The snow was crisp, you know, and I worried about the little crunch it made every time we set a foot down. I was out in front as scout and we were some distance away from our foxhole when I noticed movement ahead of me that didn’t look like wind. Working closer to another tree, I ducked down, motioning for the others to do the same. A man with a hooded padded parka shuffled around in the snow, maybe a hundred yards away. With his right hand he carried his assault rifle at the trigger. Over his left shoulder he’d slung a Panzerfaust 60, a big rifle-like tube able to shoot a hole through a tank. Two other men milled about nearby: one sitting and smoking, one standing and fidgeting with his ammo belt. A group of five other Germans worked near a clump of trees maybe fifty yards back, hauling boxes of ammunition and supplies, I guessed. I’d seen enough. I worked my way back to Popeye and Sergeant Taylor.
“So, that confirms it,” Sergeant Taylor said slowly, after I’d told him what I’d seen. “The Krauts are our next-door neighbors, all right.” We turned around and headed back to our hole, expecting the worst.
We went on more reconnaissance patrols that afternoon. Didn’t see anything then except some smoke in the distance. That night me and another fella were sent to the edge of the woods, to the outpost foxholes. He’d sleep for a spell while I listened, then we’d trade off, and so on, every two hours throughout the night. It got miserable cold in that listening post. That boy I was with, well, might have been two in the morning and he decided he’s gonna have a smoke, so he sparked up his lighter. Nearly lit up the whole sky, and I dang near walloped him. I’m sure the Krauts were watching us, but nothing happened. Maybe they were taking a nap.
The next morning greeted us with another scoopful of soup by the jeep, a little less food than the day before, a little colder. Another patrol happened that morning. Another that afternoon. A few days went by that way. Patrols in the day. Outpost at night. Sometimes we’d see some Krauts and they’d see us. We’d fire a bit and they’d fire a bit, but it wasn’t much. Sometimes at night they started up their tanks. They didn’t sound like they were moving anywhere, just rumbling the engines, trying to scare us.
A few mornings later there was no soup by the jeep, just a box of K-rations per man. I ate my crackers and Hershey bar with a gloved hand then headed back to my foxhole and tried to nap. Ten minutes later I got sent out on a patrol and heard a rifle crack but it wasn’t nothing. A few hours later I came back. I kept my spare change of socks around my neck so they’d dry from body heat. Snow had melted into the leather of my boots, and my feet were soaked. I took off my wet socks and put on my dry ones. Even my dry ones were a little damp. For a moment I got to studying my feet, sockless in the snow. They were bone white, with little hints of black beginning at the toes. I put my socks and wet boots back on and lay down. I didn’t sleep.
A few hours later, Sergeant Taylor slid by and told me to go out on patrol again. I never dreamed of refusing an order, you know. I grumbled a bit, but I never refused an order. I hiked out into the woods with a few other guys, listening for every snap of a twig. Don’t know what was wrong with my head this time. Every few feet I kept shaking the fog out of my ears. My eyes wanted to close. Sounds buzzed all around, but it wasn’t nothing important. I fought to stay alert. We kept hiking. We heard a few shells every once in a while, a few rounds from a rifle. But it was mostly quiet.
Some days passed. I don’t remember the date, mid-December maybe, but me and two boys were out on patrol. The mercury had dipped even lower. Coldest winter in Belgium’s history, said someone, and I guessed he was right, because that winter wind sliced straight through our jackets as we worked our way through the woods.
We were some distance from our foxholes when we heard a sudden snap and a buzz through the air. I knew a German 88 shell had been fired our direction. There were no holes near us. No good cover to speak of. We flattened ourselves against the snow and mashed our faces into the frost. The shell landed twenty feet away with a thud. It stuck into the ground and stayed there, straight up and spinning. Must have spun for five minutes. Then all was quiet.
A huge swallow went down my throat. I stood up, brushed off the snow, and glanced at the other guys. The shell was a dud. They stood up after a bit, and we kept going, working our way through the trees again. I got to studying about that shell and wondered who’d made it in the factory. Probably slave labor, I figured, and maybe some person had made that shell into a dud on purpose. That thought almost got me to grinning. Wherever that fella was, he’d done the one thing he could to help out, you know. He saved my life, whoever he was.
Days came and went. Most seemed the same, you know. Bitter cold. Constant shivering. Dark skies. Aching feet. I lost track of time. A shell came in now and again in daylight and burst in the trees, raining splinters, limbs, trunks, and pieces of metal down on us. The Krauts also liked to shell us at night, you know, just every so often to keep a man awake. It was strange: after a while it felt like I could sleep anywhere I wanted. But when I tried to sleep, I couldn’t. The aggravation was enough to send a fella shaky. You’d hear of a man now and again who’d shoot himself in the foot, just so he’d get sent off the line. It seemed like we were all becoming a little that way. One morning I walked past a man’s foxhole, and a German corpse lay over top of it, frozen stiff. The GI wormed his way out, his eyes blurry, and gave me a level stare. “Made damn good insulation last night,” he said with a shrug, and hiked over to the jeep for a K-ration.
One day we were just sitting in our foxholes when the clouds parted. It was such an unfamiliar sight. All around us gleamed bright, cold, blue sunlight. In a few jiffies, some of our planes flew overhead and dropped supplies. We ran out to the field to get them, dodging bullets that came our way. Not much food. Not much warmer clothes. I think each man got two boxes of K-rations. I hadn’t eaten in about a day and wanted to wolf both of mine, but didn’t know when food would come again, so I figured I’d make things last. At least some fresh ammo fell out of the sky. I guessed that’s mainly all we needed. We were in business again.
It seemed funny to think that Christmas was only a few days away. Wouldn’t be any presents wrapped with a bow this year. Instead, we hiked out to another spot near a road. Not a lot of trees around this time. We knew the Germans were on one side of a road. We were on the other.
Walter Gordon, the smart fella from down South, crouched behind his machine gun, a huge towel wrapped around his head to keep out the cold. His assistant machine gunner was a new fella; I couldn’t remember his name. McClung and Sergeant Taylor were nearby. Hayseed Rogers and Jim Alley lay crouched in the snow. We were all listening, all frozen stiff, all staring at the other side of the road to where the Germans were.
Crack! A bullet whizzed over and Gordon collapsed, shot through the shoulder. We opened up into the other side of the road, searching for the sniper with our triggers. Mortar fire. Machine guns. Artillery. Whatever we had, we gave them.
Rogers and Alley rushed over to Gordon, hauled him out of his hole and dragged him back into the woods where it was safer. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sergeant Taylor and McClung sprint across the road, probably in the direction they’d seen men running, probably searching for a better sight line of fire. I still saw targets from where I was, so I stayed put. We whaled bullets into the trees for some time, shooting everything that moved. I know I got a couple. Then it was quiet.
McClung and Taylor hiked back a short while later. McClung sat down beside me. “Didn’t I tell ya I was a fast runner,” McClung said. “I ran so fast I plumb outran the Krauts.”
Sergeant Taylor crouched beside us. He slugged McClung in the arm. “Ole One Lung ran so fast, he ran straight by this one guy. Then he realizes what he’s done, stops running and turns around, and the German’s standing there with a thirty-round machine gun pointed at his head.”
“Misfired,” McClung said. “Otherwise, I’d be a goner.”
Sergeant Taylor nodded. “I was behind a little ways and saw what was ha
ppening. We finished him off. Then we hiked over to his machine gun to take a look. The German’s gun’s chamber had rusted. The bolt only went halfway in and stuck on him.”
McClung grinned.
“Looks like you guys did okay, too,” Sergeant Taylor added, but he wasn’t smiling when he said this part. “Just before we came back over, we counted twenty-three German bodies on the other side of the road.”
I didn’t quite know what I thought about that. I was mighty happy that McClung was still alive. We’d done our jobs, sure. We were holding the line. But I didn’t know what I thought about the rest.
On Christmas morning we trudged back to the jeep and held out our canteen cups. They’d found some old brown beans and made a stew. Must have found ’em in a cave in Bastogne somewhere, because bugs crawled around the bottom of that stew. Well, it was something in your stomach.
A note went around that day from company headquarters. Seemed the German commander had sent a message to our general, telling him to surrender. Real pleased about himself, he was, like he was doing us a favor or something. Our general was so aggravated by the German’s message he didn’t rightly know what to do at first. Finally he sent back a runner with just one word: “Nuts!” Well, I’m not sure if the German commander could interpret what that one word meant or not. But any of us could see plain as day it was one man’s way of telling another man to go to hell. We all got a good kick out of that, we did.
A couple days later I was out on patrol near Noville and spotted a tree that hadn’t been there before. It was maybe a mile away, but I’d memorized the line of foliage the day before and knew what I saw. A little gully ran down left-handed, you know, and I could look off to my left and see that gully and a fence line. Well, that tree was brand-new. So I went back and reported to Sergeant Lipton. He brought out his binoculars and studied the spot. Sure enough, the tree moved. Krauts were bringing in gun barrels—88s, the sergeant guessed, big artillery pieces, firepower that could bring down a plane. Sergeant Lipton got on his radio and described the target to some upper brass back in Bastogne. They gave the okay, and we brought in our artillerymen. They gave a few blasts and scattered those big German guns. Pretty soon the place where that new tree had been staked was completely deserted. I felt fine about that. Maybe saved some lives. I don’t know.
New Year’s Day 1945 came, and for a few moments sitting there in my foxhole in the snow I got to studying if maybe it was the last New Year’s I’d ever see. Then I shook that fool thought out of my head and went out on patrol.
The snow stood about knee deep that day, and anywhere a man hiked proved a real chore. We took the odd shelling now and then, just random, you know, enough to make us all tense. We hiked around in circles. Come evening, a few Kraut planes flew over and dropped bombs on us. Wasn’t much. Joe Toye took a piece of shrapnel in his wrist and went to an aid station. We all knew a man as tough as him would be back before long. Sure enough, Joe Toye hiked back to his foxhole a while later, his rifle tucked under one arm, his other arm in a sling.
I wished I could sleep, you know. But I never really did. My head started feeling funny most every day, all day and all night. My body felt elsewhere. I kept having these dreams, I think, powerful, angry dreams in the midst of the occasional nap. Ghosts were in the woods. They were floating around, murmuring to me with nonsense words, making me feel all hollow inside. I was carrying my rifle in my dreams, but if I’d have been a little boy, it was the type of fright that would have woke me and sent me running to my parents’ bedroom. I wanted to burrow like a rabbit; be snug in a den underground. I never wanted to leave my hole, you know. It was only safe to be under the earth.
A few days later we’d been out on patrol for some time and were all feeling mighty miserable. If only we weren’t so tired, you know, maybe it’d be easier to think straight. We were hiking back to our holes in the woods above Foy, all us in Second and Third Platoons, when whoever was calling the shots decided to hike back through an open field as a shortcut, hoping to make it back to our foxholes before dark, I guess.
I started thinking this wasn’t a good idea, you know, us all walking across an open field like that. But on we went. It felt spooky out in the middle of that field. I thought back to Lieutenant Brewer and how he’d got shot by a sniper in that open field just before we went into Eindhoven. I slowed my breathing, focusing on everything around me. My eyes were peeled. That was the way I always hiked in a combat zone. Through my head ran a list of places to go. A little rise was over to my left. An old log stuck out of the snow near my right. If the shelling came, where could I duck? Where could I hide? As I passed each point, I picked out the next.
We were nearly to the edge of the woods when I started thinking we were going to make it. I felt happy for a moment, then I almost slapped myself. We weren’t safe. Why didn’t the man ahead know that? Those Krauts could track our positions all across that field and zero in their artillery. What were we thinking? We were just so damn tired, you know. So damn tired.
I was still thinking this when Popeye and I crawled into our foxhole. I noticed George Luz some distance away and wondered what he was doing. He wasn’t in a hole yet. My eyes closed. If only we weren’t so tired.
I didn’t hear the first shell coming. It exploded off a tree off to my right and sent down a firestorm of splinters and lead. Another shell raced in like a boxcar, hit the ground and exploded. The sound was deafening. Terrifying. One by one they followed. Whisssst-bam! Over and over again. All around me, the ground rocked and pitched.
All was quiet. Very sudden-like, the shelling had stopped. A man moaned from somewhere. “Medic,” he said. “Medic.” It was Joe Toye.
“I’ll get ya!” came a yell. Bill Guarnere was going after him. My tongue felt tied in a knot. I wondered if that was exactly what those Krauts wanted us to do—think all was okay and crawl out of our holes searching for survivors. That way they could shellac the lot of us. Guarnere and Toye were too far away to hear me yell.
Kablam! The earth shook. Wham! Another shell hit. Crack! A tree burst into flames and fell over. I heard yelling. Screaming. I wondered if George Luz was still out there. Again and again the shells flew in. Whisssst-bam! One after another. I glanced up. The sky was alight with enemy artillery fire. Must have been thirty thousand mortars and rounds in the air, everything all mixed together. It was like someone had been lugging around a coal car of fireworks and it suddenly caught fire. For the next chunk of time, everything went off—88s and naval guns, grenades, and screaming meemies, those rockets bundled together that screamed so loud it pierced your ears. The sky rocked and heaved. The ground shook. There was nothing to do but sit and take it.
When the smoke cleared, I sat for a moment, dazed. Popeye and I crawled out of our hole. I didn’t know whether to holler or run or start shooting or go back in the ground. What struck me at first were the trees. It was like some giant drunken logger had slashed over our heads with his chainsaw. He’d torn through trees at random, busting them in half, setting others on fire. They smoldered frozen in the winter air.
I took a step forward, trying to listen. Were there any more shells? What was coming next? I took another step. Another. I saw men lying on the ground. Blood pooled on the snow. It soaked out in a circle, red and black.
Joe Toye lay on the ground with his leg blown to bits, just hanging from his body. He was bleeding from the chest, head, arms, and saying, “I’m hit. I’m hit,” in this real soft voice. Bill Guarnere lay some distance away. He was a mess of blood. They were both conscious and calm, no screaming or yelling. Joe was shaking, you know, and Bill was trying to light a cigarette even though his leg wasn’t there anymore. I saw Lipton, Malarkey, Heffron, and Doc Roe run over. I felt out of it, you know, stunned. I didn’t know how to rightly sort it out. I found my head finally, and we worked for some time, there in the snow. Stretcher bearers took Joe and Bill away.
Right after that is when Lieutenant Compton was evacuated to the hospital. Well, I
didn’t ask why. A few rumors flew that maybe he’d gone shaky. But I didn’t believe that. An officer as good as Lieutenant Compton would never have snapped under the stress. Even as bad as it was. I think the man’s feet just got to him. They were hurting him awful bad. That’s what I believed.
A few days later we were clearing the woods west of Foy and resistance seemed light. We hiked to where we were supposed to be and dug in, then the Krauts started shelling us almost immediately. It was the same sort of horror. Huge bursts. Whole trees falling over. The air awash with flames.
After the smoke cleared, someone called for Skip Muck. He didn’t answer. Someone else called for Alex Penkala. He didn’t answer either. George Luz usually shared a foxhole with them. Maybe it was his voice I heard. Maybe he had dived for cover in a different hole this time.
I crawled out of my hole and worked my way through the trees. The voice was still calling, still looking. “Skip! Alex! ”
George Luz was digging. He was on his knees in the snow with his helmet off. He was using the helmet to scoop away dirt. There was franticness to his motion. He stopped digging, sat back on his heels, then looked to the side and held his gaze away. His eyes were ringed with dark circles. His hands were filthy and bloody. He picked up something from out of the dirt, but I couldn’t see what.
“Luz?” I said.
He shook his head. Others gathered around. They knew.
“Luz?” I asked again. I looked closer. In his hands he held a small corner of a sleeping bag.
Sergeant Taylor came over. “Shifty,” he said. His voice was husky. “C’mon. Help me out over here.”
Shifty's War Page 14
