Bloody Bandages
It's often been said that, "War is Hell!" Those of us who have "been there" can certainly endorse that statement. I spent two years in Italy, France and Germany during WWII, most of it in Infantry combat. Those memories are still distinct fifty and more years later. It seems to me that the most vivid memories are those that originated at times of peak emotion such as fear, pride, terror, joy, despair, loneliness, and victory. And then there are the macabre memories that never go away.
In late March of 1945, The Third Infantry Division was attacking southeast in Germany after having pierced the Siegfried Line, crossed the Rhine River and then the winding Main River three times. The Krauts were making an orderly retreat, but bitterly defending good defensive terrain. There was no "front line" as such. It was called "a fluid situation," which means that neither side knew for sure where the enemy was. I was in command of the 7th Infantry Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon and my mission was patrolling ahead to seek out the enemy's position and strength. The War was starting to wind down, but it wouldn't be over until there was nothing left for the Wehrmacht to defend.
On one such mission, I was ordered to patrol as far as a small German town, about three to five miles east, whose name I can no longer remember. I took only one of my four jeeps, my driver and my platoon runner. Our job was to find the enemy, not fight him. We rode through farm country, flat and treeless. We had unobstructed visibility almost to the horizon. About a half mile from our objective, we came upon a huge, solitary, stone farmhouse at the side of the unpaved road. It was surrounded by a six-foot high stone wall and built like a fortress. There was nothing to indicate that the house was occupied but I felt it was my duty to find out for sure, because it would make an ideal defensive position in the otherwise flat farmland. I could see a cobblestone courtyard through the open gate. My sense of duty overcame my fear of an ambush and we drove through the gate.
We slowly bumped over the courtyard cobbles with our weapons ready to fire. When PFC Steele turned off the engine, there was no sound but the soft sighing of the wind. It was eerie! Spooky! Steele took the opportunity to utter one of his favorite ungrammatical, but sage, expressions. "I don't like the looks of this place, Loo-tenant. It's too damn quiet!" And it was! We approached an open door with no idea of what might be waiting for us inside. We entered and found ourselves in a fairly large deserted kitchen. In the center of the room was a wooden kitchen table about eight feet long. The table and the floor surrounding it were covered with blood! Literally gallons of it! There were footprints in the blood on the floor which struck me as a form of sacrilege and we tried to avoid stepping in it. The color of the blood ranged from bright red to maroon, depending upon the degree of coagulation. An expert could probably have estimated from the consistency of the blood, how long they had been here and when they had left. I quickly recovered from my initial shock and surmised that this was an abandoned Aid Station run by the enemy's medical personnel.
Footprints in the blood on the floor pointed to and from a stairway leading to the cellar. The cellar door was wide open. I traded weapons with PFC Bigler, my runner, and with his Thompson submachine gun set on Full Automatic, I crept down the stairs. The lighting was very dim, with diffused daylight coming through a few small, mud spattered windows up high at ground level. It was deathly quiet. At first glance, I thought the cellar was being used as a barracks. Three walls were lined with two tier bunks made from two-by-fours, hastily nailed together. There was a fully uniformed German soldier in each bunk, but no one moved!
As my eyes adjusted to the gloomy light, I moved to the nearest bunks and saw a German soldier on each level. One had a large bloody bandage around his chest, the other around his head. They were fully clothed except for caps or helmets. The large, snow white dressings contrasted with the dirty field gray uniforms as did the huge bright red stains in their centers. There were no mattresses, no pillows. Both men lay on their backs on bare boards, their eyes looking straight up. I looked around the room and counted twenty bunks, every one of which was occupied by a German soldier swathed in bloody white bandages. I was struck by the fact that every wound was a head or chest wound, the worst kind. For an instant, I thought that the enemy had abandoned his wounded. But no one moved nor made a sound. Some had their eyes open. Others did not. The dim lighting and complete silence added to the oppressive atmosphere. I realized then that they were all dead!
I concluded that this had, in fact, been an enemy Aid Station, that emergency first aid was performed on the kitchen table after which the wounded were placed on bunks in the cellar, where they would be safe from artillery fire. The medics could probably do no more than administer morphine (if they had it) and try to stop the bleeding with compress bandages. When the Germans were forced to withdraw, they took their survivors with them and left the dead behind, probably because of insufficient transport. I knew they had not been gone long, because much of the blood looked fresh and there was no trace of that familiar cloying smell of decaying human flesh.
As I looked around at those mortally wounded young men, a great sadness came over me. They were pawns, whose lives were suddenly and painfully terminated with the War almost over. All in support of the wild ambitions of that egomaniac, Adolph Hitler. My heart briefly went out to them and their families, even though they were the enemy. But as we drove away, my military training put my mind back on track. I had a job to do. The ashen faces faded. And two weeks later, when we overran the Dachau concentration camp, the faces of the enemy dead no longer seemed important.
3_7_I_Recon
That is even harder to imagine even though I have seen countless photos, heard countless stories and seen countless films. For those of us who weren't there, we will never be able to fully grasp everything that you experienced. Nor do I think we would wish to.