More on North Africa

We left the dock and walked around the warehouses taking a good look at the Moroccan soldiers. We walked a mile through a portion of Casablanca. The odors drifting across our path were both familiar and strange. Some were pungent beyond description. There was the hot, dry scent of endlessly stirred-up dust, the rancid, sour smell of aged urine, the scented fragrance of Arab cigarettes, and the heavy, rank odor of manure. As we walked through the brightly colored world of Casablanca, we took in sights as vivid as a travelogue. In fact, our walk was a miniature travelogue embellished with sound and smell.

The idealists among us were somewhat shocked to discover that the officers were to be separated from the men. Being a combat team, we somehow had thought we'd live and work together. A few enlightened weeks later, to say nothing of twenty years later, such an idea seems fantastic-fantastically naive. But some of us believed it.  I believed it.  When I saw privates being detailed to carry officers' bags, I spit. Hours after we had landed overseas, military courtesy and   garrison life were   running smoothly. The caste was set-so that never the twain did meet.

The sun went down that first night in Africa, and it was cool.

The bugler sounded taps at ten o'clock, but most of us were long since asleep-asleep on the solid earth, extra good after twelve days and nights in the bottom of a ship moving through dangerous waters.

My first dawn in Africa brought C-rations and hot coffee. Trucks were rolling in through clouds of dust. Arabs, walking or riding small donkeys, were at that time a strange and novel sight. They moved along the edge of the camp out into fields or on into Casablanca. The subject was bright, the sky an exquisite blue. Water for working was distributed, but for noncoms only. Orders came to reset our tents, so they were all in a smart row.  We were reminded that this was still the army and that we were expected to salute. Once in a while the Arab boys saluted, too; that helped. By evening we had "prepared" food. Thus began five months of food, much of which, even when mixed with sand, was very good. But it was totally devoid of freshness. Everything, meat, vegetables, fruit, and milk, came out of cans. A certain monotony resulted.  

Shower of Frogs: Chapter 2 - North Africa

"Hey, Bill, land!" shouted Jim Hurley. "God, at last," I said. "Let's go up.''

It was the thirteenth day, and the morning was bright with sun­ shine. The heavy pounding of the engines slacked off, and our speed was cut to a few knots. Word passed quickly through the ship, and men swarmed all over the decks. Land was visible on the port side. Danny Moore, who worked in Supply, ran for his field glasses. Hurley and I climbed upon a hatch, watching other men work their way up higher and higher on anything available and unguarded. No one knew where we were, but all could see what it was like.

What we saw was a long yellow streak of sandy shore with mountains rising behind it. Through Danny's binoculars we picked out white houses with roofs of red, orange, blue, yellow, and cream. Jim Hurley and I jumped down and found a place at the starboard rail from which we could see a French word on a half-sunken cruiser.

I said to Jim, "I guess that's what the French lessons were for. What's the name?"

"I can't read it," he said, "but look." He was pointing to three or four U.S. and foreign battleships that lay in our path. We steered around them, steamed into the harbor, and touched land, the engines stopped, and we dropped anchor. It was May 10, three days before the war in North Africa ended a thousand miles east in Tunisia. Our port was Casablanca.

There was no mistaking the excitement on board. The sight of land was infectious; it sprung us out of lethargy and boredom; it released a flood of conversation. It stirred rumors; it quickened imaginations regarding the port and the country and what we were going to do there. We ran back and forth from port to starboard trying to catch all the views. We reacted like children to the wondrously strange sights.

Cutting edge chapter: the Boxcar ride

Several people have commented that the cutting edge to A Shower of Frogs was the box car ride as POWs. Here is Chapter 16 in its entirety. -- SGP

16

The Boxcar Ride

On the third day just before dusk we arrived at a railroad siding where there were ten small wooden boxcars about half the size of American boxcars. The guards slid back the doors and we were 

ordered in. About thirty of us climbed into each car. We sat down or lay down, taking up most of the floor space. The guards ordered thirty more into the car. We protested that it would be overcrowded, but thirty more came in. The door was pulled shut and locked.

There were two small windows, with shutters, on either side of the car, eighteen inches square, five and one-half feet up from the floor. The windows were boarded up from the outside; air came through

the cracks in the car. Straw covered a part of the floor. It was getting dark. We had not eaten since noon and were hungry. We maneuvered about in the car finding a way to sit down or, if possible, lie down. It was apparent that not all could lie down at one time. It got stuffy in the car, so we called out to the guards, asking for more air. No response. It was night. An hour passed. We waited.

The men in the car were mostly Americans, with a sprinkling of French and English Canadians. One man had an arm in a sling, one a painful jaw injury. Another hour passed. There was constant shuffling for positions in the car, made more difficult by darkness.

We sat and we waited. We were perfectly aware that we were a prime target for Allied 

aircraft. The fighting in Holland could not be far from us, certainly not far as planes fly. Transportation to and from the battle area was bound to be observed. A switchyard was the worst of all possible places. We sat in the siding near the switchyards. It was a test of nerves. We waited.

Around midnight the train started; we traveled a hundred yards; we stopped. We stood still for another hour. We heard other trains coming and going. Someone suggested that we were now in

the switchyards. It developed that a number of us were not going to lie down at all, since those who got in first held grudgingly to their places. We began to argue about spots to sit. There were several noncoms in the car, but they chose to remain silent. It got colder during the night.

Finally the train started again and ran jerkily forward across switches and tracks for half an hour. It stopped and waited. The train then backed up to the switchyards. For the rest of the night the

train sped up, jerked to a stop, started again, ran for fifteen minutes, banged to a halt, started again. I spent most of the night seated against the wall of the car or standing up in my position, stretching

my legs and then trying to squat down or sit down. We sixty English-speaking POWs settled down to live together.

We quickly learned two German words: Vasser and Luft, water and air. Whenever we stopped and the guards, who rode in a separate car, were outside our door, we shouted out to them, Guard,  Vasser! Guard, Luft!" They ignored us or told us to shut up. We banged on the door. The guards either screamed something that sounded threatening or let us bang. Among ourselves we argued 

whether air or water was more important. Tempers grew short. Cigarettes were running low. Early in the morning one POW thought he heard a plane overhead. He was mistaken. The quibbling and bickering over water, air, and a place to sit continued into dawn and the next day.

All of the first day we sat. The sun was warm on the top of the boxcar, and we sweated. We tried to get more air in the car: no answer. During the day we heard distant planes, but none came

over or near us. Outside, there was activity, guards walking up and down, conversation among them. No action. Shortly after dark, with frightful suddenness, planes swooped down over us and

strafed the area. We later learned that the train engines were blistered with machine-gun fire and disabled. We sat all night and waited. Before dawn we started again. Most of us were groggy or

half-asleep but conscious that at last we were getting clear of the switchyards. We traveled without a stop into the next day. 

By ten o'clock on the second day it was warm in the car. Whenever we stopped, the guards appeared outside the door, but the door did not open. By noon it was sweltering in the car; we began stripping off clothes. The day passed without water, food, or air. There was no chance to stretch our legs or walk around. What cigarettes were left were smoked down to butt ends and passed around

among six or seven men. One man had a tweezer and held the butt a little longer, passing it to a friend or two. We stopped numerous times but got no response from the guards. One POW spoke German and was persuaded to tell the guards about the Geneva Convention regulations regarding POWs whatever these regulations might be.

The third night the tension in the boxcar was rising-or, more exactly, the irritation increased. We were hungry and thirsty. The air stank: the only method of relieving ourselves was to use a five-gallon

milk can left for that purpose. The cap on the can didn't entirely prevent odors from escaping. When the train was moving it was difficult to use the can. It was at best a tremendous effort to climb over many men to reach it. One man didn't make it to the can. 

On the morning of the third day the door was opened and some loaves of bread and a few hunks of cheese and butter were thrown in. The door was immediately shut. We tried to get the guards to reopen the door, to no avail. We now had nearly a full milk can. None of the bread was cut, which made distribution an almost insurmountable task. We had a few knives, so, arguing and 

quarreling as to the size and number of slices per portion, we cut the bread into pieces. A few men went without bread. Some got cheese, some butter. Some none. Each time for the remainder of the trip when the door was opened and food tossed in, there was endless bickering and quarreling.

On the fourth evening we got water: some did; some didn't. By now it was clearly a case of every POW for himself, quite literally for himself, if he wished to survive. A few of us worked together. Stubbs and I stationed one of us near the door to assure us of at least one portion.

Next day we spotted, outside the car, an American officer, a POW. After much arguing he got the guards to open the door. We were not allowed out; we spent our energies keeping men from

crowding around the opening, blocking the entrance of air. In a short time the door was shut, but the officer, who was surprised at our condition, got the guards to remove the boards on the windows.

Strong barbed wire covered the openings, but we had more air and light. The officer returned to his car, the guards to theirs, and the train went on. 

By the fourth day the unshaven, hungry men ran entirely out of the buddy system. It was "to hell with my buddy." The milk can was removed; helmets were now used, the contents thrown out the window. The eighteen-inch square window would allow, once the barbed wire was kicked out, a not-too-Iarge man to squeeze through, drop the ground, and make a run for it. There was big talk about it. Two paratroopers slipped out. On the afternoon of the fourth day the train came to a screeching halt. We could hear and see the guards running away from the train.

Someone shouted, "Planes!"  Inside the boxcar there was sudden panic. One man was 

screaming and kicking against the door. Several men hollered out to the guards, "Guards! Open! Guards! Let us out!" Other men shouted back at them, "Shut up! They ain't lettin' us out. So shut up." A man yelled, "Why not? They can't shut us up in here."  "If they let you out, you'll escape; that's why. So shut up." The German-speaking POW was trying to get the guards to answer him: "Posten! Posten!" A couple of men begged the guards to let them out. There was no response.

We heard the planes at some distance; they were far off. We waited. They never came near. The guards returned to the train. We shouted at them again for more air. The train continued on its way.

During the fifth night a few men stretched out on the floor and stayed put until shoved over and made to sit up so all could at least sit down. By now our muscles were stiff, our hipbones bruised from

the hard floor, and we itched from the straw. We sat with our heads resting on our chests until our neck and back ached. We then stood up, exchanging places with others.

It seemed colder the fifth night. Some attempt was made to cooperate and take turns lying down or

lying together for warmth against the cold. Most of these suggestions were futile. Time and again the train stopped for interminable waits, would suddenly jump forward and stop after fifty yards. Again we'd wait. A six-foot, eight-inch American named "Kentucky" did a good deal more than take up a lot of space. Aside from food and women, about which he regaled us for hours, he seemed most fond of his mules. They were probably his only acquaintances not sick to death of his repetitive, foul, and poverty-stricken language. We'd heard 'em all, but even as prisoners of the army, which we all had been, we could sometimes escape Kentucky. We were now his captive audience.

On the afternoon of the sixth day the train again came to an abrupt, jerking, unexpected stop. Again the guards ran for cover. We could see them easily through the windows. They scattered from the train like rats from a sinking ship. There was immediate terror in the boxcar. Again we hollered, "Guards, let us out!" Again, "Shut up!" There was furious scrambling to get the door open and the

barbed wire away from the windows. We heard a plane, but it was not over us. It seemed to go away from us. We listened, and when we could no longer hear it, one man asked, "How do we know our car is marked?" "We don't," someone answered. "It's marked; I saw it," another answered. "How do we know it's marked big enough for the pilots to see?" One man refreshed our memories with, "Germans mark ammunition cars with POW and HOSPITAL.  And you can be damn sure the pilots know that." "Shut up!" someone yelled. "Listen!" The sound of the plane grew louder. We could not see it, but there was no doubt that it was someplace above us. We heard it dive. "It's coming down, for Christ's sake." The nearer it came, the wilder the squirming and shoving in the car. Instinctively we sought the sides of the boxcar, pushing and swearing to get a spot along the wall and out of the center of the car. The plane made a pass somewhere near us, and we heard a hundred or so bursts of machine-gun fire. No one knew which direction to run. We kept trying to guess if the plane was coming down the track or across the car. Again we heard the plane above us, but off in the distance. We waited in silence for the next pass. Several minutes went by. We waited. We could no longer hear the plane. We saw the guards return to the train. When they got close enough we cursed the bastards. They got in their cars, and the train resumed the trip.

Being trapped in a German boxcar with Allied planes strafing the area was a great equalizer.

It was hard to believe that any man here was free of bitterness, frustration, and fear. On the eighth day the train stopped; the guards slid back the door and ordered us to get out. Their insistent repetition of, "Raus; raus," left no doubt that the word meant "get out and hurry up." But we were no longer in a hurry, no longer in a hurry to get out or to do anything. The guards, each afflicted, it would seem, with high blood pressure, kept repeating that mouthful of repulsive sound: "Raus." Our eagerness to walk about, to stretch our legs, to get some air, to relieve ourselves was subdued by stiffness, depression, contempt building into hatred. Those near the door went out; the rest of us rose from our cramped positions on the floor and moved toward the door. There was a three-foot drop to the wet ground. Some of us climbed down; some jumped. All the while the guards, acting under the influence of superiors walking above them on a small rise, kept hollering and shouting in a demanding voice, 

"Come! Come! Raus! Raus!"

It was late afternoon, the sky dark and the air damp and heavy, as if it had rained for days. We were bone-tired, dirty, smelly, hungry, with ten days' growth of itchy beard. Some of us were constipated;

some had the GIs; all were lousy with fleas. Some had set expressions of determination; a few were still curious, a couple laughing; a proportion were beaten in spirit. However, most of us, each in his own manner, were set for self-preservation. The German guards in their ill-fitting dark gray ankle-length overcoats with ammunition belts buckled over their coats and around their middles, carrying bolt-action rifles, worked furiously to get the ten cars of POWs into a formation. 

After they  assembled us in a column of fours, we right-flanked and in long wavering lines 

scrambled up a six-foot slimy incline. We slipped and slid clumsily as we climbed to the top, where German noncoms standing on the road above us added their insistent, "Come! Come!" to that of the guards. Once on top, we re-formed into a column. The guards marched us hurriedly along a road a quarter-mile to the entrance of a camp. The view included a complex of high barbed-wire fences

with twenty-foot-tall guard towers every fifty yards, each manned by one or two German soldiers with a machine gun. We passed through two gates, each made of logs and barbed wire. Once inside, we were lined up in a military formation with a front of about forty men. Guards frisked us for weapons, knives, and who knows what else. Smooth-faced, well-groomed, boot-shining Luftwaffe officers, their blue uniforms neat and pressed, stood ramrod straight in front of us. They inspected us, marching smartly up and down our lines. They were so real they looked like actors from central casting, Hollywood. I wanted only to spit upon them. We stood in formation for two or three hours while the Luftwaffe went through the procedures of admitting us to Stalag XIIA. Speaking English, one informed us, in fact promised us, better treatment if we gave them no trouble: no escaping, doing as ordered, etc. 

At last we had plenty of air to breathe, but standing up for hours was not our longest suit at the moment. The ground was wet; it was intensely cold. The waiting was insane. The officers in knife edged jodhpurs turned us over to the heavy-booted noncoms, who marched us off to a brick building.

Inside, we were ordered to remove our clothes, carry them to an adjoining room, and hang them on hooks provided. We were led into another room-a shower room. At that time in my life I was not

aware of Nazi gas chambers, so I took the shower offer literally. The water was warm, but there was no soap. Our clothes, which were being deloused, were returned to us, and we marched back outside. We stood in formation, waiting while the other POWs showered and were deloused. 

Food finally arrived. We had no mess equipment, and the food was soup-a kind of weak slop. Somehow we got cans and drank some. The griping, quarreling, and pushing among the Americans for food began at the first serving in prison. After we ate the soup, we entered a barracks and were given a blanket. Most of us stretched out our full length on the unmoving brick floor and fell asleep.