Keep Your Heads Down

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Text originally published in 1945 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN

BY

WALTER BERNSTEIN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

PROLOGUE 5

I. ACTION IN GEORGIA 7

II. A ROLLER COASTER IS WORSE 14

III. JUKE JOINT 20

IV. A NIGHT IN THE GUARDHOUSE 26

V. INHALE! OUTHALE! 32

VI. NIGHT WATCH 38

VII. THE TAKING OF FICARRA 45

VIII. BUSY MORNING 54

IX. I LOVE MOUNTAIN WARFARE 64

X. SEARCH FOR A BATTLE 73

XI. WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA 82

1. ROAD CROSSING 82

2. MARCH 90

3. TITO’S HEADQUARTERS 97

EPILOGUE 106

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 108

DEDICATION

TO THE MEN WHO REPORTED TO DRAFT BOARD 179, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, ON THE MORNING OF FEBRUARY 24, 1941, WHEREVER THEY ARE.

PROLOGUE

IT WAS still dark when he got to the draft board. Three other inductees were already there, standing self-consciously against the wall. He stood by a radiator until he got warm, then sat on the edge of a desk, across from a poster showing a group of laughing air cadets. He wished he had taken time for breakfast.

The room gradually filled up. He didn’t know any of the men, although some of them knew others. Finally one of the members of the draft board arrived: a small, round, bald-headed man, who came in smiling and rubbing his hands, and immediately knocked on a table for silence. The room quieted and the little man took out a piece of paper and began reading names. The men answered promptly; one of the names was not there and there was a pause as everyone looked around for the man, wondering who he was, what he had done, what had happened to him.

After the names were called, the board member said, Let’s go, men, and led the way outside. They walked down the dark street toward the subway. The street lamps shone yellowly on the sad, dirty remains of the last snowfall. I should have brought my rubbers, someone said. At the subway the bald-headed man stopped and took a pack of government transit tickets from his pocket. He gave these to the lead man, together with a printed list of instructions as to where he should go. Then he beamed at all the men and said in a loud voice, Good luck, fellows. He waved cheerily as the men trooped down the subway stairs. You little bald-headed son of a bitch, one of the men said, but the little man did not seem to hear.

The subway was packed with commuters, who looked curiously at the group of men. He stood near a young girl who was reading Marius the Epicurean. He felt a desperate need to talk to someone and asked the girl suddenly what school she went to. The girl did not answer and he felt himself turning red. He wished he had bought a newspaper.

The ride took a half-hour, and the armory was right in front of the station. They went inside and were directed into a huge, cavernous drill room and placed at the end of a line of other inductees. When his turn came, he gave his name and essential statistics to a bored sergeant at a desk, was given a tag to place around his neck, and directed upstairs.

He remembered little about the physical examination. He was just part of a long assembly line that wound in and out of little cubicles. He remembered being told to sit down, stand up, bend over, cough; but he could not remember a single face. The only place he stopped was at the psychiatrist, who held him five minutes longer because he bit his nails. Then he was back in the drill room, standing with a group of other men, his right hand raised, repeating words after a bored officer. Their voices echoed hollowly in the dank room.

Afterwards he followed the others to the telephone booths in the corner and waited on line to make a call. He heard the phone ringing at the other end and then her voice, still heavy with sleep: Hello.

He said, It’s me. I’m in the Army.

Oh.

There was silence while he tried to think of something to say.

I’ll call you when I get to camp, he said.

How do you feel? she asked.

All right, he said.

He hung up and went back to wait with the others along the side of the room. At the other end, the line of new inductees was still as long as when he had come. There was a running track on a balcony around the top of the drill field and a middle-aged man was running around and around. The man was in shorts and sweat shirt, and he could hear him breathing heavily as the man passed over his head. A sergeant walked down the line, asking in a loud voice if anyone there could work a typewriter. He was going to volunteer, but two others beat him to it.

Those guys are all set, somebody said, but later he saw them sweeping up the room, with the sergeant giving them orders. He made a note to be careful about volunteering in the future.

At last the inductees were all there. A sergeant lined them up and marched them out of the armory to a waiting railroad train. Army men stood by while they piled in. He found a seat next to a window. A crap game had started in the seat ahead of him, and a bottle was already being passed around. He took á drink and passed it on; it was raw and hot and he could feel it down to his toes. He looked out of the window as the train started, looking back as long as he could at the spot where they had boarded the train, trying to fix the neat, civilian scene in his mind so that he would never forget it, no matter where he went.

I. ACTION IN GEORGIA

AFTER A bleak day in the Jamaica armory and a three-day stop-over at Camp Upton, I became a member of the Eighth Infantry Regiment. From Upton I was shipped, along with several hundred other selectees, to Fort Benning, Georgia, where the Eighth was stationed in the bosom of the Fourth Division Motorized, the Army’s one fully mechanized division. The Eighth Infantry is one of the oldest and most honored regiments in the United States Army. Founded in 1838 at West Troy, New York, it has since served all over the world, participating in the Indian, Mexican, Civil, Spanish-American, and Philippine Wars. It is a matter of some regret to the older enlisted men that the Eighth did not see action in the last world war; two days after the regiment arrived in France, the armistice was hastily signed. The Eighth did, however, become part of the American Army of Occupation, remaining in Germany until 1923. For the past half-century, its personnel has come mainly from the South, but in the last three months the regiment has been brought to wartime strength—about two thousand men—by an influx of Northern selectees, so today Southerners are outnumbered by Northerners two to one. Almost all the selectees in the Eighth are from New York City or its environs, while most of the officers and Regular Army men are Southerners. Though this has resulted in a good deal of sectional chauvinism, actual conflict between the North and the South has been negligible. Each side, nevertheless, is continually amazed at the other’s inability to speak English.

Once at his permanent station, a selectee goes through a period of recruit drill before he is given regular company duty. In the infantry this is an eight-week stretch. The first three weeks or so of this are spent on close-order drill and lectures. Close-order drill is formation work done at attention, such as the Manual of Arms or marching in a parade. It is not until about the fourth week that extended-order drill, or actual battle formation, is practiced. Until that fourth week the selectees in my company were taught how to march in step, how to carry and clean a rifle, how to salute an officer, and other military necessities. We were also lectured on hygiene, first aid, sex, and the iniquities of the neighboring cities. The days were completely routined. Our company was awakened at five-thirty, marched to the drill field at seven, drilled and lectured until twelve, marched back again, and lunched. At ten minutes to one we were again lined up, and the morning program was repeated until five, when we were dined. After that we were technically free until the next morning, although beds had to be made, rifles cleaned, shoes and faces shined, and other minor tasks accomplished. By ten, when lights went out, most of the men were already asleep.

The drill field was hot and dusty, and k was therefore with much relief that we learned one afternoon in our fourth week that we were to march a mile into the woods and have our afternoon there instead of on the field. The word went around as we lined up at ten to one in front of the barracks, and our lieutenant confirmed it. He was a blond young man of twenty-five who had been called up from the Reserves. He was strict, but the regulars assured us that we would later thank him for it. When we were all lined up, he told us that we were going into the woods for extended-order drill and should pay close attention to what happened, as this would approximate actual battle conditions. Then we put on our packs, slung our rifles over our shoulders, and marched off.

We marched in three platoons, about sixty men to a platoon. The Fourth Division Motorized is not only motorized but also streamlined. This means that it has fewer men and that its component units form in threes instead of fours: three platoons to a company, three companies to a battalion, three battalions to a regiment, and three regiments to a division. In a so-called heavy division, which contains heavier artillery, the distribution is by fours. I was in the first platoon, between a twenty-five-year-old Brooklyn clothing salesman named Stein and a twenty-three-year-old Italian boy named La Gattuta, who came from Corona and had been a stock clerk at Macy’s. The other men in the group usually referred to La Gattuta with obscenity, if affection, because he had volunteered. He had fought in the Golden Gloves one year but had been disqualified because of a heart murmur after he had won several bouts. He was delighted with our excursion to the country. This looks just like Corona, he said as we left the camp area and headed into the woods.

Inside the woods it was cool and pleasantly damp. The trees were all Georgia pine and grew straight and tall; you could see the sky only in patches. The ground was covered with pine needles. We marched quietly, since conversation in ranks was strictly prohibited, but you could tell that the men were excited when they counted cadence. During a march an officer will call out Cadence count! to see if his men are in step. As the men step off on their right foot, they shout Step! and then One, two, three, four to each successive step. This is repeated twice. If the men have been in the Army for more than a week, they shout the Army equivalent of one, two, three, four, which is hut, tup, thrup, frup, but during the first couple of months this always makes them feel a little foolish. Usually you can determine the level of men’s spirits by the way they count cadence. This afternoon they were counting with vim if not abandon.

After twenty minutes of marching, we came to a small glade and the lieutenant called a halt. We were told to take off our packs and prepare for the afternoon’s work. The lieutenant spoke to us briefly about what we were to do, using the word terrain often and repeating that this was practice in actual warfare. Then the company was divided into fifteen-man squads, each squad assigned to a specific sector of an assumed battle front and put under a corporal or sergeant, and marched off into the woods. My squad was led by one of the regular sergeants, a tall, red-headed boy from South Carolina. He was perhaps the best liked of the non-commissioned officers, because he did not work the men too hard. He led the squad at an easy pace for about two hundred yards, stopping every so often to see that no one was lost. We walked single file. I was still between Stein and La Gattuta. In Prospect Park— Stein said as he tripped over a branch.

Cut out the god-damn talkin’ in ranks, the sergeant said.

When we had gone far enough, the sergeant held up his hand and everyone stopped. Gather round, he said. He knelt, and we all knelt around him. He pointed to a small, wooded hill about three hundred yards ahead. We’re goin’ to attack that there hill, and there’s a machine-gun nest on top of it, he said. No one said anything, but a few men stared at the hill with interest. The sergeant looked at us and then at the hill and then at us again. You all got that? he asked. We nodded. O.K., he said. Line up in column. We took our places. When we scatter, even numbers will go to the right, odd to the left, he said. Count—Haw! We counted off after one false start. I was No. 9. O.K., the sergeant said. He waved his hand forward and we started off, walking slowly in single file toward the hill.

After about fifty yards the sergeant held up his hand as a signal to stop. He turned to face us and held both arms out horizontally, waving his hands up and down. That was the signal for us to form two skirmish lines, right and left. In a skirmish line men are staggered in two rows, one five yards ahead of the other. I unslung my rifle, hitting myself in the head, and ran to my left. When I was five yards past No. 7, I stopped and looked up and down my line. It was practically a semicircle, but the sergeant, by means of signals, adjusted the men until the line was straight and facing the hill. Then he lowered his hand, palm down—the signal for us to drop. There is a correct way to do this in the Army: you hit the ground first with your knees, then with the butt of the rifle, to break your fall. First, though, you are supposed to take cover. I headed for a tree a yard or so to my left and took about ten seconds getting down. Once comfortable, I fitted the rifle to my shoulder, as we had been taught to do, and pointed it toward the hill. The top of the hill was bare and innocent in the sun. I lay with my body at a forty-five-degree angle to the target, legs apart, and looked for the spot on the hill where the imaginary enemy’s machine-gun nest might be located.

In front the sergeant was talking to Nos. r and 2, who were looking important. He pointed to the hill and they nodded. Then they started to walk slowly toward it, No. 1 several steps ahead of No. 2. They moved on tiptoe, up the hill, dodging from one tree to another, and I wondered what the hell they were doing. Then I remembered: they were the scouts who would go ahead and warn us when they saw the enemy. I was watching them, expecting at any moment to hear a shot ring out and see one of them tumble expertly to the bottom of the hill, when the sergeant came down the line to inspect our positions. That tree ain’t no good to hide behind, he said to me. It was a good two feet across and looked solid enough for anything, but the sergeant shook his head. Machine gun’ll cut right through it, he said. Cut your god-damn head right off. He moved on down the line and I looked uneasily for another tree.

There was a clump of them to my right and I crawled toward it, conscious of all my exposed parts. When I got there I found Stein sitting against the trunk of one of the trees. This is strictly a dog’s life, he said sadly. Give me suits to sell.

I pointed out that he was No. 8 and belonged to the right side of the line.

Eight-shmate,-he said. You got a cigarette?