Whatever It Took by Henry Langrehr

Author:Henry Langrehr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

WHAT WE SHARED

Replacements for the men who were killed started coming in a few days after D-Day.

“What do we do?” they’d ask.

“Follow us,” we’d tell them. “Keep your butt down.”

And keep moving. That we learned real quick. You don’t stop when you’re fighting the Germans. Keep moving.

Shared danger built a bond between myself and the guys I’d work with; we were all “buddies,” to use the word we used. New guys, old guys—all buddies. You didn’t know the guy next to you, but if he was there, he was automatically a buddy.

There were people from places I’d never heard of. City guys and farm guys. The guys I met from New York, Chicago, Detroit, and all these other bigger cities, they were all good guys. Farm guys, too. People from the South. We had things in common besides the war. We all said the same thing:

When the war is over . . .

The words that followed differed from man to man, but the basic idea was the same:

I’m living for tomorrow, once I get through today.

But the plans weren’t elaborate. Vague hopes, more like. We couldn’t waste time figuring out tomorrow. We knew what was happening today and that’s the way we lived for those few weeks. There was no future, except when it came. Which we all hoped it would.

Another thing: when you are a lowly private, you don’t get that much information.

You’re told to do things. Rarely are you told why. And never, or hardly ever, are you told where that why fits into the overall strategy.

That encourages living in the present, doing what has to be done to get to the next day, then the next, until finally the war is over and your future resumes.

I had Arlene’s picture with me to remind me that there was a future. I looked at it every so often. I don’t think I would have forgotten what she looked like, let alone forgotten her, but it was a good thing to have. A good thing to see.

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