If You Survive (32 page)

Peacetime duty in Dinkelsbühl was most pleasant; our most serious overall business was recreation. Some of us became pretty good at pitching horseshoes. At first we were handicapped by having to use what was available, and this meant the huge old iron shoes of local farm horses. After a while we acquired the regulation shoes used in competition and soon were holding tournaments.

Although we had to be mindful of fraternizing, we didn’t think this applied to the local trout; some of us picked up some of the best trout fishing ever in the small river that ran right through town. The Burgermeister managed to come up with old cane poles, lines, and a few hooks. We then dug up some worms and headed for a bend in the river about a mile out of town, where he had suggested the fishing was exceptionally good. Lee Lloyd and our driver went along, and after about three hours we came back with almost a hundred nice ten- to fifteen-inch trout for the cooks.

This simple, pastoral life couldn’t go on forever, and in June, 1945, we entrucked for the first leg of our move home. Soon we bivouacked near Furth. Our entire company stayed in tents on the edge of a big hayfield, and without much else to do we watched interestedly as the German farmer, his robust wife, and his strong-armed daughter cut the entire field by hand using cradle scythes. Then they used huge rakes with wooden tines to get the hay in rows to dry. The farmer in me noticed the hay had to be turned a couple of times in the next few days.

When the hay was finally dry, they loaded it onto a wagon drawn by a big draft horse and a milk cow hooked up side by side. The farmer stayed on the wagon, and the two women pitched all the hay up to him.

It was a crude, old-fashioned way of farming, but it worked. I supposed that Hitler could not spare the metal for farm machinery and that many of the workhorses had become military casualties.

After a few more restless weeks with plenty of horseshoe pitching, we were happy to board the trucks again for the final overland leg as we followed the autobahn to Metz and then traveled clear across the rest of France to reach the English Channel at Le Havre.

Our ships were not yet in the harbor, and this meant a few more days to kill in a tent camp nearby. Practically all my time went into tedious paperwork, for Customs required a declaration to be made out for each nonmilitary item a man wanted to bring home, and the company commander had to examine every piece of paper and then sign it. Later, when we reached the States, the Customs people didn’t look at a single thing, and all that paperwork had been for nothing.

Finally, on July 3, we boarded the famous Liberty Ship, the U.S.A.T.
Excelsior
, and sailed for the good old USA.

For several days the seas were high, and the ship pitched and rolled and vibrated severely when the stern came up and the propeller was out of the water. Our speed was cut to about five knots, and we didn’t think we’d ever get out of the Atlantic. I didn’t feel too well most of the time, and once I was knocked flat on the deck by a sudden pitch. Many of the men were very seasick and spent most of their time below deck and away from the mess hall. Then, ten days out of Le Havre, we landed at Hampton Roads, Virginia, along with M Company, while the rest of the regiment was landing in New York.

We were given thirty days off, but that wasn’t too much for all the things on my schedule. From Le Havre I had written Florine, my bride-to-be, that she should go ahead with the wedding arrangements. I estimated my arrival home at about July 15. As it happened, I missed it by two hours, arriving home in Grand Ledge, Michigan, at 2:00
A.M
. on July 16. No one was at the station to meet me. I had wired, but they never received the message. So I phoned from the station in Lansing and that brought everyone to attention. Soon they all arrived to drive me the last twelve miles home.

I had been gone fifteen months, over half of it in combat,
and there is no describing the delicious feeling of being home again. The feeling doesn’t last long, and it has to be earned, but during its fleeting moments it is absolute bliss. I couldn’t believe it; I was
home!

On July 21 we had a nice church wedding and a big reception, which was what Florine wanted. My dad loaned me his 1937 Hudson Terraplane, and a friend at a Shell station got me some gas coupons for the short honeymoon trip to Grand Rapids and Half Moon Lake, near Stanton. We rented a lakefront cottage, and our honeymoon was beautiful.

News of the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan came while I was still on leave, and a few days later came the tremendous news of Japan’s complete surrender. At that moment I happened to be in Grand Ledge, and I could not control nor was I ashamed of the tears that suddenly flooded my face. I now was a married man, and the Fourth Division would not, as rumors had insisted, be part of the invasion of Japan. I was flooded with relief.

Just as I was beginning to adjust to the incredibly pleasant civilian life my thirty days’ leave ran out, and I had to report back to the Fourth Division, now at Camp Buckner, outside Durham, North Carolina. Florine soon joined me, and we came upon a small two-room apartment in Durham for $40 a month. It had a kitchen equipped with a kerosene stove, a portable tin oven, and an ice box. I also picked up a 1942 Hudson and shared rides with other officers back and forth.

The peacetime Army wasn’t too bad at that point. We managed to keep ourselves occupied with much routine and a halfhearted training schedule. I couldn’t help but notice that some of the men marching out to remote training areas seemed to have extra bulges inside their shirts and that some of their rifles looked an awful lot like soft-ball bats.

Finally the Army faced the inevitable and set up a system of priorities for releasing its guests. They awarded points for time in service, with extra points for overseas duty and five points for each major campaign and every medal. I was one of the lucky ones to get an early release, rolling up over a hundred points with my three years’ service, fifteen months overseas, five major campaigns, three Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, and one Silver Star.

On September 30, 1945, one day after my twenty-fourth birthday, I became a full-time civilian. Three years and eleven days had passed since my first encounter with the United States Army.

Jobs were scarce, and many people were out of work now that war production was over. I could have returned to my old job on the railroad, but I just didn’t want to; I was a different person. I found I liked to deal with people face to face, person to person, and it seemed the best place for that was in sales. I started off with vacuum sweepers, which I sold fairly easily until the company went on strike. I went into other lines until I wound up in insurance. There seems to be further irony in my life in the fact that I, who as a young man saw so much death and destruction that carried with it no compensation whatsoever—except perhaps the honor of having fought with courage and distinction—should go into a business that attempts to put a price on a loss.

Out of all this damned useless war I hope I am entitled to a few simple observations.

The cost in grief and devastation, if it’s on the scene, is so immeasurably expensive that no one really wins. No human being disputes this fact of life, so why can’t human beings think of this
before
a war?

If war there must be, then above all it must be kept
away from our shores. If I and all of my fellows learned one thing, it was that. Keeping war at arm’s length may not be possible with modern long-range weapons, and so there must be no war in the first place. Such prevention seems possible, with human beings, only if there is strength overwhelming enough, and obvious enough, that no one would dare take the first step toward war.

The war we fought in Europe was uneven enough when calculated in terms of puny men in the face of incredible firepower and colossal war equipment, unfair enough when seen in terms of the futility of strategy in the face of brute strength. It was surely the last war in which strategy could still be employed and make a difference in outcome. Nuclear weapons are bound to render this time-honored convention of war null and void.

One of the most visible religious leaders of the world, the Pope, stood at the memorial to the dead at Hiroshima and proclaimed that mankind must take a step forward in wisdom and emotional maturity so that this sort of catastrophe will never happen again. I hope we are up to it.

Let there be peace!