Before Their Time: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF

I will not say it twice. I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
    I believed in that voice and trusted it. Even more, I secretly wanted it to take complete charge of me, to make me a prisoner of war, a captive of the 78th infantry division. (A loathsome notion, to want to be a POW, as I came to believe only later.) I placed my M-1 on the ground, unpeeled all the BAR ammo and laid it neatly alongside my rifle, glad to be rid of it. Then I did the same with the M-1 ammo and the grenades. (In the middle distance, meanwhile, perhaps twenty yards away, I could make out the dim silhouettes of the enemy, rifles pointing at us; they were barely visible but fully sensed, rustling presences in the night.) I did all this deliberately, slipping off my pack, too, relieved of that at last, moving to a slow beat to quell my inner excitement, for I was terrifically excited at the unexpected action. Everyone was, I’m sure. And then suddenly, without thought or preparation, I took off to the left into the brush, my normally cautious heart charged by a new energy, my body moving powerfully on its own, as though it had a life that was separate from the rest of me.
    “What the hell,” I heard Bern say behind me, his voice heightened by surprise, but it was too late. I was gone.
    I SLEPT the night away about a mile or so to the west, well up in the hills that rose sharply on that side of the valley. During the climb, a sapling’s branch had snapped back against my left eye, causing swelling, which I kept poking at until it hurt.
    I soon settled down and decided to try to make myself comfortable. There weren’t a lot of options. I had been trained to use my helmet liner as a pillow. I turned a pile of leaves and twigs into a primitive mattress. And that was all I had. Then I lay down to try to sleep. The major problem was the chill, which was constant and biting, but there was little I could do about it. I was cold all night, waking fitfully to hug myself and get the blood going; stamping my feet also helped. Exhaustion took care of the rest, quickly putting me back to sleep, although I don’t think I was ever fully under, in the conventional sense. In my sleep, I thought I could still hear the sounds of a battle down below. There were intermittent noises all night. I found myself worrying about what had happened to the Yankee Division.
    When a leg cramp finally woke me in the morning, I could see the sun hovering behind a mass of gray-black clouds that were barely moving across the bleak sky. Our brief romance with warmth and light was over. It was sure to rain again within the hour. Nevertheless, I was pleased with myself. I was alone amid a vast, wooded space that opened out onto grand vistas on the other side of the valley. There were no orders here to be obeyed, no squad to bother with. And no threats from an unknown “enemy.” Still, I began to prepare to return to the third platoon. I stood up, tested my leg, stretched, and rinsed out my mouth with water from my canteen, which was the only piece of equipment left to me. The wind had started up by then, and I hugged myself again for warmth. My sore eye felt tender. I had been out long enough. I had had my little adventure and it felt good.
    “Cold, baby?”
    I knew that voice. “Keaton,” I said, turning around. “You bum.”
    He laughed. He was sitting on the ground behind me, about twenty feet away. “You don’t look too happy to see me,” he said.
    “How’d you find me, anyway?”
    “I tailed you. Like the deerslayer. I could hear you from fifty yards away. Some Indian you’d make.” He laughed again. Then he stood up and, turning his back, began to pee. Walking over to him, I did the same. Together, back-to-back, we made serious morning noises.
    Then the two of us stared into the distance, into the grand hillside vistas, where carpets of Tennessee clover seemed to go on forever. Down below, behind a stand of trees, a few columns of smoke rose in the air on the road we