To Hell and Back
Page 27
I walk on down the trench.
“All right, Rusty. What’s the matter?”
“Dey done battered hell out of us, lieutenant.”
“Well, let’s batter them back.”
“Dey done trow everting over but deh gun barrels.” His voice sounds like that of a child who has been wrongfully punished.
“Come on there, man. Quit saving the bret.”
“Fix it up so I can get a court-marcher. De stockade would be a pleashuh.”
“I’ll speak to the general about if.”
Another shell passes over. Rusty cringes as it explodes against a second pillbox.
“Dey be trowin’ Hitler in poisern over in a minute. Dey done trow everting else.”
“It’s our own tanks.”
“Well, tank ’em for nuttin. We done got hell beat out’n us.”
“It’s all in your mind. Come on, Rusty. Save the bret.”
I continue along the edge of the trench, insulting and pleading. Of the officers, only a second lieutenant remains. He is very young; and his eyes are staring and haunted. I can see that he is in as bad shape as his men.
“We’ve got to get out of here while the gettin’s good,” I say.
“To the rear?”
“No. You’ve got to go forward.”
“I don’t know whether the men can take any more.”
“They can take it. Can you?”
“I can take it.”
We coax the sergeants out of the trenches; and one by one the men follow. I have never seen a more thorough psychological beating. They glance anxiously about the terrain; and their movements are shaky and uncertain. It looks like a mass collapse of nerves. I would like to pull them back for a rest, but I cannot. They have to move forward.
When the tanks drew no response from the pillboxes, I rightly assumed the Germans had abandoned them. We march straight through the Siegfried Line; and not a shot is fired at us. Nobody remembers when the krauts left. Under the terrible punishment, reality had been replaced by a phantom. But in the minds of the strained and exhausted men, that phantom was real–a common occurrence in combat.
I get the men under cover and tell the lieutenant to keep them there until contacted by other units. Then, retracing my steps through the maze of silent fortifications, I return to headquarters, where I find that I have not been missed.
Beyond the Siegfried Line, our forces consolidate; and the drive becomes like a great river pushing against a series of rotting dams. A dam breaks; and the torrent lashes onward until it hits another obstruction. Between the major points of resistance lie gaps protected by lines so thinly held that locating the actual front is often difficult.
After we cross the Rhine, the dike crumbles; and a flood of men and arms pours over Germany. Even the most fanatical Nazis must now see that the game is up, but they still dupe the people with the promise that further resistance will bring a negotiated peace, rather than an unconditional surrender.
If they still want war, they can have it. With victory in our grasp, we do not soften. Our artillery levels whole sections of towns. Flames lick over burning buildings. Infantry and armor prowl rubble-strewn streets, and blood flows needlessly in the gutters.
After the battle lines roll on, windows drip with white flags. If a house fails to show the surrender token, we do not knock on the door and say, “Please.” We simply rip its windows with machine-gun fire to point out the oversight. The method is most effective.
Near Munich my jeep pulls up to a prison camp. I step through the gate with pistol drawn and come face to face with a German guard. He flinches; but before I can pull the trigger, an American yells, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot, lieutenant. He’s a good joe.”
“Have you gone soft in the head or the heart?”
“No. No. I’ve been here more than a year; and he’s always treated us decently.”
A good joe? Maybe he is. I cannot see men any more. I only see uniforms. I return the pistol to its holster.
“Tell him to turn himself in to the American authorities,” I say to the interpreter.
There follows a brisk conversation in German. “He’s afraid to go out on the streets,” the interpreter explains. “He thinks he’ll be shot. He wants to know if the prisoners will testify that he never mistreated them.”
“That’s up to the prisoners.”
“He was okay,” the newly liberated prisoner insists. “I’ll testify to it if necessary.”
“Tell him to relax and wait here then. Nobody’s going to hurt him, at least not yet.”
The interpreter translates. The German mumbles something and stumbles toward a pair of steps.
There is something pathetically human about his odd, hobbled walk. What it is I do not know. Perhaps it is the knowledge that we carry in our hearts that nobody ultimately wins. Somewhere we all go down. Force used tyrannically is our common enemy. Why align ourselves with it in whatever shape or fashion.
Now comes the picture of mass defeat, the most awesome spectacle of the war. It is in the bent bodies of old women who poke among ruins seeking some miserable object that will link their lives with the old days. It is in the shamed, darting eyes of the defeated. It is in the faces of the little boys who regard our triumphant columns with fear and fascination. And above all it is in the thousands of beaten, dusty soldiers who stream along the roads toward the stockades. Their feet clump wearily, mechanically, hopelessly on the still endless road of war. They move as haggard, gray masses, in which the individual has neither life nor meaning. It is impossible to see in these men the quality that made them stand up and fight like demons out of hell a few short months ago.
Except for tying up the bag with formalities, the war is over. A number of us are granted rest leaves. The train on which we ride clackety-clacks toward the French Riviera. Early in the morning, it halts in a little town; and above the wheezing of the engine, I hear the ringing of church bells and strains of accordion music.
Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I go to a station-side window. On the platform is a group of American artillerymen, wearing faded ODs and muddy combat boots. They wait with the patience of cows. A red-faced sergeant, leaning on a Garand, draws imaginary patterns with the toe of his shoe.
“What’s all the noise about?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Guess it’s the news of the German surrender.”
“It’s official?”
“Yessir. Haven’t you heard the radio?”
“No. I’ve been riding since yesterday.”
“We’ve been on the move for a week. Looks like the South Pacific. That’s the big rumor anyhow.”
“Maybe you’re going back to the States.”
“Oh, no. We’ve just been over nine months. Where you headed?”
“For a leave on the Riviera.”
“No kiddin’! That’s where all them beautiful babes are supposed to be, ain’t it?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Well, if you find an extra blonde, give her my address. General Delivery, South Pacific.”
“I’ll do that.”
“And slug one down for me, lieutenant. If you can’t find a scotch and soda, I’ll settle for some of the shellack that passes for booze in this country.”
“Well, take it easy.”
“I couldn’t take it easier.”
As the train pulls out, I return to my compartment.
“Where are we?” asks a yawning infantry lieutenant.
“Somewhere in France.”
“I’ve been somewhere in France till I’m sick of it.”
“Yeah.”
“What goes on outside?”
“It’s VE-Day.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Somebody ought to holler,” says a pudgy quartermaster captain. “I haven’t got the energy.”
“You shouldn’t have from the way you’ve been snoring. Has anybody got an eye-opener?”
“You shouldn’t drink before breakfast. Ruin your stomach.”
“Why? I don’t feel any joy bells ringing in my heart.”
“We want to sit here like a bunch of clucks with the war over and everything?”
“We’ve still got Japan.”
“So what? How about some poker? Anybody like to pick up some easy change?”
“I never play poker before breakfast. Bad luck.”
“Where the hell did you get that idea?”
“From a one-armed madame in South Bend. She lost her life savings to a traveling salesman. Had her cards before her coffee. I tell you it’s bad luck.”
“Speaking of women,” says a graying engineers captain.
Clackety-clackety-clack. The train races onward.
In the Cannes hotel, I crawl into a tub of hot water and wallow around like a seal. Knotted muscles snap loose; and my eyes droop.
“Hey, there. You want to drown yourself?” My roommate, the restless lieutenant on the train, pauses in the middle of his shaving. “If you want to drown yourself, do it with champagne.”
“I didn’t know a body could get so tired.”
“I’m out on my feet too. But a few snorts will fix that up.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to take this town apart. You want to come along?”
“No, I’m going to hit the sack.”
“Well, get out of the tub, bub. We’ve got a couple beds with sheets and everything, you know.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“Okay. But remember, this burg’s loaded with soldiers. If you want a dame, you’ll have to hustle.”
When I awake from the nap, it is mid-afternoon. From my window I can see the gulls wheeling over the Mediterranean and white breakers lapping the beaches. A hum comes up from the crowded city streets; and somewhere an orchestra is playing “Lili Marlene.”
Turning to my pack in search of a necktie, I spy my service pistol. Automatically I pick it up, remove the clip, and check the mechanism. It works with buttered smoothness. I weigh the weapon in my hand and admire the cold, blue glint of its steel. It is more beautiful than a flower; more faithful than most friends.
The bells in a nearby cathedral start ringing. I toss the gun back into the pack and seize my necktie.
In the streets, crowded with merrymakers, I feel only a vague irritation. I want company, and I want to be alone. I want to talk, and I want to be silent. I want to sit, and I want to walk. There is VE-Day without, but no peace within.
Like a horror film run backwards, images of the war flicker through my brain. The tank in the snow with smoldering bodies on top. The smell of burning flesh. Of rotting flesh too. Novak rotting in a grave on Anzio. Horse-Face. Knowed an old girl once. The girl, red-eyed and shivering, in the Naples dawn. And Kerrigan. Kerrigan shuting cards with half a hand. He was far luckier than Antonio. Yes, Antonio, trying to stand on the stumps of his legs with the machine gun ripping his body. And Brandon dead under the cork tree. Deer daddy, I’m in school. “I’ll never enter another schoolroom,” says Elleridge.
He was right. It is as though a fire had roared through this human house, leaving only the charred hulk of something that once was green.
Within a couple of hours, I have had enough. I return to my room. But I cannot sleep. My mind still whirls. When I was a child, I was told that men were branded by war. Has the brand been put on me? Have the years of blood and ruin stripped me of all decency? Of all belief?
Not of all belief. I believe in the force of a hand grenade, the power of artillery, the accuracy of a Garand. I believe in hitting before you get hit, and that dead men do not look noble.
But I also believe in men like Brandon and Novak and Swope and Kerrigan; and all the men who stood up against the enemy, taking their beatings without whimper and their triumphs without boasting. The men who went and would go again to hell and back to preserve what our country thinks right and decent.
My country. America! That is it. We have been so intent on death that we have forgotten life. And now suddenly life faoes us. I swear to myself that I will measure up to it. I may be branded by war, but I will not be defeated by it.
Gradually it becomes clear. I will go back. I will find the kind of girl of whom I once dreamed. I will learn to look at life through uncynical eyes, to have faith, to know love. I will learn to work in peace as in war. And finally–finally, like countless others, I will learn to live again.
About the Author
AUDIE MURPHY was the most decorated American soldier during World War II. He went on to a long film career, starring in The Red Badge of Courage, The Quiet American, and his own To Hell and Back. He was killed in a plane crash in 1971 at age forty-six.
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark
of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 1949 by Audie Murphy, © 1977 by Pamela Murphy
Foreword copyright © 2002 by Tom Brokaw
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
115 West 18th Street
New York, New York 10011
eISBN 9781466826380
First eBook Edition : July 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Murphy, Audie, 1924–1971.
To hell and back / Audie Murphy ; foreword by Tom Brokaw.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : H. Holt, 1949.
ISBN 0-8050-7086-9 (pbk.)
1. Murphy, Audie, 1924-1971. 2. World War, 1939-1945—Personal narratives, American. 3. Soldiers—United States—Biography. 4. World War, 1939-1945—Europe. I. Title.
D811 .M87 2002
940.54’8173—dc21
2002017232
First Owl Books Edition 2002