Major Conflict (11 page)

Reaching the accident I saw that the hunter green Mercedes was worse than it had looked from a distance—it had been reduced to a mere crumpled hulk, a mangled jumble of steel and shattered glass. It seemed impossible that anyone could be pulled out of there alive. Reaching the driver's side of the car, I found myself getting a little queasy and short of breath. What I saw was imprinted on my memory as indelibly as the image of the twisted body of the boy on the rock.

The body of a young man was slumped over the bent steering wheel. Blood was splattered everywhere in semicongealed rivulets, some actually dripped from the frame of the car as I stood there and watched. It looked as though the bottom half of the man's body had been crushed by the tank as the Mercedes had crashed into the back of the armored behemoth. The windshield was completely shattered, and its frame had actually been loosened and was now jutting out from the body of the car. The car was pinned under the back end of the tank, and the frame was bent so that one of the rear wheels was slightly up in the air. I just couldn't understand how this happened, and once again a great curtain of sadness descended on me as I was forced back to the memory of the cadet at camp, the boy on the rock. It was another training exercise and another casualty, with no good reason to answer the simple question, Why? I thought that maybe the second time around I might have a different reaction, but here it was again, and once again I was simply flailing against questions I couldn't possibly answer.

Staring at his lifeless, ruined body, I couldn't help thinking about war and death and my place as a soldier within the context of these two words. There was so much silence here, so much absence rising up off the dead German's body, it almost seemed substantive, as if the absence and the silence were positive conditions rather than the result of the mere lack of sound and being. I sensed that there would probably always be a disconnect between all the reasoned arguments for war and war itself, war as it presents itself finally to you as a game you score by keeping track of deaths and injuries. My Catholic training had morphed slowly over the years into a kind of secular spirituality, but it was still informing my outlook on things in a very real way. Although I'd dedicated myself to the army, made a career out of soldiering, I still had questions—not about the reasoned arguments for war, I had no question about those—but about the thing itself, which you can see only in a moment like this, when it's presented to you in all its bald vulgarity, in the form of the dead, mangled body of an innocent civilian.

I had not yet seen war, but I was beginning to understand why it is that the most reluctant warriors are those who've actually seen battle and that this reluctance, this caution, increases in direct proportion to the amount and intensity of the soldier's experience on the battlefield.

A part of me believed that all this hand-wringing was a good thing since it meant my humanity would always remain in tact. What makes a soldier most effective is the power he's given within the context of combat to actually kill fellow human beings. A soldier is by definition one who is given this ultimate power within the strictly defined rules of war. In order to counterbalance the awesome responsibility of wielding this power, a soldier must discover within himself even deeper reserves of compassion and empathy than the average citizen. These deep reserves are what keep the soldier's moral compass in place, especially in moments of great duress during wartime, when the line between fair combat and calculated brutality can become so easily blurred.

I was told to step back as the emergency personnel from the local town and the medevac people swarmed the vehicle. The sergeant in charge of the tank crew started speaking quickly.

“Sir,” he said, addressing Captain Kreuz, “I just didn't see him or anything. The first I knew anything was wrong was when you flagged us down, when you threw the water bottle.” His voice was raspy, and it quavered as he tried to hold himself together.

“How come your radio was off?” Kreuz asked him.

“Sir, we've been having commo problems for a while, and I thought we had got it fixed. I hadn't noticed that it was out again. You said you wanted radio silence on the road marches, and I thought everything was cool.”

Kreuz looked at him steadily and then turned to the other sergeant standing on his left.

“You see anything?”

“Well, sir, the rad was at the intersection and fell in with the convoy and was trying to dart in and out of the formation. It looked as though he mistimed passing in front of Staff Sergeant Barnes's vehicle and ran into the back and got caught underneath.”
Rad
is a term the troops used to refer to a German.

“All right, the battalion commander called and told me that CID (Criminal Investigation Division) will be here to investigate and take statements. I want you to be honest and forthright. Staff Sergeant Barnes, I want you to report to the ALOC, where you and your section will meet with the chaplain and get the vehicle checked for damage.” ALOC stands for Administrative Logistics Operations Center, and this was where vehicles were repaired and casualties treated.

I was feeling numb at this point. All I could think was, What a stupid, stupid way to go! How did your brother, son, lover, die? they'd ask. Oh, he drove underneath the back of an M1 tank and got stuck. Why hadn't he waited until we passed or taken a different route to get where he was going? How would his family take this? Did he have a wife and kids? Did he have a boyfriend? What would the family and friends think of us? I knew I'd never get the answers to these questions. We would all simply drive off and continue the exercise, leaving the tank and its crew behind to deal with the ramifications of being inside the vehicle that had dragged a German to his death, and experiencing, as we all would that day to some degree, the vague horror of the kind of shapeless complicity that never quite attaches itself to anything and never quite goes away, and always seems to end up as the mere complicity of survival.

This would become even clearer to me years later, after the war, when I was at Fort Bragg with the Eighty-second Airborne. This was during peacetime, mind you. One of the special incentives they devised was this: if we made it through eighty-two days without a death among us, we'd be issued a three-day pass. In the four years I was there we were given that three-day pass only once. Granted, if you take any large group of people and monitor them over time, odds are some are going to die, whether they're doing nothing or taking huge physical risks. But still, at Fort Bragg, we'd reach, say, day seventyfive, and all the troops would begin to get excited, talking about where they planned to go, what they planned to do with their three-day pass. And then it would come down that so-and-so had been injured and then died at such and such a place, and as the news spread around the post that strange unease would pass from soldier to soldier, unit to unit, and we'd all experience the odd sensation of guilt about being, still, on this side of survival.

After a few hours of waiting and watching the local German and army emergency personnel do their thing, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief when the word finally came down to mount up and move out. We all were eager to get back into the exercise and forget about the accident. The battalion commander decided to make us lead company, which was a subtle nod to Captain Kreuz that the commander had not lost confidence in him or the company.

We drove for hours, encountering no resistance, meeting our various objectives and continuing on to the next. Armored warfare is very fluid and can cover huge distances rather quickly. Whereas a light force of infantry on foot might attack an objective three miles away from its staging area, an armored force can move upwards of sixty miles without batting an eye. But riding in these vehicles is no day in the park. The whole thing is often extremely uncomfortable and gets exhausting pretty quickly. If you had to ride in a turret the way I did, you were completely exposed to the elements, rain or shine. Of course this was great in the warm weather, but in the cold, surrounded on all sides by metal that made it seem even colder, it could be hell. For those on the inside of the vehicle it wasn't much better; being tossed around, they often suffered from aching backs and exhausted muscles.

This was our basic routine for the next two weeks—long days of driving through small German towns, with the occasional run-in with the enemy. The exercises were done not so much to benefit the individual troops but for those higher up who were responsible for planning and movement. The exercises allowed generals and others to observe large forces being moved around and to cope with the logistics that came with that.

This first exercise gave me the opportunity to begin to bond with my team and for them to bond with one another. Over the two weeks I learned quite a bit about who they were and what they wanted out of life. For some of them, the army was a way out: out of poverty, a troubled home life, or both. These guys were often turned into immediate heroes in the small, depressed towns from which they usually came. Others saw it as a means to pursue the American dream, serving in the army to get educated and eventually to move up into the middle class. Some found comfort in the regularity and predictability of army life, thriving in the culture of discipline and loyalty.

Spending two weeks with these men, in such close quarters, I managed to earn their respect and to learn how to lead them at the same time. I often thought of the dead German beneath the M1 tank and, as I grew closer to my men, found myself feeling ever more protective of them. I became increasingly convinced that I'd do almost anything I could to cover their backs, and to save their very lives.

Three things that will always lift a trooper's spirits: mail, a long hot shower, and a clean uniform. We were granted our showers and clean uniforms on day nine of the exercise. And it wasn't a day too soon. The baby-wipes-plus-water-from-a-canteen bath was getting really old by that point. We were ordered to a public health club, kind of like a YMCA. As I was sitting on the ramp of the FIST vehicle, relaxing while I waited for my turn to shower, I noticed a rather dignified older gentleman with a small boy in hand, approaching me. I thought they were coming to barter for equipment and uniforms or for food. For the life of me I could never understand the Germans' fascination with army rations, but they absolutely loved them and would even bring homemade dishes—sauerbraten, Wiener schnitzel,
Rindsrouladen,
the most delicious bratwursts, even Black Forest cake, in exchange for an MRE. Chem lights, uniforms, and canteens were also quite popular.

As they reached me I got up and straightened my uniform.

“Guten Tag, Herr Leutnant,” the old man said, extending his hand.

“Guten Tag.”

“Your greeting is flawless, but your German, does it go much deeper? It seems to be the custom for Americans to eschew learning other languages,” he said, smoothly and matter-of-factly, without any disrespect in his voice, at least none that I could detect.

“Yes, well,” I said, “I'm afraid you're right. I don't speak German yet, but I am reasonably fluent in Spanish, so I guess I am an exception.”

We looked at each other. What was most striking about him was his ramrod-straight bearing and his bright blue eyes, which appeared almost icy. His voice was quite low and raspy, the product, I imagined, of a lifetime of cigarettes. His mouth began to turn up into either a smirk or a smile, I couldn't tell which. I chose to keep it light and see it as a smile.

“What is your unit, if you don't mind my asking?” the older man asked.

“Alpha Company, Three-Five Cavalry, part of the Third Armored Division.”

“Indeed,” he said with a flourish. “I brought my grandson out to meet the Americans, so that he can see for himself who is defending him against the Russians.”

“Well, I'm glad you came out. What is your grandson's name?” I looked down into the boy's face.

“Jorg, say hello to . . . Leutnant . . .?”

“Lieutenant McGowan.” I extended my hand to the boy, who was surely no more than eight or nine, and apparently very shy, but he reached up nonetheless and took my hand with a diffident grin.

“I served also,” the man said, “during the war.”

“Really? Whom did you serve with?”

“I was with the Waffen-SS.” With that he rolled up his sleeve and showed me the tattooed runes on his inner forearm. I didn't know how to respond to the sight of the runes.

“That's uhh . . . very interesting, where did you serve?”

“I fought on the Eastern Front all the way out and all the way back.”

“Wow, that is impressive.”

“Ya, I was even wounded.” He opened his coat and pulled up his shirt to reveal a long, deep scar that zigzagged across his abdomen.

“When did that happen?”

“During an attack in the Ukraine on our march to Leningrad. I lay in a bed for six months to recover, and then they sent me out again to fight in the retreat.”

“I hope you don't mind my asking you this,” I said. I couldn't help myself; I had to ask. “But could you clarify something for me? I always thought that the SS was very . . .” I stopped, thinking he'd rush in and relieve me from the burden of having to ask, but he remained silent, waiting, looking directly into my face, his steely blue eyes catching bits of afternoon sun. “I thought the SS was very involved in the killing of Jews?”

He continued to look at me steadily and then let out a small sigh.

“Certain units were responsible for the crimes,” he said, in a way that sounded rehearsed and a little tired, as if he'd been saying it all his life, “and that was just bad soldiering, horrible, not soldiering at all, really. My unit was strictly a fighting unit. We were all good soldiers. We did our duty. We played by the rules.”

“I see,” I said, anxious to move away from the subject.