Roll Me Over by Raymond Gantter

Author:Raymond Gantter [Gantter, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chu Hartley Publishers
Published: 2016-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

“I’m beginning to hanker for a world less exclusively masculine.”

I think this is March 9.

I know we are in Bonn, and I know, too, that in a short time I’m going to be very drunk. Even now I feel no pain.

Last night we crept through thin, raining blackness and entered a ghost city. Guns thundered on the other side of Bonn, and we could see the glare of shells and houses burning crimson against the dark sky. But where we passed was only stale destruction and silence and the smell of old death. And the skin crawled cold on our backs because we knew there were snipers hidden in the gutted buildings, watching us, waiting.

We parted from the rest of the platoon at the apex of the triangle and set out to establish our two strong points. Ruins and rabble choked the streets, and twice we lost our way, mistaking the raw gap where a building had once stood for the street turning we sought.

Bonn was our first city, the first time we’d tackled the job of clearing buildings five and six stories high, the first time we’d seen at close hand what war could do to a large city. There didn’t seem to be much left of it, although most of the damage had been done a while ago. Many of the buildings showed evidence of recent care—shell holes boarded up, shattered windows replaced by cardboard, rubble piled neatly by the curb.

Our progress was not silent. In the darkness we bumped into things, stumbled over each other, and cursed and clattered loud enough to wake all Bonn. I capped this burlesque of “carefully on tiptoe stealing” by falling into a bomb crater in the middle of the street and requiring the aid of two men to pull me out. I hadn’t realized the damn things were so hard to climb out of. Then, climbing through a window of the building on the corner, I failed to see the table piled high with household equipment and fell ass over teakettle in a clatter of tinware and glass.

Leaving four men in the corner building, the rest of us moved to an apartment house a block away, smashed an entrance through a boarded-up window, and set up our second post. For the balance of the night we waited and watched. It was cold, a quiet, penetrating cold, and we hung the stiff folds of the living-room rug over our shoulders and huddled together for warmth. There was no furniture in the apartment except a davenport and a dollhouse. In the kitchen was a stove, which we regarded wistfully but dared not light.

Every two hours—at two, four, and six a.m.—I was required to send a contact patrol to our other strong point and thence to the strong point beyond, which was held by another squad. On the uneven hours—one, three, and five a.m.—the neighboring squad sent a contact patrol out to us.

Bill Bowerman and I did the patrols, and on one of them we had a fright that turned our bones to Jell-O.

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