I stood up, brushed the straw off my pants, and steadied myself as I walked toward the door. Hayseed Rogers stood with his shoulder braced against the boxcar’s side, looking out at the country. He’d been standing there a long time. Rogers fished out his cigarettes, handed me one, and stuck another in the corner of his mouth. We both lit smokes and inhaled deeply. I sat down, blowing smoke out of my nostrils, and swung my legs over the edge. Rogers sat beside me. Afternoon sunlight streamed toward us. It bounced back at our faces, and the air of that warm French countryside felt good as we click-clacked along.
“See that farmer in that field over there,” Rogers said, pointing.
“The one who’s wiping sweat from his forehead with that red bandana. You see him, Shifty?”
I nodded.
“That farmer doesn’t have to be in that field right now.”
I nodded again. “Maybe being out in that field is his choice,” I said.
Rogers grinned. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. If he wants to be out in that field, then he’s a smart man. But if he wants to be a shopkeeper, no one’s telling him otherwise.”
Rogers was from Kansas and a champion of farming ways, but I sensed he was getting at something deeper than stumping for field work. I ground out my cigarette on the boxcar’s edge and was about to fish around in my pockets for one of my own, but stopped short when it dawned on me what Rogers meant. The last few years it hadn’t been that way for a farmer in France. Or for farmers in Belgium, for that matter. For farmers in Holland. Poland. Austria. Czechoslovakia. Denmark. Norway. Luxembourg. Yugoslavia. Romania. Hungary. Lithuania. Latvia. North Africa. Greece. As I thought about all the mess we’d been through from the perspective of fighting for a man’s freedom, well, it put a lump in my throat. Back home in America, we’d never had bombs fall on our cities other than on Pearl Harbor, and I doubted if folks back home could grasp what war was truly like, you know, really grip the atrocities of it. Unless a man’s had his freedom wrenched away from him and then fought to get it back, it’s hard to know what war’s like.
I lit my cigarette anyway and handed one of mine to Rogers. He lit his and smoked another, too. We kept staring at the countryside as it passed. So warm. So sunny. Shoot, I knew it wasn’t my ole rifle I’d actually been crying about. Bill Kiehn had died so a French farmer could work his field without some Nazi soldier ordering him around. That was the connection Rogers was pointing me to. I knew fighting for freedom was important, but even then, I didn’t understand it all either. Maybe I never would. Maybe someday it’d all come together for me and I wouldn’t hurt so much, like I hurt right now. In the meantime, I’d file away that picture of the farmer in my mind.
Well, we arrived back in Mourmelon and kicked around. They housed us in twelve-man tents this time, not in old barracks like last time, but Mourmelon was still sort of a divey place. New recruits came in again, and I guess Major Winters didn’t want any horseplay this time, like what had happened after the Holland campaign, so he made us all run and do calisthenics, day in day out. No boozing it up in Paris this time. No throwing cats at waiters. It felt a little silly to me, hiking through the rutabagas in the French countryside right along with the new recruits. This was the only time I was actually aggravated with Major Winters, making us old-timers train like that. But I didn’t say anything.
We had a few parades around about that time, and General Eisenhower came by and gave us a speech. He also gave our whole division the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation for what we’d done at Bastogne. I guess it was the first time in history a whole division got honored that way. So I felt proud about that.
After that unit citation, things loosened up, and passes were issued. We all scattered and went to England, the Riviera, Paris, and Brussels on longer passes. If we had an evening pass, we’d head over to Rheims for beers. Things didn’t seem wild, this time. Maybe we were all too tuckered out to raise Cain. I celebrated my twenty-second birthday on March 13, 1945, while we were in reserve. Things were quiet.
We kept hearing we were going to do one last jump on Berlin. Really squash the Krauts once and for all. But in the end, the jump went to a different paratrooper division as well as some British troops, so that was fine by us. Those Krauts were fighting to the end.
Near the end of March 1945, orders came through for us to head into Germany by another route. They lined up trucks, and we loaded up, headed for the Rhine. We had full gear this time. Full rations. Extra clothes. Our ammo supply was good. I know some of the fellas were disappointed we weren’t making one last battle jump, but it didn’t aggravate me much. We’d be heading into Germany with the upper hand. The enemy would still be fighting back, but for the first time we’d see on their turf just how strong they were. I wasn’t worried. If we could handle Bastogne, we could handle anything.
Well, we didn’t see much resistance and heading into Germany proved pretty easy, at least at first. When we went through the towns, you’d see a dead German or two along the road, but as far as Nazi troops with guns pointed at us, there weren’t any. We were billeted in German homes. We’d show up in a town, knock on doors, and tell the folks they had fifteen minutes to be out for the night. Mostly, they left real nice, although some were aggravated at the inconvenience. We didn’t care much for their fussing after what we’d been through. But we didn’t destroy their homes or anything. After we left, the homes were always more or less intact.
Most all the homes we stayed in were real nice. I don’t think Germany had felt much of the brunt of the war, at least the sections we traveled through at first. What we saw was nothing like what the British in London had gone through. One night we were in this one house and they had a ton of sugar in the basement, and sugar’s supposed to be scarce. So, things weren’t all that bad off for the folks in this house, anyway. Now, I’m sure in other parts of Germany they’d had it rough, and I know that a soldier goes through mud and blood no matter who he fights for, but I got to thinking that the German people were more like us than any of the other people I met while we were overseas. That was my opinion anyway. Sure, they’d been snowed by Hitler and that Nazi business. When you saw those newsreels with Hitler out there, and the German people are all out there, men, women, civilians, with their arms in the air, hollering Heil Hitler, why, you realize that he had them brainwashed. But the homes we were in looked to me like regular middle-class homes. German folks were neat, clean, and tidy. Sometimes we’d meet a German civilian and try and talk with him a bit. No one understood each other’s language, but as long as a man wasn’t pointing a rifle in my face, why, we got along fine.
There were a few patrols in here, a few shells flying at us during the night, but no small arms fire that I ever heard. Weeks stretched by and we went from town to town. Mostly, time just dragged for us. We began to have daily rifle inspections. Bunch of military fiddle-faddle. Other than that, the replacements went out on guard duty, and the rest of us hung around and played cards. Sometimes us old-timers went on guard duty, too. But we weren’t doing much. Three hot meals a day. Hot showers. Beds to sleep in. Being in Germany was the best conditions we’d ever had during the war.
On April 18 we were guarding a displaced person’s camp near a town called Dornmagen. Wasn’t much action going on. Just us staring at barbed wire and barracks and beet soup and black bread. I got to studying that, and it was troubling, all those people in that camp—men, women, babies, teenagers. They hadn’t done nothing wrong. Czechs and Poles, Belgians, Dutch, French—I lost track of all the different nationalities I came across, all taken prisoner from different parts of Nazi-occupied Germany. They’d been put in prison because they’d been teachers or thinkers or artists or bankers, or maybe just because they looked at some Nazi soldier the wrong way. Most all were separated from their families, they’d not received word if anyone they knew was still alive or dead. They were in the camps because the Nazis wanted them there. It was as simple as that. When the Nazis held the upper hand, the Nazis did wh
atever they wanted to do. I guessed the Nazis needed the displaced prisoners’ labor. Whatever the reason, the Nazis had sure caused a lot of aggravation for a lot of people.
We went through this German city called Cologne, and it was really bombed out. Every window was broken. Every street blocked with rubble. But you’d see the German people picking up bricks, sweeping up, boarding up windows with hammer and nails. Folks were starting to rebuild. It was another indication to me that the German civilians themselves were regular folks like the rest of us.
Near the end of April we loaded up in railway cars again and headed for the Alps. Most of the German armies had surrendered by then, but not all. I guess the upper brass thought that Hitler would try to make one last stand at a mountain town called Berchtesgaden. He’d built a sort of hideaway for himself there called the Eagle’s Nest, this big ole high and mighty house of his. The thought was that he’d hole up there and arrange for guerilla fighters to come down and harass whoever they could from that position.
Nearing this location, we saw more destruction from our boxcars on the train. The German railway system was messed up, so we needed to take the long route through a couple countries to get where we needed to be—Holland again, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, I think. It looked like a lot of those countries had been hit hard. Finally we swung back into Germany again, then hopped off the train and boarded these funny-looking vehicles called DUKWs. They looked like steel boats on wheels, and they could go through water without any problems. Those DUKWs had good rubber tires and rode good on land, too, so it was smooth sailing for us down the road. We hit a big highway called the autobahn and headed east. All the while we traveled, German soldiers marched toward us on the sides and middle of the road. Huge column, six abreast sometimes. They’d all surrendered, and they were heading back to their hometowns, I guessed. They weren’t shooting at us this time. We weren’t shooting at them. I think that’s when I first realized the war was about over. With all these soldiers surrendering, there was no way Hitler could try any more of his foolishness. The soldiers marched on past, no threat, no danger, and we just waved.
We stopped for a night or two near a town called Buckloe. The Alps were real close, and those tall, snowy mountains looked fine. Some of our fellas went out on patrol, but they returned in a big hurry. Seemed they’d found something that didn’t look like nothing a man had ever seen before. I guess Major Winters and some battalion staff went back to look at what they’d found, then they called us to go in.
All I saw were prisoners hanging on a fence. The fellas in other platoons went inside, but our platoon didn’t go in, at least the squad I was in. That was fine by me. Those prisoners hanging on a fence were like no prisoners I’d ever seen before. Just skeletons in striped pajamas. Their arms were the size around of my rifle barrel. Me and the fellas I was with were ordered to keep going, so we went through and set up an outpost on the outskirts of the area. Other soldiers helped out inside the camp. When the men came back from that duty, few of them talked much about what they saw. It was too hard for them to put into words, I guessed. General Taylor declared martial law all through the area, and he ordered the German people from the nearby towns to go into the camp and clean it up. So the next day we saw German civilians headed down the road with shovels and rakes, going to clean up the bodies in that concentration camp. I didn’t know what to rightly think of those two days. From what some of the other men told me, I was relieved I didn’t see what they saw. But then again, these horrible things happened, you know, and it benefits a young man to know what the world is actually like—both its good and bad sides. We got word around on April 30 that Hitler committed suicide. He wolfed down some cyanide and shot himself in the head. So I guessed that one evil man who’d caused so much aggravation for so many people all over the world finally got what was coming to him.
It must have been early May when we headed up the road toward Berchtesgaden. It felt like sort of a race. Other companies wanted to get there first. Other Allied armies. We drove up and up these winding roads. Looked a bit like the roads around Clinchco. Finally, a big pile of rubble blocked the road, so we stopped. The Krauts had blown up the road ahead of us the day before, somebody said. They figured we’d be coming.
We blasted the roadblock with some artillery shells, but that didn’t do much. So we sat in the sun waiting for the engineers to come up and figure out how to move the mess. Berchtesgaden was up above the roadblock, and McClung and a few others figured they’d climb up the rocks to skirt the roadblock and get to the top. So they did. I thought about going with them, but I’d had a few beers the night before and didn’t feel like a climb, so I stayed put.
Well, the roadblock got cleared and the rest of us finally got up to Berchtesgaden, and there wasn’t anybody around except us. Certainly no Hitler and none of his henchmen. Berchtesgaden was a real nice town, you know, with these snowcapped mountains all around. We secured some places to stay. Major Winters set up guards around town.
Then the party began.
Did a man need a set of wheels? Well, help yourself to a car. Did a man want a watch? Here you go. Want a bottle of booze? Well, plenty of men helped themselves to those. Looting from civilians was frowned upon, but helping yourself to something from an abandoned SS barracks was something else. We’d been sleeping in muddy foxholes a considerable time now, and we figured the Nazi government was responsible for all the fuss we’d had to go through, so I don’t think any of us felt sorry for helping ourselves to a few things.
A few days later, someone found Goering’s liquor stash, and, boy, you’d think a fella would have never seen a bottle of booze before. They passed out cases of the stuff, and we all got busy celebrating. The officers helped themselves to most of the finer drink, but few of us enlisted men cared about that uppity drink. Want a bottle of whiskey? Here, help yourself. Have two. Take a case of gin while you’re at it. And how about a bottle of wine for later on? We had food and drink and warm houses to sleep in, and nobody was shooting at us, so we drank ourselves silly, we rightly did. On May 7, word came around that all the German armies had surrendered completely. May 8 was declared V-E Day—Victory in Europe—and we popped some more champagne corks and went outside and fired our pistols, and whooped and hollered and generally got right noisy. I don’t remember much more about the specifics of how we celebrated. Only that I staggered up for reveille the next morning wearing only my underwear. My head hurt and I had an empty bottle of champagne in my hand, and when I looked around, I appeared to be about the best functioning man in the outfit.
Well, we rolled out of Berchtesgaden a day or so later and headed out for Zell am See, maybe twenty miles away or so. It was in Austria, and it was such fine country to be in. It was really a good time then. The fellas were all hanging out in the back of trucks, singing, drinking, playing cards, telling jokes. We got to some real nice barracks and settled in. Zell am See was a beautiful place with that big ole lake in the center of the town. Roads, houses, everything was nice and clean. We settled in and prepared to stay a spell. Occupation duty, they called it. It was a fine way to be a soldier, I thought.
One morning we went out for a swim, and I got to thinking about the men who were still around. Popeye. McClung. Skinny Sisk. Hayseed Rogers. Moe Alley. Carwood Lipton. Joe Liebgott. All good men. All good friends. I grinned at the thought we’d made it through. But then I got to studying about how there were so many who weren’t around anymore, you know. It was that sad thought of all the guys who were missing that wouldn’t let me grin long.
Well, weeks stretched on, and we didn’t do much. That’s when word came around that the points system was being instituted, and most all the old-timers would be heading home soon. By the end of June, every veteran of Normandy would be gone. Except me, you know. I’d fought on the front lines of every battle since Normandy, but I’d never been wounded. Being good at dodging bullets meant I wasn’t going home. Not enough points.
Sure, it bothered me. There
was still a war in the Pacific, and I’d go fight there if I needed to, but the fellas fighting over there were real capable, and none of us doubted that they’d soon clean up there. The feeling I had was sort of like when that shell hit right in front of me way back in Bastogne, that day me and a couple of fellas were out on patrol. The shell was a dud, you know, probably made that way on purpose by some prisoner in a factory somewhere. He’d done his part in helping out the war effort. Probably done a lot more than that. But that was how I felt in Zell am See, like I’d done my part in helping out the war effort. And now I wanted to go home.
Well, right about then is when Captain Speirs led us in a troop formation and I noticed one or two of the old-timers with unmistakable twinkles in their eyes. Captain Speirs drew my name out of a hat. I’d won the lottery.
I gathered my gear. Hayseed Rogers took me over to that supply building, and I picked out two of the finest pistols I’d ever seen.
I went and talked with Major Winters, asking him about that question that had been gnawing at me for some time, the question about explaining things when I got home to Clinchco, and he told me I was a hell of a soldier and didn’t need to explain anything.
So I shook hands all around and said my good-byes and climbed up in the back of that truck that was heading toward headquarters. We started winding back down that road, and that’s when that truck got in a wreck, see, and I got my very first real wound in the war—right when I was headed home. Everything got swirly for me as I lay there on the side of that mountain road and a nurse stuck me with a morphine syrette, and for a long time these were the only things I remembered: that my name was Sergeant Darrell C. Powers and I won General Taylor’s lottery.
Shifty's War Page 17
