For What He Could Become Read online

  “Your turn,” Wayne whispered.

  “Haven’t been asleep yet.”

  “I never heard you snore when you’re awake.”

  “Snore?”

  “Like General Custer.”

  Bill rolled onto his stomach and checked his rifle. He made sure his grenades were on the lip of the foxhole where he’d left them, then said, “Who told you General Custer snored?”

  “My grandpa.”

  In two minutes Wayne was snoring.

  Bill rubbed his eyes. He stared at the night, almost wishing he could see some Germans so he’d know if they were there or not. He had never been so scared in his life. If he concentrated on seeing the soldiers coming it wasn’t so scary until you saw how many of them there were. It was hard to imagine how he could shoot fast enough and accurately enough to stop them. He hadn’t stopped them. The mortars had.

  He heard some distant shots and saw one flare. Nothing exciting enough to wake Wayne up.

  He pulled back slightly on the rifle bolt and with the tip of his finger felt the cartridge, then, reassured, slid the bolt closed and noticed for the first time how slow his movements were.

  He needed to move around to avoid being solid by morning. He slid sideways out of the hole, not disturbing Wayne, and looked over the rim to see where the other foxholes were. The men would be jumpy, and he didn’t relish getting shot from behind.

  He decided he didn’t need his rifle and left it perched on the lip of the foxhole along with the grenades. When he rolled onto the snow it was crusted and almost held him, but his elbows and toes broke through as he crawled toward a tree. His breath coming faster, he leaned against the tree and noticed it felt colder out of the foxhole. He braced his neck and head against the tree and with his arms across his chest and his heels dug into the snow raised himself off the ground.

  This could work.

  The exercise started slow, but after ten push-ups he had his balance and the repetitions got faster. His breath came faster too, and his stomach, which had not had any real food for three days, was aching, but he continued. When he got to fifty-five he had to stop.

  “You makin’ out with something out there?” a whispered voice came from a hole just beyond the tree.

  Bill smiled for the first time since they’d got on the Eifel. “Yeah, you interested?”

  In a minute a GI crawled out with a dusting of snow on his coat. “Where’d she go?”

  “Who?”

  “The girl.”

  “There isn’t any girl. I’m trying to get warm,” Bill said.

  “I’m so damn cold I can’t even feel half of me.”

  “Put your head against the tree and dig your heels in. Straighten your body out and hold it. See how many of those you can do.”

  The soldier looked at him and cocked his head. “How long you been this crazy?”

  “Just since yesterday.”

  “That makes sense.” He leaned his rifle against the tree, assumed the position, and tried to lift himself. Only his legs and butt came off the ground.

  “How do you do that?”

  “Keep working at it,” Bill said. “Think of yourself as a flat board and raise your whole self at once.”

  He tried again. Then again. He did ten or twelve before he stopped. He was breathing hard now and whispered, “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Try some more.” Now his helmet slipped off the tree.

  A shot exploded from the side of them. The slug knocked a chunk of bark off the tree just above the GI’s head.

  He lay flat. “Who’s shooting?”

  Bill had dropped beside him. “Came from our right.”

  Just as the soldier reached for his rifle, another shot sprayed ice in his face.

  “Don’t shoot!” Bill said. He edged behind the tree. He could see Wayne’s face above the lip of the their foxhole.

  “Bill?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who’s shooting?”

  “Don’t know. Stay down.”

  A voice came from the right. “Hey!”

  Bill didn’t recognize the voice. “Hey yourself.”

  “GI’s?”

  “Yeah,” Bill said.

  “What the hell you doing out there?”

  “Trying’ to get warm.”

  “I wasn’t trying to hit you. Didn’t know what it was.”

  “Figure out what you’re shooting at next time,” Bill said.

  “Damn near killed us both and I don’t even know your name,” the GI said. “I’m Eric Krause.”

  “Bill Williams.”

  Krause was silent for a minute, picked up a chunk of snow and threw it off to the side. “When I was a kid in Montana I always thought sleeping out in the snow would really be a neat thing to do. Now I’m out here and I’d rather be anyplace else on earth.”

  Bill nodded. “Well, I’ve slept out in the snow a lot but we were ready for it and nobody was shooting at us.”

  “Where’d you do that?”

  “Alaska.”

  “My Dad always dreamed about Alaska but he never got there. He was always saying we should just pack up and go on up and see what it was like.” He swung his arms around his chest a couple of times.

  The GI who’d done the push-ups said, “I’m Jim Taylor. You know, I am warmer after doing that. And another thing…I feel better about tomorrow. Think it’s gonna be bad?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Bill said. “I’ve been five days in this war and only two of them shooting at anybody and I don’t know how it could get any worse than these last two days. I thought I’d have to draw some new underwear from the quartermaster.”

  Eric chuckled. “Bet there’d be a big pile of used shorts on the ground if everyone who dirtied theirs had to trade in for a new pair.”

  Bill smiled. “You bet there would.” He looked at his watch. “Time for me to go spell Wayne.”

  Bill slid in and arranged himself to watch the slope in front of the foxhole.

  “What you guys doin’ out there?” Wayne asked.

  “We’re arranging a used shorts trade-in depot, so all the guys who’ve dirtied themselves can get new ones. Want to trade yours in?”

  “Indian warriors don’t poop their pants.”

  “Who taught you to lie that good?”

  “My grandfather.”

  “The same one that heard Custer snoring?”

  “That one.” He was quiet for a few seconds, then he said, “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, I’d like to trade mine in.”

  The first sound Bill heard in the pre-dawn cold was Wayne trying to eat a D Bar.

  “This thing’s frozen like a board.”

  “Stick the bar under your armpit for a minute and warm it up if your old teeth can’t break it.”

  “Why don’t you worry about your own?”

  “You’re the one who needs help.” Bill closed the top button on his coat, which had somehow popped open in the night. “What’s the weather look like?”

  “Foggy and colder than hell. Wind’s picking up a little too. Bet the planes won’t get through to help us today.”

  “What day do you think this is?”

  Wayne thought a minute. “I think it’s Sunday. Let’s see…we came up on the eleventh, then we got hit about a week after that, then the raid on Auw…must be the seventeenth. Hell, I don’t know—don’t care, either. Just get me out of this frozen hell-hole.”

  A whispered voice came through the cold and fog. “Williams…Turner?” Sergeant Conner came up on elbows and knees, wiggling like a snake through the snow.

  “Company’s forming a perimeter defense. Our platoon is on the right point. First platoon on your left and second on your right. Got it?”

  “Hey, Sarge, what’s happening?” Wayne said.

  “Krauts on both sides of us. The Seventh Armoured is on its way and should be here this afternoon. We gotta hang on.”

  “You mean we’re surrounded?
” Bill said.

  Sgt. Conner nodded. “Anything you need?”

  “Food,” Bill said. “Where’s the kitchen truck?”

  Sergeant Conner shook his head. “Don’t know.” With that, he was gone.

  Wayne pulled out his bayonet and fastened it to the barrel of his M1. It slid in with a metallic click, and he wiped it on his sleeve. “I’m ready,” he said, “If I don’t freeze to death first.”

  “Or starve,” Bill said.

  “Or starve.” Wayne started doing little pushups on his forearms and toes. “You know, I’ve been cold and I’ve been hungry, but not like this. Somehow being under orders to stay in a dangerous cold place and starve at the same time gets to me. How you can take it so calmly is beyond me. Ah – I’m gonna find some food – you watch the front.”

  As soon as he left, Bill pulled out of the coil he had made of himself and sprawled out so he could see in front. He tucked some of the grass between his thighs and the bottom of the foxhole. He could hear long-distance artillery and tank fire behind him and on all sides. The sky was lit up like a lightning storm, and an eerie glow wedged between the horizon and the low clouds.

  The unmistakable sound of tanks drifted up from the roads that surrounded the Snow Eifel, the sound traveling uphill but its origin distorted by the trees and freezing fog. Bill had only heard the big Mark IV German tanks for two days, but after being shot at by one it was not a sound he was likely to forget.

  No enemy was in his field of vision, so he rolled to one side to tie his helmet liner under his chin. He tucked his blanket in and around him, every move driving the cold deeper into his body. He tucked his hands under his armpits and coiled up again, thinking he would peek over the top every so often to assure himself there were no krauts coming up the hill.

  There was a thud beside his neck. He shoved his arms in front of his eyes and covered his head.

  “That warm you up?” Wayne whispered.

  Bill uncovered his head and saw a box of K-rations on the grass floor.

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just got the hell scared out of me going back there and it warmed me up.”

  “Where’d you find K-rations?”

  “The CP had some. We missed out yesterday.”

  “Are they frozen?”

  “Like a rock.”

  In twenty minutes Sergeant Conner came by, breathless and talking fast.

  “We’re leaving here. No airdrops, and the Seventh isn’t gonna make it. Get with Colonel Scale’s Second Battalion in the center. We’re gonna walk out.”

  They threw the stuff they didn’t want to take in the hole, then grabbed their packs. Bill dashed back to the foxhole, picked up the K-ration boxes, and came running back.

  “Put these in my pack, will you? Good fire-starter.”

  “Yeah. Like we’ve had a lot of fires lately.”

  “Maybe today we’ll make one.”

  As they neared the command post, gunners were destroying their 57mm anti-tank cannon.

  Bill shook his head. “This retreat isn’t what the sergeant made out, is it?”

  “I think we’re in for a real fight.”

  They joined with other men of the 2nd Battalion and walked in a slow-moving silent group out of the valley and down the slope into the woods. Long lines of dark uniforms plodded along, heads down, looking at the feet of the soldier in front of them. They moved as a large disconnected body across the snow-covered area, all converging on the Ihrenbach stream. Occasionally a soldier threw off an overcoat as the men heated up from the first walking they had done in four days.

  Colonel Descheneaux led the division on foot, which stopped every few minutes for the lead elements to search the terrain. There were no shots. A soldier slipped, his equipment banged, and everyone looked as he stumbled to maintain his balance then continued on, the sound muffled by the trees and snow. There was no food or water, but no one straggled.

  By midday the 2nd Battalion was not a group. H Company was split in two, and only three squads of the four squads of 3rd Platoon were visible to Bill. Lt. Adams looked back and forth as if searching for the missing squad but he didn’t go look for them nor did he send anyone to look. They would get there or not. Before dark everyone recognized that they were lost.

  Bill had been all over the North Country near his home with no watch, no compass, and often with no daylight and he’d never gotten lost. Some from the village had, but they’d been drinking hootch and their natural survival instincts were dulled to the point that they hadn’t known what would keep them alive and what wouldn’t.

  The army had spent two full weeks teaching him how to read a map and surely it must have spent more time on officers. They had maps and compasses—where was the problem? They were only a couple of miles from Schoenberg when they started, how could a whole regiment get lost in two miles? It was almost two miles from the front to the back of the columns.

  As the 422nd stopped, the back of the column began to catch up.

  “Did you see that fire?” a private asked.

  “Which one?” Bill said.

  “The kitchen trucks.”

  “No.”

  “We get no meals for three days and then they burn the trucks.”

  “Burned them?”

  “Poured gasoline on and lit ‘em up. I could feel the heat clear over to the first-aid station. Might keep our wounded from freezing for a few hours if they don’t explode and kill them all.”

  “I saw them breaking up equipment with sledgehammers,” another GI said. “Breaking cannon firing pins. Everything.”

  “I guess the idea is if we can’t use it don’t leave it for the krauts.”

  “I know, but it would have been good to have had a meal from them.”

  The ground they had halted on was frozen but had no snow cover. Some time back up on the Snow Eifel, they had walked out of the snow and Bill hadn’t even noticed it.

  Sgt. Reginald Conner walked up, his head bowed. When he motioned for the squad leaders to come together, he lifted his head and Bill could see wrinkles that hadn’t been there a week ago and gray pods under his sunken eyes.

  “All right—listen up. The Seventh Armoured is stuck somewhere and as you can see, the weather’s keeping the air corps from lending a hand.” He mopped his dripping nose with the back of his hand. “We’re going to attack Schoenberg. Make sure everyone’s got full ammo and grenades. The 423rd is on our right, so don’t go sending any fire that way. I know you’re tired and hungry and thirsty—we all are. Let’s just take this dump of a town, kick the krauts out, and have a good rest. Any questions?”

  Wayne had one. “Sarge, how we gonna attack Schoenberg if we can’t find it?”

  Conner shook his head. “Private Turner, please do not suspect for one minute that the 422nd is lost. We’re just going to charge in a different direction until we come to Schoenberg.” With that he turned and walked away.

  “I don’t get it,” Wayne said. “If we know where it is to attack it why don’t we know where it is to find it now?”

  “Oh, shut up, Turner,” Krause said. “If you was so smart they’d make you a captain.”

  “I don’t want to be a captain,” Wayne said. “They don’t get paid enough to do this. Friggin officers—can’t even find their way in the country. Does every officer need a road with a sign on it to know where he’s going?”

  “Back off, Wayne,” Bill said.

  “Okay, okay. But they’re not likely to ask you or me to find it for them.”

  A patrol came out of the woods and reported to Colonel Descheneaux. A few minutes later the word came down that they were to go to the Auw road, stop, and form up there. In the morning they would cross the road and the Ihrenbach stream and attack Schoenberg.

  The battalion moved off slowly. The soldiers found it hard to stand up and get started, their numb feet insecure on the uneven, frozen ground and their legs wobbly from lack
of food.

  Bill had never felt so weak and tired. Something almost defied him to move his legs. Whatever it was, it directed him to stop, lie down, eat, sleep. The debate going on inside of him was non-stop and the worst of it was that he couldn’t take sides. He didn’t know if he wanted to stop and lie down or keep moving his feet and stay in the ranks. His thoughts drifted back to the walk from Arctic Village to Venetie. I’ve done that. I can do this. For the moment he moved forward, and so long as one foot followed the other he would keep the squad together until they stopped. He was afraid that if they stopped again, none of them would get up.

  His platoon came out on a small rise overlooking a road that wound through a valley parallel to a stream. That had to be the Auw road and the Ihrenbach stream. The column halted and platoons spaced themselves into a defensive perimeter. Wayne turned around in front of Bill.

  “Help me off with my pack, will you?”

  He threw his shoulders back. Bill pulled his pack off, then lost his grip and it fell to the ground. Wayne turned around and looked at him. “Need help?”

  “No.”

  Wayne took out his entrenching shovel and put his foot to it. The ground was frozen.

  “We’re gonna have to blow this ground open.”

  The shovel hit the ground again. Nothing.

  Bill looked behind him. They had just come out of the trees and were on the edge of the slope. They could see down to the bottom of the hill, across the road and to the stream. It was the right place to dig in, but if they couldn’t get in the ground it wouldn’t do them any good. He looked back up at the trees, then started walking off to the side towards the officers.

  “Where you going?” Wayne asked.

  “See the officers.”

  “Bring back some food.”

  Bill didn’t answer. He was looking for Captain Clark and found him seated on a rock watching Lt. Adams trying to dig a foxhole.

  “Sir. I know it’s not ideal for visibility, but if we backed up into those trees, the ground wouldn’t be nearly so hard and we could get some shelter as well as get holes dug.”

  “We’re not going to be here long, corporal.”