If You Survive Read online

  It was a night of almost total blackness, by far the darkest I had ever experienced. The thick, tall pines were by themselves enough to cut off reflected light, and above them was absolutely nothing. The sky was completely overcast, and we couldn’t even see our hands when we waved them before our eyes. The only way we could stay on the dirt road was to walk in the deep tire ruts. Captain Newcomb wondered aloud how I was ever going to lead a patrol under such conditions.

  We knew we had arrived at battalion headquarters when we heard the metallic click of a safety going off a rifle, followed by a frightened voice’s demand for the password. The guard then led us to Colonel Walker’s tent, a few yards off the road among some thick pines.

  As soon as we got beyond the blackout curtains we had to shield our eyes against the bright glow of the Coleman gas lamp. Gathered around Colonel Walker were his staff officers: Major Samuelson, Captain Tom Harrison, Captain Kerr, and Lieutenant Simon. The colonel came quickly to the point. He told us that division wanted to know more about the enemy, and so they needed a fresh prisoner. He therefore had changed my reconnaissance patrol to a combat patrol.

  I was to take about twenty men and move into the town of Miescheid astride the Siegfried to our front. My mission was to engage the Germans in a fight—using trench knives, bayonets, and grenades. We were to inflict as much damage as possible, then quickly take a prisoner and get out.

  Our purpose was to determine enemy strength and, through a prisoner, find out what kind of an outfit we were facing. Colonel Walker made it clear that taking a prisoner was of utmost urgency.

  I was shocked at the idea of leading twenty men into a black abyss and was well aware that hand-to-hand combat was about the last thing they wanted to do. On the other hand, I knew Colonel Walker would accept no excuses. I did venture to ask him, however, if he was aware that it would be difficult to find more than two bayonets in the whole company and very few more trench knives.

  Angrily, the colonel turned to Simon, the supply officer (S-4), and demanded the reason for the shortage. Simon replied that when the veterans got wounded they either took their weapons with them or left them in the field. New replacement troops were not coming up with bayonets or trench knives, and his own requisitions were being scratched.

  Colonel Walker at once ordered a full report from his company commanders on the number of bayonets and trench knives on hand. Then he told me I was to round up all the weapons I could from E Company and proceed as ordered.

  Captain Newcomb and I were very quiet as we stumbled blindly along the ruts heading back to the company. We decided it would be useless to take only volunteers; there wouldn’t be any. The captain suggested I immediately call out my first two squads, of twelve men each, ready to move out on patrol.

  None of the men were more than fifty yards from my foxhole, but it still took over a half hour for them to assemble their gear and find their way to me in the total darkness.

  I carefully explained our mission to the men sitting on the ground around me. Immediately a voice came out of the blackness: “Lieutenant, what are the consequences if I refuse to go on this patrol?”

  Before I could answer, another spoke up: “I don’t give a damn what the consequences are. I’m not going!”

  I quickly ordered a stop to all such talk, saying that I knew who the complainers were (I did), and that I had better not hear any more from them. I stated very firmly, in a tone no one could mistake, that I didn’t like the orders either, but that I had been ordered to lead them on this damned patrol, and that we were all going, like it or not.

  That was the one time any man ever dared question my orders. I was glad I had acted quickly to stop the discussion before it got out of control. It had been close to becoming a serious problem! The fear of those damned mines was sure to be half the trouble.

  No one uttered a peep after that, and I went ahead with the patrol orders. We agreed on a system of sound signals, making use of a pocket comb, and a few minutes later we started out.

  Never, I think, was there a combat patrol like that. The only way I could control twenty men I could not see was by deploying them in a long, snaking single file. Each man groped around until he had hold of the belt of another man, and then I felt my way to the front of the column. Somehow I was able to make out the needle of my compass, and I slowly drew the line ahead as I stumbled over the uneven ground.

  We bumped into trees, bushes slapped us in the face, and we tripped over roots. Once someone fell flat, losing his hold on the belt in front; for a few minutes we had two lines. I stopped my section and quietly groped back to look for the other line. We found one another through the sounds of our comb signals, and soon we were all one line again. I was so busy, I never gave a thought to the mines.

  Several times I had to stop and go back along the whole line to warn each man to be quiet. Then a new problem developed. Someone started to cough and it quickly spread along the line. I bawled the men out because of the danger their noise put us in, but I couldn’t see them in the blackness, and it all seemed so futile.

  By the time we reached the edge of the woods and came to the open fields, I realized my orders were impossible and decided to salvage what I could of the asinine patrol. First I went back to my original mission, a reconnaissance patrol rather than a combat one, and I selected five men who had not been rebellious coughers. I was sure I could control that many, and from then on we would be out in the open and extremely vulnerable.

  Once we were out of the thick pine forest we could make out one another’s shapes as far as four or five feet away. Leaving the other men with orders to stay put, our small patrol set out across the field in diamond formation, with one man slightly ahead of me in the lead.

  It wasn’t far across the fields, and in a few minutes we saw the dark outlines of buildings in Miescheid. Normally a tiny crossroads settlement of innocent farmhouses, it now sat atop the Siegfried Line, with formidable rows of dragons’-teeth tank traps in front.

  We did not know what sort of ambush we might be walking into, and we were scared as hell. We had to force ourselves to move from one shadowy building to the next in the deep blackness. We couldn’t even make out where the windows were, and we listened carefully for any sound of the enemy. We even tossed pebbles to attract some response but we got nothing at all.

  After a while I was satisfied we had done all we could, so we withdrew quietly back to the woods, picked up the others, and returned to the company. I told Captain Newcomb exactly what I had done and why, and he told me not to worry about it.

  “Get some sleep,” he said. “You’ve earned it. I’ll give the whole story to Colonel Walker.”

  I crawled into my foxhole and tried for sleep but was too keyed up. The patrol had been total frustration from the very beginning, the only success being that I had brought the men back alive. I hoped Colonel Walker would not insist on my trying it all over again.

  Next morning I rehashed it all with Captain Newcomb, and I told him I expected to catch the devil from Colonel Walker, but the colonel never mentioned it at all. Probably he had been out later and realized what a hopeless night it was to go anywhere.

  Later that morning a six-man patrol led by a lieutenant from battalion headed through the woods toward the old farmhouse at its edge. They were in diamond formation, and their route was about one hundred yards to the left of ours the night before.

  A few minutes after they had passed us we heard a rifle shot, followed shortly by several thumping explosions. Then someone yelling for a medic. My platoon medic and I at once headed toward the sounds, and some of my men followed.

  When we got close, the lieutenant yelled at us to stay back. Mines! He said they would all try to crawl back to us. It seems the point man had been shot, and the other five had gone forward to help. All five stepped on mines and lost limbs. The lead man was dead, shot by a sniper.

  The young lieutenant kept his cool. He lay where he fell and carefully directed each man to crawl out of
mine field back along the paths they had taken. Each man somehow managed to get out on hands and knees, dragging his shattered stump.

  It was horribly gruesome. Five young men lying there with mutilated legs. Thank God for the initial numbness that gave us a chance to help them before the pain hit. It took quite a while to get them bandaged and sent on their way, even though we had help right away.

  We taped off the entire area and marked it “MINES” as the last man, the lieutenant, was evacuated. We did not attempt to get the dead scout. Certainly there was no use in risking men for one already gone. I have often wondered who that brave young lieutenant was and how he and his men made out.

  How lucky we were to have missed all the mines! But I was weak and shaky for many hours afterward just thinking about how close we had come to them. It would have been even worse in our case, for we would have been helpless in the total blackness the night before.

  * * *

  One day we heard the pillboxes to our front were going to be bombed by our P-47 fighter-bombers. To get a better view of the dive bombing, less than a half mile from our area, some of us walked through the woods and the mines to the old farmhouse we had found on our night patrol.

  We climbed up the back side and lay with just our heads above the roofline. Grandstand seats on the fifty-yard line. It was a tremendous show. We watched spellbound as the P-47s came over at ten thousand feet and then, one by one, tipped their wings and dived straight down at the pillboxes.

  The drone of the planes’ engines became a thunderous roar as they sped earthward. My heart seemed to stop, and I held my breath waiting for them to pull up out of the dives.

  When it seemed suicidally late they released their bombs and somehow managed to level off just a few hundred feet from the ground. The bombs hit smack on top of the seven-foot-thick concrete-and-steel pillboxes.

  From our angle, we could see no damage at all. No roofs were caved in, no huge cracks appeared. Probably the Jerries had hellish headaches from concussion, but nothing was visible. All the great show did was raise dust.

  Later in the war we heard the Army had developed a special 155mm shell for our Long Tom artillery. This shell was to be fired like a rifle bullet, point-blank into the pillbox, and was designed to penetrate before exploding. Unfortunately, they weren’t around for us to use.

  The next day we were moved back about a mile into reserve. While in this area, three of us went deer hunting in the woods to our rear. One of the men got a deer, and the cooks gave us a nice venison dinner.

  While out hunting, I saw my first buzz bomb. I had heard a lot of them go over, and at night we could see the balls of fire shooting from their tails, but none of the men with me had ever seen one. The unmanned missiles traveled so fast that by the time the roar of their motors directly overhead reached us, the buzz bombs were a half mile beyond. I just happened to be looking out across a valley and spotted one leaving the area. It looked like a long, sleek plane with stubby wings.

  A few minutes later our deer hunting ended abruptly when we ran into a German patrol larger than our hunting party. We fired a few rounds to scare them off and made a hasty retreat.

  All my patrols of the past weeks had apparently impressed someone. Lieutenant Colonel Walker transferred me back to battalion headquarters and promoted me to the job of Battalion Intelligence Officer (S-2). I was now responsible for getting all possible information about the enemy.

  Finding out enemy strengths and weaknesses, his gun emplacements, mine fields, recent changes in his defenses, was not a desk job. We had to dig up this intelligence ourselves, and the only firsthand source was patrolling.

  I was not surprised, therefore, when Colonel Walker told me my first job was to capture a German soldier. I was to send out patrols day and night—and get a prisoner, no matter what. We had to find out what kind of unit was facing us. The colonel told me that division demanded the capture of a prisoner as our top priority.

  He also said I could commandeer anyone in the battalion. In addition, I was in charge of an all-volunteer platoon that was used only for special patrolling. The men of the special platoon were expertly trained, and their patrols were led by an excellent staff sergeant.

  Colonel Walker mentioned Gallagher of G Company as a top man. I had heard of “Gal” but had never met him.

  The Colonel repeated that he must have a prisoner. Nothing short of success would be accepted. Conspicuously absent from his orders were suggestions on just how to get the job done. He made it clear that that was up to me.

  At first I was stumped. At least I knew I couldn’t sit and wait for a German to walk in and surrender, so I had to go out and find one. To get myself started, I studied the map diligently. This led absolutely nowhere, for I had used the map many times before and found nothing new in it now. Then I was hit by an inspiration.

  It suddenly struck me that the German commander should be concerned with the routes we might take when we launched our inevitable attack. So how would he look at the map? I put myself on the other side of the map to try to get his viewpoint, asking myself which routes would be most likely for the Americans.

  I examined wooded cover, natural draws, fence rows, buildings, open fields, roads, and any other terrain features. Several natural approach routes offered good cover, and the shortest one looked to be the best bet, since it would give the Americans the least exposure. This approach would require us to go over two hundred yards of more or less open ground to reach the head of a draw that led close into the German lines.

  If the German commander read the map the way I did, then it seemed logical he would have an outpost at the edge of this draw nearest us. To prevent myself from jumping to conclusions, I carefully studied the other routes. In the end, I came back to the shortest one and also decided the Germans probably would have plenty of mines in front of the outpost. Also, I assumed, the commander would have at least one machine gun in the outpost.

  By now I was planning as though this German position really existed, and I figured it would have to be taken by surprise at night with a large enough force to do it quickly. Most importantly, I needed an experienced man to lead this expedition.

  The best man available was First Lieutenant Gallagher, who was summoned to battalion headquarters. He was given an outline of his mission and an explanation as to why I had chosen that spot. He saw the logic, and we began to make final plans. We quickly agreed on limiting the force to one squad armed only with rifles and grenades. We wanted the men to be able to move freely, and Gallagher felt he could use his twelve best men and get the job done quickly.

  We discussed enemy defenses and known mine fields. Both of us felt the ground immediately in front of the outpost probably would be mined, and therefore we decided the approach should be made from the flank, even though the route was longer. Gallagher hoped it might be easier to surprise the Germans that way.

  We then estimated the time for getting out and back and allowed a half hour safety margin. Timing was crucial; since quite a bit of the route was open farmland we couldn’t afford to get caught out there in daylight.

  The one-way distance from Gallagher’s G Company to the outpost was almost a mile. Most of the trip would be on the road in the woods, which led to open fields, and much of the last two hundred yards would have to be crawled, even at night.

  We agreed Gallagher should start at 2:00 A.M.and begin his return trip no later than 5:00 A.M. That should get him back in the woods before daylight. We estimated the German outpost would have six to ten men, and Gallagher was confident he could take them if he and his twelve men could achieve surprise.

  Gallagher now returned to G Company to work out the details of selecting his men, briefing them on the mission, and working out signals and the exact plan of attack. Then they all tried to get some rest before the guard woke them at 1:30 A.M.

  The night was clear with some stars and occasional clouds. Fortunately there was no moon. Gallagher had memorized the map, and he led his men right
to the spot we had marked as the outpost, without being detected. They could make out the dim outline of a machine gun emplacement and were just able to make out a German sentry sitting against a tree facing his front.

  Crawling forward very gingerly, Gallagher carefully positioned his men alongside the outpost. They came across a field-telephone wire and cut it, and then they waited patiently for cloud cover to move in even closer.

  Gallagher then gave the signal to throw grenades and break into the outpost. The surprise was complete, but even then the Germans fought back until they realized the hopelessness of their situation and quickly surrendered.

  The entire outpost of six men and a machine gun was captured, and Gallagher lost no time in disarming them and heading for home. As they moved out he made the Germans lead the way. Two of the wounded Germans were supported by their comrades.

  In the darkness the prisonors didn’t recognize their own mine fields, and suddenly there was a tremendous blast a few yards in front. One of the Germans had stepped on a mine and had his foot blown off. Gallagher allowed the Germans to give him quick first aid and then had them pick up the wounded man and carry him along.

  Time was getting dangerously short, and carrying the casualty slowed the patrol down, but there was nothing else to do. Gallagher found out that the German corporal spoke English, and so he told him that if the Germans led them into any more mine fields he would shoot them all. There were no more mines after that, and the whole patrol made it back without the loss of a man.

  I was delighted with our success on this first mission and told Gallagher what a terrific job he and his men had done. Colonel Walker thanked both of us for a job well done and said he would recommend Gallagher for a medal. I don’t know if he ever received it. Sweating out someone else’s patrol was a strange experience for me.