I arrived early at the place Patrick had mentioned on the phone. He’d said he was “between houses at the moment” when I’d offered to meet him at his home. Instead he gave me the address to a place called “Mort’s”.
The October night was dark, overcast, and windy in the way that makes you long for a heavy blanket. The weather and the weeknight meant Mort’s was relatively quiet except for a few die-hard drunks, muttering into half-full mugs. The bartender looked up at me from where he slowly polished the long wooden countertop but didn’t bother to greet me.
Not my usual scene, but I liked the place in a nostalgic kind of way. An over-abundance of wood paneling left-over from the early 80’s left you thinking about the High Tops you had as a kid. A lone fan above an empty dance floor turned lazily, stirring an oily haze of cigarette smoke.
The bartender frowned heavy gray eyebrows at my gin and tonic but didn’t comment further. I took the drink to a corner booth that allowed me to see the door. I nursed the drink slowly, partially because I still had to drive the rental car back to the hotel, but mostly because there was far too much gin and not enough tonic.
He arrived five minutes after I’d decided to give him ten more minutes. The door blew open and a scattering of late fall leaves came with the wind. Patrick wore a heavy brown rain coat, which he took off and shook before draping over his arm. With his heavy white mustachio and the brown duster, he could have been blowing into a spaghetti western saloon.
“Mr. Graham?” He asked in a whiskey baritone after a brief look around the mostly empty bar. I stood up to greet him.
He walked over and held out a heavily calloused paw. The hand trembled slightly where it hung before I took it, but his grip was strong.
“That’s right,” I said, “How’d you know?”
“You’re the only one I didn’t recognize.”
“Ah, been here before, Mr. Donavan?” I asked, sliding back into the booth.
“Yeah, a few times,” He said. He shot a glance over to the bar and ran a rough hand through his hair and sighed heavily.
“Don’t suppose you wouldn’t mind buying me a drink?” he asked looking back from the bar to me. Loose floor boards creaked under him as he shifted uneasily from foot to foot.
“Money’s been tight lately since they cut my pension at the VA and I sure am thirsty.”
I shrugged. “Sure,” I said, “ just tell them to put it on my tab.”
Patrick nodded and walked away. I stifled a yawn and looked at a bright blue Budweiser clock on the wall near the restrooms. On it was a picture of a woman sporting a teal one-piece bathing suit and highly teased, heavily sprayed bangs. She probably would have called me ‘honey,’ her lips smacking with pink bubble gum. ‘Late night for you, honey,’ she’d probably say in a southern twang. I yawned and pulled out the tools of my trade; my ipad, pen, and set my phone to record audio.
When Patrick returned, he sat heavily on the padded bench and took a long heavy swallow of beer, smacking his lips appreciatively.
“Where do you want me to start?” He asked.
“Wherever you think you should,” I said hitting the record button.
“Well, I joined up in November of 1942, a few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. My old man was a farmer, so I was considered vital for the war effort and the draft passed me by. But everywhere I went there were posters of good ol’ boys dressed up in perfect fitting uniforms, and devil-may-care faces. I used to stand and stare at them.
‘Come with us to adventure!’ Their faces said. “Don’t get left behind!”
I had three older brothers who could handle the work and I was eager to get away, be on my own, so I joined up.
The Army-- they don’t give you a choice of job, they just put you where they need bodies. When I joined, they needed bodies in Motor T, and, with my experience fixing tractors…”
“Motor T?” I asked.
“Motor Transportation,” He said. “The troops responsible for the trucks, jeeps, APCs, and Shermans. If it rolled on the ground it belonged to us. I wasn’t happy with it at first. I’d wanted a combat unit like infantry. I was full of that piss and vinegar you young guys always walk around with on your chests.
After basic they made me a messenger ‘til they figured out where to send me. One of my jobs, when I wasn’t mopping floors, was running messages to the officers in the hospitals, where the wounded in action were being treated. The broken bodies and vacant stares left me with a new appreciation for my job behind the front lines.
They put me through a quick school on fixing trucks and by March I was on a ship headed to Europe sicker than a coon dog in the trash. I never did get the hang of boats and the way they rocked, and I spent the whole trip in misery. I was glad to be rid of the ships and have my feet on solid ground.
In Europe I spent the next few months in the position of a tow truck operator. I’d go anywhere there was a truck that needed fixin’ and bring it back to the mobile repair site to see if it was a quick mend. If not, it was on to garrison, where they had greater capabilities.
It was a good job, quiet and safe for the most part, behind the front lines. Our trucks became a kind of home for me and the other boys in the motor pool. We lived in them on the long stretches of road. Sometimes, when we’d come back late, I’d stretch out best I could in the cab and sleep there. I spent most of the war like that. Picked up a promotion or two and just waited, like everyone else, for the war to end.
But towards the end of 1944 I got myself into a bit of trouble that changed the war for me.
I’d been assigned to the units responsible for collecting up the Allied tanks destroyed during the Battle of the Bulge. Hauling them back to tank graveyards to be picked clean for spare parts by vulture mechanics.
The crews of the pockmarked tanks were usually still in the compartment. Sometimes the whole crew were dead in a tank, not a mark on them. Just stone dead. Exhaust fumes not being ventilated properly, or something like that, someone said.
Climbing onto the metal shells was dangerous. Jagged pieces of the armor stuck out in all directions like wicked thorns. You had to pick your way carefully across or else sew up holes in your uniform, and skin.
In most of the tanks the crews just came apart when the Panzer shells hit them. Pieces littered the floor, stuck to the walls. Blood pooled at the low points. Thankfully it was cold, winter in full swing, so we didn’t have to contend with rot. But we still had to get in there and pull out the big pieces.
I remember the motor of one tank still smoldered when we got to it, keeping the interior from freezing. One of the tankers was mostly intact, though the others were pretty well obliterated. He had this big hole in his chest, near where his left arm would’ve been. His shirt was gone for some reason and we could see thousands of tiny holes covering his body, like a swarm of needles had sailed right through him. The little holes where different sizes, but they all had the same shape, oval, or oblong, like eyes. When we picked him up, those thousand eyes each dribbled a little blood tear.”
He was quiet for a minute or two. Staring into the bottom of his pint glass.
“Little things like that,” He said, “You can’t get out of your skull.”
He shifted about on the plastic seat of the bench and it squeaked and farted. He finished off his drink and looked over to where the bar tender still wiped at the counter.
“During, uh, during one of these trips,” He cleared his throat, “I can’t remember if it was on the way there or back, but- I’m sorry, hold on. Could I get another round of drinks?”
“Sure, no problem,” I said and waved over the bartender. Patrick gave his order and sat for a few minutes just staring at his hands.
“So, we got ambushed on the road,” He said after a few moments, “… must have been on the way back ‘cause I remember we were towing something. Me and the mechanic were near the front lines, but still behind it a respectable distance, when we got picked up by a patrol of SS doing a reconnaissance behind our lines. They pulled the classic “tree across the road” ploy. Nothing complicated or elaborate, but it worked ‘cause I didn’t catch on too quick.
We’d never actually seen the Germans before then, except maybe some captured few through the slats on a POW truck rolling by. We knew we were in a war, of course we did, how could we not? But the fear of Gerrys snatching you in the night got old after a while. Like when your big brother tells the same boogey man story too many times, and for the first, maybe second time, you’re good and scared. But after that, you got bored.
So we stopped, and both of us got out and stood there just gawping at this tree across the road with our breath fogging the air in front of us.
The mechanic says to me, “That wasn’t here when we come through was it, Corporal?”
I said, “Fuck no!” I laughed and looked at him, and saw he was serious. “How in the hell did we get through if this was here before?” I asked him.
He was still shrugging those big dumb shoulders of his when they come down the road bank with rifles on us. They’d been sitting up in the trees watching us argue. Those SS boys hustled us off the road after a quick rummage through our truck. Didn’t even rough us up too bad, they were real professional about it.
They took us back and cycled us through the Nazi intelligence factory. Assembly lines of efficiency, until they’d harvested what little information I had. A little like the vultures in the tank yard, I guess. Picking through those pieces they could use for now and leaving the rest strewn about for later.
Sometimes guys would brag they never gave anything up, no matter what the Gerrys did, couldn’t get ‘em to talk. I never understood why they did that. You know, brag about something we all knew wasn’t true. Everyone talked. Didn’t matter who you were before the war. The Germans knew their business. But the way those boys said it, they knew you knew. Still, you could see they were desperate, just sick, with wanting you not to call them on it. Most the time I didn’t.
Everyone has that question themselves, you know? ‘How long could I last? Do I have the guts?’ I think it comes from those dime stories they used to sell at the package store. You know the ones where Wild Bill gets captured by Apaches? And they try to torture out where his friends are? Those stories make it seem like it’s possible, if you’re tough enough. It’s not.
They let me be after that. Not sure what happened to the mechanic, I never saw him again after I left the Dulag. They sent me in a train to POW camp Stalag 7B, near the city of Mimmingen, and put me and the other GIs to work on the farms around there. The country side was beautiful in the early spring. It reminded me of Kentucky, and I was always home sick.
After a while they put me on a chain gang, fixing up the roads around the area so trucks could haul food off to the front lines. It was a great place to serve my time. Just me and two other GI’s, Phillips and Mouton. We’d go out every day at sun up with our guard, Sgt. Fischer. After morning roll call he’d collect us up and take us out, us carrying our shovels and picks and him his little machine gun.
Sgt. Fischer would walk us out a few miles where we’d find a little out-of-the-way spot. He rarely made us do any work, we just sort of sat around jawin’ at each other. Sgt. Fischer would always sit a little apart from us, his back to a tree or a rock, but he knew a decent amount of English, so he’d talk along with us.
Jokes were a big favorite of his. He’d listen, eyes locked on the one tellin’ the joke, then me and Phillips and Mouton would laugh at the punchline, but he wouldn’t get it. He’d insist someone explain it. We all might give it a shot to get the words right for him, for the joke to stick. But when he’d finally get it, he’d laugh long and loud.
He tried to tell us some German jokes he called “Kalauer”.
It went like this:
“What’s brown, sticky, and walks through the desert? A caramel.”
Or at least that’s what we thought he meant. He didn’t know the English word for “caramel” and it took a fair amount of heated arguing between the four of us before we finally got it sorted out.
One time he got us a whole apple pie.
We pass one of the farm houses that pop up every now and then along the road. There’s this pretty girl working in the yard as we walk by. She’s slight, with that bright hair the Germans are so proud of. We all stare of course. She smiles that sunshine, and Fischer leaves us to talk with her over the fence. He’s there a good while. Lots of smiling, back and forth. He says something that’s only a murmur to me, but she throws her head back and laughs silver bells. Finally, she leaves and goes back into the house. Comes back out a moment later with this apple pie still steaming in the damp morning air. He’s beaming as he walks back to us, holds the pie up like a trophy for us to see.
He ate most of it, but to his credit he did share. It was the best apple pie I’ve ever eaten. I come from Kentucky, where there are regular competitions for such things. My own mother herself was well renowned for her turn of an apple pie. But this pie…the crust was flaky and buttery, salty in the perfect way that sets off the sweetness of the thick syrup and the bright tart of the apple. It was warm and tender and tasted like home. Like big families and long, loud dinners. The kind of pie that makes you miss your mother.
The newspapers, when I graduated from boot camp, claimed young soldiers went off to war, “For mom and apple pie!” I never met one soldier who’d said that. And I didn’t enjoy any of my mom’s pies nearly as much as the one I shared in the ditch of a German road.
I think boys go off to war to save pretty girls. In their heads they tell themselves they are going to keep the hordes of Krauts and Japs back from the doorstep of cute Cindy Lou down the street. Or the Amis and Brits from doorstep of sweet Sophia. Sometimes I wonder if her name was Sophia, you know, Sgt. Fischer’s girl? It might have been. It’s a pretty name.
Everything was golden for a while. We still didn’t get enough to eat. But we weren’t subjected to the back-breaking labor the other work parties suffered. They certainly didn’t get any apple pie.
We didn’t work much, just admired the lush mountain valleys and told jokes. It wasn’t ideal, but life wasn’t that bad, and I was content to let the war roll by while we all waited for it to end. Then, Mouton got a Red Cross letter.
They were handing out mail one day and it’s always a big deal. No one missed mail call. The mood of all the gathered prisoners was always jovial at first. Then the mail was passed out, and as the bundles of letters and packages disappeared, the mood would turn sour. The hopefuls seeing their chances at a letter diminishing. There’s this weird kind of jealousy you get when someone else gets mail and you don’t. I remember feeling that when they handed Mouton his letter. But not all letters from home are good.
The excitement split across Mouton’s face as he tore it open immediately and began to devour it right there. His smile faded quickly and was replaced with a blank stare as his eyes roved over each line. He set the page down, then picked it up and read it again from top to bottom.
Mouton changed after that. Stopped talking, and instead just looked off into the distance at nothing while we joked. We asked him what was wrong. But he never said. His eyes were just blank. He performed whatever duties were required of him but without the same enthusiasm as before. Whatever kept him going before was gone. Replaced with something dark, and destructive.
One day, the three of us GIs were waiting for Sgt. Fischer to come back out from the country house again. Fischer was seeing his girl in longer and longer installments and we were on this road most days now. We’d just sit there in the field across the road and wait for him. Sometimes he’d come back with biscuits.
That day was the same, the spring sun warming us and the dew still shining on threads of grass, perfect spider webs hanging heavy with the drops. It smelled sweet and earthy like fresh tilled soil. Thunder clouds loomed on the horizon promising clay caked, soggy boots in the morning. But just then it was perfect.
Me and Philips laid on out on our backs and discussed the differences between city and farm life. A favorite topic of ours. Mouton stood off a few yards looking out over the meadow with his hands in pockets. I watched him out the corner of one eye while I lay there.
After the letter, he’d gotten less and less pleasant to be around. Snapping at me and Phillips for every little thing. He started scowling at everything Sgt. Fischer said. The Sgt hadn’t mentioned anything, but I could tell he’d noticed. Me and Phillips didn’t think this was a particularly good idea, seeing as how good we had it. Sgt. Fischer could actually make us work after all.
“Fraternization with the enemy is an offense punishable by death in time of war,” Mouton said, all matter-of-fact.
“What?” I said.
“You heard me.” His voice had an edge to it, tinged with hate. Malice.
“Whoa,” I said, “easy, easy. What’s your problem?”
“My problem is that we’re in a war and you’re fraternizing with the enemy like this is a fuckin’ day camp.”
Phillips and me looked at each other.
“We’re just talking,” I said.
“Just hanging with your ‘ol pal, Sgt. Fischer the Nazi? Telling jokes and havin’ a grand time while people are still out there dying in fox holes.” His face all screwed up in disgust.
The argument spiraled from there and as quick as an August fire we were grappling in the tall grass. Phillips jumped in and broke us up, panic starting to spread across his features. I tried to stand but Mouton landed a last haymaker on my mouth and I went back down.
“SSSSS!” Phillips hissed at us, “Here comes the Sergeant!”
I wiped a little blood from my lip and stood, brushing long grass from my uniform.
Mouton watched Sgt. Fischer walk back from the little farm house.
“Fuck you.” I said.
“Nah,” Mouton said, almost good naturedly. “… think I’ll fuck you instead.”
When I didn’t say anything, he said, “I’m out of here.”
I looked at Phillips. His eyes narrowed, confused. “What do you mean?” He said.
“I’m escaping. In just a little while, I’m going to get Sgt. Fischer’s gun and I’m running south to Switzerland, I heard they have people helping escaped prisoners,” Mouton said.
To emphasize his point, he pulled a small cloth sack out of his baggy shirt. Whatever was in it must be crumbs by now after our fight.
Phillips mouth hung open. He sputtered out, “You can’t, you can’t do that! We don’t have any supplies.”
Mouton just grinned at us hatefully. We all knew the same thing. Mouton had us over a barrel. If Mouton escaped without us and we ran back to the base the other prisoners would brand us as traitors for not assisting him. The POW hierarchy would come down on us hard and we would answer for it after the war.
“I will make every effort to escape and to aid others to escape,” says the US Military Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War. It was a common phrase that was constantly whispered back and forth, like we took strength from saying and hearing it. It helped keep the fire of resistance alive. No, if we went back without Mouton, we wouldn’t be looked on favorably.
But that only mattered if the Germans believed our story to begin with and didn’t shoot us on sight. I saw guys shot for less. Mouton had us over a barrel, and he knew it .
“Serves you Kraut lovers right.” He said. “See this spot up here? This is where I’m going to do it. Get ready. After I get the gun, we go our separate ways. I don’t want to see your faces again.”
“Why didn’t you just run while he was in the house with his girl!” I hissed at him.
“I want that gun,” Mouton smiled back at me, “And besides, if we are going to get a good head start, Sgt. Fischer… needs to go.” He drew a line across his throat and stuck his tongue out to the side like a dead man.
Suddenly, that little machine gun Sgt. Fischer carried looked wicked. Swinging back and forth from the leather sling on one shoulder as he walked. I don’t think I’d ever really noticed it before then. It hadn’t seemed important. I was sweating, the sun no longer pleasantly warm on my back but bright and hot in my eyes. I squinted against the glare, and my brain felt foggy.
Sgt. Fischer took up his usual spot at the rear as we walked on down the road. Mouton gave me a look. You don’t have a choice. I felt like I was going to throw up.
I had to put my hands in my pockets, so Fischer didn’t see them shake while we walked. We continued on until we came to a little bend in the road, where it ran between two berms, tall trees on each side that showed new leaves after a hard winter.
I knew, soon as I saw it. We’d walked passed that same place maybe ten times, but not till then did I realize what a great ambush it would make. It was out of sight, and any noise wouldn’t carry far.
Mouton turned slightly as he walked, looking at me, then past at Phillips, and finally at Fischer bringing up the rear. He didn’t say anything. Just turned back and kept walking.
A few moments later he dropped to the road, yelling and holding his ankle.
“I broke it! I broke my ankle!”
I looked at him, confused for a moment, then looked at Sgt. Fischer who looked as confused as me. He pushed past me and Phillips and looked down at Mouton, who was rocking back and forth, holding his ankle.
I felt a nudge to my arm and I looked over, then got out of the way just in time as Phillips swung his shovel halfheartedly at the side of Fischer’s head. But Fischer was an old Sergeant, been on the front lines before a few bullet wounds had put him in the rear. He’d never really trusted us, I knew.
He’d seen the blow coming, I think, because he turned just enough for it to only glance off his head. It still set him sprawling though. His hands went to the wicked little machine gun, but Mouton tackled him. Phillips danced back and forth, looking for an opening to swing his shovel again, but Mouton was in the way, scrabbling around on top the German.
I only stood there, my legs wouldn’t move, but even if they did, I didn’t know what to do. I froze up, just stood there like an idiot while they fought on the ground. Mouton shrieked at me that I was a coward. I wanted to, knew I had too, but I just couldn’t get my legs to work.
Suddenly Mouton swore.
“Fuck!” His legs bucked.
“Fuck!” his scream was high pitched, and cracked, full of adolescent terror. “He’s got a knife!”
Mouton said fuck every time the Sergeant stabbed him. Said it five or six times maybe. Mouton started slowing down.
Finally, Fischer rolled him off and came up quick in a crouch, his uniform covered in Mouton’s blood. But Phillips was on him, swinging the shovel now with desperate intensity, clearly terrified by the blood. When he hit the German, the gun flew out of his hand and landed in the carpet of pine needles lining the road. Phillips screamed at me to help him and I was finally able to move. I ran for the gun as Phillips landed another blow to Fischer’s face, breaking his jaw. But Fischer suddenly closed the gap and punched his dagger into the side of Phillips neck.
I picked up the gun and turned around to face Sgt. Fischer. Phillips coughed wetly from where he lay in the road, eyes wide and white. Mouton didn’t move. Fischer’s broken jaw hung open, limp and drooling. He started to cross the road towards me, but I closed the open bolt on the gun and chambered a round. I leveled it at him and he stopped and looked at me. No fear, or hate, nothing more than wide eyed interest in what would happen next.
Maybe I told him I was sorry. That I didn’t have a choice, that I was dead if I didn’t. I don’t remember exactly what I said to him, but I know he didn’t say anything back. He couldn’t with that busted jaw. He just stood there, looking at me.
I have two images in my mind of Sgt Fischer I take with me wherever I go. One is of him laughing at his camel joke. The other is of his head, all smashed up by bullets. I’ve never been able to decide which is worse.
After that, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back to the camp and I didn’t have any clue how I’d get to the Swiss border, even as close as it was. And even if I did, how would I find someone to take me in and hide me? Moutons plan was desperate at best. Suicidal was more accurate.
So, I made for the woods thinking I’d try to hide as long as I could. Turns out growing up in the backwoods of Kentucky comes in handy at staying alive. Germany and Kentucky aren’t that different.
We had our share of hunting dogs growing up, so I knew how to stay ahead of their noses. I used every trick that I’d seen hunting coons with my old man’s Blue Ticks. I stayed alive well enough, though all I had on me was Phillip’s shovel, Sgt Fischer’s gun, and the dagger I’d had to wash in a stream. Then, after only about a month or so, must have been about mid-April 1945, I came across a patrol of Brits.
The Allies had been pushing the Germans back and liberating POW and Concentration Camps. It took some convincing before the British Intel guys sent me on to the American forward operating base .
Sometimes I wonder, about Sophia, and the little country house where Sgt. Fischer would visit. Sometimes I wonder if her husband was in the war, still. She was there all by herself, so she must have had a husband in the war. Maybe, maybe she lost him. She waited, and waited, then was delivered a letter by perfectly dressed German officers. Maybe, she was alone for a long time in the empty farmhouse she shared with him.
Then this Sgt. Fischer arrives with his smiles and his jokes. And she starts to remember laughter and hope. She starts to think about after the war. Apple pies and blond babies. Planting in the spring and harvest in the fall. Sometimes, I look around me, at what I’ve done with myself. It was war and we were soldiers. It was him, or me, and, almost always, I’m ashamed I chose me.
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