Danny’s War

We’d made camp outside the town of Chambois, near Falaise, about 20 miles south of Caen, where we had hundreds of Krauts trapped, and had been given orders on how to mop up—what to do when we captured Germans, and especially about not taking revenge for buddies we’d lost—and I think we’d started some serious dreaming about going home. But that morning, when most of us were dog-tired and fast asleep, the sky began falling down on us and the earth began blowing up under us, and we were stunned to find ourselves about to be burned alive in Nazi fireballs.

Danny and I had done our basic training at Fort Knox, where we were on an all-service football team together, and now, three years later, we were dug in next to each other at the edge of an apple orchard, and—you had to admire the Krauts for their guts—they were coming at us with whatever tanks they had left that still had gas in them, soldiers with machine guns and flamethrowers flanking the tanks.

Tree trunks were cracking open and splintering, limbs crashing down on us like busted telephone poles, and smoke from rockets the German tanks were shooting off—and mist from early morning fog, too, because there’d been a sudden warm spell at dawn after a snowfall—was so thick that we didn’t know who was who. Guns were booming away, and the air was heavy not only with smoke but with sulfur fumes burning up your eyes and nose, along with a god-awful stench of men being blown up from inside out, and losing control of their bowels.

I saw townspeople here and there, running between the trees, clutching their children and sacks of who-knew-what, getting caught in the crossfire, and bleeding into the snow while our medics were busy doing what they could for our guys, many of them split open and chopped up and no longer looking like men.

I thought we were done for but Danny and I told one another we weren’t going to make it easy for them, and when our lieutenant called in two tank destroyers with big guns, Danny gave me a half-salute and took off. He was in charge of a rifle squad that made it to a high point in the orchard, and they began picking off Krauts one at a time, while on the ground, where I was, our tank destroyers were scoring solid hits so that a few of the German tanks began to retreat.

But not before one of their guys hit Danny—a single clean shot to his stomach—and Danny let the medics bandage him up, after which he dragged himself to the highest point he could find, above the orchard—the smoke and mist were starting to clear—where he could spot the German tanks that were doing the worst damage. They were in a wooded area less than a mile away and surrounded by infantrymen who somehow still had decent stores of ammunition. Danny stood up tall and started calling out signals like the quarterback he was—as if telling his ends where to go and cut, or where he wanted his backs to line up, and whether he wanted his linemen to stand up straight and make a wall, or to knock down the bozos across from them—and when the roar got louder, he limped and zigzagged across the hilltop and, as if changing plays at the line of scrimmage, began using hand signals that told us where to deploy, and gave our tank destroyers the information they needed to hit the enemy where he lived.

By late morning our destroyers had wiped out the three German tanks that were scoring the nastiest hits, and while our unit kept closing in as fast as we could on German riflemen, machine gunners, and flamethrowers, Danny kept moving and showing our men where the Germans were, and where they were headed, and pretty soon we had them rounded up, more than 300 by count, and those still able to walk, stand, sit, or breathe, dropped their weapons and surrendered, their hands clasped behind their heads.

They were a tired, miserable lot. When I looked up the hill, Danny was nowhere to be seen, so I yelled that I was coming, I was coming, and I hoisted myself up the hill by hanging onto limbs of apple trees, and I nearly fell into the hollow of a cow whose bloody insides had tumbled out, and who suddenly kicked its hind legs high into the air, missing my head by inches. I thought of leaving a bullet in the cow’s head to put it out of its misery, but that made me think of what I might have to do for Danny, so I kept clawing at rocks and branches so I didn’t slip back down, and when I got to Danny, I tried not to let him see how upset and terrified I was. I lit two cigarettes and gave him one, and he asked me to find a chaplain so he could receive last rites. His voice bubbled, and I wiped the blood and spit away, and he told me that I was his best friend and that we would always be together, no matter where. He asked me if I believed in God, and I lied and said I did. He asked me to pray with him, and I did. We were able to get a chaplain to come, and that gave Danny some peace, but the most important thing was what I saw.

I saw Danny, of course, and nothing new. I saw lots of grown men weeping and trembling, but I also saw the two people I loved most in the world—my wife and son. And I saw them there with me, Danny, and the chaplain—our sky captain—and they were sitting on the ground next to Danny, and it was as if Danny had asked me to see more than the moment we were living in and was granting me special permission to do so. So I thought about how I could have been where Danny was but I wasn’t, and I thought about how I really didn’t want to leave the world just yet because it wasn’t such a terrible place if you could have a friend like Danny in it, and what I saw, too, was me having a catch with my son when the war was over, and me teaching him to throw a good, tight spiral and how to keep the nose of the ball up or down, depending on where your receiver was and how the defense was playing him. I told Danny what I was seeing, and I said to him that some day my son was going to play the game Danny and I played, and that if I had anything to do with it, he was going to be a better player than Danny or I had ever been.

“That’s good news,” Danny said.