by Leo Litwak
“This is my home, also.”
She put on a negligee and followed me into the other room. They were at the table, wearing what looked like military discards. The tan army jackets were French, the pants GI fatigues. The boots looked like military issue. Annie, almost Bernard’s double, not so tall, wore no makeup except around her eyes.
Bernard said mockingly in English, “I regret if I have disturbed you, monsieur.”
“You don’t disturb me.”
“I should be a more gracious host. After all, you have come to liberate our country. Perhaps you did not know my home is not in need of liberation.”
“Tomorrow he returns to the war,” Marishka said.
I hadn’t come here to fight battles and didn’t need him to be gracious. In any case, Bonne nuit.
Marishka walked me out into the hallway. “They told me they would be working all night.”
No problem. I had to go anyway.
She asked, “You will write to me?”
“I will write to you.”
She told me the address on the rue du Bac. I had nothing to write with, but was sure I’d remember. We embraced, kissed, and I was on my way back to the war.
CHAPTER 7
< SONGS OF WAR >
There was good news on all fronts. The Allied armies were at the Rhine. The Luftwaffe was diminished and we had control of the air. The Russians, squeezing hard from the east, had crossed into Poland and were aimed toward Prussia and Berlin. The war in Europe would be over once we met the Russians.
I rejoined the company in a resort town on the west bank of the Rhine. It had been easy going all the way, no casualties. The medic who took my place wasn’t needed. No one even remembered his name.
Worrying about the platoon had troubled my leave. I didn’t know who would be dead or alive when I returned. I was afraid I’d have to join a morning assault as soon as I got back. But there was the company by the Rhine, disengaged and idling on a breezy, sunny day, waiting for a bridge to be repaired.
I gave Maurice all the details when he asked about Paris, even Marishka’s “ooh la la” and how she looked on the bidet.
“Sounds terrific,” he said. He liked the idea of a Sorbonne student hustling at the Moulin Rouge. He liked the idea that she surveyed the scene before choosing her clients. He liked the image of her sitting on the bidet in full view. He liked the faking of innocence. “Sounds like my kind of woman,” he said.
I told him there was no faking. She was really a student. She roomed with other students, Bernard and Annie, in an apartment on the rue du Bac near the Seine. The hotel where she worked was called Hotel de l’Avenir, Hotel of the Future, and lying in her arms, I could imagine my future.
He listened carefully, then offered his verdict. “You’re probably just one of a thousand, greener than most. My advice is, next time play it safe and use a rubber.”
“Talking to you is a stupid idea. I don’t know why I keep doing it.”
“I’m kidding, Doc. The Future is a great name for a hotel. There’s no better future than to be wrapped up in pussy.”
I wrote Marishka, trying to stabilize a feeling that was ill defined to begin with and became something else as I talked about it. I couldn’t remember the rue du Bac number and addressed the letter to Mlle. Marishka at the Hotel de l’Avenir. I had no last name and no street address and didn’t know if there was any chance the letter would get to her. I told her I’d never forget our two days together and hoped she would also remember. I promised to look for her in Paris. At the end of the letter, I said, “I love you,” knowing it couldn’t be true, but the words generated the feeling I wanted. I held the letter a couple of days, then decided if I had the nerve to face shell fire, it should be easy enough to make a fool of myself and I gave it to the mail clerk.
THERE WERE CHANGES in the platoon. Sergeant George, a gruff New Englander, had come from the Third Platoon to replace Lucca. He was a no-nonsense soldier, Captain Dillon’s kind of man. There was a new squad leader, Corporal John Novak, a heavy-chinned farmer from Wisconsin: easygoing, likeable, slow to judgment. Novak knew about Lucca and the rockets. He told me if anyone deserved a leave it was me and he hoped I’d made the most of Paris.
I told him that when I came up from under Lucca I was in shock and nothing seemed real and it stayed that way until I met Marishka.
He said that a couple of good days in Pig Alley would cure anyone’s troubles.
“It doesn’t cure my big touble,” I told him, “which is that I talk too much.” I couldn’t shut up about Marishka. I thought the feeling of joy would stay with me if I kept talking. We avoided talking about Lucca and he faded away.
TWO OTHER REPLACEMENTS came to the platoon while we idled at the Rhine. They were both named Jones, one called Roy, and the other Frank. Novak called them the Jones Brothers, an obvious joke since even at first meeting you could see they were polar opposites.
I warmed up to Frank Jones but it wasn’t easy being with Roy. Roy was the skinny Louisiana kid I saw kill two German prisoners in a gully outside a German village. He came to us from the Second Platoon. He looked like a minister, spectacled and severe. Frank once called him a minister of death.
Roy had a surprising voice. When the clerk yelled, “Jones!” at mail call, he boomed a resonant, “Hyo!,” his voice heftier than himself. Roy was avid for hometown news. There was always a bundle of mail for him. When he got hold of the Bayou Sentinel nothing could distract him.
“What you reading about, Roy?”
He was glad to let you know. We had plenty of time during that week by the Rhine. He was reading about ergot, a mold that infected dry oat grass and made sheep crazy. He was reading about a tomato blight that could ruin a crop overnight. There was more than farm news in the Sentinel. The hometown weekly mirrored Roy’s faith, which was passed on to us in the form of his likes and dislikes.
Roy didn’t like commies because they were against God and property. He didn’t like Nigras from up North because they didn’t know their place. He didn’t like Krauts because they were the enemy. He didn’t like the Japs because they were not only the enemy, but rabid. He didn’t like the Frogs because they had sex like animals; didn’t like the Limeys because they thought they were superior when in fact, said Roy, they weren’t worth shit. He didn’t like New Yorkers because they were out to fleece country boys and other good Americans. He especially didn’t like Frank, the other Jones, whom he suspected of being a Nigra-loving commie New Yorker.
He waited for you to react to his litany so he could determine if you were friend or foe. I should have been listed among those Roy Jones didn’t like. We had nothing in common, neither music nor food nor racial attitudes, certainly not politics or religion, but Roy had decided that I was only Doc, an unarmed medic, above the fray, the same order of being as a judge or a preacher or a civilian or a woman, and, therefore, no competition. It was irrelevant to him that we were the same age and that I had no advantage in experience.
He liked Generals MacArthur, Patton, and MacAuliffe because they were tough as iron. He respected Captain Dillon and Lieutenant Klamm because they weren’t bullshitters. He liked country people and other plain folks. He liked his state, his small town, and his Jones clan on one side and his Riley clan on the other. He got along with Maurice Sully because Maurice had a great voice.
In time I learned that Roy’s loyalty to those he decided were friends was unconditional. He was ready to share his rations and loot, offer advice on how to deal with homesickness, sexual anxiety, and farm problems such as sheep intoxication and tomato blight. He was respectful when he spoke of women he considered decent. He regarded prostitutes as disposable property. You paid for her, she’s yours, do what you want.
He entertained us with country wisdom and song, such as a country blues song he called the “Trifling Song,” delivered lugubriously and accompanied by a twanged guitar. It was about cheating women. “I wouldn’t trust a one,” the song says. “She’ll trifl
e on you,” and, “Lord, you’ll nearly lose your mind.” The only way to keep her from trifling was to “lock her up at night and watch her closely, too.”
I asked Roy whether any woman had ever trifled with him.
“No one ever trifles on me, Doc. Ever.”
Roy didn’t allow any trifling and that meant, I think, he couldn’t bear any challenge to his point of view. Anything alien to him was a threat he wouldn’t permit.
If I hadn’t seen what this skinny country boy could do when provoked I would have dismissed him as a fool. He defied good sense every time he opened his mouth. If you could feel superior to Roy you might find him merely ridiculous, you might ignore his goofy ideas and even see that in his odd way he could be good-hearted and generous. But I had seen Roy kill two German captives in a gully outside a German village within fifteen yards of me, and I wasn’t inclined to take him lightly.
FRANK, THE OTHER JONES, was older than most of us. His dense mustache and burly frame gave him a buccaneer appearance. He had joined us late because his radical politics had made him an undesirable recruit. He was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, presumed to be a member of the Communist Party. He had persisted in trying to volunteer for our war and was finally allowed to join—what he alone in our outfit called—“the war against fascism.”
Frank Jones didn’t get mail, because he was no letter writer. He left his Brooklyn home during the depression, still a kid. He never stayed at an address long enough to establish a base for correspondence.
In 1937 he volunteered to join the Spanish Loyalists. He was smuggled from France across the Pyrenees, given a uniform and weapon, sent, after one day’s rifle instruction, into battle outside Madrid. He claimed that of the four hundred American recruits who fought at Jarama only eighty came through alive and uninjured and he was among the chosen.
When later we marched into a German village on the other side of the Rhine, Frank sang a song of the International Brigade in a German learned from his Brigade buddies. “Die Heimat ist weit,” he sang, concluding with an explosive, “Freiheit!”
Lieutenant Klamm asked Frank what he was singing. “An ode to freedom,” Frank said, and translated, “Our homeland is far, yet we are prepared, to battle and conquer for you, Freedom!”
The lieutenant asked what homeland he was talking about.
“The homeland of freedom lovers.”
“Get a different tune for this war, Jones. Why don’t you try something like, ‘Skinnamarinkydinkydoo’?”
Frank irritated me as my father sometimes irritated me. He declared himself when no one asked. He put himself center stage in an abrasive way before anyone had challenged him. The men might have accepted him despite his background. Once they got to know him they were ready to discount his offbeat point of view. Frank didn’t want to be discounted. He sang the Lincoln Brigade songs defiantly, as if he were in an enemy camp. The attitude was, this is what I believe and you don’t, so fuck you.
He listened to the story of my Paris leave and it didn’t trouble him that Marishka operated as a prostitute. He knew what it was to have to hustle in hard times. He was impressed with her generosity.
“Look for her when the war’s over,” he told me. “She sounds like one in a million.”
It was exactly what I wanted to hear.
Roy hated the German songs. He said of Frank, “He’s all talk and none of it’s American.” He asked Frank, “Whose army you in, anyway?”
“The army of free men, comrade.”
“Don’t call me ‘comrade,’ you Red fuck!”
“How about ‘asshole’ then?”
Roy mistook me for a friend and so didn’t bayonet me when I squeezed between them.
Maurice had a far better voice than Frank’s, and he countered the ode to freedom, with some verses of Casey Jones. The penultimate verse went:
Ole Casey lined a hundred women up against the wall
Bet ten dollars he could frig ’em all
Frigged ninety-nine and he had to stop
’Cause the friction on his pecker made his balls red-hot.
I warned Frank that if he wanted to be around to see the end of fascism he’d better not light fires under Roy. There was no lid to restrain Roy once he started boiling over. I told Frank about the killings we’d witnessed.
Frank wasn’t impressed. “I met shitheads like Roy before. He is not unique.”
IT WAS ALMOST spring when we crossed the Rhine. The crossing turned out to be easy, nothing like the Sauer. Germany had disgorged all that it had swallowed of Europe. We had arrived in the German heartland and there were clear signs the war was near its end. The German prisoner of war, once exotic, was suddenly commonplace. A single GI, M1 slung over his shoulder, could march a company of docile, despondent PWs to the rear without worrying that any of them would try to escape. Where could they go? Behind us, their land was ours. Behind them, the vengeful Russians were coming. Hungry, dirty, tired, the Germans were now as accustomed to defeat as they once had been to victory. It gave us a different sense of German soldiers, whom we had once considered awesome predators—well clad, well armed, well disciplined, red in tooth and claw. Now they were flock animals, indistinguishable from each other. It was rare that we singled one out.
We did find one who clearly stood out while vainly trying to lose himself in a bedraggled squad of prisoners. He resembled a Hollywood version of a Nazi villain: tall, blond, blue-eyed, aloof. He had stripped himself of unit insignia but you could tell from his bearing and the quality of his clothes that he was an officer. He wore a braided overseas cap rather than a helmet. His gray jacket was tailored, his pant legs puffed out over burnished paratroop boots. His hands didn’t shoot into the air when Lieutenant Klamm yelled, “Hands Up!” I translated in the same tone, “Hände hoch!” He slowly raised his hands chest high. He smirked when Roy patted him down, as though he knew the whole repertoire of intimidation and scorned our timid efforts. I say “our” because I felt the same outrage as the other GIs at his reluctance to acknowledge he had been defeated. He was what we feared and hated.
Lt. Klamm asked if he was SS.
He smiled, shrugged, said mockingly, “Nicht verstehe.”
The Lieutenant told me to ask in German.
“Sind sie SS?”
He said he was a prisoner of war and would answer questions about his name, rank, serial number, nothing else. “Gar nicht anders.”
“I don’t give a fuck about his name, rank, or serial number. I want to know if he’s SS.”
“Ich muss nicht antworten.”
“He says he doesn’t have to answer.”
“Tell him to take off his jacket. I want to see if he’s got a tattoo.”
He folded his arms, not about to take off his jacket. Roy, who was standing by, clicked off the safety of his rifle and leveled it at his chest. He shrugged, removed his jacket.
“He maybe don’t understand your kraut,” Roy said, “but he sure knows my M1.”
“Now the shirt,” the lieutenant ordered.
“Jetzt das Hemd.”
“Was wollen sie?”
We wanted to see if he was SS. We wanted to know if he belonged to the crew that had slaughtered GI prisoners of war, wiped out the Czech city of Lidice and all its inhabitants, tried to empty Europe of its Jews.
He refused to take off his shirt.
The lieutenant said if the man didn’t show him there was no tattoo he’d assume it was there.
“Okay,” he confessed in British-tinged English, “I am with the Schutzstaffel. So what?”
He knew “so what.” Why else was he trying to bury himself in the crowd? It wasn’t till later that I imagined the fear behind his defiance. He knew what he would have done on the other side of the gun. He was doomed yet obliged by his discipline to preserve a façade. We would have found the tattooed insignia on his upper arm anyway.
The lieutenant left for a company briefing without, as far as I know, giving orders disposing of the pr
isoners. They were all marched to the rear except for the SS officer. Roy took charge of him. He prodded him into the woods with his rifle. We didn’t hear any shots. A few minutes later Roy came out of the woods alone and raised his rifle high, exposing the bloody butt plate.
He’d stamped the man out, ruined his good looks and clean uniform, erased his sneers.
Frank said, “Maybe there got to be Roys. I just wish they stayed on the other side.”
• • •
WE WERE OUT of practice at facing danger. We rarely advanced anymore on foot. We drove into towns in two-and-a-half-ton trucks, expecting German soldiers to be assembled for surrender. We were beginning to adjust to the idea that the war would be over sooner rather than later. Home was in the offing. We were out of rhythm with combat when we came to a small village and met camouflaged German tanks at the edge of town. There were two tanks and they cut loose with machine-gun fire. We groveled in the furrows of a plowed field in sight of the town. Not all of us groveled. Roy lay on his stomach in a furrow, deep into his hometown news. Dirt kicked up around him, and he kept reading, and I realized that alone among us, he lacked fear. Not that he’d overcome fear and reached a nobler condition, but that somehow his imagination wasn’t large enough to provide ground for fear. That made him all the more intimidating.
The German resistance didn’t last long. Artillery was called in and the tanks took off with the first barrage. Mortars dumped on the German trenches. White flags came out. We entered the town without suffering casualties. We called on the villagers to head toward the church, and strolled easily through the town. There was a rifle shot, and we scattered; the lieutenant yelled at us to get back in line and behave like veterans instead of green recruits.
We were pissed off at having been made to feel green, and when a scout found a shallow cave in a hillside at the edge of town where the shot might have come from, we let happen what happened.
Fisher, the light machine gunner, set up at the mouth of the cave with his team. Someone inside yelled something I couldn’t make out. Perhaps they were trying to surrender. Fisher was quick on the trigger and opened up and raked the cave and kept on firing and when it was over I found six dead German soldiers and one still alive, a bullet hole between the eyes. Fisher was nervous about what he’d done and wanted us all to be part of it. He called to me to come out of the cave. “Nothing you can do for him, Leo. He’s finished.”
