Compassion on the battlefield

However, in the afternoon of that day, when we reached the top of the highest mountain, a fire fight broke out. I went next to an officer I had never met before, Lt. Anderson, new commander of B Company. He smiled and said: "This is what the manual calls being pinned down by enemy fire.” With humor like that in the midst of a deadly fire fight, I liked him instantly!

We did not, yet, know these were SS we had encountered. We dug in for the night, hoping the opponent would retreat by morning. However, we were awakened about 2 a.m. by the roar of small arms fire and German voices yelling "Whatevers” in the night. I lay face up watching tracer bullets slicing ever closer through the rampart above my head. I dared not move an inch.

Finally, the firing subsided, and all we could hear were the cries of the wounded and dying. By morning, the SS had withdrawn to where we were able to get out of our holes and assess the damage. We had some dead and wounded of both sides. A German SS medical detail of four had also been captured. The dead were hauled into the shrubbery while the wounded and German medics were concentrated in the center of the circle of foxholes.

We were in trouble. We had started with only one days supply of food and water, no second tier medical equipment, such as plasma and lots of wounded. But we medics needed to set up something, so I crawled out of my foxhole and attempted to set up some rational medical protocol.

Some of the American boys had lost a lot of blood, and there was one I did not expect to live. He was a hardy guy from North Carolina, who had a bullet hole between his eyes that I could look right into. Lord knows where that bullet had come to rest.

Meanwhile, sniper bullets were still impacting the trees around us and ricocheting all over the place. With the other wounded, we could do no more than apply our large bandages and inject morphine. I felt totally helpless.

Lt. Anderson was looking down into the foxhole at us. "Anything I can do?”

"Yah! Cook me up some plasma!”

He led me to his makeshift command post and his radioman got our headquarters on the band. I asked for sulfa, bandages, morphine, plasma and some surgical tools.

It turned out to be in vain, as the helicopter drops were swept away from us by the wind patterns at the top of the mountain and our medical jeep had been ambushed on the road that morning and taken captive.

Meanwhile, Lt. Anderson and I developed one of those instant friendships. We lounged about the rest of the day discussing the North Shore of Chicago and his university, Northwestern, that I, now, hoped to attend. I had the feeling, if we both survived the war, we could be lifelong friends.

We entered into the second night feeling very dismal. Sniper fire was constant. Our meager food supply was exhausted and our canteens were almost empty. Meanwhile, the German medics, without any rations at all, had hunkered down with their wounded in a foxhole nearby. We were very worried about another night attack, but it didn’t come.

Then, one of those unexpected pivotal events: During the night, the German wounded, having no supply of water at all, were keeping us up crying repeatedly and in pain, "Vasser ... Vasser.” "Screw ‘em!” said one rifleman. "Shoot them, before they drive us crazy,” said another.

At 2 a.m., I couldn’t take it any longer. I walked over to their foxhole, where the German medics, thinking, perhaps, we were going to shoot them, were looking very pale in the moonlight. I’m a very light water drinker, so I still had half of a canteen left. I gave it to the medics for their wounded. When I returned, I got some pretty rough handling by the riflemen. "You waste our good water on those bastards!”

The miracle began the next morning. First thing, the German medics came over to tend our wounded. They were far better trained than we were. They went into the foxholes and laid down boughs of branches and shrubs to get our wounded off of the bare ground.

They showed us how to arrange coats and our few blankets to give them better wind protection and administered some of their own drugs, which we were previously unable to appropriate because we could not interpret the labels. In short, we saved everybody, including the North Carolinian, who had removed his head bandage and was walking around with the hole in his forehead helping the German medics.

Then tragedy struck!

At about noon, I heard a shot ring out! I paid no more attention to that than any other sniper shots we endured during the day, until Sgt. Riley of Anderson’s company scurried over: "Anderson’s been hit!” I rushed back with him. There, on the lumber road adjoining our site, lay Anderson, with canteens strewn all about him. He had been playing the unselfish hero role for his boys, ignoring the risk. He crossed the sniper-covered road to get to the stream below with a bunch of canteens and got hit coming back. I was trying to leap forward to get to Anderson but Sgt. Riley was holding me back: "They’ve got the road covered!”

Anderson pulled his now inappropriate joke from the road: "This is what the manual calls ‘being pinned down by hostile fire!’” We were pacing back and forth trying to figure out how to get him off the road without further casualties, when I felt a hand upon my shoulder. It was one of the German SS medics, with the others behind him, carrying one of our litters. He pushed us back, and all four of them went onto the road and gently lifted and brought Anderson back to safety. They knew the Germans would not shoot their own medics.

They set him up with some comfort near his command post, and probed for the bullet, but they looked very glum. They assumed correctly the bullet he done too much mischief to his insides. They shook their heads and left and I commenced watching my new friend slowly die.

At first, he was his convivial self as we discussed home and college again but, after an hour, he had faded into white oblivion and I had lost my new friend. "Goodbye, my good friend, short as it was!”

How a little kindness, even a lousy half canteen of water pays off! What lesson did this 19-year-old learn? There is a humanity in all of us, that may reveal itself even among deadly enemies on the battlefield. And, that is what Eugene Sledge learned during that horrible battle for Okinawa.

Keith Kreitman has been a Foster City resident for 24 years. He is retired with degrees in political science and journalism and advanced studies in law. He is the host of "Focus on the Arts” on Peninsula TV, Channel 26. His column appears in the weekend edition.