Hardly had Captain Black quieted when I received a phone call from battalion. It was Captain William S. Freeman, of Philadelphia, our S-3 (operations officer).
“Boesch,” he said in a voice that was supposed to radiate cheerfulness, “happy Thanksgiving, We’ve got a hot turkey dinner here for every man in the outfit. I’m sending Easy Company’s up now.”
“A turkey dinner?” I asked incredulously. “Are you guys nuts? It’s almost dark and my carrying parties have already made the trip up the hill with rations and water. I can’t send them up there again. Besides, they can’t feed a hot meal in the positions they’re in now. Good God, they’re right on top of the Jerries.”
“It’s the General’s orders, Boesch,” Freeman answered. “We’ve got to do it. You want to see the men get a nice hot meal, don’t you?”
“Well, Jeezus Christ, that’s a fine way of putting it. Of course I want to see them get a hot meal. I want to see them get three hot meals a day and a dry bed every night and a babe to sleep with, but let’s save the turkey until they can pull back where they can enjoy it. Who the hell knows it’s Thanksgiving except some silly bastard in the rear who gets hot meals anyway and just wants a change of diet?”
Freeman had had enough. He put Colonel Casey on the phone.
“Colonel,” I argued, “division headquarters hasn’t been up on that hill. They have no idea what it means to try to get food to those men, not to mention the trouble of trying to eat it. Why can’t we wait until we pull back and the men can enjoy the food?”
“Boesch,” said the Colonel, “I used the same arguments at regiment, and I have no doubt Colonel Jeter used them with division, but those are the orders. There will be no change. The meal is here. I’m sending yours right down. You will see that it gets served.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, defeated.
Resentment seethed inside me. What the hell difference did it make when a man ate his Thanksgiving turkey? One day was like any other to us.
Nevertheless, I sent a messenger to round up the carrying party. When I told the men their assignment, the assortment of bitches that greeted it were in no way softened by the prospect of a turkey dinner when they would get back.
One private, bolder than the rest, looked me square in the eye.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “don’t you think it’d be smarter to have a meal like this when we come off the line and can enjoy it?”
“Today’s Thanksgiving, Joe,” I said—curtly, I’m afraid. “Division wants us to remember our blessings and be thankful. So we eat turkey and like it.”
When the food arrived the men shouldered the marmite cans and started up the hill while I turned my attention to Captain Black’s company. Except for a lieutenant with the isolated platoon up on the hill, Company G had no officers left.
The men of Company G had just begun to congregate for their Thanksgiving turkey when on the other side of the creek a noisy distraction broke loose. Just about even with our position on the other bank stood a disabled tank. Though knocked out, it remained on the road. Because patrols passing near had claimed they had been fired on from the tank, the tank destroyer near my mortar position had been given the job of sending the tank up in flames. Unfortunately, the tank destroyer crew chose this particular time to do the job. The sudden bark of a direct fire weapon so close to us and the explosive crash of the shells caught us by surprise and sent us diving for the ground. Jerry heard the racket too and began to smother the valley with artillery fire.
Then all hell broke loose, not only around us but up on the hill where the men of my carrying party probably were just arriving at the company command post. In almost no time the wounded began streaming down the hill. It took little checking to determine that many of the wounded were from my carrying party.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Just when we got there with the goddamned turkey,” one man told me, holding a bloody bandage against his arm, “the artillery began to come. A lot of guys were killed and wounded, Lieutenant. They need some litter bearers up there, need ‘em bad.”
I quickly called battalion for litter bearers, then tried without success to contact Von Keller at the forward company CP. The telephone line was dead.
It was completely dark by the time the litter bearers reached us, and I was reluctant to start them forward. I knew that if we tried to bring wounded down that steep, slippery slope at night we probably would do more damage than by letting them wait overnight for evacuation. Von Keller, I was certain, would assemble them for the night in the pillbox he was using as a CP.
When Colonel Casey telephoned saying he had heard what happened, I told him my decision to wait until daylight. He agreed with me.
“And Boesch,” he added, “I’m sorry. Very sorry.”
It proved to be a miserable night. Through the course of it Captain Black sobbed and moaned. His pitiful condition was almost contagious, and I found I had to fight myself to keep from becoming thoroughly maudlin. Across the creek the tank burned with a steady flame while at intervals the ammunition inside exploded. The noise and fire kept Jerry on his toes, prompting him to bombard the valley with even more shelling than usual. Since Black had my blankets, I found it impossible even to try to sleep. Through the night I went up and down the lines of G Company’s men, checking to make sure none was hit in the shelling. Between times I slumped in the foxhole with Black and did what I could to comfort him. As dawn approached, the cold rain started again.
As soon as I could see well enough to distinguish one tree from another, I summoned the litter bearers and some wiremen who were to repair the telephone lines and we started up the hill.
As we reached the small clearing where Company E’s command post was located, I jolted to a halt. Near the entrance to the pillbox lay two men, side by side with helmets over their faces. Close by stood the unopened marmite cans containing the turkey dinner.
Inside, Nick greeted me.
“My friend Boesch,” he said with a grin on his dirty face, “welcome to our CP and we are sure glad to see you.”
I could not return Nick’s effort at pleasantness, so anxious was I to learn the details of the tragedy the night before. One shell, it developed, had come in just as the carrying party arrived with the dinner. The shell hit a tree, thus heightening the impact of the explosion and sprayed deadly fragments over a wide area. Seven men had been wounded and three killed, an awful price to pay for a Thanksgiving dinner that nobody wanted to eat.
Of the three men killed, one was Hobbs, the staff sergeant in the second platoon with whom I had spent so many nights in the big foxhole back in Luxembourg. Hobbs was one of the finest soldiers I ever met, certainly the most conscientious enlisted man I ever knew. He had received many chances for a battlefield commission, and I had urged him to accept, but he was concerned that it would mean transfer from Company E’s second platoon. He had started his army career in that platoon—and that was where he finished it. Sergeant Hobbs’ death affected me more than any had before; Hobbs was a real friend, and it is difficult to apply the stoicism with which a soldier accepts the inevitable when it applies to good friends.
Before we left Luxembourg, Sergeant Hobbs had mailed home some perfume which I had purchased for him in Paris. As I stood looking down at his lifeless body, the thought ran through my mind again and again that the people at home would get the notice of his death before they received the perfume.
Lying alongside Hobbs was Staff Sergeant William C. Gant, my machine gun section leader, a particularly capable soldier. Gant had always handled his men well and quietly, and almost to a man they would look on his death as an ill omen for their future. Gant and Hobbs, good friends during their time together in service, lay stretched out side by side where they had fallen, victims of the same shell.
The third man killed was a little old man who never had belonged in the infantry. He was Private Robert Fullerton. This man’s age and physical condition had made it impossible for him to pull his own weight in the company, even though he always tried hard. It was a shameful waste of life, it seemed to me, for he never should have been in the infantry. Careful screening would have resulted in his serving in a job within his capabilities.
While I was at the CP, Sergeant Pople approached me with news of another death.
“Well, lieutenant,” he said in a tired voice, “they got Melgoza yesterday. I guess we won’t be going out on any more patrols with him now,”
I put my hand on Pople’s shoulder. There was little I could say since I knew he and Melgoza had risked death together many times and Pople felt that now that Melgoza had lost the toss, his own time was much closer. I recalled the daylight patrol to the Our River in Luxembourg when Melgoza had been one of the four of us. Still I could not speak to Pople, for I could think of nothing to say. I patted his shoulder and turned away.
As for the wounded, Nick told me the comforting news that he had gotten every man down the hill the night before except one. He was in Company F’s CP in a pillbox about a hundred yards away.
Leading the litter bearers along a forest path, we came to a pillbox similar to that occupied by Company E’s command post. Inside we found our casualty. He had been hit in a number of places. A bandage wreathed his head, and his left arm was in a sling. As we lifted him gingerly to a stretcher, he appeared to be a critical case.
With utmost care we started with our burden down the hill toward the road. The going was rough all the way. Several times we slipped on the steep wet slope, but with the greatest possible concern for our miserable, moaning charge, we kept the litter on an even keel. We gently passed the man over some fallen trees and under others, while he groaned in pain. He seemed to be bordering on unconsciousness every step of the way.
We were about half-way down and just about exhausted when Jerry began to throw in huge shells that landed with resounding crashes. With a smoothness that showed long practice, my three litter-bearing mates gently laid down their ends of the stretcher, then dived into the deepest holes they could find. Somewhat taken by surprise at the alacrity of their maneuver, I suddenly found myself alone with the patient. Lying down close to the stretcher, I rolled near him, intent on comforting him during the danger if not actually protecting him from the deadly shell fragments.
But as I hit the dirt, I got quite a shock.
Our patient, who had been as still as death except for a few groans, leaped to his unsteady feet, bandages trailing, and with the unerring instinct of the infantryman, dived into the nearest empty hole.
In spite of continuing shelling, in spite of the horrors of the preceding night, in spite of my own exhaustion and the danger, I could not help laughing. While the enemy barrage poured out a venomous and far from humorous message, I roared with laughter.
When the shelling stopped, the medics reassembled, our patient hobbled back, climbed again on the stretcher, and placidly resumed his recumbent role. We picked him up without comment and carried him the rest of the way, but on several occasions when we came to especially difficult obstacles, the corporal in charge of the medics would tap our patient gently on the shoulder, point to the tree barring the way, and say with a grandiloquent gesture of politeness:
“Would you mind?”
Without a murmur, the patient would get off the stretcher, walk around or climb under the tree, and then get back on the stretcher to be carried the rest of the way.