Two Soldiers

Battle of the Bulge, January 1945. After a firefight, a lone American soldier surrenders to a single German officer. The German allows the American to keep his pistol, however. The plan is that both of them will walk toward the sound of artillery fire. If the guns are German, the German intends to take the American prisoner and hand him over. If the guns are American, the G.I. agrees to take the German prisoner and give him to the Yanks. As the two men are walking through the Ardennes forest, they encounter a Sherman tank. The American commander immediately shoots and kills the German officer, who is otherwise in the act of surrendering. Then he asks why the American soldier, ostensibly a prisoner, was permitted to keep his pistol. When the G.I. explains, the tank commander suspects, despite the soldier’s native English, that he is a German (or a German-American defector) wearing an American uniform—a crime punishable by death. The soldier insists he is American and then answers some baseball questions to which only a native would know the correct responses. The tank commander and his crew members are nonetheless still suspicious, so they disarm the American soldier before letting him climb onto the tank. Before boarding, the G.I. pulls the German officer’s body to the side of the road and closes the latter’s eyes. Once aboard, the American soldier shows his dog tags to the commander, and the tank moves out. The farther it goes down the road, the smaller the German officer’s body becomes.