[Here the story] When Rundstedt's offensive broke loose we were fighting on another sector of the front, quite some distance from the scene of the German breakthrough. We did quite well where we were, took some villages each day and lots of pill boxes and prisoners. While we were doing routine jobs as usual, we began to look first with surprise, then with anxiety and anger, at our maps showing our backward-bending lines in the Ardennes. Four days after the start of the offensive we left our own front sector and rushed by truck toward the Ardennes. On the 5th day we already found ourselves in the Belgian town, which was so definitely in the path of the German Panzer Divisions that as late as January 5th it was still reported to be in German hands by our semi-official Army newspaper. The story even goes that our General and his entourage arrived in the town while enemy patrols were roaming the streets. How true this is I would not dare to say, although I had the privilege of reading beautiful accounts of the adventure in newspapers enjoying a fair reputation. As usual, we lesser members of the division knew little of what was going on, although I myself had seen a military report stating in an entirely matter-of-fact way, that the town in question, the place we were to go to, had fallen into enemy hands. Most people, however, don't read technical reports and our men, in general, were blissfully unaware of the fact that we were driving straight into the lion's mouth. We sat in our trucks, dozing on our equipment, trying to find shelter from the cold under our coats and the blankets. We had taken from our packs. Our rifles were lying beside us, rather uselessly I dare say, for when a truck convoy is attacked by, let us say, a few enemy tanks coming from the flank, very little can be done. However we drove for hours and hours through snow covered hills and valleys on roads that seemed dangerously empty. Once we came through a very large town, one of the biggest in Belgium, where terror-stricken, ill-clad people stood on the sidewalks discussing the reborn danger that had already seemed gone for ever. When our convoy stopped for minutes at street crossings, young men would immediately come up and ask our opinion about the military situation. My knowledge of French as usually proved highly valuable. With conviction I reassured

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red everyone that no one would break through to this particular place. Women with black scarfs around their shoulders would immediately pass my word on to the quickly assembling crowds. The Latin capacity for being dramatic under almost any circumstances showed itself in such splendid remarks as "Il dit qu'ils ne passeront jamais" (He says that they shall never pass). This neat phrase, as you may remember, was successfully used by a French General in the First World War with regard to the flaming fortress of Verdun. French Generals of World War II, in pathetic proclamations to under-equipped, ill-led troops, used the very same words, but Verdun, nonetheless, disappeared like a tumbling stone in the avalanche of the gray-clad armies. Obviously, the magic of words has its limits. In spite of my own reassuring remarks and in spite also of what I might almost call my knowledge of the limitation of German power, I felt uneasy, however, after we had left the town behind and were driving through the sad and wintry landscape. The obvious despair of the people and their apparent lack of faith in our capacity for protecting them was not without effect. American soldiers, generally are not sentimental nor philosophically inclined but many remarks showing deep resentment and concern about "weakness" were made that night in the truck. Then, of course, we spoke of other things again, tried to look at the few passing girls and commented on their relative charms and merits. In a village children ran alongside the trucks, throwing us apples and smiling admiringly. Our men, touched by these gifts of those who were poor themselves, threw chocolate bars and chewing gum in response, cursing in the vilest manner because they could not find quickly enough the pockets or packs, in which they carried their treasures. When it was almost dark, tread signs informed us that we had nearly reached the end of our journey. Theconvoy halted. I jumped off the truck, stopped a girl with a bicycle and asked how large the town was and how nice. As usual one of the men asked me in English to find out whether she would sleep with him. I was just starting on my standard reply to similar demands: "Gentlemen, the art of seduction is a highly personal art, you will kindly seduce your girls your-selves", when she remarked distinctly unembarassed, that

[7]

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she understood perfectly, although otherwise she knew no English.
We almost remained orphans on foreign soil, when the trucks started
to move again without us. Cursing vigorously we scrambled on our
vehicles and established our office in the cold and
pretentious hall of the County Court House, where pictures of Bel-
gian royalty looked down on us with empty and utterly unimpressed
faces. Nervous staff-officers rushed through each of the seven or
eight doors of the hall at all times. The General held conference
on the dais, which in less exiting times had been the "estrade" of
the judges. I was sent to get hold of a locksmith immediately to open
the only locked door of the hall. In the completely dark town I al-
most got lost, but I found a locksmith whose services were eagerly
required by another uniformed individual for "Military Government".
My better French and somewhat vainglorious "By direct orders of the
General" won. The other uniformed individual, having lost the fight
for the locksmith, trailed indignantly behind. I offered him a ride
in the Command car, in which I had set out on my expedition and arri-
ved breathless with eagerness at the Court House. By then it proved
entirely unnecessary, of course, to have the door unlocked at all.
There were rumors of German soldiers in American uniforms and para-
chutists that had been seen drifting from the skies by unidentified
units. Armoured vehicles stood at all cross roads and in front of
the Court House, their machine guns manned by men with pitchy fingers.
Stumbling through the darkness toward the school house, assigned to
us for quarters, I was halted three times in as many minutes and asked
the pass word by guards whose voices sounded decidedly impolite. I
would have been somewhat less amused and thrilled had I known then
what I learned weeks later, namely, that we did not have any contact
with friendly units either the right or to the left. In other words
we hung there in the dark loosely connected with the rear by long
roads easily cut by an enemy, whose whereabouts were highly uncertain,
and our flanks were completely unprotected. We and our town were hard-
ly part of a front line but a mere strong point established at a

[x]

-4-

road centre to defend it and deny its use to the enemy. Tjis, of course I read much later in well rounded reports and citations by higher authorities praising the "valiant stand" of the division at that, by now rather famous town in the Ardennes (it was no longer bastogne!). That night however, I slept well and unharassed by any feelings other than a boyish excitement. During the following days the situation grew, almost audibly, more dangerous. The young men of the town, who had been members of the underground during the occupation by the Germans, began to leave in droves or singly, on bicycles, packed with their belongings. The citizenry began to be heard more clearly and more frequently. extranervousness, everybody demanded to be reassured by the hour that the advancing Panzer Divisions were still far away. Since Artys and even small armed fire began to be heard more clearly and more frequently all the time, lying became increasingly difficult. Energetic old women, talking French at breakneck speed and not without elegance, told us, with the shamelessness of old age no longer afraid of breaking conventions, that we were liars. Priests could be seen in the streets speaking to subdued crowds gathering round them for advice and counsel. Belgian Boy Scouts rushed in and out of their Headquarters delivering messages and carrying food obviously in preparation for a move. The few uniformed Belgian policemen began to look extremely uneasy, and everybody asked everybody else for the latest news. Civilians took to sleeping in their cellars and stars stowed at old touring club maps hastily pinned to the walls, to look up places, the names of which they had heard over the radio.

Two or three evenings after our arrival in the town I tried to grope my way to the upper floor of the school building where I slept. The blackout was complete and no light even inside the building. As usual I had run out of matches and bruised my shin every two steps, running into the school benches piled up high in the corridors to give space to the troops quartered in the class rooms. Cursing the darkness the unfriendly and inhospitable building, my own clumsiness, and the rifle which kept knocking against my helmet, I stumbled forward, saw some light on a staircase leading to the cellar and followed it, merely

- 5 -

We lied some more, although by that time we knew that fighting was
going on 6 km S and SW of the town. The next evening I went back to
the cellar and, although we had made no plans to that effect, it
turned out that all the others had come back too under some pretext
or another. Again we danced in the kitchen that was too hot. We
played games (always liked by those who don't believe in the art
of conversation as a subtle opening for less subtle sequences; games
which inevitably led to some boy fervidly kissing a girl, while
the others were held dancing half walking around in a circle. I made
the best of it and chose as my partner the soft and nice looking
girl from the big town.

When the shells began to fall the man in uniform started to
say that the noise came from our own artillery, but there was no use
pretending any longer, windows crashed in all directions, and down
the stairs as by magic came a stream of men rushing to the cellar for
shelter. A door that led to the outside was kicked open and soldiers
with steel helmets, who had quarded the building, almost fell into
the hallway, panting and swearing because they had been unable in the
darkness to find the entrance immediately. Then everybody became ri-
diculously quiet. The shells seemed to fall into the very courtyard
behind the school. "God damm it, this one was close, can't be more
than 20 yards away". The brothers of the girls began to tell themselves
that they ought to leave immediately before the Germans would be there
to grab them for slave labor in the Reich. But that was impossible
because of the curfew imposed on all civilians from sunset to sunrise.
Moreover, no one knew whether the roads out of town were still open.
The man who had written the book in prewar days asked the soft girl from
the big town what she wanted most in a man. Very pale she said "La
tendresse". He told me later, I did not hear it then. The French speaking
captain and I found ourselves in a very embarrassing situation. We
could not tell the people what we knew, or thought we knew, about the
military situation. Nevertheless, everybody turned to us imploringly
to ask advice. Wasn't it time to leave? To-morrow morning at the

-7-

earliest? We still tried to be reassuring, pointing out that we had "strong" forces in the area and threat the Germans would be certainly checked. All I could do was to tell them to see their own civilian authorities which would certainly inform them of any necessity or advisability of evacuation. Even worse was the fact that, with sharpened instincts and a perspicacity born of fear, they asked us whether ourselves would not withdraw, to escape encirclement, leaving them completely unprotected. Rumour had been rife from the very first moment of our arrival that we might have to fall back and several times I was extremely fear to saying: "Get out of this trap as soon as you can, particularly the young men", but in this conflict of duties the military duty to remain silent towered larger. The shells kept coming, not many, but every 30 seconds or so, the cellar shook in agony. Nobody shrieked in that crowd of civilians, not even the small children. The women prayed. The soldiers talked in half wisper's to each other, exchanging their ideas on the calibre of the firing guns, their possible distance from us, and the type of shells. The air very soon grew stiff. The place seemed a submarine that had been under water too long.

I felt helpless and uncomfortable, the idea of being buried under the school house with all these women and children was extremely unpleasant. I had flashing vision of a shell hitting into the midst of these people who were leaning, very pale and suddenly tired, against the brick wall or sat on potato sacks and old barrels filling the corners. A flickering candle seemed a symbol of all the security lost, of the lights that had burnt brightly and were gone now. With dismay I also thought of the simple and naked danger of being wiped out in this barrage, how stupid it would be, after all these years of struggle and tenacity, to be killed in a cellar passively and rather useless not even knowing where the attack came from. I began to ask whether someone would go up with me "to see what was going on". I smiled while I was doing this, because it sounded rather brave, while in reality I

- 8 -

was simply unwilling to remain in this hole that seemed like
a prearranged coffin. Moreover, why didn't I simply go alone?
Why was it necessary to ask for a companion? I smiled once more,
though rather half-heatedly because I knew the answer. It could
not be too pleasant either to be up there in the inscrutable dark-
ness, listening to the whistle of the incoming shells and without
the protection of strong walls. The idea of having someone else
at my side seemed reassuring. The man who came with me was one
whose mind, in some respects, is as abstract as mine, a math-
matician by vocation and inspiration, endlessly hovering over
mathematical formulas and relativity problems, frequently unaware of
his surroundings. Those, who remained were slightly impatient with
our indeed not too reasonable course of action, but we were thrill-
led by our own adventurousness. With tense nerves, but greatly les-
sened fear we climbed toward the street and walked over to the Court
House, where our office was. In there the lights shone brightly, of-
ficers, more or less well dressed, were working without the slight-
test sign of being disturbed. The men typed orders as usual or did
whatever else they had to do. It was like coming from a wind, swept,
cold, wet street into the lounge of an elegant hotel. And very strange
to say, I am completely unable to remember now, whether any more
shells actually came in after we had left, the cellar. If so, they
obviously no longer made any impression on us. Since I was not "On
Duty" I left the office after a short while and went back to the
school to sleep. My quarters were on the third floor, a particular-
ly unprotected place and I remember that I had visions once more of
being blown into the street by an 88 mm shell hitting the third
floor squarely, but this did not seem very terrible now.

I thought that I would never know it, because I would have been
fast asleep. I also remember that I looked at the ceiling where the
wooden structure of the roof was visible, and I moved slightly so
as not to sleep immediately under one of those huge beams that would
have crushed me, had they ever caved in. I actually was asleep after

[Y]

- 9 -

a very short time and woke only infrequently, when the ~~Arty~~ (ours or theirs?)~~ (God knows) became particularly noisy.

The next day we did leave the town. Our maps showed that we were outflanked to the right and left and only one road still open to the rear. We moved to a castle a few miles away and when, on the last morning, I hurried through the streets of the town in search of someone I had been ordered to find, these streets were almost clear of civilians and very empty. A house or two had been hit in the barrage. A very few civilians and a soldier had been killed. Broken windows were shattered on sidewalks. A soldier here and there told of his miraculously escapeing a shell that hit where he had stood only a moment before. Men of a Signal Unit were laying wires into the Church Tower on the market place. The tower was to be used as an ~~Arty~~ observation post. Officers rushed towards a few last vehicles fully loaded with equipment, and told them to hurry up and leave. In the part of the town nearest to the enemy, everything seemed dead. My steps resounded in the pavement and I had the impression that the greygreen uniforms were very near. The combat units we left behind were fully prepared for a bitter fight. Their men felt half heroic and half forsaken and sacrificed. The attack, as we knew now, never materialised. The Panzers were checked in the last villages in front of the town, although for days we heard rumors that it had become part of the front line. By chance I went back three or four days later in an Armoured Car, the one and only time by the way that I have been in one. It happened that my orders had been somewhat vague and I decided on my own actually to have the driver enter the place. All along our way we passed halted tanks and ~~Arty~~, deployed in the direction of the enemy. This array made me think that the front was very near, but when we finally stopped at the school where we had lived a few days ago, everything was absolutely calm, calmer in fact than when we had been there.

The day happened to be Xmas and the broad wife of the school

-10-

concierge bestowed on me several heartwarming cognac. She was quite alone, the young men had left to escape the Nazis labor hunters, their visitor with whom we had danced so well was gone. The daughter had accompanied her young husband on his escape journey. There were more windows smashed, a small shell had hit the Court House, where our offices had been, but the school was entirely untouched and, generally, there was very little destruction.

Once more I came to the town weeks later, when it was far behind the lines and Rundstedt's troops on their helpless march back toward the shelter of the Siegfried line. My task was the eminently peaceful one of buying good Belgian pipes for my Colonel. We had been driving in an open jeep through a beautiful winter landscape, icecold but enchanting. I was alone with the driver and sang all the way against the wind. Having bought the pipes in a tiny shop run by an old couple that had stepped out of a story book, I went first to a house where I had once spent a harmless evening with the parents of an unusually charming daughter. The whole family was still living in the cellar but it was just habit. I drew the Russian front line on a map on the wall for the father, paid a few compliments to the mother and kissed the hands of the slightly amazed daughter, then I went to my old friends at the school. Only mother and a sudden grandfather were left. They smothered us with coffee, excellent bread, real butter and home mad prung-marmelade, urging us to take second, third and fourth helpings, although they themselves had to pay the fantastic price of 300 Belgian francs, about 7 dollars, for a kilogram of butter. All we could do in return was to leave a few cigarettes for the grandfather.

When darkness fell we climbed back into our jeep and raced over glacier like roads, past burnt-out tanks and destroyed villages toward the lonely castle in the Ardennes that, for the time being, was our home. A strong wind had come up. English tanks throwing deep shadows on blue white snow crept cross country in a valley lined with high fir trees. Signs on the road warned of minefields hidden

- 10 -

under the white blanket. This was the country through which
battles had been rolling and swaying for five sudden weeks.
Now there was quietness and our souls were at rest neither
elated nor sad.

This letter, begun on February 5th, was finished three
days later. Reading it again I am doubtful whether the epi-
sode is colourful enough to be made the subject of so much
writing. But now that the 26 pages have been "done" I shall
send them to you nevertheless.

- 12 -

"You look swell, Al", George said. " How long since I seen
you? "

" Oh, since we left Camp Kilmer, I would say," Al answereed.

"Yeah," said George " I ou sure look swell. What you been doing $\&$
with yourself?"

" Office work, pretty routine."

It's the God-dammed routine that gets me," said George, I can't
stand these God-dammed jobs."

Al lit a cigarette. " It's better than what we left , anyway,"a
he said.

" I suppose. You never did like the service."

"Not much," said Al.

"What a pip you used to be " George said. " Remember what
you said when we got to Kilmer."

"No, frankly, I don't."

George laughed uproariously. " You said:'If my son takes his
first step with the left foot, I'll kill him."

Al smiled. " Well, maybe I'll have a chance to test myself soon."

"You married?"

"Yes, for almost a year."

"Good for you. It's good to settle down, I guess. Got tired of
chasing around?"

Well" said George uncomfortably, " you know how it is."

"Yeah", George said " one gets damn tired of chasing around."