war?
VONNEGUT: I thought about it. I did fix my bayonet once, fully expecting to charge.
INTERVIEWER: Did you charge?
VONNEGUT: No. If everybody else had charged, I would have charged, too. But we decided not to charge. We couldn’t see anybody.
INTERVIEWER: This was during the Battle of the Bulge, wasn’t it? It was the largest defeat of American arms in history.
VONNEGUT: Probably. My last mission as a scout was to find our own artillery. Usually, scouts go out and look for enemy stuff. Things got so bad that we were finally looking for our own stuff. If I’d found our own battalion commander, everybody would have thought that was pretty swell.
INTERVIEWER: Do you mind describing your capture by the Germans?
VONNEGUT: Gladly. We were in this gully about as deep as a World War I trench. There was snow all around. Somebody said we were probably in Luxembourg. We were out of food.
INTERVIEWER: Who was “we”?
VONNEGUT: Our battalion scouting unit. All six of us. And about fifty people we’d never met before. The Germans could see us, because they were talking to us through a loudspeaker. They told us our situation was hopeless,and so on. That was when we fixed bayonets. It was nice there for a few minutes.
INTERVIEWER: How so?
VONNEGUT: Being a porcupine with all those steel quills. I pitied anybody who had to come in after us.
INTERVIEWER: But they came in anyway?
VONNEGUT: No. They sent in eighty-eight-millimeter shells instead. The shells burst in the treetops right over us. Those were very loud bangs right over our heads. We were showered with splintered steel. Some people got hit. Then the Germans told us again to come out. We didn’t yell “nuts” or anything like that. We said, “Okay,” and “Take it easy,” and so on. When the Germans finally showed themselves, we saw they were wearing white camouflage suits. We didn’t have anything like that. We were olive drab. No matter what season it was, we were olive drab.
INTERVIEWER: What did the Germans say?
VONNEGUT: They said the war was all over for us, that we were lucky, that we could now be sure we would live through the war, which Was more than they could be sure of. As a matter of fact, they were probably killed or captured by Patton’s Third Army within the next few days. Wheels within wheels.
INTERVIEWER: Did you speak any German?
VONNEGUT: I had heard my parents speak it a lot. They hadn’t taught me how to do it, since there had been such bitterness in America against all things German during the First World War. I tried a few words I knew on our captors, and they asked me if I was of German ancestry, and I said, “Yes.” They wanted to know why I was making war against my brothers.
INTERVIEWER: And you said—?
VONNEGUT: I honestly found the question ignorant and comical. My parents had separated me so thoroughly frommy Germanic past that my captors might as well have been Bolivians or Tibetans, for all they meant to me.
INTERVIEWER: After you were captured, you were shipped to Dresden?
VONNEGUT: In the same boxcars that had brought up the troops that captured us—probably in the same boxcars that had delivered Jews and Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses and so on to the extermination camps. Rolling stock is rolling stock. British mosquito bombers attacked us at night a few times. I guess they thought we were strategic materials of some kind. They hit a car containing most of the officers from our battalion. Every time I say I hate officers, which I still do fairly frequently, I have to remind myself that practically none of the officers I served under survived. Christmas was in there somewhere.
INTERVIEWER: And you finally arrived in Dresden.
VONNEGUT: In a huge prison camp south of Dresden first. The privates were separated from the noncoms and officers. Under the articles of the Geneva Convention, which is a very Edwardian document, privates were required to work for their keep. Everybody else got to languish in prison.
VONNEGUT: I thought about it. I did fix my bayonet once, fully expecting to charge.
INTERVIEWER: Did you charge?
VONNEGUT: No. If everybody else had charged, I would have charged, too. But we decided not to charge. We couldn’t see anybody.
INTERVIEWER: This was during the Battle of the Bulge, wasn’t it? It was the largest defeat of American arms in history.
VONNEGUT: Probably. My last mission as a scout was to find our own artillery. Usually, scouts go out and look for enemy stuff. Things got so bad that we were finally looking for our own stuff. If I’d found our own battalion commander, everybody would have thought that was pretty swell.
INTERVIEWER: Do you mind describing your capture by the Germans?
VONNEGUT: Gladly. We were in this gully about as deep as a World War I trench. There was snow all around. Somebody said we were probably in Luxembourg. We were out of food.
INTERVIEWER: Who was “we”?
VONNEGUT: Our battalion scouting unit. All six of us. And about fifty people we’d never met before. The Germans could see us, because they were talking to us through a loudspeaker. They told us our situation was hopeless,and so on. That was when we fixed bayonets. It was nice there for a few minutes.
INTERVIEWER: How so?
VONNEGUT: Being a porcupine with all those steel quills. I pitied anybody who had to come in after us.
INTERVIEWER: But they came in anyway?
VONNEGUT: No. They sent in eighty-eight-millimeter shells instead. The shells burst in the treetops right over us. Those were very loud bangs right over our heads. We were showered with splintered steel. Some people got hit. Then the Germans told us again to come out. We didn’t yell “nuts” or anything like that. We said, “Okay,” and “Take it easy,” and so on. When the Germans finally showed themselves, we saw they were wearing white camouflage suits. We didn’t have anything like that. We were olive drab. No matter what season it was, we were olive drab.
INTERVIEWER: What did the Germans say?
VONNEGUT: They said the war was all over for us, that we were lucky, that we could now be sure we would live through the war, which Was more than they could be sure of. As a matter of fact, they were probably killed or captured by Patton’s Third Army within the next few days. Wheels within wheels.
INTERVIEWER: Did you speak any German?
VONNEGUT: I had heard my parents speak it a lot. They hadn’t taught me how to do it, since there had been such bitterness in America against all things German during the First World War. I tried a few words I knew on our captors, and they asked me if I was of German ancestry, and I said, “Yes.” They wanted to know why I was making war against my brothers.
INTERVIEWER: And you said—?
VONNEGUT: I honestly found the question ignorant and comical. My parents had separated me so thoroughly frommy Germanic past that my captors might as well have been Bolivians or Tibetans, for all they meant to me.
INTERVIEWER: After you were captured, you were shipped to Dresden?
VONNEGUT: In the same boxcars that had brought up the troops that captured us—probably in the same boxcars that had delivered Jews and Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses and so on to the extermination camps. Rolling stock is rolling stock. British mosquito bombers attacked us at night a few times. I guess they thought we were strategic materials of some kind. They hit a car containing most of the officers from our battalion. Every time I say I hate officers, which I still do fairly frequently, I have to remind myself that practically none of the officers I served under survived. Christmas was in there somewhere.
INTERVIEWER: And you finally arrived in Dresden.
VONNEGUT: In a huge prison camp south of Dresden first. The privates were separated from the noncoms and officers. Under the articles of the Geneva Convention, which is a very Edwardian document, privates were required to work for their keep. Everybody else got to languish in prison.
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