We slept for two hours in Wilgersdorf and were awakened at nine-thirty. An hour later we were on our way to Biiren, 110 miles to the northeast, in Westphalia We carried C rations, which we ate en route, and arrived at our destination at midnight. There was the usual waiting, wondering, stalling around for orders (“Situation Normal...”), and then we dumped our packs in the nearest houses and went to bed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“... weeping women, frightened children, the trembling bewildered aged.”
April 1, Easter Sunday.
Our breakfast did not include hard-boiled eggs decorated in gay colors. As a matter of fact, our breakfast did not include eggs. Nor did we spend the forenoon hunting for goodies in the garden. We did, however, take an Easter Sunday drive. On tanks and tank destroyers we took the air to Geseke, a sizable community not many miles removed from Büren. Our short ride was like a royal progress. In civilian best, Sunday best, Easter best, the townspeople were abroad to see us go by. They smiled timid welcome, and the white flags hanging disconsolately from every house were banners of triumph to us. The kids on the street blew kisses and begged chocolate, and all faces were happy. Nearly all. It was a lovely day.
We stayed in Geseke for five days, helping to close the iron ring tightening around the remnants of the Wehrmacht in the Ruhr. We set roadblocks and paced weary hours of sentry duty but there was no fighting. So we ate and slept and accepted the easy surrender of tired enemy soldiers and flirted with the less stony-faced frauleins.
The last of my Christmas boxes reached me on Easter Sunday, the last of the packages Ree and my mother had so conscientiously mailed before September 30,1944. The candy and cookies tasted fine. I had long since abandoned any hope of getting them, convinced that they’d vanished in the holocaust of the December breakthrough, when thousands of letters and boxes from home had been burned by our retreating forces to keep them from the hands of the advancing Germans.
From a letter home, dated April 2:
Last night Loeb and I glutted ourselves on pate de foie gras, sent to him from New York by his wife. It’s a screwball war— here we are, in the heart of Westphalia, home of those great- livered geese who supplied the noble pate of Rabelaisian memory, pate that’s imported to expensive delicacy shops in New York City, where loving wives purchase it, wrap it carefully, and send it to their soldier husbands in Westphalia!
I found a piano today, and for an hour no one bothered me or wanted me to do something. So far it’s been a good day.
Prisoners pass in unending numbers, even throughout the night. Last evening I picked up an ex-Luftwaffe pilot who, hands in pockets, sauntered unhurriedly down the road and surrendered without surprise. This is a swell way to run a war.
You ask about wounds and how we regard them, and you inquire specifically about Ketron. Our reaction to a wound is in direct ratio to the gravity of the injury. Ketron was badly wounded: his leg had been fractured and he’d been pretty well messed up by shrapnel. It was a serious wound and we liked him, so we grieved. But we were a little envious, too—he was going home and would probably be discharged. (He would, at any rate, be transferred from the infantry and assigned to duties more reposeful. A rifleman whose legs were unsolid was no good to a combat unit.)
A minor injury, such as Shorty’s, we hail joyously as a “million dollar wound” ... “a five-pointer”—the fervent wish of every Joe who is honest with himself. It means weeks, perhaps months, of pleasant hospital life, plus five points for the Purple Heart. Who could ask more?
You ask which is more frightening, artillery or snipers. Snipers are a cold fear, ghosts that walk every midnight street, lie in wait at every corner. It’s like walking into a dark room and hearing the door close softly behind you and you didn’t close it... the skin on your forearms telling you that someone, something, is in the room with you, watching you with eyes that never blink, never flicker away from you ... something that listens to your breathing and the sound of your heart. Snipers are bad.
But I think you meant not “snipers” but “small arms,” didn’t you? Rifle and machine guns versus artillery? If I have to make a choice, I’ll take small-arms fire. Rifles and machine guns are bad medicine, but they carry this small sugar coating: a hole in the ground, a hollow, even a tiny hummock of earth, offers reasonable protection against their bullets. Chances are you won’t get hurt so long as you lie there. That is, not by small-arms fire. Artillery is something else again. Shrapnel cannot be denied by a hole in the ground, a hollow, or a little mound of dirt. You hear the shell screaming through the air, you estimate where it will fall and tense yourself. Then it hits, the earth bounds under you, trying to push you up, and the air is filled with the buzzing of maddened bumblebees. The hell with Ry-Krisp or lettuce-and-lemon diets—for ladies who would be swanlike I recommend a few hours under an artillery barrage.
My house in Geseke is one of a row of unimaginative buildings that rim the edge of the town, looking outward toward the “broad Westphalian plain.” (How glibly that moldy phrase springs to my tongue! And why not? It is broad, it is a plain, and it is undeniably Westphalian.) Joe and I share a comfortable room. We have a bed, a table, a lamp, two chairs, and a stove.
It is a curious household. The building is inhabited by an indeterminate number of people, all of whom go about their tasks silently and never speak to us. Only one makes an effort to be friendly. She is a strikingly attractive young widow named Katherine Grebel. Occasionally she stops in our room to chat, but her visits are brief and furtive because the other civilians frown upon them and she is dependent on their bounty. Her story, though not uncommon, I suppose, is a pitiful one.
Her parents long dead, a brother now living in Miami Beach, Florida, is her only living relative. He’s a commercial photographer. In 1940 he sent passage money to her, urging her to come to the United States, but the German government refused to grant her a passport and (she says) denied her request to go to America as a tourist. A year later she married. Her physician husband was with the German army and for a time they lived in Posen. It was there that she made the acquaintance of an American woman, a Bostonian, who had been visiting relatives in Posen and was trapped by the outbreak of war. A few months after her husband’s departure for North Africa, Katherine and her American friend were arrested by the Gestapo for conversing in English as they stood under the marquee of a cinema. She was held for several days and questioned. (She doesn’t know what happened to the American woman.) Upon her release she fled to Berlin, a thoroughly frightened and unhappy young woman. There, her son was born, and two days before his birth she received the official notice of her husband’s death in North Africa.
Alexander, her son, is now two years old, a pale, pindling child. When the Russian advance threatened the German capital, she fled once more, this time to Geseke and to these distant connections of her husband’s family. She is nearly destitute, and her one hope is to join her brother in America someday. It cannot be pleasant for her in this house: the prosperous, comfortably fleshed peasants regard her poverty as a mark of personal weakness, and her sophistication and grace represent urban degeneracy to their stolid minds. We have grown so used to the sight of dowdy women, plain women, shapeless women, that slim, graceful Kathe in her furs, her turban, her silk stockings, is like a breath of home to us. When she has gone from the room, Joe and I sniff the air appreciatively and grin at each other in mutual, unspoken comment.
Today, at this moment and in this place, the war is a nightmare nearly forgotten. Not a gun can be heard, not a plane, not a shell. Somewhere in the house a baby is crying, a thin and far-off petulance, and here in my room a wood fire crackles intimately in the porcelain stove. There are no other sounds. From my window I can see pansies and daffodils in the garden, and this morning the cherry trees and the honeysuckle burst into flower.
One of the men in the platoon gave me a haircut today. My head looks a little odd: he’d never been a barber, but somewhere in his looting he acquired a barb
er’s clippers. Now if I could only get a bath and some clean clothes! I’ve reached the stage where I can hardly endure my own smell—which, literally speaking, is really something rare!
April 7.
We left Geseke yesterday and trucked forty-two miles eastward to Brakel. We spent the night in a big house, one of the familiar courtyard establishments. This was a remarkably prosperous menage, which included blooded horses, pedigreed cows—each with her name, pedigree, and milk record emblazoned on a shield over her stall!—and scores of pigs, geese, ducks, turkeys, chickens, and rabbits. Also, a large staff of Polish and Russian slave girls. I cannot understand why the slaves remain, why they continue to work, why they do not revolt and throw the masters out of the “big house,” now that they are liberated. But they continue their serfdom, seemingly content.
Concerning slaves, our five days in indolence in Geseke apparently served to remind some of the men that they are men ... or animals, if you insist. One of them, overcoming the language barriers in some mysterious fashion, was discovered this afternoon with one of the Polish slave girls in a dim corner of the barn. Unattractive as she was, and notwithstanding her evil-smelling boots and manure-smeared apron, she was bent casually backward against a conveniently placed barrel and they took their brief pleasure standing, with a bland disregard for anyone passing by. When they were discovered, he grinned over his shoulder and she smiled without embarrassment. And when it was done, he picked up his rifle and strolled away, and she, dropping her skirts, picked up her pitchfork once more and resumed her work. We slept last night in the granary, using grain sacks and flour bags for our beds. It’s morning now and I’m sitting on my helmet in the courtyard, relishing the frail comfort of a watery sunshine. We shove off soon.
April 10.
Three days have passed since we left the house at Brakel. When we reached Amelunxen, we paused only long enough to eat, then rode on to Wehrden, on the banks of the Weser River. The initial crossing was to be made in assault boats by E Company, and we were to follow. Kickoff was scheduled for three p.m. Crouching behind the buildings of Wehrden, we watched the men of E Company prepare for the crossing. Across the river the thickly wooded hills looked menacing. We could see German troops plainly. There were a lot of them and they knew we were coming. They didn’t seem excited.
Zero hour at last and the boats shoved off, the men crouching low and paddling with frantic energy. We watched the white boiling of the waves and fancied we could see the spurt of enemy bullets. And maybe we did—the Jerries threw a lot of lead at the boats. Miraculously, no boats were sunk, and the casualties were light for such a crossing.
After delivering E Company to the other side, the engineers manning the boats came back. Now it was our turn.
We were being signally honored: a photographer was to accompany us and take pictures of our landing. (I never saw the pictures.) Together we stood at the corner of a building, waiting for a signal from Captain Wirt. Together we raced for the riverside, threw ourselves into the boat and shoved off, hunching our shoulders in pathetic, instinctive defense. There were three engineers and nine riflemen per boat, and everyone paddled like hell except the photographer in our boat. He clutched his camera and looked excited and unhappy. Our boat was the first to land, and as we jumped ashore and streaked for the cover of the trees, the photographer threw himself on his stomach on the beach and leveled his camera at the boats coming in.
With the first platoon spearheading, we started for the village of Meinbrexen, hugging the protective shoulder of the bank on the left of the road. German rifles and machine guns chattered excitedly, and I winced when a sniper’s bullet spanked the road a yard ahead of my moving feet Soon the high bank that shielded us shrank and came to nothing and there was only an open field. We halted to consider. I sent word back to Captain Wirt, describing the conditions and saying we planned to continue along the road, on the double. While I waited for a reply from him, we took potshots at the German troops skulking in the hills.
The captain sent back an okay and we took off. Man, we really sweated! Here’s a stretch of open road—grab your rifle, hang on to the hand grenades you clipped to your pockets (like a dope!) or they’ll pull loose from the safety pin. Run, now!... run like a big-assed bird, your pack flopping up and down on your back, thumping hell out of your ribs ... your helmet wobbling, slipping over your eyes and blinding you, your rifle suddenly weighing fifty, a hundred, five hundred pounds! Okay ... here’s a little embankment... slowly now, but not too slowly—there are men behind you, crowding up ... keep moving, breathe deeply, regularly ... try to catch your breath. Okay? Here’s another open space, a long one. Okay, take off... crouch when you run and keep an eye on that patch of woods there... see something shining there? Ya sure? Funny ... thought I did ... maybe just a shred of that damn silver foil from our planes... run, you sonofabitch, I’m on your heels! Keep moving—two guys out here make a bigger target than one Okay, safe now ... take it easy for a minute ... keep down, you dumb bastard! You wanna walk into Meinbrexen minus a head? Awright, awright, wise guy ... keep moving!
We made fast time. Suddenly we were nearly there, and we could see a church tower and now the red roofs of houses. The railroad embankment on our right hid us from watchers in the town, and we decided to follow the embankment until we reached the underpass indicated on my map.
We hesitated as we neared the underpass. The Germans surely knew of our advance, and they would expect us to enter the town by the underpass, the most logical approach. We’d
baffle ’em with some American illogic: we’d keep going and enter the town from the rear, come in behind them.
Beyond the underpass the bank was higher, and even the church tower could no longer be seen. One of the scouts reported a large farmhouse on the other side of the tracks, and we crouched below the rim of the embankment and studied the buildings. We saw enemy soldiers in the courtyard and fired upon them. Our fire was returned feebly, and we were tempted to rush the farm and work into town from there. However, it was only an outpost, and we’d hold up the entire company if we stopped to slug it out. Whipping up a fresh burst of speed, we rounded a bend in the road and there was the town, fifty yards away. We were into the first buildings so fast there was hardly time for dust to rise, so fast that the German soldier walking down the nearby road was obviously unaware of our presence. Rifle in hand, he was plodding steadily in the direction of the farmhouse we’d just passed. When we opened up on him, he hit the ground like a sack of ... well, he hit the ground. We waited a moment and suddenly he was up again, still clinging to his rifle and streaking for the farmhouse. We fired again—a volley from at least six rifles, a BAR, and my carbine—and he hit the ground again. Another minute. Again he stood up—some shooting, hey?—but this time his hands were empty and they were held high above his head. Two of the newer men, trigger-happy and flushed with the triumph of having a Jerry pinned between their sights for the first time, instantly opened up on him. I yelled a blasphemous protest and hastened to knock their rifles up in the air. Then, seeing their stricken faces, I explained, “I’ll tell you about it later.”
My action was not because my personal ethics had been violated. That was a part of it, sure, but there was a sound, practical explanation, which I gave them later, soft-pedaling the ethical side. I argued that when you fire at a man who’s prepared to surrender and has clearly indicated his intentions, your bullets convince his fellow soldiers that the propaganda is true—Americans do “always shoot their prisoners.” They tell themselves that if death is the only answer, they might as well die fighting. And a fight means American deaths as well as German.
We moved through Meinbrexen like a hot wind. The Germans fought back, but we knew they were frightened and confused, whimpering inside, and the knowledge made us swift and vigorous. When a group from the platoon behind us stopped to argue about who was going to go in after a certain stubborn sniper, two other men, cocky with victory, climbed through a window and took the sn
iper by surprise. He surrendered quietly but with a look of arrogant contempt for the victors. Young and well-built, he wore several important decorations and flaunted the hated SS insignia. I removed a tiny banner from his rifle, a small triangle of yellow cloth decorated with a skull and crossbones in black. I learned later that it was a marker for a German minefield.
The captain and I had an amiable argument—to which there could be but one end, as I damn well knew!—concerning whether the castle in the heart of the town would be the company C.P. (his) or—since it was in my defense sector—my platoon C.P. It was an imposing hulk that stood proudly on a tiny, exclusive island, surrounded by a moat. A real moat, complete with water and swans. In the foyer of the castle were two oversize armoires: one of carved ebony, the other of rosewood inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl. The walls were hung thickly with swords, daggers, and battle-axes, and in the passages beyond I could see the gleam of armor and the rosy warmth of tapestries. I never got beyond the foyer, but I’d have relished a few hours of snooping, feeling with my eyes, and trying to resist the temptation to look with my fingers.
After posting the men, I relaxed in the little bier stube that was my C.P. and waited for chow. We’d been told that the engineers were building a bridge across the Weser and that our chow trucks would be the first vehicles to cross. Work on the bridge had been started in the middle of the afternoon, and we wouldn’t have long to wait. So they told us. But our food never did arrive. The engineers really loused up that job, one officer countermanding another’s orders, men getting in each other’s way, and everything confusion.
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