134th Infantry Regiment Website"All Hell Can't Stop Us" |
Captain Walter R. Good was a replacement platoon leader, injured by tank fire in Villers-la-Bonne-Eau, Belgium roughly December 30/31st, 1944. He became a POW at that time. A medic named Otto Rauber attended to him until the Germans abandoned Villers around January 10, 1945. Otto Rauber, also with the 137th Infantry Regiment, was not in his platoon but was apparently in the village. He kept moving Capt. Good from building to building because the shelling kept destoying the buildings and barns they were in. With little medical attention, his leg got gangrene and he knew he was dying. After leaving Villers, the Germans took him to one of their field hospitals where they amputated his leg. He was held prisoner in Stalag VI-G, Bonn-Duisdorf, until liberated in late April 1945.
He discussed his experience with his son in some detail after reading the Hugh Cole official history Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge. This inspired him to find Otto Rauber via internet. He did so, and they reunited on Sept 11, 2001 in upstate NY. Otto Rauber was quite surprised to hear from Capt. Good in 2001 because he was "in very bad shape" when they parted around January 10, 1945.
Capt. Walter R. Good was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, Purple Heart Medal, Bronze Star, American Theater Ribbon, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with one Battle Star (Ardennes) and the World War II Victory Medal. He passed away 2005 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
A Foot Soldier's Journal - A Story of World War II (excerpt) |
by Captain Walter R. Good, 35th Infantry Division, 137th Infantry Regiment, Company K |
Chapter 7 A Luxury Train Ride Across France We have previously mentioned several moves
by train in the United States and Great Britain.
In all of these, all ranks rode in
passenger coaches, perhaps not the most modern, but nevertheless,
equipment built to carry people.
Not so in France.
The train waiting for us in the station
of Le Harve was made up one hundred percent of freight box cars.
Not box cars as we know them in the
United States.
The European version was, and still is
as far as I know, a much smaller vehicle with only four wheels rigidly
mounted in the frame of the car.
This mode of transportation was not too
much of a surprise, as I had often heard of the French box cars from my
Father-in-Law, and other veterans of the first war. Prominently painted on the side of each car
were the words, 40 Hommes, 8 Cheveaux (40 men, 8 Horses).
It seemed that no one paid much
attention to this notice as each platoon was assigned one car and we had
close to fifty men in a platoon.
To make things worse, my platoon did
not draw a 40 and 8.
We were assigned to a 36 and 6.
Our car had an open platform at one
end.
Things were going to be a bit crowded.
My platoon sergeant and a couple of the
other noncoms asked if they could ride on the platform.
I quickly gave them permission and was
even tempted to join them.
However, I thought I had better stay
inside to help keep squabbling for space to a minimum. After we were all assigned to our cars,
instead of leaving we just sat there for hours.
In due time it was necessary to allow
the men to answer nature's call.
However, I soon found out that many of
them were answering more than one call of nature.
It was soon obvious that a lot of men
were missing so I asked one of those who remained where they were.
His answer surprised me but perhaps it
shouldn't have.
After all we were in France.
It seems that there was a "House of Ill
Repute" quite close to the station.
My informant told me that I really
should at least go and see it.
He said that the men were lined up like
they were going to a movie, he had never seen anything like it.
I decided to take his word for it and
didn't investigate. I don't recall how long we sat in the
station at Le Harve but eventually we did leave, I think with most of
our men, but we really did not have any way to check.
By the time we did leave, it was late
in the day and we traveled most of the night.
We did not travel very fast when we did
move and there were long periods when we just stood still.
At one of these stationary periods, our
platform riders pounded on the door and wanted inside the car.
They were half frozen from the December
weather.
I do not recall exactly how much time
this part of the trip consumed.
It was more than one day as we were
often just sitting on sidings not moving.
One interesting part of this saga
across France is that I have no recollection of who was in charge of our
movements or where they came from.
Although we were nominally still
loosely organized into company level units, it was very loose.
Officers and enlisted men alike were
herded about like cattle.
We were replacements, just one item in
the logistics of supply for the armies at the front.
At the time we probably had a lower
priority than ammunition and rations.
However, although we did not know it at
the time, events were occurring that would change this priority rather
quickly. In time we arrived at a stop where we were
told to unload.
We were moved into some buildings that
looked like they may have been military barracks.
The town was Fontainbleau the summer
home of the French Kings, south of, but not far from Paris.
There were a few French Officers
quartered in the building we were assigned to and we were not too
impressed with them and they were not too interested in us.
However, we were allowed to go into
town that evening so Ken Ploof and I did sample our first French wine.
I did not know it at the time but it
was also my last taste for some time.
As I recall we only spent one night at
this location and the next day we loaded back into our box cars and off
we went. I should note that while we were in Fontainbleau,
we heard our first rumors of something brewing in Belgium and also saw
in an issue of "Stars and Stripes", the army newspaper, that Major Glen
Miller's flight from England to Paris was overdue. The second leg of our trip was much
different than the first.
We seemed to have been given the right
of way and the train made only a few stops during the night and
generally traveled at a relatively good speed.
The next day we found ourselves well
into eastern France in or near the province of Alsace in a town called
Neufchateau.
Again we unloaded and moved into
buildings that looked like old military barracks.
Neufchateau had not been damaged much
by the war and we were able to do some belated Christmas shopping.
A bottle of French perfume did get on
its way to May Hall, although it sure did not get there by Christmas.
At this stop we were able to confirm
that there was something going on in Belgium, but no one seemed to know
exactly what it was.
Some of the rumors were that Germans
had launched an offensive but there was no information just how
extensive it might be.
Whatever was going on, we seemed to be
heading in that direction.
After a short stay in Neufchateau we
switched to truck convoy and headed generally north.
We passed through Nancy and eventually
arrived in Metz. At some point during this leg of the trip,
we got a minor initiation of fire.
It occurred during the late afternoon
at a stop we made for a meal.
It was again at some military type
group of buildings where we were eating.
It was after sundown and quite dark but
no blackout regulations were in effect when we were introduced to "Bed
Check Charlie".
Bed Check Charlie was a remnant of the
once mighty Luftwaffe, the German air force.
What planes they had left they rarely
flew during the day with the overwhelming allied superiority in the air,
so they would fly them at night to do as much damage as possible.
Charlie was a nuisance factor but did
not seem to have much military value.
However on this particular night, the
air raid warning sounded and someone called for the lights to be turned
off.
No one paid any attention to this
order, or request, until either a bomb dropped not too far away or the
anti-aircraft battery nearby started firing.
I'm really not certain which came first
but one or both of them shook the building a bit.
Then the lights went out in a hurry.
Actually during the next few minutes
the answering anti-aircraft fire from the ground seemed to make much
more noise and commotion than Charlie's bombs. Upon arrival at Metz we pulled into what
was obviously an old French Army Post and we soon found that most, if
not all, of the troops being quartered there were from the 35th
Infantry Division, formerly the National Guard of Missouri, Kansas and
Nebraska.
The division was part of Patton's Third
Army.
We were to be assigned to this
division. The group of officers and men that had been
more or less together since England was broken up piecemeal and assigned
to various units of the division.
My job was to be the leader of the
First Platoon, Company K, 137th Infantry Regiment.
My CO was a First Lieutenant named
Travis, I never did learn his first name.
My
friend Ken Ploof was assigned to the 320th Regiment.
I never saw him again and learned that
he was killed in action sometime later. Another officer who had been on the train
with us since we left England was Wilbur Dees.
He had been one of the Tactical
Officers of my class at OCS, Ft. Benning.
I first ran into him again at one of
the stops in England but I was not aware that he was on the same train
as me until he ended up in the same regiment of the 35th.
He was assigned to the first platoon of
I Company.
At that time he had not been promoted
since Benning and was still a 1st Lieutenant.
We will hear more of him later in this
narrative. By the time we arrived in Metz and were
given our Division assignment it was Christmas Eve.
After meeting our regimental and
battalion commanders we were taken to the quarters of our company where
we met Travis, our company commander.
The only experienced platoon leader
left with the company was a Technical Sergeant named Scott, again I do
not remember his first name if I ever knew it.
Scotty had been approved for a
battlefield commission but it had not come through at the time.
However he was given command of the one
platoon in anticipation of the promotion.
As I remember, the other two platoon
leaders were also replacement officers.
I do not remember the name of one of
them, but the other was William McLaughlin.
Bill was several years older than me
but was the only member of the company I saw again after the war was
over.
We corresponded for several years and I
visited him once at his home in Indiana.
Unfortunately he passed away at a
rather early age from causes apparently not related to the war. After we spent some time getting acquainted
as best we could under the circumstances, we learned that there were to
be passes for all ranks to spend the evening in the city of Metz.
Trucks would take the men to the center
city area.
I do not recall whether there was any
limit on the percentage of men who could get the passes.
However we also learned that our
company had a large quantity of mail to be censored.
This chore had to be performed by an
officer and the envelope of every letter had to carry the signature of
an officer before it entered the military postal system.
Since we did not know how long the
division was going to be in Metz all of the new officers of K Company
volunteered to stay in the Barracks and censor the mail so it could get
on its way. When our effort became known, a couple of
the noncoms came to us and asked if they could get us anything while
they were in town.
We said that a bottle of cognac would
be nice for a Christmas Eve treat.
Several hours later the men returned
from the town, these men came into the room where we were still
censoring mail and said, "Gentlemen, here is your bottle of Cognac".
We asked how much money we owed them
and they replied, "We got it for free, the proprietor resisted at first,
but we stuck a 45 under his nose and he gave it to us".
In case there are some real innocents
reading this, a 45 is or was the standard side arm of the military at
that time and for many years before and after that time. Before we go any further, a few comments
about war time censorship might be appropriate.
This was a very time consuming chore
that every officer had to do.
As with many things in the military,
the cast system existed.
Only enlisted men's mail had to be
censored by someone else, officers were allowed to sign their own mail
on the outside of the envelope.
Also as with many other regulations it
was rather ridiculous.
The average enlisted man didn't have
much knowledge that would be of interest to Intelligence agents of the
enemy, and even if they did have tidbits of useful information by the
time it got to the recipient, or was intercepted somewhere along the
way, it would have been out of date information.
However, no matter how useless the job
might be, it had to be done.
I am certain that some officers
probably just signed most of their mail and didn't read it.
This carried a certain amount of risk
to the person doing his or her job since the mail was spot checked at
higher echelon.
This higher echelon, wherever it was,
is were officers mail was also supposed to be randomly censored.
We should note that this censorship
existed only outside of the United States.
This job was not without its
interesting aspect.
It certainly gave one an insight into
the men he had to work with every day.
With some men you could trace their
military career by the addresses of the various women they were writing
to.
Other letters gave one various insights
into the character of the men writing them.
One group of letters I will never
forget were love letters written by a GI to his sweetheart in Brooklyn.
He called her Princess and were really
beautiful letters.
He was also a talented artist and would
illustrate them with sketches of cupids, hearts and other nice little
pictures.
He told me once that his family ran a
restaurant in Brooklyn and invited me to stop around after the war.
Just another thing I should have but
never did do. When overseas a GI could send letters by
the normal mail but delivery was slow and uncertain.
He or she also had the choice of using
V-Mail.
V-Mail was essentially a system where
the original letter, prepared on a specific form was photo copied, the
film then shipped back to the States where a positive print was made and
delivered to the addressee.
This type of mail was given a priority
and delivery was much quicker.
Overseas addresses were the unit
designation and an APO number at some major port city of the U.S. like
New York, APO meaning Army Post Office.
That was to prevent the folks back home
and others from knowing where the unit was located.
The disadvantage to V-Mail was that it
was limited to what one could write on one of the forms.
However you could send as many as you
wanted. I very seldom censored any parts of a
letter.
It usually wasn't necessary.
However, there was one occasion where a
disgruntled GI really blew off steam to someone back home.
He accused everyone from the President
to me of incompetence and many lesser crimes.
In this case I simply took it back to
the man and asked him to reconsider whether he really wanted to send it.
If he did I was obligated to send the
letter, but threatened to censor it until it lost its meaning.
He took the letter back and that was
the end of the episode.
Actually, I don't think I could have
legally done what I threatened to do but he never called my bluff. The bottle of cognac was a pleasant treat
for the balance of Christmas Eve.
We had a lot of help getting rid of it
so no one was in danger of overindulging.
Christmas Day dawned clear and cold if
my memory is correct.
We were given Christmas dinner and I
don't recall much of what we did that day until late in the afternoon
when it was almost dark.
Most of our men attended a Christmas
service in what had probably been an auditorium.
There was a stage at one end and the
Chaplain conducted the service from there.
He wore a white vestment over his field
uniform and I recall that there was a hole in the roof and the moon was
shining through the opening. After the service I was ordered to go to
Battalion headquarters, or it may have been the regimental command post
I'm not sure which.
Whichever it was we were advised that
there was indeed a German offensive in Belgium.
Our mission was going to be the relief
of a "Contingent" of paratroopers that was surrounded in a town called
Bastogne.
I emphasize the word "Contingent" which
in no way indicates that the surrounded troops were a full Division plus
some miscellaneous units.
There was no indication as to how
extensive an offensive we had to deal with. I was given a map of the area where we
would be going and informed that my platoon would be the guide platoon
of the division.
Our regiment would be the right flank
of the division and the Third Army.
Another of the 35th's
regiments was to be on our left and the 4th Armored and 25th
Divisions in that order on the left of the other regiment.
That left one regiment of the 35th
in reserve.
This arrangement meant that our
regiment, and my platoon would be the right flank of the line, and as
far as I knew the whole Third Army.
What we didn't know and I wouldn't
until many years in the future was that the 4th Armored
reached Bastogne the day after Christmas. We were also given some interesting orders.
The first was that when the German army
moved into Belgium at the start of their offensive, all units were
carrying gas masks.
Therefore we would be issued gas masks
before leaving Metz.
Also groups of German soldiers had been
identified wearing American uniforms.
Intelligence information was that they
identified themselves to each other by a scarf, thought to be yellow.
Therefore all personnel were ordered
not to wear scarfs, not a happy thought in the cold weather.
The strangest of all was that we were
to shoot all dogs.
Here the background was that there were
reports that the Germans were turning loose dogs with concealed radios
on them to overhear what was going on among the enemy troops.
The first of these orders did have some
substance as several days later I did see German corpses dressed in
American uniforms.
However they would have fooled no one
at close range as they all seemed to be wearing German field boots,
unlike anything an American GI would be wearing.
However they would have fooled someone
a few hundred yards away.
Fortunately I do not recall coming
across any dogs.
Chapter 8 North to Belgium The exact timing and sequence of events of
the next day or two are a bit foggy in my memory but I do remember the
events quite clearly.
Perhaps I should say this statement
applies to the next several weeks.
As my narrative continues this may be
rather obvious. I do recall that we left Metz by truck
convoy.
I think it was still dark, probably
early in the morning of December 26th, but it may have been
late Christmas night.
We drove north for several hours and
finally arrived at a small village in Luxembourg.
I think the name of the village was
Piero or something like that but I have never been able to find it on a
map. We set up our company command post in a
room of a private home we had commandeered.
My platoon was assigned to outpost the
town, so I assume that we were near where the action was.
Each outpost was made up of four or
five men, with some type of automatic weapon.
I personally took two of the groups to
their assigned locations and one of the noncoms took the rest.
It was not very long before we
discovered that one of our outposts was alongside of a 155mm artillery
battery.
I don't know if anyone knew they were
there but I had been given no indication that other units were in the
area.
I never had time to unscramble that
situation because as soon as I had something to eat, I had to worry
about getting my men relieved so they would not be out there all night
without rations.
I had neglected, forgotten or simply
didn't have enough common sense to give the outpost personnel one
important instruction.
That was to set up a time for radio
contact or any rules for radio communication.
Each outpost had a small hand held
radio.
However in those days battery life was
rather short for electronic devices so they could not be left on all the
time.
It was therefore necessary to have a
timed sequence when each post should check in with the company CP.
With no specific instructions regarding
the radios, our outposts didn't make any attempt to routinely check in
with the CP and we could not contact them.
Again I was fortunate, this oversight
caused no serious problem. We were soon back in our trucks but we did
not go much further and soon were unloaded and started moving as
Infantry was intended to move, on foot.
Shortly after leaving the trucks, we
approached a small river or stream where the only way to cross was a
pontoon bridge.
The only problem was that it was under
intermittent artillery fire.
Therefore we had to run across the
bridge more or less one at a time.
In that way if a shell came close,
casualties would be small.
That is unless the shell arrived at the
time you were on the bridge.
Then the casualty would be more
significant.
However we all cleared that minor
roadblock without any serious complications. A short time later, our column was
scattered by what appeared to be mortar fire.
It took some time to get reorganized
after that and eventually we approached a wooded area where we deployed
into rough skirmish lines as we entered this area. I should note here that our company
commanders had been ordered by higher command to stay in the rear so
most of the green platoon leaders were more or less running the show.
I cannot speak for the rest of them but
in spite of my good background in individual Infantry soldier skills, I
had never actually led a platoon in field maneuvers.
This was real on-the-job training.
I also doubt if any of the replacement
enlisted men had any more training that what we gave at Camp Fannin or
in England.
It was a case of the blind leading the
blind.
I was envious many years later when I
read of units actually rehearsing their maneuvers before the start of
the desert war with Iraq. We had entered the wooded area we mentioned
above when Wilbur Dees' company came to a clearing.
At the time he was leading the company
and he did the same thing I would have done.
Rather than move into the open and
cross the clearing, he started to move around the edge of the woods.
This of course slowed things down and
before he got very far with this move, his company commander came up and
really gave him hell for not striking out right across the clearing.
It is ironic that this company
commander was the first casualty among the officers and Wilbur rather
quickly inherited the company.
I met Wilber briefly after the war and
he had survived with only minor wounds and got his Captain's "Railroad
Tracks", the double silver bars. We did not move very far into the forest
after that event as we were soon ordered to dig in and prepare to spend
the night.
Our bedrolls were delivered to the
area, so we had blankets.
However, the chore of digging a slit
trench in the frozen ground was rather formidable.
However we eventually did finish a
joint project and had a trench deep enough to get us below ground level.
One of the sergeants, the platoon
messenger and I shared the trench and blankets.
The next morning we counted our covers.
There were something like twelve or
fourteen under us and seven or eight on top of us. The terrain we moved into the next day was
mostly wooded.
At this point we were truly the guide
platoon of the division.
I had been given a compass azimuth and
an overlay for the map I was carrying.
The overlay showed a series of phase
lines.
A phase line is where you hold up,
regroup and advise higher authority before continuing.
An overlay is nothing but a piece of
tissue that has been traced from anther copy of the same map you are
using.
So that the recipient can place the
overlay on the same section of the map, the tissue is keyed to the
recipient's map by the rectangular grid lines that divide all military
maps into 1000 yard squares. For some strange reason I remember clearly
that our course was only a degree or two off due North.
All went well that day although
movement by compass course through a wooded area is rather slow.
As we advanced, we found no evidence of
the enemy.
Finally we reached the last phase line
on our overlay.
I verified our position as well as I
could in the woods, sent a messenger to the rear and ordered everyone to
dig in while we waited for orders. Whenever you stopped for more than a few
minutes, it was standard procedure to start digging.
Also I did not have to wait very long
for orders because soon some unhappy Company Commanders converged on me.
They claimed that I was far off course
and pointed to a hill on the map a long way from where I thought I was.
Of course I debated the point and to
find out where we were for certain, radio contact was made with an
artillery spotter airplane flying above.
These planes were small "Cub" civilian
aircraft which were very good for this type of military use because of
their slow speed and ease of handling.
Remember this was in the days before
helicopters.
We put out colored identification
panels so we could be spotted easily and allow the artillerymen to radio
our coordinates to us.
Fortunately, while neither the Company
Commanders or I was exactly correct, I was a lot closer to where we
should be than they thought we were. After this episode we moved on and passed
through one or two small farming villages and as we moved out of one
patch of trees into a cleared area our forward elements came under
machine gun fire from another patch of woods on the other side of the
field.
The terrain we were moving through was
rolling countryside, much like portions of Lancaster County, the Lehigh
Valley or North Central Pennsylvania.
The open areas appeared to be farm
meadows or fields for crops so most of them where of good size, not an
area one would move into if you knew that there are enemy machine guns
on the other side.
Therefore we moved our men up to the
edge of the wooded area and started to dig in again.
As we were taking this position I heard
some rifle fire coming from some of our men off to my right.
I moved down the line to where the men
were firing to determine what they were shooting at.
I could see nothing.
When I inquired they pointed out
several men out in front of our position.
The rolling terrain had hidden them
from my view at my original position.
I'm sorry to report that a couple of
these men were wounded.
However they were quickly evacuated by
a couple of medics.
I don't think there were any fatalities
but I am not certain of this.
One can see that casualties from
"Friendly Fire" is not a new phenomenon. A short time after this unfortunate event,
I was told to report to the Battalion Command Post in a village more or
less a mile to the rear of our location.
Taking one man with me I headed for the
CP.
As we entered the village, we had to
duck under a parked tank when some artillery came in but no harm was
done. Before commenting on the attack order I was
to receive at the CP, one should have a picture of my attire.
Everything I was wearing was standard
army issue including the overcoat.
The only indication of rank was a small
silver bar painted on the front of my steel helmet and a vertical white
strip on the back.
We called this strip our "aiming
stake".
Non-commissioned officers had a
horizontal strip as I recall and a small rank insignia on the front.
We had all taken dirt or whatever we
could find and smeared it over the strips on the back to make it less
prominent.
The insignia on the front of the helmet
was small and not too visible from a distance.
No one was wearing a back pack but I
was still wearing the harness of mine.
Our packs, or Musette Bags were smaller
than those of the men and clipped to a harness at two rings located at
the front of each shoulder.
Whenever the bag was removed as it
always was in an active area, some individuals chose to hang a grenade
on one or both of the rings at the shoulder.
At the time I am describing, I was
carrying one grenade in this manner.
This technique later became the
trademark of General Matthew Ridgeway during the Korean War. One other comment before returning to the
CP, the reader will recall that I had noted that Gas Masks were issued
before we left Metz.
A quick check of our men after just one
or two days in the field showed that I was about the only one who still
had one.
Had the Germans used any kind of gas
the results would have been disastrous. Meanwhile back at the Command Post, the
Battalion staff was briefing me about the attack plan.
There was to be an artillery barrage
first, high explosive mixed with white phosphors.
This was a potent and effective type of
artillery against dug in troops.
Phosphors shells would burst with a
mushroom like pattern and fall into the fox holes or slit trenches.
A piece of burning phosphors landing
anywhere on a person is quite likely to make him get out of his hole
where high explosive shells can put him out of action.
The chemical shells were normally
delivered by 4.2 inch mortars handled by special units. After the timed artillery barrage, the
Infantry was to move forward.
Part of the reserve battalion was to
move up on our right and would be supported by tanks.
I don't know what unit they were from
but the main effort would be in this area.
At one point, I was leaning over a
table where a couple of staff officers were giving me this information
when the grenade I had hanging on my harness slipped out of its ring,
bounced on the table and rolled across the floor.
This caused some momentary panic, but
there was really not too much to worry about.
It took a fairly strong pull to remove
the safety pin from a grenade.
However I wouldn't recommend that one
bounce a grenade off the dining room table. Timing was important to this plan, so by
the time the briefing was finished, the clock was creeping toward the
time when the barrage was to start.
However there was one more snag.
When I came into the CP, which was a
farmhouse in the village, I had taken off my gloves and laid them on a
table.
When I went to leave, I could not find
them.
They were nowhere to be seen.
The Battalion commander, probably a Lt.
Colonel but I'm not certain, was getting itchy and said I would have to
leave without them.
I let him know that there was no way I
was going back to my unit without gloves.
I suppose he decided that he would
rather have a 1st Lieutenant with his forward unit than a 1st
Lieutenant under arrest for insubordination so he just said, rather
firmly, "Someone get this man some gloves so he can go back to his
unit".
Gloves quickly appeared from somewhere
and they fit.
Perhaps they were mine returning home. After I returned and briefed the other
platoons on the plan, the barrage came off as scheduled, we moved into
the open field.
There was no resistance in our area, we
crossed the field into the wooded area on the other side.
We found some abandoned slit trenches
and what looked like a makeshift machine gun emplacement on the edge of
the woods.
They looked like they had been
abandoned in a hurry as there were still some items of equipment in a
couple of them.
We moved through this grove of trees
and pulled up of the far side where we overlooked another small farming
village.
My map indicated that it was
Villers-la-Bonne Eau, The Village of Good Water. There is one part of this minor skirmish
that is not clear in my memory.
I am not certain whether we had armor
support as I described above or if the tanks were brought into action
immediately after we came under fire.
I do remember that at one point in
time, units of one of our other regiments, located to our right, tried
to advance supported by several Sherman Tanks.
This attempt was a disaster, the Tanks
were knocked out quickly and nothing was accomplished.
Whatever the timing of the armor's
demise the fact that they were knocked out quickly indicated that the
Germans had some rather potent equipment in that area.
It probably took one or more of the
famous German 88mm guns to put a couple of Sherman Tanks out of action
so quickly.
If they were indeed 88's, they were
probably mounted on tanks of a panzer unit.
In a couple of days we would know for
certain. We were now overlooking the village we
named above.
As we dug in and prepared to stay
awhile, our company commander ordered a patrol to move forward and scout
out the village.
They did not get very far and were
promptly driven back with some casualties.
The patrol had been led by Sergeant
Scott who I have previously mentioned and who was very fortunate to
survive.
After that we were instructed to dig in
for the night and hot food would soon be sent up.
We finally did get the cooked food but
it wasn't very hot. Since Christmas day we had been living
primarily on K rations with a D ration thrown in sometimes.
The K ration was a World War II
development.
They came in a box about the size of a
cartoon of cigarettes and would fit easily into a field jacket pocket.
Each morning you could pick up three
boxes.
There were three varieties, breakfast,
lunch and dinner.
The main course was contained in a can
about the size of a normal can of tuna or salmon.
Breakfast was a can of bacon and eggs,
lunch a can of cheese and bacon and dinner one of two or three
varieties.
Either beans and ham, or a couple of
other unidentifiable meat based concoctions.
In addition to the main course, each
ration had biscuits, a powder to make a drink and other goodies.
Not the same in the various meals.
For instance it was essential to get a
breakfast ration as it was the only one that had toilet paper.
However in the field it normally was
not necessary to have this item every day.
The reason should be obvious.
Breakfast had a powdered citrus drink
and one of the other meals a packet of Nescafe.
About the only instant coffee available
in those days.
I don't remember what drink was
included in the other meal.
However each meal did have a packet of
four cigarettes.
I wonder if they are included in
today's field rations, I doubt it. These rations would keep you going, I guess
for an indefinite period of time but they sure got monotonous in a
hurry.
The last one I recall eating about the
time we are discussing I took about two bites of the cheese from the
lunch variety and then threw it as far away as I could.
A lot of men would not drink the coffee
and I made it known that I would like to have any they planned to throw
away.
Therefore I usually had a surplus of
Nescafe in my pocket.
The meals were double wrapped.
The outside layer was paper board
similar to a cigarette carton, but the inside wrap was a much heavier
paper board impregnated with paraffin so that it was waterproof and
humidity resistant.
An added characteristic, that I am sure
was not designed but dumb luck, was that this box would burn with a
smokeless flame and would heat a canteen cup full of water for making
Nescafe.
This wasn't taught at Fort Benning but
was one of the first things that one learned from the more experienced
men. That night I don't recall that we did
anything of significance.
Another patrol was sent out from one of
the other companies but I never heard that they learned much.
At one time during the night, we
watched as Germans came out of the village with a tank and chopped some
wood a few hundred yards in front of us.
I am sure that the reader has seen
enough pictures of the Battle of the Bulge to know that the ground was
snow covered, but it was also moonlit so visibility at night was good.
The reader may ask why didn't we fire
on them.
There are two reasons, one, we did not
wish to get tangled up with a tank as we did not have any decent defense
against one easily available.
Two we did not want to give our
position away, they didn't seem to know we were there on the edge of the
woods. I do not recall getting much, if any, sleep
that night.
In fact, lack of sleep is the one thing
that remains foremost in my memory about the time since we left Metz.
Except for the one night I have
described earlier when we had our bedrolls, I really do not recall
sleeping any night.
After the company settled down for a
night there was always something else to do, if it was only finding out
what we were supposed to do next. Much of what happened the next day or two I
probably did not know, but also some of it has probably fogged by the
years.
However to the best of my recollection,
by this time the company commanders were making themselves more
prominent and were more active in the direct control of what was
happening in the forward units.
There was much discussion as to what we
do now.
For the first few hours of the next day
there was no sign of activity in the village.
Had the Germans evacuated during the
early morning hours?
Had they left only a token delaying
force and withdrawn the panzers?
We really didn't know.
I do recall that there was an order for
our company, and I guess the units on our left, to move off to the
north, skirting around the east side of the village.
Travis, our CO, got into a violent
argument with Battalion officers on this point.
So much so that he was relieved of
command.
I never saw him again and have no idea
what happed to him. However, Travis must have made some points
in his disagreement because we were told to send a patrol into the
village.
Sgt. Scott was to lead the patrol, and
for some stupid reason I decided to go along.
So off we went about six men.
We made the edge of the village without
incident, cleared the first house we came to and moved into it.
While some of the men stayed in the
house and contacted higher headquarters for instructions, I took two of
the men and moved around the edge of the village to the next house,
which was downhill from where we were, across an open field but on the
edge of a wooded area.
We inspected this building and found it
empty except for two dead civilians, and old man and woman, apparently
the farmers who lived there.
However the house had windows and/or
doors on only one side and this was the side toward the open field.
There was no way to observe any
activity on the other three sides, especially the side up against the
woods.
Therefore I decided that I did not want
to stay there and returned to the first house.
By the time we arrived, there was quite
a few more men there.
I have no idea where they came from or
who sent them but it looked like we planned to stay awhile.
Among them was a forward observer for
artillery, our new company commander and a number of others with some
automatic weapons and a bazooka or two. A Bazooka was our first hand held rocket
type weapon.
It looked like a stove pipe with hands
grips attached to it.
The name came from a comedian of the
era, Bob Burns, who played a crude musical instrument that looked
somewhat like the description of the weapon I gave above.
The Bazooka was supposed to be an
Anti-Tank weapon.
It had virtually no recoil when firing
what was essentially a small self-propelling rocket type projectile.
The head of the projectile had a shaped
charge that fired on impact from some kind of inertia firing mechanism.
The only problem was that it usually
didn't fire when it hit a curved or slanted surface.
Of course there were a lot of curved
and slanted surfaces on a Tank, especially on the front.
Another disadvantage was that when it
fired it spewed a sheet of flame out the back of its barrel and your
position was easy for the other guy to spot. Our new company commander was apparently
from the Battalion staff and I never got to know his name.
Nothing he did, if he did anything, had
any impact on what happened next. So we settled in for the rest of that day
and that night.
Why we didn't try to move further into
the village or else get out of there, I do not know.
We did know that if there were still
Germans in the area and they wanted the ground we were on, they would
counterattack at dawn.
This was the way they fought.
If they lost a position in a tight
situation, they would almost always counterattack as soon as possible.
This time was no exception because at
dawn, our building came under attack from Infantry supported by tanks,
about four of them as I remember.
I really don't know exactly which
panzers these were but I have always called them Tigers which was the
biggest tank of a Panzer Division.
Whatever they were, they looked awfully
big to me and as far as I am concerned, they were Tigers.
Tigers were basically a platform from
the German 88mm rifle, the best and most versatile artillery weapon of
the war. We were supposed to have anti-tank weapons
deployed up the hill from where we were, but they were 57mm rifles.
A rifle in artillery terminology is a
flat trajectory weapon as opposed to a Howitzer and/or Mortar which is a
high angle fire weapon.
Artillery rifles are characterized by
long barrels, while the barrel on a high angle fire weapon is much
shorter.
Getting back to the 57mm.
This is a British weapon, alleged to
have been very effective in North Africa.
However its problem was that when it
fired, it produced a large sheet of flame and smoke that could be seen
for miles and it was only a matter of time until it drew counterbattery
fire.
It was not easy to move quickly and
could not be manhandled except for very short distances.
For these reasons it was alleged that
the standard operating procedure for 57mm crews was to fire one round
and get the hell out of where they were as quickly as possible.
If they couldn't tow the gun with its
truck, they would pull the firing pin and leave it. As the attack developed, I was on the main
floor of the house but soon found that I didn't have much company.
Also I am not too certain as to the
exact sequence of the events I am about to relate, nor am I certain just
how long a time span was involved.
However there was some exchange of
fire.
At one point, I saw a rifle grenade hit
the turret of one tank.
When hit, the tank stopped, the hatch
opened and someone started to crawl out.
I had a clear view of this and somehow
I got my hands on a Browning Automatic Rifle, really a light machine gun
but with only a small magazine of 20 rounds.
It was a holdover from the First World
War.
I don't remember whether I grabbed this
from another GI or whether it was laying on the floor.
However I got it, I leveled the weapon
at the tank crewman coming through the hatch and fired several bursts
until the magazine was empty.
The man immediately ducked back into
the hatch, I don't know whether he was hit or just reacting.
After he was out of sight the tank
backed down the hill.
I think it returned sometime later. Either before or after the BAR incident, I
recall seeing a bazooka laying on the floor.
I picked it up and examined it only to
find that it had features that I had never seen at Ft. Benning.
I recall that Sgt. Scott was present
and I asked him if he could fire it.
He said yes so I said that I would load
it for him.
These weapons required two men to fire,
one to load and one to aim and fire.
After I loaded a round, Scotty fired at
one of the tanks and he told me the projectile just bounced off without
exploding.
The tank immediately returned fire and
it seemed that the whole ceiling of the house fell on us.
However it may have been part of the
wall, I really don't know.
Whatever, I recall looking around the
room and seeing the tank projectile laying on the floor within a couple
of feet of me.
It had either been an armor piercing
round or a dud.
I didn't examine it to find out.
I do recall that Scotty left after that
incident and I don't recall ever seeing him again. After these incidents, I soon found myself
virtually alone on the first floor of the house, at least in the area I
was in.
I believe there was a second floor and
I don't know if anyone was up there or not.
By this time I had no idea how many
people were in the building.
The Germans apparently knew they had us
under control and they just sat there with a tank on each side of the
house.
I was watching them through the front
door which was in a hallway that led from back to front, when the gun of
the tank I was observing traversed around and was pointing in my
direction.
As I realized that I was looking down
the barrel of a rather large gun, I dove to my left as far as I could to
get into a prone position.
I no sooner hit the floor when I felt
something kick me in the hip.
That was the only sensation of pain
that I had, but I knew that I had been hit.
My first thought was that now I could
get out of this mess, but it didn't take long to realize that this may
not happen.
There was no sense in calling for a
medic so I crawled down the hall and found steps to the cellar and
managed to get down the steps. When I got down the steps, I was surprised
to find quite a few people.
I have no idea how many, or who they
were.
I think at least one of them was an
officer, probably my new company commander.
Several of the men were wounded and
there was a medic who put some bandages on my right leg.
After a while I heard someone from the
first floor calling down the steps to the unknown officer.
He was telling him that he should come
upstairs and evaluate the situation as it looked very bad.
He was suggesting that we should
consider surrendering.
Whoever this officer was, he refused to
move from the basement and kept asking the individual upstairs to
describe the situation to him.
After some exchange along these lines I
finally joined in the exchange and told the reluctant one in the cellar
that if he wasn't going to do anything, we may as well surrender.
So I called to the GI upstairs that he
should signal our surrender.
This was finally done but I have no
idea whether the unknown soldier on the first floor was listening to me
or just gave up on the other officer in the basement and did it on his
own.
However before making the final gesture
of surrender, he gave an opportunity for any who desired a chance to
escape from the house.
I recall one or two men did try but
were mowed down with machine gun fire rather quickly. After the surrender emblem was shown, in a
few minutes we heard several people enter the building.
As someone came to the head of the
cellar stairs someone, I think the medic, loudly called out that the
wounded were in the cellar.
I heard this declaration being
acknowledged.
Sometime after that I was aware of a
German Officer leaning over me and telling me, "For you the war is
over".
He searched me and took the map I have
previously referred to and still had in my pocket.
He interrogated me a little but other
than my name rank and serial number I went by the book and refused to
answer any other questions.
When I did that he proceeded to give me
the answers to all the questions he just asked.
They were not earth shaking items of
intelligence, but did involve our unit designation, when did I arrive in
Europe and a couple of other similar points.
He had obviously got this information
from other men they had just questioned. Thus ended my short and inglorious active
military career.
We had been told at Fort Benning that
any major battle of a war was nothing but a series of little battles and
whoever won most of them, won the big battle.
Unfortunately I was involved with one
of the losing little battles.
None of us had performed very well
although we didn't seem to get much support from other troops in the
area.
Once we got in the house at the edge of
the village, I do not recall ever getting any specific orders as to what
to do or what was expected of us.
Obviously someone else was directing
the effort, whatever it was.
I have often wondered whether I should
have assumed more initiative.
I wish I had enough sense to get out of
that place shortly after we got there.
It was a stupid place to be, especially
if the German Tanks were still in the area.
Someone should have had enough sense
not to put so many men in the building with this factor still unknown.
However this is all long in the past
and nothing will change history.
I am not ashamed of my conduct and only
wish that I could have done something that would have averted the
disaster.
Surrendering is humiliating.
Being wounded at the time tempers that
reaction somewhat, but not enough to eliminate the feeling. Thus began my saga as a "Kriegsgefangener", the German word for Prisoner of War. |
Thanks to Ken Good for this information and the picture of his father.
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