The Last Full Measure

by Michael Stephenson

  Grayson La Mar of the US 712th Tank Battalion found out all about the hatch problem when his tank was hit in the rear and burst into flame: “It took three tries to get the hatch open. See, the hatch would hit the gun barrel. The gunner was killed and nobody could operate the gun to get the barrel out of the way. Finally, on the third try, I slipped by. If the gun was over a quarter-inch more I’d never had got out.”141

  Many, of course, never did get out, as Gromov, a Russian antitank rifleman, explains: “I fired at [the tank] again. And I saw at once that I’d hit it. It took my breath away. A blue flame ran over the armour, quick like a spark. And I understood at once that my anti-tank shell had got inside and gave off this blue flame. And a little smoke rose. The Germans inside began to scream. I’d never heard people scream this way before, and then immediately there was a crackling inside. It crackled and crackled. The shells had started to explode. And then flames shot out, right into the sky. The tank was done for.”142

  But perhaps the most terrible sound of a tanker’s death was a simple click (as the radio connection was severed by a hit):

  A squadron of British tanks was coming up in support. The commander calmly directed the battle using cricket parlance: “Harry, I’d like you to go a little further out in the field in the hope of a long catch.… Charlie, would you move over to silly mid-off.” … and so it went on.

  We might have been at Lord’s in London watching Test cricket on a warm sunny afternoon and wondering whether the tea break was far away. Suddenly, across the squadron leader’s voice came a sharp ominous click. We’d heard it before. We couldn’t see the tank but we knew what the click meant. Charlie took over the radio network. The others obeyed his orders calmly, resolutely, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for their comrade to depart suddenly like that—with a click as adieu.143

  AN INFANTRYMAN AT the sharp end lives in a world where risk comes in two sizes: large and larger. There are many tactical “obligations” he is expected to carry out. In fact, almost everything he does in the combat zone (including, as the decorous phrase has it, “answering the call of nature”—in fact, especially while answering that urgent summons) puts him in harm’s way. But one task in particular represents the jumbo package of risk: the frontal attack across open ground against a prepared enemy—“the basic theme of combat in World War II.” It was an old way of dying in a modern war, “as old as warfare itself.”

  Here are three soldiers, in three very different theaters of the war, recalling three attacks:

  Russia, 19 December 1943:

  Towards noon, we, the Panzergrenadiere, go into action. We have to cross open country without any cover. The enemy has been waiting for this, and he greets us with a furious bombardment using all his heavy weapons. All hell breaks loose around us, and a tumultuous inferno of violence and unceasing destruction comes pouring down. A score of combat aircraft come screaming over our heads, raining bombs on us and our tanks. The tanks rapidly make smoke to avoid being seen. In the meantime, we are lying flat on the ground without any cover, wishing that we were moles so that we could crawl to safety.

  The ground beneath us shakes with the impacts and explosions. All around us we hear painful cries from the wounded calling out for the medics. We run forward through the thundering hell, with only one thought in mind—to somehow find some sort of cover there in front of us. Even though we make it through the artillery crossfire, death waits for us a thousand times over. The Russian machine-gunners hammer away at us with all barrels and the enemy anti-tank weapons and divisional artillery fire at our every movement.

  Bursts of hot bullets swish by me and tear up the thin snow cover around … I am reminded how many times over the last few weeks I have sped through the enemy’s rain of fire. Up till now I have been lucky and have, with God’s help, always come through. Will I manage it this time?

  I do now what I have always done: I run, bent double, driven on by fear that I’ll be hit any moment. My body seems as if it’s electrically charged, and I feel hot waves running down my back.… Every now and then I throw myself flat on the ground and stick my head in between my shoulders like a tortoise. Thinking that a hit low down in my body could cost me my life, I prefer to cover the distance to the hedge crawling flat on my stomach, feet first.…

  On the churned-up field behind us the wounded are whimpering, for they can no longer run. They lie among the many dead bodies and roll over in pools of blood, often in their death throes. Less than ten paces behind me I can see Willi Krauze lying in a pool of blood. Willi is dead.144

  Pelelieu, 16 September 1944:

  The mortars had stopped. The first F Company [Fifth Marines] wave was advancing across the airstrip, running low with ranks scattered, breasting a withering machine gun fire that had begun to rake the runway. They were falling. It seemed unreal, it seemed a tableau, phantasmagorical, like a scene from a motion picture. It required an effort of mind to recall that these were flesh-and-blood marines, men whom I knew.… Still more was required in facing up to the fact that my turn was next. And here is the point in battle where one needs the rallying cry. Here where the banner must be unfurled or the song sung or the name of the cause flung at the enemy like a challenge. Here is mounted the charge, the thing as old as warfare itself, that either overwhelms the defense and wins the battle, or is broken and brings on defeat. How much less forbidding might have been that avenue of death that I was about to cross had there been some wholly irrational shout—like “Vive l’Empereur,” or “The Marine Corps Forever!”—rather than that educated voice which said in a sangfroid that was all at odds with the event, “Well, it’s our turn, now.” …

  I began to run.… The heat rose in stifling waves.… The bullets whispered at times, at other times they were not audible.… I ran with my head low, my helmet bumping crazily to obscure my view … I was alone and running.… There were men to my left, still falling.… I ran and threw myself down, caught my breath, rose, and ran again.… Suddenly I ran into a shell crater full of men and I stopped running.145

  Normandy, 13 June 1944:

  We had crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the hedgerow that the enemy was entrenched behind. We fixed bayonets and then, on command, charged headlong over the hedgerow into heavy enemy fire to do hand-to-hand battle with the Germans. We pushed forward into fierce enemy fire across grazed-over pastureland toward the next hedgerow—where the bulk of the enemy had withdrawn, leaving their dead behind. They cut us to ribbons as we ran over the open ground, charging after them. At least six enemy machine guns had us in a cross fire, and a mix of 81mm mortar, flat-trajectory 88mm cannon, and high-angle 75mm howitzer fire exploded in our midst, filling the air with searing shards of shrapnel.…

  I made it over about seven hedgerows and fields, seeing a large number of my comrades wounded, maimed, and killed around me. Still we charged forward into the small-arms and artillery fire. I was slightly ahead of my squad when a German suddenly appeared out of a hedge a few feet away on my left front. He flipped a long-handled potato-masher grenade at me in a nonchalant manner before I could bring my rifle to bear, and then he disappeared back into the hedge.

  The explosion knocked me out. My comrades left me where I lay, thinking I was dead.… You should never stop an attack to look out for the wounded or the dead—if you do, you most likely will become one of them.146

  After the initial assault, it would have been nice if the enemy could have been kept at arm’s length in a mutually beneficial standoff. But war is not like that. There is a deeply irritating and unremitting pressure to go on and visit yet more violence on one’s adversary, thereby inviting him to reciprocate. Patrolling was the infilling between pitched battles that kept men dutifully, if begrudgingly, employed in the business of killing and being killed. Raymond Gantter, recalling his experience in Germany in the winter of 1944–45, recounted the very dubious appeal patrolling had for the foot soldier:

  I think I have never been so cold, so wretched
, so frightened. I decided that a patrol was the worst of all war assignments, particularly in winter. (Nothing I experienced in later months changed my mind—patrolling remained the job I hated and dreaded beyond any other.)

  It is the slow piling up of fear that is so intolerable. Fear moves swiftly in battle, strikes hard with each shell, each new danger, and as long as there’s action, you don’t have time to be frightened. But this is a slow fear, heavy and stomach-filling. Slow, slow … all your movements are careful and slow, and pain is slow and fear is slow and the beat of your heart is the only rapid rhythm of the night … a muttering drum easily punctured and stilled.147

  Within the world of patrolling there were larger and lesser risks. An American soldier made this distinction: Patrols “were of two types. The combat patrol was sent out to kill Germans and return with prisoners for interrogation. This type of patrol was dangerous. We did not volunteer to go on these patrols because they were deadly; we had to be ordered to go. The other type was the reconnaissance patrol.… This type was less dangerous.”148

  In the Pacific theater the chances of being killed on patrol were greater than the risk of holding a defensive perimeter. Bill Crooks, an Australian fighting on New Guinea, remembers: “We did most of our fighting and suffered most of our casualties patrolling. Our fighting in the Pacific was a squad or platoon war, most of it on patrol. People would go out, there would be short, vicious firefights, grenades thrown, and people screaming like mad. It was over fast. And then the men would get going again or stay there dead.”149

  Jungle patrolling, with its limited visibility, was an agony of suspense. “A patrol moves very slowly in the jungle,” recalled Robert Leckie:

  Fear of ambush produces the most extreme caution, which reduces speed to a crawl. It is this literally. Each foot is firmly planted before the other is raised, utmost care is taken to avoid twigs, and a sort of crablike rhythm is produced as the eyes and torso travel in the alternating directions of the feet. Left foot, lean, look, listen, pause; right foot, lean, look, listen, pause.

  At such speed, it would take a day to move a mile and return. Should the trail be hilly, or especially twisting, it might take longer. On this patrol it had taken twenty minutes to go round one bend, precisely because that curve lay at the foot of a rise and because such a terrain feature is admirably suited for ambush … the enemy can deliver a plunging fire into your ranks at the very moment when your own visibility is at zero. He might even allow you to gain the hill, permit you to pass him—and then fire from behind you—a most demoralizing trick.150

  There was little that was heroic about patrolling, and soldiers knew that it did not rate highly as a military spectacle that would excite the civilian appetite for glorious deeds of martial splendor. One infantryman in Italy complained: “Since the time … the Press was first able to announce, reluctantly and with an undercurrent of disapproval, that ‘all is quiet on the Italian Front. Military operations are limited to patrol activity,’ patrol warfare has been waged with a pitiless ruthlessness that perhaps would satisfy the recumbent fireside sadists … rather than the most gory of large-scale attacks. Swift and noiseless thrusts in the dark; unpremeditated death by an unknown hand from a quarter uncertain; silent attack and counter-attack without ceasing—these are the pigments one must use to paint the picture of patrol warfare.”151

  Certain soldierly occupations carried more than their fair share of risk. Scouts and point men were particularly high up the scale of those most likely to be hit. One scout, Henri Atkins of the US Ninety-Ninth Infantry Division fighting in the Ardennes, did not beat about the bush:

  A point man needs a willingness to die. He is nothing more … than a decoy. When he is shot, the enemy position is revealed. Don’t confuse this willingness with “bravery.” A point man is just doing his job, what he has trained to do. Usually a scout is way out ahead of the attacking forces, ready to signal back enemy contact. He has a chance of survival, but not much of one. The tough question is, why did I volunteer as company first scout … when I knew how dangerous the position could be? I didn’t get paid more. It was the most dangerous position in a rifle company. I was important to my company. They needed me. I could do the job. I could be counted on. Is that an answer? I don’t know, but it’s as good an answer as any.152

  The jungle held perhaps even greater peril for front men. Richard Loucks was with the US Forty-Third Division on New Georgia:

  The principal characteristic of the jungle is its density. There are no landmarks. There are trails, and in many places we could move only on them because of the impassibility of vines, underbrush, tree roots. Mangrove swamps, for example, were totally impenetrable. We were, therefore, in great danger because the Japanese knew where we had to go and prepared for us.… The scouts out front were particularly vulnerable because they had no instantaneous support from the troops behind them. Often the scouts were on top of the enemy before either side realized what was happening. Since they were moving they were at terrible risk and took many casualties.153

  So dangerous was the scout/point position that experienced patrol leaders could be shockingly pragmatic: “It was sacrosanct,” declares one, “that point scouts carried a rifle, as they often were knocked off and we did not want to lose a submachine gun.”

  Combat medics/aidmen/corpsmen were meant to be protected by the Geneva Convention, and their helmets and armbands, emblazoned with the insignia of the Red Cross, were supposed to provide them with protection from enemy fire. Often it worked … often it did not: “The risks our medics took shocked me because their immunity was so scantily guaranteed. There was little in their dress to indicate their calling. Lacking only weapons, they wore the usual GI uniform, and their sole distinctive markings were red crosses on a white ground, painted on the four sides of their helmets, and white armbands, also marked with a red cross. A helmet and an armband, that was all. But helmets got dirty, scratched, chipped; armbands became grimy rags, twisted, narrow bands that were indistinguishable on dark sleeves. I’m surprised that more medics weren’t killed.”154 If a medic was in the European theater he did all he could to emphasize his markings; quite the opposite if he were facing the Japanese, who assiduously targeted medics.155

  Even without the overtly malicious intent of an enemy, medics went where the danger was greatest, and they paid a terrible price. John Worthman, a medic with the US Fourth Infantry Division, estimates that “our regiment had 80 percent of its aidmen lost in Normandy—wounded, killed in action, or captured.” But like point man Henri Atkins, Worthman knew that the need far outweighed the risk: “If you have never felt you were really wanted, be an aidman. Forty men are relying on you.”156

  Leo Litwak, a combat medic in northwest Europe, illustrates the extraordinary heroism of most medics (although, as he points out, extreme risk could deter even normally brave men):

  We were probing the high ground near some Belgian village, and a Third Platoon scout was hit by a sniper. He lay in the road up ahead, facedown, on his belly. The company took cover in the woods off the road. Aid man Grace crept to where he could see the scout lying in the road. “He’s not moving. You can see he’s dead. There’s a sniper waiting to knock off anyone who goes out there.” Grace wouldn’t go to him.

  They called on Cooper, aid man with the Second Platoon. Cooper said the Third Platoon was Grace’s responsibility, not his, and he wouldn’t go to the scout either.

  Sergeant Lucca came to me. “The Third Platoon has a man down out there, and Grace and Cooper won’t go.”

  I took off down the road, full speed, came up over the rise, saw the scout lying in the road, hit the ground next to him, turned him over, saw a nickel-sized wound on his forehead. I couldn’t feel a pulse. I put my cheek to his mouth and there was no breath. I expected to be hit the same way, above the eyes, in the middle of the forehead. Either the sniper respected my red cross markings or he’d taken off.157

  Some were not so lucky. J. D. Jones of the Third Infantry Di
vision saw his medic go to a wounded man even though a previous aidman had just been killed in the attempt: “Sammy turned … his helmet to get that big old white blob with the red cross on it, and he was just leaning over the man … and they [the Germans] shot him right between the shoulder blades, killed him instantly.”158

  The provisions of the Geneva Convention that sought to protect medics were emphatic that they must be strictly noncombatant, carrying no weapon. And a breach of this protocol could have deadly results. Trooper David Kenyon Webster of the 101st Airborne, fighting in northwest Europe, witnessed just such a retribution: “While I watched the smoke, a German jeep popped out of it and whirled boldly through the village. It was flying a big Red Cross flag and carried two wounded Germans on stretchers in back, and it was such a startling phenomenon, with a big, husky German paratrooper at the wheel, that nobody made a move to stop it. It drove boldly down the middle of the road until it was finally stopped by an officer with more presence of mind than the rest of us. The jeep was commandeered; the driver, a medic, was shot for carrying a pistol; and the two wounded men were left by the side of the road to die.”159

  Those soldiers with specialized jobs that involved carrying large amounts of potentially deadly substances stood a much higher risk of a very speedy trip to the Hereafter. Flamethrowers, for example, had to be operated by men of a sanguine disposition, not to say philosophical resignation. “Snipers really looked for them,” recalls a First Division Marine, and understandably there was a certain reluctance to take on the job:

  The lieutenant said, “Sergeant, put someone on that flamethrower.” I sensed we were all trying to shrink up in our uniforms, as none of us wanted that job. Then he said, “Laughlin, you do it.” I had to endure a number of ribald comments, some pity, and some cynical requests for my girlfriend’s address. I was very disgruntled at being selected—why me I’ll never know—and I considered refusing to do it and then decided against that. [Afterward] I gave loud notice that I wasn’t going to have another turn and I was not called on again.160