We assembled on the road and en-trucked onto troop-carrying trucks, destined for the combat zone.
Dusk settled as we loaded up. Engines grunted, gears ground their teeth, and the groaning two-ton trucks set off toward the certainty of bloodshed. Smoking and talking were forbidden, so we sat hunched over in silence. Each of us knew what everyone else was thinking. It was worse than D-Day, because this time, we veterans were fully aware of what awaited us.
I looked at Private Finch. After having a man commit suicide in front of him three days after he’d been assigned to our platoon, I assumed his mental bedrock had already begun shifting. He rocked gently back and forth, muttering some sort of silent mantra. He looked petrified. I looked away sadly and thought, “You poor fuck! You don’t even know.”
And so we pushed for Germany once again. Private Finch demonstrated a steadiness of mind that surprised me, and proved himself to be a dependable soldier—for the 36 hours he lived before stepping on a Teller mine.
~~~
September 28th, 1944, Aachen, Germany
Dear Darling,
How are you? I truly hope you are doing well. I miss you so.
I am faring very well. We have been making splendid progress in driving back the Nazis, and have now crossed the French/German border. While in reality it’s only a matter of moving several feet, crossing that border is very symbolic, both to us and the Germans. It has filled our boys with so much optimism. Some are talking once again about being home for Christmas, but most of us have learned our lesson about making foolish predictions. However, hope is flowing through our veins. We feel like we are now knocking on Hitler’s door, and it’s just a matter of time before we beat that door down.
I hope you haven’t fallen prey to the fear mongering that I’ve heard has been going on in the States. Several fellows told me their families back home have written and told them that the media has been giving outrageously horrid reports about our conditions. From the sounds of it, they have been inflating casualty numbers to the point where it would appear we soldiers have endured terrible carnage. It’s really quite a travesty. I myself read an old news article last week that strayed so far from the truth, I wondered if the reporter who wrote it has actually set foot on the Continent, because what he described does not in any way resemble the situation we’re in. Our progress hasn’t been without its challenges, but I think I can safely say the worst is over, and some of the optimism felt among the lads is indeed warranted.
How did your garden fare this summer? Did you get much canned for the winter? I must admit, our rations are edible, but just thinking about fresh vegetables or canned goods makes my mouth water. I do miss my ma’s pickles—I haven’t tasted them in years. I’m sure her recipes must still be around somewhere. Perhaps next summer I’ll be home, and you can make some of them for me. It’s a heavenly thought.
I remember going into the pantry late in fall when I was a boy, just to look at the rows and rows of pickled cucumbers, beans, beets, apples, meat—seemingly everything we could possibly need for the winter. Having a well-stocked larder made me feel secure, much like having plenty of hay or firewood stockpiled on cold winter nights. It’s a good feeling, a comforting feeling. I hope you are sufficiently prepared.
Darling, sometimes I feel I repeat myself in these letters of mine. The little news I have may change a little from time to time as my location does, but there is always one constant thing I always feel I must tell you, and that is that I love you and miss you. I hope you know how much I delight in your letters, and take strength in the thought of you. I face no greater hardship than being separated from you. The longer I’m away from you, the more I seem to think about you and the glad day it will be when I no longer have to worry about you from across the world.
For the past few days, I’ve had the same beautiful, persistent fantasy, of me holding you by the warmth of a crackling fire and stroking your captivating tresses. It’s a simple, but lovely thought, and it soothes me when my spirit is troubled. Thank you for your beautiful love. It is as vital to my life as the air I breathe. I love you so much, my love.
Till we walk hand in hand again,
Robbie
~~~
In the city of Aachen, we had to adapt to urban warfare. We fought man-to-man, house-to-house, street-to-street. It was in Aachen that I finally had enough of Crazy Eddie Gunn.
Eddie Gunn was a thorn in my side. He simply had no comprehension of the tactical aspect of warfare. He seemed either unable to calculate risk, or simply couldn’t be bothered. The only strategy in his repertoire was: Come out with guns blazing. He was fearless, ruthless, mindless, and at times, it seemed, indestructible. I’d seen him run through a cloud of bullets countless times as though it was a harmless swarm of flies. It seemed it amused Fate to allow the feckless to continue their madman routines, but its relentless scythe cut down the timid prematurely.
Eddie was valuable as a raw weapon, but there were times he was as dangerous to our side as the Germans’. Twice in Normandy his overzealous actions had contributed to the injury of one of our men. As the war progressed, Eddie became more and more of a loose cannon. By the time we reached Aachen, Eddie was pushing me to my limits. Not long after, he threw me over the edge.
~~~
“Aahhh, my eyes, my eyes!” Charlie screamed.
“Do something, you goddamn fool!” Johnny screamed at Eddie.
“Get a medic!” I ordered Eddie.
“Run!” I barked at him, infuriated by his lack of urgency. He loped off, and I turned my attention back to the wounded man on the floor.
“Help me!” I ordered Dick, and we gently turned the prostrate Charlie over. He was not a pretty sight. I stared into swollen, bloody eyes I knew would never see again.
“I can’t see, I can’t see!” Charlie whimpered. “I can’t see!” His bright red lips glistened with blood. What he couldn’t see is that his eyes were the least of his worries. His chest was torn wide open on his right side. Ribs jutted out over the entrance of the cavernous wound. Bits of bone swam in the frothy blood that doubtlessly bubbled from a punctured lung.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” I soothed. “Eddie’s getting a medic.”
“Do you need some morphine?” I asked, jabbing the needle into his arm before he could respond.
“W—water!” he gasped. Now his teeth were bright red, too. I carefully poured a small amount of water into his mouth, but it set off a violent coughing fit. “I—can’t—breathe!” he rattled.
“Stay with me, Charlie,” I squeezed his hand. “Help is on the way.” Charlie was beyond help. “Ma—Ma—Ma!” He managed weakly. His grip on my hand loosened. He was dead. I dropped his hand. I looked at his almost unrecognizable face for a minute. I looked over at Dick and Johnny, who were crouched on the other side of him. Anger lit both of their eyes. I sighed. “Fuck!”
“What happened?” I asked, without wanting to know. I could tell there was a story that needed telling. Johnny just shook his head, as though he didn’t even trust himself to start talking.
“Well, shit-for-brains doesn’t know what it means when you tell him to fire only on your signal,” Dick started in hotly.
“Eddie?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied, as though I had just asked the obvious.
“Anyway, he gets excited seeing Jerry twitch a muscle four hundred yards away, and of course, has to take a couple potshots at him. Well, some other Kraut hears the shots and tosses a potato masher in the window. It lands over there, not close enough to anyone to throw it back, so Charlie, nice guy that he is, throws himself on top of it. If he’d been thinking he would have pushed Eddie down on it,” he opined hotly, fumbling for a cigarette to calm himself down. I shook my head. Rage seethed in my chest. I felt my nostrils flare.
“Looks like we’re a little late,” Doc Clayton said wearily, looking at us from the doorway.
“Oh, dang,” Eddie said blandly, peering over his shoulder at Charlie. Every man in
the room looked at Eddie as though eager to slit his throat.
“Oh, dang? Oh, dang?! Is that all you have to say, Private Gunn?” I snarled at him, rising to my feet. Doc Clayton must have remembered urgent business elsewhere, because he made himself scarce in a hurry.
I shoved my nose in Eddie’s face and let loose. “Let me tell you what, you stupid cunt! The next time you flagrantly disregard one of my orders, there will be hell to pay, and you don’t even want to know what I’ll do to you if another one of my men gets so much as a goddamn scratch because of you! Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sergeant Mattox.” Eddie wiped my spit off his face, but unfortunately, the infuriating smirk he wore didn’t come off with it.
“Now get the fuck out of my sight before I lose my temper!” I screamed, pointing to the door with a thrust of my chin.
Eddie turned and strolled off. I sat down on a three-legged chair and put my head in my hands.
“What do you do with that?” I asked the floor. The room was filled with an uneasy silence. I lifted my head, plucked the lit cigarette from between Dick’s fingers, took a drag, and handed it back.
“It’s like talking to a fucking mannequin,” I vented equal parts of smoke and rage. “All you get is a dumb smile and no indication the thing understood a goddamn word.”
I looked at the faces of the men and could see my tirade was just making them more angry and demoralized, so I stopped. “Oh, well, life goes on,” I tried to smile.
“Yeah, for another day or two, anyway,” Dick replied, with no attempt at jocularity.
“Don’t let this get you down,” I told him. “If nothing else, be happy that today, at least, it was the other guy.”
“Yeah, well, sooner or later, we’ll all end up being the other guy,” Johnny said darkly.
“Take no thought for tomorrow, for sufficient to the day is the evil thereof,” I quoted.
“That’s easy preaching,” Johnny allowed a wry smile.
I rose and we took care of our dead comrade. In the days after that incident, I could sense the distrust grow between the rest of the platoon and Eddie. It was an acid that I knew would dissolve the glue that bonded man to man. I stewed about it for days. Then one day, things just—sort of took care of themselves.
~~~
I put my finger to my lips and listened. Eddie, Johnny, Dick, Leroy, and two new kids named Malone and Haney looked at me questioningly. They nodded when they felt the floor shudder. A Tiger prowled the streets of Aachen. The sixty-ton tank rumbled to and fro the narrow streets like the devil himself, seeking whom it might devour.
We were using the shelter of a stone house to launch an attack on a machinegun located in an upstairs window across the street. A short way down the street, a sniper watched the street from a church belfry, ready to put a plug of lead in anyone who dared try to assault the house which housed the machinegun. We could handle the machinegun, and we could handle the sniper, but we infantrymen had no answer for the squeaky-tracked behemoth that fired 88 mm missiles through windows and doorways.
The tank passed our house, rattling the windows. It stopped. We could see its menacing silhouette through the drawn curtains in what had once been an elegant living room. We looked at each other nervously. The silence was eerie. Finally, it rumbled on and out of earshot.
“Phew, that was close!” Malone exclaimed, wiping the sweat off his forehead with a shaky hand.
Ker-boom! The Tiger roared from down the street. We all jumped. Someone else was getting the business.
“We’re going to stay put until that tank has been removed,” I said. “I want everyone to remain in here while I radio Battalion Antitank Company to get over here and take it out. Stay away from the windows. Avoid any movement. We need to keep our presence here unknown until that Tiger has been taken care of. Understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” the men responded in unison. I made an effort to make eye contact with Eddie. He acknowledged my words with a nod.
“Good,” I said, leaving the room.
I snuck out the back door and crawled along the back of the house, using every fence and shrub as protection. The backpack radio had been forgotten two doors down, where we’d spent the night. I quickly found it, delivered my message, and received confirmation that BAC was on its way with a 105 mm howitzer. Then, I scuttled my way back, relieved when I reached the house undetected.
As I opened the back door slowly, I could hear the sound of the Tiger once again. I closed the door quietly, pushing gently on it with my shoulder until it clicked. I locked it carefully behind me, and began walking toward the living room on tiptoes, listening to the approaching tank. Another sound made me stop. I heard light footfalls on the stairway. I held my breath. They were becoming more faint. Someone was walking up the stairs.
I drew my .45 and crept up the steps. The throaty growl of the tank masked the sound of creaky steps. Reaching the top, I walked stealthily to the first bedroom and poked my pistol and one eye around the edge of the doorway. Empty. I snuck to the next room. Empty. Cautiously, I tiptoed to the next room. This one was not empty. But instead of the German intruder I feared I’d find, it was Eddie. My blood pressure shot up so quickly it was a wonder I didn’t start bleeding from the eyes. I was incensed that once again, Eddie had blatantly disobeyed a direct order.
He moved forward toward the open window like a cat stalking its prey. The breeze toyed with the curtains. A loose screw vibrated on the wooden floor as the tank shook the place with sound and weight. I opened my mouth to call out to Eddie. He lifted his rifle slowly as he inched forward. He was about to take on an elephant with a pea shooter! We were all doomed if he roused the ire of the metal beast!
Bam!
Eddie slumped to the floor like a rag doll. His helmet flew off. It bounced several feet and rocked crazily on its bowl before it settled. Blood poured from a hole in the back of his head, just below where his helmet had sat. A thin wisp of smoke floated like a spirit from the barrel of my .45.
The Tiger moved on. I dropped my pistol into its holster and again used the waning sound of the tank to cover my footsteps as I carefully crept down the stairs.
“Where’s Eddie?” I asked quietly from the doorway of the living room. The men started.
“He said he was going to check on you, Sergeant,” Haney informed me.
“We tried telling him to stay, but you know Eddie,” Dick shook his head. I nodded. The men looked at me as though expecting me to erupt in anger, but I remained calm.
“I got through to Battalion Antitank Command,” I said. “Hopefully within the hour we can move.” The men nodded, but still studied me quizzically.
“And Eddie?” Malone inquired.
“I didn’t see him outside, so I’m guessing he’s still in the house,” I shrugged.
“We think we may have heard him upstairs,” Haney told me earnestly. “It sounded like he may have fired a shot.”
“He’s a grown man, Haney, I’m sure he can look after himself,” I stalled. Seeing the confusion in the rookie’s eyes, I said, “Go ahead and try to find him, just don’t leave the house and don’t do anything stupid. And if you do find him, tell him he’d better have a fucking good story as to why he fucked off.” I sank down in a plush green arm chair and lit a cigarette.
“And take Malone with you,” I leaned my head back and squinted at him through a cloud of smoke.
“Ah, this is living,” I groaned, as the armchair attempted to swallow me. I tried not to think about Eddie or the job ahead of us, and just relax for a few moments. I could hear low voices jabbering excitedly upstairs.
“Wonder what’s going on up there?” Leroy mused, cocking his head to look up at the ceiling, and then back at me as though not entirely convinced that I didn’t know.
“Lord knows,” I said drowsily, closing my eyes. I heard heavy footsteps clomping down the steps.
A minute later, Malone and Haney appeared in the doorway with the body of Eddie Gunn.
&nb
sp; “He’s dead!” an excited Haney informed us breathlessly. Everyone looked calmly toward them for a moment.
“You think?” Dick questioned dryly. His sarcasm was lost on Haney.
“Oh, yeah, look at his eye!” Haney nodded animatedly, pointing at Eddie’s left eye, which hung out of its socket, dangling out onto his cheek. Malone looked like he was about to be ill.
“The lad has a point, Sarge,” Johnny said dryly.
“Yes, I do believe that Eddie was not in the habit of wearing his left eye outside the body,” Leroy played along morbidly. Dick knelt down and put his ear to Eddie’s chest.
“He appears to be deceased, sir,” Dick agreed solemnly, lifting his head back up and getting to his feet. All eyes waited for my reaction.
“Oh, dang,” I said blandly.
~~~
No one ever asked me if I’d shot Eddie Gunn. Haney and Malone were too green to even suspect me, even though the circumstances of Eddie’s death were extremely suspicious. As for the other men, none of them ever mentioned it, except occasionally someone would make a veiled comment about Eddie and the “sniper” that killed him.
Dick, who had a habit of saddling up a pet saying and riding it until its legs fell off, spent several weeks replying, “Oh, dang” to almost everything anyone said to him. It tickled him every time he said it, and when I was around, he’d laugh at me with knowing eyes. A dark sense of humor was all that kept some men’s minds on the rails.
I was scared for the first few days after. Not scared my men would rat me out for killing Eddie; I trusted them, and they knew I’d done what I did for their safety. Rather, I was afraid Eddie’s face would haunt me for the rest of my life. But it didn’t, partly, I guess, because I felt justified, like I’d done the right thing, but also because deciding who to sacrifice and who to spare was part of my job. No, I didn’t always know who was going to make it and who wasn’t, but there were many times I’d had to make tough decisions about who to offer to the gods of war, and who to spare. There were times I’d sent a terrified, wide-eyed greenhorn into a hornet’s nest instead of risking losing one of my few precious veterans. Those are the faces that haunt me in my sleep.
Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 21