After Metz, we have a new member come into the platoon. We need replacements and there’s a constant changing of personnel as the normal death and wounded become more a part of our lives, and deaths. I’m getting more nervous all the time.
This replacement is quartered in my tent although he’s already a T4, that is, the equivalent of a buck sergeant.
His name is Kurt Franklin and he’s small, not more than five feet seven and wears glasses, not military metal rimmed glasses, but rimless. They make him look like a bank clerk or at least a company clerk. He has curly, short black hair. I can’t figure why they put him in with me. Maybe they think I need some supervision after all the craziness with the forts, the gathering of the weapons, and most of all, the capture of all those prisoners. Also, I think they’re beginning to catch on that I’m so scared.
The two of us are at about the same level of sloppiness, so as soldiers we don’t get on each other’s nerves. With us, it’s sort of ‘live and let live’ as much as our situation has room for such an easygoing lifestyle.
My first impression is that he isn’t just an ordinary soldier. For one thing, he’s smarter and quieter. This is reinforced when they don’t assign him to any particular squad position in the platoon. He isn’t made Assistant Platoon Sergeant, either, although his rank would fit that job, and the assistant is in the hospital with measles.
He isn’t assigned to any other company duties, either. And being assigned to Regimental Head-quarters, with no duties, is about as close as one can get to being a civilian.
So, Kurt is a mystery to me and everyone else. I have a mystery tent mate. The whole squad keeps making guesses about who and what he is, but nobody comes up with anything.
We know he’s called into the Regimental Headquarters tent often enough, even more than Anderson the I&R platoon leader. Twice, our main platoon rumour-monger, Miodoser, approaches Anderson and asks about Kurt, but Anderson only ignores him. How could anybody ignore Miodoser? He can be such a pest. So, after that, we leave well enough alone.
Then the first of the new two-man night patrols is assigned. It turns out I’m to go out with Franklin and try to find just where the German Regimental Headquarters has been established. It’s not an I&R patrol, this is obviously a Tiger patrol, not our job. Somebody got mixed up. But, we go out just as it’s getting dark. Kurt insists we leave in single file with me about a hundred yards behind him. This is not a normal patrol formation. Nothing is the way it should be. He waits till we’re about two hundred yards out, going the wrong direction, as far as I’m concerned. I can hardly even see him, but I realise he’s stopped after we’ve passed what was supposed to be the frontier outpost. He sits down beside a fallen tree and pulls a map out from under his shirt.
This, too, is something new. Sure, on patrols we sometimes have maps, but rarely do we actually take an official S2 generated map out with us. It’s considered a serious security error. So, I sit with Kurt, sharing a security error beside a fallen tree.
He spreads the map out in front of us, holding down the corners with a few rocks. He looks over at me and smiles.
‘Well, Will, what do you think of all this?’
What do I say to a question like that? I decide to just tell the truth.
‘I think this might be the dumbest patrol I’ve ever been on and we could be killed any minute now just sitting here out in plain sight.’
He smiles again.
‘You could be right. But I’ll explain it all to you. You’ve been chosen as my special assistant in field interrogation. I work with the CIC, Civilian Interrogation Corps, and I’m really a First Lieutenant. You’ll be getting a promotion to tech sergeant in a few days, but you’re not to sew any stripes on or tell anybody until I give the word. Have you got that?’
I did not ‘have’ it and didn’t want to, but he explains it all again and in detail.
‘As you’ve probably guessed, we’re coming to the end of this miserable war. There are many prisoners being taken all across the front. My family comes from Germany. I was born there and didn’t leave until I was nine years old. In other words, I speak accentless German. My father and two little sisters didn’t get out. I was brought out by my mother and grew up in New Jersey. We’ve never heard from the rest of my family. As far as we can tell, they were probably killed by the Nazis, and just because my father was Jewish.’
He reaches up and carefully pulls off his fragile glasses. He wipes them on a flannel handkerchief he keeps in a little leather case. I’ve seen him do this before. He slides them back on, hooking them behind one ear after the other. He stares at me some more, tears in his eyes.
‘I’m one American soldier with something to fight about. But, I admit I’d like to kill at least five German men for every one of my family they’ve killed.’
He pauses. He has me scared. I don’t need anything like this. Up until now, there’s been nothing personal for me in this war; just killing the enemy, the Krauts.
‘Don’t tell anybody I’ve told you this. If one of the Division staff officers finds out about how I feel, they’d probably pull me off this CIC detail. I’m counting on you.’
Why the hell is everybody counting on me? This war doesn’t mean anything to me except it’ll probably kill me. I’m liable to be dead, all over nothing. I don’t say anything. I figure this Kurt for some kind of maniac. I’m not a maniac, I’m scared out of my wits, yes, but I don’t really want to actually kill anybody. I nod my head, the way you would with any crazy, and don’t say anything. This Kurt Franklin is a dangerous man. Hell, Franklin isn’t even a Jewish name, I don’t think.
I wait. Then I can’t wait any more.
‘So, what are we doing out on this patrol? Are you going to find and kill the whole German high command or something? This all seems nuts to me.’
‘Don’t worry, Will. I just wanted to see how you’d react. There’s a lot of anti-Semitism all through the American army. Most of these guys I just can’t trust. If they were Germans they’d probably be killing Jews themselves. It’s all crazy.’
‘So, again, what are we doing out here sitting in a field waiting to be killed? Let’s go back.’
‘We’re safe here. I’ve checked. I needed to find a place where I could talk to you in private. Can I trust you?’
‘You’d better trust me. If what you’re saying is true, we’re probably breaking at least ten of the Articles of War. Who’s the enemy? Which direction are they? Do we start killing American non-coms? Are we going to arrange for another of those group surrenders the way we did in Metz? I don’t get it.’
‘It’s like this, Will, simple enough. There will be more and more Krauts coming in to surrender, some of them will be their officers, some staff or intelligence officers, many of them SS, or former Hitler Youth. It’s the Twelfth Panzer out in front of us now, an SS elite command. These officers will be funnelled on back to your S2. He works with the CIC, too, and speaks some German he learned at Yale. He’s supposed to interrogate these guys.’
‘So?’
‘We’re convinced they have information about troop emplacement, planned attacks, names and sizes of Kraut forces out there that would help us a lot, maybe avoid some unnecessary killing.’
‘So, what’s that got to do with me? I don’t speak German, I almost failed Latin in high school. What makes you think I can make them tell me anything? I thought you wanted to kill all these Krauts anyway.’
‘You are a smart ass, aren’t you? I’ve been told you don’t have much respect for non-coms or officers, but this is different.’
‘In the army, everything is always different, if it isn’t the army way. So what else is new?’
‘Don’t be difficult, Will. When we interrogate these guys it will always be in the field. They’ll already have had their chance to spill their guts back at S2 interrogation centres or here at your I&R headquarters. They’ll only send the “hard core cases” out to us.’
‘Sounds like Mafia business to me. I imagine the Red Cross or MPs could make quite a case out of this.’
‘Don’t worry about the MPs or the Red Cross. That’s all being taken care of. These guys won’t be speaking any more English than you speak German. I’ll be doing all the interrogation. You’ll just be backing me up.’
‘You mean, with an M1 or one of the new “grease guns”? That should be fun!’
‘You don’t shoot anybody, just act tough and push them around some. Remember, these guys have been killing people as if it’s going out of style. These are real gangsters, garbage, a menace to the human race.’
‘You don’t need to convince me. I went to all the propaganda movies, John Wayne, Van Johnson, Alan Ladd are the good guy heroes and Lew Ayres the yellow coward. My questions is still “Why me?” You tell me I’m going to make “tech” for doing nothing more than I’m doing now, right?’
Franklin takes off his helmet, wipes his brow with the back of his hand. It’s the first time I realise how serious he is about all this. I’m listening, but the entire thing seems so bizarre, out of some other crappy movie.
‘It’s because you were so effective with that capture in Metz to start things off. I went through records of about fifty guys, photos and all, making decisions. I’m down to five guys in your division. I’ll choose three from these. You’ll never know who the others are unless we work together on a project, except they’re generally in I&R, they’ll never know about you.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘Don’t laugh. It’s because of the way you look! The Germans all have this goofy conviction of how a good, meaning “bad” German should be taller than most, with blue eyes and blond hair, the true Nordic type. You’re perfect! You almost scare a little Jew like me.’
‘Cut it out!’ Sure, I used to be called ‘Whitey’ as a kid because my hair would bleach out in the sun, and some of the dumb girls in class would start on how blue my eyes were, but that’s all. I’ve never won any beauty contests. I’ll admit maybe I was a good looking baby. But that’s never meant anything to the army.
‘You’ve won the Infantry Baby Beauty Contest and the prize could be your life. Think about that!’
He stands up and I stand up, too. We start back the way we came. When we reach the perimeter, he turns to me.
‘Well, what do you say, Will?’
‘When do they start the “tech” pay? And I already have some salary deductions I’ve lost the hard way. Do they wipe those off my service record?’
‘That’s already been done.’
‘Pretty sure of yourselves aren’t you?’
‘More sure of you, Will. We’ll be seeing each other. Remember, not a word to anybody. Not even Anderson knows about this. I’ll be transferred out of your squad tomorrow. If anybody asks, we didn’t find anything out there. There actually isn’t much according to the aerial surveys.’
With this he continues to walk away from me and I turn to where my tent is. I’ll have it to myself for a while.
During most of the months of March and April I’m called regularly to help with ‘Interrogation’. For a while, they actually put me up in one of the regimental tents. When I’m not being a terrorist, I’m living high.
Kurt is right. The guys they throw to us are blond, blue-eyed giants all right, perfect Nazi movie types. And they are arrogant. Their uniforms are fairly clean with polished boots, but one can see from their faces, and the way they move, that they’ve had some recent rough treatment. Kurt scares me when he goes into his act. He scares them, too. He’s usually pushing his face into theirs or actually into their necks and jamming a pistol or ‘grease gun’ into their stomachs and hollering at them.
The Germans are pretty impressive the way they resist. Mostly we have some Poles who’ve attached themselves to our outfit who punch them around. At the time, I didn’t realise they had good reason.
They’d get them down on the ground and use their boots to grind their faces into the mud or snow. Then they kick them, not seeming to care where they kick. And these Germans are so damned nasty and tough, one can’t help rooting for the Poles.
Finally, we have a pair of young SS officers. They look to be about the age of our Lieutenant. Kurt tells us that they’re both from an Intelligence Company something like Sicherheitsdienst and these guys we’ve got to ‘break’.
The Poles don’t get anything out of them with the rough stuff. Then Kurt tosses out shovels to them and shouts. He wants the Germans to lie down on the ground. With a bayonet he marks off spaces on the ground for the two of them, just large enough to match their bodies. It makes me think of two things from childhood. The times we’d bury each other at the beach in the sand, and the times we’d do the same thing in winter to make angels in the snow.
Kurt gets them digging. It’s a grey, cold day. They start working up a sweat and Kurt is hollering at them the whole way. I can’t understand what he’s saying, but I can understand when he starts shooting at their feet and between their legs. He actually nips one of them on the boot. He’s shooting from the hip all the time and can’t have that much control.
Every once in a while he has them stretch out in the holes they’re digging. Their faces are turning whiter than the snow. I’m tempted to just walk away. This is more than I bargained for. I feel like a Nazi myself.
When the holes are dug, Kurt has them strip off all their clothes, including underwear, then stretch out in the holes. Now they’ve started shouting back and crying. When one seems to have gone too far with his curses and anti-Semitic raging, Kurt pulls off a few shots near his head. I don’t know how he can miss. Either he’s a very good shot or a poor one. It doesn’t matter much in terms of the effect on these poor bastards.
When he has the two of them stretched out on the cold, dark ground and white muddied snow, he has the Poles begin to bury them. He’s giving instructions all the time in an almost hysterical voice. He has them start at their feet and work their way up toward the heads until only their faces are showing out of the slush. He’s asking the same questions all the time. Obviously asking if they’ll talk to the interrogators. One of them breaks down as they start sprinkling the earth on his face. Kurt gives the word and two of the Poles drag his almost unconscious body out of his grave. He’s slobbering and vomiting as he’s dragged off to the regimental interrogation tent.
It doesn’t take long until the second officer gives in too. A human mind can only take so much. When the Poles lift him up, he breaks away and starts running with his numb legs. Kurt lets him go about twenty yards, running and stumbling, then shoots him in one of his legs just at the knee. He falls screaming and rolling.
That’s the last I see of it. We’re in a daze. I think Kurt suffers almost as much as the Germans. The Poles, on their own, are filling in the holes. Maybe in some way it helps them to forget what has just happened. But I know I can never forget. That’s the end of my career on the interrogation detail.
I go back and sleep two days in my tent, chasing away the nightmares.