The Last Full Measure (46 page)
Read The Last Full Measure Online
Authors: Michael Stephenson
After the initial assault, it would have been nice if the enemy could have been kept at arm’s length in a mutually beneficial standoff. But war is not like that. There is a deeply irritating and unremitting pressure to go on and visit yet more violence on one’s adversary, thereby inviting him to reciprocate. Patrolling was the infilling between pitched battles that kept men dutifully, if begrudgingly, employed in the business of killing and being killed. Raymond Gantter, recalling his experience in Germany in the winter of 1944–45, recounted the very dubious appeal patrolling had for the foot soldier:
I think I have never been so cold, so wretched, so frightened. I decided that a patrol was the worst of all war assignments, particularly in winter. (Nothing I experienced in later months changed my mind—patrolling remained the job I hated and dreaded beyond any other.)
It is the slow piling up of fear that is so intolerable. Fear moves swiftly in battle, strikes hard with each shell, each new danger, and as long as there’s action, you don’t have time to be frightened. But this is a slow fear, heavy and stomach-filling. Slow, slow … all your movements are careful and slow, and pain is slow and fear is slow and the beat of your heart is the only rapid rhythm of the night … a muttering drum easily punctured and stilled.
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Within the world of patrolling there were larger and lesser risks. An American soldier made this distinction: Patrols “were of two types. The combat patrol was sent out to kill Germans and return with prisoners for interrogation. This type of patrol was dangerous. We did not volunteer to go on these patrols because they were deadly; we had to be ordered to go. The other type was the reconnaissance patrol.… This type was less dangerous.”
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In the Pacific theater the chances of being killed on patrol were greater than the risk of holding a defensive perimeter. Bill Crooks, an Australian fighting on New Guinea, remembers: “We did most of our fighting and suffered most of our casualties patrolling. Our fighting in the Pacific was a squad or platoon war, most of it on patrol. People would go out, there would be short, vicious firefights, grenades thrown, and people screaming like mad. It was over fast. And then the men would get going again or stay there dead.”
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Jungle patrolling, with its limited visibility, was an agony of suspense. “A patrol moves very slowly in the jungle,” recalled Robert Leckie:
Fear of ambush produces the most extreme caution, which reduces speed to a crawl. It is this literally. Each foot is firmly planted before the other is raised, utmost care is taken to avoid twigs, and a sort of crablike rhythm is produced as the eyes and torso travel in the alternating directions of the feet. Left foot, lean, look, listen, pause; right foot, lean, look, listen, pause.
At such speed, it would take a day to move a mile and return. Should the trail be hilly, or especially twisting, it might take longer. On this patrol it had taken twenty minutes to go round one bend, precisely because that curve lay at the foot of a rise and because such a terrain feature is admirably suited for ambush … the enemy can deliver a plunging fire into your ranks at the very moment when your own visibility is at zero. He might even allow you to gain the hill, permit you to pass him—and then fire from behind you—a most demoralizing trick.
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There was little that was heroic about patrolling, and soldiers knew that it did not rate highly as a military spectacle that would excite the civilian appetite for glorious deeds of martial splendor.
One infantryman in Italy complained: “Since the time … the Press was first able to announce, reluctantly and with an undercurrent of disapproval, that ‘all is quiet on the Italian Front. Military operations are limited to patrol activity,’ patrol warfare has been waged with a pitiless ruthlessness that perhaps would satisfy the recumbent fireside sadists … rather than the most gory of large-scale attacks. Swift and noiseless thrusts in the dark; unpremeditated death by an unknown hand from a quarter uncertain; silent attack and counter-attack without ceasing—these are the pigments one must use to paint the picture of patrol warfare.”
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Certain soldierly occupations carried more than their fair share of risk. Scouts and point men were particularly high up the scale of those most likely to be hit. One scout, Henri Atkins of the US Ninety-Ninth Infantry Division fighting in the Ardennes, did not beat about the bush:
A point man needs a willingness to die. He is nothing more … than a decoy. When he is shot, the enemy position is revealed. Don’t confuse this willingness with “bravery.” A point man is just doing his job, what he has trained to do. Usually a scout is way out ahead of the attacking forces, ready to signal back enemy contact. He has a chance of survival, but not much of one. The tough question is, why did I volunteer as company first scout … when I knew how dangerous the position could be? I didn’t get paid more. It was the most dangerous position in a rifle company. I was important to my company. They needed me. I could do the job. I could be counted on. Is that an answer? I don’t know, but it’s as good an answer as any.
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The jungle held perhaps even greater peril for front men. Richard Loucks was with the US Forty-Third Division on New Georgia:
The principal characteristic of the jungle is its density. There are no landmarks. There are trails, and in many places we could move only on them because of the impassibility of vines, underbrush, tree roots. Mangrove swamps, for example, were totally impenetrable. We were, therefore, in great danger because the Japanese knew where we had to go and prepared for us.… The scouts out front were particularly vulnerable because they had no instantaneous support from the troops behind them. Often the scouts were on top of the enemy before either side realized what was happening. Since they were moving they were at terrible risk and took many casualties.
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So dangerous was the scout/point position that experienced patrol leaders could be shockingly pragmatic: “It was
sacrosanct
,” declares one, “that point scouts carried a rifle, as they often were knocked off and we did not want to lose a submachine gun.”
Combat medics/aidmen/corpsmen were meant to be protected by the Geneva Convention, and their helmets and armbands, emblazoned with the insignia of the Red Cross, were supposed to provide them with protection from enemy fire. Often it worked … often it did not: “The risks our medics took shocked me because their immunity was so scantily guaranteed. There was little in their dress to indicate their calling. Lacking only weapons, they wore the usual GI uniform, and their sole distinctive markings were red crosses on a white ground, painted on the four sides of their helmets, and white armbands, also marked with a red cross. A helmet and an armband, that was all. But helmets got dirty, scratched, chipped; armbands became grimy rags, twisted, narrow bands that were indistinguishable on dark sleeves. I’m surprised that more medics weren’t killed.”
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If a medic was in the European theater he did all he could to emphasize his markings; quite the opposite if he were facing the Japanese, who assiduously targeted medics.
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Even without the overtly malicious intent of an enemy, medics went where the danger was greatest, and they paid a terrible price. John Worthman, a medic with the US Fourth Infantry Division, estimates that “our regiment had 80 percent of its aidmen lost in Normandy—wounded, killed in action, or captured.” But like point man Henri Atkins, Worthman knew that the need far outweighed the risk: “If you have never felt you were really wanted, be an aidman. Forty men are relying on you.”
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Leo Litwak, a combat medic in northwest Europe, illustrates the extraordinary heroism of most medics (although, as he points out, extreme risk could deter even normally brave men):
We were probing the high ground near some Belgian village, and a Third Platoon scout was hit by a sniper. He lay in the road up ahead, facedown, on his belly. The company took cover in the woods off the road. Aid man Grace crept to where he could see the scout lying in the road. “He’s not moving. You can see he’s dead. There’s a sniper waiting to knock off anyone who goes out there.” Grace wouldn’t go to him.
They called on Cooper, aid man with the Second Platoon. Cooper said the Third Platoon was Grace’s responsibility, not his, and he wouldn’t go to the scout either.
Sergeant Lucca came to me. “The Third Platoon has a man down out there, and Grace and Cooper won’t go.”
I took off down the road, full speed, came up over the rise, saw the scout lying in the road, hit the ground next to him, turned him over, saw a nickel-sized wound on his forehead. I couldn’t feel a pulse. I put my cheek to his mouth and there was no breath. I expected to be hit the same way, above the eyes, in the middle of the forehead. Either the sniper respected my red cross markings or he’d taken off.
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Some were not so lucky. J. D. Jones of the Third Infantry Division saw his medic go to a wounded man even though a previous aidman had just been killed in the attempt: “Sammy turned … his helmet to get that big old white blob with the red cross on it, and he was just leaning over the man … and they [the Germans] shot him right between the shoulder blades, killed him instantly.”
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The provisions of the Geneva Convention that sought to protect medics were emphatic that they must be strictly noncombatant, carrying no weapon. And a breach of this protocol could have deadly results. Trooper David Kenyon Webster of the 101st Airborne, fighting in northwest Europe, witnessed just such a retribution: “While I watched the smoke, a German jeep popped out of it and whirled boldly through the village. It was flying a big Red Cross flag and carried two wounded Germans on stretchers in back, and it was such a startling phenomenon, with a big, husky German paratrooper at the wheel, that nobody made a move to stop it. It drove boldly down the middle of the road until it was finally stopped by an officer with more presence of mind than the rest of us. The jeep was commandeered; the driver, a medic, was shot for carrying a pistol; and the two wounded men were left by the side of the road to die.”
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Those soldiers with specialized jobs that involved carrying large amounts of potentially deadly substances stood a much higher risk of a very speedy trip to the Hereafter. Flamethrowers, for example, had to be operated by men of a sanguine disposition, not to say philosophical resignation. “Snipers really looked for them,” recalls a First Division Marine, and understandably there was a certain reluctance to take on the job:
The lieutenant said, “Sergeant, put someone on that flamethrower.” I sensed we were all trying to shrink up in our uniforms, as none of us wanted that job. Then he said,
“Laughlin, you do it.” I had to endure a number of ribald comments, some pity, and some cynical requests for my girlfriend’s address. I was very disgruntled at being selected—why me I’ll never know—and I considered refusing to do it and then decided against that. [Afterward] I gave loud notice that I wasn’t going to have another turn and I was not called on again.
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Laughlin’s reluctance is entirely understandable. Particularly in battles like Okinawa, where flamethrowers were widely used to kill the Japanese in their cave redoubts, too many men would have witnessed scenes like this:
Horst von der Goltz, Maine ’43, who would have become a professor of political science, was leading a flamethrower team … when a Nip sniper picked off the operator of the flamethrower. Horst had pinpointed the sniper’s cave. He had never been checked out on flamethrowers, but he insisted on strapping this one to his back and creeping toward the cave. Twenty yards from its maw he stood and did what he had seen others do: gripped the valve in his right hand and the trigger in his left. Then he pulled the trigger vigorously, igniting the charge. He didn’t know that he was supposed to lean forward, countering the flame’s kick. He fell backward, saturated with fuel, and was cremated within seconds.
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Carrying explosives such as mines, Bangalore torpedoes,
†
or satchel charges could be highly prejudicial to one’s health. Paul
Fussell recalls that Lieutenant Matt Rose had been decapitated not, as first thought, by a German shell, for “the large black stain on the snow told the truth. Matt Rose had accidentally blown himself up with his own antitank mine, as his assistant, ordered prudently to kneel many yards away, confirmed. It was typical of the boy Matt Rose, and admirable, that he chose to do the hazardous work himself. As the winter [of 1944] went on, we gradually learned that the fuse in the American antitank mine, or its explosive, grew extremely unstable in subfreezing weather.”
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Harley Reynolds of the US First Infantry Division witnessed the heroic sacrifice of a Bangalore torpedo man, betrayed by his weapon, on Omaha Beach: “He pulled the string to the fuse-lighter and pushed himself backward. The first didn’t light. After a few seconds the man calmly crawled forward, exposing himself again. He removed the bad lighter, replaced it with another, and started to repeat his first moves. He turned his head in my direction … when he flinched … and closed his eyes looking into mine. Death was so fast for him. His eyes seemed to have a question or pleading look in them.”
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In a sad category of extreme risk were the replacements; men shoved into combat units without adequate training. Toward the end of the war, losses were so great for both the winners and losers that men who were woefully unprepared were flung into the furnace. After the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943 the Germans were forced to commit new recruits and, in so doing, to take ever greater casualties, which in turn fueled the lethal spiral. With Operation Bagration (the massive Soviet counteroffensive of 1944) chewing up huge numbers of men, the German army had, in a dramatic turning of the tables, begun to resemble that of the Soviets in the early years of the war.