To the Editor:

It’s hard to say whether it was the wind or maybe the same time of year.  I woke up thinking of Aschaffenburg and was wondering why.

It was back in 1945, I was on my way home and on my way out of the infantry.  I had 66 points, a point for each month overseas, five points for each battle star and decoration, and they all came to 66.

Like hundreds of others with about the same number of points, we had just arrived at this staging area, and we were standing in wavy lines in front of a captain who was talking about the routine we were to follow each day.  We were at the Aschaffenburg military airfield and it had been heavily bombed.  It was cold and desolate and windy, and inside the tents it was just as cold and only slightly less windy.Aschaffenburg military airfield and it had been heavily bombed.  It was cold and desolate and windy, and inside the tents it was just as cold and only slightly less windy.

I wasn’t really listening to the captain, but then suddenly his face was in front of mine.  He seemed very intense in the early dawn, and he said, “Where is your hat soldier?”

At first I thought he was concerned about the cold, and then I reached to my head to see if my woolen hat was still there; then he shouted, “Don’t move!”  However, I had already touched my hat, so I knew it was there.

He repeated, “Where is your hat soldier?” and in a fairly courteous military manner I replied, “My hat is on my head, Sir.” 

I had no idea why we were doing this, the war was over, and we had won, and I really wanted to go back to Buffalo to see my friends.  But then, after a pause and a pattern of frowns, he screamed, “That is not a hat!”

Now, we had never met before, and I thought it was a rude way of talking about someone’s hat, and I don’t know what he wanted or why.  It was my turn to speak, so I said in a less courteous way, “My hat is a hat, Sir!”

Then he shouted, “But it is not a helmet!” and of course he was right, it wasn’t a helmet.  As the war was ended, and the field had not been bombed in eight months, it seemed safe not to wear a helmet, but he made me promise never to show up at a formation without my proper helmet, and I agreed he was right, and with one final terrible glance he moved on down the line to see what else he could do as Captain. 

We returned to the cold damp tents, and I sat on a cot and said, “Jesus Christ, where did they find that son of a bitch?”  We had been assigned at random to tents, so those I came with from the 94th Division were scattered all over, and we were now part of the 80th Division.

There were guys in my tent from Georgia and Alabama, and we talked about the Okefenokee swamps and a delightful ethic that this one fellow kept repeating, “It doesn’t count if you are drunk!”  We drank some schnapps or something that was warm, and then the whistle blew, and we went out to another formation and another session with our leader.

This time he had a plan and I, of course, had my helmet.  He was going to keep us busy, and we were not to go into the town and were ordered to stay on the bombed-out airfield.  I was on the squad chosen to improve the sump holes.

We got shovels, and after breakfast headed to a far end of the airstrip where garbage was dumped.  Actually, we had more holes for dumping than you ever saw.  There were 500-pound holes and 100-pound holes and assorted holes of many other bomb sizes.

However, a bomb makes a round hole, and the army says the sump holes should be square.  It took a long time because only two worked.  It was difficult to amass 66 points and not be a Sergeant, so almost every man was a Sergeant except another fellow and me.  Sergeants did not work on menial details, so the two of us worked and the rest watched and smoked and now and then talked about the Captain.

It doesn’t embarrass me to not have been a military leader.  There are many complications, but, in the simplest terms, I was just at the right age to be in many of the wrong places, and it was bad in those places for both the leaders and the led.

Actually, this is part of what has been a bigger problem.  I have discovered that I am even less of a follower than a leader.  This has been a personal dilemma with which I have had to contend.

Back at Aschaffenburg, time passed and somehow it got to be payday.  We were all in a single line leading to the Captain’s table, and, when it came our turn, each of us would shout his name, and a couple of other people would write down some things, and then we would leave.

The Captain said, “Name soldier?”

I said quietly but firmly, “Cowley”; he said, “Full name”; I said, “Edward Cowley”; he stood up and said, “I said your full name.”

Here we were again, the man with the hat trick and at it once more.  I added my middle name and even threw in a confirmation name of my uncle Ralph who had been a math teacher and who died at 32.

He finally said, “What is your rank soldier?”

I told him PVT or PFC or whatever was on his records and added that, if he wanted to know the rank, which he already knew, why didn’t he say so.

The army had an expression called “red lined,” and that’s what he did to me.  It really didn’t make much difference, however, as there was nothing one could do with money in the tents and fields at Aschaffenburg anyhow.

Later that day, we had another formation, and, as all the holes were getting squared away, we felt it was probably time for the Captain to start something else.  He walked up and down the ranks and looked very serious and then gravely announced that the toilet tissue was missing from the latrine.

This seemed innocent enough, but he went on to say that he had suspected either the Germans or some liberated Poles who had been seen in the vicinity.

The latrine, incidentally, was not as impressive as you may think.  It was really only a slit trench, and it was located in the woods the required military distance away from the tents.

The Captain then announced that, from that time on, there would be a 24-hour guard on the latrine.  Another thing about Sergeants is that they do not do guard duty, so the responsibility for protecting the toilet tissue fell on the few of us who were still qualified for that kind of work.

That evening, a Sergeant came into our tent and told me that I was on latrine guard duty from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.  Later that night, it was probably 2 a.m., an armed soldier shook my sleeping bag and said it was time.

Now, I was warm and was sound asleep and dreaming about art or girls or other good things.  The Aschaffenburg latrine was not on my mind at all. The soldier had a flashlight and the beam jumped all over the dark green pyramid walls.  He flashed it in my eyes, “You awake?”

I assured him I was and told him not to worry.  I would watch the tissue.  He left and I pulled up the zipper and went back to Buffalo or wherever I had been.

The next morning. the Captain was frantic, and at the first formation he raged up and down saying over and over again, “The guard was broken, the guard was broken.  Who did this?  Who was responsible?  What kind of soldiers are you?”

The thought quickly occurred to me, and probably to others, that, if he kept pressing, he might learn how deadly and efficient we could be, but going home was the only goal, and at this point we could endure almost anything.  He said we had one hour to think it over and come up with the name of the person who broke the guard.  We returned to our tents, and when the hour was up, the whistle sounded, and we lined up once more.

He asked questions of everyone involved.  The Sergeant in charge had lost the list, and the men who had been on guard couldn't remember who followed them or who proceeded them or what tent they were in.  No one could recall anything or identify anyone.  The Privates and Sergeants who had helped win the war realized they had won another small but important skirmish.

The Captain fussed and ranted about his toilet tissue.  Actually, as it turned out, the tissue hadn't been stolen that night but that fact did not ease his pain.  No one had been there to watch it not be stolen.  That was the crime!

I never saw the Captain again.  Later that day, trucks came and took us to cigarette camps.  I can't even remember which one I went to.  We waited a couple more weeks on the coast of France and then came home in liberty or victory ships.

It was strange to wake up thinking of Aschaffenburg.  That was 29 years ago, and things like that are now only a brief moment in passing history, and, as times have changed so much, it probably has no relevance at all to what we do today.

Ed Cowley

Altamont

Editor’s note: Ed Cowley, an Altamont artist and former chairman of the art department at the University at Albany, died on Oct. 11, 2014. He was 89. His son, Ed Cowley, submitted this letter, which was written in 1974.