Shifty's War

by Marcus Brotherton

  After we grouped up, we hiked down the main road toward a town called Zon. You’d hear a machine-gun blast aimed our direction once in a while, but it wasn’t much. Mostly, we wanted to hightail it to a bridge that spanned the Wilhelmina Canal. That was our first objective, to make sure that bridge stayed safe. For some time all was just the jingle and clump of soldiers hiking down a road. I thought the countryside was a mite quiet. No birds. No wind other than a bit of breeze through the brambles. Maybe too quiet.

  One Lung McClung tramped out in front as our scout. Sometimes it’d be me as scout, sometimes it’d be him, but today it was him, you know. McClung walked a quarter mile ahead of us, his rifle aimed along the sandy road. I kept a clear sight line on him in case he hit trouble. McClung reached the canal and ambled across. As he neared the other side I glanced down at the river. It was shining blue and brown, flowing so peaceful, with little crests rippling up from the breeze. The rest of us were still thirty yards from the bridge.

  It felt like the air changed—like a storm had been brewing over the hills, and we walked straight into that storm. My eyes shot back at McClung on the bridge, and my jaw dropped. “Hit the deck!” somebody yelled. We heard a huge kuhBLAM! then blam!— a chunk of firewood landed six inches from my head. Stones and timbers poured out of the sky and thudded in the dust. The Krauts had blown the bridge.

  McClung was a goner. A huge lump worked its way up my throat and I fought to press it down. No way he could’ve survived that blast. We stayed flattened until the sky cleared, then stood up and fought to see past the smoke. Doggone, I nearly burst. There was ole McClung, grinning at us from the other side of the river. He told me later he’d flopped down behind a big ole shade tree as soon as he got across. Wanted to take a little rest, you know. That tree saved his life.

  Didn’t see no Krauts in the distance. I’m sure they were already running hard by the time the bridge blew. We still needed to get across that river. Gordy Carson jumped into the current, swam to a rowboat in the shallows on the other side, and brought it back. Some engineering-type fellas got in the boat and towed a line across. For the rest of the day we scoured the riverbank for planks to salvage, then built a makeshift bridge. The air turned cool and dusky. We dug foxholes, ate K-rations, and slept in shifts. Next morning, we splashed across. Strike one against us. We were supposed to hold that damn bridge.

  Up ahead lay Eindhoven. Our next objective was to make sure the town was secure. All of us in Third Platoon were out in front this time in a flanking position, hiking across open country. A replacement officer named Lieutenant Bob Brewer led the way. He was a big, tall officer and stood head and shoulders above a crowd. Ahead of us lay a stone building, maybe three hundred yards away. A light wind blew from the southeast. Visibility was clear. Bees buzzed. Seemed peaceful, yet a thin trickle of sweat went down my back.

  “We’re too exposed,” I hissed to Rogers, some distance away.

  He nodded. “Need to find some cover—quick,” he said.

  Crack! The side of the building smoked. Lieutenant Brewer was down. We flattened out, worked our triggers, and scanned the building to find the sniper. It was impossible to get a clean shot. Sergeant Taylor sprinted over to Brewer, looking for life, but the sergeant shook his head and shouted at us to keep going. Brewer bled from the throat below his jawline. We advanced at a crouch, still firing. A medic named Al Mampre must’ve not been convinced the lieutenant was dead yet, for he ran over, grabbed some plasma out of his kit, and shoved a needle into Brewer’s vein. A bullet cracked again. Mampre winced. The bullet peeled the flesh off the medic’s leg all the way to the bone. He grabbed his leg above the boot line and dumped sulfa on his wound. We grabbed cover as best we could and shot the hell out of the building. I didn’t see anyone inside. Some Dutch civilians ran out with a ladder and carried Brewer and Mampre to cover.

  McClung took over as scout and we continued toward Eindhoven. Private Don Moone walked with him. We came out of the field and reached a road. I heard a rumble in the distance. A German weapons carrier full of soldiers roared around the corner and swung into view. McClung and Moone stood dead center of the road and loaded a rifle grenade. The truck seemed to accelerate as it bore down on them. McClung and Moone fired at the truck from about twenty yards. The grenade blasted against the grill and exploded. A direct hit. The truck swerved, its engine on fire, and crashed into a post. Germans stumbled out and zigzagged up the road. We opened fire and scattered gravel. The soldiers ground to a halt and threw up their hands. We took them prisoner and sent them back to headquarters with a guard.

  As we neared Eindhoven, an old Dutchman squinted at our uniforms from where he stood alongside the road. He stepped toward us, his gait stiff, his eyes watery. Fishing deep inside his coat pocket, he took out an orange armband, the forbidden symbol of the Dutch resistance, and strapped it on. “I shall never forget this day as long as I live,” he said in stilted English, and broke into a huge toothless grin.

  That was just the start. As we walked into the city, a strange noise filled my ears. It was a mob, but they weren’t angry. I guess the Dutch didn’t much like being under Nazi occupation. They’d been that way since the war began five years earlier. Crowds lined the cobblestone roads, waving and cheering. The Dutch civilians held out trays of food for us—oranges, apples, pears, and honey. Did we want some hot tea? Care for a fresh glass of milk? How’bout a beer? We shook hands and posed for pictures. Young ladies kissed us. We signed autograph books like movie stars. For the rest of that afternoon we were swarmed with people, grateful we had come. We pushed through to the other side of the city, heading northeast.

  Some tanks rumbled up, heading to Nuenan. They slowed down long enough for us to scramble aboard. We rode for some time, then it grew dark. Don’t remember where we slept. We got up and kept going, still on tanks.

  When we reached the outskirts of Neunan, we scrambled off and hit the ditches. Brief fire broke out real sudden. All was yelling and explosions. Our tanks had a short skirmish with some German tanks. When the vibrations cleared, we started hiking through town, looking for Krauts.

  Each house had a backyard. Hedges separated each backyard from another. We moved cautiously, with suspicion, running at a crouch, eyeing anything that moved. Far away, two Germans climbed out of a second-story window and moved across a roof. They were closest to another paratrooper, but the other paratrooper’s rifle didn’t fire. Quickly, he field stripped his rifle on the spot and fixed the problem, but by that time, the Germans were gone. At least now we knew we weren’t alone.

  I hiked through a cemetery, jumped over a wooden fence, and hit the ground at a crawl. As I pushed through a hedgerow, I heard a German machine-gun burst a few rows over. Robert Van Klinken was pelted in the chest with three bullets and went down. Those closest to him pulled him to safety, but his face was ashen; he’d soon be dead. I hardly had time to notice when it happened, but later I remembered how I’d talked to him lots of times, and that he was a young mechanic from Washington State. All he wanted to do was go home, get married, and have a bunch of kids. Robert Van Klinken was kindhearted, always laughing, and then he was gone.

  Far away, I heard the rumble of more tanks. Johnny Martin yelled to watch out. He’d spotted a German tank hidden in the hay no more than a hundred yards away. Martin ran to an approaching British tank to warn him about the trouble that lay around the corner. The British tank commander stood with his head and shoulders exposed. I saw the tank commander shake his head. The British tank revved up and continued forward. Martin climbed off just in time. Wham! The German tank hit the British tank square on. It caught fire. Most of the crew scrambled out, pulling the commander out with them. The tank commander’s legs had been blown off.

  I didn’t have time to think. A machine gun cut loose in front of us, biting into the dirt to my left. More fire to my right came from a rooftop. Still more fire came, but I wasn’t sure from where. I ducked for cover, glanced up, fired my weapon, ducked down, glan
ced up, and fired again. Nearby chugged a driverless burning tank. It plowed into a power pole, knocked it flat in a shower of sparks, and kept going. I emptied clips, one right after the other. A man went down to my right. Another man ran to help him. He was gunned down. The town seemed ablaze in noise and explosions. From somewhere, an order came to fall back.

  We dashed to the outskirts of town, found the backs of some idling trucks, climbed aboard, and rode back toward Eindhoven. Fellas sat with their hands on their knees, panting, spitting. I lit a cigarette, my hands shaky. Four dead, someone muttered, eleven injured. When I looked back at Nuenen, I knew that the Germans had overrun the town. I didn’t like retreating.

  Things went from bad to worse. That night, from our foxholes far outside the city, we looked down the road the other direction at a fiery orange sky. The Germans were bombing Eindhoven, the city we’d passed through earlier with so much celebration. It was a very, very bad night.

  We picked up and went on. Next came a little town called Veghel; that was a hard day for us, mighty hard. We were on both flanks of the British when the Germans attacked. We fought back with all we had, but the Krauts came at us with all kinds of stuff—half tracks, artillery—I don’t know where they got it all from. We fired and fired, then sprinted into an apple orchard next to a crossroads, dug slit trenches, and took shelter behind trees. That proved a mistake. The Germans shelled us with huge iron blasts. The sky rained jagged pieces of red-hot metal. Shrapnel sliced and burned through branches, and the branches clumped around us. Holes in the ground proved little cover against artillery like that. After six hours of shelling, black craters dotted the earth. Finally the sky grew quiet. I felt helpless and shaky. Dusk hit, the air turned cold, and a light rain began to fall. Our grimy uniforms turned wet. We were cold and miserable.

  I guess around then is when things started to become fuzzy for me. What I mean is I never lost my sense of hearing, never lost my sense of eyesight, but I lost a sense of how one day flowed into the next. I’d wake up in my foxhole, eat a K-ration, make sure my rifle was clean, get orders, and go. Sometimes we gained a foothold. Sometimes the enemy did. At night I dug another foxhole, ate another K-ration, closed my eyes, and tried to sleep. Life became a blur of battles. Rain continued to fall, and we all knew the main road wasn’t secured. The British weren’t sailing smoothly up to Germany like we’d hoped. The war wouldn’t be ended by Christmas, that was for sure.

  Weeks passed. Nights grew frosty, and the earth was hard in the mornings when we got up. We’d been fighting in Holland maybe six weeks when a jeep came through with a mailbag. I was happy to see my sister’s familiar handwriting, but the first part of her letter nearly stopped me cold.

  My brother Jimmy’s carrier, the USS Gambier Bay, had been sunk over in the Pacific, she explained. My sister first found out about the disaster in the newspaper. She didn’t want Mama or Daddy to find out and worry, so she hid the newspaper between the mattress and bedsprings. A few days later, the family was out shopping. When they came home, the postmaster had let himself in the house and propped a telegram against the sugar bowl on the kitchen table. The postmaster knew everyone well enough in Clinchco to let himself in like that. Everyone in the family saw that telegram and suspected the worst. I stopped reading the letter long enough to wipe my eyes, then kept reading. Fortunately, Daddy opened the telegram and Mama read it aloud. It contained one line, probably the most beautiful phrase the family had ever heard:BE HOME ON SURVIVORS LEAVE. STOP. JIMMY. STOP.

  I let out a huge lungful of air. He’d spent two days in the open sea before being rescued. My brother was still alive. The letter came as a welcome respite from all that was around me. It had other bits of news in it, too. The basketball scores from the last few Clinchco High School home games. News that Mama had decided to decorate for Thanksgiving anyway that year, in spite of three of her sons being away at war. Home. I read the letter over and over, but day-to-day life on the battlefield continued to blur. They trucked us to this place called The Island. It wasn’t really an island, more a bunch of dikes set up with grassland between them. Lots of fighting there. Lots of patrols. A man never had a chance to change his clothes or take a bath. We all stunk.

  You always needed to move after dark in Holland, because it was mostly level country, see. One night, don’t know where we were, a lieutenant said to me, “Sergeant Powers, you get two guys, run across that dike over to the edge of that field, and set up a listening post.” Now, a listening post is so you can hear what the enemy’s doing. If trouble’s afoot you can call back to your unit and let them know.

  I got two guys, younger replacements, and we went out in the dark. We scrambled over some barbwire fences, cursed our way through nettles, waded across a ditch filled with scummy water, and got to where we needed. “Watch the bushes, and see that they don’t move,” I told the guys. I sat down only to jump right up again. One of the younger fellas was jumpy and had fired his M1—pow, pow, pow—making a heap of noise. “Where are the Germans?” I asked. He pointed to three bushes. “That’s just bushes,” I said. “Grab your gear.”

  We were in trouble now, and ran to the other edge of the field. We jumped into another ditch, and sure enough, the Germans had figured out where the gunfire had come from. They fired a few artillery rounds right where we’d been. I told the fellas to shut up from now on. We patrolled around another two hours or so, but never did see any Germans. So we went back.

  Another evening, McClung and me went out on patrol together. We heard some German tanks rumbling around so we decided to get the hell out of there and report back to our outfit. As we hiked along, a German plane came down low, strafing all around. Darkness was setting in, but it was still light enough to see. That pilot took a pass around, and McClung said, “Damn it, Shifty, I’m getting sick of this.” He aimed his M1. The next time the plane came by, McClung shot a bunch of holes in him. Now, an M1’s a fine weapon, but there ain’t no way a man could shoot down a plane with it. Still, I’ll swear to this day that McClung shot down the Red Baron. That was getting one on base for us.

  A week or two later we came up to this little town. It was late in the afternoon. The Germans were holding the town, and our aim was to take it back. The officer in charge decided we needed to wait until daylight to do it. It wasn’t absolutely dark yet, and a jeep with two American soldiers busted through our lines on its way to headquarters. Up the road, the Germans stopped the jeep and took those two soldiers prisoner.

  I was down in my foxhole when all this happened, and one of my guys came over, explained the situation, and hollered, “Shifty, two Germans are walking down the road holding two Americans. Come get ’em.” So I went up to take a look and oh, it was a turkey shoot, you know, real simple shooting to take out those Germans and set those Americans free.

  I lay down on the ground, aimed my rifle, and took a bead on the German on the right. I figured, I’ll shoot him first, then switch over and shoot the one on the left. Then I got to studying the situation. If I shoot those two Germans, the Americans will be out in the open, and the town’s filled with Krauts. They’re bound to hear the shots, see their men down, and they’ll shoot the two American prisoners before they can run to cover. So I just debated and debated, and watched them walk out of sight.

  Well, the next day we took the town, and drove out the Germans, killed a few, and got some American prisoners back. I hoped that some of those released prisoners were the two Americans I saw on the road. But I never knew for certain.

  A while later it was my turn with my squad to go up on the dike and watch all night. A levee ran between there and the river, and we needed to keep our eyes glued to it to make sure the Krauts didn’t come across. Well, before it got dark, I memorized everything in front of me, left to right. Two willow trees. Three. An old stump. A little shoal of rocks. Five clumps of shrubs, and so on.

  Next morning I rubbed my eyes, looked, and looked again. A tree had appeared that wasn’t there the night before. I called b
ack to the command post, and of course they told me to go check things out. So I hiked over real quiet and saw German hobnail boot tracks and a place in the mud where a machine gun had been set. That new tree had been set up to camouflage a German outpost. Fortunately, the Germans had come and gone during the night, so the upper brass decided to let it go. Once the Krauts found out that we knew about it, they weren’t going to come back.

  About that time, maybe it was earlier in the fighting, Sergeant Taylor got into a motorcycle accident on Hell’s Highway, that road that snaked up to Germany, and got sent to the hospital again. Along came a new officer to lead us in Third platoon, Lieutenant Ed Shames. Now, some of the fellas didn’t care for the new lieutenant on account of the way he barked orders and liked things kept shipshape. But Lieutenant Shames had received a battlefield commission after Normandy and knew his stuff. We got along okay. Lieutenant Dick Winters got moved up to battalion headquarters right about then, so he wasn’t around as much, which I didn’t enjoy. Lieutenant Fred Heyliger assumed command of Easy Company, but he was shot on Halloween night by one of his own men who mistook him for the enemy. A highfalutin officer named Lieutenant Norman Dike assumed command of Easy Company. The fellas called him “Foxhole Norman” behind his back, because he was gone so much. Him being gone a lot was fine by me.

  Must have been a week or two later, Lieutenant Shames said to me, “Sergeant Powers, get your squad and go down this road. A German patrol is supposed to come through here tonight.” So I got the guys ready, took our machine gun, and went out. A squad is normally twelve men, but a few of ours weren’t around. If I remember correctly we had eight men, maybe less. We got to where we were going, set up the machine gun, sat there all night, and never did see any Germans.