Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir Read online

  When the shooting stopped we give him water despite instructions that this was not a good practice for men shot in the stomach. But this man had also taken bullets through the lungs and elsewhere. His gray tunic was soaked red and he was far, far beyond being hurt by a sip from a canteen.

  In that little battle skirmish the first man I had personally known became a Killed in Action statistic and the war also ended for five other members of Charley Company. Sergeant Adolph Lucchesi was killed trying to get close enough to a machine gun position in the woods to throw a hand grenade. Lucchesi worked in a little bar in Chicago, an amiable, kind, and fun-loving man. I wondered then, and wonder now, if the machine gunner who killed him was the blond boy who played the harmonica. After that skirmish we were no longer quite so young.

  That forty-hour longest day of mine had a few more hours to run. Before it was over it produced a sort of “rite of passage” for me in which I had to decide—without really understanding how crucial that decision was—what sort of fellow I was going to be.

  We had cleared the wooded ridge where Lucchesi died. On the slope above St. Dié we again waited in vain for rations to arrive. We found a partially harvested field of sugar beets, dug some, and found they’re edible if you’re hungry enough. It is twilight now. We stumble down the slope into the edge of the smoky city and settle into a warehouse, wet, hungry, cold, and exhausted. Rest at last, I think, and untie my bedroll—which has reverted from soggy to merely damp. “Saddle up,” the platoon leader shouts, and we’re off again—up another hill and down it and away to lend a hand to Able Company in a fight it was having.

  The route brought us to a steep embankment above a narrow road—a matter of slipping and sliding. It was raining again. I was hungry, filthy, miserable, aware that war was not what I’d expected, at the absolute end of my endurance. The ankle I had torn up as a kid in a jump out of our barn loft to demonstrate how paratroopers did it was still weak. I remember standing at the top of that slope, looking down at the road below, aware of the weight I was carrying and knowing that all I had to do to escape this nightmare, to get food, rest, a warm bed, etc., was to jump and land with that questionable ankle turned in. It would break and I’d be out of there.

  This business of soldiers making their separate peace wasn’t unheard of. Morick told me one of our comrades had handed him his rifle and asked Morick to shoot him in the hand (“I told him to do it himself”). Our company had at least two cases of men courtmartialed for self-inflicted wounds, but a broken ankle wouldn’t provoke punishment. Why didn’t I do it? It had nothing to do with patriotism, or how badly it would hurt. I think it was because I didn’t want to miss whatever lay ahead, or I didn’t want to go through life knowing I was a sissy.

  11

  Crossing the Vosges

  Of what lay ahead in the dying days of that autumn I have only an episodic memory. Some weeks are almost totally blank while some days come flashing back vividly with full-color details, complete with sounds, smells, and even that perpetual sense of soggy clothing and cold feet. Mostly I recall endless walking, endless cold rain, and occasional dives into roadside ditches when we received harassing fire from German artillery and the brief but exciting flurry of shooting when we ran into roadblocks.

  Among my clear memories is trudging up a narrow and very muddy dirt road, the night made darker by the rain and the dense fir forest. A Sherman tank was clanking up the road, doing maybe four miles an hour—lights off of course. A BAR man was two men ahead of me, too far for me to see exactly how the accident happened. But suddenly he produced an ear-shattering scream and the rifleman behind him began pounding on the side of the tank with his rifle butt and yelling for it to stop which—if you understand how tank treads operate—was the worst thing it could have done. The screamer’s boot had slipped into the path of the tank and the tank had flopped one of its tread sections down on the boot. That tread now was immobile and would so remain until the tank, putting down tread after tread, had rolled its own length and picked up the one on the BAR man’s foot.

  Where did this happen, or when? I have a single clue. The thirty-ton tank only shoved the victim’s boot into the mud, causing painful bruises but only enough to get him a day or two at an aid station. That means it happened early enough in our part of the war so the earth hadn’t been frozen to iron and late enough so we knew the BAR man would have been luckier if he’d had some foot bones broken. That would have given him at least a long, warm, well-fed hospital rest—perhaps even a trip home. (Vietnam war policy sent one home after twelve months in combat and World War II Army Air Force flight crews earned a transfer home after flying twenty-five [sometimes thirty-five] combat missions. In the infantry in World War II, the only way to get home alive was to be wounded seriously enough to be no longer repairable for return to combat.)

  In the later months of the war a point system was devised for time overseas and decorations earned (a purple heart was worth five points and so were the “gallantry” decorations). I never heard of anyone in a rifle company staying healthy long enough to earn the eighty-five points required. On average an infantryman in a line company lasted about five months before he was killed or wounded badly enough to be shifted into a safer environment—such as a rear echelon unit.

  Another of those indelibly vivid memories came on a sunny morning—worth remembering if only for the lack of rain. We were in the east slope foothills of the Vosges Mountains, a grassy open slope, a narrow dirt road with a rock wall on one side. We were sprawled beside it, waiting, listening to the sporadic sound of small arms fire up ahead and salty enough now to know that B Company was on the battalion point that day and happy to let B Company deal with it. We were content to simply rest.

  Then we hear the cloth-ripping sound of a German machine gun very near. The sound seems to come from a stone house—the top of which we could see down the slope a couple of hundred yards from our road. We’re covered by both roadside embankment and the wall. No sweat. Somebody who gets paid to decide what to do about such things will either tell us what to do, or won’t. We wait. Time passes. More firing from up ahead. Another burst from our nearby machine gun. A man from one of the rifle platoons trudges up the road past us, carrying a BAR. He turns off the road through a gateway in the wall, down a path which leads toward the house, and disappears. We listen. We hear the machine gun again and the slower pounding of the BAR. Then silence. The word comes to saddle up, fall in, and move out. As we do we see the BAR man trudging back up the trail toward the road, his weapon over his shoulder. It was an odd incident, weird in fact, but so much else was going on that I didn’t think much about it at the time. In fifty-plus years of quieter times I’ve wondered what happened at the house and what provoked this man to take that lonely little semi-suicidal walk in the sun. Had he reached the same slough of despondency which had once caused me to considered escaping the misery by breaking my ankle? Perhaps he’d decided he’d rather suffer a nine mm bullet or two now than suffer through more wet, cold, weary days waiting for something as bad or worse to provide relief. But the clouds had parted and the morning was bright. On such days hope overcomes reality. Perhaps he was simply a hero.

  Later that sunny afternoon we came to the point where we could finally see out of the mountains and into the great openness of the Rhine Valley. But before we could get there we had to get past the charming little road-junction town of Itterswiller, now one of the loveliest gems of the French Department of Tourism’s wine country route.

  The last time I saw it I was with Marie. It was a late summer day in the 1980s. Itterswiller’s window boxes were glorious with geraniums and its streets were jammed with the cars of tourists. The first time I saw it was on a cold November morning from the wooded ridge to the west. From there you could see only its vineyards, the row of stone buildings that line the entry road, and no sign of life. It looked like trouble, and the trouble had already started.

  12

  How to Get a Bronze Star Without Kno
wing Why

  Having read about what U.S. Army historians call the Battle for the High Vosges, I now have at least a vague idea of what we’d been doing that rainy autumn. Itterswiller and the portion of the High Vosges we had been pushing through was held by the 716th Panzer Grenadier Division, an armored infantry unit provided with tanks, self-propelled artillery, and so forth. A grunt in the infantry is the absolute authority on the conduct of the war in a radius of about twenty yards in every direction from his foxhole, and absolutely ignorant of everything outside his line of vision. Standing on that ridge looking at Itterswiller through borrowed binoculars, I had no idea that our battalion was the point of the Seventh Army plan to drive through Saales Pass into the Rhineland, thereby cutting off four German divisions.

  The thinking behind this strategy was that since this section of mountains had no roads to support tanks, artillery, and the trucks needed to haul such things as ammunition or food for soldiers the enemy would not expect such a maneuver. Thus the mountains would be, as the military historians phrase it, “lightly defended.”

  Which was how it worked. We had encountered mostly hasty roadblocks and delaying actions by units which, like us, had no armor or artillery support. Not many casualties except among the rifle squads, which got picked to be the point at the wrong time. And here we were, the First Battalion of the 410th Infantry, Charley Company on the ridge to the left, Baker Company across the narrow valley on the ridge to the right, looking out through the trees at the vineyards of Itterswiller and the Promised Land. Success! We had “enveloped” the 716th Panzer Grenadiers.

  The way Barney and I and our friends at Sacred Heart played our war game, the 716th was supposed to pick up its marbles now and quit. It didn’t. While defense of the mountains had been light, defense of Itterswiller was heavy. Luckily for us in Charley Company, Baker had got there first.

  The table of organization of a German Panzer Grenadier Division shows it having two battalions of 105 mm howitzers, one battalion of 150 mm howitzers, plus an “antitank” battalion, which meant those awful high-velocity 88s. From where we sat on what we came to call Charley Hill most of these guns seemed to be established somewhere behind Itterswiller and most of them were blazing away at the hill that Baker Company was holding.

  Judging from the small arms fire we’d been hearing across the little draw, Baker had run into much more serious opposition than we had on our side of the declivity. Their hill was wreathed in the smoke of exploding shells while our patch of woods was receiving only a now-and-then round—just enough to add vigor to our foxhole digging—and we are experienced enough by now to dig them in the open, safer from the lethal “tree bursts.” We hunker down and wait—knowing absolutely nothing about where we are, what we’re doing there, or what happens next. Something bad had happened to Captain Neeley, the lieutenant leading our platoon. He had been wounded earlier and not replaced, and a sergeant was running things in our part of the war. We dig and wait and wonder what the hell is going on.

  That wonder is soon intensified by the sound of gunfire from the slopes behind us. Who is shooting at whom? Rumors fly. My old friend Bob Huckins walks up to my hole, cool as always. Bob is part of headquarters company, Captain Neeley’s runner, and—in Army parlance—his dog robber. Huckins has been dispatched to our position with instructions from our platoon sergeant to pick up a volunteer and go back to company headquarters and find out what is happening. Specifically the sergeant wants to know why we are hearing that gunfire behind us as well as from up front. Huckins suggests I go along with him. Why not? The last shell had exploded in the trees about forty yards to the right—getting a little closer. Taking a walk rearward with Bob seems a good idea.

  Huckins believes that company headquarters was in a large stone farmhouse and barn back in the narrow valley between and behind Baker and Charley hills—and Huckins knew an easy route. We walk down the ridge toward the rear, where a path angled down the slope to the house. It’s a beautiful late afternoon, the sun slanting through the trees, the great granite boulders lining the ridge casting long shadows. A faint breeze brings us the noise of the shellfire hammering Baker Company and the occasional crash of a howitzer round exploding on Charley Company’s position. But if you are young and healthy it takes little effort to convert that noise into nothing more troublesome than, for example, a bunch of trains coupling in a railroad yard. Thus, you make the war go away.

  Alas, it doesn’t stay away.

  Huckins stops. Points. Two Germans are sitting on the ground in the cluster of boulders perhaps forty yards ahead, their backs against the stone. One has spread out a cloth on a rock and seems to be cutting a slice from a long, fat sausage. A backpack radio is on the ground beside them—its antennae extended. Huck and I edge discreetly out of sight. Back in Fort Benning, Huck had shot an almost perfect score on the rifle range. He is carrying an M1. I am carrying a .45 caliber pistol, good to make fighter pilots and field grade officers feel like warriors but useless in combat beyond rock-throwing distance. We hold a whispered conference. Shoot them or take them prisoner? Either way we get their sausage. Huckins’s time among the officers at headquarters had made him conscious of the importance of taking prisoners—especially when we have no idea what’s going on. And neither one of us liked the idea of killing these picnickers. We will slip around behind them and make the capture. We begin this stealthy maneuver, rifle ready and pistol cocked. We reach the chosen position. I look out from around the boulder. The radio is there but the men and the sausage are gone. Just then a bullet whacks into the boulder, spraying my face with bits of rock. Germans are coming up the path from the farmhouse. How many? No time to count since they are shooting at us.

  Churchill’s remark about the exhilaration of being shot at and missed proves true. We run. One of the two radiomen reappears now and shoots at us with his pistol but sprinters racing through trees and boulders are hard to hit. By the time we reach the Charley Company perimeter our friends have surmised that maybe they are surrounded. Their rifles and machine guns now swivel to the rear. In other words, at us. But they recognize our shouts, welcome us home, and await the arrival of the trouble we surely have drawn down upon us all.

  Nothing happens. With twilight the German artillery calls it a day. Rumors spread—one being the obvious truth that while we are enveloping the 716th Panzer Grenadiers, they are enveloping us. Riflemen in foxholes down the hill send up word that they have been hearing the rumble of tanks in the valley behind us—extremely unpleasant news. We hear that all of the officers in Baker Company have been killed or wounded but that what’s left of Baker is holding its hill. We hear that Lieutenant Boyle, our artillery forward observer, has crossed the defile to Baker Hill and taken command of what’s left of Baker. We hear that Captain Neeley had been wounded and had been taken to the aid station at company headquarters. We hear that a German panzer unit has captured company headquarters, including our captain. Twilight deepens. We guess that the Germans whom Huck and I had surprised at their lunch were forward observers for the German artillery, directing the fire on Baker Hill. That seems logical and explains why we haven’t been shelled more heavily. What sane soldier would call down fire where long rounds would be hitting him? A rumor spread that we have been surrounded. It happens to be true but, being a born optimist, I scoff at it. The sergeant who has taken charge of our hill in the absence of any officers had long since had us arranged in a defensive perimeter. Then things get even weirder.

  We hear a motorcycle puttering down the road from Itterswiller toward us. It stops, starts again, and rolls on below us toward our company headquarters farmhouse. Gene Halsey and George Rice, whose machine gun positions are on the slope above the road, send up word confirming that it was indeed a motorcyclist and they hadn’t shot the fellow because they have no idea what’s going on. That ignorance is short-lived. Again we hear the motorcycle, the sound of tanks, and shouting voices. The message is: “Don’t shoot. We’re prisoners.” A column of our compadre
s is being marched down the road below us (shielding the tanks in the process) to spend the rest of the war as German POWs. Halsey, Rice, and the others dug in on the slope above the road can only watch—not that .30 caliber machine guns and rifles could dent tanks even if they’d been crazy enough to shoot.

  We spend a nervous night. Dawn comes and the rumors thicken. Company headquarters had indeed been captured, or was it battalion headquarters? The German tanks and infantry we had bypassed in our rush through the mountains had surrounded the farm buildings behind us yesterday afternoon. They had captured the battalion medicos who were patching the wounded in the building, plus headquarters personnel, and the battalion’s Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon. Captain Neeley, in the process of having a leg wound patched, had jumped out of a window and escaped into the woods, sans shoes and trousers. The tanks rolling past us from the rear during the night were escorting prisoners, including the walking wounded, into Itterswiller.

  Morning comes. Quiet. No artillery. Huckins shows up at my foxhole again. The sergeant is sending a little recon patrol into Itterswiller. The Germans have withdrawn, he tells us, pulled out of the village during the night. Those in charge just want to make sure. Come along, Huckins suggests.

  Having written the above, I find myself stuck—staring at the computer screen and reexamining my memory. What happened next seems unlikely and irrational. How can I expect a reader to believe it when I can hardly credit it myself—and I was there doing it. I said okay, or something to that effect, and climbed out of the hole and went—more or less as a volunteer although I hate to admit it. More likely the platoon sergeant had added me to the list of volunteers and sent Huck to give me the bad news.