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The G.I. slumped into a chair, stunned. Pvt. Hack Hansen from Grant's 2nd platoon, and close buddy, came running in. He whipped out his pistol. "You son of a bitch," he cursed. "I've killed better men than you." He put the pistol right in the man's face. Four men grabbed Hansen from behind and tried to pull him away, shouting that death was too good for such a coward, but he pulled the trigger. The pistol misfired.
"You ought to have seen the look of that guy," Gordon Carson remarked.
They beat him unconscious, then carried him to the regimental guardhouse and turned him over to the provost sergeant. When he revived, the provost sergeant beat him until the blood ran.
Sink came to company HQ. He strode in and asked Sergeant Carson, "Where's Speirs?"
"Up on the second floor, sir."
Sink went up and got the facts from Speirs. It took the better part of an hour. Sink left, and Speirs came down.
"How'd it go?" Carson asked.
"Pretty rough."
"Well, what did he say?"
"He said I should have shot the son of a bitch."
That he did not is remarkable. One explanation I got from a number of men was-that Speirs must have had some doubt that the arrested man was the right man. When I asked Speirs about this, he replied, "As to the Sergeant Grant shooting you have it right. There must have been doubt in my mind, because summary action never troubled me."
But I wonder if there was not another factor at work. Speirs was not the only man who had a chance to shoot the coward. Grant had an opportunity in the initial encounter. The man who found the I Company drunk could have shot him on the spot, and nearly every man in the company interviewed by me said he wished it had been done. But many of them were at company HQ when he was brought in, wearing pistols, but only one of them actually tried to kill the man, and he was being held back by four others.
Almost every man in that room had killed. Their blood was up. Their anger was deep and cold. But what stands out in the incident is not the pistol whipping and beatings, but the restraint. They had had enough of killing.
Shortly after the incident, Captain Speirs wrote a long letter to Sgt. Forrest Guth, who was in hospital in England and who had written Speirs expressing a fear that he would be transferred to another division. Speirs liked Guth, thought he was a good soldier, and was appreciative of his ability to keep all his weapons in prime condition. He especially appreciated the way Guth could take a file and work on the tripper housing of an M-l and make it fully automatic. (Winters got one of those Guth specials. He kept it and, when he set off for the Korean War, took it with him. Unfortunately, Guth cannot remember today how he did it.)
In his reply, Speirs expressed another side of himself. It was a long chatty letter about the doings of E Company since Guth went to the hospital, full of the kind of information Guth most wanted to hear: "Luz fell off a motorcycle and hurt his arm— not seriously, Sgt. Talbert didn't like being 1st Sergeant so I gave him the 2nd Platoon and Sgt. Lynch (2nd Plat.) is 1st Sgt. now. Sgt. Alley got drunk again and we had to bust him. Lt. Lipton is on furlough in Scotland and is very happy. I'm sweating out a furlough to England to see my wife and baby. Sgt. Powers was on his way home and the truck overturned and he fractured his skull and he is hospitalized. Sgt. Strohl (3rd Plat.) is on his way home to the States. Chuck Grant got in the way of a bullet from a drunk American and his head is not too good—he is in a German hospital near here and is getting better. Sgt. Malarkey just came back from a long stretch in the hospital. Sgt. Rhinehard just came from the Riviera. McGrath won't take a furlough—he is saving his money."