain stage of drunkenness, a moment of suspension between worlds when, for an instant, the commonplace is illuminated and there’s pain and all poetry in such things as the curve of an eyebrow, the turning of a woman’s wrist, a shadow in a doorway.
As I jogged dully through the mist I saw the body of a dead German soldier on the road ahead. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up. His legs were toward Dondorf and they were naked. I was not immediately aware of the nakedness, that comprehension hit me several seconds later. It was the rude circumstance of his nudity that jarred me awake. He was, in fact, naked from the waist down. With the thin man’s envy of the superbly muscled, I was intensely aware of the beauty of his body. His thighs were Grecian music, glimmering whitely against the dun-colored clay of the road like marble.
I took a last envious glance as I pounded past ... then stumbled, choked for a moment with nausea. It was indeed an athlete’s body and the legs were magnificent—what remained of them. They ended at the knee in jagged splinters of white, hung with red pulp. And although the outflung arms were strong and shapely and the torso beautiful even through the clumsy army clothing, the head was a crushed eggshell, the brains having squirted out savagely under the tread of a tank.
By the time we reached Dondorf, F Company had already gone and E Company was fretting with impatience. The town seemed alarmingly big and our tiny platoon was scattered across a wide front—three men in one house, four in another, two here ... No one said much, but we were all saying the same thing under our breaths and saying it hard: “Don’t let there be a counterattack... don’t let it!”
Forty-four German prisoners, nine of whom were badly wounded, were being held in the gasthaus near my C.P. E Company turned them over to us, and I had to assign two men to that special guard duty. We added ten prisoners to the bag during the night.
The night was endless. My orders had been, “Stay in Dondorf until you are relieved by another unit. That should be sometime tonight.” The captain had added that there was no telephone communication between his C.P. and Dondorf. We’d be strictly on our own.
Shortly after midnight the outfit that was to relieve us arrived, and our responsibility was over. We prepared at once t
o rejoin our waiting company, and when the platoon was assembled I turned to an officer of the relieving outfit—he was a first lieutenant—and said, “Sir, if you’ll assign a couple of men to take over the prisoner guard in the gasthaus, I’ll pick up my two guards and we’ll take off.”
His face assumed the expression of a dose of salts taking rapid effect and he said curtly, “Those prisoners are not my responsibility. I haven’t any men to spare for a prisoner guard. You’ll have to take them with you.”
The sonofabitch. He had an entire company to do a job that had been done all night long by a single pint-sized platoon, and he couldn’t spare two men for a guard detail!
But I was a buck sergeant and he was a first john, so I replied, meekly, “Sir, they aren’t my responsibility, either. They were passed on to me by the two companies we relieved. I’ll be glad to take along all the prisoners who can walk, but what about the nine litter cases in there?”
Upon which he looked as though the salts had taken effect and he didn’t like it and he snarled, “I don’t care how you handle them—but you take care of them. It’s your worry!”
I ached with the bitterness of tears to be his equal in rank for five minutes, just five minutes, Lord! But I held my tongue and tried to think of new arguments. He’d obviously decided the conversation was over, however, and stalked off without waiting for my salute. I walked back to my platoon slowly, pondering. I was still on my own in this damn town, I couldn’t contact the captain for advice, and the company was waiting for us. Finally I reached a decision. I told the guards to bring out all the prisoners who could walk but to leave the litter cases, along with two German medics to care for them. Then we took off. I’d like to have seen the face of that p----
of a first lieutenant when he discovered he had eleven prisoners on his hands, nine of whom would have to be moved by ambulance.
And, oh yes—something I’d forgotten! During our brief conversation he’d asked me if I’d checked the papers of all the civilians in town. Figuring I’d already overworked this military courtesy business, I answered simply, no sir, I hadn’t— my concern was with men in uniform and it was not a part of my job to quiz civilians, even if I’d had men enough and time enough to do it. He’d glared at me in return but said nothing. I wonder if the nine wounded Germans ever lived to see the inside of a stockade or whether he “disposed” of them in more terse fashion.
We walked up the road in weary silence—the rocket and mortar barrage had stopped at last—and rejoined the impatient company. Then we started back to Geisbach. But we didn’t stop there. We kept going, shortcutting through muddy fields and climbing steep hills that sapped our last remaining strength. Shortly before dawn we entered Soven once more, and stumbling into the first houses we came to, collapsed in exhausted sleep.
Our one souvenir of Dondorf: a couple of men raided the little chapel next to my C.P. and stole a four-foot holy candle, all gilded and painted and garnished with holy pictures. It was nearly two inches in diameter, and we cut it into foot-long lengths. Most of us were secretly shocked by this looting of a chapel, but candles were illumination and thus precious beyond rubies. So we took a backhanded slap at our consciences and reached greedily for a chunk of candle. Strange ... most of the men are religious, many are good Catholics, and in civilian life such a theft would seem the most gross sacrilege to them. You can blame our amoral behavior on war... or weariness. Or both.
March 26.
We were awakened at seven-fifteen for chow, and immediately after breakfast everyone went back to bed. Everyone but me, that is: I spent the day working. Lacking a platoon guide, I had to do his work as well as my own. So I checked ammunition supplies, equipment, and so on, begged, borrowed, and stole what I needed from the supply sergeant, reorganized the squads, checked the roster—all the endless and petty details that are automatic “musts” when a unit is out of combat.
There were twelve men in my platoon. Twelve men in a rifle platoon, and only eight of them properly first platoon men. Our losses at Geisbach had been so great that Captain Wirt dissolved the poor remnant of the second platoon, sending the few survivors to the first and third platoons. We got four of those men, thus giving us a total of twelve, plus myself.
I’d barely finished the last of my petty jobs when word came that replacements were arriving, fifteen of whom had been assigned to me, and I was to send the second platoon men packing because their unit was going to be reorganized. My fifteen replacements were all new men, fresh from the States and dewy-eyed with wonder. But one outstanding bit of luck came my way. An “old man,” Staff Sergeant Joe Hudziak, was assigned to me for platoon guide. More about Joe later—he was one of the finest men I knew in the army.
The job on which I’d worked since early morning now had to be done over, and the day turned into howling confusion. It was late afternoon before the mess was straightened up. At last it was done, and I looked yearningly at my mattress on the floor. No luck—orders came to pack up; we were taking off for a new sector.
We traveled in trucks for part of the way, and for the first time I began to rate some of the gravy that fell to ranking non-coms. As the top NCO of the platoon, I was entitled to ride with the driver in the cab of the truck. (Of course, if an officer is in charge of the platoon, he gets the gravy. But I was lucky on this deal—we had no officer.) I was warm and comfortable throughout the trip, and I could afford the luxury of feeling sorry for the underprivileged bastards bouncing on the unprotected wooden benches behind me.
It was well after dark when we detrucked—in another of those damned pine woods. There we waited... and waited... and waited. I spent the hours counting noses and trying to keep the green men from wandering off and getting lost in the dark. There was the usual preliminary boasting and promisory courage from the new arrivals, and the customary quiet smiles of understanding on the faces of the men who knew the score.
Finally we started off again, walking, and a long walk it was. We felt our way along a muddy road we were expected to occupy, slipping and falling, and reached our objective only to find another outfit in our positions. “Situation normal: all f----d up!”
That was a favorite phrase of the services, and from it came that colorful word so quickly and lovingly picked up by the civilians at home: “Snafu!” And therein lies a curious footnote. By the time I arrived overseas, the infantry had long since dropped “snafu” from its vocabulary, regarding it as a somewhat precious extravagance of speech. Civilian use had soured it; it had been private property and was so no longer. I heard it used only by very fresh infantry replacements and by Air Corps personnel. For a time we had a chaplain who larded his speech with it in hearty determination to be one of the boys, to our ill-concealed disgust. We usually said, simply, “Situation normal!” and loaded the two words with the most powerful overtones of irony at our command.
We had a long, cold wait in the woods while the captain attempted to contact Battalion HQ for new orders. Finally we walked a few more miles through the mud, ending up (O Tempora! O Mores!) in another woods. Naturally. I told the men to dig in, but I just curled up on the ground and closed my eyes.
March 27.
After breakfast we moved forward another three miles. The mud was only ankle deep. We had a few casualties from rocket and artillery fire, and once, our advance elements were briefly halted by a skirmish with twenty Volksturmers. This was our first encounter with Hitler’s vaunted “People’s Army,” and we were not impressed. They had been preparing a hasty minefield as a welcome for us, but our untimely arrival scattered them before the job had been finished. The mines already planted—of the Teller variety—had been so amateurishly concealed that we spotted them instantly. Lieutenant Huch of E Company sat calmly on a fallen tree and directed a sweating Volksturmer who hadn’t moved fast enough in the removal and disarming of the mines. It seemed a grisly but fitting retribution that one of the men responsible for planting the mines should now court death by digging them up again, and we gri
nned at Lieutenant Huch as we passed.
Half a mile later rifle and machine-gun fire burst on us from the woods and we took hasty shelter in the ditches to fight back against an enemy we could not see. Abruptly the green and scented woods were full of peril and the branches whispered in German. We flattened ourselves behind stumps and fallen trees and stared painfully at shadows, our skin crawling with the prescience of snipers.
Our situation was uncomfortable, but the actions of two of our green replacements lightened the atmosphere considerably. The platoon was split: half of us in one ditch, half in the other, and the empty road between us. And so we lay, our backs to the road. At a burst of fire from the woods across the road we started involuntarily, but we stayed as we were, confident that the men on the other side of the road could handle that situation. Two men lying near me, however, leaped spasmodically at the sound of the shots, made an about-face in midair and flopped down again, facing the woods across the road. Before I could order them to return to their original positions, a rattle of machine-gun fire from our woods spun them automatically to face this new danger. A few seconds later and they swung to face the road in response to fresh fire from the farther woods. And so the insane ring-around-the-rosy continued, in spite of orders and the hoarse advice of their neighbors to “get down and stay down you stupid bastards!” Their leapings, their whirls, became frenzied, and I rolled on the ground in helpless joy. I told myself this was wrong; this was the raw laughter of the Nazi bullyboys observing the humiliations of their victims. Self-admonition didn’t help; we were tired, defenseless against hysteria, and we needed laughter.
After a while the firing tapered off and we started to dig in. Apparently the fight was over, but we were rigid with cold and the exercise would warm us. Finally the order came to re-form on the road and move ahead.
We trudged over the hills and into another century, a village so peaceful in the sunset, so unchanged by progress and war and similar modern improvements that we instinctively lowered our voices. No plumbing, no electricity, no mark of the twentieth century save us and the things we brought
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