SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

War Stories James A. Moore

My grandfather was a good man. He raised his family well, and he raised my mother in a lifestyle that left her nurturing and caring. She did the same for me. But he and I had a special connection when he was alive, something my mother never knew about, and, if I have my way, never will.

He and I had both fought in wars on foreign soil. He fought in the Second World War and in Korea. I fought in Vietnam. We had both seen more than our share of combat, and we were both left scarred by what we’d been through. It’s hardly an exclusive club, even in this day and age, but it was definitely a connection.

Before I went to Vietnam he and I were not really very close. He’d show up, I’d spend the day with him and the family, and he’d leave. When I was very young, he’d tell me a few anecdotes about his time in the service, but he would never tell me about any of the combat he’d been through, and he would stop speaking of them if I came into the room.

He tried to shelter me from the horrors of war, and I guess a part of me just might have resented that. What kid growing up a baby boomer didn’t want to at least try to imagine what it must have been like to storm the beach at Normandy? Hell, half the movies made when I was growing up were about kicking Nazi butt. I almost felt that such stories were my due. So, yes, I suppose I did resent the loss of heroic tales that so many kids had. But I also understood that he didn’t like to speak of the wars, and I knew that my mother was glad not to have to listen to the tales. Both her husband and her youngest brother had died in Korea, fighting over ideals that meant a lot less when they cost a family member or two. As frustrated as I was by the lack of adventure tales from a man I knew had actually seen heavy combat, she was grateful, so I understood his reluctance. I just wasn’t thrilled by it.

We never spoke about his time in the wars, my grandfather and I, until after I came back from ’Nam. And when we did finally talk of the matter, it was in subdued tones.

I got home in ’69. They told me I could leave, that my term was done, and I went from the bloodstained rice paddies to the cool early October evenings of the family farm in Colorado. At least my body did. Harvest wasn’t really a problem. We lived on a dairy farm. So instead of losing myself in the frantic work of gathering the fall crops, I did what so many others did after they came back, I lost myself in resentment and cold, bitter rage. Every time I closed my eyes I found a different sight to haunt me. Sometimes it was walking through the steaming jungles, sometimes it was running for dear life from artillery fire that would have completely destroyed my little home town of Summitville, and praying the trees between me and the shells would be enough to save my ass again. They were, though only just.

Plenty of my friends and fellow soldiers died badly in that war and some of them did it only a few feet away from me. All of those movies I’d been weaned on hadn’t begun to prepare me for dealing with the madness. Surely they never said a thing about hostility on the home front when I came back. Just as often I saw the angry faces of strangers calling me hideous names when I stepped back on home soil. The names they called me too often reflected my own opinion of myself at the time.

Now and then, mostly when I closed my eyes, I got a nice flash back of growing up in Summitville. I got glimpses of Antoinette Sanderson’s incredible green eyes when we shared out first kiss or even a sight of her perfect breast the one time I’d seen it. I got a look at the Halloween Festival in Town Square, and remembered the fun we all had building the scarecrows that stood like sentinels around the festivities. But those were rare, just enough to keep me sane. Mostly I saw the dead and the dying in rivers of blood. It was ‘kill or be killed’ over there, as my sergeant was fond of saying, and I did far too much killing to ever be happy about having survived.

But I did discover a way to numb the pain for a while, a way to crush the overwhelming guilt of surviving when so many people who were braver or just plain more innocent than me died in screaming increments. I discovered booze. Beer was my preference and Budweiser the drink of choice. I didn’t sip and savor the beer I consumed. I drank it fast, hoping for numbness from the darkness I felt growing inside of me.

I never quite made it to alcoholic, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

My grandfather put a stop to that nonsense before it could go too far. I was sitting out on the porch about two weeks after I got home when he decided it was time to set me straight. Two weeks, and already all of my dreams had been shattered. Toni Sanderson was off in college, and even though I didn’t speak to her, it was made very clear to me that she was seeing someone else and it was serious. I’d almost managed to figure that part out anyway; the letters, which were so frequent when I’d first left for the war, were less common and often seemed almost too friendly. I could read between the lines as well as anyone else. She sent the last few either out of a misplaced sense of guilt or out of a need to keep me from feeling lower than I already did. I couldn’t even see her to put what was left of our relationship to rest with a proper funeral. Not unless I felt like driving to Denver, and I was afraid to do that because one of the faces I’d seen calling names when I got off that damned plane and looked around had looked an awful lot like Toni’s. If I’d found out she had been one of the protesters, it would have been too much for me. I was wise enough to know that much at least.

No girl waiting for me when I got back, not like in the pictures in Time and Life magazines. No victory parades, not even a hero’s welcome. I just stepped back into my life as best I could. I wasn’t very good at it, either; I started drinking and taking out my frustrations on the people closest to me. I roared at my mother when everything wasn’t just so, and it was seldom just so, you may rest assured. I glowered at my grandfather, feeling that he should have prepared me better for the madness of war, though the thought was never that well cemented in my head at the time. I ignored the rest of Summitville. They were not worth my time: they had not welcomed me back with open arms, but merely nodded and went on their way, embarrassed I suppose, to have a soldier come back intact.

So beer became my one true friend and I left the rest of the world to fend for itself.

My grandfather would have none of it. As I watched the sun do its slow descent toward Lake Overtree, he moved arthritically over to the chair next to mine and settled himself in. It took a while; though he walked very well on his fake leg, sitting and standing were still a challenge. I did my best to ignore him. He lit a Camel, blowing the smoke out with a satisfied gust of wind past his dentures, and then reached down next to me to take one of my beers. I wasn’t feeling too greedy just then, so I let him.

He finished two cigarettes and two more beers while the sun tried to hide behind the lake and mountains. It was properly twilight before he started speaking. “Reckon you’re feeling a mite sorry for yourself.” I looked his way. He hadn’t called me Eddie since I was old enough to grow peach fuzz on my chin.

“Maybe I am, Grampa. Maybe I’m just trying to get my balance back.” Oh, it was just the right sort of pop psychology my grandfather could understand. I’d picked up the term from him, after all. He most often used it to refer to someone who was in mourning for a close family relative. “Emma needs to get her balance back is all,” he’d say when someone made a comment about how poorly she was faring after her husband died in a bad car wreck. “She’s had a rough time, and it ain’t always an easy thing to start standing up again.”

He lit another Camel from the butt of the third, and cupped his hand around the cherry. He’d picked up that habit during WWII and had never stopped hiding that small source of light from potential snipers. “Yeah, I can see how you might need to. Everything I’ve heard says it’s a nasty conflict over there. They can call it a ‘police action’ all they want to, but you and I know better, don’t we?”

I nodded my agreement. Last I’d checked, police arrested people and locked them away for doing wrong; they didn’t drop bombs the size of VW Bugs on their houses and burn the forests away with Napalm. I took one of his cigarettes as he grabbed another of my beers. I was trying to quit, but it wasn’t easy. All of my willpower went to not blowing my top whenever my mother would look at me with a puzzled expression. She hadn’t been there. She couldn’t possibly understand what I’d been through. I had to remind myself of that fact everyday. She got that puzzled look a lot. It was her way of asking what was wrong without actually saying the words.

“It’s been two weeks, Eddie, and you aren’t getting calmer. You’re just getting quieter. I figure you need to get it off your chest before it crushes you.”

I knew what he was talking about, but I just didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know how to look at another person, let alone my grandfather, and explain how much I’d done, or how much I’d seen. I think he knew that, too.

He opened my beer with the church key he kept in his pocket and he took a long pull. “Maybe I should go first, just to break the ice?”

I blinked at that. He had never told me a war tale and I fully expected he never would. I guess then was when I realized that I had become a part of a rather exclusive club. ‘The Survivors’ Club. Off in the distance, I could hear my mother starting to prepare dinner. The radio was playing and I suspect she couldn’t hear a word we said to each other. That was maybe for the best.

He told me about Normandy Beach and the sheer volume of death and artillery that day. I shivered as I listened. The tale was very familiar to me, even if the location was different. I told him about the Ho Chi Minh Trail and he listened in silence. We drank and smoked some more, toasting the names and memories of people we’d known that never made it back from their fights on foreign soil. By the time I’d finished, we were both buzzing and the sun had set.

My mother finished setting the table for dinner, but she never called. I suspect my grandfather had warned her about what he was going to do. I suspect she understood well enough to know that supper could wait for a while.

We traded tales of combat and bloodshed, as I imagine many veterans have done over the years. Some were stories that were almost happy little slices of humor in the middle of Hell. Most were not.

My mind was tired and my tear ducts were sore; I had done a lot of crying, though the tears were silent ones. Finally, when I was almost ready to call it a night, my grandfather told me his last war story. Even now, so long after it happened and after it was told, it still gives me shivers.

We had moved on to the worst of the things we had seen and the worst we had done, pulling up the dregs of our experiences and showing them to each other with a morbid sort of fascination. I let him know what I and the rest of my squad had done in a little village where we suspected the locals were on the side of the enemy. He didn’t look at me differently when I was done and I can never put into words how grateful I am for that simple fact.

He reached for his cigarettes again, and discovered the pack was empty. He reached for another beer and learned that they too were all gone. He shrugged and settled himself more comfortably in the wicker chair. “I reckon I should tell you about the Château,” he said. And in his voice I heard a dread that made even Normandy seem like a pleasant story.

I looked over at him, and saw him close those bright old eyes of his. His face looked as strained as it had when my grandmother died and when he heard about my father. I swallowed the fear I felt when I saw that look, and I nodded in the dark. “I guess maybe you should,” I said, in a voice I barely recognized as my own.

“I wasn’t any older than you are now; might have been a year or two younger. I know I’d just barely gotten through basic training when I got over to France. It wasn’t like I’d expected at all. There were places where the war had made its mark, to be certain, but there were places where you’d have never known anyone was capable of even picking a fight. I’d seen a bit of both.”

He looked at me and his mouth smiled tightly, though his eyes stayed just as dark and stormy. “Met me a few fine women when I was over there, too. Some of them were very grateful to see a bunch of Yankees with supplies. But that ain’t what this here story’s about, is it?

“We weren’t all that far from Paris. We’d been in a few skirmishes and were lucky enough to come out of them with our hides intact. Mostly we managed to survive, but we weren’t winning very much. There were only a handful of us to begin with. Jenkins was the Sergeant, and he was the highest-ranking soldier we had left at the time. Lieutenant Price had gotten himself killed only two days before, and we were supposed to be heading back to the field command. Only problem was, we couldn’t figure out where we were trying to go. When Price died, he wasn’t alone. Billy Sinclair was on radio duty at the time and he and the radio both got themselves blown to pieces. We weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the way our week had been going, if you can catch my meaning.”

He stopped for a minute and without a word went back into the house. He came back out with more smokes but left the beer behind. “There were only five of us left: Jenkins, myself, Toby Baker, you’d have liked him, Eddie, he was a little butterball from Ohio, but he had a great laugh and he shared it a lot. After him there was Emit Springer from New York and there was one last fella, a man named Jon Crowley. Where he was from, I couldn’t begin to tell you and I hope to never find out. In the middle of this entire snafu, Crowley was the only one of us who wasn’t sweating bullets. He was as calm as a man could be, and normally about three times happier than he had any reason to be. He wasn’t even part of our squad. He was just a straggler we’d sort of adopted along the way.

“Came out of the west right after everything went sour, and started walking in the same direction as us. Crowley was just as happy as a clam to run across us, and it wasn’t long before we invited him to join in on our march. We were on the same side, and he had better food than the rest of us combined. He’d run across a nice supply of sausages and bread the day before.”

Grandpa looked me straight in the face then, his eyes lit only by the glow of the ember he cupped in his hand. “Eddie, no man before or since has ever scared the hell out of me the way he did. There was something about him that just wasn’t right. He didn’t scare me all the time, only when he looked directly at me, or talked to me… or smiled that nasty, evil grin of his. And Eddie, he smiled a lot. The worse things looked, the more he seemed to enjoy himself.

“He wasn’t right, is what I’m saying. There was something about Crowley that made me want to hide under the sheets or call for my mother.” He cleared his throat, maybe afraid I didn’t know what he meant, but I did. “Anyhow,” he continued gruffly. “There were five of us left and most of what we had on us had been almost useless. Maybe we had a hundred rounds left all told, and were as lost as we could be. Knowing that Paris was close by and getting there isn’t the same thing. We had one advantage going for us… we were the good guys in the eyes of most the locals. There were a few who maybe didn’t mind the Nazis so much, or maybe had a deal going to report anything unusual, like a small group of American soldiers, but we hadn’t run across any.

“It was only a matter of time before we could work everything out and be on our way safely. At least, that’s what we kept telling ourselves and that’s what Jenkins kept telling us too. Lord, but we wanted to believe him.

“Not long after the sun had set, we got to moving ourselves from the field where we’d spent the day. We had to move at night because the Nazis sure as hell weren’t going to ask us how we were before they started shooting. You know what I mean, I suspect.”

I nodded my agreement. There were times when maybe the Viet Cong were too tired to look for us and times when we were too tired to look for them, and then there were times when we hunted each other like hounds with a fresh blood trail to follow. Maybe it was the phase of the moon or maybe it was just a vibe you picked up after a while, but sometimes you could tell when something was going to go poorly. You could tell when the enemy was in a killing mood.

“We’d only gone a couple of miles, tops, when we heard the convoy coming. Crowley heard them first, and in the darkness, with the moon above, I could see his smile when he noticed the sounds of vehicles rumbling past. His teeth flashed like lightning and his voice was amused when he spoke. ‘I’m guessing that those aren’t the good guys, fellas. I think we might want to make ourselves scarce.’

“He was right. The trail of German trucks that came past our little hiding place by the side of the road were huge. If it was less than thirty vehicles all told, you could have fooled me. Most of us kept our heads down, but Crowley laid in that trench next to the road and watched like a kid at a parade as every one of those loaded machines swept past us. How he managed to not get spotted is something I’ve never figured out.

“When the last one was gone and the dust from their passage had settled, Crowley slid down with his back to the road and smiled from ear to ear. ‘That’s a lot of security going up the road. I wonder what they’re hiding.’ I reckoned we could do without finding out until we got reinforcements, and I know everyone else agreed with me, but Crowley lost his smile when I made that comment. I think I liked him better with the smile right then. ‘We’re lost, Finch. Don’t you figure maybe we should find out what those Jerrys are up to before it can come back to haunt us?’

“I asked him what he meant and he shook his head, a look on his face that said he felt like maybe I was a bug, and one he wouldn’t mind squashing under his foot. ‘They weren’t just trucks, old boy.’ He looked at me as he spoke and I had to look away. I figured if I’d kept staring I was likely to wet my pants. ‘All of those trucks had SS soldiers on them. They were hiding something, maybe something big.

“I hated him right then. I hated him because I knew he was serious, and I knew he was right. The Allies had just started making ground in France and, if the Nazis had something big planned, we had to let someone know as soon as possible. There were a few groans, but no real protests. We all knew what we were getting into when we volunteered for the war, but it seemed a little odd to me that Jenkins didn’t even try to take command. He just let Crowley lead the way.

“I’ll say this for the French; they know how to make a road accessible. I’ll also say I wish we could have taken the roads that night, but that wasn’t an option. Instead of taking the easiest route, we took the safest route and that meant a lot of climbing and hauling our meager supplies over some damned ugly surfaces. Springer, the boy from New York, had the worst time of it. He kept trying to get where he needed to be and falling, sliding halfway down the hills. He never was very graceful as I recall, but he was damned strong.

“There was one point when we were climbing up the side of a cliff that seemed to go on for miles. Oh, I reckon it wasn’t much more than a few hundred feet, nothing we hadn’t at least learned how to do in basic training, but it was dark and the ground was wet with dew and it was maybe the most scared I’ve ever been when I wasn’t looking at someone who was trying to blow my head off my shoulders. The only ones who made it look easy were Toby and Crowley.

“Well, we were doing our best to get up there, and had made it most of the way, when Springer slipped and started falling. He’d have surely fallen and split his skull wide if Crowley hadn’t showed a little initiative and snatched him. I know it sounds like a lie, and I still have days when I doubt that I saw it, but as Springer started to fall, Crowley grabbed hold of him with one hand and held him in the air. Springer wet himself right then and there, and I can’t say as I blamed him for it. He opened his mouth to scream and Crowley yanked him closer, until they were face to face. I was about ten feet below them, looking up and ready to do some screaming myself because the rock that man was planted on was starting to crumble. I figured if it went, I could pretty much call my life over unless it decided to float away. From where I was standing it was a sure thing that slab of stone would crush me like a bug.

“Crowley smiled brightly as he looked Springer in the face. His mouth was wide in a grin big enough to just about reach ear to ear. ‘Make one God damned sound, boy, and I’ll let you fall. Do you understand me?’ Those were his exact words. I can still hear them and I can still hear the pleasure he got out of saying them. Springer nodded so hard I though his head was just gonna fall off. Crowley brought him even closer to his face, like he was looking deep into that New Yorker’s eyes and studying him. He had a look like that, Crowley did, and most times I figured he didn’t much like what he saw. ‘I ought to drop you right now. I ought to let you fall and break and bleed. But I won’t. You might make too much noise.’ I think Springer would have cried right then, but he was too afraid. Crowley kept a hand on his jacket the rest of the way up the cliff and I think more often than not he actually carried the Yankee rather than risk him slipping again.

“It seemed like an eternity that climb to the top, but it wasn’t much more than maybe an hour. Crowley barely even looked at the rest of us. He just headed towards that big stone building like a man on a mission from God Himself. What else could I do? Let him go in alone? I followed him, cursing under my breath the entire way.

“Well, eventually we made it to the château. It must have been a beauty in its heyday, but there really wasn’t much worth looking at anymore. The Germans had already been through the place and taken anything worth having. What they left behind was a lot of broken furniture and lots of bare stone walls. They’d been very thorough in their search of the place. I wish I knew what they’d been after. I suspect that they found it.

“Crowley led the way again. There was something about him that made you not want to argue about who was in charge. And something that inspired confidence, though I can’t for the life of me say exactly why. Maybe it was because he never seemed scared of anything. He seemed more like he was waiting to hear the punch line to a joke, or maybe waiting to tell it.

“Whatever else I can say about the man, good or bad, he knew how to move without making a sound. I felt like an elephant waltzing through tin cans in comparison. But I guess I was quiet enough walking through those dark halls. We never ran across a guard or even a mouse. I kept waiting for them around the next corner, and Crowley just kept leading me through the maze of rooms and corridors like there was nothing to worry about.”

My grandfather looked at me for a moment. His eyes glittered in the faint light of his cigarette. Almost against my will, I looked away and went inside for another beer. I brought out a full six pack, and then I stole another of his cigarettes. When he started talking again, his voice was subdued and sounded… weaker than I’d ever heard it sound before. “That should maybe have been my first hint, in hindsight. I’d heard Crowley whistle in the middle of artillery fire, like there wasn’t the least little thing to worry about. And here he was, just gliding along and leading me into a darkened building. I wouldn’t have been too surprised if he’d started singing.

“Well, sir. We finally got where we were going. We found where the Nazis were, and we saw what they were doing. But I have to be honest; to this day I don’t really understand it all.

“There was this huge chamber down in the lower levels of the château, and I figure the Krauts must have torn down all the walls they could without actually making the foundation give away, just so they could set up everything they needed.

“There were all sorts of machines lining the walls of the room we found them in. Machines like I’d never seen before and don’t want to ever see again. They made noises like you’d expect from a power plant, that deep hum that rattles your teeth and sets your hair standing on end. I hadn’t even heard it until we were almost in the room, because the walls down there were solid stone. They had a sort of operating station in the center of the place, with seven separate tables. Each of these had a man on it, or what had once been a man, at any rate.

“Not one of them much looked human anymore. They looked like nightmares. Their skin was pale and bloodless, their faces drawn and withered, like those pictures you see of mummies, but with a little moisture left to them. Each and every one of them was strapped to the table while men worked on their bodies with scalpels and other tools, the sort you don’t really expect to see used on a person. There were places where the ones they’d been working on the longest were covered in metal, like armor almost, but actually bolted into their skin. I could see the way the metal cut into their soft flesh and could see the blood that welled around the rivets they’d used to drive the metal in. I could almost imagine the pain they must have been feeling, as surely as I can imagine the Nazis used the bones of their victims as anchors for those steel plates. Just like the studs in a wall, Eddie, they’d drive those bolts into skin and muscle and then down into the bone. Worst of all, there wasn’t one of those poor bastards that weren’t awake and screaming.”

My grandfather looked at me again; his eyes seeming to wander in my general direction, unfocused until he settled on me. I have seldom seen a man look so haunted, and that was unsettling for me, especially after looking in the mirror for the last two weeks. He reached over and popped a beer, drinking half of it down before he continued.

“Every last one of them was awake, and in all my years I have never heard screams like those before, or since. They weren’t the screams of the dying, or even the seriously wounded. They were the screams of men having their souls ripped out. I don’t know just why or how the machinery managed to do such a thing, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.

“I stared down there like I was looking past the opened gates of Hell. And I watched as one of those poor bastards was dragged from his table and set down in a glass cage. Crowley stood right next to me, his eyes narrowed down to slits, his whole body tensed and waiting to see what would happen next. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, Eddie. I turned away from the sight of that torn and bloodied prisoner and I saw him smiling as he watched the Germans flip their damned switches and read whatever devices they had to understand for what they were doing.

“He was smiling. His mouth was stretched wide and he had the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen, I half expected the sonuvabitch to start laughing then and there. But he didn’t. His mouth was smiling, but it never reached his eyes. His eyes, they were dark brown as I recall, but they looked black as a coal mine at midnight right then.

“I looked back just as the glass chamber they’d put that man in was filled with a green gas. It wasn’t just green. It had specks of light in it, like fireflies seen in a heavy fog. Whatever it was they’d put in that little glass cage, it was enough to stop the tortured screaming I’d been hearing. The man’s body was barely revealed through the dark gas that floated in the area with him. I think part of me was happy for his silence, or maybe just relieved. Either way, it didn’t take long for me to get over that. I stopped feeling much of anything but a lump of fear in my throat when I saw his body start twitching.

“When the gas cleared — and by cleared I guess I mean when it had been absorbed into his flesh — I saw the bloodied, torn body lying flat on the ground in that little glass cage. And I saw the way he didn’t breathe anymore, and the way the eyes had rolled into the back of his head. I felt my blood ready to boil over at the very notion of that sort of torture just to kill a man. To actually peel back flesh and muscle, to bury screws in skin and leave a man in that state, only to gas him to death… I couldn’t believe it, and I whispered as much to Crowley as I started checking my rifle. I was gonna end this madness, and I was gonna kill me a few dozen Nazis in the process.

“Crowley looked over at me and for the first time since we’d entered the château, I could see the humor in his eyes as well as on his face. He leaned in really close to me, close enough that for a second I was afraid he was going to kiss me, and he whispered back. ‘I’m betting that thing down there might not be so easy to kill with a bullet, old son. I’m betting that maybe he would take a bullet from you as an insult and maybe decide to kill you for your trouble.’

“I had no idea what he was talking about, but he pointed toward the glass chamber and I looked in that direction. And all that rage I’d built up, all that anger I’d focused to help me with the idea of killing so many people… died away. I went from angry to terrified in about as long as it takes me to blink my eyes.

“The man they’d killed was standing, and he looked even less human than before. The skin on his body had turned green, a little lighter in color than the gas he’d been forced to breathe, but not by much. And his eyes, which I had seen roll back into his head until all I could see was the whites, looked around with pupils that glowed with that same firefly light I’d seen earlier. He looked around, and his mouth I’d seen screaming earlier closed with a snap like a bear trap slamming down on a deer’s hind leg.

“I stood there looking down at the thing in the chamber. It barely resembled the man they’d dragged in there minutes earlier. One of the men, the one wearing a Gestapo uniform under his lab coat, barked out orders at the thing in German. It stepped forward, leaving its cage and moving with all the precision of an honor guard presenting itself to the President of these United States. That poor, tortured soul knew how to follow orders, and it was ready to follow its new master for as long as it saw fit.

“Crowley tapped my shoulder, and when I looked at him, he winked. ‘You want the green guy, or do you want the soldiers? Your choice.’ I answered him by leveling my rifle and putting a bullet through the head of the Nazi who was barking orders.”

I barely heard my grandfather speak his next words. They were so faint I had to strain to make them out. He spoke them in a hurried whisper, a dirty confession that he had to make, but didn’t want to speak. “That was the first time in my life I ever enjoyed killing a man, Eddie. But before the night was done, I’d enjoyed the feeling over a dozen times.

“Jonathan Crowley, slick-sleeved soldier in the US Army, looked at me and set his rifle down next to me. He grinned like a kid at Christmas, and said to me, ‘You’re a good man, Ben Finch. Don’t let them take that away from you.’ Then, before I could even say a word, he was running. He moved like lightning down the hallway, and I thought for sure he was abandoning me to get my ass killed by a bunch of pissed off Nazis. I didn’t see as I had much choice, so I picked off the next one.

“By the time the second one hit the ground, trying to scream through the hole I’d made in his throat, the rest of them were calling out in German and one or two of them were pointing at me. The ones that had guns started shooting. I ducked for cover, and watched as two of them made for the stairwell, ready, I’m sure, to meet me head on and put a few hundred rounds into my sorry ass. I’d ask if you ever had bullets coming at you, Eddie, but I already know the answer. It was all I could do to look up from time to time from my prone position. I just knew I was a goner as soon as those soldiers made it to the top of the stairwell. I’d be a sitting duck, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.

“I was thinking about that and how full my bladder felt, when I saw the two guards who’d come up the stairs go right back down again. I could tell by the way they fell that they were dead. You can’t move like that and be alive. Next thing I saw was Jonathan Crowley walking down those steps and looking around the room. Everyone was so busy looking for me that they never even saw him come into their little torture chamber.

“It didn’t take him long to rectify that situation. He strutted right on up to the first of them and lashed out with a foot that moved so fast I barely saw it. The Kraut dropped just as sure as if I’d shot him, his mouth bleeding and teeth flying. I shot the next one over, and then I saw most of them turn toward Crowley. He should have been terrified, I know I was scared for him, but he was smiling again, looking happier than any man has a right to look during a war.

“One of them shot him from fifteen feet away, and missed. I was watching, you understand? I was watching that man shoot, and I was calling out a warning, and Crowley managed not to be there when the bullet left the muzzle of that pistol. I don’t think he actually dodged the bullet, I don’t think that’s possible, but I know he wasn’t where he had been by the time the bullet met that spot. Instead, he was right next to the man with the gun. And the man with the gun was screaming because his shot had missed and more than that, it had hit one of his comrades.

“Crowley slipped his arm around the man’s neck like he was gonna say something confidential to him, then he twisted his body and the man fell dead. Even from where I was, even over the shouting and the gunfire, I heard that man’s neck snap like a twig. Before the soldier hit the ground, Crowley used him like a springboard and leapt high into the air. He landed on another Nazi a few feet away and I reckon he killed him as soon as he hit, but just about then I looked in another direction. I looked at the green man them Germans had made. I looked that way because someone else was shouting a command in German, and that fella turned at the sound of the voice and then turned to face Crowley.”

My grandfather looked away then, rubbing his grizzled chin with one hand and staring into the darkened field where the cows grazed. He kept talking, and I kept my mouth shut. “I know I sound crazy but I swear that thing had grown bigger while I was watching Crowley. Not just the flesh on its body, but the metal as well. It looked to be almost seven feet in height. It moved right at Crowley like it was a freight train and he was a piece of rail it meant to run over. Every last one of them Krauts jumped out of its way, too. Like they knew it would be a bad idea to be between that monster and its target.

“I took the opportunity to shoot the thing in the head, opening up and squeezing four rounds into the green scalp. I saw the holes they punched into that thing, and I saw the way its head was knocked sideways by the impacts, but it never even slowed. It just moved at Crowley.

“Crowley saw it too. He saw that thing coming at him, and he looked away long enough to stare me in the eyes. His smile was as broad and wild as it could be and he winked at me and said, ‘I’ve got him, Ben. Get the soldiers.’

“Well, I figured he was a nut case, but I was also riding on a combat high right then. I did what he said, and I promised myself I’d see he got a proper funeral stateside. I took down three more Nazis then I dropped my rifle and grabbed for Crowley’s, because the third man I shot at should have died and instead he just stood there. My weapon was out of bullets.

“Right then I felt pretty damned invincible, I must say. I was above the actual combat, and I was shooting them as easy as a man could shoot a fish in a barrel. They were shooting back, and if you look closely you can still see the scar under my right eye where one of them bullets hit the wall near me and a piece of that stone flew off and punched me in the face. I felt it, but it didn’t matter. I had the advantage. I still figured I was a dead man and too dumb to know it, but it was one hell of a fine feeling right then. I reckon maybe I was a little crazy at that point. I shot four more of them, and was ready to aim again, when I saw one of the Gestapo types hit the switch on the wall.

“There were alarms going crazy a second later. The air was filled with a sound like an air-raid siren, and I was so shocked I actually dropped Crowley’s rifle. I looked around, my heart in my throat and beating way too fast, and I saw Crowley and the green thing struggling against each other. That thing was swinging its huge hands at Crowley, and Crowley was swinging right back. I saw Crowley take a fist in the gut, and I saw his body lifted off the ground by the force of the hit, but when the monster pulled its fist back, Crowley landed swinging as hard as he could.

“Like I told you before, Eddie, I hit that damned green man with four bullets from my rifle, I saw them break into its skull, and I saw at least a couple of them leave the other side of its head. I didn’t figure it could be hurt. What I hadn’t counted on was that Jon Crowley seemed to be just as tough. I saw that thing throw him halfway across the room, and I saw Crowley bounce off a wall with enough force to fly another five feet on the rebound. I figure most people would have been dead after that, or at least unconscious. Crowley came off the ground like a scalded cat and reached out to one of the soldiers standing too close to where he landed. He grabbed the man by his hair and yanked him hard enough for the man to shriek. Then Crowley grabbed the needle gun in the Nazi’s hand and fired every round he could into the monster coming at him. Somewhere along the way he got the thing where it was vulnerable. He shot out its eyes. Lord, the mess! And its blood was green too. I don’t know what they did to that poor man, but I swear I hope the secret is never discovered again.

“Any living thing that had its eyes shot out would very likely fall to the ground screaming, or probably even die, what with the brain being right behind the eyes. Not the green man. It kept coming, tilting its head and listening to every sound. It might have worked with someone else, but Crowley could move so softly you wouldn’t even know he was there if he didn’t decide to let you know. I pretty much forgot about the Germans then, and I reckon they forgot about me. We were all too intent on watching what was happening. It was sort of like seeing a car wreck… you don’t really want to slow down, but there’s this part of your mind that makes you look, if you understand what I’m saying.”

I thought about that for a second and nodded. I’d had that same compulsion a few times in ’Nam and stateside as well. Some things are just too extreme not to stop and ponder.

My grandfather lit another cigarette, and then opened another Budweiser for himself and for me. When he started again, his voice was a little calmer. “I guess maybe not all of the Krauts forgot to do something productive. That Gestapo fella called out in barking German and I guess he told that thing where Crowley was, because it turned sharply and it grabbed him by his arms. That thing pulled him close in a bear hug and squeezed him like it was trying to get juice from an orange. Crowley almost howled, and I reckon I would have too, ‘cause I could hear his ribs breaking.

“I remembered the rifle sitting in front of me as that freak dropped Crowley on the ground. I shot the man in the fancy uniform. I figured that way maybe he wouldn’t have a chance to pull any more stunts with calling out warnings. Also, I didn’t like his face. He was smarmy and full of himself.

“Well, he died in a bad way, with a bullet that clean blew out his spine just around the same height as his belly button. He screamed a lot. And I confess I enjoyed hearing him scream. I took a shot at another one, and heard that empty clicking sound. I was out of bullets. I figured it was about time to meet the Almighty and beg His forgiveness for my sins.

“I was pretty sure things couldn’t get any worse. They were about as bad as they were likely to get in my estimation. That was when I learned that the green thing standing over John Crowley wasn’t the first one the Nazis had made. I guess wherever they’d been put, they responded to the alarm. They marched into the room in perfect unison, wearing outfits that made it clear they were designed to be as scary as possible. They wore SS uniforms and the guns they carried would have looked better on a tank than in their hands.

“That was it for me. I had my limits. I was alone and I had no weapons. I got up from my spot on the ground. I was one story above all of those freaks, and I figured if I stayed I’d either end up dead or like one of those green giants. One of them German boys called frantically to the things and they stopped where they were, falling into formation. The blind one stayed where it was, and the remaining soldiers — living soldiers that is, not zombies in Nazi clothing — breathed a sigh of relief. I took one look down at Crowley, deeply saddened that I’d have to leave his body behind for them to mess with.

“And I almost fainted when he looked back up at me and winked. That grin of his stretching even wider than I’d have thought possible, like he was just having the time of his life. Last I saw of him he was rising from the ground, and he was starting to laugh.

“That laugh of his was worse than the sounds those men had made when they were being operated on. Worse even than the sight of the monster battalion walking into the room. I swear the sounds that came from that man’s mouth shaved five years off my life.

“I went ahead with my plan, and I ran like the Devil himself was on my ass, with the sound of that laughter following me all the way to the entrance of that damned place. I got lost four times trying to get out of the building. I stumbled and I fell and I got up and I ran some more, and through it all, I heard Crowley’s laughter and the screams of the Germans.

By the time I’d reached the door, I saw the rest of my squad looking at me with pale, shaky faces and eyes that were close to mad. Every one of them was hurt, and badly. Between the three of them they’d managed to get one of the green men down and incapacitated. It was still alive, but it was so shot up and torn that it couldn’t move more than to shake and flop like a fish out of water.

“I looked at them in silence for a few seconds while they shot questions at me. Then I looked at the monster they’d stopped; its clothes were torn and shredded like they’d been in a hurricane, and on its forearm I saw a series of numbers. They’d been tattooed in place. I didn’t know what that tattoo meant then, but I figured it out later, after Auschwitz. I saw the fat face, with eyes that looked around and glowed in the darkness, and I shivered. I wondered if the poor thing could still feel and could remember what it had been before the Nazis got their hands on it. That thought still gives me nightmares sometimes.

“Finally, I looked at Sarge and I told him there were more of those things inside and that Crowley was probably dead by their hands. That was enough to get us moving. We didn’t even try looking at one of the trucks the Germans had rode up in, we just started walking, taking turns helping Toby Baker, who’d had his leg crushed by that thing when it came up on them.

The next morning we were trying to hide away again and it would have been easier to do, but even from a couple of miles away we heard the explosions coming from the direction of the château. We didn’t talk about it. We just kept going. Walking when the sun fell and sleeping away the days when we could sleep.

“It was three days before another squad found us. By then we were all in bad shape. I was still doing better than most, but I think my mind was trying to shut down. It didn’t like what it had seen and I guess maybe I ain’t as strong up stairs as I’d like to imagine I am. They have fancy names for what happens in wars. Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and I’m sure a few others. Whatever the case, I was almost as numb as I hoped those green men were. Poor Toby lost his leg. The surgeons couldn’t help much after the infection set in properly.

“We told our stories to the commander just the same. We told him where we’d been and what we’d seen. He might not have believed us, except for the trophy Springer had brought along. He’d sawed at one of the monster’s hands, and taken it with him, wrapped in a blanket and tied in place with the sling of his rifle. The major took one long look at the hand and decided we weren’t as crazy as we sounded. The hand was still twitching, trying to do something about where it was. The major looked downright calm as he poured a fifth of scotch over it and set it to burning. His face was pale, his disgust obvious, and his hands shook when he struck the match.

“Two days later one of the men who’d gone up to the château told me about what they had seen, which was mostly a lot of nothing.

“He said ‘The whole building was in ruins, Finch. There wasn’t a part of the walls that wasn’t broken and burnt. We found a lot of bodies, but they were all in bad shape.’ I asked him to elaborate and he did, I also bummed three cigarettes off him while we talked. ‘We went down into that cave you talked about, the sub-basement. There was a lot of stuff down there that had been busted all to hell. I don’t know what those machines they had were supposed to do, but they were melted and shot and a couple of those things that had been bolted to the ground were knocked over and smashed so bad you could barely tell what they were supposed to be. Finch, some of those Germans were damned big men. Like over seven feet tall and that was after the fire got done roasting them. You know how meat gets smaller when it cooks too long? I don’t want to know how big they were before that fire.’

“‘Did you see any Americans?’ I had to ask, Eddie. I had to know if Crowley was down there and dead or if he’d escaped.

“‘I don’t know for sure, Finch. All I know is that nothing was alive when we got there.’ He put a hand on my shoulder as he stood and got ready to leave for his shift. The man looked like he’d seen things he never wanted to think about again. You know the look, Eddie. So do I.

“A week after that I was reassigned. I got my orders and it was back to duty for me, and that was fine. They wanted me on one of the companies heading for Germany and I wanted to be there, because I wanted to lose myself in something other than my own miserable thoughts. I couldn’t take being alone with my memories any longer. I’d have killed someone, I’m certain of it. I kept feeling bad for all the men I’d killed and I kept feeling even worse for the folks they’d made into those things.

“As I was heading for my new squad, being driven down in a truck, I looked out at the sides of the road and tried not to think about the monsters or what I had done. I tried to forget how I’d abandoned Jonathan Crowley. I was thinking about him a lot, and hating myself for leaving him behind, for not even being able to give him a proper funeral like I swore I’d do.

“I wasn’t paying too much attention to the sights, but I always waved to the other soldiers I saw walking along with their gear and those lost looks on their faces. Just a little courtesy to let them know we were all in it together. About halfway to the post they gave me, I spotted another small group walking along the side of the road and I looked up from my hands to wave, and I froze as surely as I would have if I’d fallen into a pit of angry rattlesnakes.

“I looked right into the face of Jonathan Crowley, and I know I must have turned dead white. He looked right back at me and he smiled that nasty smile of his, and he winked.

“We weren’t driving all that fast. It wasn’t possible to drive over the roads in the area at high speed without throwing half the soldiers out the back of the trucks.

“Jonathan Crowley got a running start and caught the back bumper of the truck I was on. I thought I was going to wet myself when he climbed over the gate.

“One of the sergeants tried to question him, but Crowley shut him up with a look and then walked over and sat next to me.” My grandfather shook a bit as he spoke.

“You ever have to leave someone behind, Eddie? Someone you wanted to save and couldn’t?”

I allowed that I had, and tried not to think about Corporal Murphy, who begged me to come back for him just before the napalm eradicated the spot where he’d been bleeding out on the jungle floor.

“I swear to you, Eddie, I thought he was going to kill me right then and there. I hadn’t seen what was left of the château, but I’d seen the people who came back from it and they came back haunted by what they’d seen as surely as I was.

“‘Finch,’ he said to me. ‘Finch, I thought for sure you got yourself killed up there.’

“I think I whimpered. He was smiling, you see, and that smile of his, damn, Eddie, that smile of his was a frightful thing.

“He reached out and touched my lapels, straightening them as he looked me over. ‘Glad you made it, old son. Listen, you ever need me, you give me a call. I’ll come running. And if not, who knows, maybe I’ll come see you in Summitville. I’ve heard it’s a nice place.’

“He stood back up and climbed over the side of the truck, easy as you please. I watched him as we rumbled by and he gave me a proper salute and then winked at me before the truck took a bend in the road and he vanished from my sight.

“That was the last time I saw him.

“I don’t know what those things were that the Nazis made. I don’t know if they used some science no one knows about, or if they used magic to make them. I heard a lot of rumors about the things Himmler was into, and after what I saw at the château, I don’t know if I can honestly doubt anything like I used to.

“I sure as hell don’t know how Jonathan Crowley survived that place and, frankly, if I never meet him again or find out what he did, it will be too soon.”

My grandfather rose from his seat as he crushed out his last cigarette. He looked around the farm and smiled faintly. “It’s good to be here, Eddie. It’s good to have survived that whole damned war. I still have some memories I don’t like to think about, and now and then, when it’s dark outside, I still have moments when I’m almost sure that the people I killed are waiting for a chance to get back at me for stealing their lives. I did a few things I’m not so proud of, but I did them for the right reasons. I reckon maybe you did, too.”

He said his goodnight, and I saw that my mother had gone to sleep already when my eyes followed him into the house. I shouldn’t have been surprised. My watch let me know it was after midnight and life on the farm starts early.

We never spoke of the wars we’d endured again, but I pulled myself together after that. I’d survived, and I’d done things I was not proud of, but I was alive and that meant I had to get on with living.

My grandfather died three years later. He died in his sleep, and I hope he died with a good dream playing in his mind, but I suspect I’ll never know for certain.

At his funeral, I saw many an old man from around Summitville. They’d been his friends in some cases, and in others they were just paying their regards to another fallen soldier, one who had survived the war like they had. I saw one young man, too. He was of average height and lean, with brown hair and brown eyes.

When the funeral line was arranged and all of the visitors were saying their condolences to us, the stranger looked at my mother and took her hands gently in his own. He spoke softly and solemnly and said to my mother, “Ben Finch was a fine man. He was a fine soldier. They don’t make them like him any more. He will be missed.”

When he came to me, he spoke just as softly and his hands held mine in a strong grip until I looked him in the eye. “Your grandfather was strong, Eddie. Make sure you honor that. Do wrong by his memory, and we will not be friends.” He smiled when he was done talking and I was the only one that saw it.

He had a smile that looked like it belonged on a killer. He only flashed that smile once after that, when I was looking at him, and either he winked at me, or the wind blew something in his eye.

That night I looked through the register of names from those who’d attended my grandfather’s funeral, prepared to send thank you notes. I noticed the name Jonathan Crowley, but he left no address.

For just a few seconds I wondered if maybe the man I’d seen smiling was the same man who’s smiled at my grandfather so long ago in a château in France. But that just wasn’t possible. He’d have been older, certainly; old and gray and frail.

But I thought about that smile, and I thought about that wink, and I remain uncertain. Like my grandfather, I think if I never meet that smiling man again, it’ll be too soon.