We watched, thunderstruck, as he charged wordlessly toward the sound of gunfire across the field. He pulled the trigger of his M1 as fast as he could as he heedlessly galloped toward certain death. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Apparently the Germans couldn’t either, because he made it about 75 yards before they even started shooting at him. A bullet knocked his helmet off, but he kept running wildly, head back, gasping for air. A hurricane of gunfire rained down on him, but he ran on, as though against a gale force wind. Each step became progressively slower and more labored, as if he were running up a steep incline. Finally, he reached a standstill, dropped his rifle, and extended his arms as though offering himself up for crucifixion. He leaned forward on the gust of lead, before it threw him back several steps. He tottered, arms flailing, as though uncertain which way to fall, and toppled over on his back.
The guns then turned their attention toward us, now having a much better idea of exactly where we were hiding. We flattened our bodies against the ground. The chatter of enemy fire was met with back-talk from some friendlies that, unbeknownst to us, were hunkered down to the right of us, to the south-west. They unleashed a mortar round. The German position fell silent, but they fired another one for good measure.
“Give me some cover fire,” I told the men, after we’d waited a few minutes without being shot at. Wanting to determine if the German gunners were dead or just playing possum, I hobbled diagonally toward the other friendly position as the men released spurts of gunfire toward the knocked out nest. I didn’t draw any enemy fire, so they stopped, and I signaled that all was clear.
A few familiar faces emerged from the hedgerow in front of me, along with a couple I didn’t recognize. Capriotti, Honky-tonk, and Crazy Eddie Gunn grinned at me as they approached.
“Sarge, is that you?” Crazy Eddie asked. “Jesus Christ, I thought you were fuckin’ Jesse Owens running across the field!”
“There’s some ugly faces I haven’t missed!” I kidded back, before becoming serious.
“Everybody alright?” I asked them. “Where’s Lt. Callahan?”
“He got taken out by a sniper this morning,” Francis informed me.
“Dead?”
“He wasn’t dead when they took him off, but next thing to it. Took a few rounds in the chest. If he makes it it’ll be a hell of a long haul.”
“How about Harold?” I asked, looking at Francis. He and Harold Meeker had been almost inseparable.
“He . . .” Francis began, but something caught in his throat, and so he looked down at his boots and swallowed hard. I looked at Honky-tonk, and he made a slashing gesture on his throat.
“Aw, shit!” I shook my head, genuinely sorry. Harold was likable, and had the makings of a first-class infantryman. “I’m sorry Francis. He was a hell of a soldier. Hell of a good man.” He nodded grimly and turned his head to hide his glistening eyes.
My men crawled out of the hedgerow one by one and began making their way toward Frankie’s limp body.
“Yeah, well, we got another one to carry off,” I sighed, starting that way too.
“What the hell was Frankie thinking, running out there like that?” Honky-tonk asked.
“He wasn’t. He just went plum loco. That boy should have never been allowed into conflict,” I opined. We all flinched as a shell went off in the distance.
“Poor Twitch never had the constitution for this business,” Francis agreed. “I’ve seen him get a paper cut and just about pass out. Just too damn excitable.”
The men forming a ring around Frankie each took a step back as we approached, their faces plainly revealing the anger and revulsion they felt.
“Why didn’t they shoot him a few more times,” Johnny snapped sarcastically. “I mean, it oughta take more than 10 or 20 rounds to kill a 125-pound kid.” Their emotions were contagious. I felt the same anger and disgust as I looked at the little private from New Jersey. I didn’t even bother trying to count the bullet holes. He had been raked pretty much from head to toe, but they had almost cut him in two just above the waist. I could see his mutilated intestines floating in the bloody pool that had been his abdomen. His punctured stomach and bowels made gurgling sounds as they filled the air with the rank odor of their partially-digested contents. It was vile.
I lit a cigarette to settle my queasy stomach, or at least mask the putrid smell that saturated the air. Other men followed suit. We stood around in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts and reflections.
“Hankins, Borkowski, see if you can find a stretcher,” I ordered finally. They nodded and headed over toward the ancient stone house that served as our temporary aid station several hedgerows away. I looked down at the bullet-riddled corpse in front of me and stifled a despondent sigh.
“I’ll make sure we’re secure,” I said, making a move toward the part of the hedgerow that enemy fire had erupted from a short half hour before. Johnny and Charlie began tagging along.
“I won’t be long,” I said, wanting some time to myself. They got the hint and fell back.
It took little time to locate the remains of the enemy gunners. There was little doubt the first two men were dead. They were in worse shape than Frankie. A third lay on his belly in the underbrush, and didn’t appear to have suffered visible damage. I cautiously poked him in the back with the end of my rifle barrel. He lay still. I flipped his body over, and couldn’t have gotten more scared if he’d jumped up and yelled “Boo!” His jaw and lower teeth were intact, but his brain oozed out of where the rest of his face should have been situated.
“Serves you right,” I muttered. Then I shuddered. I stood and stared at him for a moment, waiting to receive some feeling of vindication. But it didn’t come. The only thing I felt was a growing sense of sadness. I turned away and lit another cigarette with shaky hands.
Something made a sound in the brush. I stopped stock-still, my cigarette clamped between my lips. I held my breath, straining to hear over the blood now pounding in my ears. Surely I had heard something. Again, I heard a sound. It sounded like a faint moaning. I tilted my head and could hear a slight rustle in the brush to my left.
Lifting my rifle slowly in front of me, I crept carefully in the direction of the sound, stopping intermittently to scan my surroundings and listen for more audible clues. There was blood on the grass here. And there . . . And there . . . And there! There he lay! A wounded German soldier had crawled off behind some dead brush and covered himself with some leafy sprigs in an effort to camouflage himself. He would have pulled it off, too, had he been able to stifle his moaning. Instinctively, I raised my rifle and trained my sights on his head.
“Nein! Schiess nicht!” He curled himself up in the fetal position behind the inadequate protection of the shrubbery. I hesitated. He looked a little older than me, the type of guy that might have a wife and a few young children at home.
“Bitte, Kamerad, schiess nicht! Bitte? Bitte?” he pleaded. It didn’t take a linguist to figure out he was begging for his life. The brush partially obscured him, so I moved in an arc to my left, so I was standing almost in front of his head. He raised his head to follow the muzzle of my rifle, his eyes brimming with dread. It was obvious he suffered from a degree of penitence felt only by those about to face retribution for their sins. In his eyes, I stood before him as terrible as Almighty God. I felt pity for him. I didn’t want to feel pity for him.
“You killed my buddy!” I yelled at him suddenly, trying to make myself angry. He flinched, as though he thought he’d been shot, and then looked up slowly, as if surprised when he realized he hadn’t been. Nothing in my training had prepared me for this moment. I had assumed it would be easy to kill the enemy. The enemy was evil. Captain Ross had briefed us on the depravity of the Nazi soldier.
“The Hun is a force of evil,” he’d told us. “He will use all and any means to carry out the wishes of his diabolical leader, Adolf Hitler. He will fight you with no mercy, and no conscience. You should combat him with the same ruthless
ness with which he will attack you. Killing him should give you a deep sense of satisfaction, because in doing so, you have rid the world of a dangerous and depraved menace. He will bayonet a baby for smiling at him, and think nothing more of it than you do swatting a fly. Because the Kraut is not human. He is a savage and dangerous animal. A goddamn animal!”
As I stared into his eyes, it seemed like I’d seen them before. He had the look of the damned, and there was a familiarity about the way he entreated me with his pathetic eyes. Suddenly, I knew. Captain Ross had been right. He was an animal.
~~~
When I was 10 years old, there was a half-grown, half-wild, chalk-colored mongrel that had made a habit of being a nuisance around the farm at night. On more than one occasion, Ma and I had been woken up by a ruckus in the hen house or the bellowing of cattle, and sure enough, the same good-for-nothing mutt was always the culprit. He wasn’t big or mean enough to do much damage, but he did manage to run the cows ragged and kill the odd hen.
One morning, after his visits were becoming more frequent, Ma came back from gathering the eggs.
“That confounded mongrel must have gotten in the henhouse again!” she vented. “Seven eggs! Seven eggs when there should be twice that! That dog has got the hens so spooked they can hardly crap, let alone lay eggs!” Such coarse language from Ma! I wondered if she noticed the horrified look on my face, but she was too preoccupied with ranting.
“I’d pay you a dollar if you got rid of that blasted nuisance!” she told me. A dollar? A dollar! Why if I had a dollar, I’d more or less be set for life!
“I’ll get that scoundrel for you, Ma,” I vowed, before she could see the rashness of her offer.
After that, I lay awake at night, plotting his death and spending my dollar. I could already picture myself coolly dispatching the furry menace with one expert shot from my .22 Winchester rifle. My blood raced as I thought of the excitement of approaching my fallen nemesis. Perhaps I’d cut off his tail or ear to prove to Ma that I indeed had slain the evil one as I demanded my bounty money. Oh, it would be glorious!
He did return several nights shortly after that, but the moonless summer night provided me with little opportunity to take him down. After that, he left us alone for three nights, and I was beginning to despair that he’d fallen prey to some other fortunate predator.
On the fourth night, I woke to the frenzied low of cattle, and leapt out of bed and into a pair of overalls. I snatched my loaded .22 from where it stood at attention against the wall beside my bedpost and bounded out the door without a thought for footwear or need for additional clothing.
Some pretty she-dog must have sidetracked the mongrel, because he was late. The sun heralded its imminent arrival by tossing bursts of magenta above the horizon.
I crept across the yard and squatted behind the woodpile. The grass was cool and wet on the bare soles of my feet. The air hung heavy with the promise of a hot, sticky day. I peered over the woodpile, through a spider web sagging beneath droplets of dew.
It was him alright, a small dot in the distance dancing around several larger ones in the clearing on the west side of our pasture.
I climbed through the fence and began bounding my way through the thin, grazed woods that bordered the clearing. If I could only outflank him using the trees as cover, he would be mine. I stopped and listened, my heart racing and lungs pumping like bellows. A little further. I dashed another hundred yards, slaloming around tree trunks the cattle had stripped of foliage. I hit the ground and crept toward the edge of the opening, stopping behind a tree near the meadow’s perimeter.
There he was, within range, but it would take a careful shot to kill him. I couldn’t risk hitting one of the cows. He was teasing one of our milk cows, Ginny. He’d leap at her and bark, she’d wheel at him with her horns, and he’d twirl her around in a circle, yipping with glee. I needed to get him separated from the cows.
I rested my rifle against the mossy tree trunk, chambered a round, and followed him with my sights. No shot. No shot. Finally, I lifted my head and yelled, “Hey!” My shout got lost in the brouhaha.
“Hey!” I shouted louder. He stopped and looked toward me. My sights came to rest right between his eyes. He looked quizzically, as though trying to determine exactly who or what had made the sound. My finger tightened on the trigger, but I couldn’t shoot. Ginny’s yearling calf was standing almost behind him, and I couldn’t risk a ricochet. He looked back at the cows, then back toward me, and then, as if suddenly realizing how late it was, began trotting away from the cows, up a small hill. My sights followed him from left to right. Unsure of where to aim on a moving target, I aimed in the general vicinity of his head and let fly. There was no doubt I had connected. He fell to the ground with a yelp, and commenced flopping around, all the while piercing the air with blood-curdling howls. Their mournful pitch resonated the strings of anguish inside of me. The waves of sound carried a current of pain to my soul. Now the mongrel didn't seem to be that much different from my own hound, Charlie. It was more than I could bear. I just wanted it to stop.
Blindly, I shot again. And again. And again.
Just die! I thought to myself, and fired another panicked shot in the general direction of the screaming lump of white and pink fur. He managed to roll, thrash, and claw his way over the rise and out of my sight. His cries subsided.
I sat there, trembling. Despite the coolness of the morning, I was clammy with sweat. My 10-year-old heart was about to explode. The sun peered sleepily over the eastern horizon, as though inquiring what the hell the ruckus was about.
Finally, when I’d stopped shaking enough to stand, I slowly began walking toward the place I’d last seen him. Dread encased my bare feet in lead. I could barely keep my feet moving as I shuffled up the hill. I didn’t want to see what was on the other side.
He wasn’t dead. None of the three or four holes I’d punched in him proved to be lethal. I knew it could be hours before he died. As I approached him, he tried to run, but didn’t even have the strength to raise himself. He whimpered as I got near. His eyes had a look of resignation, as though he were tied to a train track and could faintly hear the whistle of the train. Each step that drew me nearer to him heightened the terrified look in his eyes. I wondered if he could see the fear in mine.
He begged me. He implored me with his eyes. And then, when I thought my soul couldn’t feel any more turmoil than it already was, he tried to wag his tail. I cried. And it seemed he cried too. We both cried, because we both knew what must be done.
I fished a shell out of my overall pocket, slipped it into the breech of my .22, and slid the bolt into place. I pointed it unsteadily between his defeated eyes, my own eyes salty artesian wells. There was no way I could pull the trigger while he looked at me. I lowered my rifle and wiped the sweat and tears and snot from my face. I positioned myself directly behind him, in hopes he wouldn’t look at me then, but he turned his head weakly to follow my every move. Finally, I picked up a small rock from the ground and tossed it lightly over his head. It clattered to a rest several feet in front of his nose. He turned his head forward to look, and before he could look back at me, I had done what I had to do. I never did ask for my dollar.
~~~
“Please? Please?” the animal at my feet supplicated in English now. Please. With one word he asked me a thousand favors. Please don’t shoot me. Please let me live to die another way. Please allow me to bury my mother and father. Please let me see another sunrise. Please let me kiss my wife again. Please give me a chance to be a better father to my children. Please give me a chance to redeem myself. The power of life and death was in my hands. I lowered my rifle and set it down on the ground.
“Sank you! Sank you!” he sobbed, as I knelt gingerly and removed the leafy sticks he’d covered himself with. His stubbly chin quivered uncontrollably. His mouth couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry, so it opened and closed like a fish’s.
“Sank you!” he hyperventilated.
“Forget it,” I told him gruffly.
“Sank you!” he grabbed my arm.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now calm yourself down before I change my mind,” I sailed an empty threat down his auditory canal and checked him for any weapons. I found a 9 mm Luger and slipped it into my pocket. He didn’t protest. He lay still, taking deep breaths through his mouth, as though resting after completing a grueling obstacle course. He had an open wound on his right shoulder, and it appeared his right ankle was broken. The wound on his shoulder was bleeding a fair bit, but it wasn’t life-threatening.
“Morphine?” I asked him, showing him the Syrette.
“Ja,” he nodded his head vigorously.
“Danke,” he thanked me. I waited until the morphine did its work and began gently cleaning his shoulder. Then I sprinkled his wound with sulfa powder.
“Here, let me sit you up,” I told him, and helped him sit up against a tree. He winced when his leg moved, but the morphine took the edge off what would have otherwise been torturous pain.
“Water?” I asked him, pulling out my canteen.
“Ja!” he replied, and he greedily gulped down my remaining water supply. I tossed away the stubby remains of my Lucky Strike and lit another one.
“Cigarette?” I asked him.
“Ja!” he smiled, as though he could hardly believe his good fortune. He answered enthusiastically to everything I asked him. If I would have asked him if he’d like one of my hand grenades for lunch, I’m sure he would have responded with that exuberant “Ja!” He was high on being alive. I lit another cigarette and handed it to him.
“Danke! Danke!” he gushed.
“Alright, stay here,” I told him unnecessarily.
“I’m going to send some guys back to get you, OK, and we’ll find you some medical help,” I told him. He blinked at me blankly with a slight smile on his face and nodded. He obviously didn’t understand a word I’d just said.
“Doctor, I’m getting you a doctor,” I told him, crossing my index fingers to symbolize the Red Cross.
Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 18