Nomad News - Volume 2 - No. 31

"There Is No Copyright on Common Sense"



Nodebais, Belgium, Late November 1944: It was late in November, the weather was just about as miserable as it is here in Tennessee today on October 17. We were occupying an old chateau that was one grade better than the pyramidal tents we had recently vacated. I shared a room with T/Sgt. Lon Whitworth, Staff/Sgt. Michael Spero, and Staff/Sgt. Sterling Winn. We heated the room with a little round steel stove that burned soft coal and any wood we could scrounge from the nearby forest. The stovepipe exited through one of the windows. You could always tell where the GIs were billeted by the stove pipes sticking out the windows. It's a good thing the Germans didn't have the same photo intelligence capabilities we had. On this particular Saturday night we were making grilled cheese open-faced sandwiches over the heat of the coals, if you can imagine that. We were washing them down with some red wine one of our guys had liberated from we didn't ask where. As the Photo Lab needed a good sourse of water, they along with the Photo Intelligence Section were always located a distance from the main Squadron. In this case, we were about 12 miles away and Tech/Sgt. Warren Harnish, headquarters Sergeant Major, was "visiting" with us. Our repast was continually interrupted by the "put-put" of a German V-1 Buzz Bomb as it passed nearby on the way to London. Sometimes the "put-put" would stop, which meant the critter had run out of fuel and was on the way down. We would wait for it to hit, all the time hoping it wasn't going to be on the roof of the chateau. It never was, which you have discerned already or I wouldn't be typing this. I was taking a mail-order course in journalism from the University Of Indiana at the time and the following is one or my lessons with the title being:

"The Chateau"

It was an evening in late November. It was damp and it was cold. Inside the chateau it was warm but hard for one to lose that lonely feeling. There was plenty of time to think. One of those nights when you would give a month's pay for a ham on rye and a bottle of good American beer, or an American girl to talk to.

An occasional buzz bomb would go over, but by now not many of us gave them much notice, outside of a casual remark such as "There goes another one". When they first started coming over, their approaching sound was the signal for everyone to rush out and watch the anti-aircraft crews open up on them, and sometimes shoot one down.

A faint haze hung over the room and the flickering lamps threw their dull glow over a noisy group on one side of the room embroiled in a card game. Two others were battling noiselessly over a game of chess in the far corner, while still others singly or in pairs, talked about various topics of the day or scanned the latest issue of "Stars and Stripes". A quartet at the bar would break in at times with their own version of "Mairzy Doats"

Two guards coming off duty, stepped into the room, looked around, wiped rain and mist from their eyes, squinting in the dull light after coming in out of the night. Their shoes were covered with cold, sticky mud. Stepping to the bar, they quietly downed a shot of brandy in an effort to shake the chill from their body, after which they left as quietly as they came.

The room itself was large, drab, and unpretentious with a high ceiling and dark plaster walls finished off in imitation mahogany which was chipped and scarred. High French windows, blacked out with dirty cardboard and paper, lined the wall on one side. In years long past, it was undoubtedly the site of gaudy parties and banquets where fine ladies in lace dined with their noble gentlemen, or danced to light-hearted music. Rich, Napoleonic era tapestries would have lined the walls, heavy furniture and glittering chandeliers would have lent gaiety and finery.

But, tonight the room was furnished with a few unpainted wooden tables, a few woobly chairs and a bar made from boards stretched between two boxes. Light was furnished by black-globed kerosene lamps. The back bar was another box upon which rested half a dozen bottles of wine, brandy, and cognac. The heavy oak floor, once covered with expensive carpets where only the elite trod, was now covered with a thick layer of dirt and scuffed by the shuffling feet of the men now occupying the room.

Somewhere over the horizon lights shine brightly, people are happy again, but here it is cold, it is desolate, it is war.