Up Close: A Scout's Story From the Battle of the Bulge to the Siegfried Line
by John Davis with Anne Riffenburgh
The late John Davis, with Anne Riffenburgh, tells John's story of being a scout with the 106th Infantry Division from the Battle of the Bulge through the push into Germany and beyond.
The year is 1941. John Davis is a brash young man reveling in the sights and sounds of Los Angeles—not a bad fate for a country boy from Colorado who grew up hardscrabble during the Great Depression. An ocean away, life is far less rosy for those living in the shadow of war. John has heard all about this tyrant named Hitler, with his clipped mustache and staccato bark, who seems to have mesmerized the German people and is threatening an entire continent. A nasty business to be sure, but John is pretty certain that none of it is going to touch him.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launch their infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and all bets are off. Swept up in a surge of anger and patriotism, John joins the Army, undergoes three years of training, and in the fall of 1944, becomes part of the 106th Division—the last division to be made and the youngest division ever to go overseas. His plan for survival is simple: he will watch out for his own rear end and nobody else’s.
On the morning of December 16, 1944, John “Davy” Davis and 100 fellow soldiers head toward an area in Belgium called the Schnee Eifel, to face off with the Germans and take part in searing action that will eventually be known as the Battle of the Bulge. If John could know what is coming, he might be filled with dread.
Instead he feels a burning need to get down to business.
I had spent nearly three years getting to this time, this place, and this moment in history. Along the way, a vengeful stew had simmered inside me, made up of ingredients that most people considered liabilities: anger, arrogance, and a primal desire to kick some ass. But the universe had flipped, and I sensed that these qualities had the potential to serve as assets, maybe even talismans.
“Don’t take any crap,” my father had admonished long ago. “To my warrior son,” my mother had written, her words serving up both acknowledgement and expectation.
I didn’t know what lay ahead, but I was as tough and ready as I’d ever be. My hand tightened around my M1 rifle.
Let the chips fall where they damn well pleased.
From the Book's Prologue
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
—Charles Dickens
When it comes to war, some men spend the rest of their lives trying to remember, others trying to forget. I count myself among those trying to remember.
Some recollections spring without warning. These are flashbulb events—experiences so stunning, so emotionally intense they burn themselves into the brain the way a brand sears flesh. Sometimes they scorch the soul. This is the legacy of any veteran who saw action and participated in the horror that we call war.
Sixty years have passed since I fought in World War II, standing shoulder to shoulder with my fellow soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge, and later, on the Siegfried Line, and yet I have retained my share of flashbulb memories.
I was one of the lucky ones. I survived, and my best buddy Archie Moffeit survived along with me. Years later, when I was safely tucked away in Los Angeles, and he was happily hawking used cars in Claremore, Oklahoma, we would shoot the bull over the phone. We talked about fishing, the latest political scandal, the merits of Chevrolet over Chrysler, until we ran out of steam and a long, comfortable pause crept into the conversation. In that silence, old memories stirred, rustling like leaves. We both heard them.
“Say, Archie, remember that tank at Coulee?”
“Do I remember? Biggest damn thing I ever saw. Must’ve been ten feet tall. Maybe more.”
“Looked about ten stories from where I stood.”
“Of course it did,” he snorted. “If you’d dragged us any closer we’d have been under it.”
“I was a scout,” I protested, serving up a little mock indignation. “It was my job to get up close.”
“You were an idiot.”
Well, there was that, too.
Another time I called to thank him for a letter he had sent. He was drinking coffee, and I could hear him swigging it back as if he were right next to me instead of 1500 miles away.
“By the way, when you write again, be sure to put the initials WH after my name.”
“What does WH stand for?” he asked, taking another big gulp.
“War hero, naturally.”
With that, Archie blew coffee all over the room.
Beneath the banter lay a powerful bond—a bond forged in part by the banter itself. The running gags, good-natured needling and ongoing repartee helped get us through the war with our sanity intact. Together Archie and I witnessed unimaginable, in-your-face ugliness. We dug deep, clawing at whatever survival skills we could come up with, egging each other on with a combination of mutual insults and unwavering support.
It seemed to work.
We kept that banter going for decades after the war, but once in a while a serious note crept in.
“You know, you saved my feet.”
“How was that, Archie?”
“You nagged me to wiggle my toes against the cold. ‘Shuffle around,’ you said. ‘Keep moving.’” I heard gratitude in his voice, and I felt an answering emotion in my own chest.
“That’s okay, you only saved my life maybe three or four times.”
Funny thing, whenever I spoke of my combat experience to close friends and family, an editing pencil seemed to come into play: softening, deleting, protecting them from pain. With Archie it was different. There was no need for protection, he had lived it. There was no need for translation. We shared a language. Sometimes there was no need for words.
For a long time that was enough.
Archie and I continued to stay in touch. He came out to Los Angeles in the late 1950s and again in the 1970s. We looked at the Hollywood sign and stuck our feet into the footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Two decades slipped by, and in the late 1990s we batted around the idea of another visit.
“You and Dolores should come out,” I urged. “Annamae and I can take you to Olvera Street for tacos, or we can hit Chinatown for the best dim sum ever.”
“Dim what?”
“Never mind. Just get your butt out here.”
One fine fall day I picked up the phone and dialed the 800 number at Archie’s used car lot. I was feeling restless and out of sorts. The sound of an old friend’s voice was just what I needed. Jerry, one of the salesmen, picked up on the third ring. I asked for Archie, and Jerry hesitated for a fraction of a second. The back of my neck prickled.
“Heck, I hate to be the one to tell you, but we lost Archie a couple months ago. Leukemia.”
The news hit me like a punch to the gut. Jerry rambled on, but his words were drowned out by the single, repetitive thought that welled up inside me: Oh, God Almighty, we’ve lost one of the best.
Life goes on and I did too, but there was a hole inside me now that hadn’t been there before. I had known grief, but this was different. Archie’s passing took a piece of me with him. He had been my touchstone, a kindred spirit. He had seen me at my worst, become well-acquainted with every wart, flaw, and vanity—and loved me anyway.
Friendship. It’s a helluva gift, isn’t it?
Archie was gone. I folded up my memories of him and tried to tuck them away like a favorite sweater stuffed into a cedar chest.
Only thing was, Archie refused to be stuffed.
I saw him everywhere: his mischievous eyes on the face of a stranger on a bus. His untamed overbite on the smiling checker at the grocery store. His donkey bray laugh ringing out through the rolled-down window of a brand-new pickup truck. Archie just would not let go.
One lazy December afternoon, I lounged in a lawn chair under the shade of my battered backyard umbrella, a soft drink in my hand, feeling pretty smug. While the Eastern states shivered in sub-zero temperatures, I was basking in the lizard-friendly weather that Southern California can roll out even in wintertime. Mexican music blared from a nearby radio. The sun beat down on my exposed ankles. A jewel-toned hummingbird fluttered near the tangle of vines just above the hedge. It was a perfect day—the sort of day Archie and I would have given anything to have experienced during our bone-numbing, butt-freezing time at the Bulge.
Archie. There he was again.
That’s when it struck me that perhaps I had been going about this all wrong. Maybe the task wasn’t to forget about the past. Maybe the real trick was to remember. I had thought that I was good at remembering. I could recall certain events of the war with great clarity. But I had never really taken a good look at myself and my place in the process. The reality was that Archie had served as a buffer, filtering my faults and foibles through his gentle nature, returning them to me with the bumps smoothed out, like a saddle blanket for the soul.
Memory is a slippery thing. There are tricks of the light, elusive meanings sliding in and out of the shadows, the seduction of how we wish to remember ourselves versus the way we actually were. I was reluctant to dig into that after all these years.
Maybe the best way to explain my reluctance is to tell you about the response I heard other veterans make when asked if they were heroes. The reply was invariably the same: The real heroes were the ones left lying on the desolate beaches of France, the snow-covered forests of Belgium and Germany, the steaming jungles of the South Pacific or the windswept deserts of North Africa. I had no quarrel with this explanation, but I wondered if it was adequate.
I came from a generation that valued modesty and stoicism. We brushed off compliments and downplayed our wartime exploits, reserving the label of “hero” for those who made the ultimate sacrifice: giving their lives for their country. For the first time I wondered if this response might be about something else, as well. Something uncomfortable, even ugly.
Shame.
I pushed the idea away, but it popped up again and again, as persistent as one of those whack-the-prairie dog figures you find in a penny arcade. It struck me that if we acknowledged our capacity for heroism, then we were obligated to look at the flip side as well—deep among the shadows where cowardice, degradation and barbarism hide. Any combat veteran knows what I’m talking about. As a friend of mine used to say, “You can’t roll around in the mud without getting some on you.” Maybe this was what we shied away from. The reality of war is that there is no light without darkness, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either a liar or a perfect fool.
A flash of movement interrupted my reverie. The little hummingbird had broken away from the hedge and was fluttering toward me. He hung in the air expectantly, looking for all the world like a small pied piper. Follow me. In American Indian lore, the hummingbird is a hopeful sign. Quick and nimble, he belies his fragile appearance to travel long distances and overcome great hardships. He invites one to consider a journey of the spirit—with all the promise and peril that such an undertaking implies.
Pivotal moments are deceptive sometimes. They fly in on unobtrusive wings, creating barely a ripple in one’s ordinary routine. Follow me. There I was, lazing in the sun, a cool drink in my hand and Ritchie Valens crooning in my ear. It would have been easy to let the invitation slip away. Too much work. Too much pain. Too late in the day.
The reasonable thing would have been to simply let it go, but I had never been overly committed to being reasonable.
I began to pick at the stray bits of yarn holding my memories together. With each tug, time unraveled, and the decades fell away, until a young man swaggered through the hedge. With his glossy dark hair, swarthy skin and pronounced cheekbones, he could have been plucked from any one of a dozen backgrounds—from Gypsy to Indian to latter day pirate. He threw me a rakish smile, but there was no masking the glint of pain behind his eyes.
I felt a jolt of recognition.
Davy.
Davy, my youthful, half-forgotten self.
Davy, the tough, arrogant young soldier I had been in the fall of 1944 and the winter, spring and summer of 1945.
Davy, a stranger from a distant and painful past.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
If my visitor minded the scrutiny he didn’t show it. Quietly and without fanfare, he pulled an Army-issued duffel bag from the shadows and set it before me. He stared at me hard, as if to say, “Do the right thing.” Then he spun on his heel and disappeared as quickly as he had come, leaving me alone with that battered old duffel bag.
A lifetime later, it seemed I still had some unpacking to do.
Contents
- First Edition (March 2008)
- Paperback: ISBN 978-1-4303-2893-3 — $19.95
- Perfect bound, full-color wrap-around cover
- Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-4303-2691-5 — $34.95
- Blue linen cover with title stamped in gold on spine, full-color dust jacket
- PDF file on CD disc
- Complete copy of the book including the cover images in a single PDF file — $6.95
- 172 – 6 x 9 inch pages
- 2 photos