World War II: The Autobiography

by Jon E. Lewis

  At Warnach, on the other side of the main Bastogne road, some soldiers who had taken, lost and retaken this miserable village were now sightseeing the battlefield. They were also inspecting the blown-out equipment of two German tanks and a German self-propelled gun which had been destroyed here. Warnach smelled of the dead; in subzero weather the smell of death has an acrid burning odor. The soldiers poked through the German equipment to see if there was anything useful or desirable. They unearthed a pair of good bedroom slippers alongside the tank, but as no one in the infantry has any chance to wear bedroom slippers these were left. There was a German Bible but no one could read German. Someone had found a German machine pistol in working order and rapidly salted it away; they hoped to find other equally valuable loot.

  The American dead had been moved inside the smashed houses and covered over; the dead horses and cows lay where they were, as did a few dead Germans. An old civilian was hopelessly shovelling grain from some burned and burst sacks into a wheelbarrow; and farther down the ruined street a woman was talking French in a high angry voice to the chaplain, who was trying to pacify her. We moved down this way to watch the goings-on. Her house was in fairly good shape; that is to say, it had no windows or door and there was a shell hole through the second-floor wall, but it was standing and the roof looked rain proof. Outside her parlor window were some German mines, marked with a white tape. She stood in her front hall and said bitterly that it was a terrible thing, she had left her house for a few moments that morning, and upon returning she found her sheets had been stolen.

  “What’s she saying?” asked an enormous soldier with red-rimmed blue eyes and a stubble of red beard. Everyone seems about the same age, as if weariness and strain and the unceasing cold leveled all life. I translated the woman’s complaint.

  Another soldier said, “What does a sheet look like?”

  The huge red-bearded man drawled out, “My goodness,” a delicious expression coming from that face in that street. “If she’d of been here when the fighting was going on, she’d act different.”

  Farther down the street a command car dragged a trailer; the bodies of Germans were piled on the trailer like so much ghastly firewood.

  We had come up this main road two days before. First there had been a quick tempestuous scene in a battalion headquarters when two planes strafed us, roaring in to attack three times and putting machine-gun bullets neatly through the second-storey windows of the house. The official attitude has always been that no Germans were flying reclaimed Thunderbolts, so that is that. No one was wounded or killed during this brief muck-up. One of the battalion machine-gunners, who had been firing at the Thunderbolts, said, “For God’s sake, which side are those guys fighting on?” We jumped into our jeep and drove up nearer the front, feeling that the front was probably safer.

  A solitary tank was parked close to a bombed house near the main road. The crew sat on top of the tank, watching a village just over the hill which was being shelled, as well as bombed by the Thunderbolts. The village was burning and the smoke made a close package of fog around it, but the flames shot up and reddened the snow in the foreground. The armed forces on this piece of front consisted, at the moment, of this tank, and out ahead a few more tanks, and somewhere invisibly to the left a squadron of tanks. We did not know where our infantry was. (This is what a fluid situation means.) The attacked village would soon be entered by the tanks, including the solitary watchdog now guarding this road.

  We inquired of the tank crew how everything went. “The war’s over,” said one of the soldiers, sitting on the turret. “Don’t you know that? I heard it on the radio, a week ago. The Germans haven’t any gasoline. They haven’t any planes. Their tanks are no good. They haven’t any shells for their guns. Hell, it’s all over. I ask myself what I’m doing here,” the tankist went on. “I say to myself, boy, you’re crazy; sitting out here in the snow. Those ain’t Germans, I say to myself, didn’t they tell you on the radio the Germans are finished?”

  As for the situation, someone else on the tank said that they would gratefully appreciate it if we could tell them what was going on.

  “The wood’s full of dead Krauts,” said another, pointing across the road. “We came up here and sprayed it just in case there was any around and seems the place was full of them, so it’s a good thing we sprayed it all right. But where they are right now, I wouldn’t know.”

  “How’s your hen?” asked the Captain, who had come from Battalion HQ to show us the way. “He’s got a hen,” the Captain explained. “He’s been sweating that hen out for three days, running around after it with his helmet.”

  “My hen’s worthless,” said a soldier. “Finished, no good, got no fight in her.”

  “Just like the Germans,” said the one who listened to the radio.

  Now two days later the road was open much farther and there was even a rumor that it was open all the way to Bastogne. That would mean avoiding the secondary roads, a quicker journey, but it seemed a good idea to inquire at a blasted German gun position. At this spot there were ten Americans, two sergeants and eight enlisted men; also two smashed German bodies, two dead cows and a gutted house.

  “I wouldn’t go up that road if I was you,” one of the sergeants said. “It’s cut with small-arms fire about a quarter of a mile farther on. We took about seventeen Heinies out of there just a while back, but some others must of got in.”

  That seemed to settle the road.

  “Anyhow,” the sergeant went on, “They’re making a counter-attack. They got about thirty tanks, we heard, coming this way.”

  The situation was getting very fluid again.

  “What are you going to do?” I said.

  “Stay here,” said one of the soldiers.

  “We got a gun,” said another.

  War is lonely and individual work; it is hard to realize how small it can get. Finally it can boil down to ten unshaven gaunt-looking young men, from anywhere in America, stationed on a vital road with German tanks coming in.

  “You better take that side road if you’re going to Bastogne,” the second sergeant said.

  It seemed shameful to leave them. “Good luck,” I said, not knowing what to say.

  “Sure, sure,” they said soothingly. And later on they got a tank and the road was never cut and now if they are still alive they are somewhere in Germany doing the same work, as undramatically and casually – just any ten young men from anywhere in America.

  About a mile from this place, and therefore about a mile and a half from the oncoming German tanks, the General in command of this tank outfit had his headquarters in a farmhouse. You could not easily enter his office through the front door, because a dead horse with spattered entrails blocked the way. A shell had landed in the farmyard a few minutes before and killed one cow and wounded a second, which was making sad sounds in a passageway between the house and the barn.

  The air-ground-support officer was here with his van, checking up on the Thunderbolts who were attacking the oncoming German tanks. “Argue Leader,” he said, calling on the radiophone to the flight leader. “Beagle here. Did you do any good on that one?”

  “Can’t say yet,” answered the voice from the air.

  Then over the loud-speaker a new voice came from the air, talking clearly and loudly and calmly. “Three Tigers down there with people around them.”

  Also from the air the voice of Argue Leader replied rather peevishly, “Go in and get them. Don’t stand there talking about it.” They were both moving at an approximate speed of three hundred miles an hour.

  From the radio in another van came the voice of the Colonel commanding the forward tank unit, which was stopping this counterattack on the ground. “We got ten and two more coming,” said the Colonel’s voice. “Just wanted to keep you posted on the German tanks burning up here. It’s a beautiful sight, a beautiful sight, over.”

  “What a lovely headquarters,” said a soldier who was making himself a toasted cheese sandwich o
ver a small fire that served everyone for warmth and cookstove. He had opened the cheese can in his K ration and was doing an excellent job, using a German bayonet as a kitchen utensil.

  “Furthermore,” said a lieutenant, “they’re attacking on the other side. They got about thirty tanks coming in from the west too.”

  “See if I care,” remarked the soldier, turning his bread carefully so as to toast it both ways. A shell landed, but it was farther up the road. There had been a vaguely sketched general ducking, a quick reflex action, but no one of course remarked it.

  Then Argue Leader’s voice came exultantly from the air. “Got those three. Going home now. Over.”

  “Good boys,” said the ground officer. “Best there is. My squadron.”

  “Listen to him,” said an artillery officer who had come over to report. “You’d think the Thunderbolts did everything. Well, I got to get back to work.”

  The cow went on moaning softly in the passageway. Our driver, who had made no previous comment during the day, said bitterly, “What I hate to see is a bunch of livestock all beat up this way. Goddammit, what they got to do with it? It’s not their fault.”

  Christmas had passed almost unnoticed. All those who could, and that would mean no farther forward than Battalion Headquarters, had shaved and eaten turkey. The others did not shave and ate cold K rations. That was Christmas. There was little celebration on New Year’s Eve, because everyone was occupied, and there was nothing to drink. Now on New Year’s Day we were going up to visit the front, east of Luxembourg City. The front was quiet in the early afternoon, except for artillery, and a beautiful fat-flaked snowstorm had started. We decided, like millions of other people, that we were most heartily sick of war; what we really wanted to do was borrow a sled and go coasting. We borrowed a homemade wooden sled from an obliging little boy and found a steep slick hill near an abandoned stone quarry. It was evidently a well-known hill, because a dozen Luxembourg children were already there, with unsteerable sleds like ours. The sky had cleared and the ever present Thunderbolts returned and were working over the front less than four kilometers away. They made a lot of noise, and the artillery was pounding away too. The children paid no attention to this; they did not watch the Thunderbolts, or listen to the artillery. Screaming with joy, fear, and good spirits, they continued to slide down the hill.

  Our soldier driver stood with me at the top of the hill and watched the children. “Children aren’t so dumb,” he said. I said nothing. “Children are pretty smart’,’ he said. I said nothing again. “What I mean is, children got the right idea. What people ought to do is go coasting.”

  When he dropped us that night he said, “I sure got to thank you folks. I haven’t had so much fun since I left home.”

  On the night of New Year’s Day, I thought of a wonderful New Year’s resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it.

  There were many dead and many wounded, but the survivors contained the fluid situation and slowly turned it into a retreat, and finally, as the communiqué said, the bulge was ironed out. This was not done fast or easily; and it was not done by those anonymous things, armies, divisions, regiments. It was done by men, one by one — your men.

  Five months after Arnhem, the Allies were back in the northern Rhineland, this time by land. To break into Germany, the British 21st Army Group had the unenviable task of negotiating the ten-miles-deep Rewhswald Forest. This done, the British crossed over into Germany itself.

  CROSSING THE GERMAN BORDER, 28 FEBRUARY 1945

  John Foley, British Tank Officer

  I stared curiously at my first German civilian. He was an old man, dressed in shabby serge and an engine-driver’s sort of cap. His grizzled face regarded us from above a bushy white moustache as we clattered over the broken frontier barrier. And then I heard Angler’s driver’s hatch being thrown open, and when I looked over my shoulder I saw Smith 161 leaning out and staring questioningly at the old German.

  “We on the right road for Berlin, mate?” asked Smith 161, with a perfectly straight face.

  I swear the old blue eyes winked, as the man tugged at his grizzled moustache and said: “Berlin? Fa, ja! Gerade aus!”

  “I thought the Germans had no sense of humour,” said Pickford, when we got moving again.

  “I know,” I said. “But he can remember Germany before Hitler, and probably before the Kaiser, too.”

  By 3 March 1945, the Allies were emplaced along the Rhine from Dusseldorf to the Dutch frontier. The entire German hinterland lay before them. Moreover, thanks to the foolishness of the Germans the centre of the front had one bridge (at Remagen) over the Rhine left intact. The American First Army poured across it. Disregarding Berlin as a prize – the Russians were already closing on the German capital from the East – Eisenhower drove through central Germany. After heavy fighting at the Remagen bridgehead, the American First Army then swung north to meet the Ninth Army and the British (who had forced the Rhine at Wesel), surrounding the Ruhr. On 21 April the German commander in the Ruhr Pocket, Field Marshal Model, shot himself. Elsewhere in western Germany the Allies were proceeding up to 30 miles a day. German resistance had collapsed.

  ONE MAN’S WAR: A G.I. FIGHTS HIS WAY INTO GERMANY, MARCH–APRIL 1945

  Private Charles Cavas, 417th Infantry Regiment

  Pvt. Charles Cavas 31386553

  Hq Co 1st Bn 417th Inf

  APO #76 c/o PM, NY, NY

  April 20, 1945

  Dear Bob:

  Since crossing the big river we have been moving so fast that I haven’t had much chance to do anything of my own. I’d like to tell you that we made the now famous crossing in the still of a moonlight night, stealthily rowing across with everyone holding their breath expectantly but I’m afraid it wasn’t so. We did cross at night however but it was on vehicles and on a bridge which the engineers (God bless ’em) had put up in record time. So I’m afraid that I will have to tell my grandchildren that their grandfather crossed the Rhine on a jeep with his ears glued to a radio. However don’t think we weren’t nervous for although it was only a matter of a few minutes in making the other side it seemed like hours and we expected anything to happen . . . but nothing did, we didn’t even hear a single shot.

  In taking and going through the towns we are finding a lot of Russians, Poles, French etc. who had been used as slave labor and at times it looks like a parade going by for the streets are lined with these people cheering and waving to us. One town especially where there were even more Poles than Germans. I never saw anyone so glad to see anybody, hell they waved and cheered and surrounded us in an attempt to press our hands. One woman dashed to our jeep, grabbed my hands and if I didn’t quickly withdraw them I know she would have kissed them. I’m telling you all this to give you an idea of how they look upon us here, they look upon us as liberators and several times I’ve thought when witnessing such scenes God help our country if it fails to do its share in maininting and establishing a world peace at the end of the war.

  When we approach a town we look for white flags which may be showing and if we see any we send our troops in but sometimes we do not see anything resembling white flags and since we have learned that SS troops when in a town prevent the people from surrendering we immediately open up on the town with everything we’ve got including tanks, and it isn’t long before every house and building is displaying something white. That’s the way we have been working, we don’t wreck the town unless we have to for our own protection.

  Bob, there are a lot of things I’d like to tell you but unfortunately I have neither the time nor the space. Some day when this is all over we’ll have a good old fashioned bull session with plenty of beer (or should I say Four Roses?) about all this . . . that’s of course after I have been home for a while for there are a few things that need my immediate attention . . . you follow me I hope???

  In one town we liberated an underground factory and as a result we are all wearing clean underwear and so
cks. And I might add that both wearing apparel is much fancier than anything we have worn in a long time. After we helped ourselves to what we needed a bunch of Frenchmen and Russians came rushing in and they finished emptying the place. I think it is safe to say that the Germans are the only ones in that town walking around in worn underwear and socks.

  Sometimes I think that it won’t be long before I will be home and all this will be far behind me and it is then that I feel good and my spirits are high and then there are times I feel as though this thing will drag on and even when it is over we will be sent elsewhere (there is still another war on the other side of the world) and then I feel lower than low. I’m tired, Bob. I’m tired with things I’ve seen and I’m tired of always moving, of going to sleep and being awakened and told we are moving immediately. Of going all day without a bite to eat and for days without washing, can you blame me when I say I’m tired of it all? Through all this the thing that carries me on is thoughts of what I have waiting for me at home . . . each day I say to myself “It shouldn’t be long now, it can’t be, it’s got to end sometime.” I’ve often wondered what makes men go on the way they do and then I think of myself and I know that they too think the way I do with something and someone waiting for them.

  I hope you don’t think I’ve gone corny after writing the above but it’s the first time I’ve written anything like that and I know it will be kept between you and me.

  Adios,

  Charlie.

  A BOMB HITS THE PROPAGANDA MINISTRY, BERLIN, 13 MARCH 1945

  Joseph Goebbels

  Joseph Goebbels was one of the principal ring-leaders of Nazism and head of the Nazi’s Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.