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A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking

Page 24

by Samuel Fuller;Christa Lang Fuller;Jerome Henry Rudes


  The girl died a few days later. The sergeant wouldn't allow any of us to help him bury her, refusing all assistance, even the chaplain's. He made a crude coffin himself. He dressed the dead girl in a pink dress and dark brown shoes that our company's mail clerk had somehow obtained for him. He carefully laid her out, placed the music box on her belly, and put her hands around it. She had a smile on her face. Then he closed the coffin. He dug a grave not far from the gates of the Konzentrationslager and put the girl's coffin in it. From a distance, we watched him filling the grave with shovel after painful shovel of earth. Once she was buried, the sergeant never mentioned the girl again. Neither did we. For all of us, however, she remained a symbol of those mournful times filled with incomprehensible suffering and loss.

  The ending of all hostilities was a quiet shock. It was hard to accept that the war was really over. I couldn't believe that I didn't have to sleep with my hand on my rifle anymore, that every noise wasn't the start of an enemy attack, that I could light a cigar at night without worrying about a sniper putting a bullet through my brain. We'd be going home soon. Rejoining civilization was all we'd ever been talking about, joking about, dreaming about. But reentry was scary, too. How could we tell the world about what we'd experienced? About what we'd witnessed? How could we live with it ourselves?

  Earthquake

  of War

  221

  People associate me with my films about war. Sure, I made plenty of them, but I worked in other genres, too: Westerns, noirs, spy thrillers. It's easy to understand why war movies came naturally to me. I was one of a handful of Hollywood people who'd had battlefield experience. I used my firsthand knowledge to create films that, I hope, showed the truth about people at war. It would be hypocritical to deny that, as crazy, violent, and tragic as it is, war lends itself to filmmaking by stirring up the entire palette of our deepest feelings.

  In a strange twist of fate, some people got the idea I was a warmonger, that my films promoted war. What bullshit! For Chrissakes, war is living hell. I hope no one ever has to have that goddamned experience again, either as a soldier or a noncombatant. Never! We must avoid war at all cost. Nowadays, even after all we know about the ravages of war, it continues to be very much a part of our world. As I near the end of my life, that is one of my only regrets.

  The only war film I really wanted to make was The Big Red One. It wouldn't happen until 198o. Over the years, I could have made several more. Projects were offered to me that didn't ring true, so I turned them down. When I was under contract at Fox, I was asked by David Brown, a studio executive back then, to direct The Young Lions, based on the Irwin Shaw book. I loved David, who went on to become a successful independent producer, and I liked the story. But I turned the job down. They'd already cast Brando as a German officer. Brando is a genius of an actor, but his character irritated the hell out of me. How could a German officer in 1934 say he was sick of Hitler, that Hitler was wrongheaded? The sonofabitch would've been thrown into a camp or shot on the spot for saying that stuff. Maybe toward the end of the war, when the Nazis were losing, there was talk like that. But not in 1934.

  Another reason I didn't like the script for The Young Lions was the reli gious element they added, soldiers praying to God in between combat missions. It sounded good in Hollywood, but it just didn't happen. The truth is that in the middle of a war, you feel more like insulting the Almighty Creator than praying to Him. I suspect that He would respect the human race a little more if we reacted honestly, even bitterly, when confronted with such human misery and devastation.

  Another time, Paramount offered me Cross of Iron to direct. They'd acquired the rights to Willy Heinrich's great book. In the script, they added a character named Schroeder, who, in the midst of all-out warfare, has great foresight about the future. Bullshit! There's something false about characters in a period piece who can predict future events. It always sounds phony. I said no thank you.

  I was also asked to direct Patton. I'd been too close to events in his life to be objective. It would have been hard for me to make a film glorifying a man I didn't like or respect. I told them another director would be better suited for the job.

  Following the German surrender on May 7, the silence that blanketed us was overpowering. We'd forgotten what stillness was like. With no thunderous bombs, no artillery shells blowing up, no mortars bursting, no V-i missiles shrieking across the sky, no grenades exploding, no machine guns nor Mis nor Mausers firing, the quiet was incredible. The listless days following the ceasefire were disturbingly calm. We hardly spoke. Even the thousands of German soldiers who streamed into Falkenau to surrender to us were taciturn. They wordlessly laid their guns in a massive pile near our camp. If the Germans did talk to us, it was usually to criticize Hitler or deny any connection with the Nazi movement. We'd already heard that tune.

  In my 1958 movie Verboten', which deals with the problems of postwar Germany and U.S. occupation, I wrote in a scene that made fun of the sudden German aversion for Nazis.

  "When they found Hitler's body in his bunker," recounts an officer in the American Military Government, "they discovered a piece of paper in his hand. When they opened the paper, the Fuhrer had written: `I was never a Nazi!' "

  The war's end was no holiday for us. In addition to helping survivors and processing POWs, thousands of displaced persons needed assistance. Besides, a growing problem was sabotage by Hitler's "Werewolf" youthswhom I'd shown in Verboten!-disrupting food and medical supply lines. We were now part of the normalization process, trying to investigate and curtail the chaos.

  Russian troops showed up a few days after the German surrender. They moved into our sector while occupation agreements were being worked out. There was a little bridge over a stream behind some barracks. We approached the bridge and found ourselves nose to nose with a group of Russian infantry. The atmosphere was convivial. Like us, they were dirty and unshaven. They had endured just as many-maybe even more-grisly hardships as we had. There were bear hugs and kisses. They gave us vodka. We gave them Mickey Mouse watches. For the next five days, we were all buddies. Then on the sixth day, the Russian infantry were replaced by clean-shaven, well-groomed soldiers in perfectly tailored uniforms, just arrived from Moscow. Those guys wouldn't talk to us. They wouldn't even smile when we waved. Something had changed irrevocably. It was the debut of the cold war.

  I'll never forget the ice-cold faces on those Russian replacements. Together, our two countries had been fighting fascist armies at a terrible cost. Now, instead of continuing our cooperation, we were embarking on a period of alienation and confrontation. It was a ridiculous, disheartening turn of events. I've lived to see the murky shadows of the cold war subside. But for four decades, two nations who'd been Allies in the great crusade against the Nazis found it necessary to invent an icy contest to justify their own arms race. History is full of such ironies. That one was very painful for me to watch.

  After Falkenau, the war was by no means over for every soldier in the First Division. We had a point system that designated who no longer had to fight. You needed something like i8o points to be given an honorable discharge. Married soldiers got a head start for home by getting twelve points just for having a wife. You got five points if you were wounded, five points for each battle action, and so on. I had more than enough points to stop fighting. But many GIs from our outfit, like thousands of soldiers recently arrived in the European theater, were transferred to the Pacific, where the war still raged. I ended up in Bad Kissingen, a town near Munich. From there, those of us who had enough points could hop on one of the military transports leaving for the States. Like me, a lot of soldiers dreamed of finally visiting Paris before going home. We'd have to make it back to the States the long way, by ship from Marseille.

  It took three days to get to Paris. Just to reach the train station was a struggle. The truck that took us was blocked again and again by thousands of disheveled, exhausted German soldiers with backpacks, roaming the streets like lost
cattle. The trains were a mess, and railway tracks were in bad shape, too. It was a very rocky trip. Everywhere were the scars of war, reminders of the grisly violence that had been wreaked on combatants and civilians alike. Many bridges had been destroyed, forcing the train to zigzag across the countryside. One bridge collapsed right after our train passed over it. The Allied invasion had left Germany in shambles.

  We'd been given blankets in Germany in case we didn't find a place to sleep in Paris. At the Gare du Nord station, children followed on our heels as if we were Pied Pipers. I gave my blanket to one of the kids, who probably sold it to make some dough for his family.

  To my war-weary eyes, Paris was an incredible sight in June 1945, better than a hundred Mardi Gras in New Orleans and a thousand Carnivals in Rio. Wherever we went, people kissed and hugged us. Music played in the streets. Day and night, we were invited for drinks by total strangers, grateful to anyone wearing an American military uniform. I was anxious to catch up with my kid brother, Ray. I found him at SHAEF headquarters in the Hotel Scribe, near the Place de l'Opera. Ray was ecstatic to see me alive. He'd been worried sick about me surviving the war. He got me a small room at the Scribe. Holy mackerel, a hot shower and a bed with sheets!

  "But I'm te111n' you, Yvette, this is how to liberate.

  To see Paris before returning to the States was every GI's dream. French girls did things to our libidos.

  My brother and I found this sweet, unknown French girl to pose with us. While Ray was with the French gal he would eventually marry, Pierrette, I was free to explore the City of Light on my own.

  Ray and I went down to the hotel's restaurant for a celebration meal that evening. They wouldn't seat us in the main dining room because it was reserved for officers only. My brother got so angry when they offered us a table in a back corner, but I laughed at the situation. After almost four years of infantry life, I was happy to sit anywhere. All that mattered to me after those wearisome years was that I was in Paris with my brother, safe and sound.

  Then Ray's CO stopped by our table, a lieutenant general. When he saw the Big Red One on my uniform, he shook my hand warmly and asked why we were sitting in the back of the place. Ray explained the situation, and the general immediately moved us to his table in the center of the room with a bunch of officers, including more generals. Everyone was respectful of the Big Red One number on my shoulder patch because of our outfit's record during the war.

  That night, my brother and I went to a noisy club packed with soldiers. Liquor was flowing. Celebrating GIs danced with French girls and drank until they dropped. One soused man came over to our table. He was wearing a Big Red One, too. When he saw mine and found out that I was in the Sixteenth Infantry, he was ecstatic. He made a drunken speech, but I couldn't understand anything except that he'd been part of the Twentysixth. He said our outfit had saved his ass. Then he disappeared. A few minutes later, the soldier came back with a couple of red roses. He gave one to me, one to Ray. Then he grabbed me and kissed me on my goddamned mouth. Ray was so moved by the soldier's affection and respect that he kept that rose pressed between the pages of a book until the day he died.

  Ray was perfectly fluent in French and knew a helluva lot about French literature. With my kid brother, I went to Paris bookshops and started buying novels by Hugo and Balzac and poetry by Battdelaire and Verlaine. Ray had a sweet French girlfriend in Paris named Pierrette, whom he ended up marrying. They showed me around the liberated city, which had been spared the war's devastation. Typical Parisian landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, and Sacre Coeur, though beautiful to behold, didn't really excite me. What I loved seeing were all the statues by Rodin. Holy smoke, what a sculptor! To finally get the opportunity to see his work in person was a far bigger thrill for me than the Arc de Triomphe.

  During my week or so in Paris, I left Ray and Pierrette alone to enjoy their romance and roamed the streets by myself. The great city was loaded with unassuming quaintness and mystery. Giants of history and art had walked these same sidewalks, lived and died in the shuttered houses behind those wrought-iron gates. I loved reading the historical plaques on the walls. They stirred my heart and imagination. Marie Curie worked here. Alexandre Dumas wrote there. Claude Debussy composed right here. Verlaine lived over there with Rimbaud.

  I amused myself imagining movie scenes with those passionate characters. Verlaine's wife and Rimbaud's mother would've been furious about the two men's love affair. Maybe the two women cooked up a scheme to My visit to Paris, seeing my kid brother, was great, but I've always regretted one unfortunate aspect of it. By making the trip, I missed the interviews for the coveted assignments of guarding prisoners at the Nuremberg war trials that would begin that fall.

  The Eiffel Tower was a must for every first-time visitor. It didn't thrill me, but there was no denying that the view from the top was magnificent. It was the only city I d seen in the last three years that hadn't been scarred by the war.

  break off the budding homosexual relationship. I could see the two women climbing the stairs to a doorway at the top. They're in front of the door. Behind it are the two poets, man and boy. Which woman is going to knock first? Neither woman wants to disturb what's going on behind that door. But they can't tolerate it, either. Someone must knock, but who? The scene ended with the two women standing there, neither daring to knock.

  The train trip back to Munich in order to rejoin my division was not something I looked forward to. Ray had a pal in the air force, and thanks to him, I got a ride on a cargo plane heading over to Germany. Inside the aircraft, we sat on long metal benches facing each other, like on a New York subway.

  The pilot saw my Big Red One and invited me up into the cockpit for a helluva view of the countryside below. Air force flyboys were always the brunt of our jokes whenever we'd run into them in Paris bars. For the first time, I realized how difficult it was to distinguish what the hell was going on down on the ground from up in the air. American bombs had been dropped accidentally on our GIs, and plenty of boys in my own outfit had been killed by them. I still had some "Made in USA" shrapnel in my back from friendly fire. On that flight, I suddenly understood the tough task our pilots had had during the war.

  When we flew over Germany, the devastating destruction to their cities made me tremble. From my vantage point up in the sky, I was overcome with sadness about all the violence, the damage, the lost lives. I started to cry, the first tears in a long, long time. I got a grip on my emotions and wiped my eyes dry. When we landed in Munich, I thanked the pilot wholeheartedly for the ride. It had been illuminating.

  One of the other passengers on the plane, a colonel, was also heading for the camp at Bad Kissingen, where our division was bivouacked. The colonel invited me into the mess hall for a meal with him. We arrived in a big hangar where officers and NCOs were waiting in lines with trays. German POWs were in charge of distributing meals. One of them who was serving chicken wore a small Nazi medal of honor.

  "Twenty-first Panzer?" I said to the POW when the colonel wasn't looking.

  "First Division?" he said.

  We locked eyes for a complicitous moment. I turned so the colonel could see the enormous piece of chicken the German POW had served me. When I went for dessert, I came back with a gigantic piece of cake on my plate. The colonel burst out laughing.

  "I better stick close to you, Corporal!"

  To get to the First Division sector, I had to walk across the entire camp. The colonel accompanied me. There were thousands and thousands of prisoners living there, a massive flock of POWs like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was strange to be in uniform, engulfed by German soldiers, yet without a rifle in my hand. Parachutes were propped up everywhere in the fields for shelter. It was raining, and a strong wind blew across the area, flapping the parachute tents and rattling the tin plates that the POWs used at mealtimes. It was a surrealistic scene. Totally defeated, the Germans didn't look like they'd lost anything, much less a world war. Silently confident and contem
ptuous, they reminded me of big rats in some bizarre laboratory experiment.

  Our division boarded a train that took us to the south of France. Because of bombed-out train tracks and stations, trucks had to drive us the final leg of the journey into Marseille. The locals weren't quite as happy to see us as the Parisians had been. People were still bitter about the massive Allied bombing mission in May 1944 on Marseille. It was intended to break the enemy's stranglehold on the southern flank, but the cost of victory was high. More than two thousand civilians had been killed and another three thousand wounded.

  We were bivouacked just outside Marseille in an American camp called Delta Base, awaiting the arrival of a "Liberty Ship." Once her cargo was unloaded-wheat, cereal, coffee, cotton, and sugar for the undernour ished French, after years of rationing-hundreds of discharged dogfaces could board the ship and sail back to the States.

  GIs had an awkward attitude about German soldiers, deadly enemies one day, defeated charges the next. And vice versa. I tried to poke fun at our bizarre relationship in this drawing to my brother Ving.

  During my days in Marseille, I saw many buildings still in ruins, some collapsed under the Allied bombs of '44, others burned and gutted by the Nazis in an infamous hunt for Jewish refugees in '43. The docks were damaged from bombings against the German submarine station there. I walked all over the city, visited the famous old port, went up the Canebiere-the "Fifth Avenue of Marseille," as GIs called it-and climbed all the way up to the big white cathedral on the promontory overlooking the city, Notre Dame de la Garde. Messerschinitts had buzzed the cathedral and machine-gunned its marble walls just to terrorize people in the city below. The scars in the white marble from Nazi bullets were fresh.

  From the cathedral I got a good view of the three austere, chalky white islands out in the bay. One of them, the island of If, rose like a jewel out of the Mediterranean. On its massive rocks stood the walled Chateau d'If, the garrison that had once served as an inescapable prison, immortalized in Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo. Seeing the Chateau d'If was worth my entire trip to Marseille.

 

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