Roll Me Over

by Raymond Gantter

  My decision to sleep near my squad had been fortunate. Torrey, the German girl, and one of the male civilians had stretched out on the luxurious bed in the small storeroom—Torrey on one side, the girl on the other, the civilian in the middle between them. (They didn’t trust us even when we were tired, these fleshwise Europeans.) During the night the fire smoldering in the rains above had burned a hole in the thick floor, and a mass of burning coals had funneled down upon Torrey. His life was saved by the quick action of Howie Dettman, the medic, who pulled him out before the fastgrowing pile had reached his face. His hands and arms were fearfully burned, however. The girl was untouched, and the civilian sleeping in the middle had been burnt only slightly. Torrey was rushed to the battalion aid station, but before he left, he designated me as platoon leader. (He never rejoined the outfit: his burns had been so severe that he was evacuated to England and spent the duration in a hospital there.)

  There was no more sleep for me that night. Dettman and I sat on the potato bin and talked until dawn, making plans and eating apples.

  The cellar was crowded now. More civilians drifted in, like the old woman who had arrived the day before. We saw her coming through the orchard, a bent figure with a large suitcase in one hand, a heavy bundle wrapped in a red and white tablecloth in the other. She reeled with weariness and stopped every few yards to rest, leaning her stubborn old body against the broken trees, tilting her shawled head upward to struggle for breath. Ten staggering yards at a time, and we watched her in silence, with pity. One man wanted to go to her, take her bundles and help her in. Wordlessly I voted him a Bronze Star for humanity, but had to refuse his request: a lurking sniper might not fire on an old German woman, but a fresh young American was a different target altogether.

  She reached us finally, and two men helped her to the cellar. Returning to the house some hours later, I found her sitting at the bottom of the cellar stairs, her belongings piled around her. Angered, I asked the civilians if they could not offer her a better place to sit. They muttered that they did not know her, she had come from another village, the cellar was very crowded, there was no room for her, and please, when would I get the ambulance for their father? I damned them for their coldness, told them their father could wait, and stomped into their living quarters, trailed by bleats of protest. It was crowded, the old man was suffering, but I cleared a chair and went back for the old woman. No good: I couldn’t budge her. Whether she was so dulled by exhaustion that she could not comprehend, or whether her pride would not permit her to accept hospitality thus churlishly doled out by her countrymen, I could not tell. She sat there all the long night, brushed by the knees of all who passed. And as I lay on the potato bin, talking to Dettman, my eyes turned again and again to the bent figure in shapeless black, the nodding head, the sudden starts into wakefulness each time the sagging body began to slip from the narrow step. I could offer her nothing more—all I had was a bin of potatoes.

  At dawn I crept up to Shorty’s position. (Not that it matters, but the date was March 22.) From his observation post it was evident that no tanks remained in the hay shed, but we decided to burn the shed to prevent it being so used again. We fired a white phosphorus rocket into the hay and in five minutes the shed was flame and quick ashes. We flushed no Jerries.

  Returning to my late squad, I learned that a German shell had just scored a hit on the corner of the barn, wounding “Red” Hull slightly.

  Immediately after noon chow we pushed off, our company in reserve. (That is, E and F companies were forward and G company followed, to be committed to action only if necessary.) Our objective was the little town of Nieder-kümpel Ober, which sat precariously on a high hill overlooking the Sieg River. It was a helluva hike, uphill and down, dodging German shells all the way. We assembled for the assault in the woods on a neighboring hill and lay doggo there for two hours while the artillery worked the town over. It was peaceful in the wood, and the barrage was a remote phenomenon of unpleasant sound. We were tired, and content to lie quietly in the sparse grass, and five curious deer tiptoed daintily to the edge of the clearing and studied us gravely for a long time. When they were gone, I leaned my back against a tree and read a paperback mystery swiped from an unwary tank destroyer crew some days before.

  Finally the assault! Pulse pounding in my throat, I watched the other companies take off. Our turn now, and at a nod from Captain Wirt, I started—my first day as a platoon leader and my platoon was leading the company! Holding my rifle at a fiercely-assault angle and shouting something in the knightly tradition—heaven forgive me, but it might even have been “Follow me, men!”—I gallantly hurdled a barbed wire fence, thoroughly conscious of the captain’s eyes upon me. Three steps more and WHAM! I made a one-point landing on my chin, scattering my equipment for yards. A trailing end of that damned barbed wire had snagged my trousers, throwing me ass over teakettle before the captain’s eyes. And me in the middle of an intrepid charge!

  Picking myself up, I started off again, this time without any clarion call to the men, most of whom were already ahead of me anyway. All the long way to the village my ears burned with shame, and I was unconscious of fatigue and unaware of the bloody gash in my hand.

  We passed many dead and wounded. I recall a hazardous trail through a gorge and a glimpse of a familiar pietà on the rock-strewn floor of the ravine far below: a medic cradling the head of a wounded man on his knees.

  Nieder-kümpel Ober was blazing, and the civilians were fighting the flames with stirrup pumps and buckets of water. Three teenage girls spelled each other on the long handle of the town pump, the only source of water in the village. Old women and children staggered under the weight of water-filled pails hanging from yokes on their necks. A few feet from me two young women and a man labored to save their home. They worked in silence, spending words only to point out new danger spots, new small tongues of flame, but then- faces were strained and desperate, shining with sweat. They worked swiftly.

  I saw no tears, not even from children ... no tears at all until a house was given up for lost and surrendered entirely to the flames. Then the defeated stood back and watched with dull eyes, watched while all their yesterdays flamed up briefly and died to gray ash. Yesterday, today, and even tomorrow gone before the sweat had dried on their bodies. They watched quietly and wept only when it was irrevocable, when the dear familiar walls and doors blurred under the curling flames, began to dissolve and crumble. Then the men hunched their shoulders, their faces working, and the women covered then- heads with their aprons.

  Bill Bowerman, now leader of my old squad, had collapsed from exhaustion on the long uphill race to the village, and I had sent him to the battalion aid station in the rear. The platoon had no other casualties.

  From our defense fine on the crest of the hill we could see Siegburg, an important industrial center on the Sieg River. It looked big.

  As the men lifted the last weary shovels of earth from their newly completed foxholes, the C.O. walked over and told me to move the platoon to another sector. I was ashamed to look at the men when I ordered them to pack up. They were so tired they could barely move.

  Located on the edge of the village, as we were, and with many civilians moving about, we could not resort to our usual unashamed toilet expediency, a simple slit trench. (The American soldier’s modesty about the functions of the body was a constant surprise to Europeans, accustomed to the sight of their own men casually unbuttoning at the side of any road.)

  Some of the men, embarrassed by their needs and reluctant to relieve themselves before the staring civilians, came to me and shyly inquired about “a toilet” I scouted around and finally located one.

  There was no plumbing of any sort in the village, and shell and flame had taken a heavy toll of all buildings... even little ones. The one I found was in pretty good shape—all it lacked was a door. That refinement lay on the ground nearby, apparently tom from its hinges by concussion. The doorless one-holer faced the rear of the largest and b
usiest building in the village, which housed our company C.P. as well as a score of civilians. It was a little public.

  While I hesitated, uncertain whether to search further, an old woman wearily crossed the yard, heading for the little house. She paused for a moment and regarded the broken door. Then calmly hoisting her skirts, she did what she had to do and departed, her aplomb not at all shaken by the stares of the soldiers nearby. After several other civilians of either sex had followed suit, a watching soldier strode purposefully across the yard, beating a middle-aged woman to the throne by a neck. I turned on my heel, went back to the platoon, and told them where the toilet was.

  We moved a thousand yards up the road to a cluster of buildings—it might have been a village—and I established my C.P. in the main house. The men dug more foxholes, and then orders came to send out a twelve-man reconnaissance patrol to sweep the sector for lurking Jerries. I accompanied the patrol. I was new at my job and self-conscious, and I didn’t want to start off with the reputation of sitting on my fat can while everyone else worked. The patrol took two hours, and we waded through swamps and beat the fields and woods without spotting a single enemy. Returning home, I heated water on the kitchen stove and washed my feet before hitting the sack. Beatific... blissful... the “benison of hot water” ... I soaked for an hour, wriggling my toes and murmuring pleasant words to myself, comfortable rich phrases.

  Now, on the morning of March 23, I write this while seated in a warm kitchen. Only four hours’ sleep last night, but I feel good.

  Captain Wirt called me on the phone this morning and said, grinning, “Gantter, do you approve your promotion to staff sergeant?”

  I gulped audibly and replied, “Yes sir, I sure do.”

  He laughed and said, “Okay, I put you in for it.”

  So I feel good now. And early this morning Leo Allen raided the chicken house and came back with forty-two eggs. Fresh eggs, not forty-two eggs’ worth of powder! I had nine fried eggs for breakfast and four more, soft-boiled, a little later. So I feel pretty good.

  An unhappy casualty last night—Herrington, the dark-haired, quiet-spoken Tennessean, shot himself in the foot while on outpost guard duty. I was sternly questioned by HQ as to whether it was accidental or deliberate. I’m convinced it was accidental, and I said so in my report. Herrington is a levelheaded and dependable guy, and his account of the accident is corroborated by the man who shared the outpost with him. They’d discovered that they could sit down while on guard and still have perfect observation. Herrington propped his feet on the rim of the hole, his rifle between his toes. While shifting his position, the muzzle slipped against his foot and the gun went off. I didn’t see him last night before he was evacuated, but I’m confident his story is true.

  It’s going to be a day of leisure today. Leisure and eggs. Allen just came in with twenty-eight more in his helmet Let’s see... how will I have ’em this time?

  Later in the afternoon.

  I was wrong about the leisure. We shove off tonight I’ve just come from a briefing at HQ. Our objective is the town of Geisbach, located on a tributary of the Sieg River. The plan of assault is a little complex, but I’ll try to explain it.

  My platoon moves out at eleven tonight takes the minute village of Edgoven, near Geisbach, then waits. The remainder of the company jumps off at one-thirty a.m. and heads directly for Geisbach, entering the town from the south. When they’ve secured a toehold in the village, they’ll send up a flare—a great star cluster—upon which signal I jump off from Edgoven, push into the north end of Geisbach, send up an answering flare when our first group of buildings has been secured, and then woik south through the village to meet the rest of the company as it works north. There is one real difficulty in my assignment: I must cross a deep, swift creek to get from Edgoven into Geisbach.

  So that’s the story, and we’ve been making preparations ever since I returned from the briefing. I’m a little panicky at the responsibility of this assignment when I’m so damn green at this job, but I conceal my personal qualms and pretend a great confidence.

  We’ve made plans for one last tremendous banquet of eggs tonight. All these eggs and no ------! Well, that energy must be good for something else!

  CHAPTER TEN

  “The road was the dividing line: on one side … the known, and on the other side—”

  March 28.

  I’m fumbling through a mist of hangover as though after a four-day drinking bout. No ordinary carousing, however, but an intoxication of color and movement and violent sound. I’m very tired.

  We jumped off for Edgoven according to plan at eleven p.m. on March 23. With a vagrant moon to light our way, we moved swiftly along the road. There was one freezing moment when we rounded a turn and confronted a German tank looming grimly from a distance of less than fifty yards. We dropped like stones... waited five sweating minutes... made cautious reconnaissance and discovered that it was a dead tank inhabited by the dead, a smashed and burned-out iron shell, still warm to the touch.

  Edgoven presented no difficulties. Not a shot was fired. The buildings were dark and quiet and the civilians innocently asleep. I established my C.P. in a tiny farmhouse inhabited by an ancient couple who listened to our quiet talking in the kitchen and shivered in their bed.

  Leaving the rest of the platoon in Edgoven, four of us set out on a recon patrol, hoping to discover a means of crossing the creek that barred us from Geisbach. We’d progressed only a few yards through an orchard when we halted abruptly to examine the fresh spoor of a German tank. We moved cautiously after that, slipping quietly from tree to tree and hugging the bushes on the left bank of the creek as we approached Geisbach. We had not yet found a bridge, not even a footbridge. The two villages were not widely separated and soon we saw the buildings of the larger town, darker shadows against a dark sky, a stream’s width away. A lumber mill stood on the bank directly across from us, and we crept forward until we could see the front of the building. At that moment the moon came out, and instantly we flattened ourselves in the mud and rank grass of the bank. We had all seen the motionless figure at the corner of the building, the glint of moonlight on rifle and belt buckle. Silently we slipped back to Edgoven to talk things over.

  We had to cross the stream, had to get to the right bank in order to enter Geisbach—that much was clear. It was deeper and swifter and wider than we’d anticipated, but surely there was a bridge somewhere? How did the Edgovians, the Geisbachians, get across? Or didn’t they fraternize? I sent out another patrol, with instructions to follow the stream in the opposite direction, and in a short time they reported back that they’d found a bridge. We could cross the creek all right, but there was an open field on the other side, an area naked of friendly trees or bushes for more than 150 yards. Well, we’d have to take that chance, even though the moon was now shining brilliantly and giving no indication of an early retirement. But supposing the Germans had mined the bridge? I rooted a civilian out of bed and questioned him. When had the German soldiers gone from Edgoven? Oh, several days ago. What was that field used for? For the cows, every day for the cows. Had the cows been in the field today? But yes, certainly. Had anyone walked on the bridge today? Only the cows, and the women who went after the cows. I led him to the bridge, told him to run across it, and when he reached the field on the other side, to turn around and run back again. If he kept on running when he reached the other side, we’d shoot him, and I pointed to the men standing nearby with ready rifles. Poor guy ... his teeth were chattering, and not just from the skimpiness of his nightshirt. It was evident he couldn’t understand why the crazy Americans wanted him to do such a senseless thing. Perhaps my method was brutal, but he was a healthy, middle-aged man, and I was damned if I’d risk any of my men on a bridge that might be mined when adult German males were available.

  The test proved the bridge to be safe, and the terrified man skittered back to his bed, warned not to show his face again that night.

  As two o’clock dre
w near, our tension mounted. We stared toward Geisbach, straining against the blackness to see a flicker of light. Shortly after two we heard the first popping of guns, and almost at once the heavy metallic booming of tank guns in reply. Our hearts sank a little: they weren’t our tanks, and one of them sounded damn close.

  The flare signal came at two-thirty and we pushed off. We were scared. Over the bridge and across the naked field on the double, one man at a time, scampering for the shelter of the nearest trees. And the moon pouring silver with reckless extravagance.

  As soon as we’d crossed the bridge, we realized why one of the tanks sounded so near. It was near: it shared the field with us. Fortunately, its attentions were directed toward the lower end of town, and its crew members were so concerned with their job that we passed unnoticed.

  We moved swiftly to the first building, the mill we’d approached while on recon patrol. We’d almost reached it when we saw the dark figure come around the corner of the building and sensed his quick suspicion. He shouted and fired, and other dark figures ran from nowhere and joined him. We hit the ground, firing as we fell, but the alarm had been given and now we had a fight on our hands.

  The Jerries had us neatly, it seemed. We were pinned down, unable to move forward on the right side of the building because the enemy was waiting for us there, unable to pass on the left side because the mill had been built on the very edge of the stream. Leaving one squad to keep the Germans busy, the rest of us smashed into the rear of the building and went through it, our noisy stumbling over machinery, sawhorses, and piles of lumber lost in the greater racket outside.