Major Conflict Read online

  Staring at his lifeless, ruined body, I couldn’t help thinking about war and death and my place as a soldier within the context of these two words. There was so much silence here, so much absence rising up off the dead German’s body, it almost seemed substantive, as if the absence and the silence were positive conditions rather than the result of the mere lack of sound and being. I sensed that there would probably always be a disconnect between all the reasoned arguments for war and war itself, war as it presents itself finally to you as a game you score by keeping track of deaths and injuries. My Catholic training had morphed slowly over the years into a kind of secular spirituality, but it was still informing my outlook on things in a very real way. Although I’d dedicated myself to the army, made a career out of soldiering, I still had questions—not about the reasoned arguments for war, I had no question about those—but about the thing itself, which you can see only in a moment like this, when it’s presented to you in all its bald vulgarity, in the form of the dead, mangled body of an innocent civilian.

  I had not yet seen war, but I was beginning to understand why it is that the most reluctant warriors are those who’ve actually seen battle and that this reluctance, this caution, increases in direct proportion to the amount and intensity of the soldier’s experience on the battlefield.

  A part of me believed that all this hand-wringing was a good thing since it meant my humanity would always remain in tact. What makes a soldier most effective is the power he’s given within the context of combat to actually kill fellow human beings. A soldier is by definition one who is given this ultimate power within the strictly defined rules of war. In order to counterbalance the awesome responsibility of wielding this power, a soldier must discover within himself even deeper reserves of compassion and empathy than the average citizen. These deep reserves are what keep the soldier’s moral compass in place, especially in moments of great duress during wartime, when the line between fair combat and calculated brutality can become so easily blurred.

  I was told to step back as the emergency personnel from the local town and the medevac people swarmed the vehicle. The sergeant in charge of the tank crew started speaking quickly.

  “Sir,” he said, addressing Captain Kreuz, “I just didn’t see him or anything. The first I knew anything was wrong was when you flagged us down, when you threw the water bottle.” His voice was raspy, and it quavered as he tried to hold himself together.

  “How come your radio was off?” Kreuz asked him.

  “Sir, we’ve been having commo problems for a while, and I thought we had got it fixed. I hadn’t noticed that it was out again. You said you wanted radio silence on the road marches, and I thought everything was cool.”

  Kreuz looked at him steadily and then turned to the other sergeant standing on his left.

  “You see anything?”

  “Well, sir, the rad was at the intersection and fell in with the convoy and was trying to dart in and out of the formation. It looked as though he mistimed passing in front of Staff Sergeant Barnes’s vehicle and ran into the back and got caught underneath.” Rad is a term the troops used to refer to a German.

  “All right, the battalion commander called and told me that CID (Criminal Investigation Division) will be here to investigate and take statements. I want you to be honest and forthright. Staff Sergeant Barnes, I want you to report to the ALOC, where you and your section will meet with the chaplain and get the vehicle checked for damage.” ALOC stands for Administrative Logistics Operations Center, and this was where vehicles were repaired and casualties treated.

  I was feeling numb at this point. All I could think was, What a stupid, stupid way to go! How did your brother, son, lover, die? they’d ask. Oh, he drove underneath the back of an M1 tank and got stuck. Why hadn’t he waited until we passed or taken a different route to get where he was going? How would his family take this? Did he have a wife and kids? Did he have a boyfriend? What would the family and friends think of us? I knew I’d never get the answers to these questions. We would all simply drive off and continue the exercise, leaving the tank and its crew behind to deal with the ramifications of being inside the vehicle that had dragged a German to his death, and experiencing, as we all would that day to some degree, the vague horror of the kind of shapeless complicity that never quite attaches itself to anything and never quite goes away, and always seems to end up as the mere complicity of survival.

  This would become even clearer to me years later, after the war, when I was at Fort Bragg with the Eighty-second Airborne. This was during peacetime, mind you. One of the special incentives they devised was this: if we made it through eighty-two days without a death among us, we’d be issued a three-day pass. In the four years I was there we were given that three-day pass only once. Granted, if you take any large group of people and monitor them over time, odds are some are going to die, whether they’re doing nothing or taking huge physical risks. But still, at Fort Bragg, we’d reach, say, day seventyfive, and all the troops would begin to get excited, talking about where they planned to go, what they planned to do with their three-day pass. And then it would come down that so-and-so had been injured and then died at such and such a place, and as the news spread around the post that strange unease would pass from soldier to soldier, unit to unit, and we’d all experience the odd sensation of guilt about being, still, on this side of survival.

  After a few hours of waiting and watching the local German and army emergency personnel do their thing, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief when the word finally came down to mount up and move out. We all were eager to get back into the exercise and forget about the accident. The battalion commander decided to make us lead company, which was a subtle nod to Captain Kreuz that the commander had not lost confidence in him or the company.

  We drove for hours, encountering no resistance, meeting our various objectives and continuing on to the next. Armored warfare is very fluid and can cover huge distances rather quickly. Whereas a light force of infantry on foot might attack an objective three miles away from its staging area, an armored force can move upwards of sixty miles without batting an eye. But riding in these vehicles is no day in the park. The whole thing is often extremely uncomfortable and gets exhausting pretty quickly. If you had to ride in a turret the way I did, you were completely exposed to the elements, rain or shine. Of course this was great in the warm weather, but in the cold, surrounded on all sides by metal that made it seem even colder, it could be hell. For those on the inside of the vehicle it wasn’t much better; being tossed around, they often suffered from aching backs and exhausted muscles.

  This was our basic routine for the next two weeks—long days of driving through small German towns, with the occasional run-in with the enemy. The exercises were done not so much to benefit the individual troops but for those higher up who were responsible for planning and movement. The exercises allowed generals and others to observe large forces being moved around and to cope with the logistics that came with that.

  This first exercise gave me the opportunity to begin to bond with my team and for them to bond with one another. Over the two weeks I learned quite a bit about who they were and what they wanted out of life. For some of them, the army was a way out: out of poverty, a troubled home life, or both. These guys were often turned into immediate heroes in the small, depressed towns from which they usually came. Others saw it as a means to pursue the American dream, serving in the army to get educated and eventually to move up into the middle class. Some found comfort in the regularity and predictability of army life, thriving in the culture of discipline and loyalty.

  Spending two weeks with these men, in such close quarters, I managed to earn their respect and to learn how to lead them at the same time. I often thought of the dead German beneath the M1 tank and, as I grew closer to my men, found myself feeling ever more protective of them. I became increasingly convinced that I’d do almost anything I could to cover their backs, and to save their very lives.

&
nbsp; Three things that will always lift a trooper’s spirits: mail, a long hot shower, and a clean uniform. We were granted our showers and clean uniforms on day nine of the exercise. And it wasn’t a day too soon. The baby-wipes-plus-water-from-a-canteen bath was getting really old by that point. We were ordered to a public health club, kind of like a YMCA. As I was sitting on the ramp of the FIST vehicle, relaxing while I waited for my turn to shower, I noticed a rather dignified older gentleman with a small boy in hand, approaching me. I thought they were coming to barter for equipment and uniforms or for food. For the life of me I could never understand the Germans’ fascination with army rations, but they absolutely loved them and would even bring homemade dishes—sauerbraten, Wiener schnitzel, Rindsrouladen, the most delicious bratwursts, even Black Forest cake, in exchange for an MRE. Chem lights, uniforms, and canteens were also quite popular.

  As they reached me I got up and straightened my uniform.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Leutnant,” the old man said, extending his hand.

  “Guten Tag.”

  “Your greeting is flawless, but your German, does it go much deeper? It seems to be the custom for Americans to eschew learning other languages,” he said, smoothly and matter-of-factly, without any disrespect in his voice, at least none that I could detect.

  “Yes, well,” I said, “I’m afraid you’re right. I don’t speak German yet, but I am reasonably fluent in Spanish, so I guess I am an exception.”

  We looked at each other. What was most striking about him was his ramrod-straight bearing and his bright blue eyes, which appeared almost icy. His voice was quite low and raspy, the product, I imagined, of a lifetime of cigarettes. His mouth began to turn up into either a smirk or a smile, I couldn’t tell which. I chose to keep it light and see it as a smile.

  “What is your unit, if you don’t mind my asking?” the older man asked.

  “Alpha Company, Three-Five Cavalry, part of the Third Armored Division.”

  “Indeed,” he said with a flourish. “I brought my grandson out to meet the Americans, so that he can see for himself who is defending him against the Russians.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came out. What is your grandson’s name?” I looked down into the boy’s face.

  “Jorg, say hello to . . . Leutnant . . .?”

  “Lieutenant McGowan.” I extended my hand to the boy, who was surely no more than eight or nine, and apparently very shy, but he reached up nonetheless and took my hand with a diffident grin.

  “I served also,” the man said, “during the war.”

  “Really? Whom did you serve with?”

  “I was with the Waffen-SS.” With that he rolled up his sleeve and showed me the tattooed runes on his inner forearm. I didn’t know how to respond to the sight of the runes.

  “That’s uhh . . . very interesting, where did you serve?”

  “I fought on the Eastern Front all the way out and all the way back.”

  “Wow, that is impressive.”

  “Ya, I was even wounded.” He opened his coat and pulled up his shirt to reveal a long, deep scar that zigzagged across his abdomen.

  “When did that happen?”

  “During an attack in the Ukraine on our march to Leningrad. I lay in a bed for six months to recover, and then they sent me out again to fight in the retreat.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking you this,” I said. I couldn’t help myself; I had to ask. “But could you clarify something for me? I always thought that the SS was very . . .” I stopped, thinking he’d rush in and relieve me from the burden of having to ask, but he remained silent, waiting, looking directly into my face, his steely blue eyes catching bits of afternoon sun. “I thought the SS was very involved in the killing of Jews?”

  He continued to look at me steadily and then let out a small sigh.

  “Certain units were responsible for the crimes,” he said, in a way that sounded rehearsed and a little tired, as if he’d been saying it all his life, “and that was just bad soldiering, horrible, not soldiering at all, really. My unit was strictly a fighting unit. We were all good soldiers. We did our duty. We played by the rules.”

  “I see,” I said, anxious to move away from the subject.

  “You know,” he said, somewhat relieved, it seemed, that the SS question had been put to rest, “at the end of the war I walked seventeen miles to surrender to the Americans.”

  “Really, why?”

  “Because I knew that the Americans are not animals like the Russians. I want you to know that I appreciate you Americans being here. We would have a horrible life without you. The hatred is very deep between us.” He said this with a finality that startled me.

  Unsure how to respond I said, simply, “Well, it certainly was a tough war, for everyone involved.”

  Mercifully, one of the guys from my section returned from the showers at that point to let me know it was my group’s turn to go in. As I reached for my gear and extended my hand to him to say good-bye, he tightened his grip and held me in place.

  “Remember your duty always,” the deep, raspy voice came at me forcefully, while his eyes seemed to grow even brighter for an instant, like two lasers firing simultaneously, and then to soften and dim.

  Then he said, “And may I also trouble you for an MRE for my grandson? He also likes the chem lights.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Brawling Outside the Bulldog; Gustav in the Morning?

  When we weren’t doing exercises or training at Grafenwohr and Hohenfels, my officer buddies and I would often hang out in Frankfurt. We also made a lot of day trips together and occasionally an extended trip for four or five days. Usually it was four of us—John Lostrapo, Dave Bariglia, Jeff Brooks, and me. Dave had dated an au pair whose father was a high-ranking police officer in Amsterdam. When we found out that she’d be able to get us cheap accommodations at the hotel in Slotermeelaan where cops from all over the world stayed, we jumped at the chance to travel to the Netherlands for a few days. We figured we’d check out the Rijksmuseum and maybe make a pilgrimage to the Heineken brewery. It was a great trip (the Rembrandts made a big impression on me), largely uneventful, except that on our second night we ended up, oddly enough, out front of the Mc-Donald’s across the street from the Bulldog bar, fighting a half-dozen Turks, I think, at two in the morning.

  It had been a long day. We’d spent the afternoon at the museum, looking at the Rembrandts and Vermeers, and then we’d hung out at the Bulldog all night, drinking and talking to various good-looking Dutch women. We were having a terrific time.

  Upon leaving the bar at around one-thirty, we decided to grab some McDonald’s before heading back to the hotel. I always felt kind of stupid eating in a McDonald’s when I was in Europe. But that night I was a little bit too drunk to care, plus I was starving. It was a warm night, so the entire front of the McDonald’s was open to the street. You just walked up a couple steps that ran the entire width of the place. The four of us stepped up into the restaurant, laughing loudly about Dave’s failed attempt to pick up some girl at the bar. The place was packed, which seemed unusual since it was so late. As we took our place in line, in walked six guys who we thought were Turkish. To this day I’m not sure where they were from. Apparently they’d also been out drinking, and they were laughing and yelling in their own language, in Turkish, I think, and, like us, they were kind of oblivious to what was going on around them. Unlike us, though, they didn’t seem to feel it necessary to wait their turn in line. The six of them pushed straight through to the front and started shouting orders to the clerks. We all looked incensed, though no one said anything, as the two clerks tried to calm these six guys down and explain to them that they had to go to the back of the line.

  After a few minutes of going back and forth—loud broken English mixed with rants in Turkish and rants in Dutch—it looked as though the clerks were giving in. And that’s when Lostrapo erupted. John Lostrapo was six feet three inches tall and weighed at least 260 pounds; his biceps were easil
y eighteen inches. He’d been an offensive lineman at West Point. The most striking feature about him, however, was his enormous nose, which earned him the nickname Rhinoceros. I’d gotten to know him well enough by this point to understand that, despite his size, he was really a gentle giant who was generous and kind and fiercely loyal to his friends. He was also particularly sensitive to unfairness, however it might present itself in the world.

  Suddenly, without any sort of warning, he marched to the front of the line and, in one deft motion, reached out and corralled all six of the Turks in his arms and pushed them out of line. They started yelling at John, and John yelled back, and this went on the whole time we waited in line. When we reached the front of the line, Lostrapo yelled over, “Two Macs, two fries, two pies, and a big Coke, thanks, McGowan,” and then he turned back and continued yelling at the six Turks.

  “Fuck you, too,” I could hear Lostrapo shouting now. “What was that? What was that, gerbil dick? I’ll kick your fuckin’ ass,” he shouted, almost smiling.

  Our food came, and Brooks yelled over at him, “Hey, Rhino, knock it off, will you? We got the food. Let’s go.” The three of us sat down, and I was happily buzzed and totally focused on my Quarter Pounder and fries. But Lostrapo wouldn’t give it up.

  Finally, Bariglia got pissed. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is he doing?” he said, standing up and looking over at Lostrapo and the Turks. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said, moving out from behind the table, “it looks like it’s getting serious. Come on, let’s get over there.”