No One Wanted to Be a Hero

No one wanted to be a hero.

Not now, anyway. It was over, pretty much, or would be soon enough. That's what everyone was saying. That's what newspapers were saying; the last one most of them saw was yesterday's news two weeks ago. It was true. You could taste it. You could see it in the slouch of prisoners marching back; kids mostly, and old men. They looked more relieved than depressed, more exhausted than anything else. And all those white sheets hanging out of windows? Everyone knew.

The Army was so sure it was over they assigned one GI for every twenty, thirty, Germans. Think on it. One GI with eight rounds in his M1 for thirty prisoners. That’s confidence for you. Or stupidity.

The hunt, if you could call it that, wasn't for the enemy. Not in the minds of the guys who actually carried guns. Let the fighters hit 'em. Hell, they got paid enough and it wasn't like there was anything left of the Luftwaffe. Let the tanks roll over them. Ditto on the Panzers if there were any of those that weren't already burning.

The hunt was for two things: a safe end to it all and souvenirs. Souvenirs to go with a story when the grandkids asked what Gramps did in the big war. Souvenirs to sell some goldbrick in the rear who wanted to prove something to the folks back home. Talk about grandkids was new, a good thing. It started back in February, just after the Bulge. They’d stayed in a convent for a night. The kids, orphans, sat in their laps, giving kisses for chocolate, brushing their soft cheeks on rough beards. That’s when it started, talk about what they’d tell their grandchildren. It was a sign of hope. It was a sign that maybe they'd make it after all.

The time for heroes was long gone.

The sergeant told Hart and Abrams to check out the road ahead. He might have winked too, or it might have been a twitch after he suggested to the rosy-cheeked second lieutenant that they might as well wait for the tanks to catch up. The tanks were just a couple of miles back. The lieutenant, a West Pointer class of '44, must have been taught that yelling enough would compensate for a lack of traits an officer should have. Like experience. He screamed, "That's an order!"

The GIs standing nearby instinctively dropped to the ground. They’d learned many things in their time in the service, and one of the most important was not to draw attention to yourself in a combat zone. The sergeant pushed the young officer against a wall with a stern warning to keep his voice down as it wasn't a secure areathe area wasn’t secure. He said a sniper had shot the officer in the platoon they’d passed that very morning.

It wasn’t true, but it quieted the young lieutenant down. He went quiet when the sergeant suggested, “And how ‘bout the lieutenant joins the patrol?” In the rear of course, for the slim chance at some real combat experience. The lieutenant demurred, saying something about a report due at battalion HQ. The sergeant concluded with a “Yessir,” a flip of his fingers that could have been confused for a salute then returned to his diminished platoon.

They were on the front steps of a damaged home, bullet pockmarks dotting the exterior. It was too nice to be a farmhouse, but then most of the houses in Germany were better than what they'd seen in France and Belgium. White sheets flapped from widows that once waved swastikas. The GIs were trading loot and sharing a green bottle of something, liberated no doubt from the owners who were nowhere to be seen. The sergeant didn't ask for volunteers. He just shrugged in front of Hart and Abrams and gave them a look that said, “Your turn,” pointing his chin down the road.

"You heard him. Just don't listen too much," he whispered. "Walk slow, stick to the ditches, and stop after a couple of hundred yards. Little Lord Fauntleroy didn't say how far now, did he?"

Abrams returned a gesture that said, “And the horse you rode in on.” Hart's smiling Irish eyes rolled back with a resigned shake of his head. They gave each other a knowing nod that spoke to three seasons of frontline experience that left them almost unscathed. Physically at least. The nod said we get the joke.

Hart checked his M1, Abrams his Thomson. The two headed off on either side of the road leading east. Every so often, they glanced back to make sure no one was behind them. They were more concerned about that officer than any Germans. A German probably would just want to give up. What they wanted was to hear the rumble of tanks that would let them step into the narrow ditch bordering the road and wave goodbye to this assignment. Hart said he wouldn't mind taking some more prisoners. Maybe he'd get a Luger. He had one back in Luxembourg, complete with holster and a belt with a buckle that read “Gott Mit Uns.” He lost it in a poker game he knew he shouldn't have played because it was on a Sunday and he still retained an iota of parochial school guilt. His mother would have certainly disapproved. More to the point, he was lousy at poker. The guys from the other unit promised they wouldn't let him lose too much. Yeah, right.

Ah, but a Luger. Better than a medal. A Luger said you'd been here, counted coup, seen the elephant. A Luger had value. A Luger was status. There had to be one out there somewhere what with all the Germans surrendering, and Austrians. The whole lot. One lousy Luger. Surely there had to be one among the hundreds, no thousands, of prisoners. Hadn't there been everything else that needed liberation? Nazi flags, daggers, patches, Iron Crosses for God's sake. And cameras. Give an officer a Leica and you'd get a three-day pass. Dirty pictures, too. One fellow gave a limping sergeant, old enough to have fought in the last war, two packs of Luckys for a gold cigarette case. That sergeant sucked in the tobacco scent so long you’d think he’d pass out. He must have been happy with the trade.

But Lugers? None.

Hart and Abrams looked down the empty road. All they saw was mud and that was good. They didn’t want to see anything, but if they did it would probably be more of those ragged arms high above unshaved faces bearing scared shitless smiles. Hart was thinking about dead bodies. They'd been told to rifle through them in case they carried any useful intel. They never did. The dead were just regular soldiers nobody would ever have given a map to. Or a Luger for that matter. Lugers were officer guns.

Maybe they’d capture a grateful officer who'd give over his Luger grip first, his hand over the barrel, with an accented "I am your prisoner" followed by a crisp salute. A real salute, too, not a “Heil Hitler.” That would be one for the grandchildren.

"DOWN!"

Hart dropped into the muddy ditch, willing himself deeper into the ground. Abrams had crawled into a puddle ahead of him and kicked back at Hart's helmet. He used hand signals to say there was a soldier, enemy soldier, with a rifle, to their left. Hart didn't understand hand signals. "Just say it, you idiot. Sonofabitch must have seen us."

They peered over their ditch to see a someone a hundred yards up a wooded hill, peeking out from behind a massive tree, his rifle nervously pointing left and right. He wore a simple soldier’s uniform. He wasn't a sniper. A sniper would have taken them out already. And thank God he wasn’t SS. He was just one guy on a hill. Alone.

They watched. He shifted around on that spot, crouching too little, pointing his gun all over the place, looking for Hart and Abrams lying low in their cover. Hart looked down the barrel of his rifle, adjusted the sights, but the German was partially blocked by the tree and he had lousy aim anyway even if better than Abrams’.

"Get help?" said Abrams.

"Naw, just scare him off," said Hart, who fired off a few rounds in the direction of the tree. The German ducked behind it and fired a couple of rounds back kicking up dirt no closer than twenty feet from where they hid. He was nervous and a bad shot to boot. They waited a few minutes, hoping the shots would bring up their unit. No one came.

Abrams pointed to the right of the hill and said he was going up and told Hart he should creep up on the left. "You shoot, covering fire. He'll move to the right and I'll get him. Stay the fuck down, right?"

Hart readily agreed to the ‘stay the fuck down’ concept. They started their ascent, Abrams crawling up on the right, Hart on the left keeping the German, who was still pointing all over the place, in doubt.

Hart had it easy. It was April. The ground was soft, the leaves and debris moist, and he didn't make a sound as he moved from the cover of a boulder to a stump to a tree, with the German in sight all the while. Abrams was more exposed. The German fired a few rounds down the hill at nothing in particular. The effort seemed half-hearted. Abrams thought maybe the German, too, was trying to scare them off. He wanted the German to just walk away or give up. That he didn't, that he wouldn't, pissed him off, angering Abrams more than any fight he'd been in.

He crept closer, staying low, making no effort to surprise the German. That was Hart's job. Abrams had the Thomson. When the Kraut bastard moved - Abrams was thinking of him as a Kraut now - he'd open up. He double-checked the safety and, lifted the Thomson. He was ready.

Hart was ready too. He'd moved closer. There weren't thirty yards between him and the German. There he was, half his body behind the tree, the rest exposed, and the Kraut still scanning with his rifle left and right, up and down. Hart stepped on a branch—the German must have heard, and he flattened himself waiting for a shot that never came. The German just kept moving his rifle around, pointing at nothing. He wasn't very threatening. To Hart, he acted more confused, or maybe he didn't care. Or maybe he'd gone out hunting, like for deer, and didn't expect to run into anyone, least of all Americans. Hart almost felt sorry for him; a hungry soldier looking for food in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There was no need to aim. Hart would fire off some rounds, the German would move to the other side of the tree, and Abrams would let loose. From where he was, he could see Abrams looking back, and he gave him thumbs-up. Hart rose from behind a tree and moved out to get off his shots. The German picked that moment to come out from his tree. They stared at each other. Hart noticed a white flower on the German's collar and in a split-second thought that any guy wearing a flower in his lapel would be a gentle guy, someone who didn't want to fight, someone who'd want to surrender.

Or maybe it was more like a scene out of the Wild West. The German would sniff the flower, take his time, and come up shooting.

Someone fired. A couple of shots followed and then nothing. The German was on the ground, still. Hart felt something in his side, but whatever it was wasn't bad. He fired another round into the German. Abrams, who'd run up the hill, let go a brief volley into him as well. The body jerked under the unnecessary assault. Hart had got him with his first shot.

"You okay?" asked Abrams, pointing to Hart's side with the barrel of the Thomson.

Hart looked down to see the stock of his M1 shattered where the bullet had hit, blood trickling from the splinters that had entered his hip. He pulled the splinters. "Yeah, I'm fine."

They went to the body and kicked it over. He was not a young man, not one of the kids they'd seen, but a guy in his thirties, younger maybe. A pistol case dangled from the man's belt. Abrams gestured with his chin. "Your Luger."

There was no Luger. The case held letters and a photograph. The picture was of a blonde woman, pretty, smiling, kneeling. Her arms wrapped around two little girls, maybe three or four years old, not more than five. They wore exaggerated grins that said “Give a big smile for Daddy.” The girls wore matching white dresses and had identical white hair ribbons. Their hair glowed whiter than the mom's if that was possible. Hart thought they looked like little angels. He crossed himself.

On the back was a name, Gretl, in an adult's handwriting and one other written in a child's scrawl, maybe Hanna. And there was a doodle of a dog, with a smile, the sort of drawing a child would do to make a father smile when he was far from home.

They didn’t look for souvenirs after that. Anyway, the war was over, pretty much. No one wanted to be a hero.