When word came that afternoon to dig in for the night, we dropped our packs and went to work. The gun pits slowly took shape, but it was hard work. A hot sun beat down, and sweat soaked our clothes.
As we dug, somewhere to our front a man began to call for help, a plaintive, pleading, wailing voice. When I first heard it, I looked around for the medics. They had heard, but they were waiting for darkness. A litter party, they said, plainly marked with white patches and red crosses on helmets and arm bands, had gone out earlier, only to come under heavy German fire. The Germans had killed one of the medics.
I explained the situation to the men of my platoon and we went back to work, trying not to notice the voice. But we could not help but hear, and once you heard that miserable cry, you couldn’t ignore it. As the voice weakened, everyone grew increasingly nervous. I knew I had to do something.
Keeping low, guided by the voice, and all but oblivious to the crack of bullets overhead, I worked my way forward until at last I found the man. A shell fragment had caught him in the hip. He obviously could not walk. Though it was a painful wound, he had remained calm through most of the day, taking his sulfa tablets and bandaging his wound as best he could, confident that the litter bearers eventually would come. Yet as the day had worn on, shells passing overhead and crashing nearby had made him jumpy. And as the day began to wane, he had begun to fear we might pull back, that we might not find him in the dark, that he might lose consciousness and be unable to guide the medics to his position. That was when he had begun to cry out.
When I first went forward, all I meant to do was comfort him and mark his position so he could be found when night came. But the thought of staying there alone was too much for the man, and the thought of leaving him after I had seen his condition was too much for me.
It was a devil of a job getting the guy on my shoulders while at the same time trying to keep from hurting him and from ex-posing us too much to the Germans. The man was heavier and more helpless than the one I had helped that morning. I could tell that moving was painful to him, but he gritted his teeth and refused to cry out.
“It’s all right, lieutenant,” he said. “I can take it.”
I breathed a silent prayer for my long years of wrestling experience as a civilian, for without it I’m sure I couldn’t have managed the burden. Somehow I got him to my shoulders, and despite the awkward stance I had to assume, I struggled and puffed my way slowly back toward our positions. I couldn’t tell if the Germans fired at us. Somewhere I heard a machine gun, and a barrage of mortar shells fell not far away, but I couldn’t know if the fire was directed at us.
At the cross by the side of the road, the medics again took over. This should have been enough rescue work for one battle green lieutenant for one day, I knew, but something the wounded man said would not permit me to rest. During the day he had heard cries of other wounded from a group of farm buildings which the rifle companies had tried to capture. Having heard nothing more for the last hour or so, however, he figured that either they had died or else the Germans had gotten them. Nevertheless I couldn’t put the thought out of my mind that some of our wounded still might be there. Over and over I pondered how miserable it would be for any man to lie helpless through the chilly night, belonging half to the enemy, half to us.
In the end I telephoned battalion headquarters and asked permission to leave after dark with a patrol of riflemen from Company G to search the farm buildings, I didn’t propose to take any of my own men, since normally machine gunners don’t go on patrols. Not that it was the job of the machine gun officer either, but this patrol was my idea and I could hardly suggest that someone else be given the assignment. The colonel said O.K.
Darkness seemed a long time coming, even though there was much to do before the patrol. Within my own platoon we had to issue rations, portion out the water, and dig our firing positions. We stacked ammunition around the pits and made sure the guns were clean and ready. Though I started work several times on my own foxhole, the interruptions were so frequent that I did little more than scrape away the topsoil.
I also had to find the Company G commander to borrow a squad of his riflemen. It turned out he had taken a bullet in the arm and a tall, blond fellow, First Lieutenant Walter Black, had taken over the company. Black was glad to cooperate. We agreed that I would start as soon as it was completely dark.
When I met the riflemen, I recognized several men who had come through the replacement mill with me in England. Exchanging whispered greetings in the darkness, I told them what we were to do. When we were about to start, the sergeant in charge of the riflemen stepped forward and hissed through clenched teeth.
“I’ll drill the fust sonofabitch that opens his yap!”
He sounded just like Jim. I started to say something, then decided against it. Still conscious of my inexperience and aware that these men were not from my own platoon, I was reluctant to start a controversy over ethics even before the patrol set out. Though I could not approve, he could handle his squad his own way so long as it didn’t interfere with our mission.
We made our way forward slowly while shells passed overhead and nervous Jerry machine gunners fired occasional bursts. Be-cause flares constantly burst with blinding brilliance, we had to hit the ground time after time to avoid detection. When at last we drew close to the farm buildings, the men ahead of me came to an abrupt halt. I worked my way forward from the middle of the column to learn the trouble. I found the squad leader cursing vehemently.
“The bastards got the place mined, Lootenant,” he said. “We can’t go in.”
By the light of the next flare, I made out the words scrawled on a piece of board:
ACHTUNG! MINEN!
The Germans, I had already learned, always marked their minefields this way to keep their own men from wandering into them by mistake. But sometimes they marked unmined areas as well in order to delay us while we determined whether or not the warning was genuine.
We circled the buildings at a distance, looking in vain for a marked route through the minefield. At last I decided we would have to take our chances by going right through. Some of our troops had been in the buildings earlier in the day; surely they must have passed through this same marked area to get there. We passed the word along to stick close together and to step in the footsteps of the man ahead. I led the way, half holding my breath and treading as lightly as I could, as if my 220 pounds were capable of a really light tread.
It was slow. It was nerve-wracking. Any step might have blown one or all of us to kingdom come. But there was no explosion.
As we neared the buildings they appeared deserted, but we still could not be sure. We were feeling our way closer when suddenly there was a great cracking noise all around us. To ears overly attuned for the sound of exploding mines, it was deafening. We froze in position, only to realize at last that we were making the noise ourselves when we stepped on slate roofing shingles which artillery fire had strewn all over the farmyard. We stood there, wondering whether to go ahead or give up. The noise obviously was loud enough to be heard for some distance, but we had already made such a hell of a racket, I decided finally, that if the Jerries were there, they would have already opened fire—so we moved deeper into the farmyard. Like most French farms, the buildings were constructed in a square with the barn an integral part of the unit. It was in the barn, in a stable where the farmer had kept his horses, that we found what we were looking for. I breathed a prayer of thankfulness to God, for I believed He had given me the suggestion for the patrol. We found five wounded men.
One of the wounded was an officer, a Lieutenant Harris. When the rest of his company had withdrawn that morning, he had gathered the little band of wounded together. Painfully, for he too was seriously wounded, he tended them, treating their wounds as best he could and comforting their fears through a day that seemed never to end. Yet neither Harris nor the men had doubted that eventually they would be rescued. I didn’t tell them that our being there was due entirely to a chance remark of another wounded man.
We had brought along no litters or litter bearers, uncertain about what we might find. Yet none of the five wounded could walk. So, there was only one thing to do—go back for the medics.
Directing the sergeant to post his men defensively around the farmyard lest Jerry get the same idea we had and search the farm, I left with one man through the same path we had used in entering. A seemingly interminable trip across the noisy, flashing field began. In my impatient desire to get help for the men in the stable as soon as possible, the shelling and bursts of small arms fire seemed even more pronounced than before—and our halt for flares even more frequent.
We went back through the same outpost we had used in leaving and I immediately contacted battalion on the field telephone. The colonel was quick to promise help, but since it would take 20 men to carry the five stretchers properly, we had to wait while battalion called regiment for additional men. It seemed an eternity before the litter bearers arrived, and even then they were short four men. But short or not, we couldn’t wait for others to arrive; we’d use riflemen to help carry the stretchers and take our chances that we wouldn’t have to fight our way home.
On the trip back to the farm I led the group, and the man who had accompanied me brought up the rear to make sure none of the litter bearers got lost. Knowing that we were fairly certain to meet our own men at the end of the journey and not the Jerries gave us a good feeling we didn’t have the first time out.
We no sooner reached the stable than the squad leader gave me the alarming news that he thought there were Germans in some of the buildings. With the wounded still uncared for, the sergeant had been careful to avoid a fight. Finally we decided the Jerries were probably confused about our intentions and would stay quiet if we did. We got on about our business.
By the light of tiny candles, the medics began to examine the wounded. One man, they discovered, had died while we were away for the litters. The news made me sick. What a horrible, lonely way to die—in a dirty, evil-smelling horse stable in a strange and far-away land. It took much more heroism to face death calmly in the dank darkness of that barn rather than in some dashing act in the face of the enemy. I hoped that his parents or his wife and family might never know how the end had come, that they might always believe that death took him as he ran gallantly up the side of a hill in the sunlight, a picturebook hero.
But our job was for the living, and the medics set out in workmanlike manner to prepare them for the rough trip back. They were about half through when we began to hear a sound which there was no mistaking. A sound which brings fear into the heart of every infantryman.
Tanks!
Somewhere not far away, the churning motors of tanks—German tanks!
As the minutes dragged on, the riflemen began to get edgy. I went from man to man, convincing them that no matter what happened, we were going to wait until all the wounded were ready, then leave together. I don’t know how long I could have kept them convinced. Fortunately, the medics, spurred by the same rumble in the background, were soon ready. Loading the stretchers we warned each man to be careful of too much speed or jolting lest we lose another of our wounded. Then we stepped out of the barn into the farmyard.
I was the last to leave. It could have been my imagination, but I would have sworn the tanks were entering the farmyard just as we left.
The shells took no holiday as our column moved back toward relative safety. They seemed to scorch the air overhead on a never-ending schedule of death and ruin. When they burst not far from us, I could see in the quick flashes of light the strained faces of the litter bearers and the wounded.
At last we made it to Company G’s outpost, where I discovered that only two of the stretchers were with us. The others had lost contact.
For a brief moment I thought of them wandering into some other part of our lines where the men on guard would not be expecting a patrol to come through. Perhaps, I thought, some of my own machine gunners would open fire on them. Quickly I retraced my steps. In the end, the very flares I had been cursing all night revealed them and I was able to shepherd them back to safety.
When we reached the cross by the side of the road, litter jeeps were waiting. We placed the wounded on board. Lieutenant Harris reached out and pressed my hand.
“Thanks,” he said.
That was all he said, but it was enough to give me a lump in my throat. I turned and thanked the sergeant and the men in the rifle squad. They headed back to their holes.
With a tremendous feeling of relief, I searched for my own shallow foxhole and sank down, exhausted, A fog began to settle over our positions, and it started to drizzle, lightly but persistently. The shells kept up their terrifyingly monotonous whispering and crashing. I pulled my raincoat around me and huddled near a fallen tree. I didn’t want to think, but a million thoughts kept rushing through my mind.
I thought of the wounded man that morning, the other one that afternoon, of the man who had died in the stable. I thought of home, long, lingering thoughts of home and my own, dear Eleonore. I thought too of Jack.
“So this,” I said to myself, half aloud, “is combat. I’ve had only one day of it. How does a man stand it, day in and day out?”.