In a few minutes we reached a hole dug in the lee of the hill on the other side of the draw. They shoved me into it. The one with the knife also had a Schmeisser, what we called a ‘burp gun’, slung over his shoulder. He reached for my neck and yanked off my dog tags. He also used his knife to cut off my division insignia. He searched me and took my Bulova watch and wallet. This was more like a mugging than a capture. I began to be afraid. These guys must never’ve heard of the Geneva Convention. Or maybe they’d heard of it and didn’t believe in it. Just my luck.
He jammed all my stuff into his pocket and said something to the other guy. This Kraut then braced his back against one side of the hole and propped his rifle on his knee, pointed right at my chest. The one with my things clambered out from the hole and took off up the side of the slope.
I tried smiling at the Kraut with the rifle, a smile in the dark. No smile back. I’m wondering what time it is, how soon that artillery is going to start coming in. I wonder if Stan has run all the way back to tell them I’m stuck out here, or if he even knows. Hell, they wouldn’t hold up an artillery barrage for one lousy Pfc.
I slowly try to make moves with my hands over my head like bombs coming in. I make ‘Boom Boom’ noises. He flicks off his safety! Maybe ‘Boom Boom’ means something different in German. I keep trying to get the message across, but he’s only acting more suspicious and crouches behind his sight to let me know he’s ready to shoot if I make one false move. I’m beginning to panic. They’re bound to have this bridge zeroed in.
Then it comes. First one over, then one under, bracketing. The third lands about fifty feet down from us and to the right of the bridge, near the water.
Now my German comrade finally seems to have gotten the picture. Keeping his rifle on me, he looks down as bits of dirt and rocks are dropping all around us. I make moves as if to get the hell out of that hole and up the hill. He points his rifle at me again and shouts something. Another salvo comes whistling and roaring in; the bridge is blown sky high, bits of wood and stone fly around with dirt and shrapnel. So much for the attack over the bridge; everybody’s going to get their feet wet anyway. If the Krauts don’t blow it, we’ll do it ourselves.
I crouch down deep in the hole with my hands tight on my head. I remember I don’t even have my helmet. It fell off when they pulled me under the bridge and is probably floating downstream. I’m beginning to feel I’m in for it.
I’m thinking how I didn’t have a chance to surrender; I’ve had many wonderful fantasies – walking up to some Kraut, handing over my rifle, and surrendering, like General Lee at Appomattox. But they ripped my grenades off me down there by the water before I could think, and my carbine must still be on that bridge, actually flying around in pieces with the rest of the debris.
Well, now I’m a prisoner, but not for long. I try once more to get this guy to climb out of the hole with me, but no go.
Just then, it starts truly coming down. The concussion is so great I feel as if my eyes are popping out of my head. That Kraut and I are groveling, fighting, for the lowest spot in the hole. We’re both screaming. Mommy and Mutti are in great demand that morning but are not responding. I don’t even remember my mother but I’m yelling for her anyway. The impact, the noise, the dirt falling in on us fills the air.
In the middle of everything, I see the rifle leaning, unattended, against the front edge of the hole. The Kraut has forgotten all about it. We’re involved with bigger guns now; this popgun looked like a peashooter.
I decide how, if by some major miracle we get through this, I’ll look a lot better if the German is my prisoner than the other way around; so, in a clear instant, when dirt isn’t being blown into my mouth, eyes and ears, I lean over with one arm and cradle that gun against my chest. I might as well look like a hero, it can’t hurt. Single-handed, in hand-to-hand combat after he’d been captured, he overwhelmed the enemy and escaped – all that crap. It could make a fairly nice bronze star citation.
The Kraut looks at me as if I’m nuts. He probably figures we should be past all that. He’s right. I try to relax, let my mind wander, think about other things, because there’s nothing I can possibly do concerning what’s actually happening now. I try to justify what’s going on, explain it to myself.
So far, I’ve found out there’s a big difference between recklessness, fearlessness and bravery. The first is to be avoided, except as something from afar, say in a movie or a story. The second is also something to be avoided. If you are fearless, you probably lack some critical aspect of imagination. If you’re near someone who is fearless, chances are you’ll get sucked into the vortex of fearless madness and get hurt yourself, no matter how careful you are. I’d already discovered the truth of this second one before the crazy war, but have had it verified too often over the past few months.
Bravery is doing what has to be done even though you’re afraid. Most brave people I’ve known have done what they did very cautiously. They were scared, but for survival reasons, either of self or others they valued, did something that normally would require fearlessness or recklessness. But they don’t do it fearlessly or recklessly. They only do what has to be done and they do it with an absolute minimum of bravado.
Then, there’s another category. I could call it pragmatic sensibility. It’s when one does the obviously intelligent thing, which can easily be confused with bravery, that is, if you don’t look carefully. My reaching out for the rifle and cuddling it to myself fits in here somewhere.
But I don’t have long to cogitate all these minor variations in human behavior. I keep telling myself that anything I can hear or feel probably isn’t going to kill me. I’ve gotten through a few other bombardments with this specious rationale, but then the one I didn’t feel or hear must have come. I don’t know how close it was, but it was close enough to just fold that hole right in on top of us. Everything stops for me.
When I come to, I’m covered with mud, dirt and blood. I can’t move. I can barely see. My ears are ringing. My feet and arms are numb. I feel strangely warm and comfortable. I consider the idea that I am dead.
In front of me, stretched out on my dirt-covered lap, is the Kraut. His eyes are open and looking right at me, but he isn’t seeing. His neck looks twisted the wrong way. I figure he’s dead, too, and if he’s seeing anything, he’s seeing me dying. We’re on the inside of a mass grave for two.
If I’m dead, then there’s nothing to do but wait and find out what happens next. If I’m not dead, then I’m probably dying. I’m astounded at how easy it is, how I’m not as scared as I thought I’d be.
I can see enough to know, or think, that it’s full daylight. Some considerable time must have passed. I feel the way you feel when somebody buries you deep in sand at the beach, or when, in a hospital, they give you an ether anesthetic, or I should say, the way I felt when they gave me an ether anesthetic to take out my tonsils and adenoids at the orphanage when I was eight years old.
I know I’m crying, but I can’t hear myself. When you’ve been under a one-five-five artillery bombardment, you don’t hear much of anything for a while.
I’m not sure how long we lie there like that. Nobody comes to check us, neither GI nor Kraut. The war seems to have passed us by. That’s not too disappointing.
I drift in and out. I’m just beginning to feel some pain. Maybe I am alive, more or less. I try moving a few fingers but nothing happens.