Once There Was a War (15 page)

The wrecked equipment comes in in streams from the battlefields. Modern war is very hard on its tools. While in this war fewer men are killed, more equipment than ever is wrecked, for it seems almost to be weapon against weapon rather than man against man.

But there are many sad little evidences in the vehicles. In this tank which has been hit there is a splash of blood against the steel side of the turret. And in this burned-out tank a large piece of singed cloth and a charred and curled shoe. And the insides of a tank are full of evidences of the men who ran it, penciled notes written on the walls, a telephone number, a sketch of a profile on the steel armor plate. Probably every vehicle in the whole Army has a name, usually the name of a girl but sometimes a brave name like Hun Chaser. That one got badly hit. And there is a tank with no track and with the whole top of the turret shot away by a heavy shell, but on her skirt in front is still her name and she is called
Lucky Girl
. Every one of these vehicles lying in the wreck yard has some tremendous story, but in many of the cases the story died with the driver and the crew.

There are little tags tied to the barrels of the guns. One says: “The recoil slaps sideways. I’m scared of it.” And another says: “You can’t hit a barn with this any more.” And in a little while these guns, refitted and painted, with their camouflage, will be back in the fight again.

There is hammering in the yard, and fizz of welders and hiss of steam pipes. The men are stripped to the waist, working under the hot African sun, their skins burned nearly black. The little cranes run excitedly about, carrying parts, stacking engines, tearing the hopeless jobs to pieces for their usable parts.

Italy

REHEARSAL

SOMEWHERE IN MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER,
September 29, 1943
—American troops trained on the beaches of North Africa for the beaches of Italy. It was hot and dusty on the land, and back from the coast there were many training props for them to work with. There were wooden landing barges standing on the ground in which dusty men crouched, until at a signal the ramp went down and they charged out and took cover. To get ashore quickly, and to get down behind some hummock of earth where the machine guns can’t get at you, is very important stuff in landing.

And so they practiced over and over, and instead of getting wet they only raised clouds of dust, the light, reddish dust of Africa, in colors little like the red soil of Georgia.

And when the men had learned to leap out and charge and take cover and to run forward again, presenting as little of themselves as possible to the observing officers, they went to the set to learn how to conduct themselves on entering an enemy town.

There were sets like those in a Hollywood studio in the old silent days, wooden fronts and tall and short buildings with open windows and little streets between, and there the men learned how to crouch on a corner and how to slink under the cover of walls. They learned with practice grenades how to blast out a machine gun set up in a building. It was strange to see them rehearsing, as though for a play. It went on for weeks.

And when they had become used to the method and when they reacted almost instinctively, they were taken finally to the Mediterranean beaches, the long, white beaches, which are not very unlike the beaches at Salerno. The water is incredibly blue there and the beaches are white. And the water is very salty. You float like a cork on it. On the beaches they practiced with real landing barges. The teams put out to sea and then turned and made runs for the shore and the iron ramps clattered down and the men rushed ashore and crept and wriggled their way up to the line of the shore where the grapevines began, for there are vineyards in Italy, too.

When they had practiced a little while, machine guns with live ammunition fired over their heads, but not very far over their heads, to give them a real interest in keeping low.

Now in larger groups they rushed in from the sea and charged up into the vines and crept up through the vineyards and moved inland. An amazing number of men can disappear into a vineyard so that you can’t see them at all.

The dark Algerian grapes were ripe and as they crawled the men picked the grapes and ate them and the incidence of GI dysentery skyrocketed, but there is no way of keeping a dusty, thirsty man from eating ripe grapes, particularly if they are hanging right over his head, when he lies under the vines.

Over and over again they captured this little sector and climbed up and captured the heights. They had to learn to do it in the daytime because when they would really do it it would be in the dark of the early morning. But when the training for each day was finished, the men went back to the beaches and took off their clothes and played in the water. The water was warm and delightful and the salt stung their eyes. Their bodies grew browner day by day until they were only a little lighter than the Arabs.

At night they were very tired and there is not much to do in Africa after dark anyway. No love is lost for the Arabs. They are the dirtiest people in the world and among the smelliest. The whole countryside smells of urine, four thousand years of urine. That is the characteristic smell of North Africa. The men were not allowed to go into the native cities because there was a great deal of disease and besides there are too many little religious rules and prejudices that an unsuspecting dogface can run afoul of. And there wasn’t much to buy and what there was cost too much. The prices have skyrocketed on the coming of the troops.

The men slept in their pup tents and drew their mosquito nets over them and scratched and cursed all night until, after a time, they were too tired to scratch and curse and they fell asleep the moment they hit the blankets. Their minds and their bodies became machine-like. They did not talk about the war. They talked only of home and of clean beds with white sheets and they talked of ice water and ice cream and places that did not smell of urine. Most of them let their minds dwell on snow banks and the sharp winds of Middle Western winter. But the red dust blew over them and crusted their skins and after a while they could not wash it all off any more. The war had narrowed down to their own small group of men and their own job. It would be a lie to suggest that they like being there. They wish they were somewhere else.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER,
October 1, 1943
—Week after week the practice of the invasion continued, gathering impetus as the day grew nearer. Landing operations and penetrations, stealthy approaches and quick charges. The whole thing gradually took on increased speed as the day approached.

The roads back of the coast were crowded with staff cars dashing about. The highways were lined with trucks full of the incredible variety of war material for the invasion of Italy. There are thousands of items necessary to a modern army and, because of the complexity of supply, a modern army is a sluggish thing. Plans, once made, are not easily changed, for every move of combat troops is paralleled by hundreds of moves behind the lines, the moves of food and ammunition, trucks that must get there on time. If the whole big, sluggish animal does not move with perfect cooperation, it is very likely that it will not move at all. Modern warfare is very like an automobile assembly line. If one bolt in the whole machine is out of place or not available, the line must stop and wait for it. Improvisation is not very possible.

And all over in the practice zones in North Africa the practice went on to make sure that every bolt would be in its place. The men went on field rations to get used to them. Canteens must always be full, but full of the evil-tasting, disinfected water which gets your mouth wet but gives you very little other pleasure.

While the men went through their final training on the beaches the implements of war were collecting for their use. In huge harbors, whose names must not be mentioned, transports and landing craft of all kinds were accumulating. They crept up to the piers and opened the doors in their noses and took on their bellyfuls of tanks and loaded tracks and then slipped out and sat at anchor and waited for the “D” day at the “H” hour, which very few in the whole Army knew.

On the freighters cranes slung full-loaded tracks and laden two-and-a-half-ton “ducks,” which are perhaps America’s real secret weapon of this war. The “ducks,” big tracks which lumber down the beaches and enter the water and become boats, or the boats which, coming loaded to the beach, climb out, and drive as tracks along the dusty roads.

In the harbors the accumulations of waiting ships collected, tank-landing craft and troop-landing craft of all kinds. The barges, which ran up on the beaches and disgorge their loads and back off and go for more. And on the piers Arab workers passed the hundreds of thousands of cases of canned rations to the lighters and the lighters moved out and filled the ships with food for the soldiers. The fleets accumulated until they choked the harbor.

Now the enemy knew what was going on. They had to know. The operation was too great for them not to know. They sent their planes over the harbor to try to bomb the gathering fleets and they were driven off and destroyed by the protecting Beaufighters and P-38s. They did not succeed in doing damage, for finally the enemy had lost control of the skies and the fleets could load at least in peace.

But at night they tried to get through and the flak rose up at them, like all the Fourth of Julys in history, the ships and the shore batteries put up a wall of fire against the invading planes so that some of them unloaded their bombs in the open countryside and some of them exploded with their own bombs and some went crashing into the sea. But they had lost control.

Now “D” day was coming close and at headquarters the officers collected and held conference after conference and there was a growing tautness in the whole organization. Staff officers dashed in to their briefs and rushed back to their units to brief those under them. It would have been easy to know how close the time had come by the tempo, and then suddenly it was all done and a curious quiet settled on the whole invasion force.

Somewhere an order passed and in the night the ships began to move out to the places of rendezvous. And in the night the columns of men climbed into trucks and the trucks came down the piers to the ships, and the men, like ants, crawled on the ships and sat down on their equipment. And the troopships slipped out to the rendezvous to wait for the moment to leave.

It was no start with bugles and flags or cheering men. The radios crackled their coded orders. Messages went from radio rooms to the bridges of the ships. The word was passed to the engine rooms and the great convoys put out to sea.

And on the decks of troopships and on the flat iron floors of the landing craft, the men sat on their lumpy mountains of equipment and waited. The truck drivers sat in their trucks on the ship and waited. The tank men stayed close to their iron monsters and waited. The ships moved out into their formations and the destroyers came tearing in and took up their places on the flanks and before and after the ships. Out of sight, in all directions, the fighting ships combed the ocean for submarines and the listening devices strained for the signal which means a steel enemy is creeping near.

Over the convoy the silver balloons hung in the southern sunlight, balloons to keep the dive-bombers off. And then the sun went down. The balloons kept the sun for half an hour after it had gone from the surface of the sea. There was radio silence now and the darkness came down and the great convoy crept on toward Italy. The sea was smooth and only the weakest stomachs were bothered.

There were no lights showing, but a pale moon lighted the dark ships somberly and the slow wakes disturbed the path of the moon on the ocean.

The combat troops sat on the luggage and waited. This was what it was all for. They had left home for this. They had studied and trained, changed their natures and their clothing and their habits all toward this time. And still there were only a very few men who knew “D” day and “H” hour.

INVASION

SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATER,
October 3, 1943
—On the iron floors of the LCIs, which stands for Landing Craft Infantry, the men sit about and for a time they talk and laugh and make jokes to cover the great occasion. They try to reduce this great occasion to something normal, something ordinary, something they are used to. They rag one another, accuse one another of being scared, they repeat experiences of recent days, and then gradually silence creeps over them and they sit silently because the hugeness of the experience has taken them over.

These are green troops. They have been trained to a fine point, hardened and instructed, and they lack only one thing to make them soldiers, enemy fire, and they will never be soldiers until they have it. No one, least of all themselves, knows what they will do when the terrible thing happens. No man there knows whether he can take it, knows whether he will run away or stick, or lose his nerve and go to pieces, or will be a good soldier. There is no way of knowing and probably that one thing bothers you more than anything else.

And that is the difference between green troops and soldiers. Tomorrow at this time these men, those who are living, will be different. They will know then what they can’t know tonight. They will know how they face fire. Actually there is little danger. They are going to be good soldiers, for they do not know that this is the night before the assault. There is no way for any man to know it.

In the moonlight on the iron deck they look at each other strangely. Men they have known well and soldiered with are strange and every man is cut off from every other one, and in their minds they search the faces of their friends for the dead. Who will be alive tomorrow night? I will, for one. No one ever gets killed in the war. Couldn’t possibly. There would be no war if anyone got killed. But each man, in this last night in the moonlight, looks strangely at the others and sees death there. This is the most terrible time of all. This night before the assault by the new green troops. They will never be like this again.

Every man builds in his mind what it will be like, but it is never what he thought it would be. When he designs the assault in his mind he is alone and cut off from everyone. He is alone in the moonlight and the crowded men about him are strangers in this time. It will not be like this. The fire and the movement and the exertion will make him a part of these strangers sitting about him, and they will be a part of him, but he does not know that now. This is a bad time, never to be repeated.

Not one of these men is to be killed. That is impossible, and it is no contradiction that every one of them is to be killed. Every one is in a way dead already. And nearly every man has written his letter and left it somewhere to be posted if he is killed. The letters, some misspelled, some illiterate, some polished and full of attitudes, and some meager and tight. All say the same thing. They all say: “I wish I had told you, and I never did, I never could. Some obscure and impish thing kept me from ever telling you, and only now, when it is too late, can I tell you. I’ve thought these things,” the letters say, “but when I started to speak something cut me off. Now I can say it, but don’t let it be a burden on you. I just know that it was always so, only I didn’t say it.” In every letter that is the message. The piled-up reticences go down in the last letters. The letters to wives, and mothers, and sisters, and fathers, and, such is the hunger to have been a part of someone, letters sometimes to comparative strangers.

The great ships move through the night though they are covered now, and the engines make no noise. Orders are given in soft voices and the conversation is quiet. Somewhere up ahead the enemy is waiting and he is silent too. Does he know we are coming, and does he know when and in what number? Is he lying low with his machine guns ready and his mortars set on the beaches, and his artillery in the hills? What is he thinking now? Is he afraid or confident?