All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [341]
Much depended on local junior leadership, and too many brave junior leaders died. ‘The spirit of human aggression has a magical tendency to evaporate as soon as the shooting starts,’ wrote Norman Craig, ‘and a man then responds to two influences only – the external discipline that binds him and the self-respect within him that drives him on … Courage is essentially competitive and imitative.’ The commanding officer of a British infantry battalion said: ‘On an average, in a platoon of twenty-five, five will do their best to fight … and fifteen will follow a lead. The rest will be useless. This applies to the whole infantry corps, and if the junior officers and NCOs will not go, the situation is pretty bad.’
Tank officer Michael Rathbone wrote: ‘I have drawn my revolver to halt fleeing infantrymen; they came running by my tank when we were repairing a track damaged by a mine. I prayed we should never have to fight again with the 59th Division.’ Likewise another armoured officer, Peter Selerie: ‘We were often critical of the infantry … I remember that an infantry battalion melted away after incredibly heavy mortaring together with “air burst” salvos. They had unfortunately neglected to dig in properly and had lost their officers and the bulk of their NCOs. The Kensingtons machine-gun battalion held the line supported by our tanks.’ Riflemen always suffered far heavier casualties than did tank crews, and well the riflemen knew this.
Most soldiers going into battle for the first time were less frightened than they became once they had experienced its reality. When American infantryman Royce Lapp landed in France, ‘None of us were too scared then, because we didn’t know what we were getting into.’ Likewise men of a US cavalry unit clustered curiously around the first corpse they saw, that of a German officer. Their commander Lt. Lyman Diercks, a twenty-eight-year-old postal worker from Bryant, Illinois, harangued his soldiers. ‘I told them it was very likely some of us wouldn’t survive the war. We had to be like a family. I didn’t expect them to be heroes, but if they became cowards they’d have to live with it all their lives. And while I was talking to them, I was really talking to myself.’
When a shell landed close to a Canadian sergeant in Normandy, he exclaimed, ‘Shit and shit some more!’ A newly arrived replacement asked if he was hit. The NCO said no, ‘he had just pissed his pants. He always pissed them, he said, when things started and then he was okay … Then I realized something wasn’t quite right with me, either. There was something warm down there and it seemed to be running down my leg. I felt, and it wasn’t blood. It was piss … I said, “Sarge, I’ve pissed too” … he grinned and said, “Welcome to the war.”’ Fear afflicted other men in other ways. A Canadian prisoner was led into a Waffen SS regimental headquarters, under intense Allied bombardment. To his amazement, the staff were sheltering under map tables while singing a rousing chorus of ‘O Beautiful German Rhine’ to the accompaniment of a mouth organ. The Canadian shook his head and mumbled in confusion, ‘War is a merry thing!’ Some unglamorous tasks imposed disproportionate risks: ‘The first men to die in most battles were the phone linesmen,’ said Waffen SS gunner Captain Karl Godau. Field telephone communications were vital when few units had tactical radios: linesmen were constantly obliged to expose themselves under fire to repair breaks caused by shelling or passing vehicles,