by Dean Hughes
For two days the men trained with the boats, and then, as 2200 approached on a cold night, the men crouched by the river and prepared themselves to make their quick assault. It was cloudy, with no moon or stars. Most nights the Americans shined searchlights at the clouds and lit up the front along the river, but tonight there were no lights. The Germans put up some flares from time to time, and as usual, at random times, fired off a volley of artillery shells, but for the most part, it was a quiet night. From the American side, however, every German stronghold had been targeted, and a rifle team, machine gun, mortar tube, artillery gun, or some combination of all of those was ready to go into action should the patrol need the backing.
The crossing was to take place right in front of the stone farmhouse. The river had been high, even out of its banks a couple of weeks earlier. It was back to a normal width now, only about thirty meters across, but it was running swiftly. Alex was to take the first boat, with six men, row hard, and carry one end of an attached rope across. They would hook that up to a tree on the opposite side, and the second boat would use the rope to get across. Then, on the return trip, both crews would have the rope available for a quick escape.
When Alex and his men pushed off, they soon found that the water was even more swift than they had expected, but they worked hard, got across—even though they were carried well downstream—and Alex jumped out first. Just hanging onto the boat was a tussle, but the others soon leaped out and helped, and then they quickly carried the boat up the river to a place more directly across from the OP. They found a sturdy tree, tied off the rope, and signaled for the second crew to come across.
While Alex waited for the second boat, he surveyed the area, watched, and listened for any sign of movement. But all was dark. As soon as all his men were with him, he whispered, “All right. Let’s go.”
He moved quickly, without running, and all the men stayed in a tight group because of the dark until they reached a house where they knew a number of Germans were holed up. Just as the patrol had practiced, everyone fanned out, and then the designated men pulled their hand grenades loose and got ready. Pozernac fired a rifle grenade through a basement window, and then the others tossed their hand grenades in. Alex and a young private named Les Hartley were waiting, down a short flight of stairs, at the basement door. When the grenades went off, they both threw themselves against the door and smashed it open.
One of the grenades may have been a second behind the others, or maybe Alex hit the door an instant too soon. What he felt as the door gave way was the impact of flying debris against his uniform, his helmet. He had ducked his head, and he wasn’t hurt, but he heard Hartley scream and drop to his knees. He had obviously been hit by shrapnel from a grenade.
“Come out with your hands high,” Alex shouted in German. And then to the men behind him, “Hartley’s down. Someone help him.”
Two of his men ran down the steps, picked up Hartley, and carried him back. Alex stepped back outside the door, and he shouted, again in German, “Come out now, hands high, or we’ll kill you all.”
In a moment a German soldier appeared at the door. Just as Alex had hoped, he had been far enough away to survive the grenades, but he seemed to wobble, probably still stunned from the explosions. Another man was behind him. As the two stepped through the door, they hoisted their hands in the air.
“Come forward,” Alex demanded. “Are there more?”
“Alle sind tot,” the first man said.
But that wasn’t true; not everyone was dead. Another man appeared, the front of his uniform dark with blood. He was gasping for breath. Alex could hear by the wheezing that a grenade fragment must have penetrated his lung.
“Come. Come,” Alex yelled at him. But this man was a problem. He needed medical attention right away.
Most of Alex’s men had already disappeared in the dark. They had taken the two prisoners with them, and they were hurrying to the river. Everyone knew there would be a reaction just as soon as German gun crews knew where to target their shells. If the men in the patrol wanted to stay alive, they had to get back across the river fast.
Irv Johnston grabbed the wounded soldier. “He’s not in good shape,” Alex told him. But Johnston was already pulling him down the little incline toward the river. “Who’s got Hartley?” Alex yelled.
“I do,” Curtis called back. “He’s got a chunk of shrapnel sticking out of his forehead.” It was a horrifying image, but worse was Hartley’s anguished wailing. Alex ran to Curtis and they picked Hartley up, one on each side of him with their shoulders under his arms, and they hurried down toward the boat. They could see very little until they were almost on top of their own men.
The first boat crew was loaded; the men had one of the Germans with them. They had just begun to pull their way across the river, using the rope, when a flare lit up the sky. A second later, machine-gun fire began to snap, and tracer bullets darted like strings of light toward the river. Alex clung to Hartley, who was crazy with pain. His arm was around Alex’s neck, and he was squeezing with tremendous power. “We’ll get you help in a minute,” Alex told him.
Somewhere behind Alex, he heard Johnston say, “This Kraut is in bad shape. He’s collapsed. I don’t think he can make it.”
“Leave him,” Alex said. “His own medics can help him.”
By then, the first boat was out of the way, and Alex’s crew was pushing their boat into place. Two men had hold of the second German prisoner, and they took him onto the boat. Everyone else helped to carry Hartley on, and then they started pulling across the water.
Another flare flashed over the river, and a few seconds later a mortar shell crashed into the water, close by. The boat rocked to the left, and just as it was coming down, an explosion struck on the opposite side. Most of the men had lost their hold on the rope, but Alex clung on, knowing it was their lifeline. The others grabbed at it as soon as the water settled a little, and they began to tug toward the bank again. Machine-gun tracers were still whipping through the air. The men pulled hard and were across the river in a minute or less, but getting out of the boat was not easy, with Hartley still screaming and flailing. “Kill me,” he had begun to scream. “I can’t stand it.”
Just as Alex stepped out onto the bank, he heard a thud next to him, and instantly, a grunt. One of his men had dropped into the mud by the river. “Help me,” Alex yelled. “We’ve got another man down, right here.”
Alex heard men coming but could hardly see anything. He helped get Hartley up the steep bank, and then, with three others, carried him around the farmhouse. The man continued to scream, and Alex wondered how long it would be before he would lose consciousness. The shrapnel had to be through his skull, into his brain.
Once all the men were behind cover, several men held Hartley, and one of them got out a syrette of morphine, broke off the glass top, and then plunged the needle into Hartley’s arm. He calmed rather quickly after that, but Alex held out no hope that he would live.
The bombardment was going crazy now, from both sides. American guns were firing into German positions, and all around the OP, mortars were dropping in, the building itself taking a couple of hits. The men stayed close to the wall and waited for things to quiet.
“Do we have those Germans secure?” Alex yelled between explosions.
“They’re not safe with me here,” Lyon shouted back at Alex. “I’m going to kill them both.” He cursed, and Alex knew what he was feeling. Hartley was Lyon’s best friend.
“Who else went down out there?” Alex yelled.
Pozernac was next to Alex. He said, “It was Pugmire. He got hit in the back. He’s dead.”
Alex suddenly felt sick. The guy hadn’t been up front a week yet. He had a wife back home, a little baby. Alex took a long breath, and then he stood up. “Get inside,” he demanded. “We need to get into the cellar until all this fire stops. We could get some big stuff in here any minute now.”
The men moved inside and then hurried down th
e steps into the cellar. There was no electricity in the house, but the men from the other squads were downstairs already, and they had lit a lantern that cast a pale brown light around the room. Alex told the German soldiers to sit in a corner, on the floor. He watched them, noticed how hard they seemed, how fearless. He saw the SS insignias on their collars. One of the men was an Unterscharführer—a buck sergeant in the military SS—and the other an Oberscharführer, or staff sergeant. They sat calmly, quietly, and they showed no sign of emotion.
A couple of the men had stayed upstairs with Hartley. The barrage of fire was continuing, and Alex worried about them. After a few minutes he walked upstairs to see what was happening. Lyon was kneeling by Hartley, whose breathing had become so shallow it was difficult to discern. “How’s he doing?” Alex asked.
“We used the line to HQ to call for medics, but he’ll be dead before they get here,” the other man said, a corporal named Donaldson.
“For what?” Lyon asked. He turned and looked at Alex.
Alex didn’t answer. “You men need to get to the cellar,” he said, “so we don’t lose you, too.”
“He’s our buddy; we’ll stay with him,” Lyon said.
A shell hit nearby, thumped into the field to the north of the house. And then, in the silence that followed, Alex heard Hartley take a long draw of air and let go. “That’s it,” Donaldson said.
Lyon got up. He turned and walked to the door and then trudged down the cellar steps. “Come on, Corporal,” Alex said. “Let’s get downstairs.”
But just then Alex heard a commotion in the cellar, heard Lyon shout, “You did this! You did this!”
Alex hurried down the steps. By then, Pozernac had hold of Lyon, but Lyon was still kicking at the two Germans, who were cowering in the corner. One of them was holding his face, and Alex knew that he had taken a punch—or a kick—in the head. Lyon was still fighting, swearing, trying to get in another blow.
Davis had moved in now. He helped Pozernac drag Lyon to the other side of the room. But Lyon’s eyes were crazy with anger. “I want to kill someone,” he was yelling. “Someone deserves to die for this.”
Alex knew what Lyon was thinking, that maybe it was an American who deserved the death penalty—maybe the intelligence officer who had thought this mission up, or maybe Alex, who had chosen the participants. Alex walked to Lyon and put his hand on his shoulder. “Stop it,” he said.
Lyon did stop his shouting, but he looked at Alex defiantly, the anger still raging in his eyes.
“Sit down and be quiet,” Alex said. “Don’t go near those Germans again.”
“Then get them out of here.”
“A couple of Battalion S-2 officers are coming over to take them. They’ll be here as soon as things calm down outside.”
“This wasn’t right, Sergeant. I told you that before we ever started.”
Alex had no reply. But he was relieved that Lyon was beginning to collect himself. Alex walked across the room, and he looked down at the two Germans. “We lost two lives capturing you,” he said in German. “You must answer all our questions if you want to live. I promise you, these men will come after you if they learn that their friends died for no reason.”
This was all said quietly but with a certain controlled anger. One of the Germans, the buck sergeant, was a young man with a stubble of dark beard. He appeared much younger than the other. Alex thought he saw some fear in the boy’s eyes.
In the next half hour or so, the shelling from across the river slowed and then stopped. The S-2 officers, two lieutenants, showed up looking entirely too young and inexperienced, and they took the German sergeants away. Once they were gone, Lyon and Donaldson and most of the other men in the cellar decided to go upstairs and get some sleep, but Alex kept his men downstairs. They were still riled up, not ready to sleep yet, and Alex wasn’t sure the shelling was finished for the night.
The men sat around the edges of the cellar on the dirt floor, all leaning against the whitewashed rock walls. Alex knew they were feeling the same thing he was: the sickening sense of loss now that they had time to consider what had happened. And surely, too, the fear that always set in after surviving such mortal danger.
“Pugmire shouldn’t have been here at all,” Pozernac said after a time, as though he knew what everyone was thinking. “He has a little kid at home who’s never going to know him.”
“I trained with Pugmire, right from the first day,” Kaplan said. “The guy was like a big overgrown Boy Scout. He was always saying, ‘After the war—this; after the war—that.’ That’s all he thought about—getting back to his wife and his little boy.”
There was a long pause, and all the heads stayed down. Finally Pozernac, clearly preferring anger to this excruciating sadness, said, “I’d still like to shoot both of those SS sergeants right between the eyes.”
Alex tried to think how he felt about that. What he knew was that flashes of the same emotion had fired through him tonight.
“I could kill them and not bat an eye,” Pozernac said.
He waited and got no reaction until Irv Johnston finally asked, “What about when you get back home? Would you remember something like that? Would it start to bother you?”
That was not the sort of thing the men usually talked about. Johnston was probably the only soldier in the squad who would pose such a question. Alex was pretty sure it wasn’t something good to talk about, but he hesitated. He was curious to hear Pozernac’s response.
“It wouldn’t bother me a bit,” Pozernac said.
“It’s the kind of stuff we accuse the Germans of doing—killing prisoners, shooting men who try to surrender.”
“It is what they do.”
“So we should do it too?”
“Shut up, Johnston. Just shut up. I get tired of all your . . .” But he couldn’t seem to think of the word he wanted.
Johnston glanced at Alex. He had those strange pea-green eyes, and the lantern cast a yellow glow on his face. “I shot a guy the other day,” he said. “A German over on the other side of the river. He was way off, and I didn’t think I could hit him. I was mostly just bored from sitting around. So I allowed for the distance and squeezed off a round. And the guy went down. He didn’t move either. I think I killed him.”
“That’s what we’re here for, Johnston,” Pozernac said. “Maybe you don’t understand that.”
“I understand. But that guy was just leaning against a building, having a smoke. And I took a pot shot at him for the fun of it. I gotta say, since I did that, I’ve been wondering what’s wrong with me. I’ve got a feeling that ten years from now—fifty years from now—I’m still going to be thinking about that guy.”
“That’s stupid, Johnston. Really stupid. He’d kill you without giving the idea a second thought. This is war, not Sunday School.”
“That’s right. But when you get home are you going to go to church—sit there with all those decent people and act like you’re just the same as they are?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pozernac started to jump up, but as he did, Ernst grabbed him, held him.
“That’s enough,” Alex shouted. “Both you guys—just be quiet.”
“Hey, I’m just curious,” Johnston said. “I’m not—”
“I said be quiet!”
“Okay. Fine.”
“Let’s go upstairs and get some sleep.”
Alex got up, and the men tramped silently up the steps to the room where all of them slept in close quarters, their bedrolls spread out on the floor. Pozernac was still mumbling, telling Ernst what he thought of Johnston, but Johnston didn’t seem to care.
Alex lay down, with only a blanket around him. That was not a problem. He had slept plenty of nights that way. What he feared was that his mind wouldn’t stop. He could push Johnston’s questions aside—he had been doing that for a long time—but he wasn’t sure he could stop thinking about everything else that had happened that night.
It took a few minutes
for the men to settle down, but soon after they did, Alex heard a sound outside that he couldn’t identify. The broken windows were covered with torn-down curtains or burlap sacks. The coverings cut out the wind and some of the cold, but not the noise. Alex could hear a buzzing sound rise to a whistle, hesitate, then repeat itself. The pattern continued for some time before it was interrupted by a sound that Alex did know, instantly. It was a gurgling, loose cough.
“It must be that German—trying to breathe,” Curtis said. He was lying next to Alex, and he had obviously been wondering about the noise too. “The one with the fragment in his chest.”
Pozernac cursed. “I’m not going to listen to that all night,” he said. But now he sounded as though he were trying to cling to his anger, the passion of it gone.
Every soldier feared, more than anything, a slow and agonizing death, with no help, no painkiller. And alone. The man was out there on the riverbank, and the Germans hadn’t found him the way Alex had thought they would.
The wheezing continued for a couple of minutes before Ernst said, “I’m going out, Sarge. I’ll throw a grenade across the river and finish the guy off.”
“No. You’ll draw fire.”
“Yeah, but . . . I think we owe him that much.”
Alex, of course, was already thinking the same thing.
“He was SS, the same as those other guys,” Pozernac said. “Let him suffer.”
But the wheezing didn’t stop, and every draw of breath sounded like a cry for help. Then the coughing would come again, and sometimes a moan. Each time the breath held, hesitated, Alex hoped that was the last, that the poor guy could die. But on and on the sound continued, and Alex could not will himself to ignore it, to sleep. He kept thinking of Pugmire, of Hartley.
