Chris Offutt - No Heroes - A Memoir of Coming Home

I was drafted in 1939. They sent me to the border of Germany and Poland, not far from my house. The war started there in September on my twentieth birthday. The war was over in the first couple of days.

The Luftwaffe just came from nowhere. A lot of noise. The whole countryside was one big perpetuation of light and explosions. We took many casualties. The Germans dug themselves in. We were trapped. They sent me and another guy back through German lines to get help. There were woods, there were fields, there were farmhouses. Very picturesque. It’s beautiful.

I was crawling and the Germans were talking rather casually. I had a rifle but I had to get rid of it. I was afraid of making noise. I was crawling all night in the potato fields. I have never seen such a full moon. A beautiful night, like daylight. I crawled and crawled. Every time I touched a dead soldier I felt relief. Every time I touched a soldier who was not dead, I felt bad. My friend chose the wrong direction. I never saw him again.

Headquarters was gone so I joined a new unit. The next day we were attacked. The unit was destroyed and everybody was dead. I went to the city I used to live in and found my father. He was angry because he thought I deserted. No, I said, we lost.

I didn’t take off my boots for a week, and when I did I found a piece of shrapnel in my foot three inches long. I sat in a wheelbarrow and my father pushed me. The German army got us. They saw that my leg was hurt, so an injection I got. They said the war is over, you guys better go home. They gave us food. They gave us a ride to a hospital in Kraków. The hospital is impossible. There was no space. I was tagged to be amputated. I dragged myself to the outhouse, and felt a warmth in my leg, very funny feeling, and the pain eased up. Everything just burst open and pus came out, a real mess. I get a stick and drag myself home. I was laid up, and this was still within a month after the war started.

All the Jews had to report to the government, otherwise you couldn’t get any food. You couldn’t buy food in the store anyhow without an ID card. And on the ID card, naturally, it said, boom, Jew. Shortly after the ID cards came out, all the Jews have to wear visible signs on their clothes. In Kraków it was a blue band, white Star of David, which I wore very proudly. But then it was inconvenient.

After they forbid Jews from travel, they took an old part of Kraków, threw a wall around it, collected all the Jews and brought them there. They created a ghetto. The conditions were just appalling. No plumbing. No heat. No food. People were sick. People died of malnutrition, typhoid, dysentery. They were bringing in every day Jews from the surrounding cities. The way they put cattle into a corral, they corralled men. It was inhuman.

The Germans created a Jewish Police with complete power over everybody. Whatever had to be done was done through them. They were willing to do the dirty work for the Germans. The Jewish Police pushed people into the arms of the German SS guards. You’re told by this guy, the same religion, same nationality, same language, you’re told to go. This is deplorable, it’s indescribable. A nightmare. You can’t defy these guys who are wearing batons, and they don’t wait for you to make a decision. They hit you with that stick.

My mother came home to us one day and said, the police have your father and I go to him. You are big boys; you’re on your own. She told me to take care of my brother. She never came back. I never saw my mother and father again.

In ghetto I was seventeen. I know Arthur already ten years. Everybody has to work someplace, slave labor. They give me a job with a family and I’m supposed to be their cook and iron their shirts and all this. I think that’s the end of my life because I don’t know how to do these things. So lucky me, there was a main maid who was Polish, but nice. Very unusual. She showed me how to iron the shirt and what kind of food they liked and how to prepare it.

My mother was in the line to live or die. I had my father’s Iron Cross. It was the highest authority medal that existed in Germany. He received it in World War I. He was a colonel in the Austrian army and he saved many German lives. I showed the Iron Cross to the person picking who would live, so she let my mother go. Three months later they choose lives again. But this time it is SS man. He was mad that I showed the Iron Cross. He took the Iron Cross and shot my mother in front of me. My mother was killed before my eyes. On the street. The SS. By the pistol.

Then they sent me to an apartment that the Germans took over from the Jews. He came with his family, the name of Jore. He was the director of a construction company for the army. When I came in first time, I saw there was a piano, and I played pretty well yet. I remembered the Chopin waltz, and I played and he came and said, oh, you’re playing piano. They started to ask me questions and give me a lot of bread and tea, just because of one piece on the piano. I never played it again. Chopin saved my life.

There is a short stretch of highway between 1-64 and More-head, where a new Wal-Mart has slowly gnawed the town to bits. Morehead storefronts hold nothing but tape on the window cracks. A harebrained remedy to the loss of business was realigning Main Street so that it slithered like a snake. A triangular-shaped wedge of concrete protruded from the corner of every other block. These giant slices of cement pizza ran six blocks, forcing cars to weave a zigzag pattern. People said the cops should use Main Street as a means of testing drunk drivers — anyone who could drive it was sober.

This beautification project transformed Morehead into an obstacle one must circumvent on the way to the mall. You can take the bypass through town, but the lack of traffic lights and turning lanes makes it slow as grandmaw. What we really need is a bypass for the bypass.

The video store at the mall has replaced the general store as the place to visit with neighbors. Aside from church, it is the only place where families see each other. People from two counties away come to Morehead for Wal-Mart, but only locals rent videos. Foreign movies are not available in Rowan County, unless you count Road Warrior. Documentary films are confined to hunting, fishing, and National Geographic. Action movies occupy the most shelf space, then thrillers, westerns, and comedies. Porn movies are kept in a back room, but the town is too small for anyone to risk being seen going in or coming out.

While walking the stores aisles I study people near my age, narrowing their features to seek the ghost of who they once were. Anyone on either side of forty receives my wave. The other day I nodded to a man whose posture I recalled. We called him Nine-Mile because he could run fast. He hit puberty in fifth grade and began sleeping in class until high school, where he became a star athlete. Nine-Mile played three sports, drove a Dodge Charger, and dated the prettiest girl from the other end of the county. I admired him tremendously but he ignored me.

These facts entered my mind like an exploding time capsule. His voice was casual, as if we’d seen each other last week instead of two decades ago.

“If it ain’t Chris Offutt,” he said. “I heard you was in. You doing all right?”

From a great distance, I heard my voice’ tell him I was picking up videos for the kids. He pointed out his seven children and smiled with pride. Their ages spanned twenty years. One of his young boys ran to him, clutching an empty movie box.

“Put that back, honey,” Nine-Mile said. “You’ve seen that before.”

“I have?”