A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking
Page 22
One day, a lone soldier with a Big Red One on his helmet showed up at our outpost. Our sergeant stopped him cold.
"How do I know you're a GI?" asked the sergeant.
"You crazy?" growled the doggie. "Here's my dog tag!"
"Proves nothing."
"Hell, I know everybody's touchy. Ask me anything you want."
"Take down your pants," the sergeant ordered.
"What? You guys queer or something?"
"Drop 'em. Or I'll put a bullet in your mouth."
The soldier dropped his pants. The sergeant took one look at the man's underwear and shot him in the chest. We were shocked until we found German dog tags inside the soldier's pack of American cigarettes.
"The Jerry's underwear gave him away," explained the sergeant. "They tuck their T-shirts inside. We don't."
In the freezing predawn fog of December i6, the German counteroffensive was launched. It was a massive thrust of enemy tanks and infantry troops that broke through our lines and headed for the Meuse. We were determined that this would not be another debacle like Kasserine. Our division was ordered to fall back and hold the southern flank of the thirtyfive-mile-wide "Bulge." We fought like hell and held on, preventing the Germans from expanding the Bulge. We heard that in other parts of the salient, American infantrymen, armor, and airplanes were hacking their way through, trying to relieve besieged units within the Bulge's borders.
The brunt of the German thrust was against Saint-Vith and Bastogne, defended by our boys from the Twenty-eighth Infantry and the Ninth and Tenth Armored. That was a crucial junction in the Ardennes. Word had gotten back to us about the eighteen thousand Americans dug in over there, facing an onslaught of three German divisions, more than forty-five thousand men. Eisenhower had sent in the foist Airborne to try to tilt the scales in our direction. After six days and nights of intense fighting, our guys were just about overwhelmed at Saint-Vith. On December 22, the Germans offered the "Battered Bastards of Bastogne" an honorable surrender. The regiment's CO, General Anthony C. McAuliffe, sent them back a one-word response: "Nuts."
We'd never forget the piss and vinegar of the Twenty-eighth Infantry. We'd never yield to the Germans, either. Our present assignment was to blunt the enemy's last great offensive operation, then break its back. The nasty winter weather made the job that much more difficult. With the wind whipping our bodies, the snow slashing our faces, we had to fight both the enemy and the increasingly blizzardlike conditions. Constant snowfall made every movement exhausting. I had it easy next to the doggies carrying heavy machine guns and mortars through the knee-deep drifts. All hands and feet turned numb with cold. Frostbite was eating at our toes and fingertips. If you didn't thaw them out once in a while, gangrene would set in. Then there was only one solution. The rotten digit had to be cut off. But it might be too late. You could die from frostbite. Many of our boys did.
We spent New Year's, 1945, holding our position in Faymonville, waiting until conditions favored our next offensive campaign. On January 15, the long-awaited attack finally began. American artillery and bombs started and never let up. Again, our troops were hit by friendly fire. Seeing Americans killed by American shells drove me crazy. I wasn't the only dogface tempted to shoot at our own low-flying planes.
The horrible weather conditions worked to our advantage. The Germans couldn't see us moving up through the snow-blown landscape. We wrapped ourselves in snow capes, white blankets, and bedsheets, anything to blend into the all-white background. After Faymonville, town after town caved in as we reconquered Belgium and tried to breach the Siegfried Line a second time. Schoppen was next. Amel, Mirfeld, Valender. Then we moved to a position overlooking the Roer River near the town of Kleinhau, almost demolished before we'd arrived.
In snowsuits, bedsheets, or any damned white coat, my outfit advances near Faymonville, January 1945. The snow and cold made the Battle of the Bulge a gruesome campaign. Living outside was a battle against frostbite.
Crossing the Roer was no piece of cake. Previous American units had thoroughly mined the area, and heavy rains aggravated our engineers' task of building a pontoon bridge. At any time, the Germans could blow dams upstream, which would turn our position into a watery wasteland. There were many delays, the last one being an enemy-aircraft strafing and bombing mission the night before the planned river crossing. The German planes caused casualties and knocked out one treadway bridge built for our advance. The problem was our antiaircraft guns had to hold their fire that night because the skies were full of RAF bombers and fighters. We finally crossed the Roer on some pontoon footbridges on February 25 and pushed eastward.
We began a nonstop marathon that was not to end until the Rhine had been reached. There were so many little towns we took, I lost track of their names. Krauzau. Vettweiss. Gladbach. Metternich. Rotgen. Rosberg, Merten, Trippelsdorf. We were in bad shape, but we pushed forward relentlessly, pursuing the retreating enemy, not giving them a chance to get set for a counterattack. Rest was snatched in periods of minutes, not hours. Fatigue and trench foot made every step of that operation tough as hell. We looked more haggard than the Nazis we captured.
Miraculously, our outfit was invited one cold and rainy night for a USO show that was in the area. It took place in one of those conquered German towns, Friesheim. Trucks slogged through the mud to bring us to the town's little theater. Soaked, exhausted dogfaces suddenly forgot all about weather and weariness, because the mistress of ceremonies that night was the one and only Marlene Dietrich, a woman who represented all women to us. She came onstage in the packed theater dressed in a flaming red gown that hugged her curvaceous body like a second skin. Not an inch of those famous legs could be seen, but we knew they were there. Dietrich told us that she was born a German but she was now an American. Having emigrated to the States after denouncing the Nazis, she'd taken U.S. citizenship in 1939. The only reason she'd come back to Germany was to give our morale a boost. Just seeing that gorgeous woman made us all feel better. We applauded her wildly.
Dietrich told us that she'd like us all to relax for the show by laying down our pieces. We loved it that she called our Mis "pieces," just as we referred to them. Rifles clattered as we lay them down. She smiled that indomitable smile and said she wanted to hear every single gun hit the floor. She knew it was hard to let go of your Mi and that many guys always held on to them, no matter where they were. They'd become another part of our bodies, a sort of third arm. Dietrich was masterfully charming as she waited patiently for the last piece to hit the floor. She didn't do much more than sing a couple of songs and introduce different USO acts that night. She didn't have to do anything. After all, she was Dietrich.
When the show was over, we cheered lustily, then filed outside to climb on the trucks waiting to take us back to the front. I jumped up on the runner and asked our truck driver how long it would take to load up and turn his vehicle around in the mud. He said about twenty minutes. I jumped down and ran around to the stage-door entrance. An MP stopped me. Backstage was off-limits. I told him I had to speak to Miss Dietrich about a "professional matter."
"Forget it," the MP snarled. "Get back to your outfit."
He wasn't getting rid of me so easy. I began to scream at the sonofabitch that this was professional. The MP relented, turned, and walked back to Dietrich's dressing room. Just like when I was a reporter getting to a reluctant source for a story, I followed close on his heels. The MP knocked on the bare dressing-room door, opened it enough to be heard, and started talking to Dietrich. I rushed over and stuck my head in the half-opened door.
"It'll only take a minute, Miss Dietrich," I said.
Surprised but cordial, she invited me into her cold, damp dressing room. She looked gorgeous, but she was shivering. The only light came from a bare lightbulb dangling from the high ceiling. I apologized about my appearance. I looked like hell. I was unshaven. My uniform was filthy. My boots were muddy. I must have stunk, too. But Dietrich didn't seem to mind at all. She'd probably
seen worse on her tour of frontline troops.
"Miss Dietrich," I told her. "I'd like you to take a message for me back home."
"Impossible," she said. "Quite impossible."
She explained that she'd met many soldiers who wanted her to phone their mothers, their girlfriends. But she just couldn't do it, and she told everyone the same thing. It was really impossible.
I said I didn't want her to phone my mother. I wanted her to deliver a one-word message to Charlie Feldman in Hollywood.
"Charles K. Feldman?" she said, suddenly intrigued. "My agent? You know him?"
"Yes, Miss Dietrich," I said. "He's my agent, too."
She stopped dead and gazed at me.
"He's your agent, too?"
"Yeah, he is. He sold my book to Howard Hawks. A novel called The Dark Page. The message for Charlie is easy, Miss Dietrich. One word. `Cigars.' Just say `Cigars' to Charlie when you get back to Hollywood. Okay?"
She laughed and poured us both a glass of good brandy.
"What's your name, soldier?"
"Fuller. Sammy Fuller."
She asked me to write it down. I refused.
"My name's not necessary," I told her. "Just say `Cigars' to Charlie. He'll know who it is."
"Okay, soldier," she said, clinking glasses with me. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"
"Yeah, there is. My buddies will never believe I really talked to you."
I asked her to write some silly, personalized notes on scraps of paper, things such as "You can live with just one ball!" She laughed as she copied down my words. She signed each note "Marlene." We drank to Charlie Feldman, to the Big Red One, and to all the Allies.
Dietrich and I sipping brandy and laughing together in that cold dressing room over fifty years ago is a scene frozen in my mind forever. She told me to take the bottle of brandy with me. I kissed her and hurried out, reaching the troop truck just as it was getting set to leave.
During 1944 and 1945, Dietrich toured extensively behind Allied lines, giving hundreds of shows for GIs who loved her. It was cold, dangerous, and thankless work, but she seemed to relish every aspect of it.
My buddies asked me where I got the brandy.
"Dietrich," I said.
They laughed heartily. So did I. It was one of the few moments of pure laughter we'd had in a long time. My sergeant, who rarely even cracked a smile, chuckled, too. I gave the sergeant his note from Dietrich. The rain almost washed away her penciled words about hoping to wear nothing but a helmet and a bandolier for him someday.
The sergeant murmured something under his breath, then really smiled.
I passed out the other personal messages from Dietrich to my pals. In silent awe, the guys read the precious notes. Then they bombarded me with questions about the great lady. I smiled from ear to ear but said nothing, lighting the stub of a damp cigar. I looked back at Friesheim receding into the blackness, my contented smoke wafting out from the troop truck as it barreled through the German night. A box of good cigars arrived by APO from Charlie Feldman that spring. Dietrich had damn sure delivered my message.
In 1953, I'd run into Marlene Dietrich again under very different conditions. I was in the New York nightclub El Morocco for a parry following the premiere of my movie Pickup on South Street. At my table was the wonderful actress Thelma Ritter, who'd given a terrific performance as Moe, the informer who only wants a decent funeral. She'd get nominated for an Academy Award for the role. At a table across the big room was the legendary producer Sam Spiegel. He waved at me. I went over to say hello. Sitting next to Spiegel was Dietrich. He introduced us. I told her we'd already met. She was very polite, but she shook her head, not remembering me or where we'd run into each other.
"Too bad," I said. "That's life."
I turned and started back to my table. All of a sudden, Marlene Dietrich was right behind me.
"Hey, soldier," she said, her eyes twinkling.
I turned and grinned at her. She put her arms around me. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. She'd heard so many stories about all the men killed in our outfit. Yet here I was, alive. She was genuinely pleased to see me again. We had a warm reunion. She'd given over five hundred shows for GIs during the war, but there was only one little corporal trying to squeeze some cigars out of Charlie Feldman back in Hollywood.
"The Big Red One!" she said, her voice cracking with emotion.
My outfit, the Sixteenth Infantry, led the First Division as we swept eastward from the Roer River in the First Army's drive to reach the Rhine. The speed of our advance saw us taking an unscheduled swing toward the southeast. Unexpectedly, Bonn now lay in our path. With the Twentysixth Infantry on our right and the Eighteenth on our left, we'd taken fourteen villages and towns among the low hills guarding Bonn to the west. By the evening of March 7, the Big Red One was within a mile of the city.
Our assault plan on Bonn, formulated by the new division commander, Major General Clift Andrus, would be daring and swift. He based the operation on an old Indian technique. We were to move against the enemy on a moonless night without firing a shot. The Germans knew we were coming, but not when and where. They were expecting a terrific pounding from artillery and bombers. Any objective the size of Bonn would normally get softened up beforehand. But our plan called for neither saturation bombing nor preparatory shelling. It depended on a completely audacious, maybe even impudent, dash into the city by a silent infantry column.
At 0330 hours on March 8, 1945, we moved out, marching as quietly as possible down the road in columns of twos behind four medium tanks, directly into the center of Bonn. Bringing up the rear were antitank and assault artillery. Because it was pitch-black that night, our tanks passed for Panzers. Before they knew what was happening to them, enemy sentries were disarmed and forced to marched along with us. As we passed the next Nazi position, our new POWs would respond warmly to greetings called out in our direction, their delivery considerably sweetened by the trench knives held against the bases of their spines. We were mistaken over and over for German troops retreating to safety across the Rhine. The city was swollen with enemy defenders, but not a round was fired.
Moving straight down Kolnstrasse, our platoon reached Rosental and turned left. We were in the heart of Bonn, and things were very quiet, too quiet. My company hit the Bonn post office, where over three hundred Germans were bunked down. Most of them threw up their hands rather than be killed.
When dawn came, the calm was finished, overwhelmed by some fast and furious fighting. The Germans realized we were in their midst and opened fire with SP guns and tanks. Our tanks retaliated.
We worked our way down toward the Rhine, using doorways, alleys, and windows for protection. At the Agricultural Institute of the University of Bonn, enemy positions in the classrooms stopped us in our tracks. A light-armored car slammed into a sandbag barricade just in front of us, its driver shot by one of our sharpshooters, its machine-gunners immediately surrendering. Our sergeant jumped into the driver's seat of the lightarmored car and started its motor. Two other dogfaces manned the car's machine guns. The armored car drove up the steps of the Agricultural Institute, smashed through the giant doors, and steered down the long, wide corridor, spraying bullets everywhere. Behind that cover, we charged into the university. When we walked out, we had 150 POWs in front of us.
The battle became even fiercer when German artillery, mortar, and rocket fire opened up on us from the other side of the Rhine, trying to protect the bridge that was so essential to their retreat. Other German elements south of the city and across the Bonn-Cologne autobahn had recovered from their surprise. Those of us on the assault team inside the city were cut off from the rest of the division until later that evening.
By nightfall, the roads into Bonn were opened by our forces and the enemy was in full retreat. The exclamation point on what was undoubtedly our best orchestrated action since D day was the Nazi explosion that night that blew up the bridge that connected Bonn to the rest of Germany.
It was a tacit admission that the city was irretrievably lost. Scattered, lastditch resistance remained to be cleaned up. Over fifteen hundred German soldiers were taken. The Sixteenth Infantry lost six men killed, fifty-one wounded, and three missing.
Our orders that night were to stay out of sight, find a safe building, and get some shut-eye until dawn. I loved how the street names in Bonn celebrated their great composers. Haydnstrasse. Brahmsstrasse. Bachstrasse. Late that night, Johnson and I forced open the backdoor on a building situated at 24-28 Beethovenstrasse. What a great name for a street! It was pitch-black in the place, so we crawled around on our hands and knees looking for a spot to lie down. I cracked my head on what felt like a big table. Then I realized it was a grand piano. We stretched out on the floor and fell asleep. In the first light of dawn, I woke up and saw the bottom of the piano over my head. Johnson was snoring away. In the half-light, I made out a music stand holding a large composition book. I moved closer. I looked at the notes scribbled all over the sheet music. Then I rose to my knees to inspect the title of the piece. "Heroica" was majestically written at the top of the page. It was clearly signed: "Ludwig van Beethoven."
My mouth was agape. For Chrissakes, the street name made sense! We'd stumbled into Beethoven's childhood home! I got to my feet and looked carefully at all the framed letters, paintings, and busts in the house. The place had been turned into a museum. Everything was intact. I wandered around the great Beethoven's home like a man dying of thirst, unexpectedly finding an oasis in the desert. I couldn't keep the news to myself for another moment. I had to wake up Johnson.
"What?" he asked, opening his eyes quickly.
I put my finger to my lips.
"What?" he said in a lower voice.
"Beethoven was born here," I whispered.
"What outfit?"
"Beethoven, goddamnit. You never heard of Beethoven?"
"Uh-uh," he said. "Was he an officer?"