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By Root 1107 0

week and month after month in such conditions. “With our tent and clothing wet and half-frozen,” wrote George Neill, an American soldier, “I felt numb to the point of almost not caring what happened to me.” In his foxhole in darkness, “the temperature moved well below freezing. The half-frozen slush in the bottom of the hole froze solid. We just lay there in a fetal position and swore to ourselves … My buddies and I agreed it would be impossible to exaggerate how hopeless, miserable and depressed we felt.” Such was the normal condition of millions of men on both sides of the line between October 1944 and March 1945. Trench foot became endemic, especially in formations in which morale was low and thus hygiene discipline slack. Dysentery was commonplace. The working or malfunctioning of excretory processes became an obsession for millions of men deprived of control over their bowels. In battlefield conditions, many never made it to a latrine or were unable even to lower their trousers before defecating.

If it was miserable to fight at all, it was more so in soiled clothing. Tank crews suffered special indignities. A German driver wrote: “Through my vision slit I saw many hilarious sights of brave soldiers, hanging on for dear life to the turret of a moving panzer with their trousers round their ankles and screwing up their faces in a desperate attempt to do the almost impossible.” The infantryman Guy Sajer lost control of his bowels during the retreat from the Don, and grew accustomed, like all the fellow passengers in his truck, to jolting through the snow in a mess of his own excrement. Pfc. Donald Schoo suffered the same miseries during the Bulge battle. After defecating on a wooden ammunition box, “your butt hurt too much to wipe so you just pulled up your pants and went back to your hole. No one said anything about how you smelt, because everyone smelled bad.”

Robert Kotlowitz was crouched in a foxhole in Alsace when his bowels suddenly exploded. He leapt forth, tore down his trousers and squatted. His buddy shouted, “Jesus Christ! Get back where you belong!” Kotlowitz, preoccupied with the demands of his body, looked on him pityingly.

Then there was the strange assaultive sound of a rifle shot nearby, and a bullet hit the ground a few feet behind me, plowing the dirt … I looked ahead from my squatting position, shielding my eyes with the flat of my hand. I could see a German soldier, visible from the waist up … a couple of hundred yards away … he was laughing. All this was very clear to me: his laughter, the details of his clothing, the padded shoulders, the high collar, the bare head. I even thought that I could see his teeth … Then there was another shot and another clear miss. The dirt flew again. But this time I was on my feet, holding onto my pants, and in another second was in our foxhole … I believe the son of a bitch deliberately chose to miss me … he just wanted a little afternoon sport to relieve the general tedium, and I happened to be it.

Vastly worse indignities were visited on those who suffered intestinal wounds. A U.S. Army nurse, Dorothy Beavers, noted that some patients in her field hospital bore the loss of limbs with outward stoicism, while those who had undergone colostomies often “burst into tears at the sight of their own faeces in a bag.” There were no limits to the miseries imposed by bullets, high explosives, sickness and vulnerability to the elements.

IN THE WINTER OF 1944, Hitler knew he faced another looming Soviet offensive. Dismissing the constraints imposed by the weather and his shrunken resources, he determined to make a crippling thrust at Eisenhower’s armies before turning to meet this. Against the impassioned opposition of his generals, he launched a western offensive in the worst season of the year, at the place the Allies least expected it—the Ardennes forest, on the frontiers of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The objective was to reach Antwerp, splitting the Allied front. To execute it, two new panzer armies were created, thirty divisions assembled, reserves of precious