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Upstarts
Several soldiers, members of the lieutenant's platoon, offered freely and profanely
to stick a bayonet through the prisoner (“Let me have the son of a bitch! He wounded the
lieutenant!") This platoon leader was clearly popular with his men, and I am convinced
that the prisoner might well have been killed in retribution.
But Lt Drake stopped them. "Chust a minute! I vant to esk him some qvestions
first."
An aid man came to give medical attention, first to the lieutenant, then to the
prisoner. While he was being bandaged and prepared for evacuation, the lieutenant gave
instructions to his platoon sergeant for things he wanted done in the platoon and
commending certain of his men. He was a good officer, and I could see why his men
liked him.
I looked curiously at the prisoner, the first live German soldier I had seen. He was
pathetically young, with adolescent down on his smudged face and long, straight blond
hair falling over his eyes. He was hurt, and frightened sick. I don't know how much of the
conversation about bayonets he understood, but he was eager to tell Drake anything he
wanted to know.
The boy was a Czech, he said, not a German; he had been forced into the army.
He was seventeen years old, and one of a crew of three on a machine gun. There were
some five or six machine guns in the vicinity, but he did not know exactly where the
others were. He was not German, and the Germans did not trust him or tell him anything.
Yes, it was his machine gun, which had wounded the lieutenant, but he had not fired it
himself. He had come in to surrender when the lieutenant called to them, and had been
wounded by one of his own comrades for trying to surrender. He was sobbing by the time
he was through, and they gave him a shot of morphine when they bandaged him.
By the time he was ready to be sent back to the PW
enclosure for more medical
care and further interrogation, the platoon leader's men had cooled off, and no more was
said about killing the hapless prisoner.
That was my only hitch as a liaison officer, and I seldom saw Lt Drake after that,
but I heard about him occasionally, chiefly through Captain Richter, who became our
regular liaison officer with the 3rd Battalion, and a close friend of Lt Drake. Richter also
spoke German, albeit with a Texas accent.
After we finally broke out of the hedgerow country, we began to advance rapidly
against a retreating enemy. Since the Germans tended to defend, not the high ground, as
we Americans had been taught, but built-up areas (the Battle for Billets, we called it), our
infantry learned to approach each village with slow caution before attempting to enter it.
And after occupying it, they tore down the telephone wires leading to the next town to
prevent any spies from reporting our progress. These precautions necessarily slowed
down our advance.
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