Dear Dotty,
It’s been too long since I’ve written anything that actually meant something. I wanted to tell you all that I’ve seen and done in the battlefield while the war was still raging, but my C.O. and I don’t get along well at all. So it seems like all the letters you’ve gotten have been scissored up by him or another officer—that or they give them back to me with a red stamp that unfailingly declares: “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” All the work the officers ever did was sit and read our letters to home—snipping and clipping and laughing. Now that the war’s over, they have absolutely nothing to do. Anyways, I don’t think anything in my letters would have cost us even one soldier, more or less the war.
Nonetheless, my current happiness comes from the prospect of coming home to the States and you and Ma and little Joey. The war was such a blur and everything happened so fast that all the good is mixed with the bad, and above it all is snow, lots of snow, and fog and cold and the sound of the buzz bombs overhead and the eerie swoosh of the German MG42 machine guns. Tex and I made it, both with purple hearts and scars to show for it, but we survived as well as any man could in those conditions.
While you read the papers and worried over me stateside, I didn’t fare any worse than any of the other soldiers.
I remember the start of the Ardennes-Alsace campaign in the biting cold of December, when the Germans started a bombardment along 80 miles of our line that didn’t seem at all out of the ordinary, just retaliation for a similar attack on our part the day before. My division’s lines weren’t being attacked, but by the end of the day the radio was humming with the messages and reports of the front lines. The Germans were heading a huge offensive attack, a final grab at victory. That same day it seemed like the snow wouldn’t stop falling. The Ardennes look like a Christmas card and the snow feels so light when it first falls, but it’s heavier than wearing iron weights—the cold that renders you immobile, the snow that rests on all of your clothing and equipment, the wet, cold melt that permeates your skin, and the fog that follows like a mucky brew of fate. Trudging and attempting to coordinate actions that would pass for fighting is agonizing.
On the 18th we were told to move out. The day before we heard that the Germans had massacred tens of prisoners of war somewhere around Malmedy so we packed up quick and were on the move almost immediately; intel said it was all or nothing, the Germans weren’t taking any prisoners. Me and Tex were scared sick. We’d seen enough greenies get captured, wounded, or killed on their first day in action not to be a little sick to know that we were going to be fighting Nazis in this kind of weather, when the fog was so thick and the nights so black you never knew if the buzz bombs were going to land right next to you or miles away.
Moving to the new defensive lines in the Ardennes was slow work, especially for the vehicles and artillery. The roads were like slides of ice that the trucks, and even tanks and half-tracks slid and skidded off of. When the temperature warmed a little, it all turned to muck and mire. But we trudged on nonetheless. When we made it to the front lines, there were piles of snow that resembled fresh-dug graves in the winter. But they were just bodies in the cold, covered by the never-ending torrent of snow and sleet that would pile on top of them and hide their eternal slumber from our eyes. I never knew how many were ours or Germans, but at that point it didn’t matter, they would just be another tally mark to the hundreds already dead.
And me and Tex had barely made it to the front lines before the white around us became glaringly whiter. And that’s all I remember. They tell me it was a buzz bomb that landed over 25 yards away. But with a buzz bomb, that’s close enough to kill if the shrapnel pierces in all the right places. I’ve seen less kill a man.
But that’s all that happened to me since my last letter, which was probably snipped into innocence by my C.O.
You deserved to know how my time in action was cut short. I was one of the lucky ones in that battle. When they told me around 20,000 of ours died, I imagined thousands upon thousands of those freshly-piled snow graves across the terrain of the Ardennes; bodies being swept under the carpet of fresh powder.
Hope that you and Joey or anyone for that matter never has to see anything like that.
With all my love,
Chet
Sources:
good letter to home:
this one is really good:
No comments:
Post a Comment