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News Group: REC.ARTS.PROSE
This was the aftermath of the American and British air raids, whose only military target was the middle of a city. There were no stores, markets, or any other place where a German could buy food of any kind. There was no house or nuck of any kind that American soldiers or Polish soldiers dressed in American uniforms did not violate. They would enter, throw the occupants out and take whatever trinkets and such as could be found. The price of any German's life was one dollar, so very little resistance was offered by these defeated people. The American soldiers occupied the best houses throughout the city and changed quarters almost daily. It was phenomenal how the American Army got along as confused as it was. No single leader of allied authority stepped forward in this episode of foolish confusion to lead and assist in restoring some semblance of common sense. Little bands, detachments, squads, etc., with an officer or sergeant as their head were the only prevailing authority until the office of the military government of Bavaria was set up late in 1946.
My quarters were on Joseph and Mary Street near the English garden, which was a large park with considerable woods in it and cute little paths leading through the woods, also a lake which covered approximately one square mile.
This was the month of January, and snow covered most of Europe. I was out in the street in front of my quarters one day when an American army colonel confronted me. He asked if I could drive a jeep; my reply was in the affirmative. He then told me to get into the jeep. The driver, a sergeant who had brought the colonel, was a veteran of many battles as was evident by the many combat ribbons decorating his chest. He told me there were six five-gallon cans of gasoline in the back seat of the jeep, instructed me to take the colonel to Minsk, wished me good luck, and departed. Minsk is a city located somewhere in southern Poland. The colonel had a road map with grid lines made by the British for airplane targets and except for very good elevations was practically useless as a road map. Our trip through Austria and Czechoslovakia was a nightmare. The colonel had three cases of Schenley's whiskey and he lived on a liquid diet; as for companionship and conversation, there was none. Sometimes I would miss a road and wind up on a cliff or follow sleigh tracks to a farmhouse, but we proceeded eastward until arriving at our destination. The colonel continued his celebration. I slept in the kitchen with the cook. Our return trip was uneventful.
I was discharged from the army in 1946 and remained a civilian employee of the War Department. In the spring of 1947, my thoughts again turned to those hills and faraway places. I equipped my jeep (one I had bought for one bottle of the colonel's whiskey; I had this jeep hidden and it had no bumper markings on it) and again took to retracing my route to Minsk. There was still some snow in the mountains and flowers were blooming in the valleys.
It all seemed like a dream, the little villages in Czechoslovakia had become towns of art or symbols of something that looked beautiful but was not; or at least my heart spoke that way. I crossed southern Poland near the Czechoslovakian boundary and entered Russia. There were several Russian soldiers at the border but having camped with many the month before I was not afraid. After a delay of about an hour or two, I was allowed to pass.. I drove thirty-three kilometers into Russia, stopped at a creek and admired many rainbow trout and watched farmers working in the field. Towards sundown, I drove into the yard of a farmer, he, his wife, and son saw me approaching and were out in the yard before I had stopped. I hit a chicken on my way in but he got to his feet and ran across the yard. The Russian family could speak no English, and I was about to leave when two girls, driving a wagon, came into the yard from the fields (this type wagon is used to spread human waste for fertilizer). One girl was a German and spoke perfect English; using her as an interpreter I tried to apologize to the man about the chicken. He informed me he would have been happy if I had killed the chicken, because then he would have been able to eat it for supper, but the Commission had counted his chickens and he was not allowed to kill one himself. I spent the night with this family and gave them coffee and sugar from my C rations, but they were more interested in the little salt I carried. I ate some of their potatoes and black bread, which in all respects is better than the American bread. The Russians define the American bread as being a mixture of cotton and chewing gum.
On my return trip after crossing the Russian and Czechoslovakian borders, I drove at leisure with more time to contemplate the chicken incident and the crude homemade furniture of the people who had been my hosts. The boy and the furniture became one - the furniture could never be shipped and sold for very much, neither could it ever adorn the brightly lighted store fronts. If the family could not control the sale of a chicken, or even have one for dinner, what chance would the boy have to go to the school of his choice.
The beautiful villages and cottages with artistic windows and bavarian roofs, again seemed like a beautiful corpse, with a soul that was dead.
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News Group: REC.ARTS.PROSE
