Prisoners of War

by C. Alexander London

The American pilots would go to bed tonight with no idea that they’d nearly killed a whole lot of American GIs. I guess they’d also saved our lives at the same time. Savior and killer were about a razor’s width apart when it came to war.

  I became pretty sure then and there that I’d just as soon be done with war forever. I decided that if I got Goldsmith and myself back to safety and made it through the rest of this war alive, I’d do my best to spend my life back home in peace, out in the desert in a comfy little place where the snow never stuck and I’d never try to prove anything to anybody again.

  “You sprung me, vato,” Goldsmith said.

  “You remembered your Spanish, you yutz,” I said right back.

  He laughed even as it hurt him to laugh. I could see the pain he was in, and I still had my medic’s bag with me underneath my German coat. Goldsmith shivered, so I took the coat off and wrapped it around his shoulders.

  “Take that off me,” he said.

  “You’re freezing,” I said.

  “I’d rather freeze than wear a Nazi coat.”

  Goldsmith was idealistic. I thought he was being pretty foolish. Better to use the coat of the guys that wanted to kill you than to die of frostbite just to spite them. I left it on him and he was too tired to shrug it off. Next I pulled out an ampoule of morphine and shot it into Goldsmith’s leg.

  “For the pain,” I told him.

  He nodded and rested his head against the tree, his eyes going a little glassy as the medicine kicked in.

  “So, what was with you and that dog?” he asked me.

  I told him about how I woke up in the foxhole and everyone was either dead or gone; how I found the dog and figured he could help me; how we hadn’t trusted each other at first, but had come to get along; and how he’d really been the one to stop the train.

  “You used a Nazi dog to save me,” said Goldsmith, laughing. His laugh came out wheezy and started him coughing. When he recovered, he nodded. “That takes some chutzpah.”

  “Chutzpah?”

  He smiled. “You’ve got guts, is what I’m telling you, vato.”

  “Not me.” I rubbed my hands together to warm them. “I just followed the dog.”

  We heard the popping of machine-gun fire and shouts in German and in English coming through the woods.

  “We’ve got to keep going,” I told Goldsmith. “We’re a long ways behind German lines. They can still recapture us.”

  He nodded and I helped him up. The ground was wet and uneven, and it was hard for me to walk carrying most of his weight. Every time he put his bare feet down on the snowy ground, he grunted and winced. We only made it about ten steps before he collapsed and we both tumbled down.

  “This isn’t going to work,” he said. “I won’t make it. You have to leave me.”

  “Now you’re being a yutz,” I said. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll go back to get some boots.”

  “Where are you going to find —” he started, but then it dawned on him. Dead men need no boots. I was going back to the train to take a pair. Goldsmith sighed. “Some war, huh?”

  “Some war,” I agreed. “Stay here.”

  I ran back to the train tracks, keeping as low as I could, weaving between the trees. Machine guns crackled in the distance. They made me think of chattering teeth. When I reached the edge of the woods, I stopped and ducked behind a tree. I peeked out to make sure it was safe. The train engine billowed black smoke into the sky. The whole back half was burning with bright orange flames, and several of the cars lay on their sides in the white snow.

  It was a total wreck. There was no way new trains could pass by until the track was cleared. The Germans wouldn’t be able to move supplies and weapons around this way for a while, but that also meant that any new prisoners the Germans took would have to go on foot. Of course, after this escape, they might decide that taking prisoners was more trouble than it was worth. The thought made me shudder.

  I looked over the rows of bodies lying in the snow. It was a strange feeling, trying to decide whose boots I should steal. I felt like a grave robber.

  I saw one of the SS officers facedown in the snow. His boots were tall and thick. They looked like they were lined with some kind of fur. I was amazed at how much better the German Army’s equipment was. Unlike us, they’d been ready for winter.

  I raced out, half-crouched, and I threw myself down to my knees beside the dead Nazi. I began to untie his boots. I yanked the first one off and moved on to the second without pausing to think about what I was doing. Just a few short days ago, the thought of being so close to the dead, of touching them and tearing off their shoes, would have been unimaginable to me. Now, the unimaginable seemed ordinary. I’d love to say that I felt bad about what I was doing, but I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t feel anything. I just did what I had to do to save my friend.

  Once I had the second boot off, I tied them both together by the laces so I could carry them over my shoulder, and I stood to make my way back to Goldsmith as fast as possible.

  That’s when I heard the growl behind me.

  I froze.

  “Yutz?” I said without turning around.

  “Grrrrrr.” The low rumble again.

  I dared a glance over my shoulder.

  It wasn’t Yutz.

  The large German shepherd stood less than five feet from me. I hadn’t even heard him approach. His whole body was rigid; the hair on his back stood up, and he lowered his head for an attack.

  “Easy … easy,” I said, remembering too well when Yutz had almost torn me apart. And that was just to teach me a lesson. I didn’t think this dog had any lessons in mind. I was the enemy, and he was still a soldier. He wanted me dead.

  The dog sprang at me. I tried to dive out of the way, but there was no escaping him, and the full weight of the animal crashed into my back, slamming me to the ground. He had knocked the wind out of me, and I gasped for air and squeezed my eyes shut. I waited for the horrible feeling of sharp teeth tearing into me.

  Suddenly, there was a snarl and a loud yelp as someone tackled the big dog. I heard a commotion just to my side, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a riot of teeth and fur, spittle flying and the vicious sounds of a dogfight. Yutz and the German shepherd were locked in bloody battle just a foot from where I lay.

  Helplessly, I watched them roll.

  First Yutz had the other dog pinned and reared his head back to bite the German shepherd’s neck. His lips pulled back and his fangs flashed in the sun, but the other dog bucked beneath him and escaped. He snapped at Yutz and swiped at him with his claws. Their faces met; their teeth tore each other’s cheeks. The snarls and the barks were wild, like wolves.

  Each of them was deep black with brown snouts and paws, and though their bodies were shaped differently, in the tangle of fur and fury, I had trouble telling which dog was which. The black of the fur shined wet and when one dog would roll or fall, he’d leave a bright red streak in the white snow. My heart ached to help Yutz.

  I stepped forward, but the dogs rolled and snapped and I couldn’t get close enough to interfere.

  Suddenly, I saw Yutz twist and clamp his jaws down on the other dog’s leg. A terrible yelp went up, so loud and sharp it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  The German shepherd fell. He tried to stand, but he couldn’t support his own weight. Yutz had broken the dog’s leg. They were both dripping blood from their mouths and panting hot breath into the cold air, but Yutz could still stand.

  He circled and the big dog snarled at him, turning, trying to keep his face toward Yutz, but his wounds slowed him down. Yutz’s ears, though torn and bleeding, still pointed up like devil horns. He was ready to strike. He growled.

  The other dog looked away from him. He whimpered and then he lay down and rolled onto his side, exposing his belly to Yutz. He’d surrendered.

  For a moment, I thought Yutz would charge at him and rip him open from the gut. I closed my eyes. I didn’t think I could bear to see such
horror.

  When I opened my eyes, Yutz had hobbled forward with his head bowed, his ears tucked back. He went right up to the other dog and licked his face. He circled him once and then, without any objection from his enemy, he lay down beside the other dog and rested his head across the German shepherd’s stomach. He started licking the wounds that he had caused.

  I remembered what Michel had told me: “Dogs are not like people. They do not hate.”

  I watched them together, and I wondered if the German shepherd would let me get close enough to see to his wounds. I was a medic, after all. I had some bandages. Maybe I could save him. Goldsmith would be fine for a few more minutes. He’d have to be. I couldn’t just leave the dog here to die. There had been enough death for one day.

  I moved forward slowly, my arms open.

  Yutz looked up at me, his dark eyes wide, and he whimpered. He was hurt too, I could see it. But his tail wagged as I approached.

  “I think I gave you the wrong name,” I told him as I got closer. “You’re not a yutz at all.”

  The German shepherd panted heavily now. His tongue hung from his mouth and I could see at least five places where he was bleeding. He growled at me as I approached, but an almost-silent snarl and a quiver of Yutz’s lip told him what was what and the German shepherd hushed up. He’d lost his fight and now he had to let me help him.

  I pulled some gauze bandages from my shoulder bag, and just as I was about to lay the first one across the big dog’s chest, I heard a loud snap by my ear. I ducked and three more came quickly.

  SNAP, SNAP, SNAP.

  Yutz yelped and fell backward and the German shepherd on the ground flailed once.

  It took me a second to realize that the snaps were gunshots.

  Everything moved in slow motion. I reached out to Yutz, to touch him, to hold him, to help him, but another SNAP exploded into the snow right between us, and I dove back and rolled to see where the shots had come from.

  The Nazi dog handler had just killed his own dog rather than let me help him. He’d shot Yutz too. Now he took aim at me, the barrel of his pistol smoking. I saw his eyes blazing, the glimmer of the SS lightning bolts on his collar, and I rolled as he fired again. The bullet grazed my cheek with a sharp sting.

  I kept rolling. If he kept firing, I don’t know, but when I looked up he had tossed his pistol away and was charging at me with a knife in his hand.

  I hopped to my feet and raised my fists, ready to tear him apart. He’d shown no mercy to my friend or my dog. He wouldn’t get any mercy from me.

  This wasn’t war.

  It was personal.

  He swiped the blade at my chest, and I jumped back out of the way, but he kept swiping. He sliced open my shirt and stabbed at my heart. His lunge missed, and he fell off balance. I fought the desire to keep moving away from him and his blade. Instead I rushed forward so that I was too close for him to lunge at with the knife again. I slammed into his stomach and knocked his arm aside so that the knife fell into the snow. Then I brought my knee up as hard as I could. He doubled over in pain, and I delivered a sharp uppercut to his chin. The blow sent him staggering back.

  I thought I had him beat, and I moved in to knock him down with another punch, but he was no fool. He was carrying a second knife. The moment I stepped toward him, he flung it from his boot.

  It zipped through the air just slowly enough for me to see its point shine, but too fast to dodge it.

  The blade dug itself into my right shoulder. He’d been aiming for my neck, I guess, and he’d just barely missed. The knife hurt as it went in, and I felt the pain and tingling all the way down in my fingertips. I tried to lift my right arm. I couldn’t.

  I didn’t have time to pull the blade out. He charged and tackled me to the ground, pressing the knife deeper in, all the way to the handle, as we smashed into the snow. His fist cracked across my jaw and I saw stars. He rained punches down on me, and I couldn’t lift my hands to block them. My mouth filled with blood; my head spun.

  Images came to me in blurry fragments, like the pieces of a dream you remember for only a moment as you wake up. As soon as you catch them, they’re gone.

  I saw my father at the kitchen table, his tears when I told him I was going to fight the Nazis. I saw Goldsmith in his foxhole, smiling at me, asking if I spoke English, asking about fairy tales, shouting at me to get out of the foxhole to do my job, calling me a yutz. I saw the trees exploding with artillery fire, the terrible night I spent with the dead body of my sergeant, the dead body of the Nazi in the foxhole, and Yutz fighting to defend his fallen master. Yutz drinking water from the canteen in my hands. Yutz letting me sleep on his belly like a pillow. Yutz rising to attack the resistance fighters, Yutz leaping to attack the Nazi on the train, Yutz diving at the other dog, Yutz knocking the Nazi dog handler off of me.

  That last image didn’t vanish.

  It was no illusion.

  Yutz had risen and dived at the German, tearing him from on top of me.

  “Nein! Nein!” the man shouted, but Yutz did not obey him. He bit and tore at the German’s clothes, snapped at his arms as he tried to shove the dog off.

  He landed a hard punch across Yutz’s nose that sent my dog reeling. The snow turned red where he tumbled, and though he tried to get up again, his paws gave out. He fell. I could see the half a dozen wounds in his side, including a seeping bullet hole. Yutz had lost a lot of blood. He didn’t have any strength left in him.

  The dog handler climbed to his feet and reared back his leg to deliver a ferocious kick to Yutz’s head, a kick that would surely kill him.

  Despite the pain, I leapt to my feet, yanking the knife from my shoulder as stood. I screamed, but as I screamed I thrust my arm forward as forcefully as I could and I felt the knife go into the Nazi’s back. With all my strength, I shoved him to the side and, at the same time, I twisted the knife. He screamed as he fell and his feet kicked up into the empty air.

  He hit the ground and rolled once down the small slope away from the train tracks. The knife in his back stopped him from rolling any farther. His eyes were open, looking up at the sky, and his face held a look of surprise. He died like that, in the snow, surprised, as I stood over him, breathless and bleeding. I knew I had killed him and that everything I had learned growing up said killing was wrong. My training as a field medic had taught me to save lives, not take them. But I had done it, and I have to be honest: I didn’t feel bad about it at all. I didn’t feel a thing.

  Perhaps that’s the greatest horror of all. War doesn’t just kill and maim and destroy. It numbs, like the cold numbs, but in a deeper place. It numbs the feelings of kindness and mercy and remorse. It freezes the heart. My heart felt cold right then, and I wasn’t sure it would ever thaw.

  But when I turned to Yutz, I learned that my heart, though frozen, could still break.

  It shattered, and those shattered pieces cut. I loved that dog and I knew I could not save him.

  Yutz looked up at me, but lacked the strength to lift his head. He whimpered, and I bent down to touch him. My hand came away from his fur bright red.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re a good boy. It’s okay.”

  I dropped down next to him, holding him in my arms, petting him and whispering in his ear.

  I felt his breathing slow. I saw the brightness of his eyes grow dim, like a fire deep inside him had gone out, and a moment later, I knew my dog had died.

  I didn’t know the things that Yutz had done before he came my way. I didn’t even know his name. He’d fought with the Nazis, and maybe he’d done terrible things, cruel and bloody deeds against the innocent and the good. Maybe.

  But I’d seen with my own eyes what he’d done since I knew him, and I hadn’t a doubt that he died a hero, as much a hero as any soldier who ever fought in any war. It wasn’t a good war the two of us were in. I don’t know if there ever could be such a thing as a good war, but Yutz was a heck of a good dog in it, and that’s no small thing to
be. They don’t write biographies of dogs or build them memorials of marble in the capitals of the world, but they should.

  I wanted to bury Yutz, but my wound wouldn’t let me so much as move him, let alone carry him to a suitable place and dig a hole. Besides, I had to get back to Goldsmith. He’d be waiting and worried and freezing, and neither of us was out of danger yet.

  I stood and looked down on the black-and-brown mound of fur at my feet. I’d heard it said that dogs don’t have souls, so they can’t get into heaven when they die. Part of that was true. This dog didn’t have a soul.

  No.

  He was a soul. He had a body, and he’d let go of it at last. What became of the body didn’t matter, not to him. His soul was free.

  I smiled then, to think of that, and then I picked up the boots from the ground where they’d fallen, and I made my way back to my friend. Goldsmith and I had a long way to go, but I felt sure that we’d make it. We had a good soul to watch over us, the soul of a dog, and there’s no soul better.

  That’s about all there is to my story.

  When I went back to Goldsmith, Hugo was with him. He didn’t say anything, and I could see the streaks of tears in the dirt on his face, but he was a tough kid and he had some fight left in him. He offered to guide us to the Americans, and we followed him. It took us the better part of two days to make it back to the American lines.

  “Where will you go?” I asked Hugo.

  He didn’t understand me.

  “Your grandparents?” I asked.

  He still didn’t seem to understand, but he saluted and scurried away toward his ruined village, where I hoped his grandparents would be waiting for him. I never found out what became of him. There were a lot of stories like his in the war, unfinished stories.

  By the time we reunited with the American army, the tide of the war had turned. The GIs I had seen retreating along the road that one night had regrouped and attacked on the same day that the air force took to the sky again, the same day I’d led the rescue of the prisoners. They smashed the SS Panzer Brigade to pieces. By Christmas Day, American forces had stopped the German advance, and not long after that, the British and the Americans pushed Hitler’s army into a full retreat.