Before Their Time: A Memoir (21 page)

The 104th regimental history does it better. Maybe it’s a simple matter of scale or of being closer to the subject or even of a more manageable ambition. The 104th’s own history is far more specific and at times even slightly romantic in tone. Its restrained narrative names names and places, calls a disaster a disaster, and is enriched here and there by curiously lyrical interludes, especially when the facts cannot effectively carry the narrative.

In its restraint, the history catches something essential about the real experience, even while it avoids the central question for the handful of us who survived: that of accountability. Who actually was responsible for that day at the Horseshoe? C Company’s commander? Battalion’s? And what did it ultimately cost him, or them? (I would
dearly like to know, but I have accepted the fact that it will probably remain unfinished business, safely buried, in the Army’s terms, forever.) But the 104th’s history, in general, doesn’t avoid bad news. It is easy while reading its pages to recognize the voice of a thoughtful writer—or group of writers, since these narrative efforts were almost always collaborative—when it concludes, in a reflective passage about Bézange that “compared to the activities of the Western Front as a whole, these actions were insignificant—a minor engagement on a nameless [
sic
] hill somewhere in France. Yet to the regiment, they, as the initial combat encounters, were all-important. With them came the first shock of battle, the realization that combat means closing with the enemy and that closing with the enemy meant, for some, death.”

Perhaps that’s acknowledgment enough for the third platoon. It says something real and says it gracefully, even if it misses the full resonance of what happened, the elusive personal dimension of it, the private griefs and regrets. At least, the regimental history tries to look directly at the subject and describe what it sees—and succeeds often enough.

BERN Keaton and I met for the first time since the war on Sunday, May 7, 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of V-E Day. We had not seen each other since October 1944, since Bézange, in fact—a staggering stretch—although we had spoken once or twice on the phone over the years. (He would sometimes call to congratulate me on the publication of a new book.) In our occasional conversations we had talked about getting together, but it never happened.
Bern was in New Jersey, I was in New York. He had his life, I had mine. We seemed worlds apart. And there were always other demands and other priorities; we all know them. Then the anniversary of V-E Day approached. Bern called, and we had our usual exchange, but this time everything suddenly seemed right, and we made a date. Most urgent, I think, was the unspoken sense between us of how little time there was left—not only for us but for every ex-GI.

I found that I was tuning up before my visit—for we had decided that I would go to New Jersey—trying to find the right pitch for the day, the reasonable tone, and adjust accordingly. I wanted to look good and sound intelligent. I had my hair cut. I chose a flattering shirt and jacket. I looked long and hard in the mirror, regretting the twenty pounds I had put on over a half-century. I made myself ready to laugh or cry, as needed. I would be a smart kid, with Bern, for an afternoon once again.

It was a good move, as it turned out. The meeting went easily, despite obvious nervousness on both our parts. We were instantly comfortable together, once we got over the physical shock of the other’s aging. My waist, Bern’s white hair, our comparative slowness. Bern’s wound had healed well enough so that he did not limp, nor did he complain about it during the time we had together. He made it sound as though it had happened to someone else. I had to admit that Bern had kept his sharp, craggy features, his Irish good looks. About myself, I wasn’t so sure, but it didn’t seem to matter once we had settled down with each other. I soon began to see Bern again as he was at eighteen and I hope he was able to see me in the same way.

We spent eight hours together that Sunday, from lunch, which we shared alone, through the long spring afternoon, then on into the evening through dinner with Bern’s children and grandchildren, all of whom turned out to have more than enough lightning Gaelic wit to spare—more smart kids, I thought. (Like me, Bern is a widower and lives alone; both our wives died in recent years of lung cancer.) Bern did the cooking for the two meals, as he does almost every day of his life for himself, and he is very accomplished at it.

We talked all day about C Company and Bézange, about all that, trying to confirm each other’s memory of events and people. Antonovich (O Captain! Our Captain!), Francis Gallagher, Rene Archambault, Barney Barnato, Roger Johnson, Paul Willis, Rocky Hubbell, and, of course, Ira Fedderman, who, like Francis Gallagher, continues to furiously usurp my nighttime dreams.

The names ran on, so did the events. I think Bern’s memory was surer than mine. It certainly helped to give me confidence in writing this book. At one point, moving on to other matters for the moment, I mentioned to him that I had just read somewhere that more than half the personnel who served in the US Armed Forces during World War II were already dead, a half-century after the war. This seemed an astonishing statistic to me, hardly possible to accept, in fact, one that somehow carried an important warning, or omen, as though history itself—Bern’s history, my history—might begin to vanish with this lethal roll call. (No war is ever really over until the last veteran is dead.) Bern looked at me blankly when I gave him the news. I think he was as stunned as I was. Then we let it pass, shaking our heads.

We also talked about books. Bern is still a great reader, one of those who seem to have taken a silent pledge early in life never to be without a volume in hand, and he keeps a record—author’s name, book title, date read, and, sometimes, remarks, not necessarily kind—of every book he reads. (My books are there, too.) I found this endearing. I liked its attentiveness, its collaborative sense, its sense of participation; I like to think I share all three as a reader. Then we talked about family and work and marriage, about our wives’ deaths, especially that—so-called ordinary matters out of our ordinary lives, which, after all, had consumed most of the time of most of our years.

Later in the afternoon, however, we were back to the war. It was inescapable. Bézange again. Fort Benning and basic training. Orono, Maine, the great ice palace in the north. The deadly Tennessee floods. Camp Jackson. And Europe, France, Alsace, Bézange once again, irresistible, as always, the nearly forgotten scene of a horrific crime, as one of us put it at some point—never solved. It seemed to me then that the last word could never be said about Bézange or World War II—nor about anything else, for that matter.

Before I left, we spent a lot of time looking at old photos—mainly of our ASTP buddies, taken in South Carolina before we went overseas—which Bern had fastidiously arranged in an immaculate album. The photos looked as fresh as though they had been taken the day before yesterday, fresh and clear and still sharply defined—the result, I’m sure, of Bern’s loving attention. We marveled at those photos, laughed a little, remembered, then corrected each other’s memory. Wonderful young faces, if I may say it myself, without a sign of care
on them: skinny teen-age frames, nobody over a hundred and fifty pounds, except for Ira Fedderman, who was always an exception in everything. We laughed a little about that, too, but modestly and with some restraint. We were still not entirely sure how we felt about Ira Fedderman.

I continued to examine all those smiling faces. Smart kids, yes. And naive, for sure. It was easy to tell that we wore our hearts on our sleeves then, that we still had not assumed a defensive stance when it came to our feelings. You could see our good conduct medals neatly pinned to our Eisenhower jackets, so that everybody would notice. In our bright and confident eyes there was also the gleam of adolescent fervor. (The Army understood that fervor and used it; all armies do, they depend on it.) All of this was clear evidence to me, if I needed it that afternoon, that none of us, without exception, could believe then, at the moment those photos were taken, in the idea of his own death.

Anyway, by then it was late afternoon in New Jersey, near dusk. Bern’s children and grandchildren were beginning to arrive for dinner, gathering in the living room and making a lot of good-natured noise while Bern made the introductions. As I said, they were full of Bern’s wit. In fact, they outshone him. Nevertheless, brilliant as they were, they were almost totally unaware of what their grandfather had survived, or how—exactly like my own two sons. Or even of the possibility that they themselves had escaped with their own lives through his survival, exactly like my two sons had through mine.

A moment later, we were laughing again in Bern’s living room, as his grandchildren began to show us how smart
they really were. I liked the sound of that laughter—Bern’s and mine. I carried it with me when I left. It was better than sentiment, better than the sound of trumpets and drums. Maybe it meant a kind of closure—a definitive end to the accumulated weight of sadness and nostalgia that Bern and I had both carried under the pressure of a half-century of memories. So much for so long.

I would be ready to settle for that.

Robert Kotlowitz was raised and educated in Baltimore. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music, he went on to become a book and magazine editor in New York, where he served as Managing Editor of
Harper’s Magazine.
His first novel
, Somewhere Else,
published in 1972, won the National Jewish Book Award and the Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award for fiction. His subsequent novels were
The Boardwalk
(1977)
, Sea Changes (
1986), and
His Master’s Voice
(1992)
.

Twenty-five years ago, Mr. Kotlowitz joined WNET/Channel Thirteen in New York and became Senior Vice President and Director of Programming and Broadcasting; upon retirement in 1990, he was named Chairman of the Editorial Council and Editorial Advisor to the station. He is the father of two sons, and lives in New York City
.