Roll Me Over

by Raymond Gantter

  Afterword

  It was not soon. It was New Year’s Day, 1946, when I landed at New York, and the months until then were the most unhappy I have ever known.

  The final step in my commission was taken on May 26, 1945. The actual swearing in had been delayed by a snarl of red tape over the transfer of the division from 1st Army to 3rd Army jurisdiction. But finally it happened and I was a “sir” and suddenly separated from my old friends in the ranks by a thin but implacable barrier. We didn’t feel any different— Shorty, Loeb, Joe, and Frank—but opportunities for friendly intercourse were difficult to arrange, and the old days of splitting a bottle together were over. I could not invite enlisted men to my quarters for a drink and a bull session, and though I visited them in their quarters several times, the presence of unfamiliar enlisted men who knew me only as a company officer was a restraint on our efforts to unbend. Notwithstanding pleasant company among the officers, I missed my old companions, and I resented the system that had suddenly made us part-time friends. My roots were in the ranks still, and there were patterns of thought and behavior in the officer group that I could not persuade myself to adopt.

  MEN AND OFFICERS

  I never shook off my enlisted man background, never felt completely an officer. Maybe it was because I’d been spared the slow tempering of Officer Candidate School, a processing some good Joes survived, to be good Joes still, but turned many others into prime bastards. At any rate, I continued to think like an enlisted man, even though I’d moved to the other side of the railroad tracks. And though I was fortunate enough to observe the workings of the army “caste system” from both sides, I know that my final judgments were colored by my earlier conditioning.

  For that reason, the following paragraphs cannot be regarded as a fair exposition, cautiously developed, of the officer-enlisted man relationship. I cannot be completely objective: the pink underwear of my private prejudices peeps unashamed through the ragged lace of the dispassion I ought to be wearing. So let me briefly sum up my own position. When an officer was a good officer, his men were happy, efficient, and trustworthy, and (for the most part) decent and honorable in their behavior. The rub was that there were too many poor officers, poor in the sense of being morally ill-equipped to assume a true responsibility for the well-being of other men.

  Just before he pinned on my bars, General Andrus, a brave and well-loved officer, inquired of me, “Sergeant, what would you say is the outstanding fault of many second lieutenants?” My embarrassment was acute. I could recall specific gripes against specific officers but nothing that I could label a general fault. I muffed the question and replied meekly, “Sir, I don’t know.”

  He answered his own question. “They don’t think of their men enough.” Then, simply and with deep feeling, he spoke at length of an officer’s primary responsibility—his men. When I left his headquarters half an hour later, I was proud and humble, conscious of a sense of dedication.

  I think most officers of company grade tried to think of their men. But some tried only part of the time, and a few never tried at all. Many enlisted men endured needless suffering because their immediate leader considered his own comfort and safety before theirs. And the career boys, the reputation seekers, the eager beavers who sickened after medals and promotions add a bloody underscoring to that charge.

  * * *

  My first regimental officers’ meeting was an exciting occasion for me. Dressed in borrowed clothing and insignia—I had as yet no officer’s gear of my own—I entered the stately assembly room at regimental headquarters with a wildly beating heart. When I emerged an hour later, the bitter taste of vomit was in my throat, and my borrowed gauds burned like the mark of Cain.

  During the meeting a high-ranking regimental officer had addressed us on “The Need for More Rigid Discipline in the Ranks.” Fixing us with a pale eye and twirling the waxed ends of his mustache with manicured fingers, he spoke in slow and icy accents. “Gentlemen, [twirl] the rabble now in the ranks [twirl]...!” I didn’t hear any more for a long time. Consumed with shame and impotent rage, I assumed an expression of respectful attention and gnawed my self-contempt, hating him for his polished boots and immaculately creased trousers, for the riding crop so casually disposed on the gleaming desk against which he leaned. And I hated the officers around me, and myself, for permitting this arrogance to go unchallenged. I wanted to strike poses, rise in bravado, thump my breast and say, “Listen, you sonofabitch, a week ago I belonged to that ‘rabble in the ranks’—and I’m going right back to it!” I didn’t say it; I didn’t have the nerve. But I wish I had... I wish I had.

  None of the officers whom I knew best felt this lofty contempt for the men in the ranks. I cannot believe that many infantry officers of company grade did feel that way: combat troops lived too intimately for the cultivation of such exquisite disdain. Not until I was on my way home did I encounter this exaggerated caste consciousness in a group of officers. And they were not of the infantry.

  On a dreary, rainy day in November 1945 I sat in a tent in Camp Baltimore, France, and listened to the daily bull session. Each day a dozen officers gathered around the stove and exchanged boasts and gripes: the subject today was, “If I ever get back in this goddamned army, I’m gonna get me a job just as far away from enlisted men as I can get! A good desk job at regimental or division headquarters—but no enlisted men!”

  Hearing only grunts of agreement with not a voice raised in argument, I asked innocently, “Why? I mean—why don’t you want anything to do with enlisted men?”

  Heads jerked upward and they looked at me in sudden alarm, as though something not quite clean had crept into the tent. Finally one of them answered. “Why? Because I just don’t like the bastards, that’s why! All y’ever get is trouble….” Then others joined in: “They’re always looking for a chance to stick it into some officer and break it off... always bitching about something ... they’d swipe the gold fillings from their mother’s mouth ... most of ’em are dumb bastards...!”

  The chorus of indignation sputtered for several minutes, subsiding gradually to a litany of self-approval so familiar and so dear that my question was forgotten and they devoted themselves to a mutual masturbation of unexamined prejudices. Following an old pattern, they drifted to memories of those dear old days at OCS and one of them turned and inquired, “What was your class at Benning, Gantter?”

  With superb timing (and ah, the relish with which I recall this noteworthy scene in the drama of my life!) I rose, drew on my gloves with what was surely a Chesterfieldian flourish, and drawled, “I never went to Benning, or to any OCS. I was an enlisted man, commissioned out of the ranks last spring. Anybody want to walk down to the library?” Quivering silence answered, and I rang down the curtain and walked alone in the teeming rain. It was a helluva good exit, and well worth a soaking.

  On the long train ride to Marseilles a week later, I discussed the same subject at greater length and with greater passion. I shared a compartment with a certain captain, and the argument—it was never mild enough to be termed “discussion”—raged for several hours, subsided, and rose tumultuously again during the night, in the rattling blackness of the unlighted, unheated coach. Like the other officers in the group, the captain was violent in his contempt for the enlisted man, and I rose to do battle. We slugged each other joyously until he let go with a roundhouse swing that sent me gasping to the ropes: he mentioned casually that in civilian life he was a public school teacher. This officer who despised enlisted men, calling them inferior human beings (“Of course they were inferior—otherwise they’d be officers!”), was a schoolteacher, and the founder and director of a playground-and-activities project for underprivileged boys in his hometown! Reeling from the effort to reconcile these implications, I retired meekly to my corner of the carriage and could fight no more.

  After we started occupation duty in Bamberg, Germany, we settled down to a garrison life, a spit-and-polish routine that even included a Saturday-morning in
spection with the entire battalion drawn up on the parade ground. Frequently the inspecting officer was the “rabble in the ranks” officer I mentioned earlier, and it was his custom and pleasure to select several “whipping boys” from the ranks, and by his treatment of those unfortunates, cow the entire battalion into trembling submission.

  My platoon was the unlucky object of his attentions one Saturday: he started his inspection with us and selected his victims from the first six men he scanned.

  He was a skillful and subtle sadist and knew well the uses of his most potent instrument—a voice that could be as silky as the last faint moanings of flutes, as steely as a sword struck upon stone, as shattering as the full-throated bawl of a great bell or the explosive bark of a “Long Tom.” He knew the evil power of his voice and enjoyed it, enjoyed the melodramatic magic of a whisper and the knowledge that a thousand men quivered and strained to hear, relished the sudden metal of his frill voice, driving it like a mailed fist into the face of the wretch who trembled before him, expectant but never quite prepared.

  The first man to suffer his attentions was given the full treatment: first, the cool, impersonal voice, then the silky whisper, and at last the full bellow, the open and undisguised contempt that published his shame to the world. And his sin, the crime so awful (such was the implication) that he was henceforth consigned to the company of sodomists, traitors, and matricides? The collar of his shirt was open (according to the order of dress) and the underdickey was neatly buttoned (again, as per order), but the poor guy was dark haired and endowed with a luxuriant growth of chest hair, a small tuft of which, like a dark shadow, peered exuberantly over the top of the buttoned dickey. For this offense against military order he shuddered under a raging contempt that was like a blow across the mouth, and the battalion, awed and pitying, witnessed his humiliation. He should have shaved it off!

  The next man to meet the pale examination of those merciless eyes assumed the proper “Present Arms” position as the officer approached. Given the command to “Order Arms,” he obeyed smartly. The officer started to walk on, paused, turned back, and faced the man once more. Again the soldier presented arms, and again the command, “Order Arms.” He snapped the movements smartly and I could find no fault. But the inspecting officer was not easily satisfied. Stepping back a few paces, he studied the man, regarding him with an incredulous disgust, as though he were a monstrous aberration in the human race, an object strange and revolting and altogether horrible. He dropped his eyes to the soldier’s boots and slowly examined him from toes to helmet, with scalpel precision cutting the garments from the shrinking body and stripping it naked—boots, socks, trousers, shirt, and underwear—and we saw, as he wanted us to see, the gooseflesh on arm and thigh, the quivering buttocks, the stomach strained tight with fear, the soldier’s manhood shrunken and curling pitifully against the cold blast of this unloving disrobement.

  Once again the sequence of commands was given, and again the officer watched in silence. Moving to the soldier’s left side, he gave the commands once more. Still he made no comment, neither to the soldier, to me, nor to any of the other officers who stood with me.

  He moved back to his former position: directly before the now trembling man. Silkily he gave the order: “Pre-sent... ARMS!” and the man obeyed. Now he moved closer, standing so near that his nose almost touched the barrel of the rifle held so rigidly before him. In a voice that was the merest whisper, he said, “Now, soldier ... do you know what ‘Order Arms’ means?”

  We stood, a chorus in a Greek play, waiting for this principal to play out his scene, release us from the bondage of this tension and grant the mercy of catharsis.

  The soldier gulped, and his eyes flickered toward the officer before he managed to say, “Yes, sir.”

  “DON’T LOOK AT ME! KEEP YOUR EYES WHERE THEY BELONG!” The voice rattled over the parade ground, and distant men who had forgotten to button a pocket shivered. “Didn’t you have any better training than that?”

  Again the man gulped. His eyes were wide and staring, fixed on a point in infinity. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Then demonstrate it!” A pause. Now the silky voice once more, filled with a kindliness that even a child would recognize as false, the prelude to a larger cruelty. “Now, soldier, show me again how you ‘Order Arms.’ ”

  At the familiar words, the distraught man made a convulsive movement, and immediately the voice lashed him across the face. “Did anyone give you the command to order arms! Did I?”

  A long pause before the man could reply, “No ... sir,” he whispered.

  “Then wait until you get it!" Pause. “Now!... Order ... ARMS!”

  For the first time the soldier fumbled in the ritual of movement, his fear-paralyzed hands refusing to obey. When the rifle came to rest at his heel, I saw that his knees were quivering uncontrollably. Sweat clung in shining drops to his forehead and his eyes were dark with tears. He was a good man, and nothing mattered now except that he was a good man and something vile was being done to him. I moved convulsively, taking a step toward the menacing back of the officer. The only important thing now was to end this, to stop it somehow by any means at all. But my good friend the captain silently grasped my arm and looked a warning at me, holding me with his eyes. He was my superior and my friend and I trusted him. And so I halted, and the fine edge of impulse dulled shamefully in me, and I froze to respectful attention again and watched a man flayed alive.

  The torture continued ... maybe five minutes more; it may have been ten. Over and over the shuddering man repeated the prescribed movements, and with every repetition his fumbling grew worse, his body at last reaching a point where it could no longer obey.

  The one man who enjoyed this spectacle relished it with a pleasure that was obscenely sexual, lechery at its most vile. At last, satiated, he wearied of the sport, and turning, spoke to the silent group of officers at his back, spoke in a voice that carried over the parade ground, as he intended it should. “I can do nothing with this man. I hope he is not a fair sample of the intelligence represented here.” To my superior he added: “Captain, I suggest that someone take him aside later and drill him. Drill him and drill him—until he learns that, at the ‘Order Arms,’ the thumb of the left hand lies along the seam of the left trouser leg! And not a fraction of an inch away from it! He turned and completed his inspection of the battalion, sauntering through it carelessly because he was sated now, his orgasm complete.

  When the inspection was over and the battalion had been dismissed, I followed my silent platoon to the barracks. I asked the platoon sergeant to assemble the men in one of the larger rooms, and when they’d gathered, I spoke to them. Feeling the bars on my shoulders burning like acid, I offered apology; out of my own shame and humility I apologized for the caste to which I had so recently sworn myself. They looked at me and listened gravely and without contempt and I respected them for that. But there was a barrier between us that had never been there before, and standing on opposite sides of it, we grieved for each other. Later I spoke privately to the two men who’d been singled out that day, and they listened to me with a dignity that was more awful than reproach.

  Had my actions been made known to higher authority, I would have been severely censured. Maybe I’d have lost my bars. There were a few times when that would have seemed small loss.

  * * *

  During the summer of 1945 the regimental officers’ club set up shop in an elaborate summer villa located on an island formed by the junction of the river and the canal. The villa became the scene of lavish swimming and garden parties: dancing—with frauleins, nurses, or Red Cross girls—good drinks, fine food, swimming, boating, or just plain dating. We swam in the canal, which flowed directly before the villa.

  The river and the canal supplied Bamberg’s water power, and not far downstream from our club were the locks that controlled the flow of water and thus the city’s electricity. When the gates of the locks were open, the water level in the canal went
down and we found little pleasure in swimming; when the gates were closed, the water was high and the swimming was good.

  With the coming of the American Military Government (AMG) to Bamberg, certain responsibilities of our occupation duty were removed from our scope and placed under the jurisdiction of AMG. The control and administration of utilities was one of these lost responsibilities, and AMG took over the job of helping Bamberg industry to recover from its paralysis. An AMG lieutenant was stationed at the locks on the canal and required to observe a very rigid schedule governing the opening and closing of the gates. His orders came directly from AMG and not through regimental channels.

  On a particularly golden Sunday in July a certain high- ranking regimental officer stepped from the clubhouse and strolled down the path toward the canal. His heart was filled with only the most tender regard for his fellow men. Had he not arranged a swimming party of such luxury that all previous parties would fade into muddy insignificance? Had he not invited his favorite officers (and their well-stacked girlfriends, of course), and were there not to be special guests in the persons of certain high-ranking officers from neighboring units (who would admire and envy)? Had he not ordered the preparation of the most elaborate buffet lunch ever served in South Germany, and had he not supplied his guests with fine wines and liquors? And had not the day cooperated by being exceptionally blue and golden?

  Imagine, then, his consternation when his loving glance fell upon the swimming pool and discovered (Oh, the horror of it, the lèse-majesté!) an expanse of slimy, mud-covered bank growing ever broader above the descending face of the water. The lock gates were open, and the water level had gone down nearly two feet! It was still pleasant, of course, still swimmable, still a satisfactory picture, but that wasn’t the point— the pool was not at its best! Howling with rage, he stormed into the club and ordered a trembling aide to call the unfortunate AMG lieutenant at once!