If You Survive (7 page)

I don’t know what he found at the front, beyond complete demoralization and no great desire to go get the SOBs, but he quickly gained control. Soon I received orders to follow when he jumped off in the attack and to continue protecting the right flank. My first thought was “What the hell with?” The tanks had been moved up to support the attack at the front. There were only the two TDs, plus about a dozen riflemen—six from my original forty and a few stragglers.

I have often wondered if the new battalion CO knew the enemy had withdrawn and, if he did, just how he knew.
Was it simply luck? Anyway, it worked, and I was impressed.

Later on we stopped for the night in some fields not far from Tessy sur Ville, digging in along the hedges where we placed our TDs and tanks and other vehicles under the trees to hide them from aerial view.

As full darkness settled over us about 11
P.M
. we heard occasional German planes overhead. By now we could distinguish the characteristic sound of enemy planes. Our planes had a steady drone; theirs was more of a hesitant
put-put
.

As the enemy up there floated around looking for a target one of our trigger-happy gunners on a .50-caliber quad (four machine guns mounted to fire together from the back of a half-track) opened up. Soon other quads in his unit joined in, with the tracers streaming up into the night sky in a huge arch of ribbons. This cone of tracers didn’t touch the planes at all but did pinpoint our location very neatly. A few minutes later a solitary pathfinder plane drifted over us and dropped two brilliant parachute flares, lighting us up brightly, like a football field, so that the night bombers could see us easily.

As we looked up nervously through the flares to the sky above we clearly made out the dark shapes of the bombers, now directly overhead. Our gunners again opened up, shooting through the shredded tin foil the bombers were dropping to mess up our radar. The tracers looked to be way off target, and certainly no planes were hit.

It seemed those little parachute flares never would reach the ground, and we were nakedly helpless in their eerie glare. We were down on our hands and knees pressing against the earth, with mouths open—to reduce the effects of concussion—and fingers in our ears as the bombs whistled down.

As the whistling shriek of the free-falling bombs ended
just over the hedge we were utterly defenseless. We were in the bottom of an elevator shaft awaiting the crash of a runaway elevator cage. There was nowhere we could go.

A couple of five hundred-pound bombs hit just over the hedge, about thirty yards away, and I was knocked flat in the dirt. For an instant I was in the eye of a tornado with the air crushed from my lungs. My head was whirling and pounding, and I gasped for breath. I tried to stand up, but my legs sagged, and I collapsed. Suddenly it was over. After a short while most of my senses returned and I checked my men. They were shaken and frightened, as I had been, but no one was wounded.

A medical unit had the rotten luck to be in the field next to us, and they lost several ambulances and many of their men.

The rest of the night passed quietly, and for this we were immensely grateful.

Around noon the next day we were pulled out of the line. Our part in the Saint-Lô breakthrough was over. E Company was down to about twenty-seven men out of the original one hundred sixty-eight; only six of us survived from the original forty of our platoon. I was very lucky to have survived my first major battle.

We were told, officially, that we had accomplished our mission. Later the Twenty-second Infantry received the Presidential Unit Citation for its part in the Saint-Lo breakthrough. General Patton had been able to swing through the gate we had opened in the German line at Saint-Lô and began a big circling drive to capture a whole German army. Combat team A—made up of the Twenty-second Infantry and the Sixty-sixth Regiment of the Second Armored, also known as “Task Force Rose” after General Rose of the Second Armored Division—has done its job well.

Now a new phase of the war was possible. Our troops
were no longer confined to the small beachhead, stymied by crisscrossing walls of hedgerows. Now every unit was needed for a new role—pursuit of the Germans across France. We were ordered to rejoin the other two regiments of the Fourth Infantry Divison on the road to Saint Pois.

Somewhere en route we stopped for the night. I fell asleep, so exhausted that I was not aware of the heavy rain falling. It was close to dawn when I awoke, stiff and cold and wet, with about five inches of water in my foxhole.

Somehow our young bodies were able to endure such punishment.

T
he Saint-Lô breakthrough was completed by August Second and the enemy was occupied with Patton’s tanks, so we had time to stop and take on new officers and men.

Lieutenant Toles was our new commanding officer in E Company. Lieutenant Piszarak had returned after a head wound and resumed command of the first platoon. I had the second platoon, and Lieutenant Blume had the third platoon. A Lieutenant Lloyd was brought up to lead the weapons platoon.

Platoon Sergeant Reid was back with me, although I don’t know where he had been, and Sergeant Anders was returned from special patrol work. The newly minted Sergeant Phearson had survived and was still with us. We received enough replacements to bring the platoon back up to forty men. With the sergeants and about four other men, plus myself, we now had eight experienced men. All the rest were green recruits.

Meanwhile, Patton’s Third Army stormed through the gap and raced wildly in three different directions: westward
toward the great port city of Brest; in a northerly circle to help trap two German armies; and straight east to the Seine near Paris.

Our rest and replacement period was a short two days. We were moved along the route toward Saint Pois and assigned to clear up some pockets of German resistance and defend against possible penetration by the enemy.

One night, as we took up defensive positions along a ridge facing east toward no-man’s-land, I felt very vulnerable because our men had to dig in so far apart. I checked my platoon area several times during the night and found several errors the new men were making. One stands out as a major error to this day. I found one man sitting on top of a hedgerow with no cover around him. He stood out vividly long before I got near him. I showed him how to take advantage of a big tree and its shadow, which was only ten feet from his exposed position. I told him to think and thus avoid giving a Jerry an easy opportunity to kill him.

Our next objective was the village of Saint Pois. As we approached along the road, in an attempt to make the Jerries take cover and thus lose some of their advantage, our artillery began to lay down a barrage on both the village of Saint Pois and the ridge behind it. The infantry then started to move up. Our company was not in the lead this time, so we missed the fighting, but we did catch some incoming artillery. Also, one of our jeeps ran over a big antitank mine and was destroyed.

When we got into Saint Pois our company was ordered to go house-to-house on the right side of the road. We took only a few prisoners, for most of the Germans had withdrawn.

Much to the delight of our men, we did find quite a bit of hard cider. Because of impurities in the drinking water, native Frenchmen do not drink water unless it is boiled. Instead, they settle for wine or cider. After two weeks of
steady fighting, our men were glad enough to have a taste of it. The cider barrels we came across were used as reservoirs, lying on their sides. They measured eight feet in height and twelve feet in length and almost filled the small barn that stored them.

My platoon had one casualty in Saint Pois, Sergeant James “Chick” Reid, who was hit in the upper thigh by a rifle bullet. Sergeant Otha Anders moved up to platoon sergeant.

We continued our advance in the wake of Patton’s Third Army. Near Mortain, the Germans were making a desperate attempt to break our line behind Patton’s tanks and cut his supply lines. Here they ran into the Thirtieth Infantry Division, which at one point was using its artillery like rifles, firing low-level point-blank shots at German tanks and infantry.

Artillery fired in a direct line instead of a long arc is very effective. When the enemy is close enough to fire in this manner the gunners can usually see the targets, and this allows them to fire directly into the mass or at tanks. All that shrapnel really tears up the enemy. Of course, it also gives the Germans a good chance to knock out your guns—and their crews as well, if they can get in close enough. The enemy can see the artillery and direct all kinds of fire on the guns. It takes a lot of guts for the artillery crew to man their pieces when in such exposed positions. The exposure often requires the men to fight like infantry. They are better suited for long-range action, but that time it worked for us. The combined infantry and artillery fire was too much for the Germans, and they withdrew with many casualties.

During the German attacks on the Thirtieth Division, my platoon was sent out to support a couple of antitank guns at a road block. The officer who came out to relay the order, told me very little. As we were in enemy territory,
I thought I should know more about the road block, such as its exact location, how long we might be gone, and how much food and ammunition to take along. He refused to tell me anything except to get moving. I obeyed reluctantly. I could smell alcohol on the officer’s breath, and I resented having to take orders from someone even slightly drunk.

The roadblock assignment turned out to be an easy one, for no enemy appeared. The desperate German counterattack at Mortain had failed, but we were held in the area a few more days before we began a series of shuttle movements by truck toward the Seine River. With our new orders—“Keep your eyes open, but keep moving”—the chase was in full swing. Our infantry rode trucks through Alençon and Chartres, stopping only to refuel or to clear out pockets of the enemy.

The trucks were from service companies, and each had two black drivers. As though we didn’t have enough problems on our hands, yet another one, albeit minor enough, cropped up. The drivers’ orders were for both of them to ride in the cab; our orders were for either an officer or a sergeant to ride up front to make sure the trucks did not get lost. The drivers were very upset by our orders, and some refused to obey. Some officers had to pull a gun to settle the conflict in orders. I had no problem with my drivers, though they did grumble.

By now the bulk of the German armies was trapped by the combined Allied armies. British and Canadian armies were crushing down from the north to meet two American armies driving up from the south. This maneuver became known as the Falaise Gap. Worst of all for the Germans caught in this pocket must have been the annihilating bombing and strafing by Allied planes, then in complete control of the skies. Thousands of Germans nonetheless made their escape toward the Seine. The dead Germans
were literally stacked by the hundreds—in some places two and three feet deep. It was a real massacre. All of the roads for miles were strewn with German corpses and littered with hundreds of smoking or burning tanks, trucks, and wagons. The debris of the fleeing Germans was everywhere. Hulks of burned-out tanks, trucks, half-tracks, and self-propelled and towed guns were dramatic proof of the devastating power of airplanes. My feeling of utter helplessness during the brief bombing a few nights earlier made me realize what must have been absolute terror and total panic for the German soldier under the deluge of destruction from our Air Force.

Large foxholes had been dug by the enemy all along the road, ready for instant use. The strafing and bombing planes gave the retreating Germans no rest. The ability of German supply forces to get food and ammunition to their armies had been obliterated. I imagine the German truck drivers were always looking for the next foxhole they might dive into if strafed.

The combination of our devastating ground tactics and our superior air forces had almost totally destroyed two of Germany’s best armies in less than a month.

I wonder if the Air Force ever received enough credit for its awesomely effective job. One can only speculate how many infantry lives the Air Force saved. For all that, I am willing to admit that I always resented the extra pay and comfortable living of the Air Force boys. I am now prepared to declare my deepest, most profound appreciation for the work they did and for the incredible risks they took every time they were in the air. We were in a war that was coming at us from all sides, from the front, from the rear, from the flank—from the ground up, if we happened to step on a mine. Or from the air from bombs, strafing, and artillery of all sorts. Our rest was in a foxhole with a helmet for a pillow. The foxhole was considered our furnished
quarters, so the Army did not allow us our forty dollars, a month quarters allowance. Such is the life of the infantry.

We rode big six-by-six trucks day and night. After dark the truck column was blacked out except for cat’s-eye slits in their lights, which were so dim the weary drivers could hardly make out the truck ahead. Combat military police were at some of the road junctions directing traffic.

On one of the quick turns my driver’s reactions were too slow, and we careened into the ditch, breaking the front left spring and tearing the front axle loose. When the last of the convoy wheeled past, we found ourselves all alone in a private no-man’s-land. I posted guards, and the rest of us tried to get some sleep. The driver crawled under the truck, but he was too scared sleep.

Around sunup a big maintenance truck hooked onto us and dragged us to an orchard where a maintenance crew began repairs. We were ready to roll again at noon, and the crew captain let me study his map for the route the Fourth Infantry Division had taken. I made some notes, and we headed out by ourselves. I told our driver we had to catch the division before dark or we’d be camping out again by ourselves.