My sixth-grade teacher fought the boot of Italy as a Tech Sergeant in the Army of the United States during the Second World War. He operated independently, commanding two thirty-caliber machine guns, and two mortars and the men who manned them. He hated war and warned me that I should avoid it at all costs. He said there was nothing noble about it; that at a certain place and time someone had to do the job so that others would not have to later. One of the memories that haunted him was having to submit a requisition to the quartermaster for supplies, e.g. ammunition, rations, and one replacement. The replacement arrived after dark and was assigned to a foxhole, where he was needed to replace a casualty. By morning, he was dead; recruits did not often last very long. The idea of a human life, consigned to a supply list did not let go of my teacher. At night, walking among the foxholes to check on his troops, he could hear the safeties clicking off. He said, somewhat softly: “It is me, and I know where you are.”
His mortar gunner was a pacifist. He had been drafted and went along, but without enthusiasm until the day the telegram arrived about his brother. From that moment on, the gunner was on the phone: “Can I shoot? Can I shoot? I see some Germans, can I shoot?”
“Fire one at a thousand, and one at eight hundred yards, for range!” The rounds landed almost immediately. “Fire six at eight seventy-five, for effect!” All six rounds were in the air before the first one landed.
I never got a narration of the campaign; I got snippets, impressions and never asked questions. I just listened. Some of the conversation occurred years later, filling in details. The overall impression was dark, somber; often at night.
For a time they had a major in command who would not let them relax. There was nothing special about the company; they were civilian soldiers doing what they had to do to get the job done, and to try to survive. But for at least a couple of months they kept trying to move forward without a let up. They captured a German officer from an elite unit and interrogated him before shipping him to the rear. Before the first question, he offered: “Who are you people? Don’t you ever rest?”
Over the months he got to the point that he did not want to know anyone. Most of his friends were gone, and replacements did not last long enough to befriend. He went to a field hospital and found a psychiatrist who listened and said: “Do you see that soldier there?” Pointing to a bed at the end of the ward. “He has just lost his right arm and needs to write a letter home. Go and write it for him.” After the letter was written, my teacher was assigned to the next bed and so on down the ward. Then he went back to his unit at the front.
He did not sleep. At night he went out across the lines, hunting. At night, across the lines, he could not risk making any noise. In the morning mist, he could hear the safeties clicking off as he came back to our lines. He had to call out to assure them he was friendly.
Once he was captured. He was held for a time, but before they could ship him to the rear, he escaped. There was a knife involved; his captors did not want to let him go. He had nothing more to say on the matter.
One fine day, in the sunshine, they captured a German field hospital. It was clean and bright. The doctors and the nurses wore clean, starched uniforms. The wounded lay in well-made beds. The captors walked silently through the hospital carrying their rifles and submachine guns at the ready. They went out behind the hospital where they found a corral made of long stakes driven into the ground. The corral contained young Italian men. The Germans were using them as a living blood bank, until they were used up. My teacher and his men returned to the hospital and shot everyone there without a word.
He told me that the hardest thing to learn was to walk away from the dead and wounded. If you could not help them; if staying simply meant that you would also be dead or captured, then you had to do what you could for them; give them ammunition, food, water, a cigarette; make them as comfortable as possible, and walk away.
He had a fiancée, a redheaded horseback riding teacher. They had an agreement. If he got home whole in body, they would get married. When he got home, after the job was done, he was whole in body and he called her to make good on the promise. She replied: “I am busy.” Shortly she explained that she was teaching children in a boarding school in the mountains. It was too important; she could not leave. He could join her. He was afraid of children. In Italy, children were desperate to survive. Their desperation scared him. But he had nothing better to do, and a promise to keep. So he went into the mountains.
He was hired as an art teacher. The owner of the school met with him (and each teacher) at least twice a day for a few minutes, giving him practical advice on how to interact with children who were not as desperate as those he was used to. Slowly he recovered his humanity, thanks to the mountains, and the children. After a few weeks it was his turn to supervise Saturday morning activities. He still was unsure of how to act with children, especially without the structure of his classroom. The head of the school told him that his job was to know “where they were, in every sense of the word, and stay out of their way.”
For the rest of his life, every couple of years, he would find a good psychiatrist and wrestle with his memories. He was a most remarkable teacher of young children and made many young lives better by being in them. Although he became prominent in an international organization, he never agreed to go to Germany.
He died after a long life, not in battle, but still living the aftermath of combat.