The_Face_Of_War C) I The Trouble I've Seen A Stricken Field The Heart of Another Liana The Wine of Astonishment The Honeyed Peace Two by Two OTHER BOOD BY MARTHA GELLHORN: DV Martita (jellltorJl THE FACE OF WAR SIMON AND SCHUSTER · NEW YORK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM COPYRIGHT © 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941,1942,1943,1944, 1945,1959 BY MARTHA GELLHORN PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC. ROCKEFELLER CENTER, 630 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK 20, N. Y. FIRST PRINTING The photographs used on the endpapers are reproduced through the courtesy of The Imperial War Museum, Radio Times, Hulton Picture Library, and Keystone Press. I N LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 59-7262 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY AMERICAN BOOK-STRK ORD PRESS, INC. �, I _ �\ -", " �---�- . - .... _- ucea aoio 44, TO MY SON SANDY RICA INTRODUCTION 1 THE WAR IN SPAIN: 9 The Besieged City 14 The Third Winter 26 THE WAR IN FINLAND: 43 Slow Boat to War 45 Bombs on Helsinki 56 The Karelian Front 63 THE WAR IN CHINA: 73 How to Get to China 78 The Canton Front 91 Contents THE SECOND WORLD WAR: 107 The Bomber Boys 110 The Price of Fire 117 Visit Italy 125 D-Plus-One: The Prisoners 134 The First Hospital Ship 141 The Carpathian Lancers 156 The Gothic Line 166 Paris Revisited 176 A Little Dutch Town 185 The Battle of the Bulge 193 The Black Widow 202 Das Deutsches Volk 213 The Russians 224 Dachau 234 CONCLUSION 243 THE FACE OF WAR 110 202 WHEN I WAS YOUNG I BELIEVED IN THE PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN, and in progress, and thought of journalism as a guiding light. , If people were told the truth, if dishonor and injustice were clearly shown to them, they would at once demand the saving action, punishment of wrong-doers, and care for the innocent. How people were to accomplish these reforms, I did not know. That was their job. A journalist's job was to bring news, to be eyes for their con­ science. I think I must have imagined public opinion as a solid force, something like a tornado, always ready to blow on the side of the angels. During the years of my energetic hope, I blamed the leaders when history regularly went wrong, when cruelty and violence were tolerated or abetted, and the innocent never got anything except the dirty end of the stick. The leaders were a vague inter­ locking directorate of politicians, industrialists, newspaper owners, financiers: unseen, cold, ambitious men. "People" were good, by definition; if they failed to behave well, that was because of igno.. ranee or helplessness. 1 THE FACE OF WAR It took nine years, and a great depression, and two wars ending in defeat, and one surrender without war, to break my faith in the benign power of the press. Gradually came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth. as if the taste of lies was homey, appetlzin : a habit. (There were also liars in my trade, and lea ave a ways used facts as relative and malleable. The supply of lies was unlimited.) Good Eeoplez those who oQQosed evil �er­ ever they saw it, never increased beyond a gallant minority. The manipulated millions could be ar sed or soothed b an lies. The guiding lig t a Journalism was no stronger than a low-worm. . onge to a e er , my colleagues the foreign correspondents, whom I met at every disaster. They had been reporting the rise of Fascism, its horrors and its sure menace, for years. If anyone listened to them, no one acted on their warn­ ings. The doom they had long prophesied arrived on time, bit by bit, as scheduled. In the end we became solitary stretcher-bearers, trying to pull individuals free from the wreckage. If a life could be saved from the first of the Gestapo in Prague, or another from be­ hind the barbed wire on the sands at Argeles, that was a comfort but it was hardly journalism. Drag, scheming, bullying and dollars occasionally preserved one human being at a time. For all the good our articles did, they might have been written in invisible ink, printed on leaves, and loosed to the wind. After the war in Finland, I thought of journalism as a passport. You needed proper papers and a job to get a ringside seat at the spectacle of history in the making. In the Second World War, all I did was praise the good, brave ana enerous eo Ie I saw, know­ ing t is to be a perfectl useless erformance. When occasion pre­ sen e, revI e t e devils whose mission was to deny the ignity of man; also useless. I took an absurd professional pride in getting £here I intended to go and in sending my copy to New York on time; but I could not fool myself that my war correspondent� work mattered a hoot. War IS a malIgnant dIsease, an IdIOCY; a � 2 • -. .:��J_-_, ------� . - --- fromk THE FACE OF WAR prison'5n�_the E�in _..it ocaus� e ond telling_���; but (Iwar was our condition and our histo the lace we had to live in .. --I was a speclafcype of war profiteer; I was physica ly lucky, and was paid to spend my time with magnificent people. After the victory in World War II, I hung on in the climate of war for another year, since peace was uneasy and unconvincing. At last in Java I saw the postwar new-style little war, and knew I never wanted to see any more of it again anywhere. Probably that pa­ thetic murderous mess in the East Indies was inevitable. The tall white men had been conquered and debased by short yellow men; why should anyone accept the white man as master again? The Dutchmen of the Indies returned, like skeletons and ghosts, from Japanese prisons and from building the Japanese death railway through the jungle; their sick, starved women and children emerged from years in Japanese concentration camps on Java; and immedi­ ately they were set upon by the natives they had tried to rule with care and decency. Both the Indonesians and the Dutch needed time to heal from the war and find a just plan for their lives. There was no time. Nothing anybody wrote was going to shorten this torment, nor save one victim, white or brown. d ;� oIt. ,4 • Journalism at its best and most effective is education. Apparently people would not learn for themselves, nor from others. If the agony of the Second World War did not teach them, whatever would? Surely the postwar world is a mockery of hope and an insult to all those who died so that we should survive. As civilization seemed determined to grope its way toward' sui­ cide, the sane occupation for a private citizen, while waiting, was to cultivate his own garden with a view to making it as clean and merry and pleasant as possible. I devised a life which seemed to me good because it was harmless, behind high garden waIls. Now I have different ideas. I must always, before, have expected results. There was an obtainable end, called victory or defeat. One 3 THE FACE OF WAR could hope for victory, despair over defeat. At this stage in my life, I think that I think this is nonsense. Until the invention of the A-bomb, the H-bornb, the Cobalt bomb, or whatever next, we could reasonably consider human history to be a giant interminable roller coaster, going up and down. The ceaseless but temporary riders on the roller coaster changed their clothes, carried new luggage, talked in varying jar­ gOllS, yet remained men, women and children, constant in their humanity. The unique possession anyone on the roller coaster had, as far as I could see, was his own behavior while making the mysterious journey . For his own behavior each one is responsible, but no behavior is final. It shapes human destiny-any behavior, all behavior-but it makes no last decision. 'Yictory and defeat are both passing moments. There are . hare onl m ns. ourna Ism IS a means; and I now think that the act of keeping the record straight is valuable in itself. Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential. not because it is a guiding light but because it is a for ...of..jlOuoT(Jble behavior: involvin� the reporter and the ---- reader._ I am no longer a journalist; like all oth.e.t._p.riyate citizens, the onl �cord I bave to keep straight is my own. Despite official drivel about clean bombs and tactical nuclear weapons, anyone who can read a newspaper or listen to a radio knows that some of us mortals have the power to destroy the hu­ man race and man's home on earth. We need not even make war; only by preparing, by playing with our new weapons, we poison the air, the water, the soil of our planet, damage the health of the living, and weaken the chances of the unborn. How can anyone, anywhere, discount the irreversible folly of testing our nuclear bombs, or the promise of extinction if we use them in war? The world's leaders seem strangely engaged in private feuds. They hurtle in airplanes on their Olympian business; they meet 4 he Or �u lea to n� �lo rIO ilii An lo� feel '. <, Ilj_I _ ..... _/ ----:;:.. ..__-- . - --- " - THE FACE OF WAR each other, always each other; or they deliberate in the various palaces of government; and they talk and talk, incessantly, for publication. Their talk sounds as if they believed nuclear war to be a thing that can be won or lost, and probable; any minute now, without warning, we may find ourselves in it. (Be calm. We will slay the enemy with our superspace, supersonic, triple-intercon- � jar· tinental, X-ray-guided, anti-offensive-defensive missiles. Do not fear. thel! We will burn the foe with our best smallest deadliest fission­ unfission-defission-profission bombs. Meanwhile, my comrades, my people, fellow citizens, loyal subjects, your service is civil defense; dig a little blastproof hole in your back yard and wait for the Apocalypse. ) The world's leaders a ar to have lost tOllCh with life down..... � --- ---- ' .. �.- -- - h�. n� t e £round,1. to hav�_!or otte� !..J:te h"!.��n ��i!1:g� .tl1�y l�ad. Or perhaps the led-so numerous and so mute-have ceased to be quite real, not living people but calculated casualties. for w�re led and must follow whether we want to or not; there is no place to�e to. But we need not· follo� in silence; we·sti aveIne �rig1ir an uty,a"s private �itizens, to keep our own recor s straig rt., -:As rr e rru IOns 0 t ele, WI not e eraed any farther Salong this imbecile road to nothingness without raising my voice inprotest. My NO will be as effective as one cricket chirp. My NO is . nuclear this book. a radio the hu· �e\Va!; It is hard not to sound like a harangue, not to boom or squeak. �i)on And very hard (for me, certainly) to make one-two-three sense, of the logical paragraph piled on logical paragraph. I see mysteries and an�one, complications wherever I look, and I have never met a steadily nuclear logical person. Still one can sometimes say what one means, with immense effort. feuo), No one need point out my contradictions; I know them and y meet feel them. I thought that 1939 was at least three years too late to 5 -- --- . __. �_____Jl i / 1 �" ... ""' ... �.A.)J ..... I''''""",,_, ... �.._\�.��",,- ,U ... l·t"" - •• I ; ...... IP\t � _ • - - .. -� .. p" ,. - -.---- ,..._ / THE FACE OF WAR start fighting Hitler and all his cohorts and everything they did and stood for. Our victory spared us temporarily from unbearable �vil; it solved nothing. ar, w en it-h�i ��y.ptjrpose, is an- opera­ tion which removes, at a specific time, a specific cauC.e - The cancer reaERe s in different sha s in different arts of the human race; we have learned no preventive medicine for the bod of the na­ � tions. We fall back, again and a_gain on nearl fatal sur er . But the human race has always.survived th operation.and.lived. I do not hope for a world at peace, all of it, all the time. I do not believe in the perfectibility of man, which is what would be re­ quired for universal peace; I only believe in the human race. I be­ lieve that the human race must continue. Our leaders are not wise enough, nor brave enough, nor noble enough, for their jobs. We, the led, are largely either sheep or tigers; we are all guilty of stupidity, the ruling human sin. This being so, we can expect wars; we have never been free of them. I hate this fact and ac­ cept it. But nuclear war is unlike any other kind of war that has threat­ ened mankind, and cannot be thought of in the old known terms. Nuclear war reaches a dimension unseen before in history. That dimension is towering, maniacal conceit. We hardly remember who fought the Wars of the Roses or why, yet those wars lasted for thirty years and must have been a deep dark night for the combatants and civilians trapped in them. Still, we are here: the natural world remained healthy, nourishing and lovely; the race continued, uninfected in its bones, its blood, its minds. From the earliest wars of men to our last heart-breaking world-wide effort, all we could do was kill ourselves. Now we are able to kill the future. And we are so arrogant that we dare to pre­ pare for this, insane pygmies menacing the very existence of nature. Five hundred years from now our East-West quarrel will seem as meaningless as the Wars of the Roses. Who are we that we presume to end anything? 6 I. � , �, __-:�..._.J- � . _ _ __ did able pera· � ilireat· 'n tennl. �', That orwnr, n a aee� em, �till, hin� ano blooo, i� ·breakin� IV weare re to �re' � tence 01 arre!will we that THE FACE OF WAR At this point I hear loud and angry voices, as passionate as mine, saying: survival is not all. If men will not fight against tyrants and slavery, life is worthless and civilization should perish. Et cetera. I cannot understand this argument, although I have tried. I do not see how the human spirit, housed in the human body, will be able to cherish freedom, revere the rights of others, and practice its highest talent, love, when the earth is sterile from man-made poisons, the air tainted, and the race sick and dying. I , do not see what human values can be defended when an humanity is lost, the good and the evil together. If we make or allow war, we deserve it; but we must limit our weapons and our locales, and keep our crime under control. We will have to satisfy the madness that is in human nature with small non-nuclear wars of a type we are getting more and more used to. It is in o�ancient tradition .!o �urd"�r_ e�£lt 9th�r;_but only we, 'in the resent, should a the J2rice for our abominable stupidity:Nothing that ��ns ns, i.n-� sie moment *Of his­ tory, gives ur� th� r�ghlto sto tim II to blot ont.the future., to end -.ath� continuin �iracles and !2!ies and tragedies and wretchedness of the human race. ,------- This book is a selection from the reporting I did on wars in prog­ ress and wars about to be, during eight years in twelve countries. The people in these articles are ordinary people, anyone; what happened to them happened to uncounted others. The pictures are small but there are many, and it seems to me that they merge finally into one crowded appalling picture. There is a single plot in war; action is based on hunger, home­ lessness, fear, pain and death. Starving wounded children, in Barcelona in 1938 and in Nijmegen in 1944, were the same. Refu­ gees, dragging themselves and whatever they could carry away from war to no safety, were one people all over the globe. The 7 THE FACE OF WAR shapeless bundle of a dead American soldier in the snow of Luxem­ bourg was like any other soldier's corpse in any other country. War is a horrible repetition. I wrote very fast, as I had to; and I was always afraid that I would forget the exact sound, smell, words, gestures which were special to this moment and this place. I hope I learned to write a bit better as the years passed. The point of these articles is that they are true; they tell what I saw. Perhaps they will remind others, as they remind me, of the face of war. We can hardly be reminded too much or too often. I believe that memory and imagination, not nuclear weapons, are the great deterrents. M.G. '. � -'Z __ :�..__�__ - . _ _ __ - -�- 9 em· War that I were write i� that otherl, mineee 'on, not THE WAR IN SPAIN ,G, IN THE SUMMER OF 1936, I WAS CHECKING BACKGROUND MATERIAL for a novel, in the Weltkriegsbibliothek of Stuttgart. The Nazi newspapers began to speak of fighting in Spain. They did not talk of war; the impression I got was of a bloodthirsty rabble, attacking the forces of decency and order. This Spanish rabble, which was the duly elected Republic at Spain, was always referred to as "Red Swine-Dogs." The Nazi papers had one solid value: Whatever they were against, you could be for. Shortly before I was twenty-one I had gone to France to work and there became one of a group of young French pacifists. We had in common our poverty and our passion. Our aim in life was to kick out the evil old, who were clearly leading us into another war. We believed that there could be no peace in Europe without Franco-German rapprochement. We had the right idea, but the Nazis arrived. In 1934 we met the young Nazis in Berlin. At the frontier, Ger­ man police had come through the train, paused in our third-class carriage, and confiscated our newspapers. Although we represented -:-::::_�-. =: =:': :_.� ��' ',' .,. . '* �---jL __1._ / THE FACE OF WAR no one except ourselves, we read and disagreed on all opinions, ranging from Monarchist to Socialist to Liberal-reformer (me). We united, for once, in thinking this newspaper seizure an out­ rage. When we got off the train, in our usual shabby argumenta­ tive huddle, we were greeted by the young Nazis in clean blond khaki-clad formation. They proved to have one parrot brain among the lot and we did not care for them. We tried very hard to excuse them; we tried to agree that they were Socialists, as they kept assur­ ing us, not NationaI Socialists. Being sorry for the defeated Ger­ mans was a condition of mind of many people, after both world wars; I had it then. Also, I was a pacifist and it interfered with my principles to use my eyes. By 1936, no amount of clinging to principles helped me; I saw what these bullying Nazi louts were like and were up to. But there I was, working with miserable determination on a novel about young pacifists in France. I stayed some months in Germany discussing, with anyone who still dared to discuss, the freedom of the mind, the rights of the individual, and the Red Swine-Dogs of Spain. Then I went back to America, finished my novel, shoved it forever into a desk drawer, and started to get my­ self to Spain. I had stopped being a pacifist and become an anti­ fascist. By the winter of 1937, the Western democracies had proclaimed the doctrine of non-intervention, which meant simply that neither people nor supplies could pass freely to the Republican territory of Spain. I went to the French authorities in Paris to get whatever stamps or papers were required to leave the country. The French fonctionnaire, as all know who have dealt wi th him, is a certified brute. He sits, unlistening, behind a grille, scratching away with a sharp governmental pen and pal1id ink. I cannot have come out well with this type, as I only remember studying a map, taking a train, getting off at a station nearest to the Andorran-Spanish border, walking a short distance from one country to another, and Ilons, (me). rr out· menta· I hlono amon� worM 'iln mr �in� 10 roclaim�d at neiln�r terriloryol t wnatev�r ne Fr�n�n a certill�d "�r witn � come out p, labn� � rr-Spanilfl other, and THE WAR IN SPAIN taking a second train-ancient cold little carriages, full of the sol­ diers of the Spanish Republic who were returning to Barcelona on leave. They hardly looked like soldiers, being dressed however they were able, and obviously this was an army in which you fed your­ self, since the government could not attend to that. I was in a wooden carriage with six boys who were eating garlic sausage and bread made of powdered stone. They altered me their food, they laughed, they sang. Whenever the train stopped, another young man, perhaps their officer, stuck his head in the carriage and eX4 horted them. I gathered that he was exhorting them to behave beautifully. They did behave beautifully, but I do not know what they said, as I spoke no Spanish. Barcelona was bright with sun and gay with red banners, and the taxi driver refused money; apparently everything was free. Ap4 parently everyone was everyone else's brother too. Since few people have lived in such an atmosphere, even for a minute, I can report that it is the loveliest atmosphere going. I was handed around like a package, with jollity and kindness; I rode on trucks and in jammed cars. And finally, by way of Valencia, we came at night to Madrid, which was cold, enormous and pitch-black, and the streets were silent and perilous with shell holes. That was on March 30, 1937, a date I have found somewhere in notes. I had not felt as if I were at a war until now, but now I knew I was. It was a feeling I cannot describe; a whole city was a battlefield, waiting in the dark. There was certainly fear in that feeling, and courage. It made you walk carefully and listen hard and it lifted the heart. In New York a friendly and spirited man, then an editor of Collier's, had given me a letter. The letter said, to whom it might concern, that the bearer, Martha Gellhorn, was a special corre­ spondent for Collier's in Spain. This letter was intended to llelp me with any authorities who wondered what I was doing in Spain., or why I was trying to get there; otherwise it meant nothing. I had 11 A . -- . - \ � I --, �-- �:=::-==� THE FACE OF WAR no connection with a newspaper or magazine, and I believed that alI one did about a war was go to it, as a gesture of solidarity, and get killed, or survive if lucky until the war was over. That was what happened in the trenches of France, as I had read; everyone was dead or wounded badly enough to be sent away. I had no idea you could be what I became, an unscathed tourist of wars. A knap­ sack and approximately fifty dollars were my equipment for Spain; anything more seemed unnecessary. I tagged along behind the war correspondents, experienced men who had serious work to do. Since the authorities gave them transport and military passes (transport was far harder to come by than permission to see everything; it was an open, intimate war) I went with them to the fronts in and around Madrid. StiII I did nothing except learn a little Spanish and a little about war, and visit the wounded, trying to amuse or distract them. It was a poor elIort and one day, weeks after I had come to Madrid, a journalist friend observed that I ought to write; it was the only way I could serve the Causa, as the Spaniards solemnly and we lovingly caIIed the war in the Spanish Republic. After all, I was a writer, was I not? But how could I write about war, what did I know, and for whom would I write? What made a story, to begin with? Didn't something gigantic and conclusive have to happen before one could write an article? My journalist friend suggested that I write about Madrid. Why would that interest anyone? I asked. It was daily life. He pointed out that it was not everybody's daily life. I mailed my first Madrid article to Collier's, not expecting them to publish it; but I did have that letter, so I knew Collier's address. Collier's accepted the piece and after my next article put my name on the masthead. I learned this by accident. Once on the masthead, I was evidently a war correspondent. It began like that. This is the place to express my gratitude to a vanished magazine and to Charles Colebaugh, the editor who then ran it. Thanks to Collier's, I had the chance to see the life of my time, which was 12 d that 'daIlry, at wa� veryone no idea ,Akna� or �r�n; ced men comeDJ mate war) �till I ala twar,ana \\d� a roor a journalilt .�' lcouln 'n�lr callen writer, W� D\I',anaior itn? Dian't �Ioreone lnat 1 \�lte Ked, It wal 'Ivlile, �tin�tnem 'er'� aaarell, ut my name e m;�tneaa, d ma�azine Thanbto which wa! THE WAR IN SPAIN war. They never cut or altered anything I wrote. They did, how­ ever, invent their own titles for most of my articles. I did not like their titles and am not using them here, but they were a trifling price to pay for the freedom Collier's gave me; for eight years, I could go where I wanted, when I wanted, and write what I saw. What was new and prophetic about the war in Spain was the life of the civilians, who stayed at home and had war brought to them. So I have selected only two reports on this twentieth­ century war in the city. The people of the Republic of Spain were the first to suffer the relentless totality of modern war. I have praised the Causa of the Republic of Spain on the slight­ est provocation for twenty years, and I am tired of explaining that the Spanisl1 Republic was neither a collection of blood-slathering Reds nor a eat's-paw of Russia. Long ago I also gave up repeating that the men who fought and those who died for the Republic, whatever their nationality and whether they were Communists, an­ archists, Socialists, poets, plumbers, middle-class professional men, or the one Abyssinian prince, were brave and disinterested, as there were no rewards in Spain. They were fighting for us all, against the combined force of European fascism. They deserved our thanks and our respect and got neither. I felt then (and still do) that the Western democracies had two commanding obligations: they must save their honor by assisting a young, attacked fellow democracy, and they must save their skin, by fighting Hitler and Mussolini, at once, in Spain, instead of waiting unti1later, when the cost in human suffering would be un­ imaginably greater. Arguments were useless during the Spanish War and ever after; the carefully fostered prejudice against the Republic of Spain remains impervious to time and facts. All of us who believed in the Causa of the Republic will mourn the Republic's defeat and the death of its defenders, forever, and will continue to love the land of Spain and the beautiful people, who are among the noblest and unluckiest on earth. .. - . - � I v-- �-::- � ----.. - ;'/1 I / -J-, •• -:--. - ,Il -.;_------=?� • - - - __ • • .. - 11' _ _ ,._., The Besieged City November 1937 � AT THE END of the day the wind swooped down from the mountains into Madrid and blew the broken glass from the win­ dows of the shelled houses. It rained steadily and the streets were mustard-colored with mud. It rained and people talked about the coming offensive, wondering when, when . . . Someone said he knew that food and munitions were being moved; someone else said that Carnpesino's outfit was in the south or in the north; vil­ lages (forty of them, in this direction, in that direction) had been evacuated; the transport unit was ready to go; have you heard? All front passes have been recalled, leaves are canceled. Who told you, does he know? What, what did you say? So it went, and then the rain would start again. And everyone waited. Waiting is a big part of war and it is hard to do. Finally it was someone's birthday, or a national holiday (and still cold and nothing happening, only the rain and the rumors), so we decided to have a party. There were two of us who lived in this hotel in Madrid and the third was a visiting friend, an American soldier from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. A machine-gun bullet had mberl�,i from tn� meone eh� e norili; �I· n) haa De�n u karol All �o tola �OU, nO ilien tile � a bi� �art 3, (ana �bll ors), �o \V� in thi� hotel jean �oloier bullet haa THE BESIEGED CITY smashed his hip and he had come to the city on his first leave from the brigade hospital. We took the entire hoard of cans from the bottom bureau drawer-canned soup, canned sardines, canned spin­ ach, canned corned beef and two bottles of new red wine-and planned to eat ourselves warm and talk about something else, not the offensive. We would talk about movie stars and pretty places we had seen and have a proper party. It went perfectly until the coffee (one teaspoonful in a cup of hot water and stir). Then the first shell plunged into the building next door, brought down a shower of glass on the inner hotel courtyard and rattled the type­ writer on the table. The boy with the splintered hip moved his heavy plaster-encased leg and said, "Anybody seen my crutches?" He found his crutches and shifted to the place between the windows, and we opened the windows so that we could hear better and so that they wouldn't break, turned off the lights and waited. We knew this well: the whirling scream of the shells as they came, the huge round roar as they hit, guessing where they went, where they came from, timing them with a stop watch, counting, betting on the size of the shells. The boy was sad. He was used to war at the front where you could do something about it, not to this helpless war in the city; but he would never go to any front again, as his leg would always be too short, and you can't be an infantry­ man with a cane. There was smoke in the room and the hotel had been hit several times, so we took our wine glasses next door, on the agreeable and traditional theory that if a shell came in the front room it would not bother to come as far as the back room, passing through the bathroom on its way. We counted six hundred shells and got tired of it, and an hour later it was all over. We said to one another, "Well, that was a nice little shelling." Then we said, "Maybe that means the offensive will start." On the strength of this, we ate up the last bar of chocolate and called it a night. " � \ . - - - :. � _ -_ ��- ----:- - -- . -' ,�------.J! J / .1 __ ._ ._ - .• '.<_ ._�:_ �_ • , =-----,. _ - - - THE WAR IN SPAIN The next day it rained again, and Madrid picked itself up as it had done before. Streetcars clanked slowly through the streets, collecting the fallen bricks, the broken glass, the odd bits of wood and furni­ ture. People stopped on their way to work, looking at the new shell holes. The front of the hotel gaped a little more. The elevator man, who worked in bronze for his pleasure, hunted for unexploded shells in the rooms, to make lamps from them. His friend, the night con­ cierge, painted warlike scenes on parchment for the lamp shades, and they were both busy all the time. The maid said, "Come and see the room you used to have," and we went merrily in to where nothing remained except the dressing table, with the mirror un­ cracked, and I found the nosecap of the shell in the broken wood of the bureau. On the fourth floor, lying against the staircase railing, was a long heavy shell that had not exploded. It had only ripped out half a wall and chopped up the furniture of room 409, pulled down the door, and come to rest there in the hall, where everyone ad­ mired it because it had a new shape. Some friends telephoned and remarked, "Ah, so you aren't dead." It was just like before. Like the last time and the time before that and all the other times. Everybody wondered why the Fascists shelled last night and not some other night; does it mean anything? What do you think? In Madrid there is not only first-aid service for wounded people, but there is also a first-aid service for wounded houses. The men who manage this are architects and engineers and bricklayers and elec­ tricians, and some workers are employed only to dig bodies from the collapsed houses. This staff is always active because when they are not propping up, repairing, plugging holes and cleaning off debris, they make plans for a beautiful new city, which they will build in place of what has been destroyed, when the war is over. So that morning in the rain, I went about with them to see what had happened during the night and what could be done. In the best residential section, at one street corner, police were telling the people not to crowd and to move on. A shell had burst 16 thr� bal top up, rap! news ing, the D iliere, matt We nalftl �uiet 0 \va� Ie rurectl mlKin� wa� 0 tile n THE BESIEGED CITY r,ad through the top floor of a fine new apartment house, blown the iron Im� balcony railing onto the roof of a house across the way, and now the Ini· top floor stood without support, ready to fall into the street. Farther �el1 up, a water main had been cracked by a shell and the street was an, rapidly flooding. One of the architects had with him, wrapped in a he1h newspaper, his day's ration of bread. He was very careful all morn- can· ing, climbing through ruins, jumping flooded gutters, not to drop aQ�, the bread; he had to take it home-there were two small children ana there, and come death and destruction and anything else, the bread here mattered. We climbed to the top floor, moving gently into a room where half the floor hung in space. We shook hands with all the friends and visitors who had come to see also. Two women lived here, an au! old woman and her daughter. They had been in the back of the apartment when the front of it blew out. They were picking up what they could save: a cup that had no saucer left, a sofa pillow, two pictures with the glass broken. They were chatty and glad to be alive and they said everything was quite all right-look, the whole back of the apartment could still be lived in, three rooms, not as eo!ncr bright or as nice as the rooms that had been destroyed, but still they were not without a home. If only the front part didn't fall into the ��\�, street and hurt someone. enwuo A mud road, behind the bull ring on the other side of Madrid, o e\�' led into a square where there was a trough for the women of that place to wash clothes. There were ten little houses, huddled to· gether, with cloth tacked over the windows and newspaper stuck in the walls to keep the wind out. Women with quiet, pale faces and quiet children stood by the trough and looked at one house, or what was left of it. The men stood a little nearer. A shell had landed directly on one flimsy shack, where five people were keeping warm, talking with one another for comfort and for gaiety, and now there ce wer� was only a mound of clay and kindling wood, and they had dug out d Dur�! the five dead bodies as soon as it was light. The people standing 17 -;- -- 0,:-:- _ " _ JJ " '�-J.!__l _ / - - -=:"".""'"---------- - -_- � _;." - .::.. ... - --- -- THE WAR IN SPAIN there knew the dead. A woman reached down suddenly for her child and took it in her arms, and held it close to her. Disaster had swung like a compass needle, aimlessly, all over the city. Near the station, the architect asked a concierge if everyone was all right in her house. Four shells had come that way. Yes, she said, do you want to see it? Upstairs the family, including the hus­ band's sister and mother, and the wife's niece, and her baby, were standing in their living room, getting used to what had happened. The front wall was gone. The china was broken, and the chairs. The wife said to me, "What a shame for the sewing machine; it will never work again." The husband picked a thin, dead canary off the sideboard, showed it to me sadly, shrugged and said nothing. I asked where they would live now. (The wind coming in, looking down five flights into the street, the broken furniture and all of them crowded into one room and the kitchen. It is bad enough to be cold, never to eat enough, to wait for the sound of the shells, but at least one must have four walls, at least four solid walls, to keep the rain out.) The woman was surprised. "But we will live here," she said. "Where else shall we go? This is our home, we have always lived here." The architect said to me, miserably, "No, I cannot patch up the walls; we must save the wood for essentials. The walls are not going to fall out; there is no danger from them." "But the cold," I said. "Ah, the cold," he said. "What can we do?" He said to them, Good luck, and they said to him, Thank you, we are all right, and then we walked silently down the steep, unlighted stairs. It was night now. Streetcars, with people sticking like ivy on the steps and bumpers, burned muffled blue lights. People hurried, with their heads down against the rain, through the dark streets to their homes, where they would cook whatever they had and try to keep 18 wa wal craw AD �ne t laia, lOOK wnat Mae, notu expla praoa �tana An wner, wool eacn, or �lYJ tner o�en every An oloc Wrne u� tn� ot �oin� THE BESIEGED CITY warm and wait for tomorrow and be surprised at nothing. A man walked along by himself, singing. Two children sat on a doorstep having a long, serious conversation. A shop window showed a bar­ gain in silk stockings. We were tired, but there was a house near here that the architect had to see. A man brought a candle and we found our way up the stairs. It was hardly worth while going inside the apartment. There was nothing left at all, nothing to save; the walls were gored, and the ceiling and the floor. What had been a place to live was now a collection of old rags and paper, pieces of plaster and broken wood, twisted wires and slivers of glass. The man held the candle above his head so that we could see, and the shadows crawled over chaos. An old woman had been standing by the door. She came in now. She took my arm and pulled at me to come closer to hear her. She said, very softly, as if she were telling me a secret, "Look at that, look at that, do you see, that is my home, that's where I live, there, what you see there." She looked at me as if I should deny it, with wide, puzzled, frightened eyes. I did not know what to say. "1 can­ not understand," she said slowly, hoping I would understand and explain; after all I was a foreigner, I was younger than she, I had probably been to school, surely I could explain. "I do not under­ stand," she said. "You see, it is my home." And all the time it was cold. Madrid flowed with rain, rain every­ where; oh, the cold and, oh, the wet feet, and the thick smell of wet wool overcoats. And we waited for the offensive. The rumors grew each day; they rushed and swayed over the town. People looked wise or sly or happy or worried or anything, and you wondered, What do they know about the offensive? We knew it was to be an important offensive; everyone had confidence in its success whenever it came; everyone was waiting. But there was nothing to do. And so, to fill the days, we went visiting at the nearest fronts (ten blocks from the hotel, fifteen blocks, a good brisk walk in the rain, something to circulate your blood) . There were always funny people het : the ,one I, �be � bm· were nea, bain, cbln� boaro, oOKin� allo! bto� , but�t ee� tile onilie 'eo, wito toilielr to Kee� --- - .hi _" - - .". THE WAR IN SPAIN in the trenches, new faces, always something to talk about. So we strolled to University City and Usera, to the Parque del Oeste, to those trenches that are a part of the city and that we knew so well. No matter how often you do it, it is surprising just to walk to war, easily, from your own bedroom where you have been reading a detective story or a life of Byron, or listening to the phonograph, or chatting with your friends. It was as usual cold, and that day we walked through all the trenches in that particular park. In these trenches, in this once fine Madrid park, the mud was like chewing gum. We admired the dug­ outs smelling of fresh wood and of wood smoke from the little stoves, the bright blankets over the machine guns, the pictures of movie stars on the walls, the curious serenity-and, after all, there was no news in it. But on the other hand, it was different at night. Every night, clearly, you could hear from the hotel the machine guns hammering, and the echoing thud of mortars, and what was normal in the daytime became a strange business at night. So the next evening, when the sky turned blue-purple, we pre­ sented ourselves at staff headquarters, in a bombed apartment house. It was a homelike spot: there were three women, the wives of officers, shrill as birds. A five-months-old baby slept on the plush sofa and his mother told us all about him breathlessly, with astonish­ ment, as women will. The Major was tired but very courteous. The staff cook wandered in, laughing like Ophelia and a little mad, and asked when they wanted dinner. The soldier who would be our guide was at a dance given by another battalion. They had been making war here for over a year; it was right in the city and the dance was within ten minutes' walk, and a man wants a change now and again. Presently he came, a boy with fantastic eyelashes and an easy laugh, and we walked a block, went down some slippery steps and were in the trenches. The flashlight was fading, and the mud pulled at our shoes, and we had to walk bent over to avoid hitting the low beams that held 20 up aga had A areti, �i� waro �u "Kit[ �uiae well Ther "He lVeo IDu�i !neti At cree \�ili our OO!n QUCK� aIDO dati &ra ffiacnln� what wal THE BESIEGED CITY up the trench, and it was very cold. In the third line we leaned against the mud walls and looked at the thin, stripped trees of what had once been a city park, and listened. We had come to hear the loud-speakers. At night, one side or the other presents the soldiers in those trenches with a program of propaganda and music. The loud-speakers were hidden near the front line, and you could hear everything, as you can hear a telephone conversation. Tonight the enemy was speaking. A careful, pompous radio voice began: "The chief of Spain, the only chief, is willing to give his blood for you. . . . Franco, Franco . . ." Another soldier had come up and he and our guide lighted cig­ arettes, and our guide, who was anxious for us to en joy ourselves, said, "This talking part is very tiresome, but it won't last long; after­ ward comes music." Suddenly, blaring across that narrow no man's land, we heard "Kitten on the Keys," played seven times too fast. "Ah," said our guide, "that is very pretty, that is American music." Then the smooth, careful voice came back : "Your leaders live well in the rear guard while you are given guns to go out and die." There was a burst of irritated machine-gun fire after this remark. "He is too stupid," the soldier guide said, with disgust. "Usually we do not listen to him. Why doesn't he stop talking and play the music? The music is very nice. We all enjoy the music. It helps pass the time." At this point the music started: Valencia, deedle-deedle-deedle­ dee ... It went on for about an hour. We were moving forward with some difficulty because the flashlight had worn out, feeling our way through covered trenches with our hands out, touching both walls, bending beneath the beams of tunnels, slipping on the duckboards when there were any, or stumbling in mud. At one point a mortar exploded, flashing through the trees, and the machine guns clattered an answer. The radio voice said, "Viva Franco! Arriba Espana!"; and we could hear, from up ahead in the first line, the all tb� e, we �[(. entnorn�, �1V5 �l the �\UI� alton�� eOUl,Th1 emaa,an� ula ��� Jhaa� 'cyanailit chan�en� hes anaa� 'ppery �t� sh�,aD� s that he\ij 21 - -_ ._- . _ .lli .,;_-____J.� / t ._ - - - _... - - .. - - -- -,. � - - -�-;;;;;..-.....-... THE WAR IN SPAIN jeers of the government troops. Then we heard the voice but not the words of a soldier who was answering that remote radio orator. The guide explained, "The fight will now start. Now it is mainly a joke, but that loud-speaker used to make us angry. We have heard it so much, and we know it is so silly, and sometimes it announces a great victory right here where we have been all day and seen nothing, and we do not pay attention to it. But it is the custom to answer back." Very thin and high, through the trees, we could still hear the soldier's voice, shouting. "He says," the guide said, after listening, "that it is useless to talk to them in Spanish because they are all Moors over there." We waited but could not make out any other words. The guide went on: "One of our boys usually tells them they are liars and are destroying Spain, and they tell him he is a murderous Red, and later they will get angry and throw mortars at one another. Their loud­ speaker is a waste of time, but the music is agreeable." "You seem very much at home here," I said, because suddenly it struck me that we were as casual as people at an outdoor concert in any peacetime city in the summer. (The stadium in New York with all the stars, that place in a park in St. Louis, with the two great trees growing from the stage, the little brass bands in the little squares in Europe. I thought, it takes something to be so calm about war.) "These trenches are good," the soldier said. "You can see that for yourself. And we have been here a long time." The machine guns down by the Puente de los Franceses echoed over the black land. "If necessary," the boy said quietly, "we can stay here forever." I asked where the government loud-speaker was. He said prob­ ably up the line somewhere, toward the Clinical Hospital; they didn't always work at the same place at the same time. "You should come and hear ours some night," the guide said. the wo mu said jour and, and "h "I Het, Fasd Mite He for?" H "Tha A Arne (du� tnou� I muc� 22 nottne is mainl� ave nea!o announc�\ � ann se�n e custom tij �t\\\ bear ili� ere," rd�, The �i�t !e\la�anolr­ Red,analate er. Their l�ij�' ule �uaoenllil door ronctrti� �e\VYorhim h ilie hvo�� d� in toe lit� to be �o �[ can�eetoM machine�� e blacK l!r:� e guide �i THE BESIEGED CITY "We have very pretty music, too, but only Spanish songs. You would like it." We were by this time in a communicating trench, on our way tothe first line. A mortar shook the walls of the trench and scattered mud over us, and did not explode, to everyone's delight. The guidesaid to the other soldier, "It is scarcely worth while to kill foreign journalists for a little music." He told us he could not take us farther and, as we could see, both the music and the speaking were finished, and now there were only mortars. We argued it, bracing ourselves against the walls of the trench, but he said, "No, the Major would be very angry with me and I will get in trouble." So we went back as we had come. "Well," the Major said, "how did you enjoy it?" "Very much." "How was the music?" "A little too fast." "I have here something that will interest you," the Major said. He took a rocket, like a Fourth of July rocket, from the table. "The Fascists send these over with propaganda in them, and sometimes I write an answer and we send them back. It is quite a discussion." He now showed us the propaganda. "It is too much," he said. "It makes you laugh. They think we know nothing. Look at this." He thumbed through the little booklet quickly, dismissing state­ ments he had seen before and arguments he considered either too boring or too ridiculous. One page started: "What are you fighting for?" The Major smiled and said, "That's something we all know." He then read us his reply, all very careful, very dull. And we said, "That is fine." A lieutenant offered me some acorns and the talk turned to America. The guide said he knew a great deal about America be­ cause he had read Zane Grey and also James Oliver Curwood, al­ though he realized that was about Canada. Aragon must be very much like Arizona, no? Yes, that's right. THE WAR IN SPAIN The Major said when the war was over he would like to visit America, but he was a poor man. "I am a worker," he said gently and yet proudly . "Would I ever have enough money to go to America?" "Certainly," we said. Well, then, how much? Ah, now, that was difficult, in the cities it was more, in the small towns less, travel by bus was not expensive. "Well, it's hard to say how much it would cost, Commandante." "How about two dollars? Could you do it with two dollars a day?" "That depends," I said. "Well, three dollars." "Oh, surely, with three dollars." They were all quiet. The Major looked at his adjutant. "Hombre," he said, "thirty-six pesetas a day. Something." And then to me, "Ah, well, there is much work to do here and we are all needed. But America must be so beautiful. I would like all the same to see it." At the end of the cold wet waiting days, Chicote's is the place to go in search of company and conversation and more rumors about the offensive. Chicote's used to be a bar where the elegant young men of Madrid came to drink a few cocktails before dinner. Now it is like a dugout on the Gran Via, that wide rich street where you can hear the shells, even when there is silence. Chicote's is not in a safe locality at all, and every day it is so crowded that you remember, comfortably, the subway at five o'clock, Times Square and the Grand Central Station. A group of us were sitting in Chicote's wondering whether to drink the sherry, which was tasteless, or the gin, which was frankly fatal. The English girl, who looked like a small, good-humored boy, drove an ambulance for a base hospital. One of the men, a German, wrote for a Spanish newspaper and was now talking rapid th in' thl an, sta ou� �Ul tne me law one time noul �oe IVha )'ou �oo visit e\ltl� go to at \Val travel dante:' ollar� a omDI�," u to m�, 11 neeaeo, e �me t� ilie �ffit� ore ruffi�n tbe ele��nt Ole alnn�L rich �tr�d ,Cblooti! lowaea t�lt locK, Tlm� wbetfier t� wa� !ran�l od·humOl(� the men,! lkin� ��I� THE BESIEGED CITY French about politics. There were two American soldiers, the two wonderfully funny ones, so young, and so much braver and gayer than people usually are. The smoke from black tobacco was chok­ ing, the noise deafening; soldiers at other tables shouted their news; the indomitable girls with dyed hair and amazing high heels waved and smiled; people walked in through the sandbagged door and stared and saw no one they knew or nothing they liked and walked out again. In this crowded din, one could be entirely alone and quiet, and think one's own thoughts about Spain and the war and the people. How is it going to be possible ever to explain what this is really like? All you can say is, "This happened; that happened; he did this; she said that." But this does not tell how the land looks on the way to the Guadarrama, the smooth brown land, with olive trees and scrub oak growing beside the dry stream beds, and the handsome mountains curving against the sky. Nor does this tell of Sanchez and Ausino, and the others with them, those calm young men who were once photographers or doctors or bank clerks or law students, and who now shape and train their troops so that one day they can be citizens instead of soldiers. And there is no time to write of the school where the children were making little houses of clay, and dolls from cardboard, and learning to recite poetry and missed school only when the shelling was too bad. And what about all the rest, and all the others? How can I explain that you feel safe at this war, knowing that the people around you are good people? --- - .til ' _ _�_ ... ---------- - --_ --- - = The Third Winter November 1938 � IN BARCELONA, it was perfect bombing weather. The cafes along the Ramblas were crowded. There was nothing much to drink: a sweet fizzy poison called orangeade and a horrible liquid supposed to be sherry. There was, of course, nothing to eat. Every­ one was out enjoying the cold afternoon sunlight. No bombers had come over for at least two hours. The flower stalls looked bright and pretty along the promenade. "The flowers are all sold, senora. For the funerals of those who were killed in the eleven o'clock bombing, poor souls." It had been clear and cold all day and all day yesterday and probably would be fair from now on. "What beautiful weather," a woman said, and she stood, holding her shawl around her, star­ ing at the sky. "And the nights are as fine as the days. A catas­ trophe," she said, and she walked with her husband toward a cafe. It was cold but really too lovely and everyone listened for the sirens all the time, and when we saw the bombers they were like tiny silver bullets moving forever up, across the sky. It gets dark suddenly and no street lights are allowed in Barce- 26 10 51 ye m da, a f cig� up He co on It h enai1 ten­ aau� nef tne \You ana ola." bell�l� erdav �a , II weatn�!, her, ��!, , Acatal' rd a cali, ed lor ili� were ll�� in Baree· THE THIRD WINTER lona, and at night the old town is rough going. It would be a silly end, I thought, to fall into a bomb hole, like the one I saw yesterday, that opens right down to the sewers. Everything you do in war is odd, I thought; why should I be plowing around after dark, looking for a carpenter in order to call for a picture frame for a friend? I found Hernandez' house in a back street and I held my cigarette lighter above my head to see my way down the hall and up the stairs and then I was knocking on a door and old Mrs. Hernandez opened the door and asked me to come in, to be wel­ come, her house was mine. "How are you?" I said. "As you see," old Hernandez said, and he pushed his cap back on his forehead and smiled, "alive." It wasn't much of a home but they looked very handsome in it. A wick floating in a cup of oil lighted the place. There were four chairs and a big table and some shelves tacked on the wall. The ten-year-old grandson was reading close to the burning wick. The daughter-in-law, the wife of their youngest son, played quietly with her baby in a corner. Old Mrs. Hernandez had been working over the stove, and the room was smoky. What they would have to eat would be greens, a mound of cabbage leaves the size of your fist, and some dry bread. The women start cooking greens long in ad­ vance because they want to get them soft at least. Boiled flavorless greens go down better if they are soft. The picture frame was not ready, Hernandez could not get the wood. Wood is for dugouts and trenches, bridges, railroad ties, to prop up bombed houses, to make artificial arms and legs, for coffins. He used to collect the fragments from destroyed houses, he said, not to work with, but for firewood, but now that is an saved for the hospitals. It was hard to be a carpenter, there wasn't much wood or much work any more. "Nat that it matters about me," Hernandez said, "I am very old." THE WAR IN SPAIN The little boy had been listening. His grandmother kept looking at him, ready to silence him if he interrupted while his elders spoke. "What do you do all day?" I said. "I stand in the food line." "Miguel is a good boy," Mrs. Hernandez said. "He does what he can to help his old grandmother." out "Do you like doing that?" I said. loo "When they fight," he said, laughing to himself, "it is fun." and His grandmother looked shocked. "He does not understand," she said. "He is only ten. The poor people-they are so hungry, sometimes they quarrel among themselves, not knowing what they do." and nolV (They put up a sign on the shop door, and word flies through rum the neighborhood that you can get food today. Then the lines wita form. Sometimes they are five blocks long. Sometimes you wait all me that time but just before your turn comes the shop closes. There a�u is no more food. The women wait in line and talk or knit, the children invent games that they can play standing in one place. Everyone is very thin. They know perfectly, by the sound of the first explosion, where the bombs are falling. If the first bomb sounds hollow and muffled, they do not move from their places, because they know there is no immediate danger. If they can hear the drone of the planes too clearly or the first explosion is jagged and harsh, they scatter for doorways or refuges. They do this pro­ fessionally, like soldiers. The pinched women file into the shop and hand their food cards over the high bare counter. The girls behind the counter look healthy because they are wearing rouge. Then the food is doled out in little gray paper sacks. A sack the size of a cigarette package, full of rice: that will have to do two people for two weeks. A sack half that big, full of dried peas: for one person for two weeks. 28 THE THIRD WINTER Wait, there's some codfish too. The girl behind the counter pulls out a slab of the gray-white flat fish and cuts off a little piece with a pair of scissors. She cuts it with scissors, not a knife, because scissors are more accurate. A piece as long as your finger and twice as thick is the ration for one person for two weeks. The woman with gray hair and a gray frozen face and exhausted eyes reaches out to get her piece of fish. She holds it a minute in her hand, looking at it. They all look at it, and say nothing. Then she turns and pushes her way through the crowd and out the door. Now she will wait every day to hear whether the store in her neighborhood is open again, whether you can trade anything, whether a farmer she knows is coming to town with a dozen eggs and four cabbages and some potatoes. Whether somewhere, some­ how, she can get food for her family. Sometimes when the shop runs out of food before everyone is served, the women are wild with grief, afraid to go home with nothing. Then there's trouble. The little boys don't understand the trouble, all they know is that a quarrel brightens the long hours of waiting.) mg det� throu�n he lln� ��lt �ll , There knl� ili� ne �l��, nO ot tn( fIt Dom� elf �l��, can n�! 'l)ja�ro o ili��� "You don't go to school?" I said. "Not now." "He did very well at school," his grandmother said. "I want to be a mechanic," the child said, in a voice that was almost weeping. "I want to be a mechanic." "We do not let him to go to school," Mrs. Hernandez said, stroking the child's black head. "Because of the bombs. We can­ not have him walking about alone." "The bombs," I said, and smiled at the boy. "What do you do about the bombs?" "I hide," he said, and he was shy about it, telling me a secret. "I hide so they won't kill me." "Where do you hide?" [ooocaIO) untef loo� ooleaou1 e �ch��, b, A I�t� a weeh THE WAR IN SPAIN "Under the bed," he said. The daughter-in-law, who is very young, laughed at this, but the old people treated the child seriously. They know that you must have safety in something; if the child believes he is safe under the bed it is better for him. "When will the war end?" the daughter-in-law asked suddenly. "Now, now," said the old man. "It will end when we have won it. You know that, Lola. Have patience and do not be silly." "I have not seen my husband for five months," the girl ex­ plained, as if this were the very worst thing that could ever hap­ pen to anyone. Old Mrs. Hernandez nodded her head, which was like a fine worn wood carving, and made a little sympathetic noise. "You understand, senora," Mr. Hernandez said to me, "I am so old that perhaps I shall not live to see the end of the war. Things do not make any difference to me any longer. But it will be better for the children afterward. That is what I tell Lola. Spain will be better for her and Federico afterward. Besides," he said, "Federico is learning a great deal in the Army." (The Internationals had left the lines and were waiting to go home, or were already gone. * There was a parade for them, down the Diagonal, and women threw flowers and wept, and all the Spanish people thanked them somehow, sometimes only by the way they watched the parade passing. The Internationals looked very dirty and weary and young, and many of them had no country to go back to. The German and Italian anti-Fascists were already * In September 1938 the Republican government of Spain, no doubt hop­ ing to shame Franco into a similar gesture, withdrew the International Bri­ gades from the fronts. Four of Mussolini's Italian divisions stayed and fought for Franco until the end of the war. Hitler's artillerymen and pilots also re­ mained. Italian planes were bombing Barcelona when this article was written. refu mas wha patr who pulp TH who Annr co�� Every, chee iliira wrry, the u�t ilie denl�, 'ewon �rl ex, er ha� ich 'llal yailieti( 'n� to \� ern, QO�U 00 a� tnl nl\' DJ tn1 nailloo�� nOCoun� 'ere alr��: doubt�r ation� be' and tou��t ilotsallOI(' \\'35 written THE THI"RD WINTER refugees; the Hungarians had no home either. Leaving Spain, for most of the European volunteers, was to go into exile. I wonder what happened to the German who was the best man for night patrols in the i rth International Brigade. He was a somber man, whose teeth were irregularly broken, whose fingertips were nailless pulp; the first graduate of Gestapo torture I had known. The Spanish Republican Army, which had been growing and shaping itself through two winters, now dug in for the third win­ ter of war. They were proud and self-confident soldiers. They had started out as militia companies, citizens carrying any sort of rifle, and had become an army and looked like an army and acted like one. They were always a pleasure to see and often a surprise. On a clear night, coming back very tired from the Segre front, we stopped at divisional headquarters to look at maps and get some dinner too, if lucky. We were received by the Lieutenant Colonel, who commanded ten thousand men. He was twenty-six years old and had been an electrician at Lerida. He was blond and looked American and he had grown up with the war. The chief of opera­ tions was twenty-three and a former medical student from Galicia. The chief of staff was twenty-seven, a lawyer, a Madrid aristocrat who spoke good French and English. Modesto, commanding the Army of the Ebro and a great soldier, was thirty-five. All the new corps commanders were in their late twenties and early thirties. Everybody you saw knew what he was doing and why; it was a cheerful army. The winter is the worst time of all in war and the third winter is long, cold and desperate; but you couldn't feel sorry for that army. ) "Both my boys are soldiers," Mrs. Hernandez said. "Miguel's father is the oldest, Tomas, he is at Tortosa; and Federico is up toward Lerida somewhere. Tomas was here only last week." - -- • - • _ .il ,;_ Ii ,/ / _ _ .. � ... - .. .. , ......l� .-�-:_:.:----_'!o __ ----- -_-_---- - ----- - - --- - - - - -- THE WAR IN SPAIN "What did he say of the war?" 1 asked. "We do not speak of the war," she said. "He says to me, 'You are like all the other mothers in Spain. You must be brave like all the others.' And sometimes he speaks of the dead." "Yes?" "He said, 'I have seen many dead.' He says that so 1 will under­ stand, but we do not speak of the war. My sons are always close to the bombs," she said in her blurred old voice. "If my children are in danger, it is not well that I should be safe." The girl Lola had started to sing to her child, to keep it quiet, and now she brought the baby over near the lighted wick, for me to see. She turned down a grayish blanket showing the child's head and sang, "Pretty little child, my pretty little girl." The face seemed shrunken and faded, and bluish eyelids rested lightly shut on the eyes. The child was too weak to cry. It fretted softly, with closed eyes, and we all watched it, and suddenly Lola pulled the cover back over the bundle in her arms and said, coldly and proudly, "She does not have the right food to eat and therefore she is not well. But she is a fine child." (The hospital was huge and ornate, the way all modern buildings are in Catalonia. This one was built of orange bricks and was a real horror to look at. It was new and well equipped and had a garden. The buildings, called pavilions, were placed around this garden. The children's pavilion was off to the right and we followed a lanky, quiet boy who was showing us the way. I did not want to come, really. I knew the statistics, the statistics were enough for me. In Catalonia alone, there were approximately 870,000 children up to school age. Of these, the statistics announced, more than 100,000 suffered from bad nutrition, more than 200,000 suffered from undernourishment, more than 100,000 were in a state of pre­ famine. 1 thought the statistics were no doubt mild, and I did not wa chi] defo war brig the The figure pale I nand� no�pil orap� Ali wa� fa cro��i witn killed pain � nada �rew � nim�e tried nedia I� Well, 'You eall unuer· � dOle Iluren t qUle� !orme Chl\�1 re\\� thettro nlr�\l 10, colillj ilierdme bUl\aln� ana W�l ana blal rouna ili� 'e10\low� otvran\\ij enou�b !m cbllal� more tnl� )u�er� te 01 �Ie' I ala nijt THE THIRD WINTER want to think at all about Madrid, about the swift dark laughing children in Madrid. I did not want to imagine how hunger had deformed them. There were two great wards, the surgical ward and the medical ward, and it was almost suppertime and the surgical ward was brightly lit. Small beds lined the walls. It was very cold, between the stone floors and the plaster walls; there is no heat anywhere. The children looked like toys until you came closer-tiny white figures propped up with pillows, swathed in bandages, the little pale faces showing, the great black eyes staring at you, the small hands playing over the sheets. There was not one child in the hospital for any peacetime reason, tonsils or adenoids or mastoid or appendicitis. These children were all wounded. A little boy named Paco sat up in his bed with great dignity. He was four and beautiful and had a bad head wound. He had been crossing a square to meet a little girl on the other side-he played with her in the afternoons. Then a bomb fell. Many people were killed and he was wounded in the head. He had gone through his pain quietly, the nurse said. The wound was five months old. He had always been patient with it, and as the months wore on he grew solemner and more elderly every day. Sometimes he cried to himself, but without making a sound, and if anyone noticed he tried to stop. We stood by his bed and he watched us gravely but he did not want to talk. I asked if they had anything to play with and the nurse said, Well, little things, not much. No, not really, she said. Just once in a while someone brings a present for one of them. A jolly little girl, with pigtails and only one leg, was having a nice time making paper bans out of an old newspaper. There were three little boys with shaved heads and various splints on them; one of them had his leg held up on a rope from the ceiling. They lived in a corner by themselves; they were not only wounded, but they had tuberculosis. The nurse said they had fever 33 � --- - ,til ,,�� - -_ 'io -----�:::.._--- _-_----- THE WAR IN SPAIN and that made them gay, particularly at this hour. They would not live, she didn't think they would live even if there was food to give them, or a sanatorium to send them to. The sanatoriums were all full. Anyhow, they were too far gone. It works very fast on them, the nurse said. The little boys had a sort of Meccano toy, it was on the bed of the boy who had a broken arm. A bomb frag­ ment broke his arm, the nurse said; he did not suffer as much as some but he used to scream at night. The other two were now shouting instructions to their friend, how to play with the toy. They were building a bridge. When we stopped beside them, they grew shy and gave up their game. All the children were the color of their pillows except the little ones with t.b., who looked quite rosy. They were unbelievably thin. "No," the nurse said, almost impatiently, as if it hurt and angered her to talk about it. "Of course we haven't enough food to give them. What do you think? If only they didn't bomb all the time," she said, "it would help. When the children hear the siren they go crazy, they try to get out of their beds and run. We are only four nurses in these two rooms and we have a hard time with them. At night it is worse. They all remember what happened to them and they go crazy." We went into the second room. A little boy was crying noisily and the other children were listening to him, frightened by his grief. The nurse explained that he had been wounded today, in one of the morning raids, and of course he was in pain but mainly he was homesick. He wanted his mother. He was also hungry. yve stood by his bed helplessly and promised to bring him some food tomorrow if only he would stop crying and we promised that his mother would come right away, only please stop crying. He twisted on the bed and sobbed for his mother. Then she came. She was a dark witch of a woman, outdone by life. Her hair straggled from a knot on top of her head, and her bedroom slippers were worn through and her coat was pinned together with two safety pins. 34 Sh sto no WOI of him no She with she aha ScaD ate it and � Hes with theli The tole, toe ward. aia n a�ain four Itni caula THE THIRD WINTER She looked gaunt and a little mad and her voice was as harsh as stone scraping on stone. She sat on the bed (we had been careful not to touch the bed, not to move or shake the small aching wounded child) and talked to him in her shrill voice, telling him of the family's catastrophes. Their house had been destroyed by the bomb that wounded him, though he was the only one hurt. But now they had no home, no furniture, nothing to cook with, no blankets, no place to go. She told the round-eyed child the story of woe and he listened with interest and sympathy and wasn't homesick any more. Then she took a pot from some pocket, it materialized like a rabbit from a hat, and gave it to the child, and said, "Here, eat." He began to scoop up cold rice from the pot, just cold rice boiled in water. He ate it, his face close to the pot, spilling a little on the bedclothes and stopping only to collect the grayish rice grains with his fingers. He seemed happy then and at home. His mother was now talking with another woman, in her hard tormented voice, and presently the little boy went to sleep. "Would you like to see the medical ward?" the tall lanky boy said. "Well," I said. Well, no, I thought. "I like the children." So we went. Three blue lights were burning and the ward was in shadow. The children sat up in bed, silent and waiting. We stepped aside to let the dinner wagon pass. It made a metal clanking sound on the floor, and I watched their eyes follow the wagon down the ward. There was the seven-months-old baby with tuberculosis who did not notice and there was another child, like an old-faced doll against the pillows, who turned away her head. On the wagon were four lumps of something green and cooked, four shrunken lettuces, I think, and a great cauldron of soup. The nurse went over to the cauldron and lifted a ladleful and let it spill back into the pot. It 35 --- - .h< ' _ ,_'_ .. -----===- =-� - --- THE WAR IN SPAIN was clear pale-beige water. That was supper. "The children cry for food most of the time," she said, looking at the thin soup with hate. "What is the matter with them?" I asked. She evidently thought I was not very sound in the head. "There are only two things the matter with them. Tuberculosis and rickets." The old-faced doll reached out a tiny white hand. I walked over to her and her hand curled around my fingers and she smiled. She was, the nurse said, seventeen months old and her name was Manuela. Manuela let go my fingers and began to cry. Had I done some­ thing bad? "Only hungry," the nurse said. She picked the child up, lightly and gently, and tossed it in her arms. The child laughed aloud with pleasure at this lovely game. As the nurse held her you saw the rope-thin legs and the swollen stomach of rickets. "Will she be all right?" I said. "Certainly," the nurse said and she was lying, you could see that in her face. "Certainly she'll get well. She has to. Somehow.") "Yes, she's a fine child," I said to Lola Hernandez, but I thought, Maybe we can stop looking at the child, when we all know she's sick with hunger and probably will not live until sum­ mer. Let's talk about something else, now, just for a change. "Have you been to the opera?" I said to Lola. "I went once," she said, "but I do not like to go. An the time I was there, I kept thinking, What if this minute my husband is wounded, or what if he is coming home on leave. I almost thought he had come home and then I would have missed an hour with him. So now I stay home." "We all stay home," the old man said, "I like the house. We have been here for twenty-five years." Bm lau no mid whe will are real for� B ana �o too ldleetM menow,"I d� out I 'nen W� ill unti\IU� a chan�f, I thetimd hUloano � e, I a\m�1 eaannOill ho�e, Wt THE THIRD WINTER "Do you go often?" Lola asked. "I've been," I said. "It's wonderful." (The opera is not as funny as the movies, though the people of Barcelona don't think the movies are funny. But you can't help laughing when you go to see Jane Eyre, and it is all about a life none of the audience ever knew or imagined, and then in the middle the film flickers off and you hear the bombs falling some­ where, while the audience groans with irritation, knowing it will take half an hour before the current comes on again, and they are dying to see what happens to Jane and her handsome gentle­ man friend, and they are fascinated by the madwoman and the burning house. I particularly liked the Westerns, and seeing the horse stopped in midleap for an air alarm, knowing that the dan­ gerous activities of the hero and his horse were much more thrill­ ing to the audience than a mere covey of bombers flying at a great safe height and sending down indiscriminate, expensive steel­ encased death and destruction. It costs about two pesetas for the best seats at any show, and nobody earns less than ten pesetas a day. The only thing you want to spend money on is food, and there is no food, so you might as well go to the opera or to the movies. It would be very stupid to save up to buy furniture, the way the city gets bombed. Besides, it's warm inside the big overdecorated theaters, because there are so many people, and it's friendly, and sitting there with some­ thing to look at on the stage you forget for a while that you aren't really safe, you aren't really safe at all. And also you might even forget how hungry you are. But the opera was a wonder. Some afternoons there was opera and some afternoons there was the symphony orchestra. The people of Barcelona crowded to both. The opera house was far too near the port for comfort, and bombs had ruined much of 37 THE WAR IN SPAIN the neighborhood. It was surprising that the singers had energy to sing, considering how little they eat. It was surprising to see such thin singers. The women were any age at all, wearing the pre­ war costumes, a little mussed now but still brilliant and romantic. All the men were old. The young men were at the war. The opera house was full every day and everyone enjoyed the music im­ mensely, and roared with laughter at the stale formal opera jokes, and sighed audibly at the amorous moments and shouted "Ole!" at each curtain. We used to sit and scratch, because everyone had fleas this winter, there was no soap any more and everyone was very dirty and malodorous indeed. But we loved the music and loved not thinking about the war. ) The Hernandez' only daughter now came home from her job, and there was much loud gay talk as if they had not seen each other for weeks, with everyone reporting on the day's air raids. She wore her dark hair in braids around her head and was glowing with rouge, and quite well dressed. She earned plenty of money because she worked in a munitions factory. (You never know exactly where the munitions factories are, and are not intended to know. We drove over many streets I had not seen before and stopped before a great grille gateway, some­ where at the edge of town. The factory looked like a series of cement barns, not connected particularly, and shining and clean and cheerful in the winter sun. We walked across the courtyard and into the first open door. The woman in charge of this room came forward; she had a nice smile and was timid and behaved as if I had come to tea unexpectedly. The women were working at long tables, heaped with shining black squares and oblongs, they looked like trays full of sequins. Th for seq are� �na �Killc T The et� see e pte· ank opera Ie lID· jOKe�, (lOI�!" ne baa d� very aloveo her jool en ea\� �ir rnim, �lo�1n� Imone) ori� �r� tdn�ij aI' �ome· )eri�ol ana d�� cou��lij iliil room haven �l �hinin� f se�uin�, THE THIRD WINTER There were other trays full of shining little leads, like short fillers for an automatic pencil. The woman picked up a handful of the sequins and let them slip through her hands. "They're pretty, aren't they?" she said. "Very pretty," I said, mystified. "What are they?" "Powder," she said, "explosive. What makes the shells go off." At the other end of the room women worked at sewing ma- chines, the old-fashioned kind that you pump with your feet. There was cloth for summer dresses, a lovely pink linen, a nice gray-and-white stripe that would have made handsome shirts, a thick white silk for a bridal gown. They were sewing little bags, and bigger bags, like sacks for sachet. A girl came around and col­ lected them and took them to the front of the room where they were filled with the explosive that looked like sequins. Then the little pink sachet bag of sequins was dropped into a shell base. Other women carefully and daintily glued together tiny cello­ phane horseshoes; in these horseshoes was black powder, and this skilled elegant work served to make a mortar the thing it is. Two barns farther down were the great guns, home for repair. The place looked like a museum full of prehistoric animals, huge gray strangely shaped animals come to rest in this smoky room. Men worked beside each gun, with a little fire to heat the tools and for keeping warm. The room twinkled with light from the char­ coal burners. The guns all wore their small name tags: Vickers Armstrong, Schneider, Skoda. We had seen them and watched them being fired day after day and month after month at the front. The grooved rifling inside the barrels had been worn smooth from the many thousand rounds they had fired, and the barrels were being rebored. There were few guns in Republican Spain now that had the same caliber they started with, and with each reboring the size of the shells had to be changed. "Would you like to see the shells?" the foreman asked. He was obviously proud of them. 39 _-_o__ O_.t: '"_ Li I / ..... ��1!0 - - 0 0 o -_ __ __ --- --._--- - -,-- - --- THE WAR IN SPAIN He led me out in the sun and around two buildings and then into a vast storeroom. Used shell cases the color of old gold were stacked neatly against one wall; they would be hammered into shape and used again. In the center of the building and against the right wall the new shells were piled in squares and oblongs and pyramids; they were painted black and yellow. There were 75s looking neat and not really harmful at all. And there were the tall shells, the 155s, that frighten one more when they are coming in. We admired the shells and at this moment, like a dream or a nightmare or a joke, the siren whined out over Barcelona. I think that one of the worst features of an air raid is the siren. The howl­ ing whining whistle rises and screams and wails over the city, and almost at once you hear, somewhere, the deep thud-boom of the bombs. I looked at my companion and he looked at me and we smiled (I thinking, foolishly, never forget your manners, walk do not run) and we sauntered out of doors. I could not see the planes but I heard them; on a clear day they fly high for safety, so you rarely see them. I thought, anyhow, in case a bomb falls around here we won't even know it. "What do the workers do?" I said. "Nothing," he said. "They wait." The planes now showed themselves clear and silver just a little way down the sky, the sky dotted with a few small white smoke bubbles from anti-aircraft shells. The men came out of the fac­ tory and walked across the courtyard and leaned against a wall where they could get a better view, and smoked. Some played an innocent game, pitching a coin. The women dragged out empty packing cases, in which bullets would be shipped later, and sat down in the sunshine and started knitting. They did not bother to look up. Everyone knew that the electricity was turned off for half an hour, so there would be no more work for a time. They knitted and gossiped, and watching the sky I saw the silver planes wheel and circle and By back out to sea. Go me 1 dell /I THE THIRD WINTER fueu They all like working in a munitions factory because they gettwo rolls of bread each day as a bonus.) JUI\ a \\\�( hl\e Iro�lt 01 the nt' 101\ a �1� e �\a)oo!� out em�� tet, ann �\ ot tx1iliel \� eO o� im ti!De,n� silver �Ian� "I must leave," I said. "Please forgive me for staying so long. Goodbye, Miguel, after the war you'll be a mechanic." "After we have won the war," old Mrs. Hernandez corrected me. "We will invite you to come here and eat a big supper with us." They were all delighted, delighted with winning the war and' delighted with eating a big supper. "You will see Federico too," Lola said. "Yes," I said, "that will be a great pleasure. Goodbye, goodbye,"I said, shaking hands all around, "and many thanks." We were standing up now, and looking at them I suddenlysaid, "The third winter is the hardest." Then I felt ashamed. They were strong brave people and didn't need me to say cheering words for them. "We are all right, senora," Mrs. Hernandez said, making itclear at once, saying the last word in her home about her family."We are Spaniards and we have faith in our Republic." �- .�----._ .·-.III _ - '.".' - ,..., -��-- _-- / and I Be cnan, tom !Klm. tion, one'� �eopl lo�e. THE WAR IN FINLAND PEOPLE MAY CORRECTLY REMEMBER THE EVENTS OF TWENTI YEARS ago (a remarkable teat), but who remembers his tears, his dis­ gusts, his tone oi voice? It is like trying to bring back the weather at that time. When the Second Wodd War officially started, in September 1939, it must have seemed to me so expected, so on schedule, that I have no memory at the occasion. I think I stopped reading news­ papers or listening to the radio. The rapid patriotic tervor at the Johnny-corne-lately anti-Fascists was revolting. It was easy enough, and unbearable, to imagine what the real war was like in Poland. Beginning with Hitler's occupation at the Rhineland, repeated chances to prevent this war had been lost, and so had the chances to make a war in the name oi honor. This was the war to save our skins. It must absolutely be won; it was an overdue police opera­ tion, a war against, too late to be a war for. Now one could only ally one's mind and heart to the innocents-the various unknown people who would be paying for war, with all they had to love and lose. 43 --_ - .J.. ' _ _"_ .. ----- � - � THE FACE OF WAR EMIy in November, Charles Colebaugh suggested Finland; he thought something was about to happen there. I looked Finland up on a map. Further inquiry revealed that the Finns were a highly literate nation who looked after each other's needs and rights, with justice: a good democracy. I was eager to go. No one makes fancy speeches in the midst of danger, and whatever happened Finland would surely not be the aggressor. I did think, professionally, that it was unusual timing to arrive in a strange frozen country one dark afternoon and be waked the next morning at nine o'clock by the first bombs, the declaration of war. But before the bombs, there were the sea and the mines. Look­ ing back, nearly twenty years, it seems to me that my thinking or feeling about war changed again on that curious ocean journey. In Spain I had understood the meaning of the war; I saw clearly what the Spanish war was for and what it was against. On the boat, going first to England, I was in on the beginning of a great � war of greed, started by a madman; and it felt different. It felt liMa unreal, yet obviously nothing about high explosive is unreal. But nea� this war was a total madness: one criminal lunatic and his f01· forei lowers wanted what they could never get, domination over their nana� time, and they grabbed for it; other grabbers joined them; and !tooa the world slid into a six-year-long dream of hell. The sense of the mee. insanity and wickedness of this war grew in me until, for purposes weeK! of mental hygiene, I gave up trying to think or judge, and turned Ma myself into a walking tape recorder with eyes. The way people stay �engel sane in war, I imagine, is to suspend a large part of their reasoning tne a minds, lose most of their sensitivity, laugh when they get the small­ est chance, and go a bit, but increasingly, crazy. 44 aIrivem the n�rt 01 � ��! enl.ltltl! unre�l. �ij! anonll!iji n over t�� Inem; d�l sen�O!�; lor �UIpl� anorur�i, I��kl�I , eu re210nilli ret tne!md� � Slow Boat to War November 1939 � FRIENDS AND RELATIVES of the departing Belgians sang the "Marseillaise" dolefully. An old Austrian with pink cheeks and a neat, pointed white 'beard said goodbye to a young man in a stiff foreign suit. They put their arms around each other and then shook hands and wept in a decent, dignified way. A harsh-voiced woman stood near the gangplank and talked to a man with a tired, lined face. "Be sure to send the money every week," she said. "Every week! Don't forget, money every week." Many people with undistinguished faces, looking the way pas­ sengers always do in the first hours on shipboard, drifted about the decks, cold and restless. The ship was six hours late in start­ ing; bells rang and the ones who had come to say goodbye filed down the gangplank and lined the grimy Hoboken pier and stood under dusty electric lights, bobbing their heads and wiping their eyes and waving and fluttering handkerchiefs. The water was dark and the lights of New York were as spectacular as always and the ship pulled out slowly and we were off to England at war. At eleven the next morning there was a lifeboat drill. No one 45 - - - ,j. ' __ .'JA, � _ --;J. - ---- - �� THE WAR IN FINLAND paid much attention to this but, separately and with some self­ consciousness, everyone had found his way up to the boat deck to take a quick look. No lifeboat is reassuring if you think you are going to have to use it. People had also gone about making discreet inquiries concerning the cargo. "What are we carrying?" they would ask in a bright casual voice. The cargo was wheat con­ signed to the Belgian government. As the boat was heavily loaded it would ride well, which was comforting news since it was a small boat; there were only forty-four passengers aboard and a crew of two hundred and forty. Belgians who had been working at the World's Fair in New York and were going home to join their Army took over the lounge by squatters' rights. A Puerto Rican, who had already managed to lose hisluggage in New York, joined up with the Austrian and they pre-empted a corner of the smoking room and talked Spanish together in low voices or read or simply waited for time to pass. Two well-dressed Dutchmen played chess, always at the same table. Some Irishmen, an English couple, two Scotsmen and a few Americans wandered around the decks, chose good positions for their deck chairs, established hearty relations with the barman and wondered privately what they would find to talk about at table. There was no reason either to go to bed or to get up, so people began to keep queer hours, floating around at five in the morning and sleeping until three the next afternoon, or going to bed at seven and arising to walk the deck before it was light. Food was always the same-nourishing, no doubt, but as inter­ esting as boiled cardboard-and by the sixth day drink seemed to make people liverish rather than gay. The English did not know what they were going to find when they got home or whether the men would be called up to fight this second war. The Belgians remembered their invaded country of twenty-five years ago and knew what they could fear. The Dutch realized that part of their land had been flooded and the Army 46 of light from blac and Jpok neld aste tne �nos, ona \� wasp)' mlend mines 'OU ale makin� TI)1n��1I eatmn, � loau� SaSIDj\\ tonnoW� ton�nt� coun�� The Dut� 'd ilie �� SLOW BOAT TO WAR mobilized. They knew also how hard it was to remain neutral and salvage the economy of a nation through long years of war. Americans were traveling rather unwillingly, to straighten up busi­ ness affairs, and they had a detached feeling that to lose money was one thing but to get dangerously involved in other people's messes was one thing more. The eighth day was clear and beautiful and we were in the mine fields. * Every night two six-foot-high electric signs on both sides of the ship announced that we were from the Netherlands and lights on the boat deck illuminated the colors of Holland flyingfrom the mast and painted around funnels. But now two great black-and-white signs saying "Holland" appeared on the top deck and lifeboats were checked and swung over the sides. Everyone spoke of mines rather shrilly. I learned from the mate that mine fields are often fifty miles long, that there are frequently as many as ten thousand mines floating about in the mined area and that individual mines weigh from 400 to 600 pounds and maybe more. This information seemed too gloomy to dwell on, but what made it most depressing was the element of idiot chance. There is a sea full of mines which you mayor may not run into at any given moment. We plowed through this now ominous sea, and at ten we saw the first lights on the coast of England and the lightsof freighters bobbing between us and the shore. At one o'clock in the morning the sea suddenly burned with little lights like winking phosphorus. The boats seemed as small as children's toys floating on a pond. We called up to the bridge to ask what this was and were told * This was the period of the inauguration of the new German weapon, themagnetic mine. It had just appeared, a giant globe studded with spikes whichwas dropped from the air into the shipping lanes and was attracted to the metal hulls of all boats. To declare a ship's neutrality as a safety precautionwas plain foolishness, since mines can't read; but that gesture may have beenintended for morale-raising on board. No countermeasure against magneticmines had been invented as yet. 47 THE WAR IN FINLAND it was a fishing fleet carrying on as usual. The Englishwoman went to bed then, perfectly reassured, saying that if those little boats could come out and do their work normally she supposed she could go to sleep without more fuss. The point, of course, was that the draft of the fishing boats was so slight that they could float over a solid carpet of mines and not notice it. It seemed strange, after eight days of loneliness, to see the smoke of many freighters against the sky, and low, dark ships sinking down in wave troughs. An unmarked plane flew over toward Eng­ land, and the radio announced that the Simon Bolivar, a Dutch ship one day ahead of us, had struck a mine and gone down with 1 50 lives lost. The crew were shocked by the news of the Bolivar. Many of them had sailed on her and the stewards all had friends on board and, besides, it was a ship of their own nationality. The barman had been chief steward on the Bolivar in happier times and he went progressively to pieces as the day continued. In the afternoon another unmarked plane flew, silver-gray, into the sunset, and we could see the white, chalky, stiff coast of Eng­ land. Our ship turned around and stopped. It was too dangerous to cross that water at night. By now the boredom of the pas­ sengers had changed into something else. I wheedled an officer into showing me the charts, those delicately traced maps so incompre­ hensible to a landlubber. On a chart marked in pencil were the mine fields. As far as I could make out, the English, the French, the Dutch and the Belgians all mined their coasts and ports for protection, leaving a passage resembling the eye of a needle free for neutral shipping; and what had not been mined by the Allies or the neu­ trals was largely and loosely mined by the Germans. I was sur­ prised then that any ships got through at all. We sailed at dawn and anchored in the Downs off Ramsgate in midafternoon. The Downs is the flat cold-looking stretch of water wb an this insR wah COU I into 11 piece tries most �ste mea tneeI ave weeks kcau �2ce lisn tl say t� 2aea At raia roir, I craft, sky, blow snips, marK Dutd rena At aim fue\rn�h I�� Ilubu; tCWalO Eu� aI, a Du\' e UO�] �;� SLOW BOAT TO WAR where the English halt shipping. More than a hundred ships lay anchored here, so thoroughly anchored and so dead-seeming that this place became a sort of Sargasso Sea. Boats must pull in for inspection because the only free passage is through the Downs, the waters surrounding it being fatal with mines. If, however, a boat could slip through, it would be hailed and picked up and escorted into the Downs by an English destroyer. This is what a blockade really means and it is a most effective piece of work. The English have blacklists of firms in neutral coun­ tries who do business in contraband with the enemy. But now al­ most everything is contraband, since anything from shoes to tooth paste is helpful in winning a war. Cargo is inspected and unloaded in case there is any question about it. Certain cargo destined for the enemy is confiscated. Mail is also taken off and censored. It is a very slow process. Boats have been delayed for three and four weeks and longer in the Downs. Neutrals must submit to this because there is nothing they can do about it, and while they are gracefully complying with the polite but firm orders of the Eng­ lish they receive threatening complaints from the Germans, who say that in accepting inspection they are aiding the British block­ ade and not behaving as neutrals. At noon that first day in the Downs we were treated to an air raid which was, on the whole, a very pretty and unimportant af­ fair. One high-flying plane was shot at madly by coastal anti-air­ craft, the shells leaving round, decorative smoke rings in the blue sky. News came over the radio that two more ships had been blown up just ahead of us. We walked about looking at the other ships. Near us lay a Japanese liner with a fancy thing like a laundry mark painted on its side. There were Norwegian and Italian and Dutch boats, boats of every make and nationality and size, rusty red and black and gray and one rather garishly camouflaged. At night our decks were curtained in canvas, and lights were dimmed or extinguished, and we joined England in a blackout, 49 --. ____J' - --- . _ ,�- 1 I / •••1iI .� - -. '" - , ... - ---- -." - ________ -----:-- --=_--..:......- - __ ----- -- THE WAR IN FINLAND which is the most gloom-making contraption yet devised by man. The English and American passengers wanted special permission from the British Admiralty to go ashore here, as the North Sea in the last few days had become the worst battle zone of the war. It was interesting to watch the passengers. They reacted as people must react to this oppressively silent war-with their nerves. If anything did actually happen it would be almost a relief and everyone would behave well. But there were no lights and the radio constantly announced disaster, and we had been on board forever and still nothing happened. The shaken and temperamental barman did a thriving business. Two British officers came aboard in the morning and checked our passports. They were charming and apologetic. The old Aus­ trian, an enemy alien by law, got through all right, to our intense relief. He had left a good job in Guatemala to return to Holland to be at least that near to his wife, who had gone to Germany on a visit and now could not get out. They had been married for twenty-five years and he loved her the way people love in the old storybooks, and we could not have endured to see him stopped in his effort to be closer to her. He had only four dollars left and no one on board spoke Ger­ man easily, and he had walked the decks all these days with the same smooth, unstopping stride, his face sad and calm. Now you could almost feel him straining forward to be there sooner, to be where he could hear her voice speaking over a telephone across that unsurmountable frontier. The' English and the Americans were refused permission to land and they talked together in furious, indignant and anxious voices about being condemned to death by red tape. The Japanese boat which had been lying alongside us in the night was sunk by a mine two hours out of the Downs that morning, the radio an­ nounced in a reasonable voice. A thic but shar off. In been in thl that \ ning a Weh� evenin of our and st mornin in�the Nea who sa louar, Dustle man, At eleven o'clock we heard the hum of airplanes, muffled in thick gray clouds. The noise of the motors was directly above us but we could see nothing through the clouds. Then we heard the e \Var. sharp, hammering noise of machine guns, and the planes droned off. In the afternoon the radio announced that two more boats had been sunk with so and so many missing. That made eleven ships in three days and all just ahead of us. The general feeling was that we were only waiting for our turn, and the blackout begin­ ning at five in the afternoon was more than anybody could bear. We had been at this now for eleven days. There was a dance that \ evening, our first and only dance in the dimmed lounge, with three of our four women present, and we all got rather tight and jolly and staged a noisy bullfight on the lower deck at three in the morning and forgot the radio and that cultivated BBC voice say­ ing the last words over destroyed ships. Near morning news came that the British and the Americans who so desired would be taken ashore in a launch, and there was loud rejoicing and much whistling on deck and a great deal of bustle with packing. That left, as English-speaking travelers, a young American and myself. The English, kindly but we thought quite goofily, urged us to get off too, as "what is the use in going on into certain danger and, you know, it's silly to drown, I mean, and you can always get a plane or something from England." But we both had our business to do farther north and by then I would not have missed the remainder of the trip for anything. The ship felt empty and quiet after the Anglo-American passenger de­ parture; and we were still in the Downs. The American and I dropped in, uninvited, on the captain be­ fore lunch the next day for a drink. By now we were members of the family. A shy and pleasant British officer showed up in a vast raincoat and gave us our clearance papers. The British also returned several sacks of diplomatic mail which they had taken off lie! an� on 'ooal� rmi�iou � ana a11\1�l Thela�u& �'anUU(� tile �aio� SLOW BOAT TO WAR THE WAR IN FINLAND by mistake. HA good thing too," said the American. "I'd like to see them interfering with our government business, damrnitl" "Nothing like war," I said, "to bring out the patriot in every­ one." "You bet," he said. "Let's have some more of that Dutch gin and drink to the Netherlands, our home away from home." We ate very well that day, for the first time, eating with the captain, who had sent special orders to the kitchen. "We may as well," said the captain cheerfully. "We don't know when we're going to eat again." At dinner, for no reason and rather frighten­ ingly, the Dutch and Belgian national anthems were played and we all rose and stood solemnly looking at the tablecloth. "This is the music they play when a ship goes down," the Ameri­ can said. "They're just getting in their practice." The next day would be the last, one way or the other, as far as we were con­ cerned. The radio had announced three more ships sunk in the North Sea. At seven o'clock in the smoky-blue cold morning darkness, the steward pounded on my door. He said, "Will you kindly get up and dress as warmly as possible." What a way to be wakened, I thought. I put on flannel slacks over woolen underwear and sweat­ ers and a leather jacket and a fur coat and heavy shoes and wool socks and rummaged in my suitcase for fur-lined gloves. We were moving through a light fog, and the ship throbbed un­ naturally. The chief engineer said he had her up to fun speed and a half and I wondered whether we wouldn't just blow up of our own accord, we were rattling so hard. After breakfast the decks seemed unusually crowded with crew. They hung about wearing life belts and doing trifling jobs, washing bulkheads and arranging deck chairs. Light-clad, thin and grimy men who never seem to emerge from the engine room were appearing on the lower deck in shifts, as apparently the chief officer had shortened their period of duty below decks. It was deadly cold. The Belgians were won- 52 der, and on a Cae safe sw A Boat' dead, nobo Yo across rrds �oati toll, Alw IVnicn mine, It anrno onlr rou n 10 get Tn rOOm pacKa IDis DisC! wilD Amen fors time, e to see me\'ery· h�nan� Vi1th ili� Ne ma)� mhen w�re et hl�ntt1l pla)eOlt: SLOW BOAT TO WAR derfully bundled up and wearing flimsy, narrow-brimmed city hats, and they sat in the hallways with their uncomfortable life belts on and looked placid but ready. In the smoking room the old Austrian sat by himself and read Goethe. I went over to talk to him and he said we had already gone safely through an hour and a half, and then he said, serenely and sweetly, "God's will be done." At nine 0'clock we passed a dead body wearing a life belt and floating face down. Gray, bulky, casual, and not even pitiful, only dead. "From the Simon Bolivar, probably," the steward said, and nobody said anything more about it. You could see by the wake of the boat that we were zigzagging across the North Sea like pussy-wants-a-corner. Then two hundred yards away, looking like very large black footballs, we saw two floating mines. The radio announced that, completing yesterday's toll, five more ships had been sunk by mines in the North Sea. Also a boat lying anchored in the Downs, a 9,ooo-ton freighter which we had passed, had been blown up two hours ago when a mine, drifting down into that water, had struck its side. It was too cold on deck and there was nothing much to see anyhow. This was just a day to live through. A long day, and the only thing to do was wait. This is a foul kind of war, I thought, you never hear or see anything. You feel like an awful fool, waiting to get sunk. The Belgians clung to the lounge from habit. In the smoking room everyone was prepared. I had put a flask of whiskey and two packages of cigarettes and my essential papers in a shoe bag, and this with my gloves lay on the table beside me. A Dutch boy had his camera in a small oilcloth bag. The old Austrian looked swollen with all the things he was carrying in his pockets. The young American said that everyone was awfully well dressed and got up for shipwreck except him, but he would know better the next time. He would certainly bring the right clothes. 53 THE WAR IN FINLAND The old Austrian told me comfortingly to be sure to rub my nose frequently when we got in the lifeboats because the nose froze first and when you didn't feel it any more it was too late. We listened politely and when he left we roared with laughter, thinking what a fate, to go through life with a frozen nose. The steward came in and announced that we had just passed more floating mines, but we did not get on deck in time to see them. At the noon news broadcast, we were told that the ship that had followed us out of the Downs in the blue morning fog had sunk. We went on deck and looked moodily at our zigzagging wake. Then we went down to lunch, feeling rather heroic and business-as-usual. The dining saloon was on C deck and definitely not the best place to loiter in. No one ate much and conversation lagged. I stood it for another hour in the smoking room and then I had had enough. The Belgians returned to their checkers and cards, leaving their life belts strewn all around the lounge. The Dutch­ men were playing chess. The old Austrian seemed lost in Faust. The crew were still evident on deck, looking frozen and ungainly in life belts. I decided to go down to my cabin and sleep. Waiting to get sunk, on and off for fourteen days, was exhausting work. At five I was awakened by the American's knocking at my door. "Come on up and see the lights of Ostend," he said. "Everything's under control now." I joined him on deck and we leaned on the rail enjoying the lights and the dark line of land. "Some captain," he said. "A cuter little captain you couldn't meet anywhere." . Suddenly the whole trip seemed long ago and only a thing to remember. "The next problem," I said, "is how to get to Fin­ land." "Listen," he said. "Take it easy. Why not wait till we actually land?" The moon came up large and clear and beautiful and the stars swu glean Rive shom on de peace� in afel We not be6 IIAlli 54 �Q rob m� e fue nose �4) too \ak Iltn \d\l%bt�1 �n nose, �d just �I\� in time to� hat ilie I�ir a only � lli�[' w to'�et t�f: 't till we�� SLOW BOAT TO WAR swung about the mast in the accepted way. Our boat, lighted and gleaming, looked splendid as it moved slowly into the ScheIdt River. The river was wide and like the Mississippi, and sandbanks shone white under the moon along the low, black shore. We stood on deck beneath the bridge and admired this loveliness and this peace, and the captain caIIed down to us, saying, "We'll be there in a few hours." We told him warmly that he had done a fine job and it would not be exaggerating to say we appreciated it. "All in the day's work," he said. 55 '. ;; , �- -�-�- -� ----�--- - Bombs on Helsinki December 1939 � WAR STARTED at nine o'clock promptly. The people of Hel­ sinki stood in the streets and listened to the painful rising and fall­ ing and always louder wail of the siren. For the first time in history they heard the sound of bombs falling on their city. This is the modern way of declaring war. The people moved unhurriedly to bomb shelters or took cover in doorways and waited. That morning Helsinki was a frozen city inhabited by sleep­ walkers. The war had come too fast and all the faces and all the eyes looked stunned and unbelieving. The sky had been slate-colored all day, with a low blanket of cloud folding over the city. The second air raid came at three 0'clock. No siren gave the alarm; there was only the swift breath­ taking roar of the bombs. The Russian planes flew high and un­ seen and dived to within two hundred meters of the ground to dump their bombs in heavy loads. The raid lasted one minute. It was the longest minute anyone in Helsinki had ever lived through. There were five great explosions and afterward the stillness it­ self was dreadful. Then a rumor flew through the quiet, broken H H lD w TI TI wi WQ t� a chi wa dre the nig nul st oh��: t"dme �t�; he i\\itt �!�� . hlOh �n�� the' �oun�: one millut�: hrea th!��� ilie �ttllu��( �uie� D!�� BOMBS ON HELSINKI streets: poison gas. Anything was believable now. Guided by the tremendous sound of the bombs, we could see in that direction a high, round, gray cloud of smoke blowing slowly between the buildings. We had no gas masks. They shut the doors of the hotel, but as the hall skylight had already been broken by concussion this seemed feeble protection.From a fifth-floor window I saw the light of fire, pink around the sky. "Not gas yet," we said to one another, greatly cheered. "Just incendiary bombs." We shuffled through broken glass in the streets. The gray after­ noon was darker with smoke. The bombed houses on this block were so shrouded in flames that you could not see through into the ruins. Turning left, we ran toward the light of another fire. The Technical School, a vast granite square of buildings, had been hit. The houses around it and on the next street were gutted clean, with flames leaping out of all the empty windows. Firemen worked fast and silently but there was nothing much to do except try to put out the fire. Later they could dig for the bodies. At a street corner, in the early oncoming night, a woman flagged a bus and put her child on it. She did not have time to kiss the child goodbye and no one said anything. The woman turned and walked back into the bombed street. The bus was collecting chil­ dren to take them away, anywhere, no one knew where but out of the city. A curious migration started that afternoon and went on all night. Lost children, whose parents were gone in the burning buildings or separated in the confusion of that sudden attack, straggled out alone or in twos and threes, taking any road that led away from what they had seen. Days later the state radio was still calling their names, trying to find their families for them. Close to a big filling station a bus lay on its side, already burned out, and beside it in the street was the first dead man I saw in this war. On my first morning in Madrid, three winters ago, I saw a man like this one. Now as then there was no identification left 57 � , � � �.--- - -� ----� - - -- --- THE WAR IN FINLAND except the shoes, since the head and the arms had been destroyed. In Spain the small, dark, deformed bundle wore the rope-soled shoes of the poor, and here the used leather soles were carefully patched. Otherwise the two remnants of bodies were tragically the same. I thought it would be fine if the ones who order the bomb­ ing and the ones who do the bombing would walk on the ground some time and see what it is like. In Finland it is black night at four o'clock in the winter after­ noon, but people stayed in the streets as if to take comfort from one another. Women clustered in doorways and did not speak, and nowhere was anyone crying, nowhere was there the wild grief and panic that could be expected. That freezing night the roads out of Helsinki were dark with silent people, carrying knapsacks or light suitcases or carrying nothing, walking to the forest for safety. Next morning, the street-clearing department shoveled broken glass off the streets around the Technical School with snow shovels. The great buildings were holed through from roof to cellar and burned black inside. A fireman took me into an apart­ ment house next door. We waded in water from the fire hoses and climbed two flights of stairs and went through a hanging door into a home that had once been comfortable and sweet. Now the white-painted furniture of the bedroom was half splintered and the voile curtains hung in damp rags and the family photographs and all the small, useless, ornamental things people collect and cherish were blown about like rubbish on the floor. All night the firemen had been digging out bodies in this flat and the next one, and a week later they were still finding the buried dead. This fireman had worked in San Francisco and Trenton, years ago, and we talked about those cities and how lucky the people were who live there. We stood in the street and watched a fire that was still burning and looked at the ruins of the high school and the shattered homes, and the fireman said quietly, but not to joke, "Nice felIas, these Roosians." �o b lQ�eu, ·so\eu Ieill\\) ca\\� tbe e bom� e�ounQ \ed blo��n �lfu IUOW om roo! to \0 an ��It Ie bOI��n� no dOOllnt� , ,Now fut leOanufut o��ul�n� and cu�n\� ilie�l�ti \ on� an�l 1'h� �r�mln andweu\�W bo live \n�( )ti\\ DumlU\ tbe luatttlN /iNiet !�\\l\ BOMBS ON HELSINKI There was a woman in one of the hospitals who had been pinnedunder the wreckage of her home and was now waiting to die, pushing the blankets from her body because any weight was in­tolerable. Her child was dead but she did not know it, and her husband lay in another ward staring in front of him with fixed,mad eyes. The husband was a house painter. In the bed beside him a handsome dark boy with the bright face of fever held himself very still because with a hole like that in his back even breathing was torture. He had been a plumber. The Russian planes came over again at one o'clock on the sec­ ond day of the war, and the machine guns, on the roofs of the office buildings and apartment houses that line the main street,hammered up at them into the thick gray sky. The planes turnedand dumped their bombs over the worker's quarters at the out­skirts of the city. The florists sent flowers to the hospitals andmade wreaths for the coffins, and little processions of unweepingpeople followed the pretty coffins to the cemetery. They went on evacuating children in hearses and cattle cars, in anything that would run on wheels or rails. People had been hiding in the freezing woods for three days and nights without shelter or food, and now they were beginning to find their wayinto the villages. Then a truck would come to a village to move some of them to a country station, where they could catch a train going farther north. A driver put a ladder up against his truck and seven little old ladies, carrying small satchels, clambered up theladder twittering like birds. They spoke the neat, stilted English of governesses and laughed because they were so awkward and said yes, they were going to take a train now, and no, they didn't know where they were going but it would be all right, they would find some place to stay. It had been rather hard in the woods, they said,but now everything would be quite all right. A well-dressed young woman with two small children and a baby had walked from the city, the children's nurse pushing the baby carriage and she leading 59 - --.. < , U I / �'-------.::t. - - __:_�_:=---�� --_ -- -- - __ THE WAR IN FINLAND and carrying the other children. She had left everything behind, as had all the others. But the baby had a fur rug in his carriage to keep him warm, so she was not complaining. In a neighboring village a fine big woman with red cheeks was buying cough medi­ cine for her ten-year-old daughter. Her child was ill from three nights in the open woods. The mother said they slept ten in a one­ room hut now, but that way, of course, they were warm. "We wait and we hope," she said. "Why should we be afraid? We have done nothing wrong." Rumors, the inevitable by-product of war, circulated through the countryside and in the city, saying that the Russians were planning a giant air attack-they were going to flatten Helsinki. Nothing and no one would be left. In the midst of all this the Russians bom­ barded the city with propaganda by leaflets and by radio. The Finns reacted with bitter amusement. With the bombs came badly printed pamphlets saying, "You know we have bread, why do you starve?" Since the Finns eat as well as any people in the world, this was not convincing. They were told repeatedly by the Moscow radio that the Finns were brothers and this war was not the work of the real Finnish people but only the devilish machination of a small band of Finnish revolutionaries. These singular statements became the best joke in Helsinki. There is less than one per cent illiteracy in Finland and the people are well and constantly in­ formed. They believe the Russian bombs but not the Russian propaganda. As you neared the southern frontier and the battle zone, the tide of refugees thickened on the roads. The refugees traveled by sledge in this white, deadly-cold country, mostly old people huddled over their bags and bundles, with a horse or two tied on and fol­ lowing behind. The war was five days old and the first shock had worn off. There had been no panic at any time but only a stony determination to defend the country, and already it seemed as if 60 have Qon� �on� ilie�& �1�b\'ll�t Jrle �uool� � on and !�� �t )oocK �l! onlr a Ito�!, )ee01� a�J BOMBS ON HELSINKI people knew exactly where they had to go, and as if each person had some special work that was essential to all. An Italian journalist had remarked in Helsinki that anyone who could survive the Finnish climate could survive anything, and we decided with admiration that the Finns were a tough and unrelenting race, seeing them take this war as if there were nothing very remarkable in three million people fighting against a nation of one hundred and eighty million. Driving in Finland is one of the worst features of the war. In towns and villages you are constantly muffled in darkness, and the roads through the countryside are narrow and iced like a skat­ ing rink. It is also horribly cold. Late at night we stopped at a farmhouse to thaw out before continuing. The farm belonged to President Szinhuszue, first regius of Finland and third President, a greatly loved man whom all the Finns call Peter. We were welcomed into the house by the President, a tall old man wearing a lumberjack shirt and high boots. His wife, a bright-eyed, small dark woman almost as old as he, joined us in the living room. Sixteen soldiers, whom they treated as their chil­ dren, were quartered in their house. The old President had spent two and a half years of his life in Siberia because he refused to violate Finnish law at the dictate of Russia, and during those years his wife went three times to the prison camp to take care of him. Their loyalty to each other and to Finland is legendary, and now this faithful old couple seemed symbolic of their people. Like all other Finns they hate war. Like all other Finns they know what this war means. But they have been a long time building their country, and though nothing is perfect they know that Finland is a place where men do not suffer from unemployment or hunger, where health and the disabilities of old age are state concerns, where schools are available to all, where co-operatives, and widespread state own­ ership of industry and transport, and cheap land guarantee a fair 61 , - ��:.______ - -� -----=----== - - -- - - - - THE WAR IN FINLAND division of wealth, where all men may believe what they like, talk as they see fit and read anything they desire. They are not going to give up easily, and though this war is disaster they accept it calmly because they have no choice. President Szinhuszue offered us small apples from his orchard and told us how beautiful Finland was in the summer, and his wife asked us to come back and see them when the war is won. "We will not have moved," she said. "This is our home." The Army of possibly half a million, backed by a unified and unfrightened civil population of two and a half million, have de­ cided to fight a defensive war rather than lose their country, their republic and their hard-working, unaggressive, decent way of life. A nation of brave people is a good thing to see. A boy of nine stood outside his home in Helsinki and watched the Russian bombers. He was blond and plump and he stood with his hands on his hips and with his feet apart and looked at the sky with a stubborn, serious face. He held himself stiffly so as not to shrink from the noise. When the air was quiet again he said, "Little by little, I am getting really angry." The Karelian Front fi, have �t, ufi�,\ntil wa� o!li!t, December 1939eS\ooOwilli a\tnel� � THE ROAD was just wide enough for the car and here it nar­ rowed at a bridge. The blued lamps of the car only dimly lightedthe frozen snow four feet ahead. "Be careful," the soldier guidesaid to our driver. We had been driving in first gear and now we seemed barelyto move. Suddenly our dimmed lights showed a red-painted poleto the left, marking the bridge. The bridge felt different from the road, smoother and even more slippery. When we were across, the soldier let out his breath. "That's dangerous," he explained,"those mined bridges-if you skid, I mean. One of our men hit such a mine and we couldn't even find him. There's another to cross now." The car had cleared the side of the bridge by lessthan a foot. Our civilian driver turned on his full lights; he wasn't crossing any more of those bridges in the dark. The black, close-growing pine forest stood out against the snow, and the ice on the road flickered. We crossed the second bridge and the driver sighed and the soldier offered me a cigarette. Ahead of us a staff car painted THE WAR IN FINLAND dead-white-the camouflage color here-blinked its lights twice, turned a corner and suddenly sped along a narrow road past an open snow-covered field. We followed with full lights at a more sensible pace. The soldier muttered something, then the forest closed in again and the soldier spoke in a pleasant conversational voice to the driver. The driver answered quickly. I asked what they were talking about. Finnish is not a language you can pick up in a short time. "He says," the driver translated, "that I should not have kept my lights on going past that field, or else I should have gone faster. The Russians can see you from there, but he says they are poor marksmen and they have not managed to hit the road ·yet." Our soldier guide, a lieutenant, wore a gray astrakhan cap and a romantic-looking but practical coat with astrakhan collar and trim­ ming, and high, over-the-knee leather boots with turned-up toes, and he was twenty-one and answered to the nickname of Viskey. I had no idea where we were or where we were going because we had been driving for three hours, since leaving Viipuri, on these un­ marked glassy roads. Now Viskey said stop, and we piled out and joined the four staff officers from the car ahead. We spoke in whispers. Gun flashes from the Finnish batteries burned like summer lightning against the sky, and the noise of the outgoing shells was very loud and blurred; and, like an echo, the explosions could be heard as they landed. For an hour I had been waiting to hear the Rus­ sian batteries reply and still they were silent. Ahead of us a line of soldiers loaded the small lightweight sledges the Finns use for transport. Sledges are the nearest you can come to mechanized efficiency in these forests and on these roads. The line of soldiers stretched far forward into the darkness. I thought it was probably a company of 150 men but couldn't be sure; most of them, wearing white overalls over their uniforms, seemed part of the snow, and the dark-dressed ones were lost twice, ��t an \ a male the tomt 'ersatlon�l \Vnattn� lCK up \n� snoulo n�t nou\amlt i ll�n���' tar�t!�ij� n ili�� rooru e aar�n�I,: ut coulon't � eir unl!�mA oes were � THE KARELIAN FRONT against the dark trunks of the trees. They moved fast but in abso­ lute silence, and from time to time the gun flashes would light up a man bending to fix his boots or another slapping his hands for warmth. Then a clear, crackling word was shouted down the line. It came from the leading officer commanding this action and was passed on by every twentieth man, and now it sang out over the road, and the sledges and the men began to move forward. "Fol­ low!" called a voice from the darkness. "Follow!" the other voices echoed. This was the first big night operation of the war. The Russians were less than three quarters of a kilometer ahead, and all that day they had been maneuvered into a trap. The Finnish colonel in command of this sector believed there was an entire Russian divi­ sion caught in the pocket. Two battalions of Finnish soldiers, moving into the darkness, were to circle and pass the Russian lines and attack from the rear while other mobile units attacked from the front. Now we watched these go, and we heard behind us the rumble of trucks and stepped back into the ditches to leave the road clear as heavy ammunition trucks, burning cat's-eye lights, drove up and stopped. The road seemed to be blocked with incoming supplies. An officer I had known for three hours, and who was therefore an old friend, loomed up and said, in German, "Get in your car. You must go back. This is the height of stupidity-and besides, your cars are in the way." He said something sharply to Viskey, who laughed and took my arm. The officer who ordered us back had been an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Helsinki. He had a puckered thoughtful face and wore glasses and took his responsibilities seri­ ously. We returned as we came, following the almost invisible white staff car. We drove on the slant toward the ditch, to let more trucks pass, and behind them came caravans of supply - , -_ -�- � ----_ -�-- --- - .___ THE WAR IN FINLAND sledges, and three Red Cross sledges that would serve as am­ bulances. We brought Viskey to what seemed nothing more than one pine tree out of many but was actually the point of entry into the clearing where his tent stood. Later we drove slowly alongside a company of soldiers returning from the front. Their light field guns were on horse-drawn caissons; their sledges were piled high with bicycles and skis, the cavalrymen slept on their horses, the wagon cookstove smoked faintly, and in two large trucks men slept rolled up together, dark and shapeless. Half frozen and very tired, we reached the bombed city of Viipuri at five-thirty in the morning. We had left Helsinki at five­ thirty the morning before. That was the end of the day and night but all of it had been strange enough. At eight o'clock, in the beginning of the preceding night, we had arrived at GHQ for the Karelian front. GHQ was in a large, rambling country estate with many barns, stables and outbuildings. We found staff headquarters and were ushered into a ballroom with pale-blue walls, lace curtains, cut-glass chandeliers and a grand piano. From this we were led into a small, equally elegant salon where scale maps were pinned on the wall and a long, businesslike table was the only furnishing. The Commanding General, a gray, slender, shy man, came in presently from a trip to the front. The talk was friendly and formal and unrevealing, as it always is with high army officers, and at last I asked for permission to go to the front. The General said that it would be impossible-I would have to walk eight kilometers through these forests where every inch of ground seems taken up by either a tree or a granite boulder, and where between rocks and trees the snow drifts as high as your neck. I said, from French to Finnish via the aide-de­ camp, that I was perfectly prepared to try to walk through any­ thing. I had argued with generals before and knew it was a losing game. Nothing was decided, as far as I could make out, though a nl�ntl wt In a la!�tl utoUtldln�), a oalhoom anda�n� I�nt �\�� oUlln�1111!t neralla�:1 e hout 11110n t� �1 im�111Dk,1 !ore5tl w�t;( O!a�lnitt now dn!�S a tn� ala��r ilirou�n an)' t wal a l�)in! ut, tnoU�� I THE KARELIAN FRONT rapid discussion went on in Finnish. We shook hands with the General, and a sentry guided us across the grounds to a remodeled church where supper was being served. You helped yourself from a side table. Piles of butter over a foot high stood on the table, and there was macaroni with cheese and meat in a creamy brown sauce, and every kind of bread and many pitchers of milk and lemonade. This is the sort of extraordinary food that is given to the Army everywhere. The entire Army-officers, men and even pilots­ functions on total prohibition, which is a comment on the Army's discipline and the excellent state of its nerves. After dinner we were told to get in our cars. I still did not know where we were going. It took us two hours to drive twenty-five miles. We stopped at a farmhouse and picked up a guide. After a few minutes we stopped again and followed our guide into the forest and almost stumbled on a large round tent. The troops, who had been fighting a retreating guerrilla action for five days, giving the Army time to get in its present position, were now encamped invisibly in these woods and catching up on their sleep. We crawled through the tent opening, and twelve soldiers woke in surprise. They were all very young-boys who were doing their regular military service and had got a war instead of aca­ demic practice. They came mostly from central Finland and were farmers' sons. The tent was the warmest place I had been in that day. Their officer, a young man with Prince Albert sideburns, spoke English and translated as they recounted how they had stopped tanks at twenty meters and how Russian infantry at­ tacked. Here, as everywhere else, I heard the same story about the Rus­ sian infantry column. The Russians attacked en masse in line, and the hidden and dispersed Finns mowed them down with machine­ gun fire. And here, as everywhere else, I heard soldiers and officers express regret that other men should have to die stupidly and wastefully like slaughtered animals. _ -- .. , _ ____jl I / . ._�-- - _- - �------ ' THE WAR IN FINLAND We connected with Viskey here, and the next stop was field headquarters, another tent equally warm and comfortable and lost in the woods. The Colonel showed us positions on his scale map and answered questions and joked, and all this time an attack was starting. It is not usual to find a field headquarters so calm and good-humored when real business is under way. Only once division headquarters telephoned to ask how things were going, and the answer was "Fine!" Meanwhile the Finnish batteries, scattered through these woods, were preparing the attack with a fairly heavy bombardment. The Finnish batteries, eighteen guns here, were using three- and six-inch shells. The Colonel said that the Russians used ten-inch shells but that the firing was inaccurate, there were many duds, and the shells had a low explosive value. He also said that the Rus­ sians used 150- to 25o-kilo bombs on this front, and despite low flying they were inaccurate in their work. He showed me on a map how his men, divided into small, swift units, attacked in five dif­ ferent places over a fifty-kilometer radius in one day. They can and do fight like Indians, in woods which they know as well as we know the orderly streets of our own neighborhoods. The weather now was not the best for them, as it was too snowy for bicycles and too early for skis, but the new snow had started and the whole army would soon change to skis, which gives them a tre­ mendous advantage of speed. Every Finn moves on skis as other people walk. From this place we could see the sky marked with fire from burning villages, and we had passed on the road numerous small fires reflected in a lake. These small fires were from burning hay; the Finns systematically destroy anything that may be of use to the enemy, and the burning villages in front of the lines were fired either by occasional Russian shells or by the retreating villagers themselves or by the Finnish Army. The Russians come to a bare 68 -_ - - . .....�.--,� , THE KARELIAN FRONT and unfriendly country where there is nothing to eat and little or no shelter. Also in the dark, we had passed the Mannerheim Line; the Finnish Army was still in front of its own fortifications. The Mannerheim Line crosses the bottleneck of the Karelian Isthmus in a triplicate defense of granite tank traps, barbed wire and trenches. But nature itself has provided the Finns with the best defense-the forest studded with rocks and broken by lakes, icy weather and a gray cloud-thick sky. I don't know what is going on in the north, where it is no more than 125 miles from the Russian border to the Finnish coast of the Gulf of Bothnia and the vital railway line that connects Finland with Sweden. Nor does anyone know what the Russian Army has in store or what the Russian aviators can produce. But, those days on the southern front, the Russians were being outfought and liquidated. At eight-thirty in the morning, after three hours' sleep, we heard the siren wail over Viipuri and we descended to the concrete-walled hotel garage. Nothing happened. Then the snow started to fall, soft and steady, and the day promised to be safe. We went to the Viipuri prison to visit the captured Russians. The chief warden of this prison was a spare gray man with pince­ nez and a stammer and the gentle manner of a professor. He was talking in Russian with a Soviet flier. The flier was thirty-two years old and had a sad, tired face and two days' growth of beard, and he stood as straight as his fatigue would let him and answered ques­ tions in a humble, soft voice. I asked whether he had any family .. He did not move and his voice did not change, but tears rolled down his face, and the warden and the jailers turned away because they did not want to look. The flier said in the same soft voice that he had two children, one so high and the other so high, and his beloved wife and another child on the way. He simply stated these facts, not asking for pity, but his loneliness was terrible to see. 'iili ore [WID merom �ID�! bumin��\' � 01 Ul� t� �\I'ere�rw tJO� vil1��tfl e to a O�!� _--.. ,_ U I / �-� - �_:;__.::_----- ..... - -------.__ THE WAR IN FINLAND We walked down stone steps into the cellar and two Russian soldiers were let out of barred cells. They also stood in this tight, rigid manner, and I thought probably every time they were called out of their cells they expected to be shot. One was a tall man of thirty-seven and the other a boy of twenty-three. They had had two and three months' military training respectively. They were very thin, their clothes were the crudest cotton pants and coats­ in this desperate climate-and the Finns were shocked because they were so louse-infested. These prisoners answered questions shivering1y also, and they repeated what all the others had said: they were told Finland was attacking them, and so they were fighting to save Russia. The individual man, in trouble and alone and lost, is pitiful, and these were as pitiful as any I had ever seen. The warden allowed me to give them cigarettes, thus breaking a prison rule of seventeen years' standing and proving also that he was a kind, unhating old man. The roads are as ghastly by day as by night. Cars spin like coins, skidding on ice and gently descending into ditches. We arrived in the dark at the town where we were to sleep, and the next morning we were treated to a fine imitation of the best London fog. The Finns seemed very lucky in these matters. This town was a bomb­ ing objective for the enemy and an unhealthy place to be in clear weather. I was taken to the great airfield of this sector, where fighter planes are stationed. Not much can be written about it. Even when you were on the field you could see nothing. The planes were hidden in the woods and in their own dugouts. All the vastly complicated organization work was carried on in dugouts which looked from the ground like snowdrifts. Most of the planes-fast single-seater pursuits-were imported from Holland; some were copies made in Finnish factories. We stepped over sweet-smelling pine boughs that camouflaged a dugout where the crack pursuit squadron of Finland has its quar- .. ---. - _ r�-_--:--- - ._.. � �'Il � � , llssian i� tigbt, te calloo 1 mana! baa n�Q n Il�ecolm, 'earrivooiij extffiorni� on lo�, Th1 IVaI a Doffi� o�intI1J: onere n�Mt! , Evenw�ffi rlanel W�t tne v��j �OU� \V�i� rlan� .. �t lome \1'�!t mou�a��� � as i� �U!l' THE KARELIAN FRONT terse As always, one is astounded by the age of the pilots; they ought to be going to college dances, you feel, or cheering at foot­ ball games. Their dugout was warm and cheerful and one of the pilots played a guitar. The squadron commander, a new hero of Finland, answered questions for a time politely and then said, "Do you want to hear a sad Finnish love song?" I said I would be de­ lighted, and a pilot sang to the accompaniment of the guitar, and the squadron commander, when it was over, remarked with a delicious quick smile, "Paris et I'arnour." This officer, a tall man of thirty with a beautifully chiseled face, had brought down two planes in one day. The second one, at a distance of thirty meters, splashed him with oil as it fell. All these men were modest and jolly, the way brave men are. They go up, alone or in twos, to fight off any number of oncoming bombers. The squadron commander, on his big day, had been fighting alone against thirteen Russian bombers. He told me, in passing, that some years ago he tried to get a job flying transport between New York and Boston but he failed because the American company didn't think he was good enough. He said of course it was much easier to fly pursuit planes in war. The Colonel of this air regiment said he thought the Russian bombers were good planes but slow. The Finnish fighter planes have a greater speed at low altitudes and their speed increases with height. The Russians' have been flying low, not above 16,000 feet, throughout this war, both over the cities and over military objectives. A Russian squadron is nine planes, and bombers are flown with­ out any accompanying protective pursuit planes. The Colonel believed the Russians were flying now from their field at Novgorod, which is several hundred kilometers inland from the Russian coast, and their pursuits did not have enough fuel capacity to convoy the bombers, fight and return. The bomb load of these Russian planes is approximately a thousand kilos and they carry their light --. - . ;' I /��l!� - __ ------ __:.._-_.- ---- -- t: .. �_��� ��r; THE WAR IN FINLAND incendiary bombs in barrel containers. At this field all the cap­ tured Russian pilots were interviewed and the Finns were surprised that such inexperienced men had been sent against them. The Russian pilots said that they had received only ten hours of com­ bat flying training, and one Soviet flier stated that in Russia the aviators were told the Finns had neither anti-aircraft nor pursuit planes. The Finns have both, in small quantity but splendidly manned. One cannot know what will happen in a war from one day to the next, and certainly guessing is even more hazardous in a war between such unequal forces, but it is safe to say that the Finns have a trained army, helped by knowledge of the terrain; the soldiers are wen equipped and wonderfully fed and the pilots are apparently, from results already shown, superior. The Army has the sound and comforting gaiety of good troops. It has confidence in its leaders. And it has the determination of those who fight on their own soil. The squadron commander spoke for them all when he said, "They will not get us as a present." --. � - . �-�:-- .. ;11 r -. THE WAR IN CHINA NINETEEN FORTY MUST HAVE BEEN THE MOST OMINOUS YEAR OF the war, tor our side. Far off, sate in the sun, I listened to the radio, a daily funeral bell. The defeat at Finland; the Nazi invasion oi Denmark and Norway; the tailure oi the British campaign in Norway; the Nazi invasion oi Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg; the Nazi terror raid on Rotterdam; the surrender at the Dutch and Belgian armies; the Dunkirk evacuation; the Battle at France, im­ mediately tollowed by the parade oi the Nazi army down the Champs-Elysees, Italy's entry into the war; the French armistice with Germany and Italy; the BattIe oi Britain and trom then on, through the blitz, through the winter, the awful mounting toIl of the civilian dead; the pact between Germany, Italy and Japan, called horribly "The New Order"; the Italian attack on Greece; the start at the war in the Western Desert. There was no contusion of mind in hating and tearing the ,enemy. It that had been the only problem, it would have been a simple war, tor the enemy was entirely, profoundly evil. But there was also our side, and our record was not all shining and admirable, 73 - . - . �__J�' I / . =------------:: -�.-:::_ .. ---- � THE FACE OF WAR and one could not give one's undivided loyalty to our leaders, not by a long shot. We were guilty of the dishonest abandonment of Spain and the quick cheap betrayal of Czechoslovakia. We nig­ gled and refused asylum to doomed Jews; we inspected and re­ jected anti-Fascists fleeing for their lives from Hitler; we were full of shames and ugly expediencies. In the immortal words of E. M. Forster, "Two cheers for democracy." Two cheers was all one could manage. I learned my last lesson in what is called political reality during a visit I made to Paris at Christmas time in 1939, on my way home from Finland. It was an important lesson for me because I de­ cided I had learned the same thing over and over, for long enough: political reality and political morality have nothing to do with each other. Politics really must be a rotten profession considering what awful moral cowards most politicians become as soon as they get / a job. It is pointless to heap blame on leaders in a democracy, since we put them where they are in the first place and once there, they are subject to the law: power corrupts. But I see no need to hero­ worship any of them. In the early winter of 1939, Paris was the Sleeping Beauty. Blue dim-out lights shone on the snow in the empty Place de la Con­ corde. People moved quietly about the unscarred city, as it walk­ ing in a lovely white countryside. There were no crowds, few cars, 110 sense of haste or disaster. Paris had never been more at peace. I felt that I was looking at this grace for the last time. In my ex­ perience cities were bombed; that was what they could count 011. The only work I had to do in Paris was to try to rescue some friends who were imprisoned with the defeated Spanish army be­ side the Mediterranean, in holes dug on the beach at Argeles. This project interested no one at all. As a successful politician said to me, while we both stuffed foie gras: My dear girl, a German 74 --- - - - r-�1----; -- . .... � Ii 11 � '", ' ) not ent 01 e ni�. an� t�· ere lu� lE.H allont ury, m�: de I� ��! al il w�l ), kw�\ I at�I�,1 In ml�' count@ eiCue !�m( n aIfll)k at N�eh libcianl�1 a Cennl� THE WAR IN CHINA and a former Communist, really, what do you expect? It was use­ less to point out that these men, forgotten behind barbed wire, had been fighting Hitler long before anyone else thought of doing so, or had been forced to do so. I realized finally how unwise it was to be "prematurely anti-Fascist." The people of France, who have so many rare talents, apparently have no talent for self-government, which is after all a question of choosing your leaders to suit your real needs and keeping a stern eye on their actions. I knew many of the Frenchmen then in power, from the days of my youth; I knew all of their records. The ruling class did not seem to take this war very seriously; it was a brand-new witty type of war: you declared it and sat down in your fortifications and no doubt in time the whole disagreeable mess would clear up. I said goodbye, with love, to the three French people I knew who were so fine that they were sure to be killed; and I bolted from Europe. I didn't think there would be a battle; I thought there would be a massacre, and I could not bear to witness another, to watch helplessly while the innocent were destroyed. Worse than destroyed, I thought, and still made futile last-minute pleas for my imprisoned friends. War and death could be borne; what was be­ yond one's imagination, and the root of all fear, was the tortures of the Gestapo. So in 1940 Europe was lost and the Gestapo hunted over the Continent, searching for the best and bravest. No one then knew or cared much about the war in China, but Japan had become an Axis partner and what Japan did held a new menace. I wanted to see the Orient before I died; and the Orient was across the world from what I loved and feared for. Journalism now turned into an escape route. My assignment was to report on the defenses of Hong Kong, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, take a look at the Burma Road, and find out how the Sino-Japanese War was getting on. I am reprinting only two of the reports writ­ ten on this long journey. 75 THE FACE OF WAR My China articles were not entirely candid. They did not say all I thought, and nothing of what I felt. There was a severe censor­ ship in China, but I was more troubled by an interior censorship, which made it impossible for me to write properly. I had been in­ cluded, twice, in luncheon parties given by the Chiangs. They struck me as the two most determined people I had met in my life. Their will to power was a thing like stone; it was a solid separate object which you felt in the room. They were also immensely in­ telligent, gracious and I thought inhuman. But I had accepted their hospitality, and since they owned China, it would be as if I had visited them as a guest and thanked them by writing unpleasant revelations about their house. I have never again accepted hamper­ ing hospitality. The notion that China was a democracy under the Generalis­ simo is the sort of joke politicians invent and journalists perpetuate. The local men-in-office, whenever the absence of democracy be­ came embarrassing, explained these conditions by saying that any country, in the midst of a long terrible war, must abandon some of its domestic liberties; and this is a sad fact, as we can all testify. But I do not believe that China ever was a democracy, nor will be, in our lifetime. How could it be? For democracy, or even the pretense of democracy, you need a fair percentage of literacy among the population, free communication-not only by speech and print but by road and rail, and enough time out, from struggling desper­ ately for survival, to vote. I thought a good six-point program for China during the next hundred years would be: clean drinking water-at least at stated places; sewage disposal everywhere; a government-issued birth­ control pill; and an agricultural scheme which would guarantee the bare minimum of rice required to prevent the death by starvation of any Chinese. With these matters attended to, they could begin on a universal health service, attacking cholera, typhoid, typhus, leprosy, amoebic dysentery, malaria (malignant and benign), and --. - - . �--�-:-- .. jill I'� , THE WAR IN CHINA �1all all the other ills the flesh is heir to, but more heir to in China than emor· in any other country I know. After that, it would be time to build mni�, schools and fill them. And then, final1y, but how far in the future, ;enill· the moment might have come to say a word about democracy. , Tiley I felt that it was pure doom to be Chinese; no worse luck could nrlik befall a human being than to be born and live there, unless by some golden chance you happened to be born one of the .00000099 per cent who had power, money, privilege (and even then, even then). I pitied them all, I saw no tolerable future for them, and I longed to escape away from what I had escaped into: the age-old misery, filth, hopelessness and my own claustrophobia inside that enor­ mous country. 77 --. - . � L� I / ------=-fr-:----_� _ ____ _ - _--.- -- _ r _ How to Get to China January 1941 � IT WAS four-thirty in the morning and cold, and a heavy wind blew through the dark hangar and against the passengers as they crossed the Hong Kong airfield to the plane. Lights went on at the edge of the field, and we saw the Douglas DC-2, huge and silver-colored, with great black letters on the wings: CNAC in English letters on the right wing, CNAC in five-foot-high Chinese characters on the left wing. We could not see the humped green mountains that rise 3,000 feet to border the field. The eight pas­ sengers found seats in the unlighted cabin and fastened their safety belts. The weather report said the ceiling was 500 feet, visibility two miles, and storms ahead. It was perfect flying weather for the China National Aviation Corporation. No U.S. transport line would allow its planes to leave that mountain­ girdled field in such weather. We took off, sliding and swaying into the wind. We were going to fly at night over the Japanese lines, and over sharp unbroken mountain ranges with peaks 9,200 feet high and no plateaus for forced landings. It was 770 miles to Chungking. -_ - - � �,-----: -- - . ... / � ;I� I '" HOW TO GET TO CHINA The plane circled up, higher and higher above the safe territory of Hong Kong. The hills around the harbor were beaded with light. There were bright lighted ships, and floating points of light on the sampans. The city lights and the lights on the water jumped and slanted as the DC-2 climbed. Then the city was gone and white furry cloud wrapped the plane. The Chinese passengers pulled up their blankets and looked very small and quiet in their chairs, and slept. You could feel the forward pull of the plane, and you could feel the wind. We climbed to 1 3,000 feet above Hong Kong. The red and green wing lights went off. Now at this great height and flying blind, we were ready to head north across the Japanese lines. The flash from the exhausts flick­ ered against the propellers and over the wings and lighted up the drifting cloud. Then the shape of the cloud changed. It was no longer loose and soft; it had a texture like stone and it rose in a wall before the plane, and it was like flying against the side of a sandstone mountain. The wing letters blurred and finally we could see nothing. The plane moved, with sharp side drops and down plunges, in absolute darkness. At five, we entered a storm. The Chinese passengers still slept. It was very cold. The American officer, who was making this trip for the first time too, looked at me and we both laughed because there was nothing else to do. We naturally did not believe any­ thing could happen to this plane. Once you are in a plane, you are part of it, and you give it confidence, feeling that the pilot and the co-pilot and the radio operator and the passengers and the plane are all one thing: an indestructible whole. Accidents have happened, but you never think it will be now, not to you, not to this plane, not to this solid unit of machine and men that is roaring through a hailstorm. So we fastened our safety belts again to keep from being battered against the seat in front or flung to the floor, and the DC-2 bucked the wind. Hail beat against the wings and the fuselage with a noise like a threshing machine, and lightning 79 THE WAR IN CHINA made a dull glow in the clouds. We steadied ourselves with both hands hard on the chair arms and braced ourselves with our feet. Ice formed on the wings and the propellers and the plane climbed until it reached the top of the clouds. If it were not possible to reach the top of the clouds at or below 16,000 feet, the pilot would turn back. There is no de-icing equipment on the planes. After an hour we flew out of the storm, though the cloud was like thick cream all around us. The pilot came back into the cabin and remarked to the American officer that his air speed indicators had frozen during the storm. The American officer grinned and shook hands with him. The pilot said it was nothing; he opened his window an inch and gauged the speed of the plane by the velocity of the wind. He had practiced this often. The American officer told me, after the pilot left, that the stalling speed is sixty-three miles an hour-at that point the plane would fall out of control. "These boys can fly," he said. And then later, "These boys can certainly fly." The sun came up and the Chinese passengers stirred and looked out the windows and pushed down under their blankets again. We were flying over a solid carpet of cloud, in still, greenish-blue air; it was like flying over the inside of a shell. We could have used some hot coffee. After a while everyone slept. Then the plane started circling to descend, though the ground was hidden. The visibility at Chungking was 800 feet. For blind landings, the CNAC pilots use the Telefunken, a German radio for direction finding. They can tune in on any broadcasting station or long-wave station and take a bearing. All that the passengers knew, however, was that suddenly, through rifts in cloud, we could see a patch of river, or a jagged slice of brown mountains. Suddenly, from being lost in cloud, we were so low that we could see washing hanging in the courtyards, crumbled bombed walls, the always thousands of dark hurrying Chinese climbing the hill paths or walking through the broken streets. Chungking looks like 80 -_ - -- - . �--�1----: -- � illl: '"", HOW TO GET TO CHINA a loose cluster of farmhouses, spread in a circle over the hills, with the gray-green, brown Yangtze cutting through the center. We flew just over the roofs of the houses and up the river, to turn and come in on the Chungking airfield. The airfield, which is 1,900 feet long and 100 feet wide, is on a narrow island in the middle of the Yangtze, with mountains 3,500 feet high all around it. It is under sixty feet of water for at least two months a year, and at the best of seasons it looks like a mud flat in the Mississippi. In the afternoon we drank tea and waited in a thatched hut on the Chungking airfield for weather reports. We were due to leave for Kunming but the weather was too good. Everybody was very irritated by the sun and the clean sky. With this fine weather, the Japs might give Kunming a late-afternoon bombing. Still, we had to get to Lashio on the Burma border that night. The distance from Chungking to Lashio is slightly less than that from New York to Chicago, and Royal Leonard, the pilot, decided to start and take it slowly, planning to reach our first stop at Kunming after dark. The [aps did not bother to bomb there at night, since it was so easy to bomb in the daytime. The fields grew up and down the sides of the mountains. They were never the same shape twice, and below us they looked like the strange petals of a flower. Rice paddies shone in the sun and the fields were purple and gray and green and yellow. There were farmhouses built around open courtyards, and footpaths like pencil lines over the hills, and on the Yangtze great barges were being rowed by twelve standing men. We could just see the blue color of their jackets and the way their bodies moved together. Now the hills were huge brown inverted pots, and scattered over them, like white washing spread on the ground, were white flower­ ing trees. We flew low and looked at everything. We might as well enjoy the scenery since the weather was so appallingly good. And flying low like this, we could not be seen over the rims of the mountains. "I go where I'm looking," Roy said. He was in- 81 THE WAR IN CHINA venting a new route, to fit the weather conditions and the fact that Jap bombers were reported near Kunming and had to be given time to start for home. In America, transport planes fly on a radio beam. On the Clippers two officers do nothing but navigation, working at a table in a large cabin. Roy did his navigation in the cockpit with his sextant, maps, navigating tables, plotter, and Air Almanac bal­ anced on his lap. Finally it did not feel like traveling in a plane at all. We were wandering casually through the valleys, climbing to get over the mountains, dropping down again to look at a river or flying off our course to inspect a remote Chinese graveyard on the side of a hill. The DC-2 began to seem as personal and obedi­ ent as a horse. It was like riding a horse over the countryside. Then Roy said, "You know, there practically isn't a place you can land on this whole trip." There was nothing but the terraced fields broken with stone walls, and the mountains, and the narrow deep gorges of river beds. Behind us were mountains too. You could not see them when you passed over them in the dark, or through cloud, but they were there. To the north were stone mountains, rising up flat against the sky, with snow on their peaks. And southward were more mountains, purple and beautiful and going on forever. They were big mountains too, averaging 12,000 feet in height. It was not a country to have to come down m. We stopped at Kunming for gasoline and passengers. It was dusk and the Japanese had not been there today at all and would not come now. An American radio engineer who taught in the Chinese Aviation School at Kunming said he thought the Japs were student pilots, getting a little experience bombing an open town. He said they did pretty efficient bombing too, but of course there was no opposition. Then the last gasoline tin was rolled away empty and we took off again. We were going to fly over the high­ est mountains on the trip, in the dark as usual, in average-to-bad 82 --. - - . �-�1----1;' -- ..., I'll I � , HOW TO GET TO CHINA datI weather. No one took the weather seriously until one startled to � Chinese passenger bounced out of his seat into the aisle. We were flying at 14,000 feet and altitude jitters began to set n ili� in. You felt flushed and at the same time cold and you got cramps a��l� in your legs and stretched and shifted position and wondered what wltn �� was the matter with you. The DC-2 behaved as if it were a runaway n�� M roller coaster. The Chinese, who had been very gay when we left �\ant!t Kunming, quieted down. When you could see at all, you saw great Dln�t� round rings of fire on the mountains, where the peasants were burn- t a n\'� ing brush so that the rains could run down the cleared slopes to 'emooo irrigate their fields. It was weird and handsome: a vast blackness nao� suddenly breaking into lines and circles of red light. Then the 'Ilof, plane would drop and tip and we hung on to our chairs. I did not �\ale)� see the Lashio field until we landed on it. e tem� Shan men with long black dusty hair coiled and pinned up on enaITiji the tops of their heads, wearing skirtlike loincloths, took our lug- tOO,IOC gage into the airline office. The office was a bamboo hut lighted by eOl(: a kerosene lamp. A few sweating officials of mixed race and color 'erel!ij:: checked our passports. It was ten o'clock at night. We had been on ilic in the air for over twelve hours and had covered a distance greater o �uhl: than from Los Angeles to St. Louis. Only people do not travel by air from Los Angeles to St. Louis under such conditions. A polite voice says to you over the telephone, "The flight has been canceled." Under such conditions, people take a train or stay at home. We slept soundly on beds with boards instead of springs. In the morning we took hot baths in tin washtubs. We ate as well as could be expected. Then we set out to see the sights. Lashio is an Oriental boom town; the railroad from Rangoon ends here and the Burma Road into China begins. But the sights are limited: a lively dirty country fair, some barracks, a few wooden European­ style houses, native women washing themselves thoroughly but modestly at the public water taps, a collection of semiprecious /' I --. . . L / ',0 �.;'____"& -.--'�-::::= -:'. - - '.- -- THE WAR IN CHINA stones in an Indian jewelry store. (The Hindu shopkeeper said he did not keep good stones because it was too dangerous. "We have as much crime in Lashio as in Chicago," he said proudly. "Oh, terrible people." ) We went back to the airfield, which is half the size of a stand­ ard airfield in America. A neatly painted board set up outside the bamboo office stated that New York was 12,923 miles away, San Francisco 10,240 miles away. I thought of La Guardia Field as I watched Burmese men and women and oxen widening this field, leveling off the red clay to make room for the squadron of Aus­ tralian pursuit planes which will soon be stationed here. If the Second World War spreads this far, the railroad and the Burma highway will have protection. We sat in the sun and waited for a weather report. The report came. The weather was fine and twenty-seven Japanese planes were now bombing Kunming. We dozed and chatted until the all­ clear signal came through. We expected to arrive in Kunming just after the [aps left, and we would leave at dawn before they could come back. It takes one week in a passenger car, if all goes well, to drive over the Burma Road from Lashio to Kunming. But we could fly over those mountains, with a tail wind, in two hours and ten minutes. There was no hurry. The Burmese shouted to their oxen, and the sun was very hot. We were over Kunming, and from the plane all this destruction looked puny. (I remember the Italian pilot who had flown a bomber over Ethiopia, and his horror when he saw for the first time, in Helsinki, what a bomb was like when it landed.) Two columns of smoke rose from the center of the city. From the air you would not know how these smashed houses looked or sounded as they collapsed. From the air you would not hear anyone buried underneath them; you would not see the people who had lived in - - - . �-�-:-- .. �lll r � HOW TO GET TO CHINA d b� them and who now had nowhere to go. It is altogether unreal to bav� see the results of a bombing from above. liOn) Now the plane was down and we were going to the hotel. There were no lights in the bombed part of the city. We took rickshaws. �tan�· The coolies moaned steadily, saying, "Huh-huh, huh-huh," using Q�ili� their voices instead of taxi horns. We could smell the dust from the broken mud-brick houses, and the smoke from the houses that were still burning, and the crowd grew thicker. The rickshaw coolies moved slowly because paving stones had been loosened and flung over the street, and there were telephone and electric light wires coiling into the road. A crowd waited at the door of a big modern movie house. They were showing Kentucky, in Techni- � color. The Chinese stood in a dark, silent mass, waiting for the electricity to be repaired so that the movie machines would work. Behind a handsome old city gate with a carved roof and carved painted figures under the eaves, stretched one of the longest streets in Kunming, a street of small shops and homes, where people lived in mud-brick and timber houses, packed four and five to a room. Every house on this street had been hit. If you tripped in any of the holes made by bomb fragments, or got pinned against any of the fallen timbers, there was danger of being crushed. The narrow street was packed solid with Chinese: men wearing black or faded blue cotton clothes, a few women hobbling along on bound five-inch feet, peasant women in black pants and coats, with their hair in braids down their backs, children caught in the undertow. They all walked slowly, in silence. Gas mains had been hit, and cesspools, and underfoot the street sloshed in water from broken pipes. The miserable houses, suddenly cracked open, let out all their long store of dirt and smell. There was no air to breathe, and any time now these houses, sagging sideways on unsteady beams, or balanced against one firm wall, might slip down into the crowded street like an avalanche. You could hear the moving people, and you could hear 'II' I /-- . . . --.:.-----!t_t-----...::l! _ �- - -- -- ;' THE WAR IN CHINA hammers and the sound of shovels digging into hard mud or rock. All along the side of the street, by candlelight and the light of kerosene lanterns, the people were digging their way back into their bombed and ruined homes and hammering together torn boards to make some kind of roof and some kind of wall, some kind of shelter to live in. There was only the night to work. To­ morrow the Japanese would come back. Half a million people live in Kunming. When the air-raid warn­ ing sounds, they rush from the town without even locking up behind them. There are no bomb shelters in the city and no pro­ tection of any kind in these flimsy buildings, and there are no anti­ aircraft guns. They take to the hills and watch the Japanese bomb­ ers working over their empty city. Only the people who are too old or ill or disgusted to make the long daily trek stay behind, and get killed. So now, in the dark, the people had just returned from the safety of the open country, to see what twenty-seven Japanese bombers, dumping bombs weighing from 100 to 500 pounds, had done to their homes. We were staying at the Hotel de l'Europe, which had not yet been bombed. It was like a third-rate or perhaps fourth- or fifth­ rate hotel on the Riviera. It seemed splendid to us. The two proprietors were Greeks who had learned their French in Mar­ seille. The excitable, soiled one who never took his hat off ex­ plained the raids. "Madame," he said, "the warnings are correct here. Usually we have two or three hours' warning. Then we go to the country. Myself, I am tired of the country and of all the fra necessary exercise. However, it is also difficult to maintain a hotel under such conditions. These bandits [which is what most people can the Japanese] habitually bomb the city between ten and eleven in the morning. Today, however, the monsters chose to bomb at one o'clock and we had only forty minutes' warning. Some people were unable to leave in that time. Kunming was a very fine city, as 86 --. - - . �.�: ---" .. 1,111 I "" or rocK. ligbt 01 bacK lnt� etber torn wall, �Offi� o worK. T� li-raia IVdffi' locKin� ij1 'ana no rl� are no dn�, an�e �om� o are too ol� benlna, dfll eturnea ITO� yen Jdrd�N �unol,b: naonot\i urtn- OI�G m, The�: nen in �Ij: 11 nat o�� are (O!lt; en we �ot ooldllW­ 'ntain d �OIi mOlt rro�, nanoe1e1t. to OOffi�; �ome reo1ii , bne ri�'I� HOW TO GET TO CHINA healthy and agreeable a summer resort as you would find even in Switzerland." I said, since he was Greek, that he must be proud of his coun­ try. He rose and stood up straight and said formally, "We defend liberty, madame, as is our duty." We were drinking bottled water, which was a luxury and also a sensible thing to do, and I observed to Roy that it had been quite a day, quite two days in fact. But of course it was nothing remarkable to him. He has been flying in China for six years. Royal Leonard is thirty-five. The seven other American pilotswho fly this line are all about the same age, a little younger or a little older. They come from Texas and Ohio, California, Kansas, Maryland, Alabama and Indiana, and you would know they were Americans anywhere in the world. There was a ninth pilot, "Foxy" Kent from Louisiana. He would have been thirty-seven the day after he was killed. Kent was flying the regular passenger service between Kunming and Lashio when he got warning of a Japanese raid over Kun­ mingo He landed on an emergency field near Kunming to wait for the [aps to leave that area. Five Japanese planes had been bombing this emergency field. There was no radio to warn Kent, and the Jap planes, having dumped their loads, were already above the clouds, re-forming to take off for their base. The entire forma­ tion winged over and dove down through the cloud onto the CNAC plane just as it rolled to a stop. Kent was killed at once, shot through the chest by a projectile from a zo-mm, Japanese cannon. The Chinese co-pilot and radio operator climbed past him into the cabin and tried to make the passengers leave the plane. The passengers were terrified and re­ fused to move, believing that the plane itself offered protection. The two members of the crew, the stewardess and one passenger jumped from the plane. The co-pilot and the radio operator rolled to cover at the side of the field and lay still. They saw the steward- 87 --- --;�- -� -._- ---_ ---- THE WAR IN CHINA ess running from the plane. Her white nurse's uniform showed up clearly against the dusty brown of the field. A J ap plane saw her too and dove on her. She went down, halfway between the DC-2 and the fringe of bushes at the side of the field. She was shot through the legs. The [ap plane winged over and came back to give her two more bursts. They apparently did not want any sur­ vivors. The girl died eight hours later of her wounds, before they could get her to a hospital. All eleven passengers who stayed in the cabin were hit by machine-gun bullets and died before they could be moved from the plane. The Japanese officially stated that they thought the CNAC Douglas was a military plane. How could they be expected to see the markings or notice the woman in their hurry? CNAC gave up carrying stewardesses for four months. Otherwise the service went on uninterrupted. CNAC pilots accept the same risks as bomber pilots, only they are not protected by pursuit planes and they are not armed. You never know whether they will come back, until you see them. For two weeks now, a DC-2 and its pilot, co-pilot and radio opera­ tor have been missing. The pilot, Joy Thorn, a Chinese-American from Los Angeles, was carrying a load of eleven million Chinese dollars to Chungking. He set out on a bad night, as usual, and nothing more was heard of him. Rumors began to go around the Hong Kong bars, not nice talk, the kind that is easy to make if people are sitting in comfortable chairs with no greater risk than that of choking on a Scotch-and-soda. The other CNAC pilots did not argue, but they were disgusted with this talk. They knew Thorn. He was the youngest of the senior pilots and a fine man. Patrol planes could find nothing. The serial numbers of the banknotes had been listed, and a few days ago a peasant woman bought some food in Kweilin with one of those notes. She was questioned and they traced her back to a village in the mountains. Then the patrol planes went out again. They found scattered pieces of the plane, and three bodies. 88 in ili�l mon�, HOW TO GET TO CHINA Joy Thorn, off his course in the fog, had crashed into a mountain. It has happened before. Six pilots have been lost in the last year; the mountains accounted for four of them. A Chinese friend, explaining the CNAC pilots, said, "Those men are all in love with flying." That would have to be true. They love to fly and here they do a flying that is never the same; all de­ cisions are their own; they are free men in the air. They earn a thousand dollars a month, but many people might feel that a thousand dollars a trip was not enough to pay for such risks. They may also have grown into China. China is full of foreigners who were never able to leave, once a love of the country started working in them. And then this whole outfit has been tied together by com­ mon difficulties and hardships and danger. As long as the job goes on, they stick with it and with each other. It is as if they had signed up together for the duration of a war. We left Kunming at six-thirty in the morning and flew through cloud that was like volcanic white soup. All the passengers who were not airsick slept. It was generally agreed that this was excel­ lent flying weather. In Chungking we were to pick up a representa­ tive of President Roosevelt and his staff, three high Chinese govern­ ment officials, and a U.S. military attache. It was valuable cargo. We would wait at the Chungking field until the weather was bad enough to fly on to Hong Kong; or we would time ourselves to cross the Japanese lines after dark. In three days, this plane had flown twice the distance from Chicago to San Francisco. The trip had been a biweekly routine performance. Since the start of the Sino-Japanese war, flying a total distance of 12,090 air miles every week, CNAC has had only thirty-seven casualties. And it has lost passengers in only two accidents; the Japanese made those ac­ cidents. To the people who work for it CNAC is a company, organized ---- -�-� f'.s _._-- - -_ THE WAR IN CHINA according to Chinese law, that flies mail and passengers and freight in and out of China. To everyone else it is the third of China's great lifelines. The Burma Road is 1,407 miles of narrow dirt sur­ face spiraling over high mountains from Lashio to Chungking. Barring accidents, it takes trucks two weeks to bring in heavy freight. The other road, from Urumchi on the Russian border to Chungking, is 2,7°0 miles long, and trucks must carry their own gasoline, as well as their load of airplane parts, arms and munitions. The trip from Urumchi to Chungking cannot take less than six weeks. CNAC keeps the capital of free China within three hours' reach of the outside world. CNAC is China's lifeline for brains, money and mail; no government can function without these. An average of ten million Chinese dollars, printed in England or America, is flown every night to Chungking. Medical supplies for the Red Cross are flown in, and wolfram ore is flown out, to be shipped to America in part payment of the China loan. All diplo­ matic documents travel on these planes; the reports of foreign ambassadors, the instructions of the Chinese government to its representatives abroad, the mass of written paper that is necessary to the supplying and financing of a country at war. When Madame Chiang Kai-shek or any ministers of the government come to Hong Kong, CNAC flies them. When officials of foreign govern­ ments are sent on missions to Chungking, they go by CNAC. The shortest road into China is kept open by eight American pilots and five American planes. Without heroics, they do the most dangerous commercial flying in the world. The red-haired Virginian who runs the show said, "The only way to make these planes absolutely safe is to keep them on the ground. The same applies to the RAF." eight , , ma� It �U!· gbn�, heary rae! t� 1I own nitiom, han III hou�' braill\1 The Canton Front En�\��ij lu��\iti March 1941 ut, t�� A\\ai�\� � WE CLIMBED up the riverbank, slipping in the mud. A platoon HOlti� of Chinese soldiers stood in the rain alongside a bamboo shelter. Eight men were lined up facing the platoon. They wore large coni­ cal straw hats which served as umbrellas, yellow oilcloth jackets, shorts and straw sandals. These were the stable coolies. Seven of them held the bridles of seven horses slightly larger than Shetland ponies. The eighth coolie held the bridle of a former Hong Kong race horse; it had been captured from the Japanese. It was horse­ size. The soldiers, the coolies and the horses shivered with cold, and water dripped from them onto the mushy field. We took the salute of the waterlogged platoon and mounted our horses. My horse, kicking like a baby with a tantrum, knocked down our interpreter, who landed in the mud. Whenever these miniature horses misbehave, the coolies hit them on the nose and scream at them and the horses squeal and try to bite the coolies. In the midst of this a bugle brassed out something unrecognizable. We set off in single file on a path seemingly made of a mixture of grease and glue. Each coolie ran ahead of the horse he had been --.. ---- " / THE SECOND WORLD WAR undersized men. We decided that these prisoners must be a labor battalion or something of the sort; there was no sense in imagining the entire Wehrmacht would turn out to be five feet four and hangdog. We studied the line of prisoners, trying to understand, trying to see in those faces what had happened to the world. But it was no use; it was hopeless. In one row there was a boy of not more than seventeen; beside him stood a man we instantly named the Gnome, who looked at least forty-five and seemed under five feet in height. The whole lot was so motley, so unimposing, so ab­ ject that finally we wanted only to get out so as not to have to look at them any more. American stretcher-bearers filed on board to carry off the wounded. All the ambulance companies here were colored troops and I had watched them that day doing an admirable, swift, gentle job. When they came on board, the German lieutenant looked at them with a curious expression for one instant, and then his face resumed the studied indifferent half-smile. "What do you know," the redheaded American soldier mur­ mured. "The Aryans got to depend on a slave race. That's right, ain't it, that's what they said the colored people were?" The stretcher-bearers took off the wounded, competently, si­ lently, with no change in their manner. They seemed not to be noticing what they were handling. They did their job as they were trained to do. There was a strange atmosphere on the quay, where we stood waiting for the last prisoners to be marched to the prisoner-of­ war camp and for the wounded to be taken to hospital. We were almost whispering among ourselves and there was no kind of gloat­ ing or triumph. Fatigue, as thick as dust, marked everyone's face and showed in the way everyone walked and stood. And an inde­ finable sadness hung about us. Fe all felt jt· it was as if we looked at these poor specimeps of humanjty and thought· here !Lt� lowest common denominator of destruction, the world has been DealaOOI ima�iniijl : four �� mderltaij� worlQ, ��I iYJrohm lIrmm� unOfr �\1 'n&d vetoloof D-PLUS-ONE: THE PRISONERS an hurt f�r four an.i_'!_half .years by wretched p�ple "It doesn't seem true," a man next to me said. He was an American Navy lieutenant who supervised this loading ramp. "When you look at them, it doesn't seem true." Suddenly the inside of the ship came to life. Incomprehensible orders were shouted in English and the line of prisoners started to move rapidly from the oblong steel cave of the ship out into the dark. Their boots made a loud cheerful ring on the steel floor and the orders sounded nice and lively, and the British crew, who were hanging to the side of the ship like boys hanging on a fence to watch a baseball game, began to shout to each other and to the prisoners, We could not understand a word but there was laugh­ ter and whistling and all the sadness had gone. One of the crew called to a German soldier who passed at the end of the column and waved his hand. The German turned, smiled, hastily stepped out of line, and the British sailor and the German soldier shook hands. We were amazed by this and no one was pleased and we asked the sailor why he did it. The sailor was as surprised by our question as we had been by his handshaking. "We took care of him coming over," the sailor explained. "He's a Pole. There were four Poles and a Russian in with that lot. One of the Jerries tried to take food away from that Pole, and the Russian flattened the Jerry against the side of the ship and afterward we sort of took care of the Poles." They started loading the LST at once, and where prisoners had been they now rolled in tanks. The next day prisoners became a common occurrence; they seemed to be pouring in on every landing ramp. We were watching a column of prisoners march from the quay to the prisoners' camp. At an intersection of the road a line of American tanks waited for the prisoners to clear so that they could move onto an LST and cross to France. Every prisoner in the long column turned to look 137 i I / .: J_-t-_�"!o __.. ---- .1'-- ��:&i THE SECOND WORLD WAR at those tanks. None of them spoke; they looked at those tanks with a kind of solemn respectful wonder. At the end of this contingent of prisoners there were four Ger­ man soldiers carrying weekend suitcases. This baffled us; it seemed incredible to be all packed up and ready for capture and then to arrive in England with luggage. It was the first comic note in the day. The Geneva Convention forbids the press to question pris­ oners of war, in order to spare them the shame of publicity, so we could not ask what was in those suitcases. They remain a minor and laughable mystery. The German wounded who came with the walking prisoners were taken, by the sure-handed, quiet and beautifully efficient colored corpsmen and ambulance drivers, to American hospitals in the countryside beyond the port. One of these hospitals had been freshly painted and had bright royal-blue curtains for the blackout and it seemed, after the uproar of the landing ramps, an improbable haven of peace. Here, in a ward which was momentar­ ily striped with sun, lay a double row of wounded Germans, al­ ready washed and wearing regulation flannel hospital pajamas. The American medical officer in charge of the hospital was making the rounds, checking up on his new enemy patients. By a magnificent irony, the Germans who had relied on the ability and gentleness of colored stretcher-bearers and colored )lmbulance drivers now relied on the wisdom and decency of a Jewish doctor. I was moved and proud, and perhaps at this dis­ tance it will be hard to explain to you who are reading this just _ how moving it was. We had seen for two days the Allied wounded coming back and we had seen terrible things. There are no people near to this war who have any patience in their hearts for the Germans. So none of us felt as we would naturally feel toward any other human beings in pain. But, without that feeling, the Jewish doctor carefully and sincerely prepared to give his best attention to the enemy. �nl��ffi r �ffiol1:! • n�lri�li �i�B l� lid D-PLUS-ONE: THE PRISONERS The Germans watched the doctor coming in. No one knows what they have been told by their propaganda chiefs; no one knows what they expect to have happen to them at our hands. They lay and waited and they were a scared bunch of men. They saw at once that they had nothing to fear. From silence they launched quickly into very involved complaints: they hurt in this place and in that place; there was a steady flow of German which I was attempting to understand and translate. As none of them was seriously wounded, the doctor listened impassively, asked questions, waited until he was sure that he had got the exact answer, and then prescribed the necessary treatment. We came presently to a bed where a German soldier was sitting up, staring around like, an inquisitive but frightened Pekingese. In every group of men there is a clown, and this was the man. He was an involuntary clown, and though none of us was feeling warmhearted we stopped to grin at this man. His name was Otto, which some­ how added to his comedy value, and his ears grew at right angles to a lined, apologetic, good-natured and stupid face. He wore glasses and he looked about forty-eight years old. He announced firmly that he was thirty-six. "He must have worried a lot," the doctor said musingly. Otto had a slight bayonet wound in his shoulder and he was full of conversation. The other Germans perked up listening to Otto, who was evidently the joke man of the outfit. Now they were laughing and talking between the beds and the doctor could not hear what Otto was saying about his wound and there was too much noise. The doctor said to me, "Tell them to be quiet." I could think only of a very polite way to say this, and I said it very politely and to Otto alone. The man in the next bed barked out an order. "Ruhig!" he commanded as if we were all back in Germany, in that sort of voice. From gaiety and taking everything for granted, such silence descended on that ward that you could have heard a pin drop. The doctor and I looked at each other, 139 'I 1 / � it I / '�-----.o&-_-��__Jo _ . � -_ - - _ _ _ � , ==� / THE SECOND WORLD WAR and there was an expression of contempt and despair in his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. But I believe we were thinking the same thing: They take advantage or they take orders, there is nothing in between. The doctor went on, patient and careful, and all his knowledge and all the fine equipment of the hospital was given into the service of these Germans. But when the doctor had finished with the ward, and we walked out into the corridor, you could see that he felt relief and that the nurses too were glad to leave that ward for a few moments, These Germans were sim 1 not eo Ie . as no common place w ere we could meet. It was more than a Ian ua e barrier -our mm s were una i e. When e e next ward am stopped to ask an American boy how he felt, a boy who had been badly burned when his landing craft was hit on the beaches, we knew we were home again "NeFer felt better," said the boy, through his bandages. "Do we �et ice cream here, poe?;' - I he doctor asked me what one of the Germans had wanted when he called me over to his bed. This man had wanted to know what the value of a hundred French francs was in English pounds. It had seemed an odd question and a puzzling one and too hard to answer, as it would mean explaining to the German that you can't get away with everything forever, and you can't expect to trade false inflation money, imposed on a defeated nation, for good money that free men have earned. I had told the German that his money was without value here, as it came from a different bank. He did not like this idea and seemed to feel cheated. "Can you beat it?" the doctor said. He was walking quickly as it was a big hospital and wounded were coming in all the time. "Do you really suppose it takes all kinds to make a world?" the doctor asked, and smiled at me. -.-- -- . - �-�'" I his e��, elieve W� theyMt on, �ti�ijl ui�mentijl all), The First Hospital Ship Tune 1944 � THERE WERE four hundred and twenty-two bunks covered with ahijt� new blankets, and a bright, clean, well-equipped operating room, ��nt�t� never before used. Great cans marked "Whole Blood" stood on the in En�lli! decks. Plasma bottles and supplies of drugs and bales of bandages �oul were stored in handy places. Everything was ready and any moment e Genn�� the big empty hospital ship would be leaving for France. rou ��'I The ship itself was painfully white. The endless varied ships teananij�, clotted in this English invasion port were gray or camouflaged and eG�nn�� they seemed to have the right idea. We, on the other hand, were all aQi&rl�t fixed up like a sitting pigeon. Our ship was snowy white with a green line running along the sides below the deck rail, and with �ui�lpl many bright new red crosses painted on the hull and painted flat ili� tim(, on the boat deck. We were to travel alone, and there was not so rW'I�1 much as a pistol on board in the way of armament, and neither the English crew and ship's officers nor the American medical person­ nel had any notion of what happened to large conspicuous white ships when they appeared at a war, though everyone knew the Geneva agreement concerning such ships and everyone wistfully II I /.._;- __ �Lrr--� � __-& __ _ . ___. ---- � . ,I THE SECOND WORLD WAR hoped that the Germans would take the said agreement seriously.There were six nurses aboard. They came from Texas and Michi­ gan and California and Wisconsin, and three weeks ago they werein the U.S.A. completing their training for this overseas assignment.They had been prepared to work on a hospital train, which would mean caring for wounded in sensible, steady railway carriages that move slowly through the green English countryside. Instead ofwhich they found themselves on a ship, and they were about to move across the dark, cold green water of the Channel. This sud­ den switch in plans was simply part of the day's work and each one,in her own way, got through the grim business of waiting for theunknown to start, as elegantly as she could. It was very elegant in­deed, especially if you remembered that no one aboard had ever been on a hospital ship before, so the helpful voice of experience was lacking. We had pulled out of the harbor in the night, but we crossed by daylight and the morning seemed longer than other mornings.The captain never left the bridge and, all alone and beautifullywhite, we made our way through a mine-swept lane in the Channel. The only piece of news we had, so far, was that the two hospital ships which preceded us struck mines on their way over, fortu­ nately before they were loaded with wounded soldiers and without serious damage to the personnel aboard. Everyone silently hopedthat three would be a lucky number; and we waited very hard; and there was nothing much to see except occasional ships passing at adistance. Then we saw the coast of France and suddenly we were in the midst of the armada of the invasion. People will be writing about this sight for a hundred years and whoever saw it will never forget it. First it seemed incredible; there could not be so many shipsin the world. Then it seemed incredible as a feat of planning; ifthere were so many ships, what genius it required to get them here, what amazing and unimaginable genius. After the first shock t �erioulI1' ann Midi. the� Wfft a��i�nmfijl. hieb wow� rria�� lij�: lll!!ea� �I re aOOijl!� ]. Thill��. Q eacn Oij� 'n� lor�t el�ntill. anaQ�e �tij(t THE FIRST HOSPITAL SHIP of wonder and admiration, one began to look around and see separate details. There were destroyers and battleships and trans­ ports, a floating city of huge vessels anchored before the green cliffs of Normandy. Occasionally you would see a gun flash or perhaps only hear a distant roar, as naval guns fired far over those hills. Small craft beetled around in a curiously jolly way. It looked like a lot of fun to race from shore to ships in snub-nosed boats beating up the spray. It was no fun at all, considering the mines and obstacles that remained in the water, the sunken tanks with only their radio antennae showing above water, the drowned bodies that still floated past. On an LeT near us washing was hung up on a line, and between the loud explosions of mines being detonated on the beach dance music could be heard coming from its radio. Barrage balloons, always looking like comic toy elephants, bounced in the high wind above the massed ships, and invisible planes droned behind the gray ceiling of cloud. Troops were unloading from big ships to heavy cement barges or to light craft, and on the shore, moving up four brown roads that scarred the hillside, our tanks clanked slowly and steadily forward. Then we stopped noticing the invasion, the ships, the ominous beach, because the first wounded had arrived. An LeT drew alongside our ship, pitching in the waves; a soldier in a steel hel­ met shouted up to the crew at the aft rail, and a wooden box looking like a lidless coffin was lowered on a pulley, and with the greatest difficulty, bracing themselves against the movement of their boat, the men on the LeT laid a stretcher inside the box. The box was raised to our deck and out of it was lifted a man who was closer to being a boy than a man, dead white and seemingly dying. The first wounded man to be brought to that ship for safety and care was a German prisoner. Everything happened at once. We had six water ambulances, light motor launches, which swung down from the ship's side and could be raised the same way when full of wounded. They carried II I / �____j__l �� _ . ---- - . I THE SECOND WORLD WAR six litter cases apiece or as many walking wounded as could be crowded into them. Now they were being lowered, with shouted orders: "That beach over there where they've got two red stream­ ers up." "Just this side of Easy Red." We lay at anchor halfway between those now famous and unhealthy beaches, Easy Red and Dog Red. "Take her in slow." "Those double round things that look like flat spools are mines." "You won't clear any submerged tanks, so look sharp." "Ready?" "Lower her!" The captain came down from the bridge to watch this. He was feeling cheerful, and he now remarked, "I got us in all right but God knows how we'll ever get out." He gestured toward the ships that were as thick around us as cars in a parking lot. "Worry about that some other time." The stretcher-bearers, who were part of the American medical personnel, started on their long back-breaking job. By the end of that trip their hands were padded with blisters and they were practically hospital cases themselves. For the wounded had to be carried from the shore into our own water ambulances or into other craft, raised over the side, and then transported down the winding stairs of this converted pleasure ship to the wards. The ship's crew became volunteer stretcher-bearers instantly. Wounded were pouring in now, hauled up in the lidless coffin or swung aboard in the motor ambulances; and finally an LST tied alongside and made itself into a sort of landing jetty, higher than the light craft that ran the wounded to us, but not as high as our deck. So the wounded were lifted by men standing on the LST, who raised the stretchers high above their heads and handed them up to men on our deck, who caught hold of the stretcher handles. It was a fast, terrifying bucket-brigade system, but it worked. Belowstairs all partitions had been torn out and for three decks the inside of the ship was a vast ward with double tiers of bunks. The routine inside the ship ran marvelously, though four doctors, six nurses and about fourteen medical orderlies were very few coulQ � h �hout� ect �tr�m, or ndl�\di Rea �ij� nin�� tml !uDmer�oo r into �I�� the lVin�i�; The l�il'j unoea \\,�f( un� aOOdf� n�lioe ��� li�flt trill eck�lli( whornilro u� tOIDrn ,It\\'a)d ur Qod�rl, I'eryle» THE FIRST HOSPITAL SHIP people to care for four hundred wounded men. From two o'clock one afternoon until the ship docked in England again the next evening at seven, none of the medical personnel stopped work. And besides plasma and blood transfusions, re-dressing of wounds, examinations, administering of sedatives or opiates or oxygen and all the rest, operations were performed all night long. �ne soldier died on that ship and he had come aboard as a hopeless case. will be hard to tell you of the wounded, there were so many of them. There was no time to talk; there was too much else to do. They had to be fed, as most of them had not eaten for two days; shoes and clothing had to be cut off; they wanted water; the nurses and orderlies, working like demons, had to be found and called quickly to a bunk where a man suddenly and desperately needed attention; plasma bottles must be watched; cigarettes had to be lighted and held for those who could not use their hands; it seemed to take hours to pour hot coffee, via the spout of a teapot, into a mouth that just showed through bandages. But the wounded talked among themselves and as time went on we got to know them, by their faces and their wounds, not their names. They were a magnificent enduring bunch of men. Men smiled who were in such pain that all they really can have wanted to do was turn their heads away and cry, and men made jokes when they needed their strength just to survive. And all of them looked after each other, saying, "Give that boy a drink of water," or "Miss, see that Ranger over there, he's in bad shape, could you go to him?" All through the ship men were asking after other men by name, anxiously, wondering if they were on board and how they were doing. On A deck in a bunk by the wall lay a very young lieutenant. He had a bad chest wound and his face was white and he lay too still. Suddenly he raised himself on his elbow and looked straight ahead of him, as if he did not know where he was. His eyes were - It I / ,,� _ ______..J'--_"!o __ . -- ---- � THE SECOND WORLD WAR full of horror and he did not speak. Later he spoke. He had been wounded the first day, had lain out in a field and then crawled back to our lines, sniped at by the Germans. He realized now that a German, badly wounded also in the chest, shoulder and legs, layin the bunk behind him. The gentle-faced boy said very softly,because it was hard to speak, "I'd kill him if I could move." After that he did not speak for a long time; he was given oxygen and later operated on, so that he could breathe. The man behind him was a nineteen-year-old Austrian. He had fought for a year in Russia and half a year in France; he had been home for six days during this time. I thought he would die when he first came on board, but he got better. In the early morninghours he asked whether wounded prisoners were exchanged, wouldhe ever get home again? I told him that I did not know about these arrangements but that he had nothing to fear, as he could see.s The A:u��!an sai " �" . d "So man wounded men,all wounded�ll a me. Wh ver fou achother?" Perha s b om a entler race his e es werefuH oftears. He was the only wounded German prisoner on boardwho showed any normal human reaction to this disaster. An Amencan soldier on that same deck had a head wound so horrible that he was not moved. Nothing could be done for him and anything, any touch, would have made him worse. The next morning he was drinking coffee. His eyes looked very dark and strange, as if he had been a long way away, so far away that healmost could not get back. His face was set in lines of weariness and pain, but when asked how he felt, he said he was okay. He was never known to say anything more; he asked for nothingand made no complaint, and perhaps he will live too. On the next deck there were many odd and wonderful men who were less badly wounded and talked more. It was all professionaltalk: where they had landed, at what time, what opposition theyhad met, how they had got out, when they were wounded, how 146 THE FIRST HOSPITAL SHIP haa �tt: that happened. They spoke of the snipers, and there was endless talk about the women snipers, none of the talk very clear but everyone believing it. There were no French officers with these men, who could have interpreted, and the Americans never knew what the villagers were saying. Two men who thought they were ve,"iw, being volubly invited into an old woman's house to eat dinner anQ�:t were actually being warned of snipers in the attic; they somehow caught on to this fact in time. They were all baffled by the French ,Htt and surprised by how much food there was in Normandy, forget- naQ�: ting that Normandy is one of the great food-producing areas of rufW�:: France. They thought the girls in the villages were amazingly mo� well dressed. Everything was confused and astounding: first there were the deadly bleak beaches and then the villages where they were greeted with flowers and cookies and often snipers and booby traps. A French boy of seventeen lay in one of the bunks; he had been wounded in the back by a shell fragment. He lived and worked on his father's land, but he said the Germans had burned their house as they left. Two of the American boys in bunks alongside were worried about him. They were afraid he'd be scared, a civilian kid all alone and in pain and not knowing any English and going to a strange country. They ignored tlieir respective smashed knee and smashed shoulder and worried about the French kid. The French boy was very much a man and very tight-lipped, and he made no complaints and kept his anxiety inside himself though it showed in his eyes. His family was still there in the battle zone and he did not know what had happened to them or how he would ever get back. The American soldiers said, "You tell that kid he's a better soldier than that Heinie in the bunk next to him." We did not ljke this Heinie who was eighteen years old \ and the most demanding Master Race aboard Finally there was a crisp little scene when he told the orderly to move him as he was uncomfortable and the orderly said no, he would bleed if moved, THE SECOND WORLD WAR and when I explained the German said angrily, "How long, then, am I to lie here in pain in this miserable position?" I asked the orderly what to say and the orderly answered, "Tell him there are a lot of fine boys on this ship lying in worse pain in worse posi­ tions." The American soldiers in the bunks around said, "What a Heinie," wearily, and then they began wondering how they'd find their old units again and how soon they'd get mail. When night came, the water ambulances were still churning in to the beach looking for wounded. Someone on an LeT had shouted out that there were maybe a hundred scattered along there somewhere. It was essential to try to get them aboard before the nightly air raid and before the dangerous dark cold could eat into their hurt bodies. Going in to shore, unable to see, and not knowing this tricky strip of water, was slow work. Two of the launch crew, armed with boat hooks, hung over the side of the boat and stared at the black water, looking for obstacles, sunken vehicles, mines, and kept the hooks ready to push us off the sand as we came closer in. For the tides were a nasty business too, and part of the time wounded had to be ferried out to the water am­ bulances on men's shoulders, and part of the time the water am­ bulances simply grounded and stuck on the beach together with other craft, stranded by the fast-moving sea. We finally got onto a cement troop barge near the beach called Easy Red. The water ambulance could not come inshore near enough to be of any use at this point, so it left us to look for a likelier anchorage farther down. We waded ashore in water to our waists, having agreed that we would assemble the wounded from this area on board a beached LST and wait until the tide allowed the water ambulance to come back and call for us. It was almost dark by now and there was a terrible feeling of work­ ing against time. Everyone was violently busy on that crowded dangerous shore. 148 .-- --- - _rr�� THE FIRST HOSPITAL SHIP The pebbles were the size of melons and we stumbled up a road that a huge road shovel was scooping out. We walked with the utmost care between the narrowly placed white tape lines that marked the mine-cleared path, and headed for a tent marked with a Red Cross just behind the beach. Ducks * and tanks and trucks were moving down this narrow rocky road and one stepped just a little out of their way, but not beyond the tapes. The dust that rose in the gray night light seemed like the fog of war itself. Then we got off on the grass and it was perhaps the most surprising of all the day's surprises to smell the sweet smell of summer grass, a smell of cattle and peace and the sun that had warmed the earth some other time when summer was real. Inside the Red Cross tent two tired unshaven dirty polite young men said that the trucks were coming in here with the wounded and where did we want to have them unloaded? We explained the problem of the tides and said the best thing was to run the trucks down to that LST there and carry the wounded aboard, under the canvas roof covering, and we would get them off as soon as any­ thing floated. At this point a truck jolted up and the driver shouted out a question and was told to back and turn. He did not need to be told to do this carefully and not get off the mine-cleared area. The Red Cross men said they didn't know whether wounded would be coming in all night or not-it was pretty tough to trans­ port them by road in the dark; anyway they'd send everything down to our agreed meeting place and everyone said, well good luck fella, and we left. No one wasted time talking around there. You had a feeling of fierce and driven activity, with the night only being harder to work in than the day. We returned to our small unattractive stretch of the beach and directed the unloading of this truck. The tide was coming in and there was a narrow strip of water between the landing ramp of the * Amphibious jeeps. THE SECOND WORLD WAR LST and the shore. The wounded were carried carefully and laid on the deck inside the great whale's-mouth cavern of the LST. After that there was a pause, with nothing to do. Some American soldiers came up and began to talk. This had been an ugly pieceof beach from the beginning and they were still here, living infoxholes and supervising the unloading of supplies. They spoke ofsnipers in the hills a hundred yards or so behind the beach, and no one lighted a cigarette. They spoke of not having slept at all,but they seemed pleased by the discovery that you could go with­out sleep and food and still function all right. Everyone agreedthat the beach was a stinker and it would be a great pleasure toget the hell out of here sometime. Then there was the usual in­ evitable comic American conversation: "Where're you from?"This always fascinates me; there is no moment when an American does not have time to look for someone who knows his home town. We talked about Pittsburgh and Rosemont Pa. and Chicago andCheyenne, not saying much except that they were sure swell places and a damn sight better than this beach. One of the sol­ diers remarked that they had a nice little foxhole about fifty yardsinland and we were very welcome there when the air raid started if we didn't mind eating sand, which was unavoidable in their nice little foxhole. A stretcher-bearer from the hospital ship thanked them for their kind invitation and said that on the other hand we had guestsaboard the LST and we would have to stay home this evening. Iwish I had ever known his name because I would like to write it down here. He was one of the best and jolliest boys I've met any place, any time. He joked no matter what happened, and towardthe end of that night we really began to enjoy ourselves. There is a point where you feel yourself so small and helpless in such an enor­ mous insane nightmare of a world, that you cease to give a hootabout anything and you renounce care and start laughing.He went off to search for the water ambulances and returned THE FIRST HOSPITAL SHIP to say there wasn't a sign of them, which meant they couldn't get inshore yet and we'd just have to wait and hope they could find this spot when it was black night. If they never found this place the LST would float later, and the British captain said he would run our wounded out to the hospital ship, though it would not be for hours. Suddenly our flak started going up at the far end of the beach and it was beautiful, twinkling as it burst in the sky, and the tracers were as lovely as they always are-and no one took pleasure from the beauty of the scene. "We've had it now," said the stretcher-bearer. "There isn't any place we can put those wounded." I asked one of the soldiers, just for interest's sake, what they did in case of air raids and he said, well, you could go to a foxhole if you had time, but on the other hand there wasn't really much to do. So we stood and watched and there was alto­ gether too much flak for comfort. We could not hear the planes nor hear any bomb explosions but as everyone knows flak is a bad thing to have fall on your head. The soldiers now drifted off on their own business and we boarded the LST to keep the wounded company. It seemed a spe­ cially grim note to be wounded in action and then have to lie helpless under a strip of canvas while any amount of steel frag­ ments, to say nothing of bombs, could drop on you and complete the job. The stretcher-bearer and I said to each other gloomily that as an air-raid shelter far better things than the hold of an LST had been devised, and we went inside, not liking any of it and feeling miserably worried about our wounded. The wounded looked pretty bad and lay very still; and in the light of one bare bulb, which hung from a girder, we could not see them well. Then one of them began to moan and he said something. He was evidently conscious enough to notice this ghastly racket that was going on above us. The Oerlikons of our LST now opened fire and the noise inside the steel hold was as if your own eardrums were being drilled with a rivet. The wounded lly aua I�I or the � eAmeri� n u�lr ri�; re, li�n�i: � ��t�� e Deacn,�: � �Ie�t �t t ula �o �i� ryone ��r�: t �ltJ�m� i tile U�lldl i. Joulwm' anAmf� nometool ilita�o d�: �ure �'(: 01 toe �:. tDlcy�::' raia !�rr�: ilieir �icr I 1 /- Ii '0 -----=i:-_---1Io _ . ---- - / - �� THE SECOND WORLD WAR man called out again and I realized that he was speaking German. We checked up then and found that we had an LST full of wounded Germans and the stretcher-bearer said, "Well, that is just dandy, by golly, if that isn't the payoff." Then he said, "If anything hits this ship, dammit, they deserve it." The ack-ack lifted a bit and the stretcher-bearer climbed to the upper deck, like Sister Anne on the tower, to see where in God's name those water ambulances were. I clambered like a very awk­ ward monkey up a ladder to the galley to get some coffee and so missed the spectacle of two German planes falling like fiery comets from the sky. They hit the beach to the right and left of us and burned in huge bonfires which lighted up the shore. The beach, in this light, looked empty of human life, cluttered with dark square shapes of tanks and trucks and jeeps and ammunition boxes and all the motley equipment of war. It looked like a vast uncanny black-and-red flaring salvage dump, whereas once upon a time people actually went swimming here for pleasure. Our LST crew was delighted because they believed they had brought down one of the German planes and everyone felt cheer­ ful about the success of the ack-ack, A soldier shouted from shore that we had shot down four planes in all and it was nice work, by God. The wounded were silent and those few who had their eyes open had very frightened eyes. They seemed to be listening with their eyes, and fearing what they would hear. The night, like the morning, went on longer than other nights. Our water ambulances found us, and there was a lot of good in­ comprehensible Cockney talk among the boatmen while the wounded were loaded from the now floating LST to the small, buck­ ing launch. We set out, happy because we were off the beach and because the wounded would be taken where they belonged. The trip across that obstacle-studded piece of water was a chatty affair, due to the boat crew. "Crikey, mate, wot yer trying ter do, ram a gGellllll ST full, ell,ili1t: he �aiQ I,'" ammunil,: d l�� 1 Ii' once u��, ea ili�r ill: e felt r�IT' from !�[: ice wor�� aa tn�ir�c )teoin� �i� tnerni�b of �roJ[, wni11 �! �mall,�ijcr' eDeJrn�! on��a, n� na��1 rao,roml THE FIRST HOSPITAL SHIP destroyer?" And "By God, man, keep an eye in yer head for God's sake that's a tank radio pole." To which another answered, "Expect me to see a bloody piece of grass in this dark?" So, full of conver­ sation, we zigzagged back to the hospital ship and were at last swung aboard. The raid had been hard on the wounded in the wards of the ship, because of the terrible helplessness of being unable to move. The ship seemed to lie directly under a cone of ack-ack fire, and perhaps it would have been easier if the wounded had heard the German planes, so that, at least through their ears, they would know what was happening. The American medical personnel, most of whom had never been in an air raid, tranquilly continued their work, asked no questions, showed no sign even of interest in this uproar, and handed out confidence as if it were a solid thing like bread. If anyone had come fresh to that ship in the night, someone unwounded, not attached to the ship, he would have been ap­ palled. It began to look entirely Black-Hole-of-Ca1cutta, because it was airless and ill lit. Piles of bloody clothing had been cut off and dumped out of the way in corners; coffee cups and cigarette stubs littered the decks; plasma bottles hung from cords, and all the fearful surgical apparatus for holding broken bones made shadows on the walls. There were wounded who groaned in their sleep or called out and there was the soft steady hum of conver­ sation among the wounded who could not sleep. That is the way it would have looked to anyone seeing it fresh-a ship carrying a load of pain, with everyone waiting for daylight, everyone hoping for the anchor to be raised, everyone longing for England. It was that but it was something else too; it was a safe ship no matter what happened to it. We were together and we counted on each other. We knew that from the British captain to the pink-cheeked little London mess boy everyone of the ship's company did his 153 'I I / - I t I,�_�� :!t __ . ---- THE SECOND WORLD WAR job tirelessly and wen. The wounded knew that the doctors and nurses and orderlies belonged to them utterly and would not fail them. And an of us knew that our own wounded were good men and that with their amazing help, their selflessness and self-control, we would get through all right. The wounded looked much better in the morning. The human machine is the most delicate and rare of all, and it is Obviously built to survive, if given half a chance. The ship moved steadily across the Channel and we could feel England coming nearer. Then the coast came into sight and the green of England looked quite different from the way it had looked only two days ago; it looked cooler and clearer and wonderfully safe. The beaches along this coast were only lovely yellow sand. The air of England flowed down through the wards and the wounded seemed to feel it. The sound of their voices brightened and sharpened, and they began making dates with each other for when they would be on con­ valescent leave in London. We saw again the great armada of the invasion, waiting or moving out toward France. This vast directed strength seemed more like an act of nature than a thing men alone could manage. The captain shouted down from the bridge, "Look at it! By God, just look at it!" American ambulance companies were waiting on the pier, the same efficient swift colored troops I had seen working on the piers and landing ramps before we left. On the quay there were confer­ ences of important shore personages and our captain and the chief medical officer; and a few of us, old-timers by now, leaned over the rail and joked about being back in the paper-work de­ partment again. Everyone felt happy and you could see it in all their faces. The head nurse, smiling though gray with weariness, said, "We'll do it better next time." As the first wounded were carried from the ship the chief medi- THE FIRST HOSPITAL SHIP cal officer, watching them, said, "Made it." That was the great thing. Now they would restock their supplies, clean the ship, cover the beds with fresh blankets, sleep whatever hours they could, and then they would go back to France. But this first trip was rrt t done; this much was to the good; they had made it. ,1llellijIDi i� bD\i�� oVeQ �t�� min� lltlR �Iana 1001; aa� a��;: aLn��I� �lanQ ��� feel it hi tneJ�; De on ((I , I / - I � I,� -----=i�---..". _ • .,..._. ---- e. July 1944 The Carpathian Lancers= I � THIS FIELD grew huge dead cattle. They lay with their legs I poin ting up, and their open eyes were milky and enormous, and � \, I the air stank of their swollen bodies. We could not tell what had /� . killed them because we were driving too fast through a long tun-} nel of dust which was the road. Aside from the hideous dead animals everything looked lovely, with the Adriatic a flat turquoiseblue and the sky a flat china blue and the neat green hilly countryof the Marche ahead. The Major drove as usual like mad. There was plenty of dust in Italy all the time, but when he drove a roar­ ing surf of dust beat out behind us. We were going up to have a look at the front before lunch. We came to a village where the armored cars of the Third Squadron were stationed. They stood in the narrow side streets and were covered with leafy branches, had a pair of German steel helmets over each set of headlights, and flew the small red-and-blue * This article was not published by Collier's. At the time, it must haveseemed too critical of our popular allies, the Russians. THE CARPATHIAN LANCERS pennant of the Carpathian Lancers from their radio antennae. Poppi, who commanded this squadron, leaned out the window of a house by the road and invited us in. The infantry was moving forward very slowly in trucks. All the infantry had dusty white faces, as if they had decided on some new sort of masquerade, using flour for make-up. They looked hot and unenthusiastic. Poppi is more than six feet tall, exaggeratedly blond, about twenty-five years old, with bright-blue eyes and a funny husky voice. I wouldn't have thought that he was a Pole but I have now given up thinking that people look like Poles or don't look like Poles. The Poles cannot be classified, which is one of their chief charms. Peppi was living in a bedroom on the second floor of this peas­ ant house. The furniture was shiny, brown and modern and seemed but recently imported from Grand Rapids. We sat on the large bed and tried hopelessly to beat off the torrent of flies that flows over you the moment you sit still. We looked at maps as usual. The Major wanted to know where the Germans were. That was the main job of this armored regiment at the moment; their armored cars and scout cars were engaged in keeping contact with the Germans, who were withdrawing in their own time and style. The Germans were beyond a ruined medieval tower which was our farthest advance position. They held somewhere on the hills and in whatever farmhouses they thought useful. The tower was being shelled. The Germans had anti-tank guns placed in farm­ houses where they dominated the roads. The Lancers' armored cars were intended for war in the Western Desert; they could not operate across country, so they had to stick to the roads. The Germans waited and shot at them point-blank. It was like roulette; you either won or you got burned inside your car or maybe you crawled out in time. This went on during the daytime, and the infantry pushed ahead a little, and our artillery shelled the German positions, and at night usually the Germans retired a few kilo .. I I / s-: I: i ,� _�__ • 't. _ . ---- /",_ � ,..r--"'- .. THE SECOND WORLD WAR meters farther north. It was a tiny war at the moment, though people get killed in tiny wars also. The Major said he thought he would go on and have a look at the tower. Poppi said he couldn't drive there in his jeep-the dust attracted the Germans and then they shelled the place and this made the infantry, which was dug in all around, cross. We could walk if we wanted to. There wasn't anything to see, though. It was too hot to walk, so we gave it up. For three weeks the Car­ pathian Lancers had been the spearhead of the Polish Corps in a spectacular advance of two hundred miles up the Adriatic coast; and nobody was feeling violently energetic now, a few days after the capture of the port of Ancona. It was too soon for another big Polish drive, and the Lancers and the Germans were only prod­ ding each other, while the Polish Corps reorganized for the next push. We roared away in our private dust storm. The Major was dis­ appointed in this tour. "Nossing," he said. "TIeS ennuyeux pour vous. Sie haben nichts gesehen." The use of three scrambled languages was our regular communication system. Everyone un­ derstood everyone else perfectly. Since the war had so delightfully stopped, and since it was beautiful weather, and since Second Squadron was in reserve near us and doing nothing in particular, we decided to go swimming. There was a slight snag because no one had had time to investigate the beach and the approaches to the beach for mines; but as the Poles said, if you spent your life always considering mines it would be quite impossible. So we climbed over a German-destroyed rail­ way bridge, climbing as delicately as if we were Balinese dancers, stepped softly on the torn-up wooden ties and jumped prudently down the embankment and then walked very very lightly along a dusty road to the shore. Andrew, who is a second lieutenant and commands a platoon of armored cars, and I did this noble work of reconnaissance. We decided to walk side by side or closely ealoolt tnt �� ce ana� , Wt�QI thou��, I. bilit�, Co�lml riane ro-�; Qa)l�1 anotntroo oalr �r� or tnt �[ ncei!IJ! elemllfi lWlmmli�, inv�t�� out al [�r l itw�llii oJearnir e Oan�11 rruat��� Ira1@li enant ID� Dole w�11 or dOltl) THE CARPATHIAN LANCERS following each other, on the grounds that it would not be fair for just one of us to explode. There were no mines, at least we did not step on any, and there was the warm pale sea and a beach of smooth white pebbles. We swam about, observing with interest that our artillery was shelling the Germans to the right, and that the British engineers were probably detonating mines in Ancona to our left, since there were bangs and great black clouds of smoke rising from that port. Then we began to plan what we would do in case the Germans broke through and we were in swimming during this operation. We decided it would be wisest just to go on swimming. Second Squadron was camped in a hayfield a kilometer from the Regimental HQ village, and we had a party that night. We sat at a table between two haystacks; the tablecloth and the crockery were a loan from the nearby Italian farmhouse and we ate fried duck which had been bought from the farm and tomatoes which had probably been pinched, and bully beef and pickles, and drank raw new wine. In the middle of our meal we heard a great deal of artillery fire and Joe, one of the platoon commanders, hurried to the squadron communications car and came back with the news that poor old Poppi was being shelled like anything. There was a thin new moon and the sky was crimson and pink and the air had turned cool. Then we heard ack-ack fire and a light thumping of bombs, and presently our own artillery opened up, making a close and deafening racket. We went on eating and talking about Russia. All the Poles talk about Russia all the time. The soldiers gather several times a day around the car which houses the radio and listen to the news; they listen to an the news in Polish wherever it comes from. They follow the Russian advance across Poland with agonized interest. It seemed to me that up here, on the Polish sector of the Italian front, people knew either what was happening ten kilometers away or what was happening in Poland, 159 I I / .: _ ___j._�__ J-& __ . ---- THE SECOND WORLD WAR and nothing else. We never found out what the Eighth Armywas doing in front of Florence or how the French were getting onabove Siena or whether the Americans had raced ahead to takePisa. And Normandy was another world. But what went on inPoland could be seen in every man's face, in every man's eyes.They had come a long way from Poland. They call themselvesthe Carpathian Lancers because most of them escaped from Po­land over the Carpathian mountains. They had been gone fromtheir country for almost five years. For three and a half yearsthis cavalry regiment, which was formed in Syria, fought in theMiddle East and the Western Desert. They changed from horsesto armored cars in Egypt and they fought wonderfully at Tobrukand El Alamein. They had sweltered in Iraq, defending the petrolfields, for almost a year. Last January they returned to their owncontinent of Europe, via Italy, and it was the Polish Corps, withthis armored regiment fighting in it as infantry, that finally tookCassino in May. In June they started their great drive up theAdriatic, and the prize, Ancona-which this regiment had entered first-lay behind us. It is a long road home to Poland, to the great Carpathian moun­tains, and every mile of the road has been bought most bravely.But now they do not know what they are going home to. Theyfight an enemy in front of them and fight him superbly. Andwith their whole hearts they fear an ally, who is already in theirhomeland. For they do not believe that Russia will relinquishtheir country after the war; they fear that they are to be sacrificedin this peace, as Czechoslovakia was in 1938. It must be remem­bered that almost every one of these men, irrespective of rank,class or economic condition, has spent time in either a German or a Russian prison during this war. It must be remembered that for five years they have had no news from their families, many ofwhom are still prisoners in Russia or Germany. It must be re­ membered that these Poles have only twenty-one years of national 160 THE CARPATHIAN LANCERS '�htn Am freedom behind them, and a long aching memory of foreign rule. e�ethn�� So we talked of Russia and I tried to tell them that their fears �Q to� must be wrong or there would be no peace in the world. That went O�! Russia must be as great in peace as she has been in war, and that an'! eye, the world must honor the valor and suffering of the Poles by giv- I tnem�)\( ing them freedom to rebuild and better their homeland. I tried Q from II to say I could not believe that this war which is fought to main- �one� tain the rights of man will end by ignoring the rights of Poles. alldllrt But I am not a Pole; I belong to a large free country and I speak ll�nti;� with the optimism of those who are forever safe. And I remem- fromn�n; bered the tall gentle twenty-two-year-old soldier who drove me in JdtT��� a jeep one day, and how quietly he explained that his father died �tne�t of hunger in a German prison camp, and his mother and sister o ilieir� had been silent for four years in a labor camp in Russia, and his Co¥,�;: brother was missing, and he had no profession because he had nndl)!t�l entered the Army when he was seventeen so he had had no time 've �r� to learn anything. Remembering this boy, and all the others I fldoenteri. knew, with their appalling stories of hardship and homelessness, it seemed to me that no American had the right to talk to the Poles, since we had never even brushed such suffering ourselves. But as they were all young, and as a man cannot worry all the time even for his country and his family and his very hope of life, we stopped talking about Russia and the future and went over to the repair truck, where two soldiers were playing a violin and an accordion. We made ourselves comfortable on bundles of hay around the truck and soldiers drifted together, and the sing­ ing started. It is most lovely music, mournful and gay at once, and always full of memories. The soldiers have invented songs to commemorate every place they have lived and fought these last years. There are the songs of Alamein and Tobruk, and the song ffidllr& of the regiment, and soldier songs that make marching easier. The It �rl' desert songs are sadder than the others. They played their own ndoon� tangos, and tzigane music and Brahms and then a sweet, sad love 161 I ! / '0 ,}�-'__�.,, _ . ---- .., '" THE SECOND WORLD WAR song. Someone translated the words: "The roses are fading,Johnny, oh come back from the war, come back from the war andkiss me as you did so long ago. Come back from the war, Johnny,and I will give you the loveliest rose of all." The moon was clear and new and the music spread over us,interrupted only by the noise of our own artillery. Suddenly war was the way you remember it, not the way it is while it is happen­ing. Just for a moment the present had the strange quality of al­ready being the past, and one saw this night as it would look five years from now, and it was beautiful and perfect without needingfive years to gild the memory. Nothing mattered except that these men should be always young, always brave and gay and fine tolook at, always alive. The violinist and the accordion player grewtired at last and we walked home through the deep white powderof road dust. All that night our artillery hammered against thesky so that it seemed the walls of our village would have to crack and give under this ceaseless pounding in the air. We moved the next day and every day after that. It was greatfun, like being gypsies or a small-town circus. We were a long convoy on the roads, with the sirens of the armored cars screamingat every turning and the dust like a tent to cover us. We campedin fields and the moment we had anchored, the scrounging parties got busy. The object was to rush off and buy the local geese, ducks or rabbits before other soldiers had copped them. Wine too, of course. An Italian peasant offered to sell us five geese if we would come and get them-only four kilometers away, he said. On closer questioning it proved that his village four kilometers away was in German hands, and the project was renounced. We had a lovelyand extravagant dinner that night, sitting on a haystack, to coun­ teract the usual dinners that were sent up in containers from Sec­ tion B. But everyone was so distressed by the news from Poland that the dinner was not a success. They were all thinking of their families, who had survived or not survived almost five years of 162 eaaOVflt Uaaen)Jil it i� nar� �ua)iry �i; ula)OOtfl noutn�� rt tnat�: I ana n��' n rbrfrr IVnite�I'/: 2�aimt : navetoffiJ It \VJ) ��' wele a l�: �lcr�IDr; IWe�IDr­ n�n��� �eele, ��[ Vine tOO, I if wew�li ia,Onrl� aW2JMil naa a 1�1�,1 CK, to ro�:' Il from�(i' om ro�� 'n� of t�li ve reJ� m THE CARPATHIAN LANCERS German tyranny, and were wondering desperately what they would have to endure from the Russians. In the very early morning we went on reconnaissance. Emile, who commanded the Second Squadron, led this outing of five scout cars. Emile briefed us, standing in his car, and though I did not understand what he said I understood the enchanting laughing sound of his voice and the courteous bow with which he finished. VIe sat on top of the scout cars to get the sun and the air and a view of the countryside. The object of this jaunt was to find a way for the armored cars to proceed across country without using the roads. We passed the courtyards of small farms where the peasants were ambling sleepily around in mussed silk pajamas and dressing gowns. It seemed odder than one could believe, and we stared at them as hard as they stared at us. We bought some ducks and some wine and when we returned we learned that Poppi's squad­ ron and George's squadron were attacking. Suddenly the fog of war descended. No one could find the Major. The Major, who is as inquisitive as he is brave, had preceded the attack-both the armored cars and the infantry-and driven his jeep into the outskirts of the town we were supposedly going to take. He was quite alone, but some accurate German mortar fire convinced him he had better abandon his solitary war. He returned to headquarters at about one 0'clock, full of information and good humor. After lunch we went back up to the front, to find everybody stalemated. The infantry was lying low, the German antitank guns were operating, the sun was disgustingly hot, and the battle had not advanced. There were a great number of newly dug-up mines, the antitank mines which look like badly made carpenters' tool chests and the antipersonnel mines which look like badly made small cigar boxes. Men were moving around George's squadron with pointed alpenstocks, prodding the fields, to locate more mines, and George was sitting at the head of a long line of armored cars, 163 I' I /- Ii '��"'--_:& ---._ ---- � "" ;jI\..,'t THE SECOND WORLD WAR waiting. Poppi's squadron was getting shelled. We had been lightlyshelled the night before, in our encampment, and all in all itlooked as if everyone would settle down for a while and let the artillery work. It had been a hectic day, though it did not prove anything.Casualties were light and only a few cars were damaged by shell­fire. Then the regiment was ordered to retire and hand over to the infantry. War in an armored regiment seemed to consist of one day of big goings-on, one day of sitting in a haystack, and thethird of getting yanked out of the line. As this was the first rest in over three weeks, everyone was pleased, and we returned to an earlier camping ground and the whole regiment tried to getclean in canvas washbowls, or by dousing itself under the Italian irrigation pipes. They appeared the next morning in church, looking spotless. Anarmored car becomes a sort of tourist trailer for five men after theyhave lived in it and near it long enough. It is a bar and an icebox, a trunk and a dressing table, as well as a swift steel-encased machine which sprouts machine guns. Johnny, the chaplain, who is about thirty and loves being a soldier, celebrated the Mass rather shyly,as if he were taking someone else's place. The villagers came too,old women and young women, with lace scarves on their heads and rosaries in their hands. The church had a charming paintingover the altar: the Wise Men seeing the Star of Bethlehem, and a dog, who was with them, raising his head and seeing the Star aswell as they did. The clean brown lined faces of the Poles were quiet and respect­ful and rather sad. There was the Major, who had been reprievedfrom a German death sentence in order to act first as a servant to German NCOs and then as a slave laborer on a German prisonfarm. He escaped from that farm, and a Jewish underground or­ ganization smuggled him out of Poland via Czechoslovakia and Hungary. He did not know where his wife was and had not heard 164 been u�ijr all in all e ana I�( � OYe an}tij� a�eQ 1r !�. nann O�cr: COn!il(ol� �tacK, an� 1 ! tn� nnt Ii 'e retum�' t triea t�! aer tn� lrn� � !rotl�tl men aft�l�l: anaani�oc cal�mar�: wnoilaOO, lratherl!\:. rrnan ��W! er�oun��: sJofJha a�! d not n�11 THE CARPATHIAN LANCERS for five years. There was Mike, the second in command, very young and blond and alone now that his brother had been killed in Italy this summer. He and his brother, posing as students with a mythical rich aunt in Tokyo, escaped via Russia and the Trans­ Siberian Railroad to Japan and managed to get back to Egypt and to their regiment a week before Tobruk. There was Chrostek the boxer, square and as strong as a tree, whose job was to locate and disarm the mines, to clear the way for the advance of the armored cars. He had had two days' leave to marry a Polish nurse, who had joined the Polish Corps after four years in a Russian labor camp. His first fiancee was killed by the Gestapo, after being tor­ tured to tell what she knew of the underground in Poland. There they all stood, the officers and the men, friends and partners, each one with his long journey behind him and each one with the long uncertain journey ahead. At the end of the service, they sang their national prayer. The music is fine and slow and their voices carried out through the open door of the church into the sunny fly-ridden village. "Thou God who through many centuries cared for our country and kept it splendid; Thou who now defends our motherland with the shield of Thy love from the mis­ fortunes which have befallen our home; we bring our prayers to Thy altar and beg Thee to bless our country and to make it free." The rich, sad voices were quiet now and there was silence in the church. The soldiers filed out into the hot sunshine to rest, to spend the Sabbath in peace, in order that they could start fighting again, mile by mile on the long road home. II : / , __�__i __�� _ 4 ---- � .. :t� September 1944 The Gothic Line � THE GOTHIC LINE, from where we stood, was a smashed vil­ lage, an asphalt road and a pinkish-brown hill. On a dusty minedlane leading up to the village, the road and the hill, the Canadian infantry was waiting to attack. They stood single file, spaced well apart, and did not speak and their faces said nothing either. Thenoise of our artillery firing from the hills behind us never stopped.No one listened to it. Everyone listened to sudden woodpeckerbeats of German machine-gun fire ahead, and everyone looked tothe sky on the left, where German airbursts made dark loose small clouds. In front of us a bulldozer was working as bulldozers do, accord­ ing to their own laws and in a world of their own. This machine was trying to fill in a portion of the deep antitank ditch which the Germans had dug along the entire face of the Gothic Line. The bulldozer now scraped up two mines in its wide steel shovel; themines exploded, the bulldozer shook a little, and the driver re­ moved his tropical helmet and cursed the situation. An infantryofficer shouted something to him and he swerved his big machine, 166 �temD�J� a lm�nOOr: aomryrnire , tnewm& l� l���I: 'n� eitn�r, rr never !t��r.: en wOO��t(' 'one loo�ffit rKloou� e� dO,�rol': TIil ill�l� iten whid� ie Lint.� 1 �no\'fl;�: iliearivtrf.' ,An inl�� big malfii!� THE GOTHIC LINE leaving two feet cleared between the side of his shovel and the mined side of the lane. Through this gap the infantry now passed. Each man seemed very alone, walking slowly and steadily toward the hills he could not see, and to whatever peril those hills would offer. The great Gothic Line, which the Germans have used as a threat ever since the Hitler Line was broken, would under normal circumstances be a lovely range of the Apennines. In this clear and dreaming weather that is the end of summer, the hills curve up into a water-blue sky; in the hot windless night you see the hills only as a soft rounded darkness under the moon. Along the Via Emilia, the road that borders the base of these hills, the Germans dynamited every village into shapeless brick rubble so that they could have a clear line of fire. In front of the flattened villages they dug their long canal to trap tanks. In front of the tank trap they cut all the trees. Among the felled trees and in the gravel bed and low water of the Foglia River, they laid down barbed wire and they sowed their never-ending mines: the crude little wooden boxes, the small rusty tin cans, the flat metal pancakes which are the simplest and deadliest weapons in Italy. On the range of hills that is the actual Gothic Line the Germans built concealed concrete machine-gun pillboxes which encircle the hills and dominate all approaches. They sank the turrets of tanks, with their long thin snout-ended 88-mm. guns, in camou­ flaged pits, so that nothing on wheels or tracks could pass their way. They mined some more. Using as a basis the handiwork of nature, they turned the beautiful hills into a mountain trap four miles deep, where every foot of our advance could be met with concentrated fire. And it is awful to die at the end of summer when you are young and have fought a long time and when you remember with all your heart your home and whom you love, and when you know that the war is won anyhow. It is awful and one would have to be a liar 168 THE SECOND WORLD WAR or a fool not to see this and not to feel it like a misery, so that thesedays every man dead is a greater sorrow because the end of all this tragic dying seems so near. The Canadians broke the Gothic Line by finding a soft placeand going through. It makes me ashamed to write that sentencebecause there is no soft place where there are mines and no soft place where there are Spandaus and no soft place where there are long 88-mm. guns, and if you have seen one tank bum with its crew shut inside it you will never believe that anything is softagain. But relatively speaking, this spot was soft or at any rate theCanadians made it soft, and they got across the mined river and past the ,dynamited villages and over the asphalt road and up intothe hills, and from then on they poured men and tanks into the gap and they gouged the German positions with artillery fire andthey called in the Desert Air Force to bomb, and in two days theyhad come out on the other side of the Gothic Line at the coast ofthe Adriatic. Before that, many things had happened.First of all, the main body of the Eighth Army moved fromthe center of Italy to the Adriatic coast in three days' time, andthe Germans did not know it. That sounds easy too, when writtenin one sentence. What it meant was that for three days and threenights the weaving lateral roads across the Apennines, and the great highways that make a deep V, south from Florence and back up to Ancona, were crowded with such traffic as most of us have never seen before. Trucks and armored cars and tanks and weapons carriers 'and guns and jeeps and motorcycles and am­bulances packed the roads, and it was not at all unusual to spendfour hours going twenty miles. The roads were ground to powderby this traffic and the dust lay in drifts a foot thick, and whenever you could get up a little speed the dust boiled like water under the wheels. Everyone's face was greenish white with dust, and it rose in a blinding fog around the moving army and lay high overthe land in a brown solid haze. .�_ �n --- _4- -- . .... / 1:111 \ � / ,so thaI ItI e end of dll� ,mg a �ott�, l�e t�t !�ijlt: m� dnQij�r e wnereili� �nK Dum �i�' I anrhin� il: oratanrrntt: emin�nvll: t roao ana ij�t no tanh iijt�: artillery �llt in two aa)J � THE GOTHIC LINE The road signs were fantastic too because more than one hun­ dred thousand men, who could not speak Italian, were moving through complicated unknown country trying to find places which would never have been simple to find, even with empty roads and complete control of the language. The routes themselves, renamed for this operation, were marked with the symbols of their names: a painted animal or a painted object. There were the code num­ bers of every outfit, road warnings (bridge blown, crater, mines, bad bends) indications of first-aid posts, gasoline dumps, repair stations, prisoner-of-war cages and a marvelous Polish sign urging the troops to notice that this was a malarial area; this sign was a large green death's-head with a mosquito sitting on it. Along the coast, road signs were in Polish and English and at one crossroads a mine warning was printed in Polish, English and Hindu. And everywhere you saw the dirty white tapes that limit the safe ground from the treacherous ground where mines are still buried. On the main highways, there were signs saying "Verges cleared," which means the sides of this road have been de-mined, or "Verges checked," which means the sides of this road have been rapidly swept, and you can suit yourself if you want to take a chance. So this enormous army ground its way across Italy and took up positions on a front thirteen miles long. The Eighth Army, which was now ready to attack the last German fortified line outside the Siegfried Line, had fought its way to these mountains from the Egyptian border. In two years, since Alamein, the Eighth Army had advanced across Africa through Sicily and up the peninsula of Italy. All these men, of how many races and nationalities, felt that this was the last push and after this they would go home. They will one day go home to Poland and Canada and South Africa and India and New Zealand and England and Scotland and Ireland, for there are all these nationalities in this army and you would have to speak several Indian dialects and French Canadian and Polish and whatever is spoken by the Negroes of Basutoland, 169 THE SECOND WORLD WAR as well as every available accent in English, to be perfectly under­ stood in the Eighth Army. What is so comic and amazing and wonderful is how this huge hodgepodge of humanity gets on. The long trek they have done together and the sandstorms of the desert and the mud of the Italian winter and the danger and the dying and the lonely years have made them very neighborly men. We watched the battle for the Gothic Line from a hill oppo­ site, sitting in a batch of thistles and staring through binoculars. Our tanks looked like brown beetles; they scurried up a hill, streamed across the horizon and dipped out of sight. Suddenly atank flamed four times in great flames, and other tanks rolled down from the skyline, seeking cover in the folds of the hill. The Desert Air Force cab rank, the six planes which cavort around the skylike a school of minnows, was signaled to bomb a loaf-shaped hill, called Monte Lura. Monte Lura went up in towering waves of brownish smoke and dirt. Our artillery dug into the Gothic Line, so that everywhere cotton balls of smoke flowered on the slopes. Our own airbursts now rained steel fragments over the German positions on Monte Lura. The young British major who was directing this artillery through a radiophone said, "I must say, I do think our airbursts are doing very nicely." The battle, looking absolutely unreal, tiny, crystal-clear, spread out before us. But there were men in the tanks, and men under those trees where the shells landed, and men under those bombs. The noise was so exaggerated that nothing like it had been heard since the movies. All that day and the next the noise of our own guns was physi­ cally painful. The Canadian brigadier commanding the' brigade which was attacking this sector of the line amused us by outlining a postwar garden party he hoped to give. Supper would be served on a long wooden table covered with a soiled white cloth; the guests would sit on benches which had a tendency to tip over backward. In one corner of the garden a flat voice would start saying, "I am now giving you a short tuning call, roger over, vic- w ta cr ill \Vi til til th �ol -. - - • .. � � I , fectlr Una�l' mazin� dij( �eton,n; [onus of � In�er ana� hoorlr illt; a hill oW h binowit u� a F . �UdaffiIT; rollea ��� . TheD� THE GOTHIC LINE tory, victory, victory," and would go on saying this uninterruptedly for the rest of the evening. In another corner of the garden, trac­ tors would be organized to act like tanks and they would first race their motors, which is a sound like the end of the world, and then they would roll back and forth on screaming treads. In another corner of the garden, some sort of radio apparatus would imitate the sound effect of six-inch guns firing, and it is almost impossible to believe how appalling they sound. In another corner of the garden a dust machine, imported from Hollywood, would spray dust imported from the roads of Italy onto the guests. A waiter would then walk in and release a thousand flies at a time. The dinner would consist of a slab of cold bully beef as appetizer, followed by not very heated-up meat and beans, the staple canned ration of the British forces, and hardtack. For dessert there would be hardtack with jam. The tea would have been brewed that morning and would be coal-black and lukewarm, with drowned flies in it. If the guests behaved nicely and did not complain too much, they would be given, as a prize, a finger of issue rum, a drink guaranteed to burn out anyone's palate. This was a perfect picture of our own meal except that issue rum was lacking, and we laughed contentedly at the brigadier's mythical guests. Later, but I don't remember when, because time became more and more confused, we crossed the Foglia River and drove up the road our tanks had taken, and there we saw the remnants of a tank battle. An American Sherman, once manned by an English crew, lay near a farmhouse; across the road a German Tiger tank was burned and its entire rear end had been blown off. The Sher­ man had received an 88 shell through its turret. Inside the turret were plastered pieces of flesh and much blood. Outside the Tiger the body of a German lay, with straw covering everything except the two black c1awlike hands, the swollen blood-caked head and the twisted feet. He did not smell too much yet. Some Canadian soldiers, who were sightseeing, stood around the dead German. THE SECOND WORLD WAR It is remarkable how quickly soldiers start sightseeing where they inhave fought, perhaps trying now to discover what really happened. A"Not much fresh meat on that guy," one of them said. You cannot note everything that happens during a battle, youcannot even see what happens, and often you cannot understand it. Suddenly you will see antlike figures of infantry outlined against the sky; probably they are going in to attack that cluster of farmhouses. Then they disappear, and you do not know what be­ came of them. Tanks roll serenely across the crest of a hill, thenthe formation breaks, you lose most of them from sight, and thenin what was a quiet valley you unexpectedly see other tanks firingfrom behind trees. On a road that was quite empty and therefore dangerous, because nothing is more suspect at the front than the silent places, you see a jeep racing in the direction of a town which �t mayor may not be in our hands. And when you imagine you have th,found a nice restful place to camp in for a few minutes, German th� mortar shells start landing. wn A battle is a jigsaw puzzle of fighting men, bewildered terrified lee civilians, noise, smells, jokes, pain, fear, unfinished conversations 100 and high explosives. A medical captain in a ruined first-aid farm- to house speaks with regret of a Canadian padre who volunteered as th a stretcher-bearer to carry wounded men out of the mine fields in the river bed. The padre lost both his legs, and though they rushed on him out, he died at the first hospital. Bloody stretchers are stacked hOI all around, and now a jeep arrives with fresh wounded. "Come thr back and see us any time," the medical captain says. "Get some au more wire splints, Joe." A group of English tankists, drinking tea IVOI outside a smashed house on Monte Lura, invite you into their �t mansion, which is mainly fallen beams and the rubble of masonry. �e\� The place stinks because of two dead oxen at the side of the road. and One of the soldiers, who had his tank shot from under him that Thl morning, is waiting for another job. He hopes the war will be over heal wneretijr �' ha��ije in, a battl�;t unde�u:: � ou�i�;: hatdUltcr: THE GOTHIC LINE in time for him to celebrate his twenty-first birthday in England. A Canadian soldier lies dead on another roadside, with· a coat spread lovingly over him. There are two captured 88-mm. guns with a welter of German paper around them, for apparently the Germans also are the slaves of paper. Amongst this paper is a postcard with a baby's picture on it, addressed presumably to one of the gunners from his wife. And no one feels the slightest pity. A young Italian woman, wrapped in a blanket, sits on the doorstep of a poor little hovel that one of our shells had hIt dunng the -rright; thIS was in a town the Germans held until a few hours ago. S�e wakes up and statts to laugh, charming! gay and abSolu�y � Twelve parachutist prisoners, the crack troops of the Germans, stand in a courtyard guarded by the Canadians who captured them. They are all young and they wear the campaign medals of the Crimea, as well as the medal of Italy. -These were the men who held Cassino all winter. You talk to them without any special feeling, and suddenly like a shock it occurs to you that they really look evil; the sadism which their General Kesselring ordered them to practice in Italy as they retreat shows now in their mouths and their eyes. A fat old Italian in Cattolica, who had worked for twelve years on the Pennsylvania Railroad, was trundling his pitiful possessions home in a handcart. The Germans had occupied Cattolica for three months and had evacuated the citizens one month ago, and during this month they looted with horrid thoroughness, like woodworms eating down a house. What they did not wish to steal, they destroyed; the pathetic homes of the poor with smashed sewing machines and broken crockery and the coarse linen sheets and towels torn to shreds bear witness to their o� This old man was going home to a gutted house, but he was a healthy happy old man, and he was overjoyed to see us and he THE SECOND WORLD WAR invited me to visit him and his wife the next day. The next day mhis wife was dead, as the Germans came over that night and 10plastered the little town with antipersonnel bombs. The Canadian troops which I had seen two days ago, going in alto attack the Gothic Line, were now swimming in the Adriatic. The beaches were laced with barbed wire but holes had been cut through it and engineers appeared with the curious vacuum­ cleaner-like mine detectors, to sweep the beach. The infantry,sunburned the color of expensive leather, beautifully strong, beau- tifully alive, were bouncing around the flat warm sea and racing over the sand as if there were nothing terrible behind them and nothing terrible to come. Meantime you could sit on the sand with a book and a drink of sweet Italian rum and watch two Brit- ish destroyers shelling Rimini, just up the coast; see German shells landing o� the front three kilometers away; follow a pilotin a slowly sinking parachute, after his plane had been shot down;hear a few German shells whistle overhead to land two hundred yards farther down; and you were getting a fine sunburn and life seemed an excellent invention. Historians will think about this campaign far better than we can who have seen it. Historians will note that in the first year of the Italian campaign, in 365 days of steady fighting, the Allied armies advanced 315 miles. It is the first time in history that any armies have invaded Italy from the south and fought up the endless mountain ranges toward the AI .. will be able� to explatn-with authorit what it meant to break three fortified lines, a - c ing up mountains, an t e historians will also descrih how IWy became a giant mipe field aJ+G that no weapon i£ uglier, forItwaits in silence, small and secret, and it can kill any day, not only on the day of battle. - But 511 we know, we who are here, is that the Gothic Line is broken and that it is the last line. Soon our armored divisions will -- � '-�-. � - . .. �n-- r � ,I e next�, ni�nt 4� THE GOTHIC LINE move on to the Lombardy plain and then at last the end of this long Italian campaign will become a fact, not a dream. The weather is lovely and no one wants to think of those who mmt stil i a�Iiose who must still be woun e III t e fighting before �ace � - I� I / �-���---_. - Paris Revisited September 1944 � THE FRENCH BOYS wore mixed uniforms, German boots and overcoats, American khaki trousers, some sort of homemade forage cap, and the FFI* tricolored arm bands. They were armed with new rifles and a tommy gun. We were going to look at the under­ ground passages at Ivry, one of the old fortifications of Paris. The French used this great dank network of tunnels to store ammu­ nition and explosives before the war. The Germans, however, in­ vented the subhuman idea of using these tunnels as a prison. Theylocked men and women there in the wet unending dark until theydied, or until it was time to torture or shoot them. The young soldiers of the FFI moved aside huge spindles ofbarbed wire which blocked the wooden door leading into the tunnels. They had barricaded these tunnels immediately after driving the Germans out of Ivry, and no one had gone down into the darkness since then. The entries to the tunnels were all * Forces Francaises de I'Interieur (French Forces of the Interior), a branchof the underground resistance in France during the German occupation. W lu tri B� na WI we anI of fire we wn tha III ��- '-�-. - - . ,. �n--! � ,I 'mr, II 'on,TII un�� PARIS REVISITED guarded. This system of underground galleries runs beneath cer­ tain sections of Paris like a river with many tributaries. When Paris was freed, Germans fled into the tunnels, planning to emerge into the air and safety at another exit in another part of the city. The French FFI boys said that the Americans had collected some German soldiers only two days ago, at Denfort Rochereau, which is miles away; the Germans being forced by cold and hunger to climb into the daylight and surrender. It seemed most theatrical to be filing solemnly into a man-made cavern lighted by one kero­ sene lamp, preceded and followed by armed children. There were no Germans. There was no human being. But there was the mark of the Germans, and you who are safe and will never be locked underground to die must force yourselves to imagine this horror so that you can understand the bitterness of the people of Europe who have lived for years with the knowledge of it. The central tunnel was about twenty feet wide, with a mud floor. In places this floor was under water and everywhere it was wet with the seepage from old stone walls. There was abso­ lutely no light. The ceiling was lost in darkness. From the cen­ tral tunnel many blind passages led away, to end in more walls. Built off from these passages were walled-up rooms, with only narrow grilled windows opening into them. It was so cold that within ten minutes we were shivering; in half an hour one's clothes were damp and one was cold to the bone. Men and women were shut in here, without blankets or light, and here they lived as long as their bodies could endure. In angles of the stone walls there remain now the ashes and embers of small fires. Who gave these freezing people even these sticks of wood, we do not know. On the walls, written in charcoal, there are names, as if, dying, a man or a woman felt the fierce need to leave some word, or cry, in this black silence. It was hard to write with that material on dripping walls and the names are unclear and in time they will wash away. Around a long, level, unexplained - IH I / .._-----......-":.�---. - THE SECOND WORLD WAR mound of dirt, in the central passage, are a few unmatched shoes, a rotting woman's slipper, a black laced boot. This place has never been cleaned, yet there is no refuse which would show that the prisoners had food, no empty cans, no shapeless little heaps of garbage. There is nothing except the tiny burned-out fires which can have warmed no one, the shoes, the badly written names of people now dead. Those tunnels were just a prison; nothing ex­ traordinary, not one of the Germans' best efforts, just a prison todie in. In Ivry there is also a cemetery. It is not an unusual cemeteryand there are many on the outskirts of Paris, as there are around all great cities. In I vry, however, two alleys of graves are always covered with flowers and visited by silent people who are looking for their own. These are the graves of hostages and patriots shot by the Germans. The Germans brought the bodies here, in trucks. The caskets were badly made of common wood planking, and the guardian of the cemetery said that one could follow the trucks by the trail of blood which had leaked from the caskets; and fur­ thermore, as there were so many caskets in the trucks and the caskets were so badly made, the ones at the bottom were often crushed and therefore broken open. The Germans forbade names to be marked on any grave, but families who had lost their sons or husbands or fathers came to the guardian and asked for their men, and sometimes-since the guardian had the lists the Germans gave him-they found their men and so knew that a father, a son, a husband had been killed. When he could, the guardian showed the families which mound was theirs and they kept flowers on it, though the Germans forbade any flowers to be put on these graves. The guardian said no graves in the cemetery were so covered with flowers as these nine hundred unmarked mounds. But even now one cannot be sure who is buried under each rough heap of soil, and there are five graves in a row with an identical wooden plaque which says, "Here lies one of five students 178 - � .-_ . .. ��'" ," PARIS REVISITED killed by the enemy on December 14, 1943." Then there are five printed names, and after each name there is the age of the boy. The youngest was seventeen and the oldest was twenty. All day long women in black, leading quiet children, and bewildered couples of old people walk through these two alleys of graves. Most of those buried here were people arrested by the Germans for any reason or for no reason and kept as a reserve of human sacrifice, to be shot whenever the Germans decided more deaths were necessary to terrorize the citizens of Paris. A thin little book has been amateurishly published; it is a col­ lection of last letters of some of these people, hostages and mili­ tants, who were killed. Here is the farewell letter of a boy hostage of twenty-one, who can have been anyone of the boys of twenty­ one buried in Ivry. May fourteenth. At ten o'clock it will be finished. Before the end I embrace you with all my heart. My dearest little mother, I thank you for all you have done for me, you did everything you could, I thank you very much. Your son who loved you with all his heart. Many kisses from your son, JEAN And another letter from a boy of eighteen, who could not believe that he was going to die like this. And you, Mama, Maurice told me you had been to the Kommandantur. How tired you must be; above all take care of yourself and do not get sick. I do not want you to get sick because of me. Really mama all is not yet lost. And a worker who writes to his wife, speaking of his children. THE SECOND WORLD WAR I would so have wanted to see them grow up, and educate them to be honest citizens. When I think how I used to talk of taking my daughter to a dance, it hurts me. As for my doth­ ing, they will send you my valise with my raincoat and overcoat tied on to it. These things are in good condition and will be useful to you. These are the dead of Ivry, and they are only a few hundred outof thousands and Ivry is only one cemetery near Paris, and thereis nothing remarkable about it either. At RomainvilIe, another of the fortifications of Paris and used by the Germans as a barracks, is a small brick structure which is nothing much to look at, a sort of shack with three windowless rooms in it, fenced by barbed wire. It is so jerry-built and sordidand inconspicuous that you would not notice it among the im­ personal buildings of the barracks. Originally the Germans used this building as a place to disinfect clothing and blankets. One of the rooms has parallel iron bars, on which clean blankets were probably hung to cool. In the other two rooms there are brick ovens like old-fashioned bakers' ovens, five feet high and ten feet wide. A great roaring fire could be built in them. On top of each oven, like a huge unwieldy pot, stood a plain wooden box, again about five feet high and four feet long, lined with metal. Many hooks were driven in to the lids of these boxes; blankets and clothing were hung from these hooks, and the extreme heat inside the boxes destroyed the vermin which infested the woolen cloth. It was a simple, rather crude system but highly practical. TheGermans then thought it would be a good idea to put human beings into these boxes and literaUy burn them alive. It would take quite a while to die in those closed metal-lined boxes. First your feet burned, and when in agony you tried to raise yourself you reached for red hot hooks. As you could not stand, you wereforced to lean against the glowing side walls of the box. And after 180 r q �I m w a� til d fa w �t b WI cal � wil on dre a� ber -- '-�-. - - . .. �1-- I � , and eQ�� I u�ea t� t !olmr� t ana Ol�i' lanKflir. ere �r� k ana If� f: tor �f � 'oOOf� �:' "ilnm1; �lanKtGL nealilli:: OOlf� rl�i ctid T� rut n��� , It W��: ooxel,ll( 'Ie )'��� I )'ou Wt� Anal�� PARIS REVISITED you had been burned enough you would be brought out, cared for, questioned, and, if recalcitrant, put back into the box. You will find it impossible to imagine that in a squalid little brick hut, and in cheap and carelessly made oversized coffins, human beings could scream with pain and find no other human being who would release them from such torment. Yet there the boxes are, and on the sides of the metal inner walls are dirty brown swatches of blood. But since torture was German daily routine, and since there are more torture chambers in and around Paris than you can conveniently visit in a week, this place too is probably not re­ markable. Torture chambers existed anywhere, in an average house on any street or in the shabby back rooms of a ministry where formerly clerks worked over the endless papers that seem to be the necessary ballast of all ministries. The rooms themselves, so small, so shoddy, with inexpensive, rather soiled flowered or patterned wallpaper, are shocking because though pain and death were distributed in them, there can have been no dignity allowed to either pain or death in such rooms. There will be a cupboard of a room with four round steel eyelets cemented into the wall. A man or a woman was tied hand and foot to the wall, the body unbearably stretched. After that came the long, the repeated, the scientific beatings. On the walls of this room people have left messages written with stubs of pencil. The handwriting is not often edu­ cated and perhaps the hands that wrote were no longer very strong. They are terrible simple messages from people who know they will die but do not know how much longer it will take. I remember one particularly: "Caston Meaux, my time is up, * leaves five chil­ dren, may God have pity on them." There were messages of cour­ age, saying, "Comrades, tell nothing, vive la France, vive la Li­ bette." Some messages had only a name and the number of times * "bon pour Ie poteau" - "U I / �-------.:4-� _ . - - THE SECOND WORLD WAR the writer had been beaten. And one message said, "I shan die here, and it is because of my fiancee." He had printed the name of a girl and her address; evidently she had denounced this man. And after the name and address were these words, addressed to anyone and to everyone: "Revenge me." There are rooms where people, tied in the same way, had a metal cap placed on their heads through which electricity was pumped into their bodies. The metal cap was plugged into the wall as if it were an electric razor or an electric iron, because there was nothing spectacular or complicated in these tortures; they were inexpensive to execute and homely and practical. The famous bathtubs, which look like bathtubs in a fifth-rate hotel, are chipped and dirty and a bit too small. In these, in water kept icy-cold, people were held head down until their pulse announced they were about to die; after which a German doctor worked on them so that they would live, in order to be almost drowned again. In between all tortures, there was the questioning. Always the ques­ tioning, while the torturers sought other victims, using the agony of one to give them the names of another and another on whom they could inflict agony. It is necessary to know all this, and to try to imagine these places, because these are the wounds of Paris. In Paris, the prisons and torture chambers and cemeteries equal the bombed and gutted houses of London. There was no high explosive here, and we tend to forget that there are things which are worse than high explosive. For four years the Germans used a secret creeping snakelike fear as their weapon against the French. This weapon also failed be­ cause there were always more people who were ready to face the prison and the torture chamber and the cemetery. The people who walked this lonely fatal road and those who every day risked the same journey are now the great aristocracy of France. Paris never had a war as we know it, an open war, and it has no 182 wa can thi th do res rno ho te nO WI flo to pa, roc ho of tH ha ye Bu fa' a:nounceaE: WJrK�ontt� �TIe� ��ill,� ��a�i ilifl� a)�o fall�:i dr to tartt, , The rrofl �'daJnlk ance, nd it nal� PARIS REVISITED war now. Paris is intact and beautiful and puzzling. Any day you can see men and women poking in garbage cans, looking for some­ thing to take home; by the way they do this sad work you realize that they have been doing it for a long time. You can then walk down the street and eat a splendid luncheon in a black-market restaurant for ten dollars. You can buy what will always be the most beautiful dresses in the world, at any of the great dressmaking houses, for a mere three hundred dollars or so, and you can walk ten blocks to a working-class district and see women who have had no new clothes at all for four years and have been cold for four winters in the same threadbare cheap coat. You can buy as many orchids as your heart desires, in the great flower market of the HalIes, but you could not buy a pound of coal to keep warm. In fact you could more easily take a bath in cham­ pagne than in hot water, and whether you live in a dismal peeling room in a slum or in the lovely high-ceilinged rooms of the fine houses on the Avenue Foch, you would be equally cold. The city of light has practically no electricity, and if you want to be amused you can go to a freezing theater and watch actors rehearsing a new play, with a few electric bulbs burning dimly in the footlights, and behind them and before them the cold darkness of the empty house, and they tell you they will open as soon as there is enough current. Since dancing was forbidden during the occupation, the few night clubs now operating are human sardine cans. 111e Boeuf sur le Toit was always very chic and very expensive; now it is not very chic and twice as expensive and outside the door every night there is a thicket, a wilderness, of bicycles on which the clientele have arrived. The main emotion in Paris is the relief of people who for four years have lived in silence, with fear and disgust in their hearts. But there must be and there will be emotions greater than relief. That aristocracy which resisted the Germans inside France, those faithful ones who fought as Free French outside their country, 183 - It i . - ,.�--�- THE SECOND WORLD WAR those millions who have suffered in German concentration and forced-labor camps, will have to guide in rebuilding their country and a Paris which is materially unharmed. Meanwhile people who have never been to Paris before go on saying that Paris is the same as it always was. IV T �mtion d�� their Cilunrr, e��le�� i� � toe ��: A Little Dutch Town October 1944 �.., THIS IS a story about a little Dutch town caned Nijmegen and pronounced any way you choose. The moral to the story is: it would be a good thing if the Germans did not make a war every twenty years or so and then there would be no story about little towns called Nijrnegen. I have no idea what Nijmegen used to look like; there was prob­ ably quite a sweet old part to the city, judging from some of the ruins, some remnants of roofs and a carved doorway here and there. Also I imagine the curve of houses on the bluff by the Waal River was charming, but as the houses are all burned out it is hard to tell. And through the center of the town, where the university stood, it was also very likely pleasant and clean and untroubled; but due to uninterrupted shelling for a month or more the place looks now as if it had been abandoned years ago, following an earthquake and a flood. Today Nijmegen is a town where people sleep in cellars and walk with care on the streets, listening hard for incoming shells. The Dutch sweep up broken glass every morning, in a despairingly 185 - 'tt i /, ______'_'-�---. -- . THE SECOND WORLD WAR tidy way, but there is no transport to cart glass away, so under the dripping autumn trees and along the shell-marked streets there are neat mounds of rubble and glass. The center of the town can be ignored, since it is not livable, having no windows left and too many houses burned hollow; but on the fringes of the town, ugly unimaginative comfortable modern red-brick homes, which were cheap to rent or own, remain intact. Nijmegen shows no signs of great wealth, but the poorest parts of the city, which are also the oldest and most attractive, are not as bad as slums in an equivalent­ size English or American town. The people who lived in Nijmegen were obviously people accustomed to safety; they are a God-fearing folk, devoutly Catholic, who led a quiet provincial life and worked hard and neither wasted nor wanted and could count on a measure of security in their old age. A great road bridge at Nijmegen crosses the Waal River, and this part of Holland bears a strategic relationship to Germany and the constructions of the Siegfried Line and the course of the Rhine. For these reasons (to put it very simply) Nijmegen found itself in the path of the opposing armies. So Nijmegen, in modern times, becomes a besieged citadel, which means that the Germans are a few kilometers away to the east, a few more kilometers away to the west, even more kilometers away to the north. The Allies hold the town and a long narrow corridor which stretches back to Belgium. Any town within range of artillery is an unlucky town. There is no heat in Nijmegen, and the small and dwindling supply of coal is used for electricity. At night, behind all the black­ out curtains, people can at least look at each other while they listen for the shells. The food ration tickets are the same as those issued by the Germans, only now the tickets are honored and people can actually buy the basic foodstuffs allowed them. This is not to say that stores are open; it is impossible to have a system of shops, working on fixed hours, when half the shops are blown open by artillery and at given times, quite unpredictably, not even a cat 186 �-�-- - -- . .. / �� - -! � I I o undert11 stree� tn�!: etown� left ana t� e town ijul,) � ) whicn WI; '� no !i�nll are all�� an e�lli\��:, in�ijm�� a COO,I�� eana wmk onam��; ucijt�� o o\i1nt, a� ilie ollJ ueilieJ�B iliolei!!ij(j' [to�letJ; not to�! of �no� o�n�! rven a �I A LITTLE DUTCH TOWN would want to slink through the shopping district. But some stores are open occasionally and the housewives tell each other of these, and here one can buy a very little food. What the careful Dutch are really living on is the reserves each housewife somehow man­ aged to scrape together during these years. The communal kitch­ ens, which feed the great bulk of the people who have no homes left and therefore no reserves, offer a regulation day's diet of ersatz coffee or watery tea and two black-bread sandwiches in the morn­ ing, a plate of potatoes at lunch, and the same tea or coffee and sandwiches at night. Life is not exactly dull in Nijmegen, though I do not imagine life was ever really gay here. It is not a town that has a cafe or a bar or a dance hall, and I never saw a sign of a movie house. How­ ever, nowadays while riding one's bicycle (which is the usual civilian means of transport in Europe at present) one can watch a dogfight over the city, between one Messerschmitt and three Spitfires. It is also easy enough to sightsee gun batteries and ma­ chine-gun emplacements and foxholes. And at night there are always the fires, huge roaring fires that eat out the center of a house. After dark the streets are empty and there is no sound except the artillery, our artillery and the German artillery. Shells exploding in the confinement of four walls often set houses afire, and on one street there will be three sets of double houses burning wildly, and the small dark figures of the firemen spraying a weak thin stream of water onto a blaze that obviously nothing will stop. As most of the town buildings have been opened by high ex­ plosive, there are large signs all over Nijmegen saying, "Do not loot. Penalty death." But I do not feel these signs are necessary. The British and American soldiers like the Dutch and respect them, and because Nijmegen is what it is, a small, not very rich town, the soldiers recognize it and find it understandable and like home, and they know what it means to these people to watch their city and their safety being destroyed. In the most literal 187 _ ,I' i /,--------!-��--_. --�- THE SECOND WORLD WAR sense, the people of Nijmegen have no choice but to take freedom or death. They have been freed and freedom has not been cheap. The civilian side of this war is in many ways the most pitiful. The Dutch folk of Nijmegen, to whom this now routine appalling life of war comes as a grim surprise, do not complain. They are ignorant of all the techniques that soldiers learn; it takes a while to gauge shell bursts and to know what is dangerous and what is not. The old people and the children have been fairly stationary in cellars for the last month, either in the small cellars of their own beaten-up houses or in the communal cellars under the hos­ pitals or the town hall. No one likes to live in fear, and it is more bewilderment than cowardice which so numbs the people now. The members of the underground organizations, the police, the Red Cross, the doctors, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the ci­ vilian volunteers, have no time for cellars and no mind for safety. Among other activities, the police and the underground have been busy rounding up collaborators and tracking down German agents in the town. They put the collaborators in a big schoolhouse, which is pockmarked with shell holes, and they feed them as they feed themselves, and they await the return of the Dutch govern­ ment so that proper trials may be held. The schoolhouse-jail has the awful familiar smell of dirty bodies, and the rooms full of arrested people look like the sad rooms lance saw in Prague where the refugees from the Sudetenland gathered to live and wait for nothing. The Dutch are not brutal to these people and the prisoners are lightly guarded. One is always surprised to see what kind of people are arrested, and most surprised by their apparent poverty. Some rooms are filled with dreary-looking young women, ill, lying in bed with very small babies; these are the women who lived with German soldiers and are now the mothers of Germans. Other rooms are jails for old people who trafficked with Germans, or worked for the Dutch Nazi government, or denounced or in some 188 A LITTLE DUTCH TOWN way harmed the true Dutch and the country. There is a nun in one room, by herself, looking frozen and unforgiving, and along­ side her two stupid homely girls who worked in the Germans' kitchens and were soldiers' delights as a sideline. The only weII­ dressed collaborators I have seen were in the prison camp at Draney near Paris, where I actually saw a woman in a chinchilla coat, and a few men who had bought their clothes at expensive tailors. But at this stage of the war and the liberation it is to be noted that little people (or should one say little crooks?) have been caught; the real evil ones, the big enemies, are either safely away with the Germans or well hidden. Arresting collaborators is as much a part of cleaning up a town as is the maintenance of the sewage system and the street sweeping. Due to the fact that most of HoIIand is still occupied, it is impossible to write now about the Dutch underground. But it is possible to say that the Dutch people, individually and in their underground organizations, tried to help Jews, who in HoIIand as elsewhere were doomed. The penalty for sheltering Jews was death, and nevertheless Jews are reappearing in the light of day who have been forced to live like escaping criminals for four years. We gave a lift to a thin dark worried-looking woman who worked in the Dutch Red Cross. She did not seem a particularly inspiring woman and she seemed unusually nervous (which, in perilous places, is always unpleasant, because the proper manner under such circum­ stances is a real or assumed calm). She was going to the civilian hospital to see her little girl. Her child, aged twelve, was badly wounded by shell fragments; her husband had been shot; her possessions had long since been confiscated by the Germans; and now her house had been destroyed by shellfire. She worked twelve hours a day in the Red Cross and during lunchtime-unless she got a chance lift-she walked four miles to the hospital to visit her child. She was a Jewess. She had been back in the daylight for a month. Tragedy in Europe is now so general, so usual, so utcn ��\t. nOl!le·j�il �l oom!�11 Pra�ewk ana �it� rnlone��:: aol�l\. \'e�.�� ill, I�n� � jivea �i� ans. OO� 'I : / - Ii I,- ---------.!'�---_. - ._-_--- THE SECOND WORLD WAR common, that one does not even specially notice a case like this, which in a normal world would fill one with fury and pity. There were twelve hundred Jews kept in a concentration camp near Nijmegen. The Germans took them in freight cars to Poland. One of the SS guards returning from this journey told a Dutch­ man what had happened. These twelve hundred Jews, old and young, men, women and children, were taken to a rather nice­ looking building and told they could have showers. As they had lived in misery and filth for months, they were very happy. They were ordered to undress and leave their clothes outside; notably they were to leave their shoes. From vents, which looked like air vents, the Germans pumped what they call "blue gas" into the clean white-tiled bathroom. It appears that this gas works faster on slightly humid naked bodies. In some few minutes, twelve hundred people were dead, but not before the SS guard had heard them scream and had watched them die in what agony we cannot know. Then the shoes were all carefully sorted and sent back to Germany for use, and before the mass cremations all gold fillings and gold teeth were removed from the corpses. We know now of many places where Jews have been gassed to death, we have written of it for a long time. People in Europe could not believe this evil and now they do; and to have lived close to such evil and to have seen, heard, and understood it does some­ thing to people which will never be wiped out. For the Dutch Jews, the Germans meant death in agony; for the rest of the Dutch (apart from the underground, who risked the usual hazards of imprisonment, torture and death) the Ger­ mans meant slow hunger and the destruction of their families. The Germans deported half a million Dutchmen between the ages of nineteen and thirty-five to work as forced labor in Ger­ many, and for a year now none of these men has been seen or heard from. In a small country half a million men leave a great sad gap in the life of every community. The Dutch did very well e like tfu\ piry, itoo�w� en seen a ve a �� d ve�lV� A LITTLE DUTCH TOWN at saving their young men from deportation, but they could not save all. Aside from these physical facts, hunger and loss, the Dutch suffered as everyone has suffered under the Germans, from the outrage and humiliation of the Nazi regime. Free people can­ not learn to live without disgust under that domination,. and these were terrible years in which each man alone found each day that this tyranny, this stupidity, this corruption were unendurable; and yet there would always be tomorrow and tomorrow, and the tyranny had to be accepted since there was nothing to do but wait. The Germans are fiends for paper . You had to have a pass for every move, a paper for rations, identity cards, paper and paper to burst a wallet; and they liked to check their papers frequently. The Dutch forged paper themselves, in quantity, and everyone who was doing underground work or simply escaping deportation had wads of false documents. Finally the Germans began to drown in their own paper; they could trust nothing. They admitted de­ feat, refused to recognize any documents, even their own, and solved the problem by simply arresting anyone they chose to, for any reason whatsoever. The Germans were also very shrewd in Holland in the taking of hostages, and they used this filthy weapon as a way to destroy the intellectual life and the leadership of the country. But that too they had done before; there has been little variety in the German technique of terror. A story with a moral should be short. Even the moral should be short. What best points the moral of this story is short; it would take you only ten minutes to see and a paragraph to de­ scribe. In the basement of the civilian hospital (for Nijmegen has many hospitals, but now they are full of wounded American sol­ diers) there are corridors where the heating and water pipes run. These corridors have become wards because they are safe from shellfire. In one long corridor the wounded children lie in small white iron beds. The children are often too young to speak, but in all cases they are amazingly silent. There is not much for the II' , / - li I '-:--�---� - �- , . --�-- -- ----- -- -- THE SECOND WORLD WAR children to eat, no special little things to please them and make their pain easier. The light is not good either, and sometimes the child is so small that you think the white crib is empty. One thin little girl of four had both her arms broken by shell fragments, and a shell fragment had been cut out of her side and another from her head. All you could see was a tiny soft face, with enormous dark eyes looking at you, and the arms like flower stalks strapped to splints and the bandage around her head which was almost as big as she was. She would never be able to understand what had happened or what sort of world it was that could so wound a little girl of four who had been playing in the garden of her house, as surely little girls ought to be able to play in all the gardens on earth. So the moral of this story is really short: it would be a good thing if the Germans were never allowed to make war again. - -. - - . .. �r-r�� I and mn metim�� ry. One� 1\ fra���. anoilier� �th enO�t s�\b!�W V!'al �Imrul. tana IVn�1 � The Battle of the Bulge January 1945 � THEY ALL SAID it was wonderful Kraut-killing country. What it looked like was scenery for a Christmas card: smooth white snow hills and bands of dark forest and villages that actually nestled. The snow made everything serene, from a distance. At sunrise and sunset the snow was pink and the forests grew smoky and soft. During the day the sky was covered with ski tracks, the vapor trails of planes, and the roads were dangerous iced strips, crowded with all the usual vehicles of war, and the artillery made a great deal of noise, as did the bombs from the Thunderbolts. The nestling villages, upon closer view, were mainly rubble and there were indeed plenty of dead Krauts. This was during the German counteroffensive which drove through Luxembourg and Belgium and is now driven back. At this time the Germans were being "contained," as the communique said. The situation was "fluid"-again the communique. For the sake of the record, here is a little of what containing a fluid situation in Kraut-killing country looks like. The road to Bastogne had been worked over by the Ninth Air I / ,--��---_. - -------- --- - THE SECOND WORLD WAR Force Thunderbolts before the Third Army tanks finally clearedthe way. A narrow alley was free now, and two or three secondaryroads leading from Bastogne back to our lines. "Lines" is a most inaccurate word and one should really say "leading back throughwhere the Germans weren't to where the Americans were scat­ tered about the snowscape." The Germans remained on both sides of this alley and from time to time attempted to push inward and again cut off Bastogne. A colleague and I drove up to Bastogne on a secondary roadthrough breath-taking scenery. The Thunderbolts had created this scenery. You can say the words "death and destruction" and theydon't mean anything. But they are awful words when you arelooking at what they mean. There were some German staff cars along the side of the road; they had not merely been hit bymachine-gun bullets, they had been mashed into the ground. There were half-tracks and tanks literally wrenched apart, and a gun po­sition directly hit by bombs. All around these lacerated or flattened objects of steel there was the usual riffraff: papers, tin cans, car­ tridge belts, helmets, an odd shoe, clothing. There were also, ig­nored and completely inhuman, the hard-frozen corpses of Ger­ mans. Then there was a clump of houses, burned and gutted, with only a few walls standing, and around them the enormous bloated bodies of cattle. The road passed through a curtain of pine forest and came out on a flat, rolling snow field. In this field the sprawled or bunched bodies of Germans lay thick, like some dark shapeless vegetable.We had watched the Thunderbolts working for several days. They flew in small packs and streaked in to the attack in singlefile. They passed quickly through the sky and when they dived you held your breath and waited; it seemed impossible that the plane would be able to pull itself up to safety. They were diving to within sixty feet of the ground. The snub-nosed Thunderbolt is more feared by the German troops than any other plane. ally cl�l( ee secon�£ g" is a mrl back ilim� ion') an��; wnm V�ij� , . , anlbh' )' Deen �it: �ouno,Th' ana a ���. tea or �J��; THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE You have seen Bastogne and a thousand other Bastognes in the newsreels. These dead towns and villages spread over Europe and one forgets the human misery and fear and despair that the cracked and caved-in buildings represent..Bastogne was a...Qerman job of death and destruction and it was beautifully thorough. The lOIst Airborne Division, which held Basto ne, was still there! though the day e ore le wounded had been taken out as soon as the first road'wa; open. The survivors of the lOIst Airborne Division, after beini entirely�rrounded, uninterru tedl shelled and bombed, - after having fought off four times their strength in Germans, ook - or some unknown reason-cheerful and livel . A oun lieuten- arirremarked,;;'The tactical situation w;;u; alway& good" He was very surprised when we shouted with laughter. The front, north of Bastogne, was just up the road and the peril was far from past. At Warnach, on the other side of the main Bastogne road, some soldiers who had taken, lost and retaken this miserable vil­ lage were now sightseeing the battlefield. They were also inspect­ ing the blown-out equipment of two German tanks and a German self-propelled gun which had been destroyed here. Warnach smelled of the dead; in subzero weather the smell of death has an acrid burning odor. The soldiers poked through the German equip­ ment to see if there was anything useful or desirable. They un­ earthed a pair of good bedroom slippers alongside the tank, but as no one in the infantry has any chance to wear bedroom slippers these were left. There was a German Bible but no one could read German. Someone had found a German machine pistol in working order and rapidly salted it away; they hoped to find other equally valuable loot. The American dead had been moved inside the smashed houses and covered over; the dead horses and cows lay where they were, as did a few dead Germans. An old civilian was hopelessly shovel­ ing grain from some burned and burst sacks into a wheelbarrow; and farther down the ruined street a woman was talking French II : /---�---_. -- . ". --------� - THE SECOND WORLD WAR in a high angry voice to the chaplain, who was trying to pacifyher. We moved down this way to watch the goings-on. Her house was in fairly good shape; that is to say, it had no windows or door and there was a shell hole through the second-floor wall, but it was standing and the roof looked rainproof. Outside her parlor window were some German mines, marked with a white tape. She stood in her front hall and said bitterly that it was a terrible thing,she had left her house for a few moments that morning, and upon returning she found her sheets had been stolen. "What's she saying?" asked an enormous soldier with red­ rimmed blue eyes and a stubble of red beard. Everyone seems about the same age, as if weariness and strain and the unceasing cold leveled all life. I translated the woman's complaint. Another soldier said, "What does a sheet look like?" The huge red-bearded man drawled out, "My goodness," a de­ licious expression coming from that face in that street. "If she'd of been here when the fighting was going on, she'd act different." Farther down the street a command car dragged a trailer; the bodies of Germans were piled on the trailer like so much ghastly firewood. We had come up this main road two days before. First there had been a quick tempestuous scene in a battalion headquarters when two planes strafed us, roaring in to attack three times and putting machine-gun bullets neatly through the second-story win­ dows of the house. The official attitude has always been that no Germans were flying reclaimed Thunderbolts, so that is that. No one was wounded or killed during this brief muck-up. One of the battalion machine-gunners, who had been firing at the Thunder­ bolts, said, "For God's sake, which side are those guys fighting on?" We jumped into our jeep and drove up nearer the front, feeling that the front was probably safer. A solitary tank was parked close to a bombed house near the main road. The crew sat on top of the tank, watching a village 196 THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE just over the hill which was being shelled, as well as bombed by the Thunderbolts. The village was burning and the smoke made a close package of fog around it, but the flames shot up and reddened the snow in the foreground. The armed forces on this piece of front consisted, at the moment, of this tank, and out ahead a few more tanks, and somewhere invisibly to the left a squadron of tanks. We did not know where our infantry was. (This is what a fluid situation means.) The attacked village would soon be entered by the tanks, including the solitary watchdog now guarding this road. We inquired of the tank crew how everything went. "The war's over," said one of the soldiers, sitting on the turret. "Don't you know that? I heard it on the radio, a week ago. The Germans haven't any gasoline. They haven't any planes. Their tanks are no good. They haven't any shells for their guns. Hell, it's all over. I ask myself what I'm doing here," the tankist went on. "I say to myself, boy, you're crazy, sitting out here in the snow. Those ain't Germans, I say to myself, didn't they tell you on the radio the Germans are finished?" As for the situation, someone else on the tank said that they would gratefully appreciate it if we could tell them what was going on. "That wood's full of dead Krauts," said another, pointing across the road. "We come up here and sprayed it just in case there was any around and seems the place was full of them, so it's a good thing we sprayed it all right. But where they are right now, I wouldn't know." "How's your hen?" asked the Captain, who had come from Battalion HQ to show us the way. "He's got a hen," the Captain explained. "He's been sweating that hen out for three days, run­ ning around after it with his helmet." "My hen's worthless," said a soldier. "Finished, no good, got no fight in her." g to �� ,Her n�tt' ow� Or ��: wall, Dij! e her �11: ite��,l' terriDle� Ire, FiBt� n ntaa�l: nree tim�r na·)to�'i: i Deen tfl�! i �t � iliaU �,One �f� t tne Th��k �p�fl� rer �elror - 'I� I / '�..._�---_'" --�- '" . ----- ------ -- - THE SECOND WORLD WAR "J ust like the Germans," said the one who listened to the radio. Now two days later the road was open much farther and there was even a rumor that it was open all the way to Bastogne. That would mean avoiding the secondary roads, a quicker journey, but it seemed a good idea to inquire at a blasted German gun position.At this spot there were ten Americans, two sergeants and eightenlisted men; also two smashed German bodies, two dead cows and a gutted house. "I wouldn't go up that road if I was you," one of the sergeantssaid. "It's cut with small-arms fire about a quarter of a mile farther on. We took about seventeen Heinies out of there just a while back, but some others must of got in." That seemed to settle the road. "Anyhow," the sergeant went on, "They're making a counter- attack. They got about thirty tanks, we heard, coming in this way." The situation was getting very fluid again. "What are you going to do?" I said. "Stay here," said one of the soldiers. "We got a gun," said another. War is lonely and individual work; it is hard to realize how small it can get. Finally it can boil down to ten unshaven gaunt-looking young men, from anywhere in America, stationed on a vital road with German tanks coming in. "You better take that side road if you're going to Bastogne," the second sergeant said. It seemed shameful to leave them. "Good luck," I said, not knowing what to say. "Sure, sure," they said soothingly. And later on they got a tank and the road was never cut and now if they are still alive they are somewhere in Germany doing the same work, as undramatical1y and casually-just any ten young men from anywhere in America. About a mile from this place, and therefore about a mile and a half from the oncoming German tanks, the General in command 198 rr:: ..·_.-tr-�-. - -- . _ / ,IT --! � I f THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE of this tank outfit had his headquarters in a farmhouse. You could not easily enter his office through the front door, because a dead horse with spattered entrails blocked the way. A shell had landed in the farmyard a few minutes before and killed one cow and wounded a second, which was making sad sounds in a passageway between the house and the barn. The air-ground-support officer was here with his van, checking up on the Thunderbolts who were attacking the oncoming German tanks. "Argue Leader," he said, calling on the radiophone to the flight leader. "Beagle here. Did you do any good on that one?" "Can't say yet," answered the voice from the air. Then over the loud-speaker a new voice came from the air, talk­ ing clearly and loudly and calmly. "Three Tigers down there with people around them." Also from the air the voice of Argue Leader replied rather peev­ ishly, "Go in and get them. Don't stand there talking about it." They were both moving at an approximate speed of three hundred miles an hour. From the radio in another van came the voice of the Colonel commanding the forward tank unit, which was stopping this counterattack on the ground. "We got ten and two more coming," said the Colonel's voice. "Just wanted to keep you posted on the German tanks burning up here. It's a beautiful sight, a beautiful sight, over." "What a lovely headquarters," said a soldier who was making himself a toasted cheese sandwich over a small fire that served everyone for warmth and cookstove. He had opened the cheese can in his K ration and was doing an excellent job, using a German bayonet as a kitchen utensil. "Furthermore," said a lieutenant, "they're attacking on the other side. They got about thirty tanks coming in from the west too." "See if I care," remarked the soldier, turning his bread carefully so as to toast it both ways. A shell landed, but it was farther up the to tbeldW, rana�: �to�ne, Th lOume�,�: �n�li� nt� ana� 'OOtdO(fH l�enOWI �unt·loob on a litrum: ne:' �ot!� j alire tn��i undram��d'l in Am�n�, a mile �n�: in comID�� o THE SECOND WORLD WAR road. There had been a vaguely sketched general ducking, a quick reflex action, but no one of course remarked it. Then Argue Leader's voice came exultantly from the air. "Got those three. Going home now. Over." "Good boys," said the ground officer. "Best there is. My squad­ ron." "Listen to him," said an artillery officer who had come over to report. "You'd think the Thunderbolts did everything. Well, I got to get back to work." The cow went on moaning softly in the passageway. Our driver, who had made no previous comment during the day, said bitterly, "What I hate to see is a bunch of livestock all beat up this way. Goddammit, what they got to do with it? It's not their fault." Christmas had passed almost unnoticed. All those who could, and that would mean no farther forward than Battalion Headquar­ ters, had shaved and eaten turkey. The others did not shave and ate cold K rations. That was Christmas. There was little celebra­ tion on New Year's Eve, because everyone was occupied, and there was nothing to drink. Now on New Year's Day we were going up to visit the front, east of Luxembourg City. The front was quiet in the early afternoon, except for artillery, and a beautiful fat­ Baked snowstorm had started. We decided, like millions of other people, that we were most heartily sick of war; what we really wanted to do was borrow a sled and go coasting. We borrowed a homemade wooden sled from an obliging little boy and found a steep slick hill near an abandoned stone quarry. It was evidently a well-known hill, because a dozen Luxembourg children were al­ ready there, with unsteerable sleds like ours. The sky had cleared and the ever present Thunderbolts returned and were working over the front less than four kilometers away. They made a lot of noise, and the artillery was pounding away too. The children paid no at­ tention to this; they did not watch the Thunderbolts, or listen to 200 Illion! of��: IVnat W� r[ Ve oorrowro, v ana fo���: t wal ffi�t;� ilaren wrrtl i11 flaorltM1: e worbn��\( a Jot 01 n�� en plio no ��, 5, or Jistfn � 201 wmeo\O: �, W�I\li �, �iaoilli t u� iliEi: THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE the artillery. Screaming with joy, fear, and good spirits, they con­ tinued to slide down the hill. Our soldier driver stood with me at the top of the hill and watched the children. "Children aren't so dumb," he said. I said nothing. "Children are pretty smart," he said. I said nothing again. "What I mean is, children got the right idea. What people ought to do is go coasting." When he dropped us that night he said, "I sure got to thank you folks. I haven't had so much fun since I left home." On the night of New Year's Day, I thought of a wonderful New Year's resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it. There were many dead and many wounded, but the survivors contained the fluid situation and slowly turned it into a retreat, and finally, as the communique said, the bulge was ironed out. This was not done fast or easily; and it was not done by those anony­ mous things, armies, divisions, regiments. It was done by men, one by one-your men. I' I /,:- !:-_-1--___1, _ � � The Black Widow January 1945 � IN THE DAYTIME the Thunderbolts, snarling bulldog planes, roared on and off this field, and the pilots poured into the briefing shack and announced their kills to the interrogating officer, or stood huddled around a big map getting last-minute instructions before the next mission. Across the field, a fleet of C-47s was lined up and ambulances moved slowly and carefully over the deep frozen ruts, and orderlies lifted the blanketed wounded into the planes. When the cargo was completed, tier after tier of pain, the heavy freight planes moved down the runway en route to England. Nothing broke the wind and it swept in waves over the iron mud of the field and swirled the snow in dusty clouds. The field was as ugly as all forward airfields are, with the claptrap buildings of the squadrons and a tent hospital outlining its edges. The air ham­ mered with the noise of planes and everyone looked small, eaten with cold, and intently busy. When darkness came, the field was silent and nothing moved and this place then seemed a wasteland in Siberia, a plateau on the 202 m�.I' We minI .-_.. .. /�� THE BLACK WIDOW moon, the very end of the world. When darkness came, the Black Widows took over. Now the Major in command of these Black Widow night-fight­ ers, a man of twenty-six but with the ageless hard tired look one is used to seeing on the faces of all the young, was making a speech. His squadron headquarters had been pieced together from the wood of a German barracks and it was very cold, with one iron stove to heat the room, and badly lighted by a few unshaded bulbs. "Everybody shoots at us," he said. "Friendly bombers and friendly flak and enemy flak and enemy fighters. Just anybody at all; they all got a right to shoot at us. I wouldn't advise it." Last night one of their planes had been shot down, and the squadron doctor, who drove over to the place where the plane crashed, returned to report that nothing remained of the pilot and radio operator except four feet and two hands. There is never any time for pity or sorrow, at least there is no time to show these feel­ ings; death only seems to make the survivors angrier and more aware of what is after all a constant danger. Death reminds you that it can happen to you too, and everyone fears and resents this reminder. "Well," said the Major, "if you're going, you better come with me. I'm on the first mission." We ate supper at five, and it was already night. Americans call any sizable building a chateau and they had their mess in a chateau, which was nothing but a large untidy dark icy house. The pilots and radio operators ate in a big room, wearing their Hying clothes, and they passed heavy dishes of lukewarm unpalatable food around the long tables and laughed and shouted to each other, eating in haste. A Captain beside me began to list again the horrors of night flying, until the Major said, "She's coming with us now, so leave her alone. Tell her something good." The Captain said at once, "It will be beautiful anyhow. It's cer.. tainly beautiful up there, and it's going to be a fine night." 2°3 )5 � ... ..J_-t----J� / _. ---- THE SECOND WORLD WAR I handed a bowl of congealed mashed potatoes to the Major and into 0 thought that the myth of the glamorous lives of pilots is the silliest oould myth of all. Probably we got it from the movies about pilots in the lDeaul last war, who always seemed to live in authentic chateaux and eat moitlat fine tables loaded with cut glass and china and ornamented with filmeo occasional champagne buckets. Pilots, according to myth, return �utr from their hazardous work and have a hot bath and step into per- �IO ilio fectly tailored uniforms and while away their spare time in a frolic tfi�twe of stouthearted laughter and singing. Actually they live like hell Thd at these forward fields. It is only one step better than the foxhole. r�or, 1 Mostly they sleep in tents and there is no escaping the cold and inlorIDa there is nothing to do but fly, sleep, eat and wait in black discorn- �was fort to fly again. They always speak with pity of the infantry, who iliilnan have a really "rugged" life. rum ili' After supper, during which everyone except myself ate heartily, we went back to Squadron Headquarters. I was zipped into flying pants, flying boots, and a flying jacket, feeling more and more like lOut 2 breathless package. The Major appeared with an oxygen mask and there was some difficulty in fitting the thing on. "They didn't 1111 a make these for ladies," he said. "Can you breathe?" Someone was stuffing gloves into my hand, and someone else was attempting to fasten a parachute on me. I found myself choking inside the mask and shook my head and the Major said, "Okay, that'll do." He put lalOne, an escape kit in my pocket and led me to the map, which was lila fro enormous and incomprehensible, and picked up a piece of string on top that was attached to the map; where the string was attached was IDuna i our base. He described a rough semicircle to the east with the nveentl string and said, "We'll be patrolling this area. If anything happens, 1I0h, walk southwest." innere, We now piled into a jeep, the Major, the radio operator, the Inad driver and 1. It was difficult to hoist one's body around and there tnou�h \VaS a marked tendency to sit down when one meant to stand up, �ome u due to the weight of the parachute. It was so cold that one shrank o� my 2°4 THE BLACK WIDOW into one's clothes and felt oneself shriveling in the wind. Now we could see the sleek sharp outlines of the black plane ahead. It is a beautiful plane, with two upcurling tails and long narrow wings, and it looked, in the night, like a delicate deadly dragonfly. The name of these P-61S, the Black Widow, seemed all wrong for such beauty of line. No one spoke in the jeep. Then the radio operator said thoughtfully, "This is the worst part of any mission." After that we were too busy to think about better or worse. The Major climbed into the cockpit and began getting the plane ready. The radio operator was delegated to give me the necessary information. This was all so hopelessly mad that it could only be taken as a joke. He said in the dark, "If anything happens you turn this handle." What handle? where? "That will open the trap. Then turn this other handle on the right-it's wired, but you won't have any trouble. That will drop the ladder out and then all you have to do is fall out backwards. You know where your rip cord is, don't you?" "Yes," I said sadly. "If anything goes wrong with those two, you turn this handle on the cowling and that whole piece of glass will fall out and you can climb out through that. It's a little narrow with all those clothes on, but it will be an right, I guess. Well, that's about all," said he. "Have you got a cushion for her?" he asked the crew chief, and from nowhere a flat little sofa cushion appeared and was put on top of the wooden crate which was to be my seat. They had found it impractical to carry a gunner here in the glass bulb be­ tween the twin tails and there was no seat or safety belt. "Oh, and your oxygen mask," said the radio operator, "It plugs in here, and this is your earphone plug-in." I had given up hope by now; it was all too complicated and I thought gloomily that everyone of these damned wires would come undone, I would fall out without meaning to or get hurled off my crate and mashed against the confused steel sides of my 205 lajor ��: \� 5£ - It I '��----�----- , " THE SECOND WORLD WAR little glass cage, and I was already cold and so I decided to try 000 and hard to think of something else. Meanwhile a brisk businesslike matter-o conversation was going on in the cockpit; voices came through the �Daed. earphones so deafeningly that I could scarcely distinguish words, �f]and I but from the tone it sounded as calm and sensible as if you were gin), the talking about whether there was enough gas in the car to get to i�dflaa the country club. wmethin We hurtled into the night and soared for the stars. I have )�.llli) never been part of such a take-off; the actual feeling of flying 111t. We became so intense that one felt free of the plane, and as if one lret. One' were moving nakedly and with no hindrance through a sky that [an ena was bigger than any sky ever seen before. It was beautiful too, ��t�eld. with a glowing moon and the stars very close. I knew that the mQa� I beauty was not going to soothe my spirit or hold my attention. Itrel )hel The beauty was a vast emptiness in which we roared alone, and the beauty was a good deal too scary for my taste. A conversation began on the radio; or rather it had been going on all along, only it seemed clearer now. Somewhere on the dis­ tant dark snowcovered earth, men would be sitting in a hidden caravan crouched over instruments of black magic-the radar­ and a voice came from wherever they were, speaking a most tech­ nical code, and this plane obeyed that voice. At 265 miles an hour we fled blindly through the night, and our eyes were some place behind us in Luxembourg on the ground. A night fighter pilot is directed by radar to his quarry, which he cannot see, and he ifiltrum must not fire until he has a visual target (that is, until he actually �rtlentl sees and identifies the other plane) and he can be as close as two !�ro, a hundred yards from the enemy plane before he is certain of it. Thi� 1) Until that time, the Black Widow swerves and swoops, climbs tel,DU and falls alone like a strange mad bird, obeying the voice of the Qoe�n't ground controller. waring The conversation between ground and sky was weird beyond lcoul believing. Since it was all code, it cannot be repeated; but these a few 206 -.-_-. .�� .. / �i � 1 -, I THE BLACK WIDOW odd and mystical sentences filtered through the air in rather loud matter-of-fact voices, and when the ground spoke the plane re­ sponded. We were over Germany, and a blacker, less inviting piece of land I never saw. It was covered with snow, there were moun­ tains, there was no light and no sign of human life, but the land itself looked actively hostile. Then the voice from the ground said something; the pilot said "Roger," and the plane vaulted up the sky. This ranked easily as one of the nastiest sensations I have ever felt. We climbed, in a matter of seconds, from 11,000 to 22,000 feet. One's body turned to iron and was crushed down, feeling as if an enormous weight were pressing on something that would not yield. My oxygen mask was too large and had to be held on, and as I held it with my right hand, and held onto some kind of steel shelf with my left hand (so as not to fall backwards off my darling little crate) I thought that (a) my stomach was going to be flattened against my backbone and (b) that I was going to strangle. This loathsome set of feelings went on and meanwhile the radio conversation sharpened and went faster and louder, and I knew, though the words were muddled, that we were being led to our quarry. I had reached a stage of dull resignation and only prayed that we would stop doing whatever we were doing and do something else. The plane stopped climbing and now it was just hard to breathe. An added charm is that one's nose, a reasonably earthy instrument, flows steadily in this cold and of course is unwipable; presently, since the temperature inside the plane was thirty below zero, one finds oneself with a small frozen river on one's face. This is mentioned only in passing, because it is a very minor mat­ ter, but there it is. One is anyhow so cold that one more misery doesn't count. The plane, driven on by the loud ground voice, was roaring high and straight through the sky. Then, for no reason I could discover, we turned over on a wing and dropped sideways a few miles toward the ground. That too was an undesirable sen- - I� i /, ________.!"�---_. ---- THE SECOND WORLD WAR sation; one's insides seemed to drain away, leaving one empty and weak and not at all certain which side was upright. The pilot said something to me, in a nice cozy voice, but I did not understand. He repeated it. I gathered that we had just dropped through the sky that way in order to avoid flak at Cologne. It appeared that we had been following a friendly plane which must have been a bornber and was copping the Cologne flak. It seemed restful to be flying level at 11,000 feet again. The radio voices chatted to each other, apparently saying what a pity the whole thing had been, and better luck next time. Everything was calm now, except for the fact that we were still over Germany. Then the pilot called to me on the intercom, and, looking where he told me, I saw the trail of a V-2. It came from somewhere deeper inside Germany and was at this distance a red ball of fire, and it rose perpendicularly from the ground and passed out of sight over the top of the sky in a few seconds. Then there were gun flashes to the west, where the front seemed to be waking up. One huge gun opened like a blast furnace, but I could not tell whether it was theirs or ours. On the ground I saw fixed flares, and again I did not know what they were; then there would be the sudden quaking soundless fire of the guns. There was also a frightening star, which I believed to be following us. I was con­ sidering how to call it to the pilot's attention when finally I de­ cided it was a star, once and for all, and could be classed as harmless. The ground was not saying anything much and the pilot seemed to have more time, for he started an amiable conversation over the intercom, practical1y none of which I understood, but his voice and manner of speaking filled me with admiration. It was as if he were making friendly talk with someone he had just met in a bar. The intercom worked only one way; I could not have answered even if I had known what he was saying. The ground voice spoke again, giving brisk orders, and the plane flicked neatly over on 208 ;wing a l@l, an 11 were 1 '.lnave g :� a wob ldlno enl i�nain� � �tKea an :(�l)hom i�1,"Th �)n�, The pil m�n who �Dli)� �cH m!too c ni�ner tll lDoroarec Welan li�ntnin�, dno the �l�))ed �led by lor two � THE BLACK WIDOW a wing and glided steeply downward. The pilot was asking ques­ tions, and more orders came from the ground. I could tell that we were hunting and getting close. By now this journey seemed to have gone on forever; one had sat since the beginning of time on a wobbly crate in the middle of heaven, and there obviously was no end to it. The plane slowed terrifyingly; it felt as if it were standing still in the air, and at the same time the pilot's voice cracked angrily on the radio. Nothing happened. There was some reply from the ground and the pilot said very angrily, "For God's sake." The snow-covered land was nearer now and so were the gun flashes. The pilot spoke again on the intercom. We had been on the trail of an authentic enemy plane, but due to some miscalculation we were brought down on top of the enemy plane instead of under it. We were therefore briefly in the unfortunate position of getting shot at, rather than doing the shooting, but luckily the German did not wish to fight and had streaked off west and lost himself. The pilot was furious. Now we were going home, as the time limit was nearly up. Suddenly the pilot said, "See the flak?" I had seen it to the left; I thought it was low and far away and I was sad for the unlucky men who were getting it. This justifies completely the ignorance­ is-bliss school of thought. The flak was shooting at us, the distance was too close for comfort, and I imagined that the shells went no higher than the tracers. We did another quick aerial pirouette and roared for home. We landed as we had taken off, which is to say like a bolt of lightning. We had been out a little over two and a half hours, and the Major was almost blue with cold. He had not been heavily dressed because he could not fly the plane if his body was ham­ pered by all that clothing. So for two and a half hours now and for two and a half hours later that night, and every other night, 'I ' /�-:__j�_t-_J� ___ - ---- \, " THE SECOND WORLD WAR he would sit in a plane in a temperature of thirty below zero and simply take it. He did say, in passing, "Gosh, it's cold." The Major was depressed about the evening, it had been a bor- ooaroa ing patrol, nothing happened, there was one good chance of a m�CK fight and it had been mucked up, and all in all he felt browned Thundel off. So we climbed stiffly into the jeep and went back to the squad- ��ttalk ron shack. The other planes of this mission were coming in, land- iutneB. ing at that soul-shaking speed, and a new mission would be leaving �rlorrnwithin a few minutes. The radio operator came back to head- The 1 quarters to report to the interrogating officer and left again im­ mediately, as he was flying with another pilot on the second mis- sion. He had no time for a cup of coffee, or any chance to get il)t)ee warm; I do not think there was a cup of coffee available, for that tm leet rnatter. �dl." � But there was much excitement in the headquarters shack; a �iQtnat tall towheaded boy with a shining face was passing a box of cigars I�much around and getting heavily beaten on the back. His smile was wdffe enormous and he couldn't give out cigars fast enough. A cable !�l Klll� had just come, announcing the birth of a baby daughter. "Thank God," said the Major, "I've been sweating out that baby for ten days." The towheaded pilot showed his cable and a picture of his wife German and offered his cigar box. W�) ratH "How long is a baby?" he said. He held his hands about three rront of feet apart. "That long?" Que to I "Hell, no," said an elderly father of twenty-four. "About so �nQwic long." And he held his hands a foot apart. D�CK to There followed a heated argument about the length of babies. manrex No one spoke of the mission completed or of the missions to come; Inth, it was after all just another night's work. But people didn't become �acKth fathers every night; becoming a father was really something. "Wh The Thunderbolt pilots had invited us to have a drink in their I(Clo� club. They had fixed up a shack as a mess and built a fireplace out tempt.' 210 THE BLACK WIDOW zew�: of armor plate from a German tank and rigged up a bar, and they had whisky and scrambled-egg sandwiches. We drove along the bad road beside the field and the Major said, "Let's not talk about an�G Black Widows down there, see? What I mean is, we think those tor®:: Thunderbolt pilots do a lot tougher job than we do, so let's just ili��: not talk about our stuff." None of the Thunderbolt boys will ride �mJ' in the Black Widows for anything, on the grounds that the whole kl�� performance is unsound. t�k The Thunderbolt pilots were all very young and were trying a��: to be gay tonight, because they had lost their squadron leader the oon�: day before, and they loved him, and one dare not mourn. He was crtijr, last seen headed straight down, with his machine guns still firing �Im� ten feet above the ground. His last heard remark was "Give 'em hell." So now everyone was drinking and talking shop. One boy lmtt said that he never got used to shooting people, because they rolled �I(� so much when they were hit. He just didn't like it, that was all. It ih was different for the Airborne boys, and such as them, they were ,U real killers; but he just didn't like the way people rolled. The phrase that recurred most was "We sure clobbered the Herman." �t�� This means we definitely shot up the Germans. It can mean that they shot up trucks, tanks, command cars, or troops; anything �ilf: German is Herman and "clobbered" means liquidated. The Major was rather silent and was mainly occupied trying to get warm in front of the curious fireplace. I have never felt better in my life, due to my pleasure in being around at all, and I ate scrambled-egg sandwiches like a starving Armenian. Then the Major had to get back to his headquarters, as he was flying again, so we left with ioob many expressions of mutual esteem and gratitude. l�ro� In the jeep, the Major said thoughtfully, "Those P-47S. I don't � hack their talk." "Why?" I asked. i��a "Clobber the Herman," he said, with a very faint air of con- reu� tempt. "What talk is that?" 211 _ '.J I '----------�---. ---- , A THE SECOND WORLD WAR "What do you say?" "We say 'hose the Hun,' of course." We dropped him at the door and for a moment we stood there, shivering and shrunken with cold. "Wen, so long," he said. "Come and see us again. Give you a ride anytime." In the light from the headquarters shack, he looked tired and cold. You were sure he would not think about being tired or cold or think in any way about himself. They all did their job, that was all. Some men fly by day and others by night, some men work in tanks, others drop out of planes in parachutes, and there is always the infantry. All jobs and all appalling jobs. They do not think of them; they do them; there is nothing else to do. As we drove away, another sleek sharp plane tore up into the night sky, climbed and headed east toward Germany. �N, lome �Dout To tell ni�t� n Well, marne, I ilid a tilillun �ot on time, Nazi� tiler d I. No, a facto nave h The h �riven 212 - -- ... � Das Deutsches Volk Apri11945 � No ONE is a Nazi. No one ever was. There may have been some Nazis in the next village, and as a matter of fact, that town about twenty kilometers away was a veritable hotbed of Nazidom. To tell you the truth, confidentially, there were a lot of Commu­ nists here. We were always known as very Red. Oh, the Jews? Well, there weren't really many Jews in this neighborhood. Two maybe, maybe six. They were taken away. 1 hid a Jew for six weeks. 1 hid a Jew for eight weeks. (I hid a Jew, he hid a Jew, all God's chillun hid Jews.) We have nothing against the Jews; we always got on well with them. We have waited for the Americans a long time. You came and liberated us. You came to befriend us. The Nazis are Schweinhiinde. The Wehrmacht wants to give up but they do not know how. No, 1 have no relatives in the Army. Nor I. No, 1 was never in the Army. 1 worked on the land. 1 worked in a factory. That boy wasn't in the Army either; he was sick. We have had enough of this government. Ah, how we have suffered. The bombs. We lived in the cellars for weeks. We refused to be driven across the Rhine when the SS came to evacuate us. Why I' ' / ,- �;__________l _•• ---- s., _�.. ... �'f-J:£':'ii-""� . r .... � ...�..,_�,.....,F THE SECOND WORLD WAR germs in the upper leg of the prisoners, between the muscle and the bone. An extensive abscess formed, accompanied by fever and extreme pain. The Polish doctor knew of more than a hundred cases treated this way; there may have been more. He had a record of thirty-one deaths, but it took usually from two to three months of ceaseless pain before the patient died, and all of them died after several operations performed during the last few days of theirlife. The operations were a further experiment, to see if a dying man could be saved; but the answer was that he could not. Some prisoners recovered entirely, because they were treated with the already known and proved antidote, but there were others who were now moving around the camp, as best they could, crippled forlife. Then, because I could listen to no more, my guide, a German Socialist who had been a prisoner in Dachau for ten and a half years, took me across the compound to the jail. In Dachau, if you wan t to rest from one horror you go and see another. The jail was a long clean building with small whIte cells in it. Here lived the people whom the prisoners called the N.N. N.N. stands for Nacht und Nebel, which means night and mist. Translated into less romantic terms, this means that the prisoners in these cells never saw a human being, were never allowed to speak to anyone, were never taken out into the sun and the air. They lived in solitaryconfinement on water soup and a slice of bread, which was the camp diet. There was of course the danger of going mad. But one never knew what happened to them in the years of their silence. And on the Friday before the Sunday when the Americans entered Dachau, eight thousand men were removed by the SS on a final death transport. Among these were all the prisoners from the soli­ tary cells. None of these men has been heard of since. Now in the clean empty building a woman, alone in a cell, screamed for a long time on one terrible note, was silent for a moment, and screamed tH en mu�c!� �iji br tevcr ��i n a �llijijl� naoarat llir�emijij f Inem �t oa}10lt ifaij\� a not�� �MU oilirn w� cri��loofrl DACHAU again. She had gone mad in the last few days; we came too late for her. In Dachau if a prisoner was found with a cigarette butt in his pocket he received twenty-five to fifty lashes with a bull whip. If he failed to stand at attention with his hat off, six feet away from any SS trooper who happened to pass, he had his hands tied behind his back and he was hung by his bound hands from a hook on the wall for an hour. If he did any other little thing which displeased the jailers he was put in the box. The box is the size of a telephone booth. It is so constructed that being in it alone a man cannot sit down, or kneel down, or of course lie down. It was usual to put four men in it together. Here they stood for three days and nights without food or water or any form of sanitation. Afterward they went back to the sixteen-hour day of labor and the diet of water soup and a slice of bread like soft gray cement. What had killed most of these people was hunger; starvation was simply routine. A man worked those incredible hours on that diet and lived in such overcrowding as cannot be imagined, the bodies packed into airless barracks, and woke each morning weaker, waiting for his death. It is not known how many people died in this camp in the twelve years of its existence, but at least forty-five thousand are known to have died in the last three years. Last February and March, two thousand were killed in the gas chamber because, though they were too weak to work, they did not have the grace to die; so it was arranged for them. The gas chamber is part of the crematorium. The crematorium is a brick building outside the camp compound, standing in a grove of pine trees. A Polish priest had attached himself to us and as we walked there he said, "I started to die twice of starvation but I was very lucky. I got a job as a mason when we were building this crematorium, so I received a little more food, and that way I did not die." Then he said, "Have you seen our chapel, madame?" I said I had not, and my guide said I could not; it was within the 239 �u i /.... -------.... .. ��-- . _ .. _- THE SECOND WORLD WAR zone where the two thousand typhus cases were more or less iso­ lated. "It is a pity," the priest said. "We finally got a chapel and we had Holy Mass there almost every Sunday. There are very beau­ tiful murals. The man who painted them died of hunger two months ago." Now we were at the crematorium. "You will put a handkerchief over your nose," the guide said. There, suddenly, but never to be believed, were the bodies of the dead. They were everywhere. There were piles of them inside the oven room, but the SS had not had time to bum them. They were piled outside the door and along. side the building. They were all naked, and behind the crerna­ torium the ragged clothing of the dead was neatly stacked, shirts, jackets, trousers, shoes, awaiting sterilization and further use. The clothing was handled with order, but the bodies were dumped like garbage, rotting in the sun, yellow and nothing but bones, bones grown huge because there was no flesh to cover them, hideous, terrible, agonizing bones, and the unendurable smell of death. We have all seen a great deal now; we have seen too many wars and too much violent dying; we have seen hospitals, bloody and messy as butcher shops; we have seen the dead like bundles lying on all the roads of half the earth. But nowhere was there anything like this. Nothing about war was ever as insanely wicked as these starved and outraged, naked, nameless dead. Behind one ile of dead lay the clothed healthy bodies of the German soldi who (IV '\. �d been oun III IS camp. They were shot at onkt: when the �American Army entered. And for the first time an here onecould look at a dead man with gladness. ust e III the crematorium stood the fine big modern hot­ houses. Here the prisoners grew the flowers that the SS officers loved. Next to the hothouses were the vegetable gardens, and very rich ones too, where the starving prisoners cultivated the vitamin foods that kept the SS strong. But if a man, dying of hunger, fur­ tively pulled up and gorged himself on a head of lettuce, he would 240 or leii® cna�1 ��! ev��� nun�r �l DACHAU be beaten until he was unconscious. In front of the crematorium, separated from it by a stretch of garden, stood a long row of well­ built, commodious homes. The families of the SS officers lived here; their wives and children lived here quite happily, while the chimneys of the crematorium poured out unending smoke heavy with human ashes. The American soldier in the plane said, "We got to talk about it." You cannot talk about it very well because there is a kind of shock that sets in and makes it almost unbearable to remember what you have seen. I have not talked about the women who were moved to Dachau three weeks ago from their own concentration camps. Their crime was that they were Jewish. There was a lovely girl from Budapest, who somehow was still lovely, and the woman with mad eyes who had watched her sister walk into the gas cham­ ber at Auschwitz and been held back and refused the right to die with her sister, and the Austrian woman who pointed out calmly that they all had only the sleazy dresses they wore on their backs, they had never had anything more, and that they worked out­ doors sixteen hours a day too in the long winters, and that they too were "corrected," as the Germans say, for any offense, real or imaginary. I have not talked about how it was the day the American Army arrived, though the prisoners told me. In their joy to be free, and longing to see their friends who had come at last, many prisoners rushed to the fence and died electrocuted. There were those who died cheering, because that effort of happiness was more than their bodies could endure. There were those who died because now they had food, and they ate before they could be stopped, and it killed them. I do not know words to describe the men who have survived this horror for years, three years, five years, ten years, and whose minds are as clear and unafraid as the day they entered. I was in Dachau when the German armies surrendered uncondi­ tionally to the Allies. The same half-naked skeleton who had been 241 ==-.JII : /- i I� �----- . ---- THE SECOND WORLD WAR dug out of the death train shuffled back into the doctor's office. He said something in Polish; his voice was no stronger than a whisper.The Polish doctor clapped his hands gently and said, "Bravo." I asked what they were talking about. "The war is over," the doctor said. "Germany is defeated." We sat in that room, in that accursed cemetery prison, and no one had anything more to say. Still, Dachau seemed to me the most suitable place in Europe to hear the news of victory. For surely this war was made to abolish Dachau, and all the other places like Dachau, and everything that Dachau stood for, and to abolish it forever. /. - - -- . _ / __ _ill - -! � r THE FOUR WARS HERE REPORTED WERE REALLY ONE WAR. IT WAS the most monstrous war mankind has survived to date. Twenty­ five million dead; how many millions of maimed, blinded, insane; how many million children orphaned and cheated for life; the erratic and mindless destruction of man's handiwork and heritage of beauty; all our terror and sorrow were needed to cut one cancer from the body of the nations. Can anyone, remembering, dare to see this happen again? At least there was an end to it. Peace treaties were signed; lights blazed over half a darkened world; people gave thanks in churches; if you didn't feel up to singing and kissing in the streets, you could weep alone for the dead and for the manner of the dying. No one human being knew the full horror of that war; there was too much horror, too widespread. But it was over, it was over, we could breathe and hope and start to build for the future. Before any city was cleaned of its rubble and made whole, be­ fore the remnants of a tortured people found their home in Israel, before the last already forgotten burned pilot had suffered the last q� i / '-�-----::r.. _ . ---- THE FACE OF WAR stitching skin graft, the human race was busy hating and fearing again, and growing new cancers. Old enemies became allies, old allies became enemies, novice tyrants replaced defunct tyrants, and we were spending the riches wanted for life on weapons of ruin. It we will not learn, is there any hope for us? The answer is that we cannot help hoping; we do not control it. We are given a supply which only runs out in death, perhaps because each one of us ows love, the source of hope. But this is our final chance to learn. The Second World War was an evil that men could stop; the unknown nuclear war will have no end. No peace treaty will stop the interminable invisible poison dust. The war of the universe would be carried on by the wind. War is a crime against the living and always has been; no one can begin to imagine the size and the shape of the crime of nuclear war. We are told that speed is all-the mammoth surprise attack, the instant mammoth retaliation. In the absolute chaos after the rain of bombs, who is going to bury the estimated 800 million dead­ whole shattered, flaming cities of corpses; who will nurse tue un­ estimated miIlions with the open sores on their burned bodies; who is going to watch over the lingering tormented deaths that will foIlow? Where will the survivors be, outside the limits of civiliza­ tion, not worth immediate killing-and what can they hope for, what can they create again to the honor of mankind, knowing that the earth and the air and the water are incurably tainted, and that they have nothing to hand on to their children and their children's children except disease, a withering end to the last of the race? To preserve freedom? What freedom? For whom? -_ - • - , \ I / yen d ru�ll: cn Ont �I ij: Author's Note WorlGWt led! W�WL dDle in\�i�1 ea on �: 1& hdl�ij;fr: �e tnm�:: edlidrU These articles are reprinted as originally published except: where fter�tl1r the grammar was so snarled as to be meaningless, I tidied it a bit; where imon�111· hasty repetition of words became too irritating, I found some variations; Imt �n where extraneous material or the long-windedness of those who write ea 'ooi� too fast was a real interference, I cut. As any reader will see, this was the lightest, quickest first-aid job. 0/(i11 In the Dachau article, I inserted ten sentences. I remember every no�I�, detail of Dachau and probably will as long as I live. At the time of writ- ow�* ing the article, shock must have affected me like amnesia; the article is lan�� mainly full of omissions. But there are two memories I cannot leave out , CMWiu': again; I could hardly believe that I had left them out in the first place. �ern� One was the madwoman screaming alone in the empty prison; the other was the walking skeleton, lately dug from the last death transport, who brought the news of the Allied victory in Europe. , �-_;________l . ---- - ______ - - DATE DUE �:� 1a�'r;. j. : lR rl� -- - I I r GAYLOI\O .. "INTIEOIHU .•. A. -_ - - - �,