Falling Out and Belonging: A Foot-Soldier's Life

An Attack in Hürtgen.  (Ab is the Narrator’s Sergeant.)

     Next thing I knew I was throwing myself at the base of the hill, gasping for breath.  With the shells coming in ever closer, up I went on all fours, kicking the mud and stones behind me and grabbing onto whatever offered in my way—logs, tree trunks, shrubs, rocks—skinning my hands as I went.  At one point, I found I was hoisting myself up by somebody’s leg.  Whether he was dead, or not, I couldn’t stop to check.  I was intent on scrambling my way to a large, inviting hole that I saw halfway up the hill.  With that machine gun on our right opening up again, I dropped my rifle and flung myself into the hole.  There was someone else in there, and we began to struggle over his rifle.  Summoning up every last bit of strength I had left, I finally yanked it out of his hands, and was about to beat him with it, when he yelled out “STAHP!” in perfect English, and I saw it was a GI.  Was I ever a wild man.  So was he, his breath steaming out of his nose and wet lips like he was a raging bull, much as I was steaming myself.

     The shells were falling right over us and beside us, and the next instant after our death struggle, we were down on our chests, shoulder to shoulder, trying to scratch our way into the wet earth.  The chatter of rifle fire and machine gun bursts began to pick up in tempo, ours sounding strangely like firecrackers.  Two guys popped in on us and lit up cigarettes, and our hole began to cloud up with smoke.  One of them asked about a bag outside of the opening, and when I told him it contained mortar rounds, he pitched it down the hill.  Good.  I simply wasn’t thinking.  Let one of the incoming shells hit close enough, and there’d be nothing left of us but Swiss cheese. 

The rolling bag was picked up by somebody, and he stuck his head in.  It was Ab.  He told us we had to move out of there.  Too many guys were hanging back, and they needed more fire power up ahead, so we could form some kind of a skirmish line to take on those dug-in positions.  If we didn’t move up, their artillery was bound to be saturating this downward area, and we’d be trapped, with not much chance of making it out.  The smokers nodded, but wouldn’t budge.  Neither would the guy I’d fought with, saying, “I don’t give a good fuck.  Let ‘em come fur us.”

      Going up on all fours, monkey fashion, puffing like crazy, the two of us made it to where a thin line of guys was spread out in a looping semi-circle.  They were lying down behind tree trunks and firing for all they were worth, clip after clip, trying to button up the damned Heinies who were shooting out of the firing ports in their solidly constructed log and mud bunkers.   We were pinned down and feared we might just get ourselves chewed up, until Ab came up with an idea.

     The slope was too sharp and the distance too great for us to be throwing grenades, but, if you jammed the fin end of one of those shells down hard on the ground, you had a chance of creating the quick down-up motion needed to have the thing spit its safety pin out and become armed, making it point detonating.  If we’d just keep shooting, he could crawl over laterally, spider-fashion, and throw the thing up far enough to explode it within maybe a few yards of the machine gun, and, when they ducked, we’d rush ‘em.  Taking one of the mortar shells and giving me one, Ab called for a couple of other guys to follow him and provide covering fire.  When called upon, I was to deliver the shell.  The cover guys were stalled halfway over by a potato masher grenade that rolled down ahead of them.  As the one guy picked it up to toss it back, the damned thing went off and blew him backwards, all bloody at the throat and chest.  The other guy was hit as well and cried out in pain, whereupon the machine gunner started peppering the area, putting slugs right through the top of his helmet.  I had fired off a clip, trying vainly to distract the machine gunner.  But with Ab’s cover guys gone, I became aware that I was all that Ab had by way of protective fire.  In my nervousness, I was on my feet and must have opened up before he was ready, pumping out the whole of an M-1 clip and inserting another.  But that worked even better than if I’d waited, because other guys on our end of the line joined in, giving Ab more time to inch his way up for a shorter throw.  Meanwhile, as the machine gunner started firing indiscriminately in my general direction, I heard the familiar Ka-ruck of the exploding mortar shell.