The hospital is in Metz. It’s a long ride and I’m really feeling rotten, upset stomach and in shock, probably also still drunk from all the champagne. I stay in the field hospital there for two weeks, during which time I read in Stars and Stripes that the Soviets are advancing on Berlin. I’m thinking this is the way to run a war, as a spectator, in a bed.
I come back to my outfit on the line just in time, by two days, to meet the Russians. This is the great thing everybody’s been preparing for and afraid of. Any German prisoners we have who speak English try to convince us that the Russians won’t stop, they’ll go right through us.
These Soviets we meet are from Mongolia. They wear fur hats with flaps, not helmets. The only things I can compare them to are teddy bears, or a freshman football team on the way to a game. At the same time they’re deadly dangerous.
We share guard posts. The first time I’m on post with one we only smile a lot. There’s no way we can communicate. At the end of two hours, one of their trucks comes by to pick up this guy and leave off his replacement.
I’ll never forget it; they’re picking up these Russian soldiers at different posts. They only slow down, not stop, and these guys try to jump over the tailgate into the back of the truck. But the Russians on the flat bed of the truck push them off. Then the soldiers laugh, pick themselves up out of the dust, run after the truck with ear flaps flapping and are pushed to the ground again. They keep running after the truck until they catch up. Everybody in the truck is laughing and drinking. This happens two or three times while I’m watching and no one seems to get mad, they’re all still laughing.
I think they’re so glad to have beaten the Germans after the incredible five years of horror they’ve gone through, they feel nothing can hurt them. Or maybe this is the way they are naturally. I hope I never need to know.
These wild men are issued about a litre of vodka a day, a canteen full, and they drink it in great gulps and insist we drink it, too. Well, I’d never seen or tasted vodka in my life. Champagne and applejack are like water compared to this stuff. Every day, we’re all half looped, and they’re completely looped, looped and laughing.
In the US Army we have very strict rules about when you can and when you can’t fire your rifle. You just can’t shoot when you feel like it. These Russians are shooting anything that moves. Also, they’re deep into loot and rape.
I don’t know why the German women don’t hide more than they do. These guys run them down the way you would a deer or a rabbit, shouting and hollering the whole way. Seduction you can’t call it. It’s rape. Most times, they pull them into a doorway rather than do it out on the street, but not always. The women are begging us to protect them from these beasts. We try, but the Russians point their rifles at us. There’s no question that they’ll shoot. We’re just other targets of opportunity. I begin to think those German prisoners were right.
Also, of course, the same women are taking cigarettes and chocolate from the GIs who are doing their own somewhat more subtle seduction scene, as close to rape as you can get, but not too much rampant violence.
I’m nineteen and I’m really losing confidence in human beings. My morale was pretty low before, but here I am watching all kinds of mayhem going on, things I never even heard of, dreamed of, had nightmares about. With these guys, both Russians and Americans, it isn’t just fornication. They’re degrading these women, passing them on to each other. I won’t go into the details, but it’s worse than anyone can imagine.
And no one is controlling this. There are no MPs up with us, the officers, by this time, are as afraid of the non-coms and enlisted men as they are of the enemy. The war is almost over. Some of the officers have been okay, only doing their duty, but others have been mean or tough for no reason, just power mad. These hard-nose guys are mostly in hiding now, hiding from their own troops.
It’s terrible. One time, an old German man comes up to me on guard, absolutely trembling and he has a camera. The rule is, all Germans are to turn in their cameras. I don’t know why, and I didn’t even know about this rule.
He’s trying to push off the camera on me and makes me take it. I think he’s trying to sell it to me. I don’t want a camera, I don’t have any use for a camera. I can hardly carry what I have. Besides, I have no film. But he keeps begging me to take his camera. I offer him some cigarettes, some candy, but he won’t take anything. He’s practically crying. I take the camera just to shut him up and get him away from the other guys. I sit down on a piece of rubble to have a look. He runs away. It’s a beautiful, old, folding bellows camera. It’s one of the few things I manage to get home. Until my house burned down, I kept it on my desk to remind me of how brutal and cruel this war is, how helpless the non-combatants are.