Before Their Time: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

things, knew how to play on them. Earlier, just after we arrived in Tennessee, he had chosen Bern and me as his spiritual escape from the goons of the second squad, of which he was a more than shaky member. I had to be careful.
    Nevertheless, our foul mood had begun to lift. Cheerfulness spread through the ranks as we moved along. Bern and I no longer hated each other. I forgave him; I’m sure he forgave me. I even heard Bern, who kept treading on my heels, begin to sing under his breath.
“This will be … my shi-ning … hour …”
    “For Chrissakes, Bern.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “You’re stepping all over me.”
    “So pick it up.”
    It was 9:30 in the morning, the sun was on the rise, and we were on our way to the fake wars. Good riddance to the heavy litter we had left behind in our muddy camp. We had turned it into a dump.
    WE COVERED about nine miles during daylight—not a little, certainly not a lot. At some point after dark on that first day, we should have stopped to bivouac for the night. There seemed to be no real hurry, and no real destination to reach. Also, the company line had become stretched out. This was not unusual. It almost always resulted from the varying rates of speed at which each platoon and each squad and sometimes each man marched. Therefore the chronic cry “Close it up, Fedderman!” could always be heard—or Keaton, Kelleher, or Kotlowitz, for Fedderman was certainly not the only one at fault here. We were all erratic stumblers at times.
    Toward midnight, then, still marching at an increasingly slack pace, we were attacked on our right flank by invisible units of the enemy division, which were hiding in the dark. We should not have been surprised, but we were. Fake ammo suddenly began to pop in front of us like cap pistols; toy explosives detonated to the right, throwing up clods of wet soil; a dozen red flares, looking gorgeous as they fanned out in the night sky, lighted the Tennessee hills to the north. I could see the shocked look on Doug Kelleher’s face when all the racket began. A rush of strange noises rolled down the hills on our right, a rattling of weapons and ammo, the heavy sound of men running and trying toshout at the same time. I even thought I heard a dog barking wildly in the middle of it all.
    I froze. Everybody in the first squad froze. Johnson, Willis, and Rocky Hubbell were positioned somewhere up front, yards ahead of us, gathered in a tight cluster. At that moment, a lump of hard dirt hit me on the shoulder and pebbles rolled off my pack. “Holy shit!” Bern Keaton called out, and fell to the ground behind me. Up ahead, Doug Kelleher did the same. When the BAR hit the ground, it sounded as though it had broken in two.
    “Return fire, first squad. Close in!” That was Rocky, shouting stilted orders. Close in where? Fire at whom?
    The detonations came closer, grew louder. I could smell the unmistakable odor of real danger. A stone hit my helmet. Way up front, Michael Antonovich was screaming something. Above his voice I could hear Gallagher’s Irish tenor rattling away. Then Arch’s own blustery voice cut through it. What were they shouting? In what language? Standing there in the dark, immobilized and disoriented, we were discovering the true chaos that defines almost every military action.
    Perhaps a minute passed, filled with the noise of weapons firing fake ammo at us. There were another couple of flares to the north. Then there was a silence, a great black vacuum, empty of sound, so sudden that it felt as though it had been agreed upon in advance. (Perhaps it had.)
    “Hit the ground,” an unknown voice called out from our right. “All of you.” The voice sounded very calm, very authoritative—amplified, too, as though its owner were speaking through a bullhorn. “Put your weapons aside,” itcontinued, enunciating each word carefully. “You are prisoners of war, captives of the 78th infantry division. Pay strict attention to what I say.