The Road Out of Hell (38 page)

All the while, his unit was moved from England to France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. The reassurances that he sent back to his wife and sister allowed both women to sleep better knowing that he had a reasonably safe job back there in the rear, just lobbing shells.

One night in the Netherlands, the explosions of incoming shells were close enough to rattle the bones inside their flesh. Every man on the firing line felt the shock waves of the strikes in their stomachs and in their chests. At first, the rounds only landed every minute or so. Now Sanford felt certain that the shells were coming in faster and that the thunderous impacts were creeping toward their position. Meanwhile the constant freezing wind cut at their skin like a storm of razor blades. They swirled amid the thick darkness of nighttime clouds and battlefield dust, contrasted by the evil intensity of the light every time another shell went off.

The company-strength battle team of twenty-four cannons and crews stood perched like very large ducks on a lake of rough ice in the middle of a vast winter field—and they were squarely in the path of an advancing line of panzers leading a host of German infantry. He and the crew were getting “June” into firing position when his tow vehicle driver lost traction for a second and the truck fantailed toward him. He rolled out of the way so fast that the truck missed him, but “June” ended up against the far side of a wide irrigation ditch with the gun’s barrel propped at a high angle. It was a lucky slip. When it was fully elevated, the gun could now drop shells vertically onto the enemy tanks at their weakest point.

Two more artillery rounds came in nearby, close but just far enough that he and his men were out of the killing zone. But there were more flashes of evil light that seared the eyes, followed by the hammer blows of the shock waves. As soon as each roar subsided, he called out to encourage his crew, but the men were starting to look shaky.
Bit too much time back at the barracks,
he figured,
enough to make anybody lose their taste for battle.

The classified information that he was about to reveal could have been worse, but not even an optimist would claim that things looked good. An upbeat point of view could only come from someone who either failed to appreciate the situation, or who had a convincingly cheerful demeanor rendered by his mask of benign affability. “All right, gentlemen, time for another big show! Let’s man her up!” He ran to the big gun along with the others. The two bang handlers immediately opened the ammo case that they towed along with them.

“Red charge only! Leave the rest alone!” The men did not hesitate, but he thought he could see questions in their eyes.
He
would have had questions, in their position. A red charge had the lowest power, landing the shells closest to the firing team. That told them to expect close combat. “All right, all right, barrel straight to the north! Crack through that ice in the back so we can dig in the recoil spade. Let’s get ‘June’ a little traction for her big number!” He offered his cheerfulness to distract them, but it got mixed results.

Another flash of light went off, bright white and persistent, throwing bizarre shadows that swayed back and forth. It was as if they were underneath a huge swinging light bulb. He immediately turned and bellowed to his men: “Flare! Krauts want to make sure everybody can see—let’s take the opportunity! Load her up, gentlemen!” He thickened the mask another inch or two. “Okay, guys. Who the hell wants to live forever anyway, eh? Now listen in. Command said to keep it confidential until we were on site, and here we are, so this is it: there is a wave of panzers coming straight for us, and they are the front wave of a mass of German infantry. Our orders are to stand and fight.”

“Son of a bitch,” muttered his lead gunner.

“You’re too soon. Here’s the ‘son of a bitch’ part: we’ve been issued all that extra anti-tank ordnance because we’ve been told to ignore the four hundred yard danger-close minimum. We’re going to walk the barrage all the way back up to ourselves. We will press fire on the approaching enemy until the shells fall on our own heads.”

He turned and pointed to his lead gunner. “Now go.”

“Son of a bitch!”

“You said it.”

The men laughed a little, but it wasn’t much.

“So you’ve already figured that that’s why we’ve got ‘June’ elevated. We need those high-angle shots.” His crew was a solid troop that never cracked under fire, but he felt their mortal dread. He realized that it was terrible for them, but that sort of death did not fall onto his own list of things to fear.

His greatest discovery of the entire war experience so far had been his sense of familiarity with mortal danger. He had no illusions of invincibility; he simply discovered to his great surprise that he also had no respect at all for death. He had given it far too much of his terror and dread in the past. The intensity of combat focused his mind so completely that he seldom needed the mask for himself in order to appear calm. It was strictly for his men. His battle-formed revelation was that he would rather face the black-and-white purity of the fight against the Nazi machine than be left to sink into the quicksand of his own memory.

“June” was loaded and ready. His radio man called out, “Sir! Forward observer says still coming out of due north, moving slow, eight hundred yards.” That was already close for artillery work. Time to get “June’s” reaction to the situation. He waved and turned to his station, where he checked the gun’s range finder and squinted into the panoramic sights to set up a line of indirect fire.

The fire order came in over the radio and “June” opened fire at the same time that all the rest of the company’s twenty-four big guns opened up. Sanford and his men fell into their rhythm: adjust aim while loading the breech, close breech, fire—adjust aim while loading the breech, close breech, fire. Every ten seconds, along with the other twenty-four cannons that were also firing at six rounds per minute. The self-generated thunder enveloped them all.

The crew stayed with it even though he could sense their mounting nerves while the explosions of the enemy artillery’s incoming ordnance grew closer. The lead gunner was having his first major combat experience and was not looking good. His duty position on “June” was close to Sanford’s aiming position, so Sanford used the brief silences between detonations to talk to him while he worked the range setting wheels and the gunner adjusted the barrel elevation in order to slowly walk their bombardment backward toward themselves.

“So how do you like Montreal, mister?” Sanford cheerfully called out while he dialed the range finder.

“Montreal, sir?”

“You’re from there.”

“Yes, sir, but I, I don’t think that—”

“Never been over there, sorry to say. 1 like Saskatchewan real well, though.”

“Uh, yes, sir. New elevation, sir?”

“Add one point. Yeah, now you take Saskatoon. Independent-minded people. Loners, a lot of them. Good with guns, knives, hatchets.”

“Sir, are you sure you want to talk about—”

“No, I mean it. Born woodcutters, the lot of us. We give our babies little hatchets to play with, just to get them started on the right foot.”

“I see,” said the shaky gunner, who did not. “And which foot is that, sir?”

“Whichever one’s left after they get done practicing! Ha-ha-ha!”

Suddenly Uncle Stewart hit Sanford in the side of the head with a full roundhouse blow, and a blinding flash and shock wave paralyzed him. He felt his body hit something, and his impression was that Uncle Stewart had just knocked him into the kitchen wall again. In another instant, he was aware of nothing but a single very loud high-pitched drone in his head.

His senses swam. He fought to remain conscious. His hearing was overwhelmed by the loud whine ringing in his ears. Everything around him was filtered through a thick blanket of some kind that kept him from really being there. His senses cleared a bit more and he realized that he was lying on the ground, but he still didn’t know where he was. When two more intense flashes lit up the night, he realized that he was not back on the murder ranch at all, but flat on his back in the middle of a killing zone. No shrapnel had hit him, just part of the shock wave.

He rolled onto his belly and raised his shoulders with both hands, enough to see that he was lying on the edge of an older impact crater left by some earlier explosion. Probably a smaller caliber solid round, he figured, judging by the size of it.

A movement inside the crater caught his eye, and the light of the next explosion revealed that his gunner was lying at the bottom of the pit. The man’s head and shoulders were covered with earth, but his body was intact. The detonation must have knocked him into the existing hole. Before Sanford had any time to react, his blurred vision caught sight of some little movement from the gunner’s legs. But Sanford’s head was swimming and his eyes were at half strength. He was not sure that he’d seen anything. An instant later, both of the man’s legs moved and his feet kicked at the ground, but his head and shoulders were still buried.

Sanford’s ears were still not working well enough for him to hear the man gasping and gagging while the dirt suffocated him, but he already knew the sound. He had no sense at all of willing himself to move, but his body sprang into the pit and grabbed the gunner around the waist. He yanked backward with all his might and pulled him up onto the edge, landing with him more or less in his lap. The stunned soldier coughed hard and frantically brushed the dirt off of his head and face while he fought to get his breath.

Sanford sat still, unable to hear much other than the loud, single high note in his head. Another barrage of incoming rounds began and the gunner reflexively dove back into the crater and hunkered down flat on his belly. Sanford immediately leaped into the pit and pulled him back out. They landed up on the edge traveling backward again. The gunner spun to him in confusion, and Sanford watched his face scream the words “Get down!” while he pointed inside the crater. Then he leaped back in and lay flat on his belly.

Sanford immediately jumped back in for the third time and dragged him back up to the top, but this time his gunner just turned around and grabbed Sanford’s jacket and rolled backward, pulling both of them down into the crater. Sanford sprained his ankle in the fall and the flash of pain was so sharp that at first he thought he had been hit.

It was worth it. A moment later another enemy shell landed nearby. The explosion sliced the air with flying bits of red-hot steel right where they had just been sitting.

Sanford’s unit survived the battle and repelled the German advance, living to fight another day and another day and another day. Sanford served in the Royal Canadian Army from September 13, 1939, until he was honorably discharged on July 7, 1945. In spite of the many bloody combat missions that his Sixth Field Regiment fought in all across Europe, Sanford’s sprained ankle was the only injury that he sustained in the war.

Sanford and June’s reunion was joyful and exciting and challenging on multiple levels, while two people who loved each other went through the process of learning how to live together again. Saskatoon was riding the same post-war economy as the rest of Canada and the United States, so Sanford and June were able to stay in the region and set up their lives without having to migrate for work.

Sanford was entitled by the Canadian government to go from military service into a job with the Canadian Postal Service, meaning that he could work outdoors, an idea he loved. He went for the job and breezed through training that was made easy by his military experience. He put on the mask for working hours and cheerfully walked his brand-new route. The customers were soon calling him by name and on friendly terms.

The couple was eager to start a family; the dream for their generation was a house, not an apartment. His brothers had also survived the war, and although they settled in nearby towns and had to work there, Sanford still found willing hands when he and June embarked upon building their own house. One of the local men was a friend from before the war named Bill Coumont, who happened to have a building contractor’s knowledge and skills. Bill liked Sanford enough to volunteer his time after work and on weekends, when Sanford’s brothers-in-law from the Mclnnes side of the family could drive in to help out.

June and Sanford also found a willing supply of local volunteers. The entire community had heard all the stories about Sanford. But everyone in the area had already had ample opportunity to come to know him personally and to deal with him on a daily basis. They knew about his years of honorable war service. They knew how much June loved him, and how well liked June was by others. In the post-war atmosphere, community spirit was strong; neighbors also pitched in to volunteer their particular skills.

Naturally, people watched him from behind his back or from the corners of their eyes. But no one who got to know him believed that he was capable of doing any of those things. Since it was not in the style of the times to talk about something like this, they voted with their feet. The result was a thin but steady trickle of neighbors who came around to offer their skills.

The finished product was a rectangular, flat-roofed house at 1224 Sixth Avenue North in Saskatoon. It was plain but it was secure. A tidy little outhouse was installed in the back yard. Water was carried in buckets from a public tap on the corner. Some of the detailing looked like it had been done by tired volunteers who were less than expert, and the indoor plumbing and a gas line would come later. But none of that was important: they were in. They owned their own house on a large double-sized lot, and they loved each other more than ever after nine years of marriage and the trials of war.