 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Upstarts
Meanwhile, as we proceeded up the road, several rounds of tank ammunition
screamed over, sounding so low that I ducked to keep them from creasing my helmet.
"Just some of that armor-piercing crap," Richter said. "Nothing to worry about." He never
even broke stride. The nearest he ever came to ducking was to stoop occasionally and
inspect some discarded bit of German equipment to see if it was worth picking up and
stuffing into the bulging front of his fatigue jacket.
I don't think any of our firing ever hit an enemy soldier: I don't think any of us
wanted to, only to scare them into surrendering or leaving us and Upstart Forward alone.
And until the very end, none of us was hurt either. Then some German with a machine
pistol (like an American sub-machine gun) cut loose at us and wounded Private Forand
[introduced in Chapter 2. He was the man in the Liaison 3 crew who wouldn't let me
walk back in the dark by myself]. I stopped beside him with one of his close buddies
whose name I don't remember. We cut away Forand's fatigue jacket to uncover his
shoulder, where there were three neat blue holes about an inch and a half apart, not even
starting to bleed yet. We put a compress and bandage on the shoulder and made him
drink a quart of water from his canteen with a bunch of sulfathiazole tablets (12, I think)
from his first aid kit. I was amazed at the tender compassion of his close buddy, who was
also a full-time scofflaw anywhere except in combat.
Forand had one request. "Take care of my Purple Heart." [The Purple Heart is an
award given to a person who has been wounded.] Apparently Forand had been wounded
before, because Close Buddy said, "I will. Don't worry about it; you'll be getting another
Purple Heart now."
About then infantry troops from the reserve battalion came along to link up with
the troops in Chambois, and we turned over our casualty to their aid men. They also took
custody of the three Germans whom Amos Davis had been guarding with one hand while
he operated the switchboard with the other. The road was leak-proof now, and Upstart
Forward was secure.
A couple of days later, the campaign was over. The soldiers of the German
Seventh Army who had not managed to escape before we took Chambois were either
dead or prisoners of war. It was safe to go sightseeing on the battlefield, and I did so.
What I saw that day will be with me forever. I had to pick my way around dead
bodies - men and horses - and I am sure that, had I tried, I could have walked clear across
the valley stepping only on corpses. And over everything was the sweetish stink of death.
I think dead horses smell worse than dead humans, but perhaps that is only because they
are bigger.
It's hard to describe my feeling: I suppose numb is as close as anything. If I had
been able to think, of all those bodies as recently sentient human beings, each as
important to himself as I am to me, I would have gone insane. Fortunately, I could not.
82
|
 |
|