If You Survive Read online

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1987 by George D. Wilson

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  http://www.randomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-90339

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77525-2

  v3.1

  TO MY WIFE, FLORINE, AND OUR CHILDREN, DAVID, STEPHEN, KEVIN, KRISTIN AND JONATHAN

  Acknowledgment

  I gratefully acknowledge the support and encouragement of Howard Thurlow, formerly of the Cannon Company of the 22nd Infantry, often attached to the 2nd Battalion. His help typing and editing from my longhand was invaluable.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgment

  Map

  I. INDOCTRINATION

  II. SAINT-LÔ BREAKTHROUGH (First Day)

  III. SAINT-LÔ BREAKTHROUGH (Second Day)

  IV. SAINT-LÔ BREAKTHROUGH (Third Day)

  V. SAINT-LÔ BREAKTHROUGH (Fourth Day: The Massacre of Villebaudon Ridge)

  VI. THE CHASE

  VII. PARIS

  VIII. THE PURSUIT CONTINUES

  IX. SIEGFRIED LINE

  X. SIEGFRIED … AND MINES!

  XI. SLAUGHTER IN THE HÜRTGEN FOREST

  XII. REST FOR THE WEARY

  XIII. BATTLE OF THE BULGE

  XIV. OUT OF ACTION—AND IN PARIS

  XV. THE SCHNEE EIFEL—SECOND TIME AROUND

  XVI. EVACUATION

  I

  INDOCTRINATION

  Even though America was heavily engaged in World War II in the fall of 1942, I felt safe in enrolling in college because the Marines and the Navy had turned me down. I wore glasses. They were still being very selective, and anyone who wore glasses was an automatic reject. However, the Army was not the least bit disturbed by my slight visual impairment and on September 19, 1942, drafted me as a raw recruit—just a week before classes opened at Michigan State, where I had been awarded a football scholarship.

  A group of us were inducted at Fort Custer, Michigan, where we were issued uniforms and long-needled shots, sat through films on venereal disease, and took a lengthy IQ test. Two days later we boarded a train with blinds drawn and were on our way to parts unknown. Rumors as to our destination quickly began, but no one guessed correctly. After two days, the train finally stopped, and some of us sneaked a peek through the blinds to discover we were in Macon, Georgia.

  Camp Wheeler was to be my home for the next five months. The camp was a few miles outside Macon and, by a long coincidence, happened to be only about 135 miles from my birthplace in the hills of northern Georgia. We were immediately screened for assignment by sergeants who seemed to know all about us. I requested the Army Air Force but was denied. The sergeant informed me my basic training would be with a special battalion of men who were considered to have officer potential. At this point the Army really had very little knowledge of our abilities, except for whatever the IQ test was worth.

  For the next seven weeks we struggled through a basic infantry course, with the usual KP and guard duties, with lectures on fundamentals such as military courtesy, some weapons training and actual firing on the rifle range, bayonet drill, and hand-to-hand combat. Everything was very strange and new to me. I had never been away from home for more than a week and was totally ignorant of the Army. At first I didn’t know a corporal from a sergeant, and officers seemed like gods to me because everybody, including the sergeants, jumped to rigid attention when they appeared.

  For reasons quite unknown to me, I was picked immediately as an acting squad leader over twelve men. Possibly this was because of my athletic background or maybe because, to them, I appeared eager to learn how to be a soldier.

  The second half of basic was in communications. We were trained in the use of field phones, laying wire, using codes and code devices, and message center operation. The training was interesting and our lieutenant was an excellent instructor.

  Near the end of basic we were told we could apply for Officer Candidate School (OCS), and seventy-eight of the men in my company signed up. Then we found it was not quite as simple to get accepted as it at first appeared. We were required to go before a board of six officers chaired by a colonel. They really gave us the third degree. We were asked all sorts of questions, some very personal. Our military bearing and quickness of response seemed as important as the correctness of our answers. It seemed as though they deliberately tried to get us confused, and apparently in many cases they succeeded in doing so, for they eliminated sixty-one and passed only seventeen for admittance to OCS.

  At the end of basic training the seventeen of us from my company along with some others from the rest of the battalion were moved about a mile across camp to Noncommissioned Officers School. This was the final step before OCS. It was a very tough, intensive four-week course, and only five of us passed and were promoted to corpora! and made eligible for OCS.

  At last we were sent across the state to the Infantry School at Fort Bennning. For the next three months the training was most concentrated and intense. We worked day and night in both classroom and field. It was a damn good, rough, tough, cram course on weapons, tactics, map reading, close order drill, field maneuvers, and basic infantry training.

  Some of the men could not take the rugged physical program or the mental strain of the classes, and so they flunked out and were quietly transferred. Only two of my original group survived to get commissions. Somehow I made it, and on May 8, 1943, I was duly commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army of the United States. By Act of Congress we were now officers and gentlemen. Some called us “Ninety-Day Wonders.”

  My first assignment as an officer was to Camp Croft, South Carolina, as a basic training instructor. Then, only a month later, a group of us were picked out and dispatched to Camp Hood, Texas, to help start up a newly conceived seven-week crash course for the basic infantry training of college students. After this basic, they would be returned to college—and thus Uncle Sam would not call on the country’s future brains as cannon fodder, short of dire emergency.

  This experimental program never really got off the ground; only eight hundred men or so were trained in six whole months, by enough instructors to cadre an entire division of many thousands. Most of the time we instructors were bored silly and exhausted by the effort of trying to find something to occupy our time. Having no students, the instructors practiced instructing each other. After a while, even the brass gave up on the futile effort. So we played horseshoes, volleyball, and found similar pastimes for six months. My own training regiment did not receive a single college man to train. Finally, three days before Christmas in 1943, thirty of the officers from my regiment were sent to the Eighty-sixth Division, then on maneuvers in the swamps of Louisiana.

  We struggled through the mud and rain and ice of the swamps until February 1944, and learned very little—other than how to exist in such terrible conditions. The weather was worse than any I had ever been through in Michigan.

  Next we moved into nearby Camp Livingston, Louisiana, and resumed regular garrison training. The Army brass decided, however, that the Eighty-sixth Division was not fit for combat as a unit and began to break it up. Almost every day we received orders to ship out a few more men and officers as overseas replacements. It became quite a tough job choosing the men for the list, and each unit commander naturally tried to hang on to his best men. Finally, in April, 1944, my own turn came, and I was ordered to Camp Shanks, New York, with seven days leave at home en
route.

  At Camp Shanks we received all of our overseas shots, and a few days later we were on our way to England in a huge convoy of about one hundred ships, an awesome sight for this young man. After twelve days in the North Atlantic bucking through a tremendous storm that left most of us seasick—and a little jumpy from two submarine alerts during which our destroyer escorts dropped quite a few depth charges—we arrived safely at Liverpool, England, about April 20, 1944.

  The first stop was Camp Warminster, a British Army base camp near Bristol. The base was overflowing with American infantry replacements, officers and men bound for combat divisions to replace battle casualties. We at once began some very limited training, mostly to keep us busy. Weapons were carefully cleaned and inspected daily. We also played a lot of ping-pong, and I had the fun of pitching a little baseball.

  When D day—June 6, 1944—finally arrived, we watched its progress on a big operations map in the officers’ quarters. From this very distant, very safe position, it was hard to imagine the real fighting. Then, late that evening, we began to get a few of the wounded paratroopers and some who had landed in the Channel. They were from the Eighty-second Airborne, and we crowded around to hear their excited on-the-scene stories of the fighting. Many of them were on the way back to their units the very next day.

  Soon replacements were needed, and we were on our way to an assembly area near Plymouth. Security was very tight, and we could only learn that we would be leaving shortly for France. The next day as I looked into the anxious faces of the officers around me on board the Canadian Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) leaving the crowded harbor at Plymouth it struck me suddenly: This is it. We were headed directly into the war. Now, near the end of June 1944, our allies had slowly gained a foothold in Normandy, France.

  Underway, each of the officers aboard seemed to be quietly facing his own personal battle with reality. It still seems a foolish mistake to have had the entire load on our LCI be all officers. The loss of a boatload of junior-grade combat officers would make very big problems for the people tasked with the manning of combat units.

  Now the words of the port commander leapt back vividly. “You are going to Normandy as replacements.” This could only mean that the position each of us was being sent to fill had become vacant because the other officer was killed in action (KIA), wounded in action (WIA), missing in action (MIA), or a nonbattle casualty (NBC). All sorts of dismal thoughts chased one another across my mind.

  I wondered about my fiancée, Florine. How long before she would know I was at the front? Would I ever see her again and hold her in my arms? If I got wounded badly, would she still love me? Would I be able to support her? Somehow it seemed clear to me that I would make it.

  I was brought back to the present by the drone of the duty officer calling the roll. As I listened and watched each respond it was obvious we were a mixed lot. I did not recognize anyone. It probably didn’t matter, because we would all be sent to different units once ashore.

  As hunger began to gnaw at my empty stomach, it occurred to me that none of us had rations. Somehow we had been sent aboard without chow. Someone took our problem to the Canadian naval captain, who came to our rescue with some cans of split pea soup from his emergency rations, one can each. Each can held about two cups and was heated by a cylinder in the center filled with some chemical that burned. Instructions told us to punch two holes in the top of the can before igniting the fuel, otherwise the can could explode. The soup was delicious, and I’ve loved pea soup ever since.

  Someone was shouting, “Look at all the ships,” and we jumped up to see a glorious sight. Ships by the hundreds were everywhere ahead as we approached Normandy. We strained to see the armada. Huge balloons were straining at cables. They were supposed to keep enemy aircraft from flying too low. The harbor was busy as a beehive. Cargo nets were being loaded in waiting amphibious trucks, called ducks. A steady stream came out for a load and then headed back to shore. Vehicles like ants seemed to crawl all over the beaches and inland roads.

  We lurched forward as our LCI came to a grinding halt on the flat bottom. Gangplanks were lowered on each side of the bow, and we started single file down into the water. Holding our weapons high, we headed for shore. The water was up to my chin, and some of the shorter men had to be helped.

  The fighting for Utah beach had been light compared with Omaha beach. Of course, those who were wounded and died there would never agree that it had been an easy battle. I understand most of the credit for the success goes to General Roosevelt, son of President Teddy Roosevelt. We sure were grateful the beach had been secured.

  I’m sure much of the horrible results of that battle had been cleared away, and all the dead and wounded were gone. Still, the terrible scars of war seemed to shout at us. Burned-out vehicles, sunken landing craft, ships, tanks, guns, pillboxes lay twisted and still. It hardly seemed possible anyone could have survived, yet men had waded in and driven the Germans back, now some seven or eight miles inland in most places.

  We marched quickly inland to a replacement center near Sainte Mère Église. Our first instructions were to pair off and set up pup tents in an apple orchard nearby. We would stay there until assigned to our units. It was impossible to find out where we would be going or when. Most of us took a good look at the situation map, and it appeared the front was about three miles from us. We could clearly hear our artillery all night as a constant shelling seemed to be taking place. The concussion was close enough to shake our tents, and sleep was difficult.

  Sainte Mère Église was the small town made forever famous in the movie of D day. There the Eighty-second Airborne stubbornly fought its way back toward the coast to link up with the Fourth Infantry Division. Had I known the Fourth was to be my unit, perhaps I would have asked more about the battle there.

  Since we were not confined to camp, several of us took the opportunity to see some of the battle area nearby. Our noses and grapevine information led us to a burial site about a quarter of a mile away. The ghastly stories we had heard about the fierceness of the fighting were true. German war prisoners were digging up the partially decomposed bodies of their own dead—buried in neat rows in mass graves about three feet deep—for movement to a new location. Working with shovels and bare hands, the prisoners stuffed the corpses into mattress covers and piled them on trucks in rows, like cordwood. Some of the bodies were badly mangled and very difficult to pick up. Stern-faced men turned white, and many had to turn away to vomit at the sight and smell.

  The guard stated that several hundred American bodies had already been moved a few days before. Over three hundred Germans had been buried in the mass grave, but the two fields were being cleared to make way for a fighter plane airstrip.

  Near the graves were the wrecks of many gliders, some still hung up in trees, others smashed into hedgerows, all riddled with bullet holes. It’s a wonder to me that any of the glider troops survived or were able to fight once on the ground. I had tried to join the paratroops shortly after OCS. I was rejected because I wore glasses.

  We walked through a field that had been shelled by the Navy, probably with rockets. The holes were about four feet deep and six feet across. They covered a pattern about twenty feet apart over a couple of acres. It seemed impossible that anyone could have survived such a bombardment.

  We were pretty quiet as we made our way back to the tents. For me, the cruel realities of war came into vivid focus, and for the first of many times I felt the intestinal stirrings of fear.

  Finally, on July 12, orders came through. I was assigned to the Twenty-second Infantry Regiment of the Fourth Infantry Division. About a dozen of us climbed onto a two-and-a-half-ton truck and were driven through Carenten on our way to Service Company of the Twenty-second Infantry. Our first taste of shelling occurred as we crossed a small bridge near Carenten, but it screamed overhead and exploded about one hundred yards beyond us.

  Captain Hawkins, the commanding officer (CO) of Service Company, met us warmly. He
took us directly to headquarters of the Twenty-second Infantry nearby, somewhere in the swamps near Carenten.

  Colonel “Buck” Lanham was there to greet us. He was a small, wiry man who looked as tough as he was gruff. He wasted no time in scaring the hell out of us. He stated flatly that the German resistance was very stubborn, and our losses were extremely high. He explained how tough it was to cross a field with the Germans dug in behind every hedgerow. Machine gun crossfire made advance very difficult. “We are only able to gain a few hundred yards each day. As officers, I expect you to lead your men. Men will follow a leader, and I expect my platoon leaders to be right up front. Losses could be very high. Use every skill you possess. If you survive your first battle, I’ll promote you. Good luck.”

  After our brief indoctrination by Colonel Lanham, we were assigned at random to various battalions within the regiment. Five of us were ordered to follow our guide to Second Battalion Headquarters, then in regimental reserve roughly a quarter mile behind the front lines.

  Our guide was a corporal who was tired, hollow-eyed, and jittery. He acted like a cornered animal. Just watching his actions gave one the creeps as, bent low, he ducked and ran from one piece of cover to the next. We ran with him down farm lanes, between hedgerows. Some were sunken below ground level. We passed many empty foxholes dug along the banks. Some were partially covered with wood or metal torn from some farm building. Bodies of dead Germans were strewn along the way. They lay as they had fallen, in grotesque positions, glossy-eyed, cheeks sunken, mouths open. The awful odor of death was increased by the hot July sun. The guide said our dead had already been moved, and we were grateful.

  Second Battalion Headquarters was in a rather large field with most of the battalion dug in nearby. Headquarters was just a small ten-by-twelve tent set up under a tree near a hedgerow. Lieutenant Colonel Lum Edwards was in command. He greeted us briefly but made no speech. Captain Tom Harrison, the S-3, assigned us to companies. Lieutenant Piszarak and I were assigned to E Company. We became very good friends and served together from July until November, when he was killed in action. We had to go across the field to report to Captain Holcomb, commander of E Company.