This WW II novel revolves around the experience of a callow youth destined to join the Fourth Infantry Division in Hürtgen Forest. The narrative traces the bonded ties of six comrades in arms, three of whom are killed and three wounded. Vividly detailed, the stressful existence of Combat Infantrymen causes some men to break. What helps those who see it through is their loyalty to one another, called a “culture of caring” by their Chaplain. In Part I our innocent recruits are sobered by incidental casualties on the way up, which initiate them into the inconsequence of death. Part II takes them into Hürtgen, a battle fought under continuous icy rain in steep-hilled terrain favoring the well entrenched Germans. Casualties often run over l00% of a Company’s authorized strength. Attacks are met by unrelenting artillery and mortar fire–machine guns at close range. In a typical situation, our narrator covers a Sergeant, who, after taking out a machine gun pinning the Company down, is himself killed by a sniper. A hard-headed West Pointer insists on night action, impossible in the Forest, and, after stepping on a mine that takes his legs off, he rolls on another that hits those nearby. General Patton called Hürtgen “an epic of stark infantry combat.” Part III deals with how, badly depleted in numbers and morale, the men successfully withstand the Breakthrough, thereby saving Luxembourg, a defense for which Patton gave the Fourth a Unit Citation. In the concluding Part, the narrator is wounded and put on limited assignment. He dislikes the rear echelon life-style, guys being obsessed with whores, drinking, stealing, and feasting, but he holds his peace and decides he’ll return to the world where reality matters.
Growing up in the Depression, the youngest of three sons in a working class family, Syd Joseph Krause, a railroad demurrage clerk, could not have had the remotest dream that he might one day go to college, much less become an English Professor (MA, Yale; Ph.D. Columbia), who would publish numerous articles on major American Authors in learned journals, also a book (Mark Twain As Critic) with Johns Hopkins Press and become General Editor of The Novels of Charles Brockden Brown–America’s first professional novelist–for which he did a “Historical Essay” and “Historical Notes.” Following Fulbright Professorships at the Universities of Copenhagen and Tübingen, he returned to Europe on a number of occasions for lectures in Holland, Germany (East and West) Coimbra (Portugal), Rome, and Warsaw. What actually launched him on this career was the GI Bill of Rights, resulting from his participation in a Defining Event of the Twentieth Century, World War II, when in the fall of 1944 he joined the Fourth Infantry Division and was with an on-line Company during two of the bitterest campaigns in the Fourth’s history: The Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. He wrote an account of a post-Bulge battle he was in, which appeared in a collection of War Stories by members of the Fourth. As he thought about how men of his generation who survived the War were passing, Krause went to a journal he’d written shortly after discharge, and decided to do this novel dedicated to the memory of survivors who have passed, as well as those lost in combat, hoping to leave a record of what the War was like for them.
An Attack in Hürtgen. (Ab is the Narrator’s Sergeant.)
Next thing I knew I was throwing myself at the base of the hill, gasping for breath. With the shells coming in ever closer, up I went on all fours, kicking the mud and stones behind me and grabbing onto whatever offered in my way—logs, tree trunks, shrubs, rocks—skinning my hands as I went. At one point, I found I was hoisting myself up by somebody’s leg. Whether he was dead, or not, I couldn’t stop to check. I was intent on scrambling my way to a large, inviting hole that I saw halfway up the hill. With that machine gun on our right opening up again, I dropped my rifle and flung myself into the hole. There was someone else in there, and we began to struggle over his rifle. Summoning up every last bit of strength I had left, I finally yanked it out of his hands, and was about to beat him with it, when he yelled out “STAHP!” in perfect English, and I saw it was a GI. Was I ever a wild man. So was he, his breath steaming out of his nose and wet lips like he was a raging bull, much as I was steaming myself.
The shells were falling right over us and beside us, and the next instant after our death struggle, we were down on our chests, shoulder to shoulder, trying to scratch our way into the wet earth. The chatter of rifle fire and machine gun bursts began to pick up in tempo, ours sounding strangely like firecrackers. Two guys popped in on us and lit up cigarettes, and our hole began to cloud up with smoke. One of them asked about a bag outside of the opening, and when I told him it contained mortar rounds, he pitched it down the hill. Good. I simply wasn’t thinking. Let one of the incoming shells hit close enough, and there’d be nothing left of us but Swiss cheese.
The rolling bag was picked up by somebody, and he stuck his head in. It was Ab. He told us we had to move out of there. Too many guys were hanging back, and they needed more fire power up ahead, so we could form some kind of a skirmish line to take on those dug-in positions. If we didn’t move up, their artillery was bound to be saturating this downward area, and we’d be trapped, with not much chance of making it out. The smokers nodded, but wouldn’t budge. Neither would the guy I’d fought with, saying, “I don’t give a good fuck. Let ‘em come fur us.”
Going up on all fours, monkey fashion, puffing like crazy, the two of us made it to where a thin line of guys was spread out in a looping semi-circle. They were lying down behind tree trunks and firing for all they were worth, clip after clip, trying to button up the damned Heinies who were shooting out of the firing ports in their solidly constructed log and mud bunkers. We were pinned down and feared we might just get ourselves chewed up, until Ab came up with an idea.
The slope was too sharp and the distance too great for us to be throwing grenades, but, if you jammed the fin end of one of those shells down hard on the ground, you had a chance of creating the quick down-up motion needed to have the thing spit its safety pin out and become armed, making it point detonating. If we’d just keep shooting, he could crawl over laterally, spider-fashion, and throw the thing up far enough to explode it within maybe a few yards of the machine gun, and, when they ducked, we’d rush ‘em. Taking one of the mortar shells and giving me one, Ab called for a couple of other guys to follow him and provide covering fire. When called upon, I was to deliver the shell. The cover guys were stalled halfway over by a potato masher grenade that rolled down ahead of them. As the one guy picked it up to toss it back, the damned thing went off and blew him backwards, all bloody at the throat and chest. The other guy was hit as well and cried out in pain, whereupon the machine gunner started peppering the area, putting slugs right through the top of his helmet. I had fired off a clip, trying vainly to distract the machine gunner. But with Ab’s cover guys gone, I became aware that I was all that Ab had by way of protective fire. In my nervousness, I was on my feet and must have opened up before he was ready, pumping out the whole of an M-1 clip and inserting another. But that worked even better than if I’d waited, because other guys on our end of the line joined in, giving Ab more time to inch his way up for a shorter throw. Meanwhile, as the machine gunner started firing indiscriminately in my general direction, I heard the familiar Ka-ruck of the exploding mortar shell.