That’s what Cooperman claims he said anyway.
The rifleman was shaking so violently the medic had to help him up. “I felt somewhat foolish. I picked up the grenade gingerly, like it was a tea cup, my little finger sticking out, and I crawled back to the window and dropped it out. That’s when it exploded, killing the fellow beneath the window. A faulty fuse saved my life. But I got the medal anyway. My captain, who was in the room and saw it all, saw to that.”
General Clay once told me that the receipt of wounds, rather than the infliction of them, is historically how the British demonstrated courage. He said, “Witness the 27th Regiment, the Inniskillings, who at Waterloo stood in their square, motionless for four hours, while being cannonaded by Napoleon’s artillery.” If Clay was correct, then Edgar Sisler won the Victoria Cross in the time-honored manner.
Sisler and I had a few beers after the war. Between carefully measured sips, Sisler told me, “I look much the worse for my Victoria Cross, I must say.”
Indeed, Sisler had more scars than I have seen on any other person, and in my travels for this narrative I have seen plenty. His scars ran like road maps from place to place, with perforations at some locations, rolled and pleated scar tissue at others, a mess. He was proud of them.
Sisler was a machine gunner at Lyme Bay. His weapon was a .303 Vickers. He said, “A machine gun is used to freeze the front. And we wanted it frozen right there on the beach. But the Germans kept coming, and our captain ordered a retreat. I volunteered to cover it. He kindly left his service pistol for me.”
Sisler twisted the Vickers left and right, spraying the beach as his mates pulled back. “On defense, the machine gun must be kept firing at any price, so I had to stay the course, don’t you see.”
Alone, Sisler tried to keep the invaders at bay, firing at anything that moved in front of his dugout. A bullet passed through the meat of his right arm.
“I don’t remember any pain from that one,” he told me. He put down his beer to roll up his right sleeve. Just above his elbow was a crater the size of a quarter in his biceps and another rougher one caused when the bullet exited the triceps.
He continued to fire. A few seconds later another bullet took off half of his right ear.
At the pub, he pulled back his hair to show me the remainder of his ear. It was clipped neatly. “The upper half, fortunately,” he said. “I can almost hide it under my hair.”
Then the Germans employed an antitank grenade launcher against him. “It hit the front of the sandbag and the blast took off quite a bit of my scalp,” he said, which explained the purple and blue welts covering his forehead.
“A machine gun gets all the attention, and that was my problem at that point,” Sisler told me, signaling for another beer.
While he was reloading, a bullet creased his neck.
He lowered his shirt collar to show me the ridges of skin.
When he took the Vickers’ grip again, a bullet dug into his wrist and wormed its way up the length of his left arm to pop out at his elbow.
He again lowered his beer to the table. He rolled up his other sleeve to display the line of damaged tissue extending from his wrist to elbow.
He kept firing. “I was a madman, I tell you. There was nothing left on this earth but that Vickers and me. A grenade blast threw shrapnel into my left leg.”
Sisler rolled up his pants. By now everyone in the pub was watching him, including the publican behind the counter, a woman whose figure resembled a barrage balloon and whose mouth was turned down in disapproval. Sisler’s leg was serrated horizontally with scars, looking like evenly spaced railroad ties.
Another grenade blast knocked him over, and he rose to find his left arm was limp.
“So I used my right hand,” he explained as he unbuttoned his shirt far enough to show me the streaks of scar tissue on his shoulder, looking as if someone had applied the scar with a putty knife.
He kept firing. Another explosion, and steel needles entered his chest and cheeks.
Over the beer he pointed them out, pleats of purple skin that looked drawn with blue ink.
That detonation bent the Vicker’s barrel out of true. Sisler lifted his Enfield rifle and began rhythmically pulling the trigger. “Blood was coming down my face in sheets. I had to wipe my face with my sleeve.”
Another bullet hit him in stomach.
“That’s the wound that told me my time was nigh.” He stood over the beer, lifted his shirt, and pointed to the abdomen scar.
It reminded me of an egg fried over easy.
He does not remember how many rounds he fired from the Lee Enfield. “There was a two-minute period there when I didn’t receive any new wounds. I was quite encouraged. Then I ran out of shells for the rifle. I reached for the captain’s pistol, a Webley. Didn’t take me long to empty that, either. I fired blindly, blood blocking my vision, until the hammer was falling on empty chambers.”
He continued, “The Germans must have thought I’d gone for a burton. So they rushed the dugout. I swung my rifle by the barrel, like a cricket bat. I killed two of the buggers that way. Then I fainted dead away. A man only has so much blood.”
“What accounts for you sitting across from me today?” I asked.
“My captain, bless him and his children, returned after he had taken the others back. Now you might be wondering why I sit on this bench at an incline.”
I hadn’t noticed.
He said, “The captain threw me over his shoulder and ran back along a communication trench. My rump was exposed, and it took more shrapnel, which tore out some padding. I’d take down my trousers to show you, if the proprietor weren’t a lady, at least from outward appearances.”
Obergefreiter Franz Stahl and the others in his rifle platoon were trotting behind two panzers across a narrow pasture, between rows of trees. He preferred open areas because then the tanks led. In woods or thickets, the infantry led the tanks. It was safer at the rear, far, far safer.
A mine detonated under the lead tank, throwing the panzer’s tread. Stahl remembers it as being an insignificant explosion rather than a hint of what was to come, a muffled puff that sent a few treads off their rail. Abruptly propelled by only one tread, the tank spun left. Then the treadless wheels dug into the soft pasture. The panzer stalled. The second tank almost rammed into the disabled panzer. The vehicle turned left just as an AT barrage opened up.
Fifty yards behind the panzers, Corporal Stahl heard the metal clang and smothered roar of an AT hit on the second tank. The fire came from a 37mm gun hidden in the woods. The weapon was being directly layed, fired over open sights, because barrages did not work against armor. The second tank’s cupola flew open, and Stahl saw a hand try for a grip, then a torch of flame blew out, and the hand disappeared within it. The crew was cooked alive.
A machine gun sounded from the woods, ringing the first tank like a bell. Small arms fire scattered clods of dirt in front of Stahl, who dove to the ground. He heard a scream to his left. It sounded like his sergeant.
The lead panzer’s cupola opened and out came the commander. He was instantly hit, and he slid off the turret into the camouflage foliage strapped to the aft deck. His black uniform was designed to disguise grease and oil stains common among armored crews, but it also masked blood. Even so, Stahl saw the red blotch spread along the commander’s thigh.
Undoubtedly knowing the AT gun would soon find their disabled tank, the gunner, loader, and driver came next, one at a time, each to be cut down before they could find cover. The tank commander remained alive, and perhaps the driver. The commander began crawling away from his vehicle, but was waved back by Stahl’s lieutenant, who yelled, “Minen, minen!”