When the budding young painter in Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited declares that he plans to go to Venice and study the works of Bellini haughty Lord Marchmain nonplusses him by asking: “Which one; there are two.” Likewise, when young people ask me what I did “In the war” I can stop them cold by asking: “Which one; there were three.” My war, of course, is the one that ended 74 years ago, now named World War II. I was still young then, but I was in that war, indeed.
The question is what I did. If my inquirer is old enough to understand the meaning of the term “absurd,” my answer is simple: absurd stuff. Absurdity is the nature of war. I had a gun. My job was to shoot at American airplanes. A man whom I know was a pilot. I shot him down (remember: that was my job. His job was to burn down our house). His entire crew died except him. His parachute saved him. I was then a German, speaking German. He, of course, was American. Now we are both old, both are US citizens speaking English. And we are the best of friends. That, I think is absurd. As I said above: nothing made sense. Everything I did, great or small, was in one way or another absurd.
I could give many small examples. One shall suffice. For breakfast we got a brew called “coffee.” It consisted of roasted oats and barley, ground into a black powder and boiled in water. Our unit commander was a reserve officer, a colonel recalled from retirement. He was a stickler for regulations. Which required that we get breakfast. When the colonel found out that some of us poured this liquid called coffee down the sink instead of drinking it we were all summoned to a lecture. I do not remember the rest of his harangue except the memorable phrase: “He who does not drink his morning coffee is a traitor.”
So what did I do in the war? Nothing heroical, I am afraid. I did what I was ordered to do: shoot off my trusty 88mm gun and drink that awful coffee.