When I first came back to K Company, I’d been assigned as a scout to the second platoon, I guess because I’d been in I&R. I’m assigned along with a new replacement, named Rolin Clairmont. Since we’re the two new arrivals, we’re tent mates, as if we ever got to sleep in tents instead of wet holes.
We get to know each other reasonably well. He’s tall, at least six three and comes from Bordertown, New York. Before the army, he worked with his father taking hunters into upper New York State and even up into Maine to hunt. Most times they’d fly in. Rolin and his father live on a lake in New York State and they have a plane with pontoons. Rolin has been flying planes illegally since he was thirteen or fourteen years old and knows a lot about them. He also knows a lot about shooting and hunting.
He makes a good tent/hole mate. Most of the people in K Company are from the South, but he turns out to be better than the southerners at being southern. He’s had much experience with rifles, hunting of all kinds, from deer and bear, to small game hunting; squirrels, rabbits. He also knows how to build a still, and he can speak French. He tells me he speaks Canadian French. We’re not that far into Germany and most of the civilians speak French or German, or both. It’s an intermediate, no-man’s kind of land.
There’s an interesting thing about border zones, in Europe, anyway. They always seem to be much more sleazy, run down, compared to the rest. It’s almost as if everything stops moving and working right around the border. This is the kind of area we’re in, and putting the war on top of that, it’s quite shabby.
When Rolin comes up to K Company, we’re in battalion reserve. But two days later we’re moved on to Neuendorf, replacing L Company. It’s been medium hard according to them, they’re going back, and of course they exaggerate, telling us how awful it is and trying to scare us. They say things like, ‘You’ll be sorry’, or ‘Take a last look at the world’ – all those kinds of usual things.
It’s after midnight when we move into the line, so we’re slipping and stumbling around, going into holes that are already dug and mucked up. We’re two hours on and four off, but when you’re off four, you’re not really in comfort; you’re in another hole, which is dug up against a wall. However, that hole feels like practically going home compared to the outpost hole Rolin and I are sharing guard on. Our hole is the farthest forward, closest to the Germans. It’s maybe forty to a hundred yards out from the hole against the wall.
We’re out there and we rotate with each other three or four times. Nothing’s really happening. I’ll never know how the army decides when to move and when not to move. Luckily, in the part of the world we’re in, we are neither in attack nor in retreat. I imagine it’s a question of getting supplies up or somebody making up his mind.
Then when we charge out and do an attack, we’ll settle down to wait again, right after. It’s a strange kind of business. It changes later but this is the way it is then. We’re taking a bit of territory, then consolidating, taking a bit more, consolidating again.
Rolin and I are out in our hole. It’s a pretty good spot right at the edge of the forest looking down a long hill with a stream at the bottom, and then the hill goes up the other side and there’s another forest edge over there. That’s about four or five hundred yards away. We know the Germans are in the forest. We don’t know exactly where, we try to keep an eye out for them but they aren’t about to reveal their positions and we aren’t going to reveal ours either. We just assume they know where we are but aren’t doing anything any more than we are.
We’re always careful, we don’t stick our heads up and we don’t rustle around and make noise. It’s a good position to change guard because we have cover almost all the way to the hole and then there’s a slight drop going toward the forest. I imagine that’s why they dug it here.
Anyway, when we change guard, we come in and the other guys go out, hardly exchanging a word unless something important has happened, and hardly anything has, generally. After that, we’ll sit a while to see if any Germans have seen us make the change. Again, it’s sort of like ‘hide and seek’. Rolin and I are out there a little over an hour into a four hour guard. Night guards are two. Suddenly two German soldiers come out of nowhere, walking right across in front of us. We figure they must be lost or crazy. They come out of the forest on the other side, walking down the hill. They’re strolling along the stream with their guns on their shoulders as if there’s no war going on at all. We both immediately lift our rifles and release the safeties.
I’m waiting to see Rolin’s hunting skills when it comes to real combat. It’s a terrible thing to say, but you don’t want to take any unnecessary chances. The proper, warlike, military thing to do is to shoot these two guys and duck down, hoping nobody saw you shoot.
It’s as bad as that, but that’s the way it is. You’re not going to shout and stand up yelling, ‘Give up. We’ve got you covered.’ You’re not about to go down that hill and chase them either. You’re just going to shoot them and duck down as fast as possible. Also, you’re not going to let them just go by, this is the enemy after all. The sad thing is, we have an obligation to do our part. They’re just making the kind of mistake I could easily make myself. I have a rotten sense of direction.
After a minute, it looks to me as if they’re sort of coming toward us at a diagonal. They come down to the stream, a small stream, find some rocks and cross it. They must be really lost. They’re going at a slow pace with their rifles still slung on their shoulders but they’re getting closer and closer.
I’m thinking, ‘Boy this guy Clairmont really is a hunter, he never fires until he’s ready.’ He keeps looking over at me and I keep looking at him. I can see he’s getting more and more nervous. I am too. I swear they aren’t more than fifty yards away and we can hear them talking.
He turns to me and whispers, ‘Would you give a fire order, please?’
I realise he’s thinking he’s on a rifle range. You aren’t allowed to fire on a rifle range unless you have a firing order.
‘For Christ’s sake Rolin, open up, Fire!’ I yell.
Clairmont takes the front one, and I take the back one. They go down twisting and squirming, then are still. We duck down and wait to see what’s going to happen. Maybe there are other Germans and they’ll start shooting, but all is quiet
Well, I’ll never know to this day why those two Germans were strolling around as if there was no war going on. The thing I remember most is the control Clairmont had standing there, waiting for a firing order. It was a premonition of things to come.