9. Germany

It happened to be my luck to get assigned to the Ninth Service Command, whose headquarters were located in Luxemburg. Four other chaplains drew the same assignment. So early one morning we were taken out to the airfield, where we loaded all our gear on a C-47 for our flight to this new job. Of course, we knew that this would be just another stopover for us, as this was another headquarters and we knew that we would not be assigned permanently to any headquarters outfit. Headquarters assignments were too easy. We would never be lucky enough to get one of those. Men assigned to a headquarters had hotels and private homes in which to live. They had offices in which to do their work. They had churches and chapels in which to hold their religious services . . . some of them in the oldest and most beautiful churches of Europe. The chaplains in headquarters outfits even had bathrooms, and nice mess halls in which to eat. It was the silliest folly to think that green recruits like ourselves would be assigned to such luxury. We were simply to report there and to await further orders that would send us to battalions and service groups in the forward areas, where a bath was a luxury that was highly prized and seldom experienced.

We landed at the airfield outside Luxemburg without any mishaps, and after waiting for only three hours, got a truck to take us into the city. We made our way to the office of the command chaplain and reported in. At this office we were properly welcomed and told that we would be billeted in a local hotel until we were given our orders to move on to other fields of labor.

While we were getting acquainted with the officer personnel of the command chaplain’s staff, one of the chaplains who had spent his entire time overseas with the headquarters began to shed bitter tears of remorse on our shoulders. He was very much distressed that we, and not he, were being given jobs with the forward groups. It appeared to grieve him to the breaking point that the powers that be had passed passed over him and had chosen to send us into this great field of endeavor. I gathered that he was tired of the life of ease that he had been living. He had grown restless and bored with sitting in a well-padded swivel chair in an office in a large city where convenience and cleanliness were the order of the day. It bothered him no end that all the officers shaved every day, wore clean uniforms, and were expected to bathe at least three times a week. He also pointed out how gloomy the gastronomic situation was. Wasn’t it unbearable, he asked, that they were served steak and fried chicken so often and were forced to down a bowl of ice cream at least four times a week? It was all getting him down. How he envied us because we were being sent to places where life would be a little more ruggedl Oh, the joy, he said, of having to sleep on the ground, of sloshing through mud and rain, of having to wear the same uniform until it got sticky and stiff with oil and grime, of eating C rations every day, and of holding religious services to the ominous time of bombs and bullets! Really, it made my heart ache to see this man, a virtual prisoner to a life of ease and comfort, literally begging to change places with one of us. How I wished I could grant him his heart’s desire and change places with him—and I meant it! I suppose he thought that all this baloney about how he wished he could be one of us made us feel proud and happy that we would soon be in places where Jap soldiers could draw beads on our grime-covered chests. But as far as I was concerned, he could have the job.

While we were listening to this sob story of too much comfort, another one of the headquarters chaplains came in. This one had his clean blouse nearly covered with ribbons. Not long after he learned that we were all fresh from the States, he began to call attention (not too subtly) to his display of ribbons. We carefully paid no attention. He came at us again from another angle, hoping that one of us would ask him what the ribbons were for. But. we still gave him the cold shoulder of disdain. Finally he took a desperate leap. Turning to one of the other headquarters chaplains, he said, “Say, Frank, I’m having trouble with my combat stars. I have so many that I can’t get them all on my E.T.O. ribbon. I wonder if I could wear two E.T.O. ribbons so I would have room for all my battle stars.”

Thank heavens there weren’t many chaplains like that!

Several interesting things happened while I was in Luxemburg, but I had already spent so much time traveling around from one place to another, having nothing to do, that I was incapable of enjoying them. It didn’t take me long to see all the interesting sights … to be exact, the one sight I had energy enough to see. Luxemburg is built on two mountains, with a very deep valley separating the city into two sections. Old stone bridges span this valley, connecting the two parts of the city. Most of the old buildings, the ancient forts, and the other things that the ordinary traveler would be interested in seeing are down in the valley. I stood on a stone bridge overlooking the valley and got my look at these historic buildings. But when I thought of the long hike down the side of the mountain, the long walk in the valley, and the tortuous climb back up the mountain and to my hotel, the historic buildings gave me hysterics. And that was that. I never saw them, except as the birds see them.

I spent most of my leisure time (which was all my time) in my hotel room with the other chaplains. We played cribbage. Whenever we tired of that, we would sit on the sun porch and watch the people of Luxemburg pass by. Those people were the handshakingest people I have ever seen. Every time two of them met on the street, they shook hands. At first I thought they must be old friends who hadn’t seen each other since the Germans came. But after sitting on my sun porch for a few days, I got to know a number of these people real well. And I noticed that the same two men or women would shake hands all over again every time they met.

Incidentally, Luxemburg was the cleanest, friendliest city I found in all of Europe. The streets, the homes, and the people were all clean. And the people were friendly in a way that made you feel that they meant it . . . not in the way that a man who owes you ten bucks is friendly. And the people there were intelligent. I was in a store one day, trying to buy something to send my wife. A lady and a man were making purchases ahead of me, so I waited until the clerk had finished with them before I made my purchase. The lady was talking to the clerk in French and he was answering her in what I thought was perfect French. After this lady had departed, the clerk waited on the man. This fellow talked in German. Without batting an eye the clerk started talking in the same language. Then my turn came. I started talking to the clerk in English, just as I would have done if I had been in a drugstore in New York. The clerk answered me in better English than I was using—he didn’t leave off his r’s. Well, that meant that this clerk in a little store in Luxemburg could speak at least four languages: French, German, English, and his own native tongue . . . perhaps even Sanskrit. Do you think a clerk in an average American store could do that?

One day I walked into the Army Post Exchange to pick up my rations for the week. I noticed a sergeant sitting at a table off to one side of the room. He had a ledger and a money box with him, as if he were selling something or taking bets on the races. Naturally, I asked him what he was selling.

“Sheets,” he said. “You want any?”

“You going into competition with Cannon?” I asked.

“Nope. Just trying to get rid of some excess sheets. We are tired of hauling them around.”

“How much?”

“Sixty francs.”

In case you are as dumb as I was, that was about thirty cents.

I bargained with the sergeant: “That is pretty cheap. What’s wrong with the sheets?”

The sergeant sighed. “Everybody asks that. There is nothing wrong with them. They never have been used . . . not even laundered. That is what the sixty francs is for—laundry. If you pay for the laundry of one clean sheet, you can have it. Simple as that.”

I thought: But why wash a clean sheet? Oh, well, why try to understand why the Army did some tilings!

“How many can I buy?” I asked.

“Two sheets and two pillowcases.”

I didn’t want them, but who could pass up a bargain like that? So I bought the sheets and pillowcases and sent them home to my wife. Sixty cents for two sheets and two pillow cases when you folks here in the States couldn’t have bought them for sixty dollars! Don’t you just love the Army?

By the way, if you ever need any sheets, just drop down to the Rue du Rogue, Luxemburg, and tell them that Harry sent you … or maybe it was Kilroy.

There came times during my tour of the E.T.O. when I had cause to wonder just how it was that we had come to win the war. I had cause to wonder just how it was that General “Ike” had kept up with his armies. If he had had the same trouble locating an army or a command headquarters that I had, then I didn’t see how he had ever led our soldiers to victory. Of course, it may be that I was suspected of being a war criminal, or a spy of some sort from some sort of enemy. But whatever the reason, I found that it was very difficult for me to locate a certain command headquarters.

After several days of inactivity at the Ninth Service Command Headquarters in Luxemburg, I was given orders assigning me to the Ninth Engineer Command. That was all that my orders stated. They didn’t bother to burden me with the insignificant detail of where this headquarters was located. Of course, I was reasonably sure that it was in Europe, so that cut down my area of search considerably. The chaplain at the Ninth Service Command was helpful in telling me that he thought the Ninth Engineers were located in Frankfort, Germany—at least they had been, the last time he had heard from them. So arrangements were made for my air transportation to Frankfort. The chaplain of the Ninth Engineers was called on the telephone and told when and at what field I would arrive in Frankfort. It was my understanding that he would be there to meet me and would have a truck ready to haul my equipment to town. So, trustingly, I took off for Frankfort.

My usual Army luck took wings with me and landed at Frankfort just a little before I did. Those little gremlins that had always managed to gum up my affairs did a bang-up job at Frankfort. We landed at an ATC base, and when I got out of the plane, I looked around for the chaplain who was supposed to meet me. No chaplain. “Well,” I said to myself, “he is just a little late. He will be along after a while.” Some German PWs happened along just then, so I got them to take my baggage from the plane and take it to the waiting room of the air depot. I had lunch there and discovered, much to my joy, that my money would go a great deal further in German marks than it had in French francs. Why this was so, I will never understand, since the Army set up its own exchange rates. But in Germany I got a nice lunch for two marks (twenty cents) and a haircut for one half-mark (five cents).

After waiting for about two hours for the chaplain to show up, I got impatient. I decided that I would try to call him. I asked the sergeant behind the main desk at the air depot how I could contact the Ninth Engineer Command.

He looked rather puzzled. “Ninth Engineers? I don’t believe I ever heard of them. Where are they supposed to be?”

“I was told they were in Frankfort,” I replied.

“Well, in that case you can call the Central Locator File and they can tell you where they are.”

So I called up the Central Locator File and asked them to give me the number of the Ninth Engineers. From the response I got, you would think I had asked them to give me the number of the private telephone of the chief head-hunter of Salamac Island.

“Ninth Engineers? Never heard of them. No record in our office. Are you sure they are in Europe? Maybe you had better try the Pacific Theater.”

Well, when I get mad, I’m a determined little rascal. And right then I got mad. I swore by the beard of a purple saint that I would find the Ninth Engineers if it took me the rest of my life. There was but one thing left to do. General Ike’s headquarters didn’t know where the Ninth Engineers were, the Ninth Service Command didn’t know, the Central Locator File didn’t know, the ATC base didn’t know . . . the whole War Department didn’t know. As a last resort I turned to the only source of authority—the enlisted man. I went outside the air depot and hailed a truck.

“Soldier,” I said to the driver, “do you happen to know where the Ninth Engineer Command Headquarters is located?” “Sure, Chappy,” was his quick reply. “I was out there just yesterday . . . took a load of meat out to them. They are at Keidrick.”

“Good. You are the only man in the Army who knows where they are. What an intelligence officer you would make … a lousy one—you know too much! Could you take me out there with all this baggage?”

“Yes, sir,” he agreed. “Hop in. And say, let me tell you about that little blonde I saw out there yesterday. . .

I was not a little pleased with myself for the amount of effort and detective work it had taken to locate the Ninth Engineers. But I was noted for determination and detective work, and so I succeeded where lesser men would have failed. No doubt General Ike had long since given up the search. I was sorely tempted to write a letter to the chief of staff and tell him where this command was located. But I gave up the idea before I carried it through. Some clerk (and I do mean Clerk) of the colonel’s would have intercepted the letter and never allowed it to get to the general’s desk. Anyway, they would have thought, very likely, that I was just trying to show off. Why, even the best brains in the Intelligence Department hadn’t been able to locate this command.

I checked in with the command chaplain of the Ninth Engineers and asked if there was anything for me to do.

“No,” he assured me, “just stick around for a few days until we get out your orders sending you to your new outfit.”

You see, I still didn’t have a job. For nearly three months now I had been taking a tour of Europe, going from one headquarters to another. But the gravy train was about to run out of steam. This was the last stop before I was sent to the battalion whose chaplain I was to be. I was being sent down through the chain of command like a reprimand. I could understand now why it took so long for an order to be carried out. An order took the same channel that I had been taking, and it had taken me three months to get through.

After three days I was back again to see if the orders had been cut and if the personnel there knew where I was to be sent.

The command chaplain answered my question. “Yes, the orders will be ready tomorrow. We will arrange for a plane to take you to your battalion.”

“What battalion is it?” I asked.

“The 844th.”

“Where are they now?”

“Paris.”

Now, wouldn’t that take the starch out of your crackers? Here I had been hunting all over Europe for the battalion I was supposed to join, and when I finally did locate it, I discovered that it was in Paris, where I had started out, while I was now in Germany. I learned that this battalion was located at the same airfield at which I had landed when I had first come to Paris. As a matter of fact, it was their tents we had seen while coming in for the landing. And it was one of their trucks that had taken us to the Paris headquarters of the E.T.O. Now, you, being a civilian and burdened with troublesome thoughts of how to save money and time, are bound to ask, “Why couldn’t you have been assigned right then and there, or at least before you left Paris?” What a foolish questionl In the first place, that is too logical an idea for Army use. In the second place, it makes sense; and that, as we learned to say in Germany, is verboten.

Well, since I had to leave Germany after only three days, I decided to see what I could of the place. So I requested a jeep and driver and went to Frankfort. I rode from one end of that city to the other, and I don’t think I saw as much as a chicken house that was still standing. The destruction of property that had taken place there was beyond description. It had once been a great modem city. But when I saw it, it was the nearest thing to a huge pile of bricks and stones that I had ever seen. In some places the buildings had completely disappeared except for their foundations. But most of the buildings still had at least two walls standing. There were no roofs. The atomic bomb may have razed Hiroshima, but the continual blockbuster attacks upon Frankfort must have done just as much damage. Despite this vast destruction, however, the city was filled with people. And they looked clean and well fed. How they stayed clean and where they all slept no one I asked seemed to know. The Germans are ingenious and they had found a way.

As I said, I never saw such destruction in my life, yet I noticed a peculiar contrast. We drove out of the city for a few miles to General Ike’s headquarters. He was established in what I was told had once been the record division of I. G. Farben Industries. There were three very fine buildings, covering several acres of land. They represented the latest thing in construction, and not a single one of them showed any bomb damage. How they could have escaped damage when all of Frankfort was leveled was a mystery to me. Of course, it might have been planned that way. Maybe the general had decided in London that he would like to have those buildings for his headquarters, and had given orders that they should not be damaged. Or maybe they had wanted to keep the records there intact. Or … oh well, who was I to try to understand such curious things?