The First Time I Saw Paris by Norman Spivock

Another time, the whole division, it seemed, was a column of vehicles I could see stretched out for at least a mile. Suddenly everyone left their vehicles and scrambled to the waysides for safety. I started to leave, but George held me back. He pointed to a little distant spot, way to the front, and said it was an American tank. Officers with binoculars were studying the tank, and after a bit decided it was an American tank, so everyone returned to their vehicles, and we continued on. That George, from the end or at most the middle of the column, could see with his bare eyes what those in the front of the column needed binoculars to see amazed me. Thereafter I believed in whatever George said he saw.

A bit about George. He was the Indian kid who did not like the reservation and did not like school. He would leave school and go out into the desert around the Hopi Reservation and stay there till he was caught and brought back to school. Then, as soon as he could, he would take off to the wilds till recaptured and sent back to school again. With his eyesight, though, I thought he was not so easy to catch.

We were moving into Germany so quickly that we said we were 150 miles into Germany and the land was cleared (of the enemy) to the edge of the road. I was told my regiment discovered the first concentration camp. The Army newspaper,The Stars and Stripes, showed photos of bodies stacked like logs at a lumber mill. Yes, we did get the paper along with mail fairly regularly regardless of combat conditions.

At another town, we arrived after dark and, as usual, took a house at the edge of town. Because of the extremely dense fog, it was decided to have scouts out, so I was sent down the road, about a hundred feet past the edge of town. The fog was so dense I couldn't see the other side of the road. About an hour later, I heard some tanks rumbling down the road. They must have come through town. So I lay down in the ditch alongside the road. Out of the fog, almost on top of me, came a platoon of four German panzers. You have no idea how big they are. They covered the road from side to side. They actually made the ground vibrate under me. I wondered if I could run up and put my carbine in the spokes of one of their wheels, like on the last tank, to disable it. But surely the panzer tank would crush the carbine like a toothpick. In any event, what would I do with no firearm? The reality was that, after sacrificing my carbine, it was so foggy I wouldn't have been able to see what I was doing anyway. So, after they passed, I waited a while to see what, if anything, would happen.

After a long while, I decided my squad had forgotten about me, so I walked back to the house. At the first house, I saw no sign of life, but I heard something at the second, so I proceeded toward it. I turned left on the driveway toward a sound. I walked very slowly. I could see nothing and didn't want to hit or stumble over anything. As I slowly took a step forward, I made out the silhouette of a man. He was about two feet from me, and I still couldn't tell who it was. "Chandler?" I asked. A voice called my name. I said, "Yes."

He let out a sigh. It was Chandler. Exasperated, and with relief, he said, "It's a good thing you spoke, because if you took one more step I was going to shoot you." Because of the fog, he couldn't see me either. He urgently suggested I go back to my post and wait until I was relieved, which I did. That was the first of two times in my life that I was seconds from death.

Another time, after dusk, my platoon found itself at an intersection in the country.We had come down one road with a forest on the right and open fields on the left. The intersecting road came from far ahead on the left and made a large curve to meet the intersection. We were sitting alongside the road to the right, the one through the trees, when a burst of tracer bullets coming from down that road flew past us. They looked too big to be from a rifle, so we guessed it was a twenty-millimeter cannon. We all immediately jumped the six feet from the edge of the road where we had been sitting into the forest for protection. I forgot to take my carbine that I had left on the ground. Again tracers filled the air. I decided I needed my carbine, so I dashed out and got it. The soldier next to me said he thought that was brave. It didn't occur it me it was anything but necessary, and only a slight risk. The guys were getting nervous, so some starting digging what I call horizontal fox holes. Then there were some exploding missiles overhead, so those with holes jumped into them. I had no hole, so I jumped on top of a guy that had a deep hole, figuring that was better than nothing. He expressed gratitude for my being there because, he said, my body would protect him from shrapnel. Well, I reflected, they say that one of the finest things in life is to be of service to others, so I was involuntarily being noble. Soon all was quiet. Then we heard the clanking of tanks approaching us on the curved road. We all got out into the open and waved as we tried to get them to continue down the road to take out that cannon. Instead, the tanks turned to their left, away from us. As they were leaving, one of the guys noticed they were German panzers.

We continued to overrun towns. In one, I saw a woman hurriedly going nowhere around and around in front of her house as it was being ransacked by civilians, expressing her feelings that "fifteen years of Nazis is enough." The American soldiers were well controlled and caused no damage or problems with the civilians that I noticed, except for when we commandeered a house for a night or two. We had civil conversations with civilians who spoke English. When it came out that we were not going to fight the Russians, their most common reaction was puzzlement. The German civilians thought we were crazy not to join the German Army and together, side by side, fight the Russians.

We finally reached the town of Zwickau, where we stopped. At that time, of all the Allied Forces, we were the closest unit to Berlin. Rumor had it we could be the first to Berlin. Another rumor claimed it would be easy. Anyway, we believed it. It didn't happen, and soon the war was over.

My unit was resettled in the Austrian town of Linz, where we mingled freely with the civilians. The German civilians I encountered were all friendly and cooperative. And that's where tragedy struck. My platoon was housed on the third floor of an apartment building at the edge of town. Outside and below my window was a yard with a fence. At one corner, the fence formed a ninety degree angle.

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