The Bridge
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Samuel T Morgan
Samuel Thompson Morgan, 91, of Farmville, passed away on January 31, 2016, at his home the Wildwood community. Born on September 23, 1925, in Danville Va. he was the son of the late Henry and Anna (Duncan) Morgan and the husband of Mary E (Grogan) Morgan.
Tom served his country in Europe during World War II and participated in Normandy landings as well as the final drive into Germany. He had relinquished the management of his farming operations to his son, Sam, several years ago and spent most of his time maintaining the farm home, caring for his prize winning "ponies" and fishing the area lakes. He was a lifelong member of the Hebron Volunteer Fire Company, serving as president for over 15 years. He was a member and past Commander of American Legion Post 117, and also a lifetime member of the New Hope United Methodist Church.
He is survived by his beloved wife of 68 years, Mary Elizabeth, one son, Samuel W Morgan and his wife, Molly, of Farmville, and one daughter, Mary Elizabeth Bourland and husband, Robert, of Raleigh, and three grandchildren, William Henry and Sarah Ellen Morgan of Farmville and John Wesley Bourland, also of Raleigh.
Friends may call on Wednesday, February 3, 2016, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm & 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm at Stebbins Funeral Home at 465 West Main St. in Farmville. Services will be held on Thursday, February 4, 2016, at the Funeral Home, Pastor Malcolm Richards, Officiating. Internment will be in the New Hope Cemetery.
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***********
He was 91.
Of course, I went to the funeral.
I knew that he had been in the Army, but he never talked about it much.
I guess the last time I saw him was at the family reunion last summer. It was the usual, everyone brought a dish or two and, of course, a dessert. Lots of cold drinks including cold beer, lots of ice, etc. Grandpa was sitting in an oversized lawn chair just off the drinks table and was nursing a glass of ice and some clear liquid when I sat down beside him.
"Hi Grandpa", sez I, "How're you feeling these days?" in a clumsy attempt to start a conversation.
He sorta grunted,a "Hi" and looked me over slowly, "You're Billy, aren't you, Sam and Molly's kid?"
"Close, I'm Wes, John Wesley, My dad is Robert, and mom is Betty. I'm you other grandson."
"Oh," he said with a definite lack of enthusiasm.
"How are things at school, Wes? You're down at SMU, aren't you? this would be your senior year? Still in engineering? Grades still OK?"
I was beginning see he might just be a little sharper that most of the family gave him credit for.
"Duke, I go to Duke, and I'm doing fine, got a job lined up with a surveying outfit in Florida after graduation. They are doing a lot of offshore work, should be interesting. Watcha' drinking?"
"Water, dammit, we got barrels of this piss-weak 3.2 beer but not a decent drink within a mile."
The family had always been staunchly Methodist, but latterday thinking conceded the weak beer and sometimes wine, but hard liquor was definitely still frowned upon.
I remembered that I had bought some things that morning to restock my little bar at school, and there were a couple of bottles locked in the trunk of my old Toyota. "What would consider a good drink?", I asked cautiously.
"Jack Daniels"; no perceptible hesitation there.
"Your lucky day!", I mumbled; I wandered casually out toward the parked vehicles, retrieved my treasured fifth of Kentucky's finest, still in its brown paper bag, and placed it on the table just to his right. He peeped inside the bag, looked up at me with a grin and casually dumped the contents of his plastic cup on the ground and handed it to me.
"Would you be kind enough to fetch me some ice? There's extra glasses over there too."
"Anything to go with it?
He glared at me.
"Guess not," I mumbled to myself as I slunk off to the ice chest.
I set the two glasses of ice on the table and watched as, in one smooth motion, he opened the bottle, poured his cup half full of the warm amber liquid and let the ice melt and dilute it until he deemed it to drinkin' cool. He poured about two fingers in my cup, returned the cap to the bottle and quietly set the brown paper bag and it contents carefully on the ground next to the table leg. He look up, lifted his glass in a little salute and drank half of it down in about two swallows. He looked at me as I took a sip of mine, He gave a big Ahhhhh, "Damn, that was good, It has been awhile. You may have just become my favorite grandson,"
I'm thinking, I know he was in the war, but he never talked about it. But he never talked much about anything anyway. I'm wondering if he just might be persuaded to tell me a little about it.
What the hell, the worst thing would be that he would just clam up. So I let the bourbon work for a while, chatting about whatever I could think of, you know, crops, tractors, pickup trucks, and so on.
After he had sampled his second, I asked quietly. "Weren't you in the Army, Pop?
"Don't call 'Pop', dammit, I hate that,", he growled.
then a long pause.... I was afraid I had lost him,
then, "That was a long time ago"
Still have that pistol?
I do.
What is it? PPG or something?
PPK, Walther
Like James Bond's?
Yes
9mm?
No, 5.56, .22 long rifle, kinda rare
How did you come by it? Must be a story.
There is.
Tell me about it?
Another pause....
"There are stories, but the guys that would understand, are either dead or already know.
"with all due respect," says I cautiously, "you may not be around more than another twenty or so years, and if the're stories that are a part of the family history, shouldn't they be told and passed on?"
Silence; He gave me a quick glance as if to assess my trustability, then fixed his gaze at some invisible mountaintop for a long moment.
"Maybe!", he says quietly, "Some stories are kinda hard to tell." Another swallow, cleared his throat.
"All right, If I tell you, promise to leave me be, at least for a while?"
"I will,"
* * * * * *
"What outfit were you with?""750th MP Battalion, Attached to the Ninth Armored Division. Part of Patton's Third Army. If you know your history, they was the first outfit to cross the Rhine, first one into Germany's homeland. Our job was traffic control, help scout the roads ahead, and provide traffic cops for the travel routes so the troops could be moved to the proper place in the shortest time.
"Being an MP is a shitty job, The Germans, of course, would shoot anything in an American uniform and our guys hated us because we were there to tell them where and when to go and where they couldn't go, check their documents, etc.
***
"Remagen, Little town on the Rhine, crossover point to the German homeland. Ludendorff bridge. Last bridge left standing over Germany's last natural line of defense. Not because they meant to leave it; their destruction charges mostly failed. We had discovered the bridge quite by accident. Germans knew that they were losing and tried to destroy all the bridges to keep us from getting across. We were amazed that it was still standing. I was driving the jeep for Captain Collins and we had just distributed a duce-and-a-half load of our guys, along the last 40 klicks leading up to the bridge, setting up road guards at all the main intersections. The 9th was to be moving a battalion up soon to secure the bridge. The rest would follow and secure the other end so that other divisions could follow.
Germans finally destroyed it, but it took 'em ten days or so; not before at least five divisions of our guys had crossed. In the meantime there was only one recon platoon and us to watch it, "us" being the Captain and me.
We had spotted the last road guard and sent the truck back so he could pick up our guys later when the 3rd Army could set up their own. We knew that the Germans would be trying again to blow the bridge, but they didn't seem to have much in the way of troops at the other end at the moment; hopefully they didn't know that we only had the one decimated recon company and a couple of MPs, so we made as much noise as possible. We figured they would be trying to find out just how many they were up against. It was a very long bridge.
We stopped at the west end where a couple of GIs were lounging. Their recon jeep with its mounted 50 sat on the side of the road; a light tank on the other, guns pointed towards the Fatherland. Capt looked at the one with Sergent's stripes, lounging against the jeep's radiator, a Thompson sub-machine gun (Tommy Gun) slung over his right shoulder. They eyed us and our relatively clean uniforms suspiciously.
"How many people you got, Sarge?
" 'skinny squad, two on the other end, a couple in the middle and one on either side of us here. They're gonna want to know just what we've got, 'spect somebody will be trying to find out so they can try to run us off. They can't have much over there, guessing it's the locals, kids and old men; you can bet there will be more coming. just how soon will probably depend on what they can find out.
"They told us there was a full company of armor here"
"You believe everything the army tells you?
"Shit, You guys had any rest?
"Not really, we've been on the go for three days now.
It was about sundown. Cap'n looked at me, "I've got to get back down the line and see to the road guards we posted. Stay here and help these folks make sure no one wanders up here or tries to cross before we have a lot more help. Keep the radio."
"Thanks a lot", I muttered under my breath as he drove away, "Radio's worthless up here, who'm I gonna call, Hitler?"
Small talk with the Sarge and his pal for the next half hour or revealed they draftees like most of the rest of us and had lived in New York City and rural West Virginia before the Army. Sarge had been in North Africa; the other one had been in hardly six months. We had not much else to discuss and they were obviously dead on their feet. After several minutes of silence and several cigarettes, I decided that this was about to become a rather boring night. I was curious about the bridge and wanted to see what the river looked like from out in the middle.
"Sarge, I got an idea, how's 'bout I go out and relieve the guys on the other end, they probably could use a little rest?" He looked at me for a long minute, took off his helmet, scratched his head and, surveying the firepower of the smallish carbine slung over my shoulder, "How's 'bout you go about half way and give the rookies out there some rest. We got a couple of machine guns on the other end; you MP's might not be used to them. So, knock yourself out. Password is 'Watchmaker' if anyone should ask, countersign 'Theodore' but those two on the bridge have probably forgotten it, or are asleep."
"Strange passwords"
"German language don't have a 'th' sound; they never use it and have trouble pronouncing it; comes out 'z'. 'W's' sound like 'v'."
***
The bridge was originally designed to carry railroad traffic, however one of the twin set of rails had been removed and heavy wood planking laid crosswise to form a passable two-lane highway needed for the movement of military equipment. A second layer of planking established runways for the wheels and tracks. I slung my carbine, checked my belt for the extra clips for both the carbine and my '45, and set out for the center of the bridge. The moon, almost full, gave enough light for me to stay on the runway and walk with a minimum of noise. Sarge was right, no challenged me; I found the two guards, not necessarily sleeping, but they didn't hear or see me until I was in their face. Startled, they grabbed for their guns, "What th'. . . ?, ". "It's OK, I said quietly, I'm on your side."
"Who th' hell are you?"
"MP detachment, road guard. Heard you're expecting traffic. By the way, your password's Watchmaker, do you know the response?' "Some guy'sname, I think, Talmadge.., no, Theodore, that's it."
I chuckled, "Sorry, You guys must be beat."
" 'haven't slept in three days, yeah, you might say that."
"So why don't you catch a couple of z's, I'll watch for a while; don't expect anyone will get past the boys at the other end anyway. I'll wake you if anything's happening."
So I watched. there was no sounds save for the quiet murmur of the river against the bridge supports 40 or 50 feet below. No bird sounds, no village sounds from the other side, and no movements noise from the west. Nothing! So I leaned on railing and watched. Perhaps I dozed.
Anyway, I was suddenly aware of a nearby presence. The moon was well over its zenith causing dim shadows, but I could make him out clearly. Slender young man or boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen, standing in the middle of the bridge, looking straight at me. I watched, and when he looked away for a second, brought the carbine up on him.
When he saw my move and reached for his belt, I clicked off the safety, "Nein!" I said softly; he froze. "I speak English," he said weakly. "Good," sez I, "Put your hands up quietly." I was running out of German words fast. He complied. " I am from the village, I just came to see who was here. The men at the end of the bridge were sleeping. I am not armed; I mean you no harm. Please let me go. My parents are in the village."
"OK," I said," "quietly". My mistake! He turned slowly and took five or six slow steps, then, I guess his feet would not obey, for he suddenly broke into a run. I fired two or three rounds, but he never slowed down; he disappeared, but I could still hear his feet pounding the runways.
"Then, just as suddenly, there was two quick barks from a '45, followed by a five or six round burst of a Thompson. Guess I woke them up, I thought as I ran toward the sounds. Their flashlights hit me and I stopped, my hands in the air. "I'm army, MP, I shot at him as he ran and missed".
"We didn't, You know the password?"
I gave it.
"Theodore".
"He's over there," indicating a small, motionless body near the rail. He rolled the body over with his boot and shone the light on his face, "Just a kid, damn! Can't be more'n 13, guess he was scouting. They train 'em young; must be running out of the older ones."
He reached down, pulled a small pistol from the boy's belt, and gave the body another roll with his foot, pushed it under the rail and over the edge. It seemed like five minutes before we heard the splash.
He looked up at me, his eyes froze me. He glanced at the pistol for a moment then handed it carefully to me. Then, very softly, "souvenir for you, kinda looks like a nice one, I'd just have to turn it in anyway, and I don't fancy explaining how he got past us. You may as well have it."
* * * * *
The old man was quiet for a long minute, looking at that mountaintop again. Finally he turned, cleared his throat, looked me squarely in the eyes, "And that, John Wesley, is how I come by th' pistol."
"But what . . . ?", I stammered, but his eyes stopped me.
.
"My glass is almost empty," he said quietly, as he pushed it across the table to me.
***********************************
Later:
I finished my Masters at Duke a few years after my conversation with my grandfather and married a beautiful teacher with visions of enlightening the high school youth of our beloved state. With a major in history and a recently completed masters in the wars of Europe, Sue-Ellen wanted to see for herself the remnants that remained of World War II. We agreed to spend our meager savings on a honeymoon in Europe. We would fly to England, cross over to France, drive to Normandy, follow the invasion route to the Rhine and then upriver to visit my cousin William, who worked as a programmer for the staff of an international task force in Switzerland in the design and implementation of a gamma-ray satellite telescope to explore the outer reaches of the universe. Bill was our family "rocket scientist".
At dinner with my parents the weekend before we were to leave, my mother had asked about our plans and asked casually, "Will you be driving any in western Germany?"
"We haven't set any firm route yet, but we hope to just sort of follow the Rhine."
"Well, you may remember that your father and I spent some time in Germany. You were born there."
"I believe you may have mentioned that a few times." There may have been a touch of sarcasm in my tone.
My mother, still fiesty for her years, gave it right back, sounding a little like Grandpa.
"Well, you may also remember that we were stationed in a little village called Permasens in the mountains down near the French border, and, due to the shortage of on-base housing, junior officers lived in village."
"I presume you are going somewhere with this, Mom?"
"I certainly am!, So pay attention; I'll tell you some things you don't remember, 'cause I haven't told you."
I know when I'm beat.
" Well," she continued, "there was a lady in that village that baby-sat for you now and then and taught me the language. Monica and I became close friends and have exchanged letters a few times over the years. I haven't heard from her in fifteen or twenty years, but I would have bet that she was still living in that village. The Germans don't move around much like we do. When I heard that you two might be travelling in Germany, I wrote to her at the last address I had, and sure enough, I got an answer, just last week. She says that if you happen to be in her area, she would be delighted to have you visit."
"Well I don't -" She cut me off.
"Sue-Ellen might get some insights into the war that she won't get anywhere else."
Sue broke in. "I think that's a wonderful idea; I wouldn't want to miss it."
Mom smiled sweetly. "You will need to walk softly in discussions of the war; you do remember that the Germans lost the war, don't you Wes?"
"Yes, Mother, I remember."
Like I said, I know when I'm beaten."
***********
We did find Monica who turned out to be everything that Mom had said about her. Warm, friendly and eager to talk to us. The husband of a local high school physics teacher and model train enthusiast, Peter was also eager to talk. Their English was far better than any of their language we could muster up. (We learned that they were also fluent in French.)For our second evening with the Hausmanns Monica had treated us to a traditional German dinner of Viener Schnitzel mit kartoffel und salat, with cheesecake for dessert, and after a few glasses of wine, it seemed that we might be able to discuss the war years without insult or embarrasment to our hosts.
Sue broke the ice. "Monica, I have studied your country, particularly the war years, but all I know is what the books tell me; I don't feel that I have a feel for the way it was for the way it affected the people. Your friend and my mother-in-law, Mary Elizabeth, tells me that you lived through that time. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions. If I am to teach that history to my students, I want to understand as much as I can about that time."
There was a silence that seemed very long. Monica's face became quite solumn; she glanced at the ceiling, obviously remembering. "It was a sad time; I vas very young. Perhaps it vill be good to talk.", her accent made stronger with emotion.
Peter refilled the glasses.
Sue; "Thank you, have you always lived here in the village?"
Again Monica glanced upward. "No, I vas born in a town on the Rhine, on the border with Belgium, called Remagen."
The name rang a bell for me and I remembered Grandpa's story, but it did not seem the time to bring it up.
"My father was a baker and had a small shop in town. He had lost an arm in the first war. We had a good house and a comfortable living. It was my parents and my older brother, Deiter."
"Did the fighting come near?'
"Ya, when the landings took place in Normandy, ve vhere sure they would come to Deutchland through Belgium and quite possibly try to cross the Rhine there. I vas sent to my uncle here in Piemisans, as far as possible from where the fighting was likely to be. My uncle had children my age, so I became a part of his family. The family name was the same so after a while no one noticed that was not his child."
"Did you go back after the war?"
"No, my parents were old, had lost their source of income, their home had been destroyed and they had aged a lot. It vas besser I stay here where the fighting had not touched. They both died a few years later, within a few months of each other."
"And your brother?"
"He was maybe thirteen, I don't remember his birthday, when the war came. He was a member of the Hitler Youth, and was not allowed to leave. my father told me that his group was assigned to the local
military and used as scouts for the army."
"What did he do after the war was over?"
" Ve do not know vat happen to Deiter, my vater was told only that he vhent on a scouting mission one night and never returned."
("Oh my God", I thought. "Keep your mouth shut. Sue has not heard Grandpa's story.")
"Remagen is supposed to be the place where the Americans first crossed the Rhine, do you remember anything about the town or the bridge."
"Nein, only vhat my parents told me later when I visit. I zhink it vas a railroad bridge, but vas destroyed in zhe fighting. I don't zhink it vas ever rebuilt."
Monica was obviously emotionally drained. "I zhink I talk too much, please excuse"
Peter produced another bottle and refilled the glasses. The silence was electric.
Monica returned, smiling. "I am so sorry."
"It is enough. We are sorry to have upset you; please forgive us."
"It is OK, I am good now. Vhy don't you tell us about your trip? Your plans? And how is my good friend Mary Elizabeth?"
Peter refilled the glasses again.
.
NOTE: The story is historically correct, insofar as the Remagen bridge was the first crossing into Germany and the 9th Armored was the first one to cross. The characters and dialog are totally products of my imagination and, as they say, any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The pistol does exist, but its petigree has been lost to history.
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