Chapter 2 Hitlerjugend
"They must have set up quickly," said Saunders, in regard to the machine gun nest. "They weren't there when we first drove through." He plucked at the straw in the stall. He was famished. For their short trip to Jampel's meeting, they hadn't brought any food along.
"If they had been," said Hanley, sleepily, rubbing a hand over his lower face, "we'd have to do all this in reverse. I'd be the one carryin' you."
Saunders laughed, but after a half-hour's rest, he knew he couldn't delay any longer. Hanley needed a doctor and though the barn was a good, albeit warm spot to take a nap in, he had to get them back to the American lines. After studying his map, he started to make motions to get up, but his limbs, bruised on the rocks of the stream, were stiff with sitting. Before he could rise, Hanley spoke up, authority creeping into his once-friendly voice.
"Saunders."
Still sitting beside the lieutenant, the sergeant replied in kind, "Sir?"
"You can't carry me any further and you can't drag me." Hanley winced and blew out, experiencing pain all up and down his left side. He groaned as he tried to shift his position. Looking down at him, Saunders hadn't moved. "I want you to leave me here and go back to headquarters on the double. They'll send someone out. I won't be alone long."
The NCO nodded. "That sounds best, Gil. I won't be long."
"Do you need a compass?" asked Hanley, weariness finally taking over. "Left side pocket." He meant of his jacket. Luckily, Saunders didn't have to disturb that area any further, for he had his own.
"Thanks, sir. I've got mine."
He helped turn Hanley over, holding onto him while he inspected his bandage. It was wet with blood. So was the bandage wrapped around Saunders' hand. Nothing had gone right this day!
Leaving Hanley with one of the canteens, having topped off both at the stream, he tried to make his friend as comfortable as possible, stuffing some more straw under his head and shoulder and placing the canteen at his right side. After checking the clip of his own pistol to make sure he had all eight rounds, he left it lying across Hanley's chest, his right index finger on the trigger.
The sun was still high in the sky when he emerged from the very dark barn. Blinking up at it, he looked down again at his watch. Just after 1400 hours. He had to tackle the rank grass and the hidden pieces of farm equipment again, but he was able to proceed more carefully now that he wasn't so encumbered as before. A fence bordered the farm, but it was so rotten that it was easier just to break it and pass through, than climb over it.
Once out on the open fields, he made good time, knowing the direction intuitively by the sun and technically by the small, brass folding compass he carried. He had traveled with Lt. Hanley somewhat out of the way. By road, 2nd Platoon's lines should have been about three kilometers, give or take, from the bridge, but having gone overland to avoid enemy patrols, he had added at least two kilometers to that figure. He didn't think of going back to the bridge again due to the possibility of encountering German patrols on the road.
Checking his compass again, he made sure he was traveling north by northeast. Once behind American lines again, he planned to radio HQ for an ambulance and a military vehicle to accompany it to the Soigny River. There, he'd meet the stretcher-bearers and hike back to the old farm where he'd left the wounded lieutenant. But about halfway to where he expected the lines to be, he heard the whistling of 81 mm shells overhead, fired from American mortars. He could also hear M1s and carbines, punctuated by the occasional bark of a BAR. Kirby's? He didn't know. It wasn't likely to be his.
The Germans, hunkered down in the woods, and firing sporadically, were getting hit hard by the Americans in front of them, Americans Saunders couldn't see, only hear, and who he had no hope of joining. He was still behind German lines, so he was as liable to be hit by the 81s as his enemy was. How true that was! A particularly close shell made instant firewood of the brush at the edge of the field where he was hiding, showering him with dirt and debris. He threw his arms over his head and waited out the onslaught of shrapnel.
Looking up again, brushing loose earth off his nose and chin, he saw a five- or six-man enemy patrol making its way towards him, their glassy eyes probing the woods, alert for the enemy. Instantly, he searched for better cover, spotting a thicket of short trees and scrub further along the field. A bit less steady now after the shell burst, hugging the trees, he ran that way and ducked down in the brush. Less than two minutes later, the patrol stomped by. Three or four men carried Schmeissers, while two others handled a machine gun and its ammo boxes.
He couldn't get home. He knew that now, as he watched the patrol disappear into the trees. Every second too that he wasted looking for a way to penetrate German lines was a second more of blood loss and perhaps fatal weakness for Hanley, holed up in an old barn and waiting for rescue. Feeling like he had failed his friend, he pushed back into the German sector, knowing he was in the wrong uniform for meeting another Kraut patrol.
After a kilometer or two, he dropped down into the tall grass of a meadow, his only cover, as he heard a sudden gaggle of German voices. Two men materialized, both privates, both acting if anything carefree. They didn't seem to realize there was a battle going on, and that they were right on the edge of it. While the mortars still raged east of there, and a barrage of small arms fire broke out now and then, they didn't seem to be focused on it. Intrigued, Saunders, always a man of action and intensity, watched them approach, one of them swinging his rifle.
Saunders didn't need prisoners, but he did need rations, and bandages, both for himself and for Hanley. He stood up out of the long grass and trained his tommy gun on them – then he saw their faces. He had seen faces like these before. Where there should have been a strong jaw, there was a delicacy of chin, where the eyes should have been hard and cold, they were yielding and seeking. No, it couldn't be. Not again. Boys! Part of the Hitlerjugend, or HJ, that is, these boys should have been in school or on the soccer field, but there they were, in full Gefreiter uniforms, with rifles—one had a potato masher tucked in a loop of his belt. On the left side of their helmets there was the red and white diamond of the HJ directly below the German eagle.
He knew he couldn't kill them, even if they resisted. But he had to communicate with them. Jerking his gun down towards the ground, standing about six feet away, he yelled, "Throw your weapons down! Now!"
One of the boys, the younger of the two, obeyed in an instant. Saunders stepped in and dragged the Kar 98k off the other boy's back and, stepping back again, flung it aside. "Take off those ammo belts!" he ordered next, pointing to the boys' waists with the barrel of his Thompson, but keeping a respectable distance.
Dropping the belts to the ground, the two youngsters just looked at him, their eyes wide, waiting for his next orders. The older boy might even have looked a bit rebellious, while the younger one just looked scared.
"Hande hoch!" he said, watching as they raised their hands in the air. "Bandages. Food," he said, hoping to make himself understood. He held up his bandaged left hand, some of its wrapping loose, then made an eating gesture. After that, he watched their reaction.
The younger boy answered first. "Bandagen. Rationen."
He took out a box of rations from his tunic and began to hand it over to Saunders, who stepped up again to receive it, his hurt hand outstretched. Then something made him whirl around, perhaps catching the way the older, taller boy moved his eyes in that direction, just over Saunders' shoulder.
A regular soldier stood about twenty-five yards away, shadowed by trees at the woods' edge, with his rifle trained on the American. Saunders found himself lowering his Thompson to the ground and raising his own hands. The boys picked up their assorted gear and strapped it on again. Another minute passed, while the older boy came forward and pulled off Saunders' own belt and searched his jacket, finding the grenade, map and extra mag in it. The compass he found in Saunders' shirt pocket fascinated him the most and he kept it, pocketing it along with Saunders' wristwatch.
A jerk of the gun towards the trees at the bottom of the hill they were standing on relayed an order to move. He kept his hands up as he carefully negotiated the slope, not wanting to stumble and startle the boy behind him into firing a shot. At the tree line, he was roughly pushed forward by the corporal. The boys followed, already excitedly talking as the older boy spared the younger one a look at his treasures.
It was the way American boys always talked in the gym after winning a tough game on the football field. He knew the talk, though he'd never been a part of it. Smoking by the door with one or two of his buddies as the players crowded back inside for showers, wearing his dead dad's farm jeans, still muddy from yesterday's plowing, he had had the same trouble understanding what they were saying then as he did now.
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"Look at that jeep! It's like some damn piece of sculpture!" exclaimed Kirby, running onto the fieldstone bridge and looking over the wall at the Kraut 'artwork.' He stooped to turn over the two German bodies, one gunshot, the other with his neck snapped.
"I found Sarge's helmet," said Caje in the water, holding it up, but keeping his rifle ready and his eyes peeled on the trees around. "Something bad's happened here, I know it."
"Here's the lieutenant's helmet and carbine, I'd swear it!" cried Littlejohn from up on the bridge, lifting up both. He also found Hanley's ammo belt and picked it up, too. Doc came over to stand with him.
He took the helmet and turned it around, nodding. "It's the lieutenant's, alright. I remember seeing him when he got that dent from a ricochet." He pointed it out to Littlejohn, who at the moment wasn't looking. "What's happened to them?" Doc murmured, echoing Caje. He was also looking around now.
A thorough search of the area turned up almost no trace of the two men. Just a jeep on its nose among the rocks in a fast-moving stream, two Kraut bodies on an old bridge, and enough of Hanley's things to make things interesting. They did find blood on the stones of the bridge that probably didn't belong to at least one of the Germans, the Kraut with the snapped neck, so they suspected that either Lt. Hanley or the Sarge may have been wounded.
Now in the water, Kirby noted the shot-up tires and other holes placed in the jeep's side. There were several in the seat back where it was likely Lt. Hanley had been sitting, if Saunders was driving, as he probably would have been.
"Something bad's right," Kirby said, thinking back to Caje's remark. "Where are they?" he voiced the thought filling the minds of the others just then. "Where, for gosh sake?"
Still holding onto Sarge's camo-covered helmet, Caje climbed the hill and a few minutes later, he yelled, "Look what I've found. A machine gun!"
The most keen-eyed of the squad, he came down again and spotted a thin trail of blood in the grass. "Maybe they came this way, one carrying the other one," he called up to Littlejohn, still standing guard on the bridge. Doc flew down that way and knelt over it.
"The wound's likely not deep," he said. "There's not a lot of blood, but one of them is wounded. Or it could be Kraut. We found only two bodies. Aren't there always three, or even six, in a machine gun squad, Caje?"
Caje nodded. "You've read my thoughts, Doc. Where's the third Kraut?" He turned and ran in the same direction that Saunders had taken when trying to lead the last remaining German soldier, the feldwebel, away from Hanley on the bridge. Doc followed him.
"Littlejohn, you stay there!" called Kirby as he raced after Doc and Caje.
Littlejohn waved his gun once to signify that he would. In this volatile part of the sector, with actual fighting not too far away, it paid to keep a watch at all times. For his part, he pulled the radio off his back, cranked it, and relayed to HQ that they had found Saunders and Hanley's jeep, and what condition it was in.
"No sign of the two men," he said. "One of them may have been hit by machine gun fire. Over."
Capt. Jampel himself came on the radio and advised him to update him as soon as they had any other news. He'd send an ambulance out—always in short supply in a battle—as soon as they had discovered if one of the missing men was indeed hurt.
"Will do," said Littlejohn. "We're searching for them now, sir. Over."
"Over and out, private," said Jampel, sighing a bit. He'd lost so many men today—he couldn't afford to lose Saunders and Hanley, too. Hell, if he lost those two men, both familiar enough to him to be friends, he might as well call off the rest of the war!
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Not liking this day at all, and still shaken from multiple hurts and knocks, Saunders kept going at the point of a gun into the trees and up the next hill. He had to get that gun away from the soldier, a man about his age, but that would only mean getting shot by one of the nervous boys. Well-trained in small arms, they knew how to shoot accurately enough. Would they dare, though? Would they dare shoot a veteran American sergeant, who might unleash the fires of hell on them if they were to just wound him and not kill him outright?
He guessed it'd be unlucky to try to find out, by testing them. Hitler Youth, as he understood them, were like a Boy Scout Troop, with benefits. From the age of ten, its members hiked, camped and competed, but were given additional training in weapons and field tactics. Schooled in Nazi beliefs, they'd rat on their own mom and dad if they talked against the party.
Just at the top of the hill, he stopped, turned and lowered his hands, though he hadn't been bidden to. He saw it just down below, the churning river Soigny, much faster now and narrower upstream than it had been back at the bridge. He faced an unpromising fate this afternoon: a swim in the river below, its waters boiling against granite rocks, or the Kraut with the rifle and a swift trip to German HQ.
The German motioned him down the hill and Saunders turned again, throwing out his arms for balance as he took the steep, rock-embedded hill down to the river. A path lay along it, making for an easier walk for the Germans and their prisoner. The soldier and the boys followed. As they were midway down the slope, a shot rang out, then more, forcing the Germans to crouch down and try to stay low. Saunders wasn't to be stopped. He threw himself on the older German and began to wrestle for his rifle, tumbling back into the grass of the hill and rolling towards the bottom.
Once there, Saunders stood up and with both men gripping the rifle, he used the rifle stock to butt the German across the mouth, tossing him back in the same move as the man lost his balance. Saunders swung the Kar 98k towards the boys and fired a shot or two in their general direction for effect. With only a five-round clip, he hoped he still had some ammo left. The German was out cold, lying back amid the tangle of rocks and weeds at the foot of the hill.
He gestured to the two boys to stand up, drop their weapons and come down, even as he looked to his left and saw members of his squad starting to appear out of the trees at the edge of the river.
"What kept you?" he asked in a cheerful way and raising his voice so they could hear. "Anyway, thanks for the distraction." He was referring to the shots fired by the squad to surprise the older German soldier, giving Saunders the time to overcome him.
Grinning from ear to ear, Kirby replied, "We watched the German take you prisoner, then Caje had the idea he might want to use the path, so we came down here first. We had to shoot through the trees."
Littlejohn swung his gun up as the two boys materialized out of the grass and scrub of the hill and nearly let off a round or two, but Saunders threw up his hand and cautioned, "No, Littlejohn! They're only boys. Hitler Youth, again. Like before."
They could all remember that time. Boys in uniform trapped in a farmhouse and refusing to surrender, finally giving in but only after some tense moments between the squad of men whose job it was to take them, if not easily, and the boys who were too young to be soldiers.
Littlejohn waved his gun. "Thanks, Sarge, for warnin' me. I wouldn't want that on my conscience."
"We've got to get moving," said Sarge. "I left Hanley—" Doc came up to stand beside him, taking his hand. "Doc, something personal?" asked the sergeant, garnering a laugh all around.
"No, what did you do to your hand?"
"Cut it on a piece of rusted metal at the old barn where Hanley is. Now, can we move out?"
"I've never seen worse bandaging. It's dirty, too. It's only going to take me a minute, Sarge, but I'll have to change it."
"While the lieutenant bleeds to death?"
"Ah, Sarge, if he was goin' to bleed to death, he'd already have done it by now. It's been hours since you left for Jampel's meeting."
All the while he was distracting his patient by talking, Doc was very efficiently unwrapping Saunders' bandage and revealing the reddened, swollen hand for everyone to see. In fact, Doc had to say, "Get back, Kirby. I'll take care of this." Kirby looked all around, embarrassed by his forwardness, and fell back.
"How bad is it?" asked Caje, nodding his chin towards the hand.
"Not good. Infection's set in. Good thing you've had your tetanus shots, Sarge. Three in all, right?"
"At least," said the now-worried NCO. "Every time they send me to a new continent, Doc, I get three of them."
"Then you're up to date. Come with me. I can clean this out better under running water."
Saunders sighed and let himself be led away to the stream. Kneeling down on a rock, he placed his warm-feeling hand in the fast, cold water. While Caje tied up the older German, who was just then waking up, binding his hands behind his back, the boys came down the hill and shared a look with one another while watching Doc and Saunders. Neither of them had ever seen one man take such good care of another before. Up to the time when they had decided to quit the war and go AWOL—the reason the corporal was out looking for them—only a few, washed-out bandages could be spared for them or the old men they usually served with.
"We've got to go, Doc. Now." Saunders withdrew his hand from the soothing river and shook off the water. Before Doc could tell him no, he wiped it across his filthy jacket.
Doc sighed this time, turning to his medical bag for iodine swabs and more gauze to bandage it with. After dressing the wound, he wrapped it carefully and used adhesive tape to seal the bandage. The whole procedure took only five or six minutes, but Saunders was quite agitated for them to be on their way. He decided to leave the boys with the Kraut corporal, so that they could untie him, but he gave them strict warnings not to untie his hands until the squad was well away from the area. He was leaving it to the older boy to judge how far that distance needed to be.
"Throw their weapons in the river," he said after the Kraut corporal was searched.
Caje and Kirby did as they were instructed, breaking the three rifles in two first before pitching them far out into the water and tossing in a knife the corporal carried, leaving just a small penknife for the older boy to cut the man's ropes with. The two boys took off their ammo belts again, too, and threw them in a pile, but before removing his, the older boy tossed the potato masher, or stick grenade, he carried into the weeds. Littlejohn saw him and walking up, picked up the grenade out of the grass and threw it as far as he could into the stream. The boy watched where it landed. The airtight potato masher should still work if it was removed from the water before the fuse inside got wet.
Just as they were starting to head out, the younger of the two privates stepped up to Saunders with his box of rations. He didn't have the heart to refuse the gift, even though he knew that his men now would have had enough of their own, then rather shyly, the same boy handed over a loose wad of bandages. Saunders accepted both gifts with a smile.
"Open the bandages," said the boy, in faultless English that would put Kirby's to shame. "Look inside, Sergeant." Saunders did and found his wristwatch, which he had almost forgot about. "Elias gave it to me to keep. By the way, my name is Hans."
Saunders took a moment to answer, and when he did, his voice broke a little. "I'm grateful. It's hard enough in war to know what day it is. It's good to know what time it is!" He slipped it back on again and then said, "Ah, there's one more thing – Elias. Let's have it."
Begrudgingly, Elias stepped forward, dug something out of his pants pocket and handed it over.
"Hey, that's Sarge's compass," exclaimed Kirby. "I'd know it anywhere! Little bugger stole it!"
Back into his shirt pocket it went, and with that, Saunders waved, then led 1st Squad up the hill and in the direction of the old farm, in whose barn they hoped to find a very much alive second louie.