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The Battle of the Forward Switchboard
I wandered around, looking for nothing in particular. The ground between corpses
was strewn with German field equipment and personal effects, some like new, some
blown apart or shredded. Here was a toothbrush, there a pouch of unfired cartridges and a
spilled bundle of photographs - of children, a hausfrau, and a pair of elderly parents, plus
a few amateurish snapshots of a nude girl. Farther along were a partly unraveled roll of
slick toilet paper, a steel helmet, a single sock, a Bible, and one of the strange deep
German mess kits, suitable for soup or stew. And, incongruously, a woman's mirrored
powder compact made of tortoise shell.
Other Americans were there, looking for souvenirs or liquor. The German army
apparently had a less puritanical official attitude toward alcohol than we: practically
every vehicle seemed to contain an unbroken bottle or two of schnapps, cognac, gin,
vodka, Calvados, or wine.
One infantry soldier approached me. "Sir, do you suppose these are any good?"
He reached into the front of his fatigue jacket and pulled out a fistful of 1000 franc notes.
There were obviously more; his jacket still bulged.
"They look all right to me," I said. "Where'd you get them?" "Out of that Kraut
tank over there. "
I suspect he had found a German company payroll, but maybe it was only that one
of the tank crew had been a lucky gambler. It so, his luck had run out.
I later found that regulations required me to see that the captured cash was turned
over to the nearest army finance officer. However, I doubt if I would have tried, even if I
had known. The soldier with the money carried a rifle, and he was a stranger.
Some of the bodies on the ground were almost intact, with a few bloodstains on
their clothing to show where they were wounded. Others were badly mangled, bones
showing white through the torn skin and flesh, intestines spilling out of their bellies. One
thing they did have in common. They all looked dead. We read stories about people being
left for dead on a battlefield, then getting up and walking off, but I find it unlikely. A live
person, even when asleep, looks like a person. A dead one looks like a rag doll.
I did see one still living German. He was half-way out of the hull of a tank,
apparently caught there when the fuel tank exploded. The fumes of diesel fuel mingled
with the smell of burnt meat. There was no question of his surviving: all his skin was
burned away from the visible parts of his body and the flesh of his face and shoulders
was charred. But he still breathed with a harsh, labored rattle.
One of my great regrets since then has been that I did not put him out of his
misery. One shot through that scorched skull would have done it, and if I had used one of
the weapons lying around, I wouldn't even have had to clean my pistol. But I did not
think to do it, and I suppose I could not have done it anyhow. Somehow there is a
difference between mass slaughter with artillery at a great range and killing an individual
only inches away.
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