Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

"Oh my God!" I yelled. I screamed again, one long lament, and for an instant broke away from the two men who were holding me, but they, along with the lieutenant, dragged me down into the ditch. I twisted, cursing them until the lieutenant put the pistol barrel straight to my forehead.

"Schrei nicht. Schweigen Sie. Wir helfen deinem Freund. We helf." I quieted to see if they'd aid Biddy as promised, and one of them scrambled up to the road. He was back in a second.

"Er ist tot," he said.

The lieutenant could see I understood and immediately placed the icy pistol muzzle to my forehead again. The idea of some vain act of resistance passed through my mind like a weak current. But I'd already learned on the battlefield the desperate, humiliating secret of how badly I wanted to live, and I said nothing, allowing the Germans to drag me along in despair.

With any kind of luck, we'd have encountered American troops, but it was, simply put, not a lucky day. The Germans nearby were mounting an offensive action and my captors moved toward the sounds of the battle. Near nightfall, they hooked up with a German antitank unit, which turned out to have taken a number of Allied prisoners. The unit was being redeployed and we marched at the end of their column, with our hands behind our heads. As the only officer, I was separated from the dozen or so enlisted men by the buffer of a single guard.

We were clearly inside Germany, because at one point we passed through a tiny village where several locals came out to observe us. An old woman rushed from her little house and spat on the first American in line. She was followed by another, younger woman who began to scream, while several more people stepped from their houses. Perhaps to pacify them, one of the German officers ordered us to surrender our coats to the residents. I couldn't see exactly what had happened in this town. Probably nothing different than in any other town. There were still bodies of American and German soldiers pushed to both sides of the road.

We slept that night in an open field. Another prisoner thought we were somewhere near Prum. We were each issued a worn army blanket but no food. One man, a Brit, had been a prisoner for two days now. He said this was the second time he'd been captured. The first was during Market Garden, the invasion of the Low Countries, and he'd been shipped back to a German stalag in Belgium, not all that far from here, from which he and everyone else had escaped when it was bombed. As the only veteran of captivity, he did his best to remain sunny. If I'd been in a mood to like any human being, I probably would have liked him.

"POW ain't the end of the world, mate, not by my lights. Cuisine ain't the Savoy, but there been days when I ain't et in my own army. It's those blokes out there gettin shot at are 'avin the rough time, if you ask me. This 'ere, it's just boring."

One of the enlisted men asked what the former prison camp had been like.

"Jerries are completely crackers. All day long, they was counting us, mate. Stand up. Sit down. Eins, zwei, drei. Not like they were going to give us anything. Food was bread once a day, and couple times this awful potato stew. One day the commandant comes in. 'I have Boot news and bat news. Goot news. Today each man will get a change of underwear. Bat news. You must switch with the man next to you.' Only a joke," he added.

Our laughter attracted the German guards, who stomped among us, demanding silence. Nonetheless, the talk resumed shortly. Sooner or later, we were going to be handed off to the Kraut equivalent of the MPs. The Brit didn't think we were going to a stalag. Before his capture, he'd heard that they were housing prisoners in the German cities which the Allies had begun to bomb.

This time, when the two guards heard us talking, they didn't bother with more warnings. They charged around, knocking heads with their rifle butts. I barely ducked when the soldier came at me and I took the blow with little reaction. The pain resounded. But I did not care much. Sooner or later, I realized, they'd take a proper inventory of us and notice the 'H' on my dog tag. At that point, things for me were likely to get considerably worse. But I could not hold on to any concern about that. I did not feel part of this world any longer. It was as if I had sunk one foot inside myself. I often wonder if I will ever fully return.

The Germans woke us a little before daybreak. We were issued our ration for the day, a roll to be split between two men.

"Eat it now," the Brit said. "Someone will steal it, if you try to save it."

As the guards got us to our feet, the SS lieutenant who'd put the gun to my head passed by. He looked at me and then came over.

"Wie geht's?" he asked, manifestly more at ease now that he was back among his own. He thought I spoke more German than I did. I'd been muddling along with my grandparents' Yiddish, and I answered only with a shrug. Even at that, I felt I was a coward. He had perfect blue eyes and he looked at me a moment longer. "Bald schiessen wir nicht mehr," he whispered and gave me a weary smile. He was saying that the shooting was going to be over soon, and didn't seem to hold any illusion he would be on the winning side.

We marched most of the morning. I don't know where the Germans thought they were headed, probably to bolster more of the troops we could hear fighting, but they never got there. As we passed a wood, an American armored cavalry unit appeared out of nowhere. Six Shermans rolled in literally from every direction with their big guns leveled. The German commander surrendered without a shot. Apparently, he had the same view of the war's progress as the lieutenant.

The American troops rushed forward. The Germans who'd been our captors were forced to their knees with their hands behind their heads, while we were greeted like heroes. Two of the men who'd been prisoners had minor wounds, and they were whisked off for medical attention. The rest of us were loaded on a truck and transported to the regimental headquarters, while the Germans marched at gunpoint in the rear. This was the 66th Tank Regiment of the 4th Armored Division. While most of the division had been allowed a respite in Luxembourg after Bastogne, these tankers had been brought in to flank the 87th Infantry. They were doing one hell of a job as far as I was concerned.

Their mobile headquarters, about two miles behind the lines where we'd been captured, consisted of an array of squad tents in a snowy field. Each of the freed Americans was interviewed by regimental G-2. Since I had been the lone officer in captivity, the staff G-z, Major Golsby, interviewed me personally in his tent. He was confused about my orders, which I still had in my pocket, the only thing the Germans hadn't taken.

"I have to go back to Third Army JAG," I told him. If the MPs hadn't found Martin and Gita by now, there was no point in pursuing them now that they had another two days' lead time. More important, I had lost all interest in the mission. I knew as a matter of historical fact that it was my fault Bidwell was dead. My adolescent fascination with both Martin and Gita had led, as tragic errors always must, to tragedy-to combat, capture, and now Biddy's grave.

When I told Golsby what had happened to him, I realized I sounded remote. "I bawled my eyes out yesterday," I added. It was an absolute lie. I was yet to shed a tear. Instead, all my grief about Biddy had energized another of those circling thoughts, this one about why I'd never gotten around to telling him to call me David.

"They shot a POW?" he asked me, repeating the question a few times. "Unarmed? Stay here." He returned with Lieutenant Colonel Coleman, the deputy regimental commander. He looked like a former football player, big and stocky and quick to anger, and he was angry now, as he should have been, at my account of how Biddy died.