If You Survive Page 4
At this point the rest of us were ordered to fall back one hundred yards to another orchard and take cover with the remaining tanks. The captain thought we were too much of a target and would attract shelling up where we were.
So we watched from a distance as the ambulance driver and the crippled medic tried to load the wounded tank men onto stretchers and then into the ambulance. The painful wound in the side prevented our heroic medic from bending much or lifting; he couldn’t help the driver, and so they had to call out for aid. The tank captain asked for volunteers, and four of my riflemen went right out.
The four of them worked as a team and quickly loaded the first wounded man into the ambulance. They were grouped around the next man, about to lift his stretcher, when a mortar shell—which came down vertically without a sound—exploded with a bright flash and sharp crack right on the stretcher. The wounded man was blown to bits; he never knew a thing. Our four volunteers were all hit badly, though they did manage to struggle aboard the ambulance with the driver’s help. Our medic was killed.
Later, when I got the chance, I wrote up the tank sergeant for a Silver Star and requested a posthumous one for the valiant medic. My four wounded volunteers were each put in for a Bronze Star. It seemed so terribly little to do for them.
I happened to exchange glances with the tank captain, a really huge man, and then quickly looked away. He was crying. My own emotions weren’t any too strong. It sure was tough to lose good men, and you never can get used to it.
After the ambulance pulled away, we went right on through the apple orchard and by this time found no more enemy troops. On the way back we heard a moan coming from one of the farmhouses near the edge of town and found a badly wounded young German soldier lying on a pile of blood-soaked bedding in the middle of the bare floor. It seems one of our planes had strafed his unit the day before, and a fifty-caliber machine gun bullet had entered the top of his right shoulder and gone out under his arm after puncturing a lung.
Air sucked through a large hole in his side each time he took a breath. Judging from the amount of blood caked on the bedding and on him, I didn’t see how he could still be alive. I covered his wounds to try to stop the air from sucking in too much dirt, and our ambulance team took him to the rear. They thought he would pull through, but I never heard any more about him. We hoped our wounded might get the same kind of humane treatment from the Germans.
With Le Mesnil Herman secure, we dug in for the night along the road on the southeast side of town. The Germans were watching us, of course, the whole time, and we soon received some very concentrated shelling. This was my personal introduction to the famous German 88mm artillery piece. The shells traveled faster than sound, hitting the ground all around us before we heard their incoming whistle.
This time we were very lucky, simply because a great many shells did not explode. Later we learned the French Resistance had been sabotaging 88mm shells. I counted eight duds sticking in the ground within thirty yards of my foxhole. So thank you, Mr. Frenchman.
That night, as usual, I went around a couple of times to check my men and found one asleep on guard. When on the actual front we always kept half the men on guard at all time, following the buddy system—one man on guard while his buddy slept. I really gave the soldier hell, trying my best to scare the life out of him. He assured and reassured me it never would happen again, so I let him off. Perhaps some may say I should have court-martialed him, but we all were on our last legs, and I felt he deserved another chance. As it turned out, he later proved himself a good soldier, a man I could always count upon.
As my second day of combat came to a close I found my casualty list very high. Of my original forty men, three had been killed in my presence and fifteen others were wounded, although this last was optimistic in that it included the eight men on the burning tank.
Totally exhausted by two endless days of fighting, I quickly fell asleep in the shallow foxhole I had managed to scoop out. It was about eighteen inches deep and barely wide enough and long enough to lie in. The ground was hard and damp, and we didn’t have a blanket, so we just lay down with our clothes on and used our helmets for pillows. Only a man completely done in could manage to sleep like that.
Our combat fatigues were chemically impregnated to keep out enemy gas, but they also kept in all the July heat and body odors. Fortunately, we were in the open air and rather busy, for we were becoming a bit fragrant. It was a good thirty days before we got a change of clothes, and what a relief! The Army Engineers set up hot showers in the open fields, and they were really great, but they never had them very close to the front.
Now, at the end of the second day of a great drive, we were a solid six miles deep into enemy territory. We had no idea what units behind us might be doing, but our great hope was that General Patton’s army might have started through the gap we had opened.
IV
SAINT-LÔ BREAKTHROUGH
(Third Day)
After an unexpectedly quiet night at Le Mesnil Herman, we climbed aboard the tanks again and moved toward the rear over the very same road we had fought along coming into town the day before. At the first crossroad we turned eastward toward some high ground. This maneuver puzzled me, as did most of our other movements during the day, but frontline junior officers rarely knew the picture beyond their own necessarily small operations maps.
We came to some farm buildings off to our left, and my platoon was ordered to go out there and search them. We found no Germans but did come across something interesting. We heard a wireless operator sending a message. The dit-dot of his signals carried loud and clear all over the farmyard. In the middle of the yard was a huge old dry well, and we easily traced the sound to there. I carefully peeked in but could see nothing in the dark depths, even though the sound now almost jumped at me.
I was not about to go blindly down that well or send anyone else, and since we had to move on quickly we sent a message of our own. We dropped a grenade down the shaft. That ended all transmissions, though we had to rejoin our unit and never got a chance to check out the wireless gear.
A short time later, as we got closer to the ridgeline ahead, we got off the tanks and went into positions along a hedgerow on the right side of the road. We waited there until the rest of the company caught up to us. I don’t know what happened to Captain Holcomb, but Lieutenant Tawes appeared to be in command of the company.
My platoon went through the first hedgerow and into an open field beyond, with our tanks all around us. One of the tank captains was standing up in his turret looking to our right front through his field glasses when a German high-explosive (HE) shell whipped in and exploded just below the turret. The captain was killed instantly, and all of the tanks pulled back through the hedgerow to reorganize.
The situation was now thoroughly confused, so we also went back to the hedge and awaited orders. During this interlude we had our first psychiatric case, when one of my men lost control completely. His body began to shake violently, and he broke into loud sobs.
This was a genuine medical emergency and I just did not know how to cope with it, but realizing its frightening effect on the rest of the men, I had to do something quickly. So I simply turned the man over to the medic and told him to evacuate him immediately.
It was too late, however, to keep the fear from spreading. My men looked sick, and they wouldn’t look me in the eye. In a little while we were ordered to try to cross the field again but this time without the use of tanks. Not one of the men would volunteer to go out in front as the lead scout.
I had to do something at once to get my men moving, so I stood in front of Private Phearson, a soldier I had noted before, and told him I’d promote him to sergeant on the spot if he’d lead one half of the platoon while I led the other. At this point we were down to half strength, nineteen out of the original forty, with no sergeants at all. I don’t know why Sergeant Reid was gone. He was back with us a few days later, and was wounded at Saint Pois. Sergeant Anders w
as on special patrol duty at Battalion. He also rejoined the platoon before Saint Pois.
The private had no desire to take the lead, and he certainly didn’t care about being a sergeant, but he finally agreed. So my new Sergeant Phearson took the lead on the left, close to a neighboring unit, and I took the right flank, which was completely open.
We ventured out across the field in two columns about one hundred yards apart, with no man directly behind another and with ten yards between men. As we crossed the open field and I came to within ten yards of the next hedgerow a German popped his head up, took a quick look, and ducked.
I instantly hit the ground, quickly threw a grenade over the hedge, and then got up and ran forward to dive behind the base of the hedge for cover. My men quickly joined me on each side, and we all threw a few more grenades for good measure. Then I took a very cautious peek through the hedge and saw an apple orchard about fifty yards wide and three hundred yards long. There were several pieces of German equipment on the ground nearby and in among the apple trees, but no other sign of enemy soldiers.
At this time Lieutenant Tawes came running up and, without knowing the situation before me, told me to get my men over the hedge and get on with the attack. I couldn’t understand the great hurry; we had been there only a few minutes, and since we knew the Germans were close, I wanted to check around a little. I just didn’t feel safe going into that orchard. About thirty yards to my left was a gate through the hedge into the field just to the left of the orchard, and I asked if we could try that way. He agreed, saying, “Get moving right away.”
So we went quickly through the gate and moved ahead, staying close to the hedge that bordered the left side of the orchard. It was a good thing we did, because the Germans had moved to the parallel hedge opposite us across the orchard and would have hit us from the side had we gone right on through from where we’d thrown the grenades.
They fired at us with rifles and threw some potato masher grenades (grenades with handles about eight inches long to give leverage to the throw). The small depression behind the hedge gave us cover from the rifle fire, and most of their grenades fell in the orchard or struck tree limbs and never reached us. Of course, we would have been easy targets if we had gone into the orchard.
No one was hurt, so we kept on moving along the hedge toward the next cross hedgerow in front. When I looked through this next hedge I could see some farm buildings about three hundred yards ahead and, about a mile farther, another small town—probably Moyen.
At this far point in our advance, we were pulled back abruptly. I never did understand why, since the few enemy I could detect ahead did not seem capable of stopping us.
We mounted the tanks and went back along the same road we’d advanced along earlier, but when we reached Le Mesnil Herman we kept right on going a good four miles to the ruins of the small villege Villebaudon, which had been torn apart by a savage battle. Knocked-out tanks, German and American, lay all over the place, and some were still burning. Houses had walls knocked down, and furniture spilled out. Many homes were totally destroyed.
Perhaps we had been intended for reinforcements, but by the time we arrived the battle was over. I can’t say I was disappointed.
It was getting late in the day, so we were ordered to set up our defensive positions on the edge of town and spent the next few hours digging our two-man foxholes. Mine was next to a knocked-out Sherman tank. The night was blessedly quiet, without any action in our sector.
As I lay in my foxhole the unexpected calm gave me time to mull over some impressions of combat. At first glance the Army’s infantry training had been very thorough and practical, yet now that I had some actual battle experience I had come across some serious gaps in the training. Three incidents during the day had caught me without warning or preparation.
First was the fact that while training was based on leading a full-strength unit, in actual combat I found myself at about half strength, or less, much of the time. This makes a big difference in tactics, and I was forced to experiment as I went along—and this could have been tragic. Even a little training in understrength deployment would have helped.
Two other items I would have liked to have been at least introduced to in advance were how to recognize the onset of mental breakdown and what to do about it and how to replace leaders. My on-the-spot lessons showed me that seeing it happen is much different than simply hearing about it. I was convinced that all soldiers have a physical and emotional limit. The private who stepped in at once as sergeant made me wonder how many others might be able to handle a leader’s job if they got the chance or were forced into it.
My third day was now over, and I found we still had nineteen men left of the original forty, the combat fatigue case being my only loss of the day. Nothing in this world could induce me to go through even a small part of it again, but I think I learned something about myself and about other people.
V
SAINT-LÔ BREAKTHROUGH
(Fourth Day: The Massacre of Villebaudon Ridge)
Our battalion was ordered to clear the Germans off a high ridge several miles long running parallel to the Villebaudon-Tessy sur Vire road. Other units attached to us, and thus making a combat force, were a company of seventeen Sherman tanks, each with two .30-caliber machine guns and a 75mm (or three-inch) gun. Supporting us were a platoon of tank destroyers with .50-caliber machine gun and 90mm gun, plus artillery and mortars, and a cannon company with four 105mm howitzers.
Fortunately for our peace of mind, we had no inkling this routine assignment would turn out to be one of the most disastrous of the entire war. By nightfall, nine of our seventeen tanks would be demolished, and the infantry would be almost wiped out.
Our ruination was the famous German 88, the incredible 88mm artillery piece. Its power was awesome. A direct hit did not bounce off the sloping four-inch solid steel armor plate front of a Sherman tank; it went clear through and out the back. I saw smoking tanks ripped through from front to back by a single armor-piercing 88. Rarely did any of the crew survive, for along with the shell itself were the ricocheting chunks of tank metal it tore off, not to mention the inevitable concussion and internal bleeding. Fires also made it difficult to rescue the wounded as shells inside exploded from the heat. Tanks were often deathtraps for the crew.
Rifle companies F and G led off to the right of the road, probing cautiously toward the top of the ridge. The road had a gradual upward slope for about five hundred yards. E Company, minus my platoon, and H Company followed the two lead companies. My platoon trailed the two lead companies, holding about one hundred yards to their right rear as protection against a possible flank attack.
Suddenly the Germans opened up on the forward rifle companies with rifles, machine guns, mortars, and artillery. The exposed infantry instantly hit the ground and dove for any cover available, returning the fire as soon as they got into position. Our artillery was getting in quite a few rounds also as we could hear it going out over our heads.
The calm hillside exploded into a full-scale battle. Quick pinpoint flashes of small-arms fire blinked along the bottom of the hedges. The sudden bright flash of bursting shells flowered among the dark green helmeted shapes of the infantry. Worst of all on the nerves was the endless pounding of the noise, the thundering blasts of artillery, and the angry staccato of machine guns.
The Germans were close on our right flank, and they were firing just as hard as those on the battalion front. Apparently they had been pushed aside by the battalion’s advance, and they stayed out there and let us parade across their front as though it were a shooting gallery.
I moved my platoon out to the right behind a thick hedge, along with five tanks and two tank destroyers spaced out alongside my men. We opened fire on the Germans some two hundred yards away across the flat top of the ridge. They did not let up, but at least we were giving them plenty to keep them busy. Our concentrated fire should have been enough to drive them off the ridge, but one of those sorry accid
ents of fate turned the tide against us, almost wiping us out. Suddenly we were caught between two fires—the Germans to our front and our own efficient artillery to the rear.
It seems one of the prearranged signals with our artillery backfired. Red smoke was a signal for our artillery to open fire on the smoke. As luck would have it, someone dropped red smoke right on our position. Before we could move we began to catch hell from our artillery as well as the Germans.
Artillery and mortar shells were dropping on us from all sides, and we had no choice but to dive for cover. Some crawled under the nearest hedge, while others tried to get close to or under tanks to use them as shields.
Few things are as terrifying as the target area of an artillery barrage. You cannot think, cannot talk, and there is no place to go. You must fight your instincts to get up and run. All you can do is hang on and hope the shells will miss you or the barrage will end.
Tanks and tank destroyers were the exception. They had to move out of there. The tanks’ overhead hatches had to be closed against the artillery, and that practically blinded the drivers. All they could see through the driver’s slits was a narrow horizontal strip directly to the front. There was no view at all of the ground close in front of the tank.
The withdrawing tanks thus could not see some of the men on the ground, and the men, because of the overpowering din of the explosions, could not hear the tanks coming. Two of my men were crushed by the maneuvering tanks. I told myself they were already dead from the shelling.
Another of the men on the ground next to me was killed instantly by a mortar shell that landed on his back. His buddy and I were splattered with flesh and blood but were not touched by shrapnel. His body must have absorbed the shell.