along the front line. Hitler sacrificed everything in this final push, but the Americans refused to give in. The Allies eventually broke through the lines and crossed the Rhine, the Germans once again retreated, and the Battle of the Bulge came to an end. We then replaced the exhausted and battered American troops.
It was such a horror to see the veteran soldiers returning from the front mourning the friends they’d left behind on the battlefield, victorious in battle yet defeated in spirit. I immediately felt the weight of their sorrow. They seemed to me to suffer from what we now call survivor’s guilt. I remember there was this one kid named J.R. who’d been killed before I arrived, and all the older troops kept talking about him. He must have been very special. Everybody seemed affected by his death. It’s as if he represented the entire tragic reality of war. They just kept asking, “How the hell could he have died? How could a kid like that just disappear?” They couldn’t get over it. They acted as if they would rather have died instead.
The winter months were rough. Snow covered the ground, and the front was a front-row seat in hell. It was an absolutely terrifying spectacle: air battles raging above me, with the roar of the airplane engines and the swirling sound of bombs; and artillery battles all around me, with shells bursting everywhere. I watched as my buddies died right before my eyes. AllI could think of was, “When am I gonna get it?” No less than General Patton once woke us up at four AM and gave us a speech, saying: “Now listen up! Forget your mothers and everything else you’ve ever known! You’re going up to the line.” That was because we were all just teenagers, kids really. Can you imagine saying that—“Forget your mothers!”—to a bunch of terrified kids?
What we were most afraid of were the eighty-eight-millimeter cannons that the Germans used. Those eighty-eights would come whistling right down on us. What a nightmare. Shrapnel flew and hot metal strafed anyone in its path. The only protection we had on the front line was the foxhole. Every soldier had to dig himself a hole before he could go to sleep at night. Sometimes it took hours to dig through the frozen ground, and by the time you were done, you’d have only a few hours of sleep before you’d have to get up again. Once the holes were dug, we had to secure the surrounding area with booby traps and set up communications lines back to the command post. We ate cold or frozen food before going to bed. And all this after a fall day of marching or fighting. My first night on the line I had a terrifying experience. I finished digging my foxhole, but I was so exhausted I just passed out on the ground before I could even get into the hole. When I woke up, my face and body were completely covered with snow. I was really disoriented, and once I realized what had happened, I started to look around. Directly behind me was a tree, and embedded in the trunk was a huge piece of shrapnel, right above where I’d been sleeping. If I’d been just a few inches higher off the ground, I would have been killed that first night.
Nighttime was the worst. We couldn’t light any fires to keep warm; we couldn’t even light a cigarette, because the glow would be detected by the Germans and give away ourposition. The winter nights were brutally cold, and sometimes they would last sixteen hours—sixteen hours of lying underground in a foxhole, alone, watching and listening for the enemy. I learned the rules of the front line pretty quickly: don’t move. Someone is watching. Stay in your hole whenever you can. It was just awful. The whole thing was a big, tragic joke: the Germans were hiding from us, and we were hiding from them. Sometimes we were close enough to hear the Germans talking to each other. They must have been able to hear us too, but neither of us wanted to make a move unless we had to. Nobody wanted to get hurt. Everybody just
It was such a horror to see the veteran soldiers returning from the front mourning the friends they’d left behind on the battlefield, victorious in battle yet defeated in spirit. I immediately felt the weight of their sorrow. They seemed to me to suffer from what we now call survivor’s guilt. I remember there was this one kid named J.R. who’d been killed before I arrived, and all the older troops kept talking about him. He must have been very special. Everybody seemed affected by his death. It’s as if he represented the entire tragic reality of war. They just kept asking, “How the hell could he have died? How could a kid like that just disappear?” They couldn’t get over it. They acted as if they would rather have died instead.
The winter months were rough. Snow covered the ground, and the front was a front-row seat in hell. It was an absolutely terrifying spectacle: air battles raging above me, with the roar of the airplane engines and the swirling sound of bombs; and artillery battles all around me, with shells bursting everywhere. I watched as my buddies died right before my eyes. AllI could think of was, “When am I gonna get it?” No less than General Patton once woke us up at four AM and gave us a speech, saying: “Now listen up! Forget your mothers and everything else you’ve ever known! You’re going up to the line.” That was because we were all just teenagers, kids really. Can you imagine saying that—“Forget your mothers!”—to a bunch of terrified kids?
What we were most afraid of were the eighty-eight-millimeter cannons that the Germans used. Those eighty-eights would come whistling right down on us. What a nightmare. Shrapnel flew and hot metal strafed anyone in its path. The only protection we had on the front line was the foxhole. Every soldier had to dig himself a hole before he could go to sleep at night. Sometimes it took hours to dig through the frozen ground, and by the time you were done, you’d have only a few hours of sleep before you’d have to get up again. Once the holes were dug, we had to secure the surrounding area with booby traps and set up communications lines back to the command post. We ate cold or frozen food before going to bed. And all this after a fall day of marching or fighting. My first night on the line I had a terrifying experience. I finished digging my foxhole, but I was so exhausted I just passed out on the ground before I could even get into the hole. When I woke up, my face and body were completely covered with snow. I was really disoriented, and once I realized what had happened, I started to look around. Directly behind me was a tree, and embedded in the trunk was a huge piece of shrapnel, right above where I’d been sleeping. If I’d been just a few inches higher off the ground, I would have been killed that first night.
Nighttime was the worst. We couldn’t light any fires to keep warm; we couldn’t even light a cigarette, because the glow would be detected by the Germans and give away ourposition. The winter nights were brutally cold, and sometimes they would last sixteen hours—sixteen hours of lying underground in a foxhole, alone, watching and listening for the enemy. I learned the rules of the front line pretty quickly: don’t move. Someone is watching. Stay in your hole whenever you can. It was just awful. The whole thing was a big, tragic joke: the Germans were hiding from us, and we were hiding from them. Sometimes we were close enough to hear the Germans talking to each other. They must have been able to hear us too, but neither of us wanted to make a move unless we had to. Nobody wanted to get hurt. Everybody just
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