COLONEL GERDEN F. JOHNSON: During the night, and in the daylight hours that followed, men from Co. G made several attempts to reach the wounded man who lay in the [forest] but were driven back each time by German machine-gun fire. The wounded man, whose left leg had been blown off halfway to the knee, was a member of Co. B, and he had been leading a patrol from his company in an attempt to contact Co. F. Lying helpless in the dark and moaning with pain, he fell victim of a fiendish German plot. Enemy soldiers crawled out to him in the dark, removed his helmet and field jacket, and robbed him of his cigarettes and personal possessions and then placed a booby trap under his back so that when our medics finally reached him, they would be blown to bits the minute they moved him.
EDWARD G. MILLER: Ernest Hemingway was a correspondent with and spent a lot of time in the 22nd, because the Regimental Commander, Charles “Buck” Lanham, and he were quite good friends by that point in the war. After the war, one of Hemingway’s books, Across the River and into the Trees, had a character named Colonel Canfield. Supposedly, Canfield was modeled on Lanham. One of the great lines in that book is Canfield saying, “I always thought that it would have made more sense just to shoot the replacements in the rear areas than to go to all the trouble for them to de-truck, go to the front, where they were going to be killed, anyway, and then transport them to the rear.”
ALEX KERSHAW: Cold, wet, depressing, dark, and incredibly dispiriting—trying to maintain any kind of morale in that battle was very difficult for Salinger.
BOB WANDESFORDE: I hadn’t washed or shaved for weeks. Everything I wore or carried was mud brown. I had trench foot; my hands and face were black; my fingertips and lips were split and raw. I had eaten almost nothing but K rations and C rations in my filthy black canteen cup . . . and had slept in bombed-out houses or in the snow for over a month. But I didn’t look any worse than the rest of my outfit, and I considered myself lucky to be alive.
PAUL FUSSELL: For those in the know, the horror of Hürtgen could be read in the number of self-inflicted wounds and the unprecedented rates of desertion. It was a desperate moment on the Western front when, to halt the increasing desertions, pitiable serial deserter Private Eddie Slovik was formally shot to death as the only execution for desertion in the whole European Theater.
STAFF SERGEANT DAVID RODERICK: I’d taken cover under a tree during another artillery assault, and the force of the explosion and shrapnel landing on me knocked me out. It gave me a concussion and killed my radioman. I didn’t know where I was or who I was or what I was doing. Someone got me to an aid station, and I was evacuated from Hürtgen on November 24, 1944. That happened to a lot of soldiers.
When I got to the hospital I was examined, and they called me “combat-exhausted.” What they did was give you a pill that put you to sleep for twenty-four hours. Soldiers called it the “Blue 88.” They did it three times, so you slept for about three days.
ALEX KERSHAW: It was an epic disaster, the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. The 4th Division sustained an estimated 5,260 battle and nonbattle casualties. There were unimaginable scenes of destruction.
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EDWARD G. MILLER: When the Battle of Hürtgen Forest was over, privates were platoon leaders. In one company of the 22nd Regiment, the only existing soldier who started that battle on November 16 and was still a member of that company the first week of December was one lieutenant. The 28th Infantry Division and its attachments lost almost six thousand soldiers—killed, wounded, missing, taken prisoner—in about two weeks.
Throughout the war the 4th Division was authorized at about 14,300 soldiers. In the course of the war from D-Day until May 1945, it sustained something like thirty-five thousand casualties—about 250 percent casualties in the division. Ninety-five percent of those casualties were in rifle units.
ALEX KERSHAW: For those who fought it, Hürtgen Forest was the most enraging defeat. Salinger experienced the defeat firsthand. The Germans inflicted well over twenty-four thousand casualties on American forces, in addition to nine thousand casualties due to fatigue, illness, and friendly fire. Salinger saw the futility and horror of that immense loss of life.
MACK MORRISS: Behind them they left their dead, and the forest will stink with deadness long after the last body is removed. The forest will bear the scars of our advance long after our own scars have healed, and the infantry has scars that will never heal.
EDWARD G. MILLER: The amount of artillery fired was so great that even today the German government contracts with a company to do explosive ordnance disposal work in the Hürtgen Forest.
Conversation with Salinger #3
BARBARA GRAUSTARK: Hardly anyone in a roomful of New York City cops recognized J. D. Salinger when he slipped into town by train from his hermitage in Cornish, N.H., to surprise ex–chief of detectives John L. Keenan, a World War II buddy, at a testimonial dinner in Queens. He struck one diner at Antun’s Restaurant as “just another gentleman”—tall, graying, slightly stooped at 59, togged in a blue blazer suit. But his mellow battlefront memories of Keenan (“He was a great comfort in the foxholes. . . . In Normandy, he led us all in song”) moved the celebrants, and so did his outgoing manner. Said one, of the recluse’s return: “His personality has blossomed.”
JOHN L. KEENAN: [Salinger is] very normal. He’s a kind, sensitive man, a good person to be with, with a good sense of humor. Everything I know about him is good.
HELEN DUDAR: During the Keenan festivities, a friend of mine, a newspaperman who identified himself by name and trade, had a half-hour talk with Salinger. My friend recalls that he was dressed in well-made tweeds and that he was tall, slightly stooped, gaunt, extremely pale, and entirely gray—a time-eroded image of the luminously dark-eyed young man who allowed his photograph to appear on the jacket of Catcher for two editions.
Amiable but guarded, Salinger talked mostly about Keenan and the Keenan family, for whom he has great affection. The conversation was quiet, low-key. My friend does not know whether it was something Salinger said or something his manner conveyed; he remembers simply that he came away with the odd impression that he had just talked to a man who is “scared to death of not-nice people.”
DAVID SHIELDS: What strikes me about the Keenan dinner is Salinger’s singular devotedness to the cadre of soldiers with whom he served and escaped death. His family, his wives, his daughter, boyhood friends, literary friends, editors, fellow townspeople: he’d left them all long ago. But thirty-four years later he was willing to expose himself to strangers, even journalists, to relive and share the memories of Normandy with his former—and perpetual—comrades. It’s a remarkable statement of the deep impact the war had on him.
SHANE SALERNO: Salinger’s December 20, 1979, postcard to Paul Fitzgerald is addressed, thirty-five years after the end of the war, to “old veteran.”
5
DEAD MEN IN WINTER
LUXEMBOURG-BELGIUM BORDER, 1944–1945
The Battle of the Bulge, 1944.
The surprise German Ardennes counterattack infiltrates Salinger’s depleted 12th Infantry Regiment. Many units are cut off and wiped out. Salinger witnesses the massacre of two armies, the Germans now reduced to using child shock troops. He is a prime candidate to join the anonymous war dead.
J. D. SALINGER, excerpt from letter to Paul Fitzgerald, February 3, 1960:
There was a film on TV a couple of weeks ago, about the Battle of the Bulge. How the snow and the road and the sign-posts brought everything back to mind.
MARTHA GELLHORN: They all said it was wonderful Kraut-killing country. What it looked like was scenery for a Christmas card: smooth white snow hills and bands of dark forest and villages that actually nestled. The snow made everything serene, from a distance. At sunrise and sunset the snow was pink and the forests grew smoky and soft. During the day the sky was covered with ski tracks, the vapor trails of planes, and the roads were dangerous iced strips, crowded with all the usual vehicles of war, and the artillery made a great deal of noise, as did the
bombs from the Thunderbolts. The nestling villages, upon closer view, were mainly rubble, and there were indeed plenty of dead Krauts. This was during the German counteroffensive which drove through Luxembourg and Belgium and is now driven back. At this time the Germans were being “contained,” as the communiqué said. The situation was “fluid”—again the communiqué. You can say the words “death and destruction” and they don’t mean anything. But they are awful words when you are looking at what they mean.
STEPHEN E. AMBROSE: Hitler knew Germany would never win the war by defending the Siegfried Line and then the Rhine River [at Germany’s western border]. His only chance was to win a lightning victory in the West. It was almost certainly an unattainable objective, but if surprise could be achieved, it might work. Nothing else would.
WILLIAM L. SHIRER: Hitler realized that by remaining on the defensive he was merely postponing the hour of reckoning. In his feverish mind there emerged a bold and imaginative plan to recapture the initiative, strike a blow that would split the U.S. Third and First armies, penetrate to Antwerp and deprive Eisenhower of his main port of supply, and roll up the British and Canadian armies along the Belgian-Dutch border. Such an offensive, he thought, would not only administer a crushing defeat on the Anglo-American armies and thus free the threat to Germany’s western border, but would then enable him to turn against the Russians.
ALEX KERSHAW: Salinger’s unit faced a fierce, ideologically committed enemy that was fighting basically to save the Third Reich. It came down to ordinary GIs, men like Salinger, fighting from foxholes in the worst winter in living memory.
Soldiers take defensive positions during the Battle of the Bulge.
U.S. ARMY HISTORICAL DIVISION: [The 4th] Division was by all accounts in poor condition for combat. All the rifle companies lost very nearly all of the men and officers with which they started the [previous] battle. Thus the division moved to Luxembourg with almost completely new personnel in the line companies. In addition, it was understrength about 1,600 riflemen, since no replacements were furnished during the last week in Hurtgen; many of the rifle companies were only about half strength.
SERGEANT ED CUNNINGHAM: In the first frantic days of mid-December, the newspapers called it Von Rundstedt’s Breakthrough in the Ardennes. Then, as the American line stiffened and held from Elsenborn to Bastogne, it became known as the Battle of the Bulge. In between that time it was probably the most frightening, unbelievable experiences of the war.
COLONEL GERDEN F. JOHNSON: The enemy’s plan was simple and startlingly clear. In order to secure the main road through Echternach, Lauterborn, Scheidgen and Junglinster toward Luxembourg City, 20 kilometers away, all the towns in the 12th’s sector facing the Sauer River and the Siegfried Line had to be taken. Because of the average distance of from three to five kilometers between these towns, it was impossible to prevent the enemy penetrations from surrounding them and cutting off the forces which were in them.
ALEX KERSHAW: The Nazi surprise was caused by lousy Allied intelligence; the generals bungled terribly, misreading and disregarding field intelligence reports. It was the Allies’ worst intelligence failure of the Second World War. The battle began with the Americans on the run. They were taken completely by surprise on the 16th of December 1944. Over 200,000 Germans attacked them.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: There’s been a complete breakthrough, kid. This thing could cost us the works. Their armor is pouring in. They’re taking no prisoners.
COLONEL GERDEN F. JOHNSON: The front ran for nearly thirty-five miles along the west bank of the Sauer River and the Moselle River, and all three regiments were in the line. Because of its large sector and a shortage of equipment, communications were strained. [The 4th Division’s] artillery was scattered and shells were scarce. Its attached tank battalion, which had also taken heavy punishment in the Hürtgen Forest, was trying to repair its tanks in spite of an acute shortage of parts. One-fourth of its tanks were stripped for cleaning; many others would not run. The battalion had only twenty-six tanks which could be considered operational. The 4th Division, in other words, was in no position to fight.
ROBERT E. MERRIAM: Roaring cannons along an eighty-mile front served as the alarm clock for thousands of sleeping American troops that murky morning. It electrified men who felt safe in the assurance that theirs was a rest area. Commanders and their staffs tumbled out of bed, to eye with wonder the flashes of the distant artillery and listen, amazed, to reports from their outposts. They didn’t wait long; shortly after six o’clock, the first reports were hastily relayed back to the command posts that through the early morning dark could be seen German infantry, moving forward slowly in that characteristic walk. Behind them snorted the tanks, ready to roar through the gaps cleared by the infantry. In at least one instance, the infantry were driving a herd of cattle before them to detonate any mines which might have been planted in the earth by defending troops.
ALEX KERSHAW: Taking advantage of the cold, foggy weather and the total surprise of the Allies, the Germans penetrated deep into Belgium, creating a dent or “bulge” in the Allied lines. The temperature in the Ardennes during 1944–1945 was the coldest on record [below-zero temperatures]. What remained of Salinger’s division was resting on what turned out to be a front line for the German attack. The members of Salinger’s division were widely dispersed. What emerged out of the fog was hallucinatory.
PAUL FUSSELL: It was dark and it was foggy when the boys, stomachs paralyzed by fear, first saw shapes moving silently toward them, and then, as the shapes advanced, they saw the white snow garments and unique helmets of the German infantry, psyched up to kill them all. In the ghastly weather, you either fought back a bit against the bayonet and the grenade or you took off. If you were wounded outdoors you froze to death within a half hour.
COLONEL RICHARD MARR: The initial German attacks rolled over or around all the outposts on the 12th Infantry’s front without any difficulty, which was inevitable in view of the strength of the German forces. The Americans held their fire until the German lines were fully exposed, then opened a concerted surprise fire of machine guns. [The Germans] cut [the American forces] to pieces, while the riflemen in the houses picked off the forward ranks.
DANNY S. PARKER: The experienced German infantry penetrated the 12th Infantry Regiment in the early morning hours on either side of Echternach.
ALEX KERSHAW: During the most intense parts of the battle, guys Salinger knew were too afraid to fall asleep in their foxholes because they’d freeze to death. It was the last great gasp of Nazi Germany, and the American soldier took the brunt of that attack and held.
Soldiers stay low during the Battle of the Bulge.
JOHN TOLAND: The Battle of the Bulge was the greatest pitched battle ever fought by the United States; it’s the only major struggle in the dead of winter. It was as great in scale as the Battle of Stalingrad—over a million soldiers and thousands of civilians were actively involved. Unlike any other campaign in World War II, it was conceived in its entirety by Adolf Hitler. It was his last great offensive, his last great gamble.
STEPHEN E. AMBROSE: To provide the will, Hitler counted on the children. The German soldiers of December 1944 were mostly born between 1925 and 1928. They had been deliberately raised by the Nazis for this moment, and they had that fanatical bravery their Führer counted on.
ALEX KERSHAW: Suddenly and overwhelmingly, detached American units, including Salinger’s 12th infantry, were fighting an enemy as young as fifteen, as old as sixty. Hitler threw everything at them—German weapons and munitions were diverted in massive quantities from the Eastern Front to the Ardennes—because it was Hitler’s last chance to gain control and end the war in the West on his terms. Salinger and the remainder of the post-Hürtgen 12th regiment were isolated because they had been spread along a thirty-five-mile front. The isolation, coupled with the intensity of the German attack, bred the fear that if they caved in, if this went badly and they were completely overrun, the war could turn again
st them, the gains of D-Day rolled back. The ghosts of Hürtgen reemerged. A whole division enveloped by the enemy? It was not beyond the realm of possibility during the opening hours of the battle.
DEBORAH DASH MOORE: In the snow, fog, and dire cold, units like Salinger’s 12th were suddenly cut off from each other by German advances into and through their lines.
COLONEL GERDEN F. JOHNSON: The Germans had infiltrated to a depth of four kilometers into the lines of 12th Infantry Regiment and had isolated it company for company.
ALEX KERSHAW: All the GIs could do was stand and hold or run. Many small units fought to the bitter end. For an entire month, Salinger’s 4th Division fought in one of the fiercest and bloodiest campaigns of the war.
The record cold in the Ardennes created accumulating problems. Trucks had to be run every half hour or the oil in them would freeze. GIs took to urinating on their weapons to thaw them out.
DEBORAH DASH MOORE: One GI described the routine that he would use. He had three pairs of socks, and he would wear one pair on his feet to keep his feet warm; he would wear one in his helmet for his head, and he would have the third one in a pocket to try to dry his head off. He rotated these socks each day because he was very worried about frostbite, which was, along with trench foot, a huge problem.
In the brutal cold, soldiers receive rations.
MARGARET SALINGER: My father said that no matter what, he will always be grateful to his mother, who knit him socks and sent them to him in the mail, each and every week, throughout the war. He told me it saved his life in the foxholes that winter; he was the only guy he knew with dry feet.
EDWARD G. MILLER: You pray that you’re not another one of those anonymous casualties, because the casualty rate was enormous. The U.S. Army almost ran out of infantry replacements in late 1944.
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