To Hell and Back Read online

  Nor had I reckoned with realistic army training. During my first session of close-order drill, I, the late candidate for the marines and the paratroops, passed out cold. I quickly picked up the nickname of “Baby.” My commanding officer tried to shove me into a cook and baker’s school, where the going would be less rough.

  That was the supreme humiliation. To reach for the stars and end up stirring a pot of C-rations. I would not do it. I swore that I would take the guardhouse first. My stubborn attitude paid off. I was allowed to keep my combat classification; and the army was spared the disaster of having another fourth-class cook in its ranks.

  But I still had to get overseas; and my youthful appearance continued to cause much shaking of heads. At Fort Meade, where we had our final phase of training in America, I was almost transferred to the camp’s permanent cadre. An officer, kindly attempting to save me from combat, got me a position as a clerk in the post exchange.

  Fuming, I stuck to my guns; and in early 1943, I landed in North Africa as a replacement for an infantry company. The war in this sector was about over. Instead of combat, we were given another long, monotonous period of training.

  Finally the great news came. We were to go into action in the Tunis area. We oiled our guns, double-checked our gear; and prayed or cursed according to our natures. But before we could move out, the order was canceled. The Germans in the area had surrendered.

  I took no part in the general sigh of relief. Perhaps now I would react differently.

  At this moment, the fluttering roll of an enemy machine gun is causing my flesh to creep. “The devil’s own weapon,” the veteran had said. “And, of course, I knowed where they was.”

  Does the enemy know where we are. He could. Easily. We are stretched in an open field; and the cover is something less than adequate. Before us lies a railroad track along which the machine-gun crew has dug in.

  The gun has suddenly become quiet. I hear the labored breathing of our men; see Beltsky’s worried face; feel my heart churning against the ribs. “What would you have done?” the veteran had said. “I lined up my sights and waited.” He had no corner on that little game. It too could be the enemy’s.

  The order comes down the line.

  “Spread out. We’re going over the track.”

  Olsen’s mouth sags; and the fear in his eyes is sickening. My jaws clamp; my heart slows down. I have seen the face of a coward and found it loathsome.

  The secondary order is passed along in hoarse whispers.

  “When you get the signal, make a run for it. Stop for nothing until you find cover on the other side of the track.”

  Beltsky studies his wrist watch. His hand goes up in a wave. We scramble to our feet and take off.

  Brrrrrp.

  From the corner of my eye, I see two men in the center platoon reel backward and fall. Then I hear the crackle of rifles; the blast of a grenade. I leap the track. Johnson passes me. “Son,” he calls, “get the lead out of your shoes. Them krauts have started a shooting war.”

  I find a gully, drop into it, and sprawl out. A body thuds on top of me. It is Novak.

  “By gah, you excuse,” he says. “I see nahthin’ when I jump.”

  “You were coming too fast to take in the scenery.”

  He has an odd, crooked smile; his nose is bent; and a mop of oily black hair tumbles over his forehead. Carefully breaking a cigarette in two, he hands me a half.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Nah? You gotta smoke to stay happy. You try it.”

  “No, thanks. Did they get the machine gun?”

  “They get it.” His eyes burn fiercely. “But the sonsabeeches knocked over two of our men.”

  “I saw them.”

  “When they tear up Poland, that is bad enough. But when they shoot our men, it is too much. From now on, Mike Novak is not to be soft, no chicken heart. He uses his gun.”

  The following day I am ahead of the company with a group of scouts. We flush a couple of Italian officers. They should have surrendered. Instead they mount two magnificent white horses and gallop madly away. My act is instinctive. Dropping to one knee, I fire twice. The men tumble from the horses, roll over and lie still.

  “Now why did you do that?” asks a lieutenant.

  “What should I have done? Stood here with egg on my face, waving them goodbye?”

  “You shouldn’t have fired.”

  “That’s our job, isn’t it? They would have killed us if they’d had the chance. That’s their job. Or have I been wrongly informed?”

  “To hell with it. I guess you did the right thing.”

  I later discover that such mental confusion is common among new men. In the training areas we talked toughly, thought toughly; and finally we believed we really were tough. But it is not easy to shed the idea that human life is sacred. The lieutenant has not yet accepted the fact that we have been put into the field to deal out death.

  I have. If there were any doubt in my mind, it began to vanish in the shell explosion that killed Griffin; and it disappeared altogether when I saw the two men crumple by the railroad track.

  Now I have shed my first blood. I feel no qualms; no pride; no remorse. There is only a weary indifference that will follow me throughout the war.

  Again my youth catches up with me. My company commander, looking at my thin frame and cursed baby face, decides that the front is no place for me. He has me transferred to headquarters to serve as a runner. I should be grateful, but I am not. I am constantly sneaking off with patrols and scouting parties.

  The company commander finally calls me on the carpet.

  “I hear you can’t stay away from the front, Murphy.”

  “Yessir.”

  “What’s wrong with you? You want to get killed?”

  “Nosir.”

  “I tried to do you a favor. Most men would have appreciated it.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Now I’m going to do myself a favor. I’m putting you back in the lines; and you’ll stay there until you’re so sick of action you’ll want to vomit.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And, incidentally,” he grins, “you’ve been made a corporal. You may have to take over a squad. Now get up there and give ’em hell.”

  I did not only want to vomit, I did. Not long after I returned to the front, the enemy defenses began to collapse; and speed on our part became urgent. The march toward Palermo became virtually a foot race. We had to average from twenty-five to thirty miles a day over rugged terrain.

  Dust lay over the highways like a smoke screen; not a cloud appeared in the sky. Often we could not stop even to eat. We gulped our rations as we walked.

  My brain swam; and my internal organs rumbled. Finally I could take it no longer. I fell out of the ranks, lay down on the roadside, and heaved until I thought I would lose my stomach.

  A major paused in his jeep. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you sick, soldier?”

  “Nosir. I’m just spilling my guts for the hell of it.”

  “Maybe you’d better report to the medics.”

  “Yessir.”

  But I did not. I rose to my feet and staggered up the road, cursing the war in detail.

  The next day I black out completely. When I regain consciousness, I hear voices; but they seem to be coming through a thick walL I open my eyes, and the bright sunshine dazzles me. This is odd weather indeed. Despite the sweat rolling from my face, I am shivering.

  A face bends over me. “Something wrong with you, soldier?” a voice asks.

  “No. I’m perfectly all right. Where am I?”

  “At an aid station. How do you feel?”

  “I feel like hell. I’m cold.”

  “You look like hell. Must be malaria.”

  It is. Darkness blots out my mind again; and I awake in a field hospital.

  A week later I am marked fit for duty. As we pass through Palermo on the way to the front, the streets swarm with our men. The natives gape, and supp
ly trucks speed through the town. Lines of soldiers, with their weapons slung on their shoulders, stand before brothels, patiently awaiting their turn. Individual dignity has been transformed to fit the nature of war.

  The regiment reaches the west bank of the Furiano river on its drive toward Messina in the final phase of the Sicilian campaign. Across a narrow strip of water from Messina lies the Italian mainland itself.

  The Furiano area, including the stream bed itself, is heavily mined. The eastern terrain slopes down to the river; and on the west bank is a series of hills rolling toward rugged Mount Fratello, which dominates the area. The enemy is entrenched and determined.

  On our approach to the stream, we are caught in a concentration of artillery and mortar fire, The earth shudders; and the screaming of shells intermingles with the screaming of men. We fall back, reorganize, and again storm forward. For a second time the barrage hits us. Again we withdraw.

  Olsen is the first to crack up. He throws his arms around the company commander, crying hysterically, “I can’t take any more.” The harassed captain tries to calm him, but Olsen will not stop bawling. So he is sent to the rear, and we watch him go with hatred in our eyes.

  “If I ever throw a whingding like that, shoot me,” says Kerrigan.

  “Gladly,” I reply. “In North Africa, I thought he was one tough boy.”

  “Yeah. He threw his weight around plenty.”

  “He seemed to be everything the War Department was looking for. He was my idea of a real soldier. Then one night that little Italian, Corrego, came in drunk; and Olsen beat him up.”

  “He should have been shot right then.”

  “It was against regulations.”

  “At least, we should’ve mauled hell out of him.”

  “Yeah. I’ll never judge a man by his appearance again.”

  “Nor women either,” says Kerrigan, thoughtfully scratching his groin. “I thought that dame in Palermo was perfectly okay until I woke up with the mechanized dandruff.”

  “Maybe you got them from a latrine.”

  “No. Army regulations say that only officers can catch the bugs there. I’ve been fighting them with gasoline and my skin is blistered. I ought to have introduced Johnson to that girl.”

  “Sure. That’s what you get for holding out on a pal.”

  “Think I’ll plant a few of the bugs in his breeches anyhow. He drawed a blank in Palermo and won’t know where in hell they came from.”

  “Why make it a few?”

  “That’ll be enough. They spread faster than a rumor.”

  Part of the regiment crosses the river under the cover of a smoke screen. I remain behind to help guard a machine-gun emplacement. The assignment suits me. I now see that the fighting will not run out. There will be plenty of war for everybody. While the battle grows in violence, I lie in a vineyard, eating grapes and watching the fight.

  Our men are pinned down on a slope. They cannot advance; and they cannot retreat, because the Germans have laid a curtain of fire between them and the river. Our company commander is among those killed before they can withdraw during the night.

  A co-ordinated attack consisting of a surprise landing at the enemy’s rear, thrusts its way around Mount Fratello, and a direct assault on the hills themselves finally reduces the German defenses.

  I contributed little to the battle; gained much. I acquired a healthy respect for the Germans as fighters; an insight into the fury of mass combat; and a bad case of diarrhea. I had eaten too many grapes.

  2

  THE Sicilian campaign has taken the vinegar out of my spirit. I have seen war as it actually is, and I do not like it. But I will go on fighting, even as Brandon, Steiner, Kerrigan, Johnson, and Jones will go on fighting. Experience has seasoned us, made us battlewise and intensely practical. But we still have much to learn.

  We land with undue optimism on the Italian mainland near Salerno. The beachhead, bought dearly with the blood and guts of the men who preceded us, is secure. The Italian government has surrendered. We are prepared for a quick dash to Rome.

  The dash soon slows to a walk, however; and the walk, to a push. Right now we are not moving at all. We sit in a ditch near a road northeast of Salerno. Ahead a bridge over a shallow stream has been blown; and just beyond the ruins is an enemy machine-gun emplacement. We have heard its sputter; spotted its position.

  Kerrigan is irritated. He flings off his helmet and mops a sweating brow.

  “If those krauts don’t stop monkeying with those guns,” says he, “somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  “A-feudin’ and a-fightin’. Hot damn. I’ve had it all my life,” remarks Snuffy Jones as he shifts a cud of tobacco in his cheek.

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” says Kerrigan mincingly. “You scrambled-eyed hillbilly from Croaking Hollow, you never had it better.” The Irishman does not speak a language so much as he spits it.

  “Steiner,” says Horse-Face, “you damned nigh broke my back when you tumbled in that hole on top of me. Get tripped up in your cartridge belt?”

  “I’m sorry. If there was a hole around, I might have known you’d be at the bottom of it.”

  “If this was a horizontal war, you’d win it singlehanded.”

  “I don’t go around reaching for splinters. I’m not bucking for the Purple Heart.”

  “Speaking of Purple Hearts,” says Horse-Face, “I seen a couple truck loads coming up from the rear. Must be expecting some heavy scrapping ahead.”

  “There’s going to be a little scrap right away,” I say. “That gun has got to be knocked out.”

  “Wait for the tanks,” suggests Kerrigan.

  “And let those kraut-headed babies get dug in further up? Huh uh.”

  “Okay,” says Steiner, putting on his helmet. “Let’s go.”

  “I thought you wasn’t the Purple Heart kid. Stay here, son. I’ll go.”

  “Nope. Afraid I’ll catch cold in this ditch.”

  “You done got it. Your teeth are chattering like a katydid.”

  “Like a katydone, you illiterate rumhead.”

  “I go,” says Novak. “I itch to bump up some krauts.”

  “It’s the lice,” remarks Brandon; “just scratch yourself and wait. Somebody loan me a couple grenades.”

  “You got two.”

  “Here,” says Snuffy. “Take my two aigs, and don’t say I never give you nothing.”

  “Eggs. Looks like you’ve been carrying them around so long they’re about hatched.”

  “That’s what makes him so chicken.”

  “They’ll be hatched in a few minutes,” says Brandon quietly as he buckles on the grenades.

  I check my watch. “It’s nine twenty. In fifteen minutes start laying down your blast, and keep the lead high. We don’t want to walk into it.”

  “Fer chrisake,” says Antonio. “If you miss, the krauts will have us zeroed. How we going to git out?”

  “Ring for a bellhop.”

  “Yeah. Room service,” says Kerrigan. “Make plenty of room between you and them goose-stepping bastards.”

  “Aw shadup. You always got to be the wise guy.”

  “Ready?”

  “I’m okay. How about you, Steiner?”

  “I’ve been ready so long I’m about to get unready.”

  I would rather have any other two men in the squad to accompany me. It is not because they lack courage. But Brandon takes too many chances; and Steiner is apt to stumble.

  We crawl in a wide arc through the weeds to reach the stream. It is almost dry. The banks are lined with brush. We can advance up the bed in a crouching walk.

  I slip forward while Brandon covers me; then Steiner passes me, while I cover him; Brandon jumps us both; and I go again. It is like a grim game of checkers. If lead flies ahead, the man in the forward position will get it.

  We are nearing the bridge when Steiner reaches an open space in the bushes. The Germans have anticipated such a maneuver as ours and cut the brush away for the
fire path. For a moment Steiner hesitates on the edge of the clearing; then he runs for the bridge. The machine gun blurts. Steiner pitches forward and lies with his flesh quivering. Our men in the ditch lay down their blast, but the bullets are snapping too high to keep the Germans down.

  It is Brandon’s move.

  Suddenly a picture pops into my mind. It is that of his nine-year-old daughter. I see the eyes, eager with life; her pert freckled nose; her pigtails with bows of ribbon at the ends. And the letters scrawled on rough tablet paper: “Deer daddy i am in school but the teecher is not looking … when are you coming home i miss you.”

  Let the war wait. I signal for Brandon to remain where he is, but I may just as well try directing the wind. He thumbs his nose at my gesture and moves up. I part the bushes quickly, spot the machine-gun emplacement, and dig into it with a hail of lead from my tommy gun. Brandon rapidly scuttles over Steiner’s body, and I shift to a new position.

  A head pokes warily out of a foxhole to the rear of the gun emplacement. I give it a burst and drop to my knees. Brandon has reached the bridge ruins. Now he jerks the pin from a grenade, holds it briefly while the fuse sputters, hurls-it. Before the smoke can clear from the explosion, he has thrown two more.

  A kraut staggers out of the machine-gun nest with a pistol in his hand. I send a burst into him, and he topples to the ground.

  Brandon crawls up the bank, rises, and starts walking with the last grenade in his hand.

  “Keep down. Keep down. Are you nuts?” I yell. He pays not the slightest attention. Suddenly he wheels, lobs the grenade to the opposite side of the road, and falls. From the muffled sound of the explosion, I guess that the grenade has hit another foxhole. I scramble out of the stream bed. The five Germans are dead. Brandon surveys the scene with a frown on his face.

  “Jesus,” he says. And from the manner of his speaking, I cannot tell whether the word is meant as an oath or a prayer.