Free Before Their Time: A Memoir by Robert Kotlowitz Page B

the subject. I think he just stumbled on it when he realized how much time had to be filled while we waited for the Ninth Army to grow to full strength. I also think that he made up everything as he went along; he was always a great improviser. So we yawned, dozed, snored, and pretended to care. Meanwhile the sun shone, apples fell from the trees, every morning we hiked five to ten miles on mostly deserted roads, and we were bewitched.
    •   •   •
    ARCH, who loved the weapon and insisted on its primacy, put us through bayonet drill for a half-hour every day.
    “Fix bayonets!” he would shout, and we did, far too slowly for Arch’s approval, our hands trembling as we fumbled with the scabbard and blade in a shaky attempt to fix it to the muzzles of our rifles without drawing blood. We were scared of the bayonet. It carried a terrible power. It could disembowel a man. Would we ever have to use it? Could I disembowel a man? I doubted it.
    Then, swallowing our fear and following Arch’s orders, we aimed, thrust, slashed, or whichever—screaming “Kill! Kill!” in our thin teen-age voices—Bern and Ira and I. Self consciousness overwhelmed us. Squeaky sounds came from our throats. We could hear them. “Keel, Keel!” Ira tried to yell, in a threatening falsetto, as though he were some kind of Latin movie villain.
    Arch, looking disgusted, kept us at it, over and over again with no breaks, his own voice choking with pretended passion. “Girls, girls!” he shouted, only half-joking. I lunged for Fedderman (thrown totally off-balance, as I always was when carrying that huge knife at the end of my rifle). Bern went for Willis, Brewster for Natale, while Johnson and Barnato ran at each other, in a manner of speaking, both of them a little too serious, too ardent, I thought, and clumsy. Their unsheathed bayonets actually touched each other’s flesh at one point, breaking a strict taboo. “Watch it, shitheads!” Arch screamed. “That’s real skin and blood there.” From the sidelines, Rocky observed the action in silence and bit into an apple. He looked serious. God knows what he was thinking.
    Another half-hour a day was spent on weapon-cleaning, which we performed by now with near-perfect skill andspeed. (We had certainly practiced it enough.) Even Fedderman and I were near-perfect at it, stripping our rifles with our eyes closed, then minutes later putting the rifles together again, piece by irreplaceable piece. We loved to do that (at last), showing off for each other, just as we loved our M-1s, without exception. We fondled them, stroked them, sometimes held them in our arms and hugged them while we slept. It was another kind of propitiation. I knew men who used to kiss their rifles surreptitiously. Paul Willis was one of them.
    We could even take apart the BAR, although with less confidence and no love. With the BAR we might fumble a bit, look confused, hesitate, but in the end the job was done. But when, I sometimes wondered, would we ever find ourselves in a combat situation in which we would have the time and the opportunity to strip our weapons and fastidiously clean each piece? I knew, and everyone else knew, that in combat we would have to depend on pouring oil down the gun barrels and slopping the trigger mechanisms and the stock in the same way, at top speed. But then we were not being serious in our Norman orchard; we knew that we were merely killing time while we waited for orders from General Simpson.
    So we hiked, had bayonet practice, listened to absurd lectures, cleaned our weapons, ate enormous unhealthy meals, and kept house in our pup tents, which were rigorously inspected every morning after breakfast. Sometimes Arch looked in, holding his nose as a joke, other times Gallagher showed up, and even, once or twice, Antonovich himself. Mostly, though, it was Rocky’s job, as squad leader, and I have to say for him that he didn’t take it lightly. I think that inspection appealed to his