PART III: Tryannen Raufen

"Baker, you've got to be fucking kidding me, they HAVE TO take us off the line!" I said, breaking formation and jogging up to him. "You gotta talk to the captain, we've been fighting like dogs for more than a week." He turned his head smirking and replied "That's why you're called a dog faced soldier, private.. get the FUCK back IN FORMATION" flicking his lit smoke at me. I reluctantly fell back into the column and continued down the road. The thought of a hot bath and getting out of this god damn uniform was ever-so quickly shit all over.. thanks sarge.

I scratched my bristly face and reached down to undo my haversack and dig for my pencil and pad. I had been writing a little every day for the last year, and was surprised at the stories that accumulated. Writing about the things I'd done and the places I'd been in this country came MUCH easier than keeping track of lost friends and how many men I'd killed. I remember my first TEN and how I was proud to mark another dead kraut on my list; The thought of the fifty-five I had marked down since makes my mind numb.

I hastily slashed two kills (which was now 57 men), and wrote KIA: Stewart and Ski. When i closed the pad of paper and stuffed it into my haversack; I saw the line of black boots walking opposite of us. A platoon sized line of worn faces, bloodstained uniforms, and defeated men. We beat the hell out of them with all odds against us. Our hard fighting in these woods where the turning point for the push into Germany. They began singing:

"Wir sind des Geyers schwarze Haufen,

Hei juchhe!
Und wollen mit Tyrannen raufen,
Hei juchhe!"

From what little German I know, sounds like "we are the black hoard, and want a tyrants battle!" - ironic song to sing after being defeated. I could hear the low hum their voices fade off behind me as we made our way down the road. I'm sure everyone in the unit had a sense of victory seeing the big, bad Fallschirmjäger tuck tail and surrender.

The sun was a fiery low orange, just high enough in the sky to cast beams of warm light between the tree lines. The cold was setting in so we walked a few more miles, pulled off the road and into the woods to set up camp for the night. We had 15 miles to go until we reached Germany.

"I'm just a dog faced soldier, with a rifle on my shoulder, and I eat a kraut for breakfast every day"