Charles Reis Felix

Looking for an authentic memoir from the infantryman's perspective? Felix, who became an elementary-school teacher after the war, was drafted in 1944, trained as an artilleryman and, in typical; army fashion, then sent to the front as a radio operator, i.e. he carried the bulky radio sets for communications between battalion and company headquarters. He never specifies what division he was with, but because of references to Patton, it was most likely a division in Patton's Third Army.

Felix is unsparingly honest about himself and others. The grandstanding major who insisted in being in the first vehicle (terrifying Felix who as his radio man had to ride in the same jeep) to enter a city, adopting a Napoleonic pose, until a close call with a Nebelwerfer (German rockets that always came in groups of six). Then the major always went last in the column, after the tanks, much to Felix's relief.

German 88's were especially terrifying and emphasized the essential randomness of who lived and who died. "Its whistle ensures that you will have a chance to think about what will happen. And there is nothing you can do about it. You are totally helpless. It will land where it wants to land. And another basic-training truth bit the dust. The sergeant stood in front of us and said, 'A well trained soldier will survive. A poorly trained one won't' As far as I could tell, the 88s did not distinguish between the well-trained and the poorly-trained soldiers. It killed both impartially."

Ironically, the front-line infantry, developed a nostalgia for the front after being sent for R&R to the rear. The rear required all sorts of Mickey Mouse rules and conventions, subject to "the cant of everyday living. . . At the front we were special. We were alone. Nobody wanted to be there with us. At the front there were no Red Cross girls, no movies [almost always the worst Republic westerns:], no AMG officers [well-dressed dandies whose job it was to create government structures in occupied areas:], no war correspondents [always easily distinguishable by their trench coats:], and no MPs [who imposed fines for not wearing helmets, something a front line soldier would never be caught without but could see little sense in wearing where there was no danger of shrapnel:],. We were the Chosen Few. We were like lepers. Nobody voluntarily steps onto an island of lepers. And in our leperdom, in our aloneness, there was a brotherhood, a purity. We were losing the purity [in the rear:] and I think in some deep recess of our being, we knew it."

The WWII army is portrayed as a very class-oriented institution. Officers belonged to an upper class condescending, abusive, vainglorious and impervious to the plight of their underlings who thought nothing of eating wonderful, fancy meals in front of men who had not eaten anything for several days. They got the best hookers and the best accommodations too, especially officers behind the front above the rank of lieutenant. One exception, a captain, who insisted Felix get a some of the roasted chicken and potatoes being eaten by a bevy of officers who ignored Felix, the dirty, hungry, ragged grunt just back from the front. The decent captain was killed just a couple of days later.

Their regular food, K-rations, were "absolutely the most inedible, the most unappetizing, the most horrible concoctions of so-called food products ever processed. Some criminal enterprise must have bribed army procurement agents."

By April of 1945, he realized he was sick. At first given just a couple of aspirins by the MD he was sent back to his unit. Finally, he became so yellow that everyone remarked on it and was sent back to the hospital where yellow jaundiced was diagnosed and he was out of the war for good. The random event of drinking some fresh farm milk that he thinks gave him jaundice probably saved his life. Chance dictated everything. One day he was driving forward in a jeep and was passed by another jeep going in the opposite direction holding two German prisoners, safely on their way to the rear when they took a direct hit from an 88 shell killing everyone in the other jeep. A good friend was killed while sitting in Felix's chair monitoring the radio. Felix had been there for several hours. His friend took over and was killed shortly therafter. "Chance dictates everything. Who was the jackanapes who said, 'I am the master of my fate'?" But Felix has remained haunted by the memory of that soldier who will forever remain 23 years old. "He was deprived of life, of loving someone, of holding his child in his arms, of lying in bed Sunday morning reading the paper, of watching a movie, of smelling freshly baked bread, of tasting a ripe nectarine, of walking down a quiet country lane, of all the thousand-and-one pleasures of life. If he could talk, would he say to me, 'I died, you lived. Why?' And I have no answer to that."
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