U.S. soldiers perplexed their German foes with their love of the game.

In a recent Newsweek “Perspectives,” an American staff sergeant who had served in Iraq was quoted as saying, “one minute we were trying to catch a fly ball; the next minute we’re praying not to be blown into a million pieces.” The quote reminded me of something a German soldier said about American troops in Italy during World War II.

The Germain soldier, as I recall, had finally been captured and jailed in a prison camp that had been set up in what had been my old high school. While there, the German POW had become so fond of that part of America that after the war he moved to the United States and settled not far from his former prison. Soon, his wife gave him a baby who grew up to be a fine young man, who courted and married a young niece of mine. It has been a great marriage.

Once, while talking to this German soldier-father, we learned what had impressed him and other German soldiers in that awful Italian campaign of World War II.

Some of you may remember that our American troops had landed in southern Italy and had fought their way northward, driving Italian and German troops before them. Quite quickly, the Italians surrendered and only the Germans were between the Americans and Rome. The German soldiers were almost helpless with no fighter planes to provide air cover for them. It was in the mountains that Americans playing baseball bewildered that German fighting man, who later become a relative of mine through marriage.

That former German soldier told us that their troops, as they withdrew, stopped on the high ground so that their artillery could better see the enemy and use its big guns. But it was what the Americans did which gave them such a problem.

Out of range of German guns, and because much of the enemy air force had been knocked out, the Americans, whenever they stopped a forward push, would just settle down and relax.

That’s when baseball players drove the Germans almost nuts.

They, under terrible tension and in retreat, couldn’t do a thing but watch their American foes create baseball diamonds in front of them and put an umpire behind home plate. They couldn’t hear the “play ball,” but they could clearly see the men playing until darkness sent them off to sleep.

When asked if he ever went to baseball games after he became a U.S. citizen, the German soldier said he just couldn’t. It brought back too many memories of what his comrades in that war went through.

“My children love baseball,” he finally admitted, “but baseball games were hell to watch when I was young.”

I wonder now what that American staff sergeant will say many years from now when he looks back on what has become a new hell in Iraq today.

Charles M. Priebe Jr. lives in Mechanic Falls.

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