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Only Three Stories

Neal Burnham

    ONE
    Jim, armed only with a carbine rifle, was escorting seven captured German prisoners of war through a bombed-out landscape in Southern Belgium. His detail consisted of marching them back to base to be processed as captured POWs, a march that had proceeded uneventfully until the first wave of V2 rockets began to fly overhead. The prisoners were docile and relieved to be taken out of combat, as they were war weary and aware of the developing German defeat in the battle of the Bulge.
    Without warning the low-flying, primitive and un-muffled rockets generated an unbearable wall of sound, a decibel level that was unlike anything the men had ever heard in their lives or would ever hear again. It was so overwhelming that Jim instantly believed that some doomsday event was unfolding, and as he glanced up at the sky he saw the first of many waves of rockets fly overhead. The ground shook and roared and bomb-damaged structures simply collapsed from the sonic intensity. He made a snap decision: let the prisoners go free, and make a run for a basement door that was only a few yards away in the hope of riding out the unfathomable calamity that was unfolding. No longer concerned with his prisoners, he laid down his rifle on the ground and motioned to them to scram; then he ran down the stairs and threw himself into a corner where he cowered, covering his ears. The decibel level did not abate, and being underground provided little relief. After a few moments, to his astonishment, one by one the prisoners came down the basement stairs and sat down next to him. They were visibly just as frightened as he was, and sought out the relative comfort of his company. No longer captor and captives, the men sat in a circle for what seemed like an eternity and stared at each other without even attempting to communicate non-verbally—they had become men resigned to what could only be their impending doom, but from what?
    Then the last wave of rockets disappeared over the horizon on its way to rain upon London, and the wall of sound began to recede. After another minute or two, an eerie silence returned. The men were in shock, and sat in their circle for many more minutes, still not exchanging any words at all. Jim remembered the discarded rifle, and eventually rose up slowly to make his way back to the surface. The Germans did not try to jump him or impede him in any way; they just watched him climb back up the stairs. Jim hustled to where the rifle was laying on the ground, picked it up and waited as the prisoners emerged one by one with their hands over their heads to rejoin their captor. Still not exchanging any words, the group resumed the march, as if this interlude from the bowels of hell had never occurred ...
    TWO
    As a private in the Ozarks regiment, Jim participated in the battle of the Bulge. Hitler’s fierce counter-attack had come to a stalemate in the vast Ardennes forest of Southern Belgium, and the two sides were entrenched in a day and night battle: air bombardment, mortar fire, tanks and infantry assaults.
    Jim and three other men had dug out an underground bunker with their army-issue portable shovels, and reinforced the roof with the solid oaks they had felled and hewn by hand with their hatchets into roof beams. They spent their nights in this crowded wolf den, whose roof was so low that you could only hold a “crouching on all fours” position or lie down flat, but neither stand up nor stoop.
    Throughout the night the bombs and mortars fell all around, so that any real sleep was not possible. Then, at dawn, they would emerge to receive their orders from the CO; usually “hold the position” against German advances, fighting off infantry and irregular patrols and falling back when tanks attacked. The night bombardments increased night to night. It was a continuous deluge from sundown to sunup. The men took turns trying to catnap, one on all fours with his back up against the ceiling, with the others lying flat in the cramped space. It was my father’s turn to hold the “doggie” position when they took a direct hit: the roof caved in and earth instantly buried the horizontal men. Jim held his position and cried out to them to dig out and make their way under him, where a pocket of air remained. The heavy ceiling beams had collapsed and pressed down on his back, along with the earth above. He could not move but held up the weight with his arms and legs. The three men made their way to the relative safety to be found under his belly, and, amazingly, no one was hurt. They knew it was a dire situation, and they huddled: “how long can you stay that way?” “A while,” replied my dad, “a while ... .” trying to comfort his very frightened comrades. They all knew that he was very strong; a future Olympic hammer thrower from rural northern New Hampshire, whose nickname in the infantry was “tugboat”. A barrel chested man, he was built like an orangutan and just as strong. He began what would be the greatest athletic challenge of his life: hold up the caved-in roof until they were dug out. He did this for several hours, and the men underneath him got drenched in his sweat as they encouraged him through it.
    Finally, they heard muffled voices and scratching above their heads and knew help was on the way. After another grueling hour, as dawn was breaking, they were dug out. Fortunately, there was a lull in the fighting, and at last they were lifted out gingerly by many friendly hands. My father was the last man to be extracted: the platoon guys did it with extra care so that he remained in his “on all fours” rigor mortis position ... limbs akimbo.
    It would take all day for him to unfold himself and regain the use of his limbs, and he was cramped and sore and quite useless as an infantryman for weeks afterwards. When the battle was won, the regiment held a party at a liberated château in Coburg, Germany, and fêted this “great escape”. There were still those who, not having witnessed the rescue, found it hard to believe!
    THREE
    The toothache had taken a turn for the worse: the molar had been infected for weeks now, and the infection had now spread to the jaw itself. A week earlier, the harried field surgeon had dismissed Jim with a stressed-out justification: “no time for dentistry here, son.” So as the joint Russian-American pincer final attack on Berlin had come to a successful close, the surgeon had paid Jim a visit and summarily removed the molar with a pair of pliers. Then he shot him up with morphine.
    Fading in and out of consciousness at the back of his tent, Jim gradually became aware of many men milling about outside in a state of great excitement. Russian and American soldiers were euphoric at having defeated the Third Reich, and were embracing each other and crying with joy. Night was falling, and as victors have done for eons, they would celebrate throughout the night. A group of excited Russian soldiers kept shouting: ‘we have found alcohol!’, ‘we have found alcohol’ – ‘Friends, let’s party!’
    Several heads poked through the tent flaps and pressured Jim to join in, but all he could do was groan and shake his head: ‘no, not me’. Not one to ever turn down a drink, he fell back into a deep coma-like sleep.
    What the Russians had discovered were barrels of V2 jet fuel, labeled ‘Methanol’ which they mistakenly took to be ‘Ethanol’. They persuaded their fast new friends, the Americans, to drink the night away with these ‘spoils of war’.
    Methanol is a poison. Within an hour the men were dying. Jim slept through it all. He awoke the next morning with a splitting headache, and emerged from his tent to an incomprehensible sight: hundreds upon hundreds of dead revelers lying on the ground everywhere. He recognized the Russian uniforms, and noticed many American ones he had never seen before. Trying to make sense of this apocalyptic scene, he stumbled down the hillside until he found living servicemen, who could explain the horror ...
    This was not the only devastating language-related snafu of WWII. The British asked the Americans to ‘send corn’, which is a grain in the UK but Maize in the US ... the cargo ship containers came as quite a shock to the docks of Liverpool, to the British who could not fathom eating an ear of corn!
    ... FOUR – just came in from my cousin Jud:
    “Thanks for the stories, which are quite interesting.
One story he told me was about talking with POWs, and taking their possessions. One of the POWs questioned a request that he give up his watch. When Jimmy asked him how it was that he could speak English so well, he said he had been a student at Dartmouth.”

    The soldier got to keep his watch. James Herbert Burnham, of Lebanon NH next door to Dartmouth college, like most men of his generation (there were also some women), spoke little of his combat experiences in WWII. When asked by his young and curious son how many Germans he had killed in the war, he turned very pale and could not speak. A few years later, on a hunting trip with German business men and his son in the Vosges Mountains of France, he could not lift the rifle to take the shot at a deer. He went in shock, and began sweating profusely. The hunting party walked back to the lodge in silence. Throughout his life he suffered from PTSD.

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