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Praetorium Honoris

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

The Stream

Photo by Nicholas A. Tonelli
(Source)
It is a pleasant day for once, the sky is clear, the wind has died down, and the temperature is a pleasant 18° C. Grenadier Max Herrmann is laden with ten canteens, his own and those of his squad mates. As the junior man, he has been detailed to go down to the nearby stream, refill the canteens, then return to his squad. Though he has only been a soldier for three months, his squad leader figures that it's something the 17-year old can manage on his own. After all, Herrmann is a country boy from the Schnee Eifel, not all that far from where his unit is now, the Hürtgenwald.

As young Max approached the stream, he heard something, it sounded like the crack of a dead branch. Someone is nearby. He lowered the burlap sack containing the canteens to the ground as quietly as he could, a sack full of empty aluminum water bottles could be rather noisy. He knelt behind a tree, he could see the stream, which was noisy all by itself, he was surprised that he had heard the branch snap.

With his rifle unslung now,  wondering whether or not he had a round in the chamber, he eased the bolt back to check, he saw the gleam of brass, closing the bolt he then eased the safety off. Noise was his enemy now, though he was new to this soldiering business, he had grown up in the woods. Hunting for one's supper made one alive to the sounds of the forest and the movements of its inhabitants.

He held his rifle loosely, ready to bring it up and aim in any direction to his front. He waited to see if he heard any more noise, though he doubted he would hear anything further over the sound of the nearby stream. His peripheral vision spotted movement to his left, he looked, moving only his eyes, there! Another person was in the forest, Grenadier Max Herrmann trembled slightly, the other person was an American!


Pvt Ozzie Lederer was a new recruit, he had been assigned to Charlie Company only days before his new outfit had moved into the German woods southeast of the city of Aachen. He was a city boy, from San Diego and he hated this weather, he hated this forest, and he hated the fact that he was lugging all these canteens which his sergeant, Cliff Davis, had detailed him and PFC Billy Matuszak to fill up. Matuszak had stopped to take a leak, Lederer had continued on, he wanted to get this job over with and get back to the bivouac.

As he unscrewed the cap on the first canteen, he had the eerie sensation that he was being watched. Shaking his head, he was just nervous being this far from his squad, he dipped the canteen into the clear, cold water and let it fill. But he couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't alone out here. Jesus, do they have bears in these woods? Being a city boy, he was uncomfortable in the woods, especially these woods which seemed so dark and foreboding. Damn, he missed Southern California.


Herrmann watched the American, the man seemed nervous, so Max tried to stay very still and very quiet. As the man seemed to shrug then go about his business, Max relaxed slightly. No need to make trouble he thought to himself, I'll just wait for the man to fill his canteens, then I'll do the same, when he's gone on his way, of course. It was too nice a day and he'd never fired his rifle in anger, no doubt his sergeant would have shot the guy, he wouldn't unless he had to.


Billy Matuszak buttoned his trousers back up, picked up his rifle and moved down to the stream, though he'd made Lederer carry most of the canteens, he had three of his own to fill. Can't make the kid do all the work, Billy chuckled to himself, even if I do outrank him by one whole stripe.

Something made Matuszak pause before stepping into the open by the stream bank. There, across the slight ravine the stream had worn in the forest floor, was a darker shadow, something which seemed out of place in this sun-dappled wood. Was that a man?

Matuszak dropped his canteens, not thinking of the noise it would make, and brought his rifle up.


Max Herrmann was startled by the noise when Matuszak unthinkingly let the three canteens drop to the forest floor. There was another man over there, had to be another American. The man kneeling by the stream was also startled and turned to see what the noise was, his rifle was still lying on the ground nearby.

Herrmann saw the American standing there, rifle pointed in his direction, without thinking, he fired, then quickly worked the bolt to load another round.


"Jesus!" Matuszak exclaimed as he heard the hiss of a bullet pass close by his head. He had seen the flash of Herrmann's rifle at nearly the same time, then the bark of a German rifle. Without thinking he snapped off three or four rounds at the darker shadow amongst the trees. That's when he saw another muzzle flash and heard the report of the German's rifle again. The soft grunt he heard just ahead puzzled him.


Grenadier Max Hermann's first shot had clearly missed, his second was low as the American had fired a burst in Herrmann's direction, throwing off the young German's aim. Fortunately none of those bullets touched him. He was on the forest floor now, trying to make himself very small, working the bolt of his rifle again, he had to make this shot count, he had to...


Matuszak emptied the rest of his magazine at the German, the ping as his rifle ejected the clip reminding him to reload, as he saw the shape, perhaps a man, on the ground the German's rifle coming up to shoot at him. He heard a gasp, then nothing else. He quickly reloaded then advanced carefully. He didn't take any notice of Lederer as he stepped across the narrow stream and moved towards the shape lying on the ground ahead of him.

He might have heard Lederer groaning if he weren't so keyed up and if the babbling of the small stream wasn't making so much noise.


Grenadier Max Herrmann was hit, badly. One of the rounds from Matuszak's wild second burst had hit him in the shoulder, then deflected off bone and gone into a lung. He was having trouble breathing and it hurt, a lot. He wanted to bring his rifle up and shoot the man who had shot him, but it seemed that he had no control over his arms.

As he lay there, bleeding badly, the American came up to him and stood there, looking down at the badly wounded German. Herrmann thought it odd, but the man looked sad.


PFC Billy Matuszak stood over the fallen enemy soldier, it almost seemed that the man was looking at him. Suddenly Matuszak wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else. He had just shot a guy. He had fired his weapon before in combat, many times, but always over some distance, at movement, not really at any one in particular. Now he had, and it made him sick.

As he watched, not sure of what he was supposed to do now, the German closed his eyes and made an odd sound, deep in his throat. Then he just lay there. Matuszak wondered, "Is he dead? Jesus, I just killed someone."

When he snapped out of his funk, he prodded the body with his rifle, nothing, the man wasn't moving, as near as he could tell, the man wasn't breathing either. Then he thought, "Damn it, where's Ozzie?"


Pvt Ozzie Lederer was lying half in and half out of the stream running through the forest. Two of the canteens he had been carrying had floated away from him shortly after the 7.92 mm steel-jacketed bullet from the German's rifle had passed through him.

The bullet had gone through his heart, the shock of being hit had stunned him to the point where he hadn't really felt any pain. He only had a brief moment of clarity, he had seen the man who had killed him fall himself, shot down by his squad mate, PFC Billy Matuszak.

Then he had died and fallen into the stream.


Matuszak stopped, why was the stream so red, why was Ozzie in the stream, then he realized, Ozzie was hit, that must be blood.

He quickly moved to Ozzie's side, pulling him out of the stream. But it was far too late, Ozzie's eyes were glazed and stared into eternity. When Matuszak checked him, he realized that the kid had been shot square in the chest.


Sgt Cliff Davis had received the okay from his lieutenant to take his squad out to find his two missing men shortly after they had heard a brief flurry of rifle fire. When they found PFC Billy Matuszak and Pvt Ozzie Lederer, Matuszak was holding the dead Lederer while staring at the body of the dead German just up the bank.

"Matuszak, Billy, are you okay?" Davis pointed at another man and gestured for him to check the dead Kraut, while he knelt down next to Matuszak. "Billy, are you hit?"

"Nah, Sarge, I'm okay, but I think Ozzie is dead, he ain't moving and he's got a lot of blood all over his shirt. Is that guy up on the bank dead? I think I killed him."

"Yeah, he's dead, c'mon we gotta get back, the lieutenant's worried about you." As he said that, one of the other men pulled Lederer's body away from Matuszak, while another gathered the canteens and finished the job of filling them. Upstream from where Lederer had been shot. The man who had checked the body of Grenadier Max Herrmann remained next to the fallen German and was watching for more Germans.

Quietly, the squad moved back, two men carrying Lederer's body, another assisting Matuszak who seemed to be in a daze.


The men of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion of the 26th Infantry returned to their bivouac. Doc Milbury checked Matuszak out, the man was still quiet and wouldn't respond. 2Lt Morgan Childreth, told Doc to take Matuszak back to the battalion aid station. Perhaps a night off the line might help him recover his senses.


As the sun began to set and the shadows in the forest slowly grew into night, the small stream continued to flow and make its happy sounds, deep in the Hürtgenwald.

The body of Grenadier Max Herrmann was never recovered.




54 comments:

  1. A small action with consequences. Shows the "little" war vice the one of huge arrows and lines on a map.

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    1. As you well know, most of war is those small actions.

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  2. The young and inexperienced often bear the brunt of the inhumanity of warfare. So sad.

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  3. What could these men have done had they lived their lives? War may occasionally be necessary, but in some ways we always seem the poorer for it.

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    1. It's that cost in individual lives which is overlooked by many. The ambitions of a small group of men (and they are nearly always men) cause millions to go to war for the benefit of a few. Then someone has to stand against such things, the "little" people on both sides pay a heavy price.

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  4. Hearing a branch snap while near a noisy stream - your ears get attuned to what is normal, so you pick up on out of the ordinary sounds.
    Worked for a while at a prison before switching to IT. Sat in a tower that had a train track running behind it. A train hit end of shift and the engines stopped right behind me - noisy. When a bum jumped out of a boxcar, I spun back around to see what it was.
    Frank

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    1. Nice example, we don't really think in those circumstances, our ancient instincts kick in.

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  5. Life and death are frequently separated by a short distance, sometimes in fractions of a millimeter or of a decibel of sound. Our animal brain is amazingly adept at picking up the slightest abnormality our senses detect - we do ourselves a favor by paying attention to that little voice that says, in effect, "Danger, Will Robinson!"

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  6. The next instalment of this story is one of the first things I look for these days... Great story!

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  7. Missing in action. No knowing how they died, and only vaguely where and when. No closure, they are just gone. I cannot imagine that terrible, endless, emptiness of their loved ones back home.

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    1. Friend of a friend, his aircraft collided with another out over the Pacific. They know his fate and the rough location of where his aircraft went down. All that was recovered was his flight helmet. Even that is hard to take.

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    2. Missing in action, a child for all he's a soldier, and his mother at home not knowing what. War just... sucks.

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    3. Yup, never was any glory, just pain, suffering, and death.

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  8. I read somewhere that one of the favored tactics in both WWI and WWII of snipers was to set up overlooking a stream, as shooting the waterboy not only affects the target, but all who rely on the target for water. And without water, a unit's morale can crumble rapidly.

    The Germans really should have sent out two soldiers. One to fill bottles and a more experienced one to do overwatch. Never go into the woods alone.

    And the Americans? Never split up. Single men get eaten. Two men can watch out for each other and shoulder the load better.

    It's the little errors that kill you. Like going outside the perimeter alone on safari to fill canteens from the local croc and hippo filled water... There's even a phrase for it, everyone eats everybody.

    Same thing here. Just the crocs had rifles.

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  9. And... sad little stupid deaths. Surviving the invasion of some Japanese-held island only to die from stepping on the wrong fish, or from an infection from a coral cut, or from some unknown rot because the salt chaffed a hole in your skin, or from smoke and CO2 trying to stay warm in a stationary vehicle or tent during winter. It's the nasty little sad stupid deaths that really drain morale.

    (As to the tent, Mrs. Andrew and I were camping in Florida one winter where the temperature got so low our breath froze on the inside of the tent, which we had zipped up because cold. Both of us woke up dizzy and discombobulated and it wasn't until I opened the tent flap that I realized the walls were stiff and fresh air was good. Tents are funny like that, in the right weather they'll kill you in your sleep.)

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    1. And, uh, okay, that last one, the tent death, happened in the Aleutians so just because I focused on the Pacific doesn't mean all palm trees and sunshine. There was a rather dark and cold war going on for a while up north in Alaska...

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    2. Hhmm, effectively seal the tent with one's own frozen breath. Never thought of that, good to know!

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    3. Attu and Kiska, a nasty campaign.

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    4. (Don McCollor)...Then there was the muskeg up there. The Seabees were building an airfield on one island. The only vehicles that could move until a road was built were two tracked draglines with pairs of timber cribbing pallets. They would sit on one, reach back with the boom and move the second ahead of it, then crawl onto it and repeat the process. In position, one dragline would scoop up gravel at maximum boon extension, then dump it for the second to pick up and deposit as fill on the airfield...

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    5. (Don McCollor)...had a 600 ton crane with a 300 foot boom working on my farm a few years ago putting up wind towers (you could stand inside the tracks without stooping). It moved the same way on timber cribbing (with two big loaders moving cribbing). They had to cross under a 400KV power line. It would have taken a week or more to disassemble the crane and and the same time to reassemble it on the other side. They lowered the boom onto an old flatbed semi and the crane pushed it underneath the line. In place the next day. The American Way. Get 'er in and get 'er done...

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    6. (Don McCollor)...Love those guys that put up the towers. They worked 12/sevens for three months..and it it was go go go...

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    7. (Dom McCollor) Sent you an email about the towers going up. File is a big one....

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  10. A "routine chore" is not in wartime. Two young lives ended and another scarred. The city boy pressed on and the country boy spared him, until he couldn't. Once more the Garand wins over the 98k.
    Boat Guy

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    1. Semi-auto rules, bolt action drools. Or words to that effect.

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    2. In THIS case yeah. Still as Bill Jordan said " You can't miss fast enough to win". Luck or lack thereof played a part here, both shooters missed and both shooters hit - t'was the rapid follow-up of the M1 that undid the hunter. Had he been armed with a G-43 it mighta ended differently.
      Boat Guy

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    3. I think you're right, the G43 is a nice weapon.

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    4. True. I'd still druther have the M1
      BG

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    5. Same here, though the G43 won't eat your thumb.

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    6. Neither will the M1 if you run it right. And even if it does, it will only do it once. Trust me.

      One of my Reserve buddies was in JROTC way back when they were allowed to drill with M1's. As platoon leader, he got to inspect his cadet's rifles. During inspection arms, while holding the rifle at port arms, he would place his left thumb under the forearm against the op rod, and while pressing hard, release the bolt. The bolt would slowly creep forward, and he would glare at the hapless Cadet.

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  11. Beans is so right. The little errors can kill you.
    As I was reading this and the German heard the twig snap, I wondered how many died wanting to think it was just a deer-convincing themselves it was a deer or another animal? We want to believe the easier way.

    Then I thought those two young recruits-the German and the American - would warily let each fill their canteens and go.

    Those woods had to have been creepy. Particularly in the twilight.

    Beautiful yet deadly.

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    1. Most old growth forest is kinda creepy at twilight.

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  12. Sarge, thank you for exercising your storytelling gifts. I’m really enjoying your account of all these people, on all sides. Yes, the Germans served an odious cause, but they were men who breathed and ate and dreamed and suffered, too. You do a good job of highlighting their humanness and leaving us to contemplate the larger horrors on our own.

    It’s interesting how our depictions of battle have changed from ‘Combat!’ to ‘When Trumpets Fade’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ and yet we can only get so close to the truth. I’m working my way through Rick Atkinson’s ‘The Guns At Last Light’ and am at the timeframe your story brings us to now. In 1945 my father-in-law was a 20-year old artillery mechanic in an infantry cannon company, not in hand-to-hand combat but close enough to it. What little we know about his time in the ETO — the funny stories, at least — we gained from a couple of his buddies who contacted us years after he’d passed. He’d told almost none of it to his sons, even less to his daughters ... what could he say?

    Thank you for honoring our fathers-in-law and all of the others in this way.

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  13. My late former Father-In-Law was an infantry squad leader from D-Day+1 until the end of the war in Koeln, Germany. Fought in the Battle of the Bulge, would never talk of it nor even watch anything on TV related to it (he once literally broke down in tears and left the room). He did, however, tell me of one time he was tasked to take his squad forward via a road in the woods on a night patrol. Point man heard noise, signaled, and the squad moved rapidly into the ditch. Johnnie told me he and his squad lay there and watched a German squad-sized patrol pass by them only few feet away. He told me he had no desire to get into a fire fight in the dark that could have resulted in the death of any of his men. He just let them pass by with the Germans not knowing how close Death was to them.
    The reason he told me? He visited me in Germany and I was warning him about Brennessel (or "Stinging Nettle" as we know it here in the States). He related to me that when he moved into the ditch, he ended up in a patch of Brennessel and it was stinging the living hell out of him but he refused to move or make a sound until the German patrol moved on past...

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    1. I often wonder how many close encounters happen in wartime where the one side decides to "live and let live."

      A close range firefight in the dark, no one wins those. Your father-in-law made the right call.

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    2. In my world war 1 book last night the author talked of a German soldier who saw two Tommies unarmed, with a bucket going to get some water

      His comrade said why don’t you shoot them and he replied “you don’t shoot a helpless man“

      While I’m sure there wasn’t a lot of that magnanimity I’m sure it happened

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    3. I'm sure there was more "live and let live" than the history books let on. I'm betting that wasn't the case as much in Russia, and certainly not in the Pacific.

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  14. I, too, am reading Rick Atkinson’s "The Guns At Last Light" (part of a fantastic trilogy). Hodges is sending troops into the Hurtgenwald. Your story telling creates an emotion that a book like "Last Light" can't convey. I do like the counter balance telling the tale from both sides brings to the overall drama. This has become my "must read" of the day.

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    1. Thank you very much. As long as you folks out there reading it enjoy it, I'm satisfied.

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  15. William - if you haven't yet, read "A Higher Call", which gives one example of chivalry during WWII.

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  16. Wow Sarge, really well done. You had us all relax when Herrmann decided to let Lederer go about his business, then it all went to hell. NC Tom said it well- Life and death are frequently separated by a short distance. I can see that scene on a big screen- it's been done before- a shocking and unexpecting death of a character who didn't deserve it. You wrote it well.

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