Letters to America

by Tom Blair

  By August word from the top was that we’d be in Berlin by Christmas. The 326th Engineers had its act together, usually a mile or so behind the guys doing the shooting and earning the medals. We still spent most of our time building bridges. Building is probably not what we did. We put bridges together. Most everything we had was prefab. We’d anchor some cables to both sides of the river, attach some pontoons, lay down the inner connecting steel mats, and we had ourselves a bridge. Problem was, some SOB Kraut with a rifle and a scope hunkered down in the bushes on the other side of the river might use us for target practice. Usually our guys had ’em pushed back enough so’s we didn’t need to worry too much.

  By the time October rolled in, us GIs sleeping on the ground knew we weren’t going to be in Berlin by Christmas. We figured we weren’t even going to be in Germany by Christmas. The generals sleeping in warm beds told us things were real good, they weren’t. These Nazis were tough soldiers. When you’d see them, when they were captured or something, they stood tall. And I figured however good they were fighting now, they’d fight even harder the closer we got to the Fatherland.

  Something else about the Krauts, they had better equipment. All the colonels and generals that told us we were the best-equipped were flat-ass wrong. Our hand grenades were about the size of a baseball, but real heavy. Couldn’t really throw ’em; we had to heave ’em. The Krauts had this wooden stick, maybe ten inches long, coming out of their grenades. This gave ’em leverage. They could throw one of theirs fifty feet farther—a lot when you’re trying to kill a pillbox. Even their shovels for digging foxholes were better. And they had boots that kept your feet warm and dry. Our GI boots would soak right through. We were always fighting off trench foot, always changing socks and drying them by wrapping them around our necks.

  But it wasn’t the little stuff that was killing us, it was the big stuff. Their 88s shot bigger shells farther than anything we had, plus they had more of a wallop. Our Shermans had four inches of armor, their Tigers had six inches. To stop a Tiger some medal-winning GI had to be brave and lucky. Only thing I figured we had that was better was our trucks. The Germans pretty much moved things with horses. I sorta rethought this when a captured Kraut told me that the next time I was starving, I should try to eat a truck.

  By the third week of December we were in Belgium. I started to think of Christmas. Saw some trees decorated with ornaments cut from K-ration cans, but we weren’t singing Christmas carols or anything. We were pretty much doing what we always did, building bridges and fixing roads and stuff.

  Then we got the crap kicked out of us. Our generals were planning their Christmas party while Kraut generals were planning to take back Antwerp. On the morning of December 16 all hell broke loose. Krauts came pouring across the front. They had put a lot of thought into it, took some of their guys that spoke real good English, outfitted them in American uniforms from dead GIs, and gave them captured American jeeps. Lookin’ like GIs these Krauts came across our lines and generally screwed things up every which way. Even changed road signs so our reinforcements headed off in the wrong direction—that kind of thing.

  I was maybe twenty miles back from the fighting when the Germans poured across the front. Our guys were surrendering and running. I’m not saying fellas were cowards, I’m just saying we were outmuscled real quick. By the second day the Krauts had pushed us back twenty-five miles in some places. At that rate they’d’ve been in Renfroe by the next 4th of July.

  So our general, a Southern boy named Middleton, threw everything at ’em. Every GI went to the front. Guys who had been baking bread in the messes were handed M1s and pointed toward the roar. Same with me, Emory, and the whole 326th. Some shouting of orders, a bunch of confusion, and we were in the back of four-by-fours bouncing to the front, carrying rifles.

  After six hours of freezing our asses in the back of a careening four-by-four, stopping once for fuel and a latrine break, we pulled into Marvie. It was damn cold. Deep snow on the ground and none of us had winter gear. No long underwear, no winter boots, and most of us didn’t even have the full winter coat, we just had our field jackets. Maybe a half hour we rocked back and forth on our feet after we climbed out of the four-by-fours. Rocked back and forth trying not to freeze, waiting for orders. Then this captain shows up. I’d seen dead guys that looked better than this fella. Dark circles under his eyes, three-day beard, a piece of blanket wrapped around his head, covering his ears. Looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He walked by using an ax handle as a cane. I was thinking, I’m in shit trouble.

  To the east of Marvie our guys had established a perimeter, maybe a hundred GIs in foxholes. The captain put one of us—a baker, candlestick maker, or whatever—in a foxhole with one of the infantry guys. I was set down in a foxhole with a guy who made the captain look like Mr. Charles Atlas. His name was Hank, and he probably weighed 130 pounds, and that’s only if he was carrying thirty pounds of gear. He told me right off that he’d been in his foxhole a day and a half. No food, only a canteen of soup frozen like a brick. Hank had his rifle under his coat to try and keep it from freezing up. We were dug in on the edge of a wood. In front of us a field a fair piece across, maybe three or four hundred yards till the next tree line. Past this tree line was artillery, Kraut 88s, whooshing like some kinda crazy tornados. The 88s sounded different than everything else.

  Hank and me started talking. Even though he said he got his name from a famous hitter for the Detroit Tigers, Hank was from New York. Came ashore in the second wave. Got lucky, only two of the guys in his platoon got whacked. But they had a tough time the next week pushing through the hedgerows, said the Germans had pretargeted the open areas, then they’d leave a spotter behind. When our guys got in the open, the 88s would sausage ’em.

  About dark the captain with the ax handle came crawling by, making the rounds of the perimeter. Told us to watch for Kraut patrols, said he’d be back before dawn and he’d shoot us himself if he found us asleep. He knew we didn’t have any rations, promised the Air Corps would be dropping supplies the next day. Some more talk with Hank, then the sun set, and the damn cold became unbearable cold. Hank had an army-issue winter coat while I had the standard GI jacket. Neither one made much difference. We were both shivering.

  Hank had torn a blanket into strips and wrapped them around his head like a turban. Over this he’d pulled his helmet. He unwrapped a few strips, and I used them to make me some earmuffs. It was a long night. Never stopped shivering. We spoke real low so’s we could hear any Kraut patrol. Only good thing about the cold was the crust on top of the snow. No matter how slowly a Kraut walked, he’d make a crunchy noise with every step.

  From the time the sun set till daylight was probably fifteen hours. Fifteen hours of bone-hurting cold. By first light I couldn’t feel my toes, in spite of rocking back and forth on my feet all night. Captain came by and told us supplies would be dropped. Told us Blood & Guts Patton was on his way, we just needed to hold on. For a couple hours there was a lot of shelling to our left, nothing to bother us. But the sky caused a worry. Couldn’t figure out how the Air Corps was going to drop us anything. If I couldn’t see up, they couldn’t see down.

  Sure enough, the captain was right, around noon the roar of aircraft above the overcast. Then some chutes drifting down, each with a box of supplies swinging below. Right through the overcast they drifted, right into the woods held by the Krauts.

  The rest of the day Hank and I stared across the snow-covered field in front of us. Nothing moving. Maybe an hour of shelling far to the left, toward Bastogne. Before dusk the captain was back. Same story. I was thinking, I’d just as soon he shoots me, don’t know how I’m getting through another night. Neither Hank nor I had had anything to eat in almost three days. Right after sunset a strong wind. A real strong wind, strong enough to pick up icy pellets from the crust of the snow and sandblast our faces.

  Nothing we could do. We stopped guarding the perimeter and tried to survive. Hank and I hunkered down in
the bottom of the foxhole. You may have a problem with this, but I’m not sure we’d have made it another night otherwise. We huddled together—not with our backs touching, but by wrapping our arms around each other and breathing on each other’s face for warmth. Long night. Thought I was dead a couple times. Wished I was dead most of the time.

  Finally, the light of daybreak. Not a soft light through an overcast—a sharp light. The sky would be blue. They would fly. The C-47s would know where we were. We might live. Best birthday I ever had.

  A sergeant came by with two blankets and told us the 4th Armored was only five miles away. He was gone a couple hours and then three or four dozen C-47s all started dropping supplies behind our lines, dropping them in the right place. Started to think I might make it. So must have Hank, began yakking all about New York City. Wanted to show me around, show me a good time. He wasn’t real impressed about my trip to the top of the Empire State Building and eating two egg rolls.

  All of a sudden Hank stopped talking and pointed to the field. I didn’t see anything. He pointed to a certain tree on the far tree line. Told me to look down from that tree to about halfway across the field we’d been staring at for two days. I looked but didn’t see a thing. Told me to look for two tiny black dots. I looked, and then I saw ’em. They were dots, not Krauts. He told me no, they were Krauts in their winter camouflage. Said Krauts had these white blankets with a hole in the middle, sorta like our rain ponchos, that they pulled over themselves so only their square heads and helmets were showing. Everything else was white, like the snow.

  Hank and I split them up. He said he’d nail the one on the left and I’d take the other. Our foxhole was just inside the tree line, in the dark shadows. The Krauts were in the bright snow, no way their eyes could focus in the shadows. So we waited for them to get closer. Maybe seventy-five or a hundred yards out, we took our shots. A slow deep breath, exhale some air, hold my breath, squeeze a shot, and the Kraut on the right dropped. Hank took a shot and the Kraut on the left turned back. I could see his legs churning the snow under his white camouflage blanket. He was heading back for the tree line. I sighted him, squeezed, he dropped.

  By afternoon the guys from Patton’s corps were in Bastogne. Hank and I were relieved from our post. Trudged back to Marvie. After three days of nothing, we got hot food from the airdropped supplies. Can’t remember what it was, but I remember it was the best meal I ever ate. Then we crawled into sleeping bags in some sorry-looking barn with maybe fifty other guys. Right in the middle of the roof was a shell hole. We kept a fire going all night, with smoke rising through the blasted open roof. In the morning, another hot meal.

  Was scared to look, but I did. Unlaced my boots and pulled off my socks, both pairs. Toes on my right foot were a dark purple, no feeling. Showed a medic, told me that if they turned black I should have ’em cut off, or just wait for ’em to fall off.

  They kept us engineers at the front till the Krauts were hightailing it back to Germany. Got the hell scared out of me before I got off the front line. It happened right outside of Wardin. We’d been moving forward, taking back ground the Krauts had overrun. They weren’t putting up much of a fight, they’d used up most of their ammo and fuel the first few days when they’d broken through our lines.

  So we were going forward through a forest. Then came the whoosh of Kraut 88s. The shells weren’t hitting the ground, they were hitting the tops of the trees. It didn’t matter if we dropped to the ground—shrapnel was coming straight down. And shrapnel was bad, bad stuff. A Kraut bullet would hit you, then come out the other side, making a hole not much bigger than where it went in. Not shrapnel. This stuff was jagged pieces of metal, maybe half a pound. I’d seen guys hit by shrapnel. It made a hole as big as a baseball where it went in, the size of a football where it came out.

  No time to claw out a foxhole in the frozen dirt, so I was laying there in the snow, with guys hit and screaming all around me. Branches were falling out of trees. Hot chunks of shrapnel were slamming into the snow, making cloudy white puffs. Then the roar of aircraft, I looked up. Two P-47s overhead. I could always recognize a P-47 with their birdlike wings. They flew past, then the screams of their dive, and then explosions. The shelling stopped. They nailed the 88s. Sorta made up for the Air Corps missing the beaches last June. Sorta.

  By February I was back to building bridges. By March the weather was breaking. No more below-zero nights. So y’all know what happened? Two big army supply trucks dropped off gear. Long johns, winter coats, real boots with lining and rubber soles, even some strange headgear, like a big woolen sock you pull over your head with holes for your eyes and mouth. Just in time for spring.

  But no matter how bad we engineers had it, for the GIs on the line it was god-awful worse. Guys coming back from the line had the hundred-yard stare, their eyes didn’t seem to focus. Sorta like there was no purpose in them looking. Same with their words. No conversation. They’d mumble a short answer or instruction, but showed no emotion, no interest in anything. They’d surrendered, not to the Germans, they’d surrendered hope. They knew they’d be going back to the line, likely to get themselves killed. It made me sorry. Not for them, but sorry for Ma. She’d had the hundred-yard stare. All that time in Renfroe with me, Billy, and Pa, she musta known she had no future, no hope.

  By the end of March, Kraut prisoners were beginning to look real different than before. Before the average Kraut soldier stood tall. Now Hitler and his asshole buddies were getting desperate. The Russians, Brits, and our guys were grinding up their army. But instead of surrendering and saving a few million Germans, the paperhanger created the Volkssturm. Kraut soldiers weren’t between eighteen and forty years old anymore, they went down to twelve and up to sixty. The Kraut army took these kids and old farts and gave them an armband with a swastika and some rusty old rifle or makeshift antitank rocket. They weren’t much more of a threat to us than targets on the Fort Benning rifle range.

  Some changes the Germans made worked. Krauts had these land mines, sorta like a big pie tin, maybe a foot across and three or four inches thick. Mostly steel with maybe two or so pounds of explosives. Krauts buried them half a foot under the surface. Each land mine had a pressure switch on the top. Some happy-faced GI would come along and step down on a mine. Next thing you knew, body parts were everywhere and his ma would be getting a telegram.

  Us engineers could find most all these mines with a nifty mine detector. Held it in front of us as we walked, about a foot off the ground. It would give off a buzz if it went over more than a half pound of steel. Then real careful like, we’d dig up the mine without pushing down the pressure switch. But the Krauts got smart and started making ceramic mines, using just a few ounces of metal for the pressure switch. This made for two big problems. First, our detectors went right over them with no warning buzz, so all of a sudden we was setting off a bunch of land mines. Second problem was the ceramic mines weren’t as powerful as the old metal ones. Metal ones would blast you to pieces. You were dead. The new ones didn’t always kill you, they just blew off some body parts. More than one unlucky GI had his manhood blown right off. Couldn’t think of nothing much worse. Most of us woulda traded two legs and an arm to keep our manhood.

  President Roosevelt died on April 12. We found out about it the next day. Everybody I knew liked the president. His voice made you feel good. He sounded strong, but somehow he seemed a little soft, like he cared for the average Joe. But it’s not ’cause the president died that I remember the date. It was the same day I got a letter from Big Sam. I’d never gotten a letter from him before. Other than us trading some eggs for milk back in Renfroe, we’d never really spoken much.

  Big Sam sent me a letter to tell me that Pa was dead. Couldn’t hardly believe what I was reading. Sat in the mud just staring at the words. Big Sam wrote that he didn’t see him in the fields for a long time so he went over to the house. Said Pa was lying in bed real peaceful. He buried him next to the marker we had for Ma. Told me when I got b
ack to see him, he had all of Pa’s belongings. I didn’t think Pa had belongings. All our flags were at half-mast for the president. For me they were at half-mast for Pa.

  With Pa being laid out still, for sure he wouldn’t be getting my watch. I’d been trying the best I could to keep it safe for him. Thought about it, decided to give it to Billy. Figured the navy probably didn’t give sailors watches. Everyone just did what the ship’s captain told them, no need to be looking at the time.

  Remember I couldn’t describe what it was like on the beaches? Saw something else that I couldn’t find the words for. It was a pretty nice day, last week in April. Maybe it was the first week of May. Us engineers were following the infantry guys as usual. If they needed something blown up, something spanned, or whatever, we were there.

  So anyway, we were getting close to Munich, a pretty big German city where they made a lot of stuff for the war. I was in my four-by-four, following behind the real fighting. We were going to put a bridge across the Amper River. Still remember the name, thought it sounded like something electrical.

  Then we came to this place—I want to say it was a prison, but it wasn’t. It was what they called a concentration camp. Dachau. Sorta like a big army base with a lot of barrack-like buildings, and around the whole thing, barbed-wire fences. They weren’t like what I’d seen before. Maybe fifteen feet up, on the top, wires with insulators between them and posts, just like you’d see on a road after the electric company come through. Y’all have probably seen pictures of concentration camps. The pictures are bad, real bad. But it was worse. Tear your heart out worse. Sometimes I didn’t even know what I was looking at. Once I thought I saw a big pile of old clothes. It wasn’t.

  Me and Emory were just walking through the camp, numb-like, when we heard shots. A few single shots, then a machine gun. Turned toward the gunfire, GIs shooting German soldiers that they’d lined up against a wall. Didn’t seem right, didn’t seem wrong. Probably killed fifty or more before a captain showed up and halted the shooting. Didn’t stop the killing, didn’t stop the payback. Our guys broke Kraut kneecaps with rifle butts. Prisoners who had the strength finished them off with shovels and picks.